Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar Read Online Free PDF Page B

Karse’s army and Valdemar’s defenders were merely worrisome news and not terrifying reality, the land softened, spreading itself into rolling hills and lush fields. North of the Jaysong Hills, the farmsteads were built more of wood than stone; the farmstead walls were built to stop wandering chickens and not armed raiders, and shutters were not barred with iron. Here no man or woman slept with a sword beneath the pillow to arm against danger that comes in the night.
    North and east of the Jaysong Hills, near—but not too near—the Hardorn border, where the East Trade Road ran straight and smooth toward Haven, the tents of Summerfair sprouted each Midsummer. From full moon to full moon a city of tents and pavilions appeared in the cup of the Goldendale, a city to which all the north came to sell and to buy.
     
    “Why are we here?” Elade grumbled.
    Despite the fact that the Summerfair Peace hadn’t been broken within living memory—and despite the fact that her sword had been peacebound, as had every other weapon at the fair—her gaze roved over the fairgoers as though any might rise to menace them.
    “Why is anyone anywhere?” Meran answered. His teeth flashed white as he smiled at her, and he hitched his bag higher on his shoulder. Seeing the fair in Elade’s company was a bit like taking a leopard for a walk. The other fairgoers gave them a wide berth, despite the knot of yellow ribbons that bound her sword to its sheath.
    “You look like a—a—a—”
    “Bard?” Meran asked, his eyes round with feigned innocence. “But I am a Bard, sweet Elade.”
    Elade slanted a sideways look at Meran’s crimson tunic. “You don’t have to look like one,” she huffed.
    It was true that no one would take Elade for anything but what she was. Short cloak, high boots, studded leather bracers, and chain mail tunic all proclaimed her identity as a mercenary soldier. Elade had no reason ever to conceal herself . . . unlike the rest of them. In the places they travelled—and with the work they did—it was far better he and the others not travel garbed in Bard’s scarlet or Healer’s green or . . . Not that we could ever get Gaurane into Whites without knocking him unconscious first, Meran thought.
    “Why not?” he asked (it was fun to tease Elade). “It would be very wrong of me to do otherwise. Only think—I might enter all the competitions and carry off every prize.”
    Elade snorted. “You’d have to be better than everyone else to do that, Meran,” she pointed out.
    “Hey, Bard here,” he protested.
    “ Journeyman Bard,” Elade corrected, just as if she could tell the difference between the playing of a Journeyman and a Master. Elade insisted all music was nothing more than cat-squalling.
    “Elade, it’s Summerfair.” Meran dropped the teasing and set out to convince her in earnest. “We have a whole fortnight where nobody’s trying to kill us. You should enjoy yourself. We’ll be back on the Border soon enough.”
    “I like the Border,” Elade said. “You know who your friends are there. And your enemies.”
    Only Elade , Meran thought, could say something like that and mean it, when our work is finding those whose minds had been warped by Karsite demons and working to save them, minds and lives alike . The Touched hid their damage from themselves, and the demons that overshadowed them were clever at concealing themselves. Often, the only clue was in the way people or animals nearby had died. It was a pattern they’d all become adept at following in the moonturns since Gaurane had gathered them together.
    “We need supplies,” Meran said, changing the subject to one less likely to produce an unwinnable argument. “Bowstrings— harp strings—medicines.” The soldiers who held the Border and the holders who farmed it were seldom willing to part with what stocks they had, not even for gold and silver. It would be different if Gaurane were willing to ask—all doors opened to a Herald—but