Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar v(-102 Read online

  Mari leapt up, looking around for an attacker, the herbs in her lap scattering to the ground. She cursed lightly under her breath on her way to kneel beside Dionne. “What hurt you?”

  “I don’t know.” Dionne closed her eyes, searching inside. As a healer, she should know if she’d eaten something poisonous or taken ill. But it didn’t seem like that.

  And then she knew.

  “Rhiannon!” she murmured. “Rhiannon!” Her heart beat faster, fear pounding through her veins. Her stomach lurched so hard she nearly threw up her dinner. A bruise blossomed on her cheek.

  “What’s happening?” Mari demanded.

  “I have to go to her!” Now she was half-screaming and half-sobbing. Her vision still seemed wrong, slightly off, but she struggled to push herself up.

  Mari extended a hand, helping Dionne to stand up. “Are you sure she’s really in trouble?”

  Dionne nodded, gasping and struggling for balance. “I have to ... go.” She started toward their shared traveling gear, grabbing her pack and stuffing clothes in it hurriedly.

  “Are you crazy?” Mari asked. “She must be all the way across Valdemar. You need someone to help you!”

  “So help me.”

  “How?” Mari asked.

  “Let me go.”

  Mari shook her head, biting her lip and stamping her feet. “I can feel how much you need to.”

  Of course she could. She was an Empath. Dionne tried to strengthen her need even more, sharpen it. She reached forward and took Mari’s hands, something she’d been avoiding as much as possible. She searched Mari’s dark eyes. “I have to go.”

  Mari grunted. “I’m responsible for you. Gavin told me not to let you come back before time.”

  Dionne fought back a sob. “Gavin doesn’t know Rhiannon’s hurt.”

  Mari blew out a long breath. “I’ll take you back to the Collegium, and they can decide from there.”

  Good enough. Haven was almost on the way. “Can we go now?”

  “In the dark?”

  “The moon’s full.”

  Rhiannon and Lleryn were both allowed to ride, their hands tied to the pommels of their saddles. The horses were tied together, the reins all ending up in the mage’s hands. His horse’s heavy gait and broad, ugly face would have shown him for mixed farm and warhorse immediately had Rhiannon seen him during the day, instead of just his white outline in the smoke from the fire.

  Almost as soon as they passed the border, their captor began to look better, the moonlight illuminating penetrating eyes and a strangely smiling face that made Rhiannon shiver. His control over their mounts became more sure, the horses nearly sleepwalkers moving at his command. At one point, he turned to them and said, “I’m really sorry. I don’t mean you any harm, but you belong in my dream.” He looked directly at Rhiannon. “The sad beauty of your song infected me, and I needed to take you. Surely you understand that?”

  No. He liked sadness? All while he was wearing that funny grin that disturbed her? Maybe he was a little crazy or a little hurt, but that didn’t mean he should be after innocent Bards. She didn’t give him the satisfaction of an answer, but instead she looked straight ahead and appeared as unconcerned as possible given the situation.

  Just as the first morning sun began to paint the hills with light, they turned up into a narrow, wooded ravine. “I bet this is the way to his keep,” Lleryn said.

  “Shhh ...” He silenced them, leading them up a winding trail. Birds began to greet the day, the sound grating on Rhiannon’s nerves. What did he really want? He hadn’t even taken her gittern or let them take much of their stuff. Although maybe that was to get over the border well before light. Hard to tell, except that he definitely hadn’t seemed comfortable in Valdemar.

  The keep itself loomed up out of the rock—part carved into cliff, part tall wooden walls that seemed built for defense. In fact, it all looked amazingly well-built, and somewhat fresh and new. Either he’d had a small army to help him, or it was magic-built. But if it was magic-built, the amount of power made her shiver. She watched it grow bigger and bigger as they came closer, colder and more daunting. At one point, Rhiannon was close enough to lean over and speak quietly to Lleryn. “I don’t care about our mission. This is going to be tough without a Herald-Mage.”

  Lleryn grunted, and while her face looked as disconsolate as Rhiannon felt, she said, “It will be all right. Maybe this’ll be a good song some day.”

  Rhiannon blinked back tears and once more pictured Dionne’s worried face. She couldn’t die here. It was impossible to imagine leaving Dionne alone. “Maybe it will.”

  Dionne had been through the story twice under the skeptical eyes of Gavin, Breda, and three other teachers when an older man in Whites interrupted and tossed a dented and worn gittern to Breda. “I found this.”

  Even from a distance, Dionne knew it was Rhiannon’s. “How?” she demanded, not caring that she wasn’t supposed to speak unless spoken to.

  No one reprimanded her.

  “I was supposed to meet them. I waited an extra day where Lleryn told me to and then went looking. I found their gear, but not their horses. Bandits wouldn’t have left so much behind.” He was just beginning to bend with age, and a wide scar ran down his right cheek. His lips were pursed in worry. “I came here since we had some dispatches to send back anyway, and I wanted this reported. It’s not the first strange kidnapping along that border—quite a few local farmers have disappeared. I’d like to take some help, if Haven has any to give.”

  “Thank you.” Dionne stood up and looked around. After the last few tough years, Valdemar was short of more than just Herald-Mages. While she’d also have to convince others, these teachers would be the first barrier to cross. “I want to go. I can help find Rhiannon, and that will find the rest of these people.”

  No one moved or spoke for the space of three breaths. Then Gavin said, “Go on. You won’t be any use without her anyway.”

  A day later, Deckert, Rhiannon, and a second Herald named Cienda, young enough that she still wore her first set of Whites, headed out of Haven. The small group had obtained permission to cross the border for a period of no more than one week and a distance no greater than a day’s ride, and specifically to find two missing Bards.

  The Healer’s Collegium had broken a general rule and allowed Dionne to take one of her father’s horses, a three-year-old dun mare named Sugar, with long legs and a long black mane and tail. As beautiful as Sugar was, Dionne felt poorly mounted beside the Companions.

  That night and the next she woke sweating from dreams of Rhiannon, frightened and bitterly unhappy. She could see and feel her sister deep inside, and a few specifics of her surroundings came through as well. Stone walls, and a view from a window of a vast forest. Each morning she told the Heralds every detail she could remember from her dreaming, and they shook their heads. “Sounds like anyplace along the Rethwellan Border,” Deckert said.

  “At least it doesn’t seem like the Pelagirs,” Cienda pointed out. “The forest sounds healthy.”

  “Yes.” Dionne closed her eyes. “It is. They’re at the end of a long draw between deep hills that are covered in trees.”

  “Can’t be far from where the people have been disappearing,” Deckert said. “But we’ll have to be very careful since it’s on the wrong side of the border.”

  Dionne swallowed hard, ignoring her own doubts. “I can find her. I know I can.”

  Either the keep was smaller on the inside than it had looked on the outside, or the mage only allowed Rhiannon and Lleryn access to a small part of it. There was a minstrel, a Healer, and a handful of cooks and farmers and housekeepers. The girls seldom saw them and weren’t sure what kept them here. With the exception of the Healer, who wore very faded and patched Greens, it was impossible to tell if the people they saw were Valdemaran or Rethwellan. It was also impossible to tell if they were captive or free, or held in some sort of magical spell. Rhiannon was certain most of it was a spell, an
d Lleryn argued it could be some of all the above—slaves and workers, locals and people like them, who had been kidnapped.

  They’d learned the mage called himself Lompaux of the Greylorn. He had told Rhiannon that the second day, when he’d brought her a new and very lovely gittern and demanded she play the Lament for Twins for him.

  He had her sing it for him every night, and every night she grew sadder, and the song escaped her lips with more power. He seemed a willing listener, the kind of audience she had been taught came too easily to song and sometimes had to be brought from sorrow to happiness at the end of a set. At the end of about a week’s stay (she’d lost track of the actual number of days), she watched him walk out of the room after a session where he’d asked her to sing for him. It dawned on her that they were developing a bond. In fact, he didn’t seem entirely evil. It felt more like he was just trapped in a circle of sadness and a set of decisions he’d made long ago, probably before he was even grown.

  Without Dionne, she didn’t know how to sing happy songs with the full power of her Gift. But could she touch him anyway? She knew sadness, now that she spent her days locked in the cold keep without her sister. Maybe she could strengthen her bond to him by creating songs to show him the traps he’d set for himself.

  Excited, she stood up to go find Lleryn and see what she thought of the idea. The Bard was sitting in the corner of the next room, practicing air-scales over and over, her fingers tapping silently at the air in their rather large prison. After Rhiannon finished explaining, Lleryn chewed on her lip for a long time before saying, “Sure, try it. Just be careful not to let the bond become two-way.”

  Rhiannon grinned. “It won’t. I’ll keep my image of Dionne between him and me.”

  The next morning, they crossed the border, taking the widest trading road that Herald Deckert knew of. He stopped at the first fork in the road, putting up a hand to stop the group. “We have to be careful now,” he said. “Having permission from the Rethwellan ambassador won’t keep us from getting shot first and the questions asked later. Rethwellan is anti-mage at the moment, though, so if they don’t shoot us first, they may not mind our mission.” He looked down at his Companion, Kadey. “And the Companions prefer that we just aren’t seen. They’ll try to help us with that.”

  Dionne nodded.

  The whole group stood still for a bit, and just as she was wondering why they didn’t get started, Deckert’s gentle voice interrupted her thoughts. “You’re the one who’s got to find her.”

  Of course. Dionne closed her eyes. “Stay on the main road. I’ll know where to turn.”

  And she did, again and again, until she led the group all the way to their first view of the imposing keep. She pulled Sugar to a halt, and the two Companions stopped, and everyone just looked. Rhiannon was there—she could feel her from here. She didn’t think her twin knew she was close. They didn’t have Mindspeech, but they did have something like Empathy, something her mother had always called the oneness of twins. Dionne closed her eyes briefly, closing away the keep, and thought what she wanted Rhiannon to know. I’m out here. I’m going to get you out of there. It will be all right. Get ready!

  Her eyes snapped open. She was pretty sure Rhiannon had gotten the message, or the sense of the message. But what could either of them actually do?

  The Heralds had been staring for some time, and of course they’d undoubtedly been using true mindspeech between themselves and their Companions. She waited, impatient, and less and less hopeful as time went on. She’d done her part, but the next move was up to Deckert and Ciena. And the Companions, of course.

  After what seemed like a very long time, Deckert looked over at her. “Most of what you see is an illusion. There is a true Keep there, and twenty or so people. But it’s older than what you see, and a quarter that size.”

  “How do you know?”

  He reached down to pat his Companion. “Kadey was able to show me.”

  “Can he show me?” she asked.

  Deckert fell silent for a moment. “It isn’t necessary.” He sighed and glanced at her. “You’re a Healer, and your sister is a Bard. Between the two of you, you know Companions generally only give the least aid possible—the amount we need to do our jobs.”

  She nodded.

  He seemed to shift his focus to Ciena more than Dionne. “And sometimes not even that. For some reason, they want the twins reunited enough to help me see the glamour. I’ve come to accept that Companions are—in their own way—magical beings. But they keep their own counsel, and Kadey has seldom solved my problems for me.”

  Both Ciena and Dionne nodded. Ciena was at most a few years older than Dionne, but she seemed so much more poised and controlled that it surprised Dionne to see her given a lesson. Older Healers almost always looked after the younger ones. Of course it was the same with Heralds.

  Dionne looked at the Keep, willing herself to see it smaller. It didn’t help. “What do we do now?”

  For answer, Deckert and Kadey moved forward. Dionne followed, and Ciena, on her Companion Tani, brought up the rear. They were almost halfway to the keep when Dionne suddenly felt dizzy and grabbed the pommel of Sugar’s saddle with both hands. Luckily, the tall mare was well enough graced to stop when Ciena, behind them, called out, “Whoa.”

  Deckert and Kadey stopped, too. Deckert turned in his saddle to look back. “Are you okay?”

  Dionne closed her eyes and hung on, taking big, shuddering gulps of warm air. “I ... I think we should rest. Maybe it’s a message from Rhiannon, or maybe she’s sick. But anyway, I think ... think I need to stop.”

  “Could it be the mage?” Ciena asked.

  “I don’t know.” Deckert dismounted and helped Dionne climb down from Sugar. She leaned hard on the old Herald as he helped her sit on a warm stone by the path.

  She felt grateful for his strong hand and dismayed by her dizziness. Still, now that she had stopped, she knew it was exactly the right thing. Her breathing slowed and evened, and her balance returned enough that sitting felt normal even though she wasn’t quite ready to stand.

  The Heralds didn’t question her, but sat quietly. Watchful.

  The glowing alto of Rhiannon’s voice came to her, wafting down through the forest. The local birdsong stopped.

  She glanced at Deckert. “Hide, please, and watch.”

  To her surprise, Deckert and Kadey faded one way and Ciena and Tani went another way, both so quiet it underscored yet again that the Companions weren’t horses.

  Just hearing Rhiannon’s voice lifted Dionne’s hopes, although the song itself had her name in it, and Rhiannon’s, a call to her. The song sent waves of sadness through the woods with more power than she’d ever heard from her twin.

  Rhiannon rode around the corner, appearing like a vision through the trees, followed by a young man with a confused look on his face and tears falling down his cheeks. He stopped when he saw Dionne, staring fixedly.

  She stood.

  The song drew to a close, and Rhiannon mouthed, “Heal him,” over the back of his head.

  Dionne nodded so her sister knew she’d heard. Heal him of sorrow? She’d certainly failed the whole time she was with Mari, but now Rhiannon was here. Strength crept into her muscles, her heartbeat, her stance.

  When she saw someone as a patient, she often noticed small things. He stood a little to the left, leaning. His dark eyes and pale skin gave him a sallow look. “Come here,” she said simply.

  “She won’t need to sing the lament if you’re here,” he said.

  An odd response. She licked her lips, watching him. Was he happy about that, or sad?

  Rhiannon began the song again.

  Dionne stepped toward him.

  He backed away, one step for her two.

  She held out her hand.

  He stood for a long moment, his head cocked, listening as Rhiannon’s voice swelled all around them.

  Dionne took another step toward him, surrounded by Rhiannon’s song, which h
eld him in place. She took his hand. Power filled him, dark, but roiling and misty, as if his very own purpose fought against the man he had become. She touched his energy lightly, trying to understand him.

  He flinched.

  She looked at him, daring him to pull away.

  He didn’t.

  She glanced at Rhiannon, who winked. That was enough to let go, to trust the situation. They would live or they would not. At least they were together. She took a great, deep breath and closed her eyes, swaying. She grounded, pulling on the strength of the earth and the forest. She let the energy build up around her and in her, and then she sent him some.

  He seemed starved. Energy drained from her faster than she expected, driving her dizzy. His pain overwhelmed her, filling her. Perhaps she had done the wrong thing, trusted too much. Maybe she would die here after all.

  Rhiannon began a new song, one she had written for Dionne when they were both nine, the year before they started their training. It spoke of healing and joy and helping, and as Dionne poured her energy freely into him, he suddenly began to shake, finally dissolving into tears. He knelt on the ground in front of Dionne. “Now I know why that song called me so much.”

  Deckert and Ciena had come up on either side of the threesome, and her sister’s captor withdrew his hand from Dionne’s and said, “I am sorry. I will go with you.”

  Dionne blinked. Could they trust that?

  Inside her head bloomed a single word. :Yes.:

  So that was what a Companion sounded like. Beautiful.

  The Heralds led the man who had surrendered to them away, Deckert speaking softly to him while Ciena bound him securely.

  “How did that happen?” Dionne asked.

  Again, the voice. :Your sister’s voice has worked on him for almost a week. Rhiannon taught him what he had become, and your Healing showed he needn’t stay that way.:

  Dionne glanced at the keep, which now looked no more imposing than some of the Valdemar border keeps, a large, square building with a lookout turret on each corner, few windows, and a stout wooden doorway. There would be buildings and storage rooms inside, and whoever else the mage had kidnapped.