Page 13 of Valdemar

As he had many times before, Kordas felt very sorry for a creature who could not enjoy cheese. Then again, the Tayledras didn’t actually have herds of milking beasts, so they didn’t have access to cheese. Maybe that’s why they still visit us so often. Certainly they had been eager enough to set up light trade in the foodstuff, a bit of magical help in return for a wheel or two.

As if echoing his thoughts, Jelavan spoke up, because Silvermoon’s mouth was full. “I came along because I brought Sai some seeds to save until you have greenhouses,” the little lizard said. “They’re herbs and spices that won’t survive a winter without protection. You enjoyed some of them before the Veil came down.”

Kordas nodded appreciatively. “We did indeed enjoy those, and I for one miss them. Once we have glassmakers able to make new panes, we’ll certainly have greenhouses, especially here at the manor. That has always been the plan. There are a lot of herbs used in Healing that take better to sheltered conditions, or work better when fresh.”

He turned to Silvermoon, who had set his plate aside. “So what brings you here? And why so quietly? There was no fanfare, no page running to announce you, and no procession to the manor! I thought you lived to be admired.”

Although the visits by the Tayledras had grown fewer over the years, every time they appeared in public, they were greeted as heroes. No one forgot that they had brought the Valdemarans here and given them a Vale that had protection, a controlled climate, gardens, the iron mine and smelter, and places for them to live. No one forgot all the help they had been in succeeding years. Whether it was advice or direct help, if it had not been for the Hawkbrothers, the population would be half of what had arrived here by now, if not less—rather than increasing, as people became comfortable with the idea of having children here.

“Well,” said Silvermoon. “While it’s true I enjoy your company, I did come here for another reason.”

“Do tell,” Kordas said, leaning forward.

Silvermoon, for his part, leaned back in his chair, satisfied that he had caught Kordas’s attention. “We discovered after we had set up our new Vale that there was a cluster of small villages inside the area we intended to cleanse. These are tiny villages, no more than a dozen families at most, so most people don’t have secondary names, just ‘son of’ or ‘daughter of.’ This isn’t unheard of, but it did complicate matters a little. Among other things, this time the inhabitants were in a zone of chaotic magic; a couple of them, mage-Gifted, of course, had learned to use it after a fashion. Others found themselves used by the magic. So our work had to include that reality. The ones who styled themselves ‘mages’ didn’t much care for us coming in and making things orderly, for instance. They’d cemented power by being unpredictable—and no one wants to oppose somebody that anything could happen around. That, we handled by persuasion.” He left that for a moment longer than he had to, implying that something more than asking was involved. “Corralling the chaos we could handle for ourselves, obviously, as it’s largely what we do. But we have a . . .” Here he rubbed his temple, as if his head hurt. “. . . a situation we don’t have experience with, and meeting your people, shall we say . . . broadened our minds concerning solutions.”

Kordas couldn’t see where this was going, but that was Silvermoon’s way; he never gave a straightforward fact when a roundabout story would do instead. So his reason for being here has something to do with those people. Hang onto that fact, or I’ll probably lose it in the story. “Go on,” he encouraged.

“There are two villages in this story, far enough apart they don’t interact often, but close enough it’s an easy walk of about half a day to get from one to the other. Both of them are in the path of what I would call ‘mage-energy squalls.’ In the first village, there was a widowed woman with a daughter, Lythe, who had become a handful once she reached the age of rebellion. Had a habit of sleeping most of the day, would run off as soon as she woke up to idle her time away with her friends, rather than helping her mother in any way, and would return late at night and wake her mother out of a sound sleep to demand the poor woman cook her a meal. This was a fairly recent development in Lythe’s behavior, and it left her mother doing all the work for the two of them.”

“Let me guess, she’s about sixteen or seventeen, and too pretty for her own good,” Isla put in sourly. “We’ve had that situation here, though it’s more often among the highborn, and I am usually the one called on to deal with it officially if it comes to that.”

“Quite correct, oh lovely Lady Terilee,” Silvermoon nodded, using the name that the Tayledras had picked for her. “To be sure, she’s more flighty, impulsive, and selfish, as adolescents often are, than malicious, and not at all mean-spirited. But that didn’t help her mother, who was left to do the chores and work to support two people, with only one person actually working. Her mother decided to teach her a lesson by not making any meals for her if she was not there, leaving nothing that could be eaten immediately except raw vegetables, not cleaning up after her, not mending what was torn or broken, or doing any of the things the girl should have been doing herself. So she came home on the night in question, almost at dawn, and pouted and had a tantrum because there was nothing to eat and her favorite chemise was stained and had not been washed. Her mother told Lythe that she had warned her this was going to happen. Lythe snapped back with something along the lines of you have to take care of me, I didn’t ask to be born! And her mother completely lost her temper. That is where things got complicated.”

Kordas quickly tracked back and picked out bits from the story so far. Woman suffering from righteous rage, emotionally wrought up to the breaking point, and “mage-energy squalls” . . .

“Oh, no,” he and Isla said at the same time.

Silvermoon nodded, pleased they had already guessed what had happened. “The poor woman doesn’t remember her exact words, but it was something to the effect of, if Lythe was going to lie about all day and play all night, then she ought to never wake up by day, miss all the things she liked to do with her friends, and see how she liked it then. Presumably, this was in the middle of one of those mage-squalls.”

“A mother whose temper has been tried past all reason is certainly going to have a lot of will behind her words,” Isla said grimly. “Enough to turn her anger into a curse. I will admit that there has been a time or two when I have had to stop myself from saying things to the boys, because I am a mage, and I know the power of words with will and energy behind them.”

“Exactly. And since both of them by that time were in a screaming fight, neither of them realized that anything had happened until the first sliver of the sun peeped over the horizon, and Lythe dropped to the floor, unconscious.”

From the look on Isla’s face, Kordas had the feeling that his wife felt the girl had gotten off with a great deal less of a “punishment” than she deserved, but he held his peace. Silvermoon had mentioned two villages, so it followed they had not even begun to hear the whole of the story.

“Well, now, this had a couple of repercussions, the most important to Lythe being that once everyone in the village realized she had brought a curse on herself, no one wanted to associate with her, not even her former friends. So there she was, insensible during the day, and all alone and bored at night, with even her friends shunning her. Suddenly it wasn’t so much fun to stay up all night, and she and her mother came to us for help.” Silvermoon massaged his temple again. “Now, ordinarily, we’d only get involved enough to see if we could break the ‘spell,’ and if not, tell her, ‘Sorry, but you brought this on yourself,’ and go back to the Vale. This isn’t the worst fate in the world. She could even have turned this into an asset, by taking on the job of night watchperson for the entire village, which would have enabled her to contribute to the household. But then there was the second village and a second arrogant adolescent, and an entirely different, yet similar, ‘curse.’”

Well, this just gets better. But I wonder what he thinks we can do about it?

“Rothas is just as handsome as Lythe is pretty, but more than that, he’s got Bardic Gifts, extremely strong, though he uses them only crudely at the moment. But because of that, he’s extremely popular with all the villages, called on all the time for entertainment, very much the subject of praise and flattery, and actually makes his bread with his talents. To be sure, he was good enough we even invited him to our Vale now and again; he plays several basic instruments, and he’s a wonderful singer and a fabulous storyteller. And, of course, with Bardic Projective Empathy, he can and does lead you around by the nose during his entertainment. He was between villages, coming from one celebration where he was entertaining and going to another, a wedding, which was the better venue of the two and where he expected to be compensated generously, when he encountered an old woman he’d never seen before, taking up the whole of a narrow path with her donkey and cart. It was brambles on either side and he couldn’t get by and he was going to be very late.”

“Oh, no. . . . ” said Isla.

“Oh, yes. Demanded she get out of the way, railed at her, and called her a number of offensive names. Made up a chant about how useless and ugly she was on the spot, if you please.”

“And of course it turns out she’s a hedge-wizard,” said Isla.

“Of course she is. Or at least, she’s someone who’s perfectly capable of using magic. We haven’t found her, by the way, which . . . makes me suspicious she might be more than just a hedge-wizard. And she probably already knew about Lythe, because she cursed Rothas with the opposite effect—just as the squall struck, giving her plenty of power, and also altering whatever she had intended to do in unexpected ways. ‘Since you favor the night so much, I say the night shall be taken from you. From the time the last light has left the sky to the time the first light enters it, you shall . . .’ and so on. And so he dropped down right there in his tracks like a stone, and didn’t wake up until false dawn.” Now Silvermoon rubbed his other temple. “As I said, we have not found her, and some among us suspect she’s not a human at all, but rather a godling of trickery or something of the sort. It wouldn’t surprise me.” He sucked on his lower lip. “It’s certainly exactly the kind of mischief such a being would do.”

“I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the way you say things like that so calmly. So you have two brats under similar curses that I assume none of you have been able to break. But no one’s being hurt or inconvenienced except them, and they brought it all on themselves. Seems to be appropriate punishment to me. So why—” Isla wasn’t as used to Silvermoon’s long stories as Kordas was. Kordas knew that Silvermoon was just getting started.

“Because these two cursed youngsters somehow managed to stumble across each other at twilight. And—” Silvermoon made a little gesture suggestive of being struck over the head. “Lifebonded.”

Isla looked at him, stunned. “. . . oh, no.” Kordas simply facepalmed and sighed.

“Oh, yes. And remember that I said Rothas has Bardic Gifts? He’s perfectly capable of including everyone within earshot in his misery. He doesn’t even have to sing or speak; powerful Projective Empathy, and he doesn’t yet understand how to control it. Or why. And so, because he really does not know how to properly use his Gifts, he does, indeed, make everyone as wildly inconsolable as he is. Within a day, he had people at his home village weeping uncontrollably at the least little provocation—until they figured out he was the source. Moving to Lythe’s village made things worse. Both villages want no part of these two. And given their ages and immaturity, turning them loose is not a good idea. We took them in and did our best, but because—”

Here Kordas interrupted him, holding up his hand. “To be sure, you have curses cast by one woman who doesn’t know what she is doing, and another who may or may not, and all of it tangled up with chaotic power—it would take time and genius to figure out if the curses can be broken.”