Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

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Mercedes Lackey is a full-time writer and has published numerous novels, including the best- selling Heralds of Valdemar series. She is also a professional lyricist and licensed wild bird rehabilitator.

Marya was doing her shopping when the Heralds rode into the village, and the flash of white and sudden turning of heads in the corner of her vision made her stomach twist into an angry knot, her jaw tighten, and her fists clench. She knew what it was. Only one thing could be that white in the middle of a village in the middle of a rainy spring.

“Done,” she said, cutting off her bargaining abruptly and leaving Druk Pelan, the egg seller, open-mouthed in astonishment. She shoved the coppers at him, took up her basket and the eggs, and strode quickly back toward her house at the east edge of the village without getting any of the other things she’d meant to buy.

The house, inherited from her mother, which had been her parents’ before her, was really more of a cottage. They hadn’t needed much space: the loft bed for her, the bedroom her mother had slept in once she inherited the place until the day she died, and one big room that served as kitchen and work space and held her baskets of yarn and the big loom. So far as Marya knew, the cottage had been built around the loom; she couldn’t imagine how some of the big beams had been brought in otherwise. The windows were all positioned to give the person sitting at the loom the best possible light, all day. The kitchen was almost more of an afterthought; more often than not, Marya, her mother, and her grandparents had eaten food cooked at the baker’s or cold meats, raw vegetables, bread and cheese. Well she would have to make do with what she had, now.

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