Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar (11 page)

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 held 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.

She started toward it, Rhiannon at her side. Along the way, Rhiannon continued the song of joy.

“What will happen to him?” Dionne asked.

Deck smiled. “We’ll let him go far away from you two. Valdemar is uncomfortable for mages now, and he is truly changed. Someone so young should have a second chance.”

Dionne smiled agreement, and Rhiannon said, “Yes, he should.”

 

Bard Breda and Master Healer Gavin both wore solemn faces as they listened to the twins’ story for the second time. They were in a small classroom they’d commandeered for the purpose, Rhiannon and Dionne sitting in student chairs while the two teachers sat at the front. At the end of their story, the girls sat with their hands folded in their laps. Breda was not particularly fooled; they were not as meek as they were pretending to be. In fact, she was pretty sure they’d get up and walk away from their callings if she told them they would have to finish out their years apart.

The girls twitched and fidgeted lightly, a foot here, a little finger there. Clearly, they thought it at least possible that Breda and Gavin would force them to separate again.

Breda had decided Gavin deserved to pronounce their judgment. He looked very solemn and serious as he said, “We guess you want to stay together?”

The twins nodded vigorously.

“You think your bond is something more than we thought, something worth nurturing and feeding.”

They nodded again.

“All right.”

The two girls screeched jubilantly and held each other, and then seemed to recall they were almost adults and settled back into their seats, still smiling.

Breda leaned over and whispered in Gavin’s ear. “I’m glad you were right. May we always learn from our students.”

He leaned over and whispered back. “If we hadn’t separated them, we would never have known how strong that bond is.”

It was Breda’s turn to speak. “You two sound like magpies. We’re not done, yet.”

Two faces surrounded by red hair looked back at her, pretending innocence.

She leaned down and pulled a box out from under her chair. She took out two new uniforms: one scarlet and one bright green.

The twins held their tongues and reached demurely for the symbols of their new status with reverent hands. Good. Maybe their adventure had helped them understand the new realities of a Valdemar without Herald-Mages. They would have to be part of the solution, as would all of the Bards and Healers and Heralds together.

Three classes of Valdemar, working together. The Power of Three. She could already hear the refrain of a song building in her head.

What Fire Is

 

When I was small, I told my parents about my dreams. I thought they’d be pleased. We worshiped the Sun, after all, saying prayers morning and night to the round stone disk above our hearth. (The merchant’s daughter, Cara, said her family had a gold pendant, but I didn’t believe her; no one had that much gold.)

Yet as I spoke, my father’s face grew hard as the frozen winter fields. “Don’t talk of such things, Tamar. Try to dream happier dreams.”

It was a happy dream,
I thought, but before I could say so, my mother looked at me, and the fear in her eyes turned the memory of bright flames to cold ash.

“Yes,” I told them both. “Yes, I will try.”

 

 

When I was older, I called fire into the waking world.

One gray winter dawn the year I turned nine, I crouched in the loft where I slept, longing for the warmth I’d held in my dreams. My palms grew hot, and a tiny orange flame sprang to life in my cupped hands.

From below my father called me down to milk the goats. The flame disappeared in a wisp of smoke, leaving behind only a small red welt.

This time I told neither of my parents what I’d seen. I told myself they were afraid I’d burn myself. They didn’t understand that I was older now and knew how to be careful.

I didn’t call the flame back again that day. I longed to, though, even when the welt blistered, even when the blister broke and wept.