Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar v(-103

by Mercedes Lackey

  Kelyn had never wanted that. Watching it happen tore at her heart.

  Coryn was a dream. Emmerdale was real. Whatever grief or pain it cost to her to rip herself away from the Companion, the thought of Emmerdale splitting apart over it was worse.

  It was the hardest thing she had ever done, and the most necessary. She kicked her pony into a canter down the familiar track, in the whisper of pine boughs and the dusk-and-dazzle light of the Wood.

  Nerys had no time for anything but to throw a bridle on her pony and turn his head toward the mountain. The pony had been pent up for days; he was more than glad to burst out of the gate at a flat run.

  Nerys was not running away exactly. She needed to think. There was no chance of doing it in town, with everyone in such an uproar and not just one but two Heralds come to muddle what little sense anyone had left.

  The last people she ever wanted to see were Heralds who were truly Chosen, who had not been mocked with a false and bitter Choosing.

  :It’s not false,: Coryn said.

  She refused to hear him. He might be lurking in the hidden corners of her heart, but she did not want him there or anywhere. If a Companion wanted her, let him choose her—not force her to share with her worst enemy.

  She more than half expected him to take issue with that, but he seemed to have gone. She refused to be disappointed, let alone sad. Good, she thought. Good riddance.

  The track up to the high pasture seemed unusually long and arduous today. Nerys realized as she rode that she never had given Willa her mother’s message when she was there last. Coryn’s appearance had driven it straight out of her head.

  That gave her an excuse. “At least I’ll get some use out of the whole sorry mess,” she said. Her pony slanted an ear at her, bunched his hindquarters and sprang up the last and steepest part of the trail.

  He paused on the pasture’s edge, blowing hard. Nerys was breathing a little fast herself. She slid off his sweaty back and led him the rest of the way, taking her time, until his breathing slowed and his body cooled.

  She took her time rubbing him down, too, then washed him off and rubbed him again until he was respectably cool. By that time Willa should have come out of the hut, or else come toward her from the edge of the pasture where the sheep were grazing.

  But there was no sign of the shepherd. That might not have meant anything—Willa did like to wander on occasion—but she had been gone half a tenday ago, too, and it felt odd.

  The hut was cold inside, with an air about its emptiness that said it had been abandoned for days. The hearth was swept clean, and Willa’s few belongings were neatly stowed, except for a half-filled water jar on the table and the last quarter of a loaf of bread gone rock-hard and stale beside it.

  Willa never wasted food. If she had left the bread there, she had meant to eat it while it was fresh.

  Nerys started off running toward the sheep, but she remembered just in time that neither the sheep nor their guardian dogs would respond well to human panic. She made herself take a deep breath, relax her body as much as she could, and walk slowly and easily toward the cluster of woolly white bodies.

  They were all well, and all accounted for as far as Nerys could tell. The dogs did their own hunting; they could survive a whole season on their own if they had to.

  But Willa was gone. Nerys told herself it had to be nothing, the shepherd was out hunting or visiting her daughter over the mountain. Except she would never leave the sheep for more than a day, and she would have taken the bread with her to eat.

  Nerys knew a little bit about tracking, much of which she had learned from Willa. It was not much good on grass and after half a tenday.

  She did not want to think about what that meant. If Willa had had a fall or been attacked or taken ill, she would have been alone and abandoned for days. It was all too likely she had not survived it.

  “No,” Nerys said. “I’m not going to think like that. She’s somewhere she can’t get out of, but she’s alive. I’ll find her. I’ll bring her back.”

  The sheep ignored her. One of the dogs pricked its ears at the sound of her voice, but she was neither a sheep nor a predator. She did not matter in its world.

  She stood still, taking long, calming breaths. Willa could be anywhere on the mountain. But there were hunting runs she favored, and Nerys knew the way to Willa’s daughter’s village; she had gone there with the shepherd more than once.

  That might be the easy and therefore the wrong way, but it was a start. If something had happened, with luck Willa’s daughter had been expecting her mother, and when she did not appear, had gone searching herself—and Willa was safe in Highrock, maybe with an ague, or a sprain, or at worst a broken leg.

  Nerys paused to fill a waterskin and carve off a wedge of strong sheep’s cheese from the wheel that hung in the hut. She found a net bag of fruit, too, that were soft but still good.

  With water and provisions and a firm refusal to panic, Nerys set out on the path to the village. She left her pony behind. He was tired, and the path was narrow and steep. She could search it better and faster on foot.

  Under the best conditions, it took most of a morning to climb and scramble and occasionally stroll to Highrock. Usually Willa stayed the day and the night and came back the next morning, though when Nerys had been with her, she had gone both ways in a day.

  Nerys concentrated on finding the path and then keeping her feet on it. With no little guilt, she realized she was glad to do this. It was a distraction. It kept her from having to think about what waited for her in Emmerdale.

  Maybe she should spend the rest of her life hunting down the missing. The world must be full of them. It was like being a Herald, in a way.

  She could still be a Herald. Somehow. If she wanted.

  “I don’t want it,” she said.

  She had come to the summit of the first of three ridges. The track was narrow here and slippery with gravel and scree. A little ahead, the cliff dropped away sheer, plunging down to a narrow valley and a ribbon of river.

  There was no sign of Willa here—not on the track and not broken on the rocks below. Nerys did not know whether to be relieved. The rest of the way was less perilous, but it was steep and stony, and parts of it tended to wash away in storms.

  A little way past the cliff, Nerys paused to rest and breathe and sip from the waterskin. The leathery taste of the water made her think of other times she had traveled this way; somehow, without quite understanding why, she felt tears running down her cheeks.

  Willa would say she had filled her cup of troubles, and now it was running over. If she closed her eyes, she could hear the warm rough voice and feel the shepherd’s presence close by her, just a little warmer on her skin than the sun.

  Nerys had always been able to feel things and people when they were nearby or when they were thinking about her. She had never thought of it as magic, especially since Kelyn had it, too. It was just a thing they could do.

  Up on top of the world she knew, all torn with confusion over Coryn and Kelyn and Willa’s disappearance, Nerys felt as if she had walked right out of her skin. She knew where Willa was. She could feel it, smell it, taste it. It was stone and running water and the whisper of wind in leaves.

  There was nowhere like that on this track, and yet it felt as close as the next turn. When Nerys tried to focus on it, the thought that came to her was like a fold in fabric, but the fabric was the world.

  Maybe the Mage Storms had touched her part of the world after all. If they had, and if Willa had fallen into the strangeness that they left, Nerys was no mage. She knew nothing of magic.

  She would panic when she knew for certain. She needed her eyes for the path, but she focused her mind as much as she could, following the sense and the memory of Willa.

  It could be a trap. Her gut insisted it was not. It was hard to travel in two worlds, to keep from tripping and falling on her face, even while she held fast to the thread of sensation that was all she had to guide h
er.

  Another presence slid beneath her, lifted her up and held her steady. It was Coryn, and he neither asked nor expected permission.

  The simple arrogance of it made her breath catch. But she was not a complete idiot—she needed all the help she could get.

  Then something else came into focus in and through him, something clear and bright and clean that sharpened all her senses and made her immeasurably stronger. It was as if she had lived in a fog all her life and now, suddenly, she could see the sun.

  She could not afford to go all giddy—or to realize what and who must be doing this. Willa was trapped in a slant of sunlight, in a bend of the path that did not exist in the world she had thought she knew. The key was in Nerys’ hand and heart, but the way was only open while the sun was in the sky.

  Among these tumbled ridges and sudden cliffs, night came fast and early. It had been after noon when Nerys left the pasture; the sun had sunk visibly since. She had to hurry, which on that track was no easy thing.

  She found the place where the trap had closed. It looked like nothing: a sharp bend among many on the steep path and a sudden drop where the track had washed away. A trickle of water seemed to run there, out of nowhere and into nowhere. The sun sparkled on it.

  :Steady,: Coryn said, with that echo behind him. :Hold fast to me. Don’t let go.:

  She knew he was not physically there, but he was present in every way that mattered. The other beyond him made a chain, and that chain bound her to the world.

  She stepped through the sun’s door into madness.

  Egil’s guide left him as instructed, with a clear track ahead of him and Alis’ admonitions still ringing in his ears. A small needling voice kept insisting that he had followed the wrong one, but Bronwen was well capable of handling whatever she found in the sheep pasture. Egil needed to be here.

  The path was well traveled. Egil occupied himself and entertained Cynara by inviting her to dance down it. She did love the dance of horse and rider, and under the trees, in and out of sun and dappled shade, it was a wonderfully pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

  It cleared his head splendidly. When the sunlight spread wide over the hill with its crown of stones, he was calm and focused and ready for whatever he might find.

  It seemed at first to be nothing remarkable. A slim, dark-haired girl sat on a white pony inside the circle. The pony grazed peacefully. The girl’s eyes were closed, and her face was turned to the sky.

  She looked like her mother. Even at rest she had a hint of Alis’ fierce edge.

  As Cynara halted in front of the pony, Kelyn’s eyes snapped open. Her Companion—for he was that, Egil could not mistake it—stepped delicately past Egil and presented himself for mounting.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want you.”

  He tossed his splendid white head and stamped. Kelyn’s face set in adamant refusal.

  The pony bucked her off. On that thick turf, the damage must have been more to her pride than her backside. She stared up at the traitor in utter disbelief.

  “They always side with Companions,” Egil said in wry sympathy. “Get up now and do as he tells you.”

  “Do you know what he’s asking?” she demanded.

  “Not specifically,” he said. “Will you enlighten me?”

  “Ask her,” the girl snapped, jutting her chin at Cynara.

  Egil had to admit that her complete lack of awe was refreshing. It was also not unheard of in the newly Chosen. In those first heady days, it was hard to see or hear or think about anyone but the magical white being who had come only and purely for them.

  In this case, of course, that was not true. Egil did not need to ask Cynara; it was in every line of the girl’s body. “Nerys is in trouble. He wants you to help.”

  “Worse,” said Kelyn. She looked ready to spit. “He wants me to stop hating her and start facing the reason why.”

  “Because you’re exactly alike,” Egil said. “Everything you hate in her is everything you hate in yourself. Everything you love about yourself—in someone else, it grates horribly. That makes you wonder, and then it makes you twitch. It’s enough to drive a person out of her mind. Is that where she is? Gone mad?”

  “Not yet,” she said. “He says there’s a rift in the fabric of the world, another of those plague-begotten Storm remnants, and she’s gone through it to save a life. Or maybe a mind. He’s not exactly clear.”

  Egil’s lightness of mood, such as it was, evaporated. He held on to his calm, because he was going to need it. “Ah,” he said. “I see.” He bent his gaze on the girl’s Companion.

  :Coryn,: Cynara said.

  “Coryn,” said Egil with an inclination of the head, which the Companion returned. “If you will, take us to her.”

  “No time,” said Kelyn. “It’s leagues away and the sun is going down. The sun keeps it open. Once it’s gone . . .”

  Egil eyed her narrowly. “Cynara,” he said aloud with the courtesy of Heralds, “is that true?”

  :It is true,: Cynara said.

  Egil nodded, oblivious to Kelyn’s glare. “I did wonder. If my worst enemy were about to wink into nothingness, I might not be terribly inclined to do something about it.”

  “She is not my enemy!” Kelyn burst out. “I just can’t stand her. I don’t want her dead, either.” She turned on Coryn. “I get your point—all of you. I’ll help get her out of there. But I’m not your Chosen. I won’t be anybody’s second best.”

  :She is not,: Cynara said. From Kelyn’s expression, Coryn had said the same.

  Kelyn did not look ready to believe it. But she pulled herself from her pony’s back to Coryn’s, and for all her resistance, she could not keep herself from running her hand down his neck.

  She drew herself up with a visible effort. “He needs you to help,” she said to Egil. “She’s on the other side of the—wall, I think he means. Rift. Something. He can guide her out, but he wants to open the rift here in order to do it. It’s a stronger place, he says, and safer to stand on. With you and the other Herald and your Companions, he thinks he’ll almost have enough strength.”

  Egil opened his mouth to point out that Bronwen and Rohanan had gone the other way, but before he could speak, they cantered into the circle. Bronwen looked ruffled and out of sorts, the way she always did after she had lost an argument. “Rohanan says we need to be here,” she said.

  “You do,” said Egil. “He’s told you what happened?”

  She nodded. “Are we doing another dance?”

  They had helped a quadrille of riders to close a much larger rift, not so long ago, by performing a spell that was framed in the movements of the equestrian art. But this was different. “We’ll follow his lead,” Egil said, tilting his head toward Coryn.

  Bronwen sighed faintly, as if she would have preferred the quadrille. Egil most certainly would. Her Companion came to stand on the other side of Coryn, gently nudging the pony out of the way.

  Coryn raised his head. On his back, Kelyn had closed her eyes again. She held out her hands.

  Bronwen took one. Egil took the other. It was thin but strong, and it trembled slightly.

  The child was either furious or terrified. Egil would have wagered on both. “We’re ready,” he said.

  :They’re ready,: said Coryn in the midst of howling nothingness.

  The only solid thing in all that incomprehensible place was an honest miracle. Nerys had fallen on top of a warm and yielding object that protested in Willa’s voice.

  The shepherd was alive, apparently sane, and profanely glad to be found. Nerys wrapped her arms around the tall and substantial body. Willa stiffened, then closed the embrace.

  If Nerys closed her eyes, she could almost stand to be here. The screaming that was not wind and not voices— at least, not human or animal or anything of earth—still battered at her, but she could focus on the soft voice in her mind and almost, after a fashion, shut out the ungodly clamor.

  Coryn’s voice led to something e
lse. It was like an image in a mirror, or another part of herself.

  She and Kelyn were cousins. People said they could be sisters—twins, even, what with having been born on the same day.

  What if they were more than that?

  They could not be the same person. That was impossible. If each had half a soul, she certainly did not feel the lack. Maybe it was that they were meant to be something new, something larger than either of them: something that fit perfectly through a Companion.

  Washed in the white light that was Coryn, Kelyn did not grate on her nearly as badly. He softened the raw edges. He muted the dissonance that had always clanged between them.

  The fragment of it that was left gave her a foothold in this hideous not-place. The stabbing of irritation helped her focus. Coryn’s presence was a light and a guide. Through it she saw the world she belonged in, and the person she belonged with—kicking, screaming, protesting, but in the end, neither of them could escape it.

  There was a wrenching, a tearing, a rending of mind and soul and substance, all the way down to the core of her. She had never felt such pain—nor had the Companion, nor Kelyn whose will and strength were all that kept Nerys’ mind and body from shattering.

  The nothingness tore asunder. Nerys fell forever, down and down into endless light.

  The rays of the setting sun slanted through the standing stones. Out of one fell a large and amorphous shape that resolved into a slim girl with a glossy black braid and a broad-shouldered, massive woman who levered herself to her feet, looked about her, and said, “Thank the Powers. I was afraid we’d end up in a sorcerer’s lair.”

  “Would I lead you that far astray?” Nerys demanded, but there was no mistaking the affection in her tone. She faced the Heralds and the Companions, and last but never least, her rival. “Thank you,” she said, “for both of us.”

  Egil moved to respond, but Kelyn was already speaking. “You’re welcome,” she said stiffly. “You’re not hurt? Either of you?”

  “We’re well, now we’re out of that place,” Nerys said. She shuddered. “What was it?”