Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

Larissa spared the stallion an appreciative glance, but it was the mare on whom she focused. “Now there is beauty by any measure,” she said. “No nonsense about her at all, is there?”

“None,” said Egil, not caring if Larissa heard the fondness in his voice. “Cynara, come and meet someone remarkable.”

His Companion cocked an ear, finished the mouthful of grass she had been in the midst of eating, and raised her head. After a moment she deigned to approach the gate.

Egil opened it and bowed Larissa through. She moved with such quiet and deep calm that Egil felt it in himself, and in Cynara, too.

:Interesting,: Cynara said.

“May I?” Larissa asked her.

She bent her head. Larissa laid a light hand on her neck, stroking it in a kind of dizzy wonder.

“Haven’t you ever met a Companion before?” Bronwen asked from behind them. Her voice seemed to Egil to be both loud and abrupt.

“Oh, yes,” Larissa said with no sign of offense, “but never in my own stable, as my honored guest.”

“Really?” said Bronwen.

Damn the girl, what had got into her? Before she could finish throwing down the gauntlet, Egil said in his smoothest tone, “One tends to forget how few of us there are, or how many places see us seldom if at all.”

“Now that is true,” Godric said. “Come, young Herald, tell me: I noticed your saddle is unusually well made. It’s a Stefan, isn’t it?”

Godric always had had a gift for defusing the tempers of the young. Bronwen nodded, still scowling, but effectively distracted. “Yes, it was one of the last that he made before he retired. They say his daughter is an even better saddler than he was, but I haven’t seen enough yet to be sure.”

“I’ve seen some of her work,” Godric said, herding her effortlessly and tactfully away toward the barn that was nearest. “It’s very good, and some is rather radical. Have you seen her new girthing system? I’m not entirely convinced, but ...”

Egil looked from the two retreating backs to Larissa, whose smile made him smile in return. “Is he really only training the young horses?” Egil asked.

“Young riders, too, of course,” Larissa said. “He’s good. We’re lucky to have him.”

Cynara lowered her head and went back to grazing. Egil leaned against her shoulder, suddenly and completely comfortable.

It said a great deal for Larissa that she watched him without an excess of envy. Yearning, yes, and maybe a little sadness. “What is it like?” she asked. “Do you ride as you would a horse? Or is there something else—something more?”

Cynara’s tail swished at flies; her jaws worked rhythmically, cropping and chewing. She was amused, he could feel it, but there was compassion, too.

“It’s different when the creature you ride can understand the words you speak or think,” Egil said, “but not as different as you might imagine. Mostly, when I ride, it’s a dance: two bodies moving together through constantly shifting space. That’s the same with a Companion as with a horse. The harmony—I’ve seen you ride; it’s not so different.”

“But Companions don’t need training,” she said.

“Do horses, really?” Egil asked. “A horse knows how to be a horse. What he has to learn is how to do it while carrying a rider. Companions are much the same. Except of course, with them, there’s no illusion of submission.”

“That’s true of the great horses, too,” Larissa said. “Those that are born for the dance, they know. They will share their joy in it, but they never precisely submit.”

Egil nodded. She understood perfectly, as he had known she would.

“I don’t trust that woman,” Bronwen said.

She had dogged his heels to the room he had been given. It happened to be next to hers, but she showed no interest in either privacy or sleep. Everyone else in the school had gone to bed: morning came early, and there was a long day of work and study ahead of them all.

Egil would have been happy to shut and bar the door and get some peace and quiet himself, but she was his intern. He had an obligation to instruct her. “Madame Larissa is one of the greatest living masters of the equestrian art,” he said. “There is nothing suspicious or untrustworthy about her.”

“Are you sure?” Bronwen demanded, dropping down onto the bed and tucking up her feet.

That did not bode well for an early night. Patience, Egil willed himself. “What should I not be sure about?”

She hissed at his maddening insistence on answering a question with a question, but for once she consented to play the game. “Something is odd here. The weather we had to ride through, the way we got out of it—that’s not normal. And now we’re here, and it’s as normal as anything can possibly be. It doesn’t fit.”

“It does if this place has nothing to do with the strangeness,” Egil said. “It’s a genuine school, and these really are horsemen. Very good ones, from what I’ve seen so far.”

“Just because they’re good with horses doesn’t mean they’re good people,” she said.

“True,” he said, “but it’s hard to be this good at it and be wicked Mages, too. Evil taints a soul; we’d sense it, most likely, and our Companions certainly would. Cynara isn’t alarmed at all. What does Rohanan say?”

Bronwen tossed her head. “That doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”

“So? I thought you were going to look for evil Mages in the town?”

“I’ll do that,” she said stoutly, “and look for them here, too. So should you, if you can spare time from drooling at that woman’s feet. What was she, your first love?”

“Yes,” he said, and that took her quite nicely aback. “She was the first person I ever saw ride who made me understand that riding is truly an art, and worth studying for itself. Thanks in large part to her, I’ll study it for as long as I’m alive and able to balance myself in a saddle.”

“Oh,” said Bronwen in a gratifyingly small voice. “That kind of love. Believe it or not, I can understand it. I had one of those, too, when I was too young to know better.”

“It’s a good thing,” he said, “to have an example to follow.”

“It depends on the example,” she said, springing to her feet. “For me, it was you.”

She left him with that. It was a nicely dramatic exit, he had to admit, though it did not embarrass him nearly as much as she might have hoped.

Egil woke in the dark. He knew at once where he was and why, and somewhat of the when. The air had the taste and the texture it always had just before dawn.

Struck by the desire to breathe it fresh from the source, he left the bed, went to the window, unlatched it, and swung it open. Cool, soft air bathed his face, sweet with the scents of grass and flowers. He drank it in blissful gulps.

The stars were bright overhead, with neither cloud nor moon to dim them. He found the pole star and marked the shapes of constellations rising in the east that, later in the summer, would stand high overhead.

The sky rippled suddenly, as if he had cast a stone into a pool. He staggered, clutching the window frame. When his eyes opened again, it was as if he stood underwater. Wave after wave ran outward from the center of the sky.

:Cynara!: he cried inside his head. :Cynara, for the love of gods! What is happening?:

:Strangeness.: Her reply was as serene as ever. As if she had power to quell whatever had turned the sky to water, the eerie ripples slowed and eventually stopped. The stars were still again. The wind blew soft, bringing the first of the morning light.

No one mentioned what had happened, and Egil decided to keep it to himself. They all must have slept through it.

He entertained the brief thought—he almost called it hope—that he had imagined it. But the shock was still in him. Well after the sun came up, he caught himself looking upward, as if the sky would turn strange again and this time would swallow the world.

Nothing that he saw that morning was anything but sane and earthly. The horses were as fine as Godric had promised, and the riding and training were very good indeed. He was privileged to meet Madame Larissa’s new stallion, who showed great promise, and to see her ride him with even more skill and grace than Egil remembered.

No one asked anything of the Heralds—they would not dream of it—but Godric and Larissa between them inveigled Egil into riding Cynara in one of the arenas. Cynara was glad to dance again; she had missed it on the journey.

So had Egil. Riding across country was a fine and useful thing, and pleasant enough apart from rain and mud and wind. But this was the thing he lived for, this art, this dance of horse and rider.

At first he was stiff and self-conscious, but Cynara’s rather too obvious air of indulging his frailty brought him to order. He forgot who was watching and let himself enter into the place where his heart truly was.

The world was different there. Words dropped away. Thoughts, hopes, fears were dim and distant things. The dance was all there was. Two bodies so very different and yet so clearly meant to dance together, joined in balance and harmony. The air was a living thing around them, enfolding each movement, shaping and transforming it.

For an instant, at the heart of it, he understood ... something. Some very important thing about what the sky had done and why, and who had caused it.

The instant slipped away. The dance unraveled. Cynara stood in the center of the arena, washed in applause and cheers.

Egil needed to go back. He had to try to see. The answer was there.

But Cynara had had enough. People were offering other mounts—horses trained with exquisite skill and artistry. Part of Egil wanted to grasp at them all, but the part that shared its soul with Cynara said, Wait.

Egil did not want to wait. But he trusted no one else as he trusted Cynara, and for today, she was done. What riding he did after that was marvelous in itself, but he never went back to the place where the answers were. He never even came close.

The Queen’s sources had been right. Whatever was happening here, it had something to do with the school. Whether it was dangerous—he hoped not, but he was afraid that it might be worse than that. Very much worse.

Heralds’ training instructed him to share his thoughts with his intern, but he was not entirely sure what they were yet. She was already suspicious, and that was a good thing. No need to swell that suspicion until he had something solid to tell her.

That night he went to bed early and woke even earlier than before, but this time nothing happened. The stars stayed in their places, except for a handful that fell in a shower of silent silver rain. Meteors were a wonder in their own right, but nothing out of the ordinary.

The next few days were among the most pleasant he could remember. To be among horsemen all day, every day, sharing what he knew and learning so much more, was his personal dream of heaven.

Bronwen did not share his obsession with the art of riding. Once she had won the awe of all the students with her bright hair and her splendid mount, she grew quickly bored. By the second morning, she demanded leave to explore the valley.

Egil granted it. Cynara would make sure Rohanan stayed in contact, and there were always students willing, not to mention eager, to play escort. At the very least, she would keep herself occupied—and if she did find anything, Rohanan had orders to report it instantly.

Cynara would enforce those orders. Meanwhile, Egil was free to indulge himself. He was aware always, of course, that he had a mission, and that everything he did should aim toward that end.

After a handful of days, Egil began to wonder what had happened to the moon. It should have been new when they arrived in Osgard, but that was days ago. And yet every night was the dark of the moon. No thin sliver of new moon appeared to wax night by night toward the full.

No one else seemed to notice. He detected no signs of a spell; everyone was normal, and the horses were unperturbed. Yet the sky at night was crowded with stars, and the moon never rose at all.

The following morning, Egil was up hours earlier than usual. By full light he had Cynara saddled and ready to ride.

The arena in which he usually rode was already occupied. That was a minor inconvenience: there were other arenas, and most of those were empty. But he paused to watch, because there were eight riders—a quadrille—and one of them was Larissa on a fine black stallion.

Cynara was happy enough to have her reins looped up and be turned loose to graze for a few moments more before she went to work. As Egil watched, Godric paused beside him, halter in hand, on his way to fetch the first training candidate of the day.

“This is the new quadrille,” Godric said in Egil’s ear. “They’ll perform it in public at midsummer, when the local gentry come to see what we’re up to this year. That’s when the new students arrive, and the young horses, too. It’s a great event all around.”

Egil nodded. Others had mentioned that as well. It was still the better part of a month away, and while he was loving this interlude, he was practical enough to acknowledge that by then he should be back in the Collegium.

All the more reason to absorb what he could, while he could. The quadrille was a courtly dance of riders and horses, usually set to music, though there was no musician here to set the rhythm. Larissa and seven of her best young riders on matched blacks transcribed a series of intertwining figures, moving in a smooth skein that Egil knew from experience was anything but easy to achieve.

His admiration gave way to a peculiar uneasiness. It was rather like the sensation that had brought him to Osgard, and rather like a voice singing just perceptibly off key. It was a lovely, an ingenious quadrille, beautifully ridden, and there was something deeply wrong with it.

:Do you feel it, too?: he asked Cynara.

She had already lifted her head to watch the dance. Her nostrils flared; she shuddered, a ripple of the skin over her whole body. The sight of it made Egil’s own skin crawl.

:Tell them to stop,: she said.

He had never felt what he sensed in her just then. She was calm—she fought for that. Just how hard, he could see in the rigidity of her neck and the perfect stillness of her posture.

:They have to stop,: she said.

Egil’s fingers were numb as he fumbled with her reins. When he touched her, sparks leaped. He flung himself into the saddle with nothing of his usual grace.

She barely waited for him to settle before she reared up on her hindlegs and screamed.

No horse, even dying in agony, had ever made such a sound. Even the wind stopped, appalled. The quadrille staggered to a halt; riders clapped hands over ears, and horses bucked and plunged.

With that one enormous eruption of fear and rage and sorrow, the tension had gone out of Cynara. She pawed the sand, ears flat, snapping teeth in the startled face of Larissa’s stallion.

Larissa was incapable of being truly angry at a Companion, but she was visibly out of temper. “That had a purpose, I hope,” she said.

Egil scraped his wits together and put them in some sort of order. “Those figures,” he said. “Where did you learn them?”

“They’re my own,” she said without either anger or defensiveness.

He shook his head. He did not mean to be tactless, but Cynara’s scream still was echoing inside his skull. “Something inspired you. Didn’t it?”

“Well,” she said, “yes. There’s an old book in the library, full of patterns like these.”

“Show me,” said Egil.

“These are spells.”

Egil had known as soon as he saw the quadrille. The book from the high shelf in the library, with its ancient and battered cover and its crumbling pages, had done nothing to change his mind. The drawing on the page confirmed it.

He did not recognize the language in which the book was written, except that it was old. How old, he was almost afraid to guess. On each page was a pattern, deceptively pretty, like something a lady would embroider on a coverlet.

Any coverlet embroidered with these would be weapon enough to start another Mage War. Egil forced his eyes to slide past them and not sink into them, trapped within their curves and corners. Each one was a maze to bind a spirit, along with any powers that spirit had.

“Why did you choose this one?” he asked, not quite pointing at the page Larissa had marked for him.

She shrugged. “It seemed the most ridable,” she said. “It has a flow to it that suits a horse’s gaits perfectly.”

Egil looked for signs of deception, but her eyes were clear. She might be an accomplished liar; that was always possible. He could not bring himself to think so. Horses were the most honest of creatures; anyone who trained them truly well could no more lie than a horse could.

There was a difference between lying and self-delusion. “Did you know these were spells?” he asked her.

“Not at first,” she said, “but after a while I began to wonder. There’s a pattern to them; they flow from one to the next. They’re protective spells, I think. Wards. They bring safety to whoever works them.”

“Did someone tell you that?”

“No,” she said. “It’s a feeling I get when I look at them. They make me feel safe.”

That was not the effect they had on Egil at all. This was far outside any sphere of competence he might lay claim to. It needed a Herald-Mage, and he was as mere and ordinary as a Herald could be.

“I have to send word to the Queen,” he said. “In the meantime, I’m afraid I have to ask that you choreograph another quadrille for your festival—and not one inspired by this book.”

Larissa frowned. She was not angry, or else she was trying hard not to be, but he could tell she was confused. “Why, sir? Is there a law against it?”

“You don’t know what you’ve done, do you?” As soon as Egil said that, he regretted it. She was his elder; she was by far his superior in the art of horsemanship.

He stiffened his spine. He was the Queen’s Herald, and Selenay had sent him on this mission. Now that he was here, he had begun to realize just how serious this problem was.

Larissa obviously did not. “I haven’t been working spells,” she said. “I’ve been riding patterns, that’s all. As training exercises, they’re quite ingenious.”

“They’re more than training exercises,” Egil said. “Have you by any chance been wondering what happened to the moon?”

She stared at him. “The moon? What does that have to do with—”

“I’ve been here for eight days,” he said. “I haven’t seen the moon once. That comes on top of other anomalies—the Queen gave me a fairly lengthy list. You’ve been riding these patterns since last autumn, am I right?”

“Yes,” she said, “but—”

“The weather has been exceptionally mild here, yes? Has it rained since autumn?”

“Rained and snowed both,” she said, “in appropriate amounts. We haven’t been suffering.”

“Have you not?” said Egil. Gingerly he picked up the book, not touching it with his skin, but wrapping it in a napkin borrowed from the kitchen. “The Queen will want to see this.”

“Of course,” she said.

She was not alarmed. That could be simple confidence, or it could be something else. Everyone here was just a little too much at ease.

Protected, he thought. Wrapped like the book in folds of soft and smothering magic.

Bronwen brought the next piece of the puzzle, one that he had begun to expect, but it was no easier to hear. She found him in Cynara’s paddock. It was the one place in Osgard where no one would dare to disturb him.

Bronwen had no such compunction. “I think we’re cut off,” she said. “Every road I try that looks as if it should lead out of the valley just circles around and brings me back in. The people I talk to don’t seem to understand when I ask what’s happening. ‘Why, nothing, ’ they say. ‘Why do you ask?’ Have they all lost their minds?”

“Not exactly,” Egil said. “They’re under a spell. You didn’t happen to find a Mage, did you?”

“Not a one,” said Bronwen. “I did talk to the village midwife, who has rather more of the Healer’s Gift than she’ll admit to, but all she could say was that everyone is very, very safe. ‘All but the moon,’ she said. ‘It must have said something indiscreet.’ I have no idea what she meant by that.”

“I’m afraid I do,” Egil said. He was not feeling it yet. He could not afford to, because then he would break and run screaming. :Cynara, is it true? Is the rest of the world gone?:

:It’s still there,: she answered. Her white calm washed over him. The gibbering fear had retreated; he could think clearly, or near enough. :We’re just not attached to it any more. I can sense the other Companions, but they’re distant. They’ve never seen anything like this.:

:What, none of them? Not even one of the Grove-Born?:

:None,: she said.

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.

It would not be the last. The thought did not dismay him more than a little. They could work together. They were Heralds. Whatever their personal differences, they were born to live and work and fight side by side, like arrows in a quiver, or riders in a quadrille.

They saluted each other across the darkening arena, while the stars came out one by one, and the moon shone down.