Read Under the Vale and Other Tales of Valdemar for Free Online

Meran knew better than to raise the topic with him.
    “Gaurane’s out of brandy, you mean,” Elade said, but the gibe was without real malice behind it.
    “Do you really want to listen to him complain about his hangover?”
    The question startled a laugh from Elade. “No. But it doesn’t take two full sennights to pick up a few supplies.”
    “It does not,” Meran agreed. “But if you can think of a better way to get Hedion to rest, I’m sure we’d all like to hear it.”
    “Ah, I see,” Elade said. “It’s a trick.”
    “All the best things in life are,” Meran said. “But not on us, this time. So we might as well enjoy ourselves while we’re here.” He took Elade’s arm and tugged her gently toward the merchants’ street. “And that means you should come and look at the pretty things, instead of trying to terrify some poor horse trader into giving you an honest price on a new pack mule.”
    “We wouldn’t need a new pack mule if the last one hadn’t been eviscerated ,” Elade grumbled, but she came.
    When Meran had been a child singing for coppers on the streets of Haven, he’d dreamed of being able to walk into the shops and purchase anything he chose. His Gift had gained him entrance to the Collegium, and there he’d dreamed of a rich patron,whose fortune he might share. Most Bards entered a noble household upon achieving Journeyman status, for it could be the work of years to produce the song or poem that elevated a Bard from Journeyman to Master. Meran had been as surprised as anyone when he found himself choosing—upon taking the Scarlet—to travel. True, a Bard could hope for a meal and a bed at any inn he stopped at, but it was hardly as certain as it would be for a Herald. Traveling Bards slept rough and cold in a hayrick or outbuilding more often than not, and they paid for their bread and beer like everyone else. Even as he chose that path, Meran castigated himself for a fool. And yet year followed year, and the store of songs he’d made grew, and still he did not turn his steps back toward Haven.
    He’d never realized what he was looking for until the shaggy man in the tattered, threadbare clothes came to the inn where he was singing and told him there was a patient who needed his attention.
    “Beg pardon, my good fellow,” Meran said. “But as you see, I am not the one you seek. I wear the Scarlet, not the Green.”
    The shaggy man gave a sharp bark of laughter. “We already have a Healer,” he answered. “That’s why we need you.”
    He’d been curious, so he followed. He played the Healer to sleep that night and the next, and he played to soothe the Healer’s patient on the third. And as the days passed, Meran had come to realize this was what he’d been seeking, all unknowing, all along. It was unheard of, of course. Bards sang of great deeds; they didn’t do them. And the street urchin he’d been would have mocked the idea that his heart’s desire was to serve anything but himself—or even his Gift, once it woke.
    Were he making a song of this, it would be Healer Hedion who held them all together and gave them their purpose. But in fact it was Gaurane who was their leader—Gaurane who would not be called “Herald Gaurane,” whom Meran had never seen entirely sober, who refused to acknowledge the Companion who followed him everywhere like an exceptionally large and very white dog. Gaurane’s story would make such a song as would be any Bard’s Master work.
    Except Meran didn’t know the tale and had never asked. Elade, who had joined them a moonturn later, had asked (Elade had a knack for asking inconvenient questions, which had gotten her turned out of her Free Company), but if she’d received an answer, Meran didn’t know it. How Gaurane and Hedion had met, why Gaurane could not Hear his own Companion, why Rhoses was content to follow his Chosen along the Border rather than seeking help for him, why, if there was Healing to be done, Hedion didn’t do