Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

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.

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.