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  Jaw set, determined, Kaysa gripped her stick. She followed the downed trunk by touch and discovered the deadfall had torn down additional trees as it toppled. The root balls had rolled on the steep terrain, carving up clinging mud and wedged into a jam. The impasse blocked Kaysa’s progress, deflecting her downstream into the ravine. Far removed from the path, scraped and muddy and hot, she perched on an overturned boulder.

  “I am not lost!” Scared, but not panicked, she knew by the steady splash of swirled water the stream was close. Cooler air meant the sun had dropped behind the crest. The dense tangle of branches was thinning. She mustered her courage. Left no better choice, she continued downward, step by cautious step.

  Despite every care, she slipped again. She tumbled downhill into more gnarled limbs, then lay skinned and gashed and knocked breathless. A day gone bad, with the afternoon passing. The basket abandoned in the path would cause worry, enough to send searchers to find her. That embarrassment had not happened since she was ten and had lost her way home from the market.

  “In trouble, neck deep.” Kaysa flushed to imagine Da’s scolding for her latest stupid misjudgment. Alone in the stillness, nursing a bruised shin, she heard the groan of another large creature in pain. An animal caught in the branches thrashed once and subsided to labored breathing.

  Kaysa forgot her predicament. The foliage to her right shuddered again, as the trapped creature struggled in balked effort to free itself, then stilled again with a snort.

  “Someone’s horse?” Kaysa disentangled herself, grasped her stick and stood erect with a chill of foreboding. “You’re a very long way from the road!” Too far for a traveler’s mount to have bolted and come to grief in a natural storm. The worst of the damage, in fact, seemed to center upon the downed animal.

  The rider seemed nowhere in evidence, no good sign. She could not search by herself. But if she could free the horse and bring help, some good would come of her own disaster.

  Kaysa proceeded cautiously from branch to twig, guided by sound until her questing hand encountered a lathered coat. The horse jerked at her touch, startled, if not too badly injured.

  “Easy, fellow.” But all was not well. The animal was down. The distressed rasp of its breath and the tang of fresh blood overwhelmed her awareness.

  “Let’s sort you out.” Kaysa stroked the animal’s heaving flank. The beast lay on its side, still bridled and saddled. The leather felt gouged, either by violence or from scraping through obstacles in riderless panic. Kaysa knelt over the prostrate animal. She eased the girth buckle, then gently explored up the neck through the tangled mane. Sticks were tangled through the hair, clotted from bleeding scrapes. The reins were stripped to loose threads, snagged in the fallen branches and pinned when the tree toppled over.

  “You’re lucky, fella,” Kaysa soothed, concerned to find no sign of the fallen rider.

  The horse lifted its neck when she untangled the straps. “Whoa, fella!”

  Kaysa had no more chance to check for broken bones. The distraught animal gathered its legs and arose. It shook, to a jangle of stirrups, then stood, uneasily trembling.

  Perhaps dazed, it stayed still while Kaysa recovered her stick and shoved to her feet. A whuff of hot breath told her where to reach for the trailing reins. “Let’s see if you’re fit.”

  The animal steadied under her gentle hands. Other than mud and more sticky contusions, she found nothing worse than one inflamed pastern. Lame, but not crippled, the horse laid its battered head on her shoulder.

  “Can you walk?” Kaysa tugged the reins, tried a tentative step. The horse seemed able enough to go forward. “Help me get back to the village, and I’ll take you to our Healer.”

  She turned the game creature uphill, one hand gripped to the bossed breast strap in hope that its sighted guidance might steer her from further mishap.

  Dewfall and the thick, forest silence meant dusk was falling. The loss of the sunlight left Kaysa no means to determine direction when the ground leveled out. Since the horse shouldered onward without hesitation, she chose to trust its purposeful guidance. Then she caught the wafted scent of torch smoke, followed by mixed voices, arguing. Kaysa halted the horse the moment before the anxious party encountered her.

  “I wasn’t lost!” she called over their noise.

  “Lost?” The village laundress’ gruff exclamation filtered through the trees, sharpened by worried relief. While the clamor quieted, over crackling brush as massed footsteps headed in Kaysa’s direction, she ranted, “Where were you? Sulking? Your mama was sick with anxiety when you failed to return. The men are not home from the ropewalk yet. Did you ever deliver their meal?”

  “The storm—” Kaysa began, then faltered as she realized the forest around her was dry. The freak squall had not afflicted the village. No one here realized the workers’ route home would have had to bypass the downed trees. If they had encountered her abandoned basket, quite likely they had stayed in the forest to find her.

  “What storm?” snapped the laundress, stomping to an exasperated stop. “Fool girl! Hasn’t rained a drop all day long! Kaysa, where were you? Save us, you’re covered in mud! And dear, what a mess you’ve made of your clothing!”

  Someone behind must have carried a torch. Kaysa sensed the scolding’s momentum take pause, as the people crowding the laundress’ heels caught first sight of the creature behind her.

  “An unnatural squall raged through the forest,” she explained firmly. “Broken trees blocked the path. Some terrible misfortune overcame a lone traveler, who lost this poor horse.” The injured animal’s need lent Kaysa a confidence beyond her years. “Has anyone heard of a stranded stranger?”

  “Horse?” The laundress’ exclamation seemed shaken. “Child, that’s no common traveler’s nag! That’s a Herald’s Companion!”

  Kaysa swallowed, aghast. Disability had tripped her, again. Denied sight, she could not determine the Companion’s color or recognize the embellished tack without its distinctive bells. “A search will need to be raised for the Chosen, who may be unconscious or hurt.” She lifted her stick to clear the way forward. “Will you please let us through to visit the Healer?”

  The onlookers moved away with a rustle, and flame light must have revealed the Companion’s smeared coat. Clay mud and bloody scrapes changed their stark surprise to concerned exclamations.

  • • •

  The Companion’s arrival upended routine. While Kaysa delivered her charge to the Healer, the council gathered in earnest discussion. The rope workers were informed and sent looking for the Herald where the freak storm had broken the trees.

  “There’s vicious magic abroad,” insisted the boy who hauled the water for Rowsen’s infusions.

  His teen brother, arrived with a handcart of wood for the fire to heat the kettle, said more. “Sorcery, no doubt, or some other evil come from Rethwellan.”

  “Nonsense, don’t exaggerate,” Rowsen scoffed, and to Kaysa, “Sit down! We’ll put the Companion in the shed, where I’ll hang a lantern for adequate light.”

  “I’ll take him,” Kaysa insisted. Ordinary weather had not ripped through the wood. Mere mishap did not waylay a Queen’s Herald.

  The Companion shivered, crowding her as though reluctant to part with her company. “I can help with the saddle. I’ll rub him down and steady his head while you tend him.”

  “Very well! You’ve earned your place, I’ll warrant, since without you, the Companion would have been lost.” Rowsen strode ahead, brusque. “Your bruises can be treated afterward.”

  Kaysa followed the healer’s scuffed steps, aware by changed sound as he entered the shed. She helped strip the marred tack while the lad forked down fresh straw bedding. “Bilt?” Rowsen called. “Fetch hay and a pail from the dairy barn. When you get back, I’ll know which herbs and salves I need from the stillroom.”

  Kaysa braided a straw wis
p to groom the Companion’s caked coat. “I don’t think the Herald met with an accident.”

  “Don’t tempt ill fortune,” Rowsen exclaimed, muffled as he bent to examine the Companion’s stocked foreleg. “But, perhaps. The saddle is bloodstained. Chance did not strip the bells off that bridle.”

  More, the Companion still periodically shivered. Whether from fear or the shock of his injury, Kaysa lacked wisdom to tell.

  Soon Bilt scurried in with the pail and the hay, voice raised by excitement. “People are saying Kaysa’s to be a Herald! Think maybe the Companion has chosen her?”

  Kaysa caught her breath. No. Surely not. No special quality was required to save a helpless animal snagged by a deadfall. The magnificent creature had not been at liberty to select which person stumbled into him to grant help.

  “Companions Mindspeak with their Chosen,” Rowsen corrected, still bent to his work. “If Kaysa had been recognized, she would never have mistaken him for a traveler’s hack.”

  “You knew where you were going, though,” Kaysa whispered against the Companion’s taut neck. She had no extraordinary ability, no sense of a bond between kindred spirits. The creature’s dispirited manner suggested only the distress of bereavement. If the Herald survived, surely the Companion would have returned for his Chosen the moment he was released.

  Rowsen interrupted her thought. “The Companion must be returned to the capital. Heralds are the Queen’s business, and the wise at Haven must sort out his plight.”

  “I should go,” Kaysa blurted. Her balked desire to have a purpose and experience the world beyond the village clamored against her sound sense.

  “Perhaps.” Rowsen dismissed her longing and stood up, drying his hands. “That decision’s unlikely to happen tonight. I’ve your hurts to mend when I’m finished here, and the Companion is unfit to travel before his sore leg recovers.”

  • • •

  The searchers who combed the forest found no trace of the Herald in the storm’s wreckage. Evil was abroad, everyone agreed. The storm that had struck had been nothing natural. Kaysa sweated over her chores. She spun yarn and helped thread the loom in the loft. Every spare moment, she slipped away to be with the Companion. She lingered in the darkened shed through the evenings, while the council debated who should be sent to the Queen.

  • • •

  “No. Kaysa, you can’t!” Her da banged down the worn pulley he was mending, exasperated by her passion to go along. “The open road is no place for a blind girl! Summer’s labor is critical, anyway. The village can’t spare another able body to lead you through every step of a difficult journey.”

  Pleading changed nothing. Her appeal to Mam only earned her more scolding. Kaysa escaped, near to tears. She twisted fresh straw into a wisp, and in darkness where no one would see her misery, stroked the Companion’s satin coat. His attention seemed distant, his stilled pose aloof. Then he scrubbed his healing scabs against her shoulder.

  “You’re getting better.” His sore leg no longer needed a bandage. His limp was improved. Though he shuddered often with residual trauma, Kaysa recognized his restlessness to be away.

  “You know where you’re going,” she sympathized. “You don’t like waiting for a delegation.” Only one person needed to visit the Queen to report where the Companion was found. Kaysa alone could describe the fell weather that had overtaken his Herald.

  She was the sole witness. Anyone who spoke in her place must repeat her account secondhand. Who else could answer questions directly, with no vital memory of the details? “I should go,” Kaysa grumbled, “no matter the difficulty.”

  Clearly, the duty to the realm was hers, if her burdensome blindness had not clouded perception.

  “If you don’t risk the knocks in life for yourself, the choices of others will limit your days. Safety will tame every dream that you have, until you destroy your free spirit.”

  “Granddam was right.” Alone in the dark with the Companion’s whuffed breath on her neck, Kaysa understood she must seize her moment. Or else grow to adulthood confined, forever beholden to others.

  • • •

  Kaysa packed in the night, then carried her sacks of clothes and provisions on soundless feet to the shed. She needed no torch. She tacked the Companion by touch and tied her goods to the leathers. The village still slept when she set foot in the stirrup and climbed into the Herald’s scarred saddle.

  “You know where to go,” she told the Companion, then knotted the slackened reins on his neck, and left his head free to fare onward. A soft snort, the sharp surge of a forward stride, and her journey to Haven began. Not down the rutted lane through the village, but by way of the forest, where pursuit was least likely to follow.

  Perhaps to evade some unseen threat, Kaysa thought with a hollow chill. She was on her own, committed to the Companion’s charge. Gone beyond sight of friendly oversight, under the shadow of an unknown danger.

  • • •

  During two days’ ride through the wood, the pair encountered no one. Kaysa ate in the saddle and slept in catnaps, tense with the thrill of being out on her own and convinced the Companion’s direction held purpose.

  When her food stores ran low, their track wended through a village, remote and small as her own. The folk flocked to her when they sighted the Companion. Kindly strangers replenished her foodstuffs. Kaysa was offered a bed for the night and stabling for her mount.

  She declined politely. “We are bound for Haven as fast as travel can take us.”

  Nobody commented on her blindness. No one seemed concerned that she was not a Herald or questioned her right to fare abroad on her own. She stated her thanks for the grain and provender and left the settlement behind.

  The Companion bore her through the forest again, pressing the pace with scant rest. Aware his mission was urgent, Kaysa trusted his guidance. She slept in the open, washed in the streams, and sheltered under an oiled wool blanket during the summer showers.

  The Companion never strayed when she loosed him to browse. He was always waiting for saddle and bridle in the cool hush before dawn.

  • • •

  Five days farther on, with supplies short again, the Companion guided her into another outlying village. The moment his hooves clopped on the packed lane, Kaysa recognized a larger settlement. The doubled clang of two smith’s hammers rang from a sizable forge, undershot by the creaking bass rumble of a turning mill wheel. A hawker sold pies to passersby, and the wafted smell of cooking meat suggested an inn, beyond the rumble of someone rolling spent barrels out of a wine cellar.

  Kaysa let the Companion take her into a busier street, stone paving overshadowed by buildings and puddled with runoff, where women chattered by a public well. A wagon ground past, noisy with crated chickens and chased by a barking dog.

  The Companion seemed unfazed by the commotion.

  “We’ll need to find grain and water,” Kaysa murmured, stroking his neck. The smell of a nearby stable suggested an inn large enough for a carriage yard. The Companion went that way without her bidding, through the cool of a quiet back alley.

  The echoes of each hoof beat diminished just before they emerged into the open. The heat of full sunlight flamed on Kaysa’s face, and the white Companion drew instant attention.

  A child shouted. Someone leading a cart team took pause to a jingle of harness. Footsteps approached, a heavy-set person puffing in flustered haste.

  “Welcome to Beckley!” gushed a fruity, male voice. “I’m the town mayor. So pleased you’ve arrived. The journey was difficult, yes? You and your Companion look famished.”

  “Thank you. My name is Kaysa, and—”

  “Of course, of course!” The pompous official nattered nonstop, “Your arrival’s expected. Come along. Welcome! We’ll address your needs.” An impatient clap brought a scurrying groom. “See that the Companion is comfortably stabled.�
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  Worn from the saddle, Kaysa dismounted. While experienced hands took the reins, she reached to untie her guide stick and blanket roll.

  “No need, don’t trouble yourself,” the official insisted, clasping her shoulder and hustling her along.

  “But,” Kaysa protested, “I can’t—”

  “No matter, your blindness presents no problem at all.” Her corpulent escort towed her away, benignly insistent. “The boy will bring your things straightaway. Delighted for the honor! Here’s the inn stairs.” A puffed pause for breath, then, “Maisell!” he bawled. A clatter ensued past the open door, perhaps a dropped mop by the sudden splash of slopped water. “Our girl in the taproom will show you to your quarters.”

  When Maisell arrived to the rasp of damp hands being hastily dried on a towel, the mayor instructed, “Kaysa requires a wash and a meal. Lend your help while she refreshes herself. I’ll send word when the council assembles.”

  Kaysa found herself whisked away to Maisell’s kindly stream of chatter, eagerly asking after the Companion without giving pause for reply. Then, “Here’s your room. There’s a basin and pitcher in the left corner, and a stool by the bed. Make yourself comfortable. I’ll have the bath tub arranged in a trice.”

  Maisell spun, shouting back downstairs for soap and towels, while Kaysa traced her fingers along the wall to find her way through the room. Tired and hungry, she let the barrage of Beckley’s hospitality defer her questions and answers for later.

  • • •

  She never meant to fall asleep when, replete from her meal, she reclined on the inn’s feather mattress. Roused by Maisell shaking her, she sat up confused by the unfamiliar surroundings.