Last Herald Mage: Magic's Pawn Part 24

The elusive hertasi never appeared, although their handiwork was everywhere. Clothing vanished and returned cleaned and mended, food appeared at regular intervals, rooms seemed to sweep themselves.

When the vale became too familiar, Vanyel tried to catch a glimpse of them. Anything to keep from thinking.

Then he was given something else to think about.

:You fail,: Starwind said in clear Mindspeech. He was seated cross-legged on the rock of the floor beyond the glowing blue-green barrier, imperturbable as a glacier. -.Again, youngling. : :But - : Vanyel protested from the midst of the barrier-circle the Adept had cast around him, .I - : He was having a hard time shaping his thoughts into Mindspeech.

:You,: Starwind nodded. .-Exactly so. Only you. Until you match your barrier and merge it with mine, mine will remain. And while mine remains, you cannot pa.s.s it, and I will not take you from this room. : Vanyel drooped with weariness; it seemed that the Tayledras mage had been schooling him, without pause or pity, for days, not mere hours. This was the seventh - or was it eighth? - such test the Adept had put him to. Starwind would go into his head, somehow, show him what was to be done. Once. Then Vanyel fumbled his way through whatever it was. As quickly as Vanyel mastered something, the Adept sprang a trial of it on him.

There was no sign of exit or entrance in this barren, rock-walled room where he'd been taken, and no clue as to where in the complex of ground-level rooms it was. There was only Starwind, his pointed face as expressionless as the rock walls.

Vanyel didn't know what to think anymore. These new senses of his - they told him things he wasn't sure he wanted to know. For instance - there was something in this valley. A power - a living power. It throbbed in his mind, in time with his own pulse. He had told Savil, thinking he must be ill and imagining it. She had just nodded and told him not to worry about it.

He hadn't asked her much, or gone to her often. If I don't touch, I can't be hurt again. The half-unconscious litany was the same, but the meaning was different. I'II don't open myself, I won't be open to loss either.

The Tayledras, Starwind and Moondance, alternately frightened and fascinated him. They were like no one he'd ever known before, and he couldn't read them. Starwind in particular was an enigma. Moondance seemed easier to reach.

But there was always that danger. Don't reach; don't touch, whispered the part of him that still hurt. Don't try.

There had been a point back at Haven when he'd tried to reach out, first to Savil, then to Lissa. He'd wanted someone to depend on, to tell him what to do, but the moment he'd tried to get them to make his decisions for him, they'd pushed him gently away.

Now - no more; all he wanted was to be left alone.

It seemed, however, that the Tayledras had other plans.

Savil had come to get him in the morning, after several days of wandering about on his own, reminding him of what Starwind had said about being schooled in controlling these unwanted powers of his. He'd followed her through three or four rooms he hadn't seen before into - - something - He wasn't sure what it was; it had felt a little like a Gate, but there was no portal, just a spot marked on the floor. He'd stumbled across it, whatever it was, and found himself on the floor of this room, a room with no doorways.

Savil had appeared behind him, but before he could say anything, she'd just given him a troubled look, said to Starwind, "Don't hurt him, shayana," and left. Stepped into thin air and was gone. Left him alone with this - this madman. This unpredictable creature who'd been forcing him all morning to do things he didn't understand, using the powers he hadn't even come to terms with possessing, much less comprehending.

"Why are you doing this to me?" he cried, ready to weep with weariness. Starwind ignored the words as if they had never been spoken.

:Mindspeech, Chosen,: came Yfandes' calm thought, -.That is part of his testing. Use Mindspeech.: He braced himself, sharpened his thoughts into a kind of dagger, and flung them at Starwind's mind.

:Why are you DOING this to me?: .-Gently,: came the unruffled reply. .-Gently, or I shall not answer you. : Well, that was more than he'd gotten out of the Adept in hours. :Why?: he pleaded.

:You are a heap of dry tinder,: Starwind replied serenely. :You are a danger to yourself and those around you. It requires only a spark to send you into an uncontrolled blaze. I teach you control, so that the fires in you come when you will and where you will.: He stared at Vanyel across the shimmering mage-barrier. :Would you have this again?: He flung into Vanyel's face memories that could only have come from Savil - a clutch of Herald-trainees weeping hysterically, infected with his grief; Mardic flying through the air, hitting the wall, and sliding down it to land in an unconscious heap; the very foundations of the Palace shaking - :No - : he shuddered.

.-There could be worse - : Starwind showed him what he meant by "worse." A vivid picture of Withen dead - crushed like a beetle beneath a boot - by the powers Vanyel did not yet comprehend and could not direct.

:NO!: He tried to deny the very possibility that he could do anything of the kind, rejecting the image with a violence that - - that made the floor beneath him tremble.

.-You see?: Starwind said, still unperturbed. :You see? Without control, without understanding, you can - and will - kill, without ever meaning to. Now - : Vanyel hung his head, and wearily tried to match the barrier one more time.

Savil ran for the pa.s.s-through, in response to Starwind's urgent summons, Moondance a bare pace behind her. She hit the permanent set-spell, a kind of low-power Gate, at a run; there was the usual eyeblink of vertigo, and she stumbled onto the slate floor of Starwind's Work Room and right into the middle of a royal mess.

Starwind was only now picking himself up off the floor behind her; there was a smell of scorched rock and the acrid taint of ozone in the air. And small wonder; the area around all around Vanyel in the center of the Work Room was burned black.

Lying sprawled at one side of the burned area was the boy himself, scorched and unconscious.

Moondance popped through the pa.s.s-through, glanced from one fallen body to the other, and made for the boy as needing him the most. That left Starwind to Savil.

She gave him her hands and helped him to his feet; he shook his head to clear it, then pulled his hair back over his shoulders. "G.o.d of my fathers," he said, pa.s.sing his hand over his brow. "I feel as if I have been kicked across a river.''

Savil ran a quick check over him, noted a channel-pulse and cleared it for him. "What happened?" she asked urgently, keeping one hand on his elbow to steady him. "It looks like a mage-war in here."

"I believe I badly frightened the boy," Starwind said, unhappily, checking his hands for damage. "I intended to frighten him a little, but not so badly as I did. He was supposed to be calling lightning and he was balking. He plainly refused to use the power he had called. I grew impatient with him - and I cast the image of wyrsa at him. He panicked; and not only threw his own power, he pulled power from the valley-node. Then he realized what he had done and aborted it the only way he could at that point, pulling it back on himself." Starwind gave her a reproachful glance. "You told me he could sense the node, but you did not tell me he could pull from it."

"I didn't know he could, myself. Great good G.o.ds - shayana, it was wyrsa that his shay *kreth *ashke called down on his enemies, didn't I tell you?" Savil's gut went cold; she bit her lip, and looked over her shoulder at Moondance and his patient. The Healer-Adept was kneeling beside the boy with both hands held just above his brow. "Lord and Lady, no wonder he nearly blew the place apart!"

Starwind looked stricken to the heart, as Moondance took his hands away from the boy's forehead and put his arm under Vanyel's shoulder to pick him up and support him in a half-sitting position. "You told me - but I had forgotten. G.o.ddess of my mothers, what did I do to the poor child?"

"Ashke, what did you do?" Moondance called worriedly, one hand now on Vanyel's forehead, the other arm holding him. "The child's mind is in shock."

"Only the worst possible," Starwind groaned. "I threw at him an image of the things his love called for vengeance."

"Shethka. Well, no help for it; what is done cannot be unmade. Ashke, I will put him to bed, and call his Companion, and we will deal with him. We will see what comes of this." He picked the boy up, and strode through the pa.s.s-through without a backward glance.

"Ah, G.o.ds - this was going well, until this moment," Starwind mourned. "He was gaining true control. G.o.ds, how could I have been so stupid?"

"It happens," Savil sighed, "And with Van more so than with anyone else, it seems. He almost seems to attract ill luck. Shayana, why did you throw anything at him, much less wyrsa?"

"He finally is willing enough to learn the controls, the defensive exercises, but not the offensive." Starwind put his palms to his temples and ma.s.saged for a moment, a pain-crease between his eyebrows. "And if he does not master the offensive - "

"The offensive magics will remain without control," Savil said grimly, the smell of scorched rock still strong about her. "Like Tylendel. I couldn't get past his trauma to get those magics fully under conscious lock. I should have brought him to you."

"Wingsister, hindsight is ever perfect," Starwind spared a moment to send a thread of wordless compa.s.sion her way, and she smiled wanly. "The thing with this boy - I told you, he had the lightnings in his hand, I could see him holding them, but he would not cast them. I thought to frighten him into taking the offense." He lowered his hands and looked helplessly at Savil. "He is a puzzle to me; I cannot fathom why he will not fully utilize his powers."

"Because he still doesn't understand why he should, I suppose," Savil brooded, rocking back and forth on her heels. "He can't see any reason to use those powers. He doesn't want to help anyone, all he wants now is to be left alone."

Starwind looked aghast. "But - so strong - how can he not - **

"He hasn't got the hunger yet, shayana, or if he's got it, everything else he's feeling has so overwhelmed him that all he can register is his own pain." Savil shook her head. "That, mostly, would be my guess. Maybe it's that he hasn't ever seen a reason to care for anyone he doesn't personally know. Maybe it's that right now he has no energy to care for anyone but himself. Kellan tells me Yfandes would go through fire and flood for him, so there has to be something there. Maybe Moondance can get through to him."

"Only if he survives what we do to him," Starwind replied, motioning her to precede him into the pa.s.s-through, and sunk in gloom.

Vanyel woke with an ache in his heart and tears on his face; the image of the wyrsa had called up everything he wanted most to forget.

He could tell that he was lying on his bed, still clothed, but his hands and forearms felt like they'd been bandaged and the skin of his face hurt and felt hot and tight.

The full moon sent silver light down through the skylight above his head. He saw the white rondel of it clearly through the fronds of the ferns. His head hurt, and his burned hands, but not so much as the empty place inside him, or the guilt - the terrible guilt.

*Lendel, *Lendel - my fault.

He heard someone breathing beside him; a Mindtouch confirmed that it was Moondance. He did not want to talk with anyone right now; he just wanted to be left aJone. He started to turn his face to the wall, when the soft, oddly young-sounding voice froze him in place.

"I would tell you of a thing - "

Vanyel wet his lips, and turned his head on the pillow to look at the argent-and-black figure seated beside him on one of the strange "chairs" he favored.

Moondance might have been a statue; a silvered G.o.d sitting with one leg curled beneath him, resting his crossed arms on his upraised knee, face tilted up to the moon. Moonlight flowed over him in a flood of liquid silver.

"There was a boy," Moondance said, quietly. "His name was Tallo. His parents were farmers, simple people, good people in their way, really. Very tied to their ways, to their land, to the cycle of the seasons. This Talloa was not. He felt things inside him that were at odds with the life they had. They did not understand their son, who wanted more than just the fields and the harvests. They did love him, though. They tried to understand. They got him learning, as best they could; they tried to interest the priest in him. They didn't know that what the boy felt inside himself was something other than a vocation. It was power, but power of another sort than the priest's. The boy learned at last from the books that the priest found for him that what he had was what was commonly called magic, and from those few books and the tales he heard, he tried to learn what to do with it. This made him - very different from his former friends, and he began to walk alone. His parents did not understand this need for solitude, they did not understand the strange paths he had begun to walk, and they tried to force him back to the ways of his fathers. There were - arguments. Anger, a great deal of it, on both sides. And there was another thing. They wished him to wed and begin a family. But the boy Tallo had no yearning toward young women - but young men - that was another tale."

Moondance sighed, and in the moonlight Vanyel saw something glittering wetly on his eyelashes. "Then, the summer of the worst of the arguments, there came a troupe of gleemen to the village. And there was a young man among them, a very handsome young man, and the boy Tallo found that he was not the only young man in the world who had yearnings for his own s.e.x. They quickly became lovers - Tallo thought he had never been so happy. He planned to leave with the gleemen, to run away and join them when they left his village, and his lover encouraged this. But it happened that they were found together. The parents, the priest, the entire village was most wroth, for such a thing as shay'a'chern was forbidden even to speak of, much less to be. They - beat Tallo, very badly; they beat the young gleeman, then they cast Tallo and his lover out of the village. Then it was that the young gleeman spurned Tallo, said in anger and in pain what he did not truly mean, that he wanted nothing of him. And Tallo became wild with rage. He, too, was in pain; he had suffered for this lover, been cast out of home and family for his sake, and now he had been rejected - and he called the lightning down with his half-learned magic. He did not mean to do anything more than frighten the young man - but that was not what happened. He killed him; struck him dead with the power that he could not control."

Moonlight sparkled silver on the tears that slowly crept down Moondance's face.

"Tallo had heard his lover's thoughts, and knew that the young man had not meant in truth the hurtful things he had said. Tallo had wanted only for the boy to say with words what he had heard in the other's mind. So he called the lightning to frighten him, but he learned that the lightning would not obey him when called by anger, and not by skill. And he heard the boy crying out his name as he died. Crying out in fear and terrible pain, and Tallo unable to save him. Tallo could not live with what he had done. With the dagger from his lover's belt, he slashed his own wrist and waited to die, for he felt that only with his own death could he atone for murdering his love."

Moondance raised his left arm to push some of his heavy hair back from his face, and the moon picked out the white scar that ran from his wrist halfway to his elbow.

"There was, however, a stranger on the road; an out-lander who had sensed the surge of power and read the signs and knew that it was uncontrolled. She came as quickly as she could - though not quickly enough to save both. She found the young men, one dead, one nearly - she saved the one she could, and brought him to a friend who she thought might understand."

Moondance was so silent and for so long, that Vanyel thought he was through speaking. He stared up at the moon, eyes and cheeks shining wetly, like a marble statue in the rain.

Then he spoke again, and every syllable carried with it a sense of terrible pain. "So here is the paradox. If the boy Tallo had not misused his fledgling powers and struck down his lover, they would have gone off together, and, in time, parted. Tallo would likely have been found by a Mage and taught, or - who knows? - gotten as far as Valdemar and been taken by a Companion. Those with the power are not left long to themselves. It might even have been that the Mage that found him was a dark one, and Tallo might have turned for a time or for all time to evil. But that is not what happened. The boy killed - murdered in ignorance - and was brought to k'Treva. And in k'Treva he found forgiveness, and the learning he needed as the seed needs the spring rain - and one thing more. He found his shay'kreth'ashke. In your tongue, that means *lifebonded.' "

Vanyel started. Moondance nodded without turning to look at him. "You see? Paradox. Had things not fallen as they did, Tallo would never have met with Starwind. The Tayledras are very secretive and Wingsister Savil is one of the first to see one of us, much less to see k'Treva, in years beyond counting. The two meant to be life-bonded would never have found each other. There would be no Healer-Adept in k'Treva, and much Tayledras work would have gone undone because of that. So - much good has come of this, and much love - but it has its roots in murder. Murder unintentional, but murder all the same."

Moondance sighed again. "So what is the boy Tallo to think? Starwind's solution was to declare the boy Tallo dead by his own hand, a fitting expiation for his guilt, and to bring to life a new person altogether, one Moondance k'Treva. So there is no more Tallo, and there is one that magic has changed into a man so like Tayledras that he might have been born to the blood. But sometimes the boy Tallo stirs in the heart of Moondance - and he wonders - and he weeps - and he mourns for the wrongs he has done."

He turned his head, then, and held out his hand to Vanyel. "Ke'chara, would you share grief with Tallo? Weeping alone brings no comfort, and your heart is as sore as mine."

Vanyel started to reach for that hand, then hesitated.

If I don't touch - "If you do not touch," said Moondance, as if he read Vanyel's thought, "You do not live. If you seal yourself away inside your barriers, you seal out the love with the pain. And though love sometimes brings pain, you have no way of knowing if the pain you feel now might not bring you to love again."

"Tylendel's dead." There; he'd said it, said it out loud. It was real - and couldn't be changed. The tight, burned skin on his face hurt as he held back tears. "Nothing is going to bring him back. I'll never be anything but alone."

Moondance nodded, slowly, and left his hand resting on the edge of the bed; Vanyel couldn't see his face, shadowed as it was by the white wing of his hair.

"The great love is gone. There are still little loves-friend to friend, brother to sister, student to teacher. Will you deny yourself comfort at the hearthfire of a cottage because you may no longer sit by the fireplace of a palace? Will you deny yourself to those who reach out to you in hopes of warming themselves at your hearthfire? That is cruel, and I had not thought you to be cruel, Vanyel. And what of Yfandes? She loves you with all her being. Would you lock her out of your regard as well? That is something more than cruel."

"Why are you telling me, asking me this?" The words were torn out of him, unwilling.

"Because I nearly followed the road you are walking." The Tayledras shifted slightly in his chair and Vanyel heard the wood creak a little. "Better, I thought, not to touch at all than to touch and bring hurt upon myself and others. Better to do nothing than to make a move and have it be the wrong one. But even deciding to not touch or to be nothing is a decision, Vanyel, and by deciding not to touch, so as to avoid hurt, I then hurt those who tried to touch me." He waited, but Vanyel could not bring himself to answer him.

Moondance's expression grew alien, unreadable, and he shrugged again. "It is your decision; it is your life. A Healer cannot live so; it may be that you can."

He uncoiled himself from his chair and in a kind of seamless motion was standing on his feet, shaking back his hair. The tears were gone from his eyes, and his expression was as serene as if they had never been there as he looked down on Vanyel. "If you are in pain, Mind-call, and I shall come."

Before Vanyel could blink, he was gone.

Morning came - but the expected summons to Star-wind's Work Room did not. The sun rose, he wandered from room to empty room, in the small area that he knew, without finding anyone. He began to wonder if his rejection of Moondance last night had led them all to abandon him here.

Finally he found a way out into the valley itself, and stood by the rock-arch of the doorway, blinking a little at the bright sunlight, unfiltered by the tinted skylight. There were ferns the size of a small room, bushes and small trees with leaves he could have used as a rain shelter, and the larger trees, while not matching the one growing up through the middle of the "house" in girth, were still large enough that it would take five people to encircle their trunks with their arms.

:Yfandes?: he Mindcalled tentatively. He wasn't at all sure he'd get a reply.

But he did. :Here,: she said - and a few moments later, she came frisking through the undergrowth, tail and spirits held banner-high. She nuzzled his cheek. :Are your hands better?: He had unwrapped them this morning from their bandages, and aside from a little soreness, they seemed fine - certainly nothing near as painful as they had been last night.

.I think so.: He rested his forehead against her neck. It was incredibly comforting just to be in her presence, and hard to remember to barricade himself around her. :Where is everybody?: :Savil is up above, in Starwind's place.: She gave him a mental picture of a kind of many-windowed room perched in the limbs of what could only be the tree growing up through the center of the "house." :She doesn't much care for it, and having her up there makes Kellan nervy, but he was upset over the accident yesterday and he feels happier up in the boughs. They're talking.: .-With the other k'Treva?: :I think perhaps. : :Where's Moondance?: :By himself. Thinking,: Yfandes said.

: *Fandes - did I - : He swallowed. :Did I do something wrong last night?: She looked at him reproachfully. :Yes. I think you ought to talk to him. You hurt him more deeply last night than he showed. He's never told that story to anyone; Savil and Starwind know it, but he never told them. And he's never even told Starwind how badly he still feels. It cost him a great deal to tell it to you.: His first reaction was guilt. His second was anger.

By his own admission, Moondance's tragic affair had been nothing more than that - an affair doomed to be brief. How could he even begin to compare his hurt with Vanyel's? Moondance wasn't alone - Moondance hadn't murdered Starwind - just some stupid gleeman, who would have pa.s.sed out of his life in a few weeks. A common player, and no great love.

Moondance still had Starwind. Would always have Starwind. Vanyel would be alone forever. So how could Moondance compare the two of them?

Yfandes seemed to sense something of what was going on in his mind; she pulled away from him, a little, and looked - or was it felt? - offended.

That only made him angrier.

Without another word, spoken or thought, he turned on his heel and ran - away from her, away from the Tayledras - away from all of them. Ran to a little corner at the end of the vale, a sullen grove of dark, fleshy-leaved trees and ferns, where very little light ever came. He pushed his way in among them, and curled up around his misery and his anger, his stomach churning, his eyes stinging.

They don't give a d.a.m.n about me - just about what I can do. They don't care how much I hurt, all they want is for me to do what I'm told. Savil just wants to see me tricked into being a Herald, that's all. They don't any of them understand! They don't any of them know how much - I- - He began crying silently. *Lendel, *Lendel, they don't know how much of me died with you. All I want is to be left alone. Why can't they leave me alone? Why can't they stop trying to make me do what they want? They're all alike, dammit, they're just like Father, the only thing different is what they want out of me! Oh *Lendel - I need you so much - He stayed there, crying off and on, until full dark-then crept as silently as he could back to the building-part of him hoping to find them waiting for him.

Only to find it as vacant as when he'd left it. In fact, only the night-lamps were burning, and those were only left for the benefit of any of the Tayledras who might care to come down to the ground during the night. It didn't even look as if he'd been missed.

They don't care, he thought forlornly, surveying the empty, ill-lit rooms. They really don't care. Oh, G.o.ds - His stomach knotted up into a hard, squirming ball.

No one cares. No one ever did except *Lendel. And no one ever will again.

His shoulders slumped, and a second hard lump clogged his throat. He made another circuit of the rooms, but they stayed achingly, echoingly empty. No sign of anyone. No sign anyone would ever come back.

After pacing through the place until the echoes of his own footsteps were about to drive him into tears, he finally crawled into bed.

And cried himself to sleep.

Thirteen.

Leareth laughed; his icy laughter echoed off the cliffs as he held up one hand and made the simplest of gestures. A mage-storm swirled into being precisely at the edge of Vanyel's defenses. Vanyel poured power into his shielding; this was the last, the very last of his protections. He was drained, the energy-sources were drained, and he himself had taken far more damage in the duel than he would allow Leareth to know.

He was no match for the scouring blast that peeled his shields away faster than he could replace them. Leareth smiled behind his mage-storm, as if he knew that Vanyel was weakening by the moment. Sweat ran into his eyes and started to freeze there; he went to his knees, still fighting, and knowing he was going to lose. Leareth seemed not even wearied.

A final blast struck down the last of his protections. Vanyel screamed as agony such as he'd never known before arced through his body - Vanyel woke up; the bed was soaking with sweat, and he was shaking so hard the ferns over his head quivered. He was afraid that he had screamed out loud.

But when no one came running into the room, he knew that he hadn't; that everything had been in the dream. At least this time he hadn't awakened anyone, and hadn't been trapped in the dream.

Dream. Oh, G.o.ds, it isn't just a dream. He shivered, despite the warmth of the room, and stared up through the fern fronds at the descending moon. The nightmare had him in a grasp of iron claws and would not let him go.