pouring down, creating lakes and rivers where in summer there were plant beds and paths. No sane creature stirred out of doors during the unpredictable flash rains, yet here she was, somehow knowing that she needed to be somewhere other than tucked securely in Calli’s tiny spare room, where she had spent the winter tending her experimental plants. Tugging her cloak up around her ears, she darted out through the sheeting rain and splashed around to the front of the house, finding a spot just under the eaves that was a little less wet. Not knowing why she was standing there, she stared down the main road for long, cold minutes, until she saw movement that was not falling rain coming towards her from the edge of her vision.
Mud-spattered, worn out, he was everything a Companion on Search shouldn’t be—nothing like the gaily caparisoned mare who had come for Teo. He was so drenched, it was impossible to tell where the lathered sweat ended and the cold rain staining his coat began. He didn’t even look white anymore, just a muddy dark gray. Yet he was unmistakably what he was—even to the bells on the soaked harness, though their ring could not be heard above the rain pounding on the roofs.
This time, Shia was the only one who stood in the square, rain running in rivulets down her face. Light glowed out of the windows around the square, and she suddenly hoped that no one was even looking out to see this bedraggled colt slogging through the fetlock-deep mud.
And then he was standing before her, his sodden nose brushing her cheek, his glorious, impossibly blue eyes swallowing hers.
Tears mingled with the rain on her face, streaming warm with cold, and Shia collapsed heedless to her knees in the muck, weeping out the agonizing emptiness of the last four years.
The Companion—Eodan, she knew without words—folded his forelegs and lay in the mud beside her, curving his neck around to draw her slight form against his steaming side, his warmth seeping into her bone chill.
“What about Pira? She’s Gifted, I’m sure, so shouldn’t you be for her . . .” Shia finally managed to get words past the rawness in her throat.
Shia gave no response to his jest, lost in the wonder of Eodan’s presence, and yet baffled by the forlorn ache still within her, deeper than the presence of Eodan beside her—even part of her—could reach. Without words, she knew that Eodan knew, and regretted, that it was there inside her, that dull pain, that lost feeling of incompletion.
Shia turned to stare at him in disbelief, astonished at her own courage in thinking to argue with a Companion. “In Haven? What about Breyburn? I can’t just up and leave them—and it’s folly to go anywhere during the flash-rain season.”
Eodan shook his head at her, and only now did she finally hear the jingle of his harness bells beneath the drum of the falling rain.
The Last Part of the Way
Brenda Cooper has published over thirty short stories in various magazines and anthologies. Her books include
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. She is a technology professional, a futurist, and a writer living in the Pacific Northwest with three dogs and two other humans. She blogs and tweets and all that stuff; stop by
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Three riders passed beneath trees shrugging fall color into the wind. Each time a gust spurted through, cold and edged in winter, it plucked gold and orange and brown leaves and sent them to tangle in the riders’ hair and crunch under the hooves of their mounts. The redheads, Rhiannon and Dionne, would have been impossible to tell apart except that Rhiannon wore flamboyant Bardic red and Dionne a soft and subdued Healer green. The women shared the same red hair, bright blue eyes, slender figures, and the same deep laugh lines. They rode similar horses: big sturdy bays with wide white blazes and patient, alert walks. One of the horses had white socks and the other didn’t. Between them, a much younger man named Lioran sat easily on the back of a white Companion, Mila. Everything about Mila was neat and trimmed and nearly perfect, while her Herald wore his long black hair unkempt, had stains on the knees of his white uniform, and a sad silence on his face.
Dionne and Rhiannon had been riding circuit twenty-five years now and were too old to keep peace on the borders or fight teenaged toughs. But even usually peaceful towns needed healing and song, so they were sent around the easy middle of Valdemar, far from border skirmishes and the beasts of the Pelagir Hills and the intrigues of Haven. The twins were often assigned a young Bard or Healer who needed a safe year or two to gain confidence. But they’d never before been asked to take a Herald along. A mudslide had buried his family, and in fact his whole town; everyone he knew. The news had come to him right after he was given his Whites, right after he’d packed his belongings onto his Companion for a trip home to the small town of Golden Hill.
After two weeks, Dionne despaired of helping him. She watched Lioran’s face as Rhiannon’s musical voice chided him, “There will be things you can do, even in Shelter’s End.”
His voice came out gloomy. “There won’t be anyone under forty there.”
“You’ll be there,” Dionne responded, allowing only a bit of the disdain she felt into her voice. No one said you had to like a patient, or even a Herald. “We go where we’re needed, and don’t whine if we don’t like it.”
“I wish we could just go past. I don’t want to stop in a retirement town, or a town at all. I want the woods.”
Rhiannon looked as though she wanted to skin him, but all she said was, “The wind’s chill. We’d better find a place to make camp. We don’t really want to ride in on them at night, anyway.”
“How about right here?” he asked.
“How about you and Mila find someplace a little more sheltered?” Rhiannon countered, the impatience in her voice enough to make Dionne wince, although Lioran didn’t bother to react. Mila cast both women a baleful look, turning her head slightly side to side, watching each of them with her bright blue eyes. Although Dionne had no Mindspeech, she imagined Mila’s thoughts going something like, “He’s young. He’s hurt. He’ll come around.” Dionne grinned back at her, wishing for a way to tell the Companion how much she appreciated her patience. And how much she wished she had more of it handy. The boy got on her nerves.
Silence sat heavy on the group for half a mark. Dionne was about to give up and pick a place herself when Lioran pointed to a rather nice spot on a hill above the trail, in a copse of trees sturdy enough to shelter people and animals from most of the wind. Dionne rubbed her cold hands together as she waited for her sister’s nod.
It was almost full dark by the time they fed and brushed and watered the animals, and gathered enough fuel to start a small fire. Lioran did his share, silent and sullen, but without actual complaint. After they finished, the twins settled near the fire, stretching their fingers wide and close to the warm yellow-orange flames. Lioran didn’t sit beside them. He climbed up on Mila’s bare back, and looking out into the woods, he said, “Me and Mila are heading off. We’ll be back in an hour or two.” He didn’t wait for acknowledgement but simply faded into the trees and the darkness, his dirty Whites and Mila’s clean white outline the last thing they saw disappearing into darkness. If tonight was like every other night, when he came back, he’d look soft and sad.
Rhiannon sighed. “It’s too bad he’s not a kid. Then I could just tell him to snap out of it. I know he’s hurt, but all this pouting and whining is unbecoming in a Herald.”
