Vanyel stared nervously at his own reflection in the window - a specter, pale and indistinct; ghostlike, with dark hollows for eyes. Beyond the glass, night blanketed the gardens; a moonless night, a night of wind and cloud and no light at all, not even starlight.
Sovvan-night; the night of celebration of the harvest, but also the night set apart for remembering the dead of the year past. The night when - so most traditions held - the Otherworld was closer than on any other night. A night of profound darkness, like the one a moon ago when Staven had been slain.
Savil was with the rest of the Heralds, mourning their dead of the year. Donni and Mardic, having no one in need of remembrance, were with some of the other trainees at a Palace fete, indulging in a certain amount of the superstitious foolery associated with Harvestfest that was also a Jpart of Sovvan-night, at least for the young.
Lord Evan Leshara had gone home to Westrel Keep. Presumably well satisfied with himself. There was no doubt in Vanyel’s mind that Lord Evan had somehow extracted enough good information from what had been fed to him to deduce exactly what bait would serve best to lure Staven to his death. They had tried to use him - and had ended up being used by him.
And that was a blackly bitter thought.
Tylendel and Vanyel had been left alone in the suite -
Tylendel and Vanyel would not be mewed up in the suite much longer.
“Are you ready?” Tylendel asked from the door behind him.
Vanyel nodded, and pulled the hood of his dark blue cloak up over his head, trying not to shiver at his own reflection. With the hood shrouding his face, he looked like an image of Death itself. Then Tyiendel moved silently to his side, and there were two of the hooded figures reflected in the clouded glass; Death, and Death’s Shadow.
He shook his head to free it of such ominous thoughts, as Tyiendel opened the door and they stepped out into the cold, blustering night.
This morning he had slipped out into Haven and bought a pair of nondescript horses from a down-at-the-heels beast-trader, using most of the coin he and Tyiendel had managed to scrape together over the past three weeks. He’d taken them off into the west end of the city and stabled them at an inn just outside the city wall.
Tylendel had told Vanyel that before he worked the spell to take them within striking distance of the Leshara holding, he wanted-to be out of the easy sensing range of the Herald-Mages. They needed transportation, but it didn’t matter how broken-down the beasts were; their horses only needed to last long enough to get them an hour’s ride out of the city. After that it wouldn’t matter what became of them.
Obviously, riding Gala was totally out of the question. They weren’t taking Star or “borrowing” any of the true horses from the Palace stables, because if their absence were noticed, Tyiendel didn’t want any suspicions aroused until it was too late to stop them. Vanyel had concurred without an argument; if they couldn’t force their mounts through Tylendel’s Gate - and the trainee had indicated that they might not be able to or might not want to - they were going to have to turn them loose to fend for themselves. He didn’t want to lose Star, and he didn’t want to be responsible for the loss of anyone else’s prized mount, either.
The ice-edged wind caught at their cloaks, finding all the openings and cutting right through the heavy wool itself. Vanyel was shivering long before they slipped past the Gate Guard at the Palace gates and on out into the streets of the city. The Guard was preoccupied with warming himself at the charcoal brazier beside the gate; he didn’t seem to notice them as they hugged the shadows of the side of the gate farthest from him and took to the cobblestoned street beyond.
Now they were out in the wealthiest district of the city. The high buildings on either side of them served only to funnel the wind right at them, or so it seemed. Tylendel, who was still not entirely steady on his feet, grabbed Vanyel’s arm and hung on. Vanyel could feel him shivering, partly with cold, but from the way his eyes were gleaming in the shadows of his hood, partly also with excitement.
These mansions of the wealthy and highborn were mostly dark tonight; the inhabitants were either at Temple services or attending the Harvestfest gathering at the Palace. Vanyel had not received an invitation - and although he was anything but displeased, he wasn’t entirely certain why he had not. His apparent about-face with regard to Tylendel had confused not only his own little circle, but the trainees and Heralds as well. And no one had enlightened them; Savil had reckoned that keeping the rumormongers confused would keep the real story from reaching Withen for a while and buy them additional time.
Assuming Lord Evan hadn’t told him, just for the pure spite of making things difficult for Tylendel and Tylendel’s lover. It would suit the man’s character.
Vanyel thought briefly of the Sovvan-fete he was missing. It was possible that those in charge of the festivities had assumed he would be staying at Tylendel’s side, especially tonight. It was also possible that they blamed him for Tylendel’s condition (Mardic had reported several stories to that effect) and were “punishing” him for his conduct.
Whatever the reason, this had proved to be too good an opportunity to slip out undetected to let pass by.
They turned a corner, and the buildings changed; now they were smaller, crowded closer together, and no longer hidden behind walls. Each had candles in the otherwise darkened windows - another Sovvan-custom. It was by the light of these candles that the two were finding their way; the torches that usually illuminated the street by night had long since blown out.
Tylendel had been growing increasingly strange and withdrawn in the past several days since Vanyel had purloined Savil’s magic books for him. Vanyel would wake up in the middle of the night to find him huddled in the chair, studying his handwritten copies of the two spells with fanatic and feverish concentration. During waking hours he would often stare for hours at nothing, or at a candleflame, and his conversation had become monosyllabic. The only time he seemed anything like his old self was when he’d begin a nightmare and Vanyel would wake him from it; then he would cry for a while on Vanyel’s shoulder, and afterward talk until they both fell asleep again. Then he sounded like the old Tylendel - not afraid to share his grief or his fears with the one he loved. But when day arrived, he would be back inside his shell, and nothing Vanyel would do or say could seem to crack that barrier.
Vanyel had long since begun to think that he would never be his old self again until his revenge had been accomplished, and he had begun to long for that moment with a fervor that nearly equaled his lover’s.
They reached the sector of shops and inns long before they saw another human out on the streets, and that was only the Nightwatch. The patrol of two men gave them hardly more than a passing glance; they were obviously unarmed except for knives, were too well-dressed to be street-toughs, and not flashy enough to be young high-borns out to find some trouble. The two men of the Watch gave them nearly simultaneous nods, curt and preoccupied, nods which they returned as the light from the Watchlantern in the hands of the rightmost one fell on them. Satisfied by what they saw, the Watch passed on, and so did they, bootheels clattering on the cobbles.
Here the buildings were only one or two stories tall, and the wind howled and ramped about them unimpeded. The quality and state of repair of these buildings - mostly shops, inns, lodging-houses and workshops – declined steadily and rapidly as they neared the west city-wall of Haven.
The Guards on the great gates of Haven were not in evidence tonight, although there was a viewport in the wall, and Vanyel could almost feel eyes on him as they passed below it. Obviously the Guards found as little to alarm them in the two younglings as the Watch had; they passed out under the wall with no challenge whatsoever.
Once outside the west wall, they were in the lowest district in the city. Vanyel led the way to the ramshackle inn where he’d left their sorry nags; fighting the wind every inch of the way, as it nearly tore the edges of his cloak out of his half-frozen hands.
The Red Nose Inn was brightly lit and full to bursting with roisterers; Vanyel heard their out-of-tune singing and hoarse laughter even over the moaning of the wind as they passed by the open door. Smoke and light alike spilled out that door, and the wind carried a random puff of the smoke into their eyes as they passed, a noisome smudge that made them cough and their eyes water for a moment before cleaner air whipped it out of their faces again. They ignored that open door and passed around the side of the inn to the dirty courtyard and the stabling area.
There was a single, half-drunk groom on duty, slumped on a stack of hay bales by the stable door, illuminated by a feebly burning lantern. His head lolled on his chest as he snored, smelling, even in this wind, as if he’d fallen into a vat of cheap beer. Tylendel waited in the shadows beyond reach of the light from the smoking lantern that had been hung in the lee of the stable door, while Vanyel shook the man’s shoulder until he roused up.
“Eh?” the man grunted, peering into the shadows under Vanyel’s hood in an unsuccessful attempt to make out his features. His breath was as foul as his clothing; his face was filthy and unshaven, and his hair hung around his ears in lank, greasy ringlets. “What ye want, then? Where be yer nags?’’
“Already here,” Vanyel replied, in a tone as adult, brusque, and gruff as he could manage. “Here - “ He shoved the claim-chits at the groom, together with two silver pieces. The man stared stupidly at them for a moment, blinking in surprise, as if he were having trouble telling the chits from the coins. Then he grinned in sudden comprehension, displaying a mouthful of half-rotten teeth, and nodded.
“ ‘Muff celebratin’, eh, master? Just ye wait, just ye wait right here.” He shoved the coins and chits together into the pocket in the front of his stained, oily leather apron, heaved himself up off his couch of hay bales, and staggered inside the stable door. He emerged a great deal sooner than Vanyel would have thought possible, leading a pair of scruffy-looking, nondescript brown geldings that were already saddled and bridled with patched and worn tack. Vanyel squinted at them in the smoky light, trying to make out if they were the same ones he’d bought this morning, then realized that it didn’t matter if they were or not. It wasn’t as if the horses he’d purchased were any kind of prize specimens - in fact, if these weren’t “his” horses, they were likely as not to be an improvement over the ones he’d bought!
He took the reins away from the groom without another word, turned, and led them across the dirt court to where Tylendel was waiting, huddled against the inn wall in a futile attempt to avoid the biting wind. When he looked back over his shoulder, he could see that the groom had already flopped down on the straw bales and resumed his interrupted nap.
He handed Tylendel the reins of the best of the two mounts, and scrambled into his own saddle. His flea-bitten beast skittered sideways in an attempt to avoid being mounted, and gave a half-hearted buck as Vanyel settled into his seat. Vanyel made a fist and gave it a good rap between the ears; the nag stopped trying to rid itself of its rider and settled down.
The spine of his saddle was broken; the horse itself was sway backed, and its gait was as rough as he’d ever had the misfortune to encounter. He hoped, as Tylendel took the lead and they headed down Exile’s Road into the west, that they wouldn’t be riding for too very long.
* * *
The wind had died down - at least momentarily - when Tylendel finally stopped. It was so dark that the only way he really knew that Tylendel had pulled up was because the sound of hooves on the hard surface of the road ahead of him stopped. They’d trusted to the fact that Exile’s Road was lined on either side with hedges to keep their sorry beasts on the roadway. He kicked at his own mount and forced it forward until he could feel the presence of Tylendel and his horse bulking beside him.
There was a flare of light; Vanyel winced away from it - it was quite painful after the near-total darkness of the last candlemark or so. When he could bear to look again, he saw that Tylendel had dismounted and was leading his horse, a red ball of mage-light bobbing along above his head.
He scrambled off of his own mount, glad enough to be out of that excruciatingly uncomfortable saddle, snatched the reins of the beast over its head, and hastened to catch up.
“Are we far enough away yet?” he asked, longing for even a single word from the trainee to break the silence and tension. Tylendel’s face was drawn and fey, and strained; Tylendel’s attention was plainly somewhere else, his whole aspect wrapped up in the kind of terrifying concentration that had been all too common to him of late.
“Almost,” he replied, after a long and unnerving silence. His voice had a strange quality to it, as if Tylendel was having to work to get even a single word out past whatever it was he was concentrating on. “I’m - looking for something…”
Vanyel shivered, and not from the cold. “What?”
“A place to put the Gate.” They came to a break in the hedge. No - not a break. When Tylendel stopped and led his horse over to it, Vanyel could see that it was the remains of a gated opening in the hedge, long since overgrown. Beyond the gap something bulked darkly in the dim illumination provided by the mage-light. Tylendel nodded slightly. “I thought I remembered this place,” .he muttered. He didn’t seem to expect a response, so “Vanyel didn’t make one.
It was obvious that the horses were not going to be able to force themselves through so narrow a passage; Tylendel stripped the bridle from his, hung it on the saddlebow, and gave the gelding a tremendous slap on the hip that made it snort with surprise and sent it cantering off into the darkness. Vanyel did the same with his, not sorry to see it go, and turned away from the road to see that Tylendel had already forced his way past the gap in the hedge and was now out of sight. Only the reddish glow of the mage-light through the leafless branches of the hedgerow showed where he had gone.
Vanyel shoved his way past the branches, cursing as they caught on his cloak and scratched at his face. When he emerged, staggering, from the prickly embrace of stubborn bushes, he found that he was standing knee-deep in weeds, in what had been the yard of a small building. It could have been anything from a shop to a cottage, but was now going to pieces; the yard was as overgrown as the gate had been. The building seemed to be entirely roofless and the door and windows were mere holes in the walls. Tylendel was examining the remains of the door with care.
The gap where the door had been was a large one, easily large enough for a horse and rider to pass through. Tylendel nodded again, and this time there was an expression of dour satisfaction on his face. “This will do,” he said softly. “Van, think you’re ready?”
Vanyel took a deep breath, and tried to relax a little. “As ready as I’m ever likely to get,” he replied.
Tylendel turned and took both Vanyel’s hands in his; he looked searchingly into Vanyel’s eyes for a long moment. “Van, I’m going to have to force that link between us wide open for this to work. I may hurt you. I’ll try not to, but I can’t promise. Are you still willing to help me?”
Vanyel nodded, thinking, I’ve come this far; it would be stupid to back out at this point. Besides - he needs this. How can I not give it to him?
Tylendel closed his eyes; his face froze into as impassive a mask as Vanyel had ever worn. Vanyel waited, trembling a little, for something to happen.
For a long while, nothing did. Then -
Rage flamed up in him; a consuming, obsessive anger that left very little room for anything else. One thing mattered: Staven was dead. One goal drove him: deal the same painful death to Staven’s murderers. There was still a tiny corner of his mind that could think for itself and wonder at the overwhelming power of Tylendel’s fury, but that corner had been locked out of any position of control.
The truism ran “Pain shared is pain halved” - but this pain was doubled on being shared.
He turned to face the ancient doorway without any conscious decision to do so, Tylendel turning even as he did. He saw Tylendel raise his arms and cast a double handful of something powderlike on the ground before the door; heard him begin a chant in some strange tongue and hold his now empty hands, palm outward, to face that similarly empty gap.
He felt something draining out of him, like blood draining from a wound; and felt that it was taking his strength with it.
The edges of the ruined doorway were beginning to glow, the same sullen red as the mage-light over Tylendel’s head; like the muted red of embers, as if the edge of the doorway smoldered. As more and more of Vanyel’s energy and strength drained from him, the ragged border’ brightened, and tiny threads of angry scarlet wavered from them into the space where the door had stood. More and more of these threads spun out, waving like water-weeds in a current, until two of the ends connected across the gap.
There was a surge of force out of him, a surge that nearly caused his knees to collapse, as the entire gap filled with a flare of blood-red light -
Then the light vanished - and the gap framed, not a shadowed blackness, but a garden; a formal garden decorated for a festival, and filled with people, light and movement.
He had hardly a chance to see this before Tylendel grabbed his arm and pulled him, stumbling, across the threshold. There was a moment of total disorientation, as though the world had dropped from beneath his feet, then-
Sound: laughter, music, shouting. He stood, with Tylendel, facing that garden he had seen through the ruined doorway, and beyond the garden, a strange keep. Lanterns bobbed gaily in the branches of a row of trees that stood between them and the gathered people, and trestle tables, spread with food and lanterns, were visible on the farther side. Near the trees was a lighted platform on which a band of motley musicians stood, playing with a vigor that partially made up for their lack of skill. Before the platform a crowd of people were dancing in a ring, laughing and singing along with the music.
Vanyel’s knees would not hold him; as soon as Tylendel let go of his arm, his legs gave way, and he found himself half-kneeling on the ground, dizzy, weak and nauseated. Tylendel didn’t notice; his attention was on the people dancing.
“They’re celebrating,” Tylendel whispered, and the anger Vanyel was inadvertently sharing surged along the link between them. “Staven’s dead, and they’re celebrating!”
That small, rational corner still left to Vanyel whispered that this was only a Harvestfest like any other; that the Leshara weren’t particularly gloating over an enemy’s death. But that logical voice was too faint to be heard over the thunder of Tylendel’s outrage. A wave of dizziness clouded his sight with a red mist, and he could hear his heart pounding in his ears.
When he could see again, Tylendel had stepped away from him, and was standing between him and the line of trees with his hands high over his head. From Tylendel’s upraised hands came twin bolts of the same vermilion lightning that had lashed the pine grove a moon ago. Only this lightning was controlled and directed; and it cracked across the garden and destroyed the trees standing between him and the gathered Leshara-kin in less time than it took to blink.
In the wake of the thunderbolt came startled screams; the music ended in a jangle of snapped strings and the squawk of horns. The dancers froze, and clutched at each other in clumps of two to five. Tylendel’s mage-light was blazing like a tiny, scarlet sun above his head; his face was hate-filled and twisted with frenzy. Tears streaked his face; his voice cracked as he screamed at them.
“He’s dead, you bastards! He’s dead, and you’re laughing, you’re singing! Damn you all, I’ll teach you to sing a different song! You want magic? Well, here’s magic for you - ‘‘
Vanyel couldn’t move; he seemed tethered to the still-glowing Gate behind him. He could only watch, numbly, as Tylendel raised his hands again - and this time it was not lightning that crackled from his upraised hands. A glowing sphere appeared with a sound of thunder, suspended high above him. About the size of a melon, it hung in the air, rotating slowly, a smoky, sickly yellow. It grew as it turned, and drifted silently away from Tylendel and toward the huddled Leshara-folk, descending as it neared them, until it came to earth in the center of the blasted, blackened place where the trees had been a moment before.
There it rested; still turning, still growing, until it had swelled to twice the height of a man.
Then, between one heartbeat and the next, it burst.
Another wave of disorientation washed over him; Vanyel blinked eyes that didn’t seem to be focusing properly. Where the globe had rested there seemed to be a twisting, twining mass of shadow-shapes, shapes as fluid as ink, as sinuous as snakes, shapes that were there and not there at one and the same time.
Then they slid apart, those shapes, separating into five writhing mist-forms. They solidified -
If some mad god had mated a viper and a coursing-hound, and grown the resulting offspring to the size of a calf, the result might have looked something like the five creatures snarling and flowing lithely around one another in the gleaming of Tylendel’s mage-light. In color they were a smoky black, with skin that gave an impression of smooth scales rather than hair. They had long, long necks, too long by far, and arrowhead-shaped heads that were an uncanny mingling of snake and greyhound, with yellow, pupilless eyes that glowed in the same way and with the same shifting color that the globe that had birthed them had glowed. The teeth in those narrow muzzles were needle-sharp, and as long as a man’s thumb. They had bodies like greyhounds as well, but the legs and tails seemed unhealthily stretched and unnaturally boneless.
They regarded Tylendel with unwavering, saffron eyes; they seemed to be waiting for something.
He quavered out a single word, his voice breaking on the final, high-pitched syllable - and they turned as one entity to face the cowering folk of Leshara, mouths gaping in unholy parodies of a dog’s foolish grin.
But before they had flowed a single step toward their victims, a shrill scream of equine defiance rang out from behind Vanyel.
And Gala thundered through the Gate at his back, pounding past him, then past Tylendel, ignoring the trainee completely.
She screamed again, more anger and courage in her cry than Vanyel had ever thought possible to hear in a horse’s voice, and skidded to a halt halfway between Tylendel and the things he had called up. She was glowing, just like she had during ‘Lenders fit; a pure, blue-white radiance that attracted the eye in the same way that the yellow glow of the beasts’ eyes repelled. She continued to ignore Tylendel’s presence entirely, turning her back to him; rearing up to her full height and pawing the air with her forehooves, trumpeting a challenge to the five creatures before her.
They reversed their positions in an instant as her hooves touched the ground again, facing her with silent snarls of anger. She pawed the earth, and bared her teeth at them, daring them to try to fight her.
“Gala!” Tylendel cried in anguish, his voice breaking yet again. “Gaia! Don’t - “
She turned her head just enough to look him fully in the eyes - and Vanyel heard her mental reply as it rang through Tylendel’s mind and heart and splintered his soul.
:I do not know you: she said coldly, remotely. :You are not my Chosen. :
And with those words, the bond that had been between them vanished. Vanyel could feel the emptiness where ithad been - for he was still sharing everything Tylendel felt.
Tylendel’s rage shattered on the cold of those words.
And when the bond was broken, what took its place was utter desolation.
Vanyel moaned in anguish, sharing Tylendel’s agony, and the torment and bereavement as he called after Gaia with his mind and received not even the echo of a reply. Where there had been warmth and love and support there was now - nothing; not even a ghost of what had been.
The link between them surged with loss, and Vanyel’s vision darkened.
He heard Tylendel cry out Gala’s name in utter despair, and willed his eyes to clear.
And to his horror he watched her fling herself at the five fiends, heedless of her own safety.
They swarmed over and about her, their darkness extinguishing her light. He heard her shriek, but this time in pain, and saw the red splash of blood bloom vividly on her white coat.
He tried to stagger to his feet, but had no strength; his ears roared, and he blacked out.
He barely felt himself falling again, and only Tylendel’s scream of anguish and loss penetrated enough to make him fight his way back to consciousness.
He found himself half-sprawled on the cold ground. He shoved himself partially erect despite his spinning head, and looked for Gala -
But there was no Companion, no fight. Only a mutilated corpse, sprawling torn and ravaged, throat slashed to ribbons, the light gone from the sapphire eyes. Tylendel was on his knees beside her, stroking the ruined head, weeping hoarsely.
Beside her lifeless body lay one of the five monstrosities, head a shapeless pulp. The others flowed around the Companion’s body, as if waiting for the corpse to rise again so that they could attack it. Two of the others limped on three legs - but two were still unharmed, and given what they had done to Gala in a few heartbeats, two would be more than enough to slaughter every man, woman, and child of the Leshara.
Finally they left off their mindless, sharklike circling, and turned to face the terrified celebrants. They took no more notice of Tylendel than of the dead Companion.
A man bolted from the crowd. With a start, Vanyel recognized him for Lord Evan. Whether he meant to attack the beasts, or simply to flee, Vanyel couldn’t tell. It really didn’t matter much; one of the beasts that was still unhurt flashed across the intervening space and caught him. He did not even have time to cry out as it disem-bowled him.
A woman screamed - and that seemed to signal the beasts to move again. They began to ooze in a body toward their victims -
And a bolt of brilliantly white lightning cracked from behind Vanyel to scorch the earth before the leader.
There was a pounding of hooves from the Gate. Vanyel was momentarily blinded by the light and by another surge of weakness that sent him sagging back to the ground.
When his eyes cleared again, there were three whiteclad Heralds and their three Companions closing on the fiends, lightning crackling from their upraised hands. They were using the lightnings to herd the beasts into a tight little knot and barring their path to their prey.
He barely had time to recognize two of the three as Savil and Jaysen before battle was joined.
Once again he started to black out, feeling as if something was trying to pull his soul out of his body. He fought against unconsciousness, though he felt as if he had nothing left to fight with; both the rage and the despair were gone now, leaving only an empty place, a void that ached unbearably.
He felt a tiny inflowing of strength; it wasn’t much, but it was enough to give him the means to fight the blackness away from his eyes, to fight off the vertigo, and to finally get a precarious hold on the world again.
The first thing he saw was Tylendel; still on his knees, but no longer weeping. He was vacant-eyed, white as bleached linen, and staring at his own blood-smeared hands. Where the five creatures had been there was now nothing; only the mangled body of Gala and the burned and churned-up earth.
Taking her hand away from his shoulder was Savil - her face an unreadable mask.
Savil pulled her attention away from Tylendel, who was slumped in a kind of trance of despair beside her, and back to what Vanyel was telling the other two Heralds.
“… then she said, ‘I don’t know you, you aren’t my Chosen,’ “ the boy whispered, eyes dull and mirroring his exhaustion, voice colorless. “And she turned her back on him, just turned away, and charged those things.”
“Buying time for us to get here,” Jaysen murmured, his voice betraying the pain he would not show. “Oh, gods, the poor, brave thing - if she hadn’t bought us those moments, we’d have come in on a bloodbath.”
“She repudiated him,” said Lancir, the Queen’s Own, as if he did not believe it. “She repudiated him, and then-”
“Suicided,” Savil supplied flatly, her own heart in turmoil; aching for Tylendel, for the loss of Gala, for all the things she should have seen and hadn’t.. “Gods, she suicaided. She knew, she had to know that no single Companion could face a pack of wyrsa and survive.”
Tylendel sat where they had left him; unseeing, unspeaking - all of hell in his eyes. Mage-lights of their own creation bobbed overhead, pitilessly illuminating everything.
Jaysen contemplated Savil’s trainee for a long moment, but said nothing, only shook his head slightly. Then he spared a glance for Vanyel, and frowned; Savil heard his thought. :The boy is still tied to the Gate, sister. He grows weaker by the moment. If you want him undamaged - :
Unspoken, but not unfelt, was the vague thought that perhaps it would be no bad thing if Vanyel were to be “forgotten” until it was too late to save him from the aftereffects of the Gate-magic. That undercurrent of thought told Savil that Jaysen placed all of the blame for this squarely on Vanyel’s shoulders.
:It wasn’t his fault, Jaysen: she answered, heartsick, and near to weeping, but unable to be anything other than honest. :He didn’t do anything worse than go along with what ‘Lendel wanted without telling me. What happened was as much due to my negligence as anything he did.:
Jaysen gave a curt nod, but a skeptical one. :In that case, we need to get that Gate closed down as soon as possible, or the boy will sicken - or worse.:
No need to ask what that “worse” was; Vanyel was already looking drawn, almost transparent, as the Gate pulled more and more of his life-force from him. How Tylendel, half-trained, and Vanyel, unGifted, had managed that, Savil had no notion - but they dared not break the link until they didn’t need the Gate anymore.
:Fine, but what are we going to do about all that mess?: Savil asked, nodding her head at the milling crowd, the mangled corpse of the single victim the wyrsa had killed, and the pathetic body of the Companion. :Somebody had better take them in hand, or no telling what they’ll get up to. Go in for a wholesale slaughtering-party on Tylendel’s people, make up some kind of tale about Heralds being in on this - : Even a hair away from breaking down into tears, she was still thinking; she couldn’t help it.
:l’ll stay here,: Lancir volunteered. :Elspeth can do without me for a moon or so. I’ll take care of the Leshara and see to - : his thought faltered. : - Gala.:
:And you’ll get home how?: Jaysen asked, concerned. : We’re going to shut the Gate from the other side as soon as we’re through, and you aren’t up to Gating by yourself these days.:
:Like ordinary mortals,: he replied, with a deathly seriousness. :On our feet.:
:What - what are we going to do about - : Savil’s eyes flicked to Tylendel and back; the boy was still staring vacantly into space, his face pale and blank, his eyes so full of inward-turned torment that she could scarcely bear to look into them for fear she would break down and cry.
.I don’t know,: Lancir replied bleakly. .I just don’t know. There’s no precedent. Get the boy home; worry about it when you’ve got time to think about it. Ask your Companions; it was one of their number that died. That’s all I can think of. But you’d better get on with it if you expect to leave the other boy with a mind.:
“Jays, take Tylendel, will you?” Savil said aloud, reaching for Vanyel’s arm and pulling him to his feet. “Lance-”
“Gods with you, heart-sibs,” said the Queen’s Own, pity and compassion momentarily transforming his homely face into something close to saintly, like that of a beautiful carved statue. “You’ll need their help. Taver?”
His Companion sidled up to him and held rock-still for Jaysen to help him to mount; like the Queen, like Savil, Lancir was feeling his age these autumn days, and needed the boost into place that Jaysen gave him. But once in the saddle, he resumed the strength and dignity of a much younger Queen’s Own - the man he had been twenty years ago. Taver tossed his head, and walked with calm and quiet steps toward the shocked, confused mob of Leshara at the other end of the garden.
Jaysen tugged on Tylendel’s arm; the boy rose, but with the automatic movements of someone spellbound, his attention still turned within himself. The Seneschal’s Herald led the way to the Gate, followed closely by his Companion, and guiding the boy with a hand at his shoulder.
He cast a look back at Savil. “I don’t fancy the notion of the ride we have ahead of us - too many things to go wrong on the way. You know more about this spell than I do - do you think you can reset this Gate to bring us out at the Palace?”
She wrenched her attention away from the unanswerable problem of what to do about the boys, and contemplated the structure of the Gate. The portal at this end was an ornamental gazebo in the center of the blasted garden. Through the arch of the entrance lay the dark of the ruinous cottage yard.
“I don’t see any problem,” she replied, after study. “I can bring us out in the Grove Temple, if that’s all right.”
“That should do,” Jaysen said, eyeing the sky on the other side of the portal, which was flickering with lightnings. “Good gods - why did that blow in? There wasn’t a storm due.”
“Don’t look so surprised, Jays,” she growled, needed to lash out at something and using his absentmindedness to make him the target. “I’ve told you a dozen times that Gating plays merry cob with the weather. That’s why I don’t like to use Gates. It’s going to get worse when I reset it, and all hell will break out when I collapse it.”
He pursed his lips and frowned, but didn’t reply, just waved at her with his free hand. She let go of Vanyel, who sagged back to his knees, too weakened to stay standing without her support. She raised both her hands high above her head, and made an intricately weaving little gesture. Filaments of dull red light floated from the Gate toward her, and were caught up on her fingers by that complex weaving. When she had them fast, she clenched her hands on them and sent her will coursing down them in a surge of pure, commanding power, the filaments turning from red to white as her will flowed back along them.
When the wave of white reached the Gate, the portal misted over, then flared incandescently. When the light died, the scene framed in the gazebo arch was that of Companion’s Field, seen by the fitful flashes of lightning, as viewed from the porch of the Grove Temple.
Savil reached down and caught the fabric of Vanyel’s tunic, pulling him to his feet again. She dragged him with her as she followed closely on Jaysen’s heels. He hurried across the Gate threshold, pushing Tylendel before him; she half-ran a step behind him, dragging Vanyel with her by main force.
The Gate-crossing hit her with its all-too-familiar, sickening sensation of falling. Then - hard, smooth marble was beneath her feet, and they were home.
Lighting struck a nearby tree, and thunder deafened her for a moment. She cleared out of the path of the Gate and Kellan and Felar darted across, ears laid back, as soon as she and Vanyel were out of the way.
She let go of Vanyel, who stumbled the two steps to one of the pillars and clung to it. She turned to face the Gate even as another bolt struck nearby. The Gate was going unstable, wavering from red to white and back again, the instability in the energy fields mirrored in the increasing fury of the lightning storm overhead. She raised her hands and began the dismissal - and encountered unexpected resistance.
She tried again, wincing at the crack of thunder directly above her. There was something wrong, something very wrong. The Gate was fighting her.
“Jays - “ she shouted over the growl of thunder and the whine of the wind. “ - I need a hand, here.”
Jaysen let go of Tylendel to add his strength to hers - their united wills worked at the spell-knot, forcing it to unravel faster than it could knit itself back up again.
With a surge of wild power that brought a half-dozen lightning strikes down on the Belltower of the Temple itself, the Gate collapsed -
Then again the unexpected; the Gate-energy, instead of dissipating back into the air and ground, flared up, and surged back down the one conduit left to it. The force-line that had tied it into Vanyel. Savil Saw it - but not in time to stop it.
Vanyel screamed in agony, convulsing, clutching the pillar as the released power arced back into him - and from him, a second, weaker arc leapt to Tylendel.
Tylendel jerked into sudden alertness - and uttered the most painful cry of despair Savil had ever heard; it was a cry that would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.
She pivoted and grabbed for him as quickly as she could as Vanyel collapsed in a moaning heap at the foot of the pillar.
But it was too late. No longer held in deceptive docility by his shock, he dodged her outstretched hand. She saw his face in another of the lightning flashes; his eyes were all pupil, his face a twisted mask of nothing but pain. He looked frantically about him with those terrible eyes that held no sanity at all, dodged her again, and then dashed past her into the tangled trees of the Grove.
Jaysen gave chase; Savil limped after both of them. Lightning was striking so often overhead now that the sky was almost as bright as day. She tried to use the line of their shared magic to get at Tylendel’s mind as she ran, hoping to bring him back to her, but stumbled in shock and fell when she touched his thoughts. There was nothing to get a hold on - the boy was a chaotic, aching void of grief and loneliness. It was so empty, so unhuman, that for a moment she could only crouch in the cold, dry grass and listen to her overworked heart beat in panic. It took every ounce of discipline she had to get her own mind back under control after touching that terrible, all-consuming sorrow.
Belatedly she thought of Vanyel. If anyone could reach Tylendel, surely he could.
She lurched painfully to her feet and stumbled back toward the Temple. In the lightning flashes she could make out the younger boy staggering blindly out of the Temple, clutching himself as if he were freezing - saw him stumble and fall on his shoulder, without trying to save himself.
Then she saw Tylendel dart out of the tree-shadows to her right and race past her, past his fallen lover, and back into the Temple itself.
And her heart went cold with a sudden premonition of disaster.
She forced her exhausted legs into a stumbling parody of a run, but she wasn’t fast enough.
Just as she reached the place where Vanyel lay, panting and moaning in pain, she saw his head snap up as if in response to a call only he could hear. He seemed to be looking up at the Tower that held the Death Bell. She heard him cry out something unintelligible, and followed his horror-stricken glance -
- and saw Tylendel poised against the lighting-filled sky, arms spread as if to fly -
- and saw him leap -
He seemed to hang in the air for a moment, as if he had somehow mastered flight.
But only a moment; in the next heartbeat he was falling, falling - she couldn’t tell if the scream she heard was hers, or Vanyel’s or both. It wasn’t Tylendels; his eyes were closed, and his mouth twisted and jaw clenched in a rictus of pure grief.
She felt the impact of his body with the unforgiving ground as if it had been her own body that had fallen -
- and the scream ended.
Jaysen stopped dead beside her, frozen in mid-step.
She whimpered in the back of her throat, and Jaysen walked slowly to the crumpled thing lying on the ground, not twenty paces from where she now stood. He went to his knees beside it, then looked up, and she saw him shake his head slowly, confirming what she already knew.
And at that moment, the Death Bell began solemnly tolling.
She stumbled to Jaysen’s side, each step costing her more in pain than she had felt in a lifetime of sacrifice to Queen and Circle. She went heavily to her knees, and gathered up the limp, pitiable body to her breast.
She held him, cradling him against her shoulder, gently rocking a little as if she held a small child. Tears coursed silently down her face to mingle with the rain that was pouring from the sky; it seemed that the whole world echoed her grief. Jaysen knelt beside her, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking with sobs, as the Companions gathered about them and the Death Bell tolled above them.
It was only when the rest of the Heralds arrived to take their burden from them that they thought of Vanyel, and sent someone to look for him.
But the boy was gone.
Vanyel stumbled through the pouring, frigid rain. He was half-blinded with grief, with no hope of finding comfort anywhere in this world. There was nothing left for him - nothing.
He’s dead - oh, gods, he’s dead, and it’s all my fault -
His whole body seemed to be on fire, a slow, smoldering pain that was burning away at him from the inside the way the ice of his dream had chilled him.
There was no reason to fight ice or fire anymore. Let either or both eat him, he couldn’t care.
Rain pounded him, hail struck like slung stones. His head reeled and pounded with his pulse. He hurt, but he welcomed the pain.
It’s all I deserve. It was all my fault -
He couldn’t see where he was going, and he didn’t give a damn. He tripped and fell any number of times, but bruises and cuts didn’t matter; he just picked himself back up and kept running in whatever direction he happened to be facing.
His whole universe had collapsed the moment Tylendel had thrown himself off that tower. Somewhere down in the depths of his soul was the dim thought that if he ran far enough, ran fast enough, he might run off the edge of the world and into an oblivion where there would be no more feeling, and no more pain.
He didn’t run off the edge of the world, quite. He ran off the bank into the river.
The ground just disappeared under his feet, and he flailed his arms wildly as he half-fell, half-tumbled down the bank and somersaulted at the bottom into the icy water. It closed over his head, and the cold shocked him into an instant of forgetfulness; he lost the desire for oblivion as instinct took over, and he fought back to the surface.
He gulped air, shook water out of his eyes, and in a flash of lightning saw an oncoming tree limb too late to dodge it. He managed to turn away from it, but it hit him across the back of the head and knocked him under again. The second time his head broke the surface, he was dazed and unthinking; in another glare of lighting he saw the branches of a bush beside him and grabbed at them -
They were too far away, far out of his frantic reach -
Then the hush shook violently, and seemed to stretch toward him. He snatched at the ends of the branches. He caught them, somehow; they cut into his hand, but he managed to pull himself into the shallows.
He had just enough strength left to crawl halfway up into the rain-slick bank, and just enough mind left to wonder why he’d bothered to save himself.
He lay facedown in the sodden, dead grass on the bank; chilled and numb, and growing colder, and wracked with anguished guilt and mourning.
‘Lendel, ‘Lendel, it was all my fault - oh, gods, it was all my fault - I should have told Savil. I should have tried to stop you.
He sobbed into the rough grass, the damp-smelling earth, longing inarticulately for the power of a god to reverse time, to unmake all that had happened.
I’m sorry - oh, please, someone, take it all back! If you have to have someone, take me instead! Make it a dream, oh, gods - please -
But it wasn’t a dream; no more than the rain that was diluting his tears, or the icy water that tugged at his legs. And no god intervened to unmake the past. The wintry cold was closing in on him, chilling the fire along his veins; he was too weak to move, and too tired, and far too grief stricken to care. It occurred to him then that he might die here, as alone as Tylendel had died.
It was no less than his deserts, and he changed his prayers. Please - he asked, desperately, of powers that were not answering. Please - let me die.
He thought of every mistake he had made, every wrong turning, and moaned. I deserve to die, he thought in anguish, closing his eyes. I want to die.
:No.: The mind-voice was bright, bright as a flame, and sharp as steel, piercing his dark hope for death. :No, you must not. You must live, Chosen.:
He raised his head a little, but couldn’t get his eyes open, and really didn’t want to. :You don’t know,: he thought bleakly back at the intruder. :Let me alone. No one wants me, nobody should want me; I kill everything I care for. :
But someone grabbed him by the back of the collar and half-dragged him up the bank. He tried to twist away, but his body wouldn’t work right anymore, and all he did was thrash feebly. Heartbeats later the rain was no longer pounding his back, and the green-smelling, soft moss under his weakly moving hands was dry; he’d been pulled into some kind of shelter. Whatever had him let go of his collar, after lowering him gently down onto the moss; he managed to get his eyes open, but with the lightning fading off in the distance, he could see nothing but darkness.
Something warm and large lay down beside him with a sigh. A soft nose nuzzled his cheek -
- like Gala had -
The sensation brought up memories that cut him into little shreds. He brought his knees up under his chest and curled up on himself, sobbing uncontrollably, driven to the edge of sanity by grief and loneliness.
: - but I am here - :
He brought his head up a little, and looked for the speaker with vision blurred by tears - and in a last glare of the lightning met a pair of glowing sapphire eyes-eyes so full of compassion and love that he knew their owner would forgive him anything. That love reached out for him, and flowed over into him. It couldn’t erase his loss, but it could share the pain - and it didn’t blame him for what had happened.
He uncurled, and groped for the smooth white neck and shoulder the way he had seized on the branches of the bush to keep from drowning.
He sobbed himself into exhaustion on that shoulder, wept until he hadn’t the strength to shed another tear, and into a kind of fevered half-sleep. And all the while, that bright voice murmured, like a litany, over and over, into his mind -
:I am here, my Chosen. I love you. I will never leave you. :
“Savil, we found him.” Mardic burst into the room that had been Vanyel’s and Tylendel’s, dripping from head to toe, and shivering in the draft from the door behind him.
As he turned to close the door, Savil dredged up energy she hadn’t dreamed she still possessed, and started to rise. Jaysen and Healer Andrel simultaneously seized her shoulders and pushed her back down into her chair.
“Where?” she demanded, in a voice hoarsened by weeping. “Who found him? Is he all right?”
“I dunno, the Companions found him; Yfandes did, anyway,” Mardic replied vaguely, swaying with weariness, looking colorless with exhaustion in the yellow candlelight. “She found him on the garden side of the river and dragged him into a grotto. Tantras thinks he’s sick, something like backlash, but he can’t tell for sure. He’s trying to persuade her to let him bring Van back here so Andrel can take care of him.”
Savil shook her head, trying to make sense of his words. “Mardic, what are you trying to tell me? What has Yfandes got to do with anything?’’
“She won’t let anyone lay a finger on him, Savil,” Mardic replied, blinking, and still shivering despite the warmth of the room. “She’s adamant about it; damned near took Tantras’ hand off when he tried to get at Van. She told my Fortin that she doesn’t trust us to protect him and keep him under shield properly - that we won’t understand what we’ve got - that he’s hurt, all torn up inside his mind, and we can’t begin to help him - “
“Mardic,” Jaysen said, slowly, “are you saying that Yfandes Chose Vanyel? The only full-grown Companion in the Field that hasn’t Chosen - the Companion that hasn’t Chosen for over ten years - and now she’s Chosen Vanyel?”
“She didn’t come out and say so, but I guess she did,” Mardic said, fatigue slurring his words as he slumped against the doorframe. “I dunno why in hell she’d be curled up around him like he was her foal otherwise, and not letting us near him. We think he’s unconscious; he isn’t moving, and he isn’t responding when we talk to him, but Yfandes won’t let anyone close enough to get a good look at him.”
Savil exchanged startled looks with the Seneschal’s Herald, but it was Healer Andrel who put their thoughts into words.
“By the Lady Bright,” he murmured, green eyes gone round with consternation, “what in the Havens is this going to mean?”
Vanyel swam up out of a feverish, fitful nightmare, prodded by an insistent voice in his head. He moaned, and opened dry, hot eyes that ached and burned. His head still pounded, and moving it even a little made his vision blur. He felt as if his whole body was a hot, tight, painfully constrictive garment; it felt like it didn’t belong to him.
Sunlight gleamed weakly in through a rocky opening; he could see the river gurgling by just a few paces beyond it. It looked as if he were in a cave, but there were pink marble benches beside the entrance. Caves didn’t have pink marble benches. They didn’t have cultivated, moss-covered floors, either.
Then he recognized the place for what it was - one of the garden grottoes set into the riverbank. They were popular with courting couples or people seeking a moment of solitude from the Court. Tylendel had often wistfully expressed the wish that they dared to use one -
Tylendel. Grief closed around his throat and stopped his breath.
:No, Vanyel, Chosen. Not now. Mourn later; now get up.:
Without knowing quite how he had gotten there, Vanyel found himself on his feet, leaning heavily on the silky shoulder of a Companion.
His Companion. Yfandes.
He tried to make sense of that, but his head spun too much and he couldn’t get a good grip on any of the thoughts that half-formed and then blew away.
:You are ill,: said the worried voice inside his mind. .I cannot care for you. I did not wish to let you away from my protection, but I cannot help you. You have fever, you need a Healer. Move your foot. One step. Another - :
He discovered that he was shaking, and clung a little tighter to the Companion’s back. Obedient to that voice in his head, he put one hesitant foot in front of the other, learning quickly that he had to rest most of his weight on the arm clinging to Yfandes’ shoulder. He had to close his eyes after the first couple of steps and trust to her to guide him; he was so dizzy and nauseated he couldn’t make any sense out of what he was seeing.
They emerged into sunlight that was far too much for his eyes; he opened them once, and shut them again, quickly. The Companion suddenly stepped away from him, and he literally fell into the arms of a strange Herald; and once out of contact with Yfandes there were dozens of voices in his head, all of them clamorous, all of them confusing. He whimpered, tried to pull away, and hid his head in his arms. They hurt, they hurt, and he couldn’t make out which were his own thoughts and which belonged to someone else.
:Tell your fool Chosen to shield him, Delian!:
That voice he recognized, although Yfandes had never spoken that sharply to him. The stranger bit off a curse and touched Vanyel’s forehead, and the voices cut off. Vanyel opened his eyes again, and wished he hadn’t; the world was spinning around with him as the center of the chaos. He shut them immediately, vowing not to reopen them.
“Let me, Tantras.” The soft voice was that of yet another stranger.
Two cool hands rested lightly on his head, and brought with them the promise of comfort and the peace of sleep.
He took what they offered, falling into oblivion gratefully. With any luck, he’d never wake up.
The bed looked far too big for the boy; never tall, he seemed to have collapsed in on himself. He was as pale as the sheets and - it might have been his dark hair and naturally fair complexion, but it seemed to her that he looked worse than Tylendel had after his fit. That was something Savil had not thought possible until now.
Tylendel. Oh, my ‘Lendel, my poor, poor, ‘Lendel.
Unshed tears made a hard knot in her throat and misted her eyes. So she missed the moment that Andrel took his hand away from the boy’s forehead and sagged back into his chair with a sigh of weariness, his graying red hair damp with sweat, his freckles twice as evident with his skin so washed out and pale.
It was that sigh that brought her back to the urgent present.
“Andrel?” she said softly. “Can you tell me anything?”
“I did what I could for him - and more, I’ve got a line established,” the Green-robed Healer to the Heralds replied, without looking up. “I want you to follow it - or if you feel you can’t, find me a Herald-Mage your equal. I don’t believe what I Saw, to be frank, and I want a confirmation.”
Savil tightened her jaw, and told herself again that none of this had been Vanyel’s fault. Besides, she was the only Herald-Mage at the Palace who was likely to have any feelings of charity toward the boy.
“I’ll follow it. Have you got more to say, or - “
“I want you in there first. What I have to say is going to depend on whether you think I’ve gone over the edge or not.”
Savil raised one eyebrow in surprise, but moved in to stand beside the Healer. She reached out for Andrel’s soothing Presence as easily as she could have reached for his hand; they’d been lovers, once, and had worked together often, both before and since.
They meshed auras exactly as hand would close on hand, and Savil followed the “line” the Healer had established down past the churning chaos of Vanyel’s sleeping surface mind to the dark, grief-stricken core of him. The measure of that grief would have reconciled her to him even had she felt him blameworthy; she’d known the depth of Tylendel’s feelings, but it seemed as if Vanyel’s had run at least as deep. Certainly his grief and loss were as profound as her own. More -
Oh, gods - it’s just what I warned ‘Lendel against. He’s lost, he’s utterly lost without ‘Lendel -
But that was not what rocked her back onto her heels with real shock.
Savil had spent most of the past twenty years of her life as the one Herald-Mage most intimately involved in training young Herald-Mages, and the one most often set to identify youngsters with active Gifts and the potential of being Chosen. She had seen children with one, two, or (most commonly) no Gifts. Tylendel had been unusual in having Mindspeech, Fetching, Empathy and the Mage-Gift, all at near-equal strength. Most Heralds or Herald-Mages ftad one or two strong Gifts - and few had as many as three.
Vanyel had them all. Each channel she tested - with the sole exception of Healing - was open; most of them had been forced open to their widest extent. The boy had Mindspeech, Fetching, FarSight, Foresight, as much Empathy as Tylendel had shown, even enough Fire-starting to ensure he’d never need to use a tinderbox again, and the all-important Mage-Gift. His Mindspeech was even of both types, Thought-sensing and Projecting.
And - irony of ironies - as if the gods were taking with one hand and offering a pittance as compensation - the Bardic Gift.
This boy had more Gifts than any five full Heralds - and all of them had come into full activity in less than a day.
To her horror she could See that all the channels were as raw and sensitive as so many open wounds. The channels had not been “opened,” they’d been blasted open. It was a wonder the boy wasn’t mad with the pain alone.
Savil came up out of Vanyel’s mind with a rush like a startled fish jumping out of a stream, and looked from the boy to the Healer and back in a state of surprise that closely resembled shock.
“Great good gods,” she said, “What the hell happened to do that?”
Andrel shook his head. “Your guess would be better than mine. I never cared much where our powers came from, I was just concerned with learning to use them effectively. But do you see what I’m up against with this boy?”
“I think so,” Savil replied, groping for the bedpost and sitting down carefully on the foot of the bed. “Let me add this up. You’ve got backlash trauma from when the Gate-energy got pulled from him, and more trauma from when we sent it back into him; you’ve got the problems inherent when you wake Gifts late or early. You’ve got the problems with them being at full power from the moment they woke. Worst of all, you’ve got channels that were burned open or torn open instead of opening of themselves.”
“That, and more mundane emotional trauma and physical shock. I hope to the Havens that he doesn’t come down with pneumonia on top of it all. I already fought off one fever, one his own body produced when it couldn’t handle the energy-overload.” Andrel touched the back of his hand to the boy’s waxen cheek, checking his temperature. “So far, so good, but it’s a real possibility. And I’m fighting off the effects of exposure, too. Savil, the child is a mess.”
“Lover, you have a talent for understatement.” Savil contemplated Vanyel’s pinched, grief-twisted face.
Even in sleep he doesn’t lose his pain.
“Now I see why Yfandes was so reluctant to let him out of her care. Until she gets him firmly bonded to her, he’s going to have to be in physical contact with her for her to protect him. But what can we do? I can’t fit her in here, I can’t put him in the stables, not with the weather being what it is.”
“Try, and I’ll call you up on charges,” Andrel replied, and Savil could tell that he was not joking. “Do that in this chill, and you’ll kill him. It’s going to be touchy enough with him tucked up in a warm bed.”
“Well, how in hell do I protect him from his own powers?”
“Put your own shields on him, and hope nothing gets through.”
“I can’t keep them up forever,” Savil reminded him acidly. “I’m fairly well fagged out myself. A couple of hours is about all I can manage at this point.’’
“Then go order -two graves, dammit!” the Healer snarled in sudden frustration. “Because you’re going to lose this one, too, if you don’t do everything right with him!”
Savil pulled back, taken very much aback by the sudden explosion of temper. “I,” she faltered, then as his words penetrated, and she thought of what was lying in the Grove Temple at this moment, lost her own precarious hold on calm.
She got up, stumbling a little; turned away from him and leaned against the doorframe, her shoulders shaking with her’silent weeping.
“Savil - “
Strong but trembling hands on her shoulders turned her back to face the room, and pulled her into an embrace against a bony chest covered in soft, green wool. “Savil, I’m sorry,” Andrel murmured into her hair. “I shouldn’t have said that. You’re exhausted, I’m exhausted, and neither of us are up to facing the problem this boy represents. Is there anyone you can turn him over to, for a day, at least? Long enough for you to get some rest and a chance to think?’’
A white square of linen appeared just when she needed it. She mopped at her eyes with the handkerchief he offered, and blew her nose. “Under any other circumstances I’d just let any of the others spell me - but I don’t know, Andy. A lot of them still think he’s responsible for all this. Even if they shield - with Gifts like his, what’s he going to pick up? You of all people should know how leaky we all are to a new, raw Gift, even when we aren’t stressed.”
Andrel sighed. “Dearheart, I don’t think you have a real choice. You’ll just have to hope that if surface thoughts leak past, he won’t be able to understand them yet. If you don’t get some rest, you’re going to collapse, and even a novice Healer would be able to tell you that.” She bowed her head, feeling the weight of all her years and all her sorrows falling on her back. “All right,” she said, acting against her better judgment, but unable to see any other option open to her. “See if you can round up Tantras for me, will you? At least he didn’t know poor ‘Lendel all that well.”
Vanyel woke from a dream in which Tylendel was alive again, and had teased him gently about how much he had been grieving. For a confused moment after waking, he wasn’t certain which had been the dream, and which the reality.
Then he opened his eyes, and found that he was in his own bed, and his own room, now illuminated by carefully shaded candle-lanterns. And there was something odd about the room.
After a long moment, he finally figured out what it was. The feeling of “Tylendel,” the sense of his being there even when he wasn’t physically present, was missing.
That told him. He swallowed a moan of despair, and closed his eyes against the resurgence of tears - and just in time, for the door opened softly and closed again, and he felt a new presence in the room with him.
He froze for a moment, then sighed, as if in sleep, and turned onto his side, hiding his face away from the light.
He was hearing things - like someone talking to himself, only - only, inside his head, the way Yfandes’ voice had been inside his head. It hurt to listen, but he couldn’t stop the words from coming in. And from the feel of that mind-voice, he knew who it was that was sitting by his bedside, too; it was one of the Heralds that had been with Savil, the one called Jaysen.
And Jaysen did not in the least care for Vanyel.
: - gods - : Vanyel heard, a little garbled by the pain that came with the words. : - trade this arrogant little toad for Tylendel. Damn poor bargain.:
Vanyel could feel brooding eyes on him, and the words in his head came clearer, more focused. :No matter what Savil said, I’ll never believe he didn’t have something to do with the boy’s death. If they’d been all that close, Tylendel would have listened to him, and even if ‘Lendel was crazed on revenge, this one wasn’t. ‘Lendel may have loved him, but he could never have cared for the lad in the same way, or he’d have stopped him. ‘Lendel was just one more little addition to his stable of admirers. If he’d left ‘Lendel alone, if he hadn’t played on his - weaknesses - :
Vanyel cringed beneath the pitiless words, and the vision of himself that came with them; arrogant, self-centered, self-serving. Using Tylendel, not caring for him. And worse; worse than that, feeding him what he craved, like feeding a perpetual drunk the liquor he shouldn’t have.
Without thinking about it, he reached beyond his room; it was a little like straining his ears to hear a conversation in the distance, and the pain that came with the effort felt like muscles pulling against a broken bone, but he found he could catch other snatches of - it must be thoughts - that touched on him.
They could have been echoes of Jaysen’s thoughts.
He pulled his awareness back, as a child pulls its singed hand from the fire that has burned it. There were only two creatures in all the world that he could be certain cared for him despite what he was; Tylendel and Yfandes. Neither were to be trusted to know the truth about him. The second was besotted by whatever magic had made her Choose him; the first was -
The first was dead. And it was his fault. Jaysen was right; if he’d really cared for ‘Lendel, he’d have stopped him. It wouldn’t even have been hard; if he hadn’t agreed to get those books, if he hadn’t agreed to help with that spell, Tylendel would be alive at this moment. And if he hadn’t seduced ‘Lendel with his own needs, none of this ever would have happened.
Bad on top of worst; now he was a burden on the Heralds, who hated him, but felt honor-bound to take him in Tylendel’s place. And he could never replace Tylendel, not ever; even he knew that. He had none of Tylendel’s virtues, and all of his vices and more.
He listened to the mind-voice of the one beside him with all his strength, ignoring the pain it cost, hoping beyond hope that the Herald would somehow give him the chance to get away - get away and do something to make this right. If the Herald would just - go away for a moment, or - or better yet, fall asleep -
Jaysen was tired; though he’d done less magic than Savil, and had more time to rest, he was still very weary. He’d set himself up in the room’s really comfortable chair; the one Tylendel had sometimes fallen asleep in. Vanyel could feel Jaysen’s mind drifting over into slumber, and held his breath, hoping he’d drift all the way.
Because he’d gleaned something else from those minds out there -
Because the Death Bell had rung for him, despite what he’d done, Tylendel was being accounted a full Herald and tomorrow would be buried with all the honors.
Tomorrow. But tonight - he was in the Temple in the Grove. And if he could get that far, Vanyel was going to try to right the wrongs he had done to all of them, atoning with the only thing he had left to give.
Jaysen’s thoughts slipped into the vague mumbles of sleep, and in the next moment a gentle snore from the chair beside the bed told Vanyel that he was completely gone.
Vanyel turned over, deliberately making noise.
Jaysen continued to snore, undisturbed.
Vanyel sat up, slowly, taking stock of himself and his surroundings.
About a candlemark later, he was dressed; even if he had not needed to move slowly for fear of waking the Herald, he would have had to for weakness. He had even needed to hold onto the furniture at first, because his legs were so unsteady. Even now his legs trembled with every step he took, but at least he was moving a bit more surely.
He stole soundlessly across the floor and unlatched the door, opened it just enough to squeeze himself through, and shut it again. It was dark out here, a still, cloudless night. He wouldn’t be seen, but it was a long way to the Grove.
He steeled himself and stepped shakily onto the graveled path that ran from his door through the moonlit garden.
But someone had been waiting for him.
Yfandes glided out of the darkness to his side almost before he had made five steps along that path.
:No - : she said, sternly, barring his way. :You are ill; you should be in bed.:
For a moment he was ready to collapse right where he stood.
- gods, she’s going to stop me -
Then he saw a way to get Yfandes to help him - without her knowing she was doing so.
-.Please - : He directed everything he could on part of the truth. He couldn’t lie mind-to-mind, he knew that, but he didn’t have to reveal everything unless Yfandes should ask a direct question about it. And besides that, the link to her was fading in and out (and it hurt, like everything else) and he would bet she wouldn’t want to force anything. -.Pleased, Yfandes, I have to - : he faltered.: - to say - good-bye.:
She bowed her head almost to the earth as he let his grief pour out over her. -.Very well,: he heard, the mind-voice heavy with reluctance. .I will help you. But you must rest, after.:
:I will,: he promised, meaning it, though not in the way she had intended.
She went to her knees so that he could mount; he, once the best rider at Forst Reach, could not drag himself onto her back without that help. His arms and legs trembled with weakness as he clung to her back, and if it had not been that she could have balanced a toddler there and not let it fall, he would have lost his seat within the first few moments.
He concentrated on his weariness, on how physically miserable he was feeling, and spent not so much as an eyeblink on his real intentions. He closed his eyes, both to concentrate, and because seeing the ground move by so fast in the moonlight was making him nauseated and disoriented again.
He had had no notion of how fast the Companions could travel at a so-called walk. She was stepping carefully up to the porch of the Grove Temple long before he had expected her to get there; the clear ringing of her hooves on the marble surprised him into opening his eyes.
:We are here,: she said, and knelt for him to dismount.
The marble of the Temple porch glistened wetly in the moonlight, and he could see candlelight shining under the door. He slid from Yfandes’ back, and “listened” with this new, mental ear for other minds within the Temple.
None.
He shivered in the cold wind; he’d dressed carefully, in the black silk tunic and breeches Tylendel had thought he looked best in, and once off Yfandes’ warm, broad back the wind cut right through his clothing.
:Not for long,: she admonished, as he clung to the doorframe and negotiated unlatching the door into the Temple itself.
:No, Yfandes,: he said, sincerely. :Not for long.:
He got the door open and closed again - then, as quietly as he could, locked it.
There was no clamor from the opposite side, so he assumed she had not heard the bolt shoot home. He turned, bracing himself for what he was about to do, and faced the altar.
The Temple itself was tiny; hardly bigger than the common room of their suite. It had been built all of white marble, within and without. The walls took up the candlelight, and reflected it until they fairly glowed. There were only two benches in it, and the altar. Behind the altar were stands thick with candles; behind the candles, the wall had been carved into a delicate bas-relief; swirling clouds, the moon, stars and the sun - and in the clouds, suggestions of male and female faces, whose expressions changed with the flickering of the candles.
Before the altar stood the bier.
Vanyel’s legs trembled with every step; he made his way unsteadily to that white-draped platform, and looked down on the occupant.
They’d dressed Tylendel in full Whites; his eyes were closed, and there was no trace of his grief or his madness in that handsome, peaceful face. His hands were folded across his waist, those graceful, strong hands that had held so much of comfort for his beloved. He looked almost exactly as he had so many mornings when Vanyel had awakened first. His long, golden curls were spread against the white of the pallet, a few of them tumbled a little untidily over his right temple; long, dark-gold lashes lay against his cheeks. Only the pose was wrong. Tylendel had never, in all the time Vanyel had known him, slept in anything other than a sprawl.
Vanyel reached out, hesitantly, to touch that smooth cheek - almost believing, even now, that he had only to touch him to awaken him.
But the cheek was cold, as cold as the marble of the altar, and the eyes did not flutter open at his touch. This was no child’s tale, where the sleeping one would wake again at the magic touch of the one who loved him.
“Please, ‘Lendel, forgive me,” he whispered to the quiet face, and took the knife from the white sheath on Tylendel’s belt. “I - I’m going to try to - pay for all of what I did to you.”
His hands shook, but his determination remained firm.
Quickly, before he could lose his courage, he bent and kissed the cold lips - hoping that this, too, would be forgiven, and caught in a grief too deep for tears. Then he knelt on the icy white marble of the floor beside the bier, and braced the hilt of the dagger between his knees, clasping his hands with the dagger between his wrists, resting them on either side of the blade-edge.
“ ‘Lendel, there’s nothing without you. Forgive me - if you can,” he whispered again, both to Tylendel and the brooding Faces behind the altar.
And before he could begin to be afraid, he pulled both wrists up along the knife-edges, slashing them simultaneously.
The dagger was as sharp as he had hoped - sharper than he had expected. He cut both wrists almost to the bone; gasped as pain shot up his arms, and the knife fell clattering to the marble, released when his legs jerked involuntarily.
He sagged with sudden dizziness, and fell forward over his bent knees; his head bowed over his hands, his arms lying limp on the marble floor. Blood began to spread on the white marble; pooled before him under his slashed wrists. He stared at it in morbid fascination. Red on white. Like blood on the snowIt was only at that moment that Yfandes seemed to realize what it was he was doing. She screamed, and began kicking at the door. But it was far too late; his eyes were no longer focusing properly anymore, and his wrists didn’t even hurt. But he was feeling so cold, so very cold. :I’m sorry,: he thought muzzily at the frantic Companion, beginning to black out, and feeling himself falling over sideways. : Yfandes, I’m sorry… you’ll find someone… better than me. Worthy of you.:
“Gone?” Savil’s voice broke. “What the hell do you mean, gone?”
“Savil, I swear to you, the boy was asleep. I dozed off for a breath or two, and when I woke up he was gone,” Jaysen answered, one hand clutched at the side of his head on a fistful of hair, his expression frantic and guilt-ridden. “I thought maybe he’d gone to the privy or something, but I can’t find him anywhere.”
Savil swung her legs out of the bed and rubbed her eyes, trying to think. Where would Vanyel have gone, and in the name of the gods, why?
But in a heartbeat she had her answer - the frightened, frantic scream of a Companion rang across the river, and her Kellan’s voice shrilled into her head.
:Savil - the boy - : and an image of where he was and what he had done.
From the stricken look on Jaysen’s face, his own Felar had given him the same information.
“Gods!” Savil snatched her cloak from the chair beside her bed and ran out in her bare feet, through the common room, and headed for the door of Vanyel’s room, Jaysen breathing down her neck.
She hit the garden door at a dead run, and it was a damned good thing that it wasn’t locked, because if it had been, she’d have broken it off the hinges. The cold of the night slapped her in the face like an impious hand; that stopped her for a moment, but only a moment. In the next instant Felar and Kellan pounded up at a gallop. Felar skidded around in a tight pivot, presenting his hindquarters to his Chosen, who leapfrogged up into his seat with an acrobatic skill that would have had Savil muttering about “show-offs” had the situation been less precarious. Instead, she waited for Kellan to come to a dead halt, and clambered onto her back anyhow, her bedgown rucked up around her legs. Kellan launched herself into a full, frantic gallop as Savil clung on as best she could.
Now Savil was a breath behind Jaysen, as the young Seneschal’s Herald led the way across the nearest bridge and up the Field to the Temple of the Grove. Nor were they the only two summoned by the frantic screaming, mind and voice, of Yfandes. Heralds and trainees were boiling out of the Palace like aroused fire ants, rendezvousing with their Companions, and heading across the river at breakneck speed.
But Jaysen and Savil were the first two on the scene; it was their dubious privilege to see Yfandes trying to batter down the solid bronze door of the Temple single-handedly, and not budging it by so much as a thumbs’-breadth. Her hooves were screeching across the metal, leaving showers of sparks in their wake, and her anguished screams were far too like a human’s for comfort.
Jaysen vaulted off Felar’s back and hit the ground at a run, ducking fearlessly under Yfandes’ flying hooves to make a trial of the door himself.
“It’s locked from the inside,” he shouted unnecessarily, as Savil slid from Kellan’s back to limp to his side. He put his shoulder against the door, and rammed it, with no more luck than Yfandes had had.
“Vanyel!” Savil put her mouth up against the crack between door and frame, and shouted through it. “Van, lad, let us in!”
She put her ear to the crack and listened, but heard nothing. :Kellan - :
:Yfandes says he’s still alive, but unconscious and weakening,: came the grim reply, as Yfandes danced in place, her sapphire eyes gone nearly black with anguish.
“Somebody get me a mage-light on that damned tower!’’
It was Mardic; he had his hands on Donni’s shoulders and was staring up at the tower. Donni was holding a crossbow with a bulky missile cocked and ready.
Savil responded first, running far enough back from the door that she could see the top of the Belltower. It was glowing faintly, but obviously too faintly for Donni to make out a target. Savil raised her hands, and sent up such a burst of power that the entire top of the tower flowered with light.
While Mardic closed his eyes and scowled in concentration, Donni raised the crossbow, squinted carefully along it, and fired.
The oddly-shaped arrow flew strangely, and slowly, trailing something light colored behind it - and in a moment, Savil realized why and what it was. Donni had been a bright little apprentice-thief when she’d been Chosen; this was a grapnel-arrow, meant to carry a light, but strong line through an open window and catch on the sill. Mardic had a very weak, but usable Fetching-Gift; he had invoked it to help the arrow carry something heavier than a light line. A climbing-rope.
It lobbed through the loop of the Bell-house, clanging ominously off the Death Bell itself. Savil felt a chill, and made a warding-gesture, nor was she the only one. She could see most of the others shivering at the least, and Yfandes moaned like a dying thing at the sound of the Bell.
Donni, normally mobile face gone blank, was paying no attention to anything other than her arrow and line; all her concentration was on the task in her hand. She drew the rope to her with agonizing slowness; Savil fought down the urge to shout at her to hurry. Finally Donni’s careful pulling met resistance; she tugged, then pulled harder, then yanked on the rope with all her might.
Then, before Savil had time to blink, she was swarming up it like a squirrel.
One or two of the trainees gave a ragged cheer; Donni ignored them. She reached the opening and squeezed through, and Savil saw to her surprise that Mardic was following her. She’d been so intent on Donni’s progress that she’d missed seeing him altogether until he got into the glow of the mage-light.
Savil sprinted back for the door - the crowd there parted to let her through - and waited, trembling with impatience, with the rest.
:Hang on, Savil,: she heard Mardic’s mind-voice, in Broadsend-mode. :He’s alive; thank the gods he didn’t know the right way to slit his wrists. Donni’s got the blood stopped, but we II need a Healer, fast. ‘Fandes warped the door pounding on it; it’s going to take a bit of work to get it open. :
A tall figure in Healer’s Greens pushed through to Savil’s side as Mardic began pounding on the door, forcing the bolt back thumb-length by thumb-length; Andrel opened his arms and wrapped Savil inside the warmth of his fur-lined cloak with him.
Finally the door creaked open; Andrel deserted her, leaving her suddenly in sole possession of the heavy cloak. She followed inside, hard on his heels.
Donni knelt in front of the bier; there was a frighteningly wide scarlet stain on the marble of the floor, and her hands looked as if she had dipped them in vermilion dye. She was holding Vanyel’s wrists; the boy was sprawled on the floor beside her at the foot of the bier, his face as transparently white as the marble under his head, and sickly unconscious. Andrel was just beginning to kneel in the pool of blood on the other side of the boy, heedless of his robes, and as Savil limped across the floor toward them, followed by the rest of the would-be rescuers, he reached out and set his hands firmly over Donni’s bloodstained ones.
His face was fixed in a mask of absolute concentration, and Savil could feel the power beginning to flow from him. But he’d been hard-pressed today, and had little time to rest. And she knew that his few reserves were not going to be enough -
She ran the last few steps and placed her hands on his shoulders as he began to falter, sending energy coursing down into his center. And in a moment, she felt herself joined by Jaysen - then Mardic - then Donni. The four of them meshed in a union that was as nearly perfect as any magic she’d ever witnessed, and sent Andrel all he needed and more, in a steady, steadfast, stream.
Finally the Healer sighed, and lifted his hands away from Donni’s; the other three disengaged with something that was a little like reluctance. It wasn’t often that even Heralds experienced the peace that came with a perfect Healing-meld; it was nearly a mystical experience, and as close to the peace of the Havens as Savil ever wanted to get until she was Called.
Donni lifted her hands away from Vanyel’s wrists, and Savil could see that the skin, veins, and tendons beneath were whole again. For a moment the wrists were marred by angry red scars, then gradually those scars faded to thin white lines.
Jaysen moved swiftly to gather the unconscious boy in his arms; blood from the boy’s sleeves stained the front of his Whites, but Jaysen didn’t seem to notice.
Vanyel’s head sagged against the Herald’s chest. Despite being moved, he showed no signs of reviving.
Savil helped Andrel to rise and go to him. The Healer reached out a hand that shook uncontrollably and checked the pulse at the hinge of Vanyel’s jaw, lifted an eyelid, then shook his head.
“Nearer than I like, and he lost too much blood, given what he’s been through,” Andrel said, grimacing. “Jays, can you and Felar get him back into his bed as of a candlemark ago?”
“No,” Savil interrupted. “No, you leave that to me and Yfandes. Jays, give him to me as soon as I get mounted.”
She pushed her way through the silent, shocked crowd and found Yfandes waiting as close to the open door as she could get. The Companion looked deeply into Savil’s eyes, her own eyes back to a quiet, depthless sapphire, then went to her knees for the Herald to mount.
Savil mounted, and Yfandes rose gracefully to her feet, not in the least unsteady on the smooth marble. Savil held out her arms, amazed by her own calm, and Jaysen lifted the limp form of Vanyel up into place before her. She cradled the boy against her shoulder, wrapping Andrel’s cloak about both of them; he was no burden at all, really - almost too light a weight for the ease of her heart and conscience.
Oh, lad, lad - she sighed, nudging Yfandes lightly with her heels to tell her to go on. Poor little lad - we’ve made a right “mess of your life, haven’t we? And all for lack of listening to you. I don’t know who is guiltier, me or Withen.
She held him a bit tighter as Yfandes headed at a gentle walk toward the beckoning beacon of the open door of her suite. He was all the legacy Tylendel had left to her, and she pledged the silent sleeper in the Temple behind her that she would take better care of him from this moment on.
And the first task is to put you back together, my poor, bewildered, heart-broken lostling. If ever I can.
Years later - or so it seemed - Savil finally crawled into some clothing. She wanted, she needed, to collapse somewhere; wanted rest as a starving man wants bread, but dared not leave Vanyel alone. She finally dragged the chair Jaysen had been using close to the bedside and wrapped herself in the first warm thing that came to hand (which turned out to be Andrel’s fur-lined cloak), intending, despite her exhaustion, to stay awake as long as possible.
But she dozed off, some time around dawn, and woke at the sound of a strangled sob.
She fought her way out of the tangled embrace of the cloak; when she got her head free of the folds of the hood, the first things she saw were Vanyel’s silver eyes looking at her with a kind of accusative sorrow.
“Why?” he whispered mournfully. “Why did you stop me?”
Savil finally untangled the rest of her, sat up in her chair, and took a quick look around. As she’d ordered, Mardic was still standing weary guard over the door to the rest of the suite, and Donni was drowsing, slumped against the door to the garden. Vanyel was not going to give them the slip a second time, however unlikely the prospect seemed. It hadn’t seemed possible the last time.
She gave Mardic a jerk of her head and a Mindsent order; :Out, love, this needs privacy,: and woke Donni with a quick Mindtouch. Donni came completely awake as soon as Savil touched her, a talent the Herald-Mage envied. She pulled herself to her feet with the help of the doorframe at her back. Then both of them left for their own quarters, closing the door into the common room of the suite behind them.
Savil got up stiffly, every joint aching, and sat on the side of the bed, taking both of Vanyel’s hands in her own. They were like ice, and bloodless-looking. “I stopped you because had to,” she replied. “Because - Vanyel, self-destruction is no answer. Because we’ve already lost one we loved - and I couldn’t lose you, too, now - “
“But I deserve to die - “ His voice was weak, and broke on the last word.
And he wouldn’t look her in the eyes.
Oh, gods - what was going through that head of his? What had he convinced himself of? “For what?” she asked, her voice sounding rough-edged even to her. “Because you made some mistakes? Gods, if that was worthy of a death sentence, I should have been sharing that knife!”
His hands were chilling hers; she tried to warm them, chafing them as gently as she could. “Listen to me, Vanyel - this whole wretched mess was one mistake piled on top of another. I made mistakes; I should have watched ‘Lendel more carefully, I should have insisted he talk to Lancir when his brother was killed. That’s one of Lancir’s jobs; to keep our heads clear and our minds able to think straight. Dammit, I knew what ‘Lendel was capable of where Staven was concerned! And he would not have been able to hide that obsession from a MindHealer! ‘Lendel made mistakes - the gods themselves know that. He should have thought before he acted; I’d been trying to get him to do that. We - the Heralds - accept mental evidence! All he had to do was ask for a hearing, and we’d have had the material we needed from his own mind to put the Leshara down. You made mistakes, yes, but you made them out of love. He needed help, asked you for it, and you tried to help him the only way anyone had ever taught you was right. And, gods, even Gala made mistakes!”
Her voice was harsh with tears, and with her own guilt, and she was not ashamed to let him hear it. “Van, Van, we’re only simple, fallible mortals - we aren’t saints, we aren’t angels - we fall on our faces and make errors and sometimes people die of them - sometimes people we love dearly - “
She choked on a sob, and bowed her head.
He freed a hand and touched her cheek hesitantly; his fingers were still snow-cold. She caught and held it, and looked back up into his eyes, seeing worse than grief there before he dropped them.
“You thought the world would be better with you out of it, is that it?”
He nodded, dumbly, and his hands trembled in hers.
“Did you stop to think how I would feel? You were ‘Lendel’s love. Didn’t you think I’d come to care for you at least a bit, if only for his sake?”
How was she to reach him - when she’d never been good with words? “I’ve buried him today. Did you think I’d be indifferent about burying you as well? What about Jaysen? I’d left him to watch you. How do you think he feeis right now about his carelessness? What do you think he’d have felt if you’d died? And - gods help us - what did you think Yfandes would do?”
I “I thought - I thought she’d find somebody better,” he faltered, his voice quavering a bit.
“She’d die, lad; Companions very seldom outlive their Chosen. And she Chose you. If you die, she dies; she’d probably pine herself to death, and she does not deserve that.”
He shrank into himself, pulling even farther away from her, and she cursed her clumsy words, her inability to tell him what she really meant without hurting him further. “Van - oh, hell - I’m not saying any of this the way I wanted to. Listen to me; you’re sick, you need to rest and get well. We’ll deal with this later, all right? Just - don’t take yourself out of this world right now, there are folks who’ll have holes in their lives if you go. And I’m one of them.”
He nodded; he didn’t look convinced, but now she had exhausted what little eloquence she possessed, and didn’t know what else to say to him.
So she tried one last tactic. Let me just keep him alive - if I can do that, maybe we can help him.
“Will you promise me, on your word of honor, that you won’t try to do yourself in again? If you will, I’ll trust you, and I won’t leave guards on your doors.”
He swallowed, pulled his hands out of hers, and whispered, haltingly, “I - promise. Word of honor.” He still wouldn’t look her in the face, but she trusted that sworn word.
She nodded. “Accepted. Now is there anything, anything at all, that I can do for you?” Maybe - “Need to talk?”
He shook his head, and she sensed his complete withdrawal, and cursed again. Dammit, just when I need Lance the most, he’s not here.
“Sure?” She persisted, even in the face of defeat; that was her nature. “Vanyel - Vanyel, you’re the only person I’ve got who knew ‘Lendel from the inside the way I did. If - if you need somebody to mourn with…”
He shook his head again, avoiding her eyes altogether, and she sighed, giving up. “If you change your mind-well, rest, lad. Get better. Call, if you need anything - mind or voice, either, I’ll hear you.”
He nodded slightly, and closed his eyes again, leaning back and turning his face to the wall. That face was as white as the pillows beneath it, and it made her hurt all over again to see that lost look of his. She waited for another response or a request of some kind, but he slipped right back into an uneasy, shallow slumber. Finally she eased off the bed, gathered up Andrel’s cloak from the chair, and left him alone.
Andrel arrived at sunset in response to her invitation to fetch his cloak and share food and thoughts. They’d had more than one intimate little supper in their lives, many of them in this very room, but none so gloom-ridden. Mardic and Donni had gone off to cautiously interview some of Vanyel’s circle of admirers, to see if there was someone else they could contact that might help to bring him out of this mental abyss.
Savil’s Hawkbrother masks on the wall behind Andrel’s left shoulder gazed at her from dispassionate and empty eyeholes. Candles flickered on the table between them.
Neither of them had much interest in food at the moment; both their minds were on the boy sleeping behind the closed door behind Savil’s chair. “What we need,” she told Andrel glumly, eating a dinner she did not taste, “is Lancir. We need his MindHealing; the boy’s pulling farther away from touching with every moment he’s awake, and I cannot get him to let me inside. He’s barricading himself again; a different kind of barricade than that old arrogance, but it’s there all the same. And Lance bloody would be out of touch right now.’’
He sighed, his breath making the candleflame flutter, and pushed his own food around on his plate with his fork. “I have to agree with you. Is there no chance you can get Lance back via Gate?’’
She shook her head, shoving her frustration back down out of her way. She’d already been over this with Jaysen. “Not without knowing where he is, and he’s not a strong enough Thought-senser to read a Broadcast-sending. And we don’t know what route he’s taking home; could be one of half a dozen. If something were wrong with Elspeth we could afford to send out half-a-dozen Heralds to look for him, but - Vanyel just is not that important.” Her tone turned acid. “Or so I’ve been told.”
Andrel frowned, and his eyebrows met. “He may become that important; I’m shielding him as much as I can, but his trauma is still leaking through. Half the trainees are depressed to the point of tears right now, Gifted Bardic, Healer, and Herald, and it’s all due to Vanyel’s leakage.”
“Well what do you expect?” she countered, letting him see her very real anger.
“You saw the strength and depth of his Gifts. Even with raw channels he’s Broad-sending without knowing it, and he has no more notion of how to shield than how to fly! And it’s not every day you’ve got one half of a lifebonded pair left after the other half suicides. If he were trained, he’d be leaking. But nobody else believes how strong he is; they all think I’m letting my affection for Tylendel magnify everything that was connected with him out of all proportion to reality.”
“Gods!” he looked up from his plate with the expression of a stunned sheep. “Vanyel and Tylendel - lifebonded?”
She nodded unhappily. “I’m pretty damned sure of it; what’s more, so are Mardic and Donni, and if anyone would recognize a bonding, it would be another bonded pair. I expected grief, mourning; the natural responses for a youngster who’s lost his first love under rotten bad circumstances - I did not expect to find the kind of gaping emotional wounds I saw before he started shutting me out today. I’ve never seen that depth of feeling before in anyone, Herald, or no, except Mardic and Donni. So tell me; what the hell do I do about a broken lifebond?”
He shook his head, obviously at a loss. “I can’t tell you; I don’t know. I don’t Heal minds, I Heal bodies. And I don’t know of anyone who Heals hearts.”
She sighed, and looked down at her congealing dinner. “That’s what I was afraid you’d tell me. I have more bad news; the relationship between them was one where ‘Lendel was the leader and Van the follower. Van had gotten totally dependent on ‘Lendel for all his emotional needs. I tried to warn ‘Lendel, but - “ She shrugged. “And to put the snow on the mountain, Van’s got some guilt he’s hiding from me, and all I can think is that he’s convinced he cursed ‘Lendel because he seduced Tylendel. Mind you, he didn’t; from all I know I’m positive the seduction, if seduction it was, was mutual, but - there it is.”
“Jaysen,” Andrel said positively.
She nodded. “Good bet, my friend. Jays has got all those Kleimar prejudices about same-sex pairings. He accepted ‘Lendel, but mostly after I rammed his prejudices right up in his face. But Vanyel? Vanyel wasn’t even a Herald-candidate when he and ‘Lendel paired. Jays hasn’t said a word, but you can bet on what he was thinking when he was keeping watch on him. Resentment that Van is alive and ‘Lendel dead would be the least of it.”
“And Vanyel picked it up,” Andrel said sadly.
“Probably.” She took a bite, found it catch in her throat, and gave up trying to eat, shoving the plate away. “From what I can tell, he’s sensitive enough to pick up things you’ve forgotten for years and do it right through your shielding. Ah, gods.”
She rested both elbows on the table, and covered her sore eyes with her hands. A moment later she felt one of Andrel’s hands stroking her hair, and dropped her own back on the table, giving him a good long look across the candleflames. His deeply green eyes were fixed on her face, reflecting a profound concern.
“And what about you?” he asked, barely above a whisper.
“I am trying to reach out to him,” she said, feeling old and tired and about ready to give up. “I think I’ve convinced myself that none of this was any more his fault than it was anyone else’s. I bloody well hope so, or he’s going to be getting knives in the gut from me, too. And he doesn’t deserve that. The rest - gods, I don’t know what to do.”
“That isn’t what I meant,” he replied, taking his hand away from her hair, and reaching for her wrist. “I want to know how you’re weathering this. Need a shoulder?”
“Want the truth?” She tensed all over, trying to keep from bawling like a little child. “Yes, I need a shoulder, and no, I am not taking this well. I want ‘Lendel back, Andy - he was my soul-son, and I loved him, and I want him back with me.”
Her voice cracked; she lost her veneer of calm, and just dissolved into tears. Andrel got up, gracefully, and without letting go of her wrist; he moved around the table, and pulled her to her feet, then led her over to the couch and gave her that shoulder she needed so badly.
The peaceful night rocked; Vanyel convulsed, wailing -
His cry sounded like something in its death agonies, and made Savil’s hair stand on end.
The room trembled; literally. The walls shook as Vanyel’s muscles spasmed.
His eyes were wide open, but saw nothing, and his pupils dilated with fear. He convulsed again, and the very foundation of the Palace rocked. The bed shook as if it were alive. His lute fell from the wall, landing with a sickening crack that surely meant it was broken past all repair; his armor-stand crashed over and scattered his equipment across the floor, and Savil was tossed from his bedside to the floor before she realized it.
She picked herself up off the floor beside his bed without thinking about safety or bruises, and flung herself at him again.
He thrashed beneath her, fighting her with a paranormal strength; he couldn’t know where he was or who she was. All she could read from him was terrible agony - and beneath the pain, confusion, panic, entrapment. She caught his wrists and tried to pinion them against the pillows; then tried to pin him down with the blankets. His chest arched against hers, he screamed, and the walls shook again.
Mardic lay in the corner behind her, quite unconscious; Donni had his head in her lap and she was trying to protect him from falling objects with her own body. Vanyel had thrown him against the wall when this nightmare - or whatever it was - had started, and Mardic had made the mistake of trying to touch his mind to wake him.
:Donni - : Savil used a moment of lull to Mindtouch her pupil, taking a tiny fragment of her attention from the attempt - attempt, for it wasn’t succeeding - to shield Vanyel, to get him under some kind of control. : - Donni, how’s Mardic?:
:He’s all right, just stunned,: came the reassuring reply. : - I can spare you something. Catch this, quick - :
The girl “threw” her a mental line, and began sending additional, sorely-needed energy down it as soon as Savil “caught” it.
It helped to keep Savil from blacking out as Vanyel lashed out with his mind, but that was about all.
Jaysen was coming on the run; Savil could Feel him reaching out to find out what the hell was going on, and Felt the panic in his mind when he realized they had a powerful Gifted trapped in a pain-loop and hallucination. He all but broke down the door, trying to get in, and flung himself into the affray without a second thought.
“Shield him, dammit,” he shouted, throwing himself across Vanyel’s legs, as the walls (but, thank the gods, not the foundations again) shook.
“I’m trying, “ she snapped back, giving up on the uneven struggle to pin Vanyel down, and settling for securing his arms. “He breaks them as fast as I get them up!”
Jaysen succeeded in getting Vanyel physically restrained where she, being lighter, had failed. He added his strength to Savil’s and Donni’s on the crumbling shields they were trying to get on the boy. But it wasn’t even stalemate; they were losing him to his own nightmares.
Andrel appeared. Savil didn’t even see or Sense him run in; he was just there all in an instant. But instead of flinging himself into the melee, he grabbed their arms and pulled both of them off the boy.
Then he reached down for something at his feet, and came up with a bucket of icy water. He doused the boy, bed and all, without a heartbeat of hesitation.
The convulsions stopped as Vanyel came abruptly awake.
He sat up - stared - then he suddenly went limp.
The room stopped shaking.
“Savil, get me a blanket,” Andrel ordered quietly. “Jays, help me get him out of that wet bed before he goes into shock, then get the bedding stripped before the mattress gets soaked.”
By the time Savil returned with the goosedown comforter from her bed, the two men had pulled the half-stunned boy from the tangled mess of water-soaked bedcoverings, and the bedding was piled on the floor. Andrel was carefully shaking the boy’s shoulders while Jaysen supported him.
Behind them, Mardic was groggily climbing to his knees, Donni steadying him, but the two of them waved Savil off when she made a half-step in their direction.
:.We’re all right,: Donni Mindspoke. ;I’II get Mardic into bed myself, and then I’ll come make up the bed in here again.:
Savil turned her attention back to the boy, knowing she could trust Donni to deal with the situation if she had said she could.
“Come on, Vanyel,” Andrel was saying, coaxingly. “Come on, lad, come back to us. Wake up, come out of it.”
Vanyel blinked, blinked again, and sense came back into his eyes. He looked about him, momentarily confused, then the destruction about him seemed to register on him. He closed his eyes, a soft, hardly audible moan coming from the back of his throat.
And for one instant, Savil was nearly flattened beneath an overwhelming load of blackest despair, terrible guilt, and a grief so heavy she felt her knees start to give way beneath the weight of it.
Then it was gone; absolutely cut off, and so completely that for a moment even she doubted that she had felt it.
But one look at Andrel and Jaysen convinced her otherwise; the former was deeply shaken, and the latter white-lipped.
She expected tenderness and concern from Andrel - but strangely enough, it was Jaysen who carefully got the boy into a chair, wrapped in the comforter; and from the chair back into the bed when Donni had stripped it of the wet coverings and remade it. It was Jaysen who stayed beside him, leaving Savil free to see to it that Mardic was truly all right. Savil wasn’t in a mood to ask questions about his apparent change of heart.
Mardic was fine, and relatively cheerful. “I’ll have a godsawful headache,” he told her; “Poor Van thought I was going to kill him, took me for an enemy in his dream. When he realized it was a dream, he pulled most of it - “
“Most of it?” Savil choked. “He flattened you, and he pulled most of it?”
“Near as I can tell.” Mardic put both hands to his temples and massaged a little. “Well when he pulled the blow, the energy overflowed into those raw channels and hurt him, and he went over the edge; couldn’t control anything. Then - I think - he lost his center and got lost in his own pain. Andrel had the right notion; physical shock is what gave him something to home in on.”
“But you are going to be all right?”
He gave her half a grin. “If you’ll let me get some sleep.”
Savil took the statement as an unsubtle request and made a hasty exit.
She got back just in time to see Andrel give Vanyel some kind of sedative to drink. But it was Jaysen who sat with the boy until Andrel’s sedative took effect. And it was Jaysen who righted the armor-stand, and picked up the broken-backed lute from the floor with a wince at seeing the fine instrument so ruined.
“I’ll see to getting this fixed, if it can be,” he said, when he saw Savil watching him before she knelt to put out the fire. They daren’t have a fire here while Vanyel was asleep, nor candles burning, either - not unless Andrel could do something to keep him from going into another fit.
“Jays, what am I going to do with him?” she asked, quietly, standing up with a wince as a pulled muscle in her back told her what a fool she’d been. He motioned that she should precede him out the door, and she half turned to see his face as she walked past him. “He’s sick with backlash, and he’s getting sicker, not better. His channels are all raw; you can’t Mindtouch him without doing that to him, throwing him into convulsions. That was what set all this off, Mardic trying to soothe him out of a bad dream. What am I going to do the next time he has a nightmare?”
Jaysen shrugged helplessly, and shut the door behind her. She made a circuit of the common room, setting candles erect and lighting them. “If you don’t know, be damned if I do. Andy, can we keep him sedated long enough to heal?’’
Andrel grimaced, looking as if he’d swallowed something sour. “With any other patient I’d tell you where to put that question - what I just gave the boy was argonel.”
Jaysen and Savil both started with surprise, and in Savil’s case the surprise was not unmixed with shock. “Great good gods, Andy!”
“Ease up; he’s safe enough,” Andrel interrupted her, throwing himself down on the couch with his usual lack of concern for the furniture. He groaned, stretched, and then raised an eyebrow at the Seneschal’s Herald. “Jaysen, may I mention that you have lovely legs?”
Jaysen, who was attired only in shirt and hose and only just now really realized this, blushed a furious scarlet, but refused to be distracted. “Argonel, Andy - “ he began, taking a chair and crossing his legs primly.
“He’s burning it off at a respectable rate, or I wouldn’t have given it to him,” Andrel replied. “The benefit of it is that it’s a muscle relaxant and a sedative; he won’t be able to go into convulsions again even if you Mindtouch him. I won’t speak for him tossing the Palace around, but he won’t go into physical convulsions. As for him healing, well that depends entirely on what you mean.”
Savil took another chair, flopping down into it with a tired thud as loud as the one Andrel had made connecting with the couch cushions.
“Physically,” she said, flatly. “Pure physical healing. Backlash symptoms, exhaustion, blood loss. I’ll worry about raw channels later.”
“Yes, I can keep him sedated long enough for the effects of backlash to wear off, for his physical energy to recover and for him to replace the blood he lost. I can combine the argonel with jervain, and dull out all the Gift-senses enough so that they aren’t so sensitive. That might let the channels heal. I don’t know for sure; I’ve never seen nor read of anything like this, Gifts being blasted open like his were.”
“Mentally?” Jaysen prodded, frowning. “Emotionally?”
“At this point I don’t think even Lance can help him,” Andrel replied sadly. “You both felt - “
Jaysen nodded, ruefully. “That’s - I think perhaps I picked up something more than either of you,” he said, a shadow of guilt crossing his face. “He - he thinks that everything he touches is doomed, cursed. Because of - what he and ‘Lendel were. And I know exactly where he got that particularly poisonous little thought. Only it isn’t a ‘little thought’ anymore. It’s as much an obsession as Tylendel’s was.”
He hung his head, and wouldn’t look at her. “I never thought - “ he faltered. “I never guessed - I thought he was just a user - “
Savil was not feeling charitable just now. “Damn right, you never thought,” she snapped. “You never thought at all! You and your damned provincial - “
“Savil,” Andrel said, warningly, his head turned slightly to the side, nodding at the door to Vanyel’s room.
She subsided. If she got angry, Van might pick it up; it might set him off again. “Sorry, Jays,” she finally said grudgingly, not feeling sorry at all.
“At least you didn’t send somebody out to cut their wrists,” he answered unhappily.
She winced. “No - I just - hell, this isn’t getting us anywhere. Andy, you think you can get him physically recovered, right?”
Candlelight reflected in his eyes, which had gone inward-looking. “I would say yes, cautiously.”
“Let’s worry about that, then, for a couple of days. I have a germ of an idea, but whether or not I can pull it off is going to depend very strongly on whether or not you can get Vanyel fit to ride.’’
“If I can’t get him to that point in the next couple of weeks or so, it’s never going to happen,” Andrel replied.
“What’s the chance we can do something about the way he’s barricading himself - or even help him get some of his power under his own control?’’
He pondered her question while the fire crackled beside him. “Why don’t you ask your Companions? He may be able to barricade against you, but I doubt he can do much against Yfandes.”
She pressed her hand to her eyes and shook her head. “Gods, why in hell didn’t I think of that?” And at the same time, Mindsent :Kellan?: knowing that Jaysen was doing the same with Felar.
-.Here,: came the reply, immediately.
She sent their dilemma in a complicated thought-burst, and waited while Kellan digested the information, and possibly conferred with Felar and Yfandes.
:Yfandes says that the bonding is weak,: came the reply, flavored with the acid tang of concern. :It fades in and out - and it hurts the boy, sometimes, to speak with her.:
:Can we do anything about that?: Jaysen fell into the rapport, and if there was anything other than genuine distress there on Vanyel’s behalf, Savil couldn’t feel it. Through him, she could Hear Felar.
:Physical contact,: Felar said shortly.
Kellan agreed. :As much as possible. That is what strengthens the bonding; now she cannot help him to get control of what he does.:
:And if the bond is strengthened?: Jaysen asked.
:Perhaps,: said Felar.
:A hope,: added Kellan.
Jaysen looked into Savil’s eyes from across the room, and nodded, a little grimly. At this point they would accept even a hope, however tenuous.
Nothing hurt much, now, not since he’d drunk that fiery stuff the red-haired Healer had given him. Those places inside him, the mind-things, that had burned so - they still burned, but remotely, as if the hurting belonged to somebody else. He couldn’t concentrate on much of anything for very long, and none of it really seemed to matter.
Only the empty place in him was pretty much the same; only that continued to ache in a way the Healer’s potions couldn’t seem to touch. The place where Tylendel had been - and now -
But the potions let him sleep, a sleep without dreams. And he’d had the snow-dreams again - that was what had thrown him into that fit.
Oh, gods - he’d thought - he’d thought they’d never come again. He’d thought ‘Lendel had driven them away.
But they weren’t the dreams about being walled in by ice, so maybe ‘Lendel had -
Maybe not. He couldn’t tell. It was the other dream, anyway. Clear, vivid as no other dream he’d dreamed had ever been, and much more detailed than the last time he’d had it.
He’d been in a canyon, a narrow mountain pass with walls that were peculiarly smooth. He’d known, in the dream, that this was no real pass - that this passage had been created, cut armlength by armlength, by magic.
He’d known, too, that the magic had been wrong, skewed. It had an aura of pain and death about it, as if every thumblength of that canyon had been paid for in spilled blood.
It had been night; cloudy, with a smell of snow on the wind. Where he stood the canyon had narrowed momentarily, choked by avalanches on either side. He’d been very cold, despite the heavy weight of a fur cloak on his shoulders; his feet had been like blocks of the ice that edged the canyon walls.
He had felt a feeling of grim satisfaction, when he’d seen that at this one point the passage was wide enough for two men, but no more. And he knew that he had somehow caused those blockages, to create a place where one man could, conceivably, hold off an army.
Because an army was what was coming down that canyon.
He’d sent for help, sent Yfandes and Tylendel -
Tylendel? But Tylendel was dead -
- but he’d also known that help was unlikely to arrive in time.
He had waited until they were almost on him, suspecting nothing, and knowing that they could not see him yet because he willed it so. Then he had raised his right hand high over his head, and a mage-light had flared on it; so bright that the front ranks of that terrible army winced back, and their shadows fell black as the heart of night on the snow behind them. He had said nothing; nothing needed to be said. He barred the way; that was all the challenge required.
They were heavily armored, those fighters; armor of some dull, black stuff, and helms of the same. They carried the weight of that armor as easily as Vanyel wore his own white fur cloak. They bore unornamented round shields, again of the same dull, black material, and carried long broadswords. For the rest, what could be seen of their clothing under the armor and their cloaks over it, they were a motley lot. But they moved with a kind of sensitivity to the presence of the next-in-line that had told Vanyel in the dream that they had been drilled together by a hand more merciless than ever Jervis had been.
They stared at him, and none of them moved for a very long time -
Until the front ranks parted, and the wizard stepped through.
Wizard he was, and no doubt; Vanyel could feel the Power heavy within him. But it was Power of the same kind as that which had cut this canyon; paid for in agony. And when it was gone, there would be no more until the wizard could torture and kill again. Vanyel had all the power of life itself behind him; the power of the sleeping earth, of the living forest -
He spread his arms, and the life-energy flowed from him, creating a barricade across the valley -
- like the barricade across his heart -
- and a shield behind which he could shelter. He faced the wizard, head held high, defiance in the slightest movement, daring him to try and pass.
But the ranks of the fighters parted again, and the first wizard was joined by a second, and a third. And Vanyel felt his heart sinking, seeing his own death sentence written in those three-to-one odds.
Still, he had stood his ground -
Until Mardic touched his mind.
It had hurt, that touch; salt on raw flesh. He’d interpreted it as an attack of the wizards, and had struck back, struck to kill, and only as he’d made his strike had realized that -
- a dream, oh, gods - it’s a dream, it isn’t real, and that’s Mardic -
And had tried to pull the blow; had pulled the blow, but that sent the aborted power coursing back down places that burned in agony when it touched them. And he’d tried to stop the flow, but that had only twisted things up inside him, until he was a thrashing knot of anguish and he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. It all hurt, everything hurt, everything burned, and he was trapped in the pain, in the torment, crying out and knowing no one could hear him, and lost - he couldn’t feel his body anymore, couldn’t hear or see; he was foundering in a sea of agony -
Then a shock - like being struck -
He found himself gasping for breath, frozen to his teeth, but back in a normal body that hurt in a normal way.
Then he had blacked out for a moment; came to with the Healer shaking him, talking to him.
He was soaking wet, and shivering.
Mardic? What about Mardic?
The Herald Jaysen was holding him upright, more than half supporting him -
Tylendel, dead, crumpled at Jaysen’s feet. My fault, oh, gods, my fault -
The grieving came down on him, full force; but somewhere at the back of his mind he knew that they were feeling what he was feeling and he clamped down on it - closed that line off -
In the stunned, mental silence he heard Jaysen’s anguished thoughts, as clearly and intimately as if he was speaking them into Vanyel’s ear.
:Gods - oh, gods, I didn’t know, I didn’t guess - I thought he was playing with the boy, I thought he was - oh, gods, what have I done?:
He shuddered away from the unwanted sympathy, from the mind-words that were like acid in his wounds, and blocked that line just as ruthlessly.
Then had come the potions - and the numbness. The blessed unfeeling. He drifted, nothing to hold him, not even his worry for Mardic. It was pitchy dark, they hadn’t left a single flame in the room, which under the circumstances was probably wise. Scraps of what he now knew were thoughts drifted over to him; now Savil’s mind-voice, now Jaysen’s (dark with guilt, and Vanyel wondered why), now Mardic’s.
If he had been on his feet, he would have staggered with relief at hearing that last. I didn’t kill him - thank the gods, I didn’t kill him.
He drifted farther, until he couldn’t hear anything anymore. Until he lost even his own thoughts. Until there was nothing left but sleep, and the sorrow that never, ever left him.
Savil stood beside the garden door with one hand on the frame, and prayed. She didn’t pray often; most Heralds didn’t. Praying usually meant asking for something - and the kind of person that became a Herald tended to be the kind that didn’t look outside of himself for help until the last hope had been exhausted.
For Savil, at least, it had gotten to that point.
Just beyond the window, bundled in quilts and blankets and half-lying against Yfandes’ side, Vanyel dozed in the sun, still kept in a sleepy half-daze by Andrel’s potions. Jaysen had carried him out there, with his own mind so tightly shielded against leaking his thoughts that Savil fair Saw him quivering under the strain. Jaysen would be back for the boy in another two candlemarks, which was all Andrel would allow in this cold. This was the third day of the routine; there had been no real repetition of the crisis that had precipitated it, but Savil more than half expected one every night.
Vanyel sighed in sleep, and one arm stole out of the blankets to circle around Yfandes’ neck. The Companion nuzzled his ear, and instead of pulling away, he cuddled closer to her.
But before Savil had a chance to really take in this first, positive sign that the Herald-Companion bond was taking root in the boy, someone pounded on her outer door. She half-turned, and heard Donni pattering across the common room to answer it. There was a murmur too indistinct to make but.
The voice from outside the door strengthened. “Please, I’m Van’s sister - let me at least talk to my aunt - “
Savil started, and strode quickly across Vanyel’s room, pulling open the door. There could only be one of Vanyel’s sisters likely to show up on her doorstep at this point, the one that had fostered out in hopes of a career in the Guard.
“Let her in, Donni,” Savil said - and blinked in surprise. The girl in the doorway could have been herself at seventeen or eighteen.
God help her - no wonder she went for the Guard, Savil thought irrelevantly. She’s got that damned Ashkevron nose.
Evidently the same thought was running through the girl’s mind. “You must be my Aunt Savil,” she said forthrightly, standing at what was almost “attention” in the doorway. “You have the nose. I’m Lissa. Can I help?”
Savil decided that she liked this blunt girl. “Perhaps, I don’t know yet,” she replied. “First, Lissa, come in and tell me what you’ve heard.”
Lissa turned away from the garden door with a shudder. “He looks like he’s been dragged through the nine hells facedown,” she said.
“And at that he looks better than he did three days ago,” Savil replied. She would have said more, but there was another pounding on the suite door and a voice she knew only too well rumbled angrily when Donni answered it.
“Like bloody hell she’s too busy,” Lord Withen Ashkevron snarled. “I didn’t bloody ride my best horse to foundering to be put off with a’too damned busy!’ Now where in hell is she?”
Savil, with Lissa at her side, strode across to the door, flung it open, and stood facing Withen with her back poker-straight, feet slightly apart, arms crossed over her chest.
“What do you want, Withen?” she asked flatly, narrowing her eyes in mingled annoyance and apprehension.
“What the hell do you think I want?” he growled, ignoring Lissa and Donni as if they weren’t there, placing his fists on his hips, and taking an aggressive, wide-legged stance. “I want to know what the hell you’ve been doing with the boy I sent you! I sent him down here for you to make a man out of him, not turn him into a perverted little catamite!” His face darkened and his voice rose with every word. “I - “
“I think that’s more than enough, Withen,” she snapped, cutting him off before he could build up to whatever climax he had in mind. “I, I, I - dammit, you blustering peabrain, is that all you ever think of? Yourself? Vanyel almost died four days ago, he almost died again three days ago, and he could die or go mad in the next candlemark, and all you can think of is that he did something your back-country prejudices don’t approve of! Gods above and below, you can’i even call him by his bloody name, just ‘the boy’!”
She advanced on him with such anger in her face that he actually fell back a pace, alarm and surprise chasing themselves across his eyes. Lissa moved with her, and stood beside her with every muscle tensed, and her fists clenched into hard knots.
“You come storming in here when we’ve maybe - maybe - got him stable, without so much as a ‘please’ or a ‘may I,’ you don’t even ask if he’s in any shape to put two words together in a sensible fashion! Oh, no, all you can do is scream that I ‘ve made him into a catamite when you sent him to be made into a man. A man!” She laughed, a harsh cawing sound that clawed its way up out of her throat. “My gods - what the hell did you think he was? Tell me, Withcn, what kind of a man would send his son into strange hands just because the poor thing didn’t happen to fit his image of masculinity?”
Savil ran out of things to say - but Lissa hadn’t.
“What kind of a man would let a brutal bully break his son’s arm for no damned reason?” the girl snarled. “What kind of a man would drive his son into becoming an emotional eunuch because every damned time the boy looked for a little bit of paternal love he got slapped in the face? What kind of a man would take anyone’s word over his son’s with no cause to ever think the boy was a liar?’’ Lissa faced down her father as if he had become her enemy. “You tell me, Father! What right do you have to demand anything of him? What did you ever give him but scorn? When did you ever give him a single thing he really needed or wanted? When did you ever tell him he’d done well? When did you ever say you loved him?”
Withen backed up another two paces, his back against the wall beside the door, his expression that of someone who has just been poleaxed.
Savil found her tongue again. “A man - may all the gods give you what you deserve, you fathead! What kind of a man would care more for his own reputation than his son’s life?’’ She was backing him into the corner now, unleashing on Withen all the pain and frustration and anger she’d been keeping bottled up inside her over the past week. He had gone pale - and started to try to say something, but she cut him off.
“Let me tell you this, Withen,” she hissed. “Everything that Vanyel’s become, you had a hand in making - and mostly because you didn’t want a son, you just wanted a little toy copy of yourself to parade around so that people could congratulate you on your bedroom prowess. You helped make him what he is - gave him a set of values so distorted it’s a wonder he even recognized love when he saw it, and taught him that he had to keep everything he felt secret because adults couldn’t be trusted. And now I have one boy dead, and one a hair from dying, and all you care about is that somebody might think you weren’t manly enough to father manly sons! Oh, get out of here, get out of my sight - “
She turned away from him before he could see the tears in her eyes. Lissa put a steadying hand on her shoulder and glared at her father as if she would be perfectly happy to take a piece out of him if he said one wrong word.
“S-s-savil - I - I - “ he stammered. “They said - but I didn’t believe - is Vanyel - “
“One wrong word, one wrong move, and he will die, Withen,” she said flatly, her eyes shut tightly as she reestablished control over herself. “One wrong thought almost killed him. He slit his wrists because he discovered that someone he trusted believed that his love was the reason Tylendel died. Are you pleased with what you made? It was certainly the honorable thing for him to do, wasn’t it?”
“I - I - “
“I am very gratified to be able to tell you that he isn’t yours anymore, Withen, he’s mine. He’s been Chosen - if he lives that long, he’ll be a Herald-trainee, and as such, he is my charge. You’ve forfeited any claim on him. So you can have what you’ve always wanted - little Mekeal can be your heir-designate, and you can wash your hands of Vanyel with a clear conscience.”
Withen flinched at her pitilessly accurate words, and seemed to almost shrink in size.
“Savil - I didn’t mean - I didn’t want - “
“You didn’t?” She raised an ironic eyebrow.
He winced. “Savil, can I - see him? I won’t hurt him, I - dammit, he’s still my son!”
“Lissa, do you think we should?”
Lissa looked at her father as one looks at a not-particularly-trustworthy stranger. “I don’t know that he can behave himself.’’
Withen’s face darkened. “You ungrateful little - “
Lissa shrugged, and said to Savil, “See what I mean?”
Savil nodded. “I see - but he has a point. Maybe he ought to see his handiwork.” She nodded toward the door to Vanyel’s room. “Follow me, Withen. And keep a rein on that mouth of yours, or I’ll have you thrown out.”
He stopped dead at the garden door, and pressed his hands and face against the glass in stunned disbelief. “My gods - “ he gasped. “They said - but I didn’t believe them. Savil, I’ve seen men dead a week that looked better than that!”
Lissa snorted. Savil pushed him away from the door impatiently, and opened it, flinching a bit as the cold air hit her. She looked back at him; he’d made no move to follow. “Are you coming, or not?” she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to startle Vanyel.
He swallowed, his own face set and very white, and followed her with slow, hesitant steps. She walked quickly to the patch of sheltered, sun-gilded brown grass where the boy was lying with Yfandes; he hadn’t moved since she’d left. He didn’t seem to notice she was there as she knelt in the harsh, dry grass that prickled her knees through the cloth of her breeches and hose.
“Van - Van, wake up a little, can you?” she said softly, not touching him at all, either with hand or mind. “Van?”
He moved his head a little, and blinked in a kind of half-dazed parody of sleepiness. “A-aunt?” he murmured.
“Your father’s here - Withen - he wants to see you. Vanyel, he can’t take you home, he has no power over you now that you’re Chosen. You don’t have to see him if you don’t want to.”
Vanyel blinked again, showing a little more alertness. “N-no. S’all right. ‘Fandes says s’all right; says I should.”
Savil rose quickly and returned to where Withen waited uncertainly on the worn path, halfway between the door and where the boy lay. “Go ahead,” she said roughly. “Don’t raise your voice, and speak slowly. We’ve got him pretty heavily drugged, so keep that in mind. You might trigger more than you want to hear if you aren’t careful.”
She followed a few steps behind him, with Lissa behind her, and remained within earshot as he knelt heavily in the dry grass and started to reach out to touch Vanyel’s shoulder. She very nearly snapped at him, but Vanyel roused a bit more, and waved the blunt fingers away.
“Vanyel - “ the man said, seeming at a complete loss for words. “Vanyel, I - I heard you were sick - “
Vanyel gave a pitiful little croak of a laugh. “You h-heard I was playin’ ewe t’ ‘Lenden’s ram, y’mean. Don’ lie t’ me, Father. You lied t’ me all m’life an’ I couldn’ prove it, but I know when people lie t’me now.”
Withen flushed, but Vanyel wasn’t through yet.
“Y’re thinkin’ now that - I - I’m perv’rt’d, unclean or somethin’, an’ that I - I’m just bad an’ ungrateful an’ I n-never p-p-pleased you an’ - dammit, all I ev’ wanted was f’r you t’ tell me I did somethin’ right! Just once, Father, j-j-just one time! An’ all you ever d-d-did was let J-J-Jervis knock me flat, an’ then kick me y’rself! ‘Lendel loved me, an’ I loved him an’ you can stop thinkin’ those - god - damned - rotten - things - ‘‘
Withen pulled back and started to his feet - opened his mouth like he was about to roar at his son -
But that was as far as he got. Vanyel’s eyes blazed; his face went masklike with rage. And before Withen could utter a single syllable, Vanyel surged up out of his cocoon of blankets and knocked Withen head over heels into the bushes with the untrained, half-drugged power of his mind alone.
Withen struggled up. Vanyel knocked him flat. Lissa made as if to go to one or the other of them, but Savil caught her arm.
“Look at Yfandes,” she said. “She’s calm, she hasn’t even moved. Let them have this out. Between us I think Yfandes and I could keep the lad from killing his father, but that isn’t what he wants to do.”
Twice more Withen tried to get his feet, and twice more Vanyel flung him back. He was crying now, silent, unnoticed tears streaking his white cheeks. “How’s it feel, Father? Am I strong enough now? How’s it feel t’ get knocked down an’ stepped on by somethin’ you can’t reason with an’ can’t fight? You happy? I’m as big a bully as J-J-Jervis now - does that make you bloody happy?”
Withen’s mouth worked, but no sound came out of it.
Vanyel stared at him, then the angry light faded from his eyes and was replaced by a disgusted bitterness. “It doesn’t make me happy, Father,” he said, quietly, and clearly; the last of the drug-haze gone from his speech. “Knowing I can do this to you just makes me sick. Nothing makes me happy anymore. Nothing ever will again.”
He sank back down to the ground, pulled his blankets around himself, and turned his face into Yfandes’ shoulder. “Go away, Father,” he said, voice muffled. “Just go away.’’
Withen got slowly and awkwardly to his feet. He stood; shaken and pale, looking down at his son for a long time.
“Would it make any difference if I said I was sorry?” he asked, finally; from the bewildered expression on his face, acutely troubled - and more than that, vaguely aware that he had just had his entire world knocked head-over-heels, and was entirely uncertain of what to do or say or even be next.
“Maybe - someday,” came the voice, thickened with tears. “Not now. Go away, Father. Please - leave me alone.”
Dear Withen: I think you are right for once in your life. The boy is not a boy anymore. He never was the boy you thought he was. If you can adapt yourself to treating him as an adult and an acquaintance rather than your offspring, I think you can come to some kind of a reconciliation with him eventually.
“Savil?”
Savil looked up. Mardic peeked around Savil’s half-open door, uncertainty in his very posture.
Huh. I’m getting better at reading people.
She gave a quick glance out her window. Vanyel was sitting on the bench just outside it, talking with Lissa, Yfandes hovering over both of them.
Bless the child; I don’t know what I’d do without her.
For a moment she forgot Mardic; a terrible weariness bowed down her shoulders like a too-heavy cloak.
Gods. What am I going to do? He’s not getting better, just a little stronger. He keeps trying to make me or Liss into a substitute for ‘Lendel, into someone else to follow. I can’t let him do that. It ‘II just make things ultimately worse. But when we try and push him into standing on his own feet, he goes into a sulk. She sighed. It makes me so angry at him that I want to slap him into next week. And he’s had too much of that already. He doesn’t really deserve it, either. Hellfires, those sulks are the closest he’s ever gotten to normal behavior! Oh, gods -
Mardic cleared his throat, and she jumped. “I’m sorry, lad, I’m woolgathering. Must be getting old. Come on in.”
He edged into the room, crabwise. “Savil, Donni and I want to ask you something,” he faltered, hands behind his back, rubbing his left foot against his right ankle. “We - Savil, you’re the best there is, but - Vanyel needs you more than we do.”
“Gods,” she sighed, rubbing her right temple. “I have been shorting you two - I am sorry - “
“No, really, we don’t mind,” Donni interrupted, poking her curly head past the edge of the door just behind Mardic’s shoulder.
“I was wondering when you’d put in your silver-worth,” Savil replied.
“We do come as a set,” she pointed out. “No, Savil, you haven’t been shorting us. It’s more that we’re afraid you’re going to split yourself in half, trying to do too many things. Vanyel needs you; we’ve finally got what we needed from you - there wasn’t anybody else likely to be able to teach us to work in concert, but look - “
Mardic moved farther into the room; Donni stayed by the door. They reached out to one another, arms extended, and hands not quite touching, and -
Where there had been two auras there was now one; a golden-green flow over and around them that was seamless - and considerably more than either aura had been alone. Savil blinked in surprise. “Just when did you two start to do that?” she asked.
“The night - when we had to get the Temple open,” Mardic supplied. “When we had to get the arrow up, and then even more when we meshed in the Healing-meld. That’s when what you’d been showing us sort of fell into place. So, well, now any Herald-Mage could teach us, and really, given what we do together, it probably ought to be Jaysen, or Lancir. But Jaysen hasn’t got anyone right now.’’
“Piffle. You’d make a three-hour tale of a limerick,” Donni sniffed. “Savil, we asked Jaysen; he said he’d take us if you allow it.’’
Savil put down her pen, and closed her gaping mouth. “I think I may kiss you both,” she replied, as Donni gave Mardic an “I told you so” grin. “I was trying to think of a way to get you another mentor and coming up blank because I ‘m the only one who knows how to teach concert work. Bless you, loves.”
She rose and took both of them in her arms; they returned the embrace; their support as much mental as physical.
“Savil,” Donni said quietly, as she released them with real reluctance. “What are you going to do with Vanyel? He’s - he’s still so broken - and everything here has just got to keep reminding him of ‘Lendel. It’s too bad you can’t take him somewhere really different.”
“Gods, that’s only too true,” she replied.
- really different - gods - oh, gods, thank you for bright little proteges!
“Donni,” she said slowly, “I think you may just have found my answer for me. Now I’m even more grateful to you for finding yourselves a new teacher.’’
“You’ve got an idea?”
Savil nodded. “And kill two birds with one stone. Those things the Leshara had brought in - they had to be from the Pelagirs, just like what ‘Lendel conjured in retribution. I’d have had to go out there anyway, to find out who’s been tampering. So - what I’m going to do is take Vanyel there to some friends of mine, the Hawkbrothers. They’re self-appointed guardians of the Pelagirs, so they should be told if there’s been a mage tampering with their creatures. And they follow a different discipline; maybe they can help Van. And if they can’t, I know they can at least contain him.”
“But you really think they can help him?” Donni asked hopefully.
“Well, I can’t; I know for a fact that Starwind is better than I am. Besides, if we keep Van drugged much longer, Andrel is afraid he’ll become addicted, but if we take him off - “
“He could wreck the Palace.” Mardic nodded solemnly. “When are you taking him?”
“When - within the next few days, I think. The sooner the better.” She looked over his head, to the Wingsister talisman on her wall. “The only problem is that to find Starwind k’Treva and Moondance k’Treva I’ll have to go to them - because they don’t ever come out of the Pelagirs. That means two things. I’ll have to build a Gate, and I’ll have to hope that I still know how to find them.”
“Gods, I hate Gating,” Savil muttered to Andrel, squinting against the glare of sun on snow as she scanned the sky for even a hint of cloud.
“Why? Other than the recent rotten associations - “
“It’s damned dangerous at the best of times. It plays fast and loose with local weather systems, for one thing; it’s a spell that sets up a local energy field, a kind that disrupts any kind of high-energy weather pattern that’s around it. Usually for the worse.” She closed her eyes, centered and grounded, and extended her Mage-Gift sense up and out, looking farther afield for anything that might move in while she had the Gate up. To her vast relief there didn’t seem to be anything of consequence anywhere nearby; the only energy-patterns she could read were a few rising air currents over warm spots, too small to be any hazard.
She sighed. “Well, the weather’s not going to cause any problems. How was the lad?”
“Drugged to his teeth, and I would stake my arm that he won’t be able to count to one before some time tonight. And I am damned glad you told me that you were planning on Gating out of here.” Andrel tucked his long, sensitive hands inside his cloak, and peered across the open Field through the sunlight. “Since it was Gate-energy that blew his channels open - “
“Probably,” Savil interrupted.
“All right, probably blew his channels open - he’s going to be doubly sensitive to it for the rest of his life. He’ll likely know when someone’s opening a Gate within a league of him. And actually going through one may touch off another fit. Which is why - “
“ - you drugged him to the teeth. I have no objection; it’s a little awkward, but that’s why we have the kind of saddles for our Companions that we do.”
They crunched their way across Companion’s Field, now covered with the first snowfall of the season. Savil repeated a quieting exercise for every step she made, for she knew she needed to establish absolute calm within herself; she would be Gating to her absolute physical limits (in terms of the distance she planned to cover) and that would take every reserve she had.
In light of that, she had turned everything (other than establishing the Gate itself) over to the hands of others. Mardic and Donni had done all her packing, Lissa had taken care of Vanyel’s, and Lissa had taken charge of the boy once Andrel was finished with him. They were all waiting at the Grove Temple at this very moment.
“So why else don’t you like Gating?” Andrel asked, while the Field around them glowed under the sun.
“Because when I get there, I’m going to be pretty damned worthless,” she replied dryly, “And I’d better hope the Talisman performs the way Starwind claimed it was supposed to, or we’ll be a pretty pathetically helpless pair, Vanyel and I.”
“Why don’t you do what Tylendel did, use someone else’s energy?”
“Because I don’t really know what he did,” she said, after a long pause that was punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps breaking through the light crust of snow. “None of us do. That may be why we ended up feeding the energy back through poor Van instead of grounding and dissipating it. I personally do not care to take the chance of doing that to another living soul and neither do any of the others. Vanyel lived through it; someone else might not. And it may well be that you have to have a lifebound pair to carry it off at all. So,” she shrugged, “we do this the hard way, and I fall on my nose on the other side.”
They entered the Grove, the leafless trees making a lacework of dark branches against the bright blue sky.
The peace of the Grove never left it, no matter what the season was. That was one reason why Savil had chosen to set up the Gate here. The other was that it was the safest place on the Palace grounds that she could put a Gate; no one but Heralds ever came here without invitation. There should be no accidents caused by a stranger wandering by at the wrong moment.
The group waiting by the Temple, which looked today as if it had been newly-made of the same pure snow that covered the ground around it, was a small one. Jaysen, Donni and Mardic, and Lissa. There were only two Companions there; Kellan and Yfandes. Companions tended to avoid the Grove except when a Herald died. Vanyel was slumped over in Yfandes’ saddle, wrapped in the warmest cloak Savil could find and strapped down securely enough that his Companion could fight or flee without losing him.
Avert - Savil thought, a little superstitiously. Let there be no reason for her to have to fight. We’ve had enough bad fortune without that.
She went first to his side; his hands had been loosely tied together at the wrist and the bindings were hooked over the pommel of the saddle. The stirrup-irons were gone, probably stored in one of the packs bundled behind his saddle; the stirrup-leathers had been turned into straps binding his calves to the saddle itself. He was belted twice at the waist; once to the pommel, once to the high cantle, using rings on the saddle meant for exactly that purpose. He was not going to come off.
Andrel reached her side; he reached up and pried open one of Vanyel’s eyelids. The boy didn’t react at all, and his pupils were mere pinpoints. The Healer’s eye unfocused for a moment as he “read” the boy; then he nodded with satisfaction.
“He should be all right, Savil. No more drugs, though, after this. Not even if those friends of yours - “
Savil shook her head. “They don’t like this kind of drug. Not for any reason. Drugs like you’ve been giving him are too easy to abuse.”
“I don’t like them either, but there are times you’ve got no other choice, and this was one of them.” Andrel touched the boy’s hand; his green eyes darkened as he brooded for a moment. “Gods. I hope you’re right about these people. His channels haven’t healed at all, not really.”
“If they can’t help us, no one can.” Savil turned her back on her semi-conscious charge and faced the door of the Temple, and put herself into the right mindset to invoke her spell.
To build a Gate -
It was the most personal of spells. Only one person could build a Gate, because only one mind could direct the energy needed to build it. The spell-wielder had to have a very exact notion of where the Gate was to exit, and no two people ever had precisely the same mental image of a place. In any event, only Savil had ever been in the k’Treva territory of the Pelagirs. She couldn’t be “fed” by another Herald-Mage, since she would need every bit of her attention for the Gate itself and would have none to spare to channel incoming energy. Lastly, because the energy had to be so intimately directed, it could come from only one place -
From within the builder of the Gate. Or - perhaps - one soul-bound to the builder of the Gate? A lifebond was at such a deep level that it wasn’t conscious, so perhaps that was why Tylendel had succeeded in using Vanyel as his source of energy.
The kind of power needed to build a Gate was the kind that could be stored, could be planned for. But like a vessel that could only hold so much liquid, a mage could only hold so much energy within himself. Savil had prepared for this; she could replenish herself within a day when the spell was completed and the Gate dismissed. But for that critical period of twenty-four candlemarks she would be exhausted - physically, mentally, and magically.
No time to think of that. Get to it, woman. First, the Portal, then the Weaving.
The Temple door had been used so many times before as one end of a Gate that it needed no special preparation. She needed only to - reach -
She raised her hands, closed her eyes, and centered herself so exactly that everything about her vanished from her attention. There was only the power within her, and the place where the Gate would begin.
I call upon the Portal -
She molded the power into a frame upon the physical frame of the doorway; building it layer upon layer until it was strong enough to act as an anchor to hold this place when she warped space back upon itself.
Then she began spinning out threads of energy from the framework; they drifted outward, seeking.
This is the place, she told them, silently willing them to find the real-world counterpart of the image in her mind. Where the rocks are so and the trees grow thus and the feel of the earth is in this manner -
They spun out, longer, finer, more attenuated. When they weakened, she fed them from within herself, spinning her own substance out and feeling it drawn out of her.
Now she was losing strength; it felt exactly as if she were bleeding from an open wound. And the power was not merely draining from her anymore, it was being pulled from her by the Gate itself. This was the point of greatest danger for a Herald-Mage; she was having to fight the Gate to keep from being drained right down to unconsciousness.
Then one of those questing power-threads caught on something, out beyond the farthest range of her sensing; another followed -
There was a silent explosion of light that she could see even through her closed lids, and the Gate Wove itself in an instant into a temporary, but stable, whole.
She dropped her hands, opened her eyes, and swayed with uttermost exhaustion; Kellan was there beside her in time for her to catch the pommel of her saddle to keep from falling.
The door of the Temple was no longer within the doorframe. Instead, the white marble - glowing now, even in the bright sunlight - framed a strange and twisted bit of landscape.
“That’s where you’re going?” Jaysen said doubtfully, looking at the weird shapes of rock, snow and sand that lay beyond the portal. It was snowing there, from black, lowering clouds; fat flakes drifting down through still, dark air. Savil nodded.
“That’s it; that’s the edge of the Pelagirs near Star-wind’s territory. The other end is a cave entrance, so we’ll have some shelter on the other side until Starwind and Moondance get there.”
“And if they don’t?” Jaysen asked. “Savil, I don’t like to think of you two alone out in a place like that. The boy is next to useless, and you’re exhausted.”
“Jays, it’s quite possible that they’d take one look at you and kill you if they didn’t see me right there with you,” she said, clinging to the saddle and trying to muster enough strength to climb into it. “They’re unbelievably territorial and secretive, and for good reasons - think for a minute, will you? They have to have known someone was tampering, stealing creatures they thought safely locked up. If they see a stranger and Sense he’s Mage-Gifted, they’re likely to strike first and ask questions of the corpse. And I mean that literally. I’m taking enough risk bringing the boy in, and he’s plainly in need of help, and branded as mine. “
She gave up trying to be self-sufficient. “Boost me up, will you?” she asked humbly.
Jaysen went her one better; with the help of Andrel he lifted her into place. “Have you got everything you need?”
“I think so.” In actual fact, she was too tired to think; it was all she could do to keep her mind on the next step of the journey. “Toss the firewood through.”
Four heavy bundles of dry, seasoned wood went through the Gate to land in the snow on the other side.
Vanyel whimpered beside her; she could see his face was creased with lines of pain. He’s feeling it, like Andy thought he might. Better hurry.
“Mardic - “ she said quietly. “Donni - “
Savil’s proteges came solemnly to her stirrup; she held out her hands to them, and shared a moment of mind-melded intimacy with them that was more than “farewell”; it was a sharing of gifts. Her pride in them and love and blessing - and their love and well-wishing for her.
“Lissa - “
The girl came to stand beside her students.
“I can’t begin to thank you,” Savil began, awkward, as ever, with words.
“Thank me by bringing Van home well,” Lissa replied earnestly. “That’s all I want.” She reached up and squeezed Savil’s hand once, then backed away.
The youngsters moved out of the way, and Jaysen and Andrel came to take their place without any prompting. She gave a hand to each, closing her eyes again, and opening herself to them in a melding even more intimate than she had shared with her students, for there were no secrets among the three of them, and nothing held back. What she had not told Mardic and Donni was that there might be no returning from this journey. If she failed with Vanyel, he might well destroy both of them, his Gifts were that powerful. Even now he moaned again in his drug-induced slumber, feeling the Gate energies despite a dose of narcotic that would have rendered a less sensitive Gifted unconscious for a week.
For a moment, she was angry. He could kill us, and do it without knowing what he was doing. Oh, gods. Gods, you owe him, dammit! You’ve taken his love - at the least give him something in return.
But she was too tired, too depleted to sustain even her anger at Fate or the gods or - whatever. Especially when this might really be farewell.
So this was a moment when she asked forgiveness of her friends for anything she might have done in the past - and they asked for and received the same from her.
When she raised her heavy, weary head, the two pairs of eyes, green and gray, that met hers were bright with tears that would not be shed - at least not now. She squeezed their hands, and let go; they stepped away from her as she straightened in her saddle, took a deep breath, and faced the Gate and the gray landscape beyond it. It looked no more welcoming now than it had before, and dallying wasn’t going to make the leaving easier.
:All right, Kellan,: she Mindspoke. -.Let’s go.:
And they rode into the stomach-churning vertigo she had come to hate.
Savil huddled beside the fire with her legs curled under her, forcing herself to stay awake. There was, thank the gods, no wind; the cave was warming fairly quickly. It smelled of damp, though, and of the musty taint of the half-rotten leaves that had blown in here with the autumn winds. That damp meant that if she let the fire die, it would chill down very quickly, a chill that would penetrate even their thick wool cloaks.
Once she’d taken the Gate down, she’d had just enough strength to lay the fire, and start it with the coal she’d brought in a fire-safe. After that she’d sunk to the sand next to it, pulling Vanyel close in beside her. He was curled up against her now, bundled with her inside her cloak, his head in her lap; he shook like a reed in the wind. From time to time he moaned and his hand groped for something that seemed to elude him; she soothed him back into sleep, stroking his hair until he finally recognized that she was still with him and calmed a little.
The Gate-crossing had been hard on him, as hard as she’d feared. When she’d gone to take him from Yfandes’ back, he’d been half-roused out of his drugged daze; his eyes had been wide open, his jaws clenched. He had been held paralyzed, not by the drugs, but by unfocused and overwhelming terror and pain. It had taken a candlemark to get him soothed down again.
Somewhere just outside were Kellan and Yfandes, standing a watchful guard in the falling snow. Still in their tack, poor things - she’d barely been able to get Vanyel unstrapped from the saddle before collapsing beside him. She had nearly forgotten to activate the Wing-sister Talisman. It had taken Kellan’s sharp reminder to shake her out of her fog of exhaustion long enough to stab her finger and let the prescribed three drops of her blood fall on it.
Memory came, then, as sharply defined as if she had bid farewell to the Hawkbrothers scant days ago instead of years.
* * *
“Blood calls to blood, and heart to heart,” Starwind told her gravely, his ice-blue eyes focused inward. He held his slashed palm above the Wingsister Talisman of silver wire and crystals, and his blood dripped onto the heart-stone of the piece, dyeing the clear crystal a vivid ruby.
Savil watched, silently, feeling the power flowing and weaving itself into the intricate design of rainbow crystal and silver wire.
This was nothing like the kind of magic she was used to using; it really wasn’t much like that the Hawkbrothers had taught her, either. This was older magic, much older, dating, perhaps, from the times of the Mage Wars, the wars that had wrecked the world and left the Pelagirs a twisted, magic-riddled ruin. She shivered a little, and Starwind looked up, one of his brief and infrequent smiles lighting his face for a moment.
He closed his hand; Moondance touched the back of it, and he opened it again. The slash in his palm had been Healed with the speed of a thought. At eighteen the young outlander now calling himself “Moondance” was well on his way to becoming that rarest of mages, a Healer-Adept.
Starwind fixed the Talisman in its place on the mask of feathers and crystal beads; it resembled a palm-sized diadem perched on the brow of the mask above the eye-slits. He handed the whole mask to her, and nodded at the Talisman. “When you need us again, come to us, and let three drops of your own blood fall upon the heart-stone. I shall know, and come to you.”
In all those years since, the heart-stone’s bright scarlet had not faded. She only hoped that the set-spell had not faded either. It did seem to her that the heart-stone began pulsing with a dim, inner light from the moment that her blood touched it. But that could have been the flickering of the fire, or the wavering of her own vision; she was too spent to tell, and too drained to begin to sense power even if it was moving under her own nose.
Vanyel stirred at her side, curling his knees tighter against his chest. She shifted a bit, glad that the floor of the cave was covered in several inches of dry, soft sand.
Poor child, she thought, her mind dark with despair. I’m at a loss for what to do with you. You keep reaching out to me for support, and I want to give it to you, and I can’t, I mustn’t. If I do, you’II just fall right back into the pattern you danced with poor ‘Lendel. She stroked the fine, silky hair beneath her hand, and her heart ached for him. You don’t know what to think anymore, do you? You’re afraid to touch again, afraid to open yourself, you’re full of such fear and such pain - gods, when you told Withen that nothing would ever make you happy again -
She swallowed the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her, and blinked at the dancing flames, then closed her stinging eyes and felt tears bead up on her lashes. Starwind, old friend, she thought desperately, where are you? I’m out of my depth; I don’t know what to do. I need your help -
:And you have it, sister-of-my-heart.:
She started. There was a swirl of snow at the cave entrance, white-gold and shadow in the dancing firelight. There had been no alert from either Companion-But when the snow settled and cleared, he was there.
He hadn’t changed, not at all.
The sword of ice, she had called him when she’d first seen him. Flowing silver hair still reached past his waist when he put back,the hood of his white cloak and let the silky mass of it tumble free. There still were no wrinkles in his face, not even around the obliquely-slanting, ice-blue eyes; he was still tall and unbent, still slender as a boy. Only the cool deeps of his eyes showed his age, and the aura of power that pulsed about him. No mage would ever have any doubts that this was an Adept, and a powerful one.
He smiled at her, and held out his hands. “Welcome, heart-sister, Wingsister Savil,” he said in the liquid Tay-ledras tongue, gliding to her to take the hands she held up to him in his own. “Always welcome, and well come thou art.”
“Starwind, shaydra,” her sight darkened for a momerit, and when it cleared, the Tayledras Adept was kneeling at her side, holding her upright.
“Savil, you stubborn, headstrong woman,” he chided, as she felt an inrushing of energy from his center to hers. She swayed a little, and he held her upright. “What need could possibly have been so great that you drain yourself to a wraith to Gate yourself here?’’
“This need - “ She pulled back her cloak to show him the boy curled against her side, his face taut with pain.
“God of my fathers - “ He reached out with his free hand and barely touched Vanyel’s brow. He pulled back his hand as if it had been burned. “Goddess of my mothers! What have you brought me, sister?”
“I don’t know,” she said, slumping wearily against him. “He’s been blasted open, and he can’t heal - more than that - I’m too tired to tell you right now. So much has happened, and to both of us - I just can’t think what to do anymore. All I know is that he’s hurting, and I can’t help him, and if I’d left him where he was he’d have destroyed himself at the best, and half the capital at the worst.”
“There is nothing wrong with your judgment, I pledge you that,” Starwind replied, sitting back on his heels and regarding the boy dubiously. “There is such potential there - he frightens me. And such darkness of the soul-no, Wingsister, not evil; there is nothing evil in him. Just - darkness. Despair is a part of it, but - denial of what he is and must become is another. Self-willed darkness; he wills himself not to see, I think.”
“You see more than I do,” she told him, rubbing her aching forehead. “I haven’t the right to ask it of you, but - will you help me with him? Can you help me?”
The firelight turned the ice of his eyes to blue-gold flame. “You have the right, sister to brother, to ask what you will of me. Did you not gift me with the greatest of all gifts, in the person of my shay’kreth’ashke? “
She had to smile a little at that. Bringing Starwind another boy long ago had been one of the few unalloyed good things she’d ever done. “Where is Moondance, anyway?’’
:Moondance stands in the snow, defending his head and his lifeblood. Telling the ,stranger-lasha’Kaladra not to eat me,: came the laughter-flavored reply. I frightened her. She does not trust me, I think. :
:Kellan - : Savil Mindspoke tiredly.
:He popped up right under Yfandes’ nose and scared the liver out of her, Chosen,: Kellan replied apologetically. :She went for him before we knew who it was. It’s all right now, he’s just making amends.:
:Bright Havens, Kelt, you know him, at least!: she snapped, her tiredness making her impatient.
:Not anymore - :
“I fear I have greatly changed, Wingsister,” Moon-dance said contritely from the entrance. “And I also fear I had forgotten the fact.”
Savil looked over Starwind’s shoulder and felt her mouth gaping. Starwind put one finger beneath her chin, and shut it for her with a chuckle.
“Great good gods!” she said after a moment of stunned silence. “You have changed!”
The Moondance she had known - he hadn’t had the name “Moondance” for long at that point - had been brown-haired and brown-eyed and as ordinary as a peasant hut. Not surprising for one of peasant stock. But now - now the hair was as long and as silver and the eyes as ice-blue as Starwind’s. The lines of his face were still the same; square to Starwind’s triangle, but the cheekbones were far more prominent than Savil remembered, and the body had grown out of adolescent gawkiness and into a slender grace so like Starwind’s that they could have been brothers by birth instead of by blood.
:He even smells different,: Kellan complained.
“How did you do that?” Savil demanded.
Moondance made a fluid shrug, and tossed the sides of his white cape over his shoulders, showing that he wore only thin gray breeches and a sleeveless gray leather jerkin with matching boots. Savil shivered at this reminder that the Tayledras never seemed to notice the cold. “It’s the magic we use,” he said. “It makes us into what it wants us to be. I think.”
“As always, an oversimplification,” Starwind correcled him fondly. ‘ ‘Ka’sheeleth. Savil has brought us a problem. Come look at this boy - “
Moondance drifted over to Savil’s other side, sat on his heels beside her, and studied Vanyel’s face for several breaths.
“Hai’yasha, “he breathed. “Shay’a’chern, hmm? And Lovelost? No, it goes deeper than that.” He reached out as Starwind had, and touched Vanyel’s forehead, but unlike Starwind, did not pull away. “Ai’she’va - Holiest Mothers! The pain!” His jaw tightened and the pupils of his eyes contracted to pinpoints. “Reft and bereft of shay ‘kreth ‘ashke.’’ His face took on the tranquillity of a statue. “Pawn he is now - pawn he has been - “ he said, his tone flat, his voice dropping half an octave. “Pawn to what he is and what he wills not to be. But will or no, the pawn is in play - and the play is a trial - “
“And what of the game?” Starwind asked in a whisper.
Moondance hesitated, then life came back to his face as he shrugged again, and his pupils went back to normal. “No way of knowing,” he replied, slowly taking his hand from Vanyel’s forehead. “That depends entirely upon whether he is willing to become more than a pawn. But yours to be the Teaching, I think,” he said, looking up sharply at the Adept. “It is like your powers that he holds. As for Healing, I think that half of it will be his doing - if he Heals at all - “
“And the other half yours,” the Adept stated with an ironic smile.
Moondance turned Vanyel’s wrist up, showing the scar across it - then turned over his own hand, and the firelight picked out the scar that ran from the gold-skinned hand halfway to the elbow, a scar that followed the course of the blue vein pulsing beneath the skin. “Who better?” he asked. “We have something in common, I think.”
Savil swayed again, caught in a sudden dizziness, and Starwind took hold of her shoulders to steady her. “You need rest,” he said in concern. “Will you have it here, or can you ride?’’
Savil thought longingly of just lying down where she was, and then reflected on being able to do so in a bed.
And also on the Companions, out there in the snow and cold, and still in their harnesses.
“The Companions can and will carry double,” she sighed, feeling just about ready to fade away. “If you’re willing to ride them. Or strap us in, I don’t much care which. But I’d like them in the warm.”
“Then we ride,” Starwind said, as Moondance scooped Vanyel up in his arms as if he weighed next to nothing. The older Adept rose to his feet and offered her his hand, and it took every scrap of will she had left to her to stumble erect. “It is not far, Wingsister.”
“I hope not,” she told him earnestly, staggering out into the snow, while Moondance put the fire out with a single backward glance. “Because if it isn’t, you’re going to be carrying me as well as the boy.’’
First there was darkness, and the peace that came with being so drugged that there was no thought at all. It was the only time he felt anything like peace, these days, and he welcomed the drugs and the red-haired Healer who brought them. There were times without counting when he hoped that this time the Healer had miscalculated - that this time he wouldn’t wake.
Then there was pain; unfocused, but somewhere near at hand. Like the touch of sun on skin already reddened and burned. It got past the drugs, somehow; he tried to push it away, but it continued to throb in those half-healed places in his mind, promising him more pain to come.
Then - nothing but pain; fire in his veins and under his skin, flames dancing along his nerves and scorching his mind. Gate-fire, Gate-energy - it was unmistakable, and unbearable, and yet it continued long past the moment he thought his sanity would shatter or his heart stop. He screamed, or thought he did. He was lost in it, and there was no way out - not even death, for the pain would not let him die.
Then it was gone. But it left him aching, all the channels burned raw again, and worse, all the memories replaying themselves over and over - Gala dying, Tylendel throwing himself from the Tower, Tylendel lying in state in the Temple -
Then, without warning, the Dream.
He stood blocking the way, a one-mage barricade across Crook-Back Pass. Mage-light from his upraised hand reflected from the impassive faces and hollow, empty eyes of the three wizards who opposed him.
This was not like the old dream - the dream of being alone in the ice. This was - something else. He could sense things, shards of meaning, just under the surface of it, but couldn’t seem to bring them out to where he could read them.
But it felt - real. Fearfully real.
“Why do you bother with this nonsense?”
The voice from behind the wizards was sweet, lilting. One more figure paced forward as the ranks of the army backing the wizards parted to let him pass.
“You are quite alone, Herald-Mage Vanyel. “ One of the wizards stepped two paces to the side to allow the newcomer through to the center, to face Vanyel.
He was beautiful; there was no other word for him. A perfectly sculptured face and body, hair and eyes of twilight shadow, a confidence, poise and power so complete they were works of art.
Except for the dark eyes, he could have been Vanyel’s brother; except that he was too perfect, he could almost have been a younger Vanyel.
He was clad in dull black armor, like his soldiers, but carried no weapon. He didn’t need one; he was a weapon. He was a weapon with no other purpose than the destruction and death he molded into his power. Unlike the knife which could cut to heal or harm, this weapon would never serve any other purpose than pain. Vanyel knew that as well as he knew himself.
“You are, “the beautiful young man repeated; smiling, choosing his words to hurt, ‘ ‘quite alone.’’
Vanyel nodded. ‘ ‘You tell me nothing I was not already aware of. I know you. You are Leareth.” The word meant -
‘ ‘Darkness.’’ Leareth laughed. ‘ ‘I am. Darkness. And these are my servants. A quaint conceit, don’t you think?”
Vanyel said nothing. Every moment he kept Leareth here was one more moment speeding Yfandes down the road with Tylendel -
- but Tylendel was dead -
“You need not remain alone,” Leareth continued, moistening his lips with his tongue, sensuously. “You have only to stretch out your hand to me, Vanyel, and take my Darkness to you - and you would never be alone again. We could accomplish much together, we two. Or if you wish - I could even - ‘‘ he stepped forward a pace; two. ‘ I could even bring back your long-lost love to you. Think of him, Vanyel. Think of Tylendel - alive, and once more at your side. ‘‘
“NO!”
He struck at the terrible, beautiful face, struck with all the power at his command - and wept as he struck.
:Dreams, young Vanyel.: A blue-green voice froze him in mid-strike. :Nothing but dreams. They vanish into mist if you will it.:
The army, the pass, Leareth, all whirled away from him into another kind of darkness; this was a darkness that soothed, and he embraced it as eagerly as he had repudiated the other.
Cool, green-gold music threaded into the darkness; not dispelling it, but complementing it. It wound its way into his mind, and wherever it went, it left healing behind it; in all the raw, bleeding places, in all the burning channels. It flowed through him and he sank into it, drifting, drifting, and content to drift. It surrounded him, bathed him in balm, until there was nothing left of hurt in him -
- except the place Tylendel had left behind - the place that still ached so emptily -
The green-gold music was joined by another, a blue-green harmony like the voice that had spoken to dispel the dream. And this music was no longer letting him drift aimlessly. It was leading him; it had wound around his soul and he had no choice but to follow where it wanted him to go.
The blue-green music took the melody, the green-gold faded to a descant, and the voice spoke in his dreams again. :Look; you wish control - here is your center - so to center and so to ground - :
The music led him in a dance wherein he found a balance he hadn’t known he craved until he found it. The music spun him around; he spun with it, and he knew that having found this point of equilibrium he would not lose it again.
:So, so, so, exactly so,: the music chuckled. :Now, you would protect yourself - thus the barrier, see? Dense, and it keeps all out, flexible to your will. Always your will, young Vanyel, it is will and nothing less -
It spun him walls to keep others out of his mind; he saw the way of it and spun them thicker, harder - then raveled them again down to the thinnest of barricades, knowing he could build them up again when he wanted to.
Then the blue-green music faded, leaving the green-gold to carry the melody alone. It sang to him then, sang of rest, sang of peace, and he dreamed. Dreamed of waking, moving to another’s will, to drink and care for himself and sleep again. But no more dreams that hurt, only dreams full of the verdant music.
Then he woke - truly woke, not dreams of waking - to the sound of it; breathy, haunting notes that wandered into and out of melodies that he half recognized, but couldn’t identify. There was a scent of ferns; a smell of growing things, a whiff of freshly-turned earth, and a hint of something metallic. Behind the music, he heard the sound of gently falling water.
He was no longer drugged. And the mind-channels within him no longer burned and tormented him.
He opened his eyes, slowly.
He thought for one mad moment that he was somehow suspended in a tree. He was surrounded on all sides by greenery, and luxuriantly-leaved branches hung over his head. Then he saw that while the branches were real, and the leaves, they were not the same organism. The branches supported huge ferns whose fronds draped down like a living canopy over his bed, and the greenery about him was a curtaining of multi-layered, multi-shaded green fabric hung from a framework of more branches, each layer as light and transparent as a spiderweb, and cut to resemble a cascade of leaf shapes. He had never in his life imagined that there could be so many colors of green.
Weak beams of sunlight threaded past the fern fronds. The blankets - if that was what they were - were a darker green, like moss, and felt as soft as velvet, but were thick and heavy.
He tried to sit up, and discovered that he couldn’t. He was absolutely spent, with no strength left at all.
The music beyond the curtains finished with a breathless, upward-spiraling run, and a few moments later, the curtains parted.
Vanyel blinked in surprise at the young man who stood there, framed by the green of the curtain material; he knew he was staring, and rudely, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d never seen anyone who looked like this -
A young man - silver-haired as any oldster, with hair longer than most women had, and with eyes of light blue that measured and weighed him, full of secrets and thoughts that Vanyel couldn’t begin to read. He wore a sleeveless green jerkin, and breeches of a darker green, and in the hand that held back the curtains there was a white flute that looked as if it had been carved from luminescent, opaque crystal.
Vanyel suddenly realized that, indeed, he couldn’t read the young man’s thoughts; there was presence there, but nothing spilling over into his own mind.
He stammered out the first things in his mind - not terribly clever, and certainly not original but - “W-w-where am I? W-w-who are you?”
The young man tilted his head to one side a little, and Vanyel saw a faint hint of smile as he replied, very slowly and with a strange accent, “Well. ‘Where am I?’ you ask me - better than I had feared. I had half dreaded hearing “who am I?’ young Vanyel.” He tilted his head the other way, and this time the smile was definite. “You are in k’Treva territory in the Pelagir Hills, and before you ask, your aunt, our Wingsister Savil, brought you here. We are her friends; she asked us to help her with your troubles. I am Moondance k’Treva; I am Tayledras, and I have been your Healer. That is my bed you are lying in. Do you like it? Starwind says it is a foolish piece of conceit, but I think that this is only because he did not think of it first.”
Vanyel could only blink at him in bewilderment.
Moondance shook his head, ruefully. “I go too fast for you. Simple things first. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Would you like to bathe?”
All at once he was hungry - and thirsty - and disgustingly aware that his skin was crawling with the need for a bath.
“All three,” he said, a little hesitantly.
“Then we remedy all three.” Moondance pulled the curtains back to the foot and the head of the bed, and -
- and reached to pull off the blankets. At which point Vanyel realized that he was quite nude beneath the bed-coverings. He flushed, and clutched at the blanket.
Moondance gave him an amused look. “Who do you think it was that undressed you and put you where you are?” he asked. “I pledge you, it was not the Eastern Wind.”
Vanyel flushed again, but did not release the blanket.
“So, so - here, my modest one - “ Moondance reached up to one side among the hangings, and detached something which he tossed onto the blankets. Vanyel reached for it - a wrap-robe of something green and silken that was, thankfully, much more substantial than the hangings. As Moondance pointedly turned his back, he eased out of the bed and wrapped it around himself.
And reached for one of the bed-supports as dizziness made the room spin around him.
“That will never do.” There was a cool touch between his eyes, and the room steadied.
“Come,” Moondance was just in front of him, holding out his hands encouragingly. “Keep your eyes on me - yes. A step. Another. You have been long abed, young Vanyel, you must almost learn to walk again.”
The Tayledras Healer walked backward, slowly, as Vanyel followed, looking only at his eyes. But he did not move to give the boy support in any way, except the one time Vanyel stumbled and nearly fell. Then Moondance caught him; held him until he could find his balance again, and only when Vanyel was standing firmly again did he draw away.
Vanyel was vaguely aware that they had crossed a threshold into another room, but just walking was costing him so much sweating, concentrated effort he didn’t dare look around any. It seemed to take years before Moondance stopped, caught his elbow, and guided him to a seat on a smooth rock ledge that rimmed a raised pool of water so hot that it steamed.
“Now, look about you.” Moondance waved at the pool and the rest of the room. “This is the pool for washing. Here is soap. When you are clean, go there, the pool for resting.”
Though the pool Vanyel was sitting beside was deep, it was quite small. Next to the “pool for washing” was another, much larger, much deeper, and slightly above it, with an opening in the side that spilled hot water down into this pool. Both pools looked natural; rock-sided and sandy-bottomed.
“I think even weak as you are, you shall be able to find your way there. I shall return with food and drink.” The young man hesitated a moment - then with the swiftness of a stooping hawk, leaned over and kissed Vanyel full on the lips. “You are very welcome, young Vanyel,” he said, before Vanyel had a chance to get over his surprise. “We are pleased to have you, Starwind and I, and not just for the sake of Wingsister Savil.”
He vanished before Vanyel had a chance to react.
Vanyel found that if he moved slowly and carefully he didn’t exhaust himself. He shed the robe and eased himself into the water with a sigh, and soaped and rinsed until he finally felt clean again. His pool emptied itself over the side and down a channel in the floor - and where the water went from there he couldn’t say. He had figured by now that this was some kind of hot spring, which accounted for the metallic tang in the air.
With Moondance gone, he had a chance to get a good look around while trying to sort himself out. There didn’t appear to be any “doors” as such in this dwelling; just doorways. This bathing room was multileveled; highest level was the “pool for resting” which cascaded to the next level and the “pool for washing,” which in turn was above the “floor” and the channel carrying the water away that was cut into it. There were no windows in the walls of natural rock; the whole was lit by a skylight taking up the entire ceiling, and there were green and flowering plants and ferns standing and hanging everywhere. There was only one entrance into this room - that led back to the bedroom, also rock-walled and roofed with a skylight, from what Vanyel could see of it.
The ledge between the pools was not that high, though it took far more of Vanyel’s strength to get over it than he would have believed. Once in the larger pool he discovered that his surmise was right; crystalline hot water bubbled up from the sand in the center of the pool; someone had improved on nature by forming the rock of the pool sides below the waterline into smooth benches.
It was wonderful; the water was about as hot as was comfortable, and was forcing him to relax whether or not he wanted to. He closed his eyes and sat back, deliberately thinking of absolutely nothing, and only opened them again when he heard light footsteps crossing the stone floor below him.
It was, as he expected, Moondance, who had brought with him an earthenware beaker of what proved to be cider and a plate of sliced bread and cheeses and fruit.
“Eat lightly,” the young man warned, climbing to Vanyel’s level and setting his burdens down on the rim of the pool at Vanyel’s right hand. “You have been three weeks without true food, and spent more than one of those days drugged.”
“Three weeks?”
Moondance shrugged. “You needed Healing, of a kind your good Healer Andrel could not give you. I think perhaps no Healer among your folk could have given you such Healing; they know nothing of the Healing of hurts caused by magic, only of illness and wounding. That is a study only a few have made, and most of those few Tayledras. Eat, young Vanyel. There are herbs in the bread and the drink to strengthen you.”
“Where - where is Savil?” he asked, suddenly a little worried at being alone with a stranger.
“With Starwind. She was very weary, both in body and in soul. This - thing that has happened. It has been a deep grief to her, as well to you. Her heart is as sore, I think. They are old friends, my shay’kreth’ashke and Savil, and there are no secrets between them, and much love. She has need of such love. Perhaps more than you, for she has had no one to lend her support.”
Vanyel had looked up at him sharply at that - with the word ashke striking him with the force of a cold slap in the face, making his heart pound painfully.
Moondance looked down at him, something speculative in his glance. He weighed Vanyel for a moment, then cleared his throat and looked away, deliberately. “I have a thing to say to you, a thing I wish you to think upon.”
Vanyel put down his cider, and waited, apprehensively, to hear the rest.
“I have shared your thoughts; I know more of you than anyone, except, perhaps, your shay’kreth’ashke.”
Moondance changed his position so that he was sitting with his back to the pool, leaning his weight against his hands and staring up at the clouds visible through the skylight. He was being very careful not to look at Vanyel.
“As you have guessed from my words,” he said, “I am shay’a’chern. As is Starwind. As you.” Now he gave Vanyel a very brief, sidelong glance. “I am a Healer-Adept and I Heal more than people - I Heal places. I know the natural world as only one who wishes to restore it to its rightful balances can. This is the thing I wish to tell you; in all the world, there are more creatures than just man that make lifetime matings. Among them, some of the noblest - wolves, swans, geese, the great raptors-all creatures man could do worse than emulate, in many, many ways. And with all of them, all, there are those pairings, from time to time, within the same gender. Not often, but not unheard of either.”
Vanyel found himself unable to move, and unable to anticipate the direction this was taking.
Now Moondance dropped his eyes to catch and hold Vanyel’s in a joining of glances and wills that was unbreakable.
“There is in you a fear, a shame, placed there by your own doubts and the thoughts of one who knew no better. I tell you to think on this: the shay ‘a ‘chern pairing occurs in nature. How then, ‘unnatural’? Usual, no; and not desirable for the species, else it would die out for lack of offspring. But not unnatural. The beasts of the fields are innocent as man can never be, who has the knowledge of good and evil and the choice between, and they do not cast out of their ranks the shay ‘a ‘chern. There was between you and your shay ‘kreth ‘ashke much love - only love. There is no shame in loving.”
Vanyel couldn’t breathe; he could only see those ice-blue eyes.
“This I think I have learned: where there is love, the form does not matter, and the gods are pleased. This I have observed: what occurs in nature, comes by the hand of nature, and if the gods did not approve, it would not be there. I give you these things as food for your heart and mind.”
Once again, before Vanyel could move, he bent deliberately and kissed him, but this time on the forehead.
“I leave you for a moment with both kinds of nourishment.” He smiled, and gave Vanyel a slow wink. “Since you are not to stay in the pool forever, I must needs find you clothing. I would not mind, but your aunt grows anxious and wishes to see you awake and aware, and we would not wish to put her to the blush, hmm?”
And with that, he jumped down from the pool ledge to the floor, and vanished again.