Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “Why, what would they say?” Snowfire asked, ingenuously.

  “That - that I’m ungrateful, disrespectful, and I don’t know my place,” Darian said, in what was very nearly a growl, turning his gaze away from Snowfire’s face and back down to the ground.

  Snowfire made a noncommittal sound. “And why would they say that you’re ungrateful?”

  “Because after all the effort they’ve gone to in order to make sure I had someone to take care of me, and have food and shelter, and the trouble they’ve gone to in order to see that I was going to learn a useful trade, I’m not grateful, and I don’t know my place,” Darian muttered, his voice full of resentment.

  Snowfire shifted his weight, and took a more comfortable pose, giving himself time to think out his answer. “It seems to me,” he said carefully, “that you already had the grounding in a very good trade, that being the one that your parents followed. It seems to me that - provided you liked that trade, of course - you could, with a little effort, have found someone else in that trade to take you as half-trained apprentice, and thus you would have supplied your own food, shelter, and Master. So I fail to see why they should think you should consider yourself beholden to them for what they did. After all, the choice of caretaker, lodging, and trade was theirs, not yours, and you had never asked them to undertake it on your behalf. If someone cooks food I do not care for and offers it to me when they know I am not hungry, should I be grateful to them?”

  “Some people would think so,” Darian replied, but his spirits seemed a little higher.

  He shrugged. “Then some people are foolish, and that is their problem, not mine, nor should it be yours. However, there is this to consider; would any of their children, at your age, have been able to do as you would have done had they waited to let you try?”

  “No,” he admitted. “They’d have been pretty helpless. They’d have had to get a relative to take care of ‘em and sort things out for them.”

  “Then wouldn’t it be reasonable to say that they were taking care of things for you as their own children would have needed care?” Snowfire waited for Darian to make the next leap of logic.

  “I guess so.” Darian didn’t say anything else, but Snowfire could tell he was thinking about something. I hope it’s that he can see why they would expect him to be grateful, even though he wasn‘t obliged to feel gratitude. Poor lad. He was a tervardI being brought up by hertasi, who didn’t understand why he wanted to live at the tops of trees instead of a nice, safe burrow deep in the ground. And he didn’t understand why he should be grateful that they kept giving him the room farthest from the exit!

  “Well,” Snowfire said at last. “Why would they say you were disrespectful?”

  “Because I pretty much told them what you just did,” Darian said with some wonderment, so surprised to hear his own thoughts echoing from Snowfire’s mouth that he was hard put to keep his eyes down on the ground.

  “Well, if you told them in approximately the same words that I used, I can understand being called disrespectful,” Snowfire chuckled. “You might consider cultivating a more diplomatic approach to avoid conflict in the future. But what is this about ‘knowing your place’?”

  Darian looked up at him from beneath a pair of fiercely knitted eyebrows. “I guess I wasn’t humble enough,” he replied. “Old Justyn, he just let everybody treat him like the whole village’s servant, and I guess I was supposed to act the same.”

  “Really?” Snowfire did not let his expression of friendly interest slip. “Perhaps, though, it wasn’t that they treated Justyn as if he were a servant, but as if they had become so accustomed to his services that they took him for granted?”

  “Maybe.” Darian’s fierce expression eased a little. “I suppose that was it. I guess when you do things for people and they get used to you being there, it’s natural to kind of get taken for granted.”

  “Exactly true.” Snowfire nodded calmly. “That is why, from time to time, our Vale Healer goes out into the deep Forest to meditate and refresh his spirit. When we have to do without him for a while, we notice again how much he does. Of course, if any of us were to have a genuine emergency, he would return, but that rarely happens. When he comes back, he is invigorated by his rest, and we are properly appreciative of all he does. Now, that your Master did not do this is as much his own fault as the villagers’. Our Shin’a’in cousins have a saying, ‘To treat a person like a carpet, it is necessary that one do the walking, and one allow himself to be walked on.’ “

  Darian actually smiled a little, and rubbed his reddened nose with the back of his hand. “That’s a funny saying. But I guess I see the point.”

  “It seems to me,” Snowfire continued, with perfect calm, “that the people of your village could have used a deal more exposure to the wider world, and were stubborn and loud in their refusal to change their ways.”

  Now Darian laughed out loud. “That’s a funny thing for a Hawkbrother to say!” he replied. “Hellfires, you people never even came out of the Forest till just a little bit ago! Most people thought you had feathers instead of hair!”

  “That would be the tervardi, not the Tayledras,” Snowfire chuckled. “And again, the cousins say, ‘It takes a mule to repeat a mule’s bray,’ which is to say, the one most likely to recognize a fault is the one who suffers from the same fault. Hmm?”

  “I guess so.” Darian grew quiet and thoughtful, and Snowfire wondered if he had caught the second lesson - that a great deal of the trouble between himself and his guardians lay in the fact that neither of them cared to compromise the vision they had for Darian’s future. A clue that he just might have came a moment later, when he asked plaintively, “Do I have to be a mage?”

  “That is a good question, Dar’ian. Well, you have the Gift, and it seems reasonable to train it, so that it is at least under your control,” Snowfire replied judiciously. “Having a Gift is a bit like having a very large and active dog. Think about the large dogs you have been around in your life, from pups to adults. If you do not train a dog to obey you - what happens?”

  “He jumps all over people, steals what he wants, maybe bites someone.” Darian nodded, as if the analogy made sense to him.

  “But if he is trained, even if you do not go to the extent of training him for - say - pulling a cart, or searching for lost children, he will stay out of trouble. That is why you should at least train your Gift. Otherwise, like the dog, it is likely to break loose and do something unanticipated, usually at a bad moment.”

  Darian sighed and propped his chin on his hand. “It’s just that, before you did that stuff with the bandage, I couldn’t see much you could do with magic that you couldn’t do with a pair of hands.”

  Snowfire stretched and thought quickly. He needed to find something that would convince Darian to undertake real training, which would mean a great deal of hard work.

  “Well, in the long run, you are correct. If I wish to know something happening at a distance, I could work the magic to find it out, or I could go there and find it out for myself. If I needed to hide myself, I could work the magic to do so, or I could wear the correct clothing and learn to move without making a sound. Now - I could not call lightning by myself, for instance, but the Artificers of Valdemar have a powder that will certainly leave a large hole and make one think that lightning was called. So you are in the right of it. But - the black powder does not work in the rain, sometimes the right clothing still would not conceal a watcher, and it is not always convenient to go off on a journey to learn what is going on somewhere.” He spread his hands wide. “You see? It is good to know how to do things without magic, but it is good to know how to do them with magic as well. It gives you more options than just one or the other.”

  “Justyn couldn’t do much,” Darian said meditatively. “Magic, I mean. Something was wrong with his head, he said, and he couldn’t do magic like he used to. I don’t know.”

  “That may have been as much the result of the mage-stor
ms as anything else,” Snowfire replied. “With the way that magic was scattered, he may not have had the power to do the things he used to - and that may be why he lost some of the respect that he had in the past. And also - we do not know why, but a small number of mages were affected by the Storms. Some lost ability, some gained it. He may have been one of those who lost it, and that is hardly his fault. Do you fault a man for no longer chopping wood when he has lost a hand?”

  “But he figured out ways of doing things that needed getting done, without magic!” Darian protested.

  “And that is certainly to his vast credit, I have no argument with you. It is too bad that your villagers were so certain that something done by magical means is intrinsically more valuable than something done any other way that they forgot that the value lies in the accomplishment, not how it was done.” Snowfire decided enough had been said on that issue. “Well, that, after all, is how it is said that carnival sharpsters manage to separate the gullible from their earnings, by accomplishing the ordinary with so much flash and tinsel that their victims forget that they are seeing nothing but a gaudy illusion overlaid on the absolutely commonplace.”

  Darian looked so puzzled by that last remark that Snowfire reminded himself sharply that he was only dealing with a young lad, no matter how clever the boy sounded.

  “I don’t know what that means,” the boy admitted honestly, impressing the Hawkbrother even more.

  “It matters not, Dar’ian, we can talk about it another time. We have time to be friends. But for now - “ He led Darian, gently and by careful questions, to talk about his parents.

  He discovered that Nightwind had been correct about Darian’s close and affectionate relationship with his parents. He also learned that, as she had surmised, he still held to the hope that they were still alive somewhere.

  He saw no reason to disabuse the boy of that hope. Certainly his guardians had made that attempt, and failed, and after all, what harm did it do him? That hope had probably sustained him, rather than harming him in any way, and had helped him to keep his spirit intact. That was hardly a bad thing.

  Finally he persuaded Darian to come out of the ekele, get something to eat, and continue answering questions.

  “You will feel better with a meal inside you,” Snowfire assured him, as he led Darian to the central cooking area. “I know that I always do. I would also like you to meet the rest of us one at a time, rather than facing all of us in a group. That cannot have been comfortable.”

  Darian averted his eyes for a moment. “It felt like - like I was in trouble again, and you - you people are pretty scary,” he murmured uncomfortably.

  Snowfire mentally berated himself for not seeing that beforehand. “I apologize, Dar’ian, but that is how we always conduct our information-meetings. When people must know some crucial intelligence, we all come together to hear it and ask questions, then folk go off to think about the situation, then return some time later to discuss possible strategies. You were not in trouble - but you were the focus and the most important part of the meeting.”

  Darian flushed, and Snowfire decided that the subject had better be changed. “Never mind,” he said. “Let’s get food.” By that time they had reached the cook shelter, which had clay ovens constructed on the spot for baking, open fires with tripods for pots and spits for roasting small beasts and birds whole, and grills over coals for fish. Snowfire spotted the hertasi Ayshen taking fresh, hot bread from one of the ovens, and headed straight in that direction, for there was nothing he loved so much as hot bread. It was only when he noticed that Darian was no longer beside him that he turned to see the boy staring at the little hertasi with an expression of horrified surprise.

  “Dar’ian?” he asked, puzzled. “Is something wrong?”

  Darian’s face was as pale as a cloud. “What - is - that?” he whispered, as if he was afraid to make a sound lest the hertasi suddenly leap at him and rend him with claw and fang.

  “That is Ayshen, a good friend of mine, and a wonderful baker,” Snowfire said, deciding that the best approach would be to be completely matter-of-fact about the hertasi. Did the Valdemarans have no hertasi in their land? Evidently not, judging by Darian’s pinched expression. “His mate Drusi makes a better stew, but no one can rival his bread, and his meat pies are worth suffering any hardship to earn! Come, I’ll introduce you.”

  Darian could hardly hang back after that, and he trailed along after Snowfire with wide eyes and a set look of determination on his face. “Ayshen!” Snowfire hailed. “I am about to perish of famine, and our young friend Dar’ian k’Valdemar has not even had breakfast. Surely you can take pity on us and feed us!”

  Darian obviously understood none of this - probably not even his name, given that Snowfire had given it the Tayledras pronunciation - but he could not misunderstand the tone of friend-to-friend that Snowfire used. Nor could he misunderstand the similar tone with which Ayshen replied to this sally.

  “Shame on you, Snowfire. I thought the hatchling was in your charge! You are supposed to feed hatchlings, don’t you know that? Are you trying to stunt his growth through starvation so that you will no longer be the runt of this pack of humans?” Ayshen swiftly tore one of the steaming loaves in half, then tore each half in half, lengthwise. Onto two of the quarters he laid juicy slices of venison he carved from a roast over one of the fires, knife flashing in his blinding speed. He topped the meat with some mouth-watering concoction of his own, made of finely chopped herbs, wild garlic, and watercress from a set of nested simmering pots. Then he restored the top quarters of each, and handed one to each of them. Darian took his gingerly, unable to take his eyes from the hertasi’s lizardlike face.

  Ayshen was a k’Leshya hertasi, and did not suffer from the painful shyness shared by all of the Pelagirs hertasi, including his mate. So he was neither offended nor alarmed by Darian’s reaction.

  “The boy has never seen one of us, eh?” Ayshen chuckled. “No worries. I mind me the time I saw my first Haighlei; I thought my eyes would pop out of my head. To me, the idea that you humans had hide colors that wildly different just set my brain afire.” He turned to Darian, and cleared his throat.

  “To hearth, bed, and bread, be welcome,” he said in slow and uncertain Valdemaran.

  Darian jumped, but held onto his meal with both hands, and made an awkward little bow. “Thanks be to the keeper of the house; my hand is at his service,” he replied in the formal manner.

  Ayshen chuckled. “Tell him he shouldn’t have said that - I need a dishwasher today! You were on the roster, but with that bad arm, you can’t lift pots. It’s probably why you got the wound, as an excuse.”

  Snowfire obediently translated, and a slow smile crept across Darian’s face. “I wouldn’t mind - if he really needs the help,” the boy said shyly. “I used to do all the dishwashing for Justyn - and - I could pay you back a little by taking your place.”

  The glance he gave Snowfire had more than a shadow of hero worship to it, but Snowfire knew how to deal with that. “If you have no problem in taking my place, I would be grateful,” he replied and made a face. “On the whole, I don’t mind washing dishes; it’s preferable to a lot of other camp chores that I won’t escape because of my bad arm. And I will miss out on the special treats Ayshen keeps for his helpers.”

  The ploy worked; he not only established that he was grateful to Darian for volunteering, but that the job of dishwasher brought with it some extra rewards.

  It was arranged that Darian would report to Ayshen after the evening meal; with a bit of trial, they determined to both of their satisfaction that Ayshen could direct the boy with a bit of mime and a great deal of pointing.

  That certainly went well, Snowfire thought with satisfaction, as he led Darian off in the direction of the dyheli grazing grounds. He is resilient, I must give him credit for that. Now that he has the concept of nonhuman partners planted in his mind, I’ll show him the next set.

  * * *

  Darian had
hardly known what to think when he first saw the hertasi cook, Ayshen. The creature had looked - at least at first - so very much like the horrible Thing that had been leading the enemy fighters!

  But Snowfire hadn’t been afraid of Ayshen, and the hertasi himself had been very kind - as Ayshen had put together a lunch for the two of them, and as Darian had gotten over his fright enough to look closely at him, it was obvious that he wasn’t very much like the enemy Thing at all. Darian found himself volunteering to act as a dishwasher, and even more surprising, found himself looking forward to the task. At least now he would be able to accomplish something useful here!

  It was so odd, though - feeling an urgent need to be useful.

  “So - what’s a hertasi, anyway?” he asked Snowfire around a mouthful of bread.

  “They are, so we believe, one of the creations of that same great mage who ended the Mage Wars,” Snowfire replied. “As you saw, they are descended from lizards, and they share many characteristics with lizards. Cold sends them into a stupor, and extreme cold could kill or injure them very badly. They act, more or less, as our helpers; they cook and clean for us, make clothing, act as the assistants for artisans - when they are not, themselves, artisans as well. In return, we give them the protection of our Vales and scouts and things that they need. They tend to live in colonies, although they take single mates. They are one of the five nonhuman races that we Tayledras associate and work with.”

  “Five?” Darian could hardly believe it. “There are five kinds of - of - things that you have around your Vales?”

  “As equal partners and helpers and not always in the Vales. The tervardi, or Bird-people, the kyree, or Fur-brothers, and the dyheli, or Straight-horns, usually live outside our Vales. The hertasi and the gryphons in our Vales entwine their lives with ours; the others live entirely separate lives from ours, and only become partners with us where there are specific tasks that are better done with all our peoples.” Snowfire was so matter-of-fact about this - as if he were telling Darian how the Hawkbrothers arranged to get things from traders, or worked with the Valdemaran Guard! Darian found his head swimming. First, two-legged, intelligent lizards, and now this!