Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “Gods, 'Fandes, is that somehow my fault? Was I supposed to interrogate them while they were chasing me?”

  :You,: she said, ice dripping from every word, :never asked. Or bothered to ask. Or wanted to ask. It never occurred to you that Withen might not want it spread about the neighborhood that his first-born son prefers men ?:

  “ 'Fandes,” he replied, after a long, bitter moment of silence. “I don't see where it's any of your business. It has nothing to do with my duties as a Herald.”

  Silence on her part. Then, :You're right. I'm sorry. I . . . overstepped myself. I - I just wanted you to think about what was going on.:

  “Is that what I've been doing?” he asked quietly.

  :Well - yes.:

  “Then I should apologize. I can't afford to react automatically to things - not even in my personal life. And - gods. Not when I'm hurting people.”

  A wash of relief. Then a tinge of sarcasm. :You're thinking. And about time, too. Now are you going to enjoy a long wallow in self-accusation?:

  Something about the tone of her mind-voice - and the exact wording she'd used - made him pause for a moment. “Wait a minute - let me look at this from another angle.” He made a mental checklist of all the young women Lady Treesa had pushed off on him, and what they'd done when he'd failed to succumb to their various charms. And the more he thought about I t-

  “You are exaggerating, aren't you?” he accused.

  :Well - yes. But the situation exists. What are you going to do about it?:

  “Be careful, I suppose. But I'll have to watch what I say.”

  :Good. You're still thinking.:

  “The ones Mother keeps flinging at me are the hardest. If I tell them the truth, I'll hurt Father. I'll shame him, at the least. Even if I pledge them to silence, it'll get out.”

  :So?:

  “I don't know. But I'll think about it.”

  :Now that is the Vanyel I Chose.: Her mind-voice was warm with approval. :You’re not “just” reacting anymore. :

  “Havens, I've been going numb between the ears for the past year, haven't I?”

  : Well - yes. You had reason but -

  He nodded, slowly. “This last year - I've gotten into a lot of habits.”

  :Exactly. You can't let your heart or your habits control you. Not when you're who you are, and wield the power you do. Think about reacting emotionally in a battle situation. Think about even reacting reflexively, instead of tactically.: He did, and shuddered.

  He always stopped at Halfway Inn - the name, he'd learned since, was a conscious pun - the hostelry that sat in the middle of the forest that cut Forst Reach off from the rest of the Kingdom.

  In a way, what he had become had started here. The Inn had certainly marked his passage into a different world, though young Vanyel Ashkevron, more than half a prisoner of his escort, had not gotten the attention that Herald-Mage Vanyel got now.

  It was an enormous place, and in the normal run of things very few travelers even saw the Innkeeper. A Herald was an exception. The Innkeeper himself saw to Vanyel's every whim - not that there were very many of those. The Inn was quite comfortable even for those who were less noteworthy than Vanyel.

  There was less of the hero - worship here than there had been in other inns along the road. Vanyel was “local”; everyone attached to the inn and most of those staying there knew his family, his holding. They seemed to regard him with proprietary pride rather than awe, as if the things he had done were somehow reflections on them; as if his fame brought them fame. And as if they had something to do with what he had become.

  In a way, perhaps they had. If events that occurred here had not made him feel so utterly alienated from the rest of the world he might not have responded as strongly as he had to Tylendel.

  He left Halfway Inn just after dawn, hoping to reach Forst Reach by early afternoon at the very latest. He had always made excellent time on this last leg of his journey every other time he'd made his trips home - though he always left much faster than he arrived. . . .

  But he stopped Yfandes before they had traveled more than a candlemark, while fog still wreathed the undergrowth and it was dark beneath the silent trees. The air was damp-smelling, with the tang of rotting leaves, and a hint of muskiness. No birds sang, and nothing rustled the fallen leaves underfoot or the branches overhead. This forest was always quiet, but this morning it was too quiet,

  “Something's wrong,” he said, straightening in his saddle, and pulling his cloak a little tighter around his shoulders.

  :I can feel it, too,: Yfandes agreed, :but it's very subtle.:

  This forest-unnamed, so far as he knew - had frightened him to the point of near-hysteria the first time he'd traveled this road. Now he knew why; there was magic here, old magic of the kind that the Tayledras used, that they frequently drained off in order to weaken it, and open the lands to more ''normal” human settlements The kind of magic that made the Pelagir Hills the changeling-haunted places they were. Anyone with so much as the potential for the Mage-Gift could feel enough to make them unhappy and uncomfortable.

  But this magic had been dormant for a very long time.

  “I'm going to probe,” he said, and closed his eyes going in, then opening out -

  The magic was still there, but it lay even deeper below the fabric of the forest than it had the last time he had passed this way. Now that his Gift was fully trained, he could even see the traces that told him it had been drained by the Tayledras at least twice, which meant it should be “safe.” The Hawkbrothers never left wild magic behind when they abandoned an area.

  But that draining and abandonment had been long ago - very long ago.

  Yes, the magic still slept, deeper than the taproots or the trees and harder to reach - but it slept uneasily. All magic was akin, and all magic touched all other magic - an affinity that made the Gate-spell possible. But close proximity meant stronger ties to magics that neighbored one another; disturbance to one site frequently disturbed another.

  Vanyel could feel that disturbance in the magics here A resonance with another pole of power at a distance - probably across the Border, and most probably in Baires given that the ruling family was composed of mages Something somewhere was powerfully warping kindred magic fields, and this field housed in the forest was resonating to that disturbance, like a lute string resonating to a touch on the one beside it.

  But it was too far away, and the resonances too tenuous, for Vanyel to determine who was causing it, or where it originated, or even what was being done. Although -

  Vanyel brought himself up out of his scanning-trance, and bit his lip in thought.

  “ 'Fandes, did you get anything?”

  :No more than you,: she replied uneasily, resuming her pace without his prompting. - .Except - the root of all this is evil.:

  “And I know better than to ask you to probe anything I can't reach. But I don't like it either. I like it even less now, with the Border uneasy. It makes me wonder if someone is forcing an issue - and if so, what, and to what end?”

  :Tell Lissa. That's all you can do for now.:

  He glanced uneasily to either side of him. “I'm afraid you're right, ladylove,” he agreed. “I am afraid you're only too right.”

  Four

  Despite everything he'd told himself, despite being adult and with experiences behind him Withen could not even imagine, Vanyel felt his shoulders beginning to knot with anxiety the moment he crossed the gate marking the edge of the Forst Reach lands. By the time he rode through the gate in the wall that surrounded the Great House of the estate, he was fighting to keep himself from hunching down in the saddle like a sullen, frightened child.

  It never changes. Outside these walls I may be a Herald-Mage who can admonish the King himself; inside I'm Vanyel, prodigal son, with habits we don't talk about, and tastes best politely ignored. Gods, when are they ever going to accept me for who I am ?

  :Perhaps never. Perhaps when you accept yourself, Chosen.:
r />   The unsolicited reply nettled him a little.

  :Perhaps,: she continued, :when you know who you are, and know it well enough that you can't be reduced to an adolescent just by riding through the gates.:

  He glanced down at Yfandes' ears, and then ahead, down the road to the destination that was causing him such discomfort. :Are you saying I don't know who I am ?:

  She didn't reply, but picked her pace up to a trot - the easy kind-and rounded the final curve and hill that brought them within sight of Forst Reach itself, bulking heavy and gray against the brilliant autumn sky.

  The building had once been a defensive keep, and still had something of that blocky, no - nonsense look about it. It had long since been renovated and converted into a dwelling far more comfortable, though even at this distance Vanyel could see the faint outline of the moat under the lush grass surrounding it. Surrounded as it was by newer, smaller outbuildings of whitewashed stucco, it resembled a vast and rather ill-natured gray granite hen squatting among a flock of paler chicks.

  Someone had been watching for him. Vanyel saw a small, fairly androgynous figure leave a position on a little rise beside the road and run toward the main building. It vanished somewhere in the vicinity of one of the old postern gates, which were now doors, and Vanyel assumed he (or she, though it was probably a page) had gone to tell the rest of the household that he had arrived. Heralds were distinctive enough to be spotted at any distance, and few enough that it would be safe to assume that any Herald coming to Forst Reach was going to be Vanyel.

  Sure enough, people began emerging from doors all over the building, and by the time Vanyel and Yfandes reached the main doors - impressive black oaken monstrosities that had been set into a frame in what had once been the gateway to the center court - there was a sizable group waiting for him.

  There was the usual babble of greetings - Treesa wept all over him, Withen gingerly clapped him on the shoulder, his brothers all followed Withen's example. There was the usual little dance when Withen told a page to “take Vanyel's horse” and Van-again-had to explain that Yfandes wasn't a horse, she was a Companion and his partner and that he would see to her. And as usual, Withen looked puzzled and skeptical, as if he was wondering if his son wasn't a bit daft.

  But Vanyel was firm - as usual - and got his way. Because if he hadn't insisted (and the first visit home, he hadn't) Yfandes would be stripped of tack and given a good rubdown, then locked into a stall like the “valuable animal” she seemed to Withen to be. Van hadn't known what had happened that time until she wistfully Mindspoke him at dinner, asking if he'd come let her out, since she couldn't reach the lock on the door of the stall.

  That night he had gone immediately down to the stable leaving his dinner half-eaten, and with profligate use of magic, created a new split door to the outside in one of the big loose boxes Withen used for mares in foal. Whenever he came home now, that stall was Yfandes', no matter if he had to move a mare out and scour it down to the wooden floor with his own two hands first. And no matter what sort of contrivance Withen had installed on the new door to keep it locked, Vanyel magicked it so that Yfandes could come and go as she pleased. Maybe Withen wondered why the box never had to be cleaned; certainly the stablehands did. But Withen never seemed to grasp that Yfandes was exactly what his son said she was; a brilliant, thinking, creative lady, with all of a great lady's manners and daintiness, who just happened to be living in a horse's body.

  Yfandes was still moderately amused. But Vanyel frequently thought that it was a good thing he'd never mentioned Withen's proposition on that first visit to breed her to the best of his palfrey-studs, or he'd have been using his magic to repair the gaping holes in the stable, instead of adding a door.

  This time, at least, Withen had learned enough through repetition that the loose box had been vacated, scoured and bleached, and then filled with straw. But he still had left the outer door latched and double-locked.

  Vanyel just sighed, magicked the locks in the open position, and pulled the top half of the door wide. He moved the latchstring for the lower half back through the hole to where Yfandes could get at it, then rummaged through his own packs for a longer bit of string so that she could pull it closed if she chose. Needless to say, the strap he'd attached there last time was gone.

  “How hungry are you?” he asked her, stripping her tack and hanging it over the edge of the stall for the stablehands to clean, then beginning to rub her down. Straw dust tickled his nose and made him want to sneeze.

  :Very,: she replied, testing the depth of the straw with a forehoof and nodding approval. Just take the sweat off and get the knots out of my tail; I'm going to roll when I get out, and maybe swim in the pond.:

  He heard Withen's footsteps on the path to the stable, and switched to Mindspeech. :Fine, love, just have your swim when nobody's watching or they'II send half the stablehands to pull you out. Now watch; I will bet you money that Father says, “Are you sure you should leave her that much food so soon after a long ride? She might founder.“: He finished currying her, took the bucket off its hook, and went after grain for her.

  “Are you sure you should leave her that much food so soon after a long ride?” Withen said dubiously from the stable - door proper, his square bulk blocking nearly all the light. “She might founder.”

  “Father, she isn't a horse; she knows better than to stuff herself silly. She told me she's very hungry. It's been a hard tour of duty for both of us, and both of us need to get back a little weight.” Vanyel hung the bucket of mixed grains where Yfandes could get at it easily. :Now he'll say, “I suppose you know best, son, but-”:

  “I suppose you know best, son, but-” Withen moved cautiously up to the loose box as Vanyel forked in hay.

  “Father, would you stuff yourself sick after a long day at the harvest?” At harvest - time Withen made it a point of spending one day with each of his tenants and several days with his own fieldhands, working beside them. It was one of the many things he did that endeared him to his people.

  “Well -” Withen's heavy brows creased, and for once he looked uncertain. “- no.”

  “So, neither will she.” He rinsed her water-bucket until it squeaked, filled it with absolutely clear, cold water, and hung it beside the grain bucket. Withen stepped forward as if he couldn't help himself.

  “Son, she'll foul the water.”

  “Would Mother drop food into the wine in her goblet?” Vanyel sighed.

  “Well - no.”

  “So, Yfandes wouldn't.” Since she has better manners than Mother.

  He Mindtouched Yfandes gently. :All set, ladylove?:

  :Quite, beloved.: Yfandes' mind-voice was yellow and effervescent with amusement. :Does he do that to you every time we come?:

  Vanyel rubbed her forehead between her eyes and she closed them with pleasure. :Just about. Normally he doesn't follow me into the stable, but I get it when he hears from the stablehands what I did with you. Watch out for that so - called “Shin'a'in stallion;” I think he's sometimes allowed to run loose in this field. He might try and bully you; he might decide you’re one of his mares and give you a little excitement.:

  She bared her front teeth delicately. :I'd rather like to see him try anything on me. I could use a good fight.:

  He nearly choked. :Now, love, you 'II scare him impotent, and how will I explain that to Meke?:

  :Cleverly, of course. Go on with you; I'm fine and your father is fretting.:

  “All right, Father, she says she's comfortable,” he said aloud, forcing himself not to grin. “Let's go.”

  “Are you sure she should be left like that? What if she gets out?”

  “Father,” Vanyel sighed, sending the gods a silent plea for patience, “I want her to be able to come and go as she pleases.”

  “But - “

  Vanyel wondered if his father ever really heard anything he said. “She's not, “he repeated for the hundredth time, “a horse. “

  Vanyel was in time for dinn
er, a pleasure he would just as soon have done without. But once bathed, settled into the best guest room, and dressed in clean clothing - not uniform, he wasn't on duty now, not even technically - his good sense prevailed over his reluctance. When the summons for dinner came, he followed the page and took his place at the high table. Withen tried to put him at his right, between himself and Vanyel's mother. Vanyel managed to convince him to let him take the usual seat guests took, on the end, displacing Radevel, who didn't look at all unhappy to be sitting down at the low table.

  Sitting at the end he was spared having to make conversation with two people at once. His seat - mate proved to be Mekeal's thin, little red-haired wife Roshya, who took all the burden of conversation from him. She chattered nonstop, sparrowlike, without ever seeming to pause for breath. All he had to do was nod and make vague noises of agreement or disagreement from time to time, and he actually didn't mind; Roshya's gossip was cheerful and never malicious - if she had a fault it was that she seemed to assume he must know every highborn and family member for leagues around. After all, she did.

  The dark, high-ceilinged hall seemed far more cramped than Vanyel remembered - until he counted heads, and realized that there were twice the number of folk dining than there had been when he was fifteen. He blinked, but the number didn't change. The low table had been lengthened, and a second table set at right angles to it at the other end, making an “H” shape with the high table.

  And the high table had been lengthened, too; when Van had been sent to Haven and his aunt Savil, only Withen, Treesa, Jervis, Father Leren, and any guests they might have had been seated there-which had then included Vanyel's Aunt Serina and her Healer. Now, besides the original four, the table included the unmarried children, all three married sons, and their wives.

  Great good gods, this isn't a family, it's a tribe!

  The only one missing since his last visit seemed to be his youngest sister Charis; it looked like the only ones still home were the boys. After a moment of thought it seemed to him that he recalled getting word of Charis' wedding to somebody-o other just after Elspeth's death. Did I send a present? I must've, or I'd have heard about it five breaths after being greeted. That's right - I remember now - I sent that hideously pious tapestry of the Lady of Fertility. Aunt Savil took care of Meke and Roshya for me, and I sent Deleran those awful silver-and-crystal candlesticks...