Changing the World: All-New Tales of Valdemar

Doladan sought to discuss what they had learned, but Navar bade him hold his tongue, for he had already decided. This Haven had turned to nightmare, and Navar would not remain to be overshadowed in turn. They would leave at first light, he and Doladan, and make their way up the river Terilee until they could find a suitable place to winter, where they would be sheltered from forest’s dangers. Come spring, they would continue pressing west, or perhaps south, until they found another settlement—one that bent knee to neither Iron Throne nor white spirit- horses.

He outlined his plans to Doladan in a quiet voice, masked by the sound of revelry in the tavern as drunken men grew more drunken, and Doladan looked as though he held back protest. Navar kept his eyes moving around them, looking for any signs that someone was paying more attention to them than he should. “I’ll slip out after we’ve retired and find a storehouse to provision us,” Navar said, while trying to decide if the barmaid was showing too much interest in their bowed-head conference.

:I do so wish you wouldn’t.:

“It’s the only way we can be sure to have sufficient supplies for a winter,” Navar said, trying to bite back his anger that Doladan would question him. Hadn’t he proven his ability to plan and execute a long journey already? “We don’t know how harsh the winters of this land will be.”

Doladan ducked his head. “Can’t we stay here and see what will happen? What if these—these Companions aren’t a sign of something bad? What if they’re exactly what people say they are?”

“You never suffered beneath the boot of the Iron Throne.” Navar dropped his voice even further. “I have seen what power drives men to do, and I tell you: Freedom is sweet. I will not fall beneath a madman’s subjugation a second time.”

Navar brought Doladan back to their room and impressed upon him the urgency of remaining where he was, then dressed himself in his darkest clothes and smeared ash from the firepit across his cheeks and forehead as though he had simply failed to bathe after a day’s long labor. It was well past midnight when all in the tavern’s front room had finally retired for the evening and he could slide noiselessly through the tavern’s doors.

The night was clear and cold, and the moon was barely a sliver. After years of scouting, it was second nature for Navar to remain in the shadows where an onlooker’s eyes might pass him by. He wished he had had more time to learn the lay of the city, for the only storehouse whose location he could be sure of was the one that served Valdemar’s army, and that was perilously close to the palace grounds. But every instinct was telling him to be gone by sun’s rising, and that meant he could spare no time creeping from door to door until he found somewhere with sufficient wealth to serve their needs.

And besides, he had served Baron Valdemar for thirty loyal years. True, he had been well- paid for them all, but he did not think Valdemar would begrudge him the cost of what he would take as a parting gift, while his conscience would not let him steal from another.

The army’s storehouse was locked, of course, and Navar spent a moment praying to all the good gods that it was not locked by magecraft, for he no longer had the tools King Valdemar had betimes equipped him with for defeating the mage-lock of an enemy. His luck was with him, though, and so he knelt before the lock to work at it with two scraps of wire he had brought with him for that very purpose.

:You are the stubbornest man I have ever encountered.:

Navar’s nerves were well- hardened against shock, and so he did not leap in fright to hear someone speak to him, merely turned his head to see whether he was at swordspoint or whether he had a chance of winning free. It was no man who spoke to him, though. At least, not in his ears. As he rose slowly to his feet, he saw one of the spirit-horses staring at him, near to the turning that would lead to the palace, and he would have sworn it beckoned him to come near.

And was that not proof of sorcery or mind- magic being applied? For Navar found himself following, without thought to his own safety: through the streets, across the grounds of the palace, over the bridge to the fields beyond, without struggling against the witchery—

Another voice sounded, different than the first. :He thinks we’re bewitching him. He doesn’t realize his heart truly wants him to follow.:

:Is he still being stubborn?: Yet another voice this time, and Navar realized that they were sounding not in his ears, but in his mind. The realization made panic rise in his throat, for to hear voices in the mind meant sorcery, and sorcery meant that he was far too late—

:Silence, all of you. You’re frightening him. Navar, this is no sorcery. You have the ability to hear us all; it is a skill, nothing more.:

:Tell him—:

The spirit-horse that had led him stamped its foot as yet another voice interjected, and all of a sudden Navar’s mind was silence again. He looked around, startled to find that he had crossed the bridge across the River Terilee, into the field beyond, into the copse of trees that waited there.

:This is Companion’s Field,: the voice that had bade the others to silence said. Looking at the spirit- horse that had led him, Navar realized it must belong to the voice, or the voice belong to it. He was certain enough of it that when the voice continued, it seemed in response to that new understanding. :And yes, I am Ardatha, King Valdemar’s Companion. And I have led you here because we can’t let you go running off until you’re satisfied that we are no demons, nor pawns of some great sorcerer, and Valdemar is not overshadowed by some other mage. We need you. Valdemar needs you. King and kingdom alike.:

“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,