Crucible Read online

  Lynal’s life had been simple when she’d lived at home with Elfyn, and she had kept that simplicity in her quarters here. Elfyn had never been to the Collegium, had never traveled so far from her home. Seeing the Herald at her door two days ago had surprised her. He’d been sweaty and out of breath as he delivered the news of her daughter’s wounds. Lynal had been on Circuit when what was supposed to be a minor land dispute had turned into a small war between houses, and though she had been trained by the Collegium in defense, her Whites made her an easy target. There was little her body could do against multiple knife wounds.

  Elfyn and the Herald had traveled with little sleep or food to bring her to the House of Healing in time to say goodbye to her only child.

  The bed was made and covered in a fine layer of dust, evidence of Lynal’s prolonged absence. It was a modest if not nice place to live, with comforts Elfyn had never been able to give her, such as a real bed with a mattress and soft sheets.

  A shadow fell across her back and spread into the room. She turned to see another Herald in the doorway, standing just behind the Trainee. Their white clothing gave them away far too easily. That, and something about their presence that echoed inside her head. She’d noticed that same soft “other” about her daughter after she was Chosen.

  This Herald was tall and thin, the thinnest one she’d seen since arriving at the Collegium. His hair was dark, though streaked with white and gray, and pulled back into a leather thong at the back of his neck. “Josef,” he addressed the boy. “Healer Malachi needs a clean set of Lynal’s Whites. Will you take them to her?”

  “Yes, Herald Lorin.” Josef gave the Herald a slight bow before moving past Elfyn to the closet. The boy removed a set and placed them carefully on the bed. Elfyn watched as he methodically folded the clothing and retrieved a pair of clean boots.

  “Thank you,” Herald Lorin said as Josef approached the door.

  The boy paused and looked up at him with wistful eyes. “Herald Lorin . . . any word on Yllafiel . . .”

  “Everyone’s searching, Josef. Go, get those to the Healer.”

  Once the boy left, the Herald stepped inside and shut the door. Elfyn noticed Lorin’s strong presence before he addressed her. “Elfyn Muriel. I’m Herald Lorin. I was one of your daughter’s instructors. I would like to express my condolences on her passing.”

  “Were you the one that sent her into that mess?” Elfyn didn’t try to hold back her rage, and was rewarded with a wince on the Herald’s stoic face. “Sent a young girl into a situation best suited for those of you more experienced at diplomacy?”

  “I can assure you,”—he held up his hands—“Herald Lynal was capable of handling the situation—”

  “My daughter is dead!” Elfyn pointed at the floor as she expressed her anguish. “You and this Collegium have at last taken everything from me. My daughter . . .” She balled her hands into fists and turned away. “My little girl . . .”

  “Herald Lynal was anything but a little girl, ma’am.” Herald Lorin’s voice wavered just a touch, revealing his own grief. “She was excellent at diplomacy. In fact, she was the best we had, and she volunteered to go. And . . . despite the loss of her and her Companion, the agreement was still reached, and the area should know peace for some time. Your daughter is responsible for saving hundreds of lives.” He paused. “I—I just wanted to let you know.”

  Elfyn felt his sorrow; it was as palpable as her own. But something in his words caught her attention. She turned just as he reached for the door. “Wait . . . you said she and her Companion.”

  “Yes.”

  “I didn’t know her horse was injured.”

  “Yllafiel wasn’t injured. But with Lynal gone—it’s complicated,” he said as he lowered his arm and clasped his hands in front of him. “How much of Lynal’s relationship with Yllafiel did she share with you?”

  “As much as I’d let her,” Elfyn wiped her face and put her hands on her hips. “When I would listen. And I never listened much. That damn horse always seemed too uppity for my taste.”

  Herald Lorin pursed his lips. “Companions are not horses. I’m sure Lynal told you that.”

  “She did. But it still looked like a horse to me.”

  “And the bond between Companions and their Chosen is for life.”

  Elfyn narrowed her eyes. “I’m not sure what you’re trying to say. You mean because Lynal died, that Yllafiel died as well?”

  “When a Companion loses their Chosen, they usually die of grief.” He glanced back at the door. “Josef’s own Companion is concerned because no one can reach Yllafiel through Mindspeech. All available Heralds and Companions are out looking for her. She disappeared from the fields when Lynal died.”

  “So you’re saying she’s run off to die.” Hands still on her hips, Elfyn went to the window and looked out over the garden. She could see Heralds with their Companions, and younger children dressed in gray with their white horses as they took off into the forest. “The horse is just going to give up?” She looked back at Herald Lorin.

  The expression on his face surprised her. He looked stricken and she wondered if her brisk manner had offended him. He took in a deep breath before he answered. “The Companion is not just giving up. Yllafiel believes that there is no other reason to live without her Chosen.” Lorin finally moved from where he’d planted himself and joined Elfyn at the window. “Elfyn . . . I know about . . . your feelings toward Heralds and how you feel toward Yllafiel.”

  “You do, do you?” Elfyn felt that old pang of guilt mixed inside her own drowning grief when she thought about the first Herald she ever met. “Lynal tell you how a Herald found her father dead and brought me the news after I gave birth to her? Did she tell you how I picked up the pieces with a child and no husband? How I considered her a gift because my beloved was gone, only to have that gift taken from me by the very same white-robed people?” She tried to keep her temper under control, but she knew she was failing. Despair had settled too close to her heart, and she feared she would fall into its dark, bottomless pit at any moment. A pit her daughter had kept her from entering. “I wanted to spend my life as a wife and a mother, and my world shattered that day. Lyn was the only light I had. So when she was chosen by that horse—and the Heralds came for her—”

  “It was as if we had taken from you again.” Lorin’s expression softened. “And now, we are here at the time of her death, as you were at her birth.”

  “Something like that. You make it sound more poetic than harsh.”

  “Elfyn . . . the grief you’re feeling at Lynal’s loss is just as powerful as the grief Ylladriel now endures. But it is harder for her, I think.”

  “How is it harder?” Elfyn’s voice rose. “I am Lynal’s mother. How can a horse know what that’s like?”

  “Ylladriel and Lynal’s bond was reciprocal. It’s the way it works between Chosen and Companion. Ylladriel knows you hate her, that you blame her, and that only deepens the wound. There is no one to comfort her now, no one left to share with, so she will choose death.”

  “That horse knew?” Elfyn searched the Herald’s eyes. “She knew I blamed her? That I disliked her for taking my child’s attention . . .”

  “Yes. I knew how you felt about us, the Heralds, and about Ylladriel, because Lynal confided in me.”

  Elfyn reached into her pocket and retrieved the note. She clutched it to her heart a few seconds before she offered it to Herald Lorin. “Lynal wrote this for me the last time she came for a visit. The only time she visited. I said something terrible things about Ylladriel. When I woke up the next morning, she and the horse were gone, and she’d left me this note.”

  “Why are you handing it to—” Herald Lorin looked confused, then his brows raised in understanding. “You can’t read.”

  Elfyn didn’t answer. It was hard enough admitting it once. Then she said, “I never saw he
r again after that. So I . . . I believe this note is her way of choosing Ylladriel over me.”

  Herald Lorin took the paper and unfolded it. Elfyn watched his eyes move, and then he looked back up at her. “You knew Lynal had the gift of Foresight?”

  “Yes.”

  “This note is asking you to make amends with Ylladriel.” He folded it and handed it back. “I think Lynal knew her life would end.”

  Elfyn stared at the paper. “I . . . she wanted me to . . .”

  “Ask Ylladriel’s forgiveness. Talk to her. Before she dies.” He turned and strode toward the door, then paused, but didn’t look back. “I hope you can find her before her grief takes her away from you as well.”

  • • •

  “Get that—that creature out of my kitchen!” Elfyn pointed at the horse head sticking through the window of her hut. She wasn’t about to let the ill-tempered beast ruin her first reunion with Lynal since the Heralds took her. Five years! All the letters in the world couldn’t have prepared her for the vision of the confident young woman riding up on that spotless white horse.

  Awkward silences vanished when Lynal smelled her mother’s apple tarts, and the years apart quickly melted. There had been laughter and stories—so many stories of what life was like at the Collegium. And through it all, Elfyn had been aware of the horse outside. The unnatural white beast, preening in the sun.

  So when she turned to see Lynal feeding the horse an apple through the window—her patience snapped.

  “Mama!” Lynal shouted back as the horse retreated and disappeared into the forest. “You apologize.”

  “I will not!” Elfyn stomped her foot. “That horse has your attention day and night, and it’s had you all to itself for years. That’s time I’ll never get back. I don’t want it here. Now. With us.”

  She had always remembered the sad look on Lynal’s face after she said those words. Elfyn had only seen that look once, when her daughter’s best friend had succumbed to a killing fever when they were seven.

  Lynal didn’t say much after her mother’s outburst, speaking in light tones and forcing a smile.

  But Elfyn suspected she’d damaged something that day. The small distance separating her and her daughter had grown wider, and in the coming years, grew into a chasm Elfyn feared she would never be able to close.

  When she woke the next morning, Lynal and Ylladriel were gone. The only thing left in Lynal’s room was a neatly folded letter.

  Elfyn had thought it cruel at the time. She had never told Lynal she couldn’t read.

  • • •

  Hundreds of paintings and sketches filled one of Lynal’s few trunks. She didn’t know her daughter had continued drawing after being Chosen. Elfyn had maybe two dozen or so pictures Lynal did for her when she felt proud enough to show them. She had never seen these. After sorting them by style she noticed a reoccurring theme.

  The Companion. Every painting, every sketch was of her Companion. Just the horse, or with Lynal beside her. There were a few with friends and other Companions, but the bulk of the work centered around Ylladriel.

  In one of the small trunks, the one filled with Lynal’s art supplies, Elfyn found a single sketch Lynal must have done after she arrived at Collegium. It had the stick lines of Lynal’s early attempts at perspective, as well as her daughter’s early need to make everything the color of a rainbow.

  She took the drawing to the window and leaned against the frame, staring at the picture under the waning afternoon sun. Lynal had drawn herself on top of the white horse, surrounded by several people Elfyn didn’t recognize and wouldn’t. But it was also the first picture where her daughter drew her mother. It was the only one.

  Elfyn had been drawn to the far right of the group. An old woman with a sour expression in a little hut in the woods. There weren’t any friends around Elfyn.

  Not even her daughter.

  Ask Ylladriel’s forgiveness.

  Bah! Forgiveness nothing! I will demand to know why she left me!

  In a rush of anger and frustration she crumpled the drawing, squeezing and silently cursing it as she molded it into a ball of paper and absently shoved it into the pocket of her skirt before stomping out of her daughter’s room and down the hall.

  Passing a young girl, Elfyn held out her hand. “Which is the quickest way into the forest?”

  The little girl pointed behind her, and in a shaky voice said, “Down the stairs to the garden door.”

  Without even a thank you Elfyn strode down the hall, down the stairs, and into the garden she’d passed before. She stopped in the center when she realized the Heralds and their Companions were no longer there. A wind fluttered the flower petals as it moved around the courtyard.

  Seeing herself the way her daughter saw her hurt. An angry, lonely woman. She shoved her hand into her pocket again to make sure the note was still there. As angry as the sentiment made her, as the request to apologize to a horse infuriated her, she would do it because Lynal wanted it. Because Lynal loved Ylladriel.

  More than she loved me.

  A young man in blue came running out of the building behind her. She reached out and caught his shoulder. “Boy—did they find Lynal’s Companion yet?”

  “No, ma’am. No announcement has been made.” He hesitated. “Anything else, ma’am?”

  “No.”

  The boy ran off and disappeared around the corner.

  So the horse was still out there. A chance still remained to find Ylladriel.

  Elfyn hadn’t said the name often, refusing to believe a horse could choose its own name. And such a pretentious one at that. So . . . where would such a creature go to hide? She knew nothing about the layout of the place, so she trusted her feelings, the way she always had when making a decision. Where is she, Lynal? Where did your Companion go?

  Thinking about the white horse drew her to her left. She cut through more gardens, across a field, and into the edges of a thick forest. The sun sank as she stomped along, making all manner of noise among the trees, pausing now and then to let her intuition point her in the right direction.

  After what felt like hours, Elfyn paused in the middle of the woods, listening to the burble of moving water. The sound of it reminded her of home, of summer afternoons with Lynal playing in the stream as she washed their clothing. Another memory of the two of them, just relaxing by the riverside with friends from the inn.

  Friends Elfyn had pulled away from once Lynal left.

  The nagging feeling she used to get when Lynal would play in the woods and forget to come home, the one that always honed in on where she was returned and turned her in the direction of the sound of the water. She continued forward, then to her right. She saw the water in the fading light, smelled the lichens and earth along the bank and with a gasp, saw the white shadow between the trees, just as she’d seen it all those years ago.

  Picking up her skirts, Elfyn took off running, dodging limbs and snapping branches.

  When she burst out and onto the riverbank she saw the white horse, lying on its side. It had its head partially in the water. She couldn’t tell if it was alive or not, nor if it was breathing.

  “Hey!” she yelled as she approached and stomped even closer so as not to startle it any more. “What do you think you’re doing?”

  The horse didn’t move, didn’t lift her head, or open her eyes.

  Elfyn picked up her skirts again and buried her knees in the soft bank of the river as she knelt beside Ylladriel. “You get up, you hear me? This is ridiculous. Lying down and just giving up?” She leaned in close to the horse’s flank. “Well, you can’t do that. You just can’t do that now. You know why? Because . . . because I have to ask your forgiveness. I . . . I never meant to hurt you or Lynal. I just didn’t understand what being Chosen meant. All I knew was that you were taking my only light from me. My sweet, sweet Lynal.”
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  When she still didn’t respond, anger clouded Elfyn’s thoughts. Rage at everyone, but most of all for this horse! “How dare you!” She moved around on the muddy bank and put herself in front of Ylladriel’s face. “You—the one thing my daughter loved above everything else. The one creature capable of taking her away from me. From me!” She pounded her chest. “Her mother. Her own flesh and blood. You had the best years to yourself, do you know that? I had so few with her. But you . . . you were by her side when she needed you most. You were the one she turned to, the one that made the loneliness go away. She told me, all those years ago. Of how you filled a place in her heart she didn’t know was empty. A place I couldn’t . . . fill.”

  Elfyn slipped down on her side and braced herself against the bank. Everything smelled of decay and sadness here. “She never knew her father. I was devastated, losing the man I loved, and I could have given up. But I couldn’t leave Lynal. She needed me. And giving up now is just showing disrespect for my daughter’s memory.”

  She wiped her nose and her eyes on her sleeve. “But I have my memories. I have the knowledge that I brought a beautiful, caring woman into this world. A Herald! And look what the two of you did. Did you know you created peace? Lorin said you were successful. That her death was probably responsible for saving hundreds of lives. They’re going to celebrate her. My Lynal. The bards will sing songs about her. What she did. What you helped her do. And now the only way you’re going to honor her is to lie down and die?”

  With a choked-off sob, Elfyn pulled herself on top of the Companion’s side. She pressed her ear against the soft skin to find a heartbeat. Some sign that this creature, whom her daughter loved, still clung to life.

  The tears flowed freely. Now she lost herself in the same despair she had cursed the Companion for. But she could understand it. She could see the pain the future would bring. And maybe . . . maybe Elfyn could survive it, as she had survived everything given her.

  In memory of Lynal, she wrapped her arms around the Companion’s neck just as she’d seen her daughter do and hugged her. Her thoughts came to her, but she didn’t have the strength to speak them.