Sword of Ice and Other Tales of Valdemar v(-100

by Mercedes Lackey

  He was back at Elann, standing outside the gardens on a foggy spring day. Hazy clouds swirled around him, and his head throbbed painfully. Somewhere, he heard music. Then he heard the golden music of Chylla's laughter. A sharp pain stabbed deep into his heart when he heard the joyous sound.

  "Chylla!" he cried, "I'm sorry!" He ran into the garden maze, calling her name, following the laughter that rang in his head. "Chylla, come back to me!"

  Suddenly, he rounded a corner, and there she was, rosy as ever, her golden hair spilling over her shoulders, her bare feet buried in the fresh green grass.

  "Chylla," he gasped, "I'm sorry, so sorry. It's all my fault."

  "Oh, be quiet, Revy," she said affectionately. "Maybe Myndal was right, maybe we are both fools."

  "But, if I could have been there, I could have Healed you, if I'd accepted my training . . ." Her laughter rang out again.

  "If you'd been there, it would have happened differently. But don't you see? It doesn't matter now. The Havens are so bright, so wonderful. They sent me back to wake you up. It's not your fault, silly. I'll be fine."

  "But, Chylla . . ."

  She stepped forward and put a golden fingertip across his lips. "No more of that, now. Tell Mother I love her, and that I'm happy. She always worried about the ending of life. Tell her it's just a new beginning." She danced backward and began to head toward another of the maze pathways. Just before she disappeared, she turned to face him.

  "And, Revy, don't worry about that song you were going to write for me. Just keep Healing. It's a different music, but it's all connected." She slipped back into the maze, and the shrubs began to disappear into the haze

  around him. Rooted to the spot, he cried out her name, trying to bring her back to him.

  "Revyn, wake up," Eser murmured again, holding the student's head in one hand and a mug of tea in the other. x

  "Eser?" Revyn said, wonderingly, turning his head slightly to look at his teacher.

  A smile lit the Healer's face as he raised the cup to Revyn's lips. "Drink," he said, "and rest. Your mother only needs to grieve for one child at a time."

  Revyn nodded and drank obediently, then slipped back down under the quilts. The dream of Chylla was still so strong, so clear in his mind and his heart.

  Eser smiled again and nodded to himself. The lad would heal soon, and then they could talk again about his resistance to the training. He stood and slowly headed towards the door. A weak voice stopped him.

  "Eser? How long before I can resume my training in the House of Healing?"

  The Healer tried unsuccessfully to hide the happiness in his voice as he turned to the bed again. "You won't be able to visit the sickrooms for at least another week, until your strength is back. We can still give you some lessons here in your room, though. Would you like your lute? You can begin to practice again in a few days."

  "No, I don't think so," Revyn said drowsily. "Chylla told me I was better off playing a different kind of music."

  The School Up the Hill

  by Elisabeth Waters

  Elisabeth Waters sold her first short story to Marion Zimmer Bradley for The Keeper's Price, the first of the Darkover anthologies. She has sold short stories to a variety of anthologies. Her first novel, a fantasy called Changing Fate, was awarded the 1989 Gryphon Award, and was published by DAW in 1994. She is a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America and the Authors Guild. She has also worked as a supernumerary with the San Francisco Opera, where she has appeared in La Gio-conda, Manon Lescaut, Madame Butterfly, Khovanschina, Das Rheingold, Werther, and Idomeneo.

  The voices were particularly loud today. All day the instructions, unspoken and impersonal, were dinned into her brain. "This is how to make it rain . . . now you do it." She spent the entire day resisting, trying to block them out.

  These voices weren't so bad, though; at least they weren't men wanting her to do things she had no desire to do—men who saw her as a thing, not a person with feelings.

  Then twilight came. She had always hated twilight, when her mother's customers started arriving. She had never liked her mother's customers and had resolved at a young age that she was going to find some way to live without selling her body. And that was before she started hearing what they were thinking.

  Some of the customers wanted her in addition to her

  mother—or instead of her mother. And when her mother started thinking that it was time she began earning her keep, she ran away, as far and as fast as possible, until she found a place where she felt safe.

  But still twilight made her uneasy, and her resistance to the commands weakened. . . .

  Myrta lay back in the tub in her room and relaxed. Maybe it was a bit self-indulgent, but she really enjoyed a bath in the early evening, before she had to busy herself with the rush of customers the inn got every evening, particularly in the bar. The town of Bolthaven had been built around the winter quarters of a mercenary troop. When the Skybolts moved out, their garrison had been taken over by a mage-school, the largest White Winds school in Rethwellan. Now instead of drunken mercenaries, the bar got student mages.

  Sometimes this created problems: a mercenary could be asked to leave most of his weapons back at the barracks, but a mage's abilities were always with him. And if the mage was young enough for practical jokes and/ or foolish enough to get too drunk. . . . Well, the school had a policy for that; they'd send down a teacher to stop whatever was going on, and the school would pay for any damage done.

  Myrta heard running footsteps in the hall and a quick tap on her door. One of the barmaids dashed into the room before Myrta had time to say "enter."

  "Excuse me, Mistress, but it's raining in the kitchen!"

  Myrta surged out of the tub, splashing a fair amount of water around the room as she half-dried herself, threw on the nearest garment, and ran for the kitchen.

  It was indeed raining in the kitchen. A thin layer of cloud had formed just below the ceiling, and rain dripped steadily from it. Fortunately, the brick floor in the kitchen sloped slightly to a drain in the center, so that water was running out as fast as it fell; and the stew for tonight's dinner was cooking in the fireplace, so the rain wasn't falling into it. But the floor was getting rather wet and slippery, and the biscuits the cook had been

  rolling on the center table were a total loss. The table's surface was being rapidly covered with flour-and-water paste, and the cook was cursing steadily. Serena had been a Skybolt until an injury left her with a permanent limp. Myrta counted herself very fortunate to have Serena in the kitchen; she was a wonderful cook, and she wasn't frightened by the occasional magical mishap. Frequently angry, but never frightened. The new scullery maid, on the other hand, was cowering in the corner by the fireplace. She looked wet, miserable, and terrified.

  Poor girl, thought Myrta, she's not used to the hazards of Bolthaven yet, and she can't be more than thirteen years old—if that. "Serena, I think both you and Leesa had best go get into dry clothes. I'll send up to the school and have them deal with this."

  Serena stalked out, still grumbling. Leesa scuttled after her, hugging the wall, trying to stay as far as possible from everyone else. Myrta closed the door behind them, sent the barmaid back to her regular duties, and went out to the stables.

  "Ruven!"

  "Yes, Mistress?" The stable boy, a stocky lad of seventeen, appeared from one of the stalls.

  "I need you to run up to the school. Present my compliments to Master Quenten, and tell him it's raining in our kitchen."

  "Raining in the kitchen, right." Ruven wasn't terribly bright about anything but horses and mules, and thus he tended to accept everything, however outrageous, as normal.

  He dashed off, and Myrta returned to the bar to wait for help to arrive.

  Elrodie, one of the teachers at the school, was there within half an hour. In addition to being an earth-witch, she was also an herbalist. "Master Quenten wasn't certain how much salvage would be required for tonight's di
nner," she explained, greeting Myrta. "Let's go see the damage."

  The two women stood in the doorway. It was still

  raining, but the fire under the stew still burned, and the stew did not seem to Myrta to have scorched.

  "I think the stew will be all right," Elrodie said, confirming Myrta's opinion, "assuming I can get the rain stopped quickly." She sighed. "That shouldn't be too difficult; the apprentices have been practicing weather magic all week. By now I think I could stop rain in my sleep."

  "Thank you, Elrodie," Myrta said. "I'll leave you to work in peace, then. I'll be in the bar when you're ready for me."

  Elrodie nodded absently, already rooting in her belt-pouch for supplies.

  The rain was stopped in short order, the kitchen cleaned up, and Serena even managed to finish a new batch of biscuits in time for dinner. Myrta went to bed in the early hours of the next morning believing that life was back to normal.

  This belief lasted until the next evening, when she was interrupted just as she was about to get into the tub.

  "Mistress?"

  "What is it, Rose? It's not raining in the kitchen again, is it?"

  "No, Mistress." The barmaid took a deep breath and said nervously, "This time it's fog."

  Myrta put her gown back on and went down to the kitchen. Everything was normal in the other rooms, but at the kitchen doorway the air turned misty gray. The visibility in the kitchen was less than an arm's length, as Myrta discovered when she stuck her arm into the fog and her hand vanished. Cursing from the center of the room informed her that Serena was still managing, after a fashion. "I'll send for help," she informed the cook.

  Elrodie arrived and surveyed the scene with a teacher's eye. "Yes, this is today's apprentice lesson, all right. And someone has done a very nice job of it."

  "But why is it in my kitchen?" Myrta asked.

  Elrodie sighed. "Either it's a practical joke, or we've got an apprentice whose control needs more work. I'll

  clear this up for you, and then I'll have Master Quenten put a shield around your building for a few days so that no external magic can get in here. That should give us time to sort through the new apprentices and find out who's doing this. I'm truly sorry for the inconvenience, Mistress Myrta."

  Myrta shrugged. "These things happen, and it could be a lot worse. Just fix it, so that the cook can see what she's doing. A shield around this place should certainly take care of the problem."

  She broke out of his grip and ran, terrified, into the first hiding place she could find. What he wanted was only too clear—he wanted her to do what her mother had done, but he wasn't even planning to pay her. She remembered what her mother had said to her when she was a little girl, the one time she had spoken of wanting to do something else when she grew up. "What else are you good for?" her mother had asked. Mother had been so angry that she had never mentioned the subject again, but she had resolved that she would rather die than be a harlot.

  But maybe she was one; maybe if your mother was, you didn't have any choice, no matter how hard you tried. After all, why else would he treat her like that? It must be her fault somehow.

  The air around her was turning colder and darker. Now snow was starting to fall. She huddled against the wall, her face pressed into her knees, and just let the snow cover her as the tears froze on her face.

  Myrta walked into the bar to find Ruven complaining to Rose and Margaret.

  "... I don't know what she made such a fuss about— I barely touched the girl. I wasn't going to hurt her."

  What girl! Myrta wondered. Please don't let it be anyone with protective or influential parents.

  "Ruven," Rose said patiently, "you scared her. And you were going to hurt her."

  "What do you mean?" Ruven asked. "I never hurt you two."

  Margaret sighed. "Rose is eighteen and I'm nineteen. Leesa is twelve, much smaller than you, and a virgin. You were going to hurt her if you continued with what you were doing."

  Myrta's relief that this problem was confined to her own household was cut short by a stream of curses coming from the kitchen.

  She hurried there at once. The kitchen looked normal enough, but when she joined Serena at the entrance to the pantry, she saw a great cloud of white before her eyes. For an instant she thought that someone had dropped a bag of flour, but then she realized that all the white stuff was coming straight down from the ceiling and it was cold.

  "Ruven!" she called. "Go tell Master Quenten that it is snowing in my pantry, and I would greatly appreciate it if he would give the matter his personal attention, since this appears to have come through his shields!"

  Ruven ran out immediately, but it took a while for Master Quenten, who was not a young man, to come down the hill. By the time he arrived, everything in the pantry was covered with six inches of snow.

  "I apologize for the delay, Mistress Myrta," he said mildly. "I stopped to check my shields on the way here, and they are intact. It's beginning to look as though whatever is causing this is here, not at my school."

  "Here?" Myrta said incredulously. "Do you think I hire mages to wait on my customers?"

  "Not knowingly, I'm sure," Master Quenten replied. "But tell me, who was in the building when this started?"

  "I was," Myrta said, "along with the two barmaids, the cook and the scullery maid—and I believe that Ruven was indoors at the time as well."

  Ruven looked as if he would rather not have been anywhere near the house. "I didn't do anything to her, honest!"

  "To whom?" Master Quenten inquired, raising his eyebrows.

  Ruven stared at him dumbly, and Rose answered for him. "The scullery maid. It seems that Ruven fancies her, but she doesn't fancy him."

  "Indeed?" Master Quenten turned his attention to Rose. "How old is this girl, and how long has she been here?"

  "She's twelve," Rose said, "and she's been here about three weeks."

  Master Quenten looked around the kitchen. "And where is she now?"

  Margaret looked worried. "I thought she was in here. She ran out of the bar crying when I came in and Ruven let her go."

  Myrta silently resolved to pay a lot more attention to Ruven's activities in the future.

  Serena frowned, trying to remember. "She ran in here crying, and ... I think she went into the pantry."

  Master Quenten hurried into the pantry. The snow stopped falling as soon as he crossed the threshold, and the clouds just below the ceiling thinned and vanished. The snow on the floor melted away from his feet as he walked the length of the room and reached down to grasp what appeared to be a sack of grain covered in snow—until he pulled the girl to her feet and began gently brushing snow off her hair and shoulders. "I think we've found our mage," he said calmly.

  Leesa looked even more incredulous than Myrta had at the suggestion. "That's silly," she said. "There aren't any mages—except in old ballads. My mother said so."

  "Indeed?" Quenten asked. "Where are you from, child?"

  Leesa looked at the floor. "Haven," she said softly.

  "Valdemar," Master Quenten said. "That explains a lot. Until recently there were no mages in Valdemar; it was certainly the most uncomfortable place for a mage to be." He shuddered at the memory. "I was there once, briefly, and as soon as I crossed the border it was as if

  there was something watching me all the time. I got out as soon as I could."

  He looked Leesa over carefully. "So if you were born in Valdemar with a Mage-Gift, which you were—believe me, anyone with Mage-Sight can see it—you would never know you had it as long as you stayed there. But when you came to Rethwellan, whatever it is that inhibits magic in Valdemar would stop affecting you."

  "If it's so obvious that I'm a mage," Leesa said disbe-lievingly, "then why didn't that teacher who came here the last two days notice it?"

  "That is a good question," Master Quenten said approvingly. "Elrodie has no Mage-Sight, so she would not have noticed—and I imagine you kept out of her way as much as possible, didn't
you?"

  "Yes," Leesa admitted. "Being around mages makes me feel funny—they're so noisy, yelling about how to make it rain, or how to make fog, until I feel like my head is going to burst."

  "You heard the instructions on how to make rain two days ago and how to make fog yesterday, right?"

  Leesa nodded. "I don't like hearing voices all the time. It was nice when they stopped."

  "So you didn't hear anything today?"

  Leesa shook her head. "No. Not until Ruven came in and grabbed me. Then I could hear him really loud." She shuddered. "At least my mother's customers paid her to do stuff like that!"

  Master Quenten turned a measuring eye on Ruven. Myrta glared at the boy. "Can't you tell when a girl is not interested?" she asked. "Or don't you care?"

  "He doesn't care!" Leesa said, suddenly furious. "I told him to stop and I tried to get away from him, but if Margaret hadn't come in then . . ."

  "You probably would have killed him," Master Quenten finished calmly, "and quite possibly leveled the entire building while you were at it."

  Leesa looked at him uncomprehendingly. "I'm not a harlot," she said. "I'd rather die than be one."

  "Well, that explains the snow," Master Quenten said.

  "What do you mean?" Myrta demanded.

  "She turned her perfectly justifiable anger at what was being done to her inward instead of outward. Part of her wanted to die, and part of her put the weather lessons of the last two days together. Precipitation and a low enough temperature generally produce snow."

  "Lessons?" Serena said.

  "Leesa," Quenten said, "fog occurs in nature when—"

  "—the ambient temperature approaches the dew point." Leesa finished the sentence automatically, with the air of a student who had heard the lesson more times than she wanted to.

  "You're a quick study," Master Quenten said approvingly.

  Leesa just shrugged. Compliments made her feel uneasy. Since her own mother had never seen anything to praise in her, she figured that anyone who was nice to her wanted something in return. But she couldn't read this man; he didn't broadcast his thoughts the way most men she had encountered did. "What do you want?" she asked him suspiciously.