The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy

by Mercedes Lackey

  He ground his teeth in frustration, but there really was very little choice. As the Seneschal had pointed out, the thing was accomplished, and there would be no profit in trying to fight it further.

  “Done is done,” he said with resignation, ignoring Jisa’s squeal of joy. “But I hope you realize you two have saddled me with the hard part.”

  “Hard part?” Treven asked.

  “Yes,” he replied. “Trying to convince the rest of the world that you haven’t made a mistake, when I’m not sure of it myself.”

  CHAPTER 7

  “I THOUGHT YOU’D be pleased,” Jisa said sullenly. “You know how we feel about each other. I thought you would understand.”

  Vanyel counted to ten, and sighted on a point just above Jisa’s head. They weren’t alone; the priest was trying to talk Shavri around, Treven hovered right at Jisa’s elbow, and there were at least half a dozen servants in the room. It wouldn’t do to strangle her.

  The only blessing was that Arved and Joshe were gone, which meant two less edgy tempers in a room full of tension.

  “Whatever gave you the idea that I’d be pleased?” he asked. “And why should I understand?”

  “Because you were willing to defy everything and everyone to have Tylendel,” she replied, maddeningly. “You know what it’s like to be lifebonded!” :Father,: she continued in Mindspeech, :We’ve done everything else anyone ever asked of us. Why should we have to give up each other? And why can’t you see our side of it?:

  He wanted to argue that her case was entirely different—that Tylendel was only an ordinary Herald-Mage trainee, that neither he nor ’Lendel was the Heir to the Throne—

  But he couldn’t. They were young and in love, and so it was useless to bring logic into the argument.

  :I can’t understand why Treven’s Companion didn’t stop him,: he replied, irritated by her relative calm.

  :Father, Eren not only didn’t stop him, she helped us. She’s the one that found Father Owain for us.: She couldn’t have kept the triumph out of her mind-voice, and she didn’t even try.

  “She what?” Vanyel exclaimed aloud. One of the servants picking up the clutter nearly jumped a foot, then glared out of the corner of his eye at them.

  “Bloody ’Eralds,” he muttered, just loud enough for Van to hear. “Standin’ around thinkin’ at each other . . . still can’t get used to it.”

  “Eren helped us,” Jisa persisted. “Ask Yfandes.”

  “I will,” he told her grimly. :’Fandes, what do you know about all this?:

  :Everything,: she replied.

  :And you didn’t stop them? You didn’t even tell me?: He couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

  :Of course we didn’t stop them,: she said sharply. :We approve. You would, too, if you’d take a minute to think with your head and your heart. What else would you have? Jisa will make a fine Consort, better than anyone else your stuffy Council would have picked for Treven. The boy is entirely right; there are no female offspring of a suitable age among any of the neutrals, and why should he make an alliance-marriage with someone who’s already an ally? If you’d have him hang about for years without wedding Jisa, I think you’re a fool.:

  :But Randi—: he began.

  :Randale’s case is entirely different; for a start, there is—or was—a Karsite princess only a year older, and the Queen of Rethwellan is exactly his age. Before his illness became a problem, there was always the potential for an alliance-wedding.:

  He was too taken aback to reply for a moment, and when he finally managed to recover, one of the pages appeared at his elbow, looking anxious.

  “M’lord Herald?” the child said nervously. “M’lord, the King is doing poorly. The Healers said to tell you he was in pain and refusing to take anything and that you’d know what to do.”

  “Go fetch Bard Stefen,” Vanyel told the boy instantly. “If he’s not in his own rooms, check mine.” He ignored the raised eyebrows as Shavri turned away from the priest and rounded on Jisa and Treven.

  “Now see what you’ve done—” the distraught Herald-Healer began, her hair a wild tangle around her face, her eyes red-rimmed. “You’ve made him worse, your own father! I—”

  Vanyel put a hand on her arm and restrained her, projecting calm at her. “Shavri, dearheart, in all honesty you can’t say that. Randi goes in cycles, you know that—and you know he was about due for an attack. You can’t say that’s Jisa’s fault—”

  “But she brought it on!” Shavri exclaimed. “She made it worse!”

  “You don’t know that,” Vanyel began, when the page reappeared with Stefen in tow.

  The Bard strolled right up to the tense knot of people, ignoring the page’s frantic tugs on his sleeve. He bowed slightly to Treven, and took Jisa’s limp hand and kissed it. “Congratulations,” he said, as Shavri went rigid and Vanyel silently recited every curse he knew. “I think you did the right thing. I know you’ll be happy.”

  He finally responded to the page’s efforts, and turned toward the door to the private rooms. But before he could take more than a step, Shavri seized him by the elbow to stop him. “Wait!” she snapped. “Where did you hear this?”

  He looked down at her hand, still clutching his elbow, then up at her face. “It’s all over the Palace, milady Herald,” he replied mildly, and looked down at her hand again.

  She let go of him and pulled away, and clenched her hands in the folds of her robe. “Then there’s no way we can hide this.”

  “I would say not, milady,” Stefen replied. “By this time tomorrow it’ll be all over the Kingdom.”

  He winked at Treven as Shavri turned back to the priest. To Van’s amazement and anger, Treven winked back.

  :You didn’t—: he Mindsent to Jisa.

  The anger in his eyes was met by matching anger in hers. :Of course we did. The first thing we did was tell the servants and two of the biggest gossips in the Court, one of whom is Stef:

  :Why?: he asked, anger amplifying his mind-voice so that she flinched. :Why? To make your mother a laughingstock?:

  :No!: she flared back, :To keep you and her from finding some way to annul what we did! We thought that the more people that knew about it, the less you’d be able to cover it up.:

  :The Companions spread it about, too,: Yfandes said, complacently. :I was told by Liam’s Orser just as you found out.:

  “Dear gods,” he groaned. “It’s a conspiracy of fools!”

  Jisa looked hurt; Yfandes gave a disgusted mental snort and blocked him out.

  Stefen stepped back a pace and straightened his back, taking on a dignity far beyond his years. “You can call it what you like, Herald Vanyel,” he said stiffly, “and you can think what you like. But a good many people think that these two did exactly the right thing, and I’m one of them.”

  And with that, he turned on his heel, and followed the frantic page to the doorway at the back of the room.

  As the priest nodded in satisfaction and took Shavri’s arm, Vanyel threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat, and left before his tattered temper and dignity could entirely go to shreds.

  • • •

  As the Seneschal had pointed out, it was done, and couldn’t be undone. In the week following, Shavri forgave her daughter, Jisa reconciled with Vanyel—but the Council was unlikely to accept the situation any time soon. As Stefen remarked sagely, in one of the few moments he had to spare away from Randale’s side, “They’d gotten used to having a pair of pretty little puppets that danced whenever they pulled the strings. But the puppets just came alive and cut the strings—and they don’t have any control anymore. Younglings grow up, Van—and when they do, it generally annoys somebody. Do you want a potential King and Queen, or a couple of rag dolls? If you want the King and Queen, you’d better get used to those two thinking for themselves, because that’s what they’re going to hav
e to do.”

  Vanyel hadn’t expected that much sense out of Stefen—though why he should have been surprised by it after all their long talks made him wonder how well he was thinking. The young Bard was showing his mettle in the crisis, not only easing Randale’s pain for candlemarks at a time, but soothing Shavri’s distress and bringing about her reconciliation with Jisa and Treven. That left Van free to deal with Council, Court, and outKingdom: making decisions in Randale’s name, or waiting for one of the King’s coherent spells and getting the decrees from him. The two of them worked like two halves of a complicated, beautifully engineered machine, and Vanyel wondered daily how he had gotten along without Stefen’s presence and talents before this. The Bard seemed always to be at the right place, at the right time, using his Gift in exactly the right way, but that wasn’t all he did. He made himself indispensable in a hundred little ways, seeing that no one forgot important papers, that pages were on hand to fetch and carry, and that Shavri and Randale were never left alone except with each other. He had food and drink sent in to Council meetings; saw to it that ambassadors felt themselves treated as the most important envoys Valdemar had ever harbored.

  If it hadn’t been for Stefen, Vanyel would never have survived that week.

  As it was, by the time the crisis was over, both of them looked like identical frayed threads.

  And that was when the second shoe dropped.

  • • •

  Vanyel opened the door to his room, and stared in surprise at Stefen. The Bard was draped over “his” chair, head thrown back, obviously asleep. As Vanyel closed the door, the slight noise woke Stefen, who raised his head and rubbed his eyes with one hand.

  “Van,” he said, his voice thick with fatigue. “S–sorry about this. Shavri sent me out; they got two Healers that can pain-block now—they finally caught the trick of it this morning.” He shifted around and grimaced as he tried to move his head. “I couldn’t make it back to m’room. Too damned tired. Ordered some food for both of us and came here. Didn’t think you’d mind. Do you?”

  Vanyel threw himself down in the other chair and reached for a piece of cheese, suddenly ravenous. “Of course I don’t mind,” he said. “But why in Havens didn’t you take the bed if you were so tired?”

  Stefen frowned at him. “I put you out of your bed once. I’m not going to do it again. There’s your mail.” He pointed to a slim pile of letters weighed down with a useless dress-dagger. “Just came as I dozed off. Pass me some of that cheese, would you?”

  Vanyel passed the plate to him absently and used the paperweight to slit the letters. He worked his way down through the pile, and then froze as he saw the seal on the last one.

  “Oh, no,” he moaned. “Oh, no. I do not need this.”

  “What?” Stef asked, alarmed. “What’s the—”

  Vanyel held up the letter, wordlessly.

  “That’s the Forst Reach seal,” Stefen said, puzzled. Then comprehension dawned and his expression changed to a mixture of amusement and sympathy. “Oh. That. One of your father’s famous missives. What is it now—sheep, your brother, or your choice of comrades?”

  “Probably all three,” Vanyel said sourly, and opened it. “Might as well get this over with.”

  He skimmed through the first paragraph, and found nothing out of the ordinary. “Well, Mekeal’s doing all right with his warhorse project, which means that Father’s grousing about it, but can’t find anything to complain about. Looks like the Famous Stud has a few good traits—well hidden, I may add.” The second paragraph was more of the same. “Good gods, Meke’s first just got handfasted. What’s he trying to do, start his own tribe? Did I—”

  “Send something? What about that really awful silver and garnet loving-cup I’ve seen around?” Stefen had curled up in the chair with his head resting on the arm and his eyes closed. “Savil told me you kept things like that for presents, and the worse they are, the better your family likes them.”

  “Except for Savil, my sister, and Medren, the concept of ‘good taste’ seems to have eluded my family,” Vanyel replied wearily. “Thank you. Hmm. The last of the sheep has succumbed to black fly, and Father is gloating. Melenna and—good gods!”

  “What?” Both of Stefen’s eyes flew open, and he raised his head, staring blindly.

  “Melenna and Jervis are married!” Van sat there with his mouth hanging open; the very idea of Jervis marrying anyone—

  “Oh,” Stef said indifferently. “There’s a lot of that going around. Maybe it’s catching.” He put his head back down on the armrest, as Vanyel shook his head and proceeded to the third and final paragraph.

  “Here’s the usual invitation to visit home, which is invariably the prelude to something that kicks me in the—” Van stopped, and reread the final sentences. And read them a third time. They didn’t make any more sense than they had before.

  I suppose you know we’ve heard a lot about you from Medren. He’s told us you have a very special friend, a Bard. ‘Stefen’ was the name he gave us. We’d really like to meet him, son. Why don’t you bring him with you when you visit?

  “Van?” Stefen waved a hand at him, and broke him out of his daze. “Van? What is it? You look like somebody hit you in the back of the head with a board.”

  “I feel like that,” Van told him, putting the letter down and rubbing the back of his neck. “I feel just like that. There has to be a trick to it—”

  “Trick to what?”

  “Well—they want me to bring you with me. They want to meet you. And knowing my father, he’s already assumed the worst about our friendship.” Vanyel picked up the letter again, but the last paragraph hadn’t changed.

  Stefen yawned and closed his eyes. “Let him assume. He asked for it—let’s give it to him.”

  “You mean you’d be willing to go with me?” Vanyel was astounded. “Stefen, you must be crazed! Nobody wants to visit my family, they’re all insane!”

  “So? You need somebody they can be horrified by so they’ll leave you alone.” Stefen was drifting off to sleep, and his words started to slur. “Soun’s like—me—t’me. . . .”

  I couldn’t, Vanyel thought. But—he’s worn away to nothing. They do have two Healers to replace him, and those two can train more. Randi is as much recovered as he’s going to get, and the Karse situation is stable. So—why not?

  • • •

  “Why not?” Savil said, and chuckled. “He’s certainly asked for it.”

  Vanyel had finally prevailed on her to have her favorite chair re-covered in a warm gray; she looked like the Winter Queen, with her silver hair and her immaculate Whites. Taking her out of the Web had done her a world of good; there was a great deal more energy in her voice, though she still moved as stiffly as ever.

  “But Savil,” Vanyel protested weakly, “he thinks Stef is my lover! He has to!”

  Savil leveled the kind of look at him that used to wither her apprentices. “So what if he does? He is the one who issued the invitation, entirely unprompted. Call his bluff. Then confound him. Tell you what. I’ll come with you.”

  “Kernos’ Horns, Savil, what are you trying to do, get me killed?” Vanyel laughed. “Every time you come home with me, I wind up ears-deep in trouble! I might as well go parade up and down the Karsite Border in full panoply—it’d be safer.”

  “Nonsense,” Savil scoffed. “It was only the once. Seriously, I daren’t travel by myself anymore. And I could certainly use the break. They can’t afford to let Herald-Mages retire anymore, there aren’t enough of us.”

  “True,” Van acknowledged. “You know, this really isn’t a bad idea.”

  :Stef is a sack of bones and hair,: ’Fandes chimed in. :The Healers are threatening mayhem if someone doesn’t take him away for a rest. Savil needs one, too, and so do you, and neither of you will get one unless you’re out of reach.:

  “’Fan
des thinks it’s a good idea,” he mused. “And to tell you the truth, Mother and Father have been fairly civilized to me the last couple of visits. Maybe this will work.”

  “Give me two days,” Savil said, looking eager.

  “Don’t take more than that,” Vanyel told her, as he got up and headed for the door.

  “Why?” she asked. “You don’t take that long to pack!”

  “Because if you take longer than that,” he called back over his shoulder, “my courage will quite melt away, and you’ll have to tie me to Yfandes’ back to make me go through with this.”

  • • •

  Two days later, they were on the road out of Haven, with Stefen riding between them on a sleek little chestnut palfrey, a filly out of Star’s line. Vanyel’s beloved Star had lived out her life at Haven, a pampered favorite whose good sense and sweet nature bred true in all the foals she’d thrown. Star had, in fact, been Jisa’s first mount. And although once he’d been Chosen Van had no more need of a riding horse, there had been trusted friends (and the occasional lover) who did—so Star, and Star’s offspring, had definitely earned their keep. One of Star’s daughters, this palfrey’s dam, was now Jisa’s mount.

  Vanyel had made a present of this particular filly, Star’s granddaughter Melody, to Stefen. Stef had reacted with dubious pleasure—pleasure, because it meant he’d be able to accompany Van on his daily exercise rides with ’Fandes. Dubious, because he didn’t know how to ride.

  Van had been surprised until he thought about it, then felt like a fool for not thinking. Stef had seldom had anything to do with a horse as a child; he was born into poverty, and in the city, so there was no reason for him ever to have learned how to ride. While Van, who had been tossed onto a pony’s back as soon as he could walk, was a member of a privileged minority: the landed—which meant mounted—nobility.

  He didn’t often think of himself that way, but Stefen’s lack of such a basic—to Van—skill made the Herald rethink a number of things in that light.