She was all too obvious about it. Egil sighed and leaned back against a tree. It had been an easy ride out from Haven, but there were still, according to his map and Herald Bronwen, another two days of it.
Bronwen had ridden ahead. She had little patience with what she called Egil’s elderly ways—though he was hardly more than twice her age—and her Companion fussed if he had to walk or trot all day.
They would be back by the time Egil was ready to go. Meanwhile, he was glad of the time to himself.
Egil was a quiet person and a solitary one. He had managed to evade the better- known duties of a Herald for years, until an emergency and a dearth of available Heralds had forced him out at the queen’s command.
He had done well on that errand, put an end to a dangerous if inadvertent working of magic and saved a valley from spelling itself into nothingness. Unfortunately, he had done so well that people had noticed. Now he had to go on another and equally peculiar errand, just when he was getting comfortable again in his familiar place and space.
In Egil’s perfect world, he would never ride outside the Collegium at all. He would live his life between the classroom and the library and leave the Heralding to those with more of a taste for it.
Bronwen, for example. She came galloping back down the road, mounted on her fiery Companion, like every child’s dream of the Queen’s Own. She was tall and slim and elegant, her wheat-gold hair plaited down her back, and her sea-blue eyes flashing as Rohanan reared to a halt directly in front of Egil.
Plain brown Egil looked calmly up at the tall Companion and the equally tall Herald. “Already?” he said.
“The message was urgent,” Bronwen said. “Also, odd. Aren’t you curious?”
“No worlds will end if we arrive an hour later than we planned,” Egil said.
“Maybe not,” she said, “but a pair of Chosen may have killed each other before we get there.”
“So we’re led to believe,” Egil said. He rose reluctantly and stretched, and brushed at his Whites. There was a grass stain, of course. Or two or three.
Bronwen, who was always immaculate, visibly refrained from commentary. “The message must have been garbled. It can’t be one Companion and two Chosen. Somehow two Companions showed up in the same town and Chose a pair of enemies. Now they’re at each other’s throats, and their families are at wits’ end.”
“That would be the logical conclusion, wouldn’t it?” said Egil.
Bronwen’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t think—”
“We’ll see soon enough,” he said.
“It’s impossible,” she said. “How would it work? Would they ride double? Would they bring a remount? Is one supposed to kill the other, and the survivor gets the Companion? It’s preposterous.”
Egil let her babble on while he mounted Cynara and set out on the road to Emmerdale. Bronwen was as different from Egil as a human creature could be. He did not particularly like her, nor did she like him. Left to themselves, they would have crossed paths seldom if at all; certainly they would never be friends. And yet somehow, when they worked together, it worked.
There was truth in that. Egil was dull gray flint. Bronwen was sharp and shining steel.
He had no need to finish the thought. She snorted softly.
For the first day or two after Coryn showed himself in the market, Kelyn could hardly see or think or even breathe, she was so furious. She alternated between storms of tears and fits of icy rage.
She so alarmed her family that they locked her in her room and put her under guard. When she could shape a coherent thought, which was not often, she saw the wisdom in it. If she got out, if she had even the slightest chance, she would hunt Nerys down and kill her.
Shut inside familiar walls, under the unrelenting stare of her mother or her father or one of her many burly cousins, she calmed slowly. Her anger was no less strong, but her thoughts were clear again. She began to feel other things besides rage. Shock. Disappointment. And, as the hours stretched into days, a sensation that she could only recognize as grief.
By the fifth day, Kelyn knew what she had to do. Her watchdogs were as vigilant as ever, but she saw a way around that. She only had to wait a little longer, and then she could act.
A Herald was coming from Haven to sort the confusion. Nerys was not supposed to know, but her ears were keen and people were talking.
She knew that Kelyn was locked in her house. Nerys could not go anywhere without a pair of her father’s apprentices in tow, but she was allowed out. She reckoned she had won this contest, for what good it did either of them.
She could even have visited the Companion if she had wanted to. He was stabled in the best inn in Emmerdale, in the best stall, and by all accounts was getting the very best of care.
She wished him well of it. It hurt inside to keep her mind and body closed off from him, but it hurt worse to think of sharing him with Kelyn. Better for everybody if she pretended he had never come, let alone pretended to Choose her.
She shut him out so ferociously that she gave herself a crashing headache. The pain was worth it, she told herself. He was gone. She hoped his head was pounding as badly as hers.
The Herald was due to arrive tomorrow, people said. They were all expecting him to decide which of the Chosen was the real one, then take her off to the Collegium to earn her Whites.
In her calmer moments, Nerys was sure she would be the one. Kelyn had put her hair up and submitted to the tyranny of skirts. She could find herself a husband and get to work making heirs for both families.
It was logical and elegant and perfectly practical. It also meant that Nerys need never set eyes on Kelyn again. It should have felt wonderful, and yet it did no such thing. It felt like a blow to the gut.
“This is wrong,” Nerys said. She was alone for once, shut in her room like Kelyn, only she had locked herself in and could go out if she chose.
She had left dinner early, pleading an indisposition that was only half feigned. A Choosing should have been a wonderful and joyous occasion. Not this stomach-wrenching confusion.
The Herald would resolve it. But what if he did not? What if he decided that Kelyn was his Chosen? What then?
Nerys would have to live with it. Except that she was not sure she could. Never to see Coryn again, never to hear his warm deep voice in her head or feel his warmth in her heart—she would die. She would not want to live.
Maybe that was the answer. It was a terrible thing, but she had never shrunk from anything that frightened her.
She had to think about it. The Herald was coming tomorrow. Whatever she did, she should do it before he came. That left her with little time—but it ought to be enough.
Egil and Bronwen rode into Emmerdale in good time, in spite of her fretting. It was a little after noon on a beautiful summer day, neither too hot nor too cold. A few clouds drifted in the sky, but none of them carried a burden of rain.
Emmerdale was an unexpectedly pretty town. It nestled amid green fields at the foot of a mountain range so small it barely rated a name. To the west of it was a stretch of forest; it reminded Egil somehow of the Pelagirs, and yet it seemed as peaceful and empty of fear as a forest could be.
Egil’s senses came to the alert. The last such place had turned out to be under a dangerous and deadly spell. But this one lacked a certain something. Foreboding, maybe. The deep hum of magic running underneath it all. There was no ill magic in Emmerdale: Egil would have laid a wager on it if he had been a wagering man.
The only strangeness here was basking in the sun in the field that belonged to the best inn. The Companion was a stallion, and while he was not as tall as Rohanan, he was more substantially built.
His Chosen should have been hanging on him, unable to let him out of her sight. Or their sight, if the message from Emmerdale told the truth. He was alone, and he seemed content.
“Maybe he hasn’t Chosen anyone yet?” Egil wondered aloud.
