Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

The colddrake bent forward and clamped its jaws around her arm.

No! Lelia thought, jerking forward as Herda screamed. The monster wrenched its head back, ripping her arm from the socket, the clay egg-flute going with it. The colddrake turned its gaze back toward Olli, Herda’s arm slowly disappearing down its gullet as it advanced on the helpless innmaster.

What can I do? What can I do? Panic and fear made Lelia’s stomach churn. The colddrake stood between her and the flute. She looked for weapons, but saw none. There was nothing—

Oh.

Lelia took a deep breath and threw the door wide.

“Hey!” she yelled, bursting into the yard. “Over here, you bastard!”

The colddrake’s head turning toward her, its tongue tasting the air. She kept her eyes fixed above the beast, and yet even so she felt a wave of something pound against her, compelling her to look.

Instead, Lelia sang.

Her Gift reached out as she sang the same five notes, over and over. The colddrake stopped advancing even as Olli staggered forward and Herda made mewling noises on the floor of the stable, crawling through the blood toward her pet.

The colddrake lowered, bowing to Lelia’s song. The amethyst eyes closed as the monster settled its head on the snow as if it were a pillow.

Olli raised the wood-ax. The beast never made a sound, but Herda keened like a wounded beast.

“When we set out from the inn, I remember telling him he was silly for bringing that ax along,” Lelia mused.

“Sometimes silly is good.”

“Don’t I know it.” She finished off her ale. “We staunched Herda’s bleeding and carried her back to Langenfield. Kerithwyn and Artel took her from there.” Lelia frowned down at the page, setting her quill aside. “Herda will always hate me.”

“Good time to leave town.”

“She’s not a bad person.”

“She was raising a colddrake.”

“She thought she could make it good.” Lelia shook her head. “She loved it, even when she realized that she loved something that could never be. She wanted to believe she could make it work.” Her throat knotted up, her vision blurring.

The Herald’s voice softened. “Do you still refer to Herda?”

Lelia sat in silence, and then smiled. “Oh, that’s a pretty sentiment, isn’t it?” She looked square into the face of her pain. “But that’s what I want to hear.” Her throat tightened. “You’ll never say that, Wil.”

She spoke it because it was true.

And because he wasn’t really there.

“The world hates a heartbroken Bard,” she said, the same thing the Ashkevron Bard had told her when he advised her to go south, go north, go anywhere that would take her away from what she couldn’t have.

“You can’t vie with a Herald’s first love,” he’d said. “The Kingdom needs him. You can’t compete with that.”

“Kingdom’s got far more acreage than me,” Lelia had replied miserably. It was meant to be a joke. It didn’t feel like it.

The comfort of a stranger’s ear had been too tempting, and she’d spent so many months of her journeyman days doggedly trying to cross paths with Herald Wil. She’d ended up telling the Ashkevron Bard all about her little obsession with her brother’s instructor. On Companion-back he and Lyle always outpaced her, but the Heralds often were mired in the local politics, giving her time to be at the next village when they got there.

The elder Bard had shaken his head. “You need to find a song. Find something.” He had patted her arm gently. “It’ll kill you at first, but you’ll be better for it.”

Lelia thought, I found my song, and it nearly did kill me. Or Herda, at least. I’ve found something else, though. Between a Bard with a broken heart and a girl who tamed a colddrake, I know which one folk want to hear about.

She took a deep breath and seized the quill again. “So, Wil, what would you ask?”

The Herald who was not really there replied without hesitation. “How’d a colddrake get this far south?”

Lelia nodded, filling the last page of the report. “Aa-and—was it just this colddrake, or can Herda’s trick be reproduced? Is anyone mad enough to try?”

The front door of the inn opened, and Olli walked in with an armful of wood. “Talking to someone?” he asked.

Lelia looked up at him and smiled. “Just me.” She plucked a page out of the collection and tossed it in the fire. “Making sure I answer the right questions. It’s a little game I play.”

“You talk to yourself?”

“All the time. Here.” She rolled up the notes and handed them to the innmaster. “Give this to whatever Herald shows up. Tell ’em that it’s an official Bardic record of the events. I signed it and everything.”

“Great.” Olli took the scroll, and then watched as she hoisted her pack. “I—we’ll miss you.”

“I know.” She hugged him tightly. “I am forever in your debt, Drakeslayer.”

He blushed. “Take care, m’lady Bard.”

“Will do, innmaster.” She winked and strolled out, heading north.