Last Herald Mage: Magic's Pawn Part 23

"So, so - here, my modest one - " Moondance reached up to one side among the hangings, and detached something which he tossed onto the blankets. Vanyel reached for it - a wrap-robe of something green and silken that was, thankfully, much more substantial than the hangings. As Moondance pointedly turned his back, he eased out of the bed and wrapped it around himself.

And reached for one of the bed-supports as dizziness made the room spin around him.

"That will never do." There was a cool touch between his eyes, and the room steadied.

"Come," Moondance was just in front of him, holding out his hands encouragingly. "Keep your eyes on me - yes. A step. Another. You have been long abed, young Vanyel, you must almost learn to walk again."

The Tayledras Healer walked backward, slowly, as Vanyel followed, looking only at his eyes. But he did not move to give the boy support in any way, except the one time Vanyel stumbled and nearly fell. Then Moondance caught him; held him until he could find his balance again, and only when Vanyel was standing firmly again did he draw away.

Vanyel was vaguely aware that they had crossed a threshold into another room, but just walking was costing him so much sweating, concentrated effort he didn't dare look around any. It seemed to take years before Moondance stopped, caught his elbow, and guided him to a seat on a smooth rock ledge that rimmed a raised pool of water so hot that it steamed.

"Now, look about you." Moondance waved at the pool and the rest of the room. "This is the pool for washing. Here is soap. When you are clean, go there, the pool for resting."

Though the pool Vanyel was sitting beside was deep, it was quite small. Next to the "pool for washing" was another, much larger, much deeper, and slightly above it, with an opening in the side that spilled hot water down into this pool. Both pools looked natural; rock-sided and sandy-bottomed.

"I think even weak as you are, you shall be able to find your way there. I shall return with food and drink." The young man hesitated a moment - then with the swiftness of a stooping hawk, leaned over and kissed Vanyel full on the lips. "You are very welcome, young Vanyel," he said, before Vanyel had a chance to get over his surprise. "We are pleased to have you, Starwind and I, and not just for the sake of Wingsister Savil."

He vanished before Vanyel had a chance to react.

Vanyel found that if he moved slowly and carefully he didn't exhaust himself. He shed the robe and eased himself into the water with a sigh, and soaped and rinsed until he finally felt clean again. His pool emptied itself over the side and down a channel in the floor - and where the water went from there he couldn't say. He had figured by now that this was some kind of hot spring, which accounted for the metallic tang in the air.

With Moondance gone, he had a chance to get a good look around while trying to sort himself out. There didn't appear to be any "doors" as such in this dwelling; just doorways. This bathing room was multileveled; highest level was the "pool for resting" which cascaded to the next level and the "pool for washing," which in turn was above the "floor" and the channel carrying the water away that was cut into it. There were no windows in the walls of natural rock; the whole was lit by a skylight taking up the entire ceiling, and there were green and flowering plants and ferns standing and hanging everywhere. There was only one entrance into this room - that led back to the bedroom, also rock-walled and roofed with a skylight, from what Vanyel could see of it.

The ledge between the pools was not that high, though it took far more of Vanyel's strength to get over it than he would have believed. Once in the larger pool he discovered that his surmise was right; crystalline hot water bubbled up from the sand in the center of the pool; someone had improved on nature by forming the rock of the pool sides below the waterline into smooth benches.

It was wonderful; the water was about as hot as was comfortable, and was forcing him to relax whether or not he wanted to. He closed his eyes and sat back, deliberately thinking of absolutely nothing, and only opened them again when he heard light footsteps crossing the stone floor below him.

It was, as he expected, Moondance, who had brought with him an earthenware beaker of what proved to be cider and a plate of sliced bread and cheeses and fruit.

"Eat lightly," the young man warned, climbing to Vanyel's level and setting his burdens down on the rim of the pool at Vanyel's right hand. "You have been three weeks without true food, and spent more than one of those days drugged."

"Three weeks?"

Moondance shrugged. "You needed Healing, of a kind your good Healer Andrel could not give you. I think perhaps no Healer among your folk could have given you such Healing; they know nothing of the Healing of hurts caused by magic, only of illness and wounding. That is a study only a few have made, and most of those few Tayledras. Eat, young Vanyel. There are herbs in the bread and the drink to strengthen you."

"Where - where is Savil?" he asked, suddenly a little worried at being alone with a stranger.

"With Starwind. She was very weary, both in body and in soul. This - thing that has happened. It has been a deep grief to her, as well to you. Her heart is as sore, I think. They are old friends, my shay'kreth'ashke and Savil, and there are no secrets between them, and much love. She has need of such love. Perhaps more than you, for she has had no one to lend her support."

Vanyel had looked up at him sharply at that - with the word ashke striking him with the force of a cold slap in the face, making his heart pound painfully.

Moondance looked down at him, something speculative in his glance. He weighed Vanyel for a moment, then cleared his throat and looked away, deliberately. "I have a thing to say to you, a thing I wish you to think upon."

Vanyel put down his cider, and waited, apprehensively, to hear the rest.

"I have shared your thoughts; I know more of you than anyone, except, perhaps, your shay'kreth'ashke."

Moondance changed his position so that he was sitting with his back to the pool, leaning his weight against his hands and staring up at the clouds visible through the skylight. He was being very careful not to look at Vanyel.

"As you have guessed from my words," he said, "I am shay'a'chern. As is Starwind. As you." Now he gave Vanyel a very brief, sidelong glance. "I am a Healer-Adept and I Heal more than people - I Heal places. I know the natural world as only one who wishes to restore it to its rightful balances can. This is the thing I wish to tell you; in all the world, there are more creatures than just man that make lifetime matings. Among them, some of the n.o.blest - wolves, swans, geese, the great raptors-all creatures man could do worse than emulate, in many, many ways. And with all of them, all, there are those pairings, from time to time, within the same gender. Not often, but not unheard of either."

Vanyel found himself unable to move, and unable to antic.i.p.ate the direction this was taking.

Now Moondance dropped his eyes to catch and hold Vanyel's in a joining of glances and wills that was unbreakable.

"There is in you a fear, a shame, placed there by your own doubts and the thoughts of one who knew no better. I tell you to think on this: the shay *a *chern pairing occurs in nature. How then, *unnatural'? Usual, no; and not desirable for the species, else it would die out for lack of offspring. But not unnatural. The beasts of the fields are innocent as man can never be, who has the knowledge of good and evil and the choice between, and they do not cast out of their ranks the shay *a *chern. There was between you and your shay *kreth *ashke much love - only love. There is no shame in loving."

Vanyel couldn't breathe; he could only see those ice-blue eyes.

"This I think I have learned: where there is love, the form does not matter, and the G.o.ds are pleased. This I have observed: what occurs in nature, comes by the hand of nature, and if the G.o.ds did not approve, it would not be there. I give you these things as food for your heart and mind."

Once again, before Vanyel could move, he bent deliberately and kissed him, but this time on the forehead.

"I leave you for a moment with both kinds of nourishment." He smiled, and gave Vanyel a slow wink. "Since you are not to stay in the pool forever, I must needs find you clothing. I would not mind, but your aunt grows anxious and wishes to see you awake and aware, and we would not wish to put her to the blush, hmm?"

And with that, he jumped down from the pool ledge to the floor, and vanished again.

Twelve.

"Here." Moondance, a crease of worry between his brows, was back in a few moments with a towel and what looked like folded clothing; green, like his own. "You shall have to care for yourself, I fear. There is trouble, and I have been called to deal with it. Starwind and Savil will be with you shortly." He hesitated a moment, visibly torn. "Forgive me, I must go."

He put his burdens down on the pool edge and ran back out the doorway before Vanyel could do more than blink.

G.o.ds - I feel like somebody in a tale, going to sleep and waking up a hundred years later. It seems so hard to think - like I'm still half asleep.

He dressed slowly, trying to collect his thoughts, and making heavy work of it. He did remember - vaguely - Savil telling him that he was too ill for Andrel to help; and he definitely remembered - despite the fog of drugs about the words - being told that she was going to take him to some friends of hers. He hadn't much cared what was happening at that point. He'd either been too drugged to care, or been hurting too much.

Presumably Moondance, and the absent Starwind, were the friends she meant. They were fully as strange as those weird masks of beads and feathers that Savil had on her wall. As was this place. Wherever it was.

He pulled the deep green tunic over his head, and suddenly realized something. He wasn't drugged - and he wasn't hurting, either. Those places in his mind that had burned - he could still feel them, but they weren't giving him pain.

Moondance said he Healed me. Is that why it feels like I halfway know him? Tayledras. Didn't Aunt Savil tell us stories about them? I thought that was all those were - stories. Not real. He looked around at the strange room, half-structure, half-natural, each half fitting into the other so well he could scarcely tell where the hand of nature left off and the hand of man began. Real. G.o.ds, if I were to describe this place, n.o.body would ever believe me. This - II *s all so different. I even feel different.

He could sense some kind of barrier around him, around his thoughts. At first it made him wary, but he tested it, tentatively, and found that it was a barrier that he could control. When he thinned it, he became aware of presences, what must be minds, out beyond the limits of this room. Animals, surely, and birds, for their thoughts were dim and here-centered. Then two close together - very bright, but opaque and unreadable. One "felt" like Savil and the other must be the mysterious Starwind. Then two more; just as bright, just as opaque - but one he recognized by the "feel" as being Yfandes. Then a scattering of othersa Yfandes. A Companion. My Companion.

So - it was no hallucination, then. He had somehow gotten Herald-Gifts and a Companion.

Gifts I never wanted, at a cost I never thought I'd pay. I'd trade them and half my life to have - him - back again.

That hit like a blow to the gut. He descended from the level of the uppermost pool to the floor and sat heavily on one of the stone benches around the edge of the room, too tired and depressed to move.

Oh, *Lendela G.o.ds, he thought, bleak despair overcoming him. What am I doing here? Why didn't they just let me die?

:Do you hate me, Chosen?: said a bright, reproachful voice in his mind, :Do you hate me for wishing you to live?: :Yfandes?: He remembered what Savil had said, about how his Companion would pine herself to death if he died, and sagged with guilt. :Oh, G.o.ds, Yfandes, no - no, I'm sorry - I just - : He'd been able to not-think about it when he'd been drugged. He'd been able to concentrate on nothing more complicated than the next moment. Now - now his mind was only too clear. He couldn't ignore the reality of Tylendel being gone, and there were no drugs to keep him in a vague fog of forgetting.

:You miss him.: she replied, gently. :You need him, and you miss him. : :Like my arm. Like my heart. I just can't imagine going on without him. I don't know what to do with myself; where to go, what to do next.: If Yfandes had a reply, he never heard it; just at that moment Savil and a second Tayledras, this one in white breeches, soft, low boots and jerkin, entered the room. Vanyel started to stand; Savil motioned for him to stay where he was. She and the stranger walked slowly across the stone floor and took places on the bench beside him.

Vanyel was shocked at her appearance. Although her hair had always been a pure silvery white, she'd never looked old before. Now she did; she looked every year of her age and more. He recalled what Moondance had said about Tylendel's death being as hard on her as it was on Vanyel. Now he believed it.

"Aunt Savil," he said, hesitantly, as she and the stranger arranged themselves comfortably beside him. "Are you all right? I mean - "

"Looking particularly haglike, am I?" she asked dryly. "No, don't bother to apologize; I've got a mirror. I don't bounce back from strain the way I used to."

He flushed, embarra.s.sed, and feeling guilty.

"Van, this is Starwind k'Treva," she continued. "He and Moondance are the Tayledras Adepts I told you younglings about a time or two. This," she waved her hand around her, "is his, mostly, being as he's k'Treva Speaker.''

"In so much as any Tayledras can own the land," Star-wind noted with one raised eyebrow, his voice calling up images of ancient rocks and deep, still water. "It would be as correct, Wingsister, to say that this place owns me."

"Point taken. This is k'Treva's voorthayshen - that's - how would you translate that, shayana?"

The Tayledras at her side had a triangular face, and his long hair was arranged with two plaits at each temple, instead of one, like Moondance - and he felt older, somehow. At least, that was how he felt to Vanyel.

"Clan Keep, I think would be closest," Starwind said, "Although k'Treva is not a clan as your people know the meaning of the word. It is closer to the Shin'a'in notion of *Clan.' "

His voice was a little deeper in pitch than Moondance's and after a moment Vanyel recognized the "feel" of him as being the same as the "blue-green music" in his dreams.

"My lord," Vanyel began hesitantly.

"There are no *lords,' here, young Vanyel," the Adept replied. "I speak for k'Treva, but each k'Treva rises or falls on his own."

Vanyel nodded awkwardly. "Why am I here, sir?" he asked - then added, apprehensively, * *What did you do to me? I - forgive me for being rude, but I know you did something. I feel - different."

"You are here because you have very powerful Mage-Gifts, awakened painfully, awakened late, and out of control," the Adept replied. His expression was calm, but grave, and held just a hint of worry. "Your aunt decided, and rightly, that there was no way in which you could be taught by the Heralds that would not pose a danger to you and those about you. Moondance and I are used to containing dangerous magics; we do this constantly, it is part of what we do. We can keep you contained, and Savil believes we can teach you effectively. And if we cannot teach you control, then she knows that we can and will contain you in such a way that you will pose no danger to others."

Moondance had not looked like this - so impersonal, so implacable. Vanyel shivered at the detached calm in Starwind's eyes; he wasn't certain what the Adept meant by "containing" him, but he wasn't eager to find out.

"As to what we have done with you - Moondance Healed your channels, which are the conduits through which you direct energy. And I have taught you, a little, while you were in Healing trance. I could not teach you a great deal in trance, but what I have given you is very important, and will go a great way toward making you safe around others. I have taught you where your center is, how to ground yourself, and how to shield. So that now, at least, you are no longer out of balance, and you may guard yourself against outside thoughts and keep your own inside your mind where they belong. And there will be no more shaking of the earth because of dreams."

So that was what had happened - with the music, the colors - and this new barricade around his mind.

Star wind leaned forward a little, and his expression became far more human; concerned, and earnest. "Young Vanyel, we, Moondance and I, we are perfectly pleased to have you with us, to help you. But that is all we can do; to help you. You must learn control; we cannot force it upon you. You must learn the use of your Gifts, or most a.s.suredly they will use you. Magic is that kind of force; I beg you to believe me, for I know this to be true. If you do not use it, it will use you. And if it begins to use you," his eyes grew very cold, "it must be dealt with."

Vanyel shrank back from that chill.

"But this is neither the place nor the time to speak of such things," Starwind concluded, rising. "We have you under shield, and you are too drained to cause any problems for the nonce. Youngling, can you walk? If you can, you would do well with exercise and air, and I would take you to a vantage to show you our home, and tell you a little of what we do here."

Vanyel nodded, not eager to be left to his aching memories again; he found on rising that he was feeling considerably stronger than he had thought. He couldn't move very fast, but as long as Starwind and Savil stayed at a slow walk, he could keep up with them.

They went from the bathing room back through the bedroom; it looked even more like a natural grotto than the bathing room had. Vanyel almost couldn't distinguish the real foliage from the fabric around the bed, and the "furniture," irregularly shaped chairs, benches and tables with thick green cushions and frames of bent branches, fitted in with the plants so well as to frequently seem part of them. There was a curtained alcove (with more of those leaf-mimicking curtains) that seemed to be a wardrobe, for the curtains had been drawn back at one side enough to display a bit of clothing.

From there they pa.s.sed into a third, most peculiar room. There was no furniture, and in the center of it, growing up from the stone floor, was the living trunk of a tree, one a dozen people could not have encircled with their arms. Attached to the trunk was a kind of spiral staircase. They climbed this - Vanyel feeling weak at the knees and clinging to the railing for most of the climb-to a kind of covered balcony that gave them a vantage point to see all of Starwind's little kingdom.

This was a valley - no, a canyon; the walls were nearly perpendicular - of hot springs; Vanyel saw steam rising from the lush growth in more places than he could count. Although there was snow r.i.m.m.i.n.g the lip of the canyon high above, vegetation within the bowl ran riot.

"K'Treva," Starwind said, indicating the entire valley with a wave of his hand. "Though mostly only Moondance and I dwell here-below. Beneath, the living-s.p.a.ces for the hertasi and those who do not wish the trees."

Vanyel looked over the edge of the balcony; below him was a collection of rooms, mostly windowless, but with skylights, the whole too random to be called a "house."

"There are other living places above - which is where most of us dwell," Starwind continued, with an ironic smile. "Moondance is not Tayledras enough to be comfortable above the ground. The hertasi you may or may not see; they serve us, we protect them and allow them to dwell here. They are shy of strangers - even of Tayledras; really, only Moondance is a friend to all of them. They are something like a large lizard, but they are full human in wit. If you should see one, I pray you strive not to frighten it. And although you may go where you will here-below, pray do not come here-above without invitation."

Vanyel looked up, but couldn't see any sign of these "living places" - only the staircase spiraling farther up the trunk and vanishing into the branches. The very thought of being up that high was dizzying, and he thought it was likely to take a great deal more than an invitation to get him to climb above.

"Tchah - I stand on Moondance's side," Savil replied. "I remember the first time I was here, and you made me try to sleep up in one of your perches. Never again, my friend."

"You have no sense of adventure," Starwind countered, putting his palms down on the rail and leaning forward a little. "The last thing, one that you may sense, so that you know it is indeed there - the barrier about the vale. It protects us from that which we would not have pa.s.s within and it keeps the vale always warm and sheltered. So - this is k'Treva. What we do here - two things. Firstly, we make places where the magic creatures of the Pelagirs may live in peace. Secondly, we take the magic out of those places where they do not live, making the land safe for man. We use the magic we take to make boundaries about the places of refuge, so that none may pa.s.s who do not belong. That is what the k'Varda, the Mage-Clans of the Tayledras, do. We guard the Pelagirs from despoilers as our cousins, the Shin'a'in, guard the Dhorisha Plains."

"As I keep saying, you're like we are. You guard the Pelagirs as the Heralds guard Valdemar," Savil said.

Starwind nodded, his braids swaying. "Aye, save that your Heralds concern themselves with the people, and the Tayledras with the land."

"Valdemar is the people; we could pack up and flee again, as we did at the founding, and still be Valdemar. I suspect the same would be true of you, if you'd only admit it."

"Na, the Tayledras are bound to the land, cannot live outside the Pelagirs; we must - " Starwind was interrupted by the scream of a hawk somewhere above his head. He threw up his forearm, and a large, white raptor plunged down out of the canopy of leaves to land on Starwind's arm. Vanyel winced, then saw that the Tayledras wore white leather forearm guards, which served to keep the wicked talons from his flesh.

It was a gyrefalcon; its wings beat the air for a moment before it settled, its golden eyes fixed on Starwind's face.

The Tayledras smoothed its head with one finger, then stared into the hawk's eyes for a long, long time, seeming to be reading something there.

Then, without warning, he flung up his arm, launching it back into the air from his wrist. The falcon's wings beat against the thick, damp air, then it gained height and vanished back up into the tree branches.

"Bad news?" Savil asked.

"Nay - good. The situation is not so evil as we feared. Moondance is wearied, but he shall return by sunrise."

"I'm glad to hear something is going right for someone," Savil replied, sighing.

"Indeed," the Adept replied, turning those strange, unreadable eyes on Vanyel. "Indeed. Young Vanyel, I would advise you to walk about, regain your health, eat and rest. When Moondance returns and is at full strength, your schooling will begin."

So he did as he was told to do; exploring what Starwind called "the vale" from one end to the other. It was shaped like a teardrop, and smaller than it seemed; there were so many pools and springs, waterfalls and geysers, and all cloaked in incredible greenery that effectively hid paths that came within whispering distance of each other, that it gave the illusion of being an endless wilderland.

It kept him occupied, at least. The vale was so exotic, so strange, that he could lose himself in it for hours - and forget, in watching the brightly colored birds and fish, how very much alone he was.

Half of him longed for the time - before Tylendel. The isolation of that dream-scape. The other half shrank from it. He no longer knew what he wanted, anymore, or what he was.

He certainly didn't know what to do about Yfandes; he needed her, he loved her, but that very affection was a point of vulnerability, another place waiting to be hurt. She seemed to sense his confusion, and kept herself nearby, but not at hand, Mindspeaking only when he initiated the contact.

Savil was staying clear of him, which helped. When Moondance finally made an appearance, he made some friendly overtures, but didn't go beyond them; Vanyel was perfectly content to leave things that way.

When he asked, the younger Tayledras acted as a kind of guide around the vale, pointing out things Vanyel had missed, explaining how the mage-barrier kept the cold - and other things - out of the vale.