Last Herald Mage: Magic's Pawn Part 21

Lissa snorted. Savil pushed him away from the door impatiently, and opened it, flinching a bit as the cold air hit her. She looked back at him; he'd made no move to follow. "Are you coming, or not?" she asked, keeping her voice low so as not to startle Vanyel.

He swallowed, his own face set and very white, and followed her with slow, hesitant steps. She walked quickly to the patch of sheltered, sun-gilded brown gra.s.s where the boy was lying with Yfandes; he hadn't moved since she'd left. He didn't seem to notice she was there as she knelt in the harsh, dry gra.s.s that p.r.i.c.kled her knees through the cloth of her breeches and hose.

"Van - Van, wake up a little, can you?" she said softly, not touching him at all, either with hand or mind. "Van?"

He moved his head a little, and blinked in a kind of half-dazed parody of sleepiness. "A-aunt?" he murmured.

"Your father's here - Withen - he wants to see you. Vanyel, he can't take you home, he has no power over you now that you're Chosen. You don't have to see him if you don't want to."

Vanyel blinked again, showing a little more alertness. "N-no. S'all right. *Fandes says s'all right; says I should."

Savil rose quickly and returned to where Withen waited uncertainly on the worn path, halfway between the door and where the boy lay. "Go ahead," she said roughly. "Don't raise your voice, and speak slowly. We've got him pretty heavily drugged, so keep that in mind. You might trigger more than you want to hear if you aren't careful."

She followed a few steps behind him, with Lissa behind her, and remained within earshot as he knelt heavily in the dry gra.s.s and started to reach out to touch Vanyel's shoulder. She very nearly snapped at him, but Vanyel roused a bit more, and waved the blunt fingers away.

"Vanyel - " the man said, seeming at a complete loss for words. "Vanyel, I - I heard you were sick - "

Vanyel gave a pitiful little croak of a laugh. "You h-heard I was playin' ewe t' *Lenden's ram, y'mean. Don' lie t' me, Father. You lied t' me all m'life an' I couldn' prove it, but I know when people lie t'me now."

Withen flushed, but Vanyel wasn't through yet.

"Y're thinkin' now that - I - I'm perv'rt'd, unclean or somethin', an' that I - I'm just bad an' ungrateful an' I n-never p-p-pleased you an' - dammit, all I ev' wanted was f'r you t' tell me I did somethin' right! Just once, Father, j-j-just one time! An' all you ever d-d-did was let J-J-Jervis knock me flat, an' then kick me y'rself! *Lendel loved me, an' I loved him an' you can stop thinkin' those - G.o.d - d.a.m.ned - rotten - things - **

Withen pulled back and started to his feet - opened his mouth like he was about to roar at his son - But that was as far as he got. Vanyel's eyes blazed; his face went masklike with rage. And before Withen could utter a single syllable, Vanyel surged up out of his coc.o.o.n of blankets and knocked Withen head over heels into the bushes with the untrained, half-drugged power of his mind alone.

Withen struggled up. Vanyel knocked him flat. Lissa made as if to go to one or the other of them, but Savil caught her arm.

"Look at Yfandes," she said. "She's calm, she hasn't even moved. Let them have this out. Between us I think Yfandes and I could keep the lad from killing his father, but that isn't what he wants to do."

Twice more Withen tried to get his feet, and twice more Vanyel flung him back. He was crying now, silent, unnoticed tears streaking his white cheeks. "How's it feel, Father? Am I strong enough now? How's it feel t' get knocked down an' stepped on by somethin' you can't reason with an' can't fight? You happy? I'm as big a bully as J-J-Jervis now - does that make you b.l.o.o.d.y happy?"

Withen's mouth worked, but no sound came out of it.

Vanyel stared at him, then the angry light faded from his eyes and was replaced by a disgusted bitterness. "It doesn't make me happy, Father," he said, quietly, and clearly; the last of the drug-haze gone from his speech. "Knowing I can do this to you just makes me sick. Nothing makes me happy anymore. Nothing ever will again."

He sank back down to the ground, pulled his blankets around himself, and turned his face into Yfandes' shoulder. "Go away, Father," he said, voice m.u.f.fled. "Just go away.''

Withen got slowly and awkwardly to his feet. He stood; shaken and pale, looking down at his son for a long time.

"Would it make any difference if I said I was sorry?" he asked, finally; from the bewildered expression on his face, acutely troubled - and more than that, vaguely aware that he had just had his entire world knocked head-over-heels, and was entirely uncertain of what to do or say or even be next.

"Maybe - someday," came the voice, thickened with tears. "Not now. Go away, Father. Please - leave me alone."

Dear Withen: I think you are right for once in your life. The boy is not a boy anymore. He never was the boy you thought he was. If you can adapt yourself to treating him as an adult and an acquaintance rather than your offspring, I think you can come to some kind of a reconciliation with him eventually.

"Savil?"

Savil looked up. Mardic peeked around Savil's half-open door, uncertainty in his very posture.

Huh. I'm getting better at reading people.

She gave a quick glance out her window. Vanyel was sitting on the bench just outside it, talking with Lissa, Yfandes hovering over both of them.

Bless the child; I don't know what I'd do without her.

For a moment she forgot Mardic; a terrible weariness bowed down her shoulders like a too-heavy cloak.

G.o.ds. What am I going to do? He's not getting better, just a little stronger. He keeps trying to make me or Liss into a subst.i.tute for *Lendel, into someone else to follow. I can't let him do that. It *II just make things ultimately worse. But when we try and push him into standing on his own feet, he goes into a sulk. She sighed. It makes me so angry at him that I want to slap him into next week. And he's had too much of that already. He doesn't really deserve it, either. h.e.l.lfires, those sulks are the closest he's ever gotten to normal behavior! Oh, G.o.ds - Mardic cleared his throat, and she jumped. "I'm sorry, lad, I'm woolgathering. Must be getting old. Come on in."

He edged into the room, crabwise. "Savil, Donni and I want to ask you something," he faltered, hands behind his back, rubbing his left foot against his right ankle. "We - Savil, you're the best there is, but - Vanyel needs you more than we do."

"G.o.ds," she sighed, rubbing her right temple. "I have been shorting you two - I am sorry - "

"No, really, we don't mind," Donni interrupted, poking her curly head past the edge of the door just behind Mardic's shoulder.

"I was wondering when you'd put in your silver-worth," Savil replied.

"We do come as a set," she pointed out. "No, Savil, you haven't been shorting us. It's more that we're afraid you're going to split yourself in half, trying to do too many things. Vanyel needs you; we've finally got what we needed from you - there wasn't anybody else likely to be able to teach us to work in concert, but look - "

Mardic moved farther into the room; Donni stayed by the door. They reached out to one another, arms extended, and hands not quite touching, and - Where there had been two auras there was now one; a golden-green flow over and around them that was seamless - and considerably more than either aura had been alone. Savil blinked in surprise. "Just when did you two start to do that?" she asked.

"The night - when we had to get the Temple open," Mardic supplied. "When we had to get the arrow up, and then even more when we meshed in the Healing-meld. That's when what you'd been showing us sort of fell into place. So, well, now any Herald-Mage could teach us, and really, given what we do together, it probably ought to be Jaysen, or Lancir. But Jaysen hasn't got anyone right now.''

"Piffle. You'd make a three-hour tale of a limerick," Donni sniffed. "Savil, we asked Jaysen; he said he'd take us if you allow it.''

Savil put down her pen, and closed her gaping mouth. "I think I may kiss you both," she replied, as Donni gave Mardic an "I told you so" grin. "I was trying to think of a way to get you another mentor and coming up blank because I *m the only one who knows how to teach concert work. Bless you, loves."

She rose and took both of them in her arms; they returned the embrace; their support as much mental as physical.

"Savil," Donni said quietly, as she released them with real reluctance. "What are you going to do with Vanyel? He's - he's still so broken - and everything here has just got to keep reminding him of *Lendel. It's too bad you can't take him somewhere really different."

"G.o.ds, that's only too true," she replied.

- really different - G.o.ds - oh, G.o.ds, thank you for bright little proteges!

"Donni," she said slowly, "I think you may just have found my answer for me. Now I'm even more grateful to you for finding yourselves a new teacher.''

"You've got an idea?"

Savil nodded. "And kill two birds with one stone. Those things the Leshara had brought in - they had to be from the Pelagirs, just like what *Lendel conjured in retribution. I'd have had to go out there anyway, to find out who's been tampering. So - what I'm going to do is take Vanyel there to some friends of mine, the Hawkbrothers. They're self-appointed guardians of the Pelagirs, so they should be told if there's been a mage tampering with their creatures. And they follow a different discipline; maybe they can help Van. And if they can't, I know they can at least contain him."

"But you really think they can help him?" Donni asked hopefully.

"Well, I can't; I know for a fact that Starwind is better than I am. Besides, if we keep Van drugged much longer, Andrel is afraid he'll become addicted, but if we take him off - "

"He could wreck the Palace." Mardic nodded solemnly. "When are you taking him?"

"When - within the next few days, I think. The sooner the better." She looked over his head, to the Wingsister talisman on her wall. "The only problem is that to find Starwind k'Treva and Moondance k'Treva I'll have to go to them - because they don't ever come out of the Pelagirs. That means two things. I'll have to build a Gate, and I'll have to hope that I still know how to find them."

Eleven.

"G.o.ds, I hate Gating," Savil muttered to Andrel, squinting against the glare of sun on snow as she scanned the sky for even a hint of cloud.

"Why? Other than the recent rotten a.s.sociations - "

"It's d.a.m.ned dangerous at the best of times. It plays fast and loose with local weather systems, for one thing; it's a spell that sets up a local energy field, a kind that disrupts any kind of high-energy weather pattern that's around it. Usually for the worse." She closed her eyes, centered and grounded, and extended her Mage-Gift sense up and out, looking farther afield for anything that might move in while she had the Gate up. To her vast relief there didn't seem to be anything of consequence anywhere nearby; the only energy-patterns she could read were a few rising air currents over warm spots, too small to be any hazard.

She sighed. "Well, the weather's not going to cause any problems. How was the lad?"

"Drugged to his teeth, and I would stake my arm that he won't be able to count to one before some time tonight. And I am d.a.m.ned glad you told me that you were planning on Gating out of here." Andrel tucked his long, sensitive hands inside his cloak, and peered across the open Field through the sunlight. "Since it was Gate-energy that blew his channels open - "

"Probably," Savil interrupted.

"All right, probably blew his channels open - he's going to be doubly sensitive to it for the rest of his life. He'll likely know when someone's opening a Gate within a league of him. And actually going through one may touch off another fit. Which is why - "

" - you drugged him to the teeth. I have no objection; it's a little awkward, but that's why we have the kind of saddles for our Companions that we do."

They crunched their way across Companion's Field, now covered with the first snowfall of the season. Savil repeated a quieting exercise for every step she made, for she knew she needed to establish absolute calm within herself; she would be Gating to her absolute physical limits (in terms of the distance she planned to cover) and that would take every reserve she had.

In light of that, she had turned everything (other than establishing the Gate itself) over to the hands of others. Mardic and Donni had done all her packing, Lissa had taken care of Vanyel's, and Lissa had taken charge of the boy once Andrel was finished with him. They were all waiting at the Grove Temple at this very moment.

"So why else don't you like Gating?" Andrel asked, while the Field around them glowed under the sun.

"Because when I get there, I'm going to be pretty d.a.m.ned worthless," she replied dryly, "And I'd better hope the Talisman performs the way Starwind claimed it was supposed to, or we'll be a pretty pathetically helpless pair, Vanyel and I."

"Why don't you do what Tylendel did, use someone else's energy?"

"Because I don't really know what he did," she said, after a long pause that was punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps breaking through the light crust of snow. "None of us do. That may be why we ended up feeding the energy back through poor Van instead of grounding and dissipating it. I personally do not care to take the chance of doing that to another living soul and neither do any of the others. Vanyel lived through it; someone else might not. And it may well be that you have to have a lifebound pair to carry it off at all. So," she shrugged, "we do this the hard way, and I fall on my nose on the other side."

They entered the Grove, the leafless trees making a lacework of dark branches against the bright blue sky.

The peace of the Grove never left it, no matter what the season was. That was one reason why Savil had chosen to set up the Gate here. The other was that it was the safest place on the Palace grounds that she could put a Gate; no one but Heralds ever came here without invitation. There should be no accidents caused by a stranger wandering by at the wrong moment.

The group waiting by the Temple, which looked today as if it had been newly-made of the same pure snow that covered the ground around it, was a small one. Jaysen, Donni and Mardic, and Lissa. There were only two Companions there; Kellan and Yfandes. Companions tended to avoid the Grove except when a Herald died. Vanyel was slumped over in Yfandes' saddle, wrapped in the warmest cloak Savil could find and strapped down securely enough that his Companion could fight or flee without losing him.

Avert - Savil thought, a little superst.i.tiously. Let there be no reason for her to have to fight. We've had enough bad fortune without that.

She went first to his side; his hands had been loosely tied together at the wrist and the bindings were hooked over the pommel of the saddle. The stirrup-irons were gone, probably stored in one of the packs bundled behind his saddle; the stirrup-leathers had been turned into straps binding his calves to the saddle itself. He was belted twice at the waist; once to the pommel, once to the high cantle, using rings on the saddle meant for exactly that purpose. He was not going to come off.

Andrel reached her side; he reached up and pried open one of Vanyel's eyelids. The boy didn't react at all, and his pupils were mere pinpoints. The Healer's eye unfocused for a moment as he "read" the boy; then he nodded with satisfaction.

"He should be all right, Savil. No more drugs, though, after this. Not even if those friends of yours - "

Savil shook her head. "They don't like this kind of drug. Not for any reason. Drugs like you've been giving him are too easy to abuse."

"I don't like them either, but there are times you've got no other choice, and this was one of them." Andrel touched the boy's hand; his green eyes darkened as he brooded for a moment. "G.o.ds. I hope you're right about these people. His channels haven't healed at all, not really."

"If they can't help us, no one can." Savil turned her back on her semi-conscious charge and faced the door of the Temple, and put herself into the right mindset to invoke her spell.

To build a Gate - It was the most personal of spells. Only one person could build a Gate, because only one mind could direct the energy needed to build it. The spell-wielder had to have a very exact notion of where the Gate was to exit, and no two people ever had precisely the same mental image of a place. In any event, only Savil had ever been in the k'Treva territory of the Pelagirs. She couldn't be "fed" by another Herald-Mage, since she would need every bit of her attention for the Gate itself and would have none to spare to channel incoming energy. Lastly, because the energy had to be so intimately directed, it could come from only one place - From within the builder of the Gate. Or - perhaps - one soul-bound to the builder of the Gate? A lifebond was at such a deep level that it wasn't conscious, so perhaps that was why Tylendel had succeeded in using Vanyel as his source of energy.

The kind of power needed to build a Gate was the kind that could be stored, could be planned for. But like a vessel that could only hold so much liquid, a mage could only hold so much energy within himself. Savil had prepared for this; she could replenish herself within a day when the spell was completed and the Gate dismissed. But for that critical period of twenty-four candlemarks she would be exhausted - physically, mentally, and magically.

No time to think of that. Get to it, woman. First, the Portal, then the Weaving.

The Temple door had been used so many times before as one end of a Gate that it needed no special preparation. She needed only to - reach - She raised her hands, closed her eyes, and centered herself so exactly that everything about her vanished from her attention. There was only the power within her, and the place where the Gate would begin.

I call upon the Portal - She molded the power into a frame upon the physical frame of the doorway; building it layer upon layer until it was strong enough to act as an anchor to hold this place when she warped s.p.a.ce back upon itself.

Then she began spinning out threads of energy from the framework; they drifted outward, seeking.

This is the place, she told them, silently willing them to find the real-world counterpart of the image in her mind. Where the rocks are so and the trees grow thus and the feel of the earth is in this manner - They spun out, longer, finer, more attenuated. When they weakened, she fed them from within herself, spinning her own substance out and feeling it drawn out of her.

Now she was losing strength; it felt exactly as if she were bleeding from an open wound. And the power was not merely draining from her anymore, it was being pulled from her by the Gate itself. This was the point of greatest danger for a Herald-Mage; she was having to fight the Gate to keep from being drained right down to unconsciousness.

Then one of those questing power-threads caught on something, out beyond the farthest range of her sensing; another followed - There was a silent explosion of light that she could see even through her closed lids, and the Gate Wove itself in an instant into a temporary, but stable, whole.

She dropped her hands, opened her eyes, and swayed with uttermost exhaustion; Kellan was there beside her in time for her to catch the pommel of her saddle to keep from falling.

The door of the Temple was no longer within the doorframe. Instead, the white marble - glowing now, even in the bright sunlight - framed a strange and twisted bit of landscape.

"That's where you're going?" Jaysen said doubtfully, looking at the weird shapes of rock, snow and sand that lay beyond the portal. It was snowing there, from black, lowering clouds; fat flakes drifting down through still, dark air. Savil nodded.

"That's it; that's the edge of the Pelagirs near Star-wind's territory. The other end is a cave entrance, so we'll have some shelter on the other side until Starwind and Moondance get there."

"And if they don't?" Jaysen asked. "Savil, I don't like to think of you two alone out in a place like that. The boy is next to useless, and you're exhausted."

"Jays, it's quite possible that they'd take one look at you and kill you if they didn't see me right there with you," she said, clinging to the saddle and trying to muster enough strength to climb into it. "They're unbelievably territorial and secretive, and for good reasons - think for a minute, will you? They have to have known someone was tampering, stealing creatures they thought safely locked up. If they see a stranger and Sense he's Mage-Gifted, they're likely to strike first and ask questions of the corpse. And I mean that literally. I'm taking enough risk bringing the boy in, and he's plainly in need of help, and branded as mine. "

She gave up trying to be self-sufficient. "Boost me up, will you?" she asked humbly.

Jaysen went her one better; with the help of Andrel he lifted her into place. "Have you got everything you need?"

"I think so." In actual fact, she was too tired to think; it was all she could do to keep her mind on the next step of the journey. "Toss the firewood through."

Four heavy bundles of dry, seasoned wood went through the Gate to land in the snow on the other side.

Vanyel whimpered beside her; she could see his face was creased with lines of pain. He's feeling it, like Andy thought he might. Better hurry.

"Mardic - " she said quietly. "Donni - "