His parents? Doron winced slightly. “Dead. Winter flux. Nearly died myself. Uncle Branno and Aunt Savia took me in. Tried to keep the farm goin’. Couldn’t, so they sold it. Left me with next to nothin’. Joined Ferrin and the rest when I was starvin’.” He spread his hands. “Don’t you see, Tomar? They be all I got. They be my family now. Can’t leave ’em.” He licked his lips. “Not yet, least wise.”
“But—”
“Tomar . . . please! Get out of here. I be losing my hold on the illusion. Can’t keep it going much longer!”
:He’s right,: Keesha interposed. :I’m amazed he can divide his attention like this, but his strength is weakening. You don’t want to throw away the help he’s given you, do you?:
A flood of sorrow washed over Tomar. He reached out and clasped hands with the cousin he had set off to visit in a world he had erected in his own mind, a world that could never be save in memory.
“All right. But remember this, Doron. There’s a place in Valdemar waiting for you. And for what you did . . . I can’t find enough words to thank you.” He set foot in stirrup and mounted Keesha. “If you ever tire of life as a bandit, come to Valdemar. When you get there, ask for me. They’ll find me, and I’ll do anything to get you settled in a new home.”
“Go, Tomar!”
“Promise me!” He watched Doron closely. “By the God!”
“By Vkandis Sunlord, I promise. Now get out of here!”
Tomar touched hand to forehead in a salute, reined Keesha around, and rode out of the grove. Looking back over his shoulder one last time, he saw his cousin standing by the fire, his own hand lifted in farewell.
Totally drained, Doron fell to his knees, his body feeling as though he’d been badly beaten, his mind stretched to a thinness he’d never experienced before. It had been a long time since he’d used his powers, and he was amazed he still knew how to cast and hold an illusion that strong.
The grove lay silent now. No neighing horses, no crashing in the brush and trees. Ferrin and the rest of the band would be returning before long. He stood, knees shaking, and slipped off into the darkness. Wouldn’t be good if they found him sitting by the fire as if nothing had happened.
He sat down beneath a tree, crossed arms on knees, and stared into the darkness. Tomar. The cousin he thought he’d lost all those years ago. Could be, if life proved different from what it was now, he just might take a journey north. He’d heard about Valdemar . . . how couldn’t he, living so close to the border.
Life was change.
And Tomar had given him good reason to think about a different existence. His bandit companions . . . well, they’d survive somehow. Right now, so would he, with them in place of the mother and father he’d lost.
But he had family in Valdemar. Real family.
Life was not only change, it was choices to be made.
He heard rustling in the brush and stood. Ferrin and the three others were cautiously returning to the clearing now that the “danger” had passed. He drew a deep breath, squared his shoulders, and slipped back into the clearing to wait for them.
Interview with a Companion
by Benjamin Ohlander
Ben Ohlander was born in South Dakota and grew up in Colorado and North Carolina. After completing high school, he enlisted in the Marines before attending college in Ohio. Upon graduation, he was commissioned as an officer in the Army Reserve. He has been mobilized three times and is currently serving in Afghanistan. In the intervals between deployments he works as a software consultant for IBM and writes as time permits. He lives in southwest Ohio with his wife, three stepsons, two cats, and a mechanical parrot named Max. The cats are generally tolerant of his writing and encourage all of their “staff” to have outside interests.
Dave Matthews (no relation) pulled his aging Chrysler off the two-lane road to consult his map. Kentucky was full of twisty roads anyway, and Lexington more so. Horse farms predated roads here, and cutting up perfectly good bluegrass to put in a straight right-of-way was not only pedestrian, it was downright tacky.
The Google map was pretty clear, five miles north on 88th, across four miles, left turn at Mountebank, one and half miles past the bridge, near the old barn. Come alone. Okay, he was there.
He dug into the aging knapsack that combined computer bag and lunch sack and pulled out the digital recorder. It took him a few seconds to figure out where the batteries went and another several minutes to read the instructions. That, of course, was only after trial and error failed.
“June 12th. Here at Tri-Bridge to meet a source with inside information on purging techniques used by jockey to make weight.” He played it back and listened to himself. Not newsy enough.. He turned the recorder back on. “Here at Tri-Bridge to get the skinny on the jockey-purging scandal.” Snap. Much better.
The meeting out here in the middle of nowhere seemed perfectly rational for a source with inside information . . . even if “middle of nowhere” was maybe twenty-five minutes from downtown Lexington. The scene fit . . . but no one who looked like a source. No one at all, in fact.
He looked back toward the old barn, some fifty yards away, and on the far side of the white rail fences that were required in horse country. There was a girl working in the barn, but no sign of anyone who fit the profile of a source.
He checked her out. She looked slim enough, with the youngish-colt look of so many of the women in this part of Kentucky. He tried to guess how many millihelens she was, but from the distance he could tell little other than she was slim and lithe. Given his last date had been sometime last year, that was enough to launch a navy of six or seven hundred ships right there.
Still no source.
He checked his watch. He was still a minute or so early, but he thought there ought to be some sign. This was his first source, but he was pretty sure they were supposed to be on time.
He looked back the way he’d come. Nothing there and nothing on the opposite side of the road except a shiny white horse. The horse was heavier than the whippetlike thoroughbreds they were breeding up these days, not a racer at all . . . maybe a show-horse done all in white.
A show horse standing on the far side beside a split rail fence in central Kentucky. Not odd. A show horse standing next to a golf bag in central Kentucky. Very odd.
The horse stared at him, ears perked forward, brown eyes on his. Their eyes met through the streaky windshield.
He took a second look at the golf bag. Okay, definitely odd. A horse and a golf bag standing by the side of the road. Sounded like the lead in for a joke.
He opened the car door and looked down. The driver’s side swung over a small drainage ditch that ran alongside the road. He stepped across the ditch and walked around to the front of the car to peer up and down the road. He glanced at his watch, then tipped his baseball cap back on his head.
In the distance, a crop duster puttered, biplane momentarily silhouetted against the sky.
The horse stood calmly looking at him, then dipped his head into the golf bag, and nosed his way between the woods sticking out, each with its own embossed horseshoe cover. When his head came up Dave saw a golden apple between solid, shiny white teeth. Dave blinked. Horses with big yellow choppers, he had seen. These were the sort of teeth usually bought on credit.
The horse crunched the apple thoughtfully, still looking at Dave. It was, he thought, an uncommonly odd feeling, being stared at by a horse.
He looked back at the barn. The girl, obviously mucking out, had a large wheelbarrow full of fun that she pushed around the side of the barn and out of sight. He glanced back at the road, then stared at the horse as it dipped its head into the bag again, rooted between some irons, then came up with a carrot, which it chewed like a cigar. The green stalk flopped back and forth.
A cricket chirped. He flexed his feet, listening to his tennis shoes squeak.
He stared at the horse.
The horse stared at him.
The biplane puttered just on the horizon, dropping a long clo
ud of pesticide.
“Hot day,” he said to the horse.
:Middlin’ hot,: said a voice.
“What the f . . .”, Dave spun around. “Who said that?”
:Over here, by the golf bag,: said the voice.
Dave whipped his head around. The horse stared at him . . . then slowly and deliberately winked. The eyes, the ones he had thought were brown, now shone a bright, sapphire blue.
Dave took two shuffle steps backward, startled beyond thought. The second ended in profanity as he stepped into the little ditch alongside the road and went down knee deep. His new recorder, bought for the occasion, went “glunk” in the only water for thirty feet in any direction.
“What the f . . .” he repeated, stepping out of the ditch and into the road. Had there been any traffic, he would have been in someone’s on-coming lane.
:You came here to get inside information from a source,: said the voice. :You don’t get more inside than this.:
“What the . . .”
:Gotta say it . . . straight from the horse’s mouth.: The horse did something with its hooves, and the sound was a mix of rim-shot and silver bells.
Dave shook his head and began looking for a portable loudspeaker, feeling now that he’d been badly put on. Some jerk out there with a camera, filming him for a sucker, and conning him into talking to a horse.
“So, you’re a talking horse? Like the one on TV. Name’s Ed? Or that mule?” Dave milked it as best he could, playing along until he could find the speaker system. He zeroed in on the golf bag. He was such a putz. So obvious.
:Don’t be an ass, Dave,: said the voice. :Are my lips moving? In fact, are you really hearing it?:
That stopped him cold. The horselips not moving, no sound issuing. It was the voice in his head that disturbed him. It wasn’t his inner monologue . . . the sort that slipped up when he’d been drinking and checking out pretty girls, and got him into trouble. It was a deeper, masculine voice, the sort that sounded as though it ought to be coming from outside his head. Except it wasn’t outside.
“Maybe it’s cancer,” he said. “Maybe I’m just hearing things.”
:Did you read the books I sent?: The horse replied, changing the subject.
“My sister used to read those as a kid. I tried a couple. Chick fic.”
The horse rolled his eyes, really rolled them, the whole head tossing.
:Okay, Mr. Pulitzer, just how many stories have you published?:
“Umm, well, I’m working this angle . . .”
:Jockey drinking milk with ipecac chasers ain’t exactly news, monkey boy. Next you’ll be doing an expose that models are anorexic.:
“Umm . . .”
:How about a real story?:
“Okay, I may be losing it, but I’m talking to a horse.”
:Telepathy.:
“What?”
:Telepathy. You are speaking to me, and I am answering you telepathically:.
“Oh, I thought it was called something else.”
:So, you have read the books?:
“Okay, one or two. When I was in college. I was broke.”
:I won’t tell the other guys you were reading pastel pony stories.: The horse actually grinned. :I know it would get you thrown out of the club. It’s called Mindspeaking by the way.:
“Why not telepathy?”
:Well, we talked to our publicist about it and agreed that calling it telepathy . . . was too science-fictiony. Miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind-speeeeeach conveys the same idea, and keeps it in the fantasy canon.:
Dave grasped the only part that made sense. “Horses have a publicist?”
:Yes. A woman in Oklahoma takes our history, dresses it up a bit, and resells it. Makes an okay living at it.: The horse looked long and hard at him. : What you call chick fic pays pretty well. Not as well as romance, of course, but better than puking jockeys or space guns. Look. We need to get down to business, here. Got your notebook?:
Dave looked back at his voice recorder, continuing to do its U-boat impression. No way Best Buy was going to take that back. He dug out his analog recorder—a notepad and pen. Somewhere in the back of his mind he realized he had accepted that he was talking to a real live horse. Talking to, maybe not totally unusual . . . but one talking back in slightly accented English was way, way out there.
“Okay, lessee where to start. You are a Companion from Valdemar.”
:Yes. And you’ve misspelled it. It’s not Comapnian.:
“Sorry, I’m a little out of my league here. And you are here in Kentucky?”
:Obviously.
“But, why?
:Vacation. Don’t they call this ‘horse heaven’? Maybe this is where we rest up between gigs.: The Companion shifted a Number 1 wood a little to take another apple from the golf bag.
Dave stepped closer. “Is that a . . . a Nicorette patch?”
:Don’t worry about it:. The horse . . . the Companion sounded genuinely peeved. :What goes to Kentucky stays in Kentucky, okay?:
“Okay, okay. Sorry, I’m a reporter.”
:Then, do you want a story or not?:
“Umm, sure. Once I figure out how I’m going to sell my editor that I’ve had a conversation with a horse . . . sorry, Companion, that I communicate with telepathically who has given me news that is fit to print.”
:That’s a bit cynical. Why don’t you just let it play out and see where it takes us? Maybe something will suggest itself that you can use. Let’s start on background, and we’ll work up from there.:
The Companion looked up and down the road, then crossed one hoof in front of the other.
It was the hoof that sold Dave, once and for all. It wasn’t silverish, or silver painted. It was real silver, real solid silver, with the deep luster that only the best had and that he’d spent many hours polishing as a child. He didn’t know much, but he did know his silver.
“No, sh . . . this is for real. You’re a real Com panion?”
:Again. Obviously. Ask some questions. Pretend you’re a reporter.:
Dave fumbled for a place to start. “On background. Good idea. What’s magic?”
The Companion took a deep breath. :That was original. OK, stock question deserves a stock answer. We are surrounded by energy; everyone is all the time. Sun, heat, light, magnetic . . . called leylines for magnetic flux lines, easiest to see and tap. Most of it is ambient, but it’s like catching a cup full of drizzle. Easier to grab magnetic flows as they go past. Some people can tap that energy, adapt it to their needs, and alter it by force of will. Please don’t say “just like the Force.” Because it isn’t.:
“Then, who can use this energy?”
:Not sure. At least part is genetic . . . a mutation in the hippocampus or hypothalamus. One of those “H” words. Happy?:
“Yeah, I guess.” Dave paused. “Okay, then, the timeline spans two thousand years. So why don’t things progress much?”
:Well, you have to understand that magic and technology are fundamentally incompatible. The focus in Valdemar early on was to expand and improve magic . . . which is fine for small tasks, but it fails miserably at the big stuff. Easier to take a crew and pave a road than to magic the dirt to repel water. So, instead of learning physics and how to make things, the mages focused more and more on magic. It’s no accident that all of these books have just enough technology to string a sword together or mash up some armor. There is some effort in Selenay’s time to go the other way, but it’s a late start.:
That made some sense to Dave, but the publicist bit had him going.
“Okay, then what about the stories about the elves making the aluminum cars down in Daytona. That’s magic and technology.”
:Savannah, actually. They’re all friends of mine.:
“Okay . . . so now there are elves?”
:Sure, why not? Straight-up Darwin. Adapt or die, even for the fey. Some haul pizza, others carry messages, a few make racecars:. The Companion saw Dave’s incredulous expression. :Look, until twenty minutes ago you�
��d never had a conversation with a telepathic avatar horse with nifty silver hooves either, had you? So, why not elves in LA?:
Dave had the sense this was all getting way ahead of him.
“So, if that’s true . . . then what about the ones about the witch . . . the one who hunts ghosts and stuff?”
:Naw. That’s pure fiction.:
“Why does that have to be fiction when the rest of it isn’t?”
:I mean, come on. Ghosts and demons? Preposterous.:
Dave shook his head, glanced at his notebook. It gave him a moment to steady himself.
“That seems a bit arbitrary.”
:So’s life. Next question.:
“So, then just what happened to the Herald Mages?”
:Two factors came together. Magery was a distraction. It’s hard enough to be a good Herald. Heraldry is a full-time job by itself. Magecraft is a full-time job as well, one that doesn’t tolerate very many mistakes. Most of the Heralds who tried both were either not very good at either or had serious control problems. More than a couple blew themselves up, or lost control at the wrong moment. In your world it would be like having a nuke, incredibly powerful, but one that you were pretty sure the safety worked. Mostly sure.:
“What about Vanyel? Oh, I see. Never mind.”
:Magery was going away anyway . . . in Valdemar, at least. Vanyel was the hot mash after the rubdown, as we Companions say.:
He tossed his head at Dave’s obvious confusion.
:For a guy who writes about horses, you don’t know very much. The cherry on the sundae, then.:
“I write about horse racing. I’m an investigative reporter.”
The Companion looked at his POS car. :So, how’s that working out for you, then?:
“You were talking about Vanyel?”
:He was wired tighter than a banjo, and losing it on all sides. He lasted as long as was needful, but only just. His Companion was all that was holding him together at the end. The magic requires a wildness inside that just doesn’t mesh well with the discipline that is required to be a really good Herald. Most Herald Mages never mastered the level of discipline needed to be good Heralds but got too much to really embrace the wildness . . . they were the battle cruisers of our world, a compromise design that didn’t work very well.:
Changing the World Page 31
