“On what?”
“On how long I figure it needs doin’, so get home to your suppers. An’ tell Ma I’ll be home later.”
“Where’re you goin’?” Raik asked sullenly.
“Saddler’s Street.”
His younger brothers’ expressions immediately changed from aggrieved to interested, but when he simply jerked his chin toward the door, they obeyed him with minimal grumbling.
Once they were gone, he carefully straightened the pile of reports, then his uniform tunic, then the reports again, then, finally left the tiny sergeant’s office. As he headed down Iron Street, he took in a deep breath of the crisp autumn air, tasting the familiar aromas of baking bread and meat pies, before heading down Anvil’s Close. At the door to Edzel’s shop, both Zoe and her grandfather totally ignored him, but both Judee and Lillbit gave him equally knowing expressions before Trisha called them all inside to their own supper.
Twice Blessed
Judith Tarr has written many novels and several Friends of Valdemar stories under her own name. As Caitlin Brennan she writes novels about horses, especially the Lipizzan horses she breeds and trains on her farm in Arizona.
Nerys and Kelyn were born on the same day, in the same town, to mothers who were cousins as well as the best and closest of friends. Their fathers were partners; Nerys’ father bred and raised sheep that were famous for the softness and richness of their wool, and Kelyn’s father turned the fleeces to a fine and subtly dyed fabric that had even clothed the queen in Haven.
Everyone had hoped one of the children would be a boy so that the two families could unite in marriage as well as in business and friendship. When both turned out to be girls, they were universally expected to be companions in childhood and friends and allies when they grew to womanhood.
That was a lovely dream. The reality manifested when they were barely old enough to sit up: Nerys challenged Kelyn for a doll that happened to be identical to the one she herself had, and Kelyn fought back with single-minded ferocity. They had to be separated by force and carried off to their respective nurseries.
“Ah, well,” Nerys’ mother said. “They’re only babies. They’ll grow out of it.”
Kelyn’s mother wondered about that, but then she chided herself. All these children had ever known was love. What could either of them know of its opposite?
However they had learned it, Nerys and Kelyn disliked each other on sight. Age and maturity did nothing to improve their mutual antipathy. It was one of the very few things they ever agreed on: that they could not stand one another.
Everything, with them, was rivalry. They vied with each other for friends, for prizes in contests, even for marks in school. If Nerys wore the latest fashion, Kelyn had to set a completely new one; if one entered a race at the fair, the other had to enter it too, and fight for every stride.
It was like a curse, but no one in Emmerdale could imagine what or who might have laid it. Their families had enemies, of course; prosperity always attracted envy. But none of those had the resources or the knowledge to cast a spell of perpetual discord on a pair of children. Some tried to blame it on the Wizard’s Wood that touched the western edge of the town, but nothing had come out of that in time out of mind, except truffles and the occasional wild boar.
For Nerys and Kelyn, it was simply the way things were. Their families tried everything from gentle remonstrance to outright whipping with complete lack of success. They never stopped trying, and Nerys and Kelyn never stopped detesting one another. It was an epic battle in its way, as much a part of life in Emmerdale as the sheepfolds and the woolen mill.
Nerys and Kelyn shared one other thing besides mutual loathing: a lifelong fascination with the Queen’s Heralds and their magical Companions. From the time they were old enough to understand, they never tired of hearing about Companions.
“When I am grown,” Nerys said, “I shall be Chosen.”
“Oh, no, you won’t,” said Kelyn. “
Nerys laughed at her, but with an edge of unease. Nerys had beautiful hair, long and shining, so black it shone blue, and she was very vain of it. Kelyn, whose hair was slightly less straight but otherwise exactly like it, had no reason for envy, but it made a useful weapon in their endless war.
When Nerys was old enough to ride, her father gave her a beautiful white pony with a long silken mane. Naturally Kelyn had to have one, too, but hers had blue eyes. Though they were not the deep clear blue of a Companion’s, they were close enough to keep a child happy—until Nerys mocked them. “Glass eyes! How ugly. She looks as if she’s been dead in the water for days.”
Kelyn reared back, knotted her fist, and knocked Nerys flat. It was the one and only time in all their enmity that either struck a blow against the other.
Kelyn stood over Nerys where she lay sprawling and said perfectly calmly, “Leave my horse alone.”
To everyone’s amazement, Nerys did. Their war went on, but people and animals were exempt. It was entirely and exclusively personal.
One splendid summer morning, a few days after her thirteenth birthday, Nerys galloped her pony up the steep track to the highest sheep pasture. It was not a track to be galloping on, and her errand was only mildly urgent, but Nerys was out of patience with the world.
In honor of their unfortunately mutual birthday, Kelyn had received her first silk gown and had been allowed to put her hair up. Nerys’ mother had given her a necklace of amber beads, a fine wool cloak, and a new saddlecloth for her pony.
Those were excellent gifts, and under any other circumstances Nerys would have been delighted. But Kelyn had outdone her, and Nerys’ parents would not hear a word about it. “There’s time enough for you to play at being a woman,” her mother said.
It was small consolation that Kelyn spilled barley beer on her dress before she had been in it an hour, and it was not even Nerys’ fault. The dress was still silk, and fit for a woman grown. Nerys was still being treated like a baby.
In the back of her mind, Nerys knew she was being unreasonable. That was hardly enough to stop her. So she pushed her pony hard up the steep and rocky track, and trusted him not break either of their necks.
The pony might be small, and growing smaller for Nerys by the year, but he was surefooted and quick. He brought them both safely to the high pasture.
The sheep were grazing peacefully in the clear morning sunlight. The shepherd’s big white dogs stood guard, looking like sheep themselves unless they moved. The shepherd was not in her hut or anywhere on the mountaintop.
She could not have gone far. Nerys had brought fresh bread and honey sweets and the first small hard apples of the season as gifts from her mother; she left them in the hut where the shepherd could see them. The message she had to deliver, that some of the ewes had been sold and should come down off the mountain within the tenday, could wait all day if it had to—and so could Nerys.
A whole day to herself was a rare and wonderful thing, now she was almost a woman. The
Nerys pulled the saddle and bridle off the pony, rubbed him down and turned him loose among the sheep. He paused to drink long and deeply from the stream that ran through the pasture and then set to grazing on the rough, scrubby grass.
Nerys thought briefly about swimming in the stream, but it was as cold as snow even in the dead of summer. She walked along it instead, hunting for the sweet scarlet berries that hid in the grass and eating those that she found.
The stream wound into a grove of wind-stunted trees. They stood in a circle, almost as if planted; the space inside had always seemed to Nerys to be larger than the space without.
When she was younger, she had played games in and around the grove, pretending that it was the Companions’ Grove and that magic grew there by moonlight or starlight. Once when a ewe give birth to a late lamb in the shelter of the trees, Nerys called the little ram “Grove-Born” until Willa the shepherd boxed her ears to teach her respect.
Nerys had kept her dreams to herself after that, but to her the grove had always had a certain sacredness
