Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

They sat together in the darkness, holding hands just as they had during thunderstorms as littles. She couldn’t imagine a world without Lyle in it to give her comfort, to bear her through the storms. She just couldn’t.

Lelia got up early the next morning, dressed once again in rust-red. She’d lain in bed all night, struggling to come up with a plan for dealing with Wil and the damage she’d caused.

Before breakfast, she hiked down to Companion’s Field and went hunting.

It didn’t take her long. The Companion she searched for was wide awake; he even seemed to be waiting for her.

“Heyla,” she said, approaching him. “You’re Wil’s Companion, right?”

The stallion tossed his head.

“Well, I know very well you’re probably smarter than me,” she said. “I also know I owe some things to your Chosen.” She reached up and scratched his neck. “So I need to ask you a favor.” And she told him her plan.

Much to her surprise, he nodded in agreement.

Wil didn’t see Lelia all the next day. Or the next.

As the candlemarks passed, his discomfort outgrew his ability to ignore it. By dinnertime he was wrestling with the twin serpents of guilt and anger. Why should he feel guilty? She was the one intruding on his life! She was the one who refused to leave him alone! She . . .

“Damnit,” he muttered as he sat down to eat by himself in the common room.

It didn’t matter what she had done. He had lost his temper. He had raised his voice. He was better than that.

Or supposed to be. He was the one with a cart-sized otherworldly horse on his side.

Dinner ended quickly, but the self-flagellation remained. He wandered back to his room, lost in the emotional push and pull of anger and shame.

He stopped in front of his door.

A note was pinned to it with one of Lelia’s knives.

He gritted his teeth, took it down, and opened it up.

It read:

If you want to see your Companion again, come to the Grove Chapel in one candlemark.

Signed,

L.

He stared for a moment, dumbstruck.

:Vehs,: he thought, :where are you?:

:Oh, Chosen!: Vehs thought back. :Please save me! The evil Bard- trainee has me and—:

:This is not funny.:

:She refuses to play anything but “My Lady’s Eyes”! It’s awful, Chosen!:

“This is ridiculous,” Wil mumbled.

:Ah, gods! She’s invented a chorus to it! Save me!:

“I’m going to kill you both,” he sighed.

Lelia wasn’t playing “My Lady’s Eyes” when Wil strolled up. She was sitting on a stump and playing, but the song she’d chosen was one from his own sector of Valdemar; a piece by the Bard Faber called “Seven White Horses.”

Vehs lingered nearby, a loose bit of rope around his neck. She’d tied him off to a dead sapling he could have snapped without breaking a sweat.

Her strings grew silent as Wil approached. She put the lute in its case, closed it with a snap, and walked over to Vehs, untying him and tucking the rope into her belt. She stood on tiptoe, whispered something in his ear, and then gave the Companion a kiss on one plump cheek.

Vehs looked away. To Wil, he seemed to be blushing.

Lelia approached Wil and looked up at him.

He steeled himself.

Be calm, he thought. Whatever you do, be calm. Be gentle. You’re a Herald, damnit. Act like one.

“I’m sorry,” she said. She patted him on the arm as she walked away.

Wil blinked stupidly, caught off guard. An ache started in his heart and throat, and grew the longer he stood there.

Damnit.

“Wait,” he said.

Her footsteps continued to fade away.

“Wait,” he said again, turning toward her.

She started to run.

Lelia didn’t want to know anymore.

She ran through the Grove like an arrow aimed at the Collegium. She’d write something—she had to—and it would be terrible—and unoriginal—and it would probably be about Sun and Shadow—and it would probably get her kicked out of the Bardic Collegium—and she would have to go back to juggling knives with her family—but she didn’t care—she didn’t care—she—

A white shape flashed to her right. Vehs leaped in front of her. She flailed to a stop, sliding in the grass and leaves, clutching her precious lutecase to her chest. She fell on her back and stared up at him.

Wil frowned down at her from Companion-back.

“Wait,” he said stubbornly.

She blinked, flinging tiny bits of tears from her lashes.

He dismounted and sat down next to her. “Just—wait.”

Crickets sang, nightingales warbled. Vehs’ white coat shone like moonlight, a silent challenge to the growing darkness.

“She didn’t die immediately,” Wil said at last. “It took a month. Her Companion—he carried her all the way to Haven, and then collapsed. He—died. She should have, too.

“But she didn’t. She held on. The Healers didn’t know why for the longest time. And then one day she woke long enough to Mindspeak something vital—some bit of intelligence she’d been holding on to. I was there. I saw her eyes when she slipped away—to the Havens.”

Somewhere, a frog gulped. Lelia said nothing and made no move except to breathe.

“The whole Heraldic Circle was in a fury,” Wil continued. “Everyone wanted the raiders who did it to her. It was a mess.”

He stared numbly into the darkness. To his surprise, he felt Lelia’s callused fingers close over his hand.

“She fought going,” he said, “because of duty. She had to fulfill it.”

“And to say good-bye.”

He looked at Lelia, startled. “What?”

“To you. To say good-bye.”

“To me? Why?”

She gave him a confused look. “Havens, Wil, she loved you. Why wouldn’t she want to say good-bye?”

Wil blinked stupidly, thunderstruck by the obviousness of her statement. In ten years, the thought so simply expressed to him now by a Bard-trainee had never once occurred to him.

His shoulders tightened and the aura of a headache threatened. He’d avoided it for so long—the memory of that moment when Daryann’s eyes had opened. The clamor of the Healers—the shouts for a Herald—Daryann’s head had turned toward him, like a north-needle gravitating toward its inexorable position—

He pushed past the pain of the loss, and allowed himself to finally, really remember that moment.

She had seen him.

“She winked,” he said slowly. “She winked at me.”

Something inside him broke free. He felt as if an old weight—one he’d forgotten was there—had been lifted away.

Lelia’s hand slid off of his. He heard the lutecase open and the hum of the disturbed strings as she pulled it