Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

He looked into Bronwen’s face. She had been speaking to her Companion, too: her eyes were wide. “What do we do?” she asked.

The question fell on Egil’s shoulders with the weight of the lost world. She was not pretending superiority now or falling back on arrogance, either. He was the Herald whom the Queen had sent to instruct her. She needed that instruction.

The one sensible thought he had had, to pack up and take the book back to the Queen and let her deal with it, was no longer a possibility. There was no Mage to undo the magic. No one here had the power or the will to try. The spell protected them from their own defiance.

“But why not us?” Egil asked.

:Because of us,: Cynara answered.

Of course, Egil thought. Heralds were protected by a power greater than earthly magic. The spell recognized that and let them be.

It was a clever construct, but not quite clever enough. It could not seem to distinguish between protecting its charges and subtly but surely destroying them.

Osgard was a prosperous valley, rich in crops and livestock; it might survive for a long time. But in the end it would die of its own isolation.

The people were feeling it already, sinking into passive acceptance of the strangeness around them. From what Egil knew of magic, that meant that the spell was feeding on them, absorbing them into itself.

“We’re not Mages,” he said. “We’re barely full Heralds. We’re an intern and a fool who has been avoiding his duty since he came back from his first mission.”

“And two Companions,” Bronwen said with remarkably little temper. He pulled her around, glaring into her eyes, but the spell had not sunk its claws in her.

Yet.

She reversed his grip, caught hold and shook him. “Stop it! Stop thrashing. The Queen sent you here. She must have known what she was doing.”

Egil had serious doubts of that. Selenay had asked for a horseman, not a hero.

What could a horseman do to stop this?

There was one thing ...

As soon as he thought of it, he knew it was insane. But what else was there?

“Listen,” he said. “Fetch Larissa and Godric. Tell them to choose five of the best riders in the school, and saddle the best horses they have. Then run and saddle Rohanan.”

He braced for rebellion. Bronwen’s brows drew together, but she let him go, turned, and ran.

He had to trust that she was doing as he told her. Cynara had jumped the fence and was cantering toward the barn and the tack room.

She was ready. Egil was not, but there was no time for that. He groomed her carefully, saddled and bridled her, and led her back out into the deceptively cheerful sunlight.

Of course it was cheerful. It was safe. Everything here was safe.

Egil felt it pulling at him even through the Companion’s presence. If he just let go, relaxed, let the magic do its work, he would never have to worry again. The spell would do it for him.

Tempting, he thought as he mounted. There were other riders coming toward him: Larissa on an older stallion than she had ridden before, Godric on an elegant bay, and the rest behind, mounted as well as those two, if not better.

Egil sagged briefly on Cynara’s neck, limp with relief. Even through the spell, a Herald’s word could bind these loyal subjects of the Queen. He only had to hope that it would keep binding them once he set his plan in motion.

Where was Bronwen? He could do this with the riders he had, maybe. But a second Companion would make all the difference.

He could not afford to wait. The day was passing quickly. The brighter, clearer, more harmless it seemed, the more urgently it struck him. He had to stop this now.

“Follow my lead,” he said to the riders.

“What are we doing?” one of the younger ones asked.

“Your new quadrille!” Bronwen sang out from behind. “Go on, follow. This will be brilliant.”

Hardly that, reflected Egil, but her words did their work. The spell’s complaisance quelled the one who still had the wit to question. The rest followed without a word.

He could not remember the exact steps and turns of Larissa’s pattern. What he did remember was how it had run: widdershins, against the sun, twisting this part of the earth free of the rest and wrapping it in the spell’s protections.

The patterns he rode were familiar exercises from his morning schooling, stretching and suppling, then moving into the gaits and figures of this art that he loved more than anything in the world except Cynara. He was careful to ride the patterns sunwise, to unwind the spell turn by turn.

It was not a living creature. No Mage alive had cast it. But it had a sort of will, an awareness that was part of its substance. It was designed to know when it was threatened.

The sun dimmed. Clouds gathered overhead—the first Egil had seen since he came to Osgard. A cold wind lifted Cynara’s mane, lashing it against his hands and arms.

The hoofbeats behind and around him were steady. The riders were focused on him and on the white being he rode.

Bronwen and Rohanan anchored them. The young Herald and her Companion were more focused than he had ever seen them. They had what Egil had: the fire in the gut, the passion that turned sport into art.

They needed every bit of it. When the sky began to pulse and the earth to heave, it took all of each rider’s skill to keep the horses on their feet. Egil dared not look up. He could feel the vortex forming overhead.

If its charges must endanger themselves by resisting the spell, the spell would keep them safe—by swallowing them. Egil had no thoughts left and no plan, except to keep riding. His valiant Cynara kept her balance when level ground turned vertical, when the wind howled, when sand blasted her, drawing blood from the thin skin around her nose and eyes.

His own eyes were narrowed to slits. He could no longer hear the riders around him, if any remained. The wind had deafened him.

Step by step and pace by pace, forward, turn, collect, pirouette, forward again. He was drowning in sand. The wind eroded his soul. All he was, all he had, was the movement in his body and the horselike body on which he rode, and the bond between them that would hold until they died.

He was going to die. That thought was very clear. He was not afraid at all. He had a task to perform and a duty to fulfill. He was a Herald; he was doing what a Herald was born to do.

Finally, after all these years.

He looked up into absolute nothingness. Most of Osgard had spiraled down into it, bright green grass and bright yellow sunlight and blandly smiling people and all. Somewhere on the other side of the void was the world from which the spell had sundered them.

:Cynara,: he said, faint and clear in the silence of his mind. :Can you find the rest of the Companions? Can you ask them to guide us home?:

:I can do better,: she said, serene as always. :Remember the Grove in spring: the green leaves, the sunlight dappling the ground beneath them, the Companions dancing on the grass.:

He saw it as she spoke it. The Companions’ dance matched the steps and turns of his own: sunwise and clockwise, righting the tilt of the world and drawing the errant part of it back into its place. Where the vortex had been was the temple in the heart of the Grove, and the sun contained within its walls, dazzling his eyes with living gold.

The sun was setting over the arena. The wind blew soft, with a touch of chill, but that was the spring evening and not the grip of magic.

The spell was gone. Osgard was safe on its own merits. Egil had reason to hope that the storms outside the valley had abated and the world settled into its normal track, free of meddling magic.

Cynara snorted wetly and shook herself from head to tail. Egil laughed, and as he looked up, he saw Bronwen laughing with him. And that was the third time they shared an emotion other than mutual dislike.