Moving Targets and Other Tales of Valdemar

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.