Lore Drop ~ New Misty Interview #1

Mercedes Lackey Interview — The Heralds of Valdemar Deluxe Edition

Conducted by Ben Dobyns, April 24, 2026. Lightly edited for readability.

Ben: So, the the goal is to do these little monthly interviews as website content and this is the first one. And I thought it might be fun to begin with kind of a deep dive into the Heralds of Valdemar trilogy. 

Ben:  I want to start with the early chapters and Talia and the Holderkin, because there are so many questions where who knows if answers exist. We have questions like: was Keldar always First Wife, or, like Vrisa, did she survive her way to the top?

Misty: I have no clue. Seriously — that was just initial background to get Talia into the story, and I didn't think anything about it once I got that established. Plus, you have to remember: when I did those first three books, I didn't know how to outline. So this was writing seat-of-the-pants. Whatever came got put in there.

Ben: That ties into a lot of questions that have come up about plotting. Over and over we have people asking, "Oh, did you know who this person would become? Did you know what would happen to them later when you named them?"

Misty: No. It was all seat-of-the-pants writing back then.

Ben: So when we have this famous flashback — the section that Talia is reading about Vanyel — did you have any idea at that time who he was?

Misty: The only reason that is in there is because when I turned the books in to Betsy Wollheim [ed: Misty's editor at DAW], she said, "Well, it's fantasy. There has to be magic." And I said, "There is no magic. There is psionics, but there is no magic." "Well, it has to have magic." So I thought, "Oh, f*** it. I'll just throw this scene in that she's reading about." And there it goes.

Ben: So when there's this vision in the forest —let me read it: "Talia found herself searching the shadows under the trees until her eyes ached, looking for some sign, and found nothing. But something was out there. Something inhuman, almost elemental." People have connected that to Van, Stef, and Yfandes in the forest, which comes up later in Winds of Fury. So the question was, did you plan all this stuff for Winds of Fury when you were writing Arrows?

Misty: No. This is actually kind of the same thing we did when we did The Secret World Chronicles, which is that we'd go back when we were working on a later book and go, "Hey, we have this in there. Let's make it look like we planned it from the beginning and we'll look like geniuses."

Ben:We've done more than a little bit of that with the Gamers series too, setting things up where we have no idea what we'll do with it, but there's the hook, and then it looks like it's been planned for forty years. So I love that.

While we're on Vanyel and these other pieces — there's this quote: "They had magic then — real magic, and not our mind-magic." There's psionics. "The Truth Spell is just about all we have left of that." Then there's this quote: "Vanyel's curse is as strong in Sorrows as the day he cast it with his dying breath." It brought up some questions about — with where you are now, what do you think modern Valdemar does know about Vanyel's curse? How, with the context of forty years, do you think contemporary Valdemar would view the curse?

Misty: Oh, contemporary Valdemar — as far as they're concerned, it got blown away when the Mage Storms came through.

Ben: So it's gone.

Misty: It's gone.

Ben: And from a historical perspective, do they care about the details, or what they know about it, or do they view it as: this is in the past, doesn't really matter?

Misty: They're struggling to handle what's going on right now. We've got magic back, plus magic kind of got diffused and blown out of the water, and oh my god, there are Hawkbrothers living in the capital. They've got other things on their minds than to worry about that.

Ben: [Based on your answer about Vrisa] I'm going to skip a massive number of questions about the Holderkin, and we can leave that to the fanfiction writers.

Misty: Okay, yeah — just go crazy. They're kind of a combination of Mormons, mostly. The whole Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Mormons.

Ben: Oh, interesting — because one of the questions I was going to ask was how much the rise of the Christian Right in the '80s — the Pat Robertsons, the Jerry Falwells —

Misty: Oh, it was the whole Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and Mormons.

Ben: Okay. So that was absolutely intentional then.

Misty: Yeah.

Ben: I'm going to jump to a broader thematic question that I think was really interesting on a reread. The book starts off with Talia and the Holderkin and this theme of stolen childhood, and then the book ends explicitly with this quote from Selenay: "We've stolen her childhood, Kyril. We've made her a woman in a child's body." And Kyril responds, "We steal all their childhoods, Lady. It comes with being Chosen. There isn't a one of us who's had the opportunity to truly be a child."

I'm curious how you see that theme throughout the book, and what kind of contrast you see between the Holderkin approach to stealing people's childhoods and then how that fits into what the Heralds are doing, and their perspective on it.

Misty: Oh, well, with the Holderkin it's pretty much involuntary. You're stuck with that. That's how it is. There's no compensation. But with the Heralds, I mean, you get a best friend forever. So there is a certain amount of compensation for getting your childhood stolen. And it isn't always children. We've had adults Chosen. So it isn't always children — it often is, but it isn't always.

Ben: Let's connect that to the question of lifebonding, and where and how the world has kind of reacted to this concept — whether Valdemar has moved on from that. What is your take on lifebonding as it's evolved from the first Arrows book?

Misty: It was always meant to be rare. And while it seems very romantic and all this other good garbage, it comes with — not just baggage, but if you will recall Joe Versus the Volcano, it comes with the baggage. Four steamer trunks. When you're fourteen, it's really romantic and it's something that you really, really want. When you're seventy-five, you go, "Oh, Jesus f****** Christ, what did I do?"

Ben: When you look at the characters, there are a number of questions about representation in this book — about, especially with it being in the '80s, ways it was ahead of its time. When it comes to the character of Kris, it sounds like there are definitely fans out there who view him as written as asexual. And I'm curious how much that was intentional, or how much that's people kind of pulling their own perspective out of the book.

Misty: That's people reading into it what they want to read into it, which is fine. I've got an explicit asexual character in — oh god, the trilogy with Mags's kids. His daughter is Ace. His daughter is explicitly and intentionally Ace. But in Kris's case, it's people reading what they want to read into it. And that's fine. That's fine. I don't have any argument with that if that's how they want to read it.

Ben: Right. Well, and I think that's one of the powerful things about books — that we have the ability and the freedom to —

Misty: You want to see what you want to see, you go right ahead.

Ben: So there's this quote: "Only the Circle knows about Ylsa and me." There's a lot of "special friends." And Keren replies, "I've never figured on that, old rocks that they are." Just kind of wondering what kind of intentionality there was around portraying that relationship.

Misty: Oh. Oh, they were lesbian. Absolutely lesbian. And the "special friends" thing — I'm referring to what used to be called a Boston marriage. A Boston marriage is two lesbians moving in together. Apparently it was supposed to be very prevalent in Boston — from everybody outside of Boston. But that was a way to refer to a couple of lesbians moving in together back in the — oh god, it goes all the way back to the '30s, I think, maybe even earlier, as a Boston marriage.

Ben: Wow. So this lesbian representation and queer representation — it clearly has been part of these books since the very, very beginning. Did you get any pushback at the time when Arrows of the Queen came out? Or was it that people missed it?

Misty: No, not really. Not really. I didn't get any pushback at all that I know of — but again, there was no internet back then. And as I have said before, there's been queer representation in science fiction and fantasy books for a very long time. Going back to at least the '30s, if not further. So it was one of those things where, back then, you had people recognize: if you don't like the book, do not read it — as opposed to "I don't like the book, nobody can read it." I mean, there was book-banning, but honestly, science fiction and fantasy itself was such a niche culture that the fundies generally didn't even go there. That was not a part of the bookstore where they went.

Ben: I think we see the same thing in children's literature and in YA fiction. There's so much that happens there that the fundies never ever notice because they wouldn't think to read it. And that's where so much of the subversive, amazing work is happening.

I want to switch gears and talk about systems. how many Sectors are there? Are they evenly distributed? How big are they? For the Heralds' patrol Sectors.

Misty: They're fluid. Basically, we send you out to a circuit that is centered on what passes for a major population node, and then you keep your ear to the ground and in general travel it in a spiral. But if you get wind of something that needs going to, you go to it off-circuit.

Ben: It feels like the Vixen stories do a pretty good job of showing, "Oh hey, you might get drawn here, you might get drawn there." It's not like you must be at waypoint X on Y date.

Misty: Yeah, exactly. Because you're talking about a medieval — it isn't really early Tudor, but it's close — society, and you can't set a date for when you're going to be someplace because you have no idea what is going to delay or speed you up on the way. You may get wind of, "Oh, the Herald is down one village away. He's going to get here, and once he settles things there, it'll take him about two days to get here." So they can expect a Herald within a week or two. They're watching for him, but they're not necessarily going, "Oh, on June 28th, he's going to be here."

Ben: So would it be safe to say that the only difference between an internship circuit and a regular circuit is that there's a mentor along — as opposed to here's the special extra or different path.

Misty: Yeah, mostly that's it. In general, they send mentors and trainees out on something that is going to give them a lot of practice in the day-to-day stuff, but not necessarily going to have them handling an emergency. Of course, emergencies can come up.

Ben: As we see with them getting stuck at a Waystation during a storm. 

Misty: Yeah.

Ben: Let’s talk about Waystations. Do you have a sense of how long that whole system has been set up? And there are questions about like, did it grow out of building guard stations when they realized it would be a good way to keep down accusations of favoritism with the Heralds?

Misty: Yeah, it probably started expanding just before Vanyel's time. And it wasn't so much a problem when you had nodes of population and then a lot of farms out in the outskirts. But once you started having nodes of population and then outlying villages and then outlying hamlets — then you can start getting into, all right, where is the Herald going to sleep?

If you look at the Vanyel and Vixen stuff, when they're in Kettleford where they run into the spider —

Ben: Spiderlings. Yeah.

Misty: There's no Waystation. It hasn't been built. And it's only by virtue of the fact that Kettleford is small enough that people mostly get along that there's no real accusations of favoritism. But you know how these things go. You have your little population and everybody pretty much manages to get along with each other with a certain amount of friction, but if there's no major feuds, there's no big disputes.

And then you get into a bigger situation. It's analogous to Lark Rise to Candleford, the British BBC Edwardian series. There's Lark Rise, which is tiny, and people mostly get along and there's not going to be a lot of favoritism. But you move over one to Candleford, and — oh, the seething feuds within the village.

Ben: Right.

Misty: So once you get into that situation, you need a Waystation so that the Herald doesn't get accused of favoritism. He can't put up at the inn, because then they'd be accusing him of favoritism to the people in the inn who are running the inn. Then when you get into a big town, you don't need a Waystation. There are lots of inns. You can even move from inn to inn if you really want. Not a lot of people know each other outside of the neighborhoods. And while there may be seething feuds within the neighborhood, once you get across to a different neighborhood, there probably isn't.

Ben: So based on that, we'd probably see a fair amount of regional variation in how these Waystations are built, then. Like, we know that the one in Sorrows has a double door for keeping out the cold.

Misty: Yep. It's whatever is necessary for that area.

Ben: So someone's asking, "Are there others that are different from the standard?"

Misty: There is no standard. It's a very nice small one-room cottage. And the thing is, you need to keep the building regional. Because if you said, "Well, all Waystations will have a tile roof" — well, maybe nobody knows how to make roof tiles there. "All of the Waystations must be made out of stone" — well, maybe they don't have readily available stone. It's expensive to quarry, but they have lots of wood.

Ben: Or maybe you don't want a flat roof in an area that gets a lot of snow.

Misty: Yeah.

Ben: I want to divert briefly into your upcoming Vanyel and Vixen novel, because we've mentioned them a couple of times. A common comment that I'm seeing from people who know the books but are not obsessed with the books is, "Who the hell is Vixen? Why is Van with Vixen? What's going on?" Those of us who have read the Vixen stories know exactly what's going on and get that hook. I'm curious if you could give the people who don't know a little bit of background on why they should care about Vanyel and Vixen, and who Vixen is.

Misty: Okay. So basically, Vixen is a Healer who goes on circuit much like Heralds do. There are Healers that do that. And she shared a circuit with Vanyel at a point where Vanyel got injured. So she and he sort of hit it off. And this point is just at the end of Queen Elspeth the Peacemaker's reign. So we haven't yet gotten into the point where Karse is a major concern on the border. It's a concern, but they're not engaging in outright warfare down there. Things are relatively calm. Van is relatively young. And that seemed like a good place to elaborate on when I decided to do a standalone book.

Ben: I remember when we were in the early stages of developing the World of Valdemar campaign, I brought up the Arrow-code, and you said something like, "The who what now?" Because it had been so long since you wrote it. Now we have some questions about the Arrow-code, and maybe there are answers and maybe there aren't. People wondering: when was it developed? How was it typically used? Has it evolved over time? Do we share personal Arrow-codes with one's closest Heralds?

Misty: There is a standard Arrow-code. It was developed over time. It started — oh god, someplace between the Founding of Valdemar. And it probably came into standard codification about when it needed to be codified, which is — Valdemar had gotten big enough that you couldn't use mindspeaking across the distances, unless you were exceptionally talented or your Companion was exceptionally talented. And you needed to do secret messages, short ones.

It's about the same way, and in the same general development period that people started using messenger pigeons. Same thing. Short message, urgent message generally, and because the distances were too far to effectively communicate in a hurry. It's essentially the same as the signal towers. And about the same reason, and about the same — the only difference is the signal towers, if you know the signal code you can read it, whereas the Arrow-code you generally can't.

Ben: We've just gone through this process of working with Athena and Care and you, and Larry, to develop the actual Arrow-code, inspired by Ogham, inspired by some other pieces. Does having formalized it into a system that people could use in real life — does it change how you look at it? Does it feel like we've arrived at what you'd envisioned?

Misty: It's pretty much what I'd envisioned.

Ben: We'll be releasing that Arrow-code formally as part of the upcoming campaign for deluxe Heralds, which should be pretty fun. Is it standard practice for Heralds to be stationed at the Healing Temples?

Misty: I would say yes. They are generally Heralds who have quote-unquote "retired." So they don't have to go out riding. Their Companions, who are getting just as old and creaky as they are, don't have to go on long circuits. And they normally only do the business of the Guard and the Temple or the House of Healing. They don't much get involved in local politics unless they have to. And if they have to, they use their mommy voice. "Shut up. Shut up. Sit down and listen." "And stop pulling his hair."

Ben: Which I'm guessing happens more than we'd want to realize, even if it's not Talia going after Elspeth with a hairbrush. So it sounds like there are several paths for how Heralds can kind of be pensioned out or retired, as it were. Like, we have Tedric at the Waystation supply post. So is there any kind of formal process for Heralds to be pensioned out, or retirement options? Or is it some people go to Waystation supply, some people go to Healing Temples? What do people do, or do they just die?

Misty: A lot of them just die before that ever happens. I mean, you know, there's not a lot of pension plans over there. It really depends on how peaceful your era is and just what you're having to deal with. You can go to a House of Healing, you can go to a Temple, you can go to a Guard resupply. You can also opt to go home to your home town, village, or city. People usually don't. The reason for that is because you're never a hero to your hometown. So any authority they tried to exert would be second-guessed by the locals. I would say if a Herald happened to come from a tiny village like Kettleford, they'd probably go home to Kettleford if they had the option. But that's because people get along in Kettleford.

Ben: Which might not be the case in some other places.

Misty: No, exactly.

Ben: Less hair-pulling in Kettleford. All right, let's move on. There are a few questions about Gifts and abilities. What exactly is Mind-healing? It seems to exist in a category of its own. While it would make sense if it's a subset of Healing, we've also seen two Monarch's Owns with the Gift.

Misty: It's a subset of Healing, usually. There are such things as Heralds with a Healing Gift, to a greater or lesser extent. The problem with that is, of course, that — you know, are you going to be a surgeon, or are you going to be a folk musician? Pick one, because you can't be both. Or — let's, I'll say, a classical musician. Pick one. You can't be both. There's a limited amount of time and a limited amount of energy that you can devote. So not everybody can do the Albert Schweitzer thing, where he got to be a classical musician for the first forty years of his life, and then he got to be a doctor in the Congo for the last forty years of his life.

So Mind-healing is basically a combination of very intensive psychotherapy and actual rewiring of your brain. The thing with a lot of psychological problems is that you've got your brain wired a certain way, either because of trauma, or chemical imbalances, or you were born that way. Depending on the cause — if you were born that way, a mind healer may or may not be able to fix you. But there is a certain amount of the ability to help you rewire your brain to make it more functional.

Ben: There's a lot of trauma in this book and a lot of characters who are processing or not processing their trauma in various ways. I'm curious about the connection between — for example, you have Talia's suddenly awakened empathy, and the quote, "The blow to your head woke your Gift early, or overwhelming fear did. It happens sometimes." I'm curious about the relationship between trauma and the emergence of Gifts within the world of Valdemar.

Misty: Most Gifts emerge gradually around adolescence, and not traumatically. But sometimes it happens that trauma awakens this stuff. I mean, look at Vanyel. Everything under the sun, because he got blown wide open.

Ben: That certainly seems like a theme that we kind of return to at different points in the series. How much of that was intentional planning and plotting, and how much of that do you feel emerged as you were writing?

Misty: Most of it was intentional. It's compensation for having had the trauma.

Ben: Like, you've had the trauma, therefore you get —

Misty: You've had the trauma, so you get to go to Disneyland.

Ben: There are certainly elements within these books that speak very much to this kind of fantasy wish-fulfillment — like the magical relationship with the magical Companion. You were talking earlier about the fourteen-year-old desire for this strong life-bond and so forth. Do you feel like this kind of fits into that same place, or is there a different thing going on thematically?

Misty: There's always a certain amount of wish-fulfillment in fantasy. That's the very definition of fantasy. You can't have a fantasy without wish-fulfillment. It's either you're the Chosen one, or it's the call to adventure, or it's all these things that allow you — the character — to do things that the reader can't, in many ways, do or be. So there's always going to be that. That's one reason why it's fantasy.

And that was intentional. It was plotted. And I was also leavening that wish-fulfillment with "with great power comes great responsibility." So it's a two-edged sword. Yes, you get the neat stuff, but you're going to have to pay for it.

Ben: Right. So if Talia had had web-shooters, the history of Valdemar would have been very different, and the spiderlings would have had a much larger role.

Misty: Probably.

Ben: Jumping back to Gifts and abilities — we have the almost-Gifted, and we have the strong Gifts that weren't Chosen. I'd imagine a decent percentage of the population isn't really Gifted, but still have abilities like oddly specific weather prediction. So folks like that — how common is it? And what happens with people with strong Gifts who aren't Chosen?

Misty: Well, someone with a strong Gift who isn't Chosen is going to go two ways, just because of the nature of the Gift being strong. They're either going to be a helper or a villain. They're either going to use it for the good of others — not to the extent that a Herald does, but definitely. They're not going to set up in the marketplace as a fortune-teller if they've got Foresight. They're probably going to end up in a temple, which is where most of the Foreseers that are not Heralds end up. They're not going to be setting up in the marketplace with three-card monte if they've got psychokinesis. They may use it to help out neighbors. "My necklace fell down the well, and it was a gift from my dead fiancé." "Oh yeah, I can get that out." That kind of thing.

Or they're going to be a villain, and they're going to use it for evil. They're going to use it selfishly — in which case they will be setting up in the village square doing three-card monte.

Ben: We have a couple of examples from the book. You know, there's the interlude with the weather witch, where Tedric says, "This is like the old tales of witchcraft and curse-lifting. What kind of strange magic did you work back there?" And then we also have this piece where we have this person quoting, "They come to me every night now. Soon now, they'll teach me how to change my skin for one of theirs, and when I learn, when I learn…" So would you view these kinds of examples as fitting into that, or are we kind of getting more into folklore and superstition? Or is there not a difference?

Misty: The answer to that is yes. There are six of one, a half dozen of the other.

Ben: Yeah. So it's definitely — if we have people out there with different kinds of undiagnosed Gift manifestations, any of these sorts of folklore-superstition elements are possible.

Misty: Yeah.

Ben: Which I love, because it's one of those things that makes the world feel bigger and stranger — and like there are more hidden corners within it. More is possible.

Misty: Yep.

Ben: Let's talk about the Groves, which I know you touched on later in some of the Founding series. How would you view — how are the Groveborns all related?

Misty: They're archangels. They never were human, which is why they miss human cues sometimes.

Ben: So a completely different perspective and world than "here's someone with a talent." Do you have insider information you can share about them?

Misty: I don't think I have the ability to write something from the perspective of an archangel. So you're never going to get a POV — or a POV from a Companion, either. You're just not. So, the Grove-born are very powerful magicians. You can also consider them analogous to the Middle-earth Wizards. The Istari. They have magic. They for the most part refrain from using it. This is one of those cases of "meddle as little as possible," because we're not dealing with children. We're dealing with grown-ass adults. Grown-ass adults need to work out their problems for themselves. So we don't do that.

Ben: We have fans working on the process of testing recipes and putting together a cookbook. And part of what I've learned out of this is, you have such knowledge about obscure plants and botany. One of the questions that's come up — I'm going to read a quote from Arrow's Flight: "…the Queen arose" — etc., etc. — "a white-clad figure with a thin circlet of royal red-gold. It was all she would wear as token of her rank, encircling her raival-leaf-golden hair." We're wondering: what is a raival leaf?

Misty: Aspen. It's basically aspen in the fall. It's that color. Butter yellow.

Ben: Butter yellow. And riaval leaf — is that unique to Valdemar then?

Misty: It's unique to Valdemar. It's analogous to aspen. They're kind of my version of the mallorn.

Ben: There's another deep cut here. On the cover of Arrows of the Queen, there are faces depicted on Rolan's saddle. Do we know who the faces are?

Misty: They're just ornaments. Just like all the medieval barding had green men, and that's probably the equivalent of green men. Green men and wild men and angel faces and all that kind of thing. Just like you'd have on medieval barding and medieval fancy horse armor. It's pretty. So we put it there.

Ben: Is the Queen's Own Gift cluster a distinct phenomenon, like a channeling relationship between the Companion, the Herald, and the institutional memory of all the prior Queen's Owns? Or is it kind of empathy-plus-intuition applied through the specific role?

Misty: The Gift cluster for the Queen's Own will vary on what's needed at the time. So in Talia's case, what was needed most was empathy, plus a whole lot of knowledge of being a babysitter among the Holderkin. But yeah, it's basically what's needed at the time. At the time of Randale, what was needed was a Healer. Has Randale got somebody that could support him in his illness? [The catch-all] “chronic wasting disease.”

Ben: In Chapter 1 of Arrows of the Queen, we hear Rolan's voice in Talia's mind: "Now forget, little one. Forget until you are ready to remember again." And she remembers only when the Choosing is being explained to her in Chapter 3. Is that injunction to forget standard practice at Choosings, or more specific to Talia?

Misty: It's specific to Talia.

Ben: Do you feel like this was a case where Rolan was protecting her from the knowledge herself, or her inability to receive it in her state, or from creating problems with the Holderkin?

Misty: Rolan was protecting her from all of the above.

Ben: So really, recognizing: there's trauma, there's danger, you'll need this later, but I don't want to endanger you now.

Misty: Right.

Ben: Do you have any final thoughts about what's popped up today, and any comments about the upcoming campaign?

Misty: I'm really excited for the upcoming campaign. I am super excited by all the art we've seen so far. It looks fabulous. And I got another Nene Thomas.

Ben: Can you give us a sneak preview of what to expect from it?

Misty: It is basically the perfect portrait of Talia and Rolan. It really is. It is just gorgeous. And it's such a peaceful piece. Oh. Oh my god. She is so good.

Ben: We've been so lucky that Nene turned out to be a fan.

Misty: Oh god, that is unbelievable. I've loved her art from the first time I saw it, and I never thought I'd get a Nene. That's as far as I'm concerned — that's right up there with getting a Thomas Canty or a Michael Whelan.

Ben: Hopefully this campaign does well and then we can commission more art from Nene.

Misty: Oh, I hope so.

Ben: Thank you so much for your time today.