Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Now Shandi changed her tone to one of coaxing; she lowered her voice and cocked her head to one side. “Keisha, just because you get involved with someone, even marry him, that doesn’t mean one of you has to get swallowed up by the other. Darian doesn’t want that - if he did, trust me, you’d know it, and you have a good sense of self-preservation; you’d be running away as fast as a dyheli could carry you!” She laughed.

  Shandi certainly did that, when Mother tried to swallow her up. . . .

  But Shandi didn’t make that comparison, which was probably just as well. “You say that you and Darian are apart more than together now that you’re both taking on your full responsibilities - well, things change, and you have to change with them, you ought to know that by now! You’ll probably have to work some things out, maybe make some alterations in how you work, but - ”

  Me? Why should I be the one to have to change? “I don’t think it’s fair for me to have to make all the compromises!” Keisha said - and cringed when she heard the whining tone in her own voice.

  “So don’t! When I said ‘you’ I meant both of you!” Exasperation crept into Shandi’s voice. “Listen to what I’m saying, and don’t keep jumping to the worst possible conclusion! You make some compromises, he’ll make some, you’ll work out what’s acceptable to both of you. But don’t undermine your own happiness because you think you haven’t got anything to offer him, and don’t drive him away just because you’re afraid of a commitment!”

  I’m not afraid! Keisha wanted to snap - but she knew, instantly, that it would be a lie. So she didn’t say anything at all.

  Fortunately, that seemed to be the end of Shandi’s lecture. Shandi left her alone then; she didn’t ride ahead or lag behind, but she didn’t say anything more. Finally Keisha thought of something to say.

  She couldn’t help it; she sounded sarcastic. “How did you become such an expert on - on - ”

  “On romance?” Shandi looked over at her, and winked, taking her question at face value and ignoring the sarcasm. “Forced into it. Between all the boys that chased after me in Errold’s Grove, and all the Trainees who came to me with boy- and girl-problems, I got to be an expert fairly quickly.” She sighed heavily. “Everybody goes to an Empath for a shoulder to cry on.”

  “Don’t I know it!” Keisha said involuntarily, thinking of the number of times that Shandi’s disappointed suitors had done just that to her - and that broke the uncomfortable stalemate. They both laughed, Shandi heartily, Keisha weakly.

  By unspoken consent they did not discuss anything remotely uncomfortable after that. Shandi changed the subject to something completely innocuous. They spent the rest of the ride talking about trivialities, nothing that used up an awful lot of brain power, which was just as well.

  Shandi had given her a great deal to occupy her thoughts.

  Darian woke in the late morning feeling just as much turmoil and confusion in his mind as he’d had when he went to bed. In fact, he hadn’t really expected to sleep, but his exhausted body had decided otherwise. He turned himself out of the hammock he’d awakened in, in one of Silverfox’s workrooms, and found (as he’d expected) a fresh set of his own clothing waiting for him beside the window. And cleaned boots.

  The hertasi were busy this morning.

  Getting dressed, he hurried up the staircase to Firesong’s ekele above, certain that he would find his mentor there, probably engrossed in a magical text.

  He was not wrong; Firesong looked up as soon as he poked his nose in the door. “Get over here,” Firesong ordered, pointing to a low chair. In a moment, his teacher had Darian sitting down with food in front of him. Firesong turned his apparent attention back to the heavy book from which he was making notes.

  “Don’t say anything just yet,” Firesong cautioned, without looking up. “Eat first.” And he sat there with his arms folded across the pages, drawing delicate diagrams, while Darian did just that. Darian obeyed him, even though the food had no more taste than old leaves, and kept catching in his throat.

  When he’d finished enough to satisfy the Adept, Firesong allowed him to set the tray aside and get down to a serious discussion.

  “I’ve been doing some research, but I haven’t found anything that was of much use. Charting the Change-Circle against our maps put it on a proper arc, in line with others we knew of already, but since no one has yet been able to find a provable correlation between source and destination Circles when they change places, I have no prediction of where what was initially in that Circle went. I also did a little more work this morning, when I was fresher, with Starfall’s help,” Firesong told him. “Unfortunately, we got pretty much the same result. Your father is somewhere north and west of us; how far, and in exactly what direction he is, we simply can’t tell - except that it’s a long way. Farther than a hawk would fly in a week.” He sighed. “There still isn’t enough clean, clear power about for us to be able to point to him with any more accuracy than that. Best scrying we can do at present gives us a general “feel” within a quarter compass, at this distance. It is like target shooting in a dense fog, when you haven’t even seen where the target is placed first. We’d either have to have more power, or be a great deal closer to him to find him.”

  “And there’s an awful lot of ‘north and west’ to be searching in,” Darian sighed. “Firesong - ”

  “Don’t make any decisions yet,” Firesong cautioned. “We haven’t begun to exhaust all of our resources. There may be someone among the tribesmen coming here for Healing who can give us clues, or even a real direction.”

  Darian grimaced. “And this is where you counsel me about patience. My head knows you’re right, but - I don’t want to sit around and wait, I want to be up and doing something!” He unclenched a fist he wasn’t even aware he’d made. “I have been patient. I’ve undergone trials, travels, and ceremonies until my ears could bleed. I’ve been in fights that scared me to death and done responsible things for others enough to be Knighted, and even that was to better do the duties demanded of me.”

  Firesong nodded, and a lock of his snowy white hair fell over one eye. He said nothing in agreement, but also said nothing disapproving.

  “I’ve given and given to this Vale. And to the village, and to Valdemar, and even the Northerners. I have had some wonderful times and great benefits, and I don’t have too many regrets. I have not done these things so I could stack up favors to call in.” Darian paused for a long deep breath then continued. “It is just that - the things I have done over the past few years have been almost all for others, but this is for me.”

  Firesong brushed the stray hair away from his face, still seemingly impassive as he listened, then said levelly, “Go on.”

  Darian set his jaw and then concluded. “Firesong, I want this one. I want this one for me and for my family. I’m horribly afraid that if we wait too long, something will happen to them. . . .” His voice faded as he contemplated that terrible notion, that he would learn his parents were alive only to discover they’d perished just days before he could reach them.

  Firesong shook his head slightly while he steepled his fingers. “I understand. But Darian, they’ve survived this long, surely they can survive the summer!”

  “If I knew where they were, and what the situation was, I’d be more inclined to agree with you. But what if they’re alive now only because they’re being kept as a death-sacrifice by Blood Bear or some other tribe like them?” Darian protested.

  “That is as may be, but it could as well have happened two years ago as not, or never,” Firesong replied blithely. “What needs to be done is for you to balance and measure the likelihood of results with the risks to be taken, with what powers can be brought to bear with the time you have.”

  Darian looked unhappy with such an objective assessment, but he knew that Firesong was right. What they did know was that his father was in passable, maybe excellent health; the first spell had told him that much, and he had to presume that Starfall and Firesong
working together had confirmed that. If a man lacking a foot and marooned in the far north was in any health after all these years, that argued for his continued survival.

  But it was hard, so hard, to simply sit there and discuss logistical possibilities with Firesong, when what he wanted to do was to get a score of dyheli volunteers and go north as fast as they could carry him, carrying whatever food and equipment he could gather in a dash through his quarters, trusting that luck and his own magic would give him a direction.

  But even at his most optimistic and foolhardy, he knew that such a plan would be ridiculous. Luck only favored those who didn’t need it, an old saying went. . . .

  Besides, Keisha deserves to hear about this.

  That was another consideration altogether. He couldn’t just go haring off without telling her.

  “Of all the things in the world, I think being patient is the hardest,” he moaned, and Firesong nodded.

  “I know quite a few people who would agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment,” his teacher replied, with true sympathy. “That includes the man I was for the first half of my life. As the Shin’a’in shaman say, though, ‘Every scar is a lesson remembered.’ “ His face wrinkled in pits and creases as he smiled sideways. “I think that while we plan and prepare for what you will do about your parents, you ought to go find something useful that will occupy your mind.” He closed the book firmly, caressing its spine before looking to Darian.

  “I think you’re right,” Darian said after a pause, and got to his feet. “Have you any suggestions?”

  But when Firesong also rose, a wicked gleam in his eye, Darian knew he had asked the wrong question.

  “Of course, my dear student,” Firesong said in tones of silk. “After all, just because you’ve become a Master, that doesn’t mean you’ve stopped needing to learn, does it?”

  The next several hours of magical work left him exhausted in mind and body; Firesong’s idea of something that would “occupy his mind” was a set of exercises that took every iota of his thoughts and left him nothing to devote to his own problems.

  He found himself juggling multiple ley-lines, plus Heartstone power, while fending off little stinging “annoyance” attacks from Firesong - and meanwhile he had to accomplish his started task, which was to create a second outlet for his hot spring, since there was more than enough water flowing from it to supply two sets of hot pools. Ayshen had already voiced a wish for a supply of hot water for the kitchens so that they didn’t nave to use the smoke-belching wood-fired boiler that everyone considered a dubious compromise; adding blocks of native hickory sweetened the smell but still was not ideal. So, Darian just had to make a channel for the water from his spring. “Just.” Hah!

  What he’d actually had to do was find a series of cracks and weak spots through the bedrock leading to the kitchen, seal them from side pathways, then coax a tendril of the hot spring to take those cracks as he slowly forced open the weak spots, melted and sculpted the stone into a sealed channel, and finally bring the spring out near the boiler itself, so that Ayshen could use the existing boiler as a hot-water storage tank instead.

  And meanwhile, hundreds of little wasplike attack “stingers” came at him from every possible direction - any he didn’t deflect gave him a sharp reminder of his inadequacy. Twice Firesong even lobbed physical rocks at him, as he had during his Master Trial. He deflected both away - the second one directly back at his mentor, earning a chuckle from him.

  When he was through, Firesong laughed, congratulated him, and sent him back to his own ekele to bathe and change again. For a few hours, at least, he had been far too preoccupied to think of his father, but as soon as he set one foot on the path outside the workroom, it began again.

  And Mother - how is she? I don’t know anything about her - but if Father survived having his foot taken off, she had to have been with him. He could easily imagine her standing by and guarding him, hunting for both of them until he recovered, taking care of him. They worked together as seamlessly as a hand inside a glove; they’d both been hunters, but had switched to trapping so that they could include Darian in their treks. Trapping was no less work than hunting, but the danger was a bit less, and it had been something that they could all work at together, even when Darian was an infant. A crying baby wasn’t much use on a stalk, but didn’t make much difference in working a trap-line.

  He opted for a quick shower, using a spigot high up on the wall, perforated with many tiny holes. It was his own idea, to have a way to get clean quickly in his own quarters rather than having to head for a hot pool or falls; Keisha liked it for washing her hair. He was just pulling his clean shirt on over his head when he heard hoofbeats coming toward the open front door.

  He hurried outside, still barefoot, hoping to be able to catch not only Keisha, but her sister, and possibly Herald Anda as well. He wanted to tell all three of them what he had discovered himself. By now the news had certainly spread all over the Vale, and when any story spread, it tended to get changed, sometimes out of all recognition.

  He was in luck; all three of them were together, and he managed to wave Anda and Shandi in before they rode off to the guest lodge. Keisha looked faintly puzzled, but she said nothing.

  “Listen, I need to tell all three of you what’s just happened,” he said when the other two had dismounted. Then when the Companions shook their heads and snorted at him, he quickly revised, “I mean, all five of you.”

  The Companions looked mollified at his acknowledgment and he quickly outlined his search, the results, and the information that had come out of the magical investigation afterward. “And that’s all I know,” he concluded, looking mostly at Keisha for her reaction. “It’s driving me frantic, because there really isn’t enough to make a search on - ”

  “But you have to keep working on it!” Keisha exclaimed passionately, interrupting him. “Of course you have to! How can you come so close and just leave it at that? And when you do find out where they are, you’ve got to go looking for them!”

  “I wouldn’t advise undertaking a full-scale search on so little information,” Herald Anda cautioned. This was what Darian had expected out of him, but suddenly Anda dropped his dignity and his caution and burst out with, “But - oh, hang it all! We’ll all help you get a better idea of where to look, and the Tayledras and the Northerners, too, no doubt! Surely as many good minds as we have can come up with something!”

  Darian stared for a moment, as Shandi nodded energetically. “I absolutely agree,” Shandi seconded firmly. “No doubt at all; Karles feels the same. We’ll all work on this together. It seems to me that with all the best minds of Valdemar and the Vales working on it, we’ll surely come up with a way to figure out exactly where your parents are, and bring them home again!”

  Darian did not know whether to laugh or weep with relief. He’d been sure that Keisha would support him, but he’d been half convinced that the two Heralds would oppose any attempt to find and bring back his parents, since it would mean his absence from Valdemar - and all his duties. “I - all I can say is ‘thank you’ and that hardly seems adequate,” he managed, after two tries to make words come out had failed.

  “Thank us when we’ve got some results,” Anda said simply. “Just know we’re not going to oppose you, and we’ll help you any way we can, starting by putting our own minds to work on this. Remember, I was trained in a couple of different ‘schools’ of magic; I might be able to think of something new to you.”

  He and his Companion exchanged a glance, then he and Shandi traded looks. “We all need some rest, and a chance to think, so we’ll see you later,” Shandi said by way of farewell, then she and Anda mounted again and rode off toward the guest lodge.

  While they had been talking, Keisha had taken a bundle down off her dyheli, who then left them to find a hertasi to rid him of his tack. Keisha had held it clutched tensely to her chest all the time she’d been listening to Darian, and only now did she remember it. “Havens!” she said,
looking down at the bundle in her hands in surprise. “I’d forgotten all about the present I got you! It doesn’t seem like much after your news - ”

  But Darian was deeply touched. “I beg to differ!” he replied. “Thank you for remembering me - I’m hardly as exciting as the potential to see a brand new disease, after all!”

  He saw by the gleam in her eye that she understood he was teasing her. “Oh, is that what you think, then? Well you might be right!” she teased back. “Maybe some day I’ll leave you for a nice, exciting plague!”

  He caught her up in his arms, and felt a new relaxation about her that delighted him. Whatever had caused this change, he hoped it would persist; she hadn’t been this easy around him for months. “How about if I give you a fever instead?” he murmured into her ear as he nuzzled her neck.

  She turned her head - and bit his ear. Not hard, but it startled him and he let her go. “You’ll have to earn it by catching me first,” she taunted, and ran into the ekele.

  He ran after her, and for the next fever-warm candlemark or so, they were too busy with each other to think of anything else.

  After a much more pleasant shower-bath, this time shared, and yet another change of clothing, Darian stumbled over Keisha’s bundle in the middle of the floor of the outer room. He picked it up, saw to his relief that it was undamaged, and looked for a place to put it down.

  “Oh, good, I was afraid we might have trampled that,” she said, emerging from the bedroom and tying her hair back as she walked. “Here, let me.”

  She held out her hands for it, and he obediently handed the bundle to her.

  She sat down and began to unwrap it in her lap - first the outer square of cloth, which he realized had been her scarf. A scarf was something no modern Healer was ever without, since a scarf could be put to so many useful purposes. Inside the scarf was a bundle of soft, dark-brown furs. They looked rather like weasel or muskrat, but were much softer and the fur was more plush.