Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Because an army was what was coming down that canyon.

  He'd sent for help, sent Yfandes and Tylendel -

  Tylendel? But Tylendel was dead -

  - but he'd also known that help was unlikely to arrive in time.

  He had waited until they were almost on him, suspecting nothing, and knowing that they could not see him yet because he willed it so. Then he had raised his right hand high over his head, and a mage-light had flared on it; so bright that the front ranks of that terrible army winced back, and their shadows fell black as the heart of night on the snow behind them. He had said nothing; nothing needed to be said. He barred the way; that was all the challenge required.

  They were heavily armored, those fighters; armor of some dull, black stuff, and helms of the same. They carried the weight of that armor as easily as Vanyel wore his own white fur cloak. They bore unornamented round shields, again of the same dull, black material, and carried long broadswords. For the rest, what could be seen of their clothing under the armor and their cloaks over it, they were a motley lot. But they moved with a kind of sensitivity to the presence of the next-in-line that had told Vanyel in the dream that they had been drilled together by a hand more merciless than ever Jervis had been.

  They stared at him, and none of them moved for a very long time -

  Until the front ranks parted, and the wizard stepped through.

  Wizard he was, and no doubt; Vanyel could feel the Power heavy within him. But it was Power of the same kind as that which had cut this canyon; paid for in agony. And when it was gone, there would be no more until the wizard could torture and kill again. Vanyel had all the power of life itself behind him; the power of the sleeping earth, of the living forest -

  He spread his arms, and the life-energy flowed from him, creating a barricade across the valley -

  - like the barricade across his heart -

  - and a shield behind which he could shelter. He faced the wizard, head held high, defiance in the slightest movement, daring him to try and pass.

  But the ranks of the fighters parted again, and the first wizard was joined by a second, and a third. And Vanyel felt his heart sinking, seeing his own death sentence written in those three-to-one odds.

  Still, he had stood his ground -

  Until Mardic touched his mind.

  It had hurt, that touch; salt on raw flesh. He'd interpreted it as an attack of the wizards, and had struck back, struck to kill, and only as he'd made his strike had realized that -

  - a dream, oh, gods - it's a dream, it isn't real, and that's Mardic -

  And had tried to pull the blow; had pulled the blow, but that sent the aborted power coursing back down places that burned in agony when it touched them. And he'd tried to stop the flow, but that had only twisted things up inside him, until he was a thrashing knot of anguish and he didn't know where he was or what he was doing. It all hurt, everything hurt, everything burned, and he was trapped in the pain, in the torment, crying out and knowing no one could hear him, and lost - he couldn't feel his body anymore, couldn't hear or see; he was foundering in a sea of agony -

  Then a shock - like being struck -

  He found himself gasping for breath, frozen to his teeth, but back in a normal body that hurt in a normal way.

  Then he had blacked out for a moment; came to with the Healer shaking him, talking to him.

  He was soaking wet, and shivering.

  Mardic? What about Mardic?

  The Herald Jaysen was holding him upright, more than half supporting him -

  Tylendel, dead, crumpled at Jaysen's feet. My fault, oh, gods, my fault -

  The grieving came down on him, full force; but somewhere at the back of his mind he knew that they were feeling what he was feeling and he clamped down on it - closed that line off -

  In the stunned, mental silence he heard Jaysen's anguished thoughts, as clearly and intimately as if he was speaking them into Vanyel's ear.

  :Gods - oh, gods, I didn't know, I didn't guess - I thought he was playing with the boy, I thought he was - oh, gods, what have I done?:

  He shuddered away from the unwanted sympathy, from the mind-words that were like acid in his wounds, and blocked that line just as ruthlessly.

  Then had come the potions - and the numbness. The blessed unfeeling. He drifted, nothing to hold him, not even his worry for Mardic. It was pitchy dark, they hadn't left a single flame in the room, which under the circumstances was probably wise. Scraps of what he now knew were thoughts drifted over to him; now Savil's mind-voice, now Jaysen's (dark with guilt, and Vanyel wondered why), now Mardic's.

  If he had been on his feet, he would have staggered with relief at hearing that last. I didn't kill him - thank the gods, I didn't kill him.

  He drifted farther, until he couldn't hear anything anymore. Until he lost even his own thoughts. Until there was nothing left but sleep, and the sorrow that never, ever left him.

  Savil stood beside the garden door with one hand on the frame, and prayed. She didn't pray often; most Heralds didn't. Praying usually meant asking for something - and the kind of person that became a Herald tended to be the kind that didn't look outside of himself for help until the last hope had been exhausted.

  For Savil, at least, it had gotten to that point.

  Just beyond the window, bundled in quilts and blankets and half-lying against Yfandes' side, Vanyel dozed in the sun, still kept in a sleepy half-daze by Andrel's potions. Jaysen had carried him out there, with his own mind so tightly shielded against leaking his thoughts that Savil fair Saw him quivering under the strain. Jaysen would be back for the boy in another two candlemarks, which was all Andrel would allow in this cold. This was the third day of the routine; there had been no real repetition of the crisis that had precipitated it, but Savil more than half expected one every night.

  Vanyel sighed in sleep, and one arm stole out of the blankets to circle around Yfandes' neck. The Companion nuzzled his ear, and instead of pulling away, he cuddled closer to her.

  But before Savil had a chance to really take in this first, positive sign that the Herald-Companion bond was taking root in the boy, someone pounded on her outer door. She half-turned, and heard Donni pattering across the common room to answer it. There was a murmur too indistinct to make but.

  The voice from outside the door strengthened. "Please, I'm Van's sister - let me at least talk to my aunt - "

  Savil started, and strode quickly across Vanyel's room, pulling open the door. There could only be one of Vanyel's sisters likely to show up on her doorstep at this point, the one that had fostered out in hopes of a career in the Guard.

  "Let her in, Donni," Savil said - and blinked in surprise. The girl in the doorway could have been herself at seventeen or eighteen.

  God help her - no wonder she went for the Guard, Savil thought irrelevantly. She's got that damned Ashkevron nose.

  Evidently the same thought was running through the girl's mind. "You must be my Aunt Savil," she said forthrightly, standing at what was almost "attention" in the doorway. "You have the nose. I'm Lissa. Can I help?"

  Savil decided that she liked this blunt girl. "Perhaps, I don't know yet," she replied. "First, Lissa, come in and tell me what you've heard."

  Lissa turned away from the garden door with a shudder. "He looks like he's been dragged through the nine hells facedown," she said.

  "And at that he looks better than he did three days ago," Savil replied. She would have said more, but there was another pounding on the suite door and a voice she knew only too well rumbled angrily when Donni answered it.

  "Like bloody hell she's too busy," Lord Withen Ashkevron snarled. "I didn't bloody ride my best horse to foundering to be put off with a'too damned busy!' Now where in hell is she?"

  Savil, with Lissa at her side, strode across to the door, flung it open, and stood facing Withen with her back poker-straight, feet slightly apart, arms crossed over her chest.

  "What do you want, Withen?" she asked flatly, na
rrowing her eyes in mingled annoyance and apprehension.

  "What the hell do you think I want?" he growled, ignoring Lissa and Donni as if they weren't there, placing his fists on his hips, and taking an aggressive, wide-legged stance. "I want to know what the hell you've been doing with the boy I sent you! I sent him down here for you to make a man out of him, not turn him into a perverted little catamite!" His face darkened and his voice rose with every word. "I - "

  "I think that's more than enough, Withen," she snapped, cutting him off before he could build up to whatever climax he had in mind. "I, I, I - dammit, you blustering peabrain, is that all you ever think of? Yourself? Vanyel almost died four days ago, he almost died again three days ago, and he could die or go mad in the next candlemark, and all you can think of is that he did something your back-country prejudices don't approve of! Gods above and below, you can'i even call him by his bloody name, just 'the boy'!"

  She advanced on him with such anger in her face that he actually fell back a pace, alarm and surprise chasing themselves across his eyes. Lissa moved with her, and stood beside her with every muscle tensed, and her fists clenched into hard knots.

  "You come storming in here when we've maybe - maybe - got him stable, without so much as a 'please' or a 'may I,' you don't even ask if he's in any shape to put two words together in a sensible fashion! Oh, no, all you can do is scream that I 've made him into a catamite when you sent him to be made into a man. A man!" She laughed, a harsh cawing sound that clawed its way up out of her throat. "My gods - what the hell did you think he was? Tell me, Withcn, what kind of a man would send his son into strange hands just because the poor thing didn't happen to fit his image of masculinity?"

  Savil ran out of things to say - but Lissa hadn't.

  "What kind of a man would let a brutal bully break his son's arm for no damned reason?" the girl snarled. "What kind of a man would drive his son into becoming an emotional eunuch because every damned time the boy looked for a little bit of paternal love he got slapped in the face? What kind of a man would take anyone's word over his son's with no cause to ever think the boy was a liar?'' Lissa faced down her father as if he had become her enemy. "You tell me, Father! What right do you have to demand anything of him? What did you ever give him but scorn? When did you ever give him a single thing he really needed or wanted? When did you ever tell him he'd done well? When did you ever say you loved him?"

  Withen backed up another two paces, his back against the wall beside the door, his expression that of someone who has just been poleaxed.

  Savil found her tongue again. "A man - may all the gods give you what you deserve, you fathead! What kind of a man would care more for his own reputation than his son's life?'' She was backing him into the corner now, unleashing on Withen all the pain and frustration and anger she'd been keeping bottled up inside her over the past week. He had gone pale - and started to try to say something, but she cut him off.

  "Let me tell you this, Withen," she hissed. "Everything that Vanyel's become, you had a hand in making - and mostly because you didn't want a son, you just wanted a little toy copy of yourself to parade around so that people could congratulate you on your bedroom prowess. You helped make him what he is - gave him a set of values so distorted it's a wonder he even recognized love when he saw it, and taught him that he had to keep everything he felt secret because adults couldn't be trusted. And now I have one boy dead, and one a hair from dying, and all you care about is that somebody might think you weren't manly enough to father manly sons! Oh, get out of here, get out of my sight - "

  She turned away from him before he could see the tears in her eyes. Lissa put a steadying hand on her shoulder and glared at her father as if she would be perfectly happy to take a piece out of him if he said one wrong word.

  "S-s-savil - I - I - " he stammered. "They said - but I didn't believe - is Vanyel - "

  "One wrong word, one wrong move, and he will die, Withen," she said flatly, her eyes shut tightly as she reestablished control over herself. "One wrong thought almost killed him. He slit his wrists because he discovered that someone he trusted believed that his love was the reason Tylendel died. Are you pleased with what you made? It was certainly the honorable thing for him to do, wasn't it?"

  "I - I - "

  "I am very gratified to be able to tell you that he isn't yours anymore, Withen, he's mine. He's been Chosen - if he lives that long, he'll be a Herald-trainee, and as such, he is my charge. You've forfeited any claim on him. So you can have what you've always wanted - little Mekeal can be your heir-designate, and you can wash your hands of Vanyel with a clear conscience."

  Withen flinched at her pitilessly accurate words, and seemed to almost shrink in size.

  "Savil - I didn't mean - I didn't want - "

  "You didn't?" She raised an ironic eyebrow.

  He winced. "Savil, can I - see him? I won't hurt him, I - dammit, he's still my son!"

  "Lissa, do you think we should?"

  Lissa looked at her father as one looks at a not-particularly-trustworthy stranger. "I don't know that he can behave himself.''

  Withen's face darkened. "You ungrateful little - "

  Lissa shrugged, and said to Savil, "See what I mean?"

  Savil nodded. "I see - but he has a point. Maybe he ought to see his handiwork." She nodded toward the door to Vanyel's room. "Follow me, Withen. And keep a rein on that mouth of yours, or I'll have you thrown out."

  He stopped dead at the garden door, and pressed his hands and face against the glass in stunned disbelief. "My gods - " he gasped. "They said - but I didn't believe them. Savil, I've seen men dead a week that looked better than that!"

  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 grass 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 grass that prickled 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 grass 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 - god - damned - 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 cocoon 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 bloody 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 muffled. "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.