Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar Read online

  “No one’s hurt.” Jem hastened to reassure her. “Is Granddad all right?”

  “I’m perfectly well, and you needn’t treat me like an invalid.” Garrad’s voice was strong enough, coming from the main room.

  “It was the damndest thing, Father.” Lenar shook his head. He strode into the main room and let everyone else trail after him. “All of them headed for the forest, straight for the boys, and they all attacked two bears.”

  The old man paled. “Two . . . They never come this close in summer.”

  “Something was controlling them.” Jem said.

  Ree didn’t want to hear this discussion. And he was worried about Meren. He pulled the boy from Jem’s arms and said, “I’ll be outside with Meren.”

  No one argued. Ree spoke softly as he carried Meren outside. “We’re just glad you’re safe, Meren. That’s all. You two scared us, running off like that.”

  Meren’s hands clenched tight into Ree’s shirt, and he shuddered. The damncats—it looked like all of them—waited outside.

  Ree found himself needing to sit and was cross-legged on the grass before he realized that he hadn’t decided to sit down. Cats were nuzzling Meren, making the little chirp-comfort sounds mother cats made with their kittens. Meren’s sounds were sadder, remorseful.

  Ree would have sworn the cats were reassuring the boy, telling him somehow that dying happens, and the cats who’d died had died well. Whatever it was, it seemed to help, because Meren shuddered again, then started to cry. With words.

  “Ree?” The sound came from behind Ree, and for once Lenar sounded uncertain. “I guess I owe Meren an apology. It was little Garrad who opened the air hatch and climbed out. Meren followed him but didn’t catch up until he’d gotten to the oak . . . and then the bears came.” He made a sound Ree couldn’t interpret. “He’s too scared to say more, but . . . I’m sorry. I said harsh things I didn’t mean. It’s just . . . you know, I lost Jem for all of his childhood, and so many bad things happened to him. Losing little Garrad might kill me. I can’t watch him all the time.”

  Meren’s body relaxed a little but not all the way. He couldn’t understand all the words, Ree was sure, but he’d understand Lenar’s tone, and he almost for sure would understand the hand on his head and Lenar’s voice saying softly, “Thank you for saving my boy.”

  Ree waited till Lenar left. He was thinking of the cats, running like a furry tide, attacking deadly foes to save the boys. He didn’t know much, but he knew that Meren didn’t have the woodcraft to follow anyone. Yeah, he could follow a scent, but he didn’t have enough experience to do it like that, in the woods. If he’d been that far behind little Garrad . . .

  “The cats told you Garrad was going to the forest, didn’t they?” he asked.

  “No,” Meren whispered, but it was a wavering no, lacking conviction. “They can’t talk to me. I’m not an animal.”

  Ree held him tighter. “You’re not an animal,” he said “Some humans can talk to . . . creatures.” Ree had read something about it, once. “The cats told you?”

  There was a long shuddering sigh and then, “Yes. I was asleep. Damncat told me. In my mind.” A long silence. “I didn’t want to . . . but . . .”

  “You’re scared we won’t want you because of it?” Ree knew that feeling too well—and if Meren could understand the damncats that way without words, then . . . he could understand Ree, and that . . . that wasn’t something Ree wanted to really think about. If he knew how scared Ree was, all the time, it would be hard for Ree to appear calmly confident.

  Another nod, a bit shakier this time. Ree pulled Meren closer, hugged him tightly. “It’s just something you do. Not something you are. Being human is here—” He touched Meren’s chest over the heart and tried to believe that, as hard as he could, to believe that Meren having this strange Gift was just . . . well, it was like Mages had their Gift, that was all. Maybe it was an odd kind of magic, but it didn’t make Meren less human for having it.

  “Having Gifts is all on how you use it. This one saved you and Garrad tonight. That makes it good.”

  Finally, Meren relaxed. “Fank you, Papa.” The words were mumbled around a fiercely sucked thumb.

  Damncat strutted over. He gave Meren a headbutt, then rubbed against Ree’s leg.

  “Yes, you and yours did well, too.” Ree scratched the cat behind the ears, and smiled. Everything would be all right. These vessels he’d put his heart into would break it again and again and again, but somehow, it would emerge stronger from each break.

  Human hearts did.

  Heart’s Place

  Sarah A. Hoyt

  Ree watched, and tried to keep his stomach from knotting up, while Lenar’s Mage examined Meren.

  The Mage was a decent enough fellow, and he wasn’t going to do anything like denounce the boy, not here. It was just . . . after the magic circles, Ree had never really trusted magic.

  Magic had made him a hobgoblin, after all, complete with a coat of sleek brown fur and claws that retracted like a cat’s. And a ratlike tail, which was wrapped around one leg inside his pants.

  That same magic had given Meren a coat of sparse tabby fur in addition to his white-blond curls, and who knew what else. And that, Ree reminded himself forcefully, was why the Mage was here.

  You couldn’t pretend that something like being able to broadcast what you were feeling to all the damncats was just a coincidence, and with the controlled hobgoblins attacking more often . . .

  It was better to have Lenar’s Mage make sure that his Lord’s adopted grandson couldn’t possibly be controlling the hobgoblins, and never mind that those same controlled hobgoblins had attacked the child last summer.

  Scared people didn’t think about things like that. They got themselves worked up and went after anything that was different. That was one of the reasons Ree didn’t go down to Three Rivers village much—while people respected him, and knew he’d help them whenever they needed, and get hurt for them, too, it was better not to remind them just how different he was.

  The Mage leaned back with a sigh, and his eyes focused again.

  Meren drooped; whatever the Mage had been doing had tired him out.

  “I’ll just get Meren to bed, then I’ll be with you,” Ree said. With Jem walking Amelie to the manor to spend the night there—ostensibly to keep little Garrad company, but more because Lenar’s wife was near to term and not really able to keep up with her son—and old Garrad barely able to move, Ree was the only able-bodied person on the farm right now.

  The Mage nodded. “Thank you.”

  A little later, with Meren not even protesting about being put to bed for a daytime nap, and asleep before Ree had pulled the covers over, Ree returned to the kitchen and filled a bowl with the stew that was always warming on the stove.

  “Here.” He handed the bowl to the Mage. “I heard tell you get hungry after magic.”

  “Thank you again.” The Mage—Ree could never remember his name—was one of those people who looked so ordinary you forgot them as soon as you met them.

  Not that Ree would have been surprised to find that the Mage “helped” that impression a bit with magic; it had to be a powerful advantage to a Mage to be overlooked and even forgotten.

  “Well,” the Mage said after he’d eaten some. “Your son isn’t a Mage, nor will he be. He does have an unusual Gift, something I’ve seen only once before.”

  If the man had seen it before, that was better than completely weird. Ree told his stomach to untie itself, and he made himself ask, “When was that?”

  The Mage smiled faintly. “Oh, that was long ago, in the army. I was posted down south a way, and the tribes there had these people they called ‘beastmasters’ who they claimed could speak with any animal without words.” He shrugged. “The way our horses behaved around them, I got to thinking it wasn’t just one of those myths that grow up when someone knows animals really well.”

  Ree nodded. He knew about those, since he was at the
center of a fair few of them, him and the damncats—who maybe weren’t quite as ordinary as he’d thought.

  “After I’d got friendly with one of their beastmasters, we each looked at the other with our Gifts—it’s a sort of compliment, to actually open yourself to someone else’s probing that way—and . . . well. What he had was just like what your son has.”

  “So it’s a human Gift, just very rare?” Now Ree had to throttle hope. Something human, something a Mage had seen before . . . that meant that Meren was human enough to maybe be accepted that way, even if he didn’t look it.

  The Mage finished eating before he nodded. “Exactly. It’s probably not fully developed yet; these things usually don’t start showing up until puberty, although they can manifest early under enough stress.”

  Meren had seen enough stress in his short life for something like that to happen, what with being born to parents who couldn’t keep themselves fed much less their baby—and had gotten desperate and raided the village fields, getting themselves killed in the process—not to mention two near-death encounters with hobgoblins.

  “Is there any way to teach him how to . . . well, not get caught in it?” Teaching a little boy to use something he couldn’t feel wasn’t exactly Ree’s idea of fun, but it had to be done. Meren needed to be able to tell what was inside his head and what wasn’t.

  Even if Meren didn’t want to learn.

  The Mage smiled. “Oh, that’s part of why he’s so tired. I took the liberty of giving him some basic shielding and showing him how to use it. It’s close enough to the way magic works that it should keep him out of trouble—well, out of too much trouble—for a while.”

  Ree couldn’t help smiling. You couldn’t keep a child Meren’s age completely out of trouble. At that age, they attracted it like flies to honey. “Thank you. I appreciate that.” What the Mage had left unsaid—that Meren would need to learn more about his strange Gift when he got older—was something Ree figured could wait for a while. There was no point borrowing trouble when trouble came to visit regularly anyhow.

  “Oh, it’s my pleasure.” The Mage stood, and extended his right hand. “I’ll be happy to testify for you or your son, if there’s ever a need.”

  That offer was enough to make Ree blink so his eyes wouldn’t blur. Hobgoblins were killed on sight, unless they had a license and were properly controlled—which usually meant a cage or a leash. Here, he and Meren were exceptions, but that was mostly because of Lenar. Lenar being old Garrad’s son, the local Lord, and Jem’s father meant that Ree was family, and he’d made it clear he considered Ree and Meren equal members of that family.

  What would happen without that in the future . . . Ree didn’t want to think about it. “I really appreciate that,” he said softly. “Thank you.”

  If it came to a court, him not being human meant he couldn’t say anything to defend himself. Meren, too. It was something Ree mostly pushed to a dark corner of his mind, even forgot about for a while, but sometimes, especially with Garrad the way he was . . . His and Meren’s situation was so precarious, so different from anything else, anywhere in the world, that any major change in the arrangement of their life could be a disaster.

  No one dared defy Garrad, and Garrad had Lenar’s ear. But if that were to change . . .

  This farm, and the valley, were home now. Ree didn’t think he could bear it if he had to leave.

  With the shorter days of winter, Lenar had taken to making his weekly visit around the middle of the day, so he need not ride home in the dark. That suited Ree just fine; the chores were mostly morning and evening work this time of year, with the days he wasn’t patrolling the forest spent either repairing things that had been set aside to be fixed when there was time, or helping Garrad move from bed to chair or chair to pot.

  The outhouse wasn’t an option for the old man anymore, not when it hurt him so much to take the few steps between his bed and the chair in the main room.

  He only came into the kitchen for meals, but if anyone but Ree tried to help him, they’d get their head bitten off for being “damn busybodies.” Ree suspected it was because he didn’t offer sympathy, and he didn’t make a fuss of the old man. He just . . . did what had to be done.

  Garrad might be sick and his body failing him, but that didn’t mean he didn’t still have his pride.

  That pride was very much evident when he received his son this morning. Garrad was sitting in his chair in the main room, combed and shaved and wearing clean clothes and keeping the pain out of his face as much as he could. And doing his best to pretend Jem wasn’t hovering anxiously around the room, pretending to straighten things that didn’t need straightening and looking anxiously at Garrad, out the corner of his eye.

  Garrad would not acknowledge his grandson’s anxiety. He would keep his dignity till the end. “Good to see you, boy,” he told Lenar. Then he turned to Ree and said, “Ree, there’s a rolled paper in the drawer beside my bed. I’ll be wanting that now.”

  Ree just nodded. “I’ll be right back.”

  The paper was where Garrad had said, new paper carefully rolled and tied with a scrap of bright yellow fabric Ree recognized as the stuff they’d used for Amelie’s best apron this year. He closed the drawer, and returned to the main room.

  At the door, Ree paused, struck by the resemblance between Garrad, Lenar and Jem. They were grandfather, father, and son, but they could have been the same man at different ages, looking at them like this.

  You had to look closely at Jem to notice his eyes were rounder in shape and his mouth slightly softer—at least, when he wasn’t in full family stubborn. Lenar’s hair was darker than Jem’s, but not much, and Garrad’s was all white, and thinner now.

  Ree’s heart tightened when he looked at Garrad like this and saw something else shadowed on the old man, something you couldn’t fight and couldn’t beat. One day, Jem too would be like this. And the only longing in Ree’s heart, unbearable and demanding, was to still be allowed to be near then. To spend his life with Jem. He didn’t think he could stand to leave, to lose Jem.

  Garrad nodded when Ree gave him the paper. “Lenar, you’ll be wanting to keep this safe. I reckon you’ll be needing it afore spring.”

  Lenar blinked, looking blank, as though he had no notion what had gotten into his father this time. He untied the fabric, and unrolled the paper. His face went slack for a moment, then–when he looked up–he looked much younger. Younger than Jem, even. “Oh, no, Dad. You’re too damn stubborn to die.”

  Ree didn’t want to look at him, to see the hurt, the realization that his father was human, and fading. That Garrad, and Lenar, and Jem too, weren’t going to go on forever.

  Garrad chuckled. “Don’t you pull that with me, boy. I ain’t some fool woman to be soothed by pretty words.”

  “Granddad—” Jem didn’t get any further. His voice broke in a way that said he was fighting tears. “There are Healers that—”

  “Father, I . . . Is there anything that can help? Is there any . . .” Now Lenar sounded lost, that big booming voice faint and almost childlike.

  “None of that, now.” Garrad wagged a bony finger. “I’m old. Ain’t no Healer can fix that, nor no Mage, neither.” His expression softened, the fierce light in his eyes fading a little. He looked back at Lenar. “I’d have been ten years gone if not for Jem and Ree. They’ve been good years, I ain’t denying that. But I can feel them as went before calling for me, telling me it’s my time.”

  Ree nodded slowly. He’d tried to pretend otherwise, but he’d known for a while now, somewhere deep down, that Garrad didn’t have long. He hadn’t wanted to believe it, either. Lenar’s stricken look cut Ree deep. He might have been a soldier for the Empire, led his men in more than one battle, and seen enough death to make Ree cringe, but it was obvious that Lenar had never once thought his own father might be dying.

  “Just read it, son. Read it, then keep it safe until it’s needed.” Garrad got that odd light in his face, and chuckled.
“I figure you can argue better once you know what I’ve got there.”

  Beside Ree, Jem’s hand clenched tight into a fist, and his face went stony. “It’s a will, isn’t it? Why didn’t you say anything to us? To me? Why didn’t you tell us you were doing this? Why?”

  It wasn’t—quite—an accusation, but Ree could hear the hurt under it. He set his hand on Jem’s, but he didn’t say anything. This wasn’t his argument. What Garrad wanted to do with his property was Garrad’s business. He supposed it would go to Lenar and, in the fullness of time, to Jem. Meanwhile . . . Ree didn’t want to consider that. He wondered if he and Meren could claim a corner of the forest and build a willow shelter.

  Garrad all but crowed. “That’s one for me, lad. I ain’t said anything cause it’s got to be done proper, and I wasn’t going to get anyone’s hopes up.”

  So . . . no hopes up. Which meant Ree and Jem . . . He wouldn’t, couldn’t finish the thought. He wouldn’t resent Garrad, either. After all, the man had given him shelter and home and family. More than anyone had ever done for Ree.

  Garrad nodded in Lenar’s direction. “That’s why it’s got to go through your father first.”

  Lenar set the paper down again. He looked troubled. There were vertical lines between his eyes. “It can’t,” he said in a strained voice. “Imperial law . . . you can’t leave anything to Ree. Or Meren.”

  “What?” Jem about exploded across the room, glaring at his father. “Imperial law can go hang itself. If Granddad wants to leave this whole place to Ree, he can.”

  Ree was too shocked to think. He stared, unmoving, waiting for Lenar’s roar.

  It didn’t come. Lenar made an odd, distressed sound and hunched into himself like a child caught with his hand in the honey. “I’m sorry, Jem. I don’t like it either, but . . . I’ve been confirmed here—the message came yesterday—and I have to follow Imperial laws.”