One
A gentle breeze rustled the leaves of the tree,
but the young girl seated beneath it did not seem to notice. An
adolescent of thirteen or thereabouts, she was, by her plain
costume, a member of one of the solemn and straight-laced Hold
families that lived in this Borderland of Valdemar—come there to
settle a bare two generations ago. She was dressed (as any young
Holdgirl would be) in plain brown breeches and a long, sleeved
tunic. Her unruly brown curls had been cut short in an unsuccessful
attempt to tame them to conform to Hold standards. She would have
presented a strange sight to anyone familiar with Holderfolk; for
while she sat and carded the undyed wool she had earlier cleaned,
she was reading. Few Hold girls could read, and none did so for
pleasure. That was a privilege normally reserved, by longstanding
tradition, for the men and boys of the Holdings. A female’s place
was not to be learned; a girl reading—even if she was doing
a womanly task at the same time—was as out of place as a scarlet
jay among crows.
If anyone could have seen her thoughts at that
moment, they would have known her to be even more of a misfit than
her reading implied.
Vanyel was a dim shape in the darkness beside
her; there was no moon, and only the dim light of the stars
penetrated the boughs of the hemlock bushes they hid beneath. She
only knew he was there by the faint sound of his breathing, though
they lay so closely together that had she moved her hand a fraction
of an inch, she’d have touched him. Training and discipline held
her quiet, though under other circumstances she’d have been
shivering so hard her teeth would have rattled. The starlight
reflected on the snow beneath them was enough to see by—enough to
see the deadly danger to Valdemar that moved below them.
Beneath their ledge, in the narrow pass between
Dellcrag and Mount Thurlos, the army of the Dark Servants was
passing. They were nearly as silent as the two who watched them;
only a creak of snow, the occasional crack of a broken branch, or
the faint jingling of armor or harness betrayed them. She marveled
at the discipline their silent passage revealed; marveled, and
feared. How could the tiny outpost of the Border Guard that lay to
the south of them ever hope to make a stand against these warriors
who were also magicians? Bad enough that they were outnumbered a
hundred to one—these were no simple barbarians coming against the
forces of Valdemar this time, who could be defeated by their own
refusal to acknowledge any one of their own as overall leader. No,
these fighters bowed to an iron-willed leader the equal of any in
Valdemar, and their ranks held only the trained and
seasoned.
She started as Vanyel’s hand lightly touched the
back of her neck, and came out of her half-trance. He tugged
slightly at her sleeve; she backed carefully out of the thicket,
obedient to his signal.
“Now what?” she whispered, when they were safely
around the ledge with the bulk of a stone outcropping between them
and the Dark Servants.
“One of us has to alert the King, while the
other holds them off at the other end of the pass—”
“With what army?” she asked, fear making her
voice sharp with sarcasm.
“You forget, little sister—I need no army—” the
sudden flare of light from Vanyel’s outstretched hand illuminated
his ironic smile, and bathed his white uniform in an eerie blue
wash for one moment. She shuddered; his saturnine features had
always looked faintly sinister to her, and in the blue light his
face had looked demonic. Vanyel held a morbid fascination for
her—dangerous, the man was; not like his gentle lifemate, Bard
Stefen. Possibly the last—and some said the best—of the
Heraldmages. The Servants of Darkness had destroyed the others, one
by one. Only Vanyel had been strong enough to withstand their
united powers. She who had little magic in her soul could almost
feel the strength of his even when he wasn’t exerting it.
“Between us, my Companion and I are a match for
any thousand of their witch-masters,” he continued arrogantly.
“Besides—at the far end of the pass there isn’t room for more than
three to walk side by side. We can hold them there easily. And I
want Stefen well out of this; Yfandes couldn’t carry us double, but
you’re light enough that Evalie could easily manage both of
you.”
She bowed her head, yielding to his reasoning.
“I can’t like it—”
“I know, little sister—but you have precious
little magic, while Evalie does have speed. The sooner you go, the
sooner you’ll have help here for me.”
“Vanyel—” she touched his gloved hand with one
fur mitten. “Be—be safe—” She suddenly feared more for him than for
herself. He had looked so fey when the King had placed this mission
in their hands—like a man who has seen his own death.
“As safe as may be, little sister. I swear to
you, I will risk nothing I am not forced to. ”
A heartbeat later she was firmly in the saddle,
Evalie galloping beneath her like a blizzard wind in horseshape.
Behind her she could feel Bard Stefen clinging to her waist, and
was conscious of a moment of pity for him—to him, Evalie was
strange, he could not move with her, only cling awkwardly; while
she felt almost as one with the Companion, touched with a magic
only another Herald could share.
Their speed was reckless; breakneck. Skeletal
tree-limbs reached hungrily for them, trying to seize them as they
passed and pull them from Evalie’s back. Always the Companion
avoided them, writhing away from the clawlike branches like a
ferret.
“The Dark Servants—” Stefen shouted in her ear
“—they must know someone’s gone for help. They’re animating
the trees against us!”
She realized, as Evalie escaped yet another trap
set for them, that Stefen was right—the trees were indeed moving
with a will of their own, and not just random waving in the wind.
They reached out, hungrily, angrily; she felt the hot breath of
dark magic on the back of her neck, like the noisome breath of a
carrion-eater. Evalie’s eyes were wide with more than fear; she
knew the Companion felt the dark power, too.
She urged Evalie on; the Companion responded
with new speed, sweat breaking out on her neck and flanks to freeze
almost immediately. The trees seemed to thrash with anger and
frustration as they eluded the last of them and broke out on the
bank above the road.
The road to the capital lay straight and open
before them now, and Evalie leaped over a fallen forest giant to
gain the surface of it with a neigh of triumph....
Talia blinked, emerging abruptly from the spell her
book had laid on her. She had been lost in the daydream her tale
had conjured for her, but the dream was now lost beyond recall.
Someone was calling her name in the distance. She looked up
quickly, with a toss of her head that threw her unmanageable hair
out of her eyes. Near the door of the family house she could make
out the angular figure of Keldar Firstwife, dark-clad and rigid,
like a stiff fire iron propped against the building. Keldar’s fists
were on her hips; her stern carriage suggested that she was waiting
Talia’s response with very little patience.
Talia sighed regretfully, put up her wool and the
wire brushes, and closed the worn little cloth-bound volume, laying
aside the rocks she’d used to hold down the pages as she’d worked.
Though she’d carefully marked the place, she knew that even without
the precious scrap of ribbon she used to mark it she’d have no
trouble finding it again. Keldar couldn’t have picked a worse time;
Herald Vanyel was alone, surrounded by the Servants of Darkness,
and no one knew his peril but his Companion and Bard Stefen.
Knowing Keldar, it would be hours before she could return to the
tale—perhaps not even until tomorrow. Keldar was adept at finding
ways to keep Talia from even the little reading she was grudgingly
allowed.
Nevertheless, Keldar was Firstwife; her voice ruled
the Steading, to be obeyed in all things, or suffer punishment for
disobedience. Talia responded to the summons as dutifully as she
could. She put the little book carefully away in the covered basket
that held carded and uncarded wool and her spindle. The peddler who
had given it to her last week had assured her many times that it
was worthless to him, but it was still precious to her as
one of the three books she owned and (more importantly) the only
one she’d never read before. For an hour this afternoon she’d been
transported to the outside world of Heralds and Companions, of high
adventure and magic. Returning to the ordinary world of chores and
Keldar’s sour face was a distinct letdown. She schooled her
expression with care, hoping none of her discontent showed, and
trudged dully up the path that led to the Steading, carrying her
basket in one hand.
But she had the sinking feeling as she watched the
Firstwife’s hardening expression that her best efforts were not
enough to mislead Keldar.
Keldar noted the signs of rebellion Talia displayed
despite her obvious effort to hide them. The signs were plain
enough for anyone with the Firstwife’s experience in dealing with
littles; the slightly dragging feet, the sullen eyes. Her mouth
tightened imperceptibly. Thirteen years old, and still
fighting the yoke the gods had decreed for her shoulders! Well,
that would change—and soon. Soon enough there would be no more time
for foolish tales and wasted time.
“Stop scowling, child!” Keldar snapped, her thin
lips taut with scorn, “You’re not being summoned for a
beating!”
Not that she hadn’t warranted a beating to correct
her attitude in the past. Those beatings had done precious little
good, and had drawn the feeble protests of her Husband’s Mother—but
it was the will of the gods that children obey, and if it
took beating to drive them into obedience, then one would beat them
with as heavy a hand as required, and pray that this time
the lesson was learned.
It was possible that she, Keldar, had not possessed
a hand heavy enough. Well, if that were indeed the case,
that situation would be corrected soon as well.
She watched the child trudge unwillingly up the
path, her feet kicking up little puffs of dust. Keldar was well
aware that her attitude where Talia was concerned was of a
harshness that bordered on the unfair. Still, the child drove her
out of all patience. Who would ever have imagined that so placid
and bovine a creature as Bessa could have produced a little scrap
of mischief like this? The child was like a wild thing sometimes,
intractable, and untamable—how could Bessa have dared to
birth such a misfit? And who would have thought that she’d have had
the poor taste to die of the birthing and leave the rearing of her
little to the rest of the Wives?
Talia was so unlike her birth-mother that Keldar
was perforce reminded of the stories of changelings. And the child
had been born on Midsummer’s Eve, a time long noted for
arcane connections—she as little resembled the strong, tall, blond
man who was her father as her plump, fair, deceased mother—
But no. That was superstition, and superstition had
no place in the lives of Holderkin. It was only that she had double
the usual share of stubbornness. Even the most stubborn of saplings
could be bent. Or broken.
And if Keldar lacked the necessary tools to
accomplish the breaking and bending, there were others among the
Holderkin who suffered no such lack.
“Get along, child!” she added, when Talia
didn’t respond immediately, “Or do you think I need hurry your
steps with a switch?”
“Yes ma‘am. I mean, no ma’am!” Talia replied in as
neutral a voice as she could manage. She tried to smooth her
expression into one more pleasing to her elder, even as she
smoothed the front of her tunic with a sweaty, nervous palm.
What am I being summoned for? she wondered
apprehensively. In her experience summonings had rarely meant
anything good.
“Well, go in, go in! Don’t keep me standing here in
the doorway all afternoon!” Keldar’s cold face gave no clue as to
what was in store. Everything about Keldar, from her tightly
wrapped and braided hair to the exact set of her apron, gave an
impression of one in total control. She was everything a Firstwife
should be—and frequently pointed this out. Talia was always
intimidated by her presence, and always felt she looked hoydenish
and disheveled, no matter how carefully she’d prepared herself for
confrontations.
In her haste to edge past the authoritative figure
of the Firstwife in the doorway, Talia stumbled a little on the
lintel. Keldar made a derogatory noise in the back of her throat,
and Talia felt herself flush. Somehow there was that about Keldar
that never failed to put her at her faultiest and clumsiest. She
regathered what little composure she had and slipped inside and
into the hall. The windowless entryway was very dark; she would
have paused to let her eyes adjust except for the forbidding
presence of Keldar hard on her heels. She felt her way down the
worn, wooden floor hoping not to trip again. Then, as she entered
the commonroom and she could see again in the light that came from
its three windows, her mouth suddenly dried with fear; for
all of her Father’s Wives were waiting there, assembled
around the rough-hewn wooden table that served them all at meals.
And all of them were staring at her. Eight pairs of blue and brown
eyes held her transfixed like a bird surrounded by hungry cats.
Eight flat, expressionless faces had turned to point in her
direction.
She thought at once of all her failings of the last
month or so, from her failure to remember her kitchen duties
yesterday to the disaster with the little she was supposed to have
been watching who’d gotten into the goat pen. There were half a
hundred things they might call her to account for, but none of them
were bad enough to call for an assemblage of all the Wives;
at least, she didn’t think they were!
Unless—she started guiltily at the thought—unless
they’d somehow found out she’d been sneaking into Father’s library
to read when there was a full moon—light enough to read without a
betraying candle. Father’s books were mostly religious, but she’d
found an old history or two that proved to be almost as good as her
tales, and the temptation had been too much to resist. If they’d
found that out—
It might mean a beating every day for a week and a
month of “exile”—being locked in a closet at night, and isolated by
day, with no one allowed to speak to her or acknowledge her
presence in any way, except Keldar, who would assign her chores.
That had happened twice already this year. Talia began to tremble.
She wasn’t sure she could bear a third time.
Keldar took her place at the head of the table, and
her next words drove all thought of that out of Talia’s head.
“Well, child,” she said, scowling, “You’re thirteen today.”
Talia felt almost giddy with relief. Just her
Birthing Day? Was that all it was? She took an easier
breath, and stood before the assemblage of nine Wives, much calmer
mow. She kept her hands clasped properly before her, eyes cast
down. She studied the basket at her sturdily-shod feet, prepared to
listen with all due respect to the lecture about her growing
responsibilities that they’d delivered to her every Birthing Day
she could remember. After they were sure that she’d absorbed all
their collective wisdom on the subject, they’d let her get back to
her wool (and not so incidentally, her tale).
But what Keldar had to say next scattered every
speck of calm she’d regained to the four winds.
“Yes, thirteen,” Keldar repeated significantly,
“And that is time to think of Marriage.”
Talia blanched, feeling as if her heart had
stopped. Marriage? Oh, sweet Goddess no!
Keldar seemingly paid no heed to Talia’s reaction;
a flicker of her eyes betrayed that she’d seen it, but she went
callously on with her planned speech. “You’re not ready for it, of
course, but no girl is. Your courses have been regular for more
than a year now, you’re healthy amd strong. There’s no reason why
you couldn’t be a mother before the year is out. It’s more than
time you were in a Household as a Wife. Your Honored Father is
dowering you with three whole fields, so your portion is
quite respectable.”
Keldar’s faintly sour expression seemed to indicate
that she felt Talia’s dower to be excessive. The hands clasping the
edge of the table before her tightened as the other Wives murmured
appreciation of their Husband’s generosity.
“Several Elders have already bespoken your Father
about you, either as a Firstwife for one of their sons or as an
Underwife for themselves. In spite of your unwomanly habits of
reading and writing, we’ve trained you well. You can cook and
clean, sew, weave and spin, and you’re trustworthy with the
littlest littles. You’re not up to managing a Household yet, but
you won’t be called to do that for several years. Even if you go to
a young man as his Firstwife, you’ll be living in your Husband’s
Father’s Household. So you’re prepared enough to do your
duty.”
Keldar seemed to feel that she’d said all she
needed to, and sat down, hands folded beneath her apron, back
ramrod straight. Underwife Isrel waited for her nod of delegation,
then took up the thread of the lecture on a daughter’s
options.
Isrel was easily dominated by Keldar, and Talia had
always considered her to be more than a little silly. The Underwife
looked to Keldar with calf-like brown eyes for approval of
everything she said—nor did she fail to do so now. She glanced at
Keldar after every other word she spoke.
“There’s advantages to both, you know; being a
Firstwife and being an Underwife, I mean. If you’re Firstwife,
eventually your Husband will start his own Steading and Household,
and you’ll be First in it. But if you’re an Underwife, you won’t
have to ever make any decisions. And you’ll be in an established
Household and Steading—you won’t have to scrimp and scant, there
won’t be any hardships. You won’t have to worry about anything
except the tasks you’re set and bearing your littles. We don’t want
you to be unhappy, Talia. We want to give you the choice of
the life you think you’re best suited for. Not the man of
course,” she giggled nervously, “That would be unseemly, and
besides you probably don’t know any of them anyway.”
“Isrel!” Keldar snapped, and Isrel shrank into
herself a little. “That last remark was unseemly, and not suited to
a girl’s ears! Now, child, which shall it be?”
Goddess! Talia wanted to die, to turn into a bird,
to sink into the floor—anything but this! Trapped; she was trapped.
They’d Marry her off and she’d end up like Nada, beaten every night
so that she had to wear high-necked tunics to hide the bruises. Or
she’d die like her own mother, worn out with too many babies too
quickly. Or even if the impossible happened, and her Husband was
kind or too stupid to be a danger, her real life, the tales
that were all that made living worthwhile, would all but disappear,
for there would be no time for them in the never-ending round of
pregnancy and a Wife’s duties—
Before she could stop herself, Talia blurted out,
“I don’t want to be Married at all!”
The little rustlings and stirrings of a group of
bored women suddenly ceased, and they became as still as a row of
fenceposts, all with disbelief on their faces. Nine identical
expressions of shock and dismay stared at Talia from the sides of
the table. The silence closed down around her like the hand of
doom.
“Talia, dear,” a soft voice spoke behind her,
breaking the terrible silence, and Talia turned with relief to face
Father’s Mother, who had been sitting unnoticed in the corner. She
was one of the few people in Talia’s life who never seemed to think
that everything she did was wrong. Her kind, faded blue eyes were
the only ones in the room not full of accusation. The old woman
smoothed one braid of cloud-white hair with age-spotted hands in
unconscious habit, as she continued. “May the Mother forgive us,
but we never thought to ask you. Have you a vocation? Has the
Goddess Called you to her service?”
Talia had been hoping for a reprieve, but that, if
anything, was worse. Talia thought with horror of the one glimpse
she’d had of the Temple Cloisters, of the women there who spent
their lives in prayer for the souls of the Holderkin. The utterly
silent women, who went muffled from head to toe, forbidden to
leave, forbidden to speak, forbidden—life! —had horrified her. It
was a worse trap than Marriage; the very memory of the Cloisters
made her feel as if she was being smothered.
She shook her head frantically, unable to talk
around the lump in her throat.
Keldar rose from her place with the scrape of a
stool on the rough wooden floor and advanced on the terrified
child, who was as unable to move as a mouse between the paws of a
cat. Keldar took her shoulders with a grip that bruised as it made
escape impossible and shook her till her teeth rattled. “What’s
wrong with you, girl?” she said angrily, “You don’t want an
Honorable Marriage, you don’t want the Peace of the Goddess, what
do you want?”
All I want is to be left alone, Talia
thought with quiet desperation, I don’t want anything to
change— but her traitorous mouth opened again and let the dream
spill.
“I want to be a Herald,” she heard herself
say.
Keldar released her shoulders quickly, with a look
of near-horror as if she’d discovered she’d been holding something
vile, something that had crawled out of the midden.
“You—you—” For once, the controlled Keldar was at a
loss for words. Then—“Now you see what comes of coddling a
brat!” she said, turning on Father’s Mother in default of anyone
else to use as a scapegoat, “This is what happens when you
let a girl rise above her place. Reading! Figuring! No girl needs
to know more than she requires to label her preserves and count her
stores or keep the peddlers from cheating her! I told you this
would happen, you and your precious Andrean, letting her fill her
head with foolish tales!” She turned back to face Talia.
“Now, girl—when I finish with you—”
But Talia was gone.
She had taken advantage of the distraction of
Keldar’s momentary tirade to escape. Scampering quickly out the
door before any of the Wives realized she was missing, she fled the
Steading as fast as she could run. Sobbing hysterically, she had no
thought except to get away. With the wind in her face, and sweating
with fear, she ran past the barns and the stockade, pure terror
giving her feet extra speed. She fled through the fields as the
waist-high hay and grain beat against her, and up into the woodlot
and through it, following a tangled path through the uncut
underbrush. She was seeking the shelter of the hiding place she’d
found, the place that no one else knew of.
There was a steep bluff where the woodlot ended
high above the Road. Two years ago, Talia had found a place where
something had carved out a kind of shallow cave beneath the
protruding roots of a tree that grew at the very edge of the bluff.
She’d lined it with filched straw and old rugs meant for the
rag-bag; she kept her other two books hidden there. She had spent
many hours stolen from her chores there, daydreaming, invisible
from above or below so long as she stayed quiet and still. She
sought this sanctuary now, and scrambling over the edge of the
bluff, crept into it. She buried herself in the rugs, crying
hysterically, limp with exhaustion, nerves practically afire, ears
stretched for the tiniest sound above her.
For no matter how deep her misery, she knew she
must keep alert for the sounds of searchers. Before very long, she
heard the sound of some of the servants calling her name. When they
drew too near, she stifled her sobs in the rugs while her tears
fell silently, listening in fear for some sign telling her she’d
been discovered. She thought a dozen times that they’d found some
sign of her passage, but they seemed to have lost her track.
Eventually they went away, and she was free to cry as she
would.
Wrapped in pure misery, she hugged her knees to her
chest and rocked back and forth, weeping until her eyes were too
dry and sore to shed another tear. She felt numb all over, too numb
to think properly. Any choice she made seemed worse than the one
before it. Should she return and apologize, any punishment she’d
ever had before would seem a pleasure to the penance Keldar was
likely to devise for her unseemly and insubordinate behavior. It
would be Keldar’s choice, and her Father’s, what would befall her
then. Any Husband Keldar would choose now would be—horrid. She’d
either be shackled to some drooling old dotard, to be pawed over by
night and to be a nursemaid by day—or she’d be given to some
brutal, younger man, a cruel one, with instructions to break her to
seemly behavior. Keldar would likely pick one as sadistic as
Justus, her older brother—she shuddered, as the unbidden memory
came to her, of him standing over her with the hot poker in his
hand and the look on his face of fierce pleasure—
She forced the memory away, quickly.
But even that fate would be a pleasurable
experience compared to what would happen if they decided to offer
her as a Temple Servant. The Goddess’s Servants had even less
freedom and more duties than Her Handmaidens. They lived and died
never going beyond the cloister corridor to which they were
assigned. And in any case, no matter what future they picked for
her, her reading, her escape, would be over. Keldar would see to it
that she never saw another book again.
For one moment, she contemplated running away,
truly fleeing the Steading and the Holderkin. Then she recalled the
faces of the wandering laborers she’d seen at Hiring Fairs;
pinched, hungry, desperate for anyone to take them into a Holding.
And she’d never seen a woman among them. The “foolish tales” she’d
read made one thing very clear, the life of a wanderer was
dangerous and sometimes fatal for the unprepared, the defenseless.
What preparation had she? She had the clothing she stood up in, the
ragged rugs, and nothing else. How could she defend herself? She’d
never even been taught how to use a knife. She’d be ready
prey.
If only this were a tale—
An unfamiliar voice called her name—a voice full
of calm authority, and she found herself answering it, climbing out
of her hiding place almost against her will. And there before her,
waiting at the top of the bluff—
A Herald; resplendent and proud in her Whites,
her Companion a snowy apparition beside her, mane and tail lifting
in the gentle breeze like the finest silk. Sunlight haloed and
hallowed both of them, making them seem more than mortal. She
looked to Talia like the statue of the Lady come to life—only
proud, strong and proud, not meek and submissive. Behind the
Herald, looking cowed and ashamed, were Keldar and her
Father.
“You are Talia?” the Herald asked, and she
nodded affirmatively.
She broke out in a smile that dazzled her—it was
like a sudden appearance of the sun after rain.
“Blessed is the Lady who led us here!” she
exclaimed. “Many the weary months we have searched for you, and
always in vain. We had nothing to go on except your
name—”
“Led you to me?” she asked, exalted, “But,
why?”
“To make you one of us, little sister,” she
replied, as Keldar shrank into herself and her Father seemed bent
on studying the tops of his shoes. “You are to be a Herald,
Talia—the gods themselves have decreed it. Look—yonder
comes your Companion—”
She looked where the Herald pointed, and saw a
graceful white mare with a high, arched neck and a knowing eye
pacing deliberately toward her. The Companion was caparisoned all
in blue and silver, tiny bells hanging from her reins and bridle.
Behind the Companion, at a respectful distance, came all her sibs,
the rest of the Wives, and all the servants of the
Holding.
With a glad cry, she ran to meet the mare and
the Herald helped her to mount up on the Companion’s back, while
the Hold servants cheered, her sibs stared in sullen respect, and
Keldar and her Father stared at her in plain fear, obviously
thinking of all the punishments they’d meted out to HER and
expecting the same now that she was the one in power—
The sound of hoofbeats on the Road broke into her
desperate daydream. For one panicked moment she thought it was
another searcher, but then she realized that her Father’s horses
sounded nothing like this. These hoofbeats had a chime like bells
on the hard surface. As the sound drew nearer, it was joined by
another; the sound of real bells, of bridle bells. Only one kind of
horse wore bridle bells every day, and not just on Festival
Days—the magical steed of legend, a Herald’s Companion.
Talia had never seen a real Herald, though she’d
daydreamed about them constantly. The realization that she was
finally going to see one of her dreams in actual fact startled her
out of her fantasy and her tears completely. The distraction was
too tempting to resist. For just this one moment she would forget
her troubles, her hopeless position, and snatch a tiny bit of magic
for herself, to treasure all her days. She leaned out of her cave,
stretching as far out as she could, thinking of nothing except to
catch a glimpse—and leaned out too far.
She lost her balance, and her flailing hands caught
nothing but air. She tumbled end over end down the bluff, banging
painfully into roots and rocks. The wind was knocked out of her
before she was halfway down, and nothing she collided with seemed
to slow her descent any. She was totally unable to stop her
headlong tumble until she landed on the hard surface of the Road
itself, with a force that set sparks to dancing in front of her
eyes and left her half-stunned.
When the grayness cleared away from her vision and
she could get a breath again, she found herself sprawled face
downward on the Road. Her hands were scraped, her sides bruised,
her knees full of gravel, and her eyes full of dirt. When she
turned her head to the side, blinking tears away, she found she was
gazing at four silver hooves.
She gave a strangled gasp and scrambled painfully
to her feet. Regarding her with a gentle curiosity was a—well, a
Herald’s Companion was hardly what one would call a “horse.” They
transcended horses in the way that panthers transcend alleycats, or
angels transcend men. Talia had read and heard plenty of
descriptions of the Companions before, but she was still totally
unprepared for the close-hand reality.
The riderless Companion was in full formal array,
his trappings silver and sky-blue, his reins hung with silver
bridle bells. No horse in Talia’s experience had that slender, yet
muscular grace or could match the way he seemed to fly without
taking a single step. He was white—Companions were always white—but
nothing on earth could possibly match that glowing, living, radiant
white. And his eyes—
When Talia finally had the courage to look into
those sapphire eyes, she lost track of the world—
She was lost in blue more vast than a sea and
darker than sky and full of welcome so heart-filling it left no
room for doubt.
Yes—at last—you. I Choose you. Out of all
the world, out of all the seeking, I have found you, young sister
of my heart! You are mine and I am yours—and never again will there
be loneliness—
It was a feeling more than words; a shock and a
delight. A breathless joy so deep it was almost pain; a joining. A
losing and a finding; a loosing and a binding. Flight and freedom.
And love and acceptance past all words to tell of the wonder of
it—and she answered that love with all her soul.
Now forget, little one. Forget until you are
ready to remember again.
Blinking, she came back to herself, with a feeling
that something tremendous had happened, though she didn’t know
quite what. She shook her head—there had been—it was—but whatever
had happened had receded just out of memory, though she had the odd
feeling it might come back when she least expected it to. But for
now there was a soft nose nudging her chest, and the Companion was
whickering gently at her.
It was as though someone were putting loving arms
about her, and urging her to cry all her unhappiness out. She flung
both her arms around his neck and wept unrestrainedly into his
silky mane. The feeling of being held and comforted intensified as
soon as she touched him, and she lost herself in the unfamiliar but
welcome sensation. Unlike her lone crying in her cave, this session
of tears brought peace in its wake, and before too long she was
able to dry her eyes on a corner of her tunic and take heed of her
surroundings again.
She let go of his neck with reluctance, and took
another long look at him. For one wild moment, she was tempted to
leap into his empty saddle. She had a vision of herself riding
away, far away; anywhere, so long as it was away from here
and she was with him. The temptation was so great it left her
shaking. Then practicality reasserted itself. Where could she go?
And besides—
“You’ve run away from someone, haven’t you?” she
said quietly to the Companion, who only blew into her jerkin in
answer. “I can’t have you, you could only belong to a Herald.
I’ll—” she gulped. There was a huge lump in her throat and tears
threatened again at the idea of parting with him. Never, ever in
her short life had she wanted anything as much as the way she
wanted to—to—be his, and he hers! “I’ll have to take you back to
whoever you belong to.”
A new thought occurred to her, and for the first
time that afternoon, hope brightened her for a moment as she saw a
way out of her dilemma. “Maybe—maybe they’ll be grateful. Maybe
they’ll let me work for them. They must need someone to do
their cooking and sewing and things. I’d do anything for Heralds ”
The soft blue eyes seemed to agree that this was a good idea.
“They’re bound to be nicer than Keldar—they’re so kind and wise in
all the tales. I bet they’d let me read when I wasn’t working. I’d
get to see Heralds all the time—” Tears lumped her throat again,
“—maybe they’d let me see you, once in a while.”
The Companion only whickered again, and stretching
his neck out, nudged her with his velvet nose toward his saddle,
maneuvering for her to mount.
“Me?” she squeaked. “I couldn’t—” Suddenly,
the reality of what he was and what she was came home
to her. All very well to dream of leaping on his back; but in cold,
sober reflection the very idea that she, grubby and ordinary,
should sit in the saddle of a Companion shocked her.
The enormous, vivid blue eyes looked back at her
with a trace of impatience. One hoof stamped with a certain
imperiousness, and he shook his mane at her. His whole manner said
as clearly as speech that he thought her scruples were ridiculous.
After all, who was going to see her? And now that she thought about
it, it was quite possible that he had come from a goodly distance
away; if she insisted on walking, it was likely to take forever to
return him.
“Are you sure you don’t mind? That it’s all right?”
She spoke in a timid voice, unmindful of the incongruity of asking
a horse for advice.
He tossed his head impatiently, and the bridle
bells rang. There was little doubt that he felt she was being
excessively silly.
“You’re right,” she said in sudden decision, and
mounted.
Talia was no stranger to riding. She’d done so
every chance she could, often sneaking rides when no one was
looking. She’d ridden every horse of an age to bear her weight,
broken or not, saddled or bareback. She was the oldest of the
littles on the Holding, and hence the only one considered
responsible enough to be sent to other Elders with messages or to
the village on errands. She was usually a-horseback at least once a
week legitimately. She was generally found sneaking rides at least
three or four times that often.
But riding a Companion was nothing like any riding
she’d ever done. His pace was so smooth a true little could have
stayed in his saddle without falling, and if she’d closed her eyes
she’d never have guessed he was more than ambling along. Her
Father’s beasts had to be goaded constantly to maintain more than a
walk; of his own volition the Companion had moved into a canter,
and it was faster than the fastest gallop she’d ever coaxed out of
any of them. The sweet air flowed past her like the water of
the river, and it blew her hair back out of her face. The
intoxication of it drove all thought of anything else clean out of
her mind. It was as if the wind rushing past them had swept all her
unhappiness right out of her and left it behind in an untidy heap
in the center of the Road.
If this was a daydream, she hoped she’d die in the
middle of it and never have to wake to the dreary world
again.