:Skif—do you really, really want me to leave you?: The voice in his mind was no more than a whisper, but it was a whisper that woke the echoes of that unforgettable moment when he felt an empty place inside him fill with something he had wanted for so long, so very, very long—

“No,” he whispered back, and to his profound embarrassment, felt his throat swelling with a sob at the very thought.

:I didn’t think so. Because I couldn’t bear to lose you.: Her thoughts took on a firmer tone. :And I won’t. No one tries to separate a Companion and her Chosen. That would be—unthinkable.:

He lay in the firelit darkness for a long time, listening to the strange night sounds in the woods outside, the beating of his own heart, and his own thoughts.

Then he sighed heavily. “I guess I gotta be a Herald,” he said reluctantly. “But I still think there’s gonna be trouble.”

:Then we’ll face it together. Because I am never, ever going to let anyone separate us.:

* * *

In the morning, gingerly probing of his nose and the area around his eye—and the fact that he could actually open that eye again—proved that the poultice had done its work. He cleaned himself up in the cold water, and donned his shirt and trews—wrinkled and a little damp, but they’d have to do. They both ate, he cleaned the things he’d used and shut the Waystation up again. He’d been stiff and sore when he woke up, but he knew from experience that only moving around would make that kind of soreness go away. Besides, at the moment, he couldn’t wait to get back to the city where he belonged. Whatever people saw in “the country” was invisible to him. The silence alone would drive him crazy in a day.

There was just one problem, of course—and that was that he wasn’t going home, he was going to this Collegium place. As he mounted Cymry’s well-worn saddle—with a great deal more decorum this time—he shook his head slightly. “I still think there’s gonna be trouble,” he predicted glumly.

:Skif, there will always be trouble where you are,: she replied mischievously. :We’ll just have to try to keep it from getting out of hand!:

Without a backward glance, she started up the forest trail, going in a few paces from a walk to a trot to an easy lope. It was very strange, riding her, now that he knew what she was. For one thing, she wasn’t a horse—he didn’t have control over her, and that was the way it was supposed to be, not an accident. But as they moved out of the woods and onto roads that had a bit of morning traffic, he began to notice something else.