Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

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.

She had left dinner early, pleading an indisposition that was only half feigned. A Choosing should have been a wonderful and joyous occasion. Not this stomach-wrenching confusion.

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.