Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

“And I am to believe that?” Navar said, his voice rough. Well he knew that a man’s anger was a blade set at his own throat, yet he could not keep himself from feeling it. He thought of Doladan, awaiting him in their bed at the tavern—Doladan, who trusted too quickly and too easily. He thought of the hope that he might live in freedom and under law, a hope that had kindled from a fragile spark to a great blaze over so many moonturns—

:It is for this hope that we have come,: Ardatha said.

“To crush it,” Navar growled, for he had discovered that it was far more painful to have a dream destroyed than to live without dreams at all.

:No. Never.: And though Ardatha’s face was a horse’s face, in his mind Navar could feel the Companion’s emotions as if he could see them on Ardatha’s face: horror, and disgust, and anger, and an utter repudiation of the thought of tricking King Valdemar into a tyrannous rule.

Navar desperately wanted to believe. And he knew that faces and voices could lie.

But for the first time since he had discovered that Valdemar had become infested by mind-controlling spirit-beasts, it occurred to him to wonder: If these “Companions” were, in fact, the answer to King Valdemar’s prayer to keep his kingdom free of tyranny and corruption, just how were they going to go about it?

:We Choose,: Ardatha said. :And those we Choose are good men and good women, who will govern, and lead, and administer the laws of Valdemar wisely.:

“That’s all?” Navar asked after a moment. “You just pick people?” It didn’t seem like much.

He had the sense that Ardatha was clearing his throat in mild rebuke, though he could not say how he came to have that sense. :We Choose,: Ardatha corrected. :And we advise our Chosen, speaking to them mind-to-mind, as I am to you, though you are the first who can hear all of us. Each whom we Choose has some Gift of Magery, though perhaps so small that it has never been noticed before. To be Chosen is a great responsibility.:

“You haven’t Chosen me, have you?” Navar asked in alarm. If he could hear Ardatha . . .

The silvery laughter of a dozen Companions filled his mind, until Ardatha stamped his hoof. :I have Chosen Kordas, and our bond shall endure until one of us dies. You and I merely speak together through your Gift of Mindspeech, as I hope to persuade what is surely the stubbornest man in all Valdemar not to leave.:

“You could tell the king to order me to stay,” Navar said.

:I could ask Kordas to ask you,: Ardatha corrected. :He would not compel you to remain against your will. Nor will I. Nor will any of those who have been Chosen compel you to stay: Prince Restil, or Herald Beltran, or Herald Peralas. They will but ask. As do I.:

Peralas, Navar recalled, was General Harleth’s milk-name. He thought of the Herald’s Council and its unlikely membership.

It seemed to him—standing here in the freezing dark, beside a horse that was far more than a horse—that this was no more than a dream. But Valdemar itself was a dream—the best dream the hearts of men could hold, rather than the uneasy nightmare of oppression and tyranny they had fled. He thought of the Pelagiris Forest, and he knew there would be no sanctuary for him and for Doladan there. And a man might live rough for one moonturn or even a dozen, but in the end, all that might be found in a solitary life in the wilderness was starvation and an early death. Worth it to die in freedom.

Foolishness if he fled merely from shadows in his own mind.

“I am nothing and no one,” he said at last. “I can hardly threaten your plans for Valdemar.”

Ardatha seemed to sigh in exasperation. :Hardly,: the Companion said. :But you can make them a reality—if you have the courage.:

“Courage?” Navar asked. His voice was hard, for no one had ever questioned his courage.