Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  But Sendar hadn’t been there, and it might just as well have been a total failure because of that. She’d tried to lose herself in the preparations, then to immerse herself in the happiness of other people, and she’d actually forgotten for a little—just a little. She’d smiled and even laughed, and when she’d come back here to her rooms, she’d been so tired she’d fallen straight asleep.

  But she’d known, the moment that she awakened, that one day, one week, hadn’t changed anything, hadn’t filled the emptiness, hadn’t given her back the part of herself that was gone.

  Her father would have loved this. He’d have reveled in her triumph. He would have had so many ideas for the Festival, so many more than she had—

  The brief respite she’d had was just that—a moment of forgetfulness, nothing more. And now, with nothing but day after day of gray sameness stretching ahead of her, she missed him so much she thought she was going to break beneath the weight of grief.

  So she sobbed into her pillow, inconsolable. How could anyone console her for this? She and her father should have had years and years together; she should have had him to cast stern eyes over would-be suitors, to advise her how to deal with the Council, to scold her for working too hard and send her to read a book or ride. And if she ever married—he should have been there to see it, to see his grandchildren, to spoil them as he’d often threatened to do. All of that was gone, taken from her before it ever had a chance to happen.

  She didn’t want anyone to hear her crying; they wouldn’t understand. They’d tell her stupid things—that it had been long enough, that she needed to “pull herself together,” that it was “time to move on.”

  How could they know? How many of them had a beloved father cut down in front of their eyes? How many of them were facing what she faced, the rest of her life without the man who had been father and mother to her, and friend, and counselor? None of them understood. None of them could. None of them wanted to. What they wanted, was for her to be something else, some biddable creature they called “Selenay” that had no feelings but the shallowest, and no thoughts of her own. Her feelings were an inconvenient obstacle to that.

  Or worse than telling her to “get over this,” they’d spew some kind of platitude about how he was surely watching her from somewhere and was proud of her, but would be unhappy that she was still mourning for him. How could they know? How could anyone know?

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t right. Sendar had been good; he’d given up so much, he’d always done so much for others—it wasn’t fair! She’d always thought that when you did good, good came to you. What kind of a cruel god would do this to her, and to him?

  For that matter, she wasn’t entirely certain that there were any gods out there, not after this. And if there weren’t any gods, then that meant that when you died, you just died, and her father wasn’t “out there,” looking after her. He was just gone, and all those platitudes were nothing but empty lies. . . .

  Damn them. Damn them all, and their needs, and their platitudes, and their plans. They would never, could never, understand. She’d lost her best friend as well as her father; she had been cheated out of years of things that they all took for granted.

  How could she possibly ever “get over” that? There would be a great, gaping wound in her for the rest of her life that would never be properly filled!

  Except with tears, the tears that never seemed to heal anything inside her.

  She had tried, these past moons at least, to do things that would keep her moving, keep her busy, keep her too concentrated on things outside herself to think. For a while, the sheer desperation of having to learn how to rule, of having to outwit her Council when they tried discreetly to shunt her aside or maneuver her into something she didn’t want to do had filled that need to keep moving. She would work and plan and learn until she fell asleep, exhausted, and wake early to work again—and that had helped, at least, to keep things at bay. Keep moving, keep busy, keep her mind full, keep it all at a distance. Then, just as the urgency of all that began to ease, there’d been the preparations for the Festival to fill the silences, to force her to work, think, and not remember.

  But now—now she had awakened this morning, knowing there was nothing, nothing between her and that vast, aching void that used to be filled with her father’s presence.

  And anyone who found her crying like this would just never understand. They’d wonder why, after yesterday, she could be unhappy. Even if she tried to explain, they’d stare at her without understanding, then tell her that it was time she moved on, that it was time to leave her grief behind her. As if she could!

  :Of course you won’t,: Caryo said, very, very quietly. :And you shouldn’t. That would be wrong. How can you leave it behind you when it’s a part of you?:

  The feeling that Caryo had somehow put comforting arms around her only made her sob harder. But Caryo didn’t seem to think there was anything wrong with that.

  :They keep telling me stupid things like “Time will heal it—”: she said, around the sobs that shook her entire body.

  There was an ache in Caryo’s mind-voice that matched the aching of her heart. :Time doesn’t. All that Time does is make it more distant, put more space between you and what happened. It doesn’t heal anything. I don’t know how or what does the healing, but it isn’t Time.:

  :Oh, Caryo, I miss him so much!: she cried.

  :So do I.:

  Somehow, that was exactly the right thing for Selenay to hear; it let loose another torrent of weeping, but this time, it seemed as if she was weeping herself out, until at last she lay there, curled in her bed, her nose stuffed and her eyes sore, her pillow soggy—

  :Turn your pillow over, love.:

  She sniffed hard and obeyed without thinking, and closed her aching eyes. She was exhausted now, limp with crying, and if the ache in her heart didn’t hurt any less, at least she was too tired to cry any more.

  :I keep thinking, if only I’d gone after him—:

  :If only. Those must be the two saddest words in the world,: Caryo sighed. :The best thing that I can tell you is that there is nothing that could have happened that would have allowed you to follow him. And there was not one scrap, one hint of knowledge or even Foresight that any of us had that would have let us guess what he was going to do, or enabled us to prevent it. If there was ever a moment in history where a man took his own fate in his own two hands, that was it.:

  :Then I wish I could go back—: But there was no use in pursuing that line of thought. She couldn’t. No one, not even in the tales of before the Founding, had ever said anything about being able to go back into the past and change things.

  :I don’t want to get up, Caryo.: And she didn’t. She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to leave her bed. Ever. The weight of depression pressed down on her and filled her with lethargy. She wanted to close her eyes, and fall into oblivion, and never come out again. She didn’t exactly want to die—but if only there was a way to not live—

  And Caryo didn’t say any of the stupid things that other people might, about how she “had” to live for Valdemar, or how she was being hysterical, or overreacting. :If you don’t get up, I’ll miss our morning ride,: she said instead, wistfully, as if she was deliberately misunderstanding the “I don’t want to get up” as merely meaning “this morning,” and not “forever.” Maybe she was.

  But—the thought of the morning ride, another of those times when she could forget, for a little, as Caryo moved into a gallop, and she could lean over that warm, white neck and let the movement and the rush of air and the rhythm all lull her into a kind of trance, that same state of not being that she was just longing for—that broke through the lethargy. It was hard to tell why, but it did; it made her decide that she had to get up, to keep moving, to try for another candlemark, another day. And as she forced her legs out from under the covers, it occurred to her that as long as she just kept moving, even if she didn’t find any peace or escape in movement, she might
at least find a little more distraction.

  Distraction. She had to distract anyone from knowing she’d been crying, or they’d want to know why, and then there would be all that stupid nonsense that she didn’t want to hear.

  She slipped out of bed and went to the table where a basin and pitcher waited; she splashed some of the cold water into the basin, and bathed her face until she thought that most of the signs of her tears were gone. Her eyes were probably still red, but with luck, no one would remark on it. After all, with all of the snow glare out there yesterday, probably they’d think it was that. If anyone said anything, she’d claim it was snow glare. And maybe she could claim a headache, too, and cut the Council session short.

  She blew her nose, and went back to her bed, and crawled back into it, feeling as exhausted as if she hadn’t slept at all.

  :Just close your eyes,: Caryo advised. :They’ll expect you to sleep late after last night. You really did look lovely, you know. All of the young Heralds, at least, were saying so. I can’t speak for the Bards; they don’t have Companions to gossip about them, but the Heralds were very taken with how you looked.:

  :They were?: That was—if not comforting, at least it was satisfying. Nice to know that she did look as good as she had thought.

  :Believe it or not, even Alberich thought so. In fact, I think he might have had just a twinge of jealousy when he handed you off to Orthallen.:

  Well, that penetrated the lethargic depression, a bit. :Alberich? Surely not.: And anyway, it was probably only that he disliked Orthallen. Well, apparently the feeling was mutual, and there wasn’t anything she could do about that. When two men decided to take a dislike to one another, there really wasn’t anything to be done about it. It was like trying to get a pair of dominant dogs to be friends; no matter what you did, each of them was going to be certain that he should be head of the pack, and all you could do was to try and keep them separate as much as possible. Orthallen was one of the few people who didn’t say anything stupid about her father. He didn’t even say that she ought to be over her grief by now, and that made him one of the few people she felt comfortable being around, even if he did tend to treat her as “little Selenay” instead of the Queen.

  Besides, it wasn’t Alberich that she wanted to make jealous.

  Though, on second thought, there really wasn’t anyone in her entire Court or the Heraldic Circle she wanted to make jealous. Honestly, if the whole business of trying to get her to marry someone who was tied to a whole pack of special interests was put aside, the real reason she didn’t want to marry any of the Council’s choices was that they all bored her. There wasn’t one of them that was worth spending an entire afternoon with, much less a lifetime. There wasn’t a single unattached male in the entire Court that even gave her a flutter of interest.

  She was just so tired of it all; tired of the ache in her soul, tired of the loneliness, tired of trying to outmaneuver the people she should have been able to lean on. It seemed as if her entire life was nothing more than dragging herself through an endless round of weariness and grief, and she just wanted an end to it all.

  She buried her face in her pillow, not to muffle more sobs, but to block out—everything. If only for a moment.

  It was when she woke again to the sounds of her servants and attendants bustling around the room that she realized she must have fallen asleep again. And if she didn’t feel better, at least she felt a little less tired.

  Enough so, that she felt she could probably face the day. She didn’t want to, but she could.

  :I think,: she told Caryo, as they came to get her out of bed and dress her, :I think we’ll have our morning ride before breakfast.:

  :Good,: Caryo said simply. :I’d like that. Thank you.:

  Keep moving. That was the only answer. Just keep moving. . . .

  And if that wasn’t an answer, at least it was a way to keep her from just—stopping. Stopping and never starting again.

  ***

  For Alberich, the day after the Festival’s climax began just as any ordinary day did—the only differences being that now, at least, he didn’t have to concern himself with making preparations for Selenay’s appearance, and now that he knew the identity of the young man he’d been looking for, he could concentrate on thinking of ways to find out what was going on.

  But as far as the young Trainees went, apparently, the end of the Festival meant restlessness and discontent. They’d had an unexpected break in their routine, and as Alberich was woefully aware, any break in a youngster’s routine generally meant trouble in getting him back into that routine.

  As a consequence, the first class of the morning was a disaster. Far too much time was wasted in trying to get his students back on track after the excitement of the Ice Festival. And they fought him every step of the way, performing their warmups lethargically, running through the initial exercises in a state of distraction, and wasting time in chattering about the pleasures of the day before.

  And part of him was still puzzling over the question of Devlin Gereton, why he would be receiving information from a play-actor, and what that information could be. It took real effort on his own part to put that aside and concentrate on getting some results out of the class.

  But it was a futile effort. The Trainees were utterly disinclined to settle down and work, and finally, in desperation, he decided that if all they could do was chatter about ice sports, well, he’d give them an ice sport they would never forget!

  After all, they were going to have to learn to work together, in coordinated teams. . . .

  “Silence!” he barked. “Weapons down.”

  Startled, they shut off the chatter, dropped weapon points, and stared at him.

  “Weapons put away. Get the staves,” he ordered grimly. “Now. Then on with cloaks, and follow me.”

  Now looking apprehensive and guilty, they obeyed. He snatched up his own cloak, hid a little surprise inside it as he did so, and stalked out, followed by a suddenly subdued tail of Trainees of all four colors.

  Out into the snow they went, out past the practice grounds and into Companion’s Field, following a path beaten by others into the thigh-deep snow. It was another cloudless, bone-chilling day, and sunlight poured pitilessly down through the skeletal branches of the trees. He led them to one of the frozen ponds in Companion’s Field, one that had been cleared off so that it could be used for skating, but was far enough from the Palace and the Collegia that it wasn’t in use very much. In a welcome release for his temper, he kicked three basket-sided holes in the snow at the edge of the ice, one at each point of an imaginary equal-sided triangle laid on the pond, then divided the class into two teams. He made sure that the Trainees were fairly evenly distributed between both teams, and he made a point of dividing up friends as much as he could. If they were mad for sport, well, he’d give them bloody sport indeed. . . .

  :Chosen, I hope you aren’t releasing a wolf from a trap, here,: Kantor said, full of amusement. :Are you sure you know what you’re doing?:

  :No,: he said honestly. :But at least they’ll get some stave practice out of this.:

  Then he dropped what he had picked up onto the ice in front of them.

  It was one of the little round cushions that they used over their knuckles when they were practicing bare-fist fighting. They looked at it, then at him, then back down at it, without any comprehension at all.

  “Pah. You are two teams of fighters now. There are your goals. First team—there, second team, there.” He pointed, He thought he saw comprehension beginning to dawn. He hoped so. They’d all seen the broom-ball competition. He hoped they weren’t so dense that they couldn’t figure this out! “The third goal neutral is. Either team may score there. The cushion, into the opposite goal, or into the neutral goal, you are to put,” he said icily and moved carefully off the slippery surface of the ice with as much dignity as he could muster, heaving a sigh of relief when he reached the bank and could stand there with his arms folded over his chest, u
nder his cape.

  “But is this like broom-ball? What are the rules?” someone asked, and “But we don’t have skates!” protested another.

  “There are rules in war? I think not,” he retorted. “Skates you will be carrying in the field? Enough. No rules. The cushion, in the goal, you will put. How it comes there, your problem is. Hit it, you may. Kick it, carry it, I care not. You have staves. Use them. Fight with them. No rules.”

  He hadn’t been altogether certain what their response would be. On the one hand, they were Trainees, and had a modicum of training in organization. On the other hand, they were overstimulated adolescents with too much restlessness to settle down. They could settle in and make some rules, assigning tasks and responsibilities before they set to their new version of broom-ball.

  They could. But they didn’t.

  With a yell, someone broke and swatted at the cushion with his stave, and the melee began as someone else jumped for the cushion, and half of the other team piled onto the one making the move. It was, in a sadistic sort of way, rather entertaining for the onlooker. Staves went everywhere—though not as successfully as if the fighting had been on solid, unslippery ground. Bodies went everywhere. Most of them ended up sprawled on the ice. The cushion tended not to get anywhere near a goal.

  He had been counting on the ice to ensure that no one was able to get in any dangerously hard blows with the staves, and the ploy worked. Even the ones that were good skaters found the going slippery, and none of them were used to trying to stay balanced on the ice while simultaneously swatting with a stave. And all of them were fairly good at stave work to begin with, so if someone swung for an opponent instead of the cushion, there was a good chance that he’d find the blow blocked. But none of them were doing much in the way of coordination or teamwork; it was pretty much every man for himself, and Alberich had ensured that the little amount of teamwork that might have occurred naturally was sidelined by breaking up friends onto opposite teams.