It still kept the grandeur of its carvings and stone-work, and the floor had been paved with mosaics. But the furniture had been made more for comfort than for looks, there were warmly woven rugs over the cold paving, and the once enormous rooms were broken up into clusters of apartments. The smell of leather and horses permeated the place in a way that Egil found quite pleasant.
The grand hall was now half library and half dining commons. Godric led the Heralds into a hubbub of voices, the clatter of crockery and cutlery and a mouth-watering promise of dinner.
The sight of two strangers in Whites stopped the conversation cold. There must have been fifty people in the commons, men and women of various ages and sizes and shapes, but they all had a familiar look, one that Egil had learned to recognize when he was small. They were all horsemen.
They saw it in the Heralds, too; their eyes warmed, and their faces relaxed. There was no head table; people seemed to sit in groups by age and apparent experience, but Egil judged that was more a natural human impulse than a school rule.
The table to which Godric urged him was one of those in the middle. Most of the people at it were young, around the age of senior Trainees, but several were older. One, a woman of middle years, as weathered and wiry as Godric, stood and held out her hand.
“Welcome to Osgard Manor,” she said. “It’s a great honor to see you here.”
“I believe the honor is mine,” Egil said.
He was not merely being polite. She was older than he remembered, but then he was not a wide-eyed boy any longer, either. She still had the perfectly erect carriage and the exquisite balance even on foot that had made her one of the great masters of the horseman’s art.
“Madame Larissa,” he said, bowing over her hand. “Now I understand why the world has gathered here to learn the art of riding.”
She accepted his homage graciously, as a queen should, but then she said, “Honor for honor, sir. It’s a small world we inhabit here, and you’re the first of the Queen’s own to grace us with your presence. Dine with us, please, and afterwards, if it’s not terribly presumptuous, might I be introduced to your Companions?”
The hunger in her eyes startled Egil. It was not that he had never seen such a thing before. Even as difficult and dangerous as the Herald’s life could be, few in Valdemar failed to dream that they, too, might be Chosen.
Another gift had chosen Larissa, one that Egil felt was at least as great: to dance with horses in ways that even Heralds might hardly dream of. Yet like any village girl, she yearned after the white beings that had, in their wisdom, taken the shape of horses for the defense of Valdemar.
It was a peculiar sensation to find himself envied by someone whom he had been in awe of since before he was Chosen. She served him with her own hands, picked out the best cuts of the roast and the last of the fresh bread, and sent a boy to the garden for a bowlful of spring greens and tiny carrots. She would have stuffed both Heralds as full as festival geese if she had not been so manifestly eager to meet the Companions.
Rohanan and Cynara were royally housed by true horsemen’s standards, in adjacent paddocks with three-sided shelters. There was fresh water in a stream that ran through the paddocks, and fresh green grass to eat, and a manger of oats and barley if they were inclined to indulge themselves.
No horseman would be so crass as to hang over the fence, but a remarkable number of people had found chores to do in the near vicinity. Egil doubted that any of the paddocks or the nearby barns had been as clean as they were that evening, or that the horses in them had been groomed so thoroughly since the last public exhibition.
Rohanan was taking advantage of his celebrity to dance and snort and arch his beautiful white neck. Cynara, never one to shout for attention, grazed peacefully in the waning light.
Larissa spared the stallion an appreciative glance, but it was the mare on whom she focused. “Now there is beauty by any measure,” she said. “No nonsense about her at all, is there?”
“None,” said Egil, not caring if Larissa heard the fondness in his voice. “Cynara, come and meet someone remarkable.”
His Companion cocked an ear, finished the mouthful of grass she had been in the midst of eating, and raised her head. After a moment she deigned to approach the gate.
Egil opened it and bowed Larissa through. She moved with such quiet and deep calm that Egil felt it in himself, and in Cynara, too.
“May I?” Larissa asked her.
She bent her head. Larissa laid a light hand on her neck, stroking it in a kind of dizzy wonder.
“Haven’t you ever met a Companion before?” Bronwen asked from behind them. Her voice seemed to Egil to be both loud and abrupt.
“Oh, yes,” Larissa said with no sign of offense, “but never in my own stable, as my honored guest.”
“Really?” said Bronwen.
Damn the girl, what had got into her? Before she could finish throwing down the gauntlet, Egil said in his smoothest tone, “One tends to forget how few of us there are, or how many places see us seldom if at all.”
“Now that is true,” Godric said. “Come, young Herald, tell me: I noticed your saddle is unusually well made. It’s a Stefan, isn’t it?”
Godric always had had a gift for defusing the tempers of the young. Bronwen nodded, still scowling, but effectively distracted. “Yes, it was one of the last that he made before he retired. They say his daughter is an even better saddler than he was, but I haven’t seen enough yet to be sure.”
“I’ve seen some of her work,” Godric said, herding her effortlessly and tactfully away toward the barn that was nearest. “It’s very good, and some is rather radical. Have you seen her new girthing system? I’m not entirely convinced, but ...”
Egil looked from the two retreating backs to Larissa, whose smile made him smile in return. “Is he really only training the young horses?” Egil asked.
“Young riders, too, of course,” Larissa said. “He’s good. We’re lucky to have him.”
Cynara lowered her head and went back to grazing. Egil leaned against her shoulder, suddenly and completely comfortable.
It said a great deal for Larissa that she watched him without an excess of envy. Yearning, yes, and maybe a little sadness. “What is it like?” she asked. “Do you ride as you would a horse? Or is there something else— something more?”
Cynara’s tail swished at flies; her jaws worked rhythmically, cropping and chewing. She was amused, he could feel it, but there was compassion, too.
“It’s different when the creature you ride can understand the words you speak or think,” Egil said, “but not as different as you might imagine. Mostly, when I ride, it’s a dance: two bodies moving together through constantly shifting space. That’s the same with a Companion as with a horse. The harmony—I’ve seen you ride; it’s not so different.”
“But Companions don’t need training,” she said.
“Do horses, really?” Egil asked. “A horse knows how to be a horse. What he has to learn is how to do it while carrying a rider. Companions are much the same. Except of course, with them, there’s no illusion of submission.”
“That’s true of the great horses, too,” Larissa said. “Those that are born for the dance, they know. They will share their joy in it, but they never precisely submit.”
Egil nodded. She understood perfectly, as he had known she would.
“I don’t trust that woman,” Bronwen said.
She had dogged his heels to the room he had been given. It happened to be next to hers, but she showed no interest in either privacy or sleep. Everyone else in the school had gone to bed: morning came early, and there was a long day of work and study ahead of them all.
Egil would have been happy to shut and bar the door and get some peace and quiet himself, but she was his intern. He had an obligation to instruct her. “Madame Larissa is one of the greatest living masters of the equestrian art,” he said. “There is nothing suspicious or untrustworthy about her.”
“Are you sure?” Bronwen demanded, dropping down onto the bed and tucking up her feet.
That did not bode well for an early night.
