Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Kero sighed and took her first, methodical blow. Now that she knew why she was engaging in this exercise in frustration, it wasn't quite so frustrating. And, she vowed silently, I'm going to be a lot more careful in placing my hits. I just might impress her.

  She certainly wasn't impressing her grandmother. Kethry had tested her in any number of ways, from placing a candle in front of her and telling her to light it by thinking of fire, to placing various small objects in front of her and asking her to identify which of them were enchanted. She'd evidently failed dismally, since Kethry had given up after three days and told her she'd be better off in the hands of the Shin'a'in.

  But she won't take that sword back, Kero thought in puzzlement, swinging the ax in an underhand arc, repeating the motion over and over, switching from right to left and back again under Tarma's watchful eye. It's hers, but she won't take it back. I don't understand—it's obviously magical, and no one in her right mind would give something like that away—but she keeps saying that it spoke for me, and it's mine.

  So, marvelous. It spoke for me. Now what am I supposed to do with it?

  "Faster," Tarma said. Kero sped up her blows, trying to keep each one falling in exactly the same place; right on top of and within the narrow bite she'd incised on the sides of the logs. Those logs were strapped tightly to either side of what had once been a tree. When it had been alive, it had somehow managed to root itself in the exact middle of this clearing and had taken advantage of the full sun to grow far taller than any of the trees around it. Perhaps that had been a mistake. From the look of the top of the stump, some two men's height above her head, it had been lightning-struck. That top was splintered in a way that didn't look to be the hand of man.

  Maybe Grandmother got in a temper one day....

  This was not where Tarma schooled her new pupil and practiced her own sword-work; this was just what it seemed, a kind of primitive back court to the Tower, with a large outdoor hearth for cooking whole deer on one side, the pile of firewood ready to be chopped on the other, and in the center, the old, dead tree with iron bands around it. A big old, dead tree. Kero could circle what was left of the trunk with her arms—barely.

  "That's not too bad," Tarma observed. She pushed herself off the woodpile, and gestured to Kero to stop, then strolled over to the two logs and began examining the cuts closely. Kero wiped sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, and shook her arms to keep them loose.

  "That's not too bad at all. And considering what a late start you got—can you finish those in double time?"

  She gave Kero the kind of look Dent used to—the kind that said, be careful what you say, you'll have to live up to it. Kero licked salty moisture from her upper lip and considered the twin logs. They were chopped a little more than halfway through. The target she'd been creating was just above the iron bands holding them tight to the tree trunk.

  So when I get toward the end, they'll probably break the rest of the way under their own weight. She squinted up at the sun; broken light coming down through the thick foliage made it hard to tell exactly where the sun was. It was close to noon, though, that was for certain. Her stomach growled, as if to remind her that she had gotten up at dawn, and breakfast had been a long time.

  The sooner I get these chopped, the sooner I can have something to eat. Some bread and cheese; maybe sausage. Cider. Fruit—and I know she magics that up; pears and grapes and just-ripe apples all served up together are not natural at any time of year.

  "I think I can," she said, carefully. "I'll try."

  Tarma stepped back, and nodded. Kero set to, driving herself with the reminder of how good that lunch was going to taste—

  Especially the cider. At double time she was getting winded very quickly; there was a stitch in her side, and she couldn't keep herself from panting, which only parched her mouth and throat. Her eyes blurred with fatigue, and stung from the sweat and damp hair that kept getting in the way. Finally, though, she heard the sound she'd been waiting for; the crack of wood, first on one side of the trunk, then on the other. As she got in one last blow, then lowered her arms and backed off from the tree, the two half-logs bent out from the center trunk, then with a second crack, broke free and fell to the ground.

  Kero rather wanted to fall to the ground herself. She certainly wanted to drop the ax, which now felt as if it weighed as much as the tree trunk. But she didn't; she'd learned that lesson early on, when she'd dropped a practice sword at the end of a bout. Tarma had picked it up, and given her a look of sheer and pain-filled disgust.

  She'd never felt so utterly worthless in her life, but worse was to come.

  Tarma had carefully, patiently, and in the tone and simple words one would use with a five-year-old, explained why one never treats a weapon that way, even when one is tired, even when the weapon is just pot-metal and fit only to practice with.

  Then, as if that wasn't humiliation enough, she put the blade away and made Kero chop wood and haul water for the next three days straight, instead of chopping and hauling in the morning, and practicing in the afternoon.

  So she hung onto the little hand-ax until Tarma took it away from her. "All right, youngling," she said in that gravelly voice, as Kero raised a hand at the end of an arm that felt like the wood she'd just been chopping. "Let's get back to the Tower and a hot bath and some food. You've earned it." Then she grinned. "And after lunch, a mild little workout, hmm?"

  Kero finished getting her arm up to her forehead, and mopped her brow and the back of her neck with a sleeve that was already sopping wet.

  "Lady," she croaked, "Every time you set me a 'mild little workout,' I wind up flat on my back before sundown too tired to move. You're a hard taskmaster."

  Tarma only chuckled.

  Lunch in the Tower was as "civilized" as even Kero's mother could have wished. The three of them sat around a square wooden table in one of the upper balconies, sun streaming down on them, a fresh breeze drying Kero's hair. Despite the fact that she had braided it tightly, bits of it were escaping from her braids and the breeze tugged at them like a kitten with string. She kept trying to get it back under control, but it persisted in escaping, and finally she just gave up and let it fly. There was no one here to care how "respectable"—or not—she looked.

  She felt much the better for her hot bath, though her muscles still ached in unaccustomed places from that little exercise this morning. Furthermore, she knew very well that she was going to hurt even more tonight. But it was a small price to pay for freedom.

  Freedom from the bower, from boredom, from pretending I was something I wasn't. That thought led inevitably to another. So what am I now? What am I supposed to be doing with myself? And one more—Why wasn't I like Dierna, content with being someone's lady?

  An uneasy set of thoughts—and uncomfortable thoughts. But problems that, for the moment, she could do nothing about. She forced her attention back to more immediate concerns.

  Like lunch.

  I don't know where Grandmother gets her provisions, but Wendar would kill to find out. On a platter in the center of the table were cheese, sausage, and bread. Simple fare, certainly not the kind of things one would expect a powerful mage to savor—but they were the best Kero had ever tasted. It wasn't just hunger adding flavor, either; even after one was pleasantly full, the food at Kethry's table tasted extraordinary.

  Beside the platter was a second, holding fruit; not only apples, pears and grapes, but cherries as well.

  Definitely not natural. Those are fresh apples, pear season is over, grapes are ripe, but cherries won't be for another moon, and apples don't ripen until fall.

  But the sun felt wonderful, the apple she'd just cut into quarters was pleasantly tart, and Kero didn't much want to think about anything for a while.

  I'm going to enjoy this, however it came about. Father was wrong about Grandmother, and he was probably just as wrong about mages in general.

  "Think you're ready for some family history?" Kethry said, castin
g a long look at her from across the old table, as Kero reached for a piece of sausage. "I think I have a fair number of surprises for you. For one thing, you have some rather—unusual—cousins. Quite a lot of them, in fact."

  Kero froze in mid-reach.

  The sorceress sat back in her cushioned chair, tucked flyaway hair behind one ear and smiled at her expression. In her russet gown of soft linen she looked nothing at all like a feared and legendary mage. She looked like the matriarch of a noble family.

  And I must look like a stranded fish, Kero thought, trying to get her mouth to close.

  "Don't look so stricken, child," Tarma said, and reached across the table, picked up the sausage, and dropped it into her hand. "There's no outlawry on the family name. It's just—well, you have a lot more relatives than you know about. Those cousins, for instance."

  "I do?" She gathered her scattered wits, and took a deep breath, only then becoming aware that she was still clutching the sausage. She put it down carefully on her plate. "I mean—you said something about daughters and granddaughters earlier, but Mother never said anything—I didn't know what to think. How many? Did Mother have a sister or—"

  "Your mother had six brothers and sisters, youngling," Tarma interrupted, grinning from ear to ear at the dumbstruck look on her pupil's face. She played with one end of her own iron-gray braid as she spoke. The tail of hair was as thick as Kero's wrist, and as gray as the coat of Tarma's mare. "Your grandmother and I are Goddess-sworn sisters, and I know I've explained that to you already." When Kero finally nodded, she continued. "Well, what I didn't tell you was that before I met her, my Clan was wiped out by the same bandits she'd contracted to stop."

  "It was one of my first jobs as a Journeyman," Kethry put in, after Tarma paused for a moment, staring off at a long cloud above the trees. "They had taken over a whole town and were terrorizing the inhabitants. Tarma followed them there, and I managed to intercept her before she managed to get herself killed."

  "Huh. You wouldn't have done much better alone, Greeneyes," Tarma replied sardonically, coming back to the conversation. "Well. We decided to team up. It worked, and we—actually managed to take out the bandits and survive the experience. That was when we figured we'd make pretty good partners."

  "Then things got a little complicated," Kethry chuckled, popping a grape into her mouth.

  "A little complicated?" Tarma raised both eyebrows, then shrugged. "I suppose—in the same way that stealing a warsteed can get the Clans a little annoyed. Anyway, the main thing is that we got back to the Plains, she got adopted into the Shin'a'in, and she vowed to the elders that she'd build a new Clan for me. Eventually she met and wedded your grandfather Jadrek, and damn if she didn't just about manage to repopulate Tale'sedrin all on her own!"

  Kethry chuckled, and actually blushed. "Jadrek had a little to do with that," she pointed out, raising an eloquent finger at her partner.

  "Well, true enough, and good blood he put in, too." Tarma stretched, tossed the braid back over her shoulders, and clasped both gnarled hands around her knee.

  "That's another story. We three raised seven children, all told. When the core group claimed the herds, we added adoptees from other Clans, orphans and younglings who had some problems and wanted a fresh start. Tale'sedrin is a full Clan; smaller than it was before the massacre, but growing. Kind of funny how many young suitors we got drooling around the core and the core-blood—but then, to us, a blond is exotic."

  "But—I don't understand—" Kero protested. "If my uncles and aunts are all Shin'a'in, why aren't I? How did I end up here instead of there?"

  "Good question," Tarma acknowledged. "The way these things work is that even though Keth vowed her children to the Clan, what she vowed was that they'd have the right to become Clan, not that they had to. It's the younglings who decide for themselves where they want to go. We don't make anyone do anything they aren't suited for—the Plains are too harsh and unforgiving for anyone who doesn't love them to survive there. So—when we've got a case like Keth's, vowed younglings of adopted blood, the children spend half their time with the Clans until they're sixteen, then they choose whether they want to become Shin'a'in in full, or go off on their own. Five of those aunts and uncles of yours chose Shin'a'in ways and the Tale'sedrin banner when they came of age to make the choice."

  "Mother didn't. And?" Kero asked curiously. Why would anyone choose to stay here? The Keep may be the most boring backwater in the world.

  "I was getting to that." Tarma gave her one of those looks. "Of the two that didn't go with the Clans, one picked up where his mother left off, and took over the White Winds sorcery school she'd founded and set up at the Keep—just moved it off onto property he'd swindl—ahem."

  She cast a sideways glance at Kethry, who only seemed amused to Kero. "Excuse me. Earned. That's your uncle Jendar. It's not that he didn't like Clan life, it's that he's Adept-potential, and all that mage-talent would be wasted out there. There's another son, and he's mage-gifted as well. That's your uncle Jadrek, only he's a Shin'a'in shaman. But your mother Lenore was last-born, your grandfather died when she was very small and we had some problems with the school that kept us busy. Maybe too busy. She—well—" Tarma coughed, and looked embarrassed. "Let's say she was different. Scared to death of horses, and had fits over the Clan style of living, so we stopped even sending her out to the Plains. Bookish, like Jadrek, but no logic, no discipline, no gift of scholarship. No real interest in anything but ballads and tales and romances. No abilities besides the ones appropriate to a fine lady. No mage-talent."

  "In short, she was our disappointment, poor thing," Kethry sighed, and twined a curl of silver hair around her fingers. "She spent all her time at the neighboring family's place, and all she really wanted to be was somebody's bride, the same daydream as all the girls she knew. I scandalized her; Tarma terrified her. Finally, I fostered her with the Lythands until she was sixteen, then brought her back here. She came back a lady—and suited to nothing else."

  Kero thought about her mother for a moment, surprised that for the first time in months—years—the thoughts didn't call up an ache of loss. Even when Lenore had been well, she'd been fragile, unsuited to anything that took her outside the Keep walls, even pleasure-riding, and likely to pick up every little illness that she came in contact with. No wonder she didn't like Tarma or her Clan. Living in a tent for three moons every year must have been a hell for her.

  "So what were you going to do?" she asked carefully. "Mother wasn't the kind of person you could leave on her own. She was better with someone to take care of her."

  Kethry smiled slightly, the lines around her eyes deepening. "A gentle way to put it, but accurate. Frankly, I had no ideas beyond getting her married off. I wanted to find a really suitable husband for her, one she could learn to love, but after one experience with suitors, I despaired of finding anyone that would treat her so that she'd survive the marital experience." Her eyes hardened. "That suitor, by the by, was Baron Reichert. Not the Baron then, just a youngster hardly older than Lenore, but already experienced beyond his years. One might even say, jaded."

  "One might," Tarma agreed. "I prefer 'spoiled, debauched, and corrupt.' He was never interested in anything other than the lands, and when he saw how delicate your mother was, he damn near danced for joy."

  She scowled, and Kero read a great deal in that frown. "Need saw it, too; damn sword nearly made Keth pull it on him and skewer him then and there. First time that stupid thing's been totally right in a long time, and us having to fight it to keep from being made into murderers. But given what's been going on, maybe we should have taken the chance."

  Kethry sighed, and leaned forward a little. "Well, we were in a pickle then. I knew Reichert would keep coming back as long as she was unwedded, and Lenore was just silly enough that he might be able to persuade her that he loved her. I was at my wits' end. I even considered manufacturing a quarrel and disinheriting her long enough for Reichert to lose interest. Then your
father showed up, escorting a rich young mageling, and looking for work when his escort duties were done. Strong, handsome, in an over-muscled way, full of stories about the strange places he'd been, and amazingly patient in some circumstances. Personally, I thought he was god-sent."

  "The fathead," Tarma muttered under her breath. Kero winced a little; not because of what Tarma had said, but because she couldn't bring herself to disagree with it. She'd been here at the Tower for several weeks, now, and with each day her former life seemed a little less real, a little farther distant. She supposed she should be feeling grief for Rathgar, but instead, whenever she tried to summon up the proper emotions, all she could recall were some of the stupid things he'd done, and the unkind words he'd said so often to her.

  I'm turning into some kind of inhuman monster, she thought with guilt. I can't even respect my father's memory.

  "He may have been a fathead, she'enedra, but he was exactly what Lenore needed and wanted. A big, strong man to protect and cosset her." Kethry looked up at the blindingly blue sky, and followed a new cloud with her eyes for a moment. "I offered to let him stay on for a bit, and the moment Lenore laid eyes on him I knew she was attracted to him. Give her credit for some sense, at least—Reichert terrified her as much or more than you ever did. I was just afraid that he'd notice what he was doing, and manage to convince her he was harmless."

  "Tender little baby chicks know a weasel when they see one," Tarma retorted, scratching the bridge of her beaklike nose with one finger. "That's not sense, that's instinct. Lady Bright, I suppose I should be glad her instincts were working, at least. One year in his custody, and you'd have been out a daughter, and lands, and probably under siege in this Tower."