"Auntie Ari, tell me about Companions." He had a high-pitched, imperious little voice. "Tell me."
Tell him about Companions. Tell bun about the time spent at the Collegium wishing her Blues were Gray. Tell him how the skills of mind and hand that had earned her a place seemed so suddenly unimportant next to the glorious honor of being Chosen. Tell him of watching them gallop across Companion's Field, impossibly beautiful, impossibly graceful — infinitely far from her mechanical world of stresses and supports and levers and gears.
Tell him how she'd made certain she was never in the village when the Heralds came through riding circuit because it hurt so much to see such beauty and know she could never be a part of it. Tell him how after the accident she'd stuffed her fingers in her ears at the first sound of bridle bells.
Tell him any or all of that?
"You saw them, didn't you, Auntie Ari. You saw them up close when you were in the city."
"Yes." And then she regretted she'd said so much.
:Chosen! I've brought hands to dig you out!:
Jots released a long, shuddering breath that warmed the rock under his cheek and tried very, very hard not to cry.
:Chosen?:
The distress in his Companion's mind-touch helped him pull himself together. -:I'm okay. As okay as I was, anway. I just, I just missed you.: Gevris' presence settled gently into his mind, and he clung to it, more afraid of dying alone in the dark than of just dying.
:Do not think of dying.:
He hadn't realized he'd been thinking of it in such a way as to be heard..'Sorry. I guess I'm not behaving much like a Herald, am I?:
A very equine snort made him smile. :You are a Herald. Therefore, this is how Heralds behave trapped in a mine.:
The Companion's tone suggested he not argue the point so he changed the subject. :How did you manage to communicate with the villagers?:
:When they recognized what I was, they followed me. Once they saw where you were, they understood. Some have returned to the village for tools.: He paused and Jors had the feeling he was deciding whether or not to pass on one last bit of information. :They call this place the Demon's Den.:
:Oh, swell.:
:There are no realdemons in it.:
:That makes me feel so much better.:
:It should,: Gevris pointed out helpfully.
“Herald's down in the Demon's Den." The storm swirled the voice in through the open door stirring the room up into a frenzy of activity. All the able-bodied who hadn't followed the Companion ran for jackets and boots. The rest buzzed like a nest of hornets poked with a stick.
Ari sat in her corner, behind the tangled tent of her hair, and tried not to remember.
There was a rumble, deep in the bowels of the hillside, a warning of worse to come. But they kept working because Ari had braced the tunnels so cleverly that the earth could move as it liked and the mine would move with it, flexing instead of shattering.