Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

go back under the awning to fire up the little cook-stove, since it was her turn to cook.

“Where’s Arville?” she asked, suddenly realizing the fourth member of the inseparables was missing—and she was about to cook, which up until this moment had meant he was going to be at her elbow, waiting, with a look on his face like a starving puppy.

“He said he heard something out in the—”

“Look what I found!” Arville cried happily, bounding up to them, arms and legs flapping with happiness like a demented scarecrow. “Look what I found out in the forest!”

The thing bounding at his side was like no animal that Elyn had ever seen before. The head was something like a wolf’s, but the body was lean and had a curved back like the pictures of hunting cats she’d seen. When the shaggy, soaked fur dried, it would probably be a dark gray.

And it came up to Arville’s waist. It was huge.

If it hadn’t been wearing exactly the same puppy-eager expression that Arville was, she’d have been terrified of it. It wagged its tail merrily.

And then it talked. Or tried to. Its voice, if it could be called that, was a mix of bark and howl limited by the chops and cut occasionally to form words. And it tried enthusiastically to be understood.

“Reyra!” it said. “Rye Ryu! Ryer Ryeree!”

It skidded to a halt on the wet grass and plopped its haunches down, staring up at her expectantly, its bushy tail pounding on the grass and sending up a spray of drops each time it thumped.

She blinked at it.

“He said his name’s Ryu, and he’s a kyree,” Arville supplied hopefully.

“Of course he is.” She looked at the thing carefully. Well, it talked. So it probably wasn’t going to unexpectedly turn savage and tear out their throats. And it wagged its tail, which was something that hadn’t been covered in her Fear-the-Monster classes. “And what does Ryu want?” she asked, hoping that the answer was not going to be “dinner.” They didn’t have enough meat to satisfy something that large.

“Rum ree ru!” Ryu said, his tail thumping soggily. That didn’t need any translation.

“He’s kind of—uh—Chosen me,” Arville said, looking guilty. “Pelas says it’s all right with him.”

Chosen him—some weird beastie out of the Pelagirs, and it’s Chosen him. She wanted to thump her head against the side of the wagon. Why couldn’t anything these four did be straightforward? She wanted to tell both of them that this was absolutely out of the question, that the big, soggy gray thing could just turn itself back around and lope into the forest where it had come from. But two sets of big brown begging eyes were boring holes in her soul, in exactly the cliched way they were supposed to in silly stories. And Arville’s Companion was all right with this ...

“He’ll have to catch his own food!” she said sharply.

“Rall rye!”

“And he doesn’t sleep in the wagon! It’s cramped enough in there as it is, and he smells like wet dog. I don’t care if there’s a spare bunk when the grain is gone, he doesn’t get it. And he definitely doesn’t get my bunk.”

“Rall rye!” This didn’t seem to bother the thing at all. “Rye ree runner!”

“He’ll sleep under the wagon, he says,” Arville said happily. “When we get to the village, I’ll buy him a blanket to sleep on. Won’t I, boy?”

The tail thumped soggily. Elyn gave up.

The creature managed to not get too much in the way, dutifully went out and presumably hunted himself some dinner, and settled in under the wagon to sleep as if he had done so all his life. It was all Elyn could do to persuade Arville not to settle in next to him. And that gave her some pause when she climbed into her own bunk for the night. The bond that had sprung up between the young man and what looked like some kind of savage beast seemed harmless enough—but it also was disturbingly strong and clearly magical in nature.

So what if it wasn’t harmless?

:It’s harmless,: Mayar said instantly in her mind. :Really. The kyree are known to us. Yes, it’s a magical beast, like the Hawkbrother bondbirds. In fact, the Hawkbrothers know all about kyree.: She sensed something like a chuckle from Mayar. :Ryu is younger than he looks, a mere stripling. He’s been lonely. His sort are supposed to go out and find someone to attach themselves to. It’s a little like what we do, except that ... well, never mind. Think of him as a congenital helper, and he’s been looking for the right someone to help for almost a year now.:

Elyn could only shake her head. Well if Mayar saw no problems, and Arville’s own Companion had no objections, who was she to interfere?

She only hoped she would have no cause to regret the decision.

And then, just as she was drifting off, she felt the wagon ... vibrating.

At first she couldn’t imagine what it was. Thunder? Earthquake? Landslide? But if it was anything dangerous the Companions would be screaming their heads off.

The she realized what it was. It came from below.

Ryu was snoring.

Kill me now ...

Oh, what a surprise. The most impressive thing about Bastion’s Stone was a stone. A great big stone that the cluster of little houses huddled against, like baby chicks up against their mother. It was too small to have a market. It was too small to have an inn—one of the locals who was apparently the only one capable of brewing drinkable beer sold it out of his house, and you either drank it in the yard or took it home to drink with your neighbors. So far as Elyn could tell, the only reason for the village existing in the first place was so that all the villagers could share farming equipment and the team of oxen required to pull it. And, of course, because they had a really big stone.

:It’s like a Heartstone, without the heart,: Mayar commented.

Elyn sat down with the entire population of the village in the only structure big enough to hold them all, the communal threshing barn, and listened to what they had to tell her. Her four charges she told (a bit sternly) to stand and listen and not comment or ask questions themselves. She could tell that Alma was almost writhing with impatience at being muzzled, but that was too bad. At this point, these people didn’t need to have questions fired at them from five different people. One person had to be the voice of authority, and that person had better be her. Only when she was done would she give them leave to go question people on an individual basis, when it was clear that they were answering to her and not the other way around. Having multiple “authorities” only made for trouble.

As for the villagers, they all seemed to defer to the blacksmith, which was curious. Perhaps it was because he was the strongest, or just because, being in a trade that had “trade secrets,” he seemed the most important to them.

But when facing someone wearing a uniform and an air of unquestioned authority, he became almost comically deferential. Regrettably, with that deference came being tongue-tied.

“Just start at the beginning,” she coaxed, “when you all first noticed something wrong, no matter how trivial it seems.”

He mumbled something. It was a little hard to understand his accent; although what he spoke was similar to Valdemaran, the way the words were pronounced wasn’t always the same. She thought it sounded like, “I can’t remember.”

“Sure ye can, Benderk!” one of the others urged, studiously not looking at her. “Ye were the first t’say! ’Twere the Shadows.”

“Sounds like a wee laddie’s boggles,” Benderk mumbled. At least, that was what she thought he mumbled.

“Tell her, Benderk! Tell her ’bout them Shadows up at Stony Rill! How they was on’y there at twilight, lurkin’ like, but then they was them there rustlin’s and whisperin’s on’y no one was there, an that was by broad day! An’ then it weren’t jest whisperin’s but noises t’make the blood cawld, gibberin’s and gurglin’s an’ a mad laugh ’at made th’ dogs run away! Tell her!” The speaker was the fellow that sold the local ale; he had brought a barrel of it, and now he plied Benderk with a mug and a refill, and Benderk evidently found courage therein, for he finally raised his