Mercedes Lackey - Changing the World - All-New Tales of Valdemar

What was going to take its place, she didn’t know. But the anger had been washed away on the tide of tears.

She reread the letters, knowing that she would do so many more times to come, reread them with a heart open to what was in them. And as she put the last of them back in the box, there was a knock at the door.

It was Callan and Sendar again, this time loaded down with all the shopping she would need for the next week and more. “We thought it was the least we could do,” Sendar said cheerfully. “We’ll be going back to Haven, but we wanted to thank you. We never could have managed without you.”

“You certainly could not have, you highborn babies,” she said, tartly, but with a bit of a smile. “No more notion of what common people are like than the man in the moon. And thank you, thank you very much. But you can do me one more favor. Since that’s your direction.”

“Certainly,” Callan nodded. “We owe you a very great deal, still.”

“Take this message to Lord Poul Haveland in Haven.” She held out the folded paper. “I’ll be taking that commission he wanted me to do after all. And I would be obliged if some of that Companion hair could be sent along in the spring so the creature can be the proper white and not a fraud.”

And if the Herald in that tapestry looked something like her misty memories of her father . . . well. That would not be bad, either.

For Want of a Nail

by Rosemary Edghill and Denise McCune

Rosemary Edghill has been a frequent contributor to the Valdemar anthologies since selling her first novel in 1987, writing everything from Regency romances to science fiction to alternate history to mysteries. Between writing gigs, she’s held the usual selection of weird writer jobs and can truthfully state that she once killed vampires for money. She has collaborated with Marion Zimmer Bradley (

Shadow’s Gate

), Andre Norton (

Carolus Rex

), and Mercedes Lackey (

Bedlam’s Bard

and the forthcoming

Shadow Grail

). In the opinion of her dogs, she spends far too much time on Wikipedia. Her virtual home can be found at

http://www.sff.net/PEOPLE/ELUKI/

(Her last name—despite the efforts of editors, reviewers, publishing houses, her webmaster, and occasionally her own fingers—is not spelled Edgehill.)

Denise McCune has been writing since she was eleven—which was (coincidentally?) right around the time she fell in love with Valdemar. She has worked in the social networking industry for nearly a decade, and not having enough to do writing novels and short stories, she decided to launch Dreamwidth, an open source social networking, content management, and personal publishing platform. Denise lives in Baltimore, Maryland, where her hobbies include knitting, writing, and staying up too late writing code.

Navar was an ordinary man. A soldier, and a good one, rising from common foot soldier in the Baron’s levy to sergeant of his company, but his true gift was to go from here to there unseen; and so Captain Harleth had used his talents for scouting, for the Barony of Valdemar was beset on every side by enemies. Not those that came by day, for all knew that the Eastern Empire was at peace, but those that came by night, for the Iron Throne ruled by fear and blood and dark magic, so that no man might call his soul his own.

In later years, many claimed to have known Baron Kordas Valdemar’s mind, to have plotted with him for their exodus into the unknown West. Navar was not one whose status gave him entry into the councils of the good and the great, but he thought that such words were no more than idle tavern talk, the speech of men who wished to be seen as greater than they were. True enough that Soferu, who wore the Wolf Crown and sat upon the Iron Throne, was but a man. True as well that he was not a man like any other, for lust for power ran as hot as magery in Soferu’s veins, and so the Iron Throne was an iron boot upon men’s necks, and an iron collar about men’s throats, and an iron chain about men’s minds, and only a fool would sow treason farther than he must.

And Baron Valdemar had been no fool.

Only he, and Juuso Beltran, whose line had served Valdemar’s as seneschal since the lands had first come into Valdemar’s hands, and Terilee, Valdemar’s lady, brave and bright as a swordblade, had known all Lord Valdemar’s heart and mind. The three of them had warded their plans with subtle spells (so Navar heard later, and this tale he was moved to credit)—not wards that would draw the attention of the Hellhound Mages of the Imperium, but layer upon layer of subtle shields of misdirection, a deception as artful as a swirl of autumn leaves concealing a doe from the hunter’s bow.

Of the journey to freedom itself, Navar knew as much as any man, for a scout’s skills were as vital as a mage’s when one must make one’s way through lands first hostile, then unknown. They brought with them not merely the household troops that a barony was permitted to arm and muster, but nearly all who dwelt within Valdemar’s bounds—all save for the baron’s eldest son. Lord Dethwyn, fostered as was the custom at Soferu’s court as hostage against his father’s obedience, would have willingly ascended to his father’s honors across his father’s grave were he granted the slightest chance. When Valdemar’s second son Restil came of age, he was meant to join his brother at the Wolf Court. It was not unknown for the sons of inconvenient nobles to perish at court so that their fathers’ lands might return to the emperor’s gift, and it was—perhaps—the thought of losing both his sons as much as anything else that caused the baron to move when he did.

It was the work of a year—hard travel, and sometimes terrifying; through the empire, then (by stealth and misdirection) across the kingdom of Hardorn, and at last into the western lands, which Hardorn did not claim—that brought them to haven. And Haven it was in truth, the city that they built upon the banks of the river that Valdemar named for his lady. Some had died on that journey, but their numbers were greater at the end of it than at the beginning, for the rumor that their fellowship journeyed to a freedom beyond the persecution of the Empire had spread, and those who did not join them in the first days of their exodus followed them in the sennights and moonturns that followed. To all who came seeking asylum, Valdemar—now King Valdemar—granted it, for the work of building a kingdom was the work of many hands.

For Valdemar now ruled a kingdom. The lands Baron Valdemar could now claim as his own were vaster by far than those that he had once ruled at the emperor’s pleasure, and he ruled now at no man’s pleasure save his own. And just as Valdemar’s lands had grown, so had the army grown into a great force of many companies, many captains, many sergeants, and Harleth now styled general over them all.

That growth was the reason Navar was now uneasy.

The days in which Navar had known every man and woman with whom he served were long gone—had been gone since before they had come to rest in their Haven. Thirty years ago, when he had been new come to the baron’s levy, he had known everyone his duties brought him near, both holder and servant alike. He had been able to measure the hearts and minds of all who sought to command him. Any soldier knew that just as there were good orders and sensible orders, there were bad orders and senseless orders, and it was a good soldier’s duty to evaluate each given order to see where it fell. He had seen countless lives saved by a swift-witted sergeant playing sunstruck at precisely the right time, and he had kept his own list (in his mind, never written where agents of the Iron Throne might see, for no one would think to look within the thoughts of a common sergeant, and Navar played the fool better than most when there was need) of those whose orders he himself would “lose” for precisely long enough to ease their disaster.