The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Not really,” Stefen confessed.

  Vanyel sighed. “Just say that it’s a need to help—could you not sing and play? Well, I can’t not help. Not anymore, anyway. And it doesn’t matter if anyone knows what I’m doing or not; I know, and I know I’m doing my best. And because of what I’m doing, things are better for other people. Sometimes a great many other people.”

  “This is loyalty, right?” Stefen hazarded.

  “Only in being loyal to people in general, and not any one land. I could no more have let those farmers in Hardorn be enslaved than I could have our own people.” Vanyel leaned forward earnestly. “Don’t you see, Stef? It’s not that I’m serving Valdemar, it’s that I’m helping to preserve the kind of people who leave the world better than they found it, and trying to stop the ones who take instead of giving.”

  “You sound like one of those Tayledras—”

  “I am. Moondance himself has said so more than once. Their priority is for the land, and mine is for the people—but that’s at least in part because the land is so damaged where they live.” Vanyel smiled a little. “I wish you could see them, Stef. You’d want to write a thousand songs about them.”

  “If they’re so wonderful, why are people afraid of them?” Stefen asked. “And why aren’t you and Savil?”

  Vanyel laughed at that. “Let me tell you about the first time I ever worked with Moondance—”

  The story was almost enough to make Stefen forget his frustration.

  CHAPTER 6

  “DAMN!” MEDREN SWORE, pounding the arm of his chair. “This is stupid! I swear to you, my uncle is about to drive me mad!”

  The windows to Stefen’s room were open to the summer evening, and Medren was trying to keep his voice down to prevent everybody in the neighborhood from being privy to their plight. Stef evidently didn’t care who overheard them. “About to drive you mad?” Stefen’s voice cracked, and Medren winced in sympathy. Stef was pulling at his hair, totally unaware that he was doing so, and looked about ready to climb the walls. He shifted position so often that his chair was doing a little dance around the room, a thumblength at a time.

  “I know, I know, it’s a lot worse for you. I’m just frustrated. You’re—” Medren paused, unable to think of a delicate way to put it.

  “I’m celibate, that’s what I am!” Stefen growled, lurching to his feet and beginning to pace restlessly. “I’m worse than celibate. I’m fixated. It’s not just that Vanyel isn’t cooperating, it’s that I don’t want anyone else anymore, and the better I know him, the worse it gets!” He stopped dead in his tracks, suddenly, and stared out the window for a moment. “I’m never happier than when I’m around him. I sometimes wonder how long I’m going to be able to stand this. There are times when I can’t think of anything but him.”

  Medren stared at his friend, wondering if Stefen had really listened to himself just now. Because what he’d just described was the classic reaction of a lifebonded. . . .

  Stef and Uncle Van? No. Not possible; not when Van has already been lifebonded once. . . . Or is it? Is there a rule somewhere that lifebondings can only happen once in a lifetime, even if you lose your bondmate?

  A lifebonding would certainly explain a great deal of Stef’s behavior. Medren had long ago given up on trying to second-guess his uncle. Vanyel was far too adept at hiding what he felt, even from himself.

  “So, what have we tried so far?” Medren said aloud. Stef at least stopped pacing long enough to push his hair out of his eyes and count up all the schemes they’d concocted on his fingers.

  “We tried getting him drunk again. He didn’t cooperate. We tried that trip to the hot springs. That almost worked, except that we got company right when it looked like he was going to break down and do something. We tried every variation on my hurting myself and him having to help me, and all I got were bruises in some fascinating places.” Stefen gritted his teeth. “We tried my asking him for a massage for my shoulder muscles. He referred me to a Healer. The only thing we haven’t tried is catching him asleep and tying him up.”

  “Don’t even think about that!” Medren said hastily. “Listen, first of all, you won’t catch him asleep, and secondly, even if you did—you wouldn’t want to be standing there if he mistook you for an enemy.”

  Like the last time he was home, when that idiot with the petition tried to tackle him in the bath. Medren shuddered. I know Grandfather said he needed to replace the bathhouse—but that wasn’t the best way to get it torn down.

  “He wouldn’t hurt me,” Stefen said with absolute certainty.

  “Don’t bet on that,” Medren replied, grimly. “Especially if he doesn’t know it’s you. I’ve seen what he can do, and you wouldn’t want to stand in the way of it. If he wants to level something or someone, he will, and anything in between him and what he wants to flatten is going to wind up just as flat as his target.”

  “No,” Stef denied vehemently. “No—I swear to you, I know it. No matter what, he wouldn’t hurt me.”

  Medren just shook his head and hoped Stef would never have to test that particular faith. “All right,” he said after a moment’s thought. “What about this—”

  • • •

  Vanyel closed his weary eyes for a moment, and thought longingly, selfishly, of rest, of peace, of a chance to enjoy the bright summer day.

  But there was no peace for Valdemar, and hence, no rest for Herald Vanyel.

  :Take a break tonight, Van,: Yfandes advised him. :You haven’t had young Stefen over for the past three evenings. And I think you can afford to let the Seneschal and the Lord Marshal hash this one out without you.:

  At least the news out of Karse was something other than a disaster, for a change.

  “So there’s no doubt of it?” he asked the messenger. “The Karsites have declared the use of magic anathema?”

  The dust-covered messenger nodded. It was hard to tell much about her, other than the fact that she was not a Herald. Road grime had left her pretty much a uniform gray-brown from head to toe. “There’s more to it than that, m’lord,” she said. “They’re outlawing everyone even suspected of having mage-craft. Just before I left, the first of the lucky ones came straggling across the Border. I didn’t have time to collect much of their tales, but there’s another messenger coming along behind me who’ll have the whole of it.”

  “Lucky ones?” said the Seneschal, puzzled. “Lucky for us, perhaps, but since when has it been lucky for enemy mages to fall into our hands?”

  “Aye, it wouldn’t seem that way, but ’tis,” she replied, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead, and leaving a paler smear through the dirt and sweat. “The ones we got are the lucky ones. They’re the ones that ’scaped the hunters. They’re burning and hanging over there, whoever they can catch. ’Tis a bit of a holy crusade, it seems. Like some kind of plague, all of a sudden half of Karse wants to murder the Gifted.”

  “Good gods.” The Seneschal ran his hand over his closed eyes. “It sounds insane—”

  “How did it start?” the Lord Marshall asked bluntly. “Or do you know?”

  The messenger nodded. “Lord Vanyel’s turning those demons back on Karse ten years ago was the start of it, but the real motivator seems to be from the priesthood.”

  “The priesthood?” Healer Liam exclaimed, sitting up straight. “Which priesthood?”

  “Sunlord Vkanda,” the messenger replied. “And there’s not enough news yet to tell if it’s only the one priest, or the whole lot of them.”

  At that moment, a servant appeared with wine. The messenger took it and gulped it down gratefully. Lord Marshall Reven leaned forward over the table when she’d finished, his lean face intent, his spare body betraying how tense he was.

  “What else can you tell us?” he asked. “Any fragment of information will help.”

  The messenger leaned back in her
chair. “Quite a bit, actually,” she said. “I’m trained by one of your Heralds. The one that started this crusade’s a nameless lad of maybe twenty or so; calls himself The Prophet. No one knows much else about him, ’cept that he started on that there was a curse on the land, on account of them using mages. That was a bit less than a month ago. Next thing you know, the countryside’s afire, and Karse’s got more’n enough troubles to make ’em pull back every trooper they had on the Border. That was how matters stood a week ago when I left; gods only know what’s going on in there now.”

  “Have we heard from any of our operatives in Karse itself?” the Seneschal asked Vanyel.

  The Herald shook his head. “Not yet.”

  He was worried for those operatives—there were at least three of them, one Mindspeaking Herald among them—but his chief reaction was relief. I cannot believe that we pulled the last of the mages out less than a year ago. There is no one in there now who should be suspected of magery. . . .

  “You say this situation is causing some civil disorder?” Archpriest Everet had a knack for understatement, but he was serious enough. His close-cropped, winter-white hair was far too short to fidget with, so he fingered his earlobe worriedly instead. Beneath his bland exterior, Vanyel sensed he was deeply concerned.

  Not surprising; while it might look as if this was unalloyed good news for Valdemar, the fact that it was a religious crusade meant the possibility of it spilling over the Border. There were several houses of the Sunlord within the borders of Valdemar. If they joined their fellows in this holy war against mages, not only would the Archpriest be responsible for their actions, he would be obligated to see to it that they were stopped.

  Which is about all he’s thinking of. He doesn’t see how much chaos this could cause the entire country. If the followers of the Sunlord move against Heralds—

  Some of us are mages; they might also count all Gifts as “magic.”

  And we have the backing of other religious orders. If the Heralds were attacked, those orders might move before the Crown and Archpriest could. What would happen if the acolytes of Kernos decided to take matters into their own hands and fight back on the mages’ behalf? After all, the order is primarily martial . . . fighting monks and the like. And they favor the Heralds.

  The situation, if it crossed the Border, could be as damaging to Valdemar as to Karse.

  “The Sunlord’s the Karsite official state religion,” the messenger reminded them. “If this Prophet has the backing of the priesthood, then he’s got the backing of the Crown. When I left, that was what things looked like—but there’s a fair number of people with a bit of magery in their blood, and a-plenty of hedge-wizards and herb-witches that do the common folk a fair amount of good. Not everybody can find a Healer when they need one; when the big magics are flyin’ about, the lords tend to forget about the little ones that bring the rain and protect the crops. So not everybody is taking well to this holy crusade.”

  “I would suggest a series of personal visits to our own enclaves of the Sunlord, my lord Everet,” Vanyel said mildly. “I suspect your presence will make cooler heads prevail, especially if you point out that this so-called ‘Prophet’ seems to be operating on nothing more than his charisma and his own word that he speaks for the Sunlord Vkanda.”

  Everet nodded, his mouth tight. “They owe their establishments to His Majesty’s tolerance,” he replied. “I shall be at pains to point that out.”

  “I’ll assure him that you’re already working on the potential problem,” Vanyel told him, glancing at the empty throne. Barring a miracle, Randi will never use that seat again. I wonder if we should have it taken out? It’s certainly depressing to have it there.

  The Seneschal dismissed the messenger, who got stiffly to her feet, bowed, and limped out. “Well,” Seneschal Arved said, once the door had closed behind her, “I think we have a Situation.”

  The Lord Marshal nodded. “If it stays within the Karse Border, this situation can only benefit us.”

  “If.” Vanyel shook his head. “There’s no guarantee of that.”

  :And what about later?: Yfandes prompted. :After this crusade is over?:

  :Good point.: “We use magic openly in Valdemar, sanctioned and supported by the Crown,” Van continued. “If this crusade doesn’t burn itself out, if in fact it is sanctioned by the Karsite Crown, where does that leave us?”

  “The deadliest of enemies,” Everet answered grimly. “It will be worse than before; it will become a holy war.”

  Arved groaned, and closed his eyes for a moment. “You’re right,” he said, finally. “You’re absolutely right. And if that situation occurs, there’s nothing we can do to stop it.”

  “What we need now is information,” Vanyel told them. “And that’s my department. I’ll get on it. Whatever happens, we’ll have a respite from Karsite incursions for a couple of weeks while they get their own house in order. We should use that respite to our own advantage.”

  “Good,” Arved said, shaking back his tawny hair. “Let’s take this in manageable chunks. Herald Vanyel, you get us that information, and find out what the King wants us to do with refugees. We’ll see what we can do to use this involuntary truce. Tomorrow we’ll put together plans to cover all the contingencies we can think of. Everet—”

  “I’ll be making myself conspicuous in the Vkanda enclaves,” the Archpriest said, rising from his seat. “You’ll have to go on without me. I think I’d better leave as soon as I can pack.”

  :He’s going to be out of here within two candlemarks,: Yfandes said. :He travels light.:

  “Lord Everet, I’ll have a document from Randale for you before you leave, authorizing you to take whatever actions you think necessary with the followers of Vkanda,” Vanyel said. “Please don’t leave without it.”

  Everet paused in mid turn, and half-smiled. “Thank you, Herald. I would have gone charging off trusting in my office and so-called ‘sanctity,’ forgetting that neither apply to the Guard.”

  “Nor some highborn,” the Lord Marshal reminded him. “And unless I miss my guess, there’ll be one or two of those among the Sunlord’s followers.”

  “Gentlemen, the Archpriest and I will get to our duties, and we’ll leave you to work on this in our absence,” Vanyel told them. He and Everet pushed their chairs aside and left the Council Chamber, going in opposite directions once they reached the door.

  Randi first, then get in touch with Kera. . . . he thought, then Mindsent, :’Fandes, can you boost me that far?: knowing she’d been watching his surface thoughts.

  :If not, we can at least reach someone stationed near the Border to relay.: She sounded quite confident, and Van relaxed a little. :We’ll have inside information shortly. And don’t worry about Kera—thanks to that new Web we wove, if she was in trouble, we’d know. One of us would, anyway.:

  :Thanks, love.: He’d reached the door to Randale’s quarters, and was such a familiar sight to the guards that one of them had already pushed the door open for him.

  He thanked the man with a nod, and slipped inside.

  Most of the time Randale was cold, so the room was as hot as a desert, with a fire in the fireplace despite the fact that it was full summer. The King lay on a day-bed beside the fire, bundled up in a blanket, Shavri on a stool beside him; he looked exhausted, but the pain lines about his mouth and eyes were mercifully few.

  Those eyes were closed, but he wasn’t sleeping. Vanyel saw his lids flutter a little the moment before he spoke. “So,” he said quietly. “What’s sent you flying out of the Council Chamber this time? Good news, or bad?”

  “Wish I could tell you,” Vanyel replied, dropping down beside the bed, and putting one hand on Shavri’s shoulder. She brushed her cheek briefly against it, but didn’t let go of Randale’s hand. Van touched her dark, gypsy-tumble of curls for a moment, then turned his full attention back to the King. “W
e just got a messenger from the Border and the Karsites have just confirmed my belief that they’re all completely mad.”

  He outlined the situation as quickly as he could, while Randale listened, with his eyes still closed. The King had long ago shaved off his beard, saying it no longer hid anything and made him look like the business end of a mop, he’d grown so thin. That was the day he’d finally acknowledged his illness, and the fact that he was never going to recover from it; the day Van had been reassigned permanently and indefinitely to the Palace.

  All of Randale that could be seen, under the swathings of blankets, were his head and hands. Both were emaciated and colorless; even Randale’s hair was an indeterminate shade of brown. Herald Joshe, who was something of an artist, had remarked sadly that the King was like an under-painting, all bones and shadows.

  But there was nothing wrong with his mind, and he demonstrated that he’d inherited his grandmother’s good sense.

  “Rethwellan,” he said, after listening to Vanyel. “They have mages in their bloodline; if Karse starts an anti-mage campaign, they’ll be in as much danger as we. Get Arved to draft up some letters to Queen Lythiaren, feeling her out and offering alliance.” He paused a moment. “Tell him to word those carefully; she doesn’t entirely trust me right now after that mess with the Amarites.”

  “It wasn’t your fault,” Vanyel protested, as Shavri stroked her lifebonded’s forehead. Randale opened his eyes and smiled slightly.

  “I know that, but she can’t admit it,” he replied. “Have we got a ‘limited powers’ declaration around here somewhere? You’ll need one for Everet.”

  “I think so,” Vanyel answered, and got to his feet. After a moment of checking through the various drawers, he found what he was looking for—a pre-inscribed document assigning limited powers of the Crown, with blanks for the person and the circumstances. There was always pen, ink, and blotter waiting on the desk; in another moment Vanyel had filled in the appropriate blank spaces.