Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Darian looked dazzled, and as Hweel waddled toward his perch with an owl’s awkward and ungainly ground gait, Snowfire got one of the larger body-feathers, about the size of the boy’s hand, from a little basket he had woven of pine needles and tacked to the logs on his side to hold molted feathers. He lifted Hweel up to the perch - given the owl’s huge wingspan, he preferred that Hweel not use his wings inside the ekele - then gave the feather to Darian. The boy took it with shy thanks, and occupied himself with stroking and examining it.

  “That was neatly done,” Nightwind complimented him. “I was having trouble getting him to relax enough for the drug I gave him in his tea to work. I want him to be drowsy when you and Starfall question him.”

  “Thank Hweel for cooperating so nicely,” Snowfire replied, as she pushed him over to his own sleeping pad and began unwrapping the bandage on his arm.

  “I already have,” came the calm reply, and then Snowfire endured a few bad moments as she examined the wound and gave it a thorough cleansing. Once it was clean, however, she was quick to put a numbing salve on it, so that when she stitched it up for him, he scarcely felt the prick of the needle. The boy watched them intently, but with a detachment that Snowfire thought was probably thanks to the drug.

  “I am very concerned by the little I have sensed from this boy,” Nightwind told him. “He is quite traumatized, and on the whole, I am concerned about what will happen to him when he allows himself to feel the emotions he is holding inside.”

  “I got the impression that he doesn’t show half of what he is feeling,” Snowfire confirmed, as Starfall tapped the doorframe lightly, then entered.

  “He keeps things to himself, I think,” she told Snowfire. “His griefs are many, and not all concerned with whatever led him to us; once he allows one to be free, the others may come flying out. That will be good for him, but it will be a hard time as well.” She looked troubled. “I cannot tell you if your questions will trigger this release. They may, or they may not.”

  “Whether they do or not, we need to know why Snowfire found him in the predicament that he was in,” Starfall pointed out. “And the sooner we know, the better.”

  “Darian, now that you have eaten and rested, we would like you to tell us what happened to you,” Snowfire said in his best Valdemaran.

  The boy nodded; he looked awake, but not entirely alert. “Those men that were chasing me - there were fighters like them that attacked Errold’s Grove,” he said plaintively. “I guess the militia went to stop them, but they probably didn’t have a chance.”

  “How many men?” Starfall asked quickly. “What were they like?”

  “It wasn’t just men, it was some kind of monster, too, and - I didn’t actually count how many there were, but they were in ranks of five, and I saw ten times five ranks and I know I didn’t see all of them,” Darian said, growing agitated, as Nightwind put a steadying hand on his arm. “There were just a lot - an awful lot. I was out in the woods, getting some tree-fungus that Juh - that we needed, and I saw smoke and fire and came running back. When I got there, everybody was running away, and this whole army was on the road to the bridge. They had lots of armor, and all kinds of pikes and swords and things, and not all of them were men, they were kind of half bear and half man! And there was another thing, a monster or a demon or something, that wasn’t anything like a man at all, and it was leading them - it was riding on this big lizard. J - “ A spasm of pain swept over the boy’s face, and Snowfire made a mental note to find out who or what began with “J” that the boy avoided talking about so carefully. That might be the key to releasing some of that pent-up grief. “The bridge got - destroyed - set afire to keep them off, but they came across the river anyway. That’s when I ran, and I got away from the first lot, but those others were deeper in the forest and came after me when they saw me.”

  Starfall and Snowfire exchanged looks. This did not sound very good.

  “Did the others of your village get away from this army?” Snowfire asked. “Did they have somewhere to go for help?”

  The boy frowned for a moment, then shrugged. “I didn’t see anybody get caught,” he said finally. “And I guess they must have run to Kelmskeep. Lord Breon has got a whole garrison of his own, and Kelmskeep’s fortified, they say. He has messengers and things he could send for the Guard, so that’s probably where everybody went.”

  “Now, what about the men who chased you?” Snowfire asked. “How did that happen?”

  The boy winced with chagrin. “I ran into them,” he admitted. “I didn’t think there was any way they could have got ahead of me, and I ran into them, ‘cause I wasn’t looking for anyone. They came after me, and I headed for that clearing ‘cause there’s places in there I could’ve hid, and they couldn’t have brought their horses over those loose rocks. But one of them caught me, and that’s where you showed up, and that’s all.”

  “That will do; I’ll have the others gather, and we can discuss this when you are ready,” Starfall said, as he got to his feet and headed for the door of the ekele.

  “I’ll be there as soon as the boy is asleep,” Snowfire promised, and turned his attention back to Darian.

  “Hweel won’t have to hunt for himself tonight, so even though Wintersky and I will be gone for a little, Hweel will be with you,” Snowfire told him, then asked the one question that was still puzzling him. “Darian, did you really intend to go after those two barbarians with your rabbit-bow?”

  “I had to,” Darian replied sleepily. “I knew you were hurt, and I didn’t think you’d seen them. I knew I couldn’t do much unless I got a lucky shot, but maybe I’d distract them, and for sure they’d make a noise, so you would know that they were there.”

  “Well, that was good planning,” Snowfire told him, and was rewarded with a sleepy smile that faded into drugged slumber. He waited until he was certain that Darian’s sleep was too deep to be easily broken, then got up to go outside, leaving Hweel to keep a vigilant eye on the boy.

  :Watch and guard,: he told the bondbird, keeping things simple. People had been known to have odd reactions to drugs, and children in particular were prone to sleepwalking after a severe trauma. Snowfire was not in the least deceived by the boy’s apparent calm; Nightwind said that there was great emotion ready to burst out at any moment, and he believed her. :Find me if something happens.:

  Hweel roused his feathers and huured his agreement. Now that he was full of rabbit, he was quite content to stay in one place with a foot tucked up beneath his breast-feathers.

  Snowfire joined the rest of the group around the small fire that Nightwind kept feeding with herbs to keep the insects away. He accepted a mug of cool water from the spring from Wintersky with a nod of thanks, and took his place in the council session that had formed.

  “I’ve told the others what the boy told us,” Starfall explained, as firelight flickered and cast odd shadows on his face. “And the very first question I can think of is whether we should involve ourselves at all.”

  “I don’t think we can, to tell you the truth,” replied Wintersky regretfully. “I mean, this sounds like an army! And we have how many? Not quite twenty humans, twice that in the dyheli herd, a couple of hertasi and a gryphon. We aren’t exactly equipped to be fighting battles either.”

  The fire popped and hissed, blending with the sound of movement of something large, like the sussuration of canvas across canvas.

  “I would sssay that one grrryphon isss worrrth an arrrmy, but I rrreluctantly concurrr,” a deep voice rumbled from the shadows behind Nightwind. “It only takesss a sssingle arrrow.”

  “It isn’t just an army of men, but of Changechildren as well, and that means a mage is deep in it somewhere,” Starfall put in. “Unless what the boy saw were just costumes or disguises, and I can’t imagine why barbarians would bother wearing disguises.”

  “It sounds to me as if someone managed to reconcile a great many Bearclan septs,” Snowfire mused. “Maybe - well, this is a wild surmise
, but from what I know about the northern tribes, they attach heavy religious and emotional significance to their totems, and a lot of emphasis is put on taking on the attributes of those totems. Now, what would happen if a mage came along, perhaps in the guise of a shaman, who could give them physical attributes of their totems?”

  “He’d own the clan to the point of being able to reconcile all the feuds between the septs,” Starfall said flatly. “And there was someone who managed that, once.”

  “Yesssss.” The shadow behind Nightwind rose, and loomed up over her head. “Yessss, therrre wassss. And we all know hisss currrsssed name.” The shadow resolved itself into a shape, and the shape into a creature, a creature with the mantling wings and head of a raptor, but a raptor of enormous size, and with four limbs instead of two. “He wasss called Ma’arrrrr.”

  “I don’t think we’re in any danger of seeing another Ma’ar, Kelvren,” Nightwind soothed. “It’s all right.”

  But Starfall frowned. “Perhaps. And perhaps not. I can’t help but think that this is a rather nasty coincidence, these barbarians, presumably led or backed by a mage, suddenly moving into territory where no one has yet established a matrix for magic. The difference between a Ma’ar and a petty tyrant is largely a matter of power.”

  “All the more reason for you to form and hold the matrix,” Snowfire replied firmly. “That will have to be our first priority, it seems to me. If the boy is correct, most - if not all - of his people escaped. Surely one will reach Lord Breon, and he can take care of the military problem from there.”

  “That would be best,” Starfall replied, but with a little reluctance. “We are hardly the group best suited to taking on an army.”

  “But think of what it would have meant if sssomeone had ssstopped Ma’arrr when he wasss gatherrring the trrribesss,” Kelvren urged, his eyes glinting in the firelight. “Would it not have been worrrth everrry sssacrrrificssse to do sssso?”

  “We can stop any mage just as easily by holding the magic energy of this area away from him,” Snowfire replied. “I think we should concentrate on getting that done first. By then, we should know if the Valdemarans have taken care of the military situation themselves.”

  “And if they have not?” Kelvren persisted.

  “We’ll deal with that when we come to it,” Starfall said firmly, ending the debate.

  The gryphon folded his wings, feathers making a cloth-on-cloth sound as they slid across each other intq precise order. “Verrry well. I will be - rrready. And if they do rrre-memberrr Ma’arrr and hisss waysss - “ Kelvren reached for a log of firewood and purposefully splintered it into several pieces merely by squeezing it. “ - then I will ensurrre that they rrrememberrr grrryphonsss asss well.”

  Four

  Darian woke in the morning feeling as if his head weren’t working quite right. It was difficult to put his thoughts together; he seemed to be taking a very long time to get even a single thought to form. He stared for a long time at the wall that was a hand’s breadth or two past his nose, and wondered why the rough texture didn’t look the way it should. Why did each rough-sawn plank look rounded? And why wasn’t the wall itself slanting toward him as it formed the peak of the roof? His mind moved slowly and his thoughts felt fuzzy around the edges. And what was wrong with the light? It was greenish, and it was much darker in the loft than it should have been.

  It couldn’t be just turning dawn, because he never woke up that early. Maybe it’s going to rain? Justyn hadn’t Fore-Seen any rains, though, and that was one thing that he could do right; his weather-watching was always accurate.

  He’d had the strangest dream, too - that the village had been attacked by a whole army. There was fire, a lot of fire in the dream, the whole town had been on fire. It had been more of a nightmare. Darian shivered and tried to remember more. There was a lot of him running, and monsters chasing him, then more running through the forest, then horrible men on horseback chasing him - getting rescued by a Hawkbrother and an owl, a huge owl -

  A pretty strange dream, too. When would I ever see a Hawkbrother? Never in a thousand years. And who would ever bother to attack Errold’s Grove with an army? What could they possibly want? Beans and turnips? Or maybe chickens - He had to shake his head at the way he was trying to make sense of a dream. Anything can happen in a dream, of course - one of Widow Clay’s chickens must have started laying silver eggs with golden yolks. Or maybe Justyn ‘s spells finally worked and everyone was suddenly rich, and that was why an army came.

  Then he rolled over, and saw that he wasn’t in the loft, but in a strange, octagonal hut made of rough logs - windowless, and with vines over the door. There was a huge owl, the same one he thought he’d only “dreamed” about, blinking sleepily on a perch to one side. At that moment, he realized with a plummeting heart that it hadn’t been a dream at all. It had all been real, horribly real. Errold’s Grove was gone - or if not gone, it was in the hands of an army of violent strangers, and everyone he knew had fled in fear of losing their lives.

  In one moment, he went from sleepy and laughing at himself to despair. His insides became cold; a lump rose in his throat that was half grief and half fear, and his thoughts spun dizzily with nowhere to go. He still couldn’t quite remember all that had happened, and the way his thoughts kept spinning didn’t help. There was something about Justyn - and his mind shied away from the thought, as if he didn’t want to remember, as if remembering would be the most horrible thing that had happened to him.

  The village had been taken - but why? What could anyone possibly want with a little town that was on the verge of drying up and blowing away? If there were a single gold coin in the place, he would be surprised. A few of the women had jewelry, silver and silver-gilt, but he was sure there was not enough in the whole village to fill a hat. The women depended on their needlework to brighten their apparel.

  Most ornaments were made of carved and painted wood, plaited straw, beads and beadwork, copper, and bronze, and not a single precious stone in the lot, just turquoise, agate, and colored quartz. There simply was nothing worth looting - and even if you cleaned out every bit of beer and liquor in the place, by the time you parceled it out among all the soldiers, there wouldn’t even be enough to get them mildly intoxicated!

  This is insane; nothing is making any sense. I should be home, I should be in the loft, not here. Wherever “here” is. . . .

  But if he wasn’t in the loft in Justyn’s house, where was he?

  I’m with the Hawkbrothers - he remembered. This house belonged to them. What were they going to do with him now? He remembered, with a dreamlike vagueness, that they had asked him questions about what had happened, but they hadn’t given him any idea what they planned to do. Where was he going to go if they didn’t want him to stay? Could he get them to take him to Kelmskeep? But then what would he do?

  Thoughts of Kelmskeep led him back to the village. Kelmskeep must have been where all the villagers were trying to escape to, and that was why they were running without trying to take anything. They could make Lord Breon’s lands in a few days or a week or so - it would be a hardship, but this was summer, and no one would die of exposure or thirst. But what had actually happened to the rest of the villagers? How well-planned had that attack been? Had those horrible fighters caught anyone else? How could they not have? If there had been four men on horseback ranging out that far from the village to catch those who tried to escape, mightn’t there be more?

  No matter what the town did to me - they never hurt me on purpose, they just wanted me to be like them. They never did anything to anybody, they don’t deserve to have those awful men get hold of them!

  What would happen to them? The man who caught him hadn’t killed him right off, but what would he have done when he learned that Darian didn’t have any money and didn’t know where any was? Darian had only vague notions of what enemy soldiers wanted, based on what bandits wanted. If you didn’t have money for them, what would soldiers do? How could you sat
isfy them if you didn’t have what they had come for?

  Now Darian’s vivid imagination portrayed all manner of terrible things that could have befallen the folk of Errold’s Grove, and he grew more and more agitated as he thought about their possible fates.

  The owl turned his head then, as if it sensed something was wrong. It opened a pair of enormous eyes completely and fastened its gaze on him. He found himself locking eyes with it. It clearly was not afraid of him, and strangely enough, he was not afraid of it, although it was easily large enough to hurt him quite seriously, if not kill him, if it took the notion to attack him. In fact, the more he looked into its huge, golden eyes, the calmer and quieter he felt. It was so strange, and warm-feeling, and it made every thought seem to slow down. It was almost as if the owl was putting its wing over him and sheltering him, and telling him that everything would be all right. . . .

  Then the owl blinked, and the spell was broken. The bird yawned hugely, snapping his beak shut with a loud click. Darian yawned along with the owl, then watched as the bird shook its tufted head so fast it blurred, and felt as if he had to laugh a little at the sight.

  The curtain of vines over the door to the hut parted, and a shadow blocked out the light for a moment. By the long, braided hair and the odd clothing, the newcomer had to be a Hawkbrother. As the Hawkbrother came into the light, he saw that it was the one who had rescued him yesterday. He was very tall, with long hair that had white roots, and was dyed all over in patterns of pale and dark brown, golden brown, and bark-gray. His square, chiseled face was very friendly, with many smile-creases at the corners of his mouth. His blue eyes contrasted oddly with his weathered, golden skin. He wore clothing in many shades of brown leather and closely-woven fabric, and his left arm and shoulder were completely encased in a sleeve of padded leather.