Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar

by Mercedes Lackey

  North and east of the Jaysong Hills, near—but not too near—the Hardorn border, where the East Trade Road ran straight and smooth toward Haven, the tents of Summerfair sprouted each Midsummer. From full moon to full moon a city of tents and pavilions appeared in the cup of the Goldendale, a city to which all the north came to sell and to buy.

  “Why are we here?” Elade grumbled.

  Despite the fact that the Summerfair Peace hadn’t been broken within living memory—and despite the fact that her sword had been peacebound, as had every other weapon at the fair—her gaze roved over the fairgoers as though any might rise to menace them.

  “Why is anyone anywhere?” Meran answered. His teeth flashed white as he smiled at her, and he hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. Seeing the fair in Elade’s company was a bit like taking a leopard for a walk. The other fairgoers gave them a wide berth, despite the knot of yellow ribbons that bound her sword to its sheath.

  “You look like a—a—a—”

  “Bard?” Meran asked, his eyes round with feigned innocence. “But I am a Bard, sweet Elade.”

  Elade slanted a sideways look at Meran’s crimson tunic. “You don’t have to look like one,” she huffed.

  It was true that no one would take Elade for anything but what she was. Short cloak, high boots, studded leather bracers, and chain mail tunic all proclaimed her identity as a mercenary soldier. Elade had no reason ever to conceal herself . . . unlike the rest of them. In the places they travelled—and with the work they did—it was far better he and the others not travel garbed in Bard’s scarlet or Healer’s green or . . . Not that we could ever get Gaurane into Whites without knocking him unconscious first, Meran thought.

  “Why not?” he asked (it was fun to tease Elade). “It would be very wrong of me to do otherwise. Only think—I might enter all the competitions and carry off every prize.”

  Elade snorted. “You’d have to be better than everyone else to do that, Meran,” she pointed out.

  “Hey, Bard here,” he protested.

  “Journeyman Bard,” Elade corrected, just as if she could tell the difference between the playing of a Journeyman and a Master. Elade insisted all music was nothing more than cat-squalling.

  “Elade, it’s Summerfair.” Meran dropped the teasing and set out to convince her in earnest. “We have a whole fortnight where nobody’s trying to kill us. You should enjoy yourself. We’ll be back on the Border soon enough.”

  “I like the Border,” Elade said. “You know who your friends are there. And your enemies.”

  Only Elade, Meran thought, could say something like that and mean it, when our work is finding those whose minds had been warped by Karsite demons and working to save them, minds and lives alike. The Touched hid their damage from themselves, and the demons that overshadowed them were clever at concealing themselves. Often, the only clue was in the way people or animals nearby had died. It was a pattern they’d all become adept at following in the moonturns since Gaurane had gathered them together.

  “We need supplies,” Meran said, changing the subject to one less likely to produce an unwinnable argument. “Bowstrings—harpstrings—medicines.” The soldiers who held the Border and the holders who farmed it were seldom willing to part with what stocks they had, not even for gold and silver. It would be different if Gaurane were willing to ask—all doors opened to a Herald—but Meran knew better than to raise the topic with him.

  “Gaurane’s out of brandy, you mean,” Elade said, but the gibe was without real malice behind it.

  “Do you really want to listen to him complain about his hangover?”

  The question startled a laugh from Elade. “No. But it doesn’t take two full sennights to pick up a few supplies.”

  “It does not,” Meran agreed. “But if you can think of a better way to get Hedion to rest, I’m sure we’d all like to hear it.”

  “Ah, I see,” Elade said. “It’s a trick.”

  “All the best things in life are,” Meran said. “But not on us, this time. So we might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here.” He took Elade’s arm and tugged her gently toward the merchants’ street. “And that means you should come and look at the pretty things, instead of trying to terrify some poor horse trader into giving you an honest price on a new pack mule.”

  “We wouldn’t need a new pack mule if the last one hadn’t been eviscerated,” Elade grumbled, but she came.

  When Meran had been a child singing for coppers on the streets of Haven, he’d dreamed of being able to walk into the shops and purchase anything he chose. His Gift had gained him entrance to the Collegium, and there he’d dreamed of a rich patron,whose fortune he might share. Most Bards entered a noble household upon achieving Journeyman status, for it could be the work of years to produce the song or poem that elevated a Bard from Journeyman to Master. Meran had been as surprised as anyone when he found himself choosing—upon taking the Scarlet—to travel. True, a Bard could hope for a meal and a bed at any inn he stopped at, but it was hardly as certain as it would be for a Herald. Traveling Bards slept rough and cold in a hayrick or outbuilding more often than not, and they paid for their bread and beer like everyone else. Even as he chose that path, Meran castigated himself for a fool. And yet year followed year, and the store of songs he’d made grew, and still he did not turn his steps back toward Haven.

  He’d never realized what he was looking for until the shaggy man in the tattered, threadbare clothes came to the inn where he was singing and told him there was a patient who needed his attention.

  “Beg pardon, my good fellow,” Meran said. “But as you see, I am not the one you seek. I wear the Scarlet, not the Green.”

  The shaggy man gave a sharp bark of laughter. “We already have a Healer,” he answered. “That’s why we need you.”

  He’d been curious, so he followed. He played the Healer to sleep that night and the next, and he played to soothe the Healer’s patient on the third. And as the days passed, Meran had come to realize this was what he’d been seeking, all unknowing, all along. It was unheard of, of course. Bards sang of great deeds; they didn’t do them. And the street urchin he’d been would have mocked the idea that his heart’s desire was to serve anything but himself—or even his Gift, once it woke.

  Were he making a song of this, it would be Healer Hedion who held them all together and gave them their purpose. But in fact it was Gaurane who was their leader—Gaurane who would not be called “Herald Gaurane,” whom Meran had never seen entirely sober, who refused to acknowledge the Companion who followed him everywhere like an exceptionally large and very white dog. Gaurane’s story would make such a song as would be any Bard’s Master work.

  Except Meran didn’t know the tale and had never asked. Elade, who had joined them a moonturn later, had asked (Elade had a knack for asking inconvenient questions, which had gotten her turned out of her Free Company), but if she’d received an answer, Meran didn’t know it. How Gaurane and Hedion had met, why Gaurane could not Hear his own Companion, why Rhoses was content to follow his Chosen along the Border rather than seeking help for him, why, if there was Healing to be done, Hedion didn’t do it—all were mysteries Meran was content to leave unplumbed.

  It was only at times like this, when the Summerfair merchants’ bright and glittering wares lay spread for display like the fabled treasure-cave of the legendary Queen Lilyant of Bai, that Meran spared a thought for the life he’d once thought to live. Even Elade was drawn to the splendor along the street of merchants, though her eye was caught by the table of blades, while Meran lingered before the scentseller’s booth. He wondered if he could persuade Elade that oil of violets was a necessity vital enough to expend some of their scant resources upon.

  A woman stepped up to the table, and Meran drew back courteously. He did not truly intend to buy, after all, and it was only polite to leave room for those who did.

  As the two women, buyer and seller, dickered over the price and kind and quality of the wares, Mera
n let his gaze and his attention wander. The street of merchants was only a very small part of Summerfair. For the truly exotic and the truly costly, one must seek out Haven’s Harvestfair or the shops of her High Street. Summerfair was for the farmers and holders of the south. It sold horses and mules, pigs and chickens, cows and goats, and it was also a hiring fair, for harvest was coming, when every hand would be needed. Meran had known nothing about the farmer’s year when he’d left Haven; since then he’d come to know it ran opposite to the year the townfolk kept. Spring was for planting and autumn was for harvesting. Winter was for doing all the tasks of making and mending there was no other time for. But summer was a time of near leisure.

  With a practiced ear, he followed the sound of the bargaining, paying no real attention. Its cadence told him the transaction was drawing to a close when a new note was added to the song.

  “Here, mistress, let me hold that for you.”

  Meran turned toward the speaker. Young, dressed in clothing that was plain but of good quality, with something of the look of Iftel to him--no odd thing, when Valdemar lay open to any who wished to live in peace. He smiled as he held out his hand, and the farmwife placed a plump sack of coins into it.

  Meran was about to turn away again—so the woman had a manservant; there was nothing odd in that—when he saw the young man step smoothly away from the table, tucking the money pouch into his tunic as he did. Meran would have raised the hue and cry, or even moved to stop him, were it not that the woman gave no indication anything was amiss. In a moment, the young man had disappeared into the crowd.

  “My purse! Where is it?”

  The indignant cry behind him summoned Meran’s attention again.

  “Help! Thief! I’ve been robbed!”

  “It didn’t make any sense,” Meran said, a candlemark later. “I watched her hand him her purse. And a moment later, it was as though she’d forgotten she had.”

  They’d found Gaurane and Hedion at the aleseller’s nearest their lodging. There was always someone willing to rent space to travelers who had not provided their own accommodation. On the Border, they could always find an inn or a village to lodge them in exchange for a song or two if it was not giving them lodging for Hedion’s sake. Here, entertainment could be had for the asking, but beds required coin.

  “Maybe they were working together,” Elade said, sounding puzzled.

  “Fairs are made for thieving,” Gaurane said. He took a long pull from his tankard of ale and sighed appreciatively. “Thieves everywhere.” He tipped it up again, draining it, and reached for Meran’s cup.

  “There’s a whole pitcher of ale in front of you,” Meran said indignantly, whisking his cup out of reach.

  “Yes,” Gaurane said. “And if I drink it, it will be gone.”

  “I’ll buy you another one,” Meran said. Then kicked himself when Gaurane smiled beatifically.

  “Good lad. I knew I could depend on you.”

  “She handed him her purse. And then she said she’d been robbed?” Hedion frowned, clearly still trying to make sense of the puzzle.

  Of the three at the table entitled to wear the colors of one of the schools of the Collegium, only Meran was dressed in accordance with his rank. Everyone—even Elade—had been firmly against Hedion wearing his Healer’s tunic here. Summerfair was supposed to be a holiday for all of them, Hedion most of all. Even now—a full sennight after the last Mindhealing he’d performed—Hedion’s face was pinched and drawn, and he clenched his hands to stop their constant trembling when he thought no one saw. Meran knew, without having to be told, that left to himself, Hedion would pit his strength against the impossible task he’d set himself until he dropped from exhaustion. No one man could stem the tide of damage the Karsite demon-callers caused. But Hedion Mindhealer would try. If not for Gaurane, Meran knew, Hedion would have broken beneath his burden already.

  “She swore someone must have taken it,” Meran said. “The scentseller told her she’d handed it to her servant—”

  “But she swore she had no servant,” Gaurane finished, in the tones of one who knows how the tale ends.

  Meran nodded in agreement. “She was quite indignant about it, too,” he said dryly.

  “So he could hardly have been her partner,” Hedion said. “She loses her coin, she doesn’t buy the scentseller’s wares, and the man escapes. A mystery.”

  “The only mystery I’m interested in solving is how long I am to stare at the bottom of my tankard before it is full again,” Gaurane said.

  It was certainly a mystery, but hardly one they were likely to solve. The Heralds of Valdemar were charged with keeping the peace and meting out justice, but Gaurane insisted he was no Herald, Rhoses’ presence notwithstanding. Meran doubted the man still owned a traveling uniform, much less a set of formal Whites. As for Rhoses’ saddle and silver-belled bridle . . .

  . . . there were some things it was better not to wonder about.

  No, they could hardly look to Gaurane to hunt their quarry. But Meran disliked thieves. It was one thing to steal when you had to steal or starve—he’d done that often enough, before Bard Meloree found him. It was another thing to steal for sport or out of greed. The man he’d seen with Mistress Theret’s purse looked well fed (and clean, which was more to the point), and his clothes had been of good quality and in good condition.

  “If you want to be a Guardsman, I’m sure they’d take you on,” Elade said in a low voice.

  “You didn’t have to come with me,” Meran answered.

  “Easier than buying you out of the stocks. Gaurane would complain about the waste of coin, and Hedion would worry.”

  “If you can get Hedion to worry, you’re doing better than Gaurane is,” he said absently, his gaze never leaving the crowds around them.

  “Hedion worries,” Elade said. “As long as it’s about somebody else. I’m sure even you notice that.”

  “Point,” Meran said.

  He didn’t know what he was looking for—or rather, he did know, but he wasn’t sure he’d see it. Anywhere there was money, there was thievery, but the style of thievery varied from city to countryside. There might be a few cutpurses working a crowd like this, but it was unlikely the experts at that craft would travel all the way to Goldendale to ply their trade. Here you were more likely to find snatch-and-grab artists, horse traders selling spavined nags as sound, or even an old-fashioned mugging or two. What he’d seen the day before didn’t fit any of those categories. It was trickery, but what kind?

  “There. See him? That’s the man.”

  Meran kept his voice low—though there was no possibility of being overheard in the crowd’s noise—and nodded toward a pieseller’s stall. As he watched, the same man he’d seen yesterday walked up to the table and pointed toward the shelves. The pieman reached back and took down a pie. He handed it over, smiling. Though Meran watched closely, he did not see any money exchanged.

  “Wait here. I’ll get him.” Elade took off like a hound that’s suddenly seen a rabbit break cover.

  The man dropped the pie and bolted. He and Elade vanished into the crowd.

  Meran sighed. Not the way he would have done it, but he had no doubt Elade would catch their culprit. Then they could ask him what he’d done with Mistress Theret’s purse. Since there was no chance of catching up to Elade, he settled himself to wait.

  It was half a candlemark before Elade returned. She was alone.

  “I can’t believe he outran you,” Meran said.

  “What?” Elade asked blankly. “Oh, no. I caught up to him quickly enough. But he said he wasn’t the man I was after, so I let him go.”

  For a long moment, Meran stared at her. “He said he was innocent, and you believed him?”

  Elade simply stared back at him, looking cross. Then her eyes widened, and she looked utterly horrified.

  “Come on,” Meran said, sighing. “It’s time to consult an expert.”

  There was no place in all of Valdemar where a Herald a
nd a Companion would not be made welcome. In fact, there were several Heralds at Summerfair, for one of a Herald’s duties was to hear disputes and give judgment, and another was to keep the peace, and those whose circuits brought them near the great fairs made sure to attend them.

  The only time things became awkward was when one traveled with a Companion whose Herald flatly refused to acknowledge himself as a Herald.

  They found Rhoses with three other Companions in an open space behind one of the larger pavilions. One of them was probably with a Herald Trainee on Progress, while the other two would be the Companions of the Heralds working the fair. In his time at the Collegium, Meran had become used to the sight of the dazzling white creatures who held the peace and safety of Valdemar in their charge, but no matter how much the Herald Candidates insisted they were easily distinguishable, he’d never been able to tell one Companion from another.

  But it was certainly Rhoses who came walking over to them, ears pricked forward in curiosity. When he reached them, he nudged Hedion hard in the chest.

  Hedion staggered backward. “Oh, not you too?” he said.

  They’d had to find Hedion before coming for Rhoses. While Rhoses could hear them perfectly well, it would be a rather one-sided conversation, since no one but Hedion could hear him.

  Not even Gaurane.

  A pause. “I am!” Hedion protested. “Here I am, doing nothing at all!”

  Meran had gotten used to listening to only half a conversation in the past several moonturns. It had never stopped him from being curious about the half he couldn’t hear.