Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Darkwind shook his head, feeling nauseous. That had to be one of the strangest and most perverted things he'd ever heard. "So Hulda has been deliberately wrecking this land?"

  :Pretty much. Encouraging Ancar to do what he wants, without ever giving him any real power or training past a certain point. Huh. Maybe I do know what she was doing with all that power. Those magical attacks, coercive spells on the troops—all of that is far too powerful for the mages Ancar has in his employ to be able to successfully invoke—unless someone was feeding them the energy to do it. Interesting idea.:

  "That makes a great deal of sense," Firesong agreed, his voice flat with exhaustion. "More sense than that she would be making courting-gifts of mage-power. So Ancar has been the puppet, and she the manipulator?"

  :Until lately. She's been sloppy, and he's been chafing at the constraints she put on him. She made the mistake of promising him more training and not delivering. So he started experimenting on his own; that's how he got Falconsbane. Put up half a Gate without knowing what he was doing or what it was for, wished desperately for an Adept to get him out of it before he got eaten alive, the Gate took the wish for the destination, and delivered Falconsbane with a bow on him.:

  Firesong bit off an exclamation. Darkwind could only sit and shake his head with weary astonishment. "Either he is the stupidest lucky man in the world, or the luckiest stupid one," Darkwind said at last. "I would not have given him the chance of a dewdrop in an inferno of surviving such a blunder."

  "And Mornelithe has the luck of a god, I swear it." Firesong snorted with a little more energy.

  :He put Falconsbane under coercion while still magically naked and helpless—for once in his life, the Beast couldn't fight or break what was put on him. So; now Ancar has an Adept, he starts to feel as if he can do without Hulda. Falconsbane has been encouraging this, figuring on setting both of them against each other and running out while they get rid of each other. Except that Ancar managed to catch Hulda in a moment of weakness, and right now he has her inside a mage-mirrored prison cell she helped create. So she's out of the way, for the moment.:

  "So, what we have is the three powers at the top, who should be working together, who we've assumed have been working together, are actually fighting each other?" That was Skif, and he sounded incredulous despite his own weariness. "We might yet be able to pull this off!"

  :Before you get too confident, let me give you the details,: Need said dryly.

  The details were many, and often baffling. Only by assuming that Need's assessment of Falconsbane was accurate could Darkwind even begin to understand how the Beast had made so many fundamental blunders. It was incredible, impossible, insane. But, he realized, that described Falconsbane perfectly.

  Still, it was terrifying to think what would happen if Falconsbane should happen to change his mind about cooperating with Ancar. The damage that had been wrought without that cooperation was terrible. And the number of successes the army of Hardorn had against Valdemar without Falconsbane's real help was even worse. But with it—

  And Falconsbane was capricious. He could change his mind at any time. Their only chance was to strike for him while he was still Ancar's captive, for if he became Ancar's comrade before they reached the capital—the odds in their favor were not good.

  The odds for Valdemar would be even worse.

  Chapter Sixteen

  An'desha waited on the Moonpaths; alone this time, for Dawnfire had appeared only long enough to summon him and then had left him. That might mean the old woman wished to speak with him, then. That was good, for An'desha had been keeping Falconsbane annoyed with Ancar, as she had asked him to do, and at the moment it would be more likely for a pig to stoop on a hawk than that Falconsbane should become Ancar's willing helper.

  Still, the Adept was a slippery and unpredictable creature. An'desha had been forced to play fast and loose with Mornelithe's mind to stave off the thought that it might not be such a bad thing to cooperate with the King. He'd had to remind Falconsbane of the coercions, and the King's own word that he had no intention of taking them off.

  The trouble was that Hulda was still incarcerated. The protections she herself had put on the cell were better than Falconsbane had given her credit for. There was no sign that she was going to come bursting out of there and finish Ancar off any time soon, and the Adept was growing impatient.

  He heard footsteps—real footsteps, on the Moonpath to his right. He turned to peer into the glittery fog. It had to be the old woman, for the Avatars had never made the sound of footsteps, and she was just contrary enough to create a sound in a place where such things were superfluous.

  The old woman emerged out of the fog; from the set of her jaw, she had much to tell him.

  "Well, boy," she said, stopping within a few paces of him, and looking him up and down as if to take his measure, "I hope you're as ready for this as your friends think because this is where we gamble everything."

  "Friends?"

  "The Avatars."

  A chill of anticipation mingled with fear threaded his veins, for all that his "veins" were as illusory as the old woman's footsteps. "I can only try," he said carefully. "I have kept Falconsbane at odds with Ancar. He was beginning to think it might be good to ally with King Ancar after all."

  She nodded brusquely. "That's good. You've done very well, boy. But this is going to take a surer, more delicate touch, and constant work. I mean that. We've come to the real turning point, and there's no way back now. You won't be able to leave him alone for a heartbeat, and you'll have to be absolutely certain he doesn't know you're playing with him. My people aren't more than a day away."

  An'desha felt very much as if he had been suddenly immersed in ice water, but his voice remained steady. "So, whatever we do, it must be done soon. You have a plan, and its success depends upon my performance. If I fail, we all will lose."

  "Exactly." She gave him another of those measuring looks. "This is where we see if you can really come up to what we're going to ask of you. You're going to have to create memories for Falconsbane from whole cloth, boy—memories of one of the servants telling him about the carnival, and that there's a captive cat-woman dancing in one of the tent-shows there. We want him to hear about Nyara, we want him to come after her. We intend for him to walk into ambush. Can you do that?"

  Create whole memories... he had been making fragments, adding to things Ancar truly had said so that they could be read as being insulting, for instance. Falconsbane had no idea his memories had been tampered with. An'desha had plenty of memories to use to make this one, memories that featured the servants talking. Was there any reason why he couldn't do this?

  "I believe I can, Lady," he replied, trying to sound confident.

  She smiled for the first time in this meeting. "Good. Then I'll leave you. You're going to need a lot of time to do this right, and I'm only wasting it."

  And with that, she turned and walked off into the mist, and was gone.

  Part of the plan, however, was not going to work. Having a servant tell Falconsbane about the carnival was simply not believable, no matter what the old woman thought. No, he thought, as he examined Falconsbane's sleeping mind and all the memories of servants in it. No, I cannot have a memory of a servant telling him something. They do not speak to him unless they need to, for they fear him. But a memory of him overhearing them—yes, that I can do. There are plenty of those, and they will be less obtrusive, for he listens to the servants speak when they do not think he can hear them.

  The memory, he decided after some thought, should be just a little vague. Perhaps if Falconsbane had been sleeping?

  He selected something that had happened in the recent past, a recollection of a pair of servants coming into Falconsbane's room to tend the fire, and waking him. That time they had been gossiping about Ancar and Hulda and had not known he was awake. It was a good choice for something like this; Mornelithe had been half-asleep, and had only opened his eyes long enough to see which
of the servants were whispering together. It was another measure of how damaged he was that he didn't think of the servants as any kind of threat. The old Falconsbane would never have been less than fully alert with even a single, well-known person in the same room with him, however apparently helpless or harmless that person was.

  He took the memory, laid it down, then began to create his dialogue. It wasn't easy. He had to steal snippets of conversation from other memories, then blend them all in a harsh whisper, since Hardornen was neither his native tongue nor Falconsbane's. He did not think in this language, so he had to fabricate what he needed, making his dialogue from patchwork, like a quilt.

  He kept Falconsbane sleeping deeply as he labored through the night. If he had been able to sweat, he would have; this was hard labor, as hard as horse-taming or riding night-guard. It was so much like weaving a tapestry—like he imagined the legendary history-tapestries were. But at last it was done, and he watched it himself, to examine it as a whole with a weary mental "eye." He was so weary that even his fear was a dull and distant thing, secondary to simply finishing what had been asked of him.

  The two servants entered the room; the memory of this was only the sound of the door opening and closing. They were whispering, but too softly to make out more than a word or two—"show," and "faire," and some chuckling. Then—a bit of vision as if Falconsbane had opened his eyes and shut them again quickly. A glimpse of two men-servants, one with logs and the other with a poker, silhouetted against the fire.

  "... what could be worth going back there?" asked one, over the sound of the fire being stirred with the poker.

  "There's a dancer. They call her Lady Cat, and she looks half cat. I tell you, when she's done dancing, you wish she'd come sit on your lap! When she moves, you can't think of anything but sex. She's supposed to be a slave; she's got a collar and a chain, but she doesn't act much like a slave, more like she owns the whole show."

  Another laugh, this one knowing. "I'll bet she does! I'll bet she does things besides dance when the show closes, too!"

  "Well, that's what I mean to find out—"

  Sounds of logs being put on the fire, then of the servants leaving the room and closing the door behind them.

  It looked good, what vision there was behind it. It sounded good, solid and real. Well, now to wake Falconsbane up, and make him think the little conversation has just now occurred.

  He woke the Adept with the sound of the door closing, and a little jolt, then left the memory out in Falconsbane's mind where it was the very first thing he would "see."

  And it worked! The Adept thought he had actually witnessed the entire conversation!

  He watched as Falconsbane mulled it over, wondering if this so-called "Cat Lady" was a carnival fake, created because of his own growing notoriety, or was real—

  Oh, no—oh, no. She can't be a fake—he can't even think she might be a fake. Quickly An'desha shunted that thought away, guiding Falconsbane's sleep-fogged mind in the direction he wanted.

  No, of course the cat-woman wasn't a fake. No one would dare counterfeit a Changechild, much less counterfeit Falconsbane; his own reputation would frighten anyone who dared to try it! No, it had to be real, and if it was real, there was only one creature it could be.

  Nyara, An'desha whispered, keeping his own terror of being caught under tight control.

  Nyara. Falconsbane's claws tightened on the bedclothes, piercing holes in the cloth. She had run eastward, after all! Probably she had started running when he had escaped death at the hands of the cursed Shin'a'in, and had not stopped until she had been captured. Now was his chance to catch her and make her pay for her treachery!

  But I must hide her existence from Ancar, An'desha prompted.

  But of course he would have to hide her very existence from Ancar. He would have to slip out of the palace, go alone and unobserved, and take her himself. If Ancar learned about her, he would want to see her, and the moment he saw her he would know she was Falconsbane's handiwork. Ancar was not the fool Falconsbane had thought—although a fool he certainly was—and he would certainly use Nyara as an additional hold over his captive

  Adept. Falconsbane had invested a great deal of power in making Nyara what she was, and any mage higher than Journeyman would know that using her he could control the creator. The old law of contamination. Any mage left some of himself along with his power, even an Apprentice knew that. There was the likelihood that even Hulda's old toy knew it as well.

  Going to this carnival alone and unobserved, though—that would take some creativity. There were always guards at his door, and more guards throughout the palace. He would have to find a way to avoid them, and a time when Ancar was occupied elsewhere. This would take a great deal of advance preparation, and no small amount of power to come and go without detection.

  Why else have I been storing up mage-energy? An'desha asked.

  But then, why else had he been storing up mage-energy? Even with the coercions, he could still work spells that would make him ignored by anyone who set eyes on him. He could even work a true spell of invisibility for a short period of time. He could stun the guards for as long as he needed, and he had certainly picked up enough information from the servants' gossip to know the easiest clandestine ways in and out of the palace. If he picked a time when Ancar was busy with the war plans, he could be down to the carnival and back with no one being the wiser.

  And as for Nyara—once he had her, even though her death would of necessity be rushed, he could make it seem an eternity to her. Perhaps—perhaps he could enhance all her senses, and stretch her time perception, so that every tiny cut seemed to take a year.

  Such a sweet reunion it would be....

  Falconsbane began to plan what he would do to his daughter when he finally had his hands on her. An'desha shuddered but did not pull back into the familiar corner of his mind.

  Skif couldn't help but notice the air of relaxation all through the carnival this afternoon. Wagon-folk all over the carnival had breathed a sigh of relief as they set up just outside the walls of the capital, at the gate nearest the palace itself. Ancar might permit his men to do as they willed anywhere else, but here they were as restrained as good, disciplined troops in any other land. Pairs of Elite Guards with special armbands patrolled the streets, and today while running his errands, Skif had seen one man hauled off for public drunkenness, and another for robbing a street peddler.

  Skif only wished that he and the others could share in the general feeling of relief. For the Valdemarans and their allies, the dangers had just increased exponentially.

  The general consensus among the wagon-folk was that it would be well worth staying a week or so, here, and safe enough to let the women come out of hiding. There were good pickings to be had in this city. Many of them had constructed clever hiding places in their wagons for a small hoard of coins in anticipation of a good run.

  No one among the wagon-folk knew what the Valdemarans were really up to; their story—which still seemed to be holding under the pressure of passing time—was that they were going into the city; that they had found out that their missing relatives had last been heard of here, and they were going to get them out, if they were still alive. Missing relatives was a common enough tale in Hardorn these days, and if the wagon-folk wondered about the odd group, they had so far kept their speculations to themselves.

  Skif had gone out into the city to get the lay of the land; now he returned to the carnival with the provisions he had been "sent" for, and a great deal of information. Last night Nyara had danced in three shows; and his every muscle had been tight with strain at each one, wondering if she would be able to continue the charade. This morning there were at least a few people in the marketplace talking about her. If Falconsbane would just hear about her and come looking....

  Already townsfolk threaded the aisles of the carnival, looking, fingering, and sometimes buying. He pushed his way through them until he came to "Great Mage Pandemonium's" stand. A
t the moment it was closed; the five of them had decided it would be better only to perform after nightfall, and to keep the use of magic to a minimum. Nyara was only a draw to the adult crowd, anyway, and the day-goers seemed to be families and older children.

  The rest should be in the tent, relaxing; the wagon was too cramped for anything except sleeping. And just sleeping; he was far too shy to do anything with Nyara in company, and Elspeth and Darkwind felt the same. They'd been making it a habit to eat, lounge, and carry on the things that had to be tended to, day-to-day, in the larger area of the show-tent.

  He had expected the atmosphere to be tense when he entered the tent, but he had not expected the set of peculiar expressions on the faces of his friends as they turned toward him. They were seated on makeshift stools of whatever equipment boxes happened to be handy. Even in the dim light beneath the heavy canvas, they looked as if they were suffering from sunstroke. Stunned, and quite at a loss.

  "Our sharp friend has handed us a complication," Darkwind said, his own expression swiftly changing from irritation to apprehension and back again as he glanced at the sword at Nyara's side.

  "It seems that Falconsbane isn't really Falconsbane."

  What? "An imposter?" Skif blurted, that being the only thing he could think of. "We've been chasing an—"

  "No, no, no," Elspeth interrupted. "No, that's not it at all! But—the Beast is not exactly alone."

  Now Skif was even more bewildered, and he shook his head violently, as if by shaking it, the words would make some sense. "What in Havens are you talking about?"

  :Damn it, you're all missing the point,: Need said with irritation. :Except Firesong, but I've been talking to him all morning. Here, let me show you.:

  Then, without even a "by your leave," Skif found himself inside the thoughts of some other person entirely, just as Need had once flung him inside her own memories when she had first awakened, to explain what she was by showing him. But this was not Need's memory; this person was young, male, and seemed to be Shin'a'in—