Free Storm Rising by Mercedes Lackey Page A

with the effects of magic if not the practice of it. As for the ways of Valdemar—they were all as odd as this surface congeniality among religions.
    “I guess I’d be safe to assume that any time I have to deal with a priest
from
Valdemar that they’re going to tolerate me, even if they don’t like me.” At Florian’s nod, he shrugged. “At least, that’s easier than waiting for holy assassins to waylay me in the hallway.”
    :Holy assassins are going to come from outside Valdemar, if they come at all, and Kero has had a particular watch out for that sort for some time.:
“Kero,” of course, was Herald Captain Kerowyn, the onlyHerald in all of the history of Valdemar who was also the Captain of a mercenary Company. She was in charge of Valdemar’s less conventional defenses—the ones that the Lord Marshal did not want to know about officially. She was also one of the—former—Great Enemies of Karse, and had been rumored to eat Karsite babies on toast for breakfast.
    Karal could vouch for the toast, and Kero swore she didn’t touch babies, Karsite or otherwise, before lunch at the earliest.
    Florian did not actually “speak” to him; the Companion’s “voice” echoed inside Karal’s head. They called it “Mindspeaking” here. The locals took it for granted that Heralds and Companions talked to each other just like two human friends. One Herald could mention an appointment with a thought, and his Companion would round the corner a moment later, to bear the Herald on his way. It was odd, still, to see a Herald and Companion walk by, and witness the Herald suddenly breaking up in laughter at some silently-shared joke while the Companion whickered merrily. Heralds spoke with their minds and Companions answered, and none of it was considered the least bit unusual.
    This was a magic that Karal had never even known existed before he came here—largely because in the past the Sun-priests did their best to eradicate children “Gifted” with such things. “Witchery,” they called it, and hunted it out ruthlessly until Solaris took the Sun Throne.
    Other Heralds had the ability to talk with each other as they did with their Companions. Some could move things without touching them, or see things at a distance. Others could see into the future or the past, and some had even stranger abilities.
    All these things could be accomplished with the magic that Karal was familiar with, of course, but this was
not
the magic he knew. Sun-priests often had the ability to work “true” magic; the false priests used it to create “miracles” to deceive the gullible. Because such a power could be controlled, the Sun-priests had incorporatedthose with the ability to perform magic into their ranks, rather than destroying them.
    The Valdemarans had the “witch-powers”; they called it “mind-magic,” or “Gifts,” and they were something that was inborn, though skill in them could be honed with training and practice.
    Karal had gotten used to it, to a certain extent, although it never ceased to amaze him how casually the Heralds accepted these powers. And it would have been so very easy for those powers to be misused, as the power of true magic had been misused in Karse. Yet here—there were the Companions.
    The only place to find training in mind-magic was at Herald’s Collegium, and the only way to be accepted into the Collegium was to be Chosen by a Companion. Thereafter, the Companion acted as best friend, mentor, conscience, and sometimes stern taskmaster. The fact that the Companions happened to look like horses—always white, always blue-eyed—was incidental. Florian told him once that the initial reason Companions came in that particular “shape”—rather than, say, a dog or a cat—was because a horse was not only ubiquitous and hence invisible, but because a horse was weapon, fellow fighter, and transportation all in one. In Karsite mythology, as a sort of mirror image of the reality, the Heralds, in