Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

More than one young and not so young person reached out to catch hold of his bridle or tried to bar his way. He never seemed to veer from his path, nor did he slow or stop. He simply was not there for those who hoped to make him Choose them.

The center of the market was a fountain that had not run in living memory. The well that fed it was dry.

As the Companion came to a halt in front of it, water bubbled up in the bowl, filled it and spilled over into the basin below. He lowered his chiseled white head and drank, while the market watched in spreading silence.

Two voices at once broke that silence, from opposite ends of the square: “Coryn!”

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.”