Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

Artel found Olli sitting by the fire and poking the coals.

“Your sparrow has flown, I take it?” she asked.

He nodded.

Artel looked about the gloomy common room. “Time to get things ready for the evening, eh?”

He replaced the poker in the stand. “I almost had myself convinced she’d stay.”

She smacked his shoulder. “She’s a Bard, you besotted fool! You keep someone like that here, and everything good about her dies. Her first love will always be the road.”

Olli grimaced. “Where I can’t follow.”

Artel rolled her eyes and threw her hands in the air. “Bright Lady, lad, get yourself on top of a woman already, and forget the one that never paid notice to you!”

She stormed out. The innmaster roused not much later, rolling his stiff shoulders. He built up the fire and then went to pulling out tables and benches, placing plates and bowls of honey.

The fire burned merrily all the long night.

Live On

by Tanya Huff

Tanya Huff lives and writes in rural Canada with her partner Fiona Patton and five, no six, no seven ... and a lot of cats as well as an elderly chihuahua who mostly ignores her. The recent adaptation of the five Vicki Nelson books to television (

Blood Ties

) finally allowed her to use her degree in radio and television arts some twenty-five years after the fact. Her twenty-fourth and most recent novel,

Valor’s Trial

, came out from DAW in hardcover in June 2008, and she is currently working on

The Enchantment Emporium

, a stand-alone contemporary fantasy. In her spare time she practices the guitar and tries to avoid some of the trickier versions of a Gm7.

“Are you the young man who wrote that report about Appleby?”

Heralds didn’t tend to grow old. Even in times of peace, they lived lives that lowered the odds of them dying in bed to slightly less than negligible. It seemed that the elderly Herald who’d appeared at Jors’ side was the exception to prove the rule. His shoulders were hunched forward, his eyes were red rimmed and moist, he stood with his weight supported on a polished cane, and above the scarf he wore in spite of the heat of a sunny, late spring day, age had pleated his face into a hundred wrinkles.

“Are you deaf, boy? I said, are you the young man who wrote that report about Appleby! Are you Herald Jors?”

Age had roughened his voice but not lessened his volume.

People were beginning to gather, and Jors could see a trio of Companions heading in across the field to see what all the noise was about. “I am. I’m Jors.”

“Who taught you to write reports? Never mind. You leave too much out. That report about Appleby? All apples.”

“That’s pretty much all there is in Appleby.”

“What? There’s no people? No dogs? No cats? No buildings? No apple trees for pity’s sake?”

“Of course there are and ...”

“Of course there are,” the elderly Herald snorted. “Why didn’t you mention them, then, eh? You mentioned the apples, why not the apple trees?”

Jors smiled and spread his hands. “They didn’t do much.”

The rheumy eyes narrowed. “Don’t get smart with me, boy. I’ve had my Whites longer than your father’s been alive, maybe even your father’s father, and there has been a distinct disintegration, no, dispersing, no, erosion of writing ability over the last few years.” He shook a swollen finger at Jors—or perhaps he merely pointed and it shook on its own, it was hard to tell. “Reports used to say things. Give details. Tell stories. They used to bring Valdemar to life. Now it’s all apples!”

Since he seemed to be waiting for Jors to respond, the younger man ventured a reasonably sincere “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. Do it right the next time. Honestly,” he muttered, turning and making his way toward the stables. “What are they teaching them when they’re in their Grays?”

Jors watched him go, watched him correcting a lateral drift every six steps or so, and wondered if he should have offered his arm.

“I see you’ve met Herald Tamis.”

He turned to see Erica, one of his yearmates, leaning on the fence, one arm stretched out over the top rail so she could scratch up under Raya, her Companion’s mane. “He doesn’t like the way I write reports.”

“As near as I can tell, he doesn’t like the way anyone writes reports.” She put a quaver into her voice. “It’s all business now, I tell you. No stories.” Then her expression changed. “Raya says we shouldn’t mock him.”

“I wasn’t.”

She smacked his shoulder with her free hand. “You would have.”

“Who is he?” Jors asked, climbing up onto the top rail so he could pay a similar attention to his own Companion. Who seemed to be sulking.

:I was not sulking,: Gervis protested, pushing against Jors’ leg almost hard enough to knock him off the fence. :You were ignoring me.:

:I wasn’t.:

:I had an itch.:

Jors rolled his eyes as he pushed a hand up under the silken mane and began to scratch. :Better?:

:Yes.: