Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

by Mercedes Lackey

  This was the first time anyone had mentioned music in connection wit the witch I was seeking. Did Moonwoman have Bardic Gifts? No proper Bard would use his or her powers so; I was not even certain that Bardic Empathy could so thoroughly compel someone against their will, certainly not the Gift of an untrained Bard.

  I would have questioned Meramay further, though it was a chancy thing to do, save for the fact that we had arrived at Meeting Home.

  It was the closest thing to a proper town that I had yet seen in the Armor Hills, though it must lie deserted most of the year. There were dance floors, open to the air; platforms of raised wood planks, where even now groups of dancers whirled, stamped, and spun to the sounds of drums and dulcimers, and even a few roofs without walls, where groups of hill women clustered together, talking and sewing and keeping a weather eye on the youngest children. Meeting Home filled an entire valley, and its floor was surely the largest flat space I’d seen since I’d arrived here. At one end of the valley there were a row of hearths, a great openair kitchen flanked by tables enough to fill the dining hall at the Herald’s Collegium.

  I wondered, then, why I should think of that, for memories of the Collegium belonged to a life I had long since left behind me. They had nothing to do with the life Paynim the Tinker led.

  Though the Meeting did not properly begin until the following night, the whole of the valley was already filled with bright clothes and bright colors, the sounds of music, and the smells of good cooking. There were more people here than I had seen so far in my entire visit to the Hills, and Meramay assured me that more would arrive before the Meeting Days began tomorrow night with the acknowledgment of the new children born in the past year. As I followed Meramay across the meadow to help her unload her cart, I saw unharnessed cart dogs lying everywhere, basking in the sunlight.

  With Meramay to make my introductions, I was welcomed without trouble, and set myself up near those who had brought things to trade. I soon had as much work as I could fairly handle. Not much of my payment was in coin; there was little way I would be able to carry the bulkiest of the goods away with me, but I might well be able to trade them for smaller and more portable items—or for more costly things that I could fairly use, such as a new shirt, a hat, or a pair of breeches.

  More people arrived as the day waned, and that night there was a feast the like of which I had rarely experienced, followed by dancing that would go on, I was assured, until dawn.

  The dances of the Armor Hills are complicated ones, and after stumbling through a few sets, I excused myself and sat with those who were—to hear them tell it—older and wiser. When the ale jugs began to pass, I began to hear more of the Moonwoman.

  Half of what I heard I discounted immediately, for not even the sorcerers of Karse and Iftel could do such things as were claimed for Moonwoman—or if they could do one, they surely could not do the whole.

  Thus, I did not think she could truly turn men into wolves and women into deer, nor ride the wind invisibly, nor strike people dead with a touch. If she could do even a tenth of what was claimed of her, she would have been a greater Mage than Vanyel the Good, and I thought that unlikely.

  What was plain to hear, however, was that the people of the Armor Hills feared her greatly, and would not cross her, though she took not only goods from their houses, but young men as well, none of whom had ever been seen again. I heard, further, that she was never seen beneath the light of the sun, which only increased the awe in which she was held.

  The awe . . . and the fear.

  It was fear, perhaps, that had kept them from petitioning for a Herald’s services before now. In truth, I did not know. I heard as much admiration of Moonwoman as I did anything else, though only a fool would think he would hear honest and open criticism of one whom they felt wielded such power. Such reticence was, in fact, one of the very reasons I walked the roads, for awe and fear are close cousins, and neither is the sister of truth. It was plain that I had much to report to Alberich, but I could not leave just yet. I would have no good reason to give for my sudden departure.

  Besides, I had not yet seen the woman, and there is a saying in the taverns along the Exile’s Road that truth is to tale as the worm to the fish: one may easily be swallowed up by the other.

  On the first day of the Meeting, disaster struck, though at first Meramay and I both thought it to be a blessing. Several of the families that arrived brought strangers with them. In each case, the story was the same: they had been found wandering nearby, with no memory of who they were or how they had come to be where they were. The families that had found them led them around to those who cooked and those who traded, for these were usually the elder men and women of their households, and might have the best chance of naming them.

  Of course I could be no help in identifying them; perhaps if Shavanne had still been with me, but not now. That they all came from the Armor Hills was plain; the folk there, whether blond or dark, have a strong look of one another. And all were within a few summers of the same age.

  I returned to my work, turning over in my mind what could have caused this. A few moments later I heard Meramay scream, loud enough to be heard over the sound of my own hammering. I dropped my tools at once, and ran for her side.

  “Garan! Paynim, it’s Garan! Ceile, Joard, Magan—it’s Garan!” She was laughing and crying, and hugging the neck of one of the men. He looked bewildered but polite. Elsewhere, I heard similar glad outcries as lovers and kin claimed those without memory.

  “Moonwoman Sang him away, and now he’s back!” she added.

  When I had been a Herald, I could sense the tenor of emotion in the towns and villages I passed through. It required no Mind Gift to do so, Shavanne had assured me, only experience and plain common sense. As a tinker, I had not noticed such things any longer, and came to the conclusion that I had felt it before because everyone had been focused upon one thing: me. And I did not feel it later, since no one pays any attention to a wandering craftsman, or if they do, it is in ones and twos, and not everyone in the town at once.

  But now once more I felt it, and as if I still wore Whites, I could read the ripples of emotion as easily as a fisherman can read the ripples in a stream.

  For Meramay to speak Moonwoman’s name aloud was bad enough. To say what she had done—in fact, to accuse Moonwoman of doing something—was far worse. Even though no one moved from where they stood, I felt their displeasure, and I was not surprised when they began to drift away and move their goods away, until soon Meramay was standing alone.

  Even Garan felt it. He made graceful apologies to Meramay, saying he had to get his family settled in, but still he left; he had been Sung away nearly five moonturns ago, after all, and the people who had taken him in were all the family he knew.

  She gazed at me, eyes wide and hurt and frightened, just beginning to be afraid.

  I knew then that we must leave at once, for the sort of sullen anger she had roused was the sort I had seen flare to violence more times than I could count. But she swore she would not leave without Garan; that he would not be taken from her twice.

  I mustered every good argument I could think of in vain—that she knew now where he was and that he was safe; that she did not wish to kindle one of the stubborn grudges that might smolder for generations in a small enclave, beginning for a cause as trivial as a misheard greeting; that Garan would return to her when he had gotten a chance to think—but she would not go. Whether because it was impossible for her to leave Midsummer Meeting or because it was impossible for her to leave Garan, I did not know. I dared not press her too hard lest she turn against me and order me from the Meeting; I would not go in any event, and I thought she would need my help soon.

  I was more right than I suspected.

  The shunning of Meramay that had begun when she had spoken those fatal words grew like the lake ripples from a thrown stone, until her face was as grim as my own. No one wished her assistance at their cookstove, nor to add the dishes she had
prepared to their communal table. But she was proud and stubborn, and still she would not leave. We sat alone together, I making my whole meal of the eggs and vegetable pies that were to have been her contribution to the feast, and Meramay too miserable to eat at all.

  I had expected the dancing to resume after supper, though the trading and bargaining over knives and axheads, cloth and livestock, was over for the day. But instead of pipes and drums and fiddles, as the sun set over the valley and twilight filled it, the only sound I heard was that of a lone and distant gittern.

  In my home village we play the twelve-string gittern only, though the six-string is the more common instrument in most of the kingdom, for it is easier to learn, and to play well. I recognized the faint silvery ringing of the doublestringed gittern long before I saw the singer.

  She came walking down the valley, glowing like the full moon itself in the twilight, and if you had never seen a Companion, you would surely think that the hair that fell loose and rippling to her waist was as white as its coat.

  And I thought I must know what she was, or half of it.

  When I was a student at Haven, a child was brought to the Healer’s College for treatment. Young Jaxon’s skin and hair were as white as Moonwoman’s, and the bright light hurt his eyes terribly. I had seen the boy arrive, and asked the Healers what might be wrong with him. Master Tiedor told me that like some animals, the boy had been born without color in his skin or hair, and none of the healing arts could cure that, or lend strength to his eyes. In animals, Healer Tiedor told me, the uncolored state does not cause weak eyes, but humans who are so afflicted cannot see in bright sunlight at all.

  The Healers were able to help, with tinted lenses for Jaxon’s eyes, lotion for his skin to heal the effects of the sun, and calm matter-of-fact advice to his parents. Though his parents had been hoping for a cure when they came to Haven, this was no disease, just a different way of being born, and to change it was beyond a Healer’s skill.

  So must it be with Moonwoman.

  The people all turned toward her like flowers to the sun, and I felt a strong prickle of warning, though as yet she had done nothing but pick out a tune upon the gittern, a lullay I had heard many of the women sing here. It is written in a minor key, filled with sadness and longing, like so many of the old songs.

  But now the sweet tune seemed to contain anger as well; I felt it prickle across my skin and I wished, longingly, for some weapon. But I had nothing more than an eating knife, and my belled staff.

  Many of the men with whom I had shared ale last night had fallen into step behind her, and from all around, men and women drifted toward her in little groups, following as she paced slowly down the length of the valley. Some carried torches plucked up from around the dancing floors to light their way.

  And then Moonwoman opened her mouth and sang.

  To this day the experience seems unreal to me. Her words were of a father who has gone away hunting to feed his family and will never return; but the meaning had nothing to do with the words.

  In Haven I had once been privileged to listen to a Master Bard enchant a whole hall of folk in just this way, standing upon a stage with a harp in his arms—but it was his audience that was his instrument. But the emotions Bard Ronton had conjured in audience were mild and peaceful, compared to the killing rage I sensed building in the people around me.

  In a minute—or two, at most—it would crescendo into violence, and I could already guess its target. If we dared to run, we would only conjure the inevitable up faster. Meramay stood beside me, too terrified by what she, too, knew was about to happen to fall beneath the music’s spell.

  The music—and the musician.

  By now the mob was close enough that I could see the singer’s face clearly. Tears glittered in her pale eyes, and her face was set in a white mask.

  She was as terrified as Meramay.

  I could not let this happen, though I died trying to prevent it.

  As Shavanne had died, swept downstream by floodwaters, her body battered against the rocks along the way, until she was impaled on a submerged tree branch that ended her glorious life as surely as a Tedrel spear.

  We had nearly been safely across the river, risking the crossing because villagers downstream had to be warned about the flood. But the bridge ropes had been rotted through with age, and it had collapsed under our weight. Shavanne had nearly gotten us both to safety even so, but the far bank was water-sodden earth and it had collapsed beneath her hooves when she tried to climb it. She had spent the last of her strength throwing me to safety, but doing so had pitched her back into the water.

  I had felt each moment of her struggle to live.

  I had heard her dying scream.

  I would not again fail to save a life.

  Not here, and not tonight.

  I willed Moonwoman to hear me, as I stepped into her path and shouted with all my might, both in Mindspeech and with my voice. To stop what she was doing was our only chance; the people she had englamoured could not be reasoned with, nor would they feel they were acting in anything but self-defense.

  Someone threw a rock.

  It struck me in the shoulder, too small and flung from too far off to do more than sting, but in that moment I knew despair and felt Death step near.

  Yet I would not surrender nor flee, for I was a Herald still, in my heart, even though no one could see.

  I had never ceased to be a Herald.

  “Stop!” I shouted again, and this time I felt Shavanne add her strength to mine.

  Power roared through my veins like the waters of that long-ago flooded river. This was the Mindspeech such as I had never wielded it, strong enough to match Moonwoman’s own gift, enough for all about me to hear.

  She flung back her head as if I had struck her with a hand of flesh. The gittern fell from her hands, and she swayed, falling at last to her knees and burying her face in her hands, weeping.

  All around me the hill folk roused, coming out of the trance into which she had Sung them. They gazed from Moonwoman to me with looks of awe, though I knew how quickly that would change to both fear and anger. The “sorceress’s” power over them was broken at last—and they would quickly hate what they had lately feared—but they had no idea how.

  I did.

  The night wind brought me the sound of phantom silver bells.

  :Now at last I leave you, Beloved. Be well.:

  I knew now how I had lived through my terrible bereavement, and why I had never been Chosen again. Why should a Herald with one Companion have another? In all the years I had walked the roads of Valdemar, Shavanne had never left my side, and in the one moment when I truly needed her, she was there.

  Perhaps it is not possible. Perhaps her presence in my mind was no more than an illusion, nurtured by longdelayed grief. Perhaps my Mindspeech was so powerful for lying dormant all those years.

  But I know what I believe.

  I did not wait for the folk of the Armor Hills to know their own minds, but took Moonwoman away with me while they still wondered and argued among themselves. I stayed only to gather up my pack and to borrow Meramay’s hooded cloak from her. The goods I had gotten in trade here would be a fair bargain for it, and I knew that Moonwoman would not be able to stand the light of the sun upon her skin. And we would be traveling many days beneath the light of the sun.

  I would be returning to Haven for the first time in many years, for I needed to give my charge personally into the hands of Healers and Bards—and there was certainly no safety for her in the Armor Hills now, even if she had wished to stay.

  Along the way, she learned to trust me, and told me her story.

  Her true name was Liah. She had been born in these hills nineteen summers ago, in a remote cabin similar to many I had stopped at during my visit here. Her parents, Andren and Colmye, were simple folk who knew little of the world beyond their hills and believed less. They had thought their daughter’s milk-white skin and hair must be some sort of judgmen
t upon them, and when the sickly child was painfully burned by the sun, they became certain she was a curse, for what else would take injury from the sun, source of all good?

  Andren blamed his wife, of course, denying that the child was his.

  I well knew the madness of grief. Even though his fear and anger had led to suffering for so many others, I could understand why Andren had acted as he had done, even though I could not excuse it.

  Andren put it about at the next Midsummer Meeting that Colmye’s child had died; no one doubted his tale. Colmye never attended another Meeting—whether she would have endorsed his story to her own mother, even Liah does not know. Andren never ceased to reproach his wife for giving birth to a Moon-child, though he never raised a hand to her or to Liah.

  Liah grew toward maturity seeing no one but her parents. Her father hated and feared her, her mother, shattered in spirit, retreated into a world of music. It was her mother’s gittern Liah had been playing that night.

  Her Gift manifested violently, as the Great Gifts often do. One night the smoldering anger she felt against Andren boiled over. She Sang him all her hatred and despair with the life she led until he fled the cabin into the night; in the morning her mother’s screams awoke her.

  She helped her mother cut her father down from the branch on which he’d hanged himself.

  After that, I think Liah lost all hope. She knew she had caused her father’s death; therefore all that he said of her must be true. She knew that she had the power to impose her will upon those around her with a song, and she had used her power to kill.

  Her mother followed her father into death a scant few years later, wasted away with madness and grief. Though I do not think Liah caused that death, save indirectly, she blamed herself for it as well—and she blamed the hill people who had not come to her mother’s aid, though by the time Liah had eighteen summers behind her, I do not know if many of them remembered Andren and Colmye at all, and none knew that there was a child.