Chapter Text

Her name is Yfandes, and she is alone.

She has never been alone before, not truly. Since the day that she came into the world, squalling, in a white body with four hooves and blue eyes, she has always been within reach of the herd, never apart.

And for sixteen long years, she has been with her Chosen, day and night, always.

She never thought this would happen.

Her Chosen.

She thought she knew what was coming, thought she was ready for it. She was so wrong.

She is still in Valdemar, probably – even at a Companion’s pace, it would be more than a day’s journey to the nearest border, and she has avoided the open roads, not wishing to be conspicuous – but she cannot feel the Web. She is shielding with every fibre of her being, and ignoring the pain of it, the deep wrongness of that unnatural solitude.

She left silently, but the others will notice she is gone soon enough, and Rolan will try to find her. She is not ready to be found. Not while the conflict still rages in her deepest core.

Not like this, she thinks, frantically, pointlessly. I never thought to lose him like this. Not to a soldier’s blade or a mage’s fire, that would have been nightmare enough, but to this new creeping horror. Everything she is built on, the one thing she thought would always be bright and clear, slowly crumbling, a landslide, nowhere solid left to stand. The strange edifice that is their bond is breaking, pulling her apart, as it has been since that first awful sting of confused betrayal, and she cannot look at it, no no no no no.

She should be with him. It is what she is for, and he needs her. And she cannot.

Alone, she stands in a clearing, snow and silence all around her.

She is not angry, exactly. It would be easier, she thinks, if it were that simple. In the quiet space of her own mind, she can admit that her Chosen has a point. That the situation they find themselves in, however terrifying, is not black and white.

That the world is broken, in more ways than she could have imagined at the beginning of their sixteen-year journey together, and that no one is trying to fix it. Not truly. Except for an immortal mage who wears and sheds the bodies of innocents like clothing, who burns lives like cordwood to fuel his unending quest. A man who would risk destroying the world in pursuit of a dream. She sees that implication clearly enough. I will not be deterred, he says to her Chosen, and so they must stop him, by violence if necessary, she can no longer see any way out.

They have left him alone for so many years. Is it too late now?

Once, she spoke to Taver of riding north. She did not tell her Chosen, saw no need to alarm him – at the time he still struggled so much just to take on a Herald’s ordinary duties – and Taver’s gut agreed with hers. Wait. Their chances will be better later. It seemed right – the blue place of silver patterns is never clear, but she has done her best to follow a narrow and winding path. With Taver’s guidance, until four years ago, and she knows that the Groveborn see further.

Except that she is no longer sure she can trust the blue that lies behind the Web, the threads that show hints at her future. Or a possible future of many, anyway, there has always been more than one way this may end. A part of her has always stood in the blue, watching, until now.

Where can she go, if she cannot trust those threads? The place, if it can be called a place at all, is under the power of a strange and unnamed god, and so is she.

If she could walk away…

She almost feels as though she could. She is unmoored, a lost purpose, silver cord fraying.

But does she want to?

She wants a hundred things, half of them contradictory, all of them impossible. To take back the last day and do it over. To take back the last decade-and-a-half, and this time, somehow, she will fight with Gala, and Tylendel will survive, and everything will be different… Perhaps that alternate world is worse for Valdemar, but she is not sure she cares anymore.

Oh, but that is a new feeling. She is a Companion of Valdemar, and to serve her Kingdom is what she is for, and yet. Perhaps some costs are not worth paying, even to save a country.

She wants the world to make sense again. She wants everything to stop, just for a moment, so she can think.

She wants her Chosen back. His name is Vanyel and he is hers. Was hers. Always. Only not anymore. Maybe never again. Maybe never was, always a lie. The wrongness is like biting down on broken glass when she expected fresh hay, complete with a desperate urge to spit it out, disgust and horror, wrong wrong wrong.

No.

The part of her that wishes to renounce him, to take back their bond and walk away, is still screaming. It would be so easy. It is the right thing to do, that voices cries.

And yet she made a promise.

A promise she has already broken, leaving him alone.

It is too much, everything is too much and even inside her head is too loud. I can’t, she thinks, I can’t I can’t I can’t, a pointless refrain cried out to no one and nothing. Even if she still believed that her god-beyond-the-world might listen, she is not sure she wants this prayer to be heard.

She cannot stay here forever. She needs to make a decision, and every part of her flinches from it. Like a pressure on her hide, it threatens to crush her.

Start with what she knows – and a sad mental chuckle, because it is exactly how Vanyel would face it. What Leareth has taught him.

Start at the beginning. Some force beyond mortal understanding makes her Vanyel what he is, and sets him on a course to defend the Kingdom, against a threat that seems so straightforward at first. (For a moment she longs for the world where it stayed that simple, but wishing will not change it.) Their lives are not their own, and never have been.

–And the fury surges, that she has never let herself feel. Not for Vanyel – she has been indignant on his behalf many times before, it is a well-worn and weary anger now – but for herself. This is not a path she chose, and it should not matter, she is a Companion of Valdemar and exists only to protect and serve that Kingdom, and yet. It isn’t fair, she wants to scream. This is not what she is for. There are burdens she is not made to bear. Costs that are too high to ever be worth it. I didn’t choose it, she thinks, and for the first time, it matters. For the first time, she can admit that to herself, if only in the quietest, innermost corner of herself.

I did the best I could, she thinks, and she is not sure who she is defending herself to. No one is listening.

Start with what she knows. A mage called Leareth plots in the north, and for fifteen years he has spoken to her Chosen in his dreams. Perhaps he lies, and he seeks only his own advancement. She cannot know, not yet, maybe not ever, but more likely, she thinks, he tells the truth. As he sees it.

If he succeeds–

–Every part of her tries to pull away from even considering it, but she bites down on it anyway, swallowing the sick horror, she breathes it in and swims in it.

If he succeeds in part, in the creation, and yet it goes wrong, he might destroy everything.

But if not?

If his success is true, if he creates a different sort of god, a being that agrees that the world is broken and would like it to be different…

(The cost is far too high, blood and lives, there is a bright line that must never be crossed–)

Ignore the cost. Would it be good?

Her vision darkens at the edges. There is a strange dizziness, the feeling of a gorge below her hooves, nowhere left to stand. She cannot understand why it is so hard to think about.

It is utter madness even to attempt. Surely he must fail–

Ignore that. Consider only the world in which he succeeds.

Two lens, like doubled vision. Through one of them, there is certainty, though it is dark and ugly. What the man who calls himself Leareth wants is wrong, monstrous, must be stopped at any cost, and her Chosen, her Vanyel, can no longer see that, he is changed, corrupted, she cannot trust him anymore, cannot love him anymore, wrong wrong wrong–

Shift sideways, look again, and it is so much murkier. Leareth, for all his centuries, is only a human being, doing the best he can in a world of chaos and confusion – and so is Vanyel, and so is everyone, and perhaps they will never know if the path they are on is the right one. Perhaps it is impossible for anyone to know; perhaps the question does not even make sense. And even so, Vanyel will never, ever stop trying, though it would be so much easier to give up. That is why he cannot turn his back on Leareth’s ideas, why he must look straight-on at that yawning horror, that most inconvenient of worlds where Leareth is the only one brave enough to fix a broken world.

And that is why she loves Vanyel, why she Chose him, when she saw, not the shape he was then but the shape he would be. Vanyel is a pattern that cannot walk away.

She sees both at once, somehow, and the tension threatens to tear her apart.

We never have certainty, she thinks, as she has heard in Vanyel’s thoughts a thousand times, an echo of advice that Leareth gave him once. Not for anything in this world.

And yet refusing to choose, refusing to look, is also a choice. A cowardly one.

It would be good, she thinks, forcing the words through a howling whirlwind. If Leareth is telling the truth, if he succeeds in what he claims to be trying to do, it would be good.

So why can she not even look at that possibility? Why does it make her feel sick even to try?

She holds her shields, but she takes a step anyway, not with her body but with her mind, not in any ordinary direction. She is in the blue, and she is still alone, threads of her trailing off into nothing. She sees only the pattern that is everything she is, sprawled out, dreams, decisions, silver threads.

She is a Companion of Valdemar.

And Vanyel is her Chosen.

Those have always seemed like one and the same, two sides of a single coin. Now, she is not so sure. Vanyel is hers, was hers, because of the strange magic of Companions, something half a spell and half a miracle, set in motion eight centuries earlier – and that is an uncomfortable thought, as though her skin is turned to glass and she is looking at her own innards.

And yet, even if that were taken away, even if there were no threads of power binding them together–

She would still love him. Not because he is her Chosen, but because he is Vanyel. She knows him; she has seen him in his entirety. He is a pattern that cannot walk away, never ever ever.

And so is she. The pattern that is Yfandes is a pattern that does not walk away – but for the first time, she is entirely unsure what that means. No bright line. No certainty. Only murkiness, and pain, and the bottomless fear of failure.

I want to go home, she thinks, brokenly, pointlessly. Home has never been a place, not since she was a filly; home is where her Chosen is, and she is not sure if it exists anymore. Perhaps it was never a real place at all.

Stop wasting time, she tells herself. Focus. Results, not virtue – that is what Vanyel would say. He learned it from Leareth. She has talked her Chosen through every conversation he ever had with the man, hundreds over the years, and of course they have shaped her as well.

Her thoughts tug away, spiralling in panic.

Focus. All information is worth having, and those words are not from Leareth; a Herald of Valdemar wrote them, centuries ago. If she cannot trust that – if she cannot trust her own reasoning – then what can she do?

Maybe nothing. Maybe it is too late, no matter which way she chooses. She is not sure how long she has been among the trees, but darkness is falling again; she has been gone for a day, or is it two? Locked into her own mind, she is not sure anymore.

Leaving Vanyel alone. Is he–

No. He is alive. She would know otherwise.

Still, she does not have all the time in the world. It settles onto her, a new weight. The future will happen with or without her, action and reaction, an inevitable dance. What part does she want to play?

She wants to flee in gibbering horror from the question.

No. Not an option. That would be only the worst sort of walking away.

Breathe. Find the stillness deep within her, carve out a tiny pocket there. Ignore the ropes that hold her to a distant, alien god; she can feel their tugs, even now, but for just a moment she can choose not to heed them. To ignore the less visible ties that bind her – duty, honour, what it means to be a Companion. What Rolan would say. Relevant considerations, but for a moment she can set them aside.

Just her. Just Yfandes, the mortal being of flesh and blood, not quite human, but close enough to laugh and cry and bleed.

What does she want?