Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  :Never let up, do you?:

  :I'm trying to lighten your mood, Chosen,: the Companion replied. :You are going to fret yourself right off that branch if you don't calm yourself.:

  :Is that second patrol showing any sign of moving?: he asked anxiously, ignoring the advice.

  He felt Ratha sigh. :Relax, will you? They've settled in, but they haven't set up a permanent camp. I think they plan on moving before nightfall. In any case we can get by them above the road; I found a goat track.:

  Eldan stifled a groan. The last time Ratha had found an alternative route, they'd been all night covering a scant league of ground. :How—ah—"challenging" a goat track?:

  There was a hint of amusement in Ratha's mind-voice. :Challenging enough. It'll be good for you.:

  Eldan Sent an image of his still-livid bruises. :That's what you said about the last one you found.:

  :I have four legs instead of two, no hands, and I weigh a great deal more than you do. If I can make it over, you can.: Ratha sounded a little condescending, and more than a little impatient. :All the fuming in the world isn't going to get us to Valdemar any faster. We'll get there when we get there.:

  :You sound like Kero,: Eldan replied, opening his eyes a little and taking a sidelong glance at the mercenary. She had been watching him, and he saw her swallow and look away. She knew he was Mindspeaking Ratha, and as always, it bothered her. I wish she'd get over that, too.

  :She's had many lessons in patience. You could profit by her example.: Ratha hesitated for a moment, and Eldan had the feeling the Companion would have said more, but was uncertain if he should.

  On the road below them, the Karsites finally reappeared, going back the way they had come. That just left the patrol Ratha was watching. As the last of the sun dropped below the horizon, the wind picked up, and gusted a chill down Eldan's neck. He felt a little more of a chill at Ratha's next words.

  :You are very—fond of this woman,: Ratha said, finally.

  :I think I'm in love with her,: Eldan told his Companion, cautiously, relieved to have it out in the open between them at last, but not certain he liked the phrasing or the tone of Ratha's statement.

  :I—think you are, too,: Ratha replied, obviously troubled. :I am glad for you, and yet I wish you were not.:

  Eldan had never hidden anything from his Companion, and he didn't intend to start now. :Why?: he asked, bluntly, determined not to let things rest with that. :What's wrong with her? I know you like her.:

  :The patrol is moving off now,: Ratha replied brightly.

  :Thank you. And you're changing the subject.: Eldan wasn't about to let Ratha get off that easily. :I won't be able to move out of this tree for at least half a candlemark. I'm not going anywhere. Just what, exactly, is wrong with Kero?:

  Ratha sounded reluctant to answer. :She doesn't understand you—us. She can't understand how we can be loyal to people we've never seen, be willing to stand between them and harm, and for no gain. She does not understand loyalty to a cause. And yet—:

  :What, yet?:

  :There is something about her that is very noble. She abides by her own code. And she has been very good for you. You are more—alive, since being with her.:

  :I feel more alive.: Eldan pondered Ratha's statements; caught Kero watching him with an odd little smile on her face, and felt his heart clench. This strange, frighteningly competent woman was not like anyone else he'd ever encountered. She was—like a perfect Masterwork sword; she could have given any of the famous beauties at Court tough competition, with her long, blonde hair, her finely chiseled features, her pale aquamarine eyes—

  Competition? No. She'd never take second place to anyone. She's not only beautiful, she's polished. There's nothing about her that hasn't been honed and perfected until it's the best it can be. Beside her, any other woman looks like a pretty doll; no fire, no spirit. Except maybe the Heralds—but—

  His relationships with other Heralds had never gone beyond friendship and a little intimate company. And he almost always had to initiate the latter.

  Kero initiated lovemaking as often as he did; pouncing on him, giving him soft little love-bites and growling like a large playful cat—languidly rubbing his shoulders or scratching his back, then turning the exercise into more intimate caresses. He shivered a little, a smile playing around the corners of his mouth. She was a truly remarkable, exciting, bedmate—

  But she was more than that. She treated him outside of bed like an absolutely equal partner, taking on her share of the chores without a quibble, substituting things he couldn't do—like hunting—without an argument.

  And she had entered his thoughts the way no one else, man or woman, ever had. He wanted to show her his home, to see her excitement, her reactions. He wanted to share everything with her.

  He wanted, most of all, to make her understand. Because he wanted to hear her say she was willing to be his partner from now on.... :I want to get her into Valdemar. I know once I get her there, she'll understand, she'll see what it's like for us, and she'll understand everything.:

  :If she ever could, she—: The Companion cut the thought off, and Eldan wondered what it was he almost said.

  :She what?:

  :It doesn't matter. Not now. Just an idle speculation. I agree, we should get her into Valdemar if we can. I think it would make all the difference.: He felt Ratha's reticence, and didn't press. Whatever it was, if it was important enough, Ratha would tell him in his own time.

  :You are clear, now,: the Companion concluded. :I will check ahead.:

  Eldan double-checked the road through the eyes of every bird and beast he could touch, and confirmed Ratha's statement. He opened his eyes again, and touched Kero on the elbow, carefully.

  "We can go," he said quietly. "We've both checked."

  "Good," she replied, a hint of relief in her voice. "I was beginning to wonder if I was going to spend the night in this tree."

  She caught the branch she was sitting on and swung down to the one below. Eldan followed her, marveling at her agility, and her ability to move so well in the twilight gloom.

  "Oh, I can think of worse places to spend the night than in a tree," he replied lightly, as he lowered himself down onto the ground beside her.

  "So can I, and I've probably been in most of them. Can we take to the road?" She dusted her hands off on her breeches, and unwound Hellsbane's reins from the snag she'd tethered the mare to.

  "So far. Ratha's going on ahead. He says he's found a goat-track we can use if more of those patrols show up."

  She turned a sober face toward him. "I hope he's finding cover for us in case more of those—things—show up. I don't want to meet one of them out in the open with nowhere to hide."

  "No more do I." He shuddered at the thought of it, and marveled at her courage, who'd encountered the creatures—whatever they were—alone, without panicking.

  She's incredible, he thought for the hundredth time, as he followed directly in Hellsbane's tracks. I have to get her back to Valdemar. I have to. She'll never want to leave....

  Fourteen

  They're thinking at each other again, Kero observed, trying not to cringe. With Eldan sitting and the Companion lying beneath a roof of living pine boughs, the Herald gazed deeply into Ratha's eyes, both of them oblivious to everything around them. The ground was invisible under a litter of pine needles that must date back ten or twenty years. They'd left Kero on guard while the two of them conferred. If Kero hadn't known the sky was clear, she'd have sworn there was a storm coming; it was that dark under this tree.

  She looked away after a few moments, and decided that halfway up this same pine tree would be just about the best lookout point. She should be able to see quite a distance up the main valley from there. And she wouldn't have to watch Eldan and his Companion.

  As usual, they'd traveled by night, stopping just before dawn to find a place to hole up in during the day. For the past night they'd been paralleling the main road down the center of a series of l
inked valleys. The closer they got to the Valdemar border, the less populated the countryside became—but the terrain was a lot rougher, and the alternatives to the main roads fewer. Their hiding place this time had been a little pocket-valley off the main vale. And it wasn't a place where Kero would have stopped if she'd had any choice. There was a shepherd's town—not a village, but a town, rating a main square, a marketplace, and the largest temple of the Sunlord Kero had seen yet—at the head of the valley. This had been the best they could do, and it hadn't been a terribly secure place to stay. A good-sized stand of tall pines with branches that drooped down to the ground ensured that there was no grass here; there was no water either, no one would stumble across them bringing his sheep to pasture. The pines themselves provided cover; one sheltered Hellsbane, one protected Ratha, and one kept the two of them hidden beneath the tentlike boughs.

  But it was still open, and too close to that town to make any of them feel comfortable. Kero knew she slept lightly, and she was fairly certain the same could be said of Eldan and Ratha. After they woke, Eldan seemed preoccupied, and finally asked Kero to stand watch while he and his Companion talked.

  Kero had a shrewd notion that strategy was not going to be the subject—that she was. She had gotten the impression more than once that Ratha liked her, but didn't entirely approve of her. Certainly the Companion wasn't likely to approve of her as a long-term liaison for his Herald.

  He thinks a lot like his Herald, she reflected, climbing through the scratchy pine boughs carefully, to avoid making the tree shake. They couldn't afford any carelessness; there had been too many near-escapes in the past few days. The hunters were getting thicker, and more, not less, persistent.

  Somehow, in the next couple of days, they had to make a try at the Border. Which meant that parting from him was only days away. She settled herself on a sturdy limb, and blinked her burning, blurring eyes back into focus. Blessed Agnira, what am I going to do? Standing watch didn't occupy a great deal of her attention, which meant she had more than enough left over to worry. I'm in love with this man. He's in love with me. Should be a happy ending in there somewhere, if this was only a ballad....

  She bit her lip to keep from crying. The whole relationship is impossible, that's all there is to it. It's all the same problems that I had with Daren, only worse, because I do love him. I want to be with him more than I've ever wanted any other person in my life.

  But that was the key: any other person. Her independence had been dearly bought, and she wasn't about to give it up now.

  If she went with him, giving up her position in the Skybolts, what would she do in Valdemar? The regular army might not take her, and if they did, she would undoubtedly find herself on the wrong end of rules and regulations every time she turned around. With her record, she could ask for concessions from a Company that she could never get from a regular army force. Her peculiar talents did not fit into the parameters of a regular army. She wasn't a foot or line soldier, she wasn't heavy or even light infantry, and she was in no way going to fit into heavy or light cavalry. She was a scout—well, that was a job for the foot soldier. She was a skirmisher—that was under the aegis of either light infantry (bow) or light cavalry (sword). She knew more about tactics than most of the regulation officers she'd met, and that would certainly earn her no points. Lerryn encouraged the input of his junior officers, but that simply wasn't so, outside of mercenary Companies.

  That assumed they'd even take her in the first place; many regular armed forces wouldn't accept former mercs because they tended to have an adverse effect on discipline.

  Which would leave me living on his charity. Not a chance. I won't ever put myself in that position again. Despite the lump in her throat and the ache in her chest at the thought of parting from Eldan, the resolution remained. Never. I have my own life, and I'm going to lead it.

  He just didn't understand what could lead someone to fight for a living, and it didn't look as though he ever would. She'd tried to point out that if a relatively ethical person didn't do the fighting, that would leave it to unethical people—he'd stared at her as if she was speaking Shin'a'in. For her part, she could not understand his fanatical devotion to an abstract: a country. What on earth was there about a piece of property that made it worth dying for? Never mind that territorial disputes were what paid for a merc's talents, more often than not—she still didn't understand it. In a way, she was as alien to him as one of those Karsite priestesses. She disturbed him more than they did, because he knew they were alien—she was the woman he loved, and seemed completely rational to him—until she would say something that completely eluded him, or he would say something that made no sense to her.

  There were other differences, too; serious ones. Like his attitude toward Mindspeech. The way he shared his thoughts so freely with Ratha made her skin crawl and her shoulders tighten defensively. No one should be able to get inside your mind that closely.

  It makes you vulnerable, she thought, with a shiver of real fear. What happens when you open yourself that much to anyone? Gods and demons, the power that gives them over you... even if they never use that power, it's a point of weakness that someone else can exploit. And will. There's never yet been a breached wall that someone doesn't use to invade.

  Then there was that fanatical devotion to duty of his. He'd make it back to Valdemar if it killed him, just to get information back there personally. It isn't sane, she thought grimly. It just is not sane. There are a dozen ways he could get that news back, and if he took all of them, that would virtually guarantee it would get there. Maybe not as quickly, but it would get there. But it has to be by his own personal hands....

  He frightened her; as much as she loved him, she feared him, and feared for him. She was torn between that love and that fear, and when you added in her reluctance to place herself in a position where she would be dependent on him, there was only one conclusion she could come to.

  It's impossible. Oh, gods, it's impossible. And I still love him....

  She clutched the trunk of the tree in anguish, bark digging into her palm, the pain keeping tears out of her eyes. She fought to keep control, finally attaining it just as Eldan himself appeared under the tree, waving at her to come down.

  She took a couple of deep breaths to make sure the lump wasn't going to return, and to steady her nerves. Then she waved back, grinning down at him, as if nothing was wrong.

  The faint frown left his brow and he grinned in return.

  We've more important things to worry about, she told herself as she slipped down the tree as carefully as she had climbed it. Right up at the top is staying alive to reach the Border in the first place.

  A rock was digging a hole in Kero's stomach, but just now she didn't want to move to dislodge it. "Where are they all coming from?" Eldan whispered, as they watched yet another of the Sunlord's priestesses pause just below the entrance to their current hiding place. She pulled back the cowl of her robe, and stared up at the face of the cliff above her. It looked blank from that angle; the ledge they were lying on obscured the entrance, and Kero had seen it only because she had been up in a sturdy oak spying out the land when she'd spotted it. And it couldn't be reached from the floor of the valley; they'd had to backtrack and come up over the ridge to get down to it.

  Hopefully that meant no one would look for it. Except the priestess, like all the others, seemed to have sensed something.

  From up here, they couldn't make out her features; they could just barely distinguish her face from her blonde hair. The scarlet robe she wore was a sure sign of high rank, though—the only rank above scarlet wore gold, and there were never women in gold robes. Against the green meadow below them, she looked like some kind of exotic flower.

  "I have no idea where they're all coming from," Kero whispered back. That was at least half a lie; at this point she was fairly sure they were tracking Need somehow. It would make sense, since neither she nor Eldan ever used unshielded Mindspeech. Since magic was forbidden,
it followed that the priesthood had some way of detecting its use. And Need was created with magic; even when she wasn't actually doing something, she must be "visible" to someone capable of detecting magic. And no doubt she could hide herself, but she had to know she was endangering her bearer, and her bearer wouldn't know that until a priestess actually was in sight.

  Kero held her breath, waiting. Surely this time the camouflage would break; they'd be spotted. This red-robe was the highest ranking priestess they'd seen yet; all the rest had been white-, blue-, or black-rank. Surely this time would mark the end.

  The woman pulled her hood back up over her head, and rode off across the meadow.

  Kero let out the breath she'd been holding.

  Eldan put his arm across her shoulders and hugged her wordlessly. She snuggled into his shoulder for a moment, content just to enjoy it, and his warm presence.

  But her mind wouldn't stop operating.

  That's the third priestess today. We see two and three search parties every day. It's getting harder and harder to find a place to hide by dawn.

  Some of that was to be expected; they were right on the Border now, and there were regular Border patrols all the time. Eldan had mentioned that, and mentioned, too, how he'd avoided them in the past. But he had not mentioned ever seeing the clergy out on these hunts before, an omission Kero found interesting.

  But although he was trying to pretend that this kind of activity was entirely normal, it was fairly obvious that he was worried. Quite worried.

  Which meant that a good number of these patrols were new, and probably called out to find them.

  He knew the priestesses were able to pick up something about them, but he didn't know what, and so far Kero had been able to keep Need's abilities from him. So far he hadn't asked any awkward questions, and so far he didn't seem to have made the connection that only the female clergy were detecting whatever it was. It helped that he seemed utterly incurious at moments when she'd have expected a barrage of questions. That was odd, but no odder than the fact that she was literally unable to talk about anything involving real magic to him. Absolutely, physically, unable. She'd tried, and in the end, couldn't get the words out of her mouth.