Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar (20 page)

But no one Chose me, and it was a relief.

When a year had passed, I knew it was time to take up my service to the Crown once more in whatever fashion I could. The King’s Own had shown me the way.

There are places in Valdemar that a Herald cannot go. I had all a Herald’s training, and loyalties, but I was not, precisely, a Herald. I put off my white leathers for a coat of motley, and took up my belled staff.

Paynim the tinker was welcome everywhere in Valdemar. My father had been a tinsmith; we both thought, when I was Chosen, that my apprenticeship in his shop had been for nothing. How wrong we both had been. A tinker can find work anywhere, and stay as long or as short a time as he pleases. He need carry with him no more than the tools of his trade, and no one is surprised when he wanders on. I wandered where I was sent—even into Hardorn and Karse—and in twenty years I had crossed and recrossed Valdemar a dozen times.

Where there was need of a Herald, all white leather and silver bells, I sent for one. Where merely sending a report back to Haven was wanted, I did that, too. I quickly learned the circuit of every Herald; it was easy to pass messages and receive orders.

My friends kept my secrets, as I wished, and as the years accumulated, fewer and fewer that I met knew that I once wore the White. It is more comfortable that way. If they wonder who I am, and why they bring me messages and take my reports away, they do not ask.

 

Herald Niniyel and Companion Teroshan had brought me a message; there are many fairs and market days throughout the warm dry months, and Heralds and tinkers both attend many of them. The message was an odd and improbable one, but it is my task to turn the unlikeliest of rumors into hard truth, and until I have seen—or not seen—what I have been sent to see, I do not waste my time wondering about it in advance. A wise man never needs to borrow trouble since fools give it away free, as my father always told me.

Yet this time I did wonder out of season, for the message Herald Niniyel had brought me said there was a witch in the Armor Hills.

That alone was reason enough for me to go.

Since Vanyel’s time, there has been no magic in Valdemar. The Mind-Gifts of Herald and Healer are not sorcery, as they use the term beyond our borders. But lately that has changed. There is even a Mage College in Haven now, though it is new and I have never seen a Brown Robe on my wanderings. But the world is filled with wonders that I have not seen with my own eyes—a Karsite Captain with a Companion, for example.

But it is a byword of the Bards that the memory of the common folk is longer than any History, and so the country folk have never ceased to speak of witches when they encounter anything uncanny.

 

A fortnight and more of steady walking lay between me and my destination, but it was summer, a good time to walk the roads. The Armor Hills are north of the East Trade Road. They are not so distant from Haven as many other places, but Sumpost and Boarsden are the nearest villages, and they are not large. To the north, Iftel is their border; on the east, Hardorn.

I had been told that the witch of the Armor Hills was said to be a woman grown—that in itself was odd, for notable Gifts generally appear first in childhood. Further, it was said that all the Armor Hills paid her tribute, for she had the power to call a man’s soul out of his body, which is a power that could not be explained by a misunderstanding of any of the Mind-Gifts I knew—so perhaps the tales I chased were true, and what I sought was indeed a witch.

At first, there was nothing for me to see. It was difficult enough to find the people themselves, for the Armor Hills is a wild and unforgiving place, and the houses of its folk are scattered and hidden. The people there subsist by hunting and trapping, and gathering the bounty of the wild, for though I saw many small gardens—once I had found the people—I had also quickly discovered that everything that is not up is down; it is impossible to find a level tract of land to plow or plant. It is an article of faith with those who dwell there that the land is too poor to take a crop, but I saw no sign of that. The small gardens flourished, and the woods and sharp-cut narrow valleys that I trudged through were lush with growth.

I mended pots, gossiped idly, and listened more than I talked.

A moonturn passed as I wandered from house to house. I had visited such remote places before, and knew better than to ask questions, lest I give offense, but soon I was accepted so far that one night’s host would give me good directions to the next place that might have need of my services, and I no longer had to search out each house by myself.

People began to talk freely in my hearing, giving little thought to me as I sat over my fire in the dooryard, wrestling a cracked pot into working order or repairing an old skillet that must have lost its handle in King Roald’s reign. That was when I first heard folk speak of the Moonwoman. Who else but she could be the creature I sought?

They said she was the offspring of a Companion and a Herald. I took no offense at hearing that; the common folk say odder things of us. They said her hair was as white as a Companion’s tail—that, at least, was a thing nearly possible.

They said she could see the inmost thoughts of man, woman, or child, and could send their spirit from their body into light or darkness, calling it back at her whim. To placate her, they gave her anything she asked for when she walked among them.

These things did not sound at all encouraging, but what mattered most to me was that they said she would be at Midsummer Meeting. There I could see her—if she was, in fact, a flesh-and-blood woman and not simply a tale of the hills—and judge for myself for myself whether she had all—or any—of the powers claimed for her.

It took more work than I had imagined to gain an invitation to Midsummer Meeting. I had imagined, hearing the hill folk speak of it, that it was simply their version of one of the Season Fairs so common elsewhere, in Valdemar, and so a tinker would surely be welcome.

In fact, it bore more in common with a religious gathering, or a mustering of clans. Midsummer Meeting was where marriages were celebrated, babies acknowledged, and those who had died in the previous twelvemonth named. Trading went on as well, and music, dancing, and fine eating, but the true purpose of Midsummer Meeting was the exchange of information among the hill households, and a chance for a young hill son or hill daughter to meet someone from several valleys away.

But outsiders were not forbidden to attend.

Meramay was a young widow, plump and blonde, who had taken a shine (as the saying there went) to me. I had stayed with her ten days together, walking out each day in search of work, and returning at nightfall, adding my day’s payment, in eggs or honeycomb or fresh-killed rabbit, to Meramay’s larder. In truth, she could use all that I brought, for she lived entirely alone, and to take a living from the hills was a constant round of hard work, best shared by many strong backs.

I dealt with her honestly, telling her that I was lowland bred and born and would be moving on before the seasons turned. Still, there was comfort to be given and taken. She told me flatly the first night I stayed with her that she hoped to get a child with me, as she was seeking a new husband at Midsummer Meeting, and, as in many places, a woman’s fertility was a far more attractive quality than her chastity.

It was she who invited me to accompany her to Midsummer Meeting; she wished to show off her current bedmate to her prospective suitors, much as a farmer would show the bull when selling the calf. I had long since outlived false pride, and so I was happy to say I would go with her.

“I only hope Moonwoman doesn’t take against me,” Meramay told me matter-of-factly. “She doesn’t like a light-haired girl, and no man’s going to cross her.”

“You might darken your hair,” I said casually, though my heart was beating fast; this was the first time anyone had spoken of Moonwoman directly to me. “The herbs are easy to find, after all.”

Meramay shook her head decisively. “That’d be the same as lying, and they say she hates a liar worse than death and poison. She can see right into a body’s heart, too.”

There was no changing Meramay’s mind, though I did wonder why, if she feared Moonwoman so much, why she was taking the risk of bringing an outsider to Midsummer Meeting. She did take the precaution of tying up her hair in a brightly colored scarf before we set out; apparently simply hiding her hair didn’t count as lying.

And so we began.

Meramay carried a pack heavier than my own, and traveled, besides, with a cart drawn by one of the enormous brown-and-black dogs which are the usual beasts of burden in these hills, pulling carts and sometimes carrying packs themselves.

It took us three days to reach the place where Midsummer Meeting was to be held, but I had long since decided for myself that everything in the Armor Hills was three days’ walk from everything else, most of it spent climbing one side of a hill and falling down the other. As we walked, I did my best to gain more information from Meramay about the mysterious Moonwoman.

Meramay said she had been here “for always,” but Moonwoman had not been at last year’s Midsummer Meeting, nor had word reached Haven of her before the spring, so I did not think that could be so. I was growing increasingly uneasy with what I heard of her; Meramay had never seen her, but she certainly feared her.

On the third day, just as we reached the meeting grounds, I found out why.

“Was her took my man,” Meramay said, as simply as if she were remarking on the fine summer weather, or the flowers growing by the side of the trace. “Saw him out walking of an evening and followed him home. Then she Sang him out of my bed, will-he, nill-he, and that was that.”

This was the first time anyone had mentioned music in connection wit the witch I was seeking. Did Moonwoman have Bardic Gifts? No proper Bard would use his or her powers so; I was not even certain that Bardic Empathy could so thoroughly compel someone against their will, certainly not the Gift of an untrained Bard.

I would have questioned Meramay further, though it was a chancy thing to do, save for the fact that we had arrived at Meeting Home.

It was the closest thing to a proper town that I had yet seen in the Armor Hills, though it must lie deserted most of the year. There were dance floors, open to the air; platforms of raised wood planks, where even now groups of dancers whirled, stamped, and spun to the sounds of drums and dulcimers, and even a few roofs without walls, where groups of hill women clustered together, talking and sewing and keeping a weather eye on the youngest children. Meeting Home filled an entire valley, and its floor was surely the largest flat space I’d seen since I’d arrived here. At one end of the valley there were a row of hearths, a great openair kitchen flanked by tables enough to fill the dining hall at the Herald’s Collegium.

I wondered, then, why I should think of that, for memories of the Collegium belonged to a life I had long since left behind me. They had nothing to do with the life Paynim the Tinker led.

Though the Meeting did not properly begin until the following night, the whole of the valley was already filled with bright clothes and bright colors, the sounds of music, and the smells of good cooking. There were more people here than I had seen so far in my entire visit to the Hills, and Meramay assured me that more would arrive before the Meeting Days began tomorrow night with the acknowledgment of the new children born in the past year. As I followed Meramay across the meadow to help her unload her cart, I saw unharnessed cart dogs lying everywhere, basking in the sunlight.

With Meramay to make my introductions, I was welcomed without trouble, and set myself up near those who had brought things to trade. I soon had as much work as I could fairly handle. Not much of my payment was in coin; there was little way I would be able to carry the bulkiest of the goods away with me, but I might well be able to trade them for smaller and more portable items—or for more costly things that I could fairly use, such as a new shirt, a hat, or a pair of breeches.

More people arrived as the day waned, and that night there was a feast the like of which I had rarely experienced, followed by dancing that would go on, I was assured, until dawn.

The dances of the Armor Hills are complicated ones, and after stumbling through a few sets, I excused myself and sat with those who were—to hear them tell it—older and wiser. When the ale jugs began to pass, I began to hear more of the Moonwoman.

Half of what I heard I discounted immediately, for not even the sorcerers of Karse and Iftel could do such things as were claimed for Moonwoman—or if they could do one, they surely could not do the whole.

Thus, I did not think she could truly turn men into wolves and women into deer, nor ride the wind invisibly, nor strike people dead with a touch. If she could do even a tenth of what was claimed of her, she would have been a greater Mage than Vanyel the Good, and I thought that unlikely.