“Van, I think you and I need to actually get into the palace,” Savil put in, staring up at the ceiling. “I think we ought to try and find out exactly what happened and what that attack was. If it was magic, that alone would rule Tashir out.”
“Hmm.” Moisture beaded the outside of his goblet. He ran his finger down the side, collecting the droplets, and traced little patterns on the table in front of him with a wet forefinger. “Do you think getting Tashir back into the palace might trigger his memory as well?”
“It might,” Savil said, moving her gaze down until she caught his eyes. “It's worth a try.” “Then let's do it.”
“I never thought I'd see this nag cowed!” Jervis chuckled, the rising sun at his back throwing their shadows far ahead of them on the dark-paved road. Three of the four shadows were as long-limbed and graceful as the Companions that threw them. The fourth crow-hopped from time to time as the raw-boned, ugly stud Jervis sat made his displeasure as obvious as he could.
Savil laughed. “He doesn't look too cowed to me!”
“Compared to what he was like before your two ladies chased him up and down the paddock all night, he's an angel!” Jervis chuckled, reaching out and hitting the stud between the ears with his fist when he bucked a little too hard. The gray stud squealed and laid his ears back; an answering squeal from Kellan and a showing of her formidable teeth settled him back down.
“I hate to think what Meke is going to do to me when he finds out what we've done,” Vanyel murmured. He was still feeling guilty about “borrowing” the stud without a “by your leave.”
“What else were we going to use?” Savil asked in a sweetly reasonable tone of voice, as Yfandes snorted. “That blasted stud of Meke's was the closest thing to white on the holding, besides being the only beast with the endurance to keep up with three Companions!” She chortled. “Come to that, he's a good match for Jervis as a Herald, provided you're seeing the real Jervis and not the glamour you put on him.”
Jervis did make a very unlikely looking Herald. Tashir fit a set of Vanyel's cast-off Whites, left from when he was seventeen, fairly well. Vanyel and Savil had their uniforms, of course. But for Jervis it had been a case of hasty make-do. He wore one of his own shirts, and had squeezed himself into a pair of Vanyel's white breeches, but they'd had to sacrifice a sleeveless leather tunic of Savil's, opening the seams on both sides and punching holes, then lacing it onto him. He wore his own boots - brown - but they hoped no one would notice that.
“So long as we aren't dealing with anyone who can see through the glamour we'll be all right.”
“Are you sure any spy Vedric might have on the Border won't pick this up?” Savil asked.
“Well, Heralds are supposed to feel a little of magic. A full illusion would radiate for too much, but an enhancement should pass without any trouble.”
“But won't Vedric pick up the illusion-disguises once we're in town?” Jervis said suddenly. The stud took advantage of his distraction to try to buck him off.
Yfandes nipped the stud's flank, Kellan kicked him, and Jervis bashed him between the ears, all simultaneously. Vanyel choked down a laugh.
The stud shrilled his indignation, but settled again.
“He would, if the ambient magic in Highjorune wasn't going to mask my relatively weak spells. The illusion is only going to be on the Companions, to make them something else. Hardly a whisper on the wind.”
The stud tried to rid himself of the bit. “You fixed his outside,” Jervis said wistfully. “If you could only do something about the inside of his ugly head. ...”
Held to the pace of the stud, it took them three days to reach Highjorune. To pass the gates, Kellan and Ghost became donkeys led by an old peasant woman and her son. Vanyel became a Bard on a showy gold palfrey, and Jervis his man-at-arms and general servant. If attention was to be drawn, Vanyel wanted it drawn to him.
And indeed, he drew enough attention coming through the gates to more than distract the guards from the old woman and her offspring behind them. Vanyel and Yfandes pranced and preened, sidled and danced - and in general made a thoroughgoing nuisance of themselves. Jervis grunted, looked long-suffering, and earned the sympathy of the gate guards. The stud tried to take off someone's hand and got a fist in his teeth for his trouble.
No Row taverns for Vanyel, not this time. He lodged in the best inn in Highjorune, right across from the residency of the Master of the Weaver's Guild. Not so incidentally, that put the palace and all its mage-energies and shield-spells between him and the house where Lord Vedric was staying. Hopefully, any disturbances the illusions were creating would be lost in the greater wash of the shields and the node beneath the shields.
“Somebody's tried to break the shields,” Vanyel observed, staring fixedly put the window.
“You can tell that from here?” Jervis asked, surprised, looking up from sharpening his dagger.
“Uhm - hmm.” Vanyel probed deeper, and let his eyes unfocus. “I can even tell what spells he used. And that it was a he and not a her. Nobody I recognize, but I'd bet it was Vedric.”
“Couldn't you - I don't know - get a look at Vedric so you'd know for certain?”
Vanyel turned restlessly away from the window and shook his head. “No. Probing him to get his signature would tell him I was here. Having the palace between us wouldn't hide me long if he started looking for another mage. I don't like it, though. I wish I knew for certain. And I wish I knew why whoever it was tried to breach the shields. It can't be pure curiosity, not with spells that powerful being used. Oh, I can guess that it's Vedric, and that he wants to get in there to destroy some kind of evidence, but I'd much rather know for certain if my guess is wrong or right.”
“Well, I wish Savil and the boy would get here,” Jervis growled. “I don't like the notion of us bein’ split up like this.”
“I agree,” Vanyel began, when a tap at the door interrupted him.
He whirled, but it was Jervis who answered it and with a grimace of relief let in Savil and Tashir.
“Where in Havens have you been?” he demanded. “You were s'pposed to be here long before sundown!”
“Detained,” she replied, smugly. “And what I got was worth the delay! What would you two say to a motive for the Mavelans to destroy the entire Remoerdis Royal House?”
“What? “ Jervis and Vanyel exclaimed simultaneously.
“We were playing peasants seeing the sights,” Tashir said tiredly. “One of the sights is the Great Hall of Justice. They keep important documents in there, under glass, so that anybody who can read can see them. I remembered one of them was the treaty between Baires and Lineas and told Savil, so that's why we went there.”
“It took a fair amount of Tashir playing gawker to give me time to read it; by then it was dinnertime, and they shooed us all out.” Savil threw herself down in a chair beside the table, picked up the knife Jervis had been sharpening, and examined it critically. “What it all comes down to is this: if one of the two Royal Houses dies out - and there are provisions about it being 'through misadventure, pestilence, or acts of the gods,' in other words, it can't be because of proven assassination by the other House - the surviving House gets the thrones of both. And that's all in ink and parchment under the signature and seal of Elspeth. Remember? Valdemar oversaw the treaty in the first place, and Valdemar is responsible for administering the provisions of it.”
“If I ever knew that, I'd forgotten it,” Tashir confessed into the silence.
“In other words, if Tashir is declared guilty of murder, the Linean throne gets handed over to the Mavelans - and Valdemar has to enforce this?” Vanyel said, incredulously.
“In a nutshell.” Savil replied. “Great good gods -”
“That ain't real likely to make Valdemar popular around here,” Jervis observed. “Not that they're real popular after Van runnin' off with the boy. And if that ain't a pretty good reason for the Mavelans to kill off the Linean House and slap the blame on Tashir - who's
Linean, even if he was disinherited - I don't know what would be.”
“Nor I,” Savil agreed grimly. “Very tidy little plot. Well, Van, you wanted a motive.”
“I certainly got one.” He returned to the window, and stared out of it. “And I have an excellent reason for Vedric making himself so popular with the Lineans.” There was still some lingering sunset afterglow to make the sky a pearly light blue-and against it, the palace loomed ominously dark.
“Exactly. When everyone finally gets around to checking that treaty, Vedric will be the only Mavelan the Lineans will accept. And they might even do it with good grace, if he's done his job right.”
“Savil,” he said slowly, “I think our very first order of business is going to be -”
“The palace,” she supplied.
“These seals were definitely tampered with,” Vanyel observed. “A little more power behind the attacks and the shields might well have come down.”
Yfandes paced up beside him and extended her nose to the door, closing her eyes. :Blood-magic,: she judged. :Faint, but there. Most of the energy traces are ordinary sorcery, but whoever set the spells is used to using blood-magic, and that will taint everything he does. :
“Which means it's not Heraldic - which we figured. And probably not a local. Working mage-craft around here would get you into trouble with your neighbors quickly, but working blood-magic would get you caught and hung.” Vanyel licked his lips, and glanced around at the darkened courtyard. Acting on a hunch from Savil, they'd cleaned out their belongings from the inn and brought everything with them. Now he was glad they had. He raised his voice just a little. “Conference - ” he called softly.
Four humans and three Companions made a huddle. Mekeal's stud was tethered as far away as possible. “Whoever tried to break the shields used something tainted with blood-magic,” he said. “Yfandes smelled it out. Now I have a problem of defense here. Jervis, Tashir, every time we pass the threshold we're going to weaken those shields further. I think maybe we'd better change our plans because I don't think those shields are going to take much more weakening, and the only way for me to reinforce them will be from inside.”
“That won't necessarily work either,” Savil observed. “You'll just be patching. The weak spot will still be there.”
“Exactly,” Vanyel nodded. “It isn't going to be pleasant, but what I'd like to do is to just cross once, to keep the strain to a minimum.”
His immediate answer was a silence in which the sound of dead leaves skittering across the cobbles was enough to set his nerves jumping. “Set up in residence, until we figure out what happened, you mean?” Savil asked. He nodded. She pursed her lips, and gave a reluctant assent. “I'm inclined to agree. Blood-magic will break shields the way nothing else can, and I'd rather this place wasn't left open to tampering. But what about the Companions?”
“They leave,” Vanyel said unhappily. Yfandes Sent a wordless burst of protest. “I'm sorry, but I can't think of any place that's safe for them inside the city walls. The west gate stays open at night; but it's guarded. If I put a no-see, no-hear spell on them, they'll make it out all right. And if Vedric detects it, it won't matter; the stir I'm going to make by opening the shield ought to keep him thoroughly occupied.”
Jervis cleared his throat. “ 'Mother thing; we run into trouble, that way they're free t' run for help.”
Vanyel bit his lip thoughtfully. “Good point. 'Fandes, I don't like it either, but -”
:I see no other recourse,: she answered, pawing the cobbles and radiating unwillingness.
“And you'll have to look after that damned stud.” :May I kick him if he won't behave?: she asked, raising her head and ears hopefully.
Vanyel grinned to himself. Other than Jervis, Yfandes had suffered the most from the stud's behavior; the beast kept trying to induce her to mate. “As much as you have to. From here to Karse if necessary. Be my guest.”
:Then this is not altogether an unpleasant prospect. Kellan, Leshya - : She waited for the humans to remove their packs from the saddles, then trotted to the tethered stud and freed him with her strong white teeth. With heads high and eyes fixed on Vanyel with acute interest, they waited for him to cast the spell.
Since the four of them already knew that the four mounts were there, the spell had very little effect on the onlookers. But Vanyel could See them surrounded with a distorting shimmer that meant the cloaking was in effect. Yfandes Mindsent him a wordless wave of love and concern, and with the stud's reins still in her teeth, turned toward the open gate to the courtyard. Then, with squeals and nips, the three Companions drove the stallion out of the gates and into the swiftly darkening streets.
Vanyel focused his inner eye on the place where he meant to set a portal in the fabric of the shields, then moved his hands in a complicated, mirror-imaged gesture. Through closed eyelids, he Saw the energy walls of the shields part just enough to let a tall man through.
“It's open.” He looked with outer eyes again, and watched Jervis feel his way along the invisible - but patently tangible - shield-wall, until he came to the spot opposite Vanyel. Vanyel wasn't sure which was funnier, his expression when he couldn't force his way past the shields, or his expression when he found the “hole.”
“I can't hold this too long,” he warned; the other three snatched up their packs and his, and Medren's poor, battered, secondhand lute, and hurried up the stone stairs as far as the double door. They waited, white against the dark bulk of the door, while Vanyel slipped across the boundary and resealed the shields behind himself.
He took the stairs slowly, and regarded the purely physical barrier. “Tashir,” he began.
The boy looked at him in startlement.
“Young friend, this is where you see how useful that Gift of yours is. My strong suit is not Fetching, and I've only seen this door once, remember.” Vanyel folded his arms and raised an eyebrow at him. “I also distinctly recall that I barred the door behind Lores. You surely remember what the door and bar look like, and your Gift is Fetching. Let's see you raise that bar.”
“But -” Tashir began to protest. Savil looked as if she might object as well, but Vanyel silenced her with a look.
“Do it, Tashir. You're better at this than I am.”
The young man took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and took a wide-legged stance in what may have been an unconscious imitation of the one Vanyel had taken, and frowned.
Vanyel had been giving him what rudimentary instruction he could, when he could. It wasn't much. But as Vanyel had half suspected, away from the disapproval of his family and into an environment in which “magic” was actually encouraged, he'd begun practicing, probably in an attempt to get his rogue Gift under some kind of conscious control. All of them could clearly hear the grate of the bar in its sockets on the other side of the closed metal-sheathed door; Jervis clapped Tashir on the back, startling him, as the door creaked open a thumbs'-breadth.
Vanyel did the same, a bit more gently. Tashir grinned at both of them, teeth flashing whitely in the first of the moonlight. “Good work, young man,” Vanyel congratulated him. “Now let's get ourselves under cover before somebody curious comes by.”
Savil was already pushing the door open; the rest of them followed her into the absolute darkness of the entry hall. She waited until Vanyel had closed the door and rebarred it before fashioning a mage-light and sending it upward to dance and flare above her head.
“Gods!” she hissed, shocked at the extent of the wreckage in the next room.
Jervis moved past her to stand at the top of the stairs, shaking his head. “I've seen wars and looters that weren't this thorough. What'n hell did that?”
Vanyel glanced over at Tashir, who had lost his expression of triumph and had become very pale. His eyes were shadowed; his expression haunted. Vanyel put his hand lightly on the youngster's shoulder in encouragement, and felt him tremble.
Savil joined Jervis, oblivious to Tashir's distress, walking very slowly
. “I can tell you what didn't,'' she said, unexpectedly. '' Tashir.'' The youngster jerked in startlement. “You're sure?” Vanyel asked softly, feeling a tense core inside him go limp with relief. He really hadn't believed it was the boy, but still. , . .
“Positive. You get under the glare of the node-energy, and this place is dusted all over with magic.” She closed her eyes, and reached out her hand as if to touch something. “There's a very old spell tied to the node that's rooted somewhere just ahead of us. But there's a second spell overlaid on the walls themselves, and that's what caused this mess. Van, let me handle that one; it's a trap-spell, and I'd rather you didn't trigger it.”
“I'll second that. You're much better with set-spells than I am. Tashir, Jervis, did you understand that?”
Jervis nodded.
Tashir looked both frightened and hopeful. “She said that there was a magic spell on the palace that - did all this? But why does that eliminate me?”
“Because you haven't even Mage-potential. Your Gift isn't magic, as we use the term. Real magic leaves traces of itself behind, like the dust a moth's wings leave on your hands when you catch it. You couldn't have done something that would leave those traces; you're not capable of it; for you, manipulating mage-energies would be like trying to carry water in a bucket with no bottom.”
“And that's good enough evidence for Valdemar,” Jervis put in. “Trouble is, I'd bet it ain't good enough evidence for Lineas.”
Tashir's face fell. “That's only too true,” he said, crestfallen.
“So our job is to find good enough evidence for Lineas.” Vanyel took on unconscious authority. “First off, let's clean out one of the smaller chambers and set up living quarters. Then we'll get some sleep; we'll be better off working by daylight.''
Savil dropped out of her half-trance and rejoined them. “I agree. I don't want to tackle anything that tricky without a full night's sleep. Tashir, this was your home; what would be the best place for us to set up where we aren't likely to be seen or disturbed?'' She shivered in a sudden chilly draft. “And where we can build a fire; I don't fancy freezing to death in my sleep, and there's a winter bite to the air at night.”
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