Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  TRANSMUTATION

  THE FEAST OF THE CHILDREN

  DEATH IN KEENSPUR HOUSE

  DAWN OF SORROWS

  HORSE OF AIR

  A Change Of Heart

  ALL THE AGES OF MAN

  WAR CRY

  STRENGTH AND HONOR

  THE BLUE COAT

  SAFE AND SOUND

  SONG FOR TWO VOICES

  FINDING ELVIDA

  DARKWALL’S LADY

  NAUGHT BUT DUTY

  LANDSCAPE OF THE IMAGINATION

  Raves for the Previous Valdemar Anthologies:

  “Fans of Lackey’s epic Valdemar series will devour this superb anthology. Of the thirteen stories included, there is no weak link—an attribute exceedingly rare in collections of this sort. Highly recommended.”

  —The Barnes and Noble Review

  “This high-quality anthology mixes pieces by experienced author and enthusiastic fans of editor Lackey’s Valdemar. Valdemar fandom, especially, will revel in this sterling example of what such a mixture of fans’ and pros’ work can be. Engrossing even for newcomers to Valdemar.”

  —Booklist

  “Joseph Sherman, Tanya Huff, Mickey Zucker Reichert, and Michelle West have quite good stories, and there’s another by Lackey herself. Familiarity with the series helps but is not a prerequisite to enjoying this book.”

  —Science Fiction Chronicle

  “Each tale adheres to the Lackey laws of the realm yet provides each author’s personal stamp on the story. Well written and fun, Valdemarites will especially appreciate the magic of this book.”

  —The Midwest Book Review

  NOVELS BY MERCEDES LACKEY

  available from DAW Books:

  THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

  ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

  ARROW’S FLIGHT

  ARROW’S FALL

  THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

  MAGIC’S PAWN

  MAGIC’S PROMISE

  MAGIC’S PRICE

  THE MAGE WINDS

  WINDS OF FATE

  WINDS OF CHANGE

  WINDS OF FURY

  THE MAGE STORMS

  STORM WARNING

  STORM RISING

  STORM BREAKING

  VOWS AND HONOR

  THE OATHBOUND

  OATHBREAKERS

  OATHBLOOD

  BY THE SWORD

  BRIGHTLY BURNING

  TAKE A THIEF

  EXILE’S HONOR

  EXILE’S VALOR

  VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES:

  SWORD OF ICE

  SUN IN GLORY

  CROSSROADS

  Written with LARRY DIXON:

  THE MAGE WARS

  THE BLACK GRYPHON

  THE WHITE GRYPHON

  THE SILVER GRYPHON

  DARIAN’S TALE

  OWLFLIGHT

  OWLSIGHT

  OWLKNIGHT

  OTHER NOVELS

  THE BLACK SWAN

  THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

  JOUST

  ALTA

  SANCTUARY

  THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

  THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

  THE GATES OF SLEEP

  PHOENIX AND ASHES

  THE WIZARD OF LONDON

  And don’t miss:

  The VALDEMAR COMPANION

  Edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

  Copyright © 2005 by Mercedes Lackey and Tekno Books

  All Rights Reserved

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1346.

  DAW Books are distributed by Penguin Group (USA).

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  All resemblance to persons living or dead is coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  First Printing, December 2005

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-52437-4

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  Acknowledgments

  Introduction copyright © 2005 by Mercedes Lackey

  “Transmutation,” copyright © 2005 by Larry Dixon

  “The Feast of the Children,” copyright © 2005 by Nancy Asire

  “Death in Keenspur House,” copyright © 2005 by Richard Lee Byers

  “Dawn of Sorrows,” copyright © 2005 by Brenda Cooper

  “Horse of Air,” copyright © 2005 by Rosemary Edghill

  “A Change of Heart,” copyright © 2005 by Sarah A. Hoyt and Kate Paulk

  “All the Ages of Man,” copyright © 2005 by Tanya Huff

  “War Cry,” copyright © 2005 by Michael Longcor

  “Strength and Honor,” copyright © 2005 by Ben Ohlander

  “The Blue Coat,” copyright © 2005 by Fiona Patton

  “Safe and Sound,” copyright © 2005 by Stephanie Shaver

  “Song for Two Voices,” copyright © 2005 by Janni Lee Simner

  “Finding Elvida,” copyright © 2005 by Mickey Zucker Reichert

  “Darkwall’s Lady,” copyright © 2005 by Judith Tarr

  “Naught but Duty,” copyright © 2005 by Michael Z. Williamson

  “Landscape of the Imagination,” copyright © 2005 by Mercedes Lackey

  CROSSROADS: AN INTRODUCTION

  by Mercedes Lackey

  Once there was a computer programmer with ambitions—one might say delusions—of being a writer.

  Actually she’d had ambitions for a very long time. As a kid, she had written Andre Norton pastiches and illustrated them too (and somewhere she still has some of those illustrations) and occasionally told them as bedtime stories to the kids she babysat. As a teenager she continued to write, submitting short story after short story to her high school literary magazine (and she has some of those somewhere as well). And in college she created an ongoing story arc about a team of psychic spies that she wrote as letters to amuse a friend.

  She actually went so far as to take a creative writing honors course with the one college professor who was interested in science fiction and fantasy. His advice: find out what you like, break it down to see what you like about it, then do that. It was good advice, and she’s been following it ever since.

  Writing kind of went by the wayside for a while as she (OK, I) struggled to make a living. But when things weren’t quite so hard, I went back to the writing, pounding stuff out on an old typewriter for fanzines. Good heavens, someone even had a set of those things they asked me to autograph recently. I was joking when I offered to buy them back; but truth to tell, I have a lot of affection for those old zines and stories. I had a lot of fun writing them.

  But then one day, at the point where I was actually that computer programmer, something switched over and I decided to get serious.

  A novel of Valdemar was not the first book I tried to write. Actually, the germs of that first book became the books I co-wrote with James Mallory. But it was the second. And Arrows of the Queen was the first one I actually finished.

  By that time I had written and actually sold several Tarma and Kethry stories—also in the same world—and some Darkover fiction. Most sold to Marion Zimmer Bradley, but some also sold to fantasy magazines. That was the point where C.J. Cher
ryh volunteered herself as my mentor, looked at the book, said “Commit trilogy,” and it all proceeded from there.

  I was incredibly lucky to hook up with Elizabeth Wollheim and the folks at DAW with this first effort. It has been a great relationship all the way.

  Even better, the whole world seems to have inspired other people to want to come play in it. Each person has had his or her own take on it that has made it just that much more varied and interesting, and come up with things that made me smile, made me cry, and sometimes made me say, “Boy I wish I had thought of that!”

  Two volumes of Valdemar short stories have been published already, and you hold in your hands the third. It’s been a great trip so far, and even better for having all these wonderful folks along for the ride.

  TRANSMUTATION

  by Larry Dixon

  Larry Dixon is the husband of Mercedes Lacky, and a successful artist as well as science fiction writer. He and Mercedes live in Oklahoma.

  Prologue

  VALDEMAR weathered the Mage-Storms, and all the nations and peoples of Velgarth worked to stabilize in the aftermath. In the north of Valdemar, Darien and his compatriots returned from their quest to find Darien’s parents. Errold’s Grove, Kelmskeep, and the newest Hawk-brother Vale, k’Valdemar, forged ahead alongside the western refugees while in the east, ancient Iftel opened its borders for the first time, and to the south Hardorn and Karse were no longer the threats they once were.

  The trouble now, though, was from within. A trade baron named Farragur Elm and a coalition of major tradesmen, distributors, and warehousers seized all resources in the vicinity of Deedun and created a putative secessionist movement, using the entire—stolen—livelihoods of the region’s workers as leverage. The strong arm of the plan was a mercenary force, once under Haven’s pay, hired over to Elm’s side. The Crown sent Heralds, Guard Regulars, and Cavalry to test the situation. In the first engagement with the mercenaries, Cavalry officer Hallock Stavern was mortally wounded, and dragged back to camp—whereupon he was put in medical isolation as an untreatable casualty. He heard a commotion outside, and discovered that a gryphon, sent from Kelmskeep in the north to scout the situation, dove in and smashed a mercenary attack against Valdemaran troops—but was himself gravely hurt. The gryphon, given only the crude medical treatment available and expected to expire soon, was housed with Stavern. They shared each others’ company with stories of their homes and loves. Hallock told the gryphon, Kelvren, about his wife Genni. Charmed by the tales of Genni’s love for the man, Kelvren is soothed, but then Hallock critically weakens—and would have died, if not for Kelvren’s desperate Healing spellwork to save him.

  It came at a great cost, though, because aside from his terrible wounds going septic, Kelvren was sliding into an agonizing death as a result of using literally all of his magic capacity to heal Hallock—and it was not coming back. . . .

  Darkwind k’Treva handed over a strip of paper. “Here’s trouble.”

  Elspeth turned away from the Lord Marshal and read the paper’s battlefield shorthand aloud. “Gryphon, male. Defended First Company Sixteenth. Wounded. Recovered from field. Initial aid bad. Disposition: Gryphon near death, from attempt to heal Guard officer by spellwork. Healers unable to aid further.” She frowned as she put that dispatch aside from the rest, and tapped her command baton thoughtfully on her chin. “We’d better tell Treyvan and Hydona.”

  “Mmm. You know how they are. Protective,” Darkwind observed. He leaned forward against the most massive of the many strategic planning tables in the Haven palace. It held charts far more detailed than the great map inlaid on the wall in the main court room. “They’ll be concerned. You remember those parental instincts of theirs from when we first met. With Jerven and Lytha getting older, they treat every other gryphon as clueless little fledglings to be herded about and taught not to fall into wells.” He murmured to a page, who nodded and left immediately.

  Less than half a candlemark passed before there were results.

  “Unbarrr the way,” a deep voice boomed from behind the double doors as palace guards hastily tried to open them. An imposing male gryphon shouldered into the room, causing the guards to stumble back as the heavy doors swung against them. Truth be told, he liked the feeling of people trying to get out of his way. And no wonder people did, considering both of the resident gryphons’ reputations and relative power—and sheer presence. Treyvan had a wicked beak and formidable talons that were, at the moment, sheathed in wood-and-leather coverings to protect the Palace’s floors. He was golden brown, with shadings of pure metallic gold and darker sable, with golden eyes the size of fists. Completely aside from being a predator the size of a horse, Hydona alone could wither a tree just by staring at it, or should the mood strike her, restore it to life. Treyvan was smaller, just as powerful magically, but faster, stronger, and more direct in action. Together, they put forth a presence in Haven felt in more ways than just the body heat they radiated. Treyvan’s crested head flicked side to side, then homed in on the main table and its dozen or so planners and pages. “Who isss it?” he demanded, with no preamble.

  Elspeth retrieved the dispatch slip and looked it over for any new clues she might have missed in the dozens of lines of code. She finally shrugged, holding the paper up. “It doesn’t say. Dispatches can be annoyingly vague, I’m sorry. It’s just how they are,” she offerred.

  “And concsserrrned about all grrryphonsss isss how I am. No morrre than that?” Any excuses about field vagueness clearly did not placate the beast that stalked toward the largest planning table. Respected friend of the Crown’s or not, Treyvan had long ago established that he wasn’t someone to obstruct, for any reason. Lesser commanders, analysts and staff alike, parted to make room. Elspeth handed over the dispatch, and Treyvan accepted it delicately with the tips of his talons.

  “It might be from one of the Vales due west of there, but that would be more than a hundred miles. It wouldn’t have any good reason to be in this region, would it? Maybe it got lost,” a lieutenant suggested, but that only gained him a loud click of Treyvan’s beak, snapping a warning. “He,” Treyvan said sternly. “The grrryphon isss a ‘he,’ not an ‘it,’ sssoldierrr. Flesssh, bone, blood, beak,” and he clacked his own for emphasis, making a sound like branches snapping, “talonsss,” and he flicked up thumb and forefingers of his right “hand,” causing subtle magical sparks to split off, “and mind asss sssharrrp asss any herrre.” A nearby sergeant visibly winced, and tapped the lieutenant’s shoulder. They made themselves scarce, each giving a weak salute to Elspeth before fleeing.

  Darkwind snorted a barely suppressed laugh. “Another stellar triumph for interspecies diplomacy, Treyvan. Good work.”

  The gryphon Adept ground his beak and clicked it softly. “He ssstrrruck sssomething that annoyed me. I cannot abide usss being thought of asss lesss than yourrr equalsss. Hissstorrry ssshowsss that—” he growled.

  Darkwind interrupted, “Maybe he thought of you all as something more than equals. You don’t call an Avatar or sacred vision ‘he’ or ‘she.’ Unless you’re very good friends. I’m sure he was just overwhelmed by the dazzling thought of—”

  Elspeth rolled her eyes and sighed, giving a wave of reassurance to the staff as they backed off. The Lord Marshal raised a brow, then drifted to another table, shaking his head. A few adjuncts stayed. Elspeth snapped her fingers. “You two. Featherheads. Come visit my world,” she said, and loudly tapped her baton on the map.

  Treyvan loomed beside Darkwind and studied the map, twitching his massive wings a few times. “K’Valdemar Vale,” Darkwind surmised, and tapped a fingertip on the map symbol. “He might be from there. Firesong’s new roost. They’re near Kelmskeep, they’ve got a wing of gryphons, and they’re threatened by the land grab. Assuming Kelmskeep and k’Valdemar are on good terms, they may have gotten gryphons to fly scout. Bondbirds can only do so much. Range and stamina would all be improved by a healthy gryphon.”

  Elspeth folded her a
rms. “Yes. Well. It sounds like all aid available’s been given to him,” and she eyeballed Treyvan, “and it’s failing. We only have so many Heralds and Healers, and they’re more concerned about the hundreds of troops digging in. I don’t much like the news from the north.” She reached out and tapped her baton against the largest of the table maps. “It’s more delicate than you might first think. For reasons we still don’t understand, these insurgent leaders feel justified in seizing power and using force. But if we go in and squash that dissent—militarily—we send a poor message to the rest of Valdemar.”

  “And allies and rival states,” Darkwind pointed out. “The famed free country of Valdemar, open to refugees and the oppressed—its population pounded into submission.” He leafed through other dispatches, laying them out to match their approximate places of origin on the map. “But we have heard the Bell ring twice since this began. This situation cannot stand, but handling it poorly could do great long-term damage socially.” If anyone was aware of things in the long term, it would be one of the Hawkbrothers who’d think of it.