Protagonist: Herald Talia
Antagonist: Hulda the sorceress, aided by Prince Ancar and Lord Orthallen
Subplot: Protagonist: Talia, Antagonist: Herald Dirk
(Conflict: fearing to admit their love for each other due to fear of rejection)
Bone of Contention: Elspeth's hand and the future of Valdemar, and the survival and future happiness of Talia and Dirk
Talia comes to Queen Selenay's court after her Journeyman's year eager to serve her monarch in any way necessary. Not yet inside the city, she receives word that the council of elders is advocating marriage between Selenay's daughter Elspeth and Prince Ancar of Hardorn. Because of her intuition that something is awry and Elspeth's plea that Talia prevent the marriage, Talia counsels Selenay to delay until Elspeth completes her Herald training, but the council pushes ever harder for the match.
During this period, Talia's friend Kris and the other Heralds realize that Talia and another herald, Dirk, are apparently Life-Bonded, but are resisting conscious recognition of the situation out of fear. One misunderstanding after another keep Dirk and Talia from each other.
Due to much wrangling, especially on the part of Kris's uncle Lord Orthallen, Talia finally acquiesces to going to Hardorn to meet the Prince and learn the true situation awaiting Elspeth. Elspeth and the rest of the retinue plan to follow her soon, and Talia and Kris set out at full speed on their Companions - horse-like beings with many extraordinary powers.
Their second night inside Hardorn, they stop at an inn, where they take supper and breakfast. Soon after leaving, Talia sickens and suffers blockage of her Empathic gift. She and Kris decide that perhaps the problem is that the Hardornans, knowing nothing of Heraldic Gifts, did not know a certain fungus would harm her. The two continue onward, seeking information on the Prince and the country along the way. Each thing they hear disturbs them more than the last. Talia's dread increases, but attributing it to the fungus, she and Kris press onward.
Arriving, are invited to a banquet, but instated of attending, they dress two servants as themselves and hide in the gallery to observe. As soon as their doubles are inside, a group of bowmen kills everyone in the room, and Kris and Talia flee. Kris and his Companion are killed, Talia gravely injured and taken prisoner, but Rolan, Talia's Companion, escapes.
Imprisoned in the dungeon, Talia is tortured by the prince and Hulda (who had been Espeth's nurse in the prequel, and had been proven a traitor) who admit to Talia that Lord Orthallen has been their accomplice within Valdermar for years, undermining Selenay's rule, even attempting to kill Talia before she was a Full Herald. Finally, in agony, Talia asks a peddler who finds a grating in the dungeon wall to ask if he can help to tie a message into Rolan's mane to take to Selenay and to bring Talia a vial of poison. Finally, unable to bear the agony longer, Talia takes the poison and falls asleep to die.
Meanwhile, Selenay, Elspeth, Dirk, and the body of the army has arrived at the border to await Kris and Talia's return. During the trip, Orthallen has continued to whisper doubts about the Queen to Elspeth, Dirk, and other members of the party.
Once Rolan reaches the party, it is understood that Kris and his Companion are dead and Talia is expecting to die at any time. Dirk, whose gift is Far-fetching, combines mental forces with the inner circle of Talia's friends and their Companions and Fetch Talia from the dungeon.
Brought back, Talia lays a trap to determine Orthallen's guilt and Elspeth executes him.
Ancar, having lost Talia and with her, all hope of gaining Elspeth, attacks Valdemar with the full assistance of Hulda and other blood mages, and only by using every bit of cooperation, strategy, and mind-magic do the Valdemaran forces beat them back at the border.
Months later, Talia is well enough to marry Dirk, though she cannot yet walk because of the injuries to her feet. Gifts pour in from all the people Talia won as friends. When she and Dirk return to Talia's room in the Collegium after the wedding, Talia finds a posey of Kris's favorite flowers on her bed. They bloom only in another season and only in the far north, and Talia realizes that Kris has sent them his blessing, too.
by Mary Stewart
Protagonist: Mary Gray
Antagonist: Connor Winslow
Bone of Contention: Survival and possession of the Whitescar farm
Plot:
Mary Gray, newly arrived in England, takes a bus up into the hill country near Hadrian's Wall, walks up the hill from the bus stop, and sits in a pasture. A young man accosts her, calling her Annabel and saying she has "a hell of a nerve, coming back after all these years!"
She protests that she can't have come back to somewhere she's never been before, but asks him who he thought she was, who he is, and his background for the story of the residents of the area. His cousin Annabel ran away 8 years earlier and Mary Gray looks uncannily like her.
Mary comments that her ancestors had come from the area and she mentions several names common in the borderlands, including a "forest" and Con tells her the story of the nearby gentleman-farmers, the Forrests. The wife of Adam, last member of that family, had been taken abroad and the husband had remained abroad after she died.
Several days later, Con's sister, Lisa, finds Mary at her place of work and proposes that Mary come to the farm to impersonate Annabel in order to convince Annabel's and Con's grandfather to will the farm to Con. Reluctantly, Mary agrees and after several weeks of secretly meeting with Lisa and Con, Mary comes to Whitescar. Once there, she carefully establishes a shaky relationship with the workers on the place and with the grandfather.
The grandfather takes "Annabel" to look at a mare and her foal, and Con comes to Mary's rescue, knowing that she is afraid of horses.
When Annabel's cousin, Julie, arrives from London (with Donald, her boyfriend, in tow - a Scottish archaeologist working on a Roman dig near the farm), Julie and "Annabel" go walking outdoors in order to talk.
Julie reveals that she had known about Annabel's relationship with Adam Forrest, and that Annabel and Adam had left notes for each other in a hole in the old ivy tree at the gatehouse of the Forrest manor. The grandfather has mentioned that Adam is home now. When Julie returns to the house, "Annabel" walks across to Forrest, where she encounters Adam himself. He asks her to consider dating him now that his wife is dead, and she is shaken enough that she reveals to him that she is an impostor brought in by Con. She extracts a promise from him to say nothing at present and to warn her if he later decides he must divulge the information.
The next morning, "Annabel" gets up at dawn, and rides the colt Adam still has from his stud farm. He encounters her as she is turning the horse loose and the two have another cryptic conversation, ending with Adam telling her she has 24 hours to come clean to the grandfather or leave.
Later that morning, "Annabel" gets out garden tools (after asking Lisa where they were kept) and while gardening, she remembers a group of bulbs which had been in bloom the last day before she fled the farm. She kneels in the garden crying for her lost dreams.
Julie and Donald go to ask Adam about a Roman inscription Adam had mentioned and Annabel/Mary goes to help Con in the hayfield. Later that afternoon, the grandfather has a stroke and Annabel and Con go to be with him as he dies. While they are sitting with him, a storm breaks, and at one point comes a huge bolt of lightning and a crash louder than Annabel/Mary thinks could be thunder, but she is so concerned for her grandfather that it only peripherally computes. The old man dies soon after and Annabel /Mary is not able to hide her love and sorrow, and Con realizes "Mary" really is Annabel.
While they sit in stunned silence, Julie runs in. The ivy tree has fallen on the Forrest gatehouse, causing a support to collapse on Adam and Donald. Julie, Con and Annabel race by car to the gatehouse but are not able to lift the brace and free the two men. Adam is all right though trapped and Donald is seriously injured and will die if not rescued soon. If the support that has broken collapses further, both men will be killed.
Adam suggests that Annabel go to the neighbors for help (the neighbor woman is a nurse), but Annabel is not able to get through by car due to the storm. Adam suggests that Annabel ride the colt, and Annabel agrees to, then realizes that this is only another confirmation to Con that she is actually Annabel.
Annabel drives to the stable, bridles the colt and rides him to the neighbors, who pack up rescue equipment and go to the gatehouse. Annabel rides the now-exhausted colt to the stable at Whitescar. She arrives at the stable and leads the colt into the stall, but as she grooms him, Con appears in the doorway, drunk and angry. They have words about the night Annabel ran away - she had encountered Con on her way home from her last meeting with Adam and he had threatened her, and between that and the argum ent she had had with Adam, she had left.
Con then enters the stall with a horseshoe in his hand and Annabel realizes that Con intends to kill her and make it look as if the colt had done it. He makes a move that startles the colt, however, and it kills him in its fright. When Adam arrives in the stable, having realized the danger he had placed Annabel in, he comforts her. When Julie and Donald arrive, continues to hold her, a sign that he wants to be her love openly now.
The next evening, Annabel and Julie walk out and Julie mentions again the letters in the tree. She suddenly remembers a last letter that had arrived after Annabel had left, which she had put into the tree, not realizing that Adam would never think to look there once Annabel was gone. She reaches in and pulls out the remains of an envelope, asking Annabel if she would like Julie to give it to Adam. Annabel says she is meeting him tonight, that she will take it to him.
Julie returns to the house and Annabel sets out to meet Adam, thinking that it is rare for a person to get such a second chance at happiness.
In a deep forest beset by a prankster of whom everyone in the area is afraid, an old woman is walking home from her job and finds an old cooking pot in the center of the road. She looks inside and sees gold coins and begins carrying it home. Becoming tired, she sets it down and takes a rest, then looks into it again, to find the gold coins turned to silver coins. She reasons that silver is even better than gold because silver is less likely to be stolen. The second time she rests and looks in, the silv er is replaced by lead and she finds a reason to be glad of that. Each time she rests, the contents are replaced by something less valuable as the world measures value, and the pot also becomes heavier and heavier. Finally at her doorstep, she looks inside and out jumps the Hedley Kow, the prankster.
She remarks to him that she is very glad he is there, because she has been lonely the past few years. She says that she has little food, but what she has, he is welcome to share. Miraculously, the little bit of food she has renews itself as they partake, and as time goes on, she finds that her wood supply also never runs low. The Hedley Kow comes to visit often and the woman enjoys him thoroughly each time.
The villagers sometimes remark to her after they become friends that it's too bad the Hedley Kow lives in the neighborhood, playing his pranks, and she replies each time "Oh, he's really not so bad. He just likes to have fun."
Analysis: The old woman sets the story in motion when she picks up the pot and looks inside. Each subsequent event occurs because she sees the good in the developing situation. She ends up leading a blest life with a good friend.
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