Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar Read online

  Not for long, he thought, his eyes drifting shut. Warm . . . no time.

  He slept. And in his dreams, Elene died again.

  —in the water—

  Freezing, all the way up to her neck. A hard shock of cold as she allowed the current and rope tied to Alrek carry her to the child clinging to an outcropping of rock. She practically blanketed him with her body, getting a good hold.

  She turned to look back at the shore, Alrek’s white form blazing like a guiding star.

  Then she reached, her Gift struggling with the child’s weight and mass, struggling with the distance, struggling as she struggled against the current.

  The boy vanished beneath her. She saw a dark figure appear near Alrek, heard the shore crew cheer. For a moment, her heart soared—

  The log came—

  —out of nowhere—

  —and dragged her down, her body pinned beneath the wooden anchor and the tangled lead rope. Everything became a confusion of sound and sensation, so dark and cold, and all she could think was, Ah, gods—mother, I’m so sorry.

  :Elene!: Her Companion’s voice, pleading in her mind.

  :So sorry, Alrek.:

  She felt him and the villagers straining to drag her in. The rope jerked, and her chest blazed with pain as ribs cracked. Her Companion’s mindless panic threatened to overwhelm her.

  :No! Alrek—:

  She fumbled with something at her belt—

  Wil shot up out of bed, fighting his own blankets, spilling out onto the floor with a scream in his throat. He sat, panting, until his heartbeat settled.

  Am I missing something? he thought. When will I stop dreaming about you, Elene? She had been a yearmate, an infrequent lover, a fellow Circuit rider. She could be in his head another day, week, month . . .

  :Year,: Vehs said adamantly. :And in the meantime, you aren’t sleeping. Go do something about it already!:

  Wil pushed a hand through his close-cropped hair, smearing sweat across his scalp. :I’d rather you sang me a lullaby.:

  :Chosen—:

  :No tinctures, Vehs.:

  :Stubborn—bull-headed—:

  But Wil’s annoyance at his Companion’s meddling had reached its breaking point—he snapped down his shields, cutting off Vehs’s rant. Not that he could block him completely. Just enough to muffle the chatter.

  He curled up on his side in his bed, and sometime around midnight he finally eased into a half-waking doze that lasted until dawn.

  Food and a bath briefly revitalized him, but by the time he took the stairs back to his quarters, he found his steps dragging. He flopped onto his bed and settled his eyes shut.

  In the water—

  Knock! Knock! Knock!

  Wil jolted up and for a moment sensed something nearby, watching—

  The feeling vanished. Someone was knocking on his door, but he was alone in his bedroom.

  Wil lurched over to the door, yanking it open. A red-haired girl in the orange-red of a Bard Trainee waited in the hall.

  “Hi!” she said brightly. “I’m Amelie!”

  “Hello,” he replied, fighting the instinct to close the door again. Bard Trainees were, in his experience, never a good omen.

  “Milady Lelia would like to see you.” Amelie smiled brightly. “Is now a good time?”

  Wil raised a brow. “ ‘Milady’ Lelia?”

  Amelie maintained her blazing smile and nodded.

  Wil glanced back at the bed, then back to her. He forced himself to smile. “Now’s a fine time,” he said.

  They didn’t have far to go. Wil hadn’t seen Lelia in years, so he didn’t know how the Bard had managed to win a Palace wing apartment from one of Selenay’s distant relatives, but she’d done it.

  What surprised Wil was not that she had finagled it but that she had chosen to settle down. Lelia seemed the type of Bard who would wander Valdemar until her shoes wore away and her toes fell off.

  Amelie led him in, and if the woman waiting for him was barefoot, he couldn’t tell because she was bundled up in a red velvet blanket.

  “Wil,” Lelia said, with enough warmth to make his heart swell. She remained unvarnished loveliness, albeit with an air of fragility he did not remember seeing before.

  Aging, just like me, he thought. Only with a little more grace and flair.

  “Milady.” He bowed.

  She rolled her eyes at his airs, pushing out of the chair to hug him. The sudden, friendly movement pushed away the melancholy he’d felt a moment before. He returned the gesture, smiling.

  “I’d have given you a full day to rest and recuperate, but the last two times I did that you were gone before I could gain an audience.” She sat back down. “You just love to go, don’t you?”

  I could say the same about you, he thought. He took a seat on a couch as Amelie plied him with tea, cream cakes, and other snacks. He waved them off politely.

  “My protégé,” Lelia said, nodding toward Amelie as she swept out of the room. “She’s all sorts of mischief.”

  “You seem to be doing well.”

  She stretched her smile so wide he thought her face would crack. “You’ve no idea. How’ve you been? Stopped any assassination plots lately?”

  He shrugged. “It’s been a slow year or two. Mostly citizens irate over taxation, property lines, and who owes whom for what.”

  “Assassination plots sound more fun.”

  “Same amount of paperwork, too.” His lips twisted in a grim smile.

  She sipped tea as they talked. He gradually grew at ease with the sumptuous setting. No one disturbed them, though judging by the number of chairs, settles, and low tables, Lelia was accustomed to entertaining groups.

  “When do you head out next?” she asked, topping off her cup from a nearby pot.

  “Tomorrow,” Wil said. “Probably. Maybe the day after.”

  “Another Circuit? So soon?”

  “No,” Wil replied. “I have to go deliver bad news to Herald Elene’s family.”

  Lelia tilted her head to one side. “She died a fortnight ago, near Callcreek, yes?”

  “Yes.” He gave her a curious look. “You knew her?”

  “No, but I make a practice of knowing for whom the Death Bell tolls.”

  “Ah.” He lifted his brows sympathetically. “Right. Lyle.”

  Lelia smiled. Her twin brother was a Herald; he had, in fact, been Wil’s internee.

  Every time it rings, she has to wonder, he thought. Even if sometimes it’s a little more than I want, at least I know.

  “I was near Callcreek when she died,” he said. “On my way back from the Border, actually. I did the footwork of finding out where, when, why, and how.”

  “No ‘who’?”

  “She drowned on a rescue mission. No one’s fault.” His chest twinged as he said it though, and he remembered the crushing pain from his Vision. “Her family needs to know. So I’ll be heading to Boarsden shortly.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Boarsden, eh? That’s near Winefold.”

  Wil knew the map of Valdemar the way parents knew the faces of their children. “Correct.”

  “Would you like me to go with you?”

  He blinked. “What?”

  “Me. Go with you. I admit in advance I have ulterior motives.”

  He swallowed around a suddenly dry throat. “Such as?”

  “My family travels to Winefold around this time of year. There’s a festival to bless the fields—it’s at least a week long. Good work for traveling entertainers. I’d love to see them, and once you’re done at Elene’s you could view it as—” She cocked head again. “Brace yourself, Wil. I’m going to use a strange word on you.” She shaped it slowly. “Hol-i-day.”

  :The Bard is wise.:

  Vehs’s interjection startled Wil. It was the first thing the Companion had said since Wil had awakened and eased his shields.

  Lelia took his silence for disapproval. “No?”

  “Let me think about it.”

 
; “Oh. Well. Do.” She drained her cup and set it next to the pot. “You’d be doing me a favor. I’m a frail little Bard, getting on in her years.” She draped her arm across her forehead and slumped. “And I surely would love the company.” She straightened and winked. “My destrier and I can be ready to go either day.”

  After leaving her, he headed to the Collegium common room for supper. Trainees chattered earnestly around him as he ate and contemplated the bitter work ahead.

  :You know,: Vehs said, somewhat unexpectedly, :she’s unattached. Unbridled. Available.:

  Wil furrowed his brow, wiping up the last of his stew with a crust of bread. :Who?:

  :Lelia.:

  :What does that have to do with anything? And how do you know that?:

  Vehs ignored the second question. :You liked her once.:

  Wil wiped his mouth and collected his empty plates. :It’s been a while, Vehs.:

  :Oh, yes, it’s been a while, Wil.:

  :Ha ha.:

  :She wouldn’t have invited you to her quarters, or herself along on your journey, if she didn’t still like you on some level.: Vehs hesitated. :I think there’s a very real chance she’d like to play Stefen to your Vanyel.:

  If Wil had been drinking, he’d have choked. :Thanks for waiting until I was done with dinner before planting that on me,: he thought.

  :Just pointing out the blindingly obvious to the obviously blind.:

  Wil looked around. “Where’s your destrier?”

  Lelia patted the neck of the slender-legged chestnut palfrey waiting beside her. “Right here. Wil and Vehs, meet my horse. Destrier.”

  Wil and Vehs exchanged a look.

  :Forget what I said,: Vehs said. :This one’s crazy.:

  “You named a palfrey ‘Destrier’?”

  Lelia grinned. “I always said I wanted one.” She cocked her head. “Exit through the Haymarket Gate?”

  “Haymarket Gate,” he agreed, and helped her mount her . . .Destrier.

  He’d left the question of bringing her along to Kyril. The Seneschal’s Herald had spent the better part of the evening explaining the art of breaking bad news to good people, and he had provided a small box of Elene’s personal items. According to Kyril, Elene had no living family except for her mother, Kaylene.

  When Wil had asked about letting Lelia accompany him, Kyril gave him a thoughtful look and then said, “Having a Master Bard along might not be a bad idea.”

  “Assuming she’s discreet,” Wil had said.

  “Oh, she is,” Kyril said knowingly. “But I’ll want a full report on how it works out when you get back. Perhaps it’ll be an improvement on the process.”

  Perhaps, Wil thought, taking a sidelong glance at Lelia as they rode. She sat straight in the saddle, eyes ahead, reins loose in her hands.

  Finally, he cleared his throat and said, “You pack light.”

  “I used to do this on foot,” she replied, smiling. “I learned to get by with very little.”

  “No gittern?” he asked.

  She shrugged from within her voluminous scarlet cloak. “Takes up space.”

  Wil frowned. “Won’t your family want to hear your music?”

  “I don’t need a gittern to sing, Herald.”

  You’ve plenty of room, he thought, but he let it slide. Lelia seemed focused elsewhere, as if listening to something Wil could not hear. Even when they finally got free of Haven’s crowds and the open road spread before them, she remained silent, her gaze soft.

  The silence gave Wil time to mull over what he was going to say to Kaylene. Kyril had given suggestions, but they all sounded so . . . formal. But then, what could one say that was “right” in this situation?

  Nothing. But “nothing” wasn’t an option, either. He would have to say something.

  They stopped for the night at an inn where the owner greeted Lelia personally. People, Wil reflected, remembered a good Bard. After making sure his things (and Elene’s) were secure in his room, he joined Lelia in the common area for a simple but tasty meal. They capped the evening with hot drinks—he with wine, she with her personal tea blend, which she had packed much of for the journey. They nursed their drinks in companionable silence, stretched out on comfortable chairs and settles near a hearth. Despite the heat, Lelia remained wrapped in her cloak, nothing emerging from it but her head and hands.

  “You must be sweltering,” Wil said.

  She smiled drowsily at him. “I’m quite comfortable, thank you.”

  The wood in the hearth popped loudly, showering sparks. A moment later, it resumed its gentle murmur of crackles and pops.

  “Such a lovely ditty,” Lelia murmured. “Practically singing me to sleep.”

  Wil started to nod, but the phrasing caught his fancy. “Can you do that?”

  Alertness crept into her gaze. “Do what?”

  “Sing someone to sleep. With your Gift.”

  “I have, on occasion. Why?”

  Because I haven’t slept in over a week, and I’m going mad drowning in a cold river every night, he thought, but as usual, the actual words became stuck in his throat. “Just curious,” he said.

  She studied him, then drained her mug and set it aside. “Goodnight, Herald.” She patted him on the shoulder before disappearing up the stairs.

  Wil could feel Vehs in his head. His Companion wanted to say something . . . but, ultimately, did not.

  In that, they were similar.

  He drank two more cups of wine before he finally went to his room.

  Wil clawed his way back to waking.

  And again that sense of being watched—

  He blinked. It vanished.

  It wasn’t far past midnight, and the thing that had woken him had not been the Vision—though he’d been up to his neck in cold water—but his bladder. He threw on clothes and trundled out into the night, toward the outhouse.

  He turned the stable’s corner—

  Something was out there.

  Wil had never feared the dark. But the yawning space between the stable and the outhouse filled him with sudden, unspeakable dread.

  Something was there.

  His eyes scanned the uneven shadows of the forest hemming the inn. Did he see a shape there? A blot of movement in the darkness?

  Cold dread filled him. The presence felt true—not just a hallucination. His mind flitted back to his time on the Karse Border . . . was it possible he’d raised a Sunpriest’s ire? Was something following him, waiting for a chance to strike?

  The presence evaporated. The darkness became just that, the movement in the trees nothing more than wind and woodland beasts about on mundane business.

  Wil crept back to his room, hunkered down in his bed, and waited out the night.

  When he emerged from the inn the next morning, Lelia stood next to Vehs, one hand on his withers.

  “Good morning,” Wil said, faintly suspicious about them together. Something in their posture suggested . . . conspiracy.

  “You look like hell,” Lelia replied cheerfully as a groom emerged with Destrier and helped her up into her saddle.

  :She’s worried about you,: Vehs murmured.

  :I’m worried about me.:

  :Well, finally.:

  Wil swung into the saddle, ignoring the jab. :Last night—something was out there.:

  :Something?:

  Wil toyed with the reins. :Alberich . . . he mentioned night-demons once—:

  Vehs snorted. :This far into Valdemar? Not possible.: More gently, he added, :Chosen, you’re exhausted. Your mind is playing tricks on you.:

  :I felt something, Vehs.:

  Vehs said nothing.

  :You don’t believe me—:

  :No!: Vehs said sharply. :I believe that you think you saw something.:

  Wil took a deep breath. :Fine. But let’s stay in a Waystation tonight. Just in case.:

  :This close to Traderest?:

  :Yes.:

  :With the Bard?:

  Wil frowned. Now he wished
he hadn’t brought her along. They were potentially in danger, but he was sure if he told her to turn back, she’d only want to know why, and no matter what he told her, she’d still want to come along.

  But better one overcurious Bard than a village full of innocents . . .

  “Lelia,” he said, “we’re going to stay at a waystation tonight.”

  He braced for the inevitable questions.

  “All right,” she replied.

  He gave her an odd look. She smiled back congenially.

  “Whatever you say, Herald,” she said.

  The Waystation outside Traderest was typical of its kind—small, with a water pump and trough, and secluded among the trees. Wil slid out of the saddle, and Lelia tethered Destrier as he hauled their packs into the Waystation. They had a fire and a pot of porridge going within a candlemark.

  She still hadn’t asked why they were here. He watched as she finished smoothing one of her cloaks over her boxbed—they hadn’t brought bedrolls—and then left again to tend to her horse.

  He sat on the edge of his own boxbed. All he wanted was sleep without dreams. He wanted . . .

  One minute he was alone, the next Lelia was leaning over him. When he’d fallen back on the bed, he wasn’t sure. Just that his eyelids felt so, so heavy. He could barely meet her gaze.

  “You know,” she said, “Heralds don’t just die in fights, fires, and floods. Keighvin, the Queen’s Own before Talamir, worked himself into a brainstorm and an early grave.”

  “Knew that,” Wil mumbled.

  “They throw themselves into their work,” she continued, “until they’re so exhausted they wind up doing something foolish.” She smiled a little. “Lyle once told me . . . I was his balance. I keep him from flogging himself to death.” The smile softened with sadness. “I don’t know how good a job I’ve done with that, honestly.”

  Even talking, her voice had a melodic quality. His eyes slid shut, his thoughts growing muzzy. He could feel the Vision unfurling, tugging at him like the waters of the river that had killed Elene, and then—