Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar Read online

  “You didn’t think to find him when you knew you were coming to court?”

  “I tried, but he doesn’t always take the same route.”

  Perran lifted another sheet of paper. “You’ve given this court a receipt for the paper you claim Barro ruined by slashing it with a knife.”

  Haivel nodded. “It’s from a traveling paper merchant. I get a shipment from him whenever he passes through town.”

  Perran studied the receipt. “It says here the amount you paid the merchant for the paper was ten silver soleri. Is that correct?”

  “Yes, your lordship. It was a large order. I have to stock paper because I’m never sure when the merchant will be passing through town again.”

  “You may be seated.” Perran studied the two men. They returned his stare, faces set in expressions of total belief in what they recounted. But somewhere, in Haivel’s recounting, he sensed a lie. He straightened. “This court will adjourn for two candlemarks while I review the cases. I want you both back here then.” He looked across the room, briefly focusing his attention on Trika. “Please bear in mind that everything you’ve said I have taken into consideration. And I am, as you well know, an enforcer of the laws of Karse. My judgment here today is final, and your cases cannot be tried again.”

  Levron stood outside the inn, well aware his next duty to Perran might be one of the hardest he had ever performed. Nonetheless, any information he could find would aid Perran’s decision in this case. Glancing up at the passing clouds, he made an effort to appear relaxed and calm, one more man enjoying the springtime sun.

  He heard his name called, turned, and saw Trika coming his way, accompanied by her father.

  “Levron,” she said, her smile such that any man would immediately feel flattered to be addressed by her. “You remember my father?”

  “I do. Good day to you, sir.”

  Trika’s father wore a somewhat preoccupied expression and merely nodded.

  “So, you’ve become assistant to the judge.” She smiled again; this time the smile was more than inviting.

  “Yes.” Levron squared his shoulders. “A position I’m rather proud of.”

  “And you should be,” she said, stepping close enough so he could smell the slight hint of her perfume. “I’m confused as to why Barro and Haivel are in court. Perhaps you can tell me what will happen if they’re found guilty.”

  “That I can’t. I don’t make those decisions.”

  “Oh.” She pouted prettily. “I thought you might have witnessed cases like this before.”

  “And why should you care?” Levron asked, keeping his voice even.

  Trika lifted her chain and glanced off for a brief moment. “I don’t, actually. I’m merely interested. They were both beginning to bore me.”

  “Trika!” This from her father, who now stared at his daughter. “That’s not a kind thing to say.”

  “But it’s true, Papa. First Haivel, then Barro.” She tossed a strand of night-black hair over her shoulder. “You’d think I was the only woman in town.”

  Levron cleared his throat. Much as he wanted to keep his opinions hidden, the time had come to reveal them. “You haven’t changed, have you, Trika?”

  She appeared startled for a few heartbeats. “What do you mean by that?”

  “I remember all too well how things stood when I left Streamwood.” Levron met Trika’s father’s eyes. “Your pardon, sir, I don’t mean any disrespect.” He returned his attention to Trika. “You always seemed to enjoy setting boys, and then men, at each other, simply to see how they would react. Isn’t that what you’ve done to Barro and Haivel?”

  Trika’s eyes turned to black ice. “That’s unfair. I thought you and I were friends!”

  Friends again. Why do they think we were ever friends? “Not so I noticed. You never paid me any attention at all.”

  “I can see why I didn’t,” Trika said, her eyes narrowed now. “You’re nothing more than a—-”

  “Trika!” This time, her father put a hand on her shoulder. “Be still!”

  “I will not!” she fumed. “Why should I let Levron accuse me of—-”

  “Because it’s true, and you know it,” her father interrupted. “I’ve ignored your behavior far too long. You’re aware of what they call you in town, aren’t you?”

  For a brief moment, Trika’s haughty expression cracked. “Trika the Tease,” she said at last, her voice gone very quiet.

  Levron bowed his head in Trika’s father’s direction. “I think it best I take my leave,” he said. “I’m fairly certain I won’t be back in Streamwood for a long time, if ever, so I wish the best of everything for you both.”

  He turned and entered the inn, a headache beginning to pound behind his eyes. But the unfortunate meeting had been worth it . . . he now had the answer Perran wanted.

  Perran couldn’t deny the emotional cost of Levron’s meeting with Trika. Levron had hardly spoken a word other than to recount the conversation he had shared with Trika and her father. Knowing how difficult that meeting must have been, Perran vowed, somehow, to set things right. Perran earnestly hoped a situation similar to this one would not occur in the future.

  Court in session, he stared at the two men seated before his table and made a show of inspecting the receipts they had given him to prove their loss. Let them squirm a little, it certainly wouldn’t do them further harm. Finally, he motioned for Barro and Haivel to stand.

  “What I have here are receipts for the goods you have lost. Once again, I ask, can either of you prove the damages created by the other?”

  Barro darted a quick glance at Haivel. “I saw him ruin my cloth with my own eyes.”

  “And I,” Haivel said, “saw Barro destroy my paper.”

  “But neither of you has a witness. It’s only your individual accusations that this is what happened.”

  “My cloth is ruined!” Barro exclaimed. “I saw Haivel dump the paint on it!”

  “And I saw Barro destroy my paper!” Haivel growled. “Whose word weighs more here, his or mine?”

  “Are you asking me a question?” Perran leaned forward in his chair. “I don’t answer questions, I ask them!”

  Both men seemed to shrink slightly.

  “My apologies, your lordship,” Haivel said quietly.

  “So.” Perran studied the papers again. “You, Barro, suffered a loss of ten silver soleri for the destruction of your fine bolt of cloth, caused, you say, by Haivel upending a bucket of paint on it. And you, Haivel, suffered a loss of ten silver soleri because you claim Barro took a knife to your delivery of paper. All because you’re both acting out of a misguided sense of jealousy and revenge. You, Haivel, courted Trika for a considerable time, and when she started seeing Barro, you reacted.”

  Haivel’s face turned red and he stared at his feet.

  “And you, Barro,” Perran continued, letting his eyes stray to where Trika and her father sat, “reacted in anger because you claim Haivel destroyed your cloth. As you said, Haivel, it’s his word against yours and your word against his. Now how can I tell who’s guilty and who’s not? Since neither of you has a witness, and, Haivel, I’m not certain I believe your witness exists, I’m left in the unenviable position of having to decide a case that has no easy resolution.”

  Silence gripped the room. Perran noticed several people glancing sidelong at Trika. If those gathered to watch the trial were any example, what Levron had recounted regarding Trika’s manipulations in the past seemed to be all too familiar to the citizens of Streamwood. And now he had to make a judgment. Both had suffered losses, but the reasons behind the vandalism of each man’s property could be left squarely at Trika’s threshold. Not that they were innocent. Perran believed each had told the truth despite Haivel’s story about his witness: Barro had seen Haivel destroy his cloth; Haivel had witnessed Barro shred his delivery of paper.

  Perran gathered the two receipts and set them aside.

  “Now hear my judgment,” he said. “By th
e authority granted to me by the Son of the Sun, whose rule of law emanates from Vkandis Sun Lord, I speak. Barro, I believe your recounting. Even with no witness, you have proved it more likely than not Haivel destroyed your fabric for which you paid ten silver soleri. Therefore, he will pay you that amount to recoup your loss.”

  Barro’s face lit up and a smile touched his lips. Perran turned to Haivel, whose expression bordered on the shocked.

  “And Haivel, you also have no witness, but you have proved it more likely than not Barro destroyed your paper, for which you paid ten silver soleri. Barro is ordered to pay you that amount to make you whole.”

  Barro’s eyes widened and Haivel lifted his chin.

  “And now,” Perran said, “I come to the portion of this trial that strays from the normal path I usually take. The two of you,” he continued, “have behaved poorly for men of your standing in Streamwood. Now I understand, or I can try to understand, feelings of betrayal on your part, Haivel, and the jealousy that followed. And you, Barro, you reacted in vengeful anger at the ruination of your property. Vengeance I can also understand. However—-” and here Perran stared directly at Trika who sat next to her father “—-there is someone in this court who is ultimately responsible for setting these actions into motion. Trika, will you and your father stand?”

  Trika’s face froze into a pale mask, and her eyes darted left and right as she and her father rose.

  “I find you guilty of playing petty, emotional games with these two men. Therefore, in my authority as judge, as penalty I fine you twenty-five copper soleri to be paid to Haivel and twenty-five copper soleri to be paid to Barro.”

  A muted gasp rippled through the room. Barro and Haivel exchanged a glance, then looked away. Trika’s father glared at his daughter, who had lowered her eyes to the floor, no longer flaunting her beauty as a seductive weapon.

  “And,” Perran continued, “I caution you, Trika, to think how your actions can influence others. Emotions are easily manipulated in certain circumstances. Perhaps this will teach you to be more considerate of those around you. And so, by the authority vested in me, I conclude my judgment. In the name of the Son of the Sun and Vkandis Sun Lord, so shall it be!”

  Levron had never felt more relieved to depart a town after a judgment. He rode next to Perran, for the first time in two days feeling unburdened by what lay in the future.

  “I want to thank you again,” Perran said. “I asked a great deal of you, and I hope you understand the need. What you told me illustrated in detail how people can behave so badly. It’s always a shame to see these things happen, but I’m willing to wager this won’t be the last such case I’m called to judge. Only next time, you won’t be so intimately involved.”

  “It was my duty,” Levron replied, warmth flooding his heart at Perran’s apology. “Yes, it was draining. Yes, I wish I didn’t know the three of them. I will say this, your judgment was superb. I found it amazing to see how you dealt with Barro and Haivel. Fining Trika the fifty copper soleri to be paid half to Barro and half to Haivel meant each of them left court owing nothing to the other, and a bit better off besides.”

  Perran chucked. “Do you think she will have learned anything?”

  Levron thought for a moment, then shook his head. “Probably not. It will take more than a fine to change her, unless her father reins her in at last. Perhaps it might happen one day when someone she truly loves spurns her.” He lifted his head, took a deep breath of the fresh scents of the fields that stretched off from the roadway. “I will tell you this: I never want to return to Streamwood. If there’s another case to be tried there, I beg you . . . please find a substitute.”

  Perran laughed and lifted the reins, urging his mount to an easy canter. Levron touched his heels to his horse and caught up, a smile touching his face warmed by the late afternoon sun.

  Under the Vale

  Larry Dixon

  Misty and I are asked some very clever and insightful questions when we’re doing Q&A sessions at conventions. One thing I invariably say is, “A Star Trek™ writer once told me, ‘I have one brain to get it right, and the fans have a hundred thousand brains to find what I got wrong.’ ” There are fans and there are Fans, and the True Believers memorize every detail, and how it all comes together, and they make webpages, trivia games, and databases and keep track of all details. We love that. It’s awesome.

  We put amazing levels of worldbuilding and research go into even the most casual mentions and tertiary characters. Well, it’s amazing to us anyway. We could be easy to impress. We might be weak compared to a lot of writers, especially roleplaying-game writers, but it sure feels like a ton of development. Even when something gets just a passing mention or is glimpsed in the background, there’s been thought put into it. Plus, there are in-jokes, and meta-references, and braided or circular storytelling that have as much to do with stand-up joke framework (warmup, first callout, setup, gag, punchline, callback) as with screenplay or prose structure. Some person or building in the background might be important six books down the line. In one interview we laughed and said we always have four pages of notes for a two-line reference.

  This essay shows a little bit of what that forethought is like. And you know what? This is our job, seven days a week, writing and drawing and researching every single day, and we still get things wrong all the time. But I promise you, we sure do our very best for you.

  My specialty is the How and Why Things Happen Department. Here are some insights into the Hawkbrothers, the hertasi, and just what a Vale is—and what it’s for.

  About 1150 years ago from the “current” point in the Valdemar/Velgarth timeline (circa Perfect Day and Transmutation), the paired disasters known as the Cataclysm occurred. And it was a mess. A deity-level, impossible-to-fix-instantly mess. The seventy-some years before the Cataclysm were called The Mage Wars, because Velgarth’s native magic fields had been harnessed like never before by cabals and individuals. In the centuries before, magic work had been at what might today be called journeyman level at best, and those who used sorcery had few, if any, mentors. Spellwork was mostly experimentation. Experimentation was often lethal. Magery wasn’t a career choice for a long life. Some of these early wizards did keep notes, though, and the ones that didn’t die in a flash of Mage-shaped embers passed their notes along. And so, schools of thought regarding magic and what could be done with it led to those that could eventually be called Adepts.

  These Mages often became more than tyrants and more than leaders. They became strategic weapons. Alliances and one-time deals shaped the courses of tribes and nations alike. Just having the social favor of a Mage could be enough to stop a rivals’ invasion of your duchy or hunting grounds. A warlord of great strategic ability could employ a Mage for tide-turning battle tactics, and the Mage would be kept safe and comfortable by the warlord all the rest of the time. Everybody—and let me stress that, everybody—who understood any sort of civilization knew that those who worked magic were to be respected.

  The next turning point after Adepts came very swiftly. An Adept could train others to do parts of spellwork and then combine their subworks into a Great Work. This was first used to enrich an eroded floodplain, while the baron’s men built levees to make use of the renewed soil. This historic Great Work used just under sixty journeyman-level Mages and a single Adept.

  One of the journeyman Mages was a very young man named Urtho.

  At this time, the “texture” of Velgarth’s magic was very rough. It took a brute force approach to cause something to happen, and Great Works nearly always resulted in serious injury for two-thirds of the magic users involved, because excess energy would manifest as light and heat. Very often, spellwork simply wasn’t worth the chance of losing a percentage of your Mage teams to blindness and burns. Magework was reserved solely for things that laborers, soldiers, and engineers could not replicate. And, not incidentally, wherever there was magic, something was going to explode. This was partly because no one had t
he slightest concept of static electricity, and magework would sometimes create a huge potential charge that would ignite materials and gasses nearby. That never helps. Other times, enchantment-prone materials would accidentally get charged up and detonate. This led to a brief and ill-advised fad of naked spellcasting, which ended not long after the first spate of full-body, smoking head and groin hair burns. Obviously comparing notes literally couldn’t hurt.

  A bold tradition arose, by Urtho’s doing, that got Mages together in “salons” to share their information freely about spells and energies, regardless of their political leanings or ranks. It was against common law, even considered traitorous by some, but the fear of and respect for Mages were such that these salons were not once raided. Urtho was, to put it mildly, likable. Whereas so many colleagues were gruff or pained by old wounds or insufferably self-important, Urtho had kind eyes and a kind heart, to match his ability to maneuver socially. A knack for bribery didn’t hurt, either.

  Urtho’s salons became a “movable feast” that would travel village to city, Mage school to secret cabal, and every year they became more lavish and the food much better. Mages were always wealthy. The salons advanced magical theory to a level that might have taken a century more, had they not flourished. Inevitably, these gatherings collapsed due to schism and war, but the world gained much knowledge (and fewer explosions) from them.

  Urtho gazed at an oil lamp one evening and mused, “If it were a bowl of oil, touched by this fire, it would explode. But it is a lamp, and the wick is restricted, so only the wick burns. It gives just a little light and heat, and that is just what I ask of it.” Urtho wrote this in one of his many notebooks, unaware that by doing so, he had just changed the history of the entire world and the spirit realms above and below it.

  Urtho’s great accomplishment in the years after the salons was to develop a set of “weights and measures” for magic use. It all began with that first observation from the oil lamp. His title, Mage of Silence, was because spellwork at the time put out a huge “signature” that could be detected even at long distances; but Urtho’s spellwork used exactly as much power as was needed and no more. Thus, “silence,” and others feared and respected the fact that Urtho could have operations going and operatives active right beside them that they simply couldn’t detect. It became the bluff that saved countless lives.