Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar v(-101 Read online

  “Did anyone ever write a song about Lisle?”

  Jocelyn shrugged. “I don’t know. Remember, she’ll just barely be getting her Whites by now. I never stayed in Haven long enough to watch for her.” Jocelyn shrugged. “Most Heralds live unsung lives. It’s easy to forget that. There are so many songs about Heralds, but there are many more Heralds than songs about them. Many parents and families of people who come to Haven, whether Herald or Bard or Mage or Healer, well, their pain is unsung as well.” She stared down at her knotted fingers. “That’s why I wrote ‘Dawn of Sorrows,’ for Choosing, and all the love and pain and sacrifice and promise of that moment. Dawn’s pain would have gone unnoticed, a single sacrifice in a flood of things surrendered to save Valdemar from Ancar. Except I gave people her story for remembrance. That’s what Bards do.”

  Silver twisted her hands in her lap. “I haven’t yet written anything that many people sing.” The wistful yearning in her voice echoed in her eyes.

  Jocelyn stood up. “Your life will surely yield opportunities. Come on, there’s only a few hours until dark. We should get moving.” She bent down to gather up her battered leather pack and fiddle case, and when she stood back up, she saw the disappointment on Silver’s face. She sighed. “Yes, there’s more. I’ll tell you more of the story tonight.”

  “Thank you.” Silver’s voice sounded small. She shouldered her own nearly-new black leather pack. A flute case hung below her pack, tied in with purple ribbons, and she carried a gittern case that looked as new as her pack. “Will we stay at an inn tonight?”

  Jocelyn shook her head. “Not if you want the rest of Dawn’s story. It doesn’t make me want to sing. They’ll have plenty of minstrels and even Bards in a town this close to Haven—they won’t expect us to sing.”

  Silver fell silent, and Jocelyn started down the hill, setting a good, hard pace. Silver’s footsteps behind her reminded her of Dawn following her, and she walked faster, leading them downhill through tall dry grass and yellow mustard flowers. If only she hadn’t tried so hard to help Dawn. She struggled to distract herself by counting the small suncup butterflies flashing white and orange over yellow mustard flowers and tiny blue wild onions. She picked up speed, nearly jogging down the water-rutted path.

  After an hour, the footsteps behind her began to fade and Jocelyn stopped, looking back. Silver’s cheeks shone red with exertion and her shoulders drooped. Jocelyn heard her own rattling breath and stopped. She waited for Silver to catch up, then said, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to walk so fast.”

  Beads of sweat stood out on Silver’s forehead. She breathed in little hard gulps. “I didn’t know how much you’d mind talking about Dawn.” She licked her lips and brushed damp hair from her face, looking at Jocelyn earnestly. “I thought I was asking about a song, but I guess I was asking about more. You don’t have to tell me.”

  Hot tears suddenly licked at the edges of Jocelyn’s eyes. She turned her face away a little, hoping Silver wouldn’t see them. “I know.” She took a long drink of water, felt it fall like a welcome river in her mouth. She’d been pushing Silver too hard, but maybe she’d also been pushing herself too hard. “I’ll slow down some. Tell me about the first song you wrote.” She started off again, not looking at Silver, but measuring her pace.

  Silver was quiet for a few steps. When she spoke, her soft voice barely carried to Jocelyn. “I always made up songs, as long as I can remember. I’m sure my first songs were about my family. What about you? Did you sing about your family?”

  Jocelyn flinched. How come everything Silver said poked at her? Had she really become such a pincushion? No wonder Dennis had looked so concerned when she wandered back to Bardic a month ago for rest. “I sang about the boarding school I was raised in, and about some of my teachers. Maybe we should just walk for a while.”

  Behind her, Silver’s answer was to start humming, and then singing, a summer harvest song. If Silver had asked her to join in, Jocelyn would have refused, but the younger woman’s quiet singing acted like a balm, letting Jocelyn enjoy the late afternoon sun warming her face and steady, quiet hum of bees in the flowers. By the third song, Jocelyn began to sing along, and before they even made it all the way off the hill and onto the main road, she realized she was smiling and her pace was naturally slower.

  The road to Sunny Valley was wide enough for two carts to pass each other easily. Although the hard-packed road was empty for long stretches, they were greeted by kids on horses going between farms, and carts most likely headed between towns or even to Haven.

  Jocelyn remembered to stop a few times under shade trees. Silver would get used to traveling, and they’d make better time in the future. After all, this was only day two of a three-month journey.

  They stopped at an inn in Sunny Valley to refill their waterskins and purchase a loaf of fresh bread, a skin of red wine, and a round of deep-yellow cheese. As the skinny, dark-haired innkeeper handed them their packages of food, he said, “There’s room. We have a local minstrel who plays here, but he never minds being joined by Bards, long as they share the takings. Says it helps him learn new songs.”

  Jocelyn glanced at Silver, letting her choose.

  Silver shook her head. “We’d rather push on tonight.”

  The innkeeper grumbled good-naturedly. “You folk from Haven. Always hurrying.” He turned to his next customer, and Jocelyn and Silver headed back for the road.

  Two candlemarks later, after setting up a quiet camp by a thin stream, they perched on an old log, a small fire at their feet throwing tiny sparks up into a darkening sky. Jocelyn broke the bread in half while Silver parceled out the cheese and one more apple each.

  Jocelyn set her plate on her lap, and took a long sip of the wine. Her stomach fluttered, but at least the hot tears didn’t return. No point in waiting, the words wanted to come out. “So we left the story with me and Dawn in the middle of the road, and Dawn in pain, and me feeling her pain, and on my way to Johnson’s Ford to convince people I’d never met to leave a town they’d struggled to build their whole lives.

  “Well, I might as well have promised Tamay I’d take care of Dawn, and besides, who could have left her? So I sat there with her and fed her water and sang to her, and she let me stroke her back even though she’d never seen me before. Finally, she pushed herself away from me and looked deep into my eyes. Her voice trembled as she said, ‘Thank you.’

  She glanced at Silver, finding Silver’s pale eyes staring at her, waiting. Silver still looked like Dawn, and still, like Dawn, looked like she needed Jocelyn. Except Silver had her own scarlet cloak, and her need was simple and healthy, unlike Dawn’s naked, scraped-raw tenderness. Jocelyn cleared her throat. “I stood and helped her up. We walked back to town just as the sun was setting. She moved slowly, as if she were an old woman, as if every movement hurt. Perhaps it did. Perhaps her grief was so heavy it weighed on her bones.

  “Johnson’s Ford didn’t have an inn, so Dawn led me home with her for the night. I really should have called a town meeting right then, maybe stayed one night, and gone on, but I didn’t. I stayed a week.

  “Dawn’s house had two beds, hers and another that must have been Lisle’s, but Dawn didn’t offer it and I couldn’t make myself ask. Besides, I’d been traveling a few months anyway, and the floor wasn’t as hard for me as Dawn’s sadness.”

  Jocelyn stopped and took another pull of wine, leaving her plate untouched.

  Silver spoke softly, compellingly, a voice full of promise. “You loved her, didn’t you? The first time I heard ‘Dawn of Sorrows,’ I thought it must have been written by a man.”

  Had she? They’d never been lovers. But she knew every line of Dawn’s face, every curve of her slender arms. She knew the shape of her fingers (long, slender, with one pinky shorter than the other). Even after all this time, she remembered how warm Dawn’s hand had felt in hers. Even though she’d only had weeks with Dawn, she still stopped by streams and pretty trees in bloom, and wished Dawn were t
here to point them out to.

  She swallowed hard. “I loved her beauty and her loss, and her story was so romantic and so tragic, and I’d seen the most recent part of it. So maybe I was star-eyed about her. But there’s nothing romantic about helping someone with such deep grief. So . . . even if maybe you’ve found a grain of truth, it didn’t feel that way the days we spent in Johnson’s Ford.

  “I talked to the mayor that next morning. I told him about the Choosing, and he helped me get news out that Selenay had sent me to talk to the town.

  “I met with about twenty townspeople that night. Farmers and hunters; strong and tough, sure of themselves. The women held their little ones like they were gold, especially the older boys, watching me carefully. Their faces were stoic and still as I told them Selenay wanted them to abandon Johnson’s Ford.

  “When you’ve worked your whole life to keep a town together, when you’ve built the buildings with your own hands, you don’t much want to just pick up and leave. After the first amazement at having the Queen’s words sent to them, the meaning of the words sank in. Some of the parents understood right away, but most people’s faces stayed stones to me, and I knew I hadn’t convinced them. So I told them I’d sing to them, every night, and that they could find me at Dawn’s house most of the day if they had questions. I only sang a few songs that first night. Even though I put as much of my Gift into those songs as I could, the town didn’t just jump up and start packing.

  “Another mage-born storm slammed into town that night, and by morning the streets ran with water and the river had risen noticeably, but still no one agreed to leave. Between me and the storm, it took four days before anyone started to pack. Those four days are their own story that I’ll share some other time.

  “Each night, I sat with Dawn after I came back in, wet from walking home from the Mayor’s house in the storms. We kept a fire going, talking a little and singing a little and staying quiet a lot.” Jocelyn started to reach for the wine again, but changed her mind and picked up the bread. She chewed slowly, watching the little fire. “So it took four days for the town to start packing. It began with three women who had little kids, and their husbands, and then a grandfather and then a young couple that had just gotten married. By the sixth day I was there, everyone finally decided they didn’t want to be the last one in Johnson’s Ford, and they all started making plans to leave. Some had family in other towns, but most were just going to walk away from the border, walk farther into Valdemar and hope.

  “Except Dawn.

  “Dawn came up to me, her eyes big and dark and suddenly full of fire instead of sadness. She said, ‘I don’t want to go with them. I want to help you keep other people safe. I want to go with you.’

  “She took me aback, completely. She looked so brave, and so damned lonely. I reminded her I was traveling toward danger, and wouldn’t be going back to Haven until winter. I thought maybe that was it, maybe she wanted to get to Haven and saw me as the easiest way to get near Lisle. But she stood in front of me, looking like she’d looked when she stared into Tamay’s eyes, rooted, curious, and full of dread.

  “She said, ‘I want to do something that matters. All my life I’ve just lived, and loved the people I loved, and I’ve been lucky. I had the best husband and the best little girl in the world. They’re all gone now. Even Lisle, even if I get to live near her, well, she’ll have her own life. Tamay told me all about the Collegium and about how Lisle would have important jobs for Valdemar, how she was special. Tamay convinced me my little baby was special for more than me, that it was time for her to grow up. Now it’s time for me to do something that matters, and the only thing I can think of is to go help you.’ She took my hand, the first time she voluntarily touched me. ‘You can use someone familiar with living near the woods and hills of the border, I know you could. I can’t just run away with everyone else, and I can’t start over, not yet, not until the war is over. Lisle’s gone off to help in her way, and I want to help in mine. I need to.’

  Jocelyn shifted uncomfortably, and stirred the fire. Dawn’s eyes had drilled into her so hard, needed her to say yes so badly. “I didn’t have an argument for her; I understood her. We were allowed to accept local help. I could probably even bring her back to Haven and find her work somewhere, maybe even at the Collegium. But first there was a war on. I wish I’d told her no, every day I wish I’d told her no.”

  “I took her.

  “The next town was about the same size as Johnson’s Ford, and we stayed outside of it in my tent, stormdrenched and shivering, for the first night. The second night, an older couple made room for us in their barn. That town took five days to convince to leave. Then we went to Killdeer, which was big enough for an inn. A Herald came through there the day after we got there, reinforcing my message, so we were off again.” Jocelyn paused, reaching for water.

  Silver shivered. “I was only thirteen that year and mostly I heard about everything—I wasn’t involved, except I did get to see the gryphons come into Haven. I remember that. So you must have only been twenty.”

  Jocelyn closed her eyes. “I felt older.”

  “And Dawn, how old was Dawn?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose she was in her late twenties. Lisle couldn’t have been more than ten when she was Chosen, and women marry young out in the hill country like that. I bet she wasn’t ten years older than I was.”

  Silver took a bite of cheese and reached for the wine. The last light had faded; Silver’s white face and light hair looked almost ghostly in the firelight. “But she listened to you, followed you, right?” She sipped the wine. “Because you were a full Bard?”

  Jocelyn shook her head. “Not everyone follows you because you’re a Bard. Not in Haven, and not out here. You’ll learn that eventually.” She steepled her hands under her chin, musing on Silver’s question. “I think she needed someone, and maybe it mattered that I was a Bard, but maybe it mattered more that I had seen Dawn’s loss, and been there for her. I was young, and any other year, I probably wouldn’t have been a full Bard yet. I think a few of us were tested into full Scarlets because Valdemar needed us. That was a scary year with new-found Mages and Ancar’s army and the storms. Very little was done the way you’d do it in peacetime.” Jocelyn took her own sip of wine. Silver was right—she really had been young. Younger even than Silver, if just by a year or two.

  Silver said, “You’ve traveled alone ever since. Didn’t you like having someone to travel with?”

  The fire snapped and popped, holding Jocelyn’s gaze. The presence of the other woman did feel good. And Jocelyn wasn’t responsible for her. Even though Silver was younger, she was a full Bard. While Dennis was correct and Silver could learn from Jocelyn, they were more equal than Jocelyn and Dawn had ever been. Silver had education as well as enthusiasm, even if she had lived in the city her whole life. Maybe . . . maybe Silver could be a friend. Or more. Dawn could have been more, but there hadn’t been time. . . .

  Jocelyn threw two new logs on the fire and watched it lick up their edges in bright tendrils, then bloom. The new light played on her feet. She didn’t have to decide whether or not to trust Silver, not yet. But she did have a story to tell. She finished eating and then slid down so her back rested against the log. Next to her, Silver took out her metal flute and started polishing it with a clean cloth until firelight glittered back from its bright surface. Jocelyn cleared her throat. “We had fires like this at night, small and cozy, and we talked. After a while, Dawn began to talk about Lisle and Drake. She told me doing something, even just helping me find my way from place to place, helped her to feel less lonely. Oh, I still heard her crying sometimes at night, especially when it was cold and wet and we shared a tent and lay close, each of us swaddled in blankets, but still near enough to share body heat. The coldest, scariest nights, we even held hands.”

  She’d never told anyone that. But then, she hadn’t told the story at all for years. Oh, she’d told plenty of stories and sung plenty of songs
to countless people she didn’t know. But this was different. It was like . . . like talking to Dawn had been.

  “After we’d been traveling two weeks, we had two more towns to go, and then I was due to head back. I still planned to take Dawn with me. We came to the first of the last two towns, up over a hill, kind of like where you and I sat today when I started this story. The sky hung low and oppressive over us, a gray at midday that was almost black. Lightning flashed in the far hills. It wasn’t raining, but it had, and would, and the air itself felt full of water, as if drops might materialize all on their own. In the damp darkness, smoke filled the bottom on the valley, persistent and thick and ugly. Bright embers showed where the largest houses had once been. We walked down into it. We had to. Whoever, whatever, had burned the town did not seem to be there, and maybe there was someone we could help.

  “Dawn clutched my hand when we saw the first two bodies. Children. Two children. They had been running, and fire had somehow caught them. Dawn’s eyes were huge, her face pale, and at first she stopped and her fingernails dug into my palm and her body shook. I had seen the dead before, but something seemed unnatural. The nearest burned building was quite a distance away. It looked like the children had just burst into flame running, not like they ran, flaming, from a fire. It sounds like a small difference when I say it, but it was a big difference to see. It struck us both silent. Part of me didn’t want to go any farther into the town, no matter what, didn’t want to take another step.” The memory hurt, the moment she should have, could have, changed her mind. Jocelyn stood and stretched and paced once around the fire and sat back down, keenly aware of her own restlessness. “But you know, when you’re out there, and there might be someone you can help, you remember you’re a Bard, that you’re more than just a court singer. You just are.”

  Jocelyn looked up into Silver’s eyes. Did Silver understand this, in her bones? Did she know what life she’d chosen? Silver nodded, as if answering Jocelyn’s unspoken question.