Ten

“Boy?”

The harsh whisper in the dark startled him out of unrestful sleep; it jerked him into full awareness, dry-mouthed, heart pounding.

“Boy, be ye awake?”

“Yes,” Valdir replied. I am now, anyway.

Hot, onion-laden breath near his elbow. “Lissen boy, ye needs warnin'. The reason this place don' prosper. Bel drinks up th' profit.”

Valdir calmed his heart, nodded to himself. That explained a lot. “I'd wondered,” he whispered back.

“She be at the keg in 'er room right now. Come mornin' she'll be up wi' a temper like a spring bear. She won't go hittin' on th' girls, not them as makes her profit - but me an' Tay an' Ri be fair game. An' now you. Ye take my meanin'?”

“I think so.”

“Don' doubt me. An' don' go thinkin' ye got anywhere's else. Ev'ry inn on th' Row's got its singster or dancer. Bel's the only one did wi'out. That be 'cause she don't care for ye singsters, an' no dancin' girl'l stay where the profits be so lean. How long ye plan on stayin'?”

Valdir was profoundly grateful that he was not locked into this life. “I hadn't thought I'd be here long. I really sort of thought I'd look for a place at the Great Houses or the Palace,” he began timidly. “I used to be with a House. They mostly keep at least one minstrel, and I figure the Palace must use -”

The old man choked with laughter, and then broke into a fit of terrible coughing. Valdir acted as would be expected. “I'm not that bad!” he sputtered indignantly. “I'm just - out of luck, lately.”

The old man convulsed again. “Outa more'n luck. First off, there ain't no Great Houses in the city. They all be outside the walls. Second, the Remoerdis Family's dead. Ain't nobody in th' Palace but ghosts.”

Valdir gasped, and let the old gaffer tell the tale as he pleased. It was amazingly consistent with what Lores had told him, save only that the Herald who'd carried off Tashir had been seven feet tall, cut down a dozen guards, and rode away on a fanged white demon, “- an' third thing -” the rheumy voice continued, “- they wouldn't have anyone next or nigh the palace as wasn't blood kin; even the servants be blood kin on the backside. So even if they'd been alive an' ye'd been t' see, they'd not 'ave took ye.”

“Why?” Valdir asked, bewildered. “That doesn't make any sense! What does being blood relation have to do with serving - or talent?”

The old man coughed again. “Damn if I know. Been that way f'rever. Anyway, I'm tellin' ye, if ye wanta keep that purty face purty, save yer coppers an' get outa here soon as ye can; afore the snow flies be best. Otherwise ol' Bel likely to start seein' how far she can push ye. I've warned ye, now I'm goin' t' sleep.” And not another word could Valdir get out of him.

He found out how right the warning was the next day, when Bel stumbled down the stairs, red-eyed and touchy, smelling like a brewery. She started in on the two kitchen girls, looking for excuses to punish one of them. She found plenty; the girls sported a black eye each before she was through with them.

Valdir managed to stay out of her way long enough to get his pack and bed stowed safely and his lute placed beside the door. But then - then he got an unexpected and altogether unpleasant shock. Bel tried - him. First flirting, then, when that brought no result, threatening.

She disgusted and frightened him, and he knew he dared not retaliate in any way. Instead he had to stand and take her pawing, while his skin crawled and his stomach churned, trying not to show anything except his very real and growing fear of her. She finally convinced herself that she wasn't going to get any pleasure out of him in that way, so she chose another.

In the end he escaped with no worse than a darkening bruise on his cheekbone where she'd backhanded him into a wall - without his promised breakfast or lunch, and not willing to endure either more of her clumsy caresses or her brutality to get it. He flew out the door as soon as she unlocked it, resolving not to return until nightfall and the time appointed for him to perform. He paused long enough in his flight to snatch up his lute; he would not leave the means of his livelihood unguarded, and anyway, there might be the chance of making a few coins on the street as he had last night. Enough, maybe, to feed him.

Herald Vanyel would not have tolerated that treatment, but Herald Vanyel was far, far away. There was only poor, timid Valdir, fallen indeed on bad luck, scrawny, fearful, and no little desperate.

Gods help her people. If I was what I'm pretending to be, I think I'd go hunting a sharp knife, and I'm not sure if I'd use it on her first, or myself...

“Thought you might end up here,” drawled a strange, well-trained voice, as he bolted out the door and into the street. He turned, blinking in the bright sunlight. Lounging against a wall across the street was the grizzled minstrel who'd been playing the gittern in one of the other taverns the night before. He was dressed in dull colors that blended with the wall; he'd taken up a post right opposite The Green Man. He looked bored and lazy; as Valdir watched him suspiciously, he pushed away from the wall and walked slowly toward him across the cobblestones. In the light of day he was clearly much older than Valdir; hair thinning and mostly gray, square face beginning to wrinkle and line. But as he approached Valdir, it was also plain that he had kept his body in relatively good shape; beneath the loose, homespun shirt, leather tunic and breeches, he had only the tiniest sign of a paunch, and the rest of him looked wiry and strong enough to survive just about any tavern brawl.

To someone like Valdir, this stranger meant danger of another sort. The man could be looking to eliminate a rival, or intending to bully him - or worse.

Talk about luck being out. Have I leaped out of the pan into the fire?

Valdir backed up a pace, letting his uncertainty show on his face.

A tired horse pulled a slops-wagon down the center of the street, and the stranger stepped deliberately toward him once it had passed.

“Ah, ease up, boy, I'm not about to pummel you,” the minstrel said, a faint hint of disgust twisting his lips. Valdir continued to step back, until the minstrel had him trapped in a corner where a fence met the inn wall. Valdir froze, his hands pressed against the unsanded wood behind him, and the minstrel reached for his face, grabbing his chin in a hand rough with chording-calluses. He turned Valdir's cheek into the light, and examined the slowly purpling bruise.

“Got you a good one, did she?” He touched the edge of the bruise without hurting his captive. “Huhn. Not as bad as it could be.”

The minstrel let him go and backed up a few steps. Valdir huddled where he was, watching him fearfully. The stranger scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Heard you last night when I went on break. You aren't bad.”

“Thank you,” Valdir replied timidly.

“You're also going to get your hands broken if you stay with Bel for very long,” the other continued. “That's what she did to the one before the one that ran off with her girl.”

Valdir did not reply.

“Well? Aren't you going to say anything?”

“Why are you telling me all this?” Valdir asked, letting his suspicion show. He stood up a little straighter, and rubbed his sweaty palms on his patched and faded linen tunic in a conscious echoing of an unconscious gesture of nervousness.

“Because the one before the one that ran off with her girl was a good lad,” the older man said, impatience getting the better of him. “He was pretty, like you, and he was fey, like I bet you are, and I don't want it happening to another one. All right?” He turned on his heel and started to walk away.

Don't turn away a possible ally!

“Wait!” Valdir cried after him. “Please, I - I didn't mean -”

A bit of breeze blew dry leaves up the street. The minstrel halted, turned slowly. Valdir walked toward him, holding out his hand. “I'm Valdir,” he said shyly. “I've been - north. Baires.” The other showed his surprise with a hissing intake of breath. “I made a bit of a mistake, and I had to make a run for it.” He looked down at his feet, then back up again. “It hasn't been easy; not while I was there, and not getting across the border to here. They got me out of the habit of looking for friends up there, and into the habit of looking for enemies.”

“Renfry,” said the older minstrel, clasping his hand, with a slow smile that showed a good set of even, white teeth. “Not many real musicians on the Row. I s'ppose I should be treating you as a rival - but - hell, a man gets tired of hearing and singing the same damn things over and over. Bel had Jonny for a long while before she ruined him, and he trained here.”

“What happened to him? After, I mean.”

“We clubbed together and sent him off to a Healer the very next day, ended up having to send him across the Border. Uppity palace Healer didn't want to 'waste his time on tavern scum.' Never heard anything after that.” He shrugged. “If the poor lad ended up not being able to play again, I don't imagine he'd want anyone to know.”

Valdir shuddered; genuinely.

“Ol' Bel don't believe in letting the help sample the goods. She got drunk and thought Jonny had his eye on one of the girls.” He snorted in contempt. “Not bloody likely.”

“She must have slipped up once -” Valdir ventured. “I mean - the one that romanced her girl, like you said.”

Renfry laughed, and started up the dusty, near-empty street with Valdir following. The thin autumn sunlight stretched their shadows out ahead of them. “She did, because she was bedding the fellow herself. She never figured him for having the stamina to be double-dipping!

Truth to tell, I hope he was good in bed, because he surely had a voice like a crow in mating season, and maybe four whole chords to his name.”

Valdir thought about the way Bel had tried to come on to him, and could actually feel a shred of sympathy for the unknown minstrel. “Were you waiting out here for me?” Valdir asked, as they approached the closed door of The Pig and Stick, the tavern Renfry had been playing in last night.

Renfry nodded, holding the door to “his” inn open.

“Why?”

“To warn you, like I said. Let you know you'd better make tracks.”

Valdir shook his head, and his hair fell over one eye. “I can't. I - I haven't got a choice,” he confessed sadly. “I haven't anywhere else to go.”

Renfry paused in surprise, half in, half out of the doorway. “That lean in the pocket?” he asked. “Lad, you aren't that bad. You're a good enough musician, for true. Unless you really made more than just a mistake.”

Valdir nodded unhappily. “Made a bad enemy. Sang the wrong song at the wrong time. Used to be with a House. Now I've got the clothes on my back, my lute, and that's mostly it.”

“Save your coppers and head over the Border into Valdemar,” the other advised. “Tell you what, I'll stand you a drink and a little better breakfast than you'd get from old Bel, then I'll steer you over to a decent corner. Not the best, but with the palace a wreck, there's a, lot of guards standing about with nothing to do but make sure our High and Mighty Lord Visitor doesn't get himself in the way of a stray knife round about the Town Elder's house. You ought to collect a bit there, hmm?” He grinned. “Besides, I got an underhanded motive. You're about as good as me, and you know some stuff new to our folk. I'm going to bribe you with food to learn it, and then I'm going to get you out of town so you aren't competition anymore.”

Valdir smiled back hesitantly, at least as far as his sore cheek permitted. “Now that I understand!”

By nightfall Bel was sober, and when Valdir crept in at the open door she waved him to his place on the hearth with nothing more threatening than a scowl. He sat down on the raised brick hearth with his bruised cheek to the fire, and began tuning the lute. There were one or two customers; nothing much. Valdir was just as glad; it gave him a chance to think over what he'd picked up.

It had been a very profitable day. The Town Elder's servants were entertainment-starved and loose-tongued; once Valdir had gotten them started they generally ran on quite informatively and at some length before demanding something in return.

Ylyna had been a child-bride; that made Tashir's arrival eight-and-a-half months after the wedding so much more surprising. Several of the Mavelan girls had been offered as prospective treaty-spouse, but of them all, only Ylyna had lacked mage-powers, so only Ylyna had been acceptable to Deveran Remoerdis or his people. It was generally agreed that she was “odd, even for a Mavelan.” And strangely enough, it was also generally agreed that up until the night of the massacre Tashir had been a fairly decent, if slightly peculiar, young man. “A bit like you, lad,” one of the guards had said. “Jumpin' at shadows, like. Nervy.” If it had not been for his mage-powers there likely would have been no objection to his eventual inheritance of the throne of Lineas. But once those powers manifested, it became out of the question. No Linean would stand by and see a mage take the seat of power.

“We seen what comes o' that, yonder,” an aged porter had told him a bit angrily, pointing with his chin at the north. “Put a mage in power, next thing ye know, he's usin' magic t' get any damn thing 'e want out 'o ye. No. No mages here.”

So as soon as it had become evident that several of Tashir's younger brothers - all of whom markedly resembled Deveran - were going to live into adulthood, the Council demanded that Deveran disinherit the boy. They didn't have to pressure him, according to the Lord Elder's first chambermaid; he gave in at once, so quickly that the ink wasn't even dry on the copies of the proclamation when his heralds cried the news.

And strangely enough, Tashir didn't seem the least unhappy about it. “Didn”xactly jump for joy, but didn' seem t' care, neither,” a fruitseller had observed.

Lord Vedric - that was who Valdir assumed was the “Lord Visitor,” though he was never referred to as anything but “that Mavelan Lord” - had come as something of a surprise to the folk of Highjorune. They'd expected him to attempt to defend Tashir; instead he'd listened to the witnesses with calm and sympathy, and had expressed his horrified opinion that the boy had gone rogue. He'd kept displays of magery to a minimum, and had made himself available to the Council as a kind of advisor until someone figured out how to get Tashir back to be punished, and until they determined who the new ruler of Lineas would be.

As for the startling resemblance between Lord Vedric and Tashir -

“ 'E said th' boy could be 'is, 'e didn't know,” one of the chambermaids - a pretty one that Valdir suspected of getting gossip fodder via pillow talk - had whispered, sniggering, to Valdir. “ 'E said th' girl couldn' keep 'er skirts down, an' that she'd bribed 'er way inta lots o' beds, takin' the place o' th' girls as was s'pposed t' be there. Said 'e'd found 'er in 'is bed more'n once, an' that 'e didn't know it were 'is own 'alf-sister an' not the wench 'e'd called fer till mornin'. That was why 'e were tryin' t' keep th' boy heir, so 'e says; tryin' t' do right by 'im, like, just in case.” She sniggered again. “I 'card 'nough fr'm m' cousin 'bout 'Er 'Ighness an”er light-skirt ways I believe'im.”

And the cousin, it seemed, had been one of Ylyna's personal maids. More importantly, she had been out of the palace the night everyone else had been killed. The chambermaid had promised an introduction in a day or two.

“You gonna sit there all night diddlin' that thing, or you gonna play?” Bel growled, breaking into his thoughts. With a start and a cowed look, he began playing.

The young girl scampered back to her duties, leaving Valdir alone with the last surviving member of the palace staff, her cousin. The woman pondered him for a moment, then, a trifle reluctantly, invited him into her tiny parlor. The cousin was old; that surprised Valdir. And the odd look she gave him as he took the seat she indicated surprised him more.

“Why are ye askin', lad?” she queried, as she settled into her own chair. “If it's just morbid curiosity...”

He rubbed the bruise Bel had gifted him with this morning - it matched the first - and tried to get her measure. She was a bit younger than Savil, and small, but proudly erect. There was something very dignified about her, and out of keeping with her purported position; she didn't hold herself with the air of a servant. She was plainly clothed, in dark wool dress and white linen undertunic, but the wool was fine lambswool, tightly woven, and costly, and the linen as fine as he had ever seen on his mother. She watched him from under half-closed lids. Her eyes seemed full of secrets.

She had been out of the palace that fatal evening, the girl had told him, because she had been here, in the home of her aged mother, who had fallen and could not be left alone at night. There was a great deal about her that prompted Valdir to trust in her honesty; enough that he decided to tell her a certain measure of the truth.

“I want to find out what really happened,” he said, as sincerely as he could manage. “The stories I've heard so far don't make a lot of sense. If there's something that needs to be told, perhaps I'm the one to tell it. A minstrel can tell an unpleasant truth with more success, sometimes, than anyone else. I'm a stranger, with no interests to protect. It might be I'd be believed more readily than a Linean.”

She looked away from him, and her face was troubled. “I don't know,” she said, finally. “This ...” She looked down at her hands, and her attention seemed to be caught by a ring she wore.

It was an unusual ring in the fact that it was so very plain; burnished, unornamented silver, centered with a dull white stone. The stone was nothing Valdir recognized; it looked like an ordinary, water-worn quartz pebble.

Then her attention was more than caught -

The stone flared with an internal, white flame for a moment, and it seemed that she could not look away from it.

The woman's face took on a blankness of expression he'd only seen in the spell-bound.

Valdir felt the back of his neck chill. There was a Power moving somewhere, one he didn't recognize. He longed to be able to unshield and probe, and maddeningly knew he dared not. This felt almost like someone was working a Truth Spell, only the feel of this was old – old -

“Lady Ylyna-” she said, in a strangely abstracted voice. “At the bottom of this, it all comes down to Lady Ylyna.”

“Tashir's mother?” Valdir asked, biting his lip in vexation when it occurred to him that his words might break whatever spell it was that held her. But her expression remained rapt, and he ventured more. “But – how -”

“She was hardly more than a child when she came here,” the woman said, still gazing into the stone of her ring, “but I've never seen a more terrified girl in my life. She'd been the ignored one, until Deveran refused to take any girl to wife that had mage-powers. Then she was valuable, and you can believe her family kept the strings on her. She was terrified of them. She was so happy when she was first pregnant - Deveran made a great deal of her, you see. But then Tashir came early - there was no telling him that it was just accident the boy looked like his uncle. So he only came to her to get her pregnant, and once pregnant, he ignored her until the children were born.”

“But - “

She didn't seem to hear him. “He ignored the boy, too. She was scarcely old enough to have left off with dolls, she hadn't a clue what to do with a child. Then the letters started coming - letters from Baires, with the royal seal on them, from The Mavelan. She never let us see them, but they terrified her. And she took it all out on the boy. The other children, the ones that took after Deveran, they had nursemaids, and careful watching, but not Tashir. He was left to her. Poor child. Half the time she petted and cosseted him like a lapdog - that was when her letters seemed to be good. The other half of the time she'd take a riding crop to him till the poor boy was bruised all over. That was when the letters frightened her. Then the boy started showing wizard-power, and it got worse. I watched her watching him one day - I've never seen such jealousy in my life on a human face.”

“Why would she be jealous of him?” Valdir wondered aloud.

The old woman shook herself, and gave him a sharp look. “I've said more than I intended,” she told him, almost accusingly.

He tried to look innocent and trustworthy. “But what you've said is important.''

She rose and walked slowly across the tiny sitting room to the door, and opened it. “Come back in two days,” she said, in tones that brooked no argument. “I may decide to tell you more then.”

Nearly ready to burst with frustration, Valdir left, doing his best to show none of it.

She shut the door behind him, and he wandered back down to the Row, looking for a good place to set out his hat for a few more hours.

He still had to eat, after all.

:How much of this can you trust?: Yfandes asked.

:Well, I'm hardly going to be able to run Truth Spell on her,: he replied, staring up into the darkness and listening to old Petar snoring loud enough to shake the chimney down. :Although-gods help me, it seems as if something was doing that for me. And you have to admit, this report of alternate petting and abuse certainly explains some of his reaction toward women. Mothers in particular.:

:But it doesn't explain what happened that night.:

One of the two girls murmured in her sleep. Vanyel shivered, and pulled his blanket a little closer. The cold of the dirt floor was seeping through his thin straw pallet. :There's more. I know there's more. I think she - or whatever it was that made her talk - is testing me, and I don't know why. Gods, and the questions I have - why allow only blood relations to serve the Remoerdis Family? And why does it feel as if the old lady is - Gifted? Or geased, bespelled. Or both, I don't know. And I don't dare test her to find out, with Vedric in the city:

:Mm,: she agreed. :Wise. What's he up to?:

:Being utterly charming,: Valdir replied.  :He's got the locals coming more and more over to his side. And he's agreeing with them on every point. It's hard to believe that this is the same man my sister called a viper.:

:Interesting. And these Lineans are a hard-headed lot.:

:It would just about take an angel to change their minds about the Mavelans,: Vanyel told her. :But Vedric seems to be doing just that.:

Petar snorted, coughed, and turned over. There was silence for a moment, then he snorted again, and the snores did not resume.

:Take the chance to get to sleep while you can,: Yfandes advised dryly.

But sleep refused to come.

Tonight had been particularly bad. Not only had Bel made another try, but Valdir had fended off the attentions of someone else as well.

Even if he hadn't taken Bel's glare as warning that she meant what she'd said about not taking up with her customers, he'd have avoided this one. Shaych, yes - but in a way that made Valdir's skin crawl as much as Bel did. The man hadn't been physically repulsive, but there was something twisted about him, something unhealthy. Like a fine velvet glove over a taloned hand. The man had looked at him with a hunger that made him shiver with reaction even now. He had reminded Vanyel - not Valdir - of the mage that had called himself “Krebain.”

I don't know what to think anymore. If I'm not shaych, then why can't I just do what Bel wants and get it over with? If I am, then why did that hunter revolt me? He turned onto his side, curling into a ball against the cold, the ache of his empty stomach, the misery his own uncertainty was causing.

And today - gods. That sick little game I was playing on the serving girls. Leading them on - knowing I was leading them right down a dead end. Yes, I got information - but I was actually enjoying deluding them, having a little power over them. Gods, that was sick. And I would have gone right on playing little sex-flirtation games if 'Fandes hadn 't threatened to kick me into next week. I'm turning into something I don't much like.

He curled up a little tighter. I don't even know my own feelings any more.

He tightened his lips in exasperation. Look, Van, you’re supposed to have been trained in logic. So why don't you try putting things into some kind of category, you goose? Maybe you don't know what you feel, but you certainly know what you don't feel. You 've been agonizing over that enough lately! Then figure out what it is that everything you don't care for has in common.

: It's about time,: came Yfandes' sardonic comment.

He was startled - and then angry. He very nearly made some kind of nasty retort back to her, but she was blocking, and he wasn't so angry that he'd try to breach her shields just to tell her off. For one thing, he wasn't sure he could - for another, the attempt might give him away to Vedric.

But he certainly wanted to...

The next several days were some of the worst Valdir had ever spent. He played his fingers to the bone every night until the last customer left. He dodged Bel, not always successfully, by day. He took her beatings with teeth-gritting meekness, avoided her increasingly heavy-handed attempts to trap him, and did his best to minimize the damage she inflicted. He was cold at night, and starved by day; Bel's idea of “meals” being scarcely enough to keep a mouse alive. And his own unhappy thoughts kept him awake more often than not.

He went back to the former maid Reta's tiny house faithfully every two days, only to be turned away with nothing.

Then, finally, after close to a fortnight - an endless series of attempts to see the old woman and being turned away from her door - Reta finally agreed to speak with him again.

“I wasn't sure you'd be back.” Reta held the door open for him, and he slipped past her into the tiny, painfully neat sitting room. She closed the door carefully, and sat down on her settle beside the hearth. Valdir took the only other seat, a stool. The old woman regarded him thoughtfully while he curbed his impatience, and hoped that this time some more information would be forthcoming.

“No, I wasn't certain you'd be back,” she repeated.

“Why wouldn't I?” he asked, just as quietly, as he ignored the hollow feeling in his stomach. He'd been here long enough that the meager rations and short sleep were beginning to affect him, and while he'd recharged his mage - energies fully, his physical energies were becoming exhausted. He woke up five and six times a night, cramping with cold, and even with the supplementary food he was spending his pittance of earnings on, he was beginning to have spells of light-headedness. Most of his money was going to buy Yfandes grain, anyway. But Reta held the key, he was sure of it. If only he could persuade her to part with the information. Her - or whatever power had controlled her the first time he came to her door.

“This isn't a tale of high adventure,” she pointed out dryly. “And it isn't a bedroom farce. It's not terribly interesting, it's not good song-fodder, and it's sad.”

“Sad?” He raised an eyebrow. “Why sad?”

She examined the hands she held folded in her lap, as if they were of great interest. “That poor child Ylyna, she never really had a chance to grow up. Oh, she was grown in body, but - They kept her a child, a frightened child they could manipulate. I find that sad.”

“They” meaning the Mavelans. “Why didn't you say something?” he asked, trying to understand what could have led her to stand by and watch, and not act.

She shrugged. “Who would have listened? I was Her Highness' personal maid, as I was Deveran's mother's. Deveran would have thought me either besotted or bewitched. He wasn't known for thinking much of women in the first place.” She shook her head and stared at the ring on her finger. The peculiar, dull white stone seemed to brighten for a moment, and her voice and expression became abstracted, as it had the first time she'd spoken openly.

It's happening again! Valdir held his breath, all his exhaustion, his personal concerns forgotten, hoping against hope...

“No, Deveran had no faith in the good sense or the honesty of women. After all, his own mother had betrayed him by dying when he most needed her, or so his own father kept claiming. And Ylyna - not a virgin, possibly mad, and surely little better than a trollop - certainly didn't help matters.”

Valdir could not stay silent; he protested such inexcusable, willful blindness. “But the way she treated Tashir -”

“Was likely the way she'd been treated.” The old woman shook her head again, continuing to stare at the stone of her ring. “When you reach my age, you have generally seen a great deal. Adults who have been beaten as children beat their own children. And - other things. I sometimes wonder if that isn't what Holy Lerence meant when he said 'the sins of the fathers shall be taken up by the sons.'“ Her eyes grew even more thoughtful - or entranced. She didn't seem to be paying any attention to him.

There was something stirring here. Again he felt some Power moving under the powers he could detect easily. Gods! I don't dare try to probe for it. The frustration maddened him. He could feel it, something deep, and powerful, it vibrated so that he felt it rather than “detected” it; the way he could sometimes “feel” the vibrations of a note too low to actually hear.

But it was stronger this time, much stronger, and it seemed to be stirring to his good, for the old chambermaid was saying things she hadn't more than hinted at before.

“What other things was she doing?” Valdir prompted in a whisper, hands clenched together so tightly they ached. This was it. This was what he was looking for. The secret no one knew. The key to it all.

She sounded as if she was talking to herself. “When Tashir grew older - and handsomer - she started looking at him differently. The gods know Deveran hadn't come to her bed for four years, and wouldn't allow any male servants near her, only women. She had never had any pleasure except in bed, I think. I wonder if that wasn't the only thing she thought she could do well.” The old woman was gazing deeply into her stone and not at all at him now, and her voice was very low, so that he had to strain to hear it. She shifted just a little, and he caught the sharp smell of lavender from the folds of her dress. “Tashir began looking more and more like his uncle, and he was still terrified of her. Of her, who never frightened anyone, and couldn't even command respect from her servants. It must have been too seductive to resist, that combination; fear, and the handsome young face and body. She set out to seduce her own son into her bed.”

Valdir froze. No - that's - my gods -

She continued on, still speaking in that same, dreamy voice, as if she was speaking only to herself. “That frightened him even more, I think, once he realized what was going on. Poor child. I hardly believed it at first; I just thought the petting was getting a little - overwarm. She'd use any excuse to get her hands on him. Any excuse at all.”

Valdir licked his dry lips, but couldn't make his voice work.

Reta sighed. “And Deveran either didn't know or didn't care; I tend to think the latter. He had what he wanted; three sons indisputably his, and likely to reach maturity. What happened to Tashir didn't matter. The only person who cared what was happening to him was the old armsmaster, the one Deveran had retired. Karis. He had taken to teaching the boy, when he saw no one else would. He protected him as much as he could. Which wasn't much, but it was something. He gave the boy a place to hide- and a person to look up to who was stable, sane, and fond of him.”

“A good man?”

And possibly another way to get Tashir to open up -

“A very good man. A pity he was in the palace with the rest of them.”

Valdir wanted to curse, and restrained himself only by a strong effort of will.

“Finally it got to the point that Tashir couldn't keep her away - and that wizard-power of his intervened. He had a kind of fit; smashed half the bower before it was over. That was when Deveran decided.”

“Decided what?” Valdir asked.

At that moment, the power faded abruptly. One breath it was there. Then it was gone. Her eyes finally came back to their normal sharp focus. “What?” she asked him, looking up at him suddenly.

Gods - the spell's broken. Oh, Lady of Light, help me persuade her. Would she finish the sentence? Could he convince her on his own? “You were going to tell me what Deveran had decided to do about Tashir,” he prompted. “That night.”

“Oh.” She shrugged, indifferently. “That. I thought everyone knew about that.”

“I don't,” he pointed out. “And nobody wants to talk about it, much.”

“It's simple enough. Since Vedric was making such a big to-do over the boy, Deveran decided to let him deal with the problem. Deveran was going to send the boy to his Mavelan relatives - permanently. That was what he told Ylyna after they cleared the boy and the mess out of her bower. That he intended to tell the boy at dinner.” She sighed. “And I can only assume, given that Tashir was even more frightened of that den of madmen than he was of his mother, that this was exactly what happened, and what brought - everything-down.”

He hadn't realized how much time he'd spent in the little sitting room; when he took his leave of Reta, he was appalled. One candlemark to sundown.

Panic stole thought. He could only think of one thing.

Home.

He had to get home, before it was too late. He didn't dare try to Mindtouch Savil from here; that would be as stupid, with Vedric so near, as riding through the gates in full Whites on Yfandes.

He ran across town, dodging through foot and beast traffic, trying to reach the east gate before they closed it for the night. Once closed-he wouldn't get out until morning. He didn't dare cast any kind of spell to get him by, no more than he dared Mindtouch Savil. Vedric would detect spellcasting even faster than the use of a Mind-Gift. And every moment he stayed here was another moment the same disaster that wiped out Tashir's family could move to harm his.

The sun was dropping inexorably toward the horizon; he had a pain in his side, and he was gasping for breath- and still he wasn't more than halfway to his goal. He stumbled against a market-stall; recovered; ran on. He realized with despair that he was not going to make it in time.

And candlemarks could count; could be fatal, given what he knew now.

It was only too possible that Tashir had done exactly what he'd been accused of; that he had been pushed too far by his father's ultimatum, and he had lost his hold temporarily on his Gift and his sanity. It was only too likely that he had unleashed power gone rogue and had destroyed his own home and everything and everyone in it.

Valdir stopped, unable to run any farther; clung to the corner of a building at a cross street, and watched the sun turn to blood, and sink below the horizon.

Taking with it his hope.

Valdir slipped into the Pig and Stick, keeping to the wall and the shadows as much as he could. He managed to get within touching distance of Renfry, and froze there, unmoving, in the shadows behind him.

He prayed that Renfry was about to finish a set, and that he had not just begun one. The tavern was hot, and he was sweating from his run. His side still hurt, and he wanted to cough so badly his chest ached with the effort of holding it back. Sweat ran down his back, and into his eyes. Odor of bread and stew and spilled ale made his stomach cramp up with hunger, and his eyes watered. The lamps flickered, and he gripped the wall behind him, as the room swam before his eyes.

Too long on too little. Oh, gods, keep me going!

Finally Renfry finished, and waved aside requests for more. “Not now, lads,” he said genially. “Not until I wet my throat a bit.''

He turned, and saw Valdir behind him. He started to say something - then took a second, closer look at him, and his eyes grew alarmed.

He picked up the gittern by the neck, and grabbed Valdir's elbow with his free hand. Without a single word, he propelled the unresisting Valdir before him through the door leading to the kitchen.

It was light enough in here, though twice as hot as the tavern common room, what with two fires and the brick bake-oven all roaring at once. A huge table dominated the center of the room; an enormously fat man in a floury, stained apron was pulling fresh loaves out of the oven with a long wooden paddle and putting them to cool on the table. There were two boys at each of the fireplaces, one turning a spit, one watching a kettle. A fifth boy was sitting on a stool right by the door, peeling roots.

Renfry pushed the boy peeling roots off his perch and shoved Valdir down onto it.

“What's wrong?” he said, “And don't tell me it's nothing. You look like somebody seeing a death sentence.”

Valdir just nodded; he'd already concocted a story for Renfry, and one that fit in with what he'd already told the man. “I've -” He finally coughed, rackingly; swallowed. “I've got to get out of here. Now. Tonight.”

Renfry looked at him narrowly. “Wouldn't be that little matter of a song, would it?”

Valdir just looked at him, pleadingly. “If Vedric finds out I'm here,” he whispered truthfully, “he'll probably kill me, You didn't tell me it was Vedric here.”

“Vedric!” Renfry exploded. “Great good gods, boy, you sure don't pick your enemies too carefully! Oh, hell.”

He folded his arms and gazed up at the ceiling, brows knitted together so that they came close to meeting. “Let's see. First off, we got to get your things away from Bel. Huh ... got it!”

He slipped out into the taproom and returned within a few moments. “I just paid that little sneak brat of the cook's to pinch your things. If he can't nip 'em, nobody can. Now - how much coin you got?”

Valdir turned out his purse. There wasn't much. Renfry counted it carefully. “Tel!” he shouted into the chaos of the kitchen. “How much day-old bread and stuff can I get you to part with for twenty coppers? Be generous, the boy has to run for it.”

The massive cook blundered over to their side of the big central worktable, peered at Valdir, and then at the tiny heap of coin. “Huh. Apples is cheap right now; got some with bad spots. All right fer the road, no good t' store. Bread, uh - got some I was gonna use fer stuffin'. Let ye have it all. Got some cheese w' mold all through. Mold won' hurt ye, just looks like hell an' tastes mighty sharp; people round about here don't care for sharp cheese. Skinny runt like you, hold ye least a fortnight.”

Renfry gave Valdir a look brimming with satisfaction. “That'll get you across the Border, easy, and there's a Harvestfest going on over there right now. Boy with a voice like yours that can't get coin at a Harvestfest don't deserve t' call himself a minstrel.”

“Hey, 'Fry!” An insolent urchin slid in under Renfry's elbow, Valdir's pack and blanket in one hand, his lute in the other. “These whatcha lookin' fer?”

Valdir snatched the lute out of the child's hand and held it to his chest, his eyes going moist. “Oh, gods - Renfry, I - “

I never dared hope for this much help from him. Never even prayed for it.

“Don't you cry on me!” Renfry growled, cuffing his ear. “Just getting my competition out of town, I told you. Tel, here - pack up the boy's food.” He scraped everything but two small silver pieces off the table and poured them into the cook's hand. The handful of copper bits vanished into a pocket of the stained apron, and a hand rivaling Bel's for size and strength took the pack. “Now, listen careful, because I'm only going to tell you this once. You go down to the west gate. I know it's the wrong way, just circle around the city walls once you get outside. You ask for Asra. You got that?”

“Asra,” Valdir repeated, nodding. “West gate.”

“You tell him Renfry sent you, and you give him one silver. That's his standard bribe to let folks out after dark, and don't let him tell you different. Then when you get to the Border, you give the other to our lads. That'll get you past them. Valdemar folk don't give a hang about who crosses to their side, so long as you don't look like a fighter or a trader. Fighter they'd question, trader they'd tax. You got that?”

“One silver to Asra at the west gate, one to the Border Guards.”

“Good lad.” Renfry nodded approvingly. “Now belt that blanket around you under your cloak; you're going to need it, it's cold out there. When you get 'round the walls, you take the east road as far as the second farm on the right tonight. You stop there. There's a haybarn right on the road and the old boy that owns it don't give a hang if people sleep there so long as they don't build fires. After that, you're on your own.”

Valdir was pulling his threadbare cloak on over the blanket when the cook returned with his pack bursting at the seams. He tucked the two tiny coins into his now-empty purse, slung pack over one shoulder and lute over the other, and turned to Renfry, trying to think of some way to thank him.

Renfry took one look at his eyes, and softened. “Damn. Wish you could have stayed a while,” he said gruffly, and suddenly pulled Valdir into a quick, rough embrace. “Now get out of here, before Bel comes looking for you.”

Vanyel made the best meal he'd had in a fortnight of half a loaf, the cheese, and a couple of apples. Yfandes got the rest.

:Funny, how you seem to be able to find friends in the most unexpected places,: she mused. :Sometimes I wonder...:

“Friends? What are you talking about?” he asked her, cinching the blanket pad in place, and pulling himself up on her back. “Gods.” He clung there for a moment, as another wave of disorientation washed over him.

:Never mind. Are you all right?:

“I'll be fine. Just low on resources, and worn out.” Anxiety cramped his stomach a moment. He wouldn't have stopped long enough to eat if he hadn't found his legs giving out as he circled around the city to his meeting place with Yfandes. The shadows under the trees seemed sinister. The wind in the near-naked branches moaned as if in pain. He had to get back -

- but the old man was one of those that died. The thought kept nagging at him. He must have loved that old man, given his reaction to Jervis. That wasn't feigned. I can't believe that he would have killed the only person he trusted, even in a fit of uncontrolled rage and fear.

Never mind. The important thing was to take this knowledge back, now - before it was too late. Before the same thing could happen at Forst Reach. It still might not have been Tashir who killed the Remoerdis Family, but he dared not take that chance.

“All right, 'Fandes,” he said aloud. “Let's get out of here.”

And she leaped out onto the moon - flooded road.

Eleven

If Vanyel had dared to Gate so close to Vedric Mavelan he would have. But he didn't; he didn't dare alert him to the fact that a mage powerful enough to Gate had been within the city. If the Mavelans were somehow behind the disaster after all, he would be a fool to alert his quarry. So he and Yfandes pounded into Forst Reach just after dawn-

To find everything as peaceful as when they'd left.

:I told you,: Yfandes said, in a maddeningly reasonable tone of mind-voice as she pulled into a tired walk. :I told you if anything had gone wrong we'd have felt it, the way we felt the first surge. Didn't I tell you?:

Visions of slaughter and mayhem melted, taking with them the fear that had strengthened and supported him. When they got to the stable, Vanyel just slid wearily off her back, vowing not to say a word.

Because if he did, he'd take her head off. He hated it when she said, “I told you so.”

And he did not want to get into a fight with her, didn't even want to have words with her; she didn't deserve it.

Much.

He hurt; he ached all over, and he was half numb with cold. His legs trembled a little as he walked beside her into the stable, his boots and her hooves echoing hollowly on the wooden floor. He managed to get her stall open, and he spent as much time as he could leaning against something while he groomed her. There was, thank the gods, hay and water already waiting.

“Get some rest,” he told her, fatigue dulling his mind and slurring his words. “I'm going to do the same.”

He didn't remember how he got to his room; all he really remembered was leaving Medren's lute by the door, stripping his filthy rags off and dropping them on the floor as he staggered to his bed, and falling into the bed. Literally falling; his legs gave out at that point. He held onto consciousness just long enough to pull off the patched breeches and his boots, drag the blankets over himself and wrap them around his chilled, numb body; as soon as he stopped shivering, he was asleep, and oblivious to the world. At that point, Tashir could have replicated the massacre in Highjorune, and he'd have slept right through it.

He woke about mid-afternoon, still tired, but no worse than when he'd first arrived home. The filthy rags he'd worn were gone. Evidently one of the servants had come in and picked up after him, and it was a measure of his exhaustion that he not only hadn't woken, he hadn't even heard the intruder. He was not pleased with himself; carelessness like that could get him killed all too easily under other circumstances.

On the other hand, it means I'm obviously nowhere near as jumpy as I was, which is all to the good.

The first order of business was food and a bath, and stopping by the kitchen on the way to the bathhouse solved both at the same time.

But the next order of business - and one that made him wolf down the first decent meal he'd had in a fortnight practically untasted, and while he bathed - was a long talk with Jervis and Savil.

“The boy's staying so close to Jervis you'd think he'd been grafted there,” Savil said. Vanyel followed her out to the salle as the late afternoon sunlight gilded everything with a mellowing glow. “It's been entirely quiet, ke'chara. Not so much as a murmur out of the boy, or a single plate gone skyward.” She looked at him quizzically, with a touch of worry. “To see you practically flying back, and in this state - I wish you'd tell me what's going on.”

Vanyel shook his head, and his hair fell annoyingly into his eyes again. He hadn't had a chance to get it cut; it was a lot longer than he was used to wearing it, and he wasn't sure if he ought to find the time to do something about it or not. He raked it back with his fingers and suppressed his flash of annoyance at it. “I will, as soon as I have both you and Jervis together. I don't want to have to repeat myself, and I want to hear both of your opinions at the same time. It's - some of what I found out is terrifying, and none of it is pretty. And I don't know what to make of it.”

Savil brooded on that. “I thought you were going to find answers over there.”

“I did,” he replied, deeply troubled. “But the answers I found only gave me more questions.”

Jervis was alone in the workroom of the salle. Which might be the first piece of good luck I've had in a while, Vanyel thought with reluctance. Jervis' eyebrows went up when he saw the expression on Vanyel's face, but he didn't move from his chair; he only put down the vam-brace he'd been repairing, and waited for them to settle themselves.

“You're back, hmm?” the armsmaster said quietly. “From the look of you, I don't know as I'm going to like what you're going to tell me.”

Vanyel shut the door carefully behind Savil; he would have preferred to stand, but he was just too tired. He compromised by perching on a tall stool, and then looked from Jervis to his aunt and back again, at a real loss as to how to broach the whole subject.

“Did you find out who put fear in the boy?” Jervis prompted.

That's about as good a place to start as any. Vanyel took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said, and began his tale.

Jervis and Savil heard him out in complete silence, hardly even breathing. Savil's face was expressionless; Jervis, though, looked ready to call somebody out. Vanyel, for starters.

“That's it,” Vanyel finished, starting to slump with weariness, his shoulders aching with tension. “That's what I found out. And you have to admit, the answers I got certainly fit the symptoms.”

“Dammit Van,” Jervis said tightly, plainly holding his temper in check, “I am bloody well tempted to call you a damned liar to your face!”

“Why?” Vanyel asked bluntly, too weary for diplomacy.

Jervis colored, and growled. “Because that's nothing like the things Tashir's been telling me! The way he tells it -”

“Wait a minute! Do you mean Tashir's been talking about his family to you?”

“He trusts me! Can't the boy trust somebody other than you?”

Vanyel told himself that Jervis was only reacting much the way he would if the boy were in his protection, and managed to cool his rising temper. “Why don't you begin at the beginning, and tell me what you heard?”

What emerged was nothing less than a fantasy, if what Vanyel had learned was true. In his long talks with Jervis (and it seemed that there had been several), Tashir had painted a perfect, idyllic family for himself, one in which the members were forced by circumstance and enemies to present a very different face to the outside world than the one they showed each other. His mother, for instance; Tashir depicted her as the long-suffering plaything of her Mavelan relatives. According to him, once she discovered Deveran's kindness, she took a stand firmly by the side of her wedded lord, but played the part of the discarded, unwanted spouse so as to give the Mavelans no reason to think she could be used against Lineas and its ruler.

And according to Tashir's tale, Deveran was not the bitter, half-impotent dancer on the line between Baires threat and Lineas politics. He was supposedly a stern but kindly patriarch of the Linean throne. Deveran, so Tashir had told Jervis, had only disinherited him under pressure from his people. No, there was never any question in Deveran's mind as to who Tashir's father was. No, there had never been a fight, never been anything other than a small misunderstanding that they had settled that very night.

Fiction, first to last.

“That doesn't even square with what the boy told me!”

Vanyel retorted, disgusted with the game the youngster seemed to be playing. “He told me that his father hated him - that knocking him to the ground that night was only out of the ordinary because Deveran hadn't knocked him about much in public before!”

“Hell!” Jervis replied, his face flushing. “The boy was half - crazed an' scared outa his wits.”

“All the more reason that he should have told me the truth - he didn't have time to make up some tale!”

Jervis started to protest, and Vanyel raised his voice to interrupt him. “And the part about the fight wasn't just from Tashir, it was from Herald Lores!”

“A fathead,” Savil put in reluctantly, “but an honest fathead.”

Jervis lunged to his feet. “An' how much of this is 'cause you want that boy's tail?” he snarled, hands knotting into fists at his sides.

Vanyel went hot, then cold. “If that's what you think, I see no point in any further discussion. Think what you like - do what you like - but obstruct me, and I'll haul you off to Lissa in manacles.”

Jervis froze.

“Before I am anything else, armsmaster, I am Herald Vanyel, and my first priority is to my king and land. If I judge this boy is a danger to either, I will give him into Randale's custody. Not mine, armsmaster. But I must, and will have answers, and I will not permit anyone to even attempt preventing me from finding those answers.”

Vanyel rose stiffly from his stool, pivoted, and stalked towards the door.

He hadn't taken more than a few steps, when Jervis' strangled, half-smothered “wait” stopped him in his tracks.

“Why?” he asked, not turning.

“Because - I - we gotta figger out this thing.” Jervis cleared his throat. “All of us.”

Vanyel turned back, still angry, but suppressing it. “Very well. If we're going to figure this mess out, you'll have to take my word as being at least as good as the boy's.”

Jervis plainly didn't like that, but only protested, “How in hell can we take two stories that're that different?”

“Look at the one that fits the symptoms,” Vanyel's voice was grim, and his face felt tight. “He's afraid to let women between the ages of eighteen and forty even touch him - assume the story he told you is true - Ylyna alternately beating him and loving him, and then trying to seduce him -”

He wiped his forehead, and his hand came away wet with nervous sweat.

“Gods. Think about how Treesa treats every attractive male, including me. She comes on to every man like a flirt. It's only a game to her, but think how that must have looked to Tashir - the way he'd react. Given my version is true, you could predict he'd do just what he did - panic, and let his Gift act up and frighten her off - just as I was told he did with his mother. Think about how he hides from Withen! And think about the way he clings to you, Jervis! Everything makes sense.”

Jervis faltered. “Well, yes, but -”

“And everything points straight at Tashir as the unconscious murderer,” Vanyel continued, heartsick.

“Now that I will not believe!” Jervis shouted, surging to his feet. “That boy is no kind of a killer! Hell, he damn near castrated himself in practice yesterday, pulling a cut when Medren lost his helm!''

“Who else could it be?” Vanyel shouted back, overriding Jervis' protests by sheer volume. “He had the power, he was at the scene, and he had the motive! There's nobody, nobody, with any kind of a motive except Tashir!''

“No!” Jervis insisted, eyes going black with anger. “No, I won't accept that! Look how he kept from hurting anybody in Treesa's bower.”

“But crazed with fear, wild with anger, can you speak for that?”

“Even crazed - how could he kill that Karis? He loved that old man, he must have, to trust me so much just because I look like him!”

Vanyel sat heavily back down onto the stool. “I don't know,” he admitted in a low voice. “That's only one of the things that's been bothering me. In all of the cases of Gifts gone rogue that I've ever heard of, the rogue never hurts anyone but the ones directly in his way. Everybody was killed in this case, and that doesn't make sense. It might make sense if he panicked completely and thought he was killing witnesses, but he didn't have enough time to reason something like that out, not from all I learned. And from what I know of his personality - no. I can't see him killing in cold blood even to save himself.” He rubbed his pounding temples with his fists. Fits of anger always gave him a headache. “The first half of the story fits, but the second doesn't. I just can't reconcile the two.”

“There're other questions,” Savil pointed out from her seat on the cot. Vanyel looked at her in surprise; he'd forgotten she was there. “Lots of other questions. Some of them may tie in, others may not, but the fact is there's too many of them. Lord Vedric's behavior is certainly peculiar. It doesn't in the least match what I've heard of him. Either the man has reformed, or he's up to something. Then there's the puzzle of the Remoerdises, the Linean Royal Family. Why did Deveran insist that only those related to his family serve in the palace? Why is the place built on top of a damned mage-node? Why are the Lineans so completely against mage-craft?”

Vanyel shook his head. “You think those questions are crucial?”

“Don't you?” She stood, and smoothed down the front of her tunic. “You know damned well they are, or you wouldn't have brought them up. I tend to agree with Jervis; Tashir is no killer. I agree with you that your tale of how the boy was treated fits his behavior a lot better than the one he told Jervis. And there is something we're missing. Something important. I think we ought to all think about it.”

“What about that tale he's been feeding Jervis?” Vanyel asked.

“I think whoever runs into him next ought to call him on it - no, let me amend that. Whichever of the two of us, Van. Jervis, I'm sorry, but if it comes to magic, you're defenseless. I'm pretty certain Van and I could contain the worst of anything he could do.”

“The boy wouldn't hurt anybody, and especially not me,” he insisted stubbornly. “I know it, damn it, I just know it!”

“Forgive me, but I'd rather not take the chance,” Savil said dryly. “I hate picking up my acquaintances in palm-sized pieces. We've eaten this particular bird down to bones; let's let things simmer for a bit, and let's do something about dinner.”

“Gods.” Vanyel slid off the stool, held out his hands and watched them shake with a certain bemusement. “I just ate, and after this to-do, my stomach should be in knots. Instead, I could eat a cow.”

“Don't fill up,” Savil cautioned him, as they left Jervis mulling over the unpleasant things he'd heard. “There's Harvestfest tonight.”

“What?” He looked at her, bewildered. “Harvest - can't be - oh, gods -”

He counted up the passing days in his mind, and when he arrived at today, he could feel the blood draining out of his face. “Oh, gods. It's Sovvan. I lost track of time...” He stopped dead in the path, legs gone leaden, mind gone numb. Sovvan-night. Year's turning.

The night Tylendel had died.

Coming on top of all the rest of it - exhaustion, confusion, the verbal fight with Jervis -

It was too much. What little emotional balance he had left evaporated so quickly that he felt dizzy, as if he was dangling over a precipice.

His internal turmoil must have been mirrored clearly on his face. Savil moved closer to him, brows knitting in concern. “Van-ke 'chara-let it go. You aren't helping yourself by brooding.'' She put her arm around his shoulders. “Go down to the barns with the others. I'm going to -“

He scarcely felt it. All he could see was -

- a crumpled, lifeless shape.

He clamped an iron control down over his face. “That's not something I can do,” he replied stiffly. “I can't forget, especially not tonight. I won't ever forget...”

“Then, for the gods' sake, for your own sake, find something to distract you-music, dancing -”

“No, Savil.” He pulled away from her, and forced himself to walk steadily toward the keep. “You deal with grief your way, and leave me to deal with it in mine.”

“But - “

He shook his head stubbornly, unwilling to say more, and not sure that he could. Forget 'Lendel? How can I forget-how can I ever forget?

Oh, 'Lendel -

There was only one place where he could escape the sounds of celebration; the stone porch on the north side of the keep. All other interests had vanished when he realized what night it was; now all he wanted was solitude.

The lingering warmth of this fall had fooled him, usually. Sovvan-tide was marked by ice-edged rains and bitter winds.

Like the storm that night -

Usually he tried to find something useful to do - like stand guard-duty, or spell someone at courier, or even take the place of one of the Guardians watching the Web. Anything, so long as it was work, and didn't involve interacting with people, only serving them.

He'd completely forgotten that he'd be spending Sovvan here, in presumed idleness; leisure that would only give him the opportunity to remember how utterly alone he was.

It hadn't been this bad the first few years; in the first two, in fact, there had been moments when he thought he'd felt that treasured and familiar presence waiting, watching. But as the years passed - and it became clear that he was and would always be alone, Sovvan-night had become an occasion for profound depression unless he was very careful not to give in to it. This Sovvan-night bid fair to be an ordeal; he was too exhausted, and too shaken, to put up any kind of fight against himself.

He watched the sun die in glory; watched the stars come out, flowering against the velvet sky. He closed his eyes when the sparks of white began to waver in his vision, and struggled anyway in a losing battle against self-pity and heartache. I've wept enough; tears won't ease this, they'II only make it worse. I wish I was being Valdir. I wish I was back at Haven.

He thought briefly of Yfandes, and rejected the notion of going to her. She couldn't help him, much as he loved her. Her presence would only serve as a reminder of how much he had lost to gain her.

I need something to keep me occupied. Savil was right about that. Something that will take concentration.

There was only one task he knew that could possibly fill all his thoughts, take all his attention. Magic. I’ll build some illusions, good, tight ones. I can use the practice. I need the practice.

He perched on the edge of one of the stone benches, the gritty granite warm from the sun it had absorbed this afternoon, and concentrated on a point just in front of him. People, they're hardest. Starwind. He's vivid enough.

He closed his eyes, and centered.

It took very little to cast an illusion, just a wisp of power, and he didn't even need to take it from his reserves. The ambient energy around him was enough. He visualized a vibrant column of light growing in the air in front of him, then began forming the shapeless energy into an image, building it carefully from the feet up. Green leather boots, silky green breeches, and sleeveless tunic, all molding to a tall, slender, wiry body. Implicit strength, not blatant. Waist-length silver hair, four braids in the front, the rest falling free down his back, a cascade of ice-threads. Golden skin. Then the face: pointed chin, high cheekbones, silver - blue eyes with a wisdom and humor lurking in them that could not be denied, and a smile just hovering at the edge of the thin lips.

He opened his eyes - and before him stood the Tayledras Healer-Adept Starwind k'Treva.

For one moment he had it; perfect in every detail.

Then the hair shortened and darkened to curly blond, the face squared, and the eyes began warming and darkening to a soft and gentle brown.

His heart contracted, and he banished the illusion and began another, quickly: Savil. This one started to go wrong from the very beginning, and with a gasp of pain, he wiped it out and started on a third. Not even a human this time - one of the little lizards that served the Tayledras, the hertasi.

But the hertasi began growing taller, and developed blond hair.

“Oh, gods -” He banished the third illusion, and buried his face in his hands, shaking in every limb and battling against grief.

This - this is the worst Sovvan I've ever had, he thought, feeling sorrow tearing at his chest until it hurt to breathe. It's the worst since you died. Oh, 'Lendel, ashke, I can't bear it, and I have no choice! I'm so tired, so very tired-my balance is gone. And, to know it's going to go on like this, year after year, alone...

I don't know how to cope anymore. I don't know how anyone can be this lonely and still be sane. . . . I don't even know how sure I am of myself. I thought you were the only person I could ever love, but this business with Shavri has me all turned 'round about. And Tashir - I came so close to giving in to temptation with him...

All I am certain of is that I need you as much as I ever did. And I'd give anything to have you back.

He bit his lip and tasted the sweet-salt of blood; took his hands away from his face, and willed his eyes open. Nightshadows of leafless trees moved ebony against charcoal; the last frost had killed the insects, and the birds had mostly flown south by now. There was no sign of anything alive out there; just barren shadows dark as his soul, as empty as his heart.

A wisp of glow drifted in the air in front of him, and he gave in to his anguish, to the perverse need to probe at his heartache.

To hell with it - how can I hurt any more than I do now? And everything I try turns to 'Lendel. Not Shavri - which ought to have told me who I love more.

Once again he closed his eyes and began to build a new illusion, one formed with passionate care, and at a level of detail only love could have discerned in the original. The way that one lock of gold-brown sunstreaked hair used to fall - just touching the eyebrow. The depth of the clear, brown eyes, sometimes sable, sometimes golden, but so bottomless you could lose yourself in them. The square chin, so - high cheekbones, so - the generous mouth, so ready to smile or laugh, the strong pillar of the neck. Shoulders ready to take the weight of the world's troubles. Body of a fighter or a dancer; gentle hands of a healer - It didn't take long, now that he was no longer fighting with himself.

Oh, Tylendel -

Vanyel looked up to see his handiwork, and sobbed, once, reaching out involuntarily to touch empty air.

The illusion was nothing less than heartbreakingly perfect. The Tylendel of the joyous days of their one summer together stood before him, so alive Vanyel fancied he could see him breathing, that in a moment he would speak.

And I could do that, too; I could make him breathe and talk to me. No, I couldn't bear that. It's hollow enough as it is. Oh, gods, why? 'Lendel -

Someone gasped behind him, and as he started and lost control of it, the illusion shattered, exploded outward into a hundred thousand glittering little bits that rained down and vanished, melting away before they touched the pale stone of the porch. Vanyel whipped around to see a dark and indistinct shape beside the black hole of the door.

“Who's there?” he snapped, hastily wiping his eyes with the back of his hand. “What do you want?”

“I-it's Tashir.” The young man came toward him hesitantly. “Medren told me you were back. I wondered where you were. Where you've been.”

Depression abruptly became anger at being disturbed, and the desire to hurt fountained in him. He wanted someone, anyone, any creature at all, to suffer inside as much as he did at this moment. He knew it was base; knew that Tashir would be an easy target, and that he could hurt him. He hated the desire even as he felt it, and it sickened him as much as he wanted it. He fought it down, but the anger remained, red and sullen. This young man, for whom Vanyel had been risking his life, had been undermining everything he'd built here. It wasn't just that Tashir had been lying; it was that what he had told Jervis had come close to destroying the fragile beginnings of friendship that had cost both of them so much pain and soul-searching to create, had set them at each other's throats like enemies, and had left them, once again, uneasy and grudging allies at best.

“I've been finding out the truth,” he said softly. “While you seem to have been busy trying to hide it.” The anger blossomed, and he briefly lost control over it, just long enough that he growled a single sentence.

“Why did you lie to Jervis?”

“I didn't!” Tashir's voice cracked as Vanyel rose and walked toward him, one hand flaring with mage-light. The blue light reflected off Tashir's face, revealing the youngster's surprise and growing fear. The young man's eyes widened, his expression froze, and he backed away from the Herald step by forced step. He didn't stop until his thighs hit the stone railing and Vanyel had him backed into a corner with nowhere to go.

“You did,” Vanyel whispered. “All those stories you told him about your perfect, loving family - that's all they were, stories. Lies. I've been in Highjorune, Tashir. I spent the last fortnight there, talking to people. One of them was your mother's maid, Reta.”

The branches of the bushes nearest Tashir began to thrash as if tossed by a wind, though not a breath of air stirred anywhere else. Vanyel didn't have to see them to know that the young man had unleashed his Gift in panic. He let it go for a moment, waiting to see how violent Tashir would become. Fallen leaves whirled up in a mad dance to engulf both of them, beating at Vanyel ineffectually. But with nothing more at hand to work with than leaves, the attack wasn't even a distraction. Vanyel savagely clamped down on the young man with a shield not even an Adept could have cracked, and the leaves drifted back down to the ground and the porch.

Tashir cowered against the stone railing, averting his eyes as the mage-light on Vanyel's hand flared. Perversely, the display of subservience only made him angrier. He fought down his temper and got himself back under control, managing at last to gaze down upon the youngster with his anger held in check.

“Well, Tashir?” Vanyel whispered tonelessly. “Are we ready to hear a little truth now?”

“A-about wh-what?” Tashir croaked.

Vanyel formed the light into a ball and sent it to hover just over his head with a flick of his wrist. He folded his arms, and compressed his lips, forcing his anger to cool a little more.

I'll invoke Truth Spell on him. Then at least I'll bloody well know when he's lying.

“I think,” he said, finally, “that we can start with your father.”

He called up the vrondi, and when it surrounded him with faint blue light, Tashir's pale face stood out with sharp-edged distinctness against the night-dark shadows behind him. Word by agonized word, he dragged a story out of Tashir that was virtually identical to the one that Reta had told him. Three times more, whenever Vanyel dealt with the subject of his mother, the boy unconsciously attempted to evoke his Gift; he failed to break the shield Vanyel still held on him each time. Vanyel noted with a smoldering, sullen calm that while Tashir did freeze physically when this happened, he was quite conscious, if not in conscious control of what he was doing.

Finally Vanyel decided to force the issue - to deliberately evoke the same state of mind the younger man must have been in on that fatal night.

“The night I found you,” he said, “your father told you something, and you refused him, and he hit you. Do you remember what that was?”

Tashir shook his head, a breath away from hysterical breakdown. The blue aura of the Truth Spell continued to glow.

“He told you that he was going to send you to your Mavelan relatives to stay; that he was washing his hands of you.”

It was hard to tell in the blue glows of mage-light and Truth Spell, but Tashir seemed to become paler. Vanyel shook his head regretfully, and deliberately turned his back on the youngster. “I don't know what to do about you,” he said expressionlessly. “You've brought me nothing but trouble, and you're about to cause a major diplomatic incident between Valdemar and Lineas. You could even start a war. I'm sorry, Tashir, but your uncle Vedric is petitioning that you be put into his custody. King Randale is likely to order just that. Given the circumstances, I think it would be the wisest thing if I admitted where you are and my part in this mess and turned you over to Vedric in the morning.”

He waited for an attack; he waited for the shield to break under the stress of Tashir's Gift at the kind of level of manifestation that was indicated by the slaughter at Highjorune.

Instead, he heard a peculiar little whimper, and felt the pressure within the shield go null.

Vanyel pivoted in surprise just in time to catch the youngster as he fell over in a dead faint.

It took him the better part of a candlemark to revive Tashir. It took longer to convince him that although it might be the wisest thing to do, it was not the course of action Vanyel intended to take. The youngster was totally terrified of being sent into Mavelan hands, yet even under the stress of this absolute terror, his Gift manifested at no higher level than before.

Eventually Tashir believed him when he told the youngster that he would continue to shelter him, to try to find out what had really happened.

And then, when the young man had settled a little, he began the questioning again.

With a cool and calculated assessment of the stress he was putting Tashir under, Vanyel brought him to the breaking point over and over, until he was certain that nothing was going to evoke the kill-storm.

Finally the boy was too exhausted to be pressed further. And Vanyel wasn't too far behind him - at least emotionally. “Why, Tashir?” he asked, looking for any clue as to the truth of that night. “Why did you make up that fantasy for Jervis?”

“Because - because I wanted him to like me!” the young man blurted desperately. “How could he like me if my own father hated me? How could he like me if he knew what my mother wanted to -”

Vanyel interrupted, trying not to show the frustration he was feeling. “Tashir, Karis tried to protect you. Why did you think Jervis would be any different?''

“But Karis was there, he saw what was happening. If I told anybody else they'd think I was lying, Mother said so.”

Tashir paled again, but Vanyel assumed it was only the stress of having to face that unnatural relationship squarely.

“Karis,” he whispered, “was there.'“

“Tashir, from what I've been told, she was the one who lied; why would you think she'd have told you the truth about -”

“V-Vanyel,” the young man interrupted. “Karis - they never told me who besides - was Karis - one of - was he -“

Then Vanyel saw what Tashir had finally realized; saw the plea in Tashir's eyes to be told that Karis was still alive, and couldn't answer it. He looked away - which was answer enough.

The youngster crumpled, holding the stone balustrade for support, his entire body shaking with harsh, racking sobs. Vanyel remembered, as he banished the shield and uncast the Truth Spell, that one of the most telling pieces of evidence against the youngster - in the eyes of Herald Lores, at any rate - was Tashir's lack of emotion when he'd been told what had happened.

Lores should see him now, he thought grimly, putting his arm around Tashir's shoulders and letting him weep himself out with Vanyel supporting him. His own anger was quite gone, and he was recalling his desire to make Tashir hurt as much as he did with a sick, shamed feeling in the pit of his stomach. Then Tashir turned to cry on Vanyel's shoulder, and it was all Vanyel could do to keep from losing control again, this time for a very different reason.

Finally the youngster pulled away, and Vanyel let him go. He walked back to his former seat or. the bench at the farther side of the porch and slumped there, his head in his hands, not really thinking, only aching.

Because Tashir was so like Tylendel.

Holding him while he wept had been like reliving the past. The dead past. ...

Hesitant footsteps behind him, and a shy sniffle.

Vanyel wished with all his heart that the boy would go - find Jervis, go back to his room, or seek solace at the festivities, anything but stay here with that far-too-familiar face, providing a ready - made knife to the heart, and not even knowing that he was doing so.

“Vanyel?” came the halting whisper. “Vanyel, who was that man? The one that disappeared when I startled you? I thought it was me, at first, but he was different.”

“It was just an illusion,” Vanyel replied, rubbing his temples, staring at the dark blot of his own feet against the gray stone. “I was practicing.”

The youngster hovered just beside him. “But who is it?” he persisted. “It wasn't me, and it wasn't Uncle Vedric. And why were you casting a seeming of him?”

“Tylendel,” Vanyel replied shortly. “His name was Tylendel. He's dead. He-was-my lover.”

And half of my soul and all of my heart.

Tashir started back at that, out of touching distance, projecting clear revulsion and fear so clearly that Vanyel felt it like a blow.

Vanyel's temper snapped.

“Dammit,” he snarled, rounding on the youngster, “will you not act like I'm going to pounce on you and rape you? I don't make a habit of hitting attractive young men over the head and dragging them off to my bed, no matter who they look like!”

Tashir put out a hand as if to keep him away.

Vanyel could not longer control his temper or his words. “You came to me not all that long ago,” he snarled, “and I'll thank you to remember that I didn't take advantage of the situation! So you've changed your mind about being shaych; fine, I have no quarrel with you or with that, that is your decision and yours alone to make. I have no intention of making you change your mind. But kindly remember that I'm a human being, and I lost somebody -”

He fought the words past the grief. “- lost somebody I loved more than anyone else on earth. He was my lifebonded, and I will be without him for the rest of my life. You're not the only one in the world who's alone! You're not the only one who's suffered!”

He turned away abruptly, got up, and stalked stiffly to the stone railing, staring out into the lattice of bare tree branches and trying to keep from breaking down completely. Behind him he could hear Tashir shuffling his feet, the sound betraying uncertainty.

Go away, boy. Leave me alone. Leave me to mourn my dead, my beloved, and go chase my niece. Just leave me.

But the footsteps shuffled nearer, hesitated, then came nearer still, until Tashir stood at his right elbow. Vanyel stared out ahead of him, at the branches, and the stars that seemed to be caught there.

“Was he a Herald?” The voice was timid.

“No. A trainee.”

Stop driving knives in me. Go away.

“How long ago?”

“Twelve years, tonight.”

Twelve years forsaken. Twelve long, lonely years, knowing I'll never be whole again.

“What happened?” the youngster persisted, sounding very young indeed.

“He killed himself.”

There. Are you happy? Now will you go away?

“But -” No condemnation, just bewilderment. “- why⁷ How could he - when he had a Companion?”

So you know that already, do you ? How if we die, they die? But you don't know everything, laddy-boy.

“She repudiated him. That's why he did it. He - couldn't bear - the -”

He couldn't finish.

Silence, a silence marked only by the occasional rustle of leaves. Vanyel hung his head and wrestled with his grief and hoped the youngster would take the hint and finally go away.

Tashir moved a little closer. “I don't understand,” he said, humbly. “I can't imagine what could have happened. Please -”

Vanyel took a deep, shuddering breath. Obviously the boy wasn't going to leave until he had his curiosity satisfied.

So tell him, and get it over with.

He looked back up at the remote and uncaring stars. “ 'Lendel was Savil's trainee when my father sent me to her because I wasn't the kind of man he thought I should be,” he began, trying to recite the words as if they described someone else. “What I didn't know then was that he was afraid I was fey, and he was trying to keep me from being shaych. He kept me amazingly sheltered, really; I had no idea that - well, I suppose - anyway, I knew I was different, but I didn't know why.” His chest ached when he took a breath. “I was disliked at home. The fosterlings, my brothers, they all figured me for Mother's darling. And I just couldn't seern to fit in with them. Granted, I didn't make much effort to be liked after a while, but - well.”

It was all coming back with the impact of something that had happened only yesterday. “So Withen sent me off to Haven, where I was even more a stranger.” He tried to laugh; it sounded like a croak. “I was put with Savil and her proteges, and Savil was supposed to 'make a man out of me' - turn me into something like Meke, I suppose. What Father didn't know was that her favorite protege 'Lendel was shaych - openly shaych. Exactly what he'd tried to keep me from. I was lonely and desperately unhappy, and 'Lendel was kind to me even when I was rotten to him. Then I found out certain things about him from other sources and suddenly a lot of inexplicable things about myself had answers.”

I watched you and wanted more from you than friendship - for days, weeks. And at the same time - I was so afraid. Not like this young fool is afraid; I was afraid that once I broke my isolation, you 'd hurt me like everyone else had. But you didn't, 'Lendel. At least not in the way I'd feared. And in the end, it wasn't you who hurt me; it was losing you -

“Things - happened.   'Lendel and I became lovers, then lifebonded. I know that now, I didn't know that then; all I knew then was that I'd have done anything for him, committed any crime to avoid losing him.”

“You weren't a Herald?''

“No, not even a trainee.” His eyes blurred and burned. Vanyel blinked, and tears splashed down onto the balustrade beside his hand. “Tylendel had a twin; his twin was murdered in a feud. Murdered by magic. No one seemed willing to do anything about it. 'Lendel and Staven had been mindlinked; losing Staven drove him more than a little mad. He decided to take matters into his own hands, and I helped him by stealing the proscribed books of magic. I couldn't believe - I was outraged that no one had done anything about Staven's murder. I didn't know what I should have done, and I didn't see anything wrong with going out for revenge - especially not when 'Lendel was hurting so much. We slipped away on Sovvan-night -”

Dark and cold it was, and wind blowing fit to tear the clothes from your body. But not so dark and cold as the place inside 'Lendel that only revenge would heal - I thought. I only wanted him satisfied so I could have the Tylendel I knew back again. I never thought further than that.

“- we Gated to where the other family was celebrating. Since we were lifebonded and I had Mage-potential, 'Lendel could use my energy to make the Gate and his own to call up his vengeance. Which he did. He called up a pack of wyrsa and turned them loose.”

He felt the young man beside him shudder, but he was too caught in his memories to pay much attention. He could still see it; the image was burned into his mind for all time.

'Lendel, his face twisted with grief and rage, his eyes no longer gentle, and holding a black gleam of madness. The cowering people, seeing no escape - and Evil made flesh in the form of the four wyrsa, unholy meldings of snake and ferret, with their dagger-teeth and their burning sulfur eyes and their insatiable hunger that he could feel beating against his mind even now. And then the thunder of hooves behind him and the equine shriek of defiance and loss -

“Gala came through the Gate when the wyrsa had made only one kill. She challenged the whole pack - she repudiated 'Lendel.”

Sweet blue eyes gone dead and empty, mind - voice reverberating coldly down the link that bound him and 'Lendel. I do not know you. You are not my Chosen. Then the internal snap of something breaking, and the utter desolation where love had been -

“She attacked the pack. They pulled her down and killed her.”

Tylendel's eyes with all of hell in them. Tylendel's heart a churning storm of loss and agony. Tylendel's soul a shattered thing past all repairing. Tylendel's mind holding no sane thoughts at all -

“Savil and two other Heralds came through the Gate and destroyed the wyrsa - too late, oh, gods - 'Lendel's heart, his mind, his soul were broken. He got away from them when we reached Haven. They backlashed the Gate energy through me by accident, and my collapse distracted them just long enough for him to break free of them. He couldn't bear it - the pain of losing Gala, then having her die before his eyes-so he threw himself - off the Belltower -”

I wish they'd let me die with you. I wish they hadn't saved me when I tried to kill myself. Oh, 'Lendel, Tylendel, it wasn't supposed to end that way -

He couldn't look at Tashir. Couldn't. Tears fell silently and splashed onto his hands. He gripped the railing until his knuckles ached. There was nothing inside him but the same throbbing emptiness that had been left twelve years ago.

Twelve years, 'Lendel. Twelve years, and it hurts more, not less. Twelve years, and all I really look forward to is the moment it's all over -

Tashir was very quiet; Vanyel couldn't even hear him breathing, and only the sense of presence still at his side told him that the young man was still there.

“I'm sorry,” Tashir said awkwardly. “That's a stupid thing to say, but it's all I can think of. I wish it had never happened. I wish I could bring him back for you, Herald Vanyel. Karis always told me people could feel that way about each other, could really love each other and not just pretend to, but I never - I never knew anybody who did. I'm sorry I made you unhappy. I apologize for reacting like I did. If I'd known what you just told me, I'd have realized how stupid I was.”

“It's all right,” Vanyel answered him huskily, after a pause to get the lump out of his throat. “You couldn't know. Lifebonds don't happen very often. When they do, well, it's like Companion-bond; when one partner dies, the other dies with him, usually. The only thing that kept me alive was that I bonded to Yfandes that night. It doesn't hit me like this very often, it's just - Sovvan-night, and I'm bloody damned tired, and you - gods, Tashir, you could have been him. It hurts every time I see you, because half the time I don't see you, I see him.”

The young man was silent again, but it was a silence that implied he was going to speak. And he did.

“I'm probably saying things I shouldn't, but you said it yourself, Vanyel. It's been twelve years. Don't you think that's an awful long time to be holding onto a memory so tightly that it strangles you?”

He stepped away a little, as Vanyel finally turned to look at the dark shape of him in shock and astonishment. “People need you, and you can't help them when you're like this. Jervis told me that you said that's important. And you aren't the only one in the world who's suffering, either. You aren't the only one who's ever lost his love.”

He backed up a little, then broke and ran for the door, leaving Vanyel standing stiffly beside the railing, trying to collect his wits.

Have I been that selfish? he wondered. Is it selfish to grieve for someone like this ?

I don't know.

But he's right. I'm not the only one in the world who's lost someone they loved. He lost Karis; and Karis was the only person he ever knew who loved him. I have Savil; I have 'Fandes. I have - Friends.

Gods.

He blinked, as answers finally put themselves together in his mind. I said it myself; it wasn't Shavri everything turned into, it was 'Lendel. I do love Shavri, but not like that. It's just that I've been so long without caring for anyone that deeply that I couldn't untangle what it meant. I want to protect her, care for her, but because she's a friend who needs me more than anyone has ever needed me except 'Lendel. And because she cares for me. It was only 'Lendel who gave me love without asking for anything -

- good gods. That's it, isn't it. That's where the sticking point is. Everybody wants something from me, or seems to. Mother, first of all; Melenna, Randi - they all want me to be something for them. Only 'Lendel wanted me to be myself. Only 'Lendel gave without asking what he was going to get. And now Shavri. And Jisa, who just loves, like only a child can love, without any questions at all.

But that's not wrong, either; I can't blame the ones who need things from me. But that may be something of the difference between friends and lovers. Interesting. But how is it that I can go to bed with a friend -

Ah. I can't go to bed with someone who's not a friend. How could I have lost what I knew when I was fifteen? That was what I knew when Krebain tried to seduce me. Sex and love aren't the same thing. But love and friendship are so close that you can't have love without having friendship. I could have continued to love 'Lendel even without sex. That's what had me confused. We became friends and lovers and beloved all at the same instant. There was something about him I would always have liked, even if I'd never loved him.

The stars weren't any brighter for having just found some of his answers, but they seemed that way. Poor Tashir - he doesn't have anyone. I had a true love. Not too many people can say that.

He contemplated that for a moment. I've been thinking awfully hard about how I lost him. Maybe it would be better to remember how I had him. Once again he set himself to build the illusion that had shattered with Tashir's gasp; just as carefully, just as lovingly. But this time remembering the good times.

Once again Tylendel stood before him, frozen in a moment of gentle joy. He remembered that moment well.

You gave me a gift I never expected to have; you gave me my music back, beloved. You told me that it was more important to you to hear music played for itself than to hear it enhanced by the strongest of Bardic Gifts. He found himself smiling, a smile with tears on the edge of it, but smiling. Then I sang you a love song. The first one I ever sang for you. It was the first time I'd ever sung one with my heart in it.

Tylendel had given himself up completely to the music he'd woven for him. It had been a moment completely free of any shadows because 'Lendel had chased the only one that haunted him.

Beloved, you knew how much I needed that back, and you gave it to me with open hands.

Memory could be sweet - even if it held an edge of sorrow.

I won't ever forget you, ashke, but I can choose how I remember you. And I promise I'll try to remember with love, not tears.

He allowed the image to fade.

So it's time I started doing something about people who need me, hmm? Just like you told me. And the most urgent of those is Tashir.

He yawned suddenly, then laughed a little at himself. And I'm not going to do anyone any good falling asleep on my feet. So best I seek my virtuously empty bed. Morning is going to come far too soon.

He looked once more into the sky - or beyond it. Even he wasn't certain which.

Good night, ashke. Wherever you are. Wind to thy wings –