Nerys and Kelyn ran toward him. Neither saw anything or anyone but the Companion, until they reached to embrace him in front of everyone and found themselves face to face instead.
The shock was as sharp as a slap. It struck the words out of them and left them staring, too shocked even for hate.
That came next, so strong and so perfectly matched that no one who watched could have said who sprang first. There would have been blood or worse if the Companion had not set himself quietly and immovably between them.
They climbed up and over him, yowling like forest cats. His head snaked around and plucked first Nerys and then Kelyn off his back, dropping them to the ground and looming over them until their yowling stopped.
It was Kelyn’s mother, Alis, who spoke for them both, and for the whole town, too. “They can’t both be Chosen.”
“We aren’t!” Nerys cried. “I was Chosen. He came to me in the high pasture, and he told me—”
“He came to me!” Kelyn shouted over her. “I was in the stone circle in the Wood, and he—”
The Companion lifted his head and let out a ringing peal. It sounded like laughter—and from the girls’ expressions, that was exactly what it was. “You can’t do that!” they sang in chorus.
Except, it seemed, he had.
“The trouble with success,” Herald Egil said, “is that everyone expects you to succeed all over again.”
His Companion ignored him. She had found an unusually succulent patch of grass and was savoring each leisurely mouthful.
She was all too obvious about it. Egil sighed and leaned back against a tree. It had been an easy ride out from Haven, but there were still, according to his map and Herald Bronwen, another two days of it.
Bronwen had ridden ahead. She had little patience with what she called Egil’s elderly ways—though he was hardly more than twice her age—and her Companion fussed if he had to walk or trot all day.
They would be back by the time Egil was ready to go. Meanwhile, he was glad of the time to himself.
Egil was a quiet person and a solitary one. He had managed to evade the better- known duties of a Herald for years, until an emergency and a dearth of available Heralds had forced him out at the queen’s command.
He had done well on that errand, put an end to a dangerous if inadvertent working of magic and saved a valley from spelling itself into nothingness. Unfortunately, he had done so well that people had noticed. Now he had to go on another and equally peculiar errand, just when he was getting comfortable again in his familiar place and space.
In Egil’s perfect world, he would never ride outside the Collegium at all. He would live his life between the classroom and the library and leave the Heralding to those with more of a taste for it.
Bronwen, for example. She came galloping back down the road, mounted on her fiery Companion, like every child’s dream of the Queen’s Own. She was tall and slim and elegant, her wheat-gold hair plaited down her back, and her sea-blue eyes flashing as Rohanan reared to a halt directly in front of Egil.
Plain brown Egil looked calmly up at the tall Companion and the equally tall Herald. “Already?” he said.
“The message was urgent,” Bronwen said. “Also, odd. Aren’t you curious?”
“No worlds will end if we arrive an hour later than we planned,” Egil said.
“Maybe not,” she said, “but a pair of Chosen may have killed each other before we get there.”
“So we’re led to believe,” Egil said. He rose reluctantly and stretched, and brushed at his Whites. There was a grass stain, of course. Or two or three.
Bronwen, who was always immaculate, visibly refrained from commentary. “The message must have been garbled. It can’t be one Companion and two Chosen. Somehow two Companions showed up in the same town and Chose a pair of enemies. Now they’re at each other’s throats, and their families are at wits’ end.”
“That would be the logical conclusion, wouldn’t it?” said Egil.
Bronwen’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t think—”
“We’ll see soon enough,” he said.
“It’s impossible,” she said. “How would it work? Would they ride double? Would they bring a remount? Is one supposed to kill the other, and the survivor gets the Companion? It’s preposterous.”
Egil let her babble on while he mounted Cynara and set out on the road to Emmerdale. Bronwen was as different from Egil as a human creature could be. He did not particularly like her, nor did she like him. Left to themselves, they would have crossed paths seldom if at all; certainly they would never be friends. And yet somehow, when they worked together, it worked.
:Friction,: Cynara said. :Like flint and steel. Alone, they’re nothing alike, and they have little in common. Together, they spark fire.:
There was truth in that. Egil was dull gray flint. Bronwen was sharp and shining steel.
:Do you think . . . ?: he asked Cynara.
He had no need to finish the thought. She snorted softly. :You’ll see,: she said.
For the first day or two after Coryn showed himself in the market, Kelyn could hardly see or think or even breathe, she was so furious. She alternated between storms of tears and fits of icy rage.
She so alarmed her family that they locked her in her room and put her under guard. When she could shape a coherent thought, which was not often, she saw the wisdom in it. If she got out, if she had even the slightest chance, she would hunt Nerys down and kill her.
Shut inside familiar walls, under the unrelenting stare of her mother or her father or one of her many burly cousins, she calmed slowly. Her anger was no less strong, but her thoughts were clear again. She began to feel other things besides rage. Shock. Disappointment. And, as the hours stretched into days, a sensation that she could only recognize as grief.
He was always there. She was too angry to speak to him, but she felt him, white and shining in the back of her mind. She looked, when she could stand to, for the taint of Nerys that must be on him, but there was nothing. Only the whiteness and the warmth and the sense of rightness that stung like salt in an open wound.
By the fifth day, Kelyn knew what she had to do. Her watchdogs were as vigilant as ever, but she saw a way around that. She only had to wait a little longer, and then she could act.
A Herald was coming from Haven to sort the confusion. Nerys was not supposed to know, but her ears were keen and people were talking.
She knew that Kelyn was locked in her house. Nerys could not go anywhere without a pair of her father’s apprentices in tow, but she was allowed out. She reckoned she had won this contest, for what good it did either of them.
She could even have visited the Companion if she had wanted to. He was stabled in the best inn in Emmerdale, in the best stall, and by all accounts was getting the very best of care.
She wished him well of it. It hurt inside to keep her mind and body closed off from him, but it hurt worse to think of sharing him with Kelyn. Better for everybody if she pretended he had never come, let alone pretended to Choose her.
:It’s not a pretense,: he said.
She shut him out so ferociously that she gave herself a crashing headache. The pain was worth it, she told herself. He was gone. She hoped his head was pounding as badly as hers.
The Herald was due to arrive tomorrow, people said. They were all expecting him to decide which of the Chosen was the real one, then take her off to the Collegium to earn her Whites.
In her calmer moments, Nerys was sure she would be the one. Kelyn had put her hair up and submitted to the tyranny of skirts. She could find herself a husband and get to work making heirs for both families.
It was logical and elegant and perfectly practical. It also meant that Nerys need never set eyes on Kelyn again. It should have felt wonderful, and yet it did no such thing. It felt like a blow to the gut.
“This is wrong,” Nerys said. She was alone for once, shut in her room like Kelyn, only she had locked herself in and could go out if she chose.
The Herald would resolve it. But what if he did not? What if he decided that Kelyn was his Chosen? What then?
Nerys would have to live with it. Except that she was not sure she could. Never to see Coryn again, never to hear his warm deep voice in her head or feel his warmth in her heart—she would die. She would not want to live.
Maybe that was the answer. It was a terrible thing, but she had never shrunk from anything that frightened her.
She had to think about it. The Herald was coming tomorrow. Whatever she did, she should do it before he came. That left her with little time—but it ought to be enough.
Egil and Bronwen rode into Emmerdale in good time, in spite of her fretting. It was a little after noon on a beautiful summer day, neither too hot nor too cold. A few clouds drifted in the sky, but none of them carried a burden of rain.
Emmerdale was an unexpectedly pretty town. It nestled amid green fields at the foot of a mountain range so small it barely rated a name. To the west of it was a stretch of forest; it reminded Egil somehow of the Pelagirs, and yet it seemed as peaceful and empty of fear as a forest could be.
Egil’s senses came to the alert. The last such place had turned out to be under a dangerous and deadly spell. But this one lacked a certain something. Foreboding, maybe. The deep hum of magic running underneath it all. There was no ill magic in Emmerdale: Egil would have laid a wager on it if he had been a wagering man.
The only strangeness here was basking in the sun in the field that belonged to the best inn. The Companion was a stallion, and while he was not as tall as Rohanan, he was more substantially built.
His Chosen should have been hanging on him, unable to let him out of her sight. Or their sight, if the message from Emmerdale told the truth. He was alone, and he seemed content.
“Maybe he hasn’t Chosen anyone yet?” Egil wondered aloud.
:Oh, he has,: Cynara said. Egil could not tell what she thought of it, or of the stallion, either. Her tone was unusually bland, as if she had no opinion at all.
That Egil could not believe. Cynara always had an opinion.
He glanced at Bronwen. She stood with her Companion in a crowd of townspeople, basking in their admiration. They seemed to have forgotten that Egil was there, in spite of his Whites and the shining coat of his Companion.
That suited him admirably, but Bronwen was too hemmed in with people to either catch his glance or hear him if he asked the question that was in his mind. He asked Cynara instead. :And Rohanan? Is he as noncommittal as you?:
Cynara did not trouble to answer. Egil had known she would do that. He drew his breath in sharply, as close to a fit of pique as he ever came.
Fortunately for his peace of mind, Bronwen asked the other question, the one that had brought them here. “Pardon my impatience, but your message was urgent. There is a problem with the Companion’s Chosen?”
The man who answered was no older than Egil, but he carried himself with an air of easy authority. “There is,” he said. “It seems he’s been unable to make up his mind. He’s Chosen two of our young women: my daughter and Hanse’s daughter.”
“I gather they’re not friends,” Bronwen said.
Both fathers rolled their eyes. That they were friends was unmistakable, which made it odder that their daughters were not. “They hate each other,” Hanse said.
The other nodded. “There’s no sense or reason to it. It just is.”
“Nothing ever just is,” Bronwen said.
“Then maybe you can find out why they were born like that,” said Hanse. He sounded more tired than skeptical.
Egil was in full sympathy with the man. When Bronwen did not ask the next and essential question, Egil did it for her. “Where are they, then, sirs?”
They started a little at the voice that to them must seem to come from nowhere. Hanse recovered first, enough to answer. “Secure under lock and key,” he said grimly.
“Well,” said the other, “more or less.”
“Pitar,” Hanse said. “By the Powers. You trust her?”
“I trust my daughter,” said Pitar somewhat stiffly, “to do nothing foolish while under the watchful eyes of my apprentices.”
“So you hope,” said Hanse.
People started to rumble around them. Some spoke for one, some for the other: a low growl of division that made Egil’s nape prickle. He had felt something like it before, long ago, while he was still a Trainee. Within the hour there had been a riot.
Egil interjected politely but firmly. “I think we’d best begin our inquiry. Which of them would be closer?”
“That would be Kelyn,” said Hanse. His voice and face were tight.
With a last glance at the Companion who had done this baffling thing, Egil followed both Pitar and Hanse down through the town.
Kelyn was not in her room. The cousin who had been guarding her was almost in tears, which was disconcerting: He was head and shoulders taller than Egil’s middle height and as broad as a barn door. The tiny woman who had reduced him to a quivering wreck whirled on Hanse in such a fire of fury that even Egil fell back a step.
“She went to the privy,” the woman said, biting off each word. “Two hours ago. Rickard only began to worry, he tells me, after an hour. Because every girl takes forever to do what she will do. And then,” she said, “he was afraid to tell anyone.”
“I can hardly blame him for that,” said Egil mildly.
The woman bridled, then transparently remembered what his white uniform meant. “Herald,” she said with prickly respect. “Thank the Powers you’ve come. The girl has bolted. If she’s not with the Companion, someone had better make sure Nerys is still home and safe.”
Pitar muttered something that sounded like a curse, spun in the doorway and ran.
Nerys was nowhere to be found either. The apprentices who should have been shadowing her had fallen for the same ruse as Kelyn’s cousin.
Egil was not quite ready yet to find a pattern there, but from what he was seeing and hearing, he was inching toward a conclusion.
:Cynara: he said in his mind, since she was still out by the fields, taking the opportunity to dine on sweet grass and be adored by a gaggle of children. :Their Companion must know where they are:
Her reply was somewhat delayed and redolent of grass. :He says they’re not choosing to enlighten him. He also says they’re not together.:
:How can he not—: Egil broke off. Companions had a notorious habit of not telling their Chosen everything they knew. It could drive a Herald mad.
Egil did not intend to lose his sanity. Nor was he about to lose these two children—not, at least, until he knew why one Companion had Chosen them both.
“Bronwen,” he said in the middle of the milling and expostulating that had taken over this part of the town. He spoke softly, but his Herald-intern heard him. “They won’t have gone far. Enlist some of the locals and go after Nerys. I’ll find Kelyn.”
Time was when Bronwen would have argued simply for the sake of arguing. In this long, warm summer afternoon, she nodded and set about doing the sensible thing.
Mind you, Egil thought, if she decided my orders weren’t sensible, she’d perfectly well disobey them.
:We are surrounded by obstreperous youth,: Cynara said.
It was all Egil could do not to break out in painful laughter. As it was, one or two townspeople looked at him oddly.
He pressed them into service. “Tell me where Kelyn would most likely go.”
There were many opinions as to that, but Kelyn’s mother glared them all down. “There is one place where she goes when she needs to think. She doesn’t know anyone knows about it.”
“I won’t betray your secret,” Egil assured her.
The woman nodded brusquely, called over one of the boys who had been hanging about, staring at the
Herald’s Whites, and said, “Take him to the Wizard’s Wood, to the stone circle.”
“Maybe it would be best if you simply told me where to go,” Egil said, “since she’s likely to run if she sees anyone she knows.”
“She might,” her mother conceded. “Well enough, then. Galtier will take you to the edge of the Wood. Stay on the track and don’t let yourself be tempted to wander off it. It will lead you to the circle.”
“That’s clear enough,” Egil said, “and I thank you.” He added a brief bow, because she was worthy of respect.
That flustered her into a scowl. “Go on,” she said. “Before she gets all her thinking done and runs off the Powers know where.”
Escape was almost too easy. Kelyn kept looking for pursuit, but she had made it as far as the Wizard’s Wood without anyone seeing her. They were all off gawping at the Heralds—for there were two of them; Coryn made sure she knew.
Two Heralds, two Companions. Kelyn hoped he felt the full force of her bitterness over that.
It seemed to trouble him not at all. She shut him out once more, diving into the solitude of her own mind.
That was not the most pleasant place to be. Such plan as she had was to ride her pony through the Wood, then keep on riding as far and fast as she could, until Coryn was no more than a memory.
A large part of her would rather stay and fight for him. But Kelyn had been raised to be practical. It simply did not make sense for a Companion to Choose two Heralds-to-be.
She should be that one. Not Nerys. By the Powers, never Nerys.
And yet as she endured the days of waiting for the Herald to come, Kelyn had seen and felt what this unprecedented Choosing was doing to Emmerdale. All her life she had done her best to outrun and outride and outsmart her rival. This was the greatest contest of all—and she was running away from it.
She hated Nerys, but she loved Emmerdale more. At last, after so many years, people were choosing between them. Lines were being drawn. Emmerdale was splitting down the middle, half of its people convinced that Nerys should be the Chosen, and half contending that Kelyn deserved it more.
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