Despite everything he'd told himself, despite being adult and with experiences behind him Withen could not even imagine, Vanyel felt his shoulders beginning to knot with anxiety the moment he crossed the gate marking the edge of the Forst Reach lands. By the time he rode through the gate in the wall that surrounded the Great House of the estate, he was fighting to keep himself from hunching down in the saddle like a sullen, frightened child.
It never changes. Outside these walls I may be a Herald-Mage who can admonish the King himself; inside I'm Vanyel, prodigal son, with habits we don't talk about, and tastes best politely ignored. Gods, when are they ever going to accept me for who I am ?
:Perhaps never. Perhaps when you accept yourself, Chosen.:
The unsolicited reply nettled him a little.
:Perhaps,: she continued, :when you know who you are, and know it well enough that you can't be reduced to an adolescent just by riding through the gates.:
He glanced down at Yfandes' ears, and then ahead, down the road to the destination that was causing him such discomfort. :Are you saying I don't know who I am ?:
She didn't reply, but picked her pace up to a trot - the easy kind-and rounded the final curve and hill that brought them within sight of Forst Reach itself, bulking heavy and gray against the brilliant autumn sky.
The building had once been a defensive keep, and still had something of that blocky, no - nonsense look about it. It had long since been renovated and converted into a dwelling far more comfortable, though even at this distance Vanyel could see the faint outline of the moat under the lush grass surrounding it. Surrounded as it was by newer, smaller outbuildings of whitewashed stucco, it resembled a vast and rather ill-natured gray granite hen squatting among a flock of paler chicks.
Someone had been watching for him. Vanyel saw a small, fairly androgynous figure leave a position on a little rise beside the road and run toward the main building. It vanished somewhere in the vicinity of one of the old postern gates, which were now doors, and Vanyel assumed he (or she, though it was probably a page) had gone to tell the rest of the household that he had arrived. Heralds were distinctive enough to be spotted at any distance, and few enough that it would be safe to assume that any Herald coming to Forst Reach was going to be Vanyel.
Sure enough, people began emerging from doors all over the building, and by the time Vanyel and Yfandes reached the main doors - impressive black oaken monstrosities that had been set into a frame in what had once been the gateway to the center court - there was a sizable group waiting for him.
There was the usual babble of greetings - Treesa wept all over him, Withen gingerly clapped him on the shoulder, his brothers all followed Withen's example. There was the usual little dance when Withen told a page to “take Vanyel's horse” and Van-again-had to explain that Yfandes wasn't a horse, she was a Companion and his partner and that he would see to her. And as usual, Withen looked puzzled and skeptical, as if he was wondering if his son wasn't a bit daft.
But Vanyel was firm - as usual - and got his way. Because if he hadn't insisted (and the first visit home, he hadn't) Yfandes would be stripped of tack and given a good rubdown, then locked into a stall like the “valuable animal” she seemed to Withen to be. Van hadn't known what had happened that time until she wistfully Mindspoke him at dinner, asking if he'd come let her out, since she couldn't reach the lock on the door of the stall.
That night he had gone immediately down to the stable leaving his dinner half-eaten, and with profligate use of magic, created a new split door to the outside in one of the big loose boxes Withen used for mares in foal. Whenever he came home now, that stall was Yfandes', no matter if he had to move a mare out and scour it down to the wooden floor with his own two hands first. And no matter what sort of contrivance Withen had installed on the new door to keep it locked, Vanyel magicked it so that Yfandes could come and go as she pleased. Maybe Withen wondered why the box never had to be cleaned; certainly the stablehands did. But Withen never seemed to grasp that Yfandes was exactly what his son said she was; a brilliant, thinking, creative lady, with all of a great lady's manners and daintiness, who just happened to be living in a horse's body.
Yfandes was still moderately amused. But Vanyel frequently thought that it was a good thing he'd never mentioned Withen's proposition on that first visit to breed her to the best of his palfrey-studs, or he'd have been using his magic to repair the gaping holes in the stable, instead of adding a door.
This time, at least, Withen had learned enough through repetition that the loose box had been vacated, scoured and bleached, and then filled with straw. But he still had left the outer door latched and double-locked.
Vanyel just sighed, magicked the locks in the open position, and pulled the top half of the door wide. He moved the latchstring for the lower half back through the hole to where Yfandes could get at it, then rummaged through his own packs for a longer bit of string so that she could pull it closed if she chose. Needless to say, the strap he'd attached there last time was gone.
“How hungry are you?” he asked her, stripping her tack and hanging it over the edge of the stall for the stablehands to clean, then beginning to rub her down. Straw dust tickled his nose and made him want to sneeze.
:Very,: she replied, testing the depth of the straw with a forehoof and nodding approval. Just take the sweat off and get the knots out of my tail; I'm going to roll when I get out, and maybe swim in the pond.:
He heard Withen's footsteps on the path to the stable, and switched to Mindspeech. :Fine, love, just have your swim when nobody's watching or they'II send half the stablehands to pull you out. Now watch; I will bet you money that Father says, “Are you sure you should leave her that much food so soon after a long ride? She might founder.“: He finished currying her, took the bucket off its hook, and went after grain for her.
“Are you sure you should leave her that much food so soon after a long ride?” Withen said dubiously from the stable - door proper, his square bulk blocking nearly all the light. “She might founder.”
“Father, she isn't a horse; she knows better than to stuff herself silly. She told me she's very hungry. It's been a hard tour of duty for both of us, and both of us need to get back a little weight.” Vanyel hung the bucket of mixed grains where Yfandes could get at it easily. :Now he'll say, “I suppose you know best, son, but-”:
“I suppose you know best, son, but-” Withen moved cautiously up to the loose box as Vanyel forked in hay.
“Father, would you stuff yourself sick after a long day at the harvest?” At harvest - time Withen made it a point of spending one day with each of his tenants and several days with his own fieldhands, working beside them. It was one of the many things he did that endeared him to his people.
“Well -” Withen's heavy brows creased, and for once he looked uncertain. “- no.”
“So, neither will she.” He rinsed her water-bucket until it squeaked, filled it with absolutely clear, cold water, and hung it beside the grain bucket. Withen stepped forward as if he couldn't help himself.
“Son, she'll foul the water.”
“Would Mother drop food into the wine in her goblet?” Vanyel sighed.
“Well - no.”
“So, Yfandes wouldn't.” Since she has better manners than Mother.
He Mindtouched Yfandes gently. :All set, ladylove?:
:Quite, beloved.: Yfandes' mind-voice was yellow and effervescent with amusement. :Does he do that to you every time we come?:
Vanyel rubbed her forehead between her eyes and she closed them with pleasure. :Just about. Normally he doesn't follow me into the stable, but I get it when he hears from the stablehands what I did with you. Watch out for that so - called “Shin'a'in stallion;” I think he's sometimes allowed to run loose in this field. He might try and bully you; he might decide you’re one of his mares and give you a little excitement.:
She bared her front teeth delicately. :I'd rather like to see him try anything on me. I could use a good fight.:
He nearly choked. :Now, love, you 'II scare him impotent, and how will I explain that to Meke?:
:Cleverly, of course. Go on with you; I'm fine and your father is fretting.:
“All right, Father, she says she's comfortable,” he said aloud, forcing himself not to grin. “Let's go.”
“Are you sure she should be left like that? What if she gets out?”
“Father,” Vanyel sighed, sending the gods a silent plea for patience, “I want her to be able to come and go as she pleases.”
“But - “
Vanyel wondered if his father ever really heard anything he said. “She's not, “he repeated for the hundredth time, “a horse. “
Vanyel was in time for dinner, a pleasure he would just as soon have done without. But once bathed, settled into the best guest room, and dressed in clean clothing - not uniform, he wasn't on duty now, not even technically - his good sense prevailed over his reluctance. When the summons for dinner came, he followed the page and took his place at the high table. Withen tried to put him at his right, between himself and Vanyel's mother. Vanyel managed to convince him to let him take the usual seat guests took, on the end, displacing Radevel, who didn't look at all unhappy to be sitting down at the low table.
Sitting at the end he was spared having to make conversation with two people at once. His seat - mate proved to be Mekeal's thin, little red-haired wife Roshya, who took all the burden of conversation from him. She chattered nonstop, sparrowlike, without ever seeming to pause for breath. All he had to do was nod and make vague noises of agreement or disagreement from time to time, and he actually didn't mind; Roshya's gossip was cheerful and never malicious - if she had a fault it was that she seemed to assume he must know every highborn and family member for leagues around. After all, she did.
The dark, high-ceilinged hall seemed far more cramped than Vanyel remembered - until he counted heads, and realized that there were twice the number of folk dining than there had been when he was fifteen. He blinked, but the number didn't change. The low table had been lengthened, and a second table set at right angles to it at the other end, making an “H” shape with the high table.
And the high table had been lengthened, too; when Van had been sent to Haven and his aunt Savil, only Withen, Treesa, Jervis, Father Leren, and any guests they might have had been seated there-which had then included Vanyel's Aunt Serina and her Healer. Now, besides the original four, the table included the unmarried children, all three married sons, and their wives.
Great good gods, this isn't a family, it's a tribe!
The only one missing since his last visit seemed to be his youngest sister Charis; it looked like the only ones still home were the boys. After a moment of thought it seemed to him that he recalled getting word of Charis' wedding to somebody-o other just after Elspeth's death. Did I send a present? I must've, or I'd have heard about it five breaths after being greeted. That's right - I remember now - I sent that hideously pious tapestry of the Lady of Fertility. Aunt Savil took care of Meke and Roshya for me, and I sent Deleran those awful silver-and-crystal candlesticks...
But gods, did I do anything about Raster and whatever-her-name-is? That was just seven or eight months ago, I was so tangled up in the Border-fight - I don't remember -
He continued to fret about that until Roshya's dropped comment about the “delightful bedcurtains, Kaster and Ria were so pleased,” told him that if he hadn't, Savil must have sent something in his name. At that point he relaxed a little. From Roshya's chatter, Vanyel learned that she and Mekeal had six children thus far; Deleran and his wife had two, and Raster's rather plump new bride -
Looks ready to spawn at any moment. Lord and Lady, they certainly didn't waste any time.
It made his head swim to think about it. Forst Reach was hardly a small holding, but it must be near to bursting at the seams.
He must have looked as if he were marginally interested in the new bride. Roshya waved her beringed hands in an artful imitation of Treesa, and launched into a dissertation on Lady Ria that was partly fact and mostly fancy - Vanyel was in a position to know. She'd been one of the young women his mother had thrown into his path the last time he'd been home. She looked content enough now with Kaster, which was something of a relief to his conscience.
He looked back down at the low table in one of Roshya's infrequent pauses for breath.
No wonder she's thin. She never stops talking to eat.
Radevel was the only face he recognized down there, although a good half the youngsters had the Ashkevron build and look. Radevel was stolidly munching his way through a heaping plateful of bread and roast when he caught Vanyel looking at him, and gave the Herald a shrug of the shoulders aimed at the mob of children, then a slow and quite deliberate wink.
Vanyel stifled a laugh. So Father is still fostering dozens of cousins, and Radevel is still stuck here. Poor Rad; what is he, fifth son ? Nowhere else to go, I guess. I bet Father's put him in charge of the younglings. Good choice. He 'II keep them moderately in line. Better him than Jervis.
He looked back up in time to catch crag - faced Jervis, the Forst Reach armsmaster, giving him an ugly glare. He met the glare impassively, but with an inward feeling of foreboding. He's going to try something, I feel it in my bones. Great, that means I'll get to play cat-and-mouse with him through the whole visit. He looked away when the armsmaster's eyes fell, only to find that saturnine Father Leren was giving him a look of ice and calculation, too, from beneath hooded lids. Delightful, so I have both of them to deal with. Just what I needed. What a wonderful friendly visit this is going to be.
He continued to make the appropriate noises at Roshya, and ignored the further stares of Jervis and Leren.
Mekeal had become so like Withen that Vanyel had to blink, seeing them together. Broad shoulders, brown beards trimmed identically, brown hair held back in identical tails with identical silver rings, dark brown eyes as open and readable as a dog's-dissimilar clothing was about all that differentiated them. That, and a few wrinkles in Withen's face, a few gray streaks in his hair and beard. Meke was perhaps a touch less muscular; not surprising since Withen's muscles had been built up in actual fighting during his career as a guard officer, and Meke had never seen any righting outside of an occasional skirmish with bandits. But otherwise - Withen did not look his age; with all the silver in his hair and the stress-lines around his eyes, Vanyel could be taken for older than his father.
Treesa, on the other hand, had not aged gracefully. She was still affecting the light, diaphanous gowns and pale colors appropriate to a young girl. Even if he had not been aware of the various cosmetic artifices employed by the ladies of Randale's Court, Vanyel would have known the coloring of her hair and cheeks to be false.
She's holding onto youth with teeth and nails, and it's still getting away from her, he thought sadly. Poor Mother. All she ever had to make her feel like she had some worth was being pretty and me, and she's losing both. Every year I become more of a stranger to her; every year her looks fade a little more. He glanced over at Roshya, who seemed to be doing her best to imitate Lady Treesa, and was relieved to see a gleam of lively good humor in her green eyes, and to hear a little of that sense of humor reflected in what she was saying. Treesa would likely become a bitter, unpleasant old woman on her own - but not with Roshya around.
The rest of Vanyel's brothers had become thinner, more reckless copies of Meke. They ate heavily and drank copiously and roared jokes at each other across the length of table, emphasizing points with a brandished fork. They’re probably terrors on the hunt - and I bet they hunt every other day. And probably fighting when they aren't hunting. They need something to keep them occupied, can't Father see that?
The more Vanyel saw, the uneasier he became. There was a restlessness in Withen's offspring that demanded an outlet, but there wasn't any. No wonder Meke is hoping for a Border-war, he realized as the meal drew to a close. This place is like a geyser just about to blow. And when it does, if there isn't any place for that energy to go, someone is going to get hurt. Or worse.
Servants began clearing the tables, and the adults rose and began to drift out on errands of their own. By Forst Reach tradition, the Great Hall belonged to the youngsters after dinner. Vanyel lingered until most of the others had gone out the double doors to the hallway; he was not in the mood to argue with anyone right now, or truly, even in the mood to make polite conversation. What he wanted was a quiet room, a little time to read, and more sleep.
It didn't seem as if the gods were paying much attention to his wants, lately.
Withen was waiting for him just beyond the doors.
“Son, about that horse-”
“Father, I keep telling you, Yfandes is not-”
Withen shook his head, an expression of marked impatience on his square face. “Not your Companion- Mekeal's horse. That damned stud he bought.”
“Oh.” Vanyel smiled sheepishly. “Sorry. Lately my mind stays in the same path unless you jerk its leash sideways. Tired, I guess.”
For the first time Withen actually looked at him, and his thick eyebrows rose in alarm. “Son, you look like hell.”
“I know,” Vanyel replied. “I've been told.”
“Bad?'' Withen gave him the same kind of sober attention he gave to his own contemporaries. Vanyel was obscurely flattered.
“Take all the horror stories coming north from the Karsite Border and double them. That's what it's been like.”
For once Withen's martial background was a blessing. He knew what Border-fighting was like, and his expression darkened for a moment. “Gods, son - that is not good to hear. So you'll be needing your rest. Well, I won't keep you too long, then - listen, let's take this out to the walk.”
The “walk” Withen referred to was a stone porch, rather like a low balcony and equipped with a balustrade, that ran the length of the north side of the building. Why Grandfather Joserlin had put it there, no one knew. It overlooked the gardens, but not usefully, most of the view being screened off by the row of cypresses he'd had planted just beneath the railing. It could be accessed by one door, through the linen storeroom. Not many people used it, unless they wanted to be alone.
Which actually made it a fine choice for a private discussion.
Blue, hazy dusk, scented with woodsmoke, was all that met them there. Vanyel went over to the balustrade and sat on the top of it, and Withen began again.
“About that horse - have you seen it?”
“I'm afraid so,” Vanyel replied. His window overlooked the meadows where the horses were turned loose to graze, and he'd seen the “Shin'a'in stud” kicking up his heels and attempting to impress Yfandes who was in the next field over. She had been ignoring him. “I hate to say this, Father, but Meke was robbed. I've seen a Shin'a'in warsteed; they're ugly, but not like that beast. They're smaller than that stud; they're not made to carry men in armor, they're bred to carry nomad horse-archers. They have very strong hindquarters, but their forequarters are just as strong, and they're a little short in the spine. 'Bunchy,' I guess you'd say. And their heads are large all out of proportion to the rest of them. The only thing a Shin'a'in warsteed has in common with Meke's nag is color. And besides, the only way an outsider could get a warsteed would be to steal a young, untrained one— and then kill the entire Clan he stole it from—and then kill the other Clans that came after him. No chance. Maybe somewhere there's Shin'a'in blood in that one, but it's cull blood if so."
Withen nodded. "I thought it might be something like that. I've seen their riding-beasts, the ones they will sell us. Beautiful creatures—so I knew that stud wasn't one of those, either. The animal is stupid, even for a horse, and that's going some. It's vicious, too—even with other horses; cut up the one mare Meke put it to before they could stop it. It's never been broken to ride, and I'm not sure it can be—and you know how I feel about that."
Vanyel half-smiled; one thing that Withen knew was his horses, and it was an iron-clad rule with him that all studs had to be broken for riding, the same as his geldings, and exercised regularly under saddle. No stud in his stable was allowed to laze about; when they weren't standing, they were working. It made them that much easier to handle at breeding-time. Most of Withen's own favorite mounts were his studs.
A mocker-bird shrilled in one of the cypresses, and Vanyel jumped at the unexpected sound. As he willed his heart to stop racing, Withen continued. "It hasn't taken a piece out of any of the stablehands yet, but I wonder if that isn't just lack of opportunity. And this is what Meke wants to breed half the hunter-mares to!"
Vanyel shook his head. Damn! I hope this jumping-at-shadows starts fading out. If I can't calm myself down, I'm going to hurt someone.
"I don't know what to tell you, Father. I'd have that beast gelded and put in front of a plow, frankly; I think that's likely all he's good for. Either that, or use the damned thing to train your more experienced young riders how to handle an unmanageable horse. But I'm a Herald, not a landholder; I have no experience with horsebreeding, and Meke is likely to point that out as soon as I open my mouth."
“But you have seen a real Shin'a'in warsteed,” Withen persisted.
“Once. With a real Shin'a'in on its-her-back. The nomad in question told me they don't allow the studs anywhere near the edge of the Dhorisha Plains. Only the mares 'go into the world' as he put it.” Even in the near dark and without using any Gift, Vanyel could tell his father was alive with curiosity. Valdemar saw the fabled Shin'a'in riding horses once in perhaps a generation and very few citizens of Valdemar had even seen the Shin'a'in themselves. Probably no one from Valdemar had ever seen a nomad on his warsteed until he had.
“Bodyguard, Father,” he said, answering the unspoken question. “The nomad was a bodyguard for one of their shamans, and I met them both in the k'Treva Vale. I doubt the shaman would have needed one, except that he must have been nearly eighty. I tell you, he was the toughest eighty-year-old I'd ever seen. He'd come to ask help from the Tayledras to get rid of some monster that had decided the Plains looked good and the horses tasty, and moved in.”
Withen shivered a little; talk of magic bothered him, and the fact that his son had actually been taught by the ghostly, legendary Hawkbrothers made him almost as uneasy as Vanyel's sexual inclinations.
The mocker-bird shrieked again, but this time Vanyel was able to keep from leaping out of his skin. “At any rate, I don't promise anything more except to try. But I want to warn you, I'm going to go at this the same way I'd handle a delicate negotiation. You won't see results at once, assuming I get any. Meke is as stubborn as that stud of his, and it's going to take some careful handling and a lot of carrots to get him to come around.”
Withen nodded. “Well, that's all I can ask. I certainly haven't gotten anywhere with him. And that's why I asked you to stick your nose into this. I'm no diplomat.”
Vanyel got up off the railing and headed for the door. “The fact is, Father, you and Meke are too damned much alike.”
Withen actually chuckled. “The fact is, son, you're too damned right.”
Vanyel slept until noon. The guest room was at the front of the building, well away from all the activity of the stables and yards. The bed curtains were as thick and dark as he could have wished. And someone had evidently given the servants orders to stay out of his room until he called for them. Which was just as well, since Van was trusting his reflexes not at all.
So he slept in peace, and rose in peace, and stood at the window overlooking the narrow road to the keep feeling as if he might actually succeed in putting himself back together if he could get a few more nights like the last one. A mere breath of breeze came in the window, and mocker - birds were singing-pleasantly, this time - all along the guttering above his head.
He could easily believe it to be still summer. He couldn't recall a gentler, warmer autumn.
He sent out a testing thought - tendril. :'Fandes?:
:Bright the day, sleepy one,: she responded, the Hawkbrother greeting.
He laughed silently, and took a deep breath of air that tasted only faintly of falling leaves and leafsmoke. :And wind to thy wings, sweeting. Would you rather laze about or go somewhere today?:
:Need you ask? Laze about, frankly. I think I'm going to spend the rest of the day the way I did this morning- napping in the sun, doing slow stretches. That pulled tendon needs favoring yet.:
He nodded, turning away from the window. :I don't doubt. Makes me glad I was running lighter than normal after you pulled it. :
She laughed, and moved farther out into her field so that he could see her from the window. :I won't say it didn't help. Well, go play gallant to your mother and get it over with. With any luck, she hasn't had a chance to bring in one of the local fillies.:
He grimaced, rang for a servant. One appeared with a promptness that suggested he'd been waiting right outside the door. Vanyel felt a pang of conscience, wondering how long he'd been out there.
“I'd like something to eat,” he said, “And wash water, please. And-listen, there is no reason to expect me to wake before midmoming, and noon is likelier. I surely won't want anyone or anything before noon. So pass that on, would you? No use in having one of you cool his heels for hours!”
The swarthy manservant looked surprised, then grinned and nodded before hurrying off after Vanyel's requests. Vanyel hunted up his clothing, deciding on an almost - new dark blue outfit about the time the wash water arrived. It felt rather strange not to be wearing Whites, but at the same time he was reveling in the feel of silk and velvet against his skin. The Field uniforms were strictly utilitarian, leather and raime, wool and linen. And he hadn't had many occasions to wear formal, richer Whites. No wonder they call me a peacock. Sensualist that I am - I like soft clothing. Well, why not?
The manservant showed up with food as Vanyel finished lacing up his tunic. He considered his reflection in the polished steel mirror, and ended up belting the tunic; it had fit perfectly when he'd last worn it, but now it looked ridiculously baggy without a belt.
He sighed, and applied himself to his breakfast. It was always far easier to gain weight than to lose it, anyway, that was one consolation!
After that he felt ready to face his mother. And whatever lady-traps she had baited and ready.
She always asked him to play whenever he stayed long enough, so he stripped the case from his lute and tuned it, then slung it on his back, and headed for her bower. Maybe he could distract her with music.
“Hello, Mother,” Vanyel said, leaning down to kiss Treesa's gracefully extended, perfumed fingertips. “You look younger every time I see you.”
The other ladies giggled, pretended to sew, fluttered fans. Treesa colored prettily at the compliment, and her silver eyes sparkled. For that moment the compliment wasn't a polite lie. “Vanyel, you have been away far too long!” She let her hand linger in his for a moment, and he gently squeezed it. She fluttered her eyelashes happily. Flirtation was Treesa's favorite game; courtly love her choice of pastime. It didn't matter that the courtier was her son; she had no intention of taking the game past the graceful and empty movements of the dance of words and gesture, and he knew it, and she knew he knew it, so everyone was happy. She was never so alive as when there was someone with her willing to play her game.
He fell in with the pretense, quite pleased that she hadn't immediately introduced anyone to him; that might mean she didn't have any girls she planned to fling at him. And she hadn't pouted at him either; so he was still in her good graces. He had much rather play courtier than have her rain tears and reproaches on his head for not spending more time with his family.
In the gauze-bedecked bower, full of fluttering femininity in pale colors and lace, he was quite aware that he looked all the more striking in his midnight blue. He hoped it would give him enough distinction-and draw enough attention to the silver in his hair - so that Treesa would remember he wasn't fifteen anymore. “Alas, first lady of my heart,” he said with a quirk of one eyebrow, “I fear I had very little choice in the matter. A Herald's duty lies at the King's behest.”
She dimpled, and patted the rose - velvet cushion of the stool placed beside her chair. “We've been hearing so many stories about you, Vanyel. This spring there was a minstrel here who sang songs about you!” She fussed with the folds of her saffron gown as he took his seat at her side. Her maids (those few who weren't at work at the three looms placed against the wall) and her fosterlings all gathered up their sewing and spinning at this unspoken signal and gathered closer. The sun-bright room glowed with the muted rainbow colors of their gowns, and Vanyel had to work to keep himself from smiling, as faces - young, and not-so-young, pretty and plain - turned toward him like so many flowers toward the sun. He'd not gotten this kind of attention even when he was the petted favorite of this very bower.
But then, when he'd been the bower pet, he'd only been a handsome fifteen-year-old, with a bit of talent at playing and singing. Now he was Herald-Mage Vanyel, the hero of songs.
:And all too likely to have his foot stepped on if he comes near me with a swelled head,: said Yfandes.
He bent his head over the lute and pretended to tune it until he could keep his face straight, then turned back to his mother.
“I know better songs than those, and far more suited to a lovely lady than tales of war and darkness.”
There was disappointment in some faces, but Treesa's eyes glowed. “Would you play a love song, Van?” she asked coquettishly. “Would you play 'My Lady's Eyes' forme?”
Probably the most inane piece of drivel ever written, he thought. But it has a lovely tune. Why not?
He bowed his head slightly. “My lady's wish is ever my decree,” he replied, and began the intricate introduction at once.
He couldn't help noticing Melenna sitting just behind a knot of three adolescents, her hands still, her eyes as dreamy as theirs. She was actually prettier now than she had been as a girl.
Poor Melenna. She never gives up. Almost fourteen years, and she's still yearning after me. Gods. What a mess she's made out of her life. He wondered somewhere at the back of his mind what had become of the bastard child she'd had by Mekeal, when pique at his refusing her had led her to Meke's bed. Was it a boy or girl? Was it one of the girls pressed closely around him now? Or had she lost it? Loose ends like that worried him. Loose ends had a habit of tripping you up when you least expected it, particularly when the loose ends were human.
He got the answer to his question a lot sooner than he'd guessed he would.
“Oh, Van, that was lovely,” Treesa sighed, then dimpled again. “You know, we haven't been entirely without Art and Music while you've been gone. I've managed to find myself another handsome little minstrel, haven't I, 'Lenna?”
Melenna glowed nearly the same faded-rose as her gown-one of Treesa's, remade; Vanyel definitely recollected it. “He's hardly as good as Vanyel was, milady,” she replied softly.
“Oh, I don't know,” Treesa retorted, with just a hint of maliciousness. “Medren, why don't you come out and let Vanyel judge for himself?”
A tall boy of about twelve with an old, battered lute of his own rose slowly from where he'd been sitting, hidden by Melenna, and came hesitantly to the center of the group. There was no doubt who his father was - he had Meke's lankiness, hair, and square chin, though he was smaller than Mekeal had been at that age, and his shoulders weren't as broad. There was no doubt either who his mother was - Melenna's wide hazel eyes stared at Vanyel from two faces.
The boy bobbed at Treesa. “I can't come close to those fingerings, milord, milady,” he said, with an honesty that felt painful to Vanyel.
“Some of that's the fact that I've had near twenty years of practice, Medren,” Vanyel replied, acutely aware that both Treesa and Melenna were eyeing him peculiarly. He was not entirely certain what was going on. “But there's some of it that's the instrument. This one has a very easy action - why don't you borrow it?”
They exchanged instruments; the boy's hands trembled as he took Vanyel's finely crafted lute. He touched the strings lightly, and swallowed hard. “What -” his voice cracked, and he tried again. “What would you like to hear, milord?”
Vanyel thought quickly; it had to be something that wouldn't be so easy as to be an insult, but certainly wouldn't involve the intricate fingerings he'd used on “My Lady's Eyes.”
“Do you know 'Windrider Unchained'?” he asked, finally.
The boy nodded, made one false start, then got the instrumental introduction through, and began singing the verse.
And Vanyel nearly dropped the boy's lute as the sheer power of Medren's singing washed over him.
His voice wasn't quite true on one or two notes; that didn't matter, time, maturity, and practice would take care of those little faults. His fingerings were sometimes uncertain; that didn't matter either. What mattered was that, while Medren sang, Vanyel lived the song.
The boy was Bardic Gifted, with a Gift of unusual power. And he was singing to a bowerful of empty-headed sweetly-scented marriage-bait, wasting a Gift that Vanyel, at fifteen, would willingly have sacrificed a leg to gain. Both legs. And counted the cost a small one.
It was several moments after the boy finished before Vanyel could bring himself to speak - and he really only managed to do so because he could see the hope in Medren's eyes slowly fading to disappointment.
In fact, the boy had handed him back his instrument and started to turn away before he got control of himself. “Medren - Medren!” he said insistently enough to make the boy turn back. “You are better than I was, even at fifteen. In a few years you are going to be better than I could ever hope to be if I practiced every hour of my life. You have the Bardic-Gift, lad, and that's something no amount of training will give.”
He would have said more - he wanted to say more - but Treesa interrupted with a demand that he sing again, and by the time he untangled himself from the concentration the song required, the boy was gone.
The boy was on his mind all through dinner. He finally asked Roshya about him, and Roshya, delighted at having actually gotten a question out of him, burbled on until the last course was removed. And the more Vanyel heard, the more he worried.
The boy was being given - at Treesa's insistence - the same education as the legitimate offspring. Which meant, in essence, that he was being educated for exactly nothing. Except – perhaps - one day becoming the squire of one of his legitimate cousins. Meanwhile his real talent was being neglected.
The problem gnawed at the back of Vanyel's thoughts all through dinner, and accompanied him back to his room. He lit a candle and placed it on the small writing desk, still pondering. It might have kept him sleepless all night, except that soon after he flung himself down in a chair, still feeling somewhat stunned by the boy and his Gift, there came a knock on his door.
“Come -” he said absently, assuming it was a servant.
The door opened. “Milord Herald?” said a tentative voice out of the darkness beyond his candle. “Could you spare a little time?”
Vanyel sat bolt upright. “Medren? Is that you?”
The boy shuffled into the candlelight, shutting the door behind him. He had the neck of his lute clutched in both hands. “I - ” His voice cracked again. “Milord, you said I was good. I taught myself, milord. They - when they opened up the back of the library, they found where you used to hide things. Nobody wanted the music and instruments but me. I'd been watching minstrels, and I figured out how to play them. Then Lady Treesa heard me, she got me this lute. ...”
The boy shuffled forward a few more steps, then stood uncertainly beside the table. Vanyel was trying to get his mind and mouth to work. That the boy was this good was amazing, but that he was entirely self-taught was miraculous. “Medren,” he said at last, “to say that you astonish me would be an understatement. What can I do for you? If it's in my power, it's yours.”
Medren flushed, but looked directly into Vanyel's eyes. “Milord Herald-”
“Medren,” Vanyel interrupted gently, “I am not 'Milord Herald,' not to you. You're my nephew; call me by my given name.”
Medren colored even more. “I-V - Vanyel, if you could - if you would - teach me? Please? I'll -” he coughed, and lowered his eyes, now turning a red so bright it was painful to look at. “I'll do anything you like. Just teach me.”
Vanyel had no doubt whatsoever what the boy thought he was offering in return for music lessons. The painful - and very potently sexual - embarrassment was all too plain to his Empathy. Gods, the poor child - Medren wasn't even a temptation. I may be shaych, but - not children. The thought's revolting.
“Medren,” he said very softly, “they warned you to stay away from me, didn't they? And they told you why.”
The boy shrugged. “They said you were shaych. Made all kinds of noises. But hell, you're a Herald, Heralds don't hurt people.”
“I'm shaych, yes,” Vanyel replied steadily. “But you - you aren't.''
“No,” the boy said. “But hell, like I said, I wasn't worried. What you could teach me - that's worth anything. And I haven't got much else to repay you with.” He finally looked back up into Vanyel's eyes. “Besides, there isn't anything you could do to me that'd be worse than Jervis beating on me once a day. And they all seem to think that's all right.”
Vanyel started. “Jervis? What - what do you mean, Jervis beating on you? Sit, Medren, please.”
“What I said,” the boy replied, gingerly pulling a straight-backed chair to him and taking a seat. “I get treated just like the rest of them. Same lessons. Only there's this little problem; I'm not true-born.” His tone became bitter. “With eight true-born heirs and more on the way, where does that leave me? Nowhere, that's where. And there's no use in currying favor with me, or being a little easy on me, 'cause I don't have a thing to offer anybody. So when time comes for an example, who gets picked? Medren. When we want a live set of pells to prove a point, who gets beat on? Medren. And what the hell do I have to expect at the end of it, when I'm of age? Squire to one of the true-born boys if I'm lucky, the door if I'm not. Unless I can somehow get good enough to be a minstrel.”
Vanyel's insides hurt as badly as if Medren had punched him there. Gods - His thoughts roiled with incoherent emotions. Gods, he's like I was - he's just like I was - only he doesn't have those thin little protections of rank and birth that I had. He doesn't have a Lissa watching out for him. And he has the Gift, the precious Gift. My gods -
“ 'Course, my mother figures there's another way out,” Medren continued, cynically. “Lady Treesa, she figures you've turned down so many girls, she figures she's got about one chance left to cure you. So she told my mother you were all hers, she could do whatever it took to get you. And if my mother could get you so far as to marry her, Lady Treesa swore she'd get Lord Withen to allow it. So my mother figures on getting into your breeches, then getting you to marry her - then to adopt me. She says she figures the last part is the easiest, 'cause she watched you watching me, and she knows how you feel about music and Bards and all. So she wanted me to help.”
Poor Melenna. She just can't seem to realize what she's laying herself open for. “So why are you telling me this?” Vanyel found his own voice sounding incredibly calm considering the pain of past memories, and the ache for this unchildlike child.
“I don't like traps,” Medren said defiantly. “I don't like seeing them being laid, I don't like seeing things in them, and I don't much like being part of the bait. And besides all that, you're - special. I don't want anything out of you that you've been tricked into giving.”
Vanyel rose, and held out his hand. Medren looked at it for a moment, and went a little pale despite his brave words. He looked up at Vanyel with his eyes wide. “You -you want to see my side of the bargain?” he asked tremulously.
Vanyel smiled. “No, little nephew,” he replied. “I'm going to take you to my father, and we're going to discuss your future.”
Withen had a room he called his “study,” though it was bare of anything like a book; a small, stone-walled room, windowless, furnished with comfortable, worn-out old chairs Treesa wouldn't allow in the rest of the keep. It was where he brought old cronies to sit beside the fire, drink, and trade tall tales; it was where he went after dinner to stare at the flames and nurse a last mug of ale. That's where Vanyel had expected to find him; and when Vanyel ushered Medren into the stuffy little room, he could tell by his father's stricken expression that Withen was assuming the absolute worst.
“Father,” he said, before Withen could even open his mouth, “do you know who this boy is?”
Candlelight flickered in his father's eyes as Withen looked at him as if he'd gone insane, but he answered the question. “That's – uh - Medren. Melenna's boy.”
“Melenna and Mekeal's, Father,” Vanyel said forcibly. “He's Ashkevron blood, and by that blood, we owe him. Now just how are we paying him? What future does he have?'' Withen started to answer, but Vanyel cut him off. “I'll tell you, Father. None. There are how many wedlock-born heirs here? And how much property? Forst Reach is big, but it isn't that big! Where does that leave the little tagalong bastard when there may not be enough places for the legitimate offspring? What's he going to do? Eke out the rest of his life as somebody's squire? What if he falls in love and wants to marry? What if he doesn't want to be somebody's squire all his life? You've given him the same education and the same wants as the rest of the boys, Father. The same expectations; the same needs. How do you plan on making him content to take a servant's place after being raised like one of the heirs?”
“I - uh - '
“Now I'll tell you something else,” Vanyel continued without giving him a chance to answer. “This young man is Bardic-Gifted. That Gift is as rare - and as valued in Valdemar - as the one that makes me a Herald. And we Ashkevrons are letting that rare and precious Gift rot here. Now what are we going to do about it?”
Withen just stared at him. Vanyel waited for him to assimilate what he'd been told. The fire crackled and popped beside him as Withen blinked with surprise. “Bardic-Gifted? Rare? I knew the boy played around with music, but - are you telling me the boy can make a future out of that?”
“I'll tell you more than that, Father. Medren will be a first-class Bard if he gets the training, and gets it now. A Full Bard, Father. Royalty will pour treasure at his feet to get him to sing for them. He could earn a noble rank, higher than yours. But only if he gets what he needs now. And I mean right now.”
“What?” Withen's brow wrinkled in puzzlement.
Vanyel could see that he was having a hard time connecting “music” with “earning a noble rank.”
“You mean - send him to Haven? To Bardic Collegium?”
“That's exactly what I mean, Father,” Vanyel said, watching Medren out of the corner of his eye. The boy was in serious danger of losing his jaw, or popping his eyes right out of their sockets. “And I think we should send him as soon as we can spare him an escort - when the harvest is over at the very latest. I will be happy to write a letter of sponsorship to Bard Chadran; if Forst Reach won't cover it, I'm sure my stipend will stretch enough to take care of his expenses.”
That last was a wicked blow, shrewdly designed to awake his father's sense of duty and shame.
“That won't be necessary, son,” Withen said hastily. “Great good gods, it's the least we can do! If - if that's what you want, Medren.”
“What I want?” the boy replied, tears coming to his eyes. “Milord – I - oh, Milord - it's -” He threw himself, kneeling, at Withen's feet.
“Never mind,” Withen said hastily, profoundly embarrassed. “I can see it is. Consider it a fact; we'll send you off to Haven with the Harvest-Tax.” The boy made as if to grab Withen's hand and kiss it. Withen waved him off. “No, now, go on with you, boy. Get up, get up! Don't grovel like that, dammit, you're Ashkevron! And don't thank me, I'm just the old fool that was too blind to see what was going on under my nose. Save your thanks for Vanyel.”
Medren got to his feet, clumsy in his adolescent awkwardness, made clumsier by dazed joy. Before the boy could repeat the gesture, Vanyel took him by the shoulders and steered him toward the door.
“Why don't you go tell your mother about your good news, Medren?” He winked at the boy, and managed to get a tremulous grin out of him. “I'm certain she'll be very surprised.”
That sentence made the grin widen, and take on a certain conspiratorial gleam. Medren nodded, and Vanyel pushed him out the door, shutting it tightly behind him.
He turned back to face Withen, and there was no humor in his face or his heart now.
“Father-we have to talk.”
What?” Withen asked, his brow wrinkling in per -
plexity.
“I said, we have to talk. Now.” Vanyel walked slowly and carefully toward his father, exerting every bit of control he possessed to keep his face impassive. “About you. About me. And about some assumptions about me that you keep making.”
He stood just out of arm's length of Withen's chair, struggling to maintain his composure. “When I brought Medren in here, I knew what you were thinking, just looking at your expression.”
The fire flared up, lighting Withen's face perfectly.
And you’re still thinking it-
Vanyel came as close as he ever had in his life to exploding, and kept his voice down only by dint of much self-control. It took several moments before he could speak.
“Dammit, Father, I'm not like that! I don't do things like that! I'm a Herald - and dammit, I'm a decent man - I don't molest little boys! Gods, the idea makes me want to vomit, and that you automatically assumed I had -”
He was trembling, half in anger, half in an anguished frustration that had been held in check for nearly ten years.
Withen squirmed, acutely uncomfortable with this confrontation. “Son, I -”
Vanyel cut him off with an abrupt shake of his head, then held both his hands outstretched toward Withen in entreaty. “Why, Father, why? Why can't you believe what I tell you? What have I ever done to make you think I have no sense of honor? When have I ever been anything other than honest with you?”
Withen stared at the floor.
“Look,” Vanyel said, grasping at anything to get his point across, “let's turn this around. I know damned good and well you've had other bedpartners than Mother, but do I assume you would try to-to seduce that little-girl chambermaid of hers? Have I looked sideways at you whenever you've been around one of her ladies? So why should you constantly accuse me in your mind - assuming that I would obviously be trying to seduce every susceptible young man and vulnerable little boy in sight?”
Withen coughed, and flushed crimson.
He'd probably be angry, Vanyel thought, in a part of his mind somewhere beyond his anguish, except that this frontal assault isn't giving him time to be anything other than embarrassed.
“You - could use your reputation. As a - the kind of person they write those songs about.” Withen flushed even redder. “A hero-worshipping lad would find it hard to-deny you. Might even think it your due and his duty.”
“Yes, Father, that's only too true. Yes, I could use my reputation. Don't think I'm not acutely aware of that. But I won't - would never! Can't you understand that? I'm a Herald. I have a moral obligation that I've pledged myself to by accepting that position.”
By the blankness of Withen's expression, Vanyel guessed he had gone beyond Withen's comprehension of what a “Herald” was. He tried again. “There're more reasons than that; I'm a Thought-senser, Father, did you ever think what that means? The constraints it puts on me? The things I'm open to? It's a harder school of honor than ever Jervis taught. There are no compromises, mind-to-mind. There are no falsehoods; there can't be. A relationship for me has to be one of absolute equals; freely giving, freely sharing-or nothing.” Still no flicker of understanding. He used blunter language. “No rape, Father. No unwilling seduction. No lies, no deception. No harm. No one who doesn't already know what he is. No one who hasn't made peace with what he is, and accepted it. No innocents, who haven't learned what they are. No children.''
Withen looked away, fidgeting a little in his chair. Vanyel moved swiftly to kneel between him and the fire, where Withen couldn't avoid looking at him. “Father - dammit, Father, I care about you. I don't want to make you unhappy, but I can't help what I am.”
“Why, Van?” Withen's voice sounded half - strangled. “Why? What in hell did I do wrong?”
“Nothing! Everything! I don't know!” Vanyel cried out, his words trembling in the air, a tragic song tortured from the strings of a broken lute. “Why am I Gifted? Why am I anything? Maybe it's something I was born with. Maybe the gods willed it. Maybe it's nothing more than the fact that the only person I'll ever love happened to be born into the same sex body that I was!” Grief knotted his throat and twisted his voice further. “All I know is that I am this way, and nothing is going to change that. And I care for my father, and nothing is going to change that. And if you can't believe in me, in my sense of honor - oh, gods, Father -”
He got to his feet somehow, and held out his open hands toward Withen in a desperate plea for understanding. “Please, Father - I'm not asking for much. I'm not asking you to do anything. Only to believe that I am a decent human being. Believe in Herald Vanyel if you won't believe in your son. Only - believe; believe that no one will ever come to harm at my hands. And try to understand. Please.”
But there still was no understanding in Withen's eyes. Only uncertainty, and acute discomfort. Vanyel let his hands fall and turned away, defeated. The last dregs of his energy had been burned out, probably for nothing.
“I - I'm sorry, son-”
“Never mind,” Vanyel said dully, bleakly, walking slowly toward the door. “Never mind. I've lived with it this long, I should be used to it. Listen; I'm going to make you a pledge, since you won't believe me without one. Medren is safe from my advances, Father. Your grandsons are safe. Every damned thing on this holding down to the sheep is safe. All right? You have my damned oath as a damned Herald on it. Will that be enough for you?"
He didn't wait to hear the answer, but opened the door quickly and shut it behind him.
He leaned against it, feeling bitterness and hurt knotting his gut, making his chest ache and his head throb. And eleven years' experience as a Herald was all that enabled him to cram that hurt back down into a little corner and slap a lid on it, to fiercely tell the lump in his throat that it was not tears and it would go away. Maybe he would deal with all this later—not now. Not when he was drained dry, and not when he was alone.
"Heyla, Van!" The voice out of the dark corridor beside him startled him, and he whirled in reaction, his hands reaching for weapons automatically.
He forced himself to relax and made out who it was.
Gods—just what I needed.
"Evening, Meke," he replied; tired, and not bothering to hide it. "What brings you out tonight?"
Lady Bright,^ that sounds feeble even to me.
"Oh," Mekeal replied vaguely, moving into the range of the lantern beside the study door, "Things. Just— things. Where were you off to?"
"Bed." Vanyel knew his reply was brusque, even rude, but it was either that or let Meke watch him fall to pieces. "I'm damned tired, Meke; I've got a lot of rest to catch up on."
Mekeal nodded, his expression softening a little with honest concern. "You look like hell, Van, if you don't mind my saying so."
Gods. Not again.
"The last year hasn't been a good one. Especially not on the Borders."
"That's exactly what I wanted to talk to you about," Mekeal interrupted eagerly, coming so close that Vanyel could see the lantern flames reflected in his eyes. "Listen, can you spare me a little time before you go off to bed? Say a candlemark or so?''
Vanyel stifled a sigh of exasperation. All right, stupid, you gave him the opening, you have only yourself to blame that he took it. "I suppose so."
“Great! Come on.” Mekeal took Vanyel's elbow and hauled him down the ill - lit corridor, practically running in his eagerness. “You've seen that stud I bought?”
“From a distance,” Vanyel replied cautiously.
“Well I want you to come have a good look at him, and he really doesn't settle down until well after dark.”
I can believe that.
They walked rapidly down the hollow-sounding corridor, Mekeal chattering on about his acquisition. Vanyel made a few appropriately conversational sounds, but was far more interested in reestablishing his “professional” calm than in anything Meke was saying. Meke was obviously heading for the corridor that led to one of the doors to the stable yard, so Vanyel pulled his arm free and picked up his own pace a little. Might as well get this over with now, while I'm still capable of standing.
Mekeal obviously had this planned, for when they emerged into the cool darkness and a sky full of stars, Vanyel saw the dim glow of a lantern in the stable across the yard. They crossed the yard at something less than a run, but not for lack of Mekeal's trying to hurry his steps.
The famous stud had pride of place, first stall by the entrance, by the lantern. Vanyel stared at it; if anything it was worse up close than at a distance.
Ugly is not the word for this beast.
It glared over its shoulder at him as if it had heard his thought, and bared huge yellow teeth at him.
I've never seen a nastier piece of work in my life. You couldn't pay me enough to try and saddle - break this nag!
“Well?” Meke said, bursting with pride. “What do you think?''
Vanyel debated breaking the bad news easily, then remembered what his little brother was like. He not only did not take hints well, he never even knew there was such a thing as a subtle hint. Vanyel braced himself, and told the truth. “Meke - there's no way to say this tactfully. That monster is no more Shin'a'in than I am. You were robbed.”
Mekeal's face fell.
“I've seen a Shin'a'in warsteed,” Vanyel said, pressing his advantage. “She was under a Shin'a'in. The nomad told me then that they don't ever sell the warbeasts, and that they literally would not permit one to be in the hands of an outsider. And they never, never let the studs off the Dhorisha Plains. I'll give you a full description. The mare I saw was three hands shorter than this stud of yours, bred to carry a small horse-archer, not anyone in heavy plate; she was short-backed, deep-chested, and her hindquarters were a little higher than her forequarters. She had a big head in proportion to the rest of her; and if anything, this stud's head is small. Besides being large, her skull had an incredibly broad forehead. Lots of room for brains. Need I say more? About the only things she had in common with your stud are color and muscles.” He sighed. “I'm sorry, Meke, but -”
“A half-breed? Couldn't he be a cross?” Mekeal asked desperately.
“If a common stud caught the mare in season and if she didn't kill him first and if the mare's owner decided - against all tradition - to sell the foal instead of destroying it or sending it back to the Plains. Maybe. Not bloody likely, but a very bare possibility. It is also a very bare possibility that this stud has Shin'a'in cull blood somewhere very far back in his line.” Vanyel rubbed his nose and sneezed in the dust rising as the stud fidgeted in his stall. The precious stud laid his ears back, squealed, and cow-kicked the door to the box as hard as he could. More dust rose, there was a clatter of hooves all through the stable, and startled whinnies as the rest of the horses reacted to the stud's display of ill - temper. “Meke, why did you buy this monster? Forst Reach has the best line of hunters from here to Haven.”
“Hunters won't do us a hell of a lot of good when there's an army marching toward us,” Mekeal said, turning to look at him soberly. “And even if this lad isn't Shin'a'in, crossed into our hunters he'll sire foals with the muscle to carry men in armor. I just hope to hell we have them before we need them.”
Incredulous at those words coming from this sibling, Vanyel looked across his shoulder at his younger brother. “That's what this is about?”
Meke nodded, the flickering lantern making him look cadaverous-and much older. “There's trouble coming up on the West. Even if it doesn't come from Baires and Lineas, one or both, it'll come from the changeling lands beyond them. It's been building since Elspeth died. Every year we get more weird things crossing over into Valdemar. Plenty of them here. Check the trophy room some time while you're visiting; you'll get an eyeful. Liss thinks they're either being driven here by something worse, or they're being sent to test our defenses; neither notion makes me real comfortable. Hunters are all very well, but they can't carry a fighter in full armor. And the tourney-horses I've been seeing lately don't have the stamina for war. One thing this lad does have is staying power.”
Gods. Oh, gods. If the problems are so evident even Meke is seeing them - Vanyel's spine went to ice.
“Do you want my advice with this beast?” he asked bluntly.
Mekeal nodded.
“Given what you've told me, he might be useful after all. Breed him to the best-tempered and largest of the hunter-mares. And see what comes of breeding him to plowhorse mares. Maybe make a second-generation three-way cross - if you have time.”
Meke nodded again, smoothing his close-cropped beard. “I hadn't thought about plowbeasts; that's a good notion. He is vicious. I like the willingness to fight, but I can do without viciousness. So, you agree with me?”
Vanyel turned slowly, a new respect for his brother coloring his thoughts. “Meke, even if this Border stays quiet, there's Karse, there's Hardorn, there's Iftel-Rethwellan seems quiet, but their king is old and that could change when he dies. There's even the north, if those barbarians ever find a leader to weld them into a single fighting force. May the gods help us - you'll have a ready market all too soon if you can breed the kind of horses you're talking about.” Vanyel pondered the worn, scrubbed wooden floor of the stable. “What have you heard? About here, I mean.”
“The Mavelans want Lineas. Badly enough to chance a war with us, I don't know. The Lineans don't much like either Baires or Valdemar, but they figure Valdemar is marginally better, so they'll put up with us enforcing the peace as third-party. It all comes down to what's going to happen with this mess with Tashir being disinherited.”
Lady Bright, more words of political wisdom where I never expected to find them. His view may be shortsighted - he may not see the larger picture - but where his neighbors are concerned, my little brother seems to have them well weighed and measured.
“I heard Lord Vedric is behind the protests,” Vanyel ventured. Mekeal looked skeptical.
“One thing I've learned watching them, anything the Mavelans do openly has about fifty motives and is hiding a dozen other moves. The protest might be a covering move for something else. Vedric might have the backing of the family. Vedric might be operating under orders. Vedric might be acting on his own. Vedric might have nothing to do with it. And Vedric might really be Tashir's father - and might actually be trying to do something for the boy. The gods know he hasn't any true-born offspring and it's not that he hasn't tried.”
Vanyel nodded and stowed that tidbit away. “I'll tell you what, Meke, I'll do what I can to get Father to see why you want to breed this stud - and persuade him that since you aren't breeding hunters, he ought to leave you alone to see what you can come up with. But those sheep - “
Mekeal coughed and blushed. “Those sheep were a damnfool thing to do. There's no market, not with Whitefell just south of us, with furlongs of meadow good for nothing but sheep. But dammit, the old man goes on and on about it until I'm about ready to bash him with a damned candlestick! I am not going to give in to him! We aren't losing money, we just aren't making as much. And if I give in to him on the sheep, he'll expect me to give in to him on the stud.”
Vanyel groaned. “Lady bless! The two of you are stubborn enough to make an angel swear! Look - if I manage to get him to agree on the stud, will you please agree to clear out the damned sheep? Bright Havens, can't one of you show a little sense in the interests of peace and compromise? ''
Mekeal glowered, and Mekeal grumbled, but in the end, on the way back to the keep, Mekeal grudgingly agreed.
The silken voice stopped Vanyel halfway between the keep and the stables, dimming the bright autumn sunlight and casting a pall on the sweetness of the late - morning sky.
“Good-morning, Herald Vanyel.” The slight hesitation before the second word called pointed attention to the fact that it lacked little more than a candlemark till noon. The cool tone made it clear that Father Leren did not approve of Vanyel's implied sloth.
Vanyel paused on the graveled path, turned, and inclined his head very slightly in the priest's direction. “Good afternoon, Father Leren,” he replied, without so much as an eyebrow twitching.
The priest emerged from the deeply recessed doorway of the keep's miniature temple, a faithful gray-granite replica of the Great Temple at Haven. Leren had persuaded Withen to build it shortly after his arrival as Ashkevron priest, on the grounds that the chapel, deep within the keep itself, couldn't possibly hold the family and all of the relatives on holy days. It had been a reasonable request, although the old priest had managed by holding services in shifts, the way meals were served in the Great Hall. Vanyel alone had resented it; the little gray temple had always seemed far too confining, stifling, for all that it was five times the size of the chapel. The homely wood-paneled chapel made the gods seem - closer, somehow. Forgiving rather than forbidding. He had hated the temple from the moment he'd first stepped into it at the age of five - and from that moment on, had refused to enter it again. In fact, Vanyel wasn't entirely certain that Leren had ever even set foot in the old chapel-which was why, as a boy, he had accomplished his own worship there.
“I have seen very little of you, my son,” came the cool words. The priest's lean, dusky face beneath his slate. - gray cowl was as expressionless as Vanyel's own.
Vanyel shrugged, shifted his weight to one foot, and folded his arms across his chest. If he wants to play word-games - “I'm not surprised, sir,” he replied with detached civility. “I have spent very little time outside of my room. I've been using this time alone to catch up on a year's worth of lost sleep.”
Leren allowed one black eyebrow to rise sardonically. “Indeed? Alone?” His expression was not quite a sneer.
Oh, what the hell. In for a sheep - Vanyel went into a full-scale imitation of the most languid fop at Haven.
The man in question wasn't inclined to shay'a'chern, as it happened: rumor had it he played the effeminate to irritate . . . not Vanyel - but certain of his colleagues - and he also happened to be one of the finest swordsmen outside of the Circle or the Guard.
Following that sterling example, Vanyel set out to be very irritating.
“Quite alone, sad to say,” he pouted. “But then again, I am here for a rest. And company would hardly be rested.”
The priest retreated a step, surprise flashing across his face before he shuttered his expression. “Indeed. And yet - I am told young Medren spends an inordinate amount of time in your rooms.” His tone insinuated what he did not-quite-dare say.
I won't take that from Father, you snake. I'm damned if I'll take that from you. Vanyel transformed the snarl he wanted to sport into an even more petulant pout. “Oh, Medren. I'm teaching him music. He is a sweet child, don't you think? But still, a child. Not company. I prefer my companions to be somewhat older.” He took a single slow step toward the priest, and twitched his hip ever so slightly. “Adult, and able to hold an adult conversation, to have adult-interests.” He took another step, and the priest fell back, a vague alarm in his eyes. “More - masterly. Commanding.” He tilted his head to one side and regarded the priest thoughtfully for a moment. The alarm was turning to shock and panic. “Now, someone like you, dear Leren -”
The priest squawked something inarticulate about vessels needing consecrating, and groped behind him for the handle of the open temple door. Within a heartbeat he was through it, and had the gray-painted door shut - tightly - behind him.
Vanyel grinned, tucked his head down to hide his expression, and continued on toward the stables and Yfandes.
“Meke, is there going to be a Harvest Fair this year?” he asked, brushing Yfandes with vigor, as she leaned into the brush strokes and all but purred.
Mekeal did not look up from wrapping the ankles of one of his personal hunters. “Uh - huh,” he grunted. “Should be near twice as big as the ones you knew. Got merchants already down at Fair Field.”
“Already?” This was more than he'd dared hope. “Why?”
“Liss an' her company, dolt.” Meke finished wrapping the off hind ankle and straightened with another grunt, this time of satisfaction. “Got soldiers out here with pay burnin' their pockets oif, and nothin' to spend it on. There're only two ladies down at Forst Reach village that peddle their assets, and three over to Greenbriars, and it's top far to walk except on leave-days anyway. So they sit in camp and drink issue-beer and gripe. Can you see a merchant allowin' a situation like that to go unrelieved? There's a good girl,” he said to the mare, patting her ample rump. “We'll be off in a bit.”
:Keep brushing. You can talk and brush at the same time. :
Vanyel resumed the steady strokes of the brush, working his way down Yfandes' flank. “Would there be any instrument makers, do you think?” Forst Reach collected a peddling fee from every merchant setting his wagon up at the two Fairs, Spring and Harvest. Withen found that particular task rather tedious - and Vanyel hoped now he'd entrusted it to Mekeal.
Meke sucked on his lip, his hand still on the mare's shoulder. “Now that I think of it, there's one down there already. Don't think we'll likely get more than one. Why?”
“Something I have in mind,” he replied vaguely. And, to Yfandes, :Lady-my-love, do you think I can interest you in a little trip?: She sighed. :So long as it's a little trip.: :This soft life is spoiling you.:
:Mmh,: she agreed, blinking lazily at him. :I like being spoiled. I could get used to it very quickly.: He chuckled, and went to get her gear.
Before Vanyel even found someone who knew which end of Fair Field the luthier was parked in, he had picked up half a dozen trifles for Shavri and Jisa.
He paused in the act of paying for a jumping jack, struck by the fact that they were so uppermost in his mind.
What has gotten into me? he wondered. I haven't thought about them for a year, and now - Well, I haven't seen them for a year. That's all. And if I can give Shavri a moment of respite from her worry - He pocketed the toy and headed for the grove of trees at the northern end of the field.
He spotted the faded red wagon at once; there was an old man seated on the back steps of it, bent over something in his hands.
Shavri, bent over a broken doll some child in the House of Healing had brought to her. Looking up at me with a face wet with tears. Me, standing there like an idiot, then finally getting the wits to ask her what was wrong. “1 can't bear it, Van, I can't - Van, I want a baby -” He shoved the memory away, hastily. “Excuse me,” Vanyel said, after waiting for the carver perched on the back steps of his scarlet traveling - wagon (part workshop, part display, and part home) to finish the wild rose he was carving from a bit of goldenoak. He still hesitated to break the old man's concentration in the middle of such a delicate piece of work, but there wasn't much left of the afternoon. If he was going to find the purported luthier -
But the snow-pated craftsman's concentration had evidently weathered worse than Vanyel's gentle interruption.
“Aye?” he replied, knobby fingers continuing to shape the delicate, gold-sheened petals.
“I'm looking for Master Dawson.”
“You're looking at him, laddybuck.” Now the oldster put down his knife, brushed the shavings from his leather apron, and looked up at Vanyel. His expression was friendly in a shortsighted, preoccupied way, his face round, with cloudy gray-green eyes.
“I understand you have musical instruments for sale?”
The carver's interest sharpened, and his eyes grew less vague. “Aye,” he said, standing, and pulling his apron over his head. There were a few shavings sticking to the linen of his buff shirt and breeches, and he picked at them absently. “But - in good conscience I can't offer 'em before Fair-time, milord. Not without Ashkevron permission, any rate.”
Vanyel smiled, feeling as shy as a child, and tilted his head to one side. “Well, I'm an Ashkevron. Would it be permissible if I made it right with my father?''
The old man looked him over very carefully. “Aye,” he said, after so long a time Vanyel felt as if he was being given some kind of test. “Aye, I think 'twould. Come in the wagon, eh?”
Half a candlemark later, with the afternoon sun shining into the crowded wagon and making every varnished surface glow, Vanyel sighed with disappointment. “I'm sorry, Master Dawson, none of these lutes will do.” He picked one at random off the rack along the wall of the wagon interior, and plucked a string, gently. It resonated - but not enough. He put it back, and locked the clamp that held it in place in the rack. “Please, don't mistake my meaning, they're beautiful instruments and the carving is fine, but - they’re - they're student's lutes. They're all alike, they have no voice of their own. I was hoping for something a little less ordinary.” He shrugged, hoping the man wouldn't become angered.
Strangely enough, Dawson didn't. He looked thoughtful instead, his face crossed by a fine net of wrinkles when he knitted his brows. “Huh. Well, you surprise me, young milord - what did you say your name was?”
Vanyel blushed at his own poor manners. “I didn't, I'm sorry. Vanyel.”
“Vanyel – that - Vanyel Ashkevron - my Holy Stars! The Herald?” the luthier exclaimed, his eyes going dark and round. “Herald Vanyel? The Shadow -”
“Stalker, Demonsbane, the Hero of Stony Tor, yes,” Vanyel said wearily, sagging against the man's bunk that was on the wall opposite the rack of instruments. The instrument maker's reaction started a headache right behind his eyes. He dropped his head, and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Please. I really - get tired of that.”
He felt a hard, callused hand patting his shoulder, and he looked up in surprise into a pair of very sympathetic and kindly eyes. “I 'magine you do, lad,” the old man said with gruff understanding. “Sorry to go all goose-girl on you. Just - person don't meet somebody folks sing about every day, an' he sure don't expect to have a hero come strollin' up to him at a Border Harvest Fair. Now - you be Vanyel, I be Rolf. And you'll have a bit of my beer before I send you on your way - hey?''
Vanyel found himself smiling. “Gladly, Rolf.” He started to pick his way across the wagon to the door at the rear, but the man stopped him with a wave of his hand.
“Not just yet, laddybuck. As I was startin' to tell you, I got a few pieces I don't put out. Keep 'em for Bards. And I got a few more I don't even show to just any Bard - but bein' as you are who you are - an' since they say you got a right fine hand with an instrument -” He opened up a hatch in the floor of the crowded wagon, and began pulling out instruments packed in beautifully wrought padded leather traveling bags. Two lutes, a harp - and three instruments vaguely gittern-shaped, but-much larger.
Rolf began stripping the cases from his treasures with swift and practiced hands, and Vanyel knew that he had found what he was looking for. The lutes-which were the first cases he opened-bore the same relationship to the instruments on the wall as a printed broadside page bears to an elegant and masterfully calligraphed and ornamented proclamation.
He took the first, of a dark wood that glowed deep red where the light from the open door struck it, tightened a string, and sounded a note, listening to the resonances.
“For you, or for someone else?”
“Someone else,” he said, listening to the note gently die away in the heart of the lute.
“High voice or low?”
“High now, but I think he may turn out to be a baritone when his voice changes. He's my nephew; he's Gifted, and he is going to be a fine Bard one day.”
“Try the other. That one is fine for a voice that don't need any help, it's loud, as lutes go - and all the harmonics are low. The other's better for a young voice, got harmonics up and down, and a nice, easy action. That one he'd have to grow into. The other'll grow with him.”
Vanyel looked up in surprise at the old man.
Rolf gave him a half-smile. “A good craftsman knows how his work fits in the world,” he said. “I got no voice, but I got the ear. Truth is, the ear is harder to find than the voice. Though I doubt you'd find a Bard who'd agree.”
Vanyel nodded, and picked up the second lute, this one of wood the gold of raival leaves in autumn. He tightened a string and sounded it; the note throbbed through the wagon, achingly true. He tried the action on the neck; easy, but not mushy.
“You were right,” he said, holding the chosen instrument out to the luthier. “I'll take it. No haggling.” He looked wistfully over at the other. “And if I didn't already have a lute I love like an old friend. ...”
Rolf waggled his bushy eyebrows, and grinned, as he took the golden lute from Vanyel and began carefully replacing it in its bag. “Care to try a friend of a new breed?” He nodded at the gittern-shaped objects.
“Well . . . what are those things?”
“Something new. Been trying gitterns with metal strings, 'stead of gut; you tell me how it came out.” He laid the chosen lute carefully down on his bunk, and stripped the case from the first of the gitterns. “I keep 'em tuned; this one is a fair bitch to demonstrate if I don't. Hoping to get to Haven one day, show 'em to the Collegium Bards.”
“Great good gods.” Vanyel's jaw dropped. “Twelve strings? I should say”
“Fingers like a gittern. That one's like it; the other has six. Use metal harpstrings.”
Vanyel took it carefully, and struck a chord -
It rang like a bell, sang like an angel in flight, and hung in the air forever, pulsing to the beat of his heart.
He closed his eyes as it died away, lost in the sound; and when he opened them, he saw Rolf grinning at him like a fiend.
“You,” he said, sternly, “are a terrible man, Rolf Dawson.”
“Oh, I know,” the old man chortled. “It don't hurt that the inside of this wagon's tuned, too. That's one reason why them student lutes sound as good as they do. But that lady'll sound good in a privy.”
“Well, I hope you're prepared to work your fingers to the bone,” Vanyel replied, snatching up the leather case and carefully encasing his gittern. “Because when I take her back to Haven and Bard Breda hears her, she will send packs of dogs out to find you and bring you there!”
Rolf chuckled even harder. “Why d'you think I pulled her out and had you try her? You're going to do half my work for me, Herald Vanyel. With you t'speak for me, an' that lady, I won't spend three, four fortnights coolin' my heels with the other luthiers, waitin' my turn to see a Collegium Bard”
Vanyel had to chuckle himself. “You are a very terrible man. Now - you might as well tell me the worst.”
“Which is?”
He felt a twinge for his once-full purse. Well, what else did he have to spend money on? “How much I owe you.”
Vanyel shut the door to his room behind him, and set his back against it, breathing the first easy breath he'd taken since he left his chamber this morning. “Gods!” he gasped. “Sanctuary at last! Hello, Medren. Oh, you brought wine-thank you, I need it badly.”
The boy looked up from tuning the new strings on his new lute. Giving it to him had given Vanyel one of the few moments of unsullied joy he'd had lately, a reaction worth ten times what Vanyel had paid.
Medren grinned. “Mother?”
“That was this morning,” Vanyel replied, pushing away from the door, heading for the table beside the window seat and the cool flask of wine Medren had brought. “I swear, she chased me all over the keep, with stars in her eyes and the hunt in her blood.”
Poor Melenna. Gods. She's driving me insane, but I can't bring myself to hurt her. I've been the cause of so much hurt, I can't bear any more.
“And lust in her -”
“Medren!” Vanyel interrupted. “That's your mother you're slandering!”
“- heart,” the boy finished smoothly. “What did you do?”
“I took a bath,” Vanyel replied puckishly. “I took a very long bath. When I finally came out, she'd given up.”
“So who was chasing you this time, if it wasn't Mother?”
“Lord Withen. On the Great Sheep Debate. Meke wants to keep the sheep on Long Meadow until spring shearing; Father wants yearling cattle back there immediately, if not sooner.” Vanyel groaned, and held both hands to his head. “If it wasn't for the fact that once this door is shut they leave me alone-gods, the Border was more peaceful!”
Water droplets beaded the side of the flask and ran down the sides as Vanyel picked it up. “Whoever gets you as protege will bless you for your thoughtfulness, lad.” He poured himself a goblet of wine, and took it with him to sip while he stood over Medren at the window seat. No breath of air stirred without or within, and even the birds seemed to have gone into sun-warmed naps. “That instrument still as much to your liking?”
Medren nodded emphatically, if with a somewhat preoccupied expression. He was tuning the last string, a frown of concentration making his young face look adult.
Vanyel warmed inside, as he picked up his own lute.
It takes so little to make the child so happy - and gods, the talent.
“Well, then,” he said, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder, “Ready for your les - ”
The boy winced away from the light touch on his shoulder. Not in emotional reaction - but in physical pain.
Vanyel snatched his hand away as if it had been a red-hot iron he'd inadvertently set on the bare skin of the boy's back. “Medren! What did I-”
“It's all right,” the boy said, and shrugged-which called up another grimace of pain. “Just-old Jervis reckoned we all ought to see how you could trick somebody into dropping his shield and then come in overhand. Guess who got to be the victim.” His tone was so bitter Vanyel could taste it in the back of his own mouth. “Like always.”
The blur of the blade coming for him, always coming for him; the weight of the shield on his arm getting heavier by the moment. The shock of each blow that he couldn't dodge; shock first and then pain. Breath burning in lungs, side aching with bruises; cramps knotting his calves. Stumbling backward, head reeling, vision clouding.
“Van?”
Cold sweat down his back and the taste of blood in his mouth. Bitter, absolute humiliation. Metallic taste of hate and fear.
“Hey, Vanyel-are you all right?”
Vanyel shook his head to clear it, and locked down his own agitation as best he could, but the memories were crowding in on him so vividly he was almost reliving that moment so many years ago when Jervis finally got him in a corner he couldn't escape.
“I'm all right.” His left arm began to ache, and he massaged the arm and wrist, reflexively. It still aches, after all these years. I still have numb fingers. Oh, gods, not Medren.
“We could skip the lesson,” he began, with carefully suppressed emotion.
“No!” Medren exclaimed, clutching the lute to his chest and jumping to his feet. “No, it's nothing! Really! I'm fine!”
“If you're sure,” Vanyel said, wondering how much of that was bravado on the boy's part.
“I'm sure. I got some horse-liniment, I'd have rubbed it on right after, but I didn't want to stink up your room.'' The boy grinned half-heartedly and sat down again, his eyes anxious.
“I've got something better than that - if you aren't afraid I'll seduce you!”
The boy made an impudent face at him. “You had your chance, Vanyel. What's this stuff you got? I don't mind telling you my shoulder hurts like blazes.”
“Willow and wormwood in ointment, with mint to make it smell reasonable. I always have some.” He put his lute down and leaned over to rummage in the chest at the foot of his bed. “I'm one of those people who bruise just thinking about it. Get your shirt off, would you?”
When he turned around with the little jar in his hand, the boy had stripped to the waist, revealing a nasty bruise the size of his hand spreading all over the left shoulder. It was an ugly thing; purple the next thing to black in the center, blue-gray and red mottled through it.
Crack like lightning striking as the shield split. Sudden darkness, dizziness. Waking to Lissa's anxious face, and a pain in his left arm that sent the blackness to take him again.
“Good gods!”
Medren shrugged with one shoulder. “I bruise that way. Looks worse than it is, I guess. Young Mekeal took one just as hard and you can't hardly see a mark on him.” He looked longingly at the pot of salve. “Vanyel, you going to stand there and stare all day, or use that stuff?”
“I'm sorry, Medren.” He shook off his shock; got several fingersful of the ointment, and began to massage it as gently as possible into the bruised area, working his way from the edges inward. The boy hissed with pain at first, then gradually relaxed.
Vanyel, on the other hand, was profoundly disturbed, and growing tenser by the moment, his own shoulder muscles knotting up like snarled harpstrings. Gods, what can I do? Damned if I'll let Jervis ruin Medren the way he ruined me - but how? If I force a confrontation, he'll only take it out on Medren. If I take him on myself - gods, I do not trust my temper, not with that old bastard. Not with the hair-trigger I've got right now. He'd make one wrong move, or say something at the wrong time - and I'd kill him before I could stop myself. What can I do? What can I do?
“Lady Bright,” the boy sighed. “I feel like I got a shoulder again, instead of a piece of pounded meat.”
“Medren, is there any way you can avoid practices until you're safely out of here?” Vanyel asked.
Medren considered a moment. “Now and again,” he said, slowly. “Not on a regular basis.”
“Are you sure?” Vanyel pursued, urgently. “Isn't there any place you can hide?”
“Not since they opened up the back of the library. Anyplace I go, they'll find me, eventually. Isn't there anything you can do?”
Vanyel shook his head with bitter regret. “I wish there were. I can't think of anything at the moment. I'll work on it; if there's a way out for you, I'll find it. Look, avoid him as much as you can. Try and stay out of his line-of-sight when you can't avoid the practices. If he doesn't actually see you in front of him, sometimes you can manage to keep from becoming his target for the day.”
Medren sighed, and shrugged his shirt back on. “All right. If that's all I can do, that's all I can do.” He twisted his head around and gave Vanyel a slightly pained grin. “At least you believe me. You even sound like you know what I'm going through.”
Vanyel stared at the wall, but what he was seeing was not wood panels, but a thin, undersized boy being used as an object upon which a surly ex - mercenary could vent his spleen. “I do, Medren,” he replied slowly, a cold lump settling just under his heart. “Believe me, I do.”
Vanyel was more than happy to see his Aunt Savil's serene, beaky face again. And was glad he'd decided to ride out and meet her. It was a lot easier to tell her what had been going on without wondering who was going to overhear.
“. . .so that's the state of things,” Vanyel concluded, Yfandes matching her pace to Savil's taller Companion. “The only real problems-other than the fact that Lineas and Baires could go for each other's throats any day - is Medren. Melenna I can avoid. The Great Sheep Debate is going to go on until the sheep are gone from Long Meadow. Father seems to have accepted Meke's breeding program, although he's got his agent out looking for an alternative to that awful stud Meke bought. But Medren - Savil, I know what you're thinking, you're thinking I'm overreacting to seeing another lad in the same position I was in. You didn't see that monster bruise he showed up with. He's not getting love-pats. That bruise was the size of my spread hand, finger-tip to thumb-tip, easily.”
“Huh,” Savil replied, frowning in thought.
“And to make it worse, Meke told me Jervis wants to - I quote-'go a few rounds with me.' To spar.” Vanyel snorted. “ 'Spar' indeed. It'll be a cold day -”
She nodded. “Probably a damned good idea to avoid him. He'll push you, Van; he'll push you all he can.”
“And I've just spent the last year on the Border.”
“Exactly. If he pushed you too far - well, you know that better than me. Kellan, can you and 'Fandes kindly wait until you're loose for the chatter and gossip? We're trying to have a serious briefing here.”
Vanyel chuckled. :Trading stories about the muscular, young courier - types?:
:Shut up and ride.:
Vanyel caught Savil's eye, and they exchanged a look full of irony. “I can see,” she said aloud, “that this is going to be a very-lively-visit.”