After the wedding. That was the way of Marlys’ world these days. Everything was wedding, wedding, wedding. And then when it was over—what?
Peace and quiet. Back to the daily round of farm and dairy, with Marlys’ little bit of adventure added in, the horses that Ginee had bequeathed her.
She had never ridden a horse before she married. She loved them, dreamed of them, admired them from afar, but horses were working stock on the farm, and the lovely light-boned saddle horses that she yearned after were far out of her family’s reach. She expected to live a life of faint and bittersweet regret for that, as a woman did, while the rest of her went on to be a wife and a mother and a grandmother.
Of all her daughters, only Ginee, the youngest, had inherited her mother’s love of horses. She had not inherited Marlys’ acceptance of the way things were. What she wanted, she found ways to get. She made friends with the horse farmers down the road, traded milk and curds and her own attempts at cheese for riding lessons, and for a while between short skirts and her wedding to Ronan, apprenticed to the trainer.
Ginee had moved on, but her first dream was still there, like Margali’s flock of finches in their cages, Kaylin’s horde of barn cats, Elspeth’s ancient and flatulent dog . . .
Daughters dreamed. Mothers inherited the detritus of their dreams.
“Sometimes,” Marlys said to the filly in her paddock on the other side of the manure pile, “mothers get their own dreams after all, a few decades late.”
The filly, who was was some years yet from being a mother, tossed her mane and flagged her tail and danced. That was all she knew or cared about, and that was exactly as it should be.
“Gramma,” said a young voice behind Marlys. Then when she did not turn quickly enough: “
Gramma!
”
Her third-eldest grandson was windblown, dusty, breathless, and hopping from foot to foot. “Gramma, come see!”
“Come see what?” asked Marlys.
He shook his head. Whatever it was was beyond words.
It was not bad, she thought, or he would be howling. His eyes were huge with wonder. “Come
see!
”
There was no time. She had a hundred things to do, and a hundred more behind those. The last thing anyone needed was for Marlys to go chasing rainbows with Kaylin’s four-year-old.
She held out her hand. “Show me what’s to see,” she said.
Kaylin had married the innkeeper’s son, and lived down the hill from the farm and over the bridge that spanned the river. On market days the inn filled early and stayed full late with people who came in from the farmsteads and the horse farms and the smaller villages within a day’s wagon ride.
Today was not a market day, but there was a crowd around the inn. The crowd was thickest in the square in front, where the innkeeper set tables in fair weather. Marlys, who was not tall, had to strain to see what they were staring at.
At a table under the awning sat a man dressed all in white, with no hint of color anywhere. There would be no doubt as to what he was, not in that uniform. There was a Herald in Emmersford.
In spite of herself, she sighed. That had never been her dream, even when she was young. She had wanted to marry and settle down and be a mother. Heralds were like adventures and Haven: all perfectly well for someone else.
And yet, seeing the Whites and thinking of the Heralds’ mysterious mounts that were not, appearances to the contrary, horses, Marlys could be just as dazzled as any half-grown girl in Valdemar. That was why she had let young Devyn take her away from her responsibilities. She had recognized the look in his eye.
This was his first sight of a Herald. It was, by her count, the fourth that she had had in her life. Heralds did not often ride through Emmersford.
The Herald, Marlys heard as she came near, was on his way north; naturally he did not proclaim his errand to the world. But he had taken the wrong turning near Twin Hills where the road split twice—travelers more often than not took the first fork instead of the second, and found themselves in Emmersford instead of on the straight way to the North Road.
“I suppose you get the odd bit of business from that,” the Herald said to Marlys’ son-in-law, who had brought him a tankard of ale.
“We do get a little now and then,” said Devyn the elder. Devyn had wanted adventures before he married Kaylin; he had spent a year in Haven, helping his aunt run a tavern in a part of the city that was not, Marlys had deduced, the most savory. He never would say how he had broken his nose.
He seemed remarkably at ease with the Herald. When Devyn the younger slipped free of Marlys’ grip and darted through the crowd, his father swept him deftly up before he could launch himself at the Herald. “Manners,” said the elder in a warning tone, setting the younger on his feet.
“Manners,” the child echoed, then grinned at the Herald. “Good afternoon,” he said. “Don’t you ever get dirty?”
The Herald laughed. “All the time,” he said.
Marlys had only been seeing the Whites. Now she saw the man: not a young man, though far from old; not handsome, if by no means ugly either. He looked like someone she might have been at ease with if he had lived in Emmersford.
When young Devyn climbed into his lap, he waved off Devyn the elder. “It’s no trouble,” he said. “Is that meat pasties I smell baking?”
Young Devyn had fallen in love by then, and not only with the glamour and the dream. Marlys was rather taken with the man herself. So was everyone else she could see.
They were all ordering ale, now the Herald had his; and speaking up for pasties fresh from the oven, too, or bowls of thick savory soup, or new-baked bread with wedges of cheese thrust into the loaves, melting into deliciousness inside.
Marlys was neither hungry nor thirsty, but she was intrigued. The Herald was good for business, and she had a feeling he knew it.
The sound of bells teased her ears. How she could have heard so soft a sound through the hubbub, she could not imagine, but there was no mistaking it. It almost seemed to be calling her—though even as the thought took shape in her mind, she dismissed it, She was looking for ways to escape wedding hysteria, that was all. A Companion was a singularly effective distraction.
This one was a mare, and she was settled comfortably in the stable, eating her elegant way through a manger of hay. The stall door was open; her saddle and her bitless bridle waited for her on a stand just outside. The bells on saddle and bridle were perfectly still, and yet Marlys could hear them in her head.
She would have thought the Companion would attract an even larger crowd than the Herald, but there was no one in the stable but Marlys and the white being who was not a horse.
Truly, she was not. Marlys knew and loved horses. This was something else altogether. But the shape it wore . . .
“It’s good,” she said before she realized she was speaking aloud.
Amusement washed over her, warm and . . . indulgent? The Companion’s clear blue eye was watching her; the little lean ear slanted toward her. Marlys could not help peering into the stall—yes; the hooves did look like silver, even close up. But the coat felt like a horse’s, warm and satin-soft.
She jerked her hand back. “I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not at all what I—”
The Companion shook her silken mane.
:You’re not presumptuous,:
she said. The words were clear, the voice in Marlys’ mind a firm, practical woman’s voice—like Brenna’s or like Marlys’ own.
Marlys blinked. “I thought you could only talk to your Herald.”
:It’s not
could
,:
the Companion said.
:As a rule, it’s
would
.:
Oh, she did sound like Brenna. Marlys sat on the stool that the stableboy had left in the aisle, because her feet were not as young as they used to be and she had been on them enough today as it was, and smiled up at the Companion. The Companion’s face was not made for smiling back, but Marlys felt the warmth inside, a deep, peaceful, altogether wonderful feeling. It asked nothing of her except that she be there; it expected nothing. It was exactly what she needed.
The Herald left well before sundown. Marlys was long gone by then, back to the farm, but she heard the fading sound of bells and the distant chiming of silver hooves, and knew a momentary pang of regret—though for what, she could not have said. She had no ambition to be a Herald. But to be a friend: in another world, that might have been possible.
In this one, she was what she was. There were six crises and a handful of disasters to avert before dinner, and Ginee’s wedding tabard to finish embroidering after, because tomorrow would be full from dawn to midnight, and if she did not do it now, it would never get done.
By the time Marlys fell into bed, she was ready to sleep like the dead. Her dreams were full of white light and the sound of silver bells. Even in the middle of them, she laughed at herself for dreaming like a silly girl.
:Good morning.:
This voice was male. It was as warm as the other Companion’s voice had been, and it had a beautiful timbre in Marlys’ sleep-fogged mind, soft and rich and deep. The white light around it had a distinct golden cast, like a memory of summer. There was, over and under it all, a ringing of silver bells.
Marlys sat bolt upright. The wind blowing through the open window smelled strongly of rain, and the light was ominously gray.
With any luck at all, Ginee would sleep for hours yet without the sun to wake her. That would postpone, if not, unfortunately, dispense with the eruption altogether. Today the wedding tent was to be delivered and set up in the daisy meadow, which in wet weather was also known as the swamp. Ginee would not be happy about that. Oh, no. Not at all.
:The rain will stop by evening,:
said the Companion, who should have receded with the rest of her dreams. But he was still there, and she was wide awake.
:It will be a little wet still tomorrow, but not enough to make the tent impossible. You’ll have a fine dry day for the wedding.:
For a magical being, he was remarkably practical. That stood to reason, since he was a figment of Marlys’ imagination. Even in flights of fancy, Marlys kept a grip on reality.
:Oh, no,:
he said.
:I’m quite real. You had better get dressed. The tent is almost here.:
“What in the name of—” Marlys sprang to the window.
He was there in the kitchen garden, grazing on the grass that insisted in springing up along the outside wall. He had been very careful not to step on the squash vines or to knock down any of the beanpoles. He was saddled, bridled, and groomed to a luminous sheen. The rain seemed powerless to penetrate the light that surrounded him.
He lifted his head. He was not particularly large; the Companion in the inn had been a good hand taller. But he was well and sturdily built, and he had a good, solid head, the kind Marlys liked best: not too small, not too dished in the face, with plenty of brain space between the ears.
:Thank you,:
he said.
:Do you want the tent in the barnyard? That’s where they’re headed with it.:
Marlys flung on clothes more or less at random, snatched her oiled rain cloak from the peg, and managed to get her hair braided out of her face before she had to head off the wagon. By the time she had dealt with the tent and the people who belonged to it, sent Ronan and the boys to help them, settled three lesser crises, and fed the horses, she was as ready as she was going to be to face the wrath of Ginee.
To her amazement, there was none. Her daughter was awake, dressed, and cooking breakfast, and her expression was profoundly bemused. “Did you know there’s a Companion in the garden?” she asked.
The last time she had sounded that reasonable, or that much like herself, she had been walking out with Ronan but had yet to tell him they were getting married. It was so unexpected that Marlys almost forgot to answer the question. “Yes, I did notice.”
“Did you happen to notice who he’s here for?”
Ginee was doing her best to sound elaborately casual, but Marlys could sense the disappointment underneath. It was buried deep; she probably was barely aware of it.
But Marlys was her mother. Marlys could read her with practiced ease. “I haven’t had time,” she said. “Why? Has anyone said anything?”
“Not a word,” Ginee said. “I don’t think anybody’s seen him but us. You don’t think—after all—”
“Did he speak to you?” Marlys asked.
Ginee shook her head. “Really, I know it’s not me. I don’t want it to be me. I’ve got the life I want. I don’t want to give it all up to be a living, breathing, mounted target.”
“I guess we’ll find out, then,” said Marlys as Ginee filled a bowl with porridge and honey and cream and set it in front of her. She was careful not to make a great show of appreciation, because Ginee hated that, but she smiled and dipped her head in thanks, and ate her breakfast while it was hot.
Then, after certain preparations, she went to the kitchen garden, where the Companion had finished off the grass and was asleep with one back foot cocked, as much like a horse as made no difference. The rain had backed off for a bit, and he was still perfectly dry.
“All right,” she said as he started awake. “If you’re here to Choose somebody, do get about it, but could you make sure they stay until after the wedding? If it’s somebody essential, we can’t spare her, and if it’s family, we’ll be needing some time to get used to the idea of losing her. Or him?”
:For me it would be “her,”:
the Companion said.
:My name is Kellen.:
“Marlys,” she said. “If you don’t mind, the stable’s probably more comfortable, and it’s certainly less wet.”
:I would be glad of that,:
he said civilly. He dipped his head as a man would, a small bow of appreciation. She had done the same for Ginee not an hour before.