“Some day you'll have to do without me,” Van reminded him grimly. “I'm not immortal. Well, let's get on with this. My operatives say the next move will be for Karse to declare holy war on Rethwellan, too, trusting that the mountains will keep the Queen from coming at them.”
“The more fools, they,” the Lord Marshal replied. “Here's what she's pledged us if they make a move like that...”
The fire in Savil's room hissed and popped at them, and the late-afternoon sun shone weakly down on the gardens outside the window. Van sat back in his chair and tried not to look as if he were tired of hearing his aunt's plaints.
“I don't like it,” Savil said fretfully. “First Kilchas, then Lissandra. Both of them Herald-Mages. It's no accident.”
“What else could it be?” Vanyel asked reasonably, nibbing one of his shoulders. He was still stiff and sore from his fit this afternoon. “We've been all over that. No one found anything out of the ordinary. No signs of tampering, magical or otherwise. Just the result of miscalculation.”
A coal fell down to the grate, and a shower of sparks followed it.
'I still don't like it,” she replied, stubbornly shaking her head. “What if the tampering wasn't with their equipment, but with them - their minds or their bodies? A Healer could easily have stopped Kilchas' heart. A MindHealer could have made Lissandra think she was putting something harmless on the fire. You'd never detect that kind of tampering.”
She's getting old, he thought sadly. She's getting old, and frightened of everything. In her oversized, overstuffed chair she looked thinner, and terribly frail. There were lines in her face that had never been there until this winter. It seemed that, like the Tayledras, she was failing all at once. She's aged more in the last six months than in the last six years. “Savil, love, why would a Healer do something like that?” he asked. “It just isn't logical.”
“You don't have to be a Healer to have Healing Gifts,” she countered. “You have them; so do I. Moondance is a Healing Adept. It could be a rogue mage with the Gift. A kind of anti-Healer.”
Great good gods. Now she's inventing enemies. Whoever heard of anything like that? “All right, then,” he replied patiently. “Who? We've no indication that anyone is using mages against Valdemar right now.”
She frowned. “What about the one that nearly killed you?”
“There's no sign of that kind of magical attack in either Kilchas' death or Lissandra's,” he reminded her. “And the attempt on me was not directed at Valdemar. I think that must have been a purely personal vendetta and nothing more. I've made a lot of enemies in the last few years, and it's all too likely to have been one of them.”
“Van,” she said unhappily, “I'm worried. I think it's stretching coincidence - first the incident with you, then Kilchas is killed, then Lissandra. Please listen to me -”
Vanyel sighed. “I'll tell you what, Aunt Savil. If it'll make you feel more confident, I'll strengthen your wards. But I don't think they need it. You're an eminently capable mage, as you very well know - you're my superior at ritual magics. Kilchas was very old and inclined to try and do things he shouldn't because he was stubborn. Lissandra worked with very dangerous substances all the time. The odds just caught up with both of them.”
Savil scowled at him, and the fire hissed as if it felt her anger. “Vanyel Ashkevron, you're being more than usually dense. If I were ten years younger -”
Abruptly she deflated, and shrank back down into her chair. “But I'm not,” she said sadly. “I'm older than Kilchas, and just as vulnerable. I'm holding you to your promise, Van. Strengthen my wards. I'll take any help I can get, because I believe I will be the next target and I can't get anyone else to agree with me, not even you.”
Vanyel stood up, feeling guilty. “Savil, I don't blame you for overreacting. You knew both of the others better than I did. I'll be happy to strengthen your wards as soon as I get a moment free, and I'm absolutely certain that in a few more weeks we'll be laughing about this.”
“I hope so,” Savil said unhappily as he moved toward the door. “I truly hope so.”
He stifled a surge of annoyance, and bade her good night as affectionately as he could manage. It wouldn't cost him more than a candlemark and a little energy to strengthen her wards, and if it made her less paranoid, it was worth it.
He closed the door behind himself, and literally ran into Stefen in the hall outside.
“I hope you're through for the day,” the Bard said in a weary voice as he caught Vanyel's arm. “Because I certainly am. It's my turn to need a backrub. The Rethwellan ambassador wouldn't talk unless I was out of the room and Randale couldn't sit up unless I was in the room, so they compromised by sticking me in a closet.”
Vanyel chuckled tiredly, and put his arm around Stefen's shoulders. “Nobody has me scheduled for anything more, and I'm not inclined to let them know I'm free. Let's go; I'll give you that backrub.”
“More than a backrub, I hope,” Stef said, shyly.
“I think I might be able to manage that,” Vanyel said into the Bard's ear.
“Good,” Stef said. “I'll hold you to that. . . .”
Later, much later, as Vanyel drifted off to sleep, he remembered what he had promised Savil.
Oh, well, he thought drowsily. I can take care of it tomorrow. It's not that urgent. And I didn't promise exactly when I'd do it, just that I would when I got some free time.
The fire had burned down to coals, with a few flames flickering now and again above them, and Stef was already asleep, his head resting on Vanyel's shoulder. It was the first moment of peace together they'd had since returning from Forst Reach - the first entire evening they'd been able to spend together without either of them being utterly exhausted or worried about something.
And it was the first evening Van hadn't had to spend in the nodes, drawing energy for later use, or channeling it elsewhere.
He stroked Stef's silky, fine hair, and the Bard murmured a little in his sleep. I'm not going to spoil it now. It can wait until morning.
He watched the fire through half-closed eyes, listening to Stef breathe, and waited for sleep to take him.
Then the peace of the evening shattered.
:VANYEL!:
He was out of bed and grabbing his clothes before Stef woke.
:VAN - :
Savil's cry was cut off, abruptly, and Vanyel doubled up and fell to the floor -
Pain -
- knives of fire slicing him from neck to crotch-
- lungs aching for air-
- teeth fastening in his throat-
Then, nothing -
He found himself gasping for breath, curled in a fetal position on the floor, Stefen staring at him from the bed with his eyes wide with fear. It had felt like an eternity, yet it had taken only a few heartbeats from the moment Savil called him until now.
Savil!
He grabbed his robe from the floor beside him where he had dropped it and struggled to his feet, pulling it on. He burst out the door and ran down the corridor-joined by every other Herald in the wing just as the Death Bell tolled. This time he hadn't been the only one to feel the death-struggle.
And this time there was no doubt. This was no accident.
Savil's door was locked; Vanyel kicked it open. His aunt lay in the center of a circle of destruction; furniture overturned, lamps knocked over, papers scattered. Blood everywhere. Some of the others, Herald-trainees who had probably never seen violent death before, gasped and turned green - or blanched and fled.
Claw and teethmarks on Savil's throat and torso showed that she'd put up a fight. A trail of greenish ichor and a broken-bladed knife told that her enemy had not escaped unscathed.
But there was no sign of it, and the trail ended at the locked door.
Not that it mattered to him. The damage was already done, and this time Vanyel's hard-won detachment failed entirely. While the others checked the locks, and looked for clues or any sign of what had attacked her, he sank do
wn to his knees beside the body, and took one limp hand in , his - and wept.
Oh, gods - Savil, you were right, and I didn't listen to you. Now you're gone, and it's all my fault. . . .
Some of the others stopped what they were doing, and looked at him with pity and concern. Very few of them had ever seen Vanyel emerge from behind the cool mask of the first-ranked Herald-Mage of Valdemar. Fewer still had seen him break down like this, especially in public. He had heard that he had a reputation for such coolness and self-isolation that even fellow Heralds seemed to think nothing could crack his icy calm.
They were finding out differently now. “She - thought someone was - targeting the Herald-Mages,” he said brokenly, to no one in particularly. “She was afraid she was going to be next; she asked me to help her, and I just thought she was being hysterical. I promised to strengthen her wards, and I didn't; I forgot. This is all my fault -”
She's never going to sit there in her chair and expound at me again. I can't ever ask her for advice. She'll never take on Father for me - she was my mother in everything but flesh, and I failed her, I failed her, when I'd promised to help her.
He hung his head, and closed his eyes, choking down the sob that rose and cut off his breathing.
Savil, Savil, I'm so sorry - and sorry isn't enough. Sorry won't bring you back.
Tears escaped from under his closed eyelids, and etched their way down his cheeks. He couldn't swallow; he could hardly breathe.
A hand touched his shoulder. He looked up, slowly, through eyes that burned and vision that wavered with tears.
“Van?” Tantras said quietly. “I know you're in no shape to do anything, but you're the only Herald-Mage left, and we can't check all the magical locks she had to see if they were violated.”
He blinked, then reckoned up in his head ail the deaths over the last couple of years.
Oh, gods - I'm not just the only Herald-Mage they have left here, I'm the very last Herald-Mage. There aren't any more but me.
He wiped the back of his hand across his eyes and rose slowly to his feet. “Clear everyone out,” he said in a low, and deadly calm voice, as a coldness settled in his heart and icy anger steadied his thoughts. “I'll need some room to work.”
The wards weren't violated. Van stood in the middle of the room and scanned every inch of it with Mage-Sight. The wards were fading now that Savil was dead, but they were still strong enough to read. She had warded all four directions, above and below, weaving protection atop protection, and all glowed with the bright blue that meant no strand and no connection had been broken, and the only hole was the one he himself had made when he broke down the door.
The wards weren't violated. The locks and locking-spells are all intact. Whatever it was came in before she set the wards.
What was the damned thing, anyway?
There was still a trace of the greenish ichor left; more than enough to identify the creature if it was something Vanyel had encountered before this. But it wasn't; it wasn't even close to anything he knew, and the magical signature it had left behind when it broke the spell that gave it its disguise was entirely new.
It's intelligent, he decided. It has to be. And it's not Abyssal, or I'd at least recognize that much of its signature, which only leaves one possibility. It's created, or it's from the Pelagirs. Or both -
His only option now was to try alone what he and Savil and the two Tayledras had done together; try to See into the immediate past. He wouldn't have tried it if he hadn't seen it done by an expert; and if the time he wanted to See hadn't been so recent, he wouldn't have been able to do it alone.
The longer he waited, the fainter the traces would be. His best chance at discovering anything would be to cast the spell now, this instant.
You son of a bitch, whoever, whatever you are, you're not getting away! I'm going to hunt you down if it takes me the rest of my life-
He sat down on the cold, bare floor, next to where Savil had been found, and tapped recklessly into the node far below Haven. His need, anger, and sorrow drove him deeper into it than he had ever been or dared to go before; he grasped the raw power with unflinching “hands,” manipulating it like soft, half-molten iron. He forged it into the spell on the anvil of his will and tuned it to himself through the medium of his mage-focus. Then he cast it loose.
When he opened his eyes, the room was as he had left it when he'd last seen Savil alive. He was sitting just beside Savil's big chair; it was early evening by the thin light coming in the windows, and she didn't seem to be in the room.
This must be just after I met Stef, he thought, and guilt ate at him, acid in his wounds of loss. The wards were not up. And there was nothing in the room that did not belong there.
Vanyel froze the moment and searched everywhere, even behind and underneath the furniture. Nothing. Everything was entirely as it should be.
He gritted his teeth and let time proceed again, waiting as the twilight deepened and became true night; as one of the servants came in, lighting the lamps and leaving fresh candles in the sconces. Another brought in a heavy load of wood, and fueled the fire. Nothing at all out of the ordinary -
Wait a moment!
He froze the time-stream again, and examined the candles, minutely, with Mage-Sight.
Nothing at all odd about the candles - but when he turned his Sight on the wood, the entire pile glowed an evil green, and when he dug deeper at it, the wood gave him the same signature as the ichor.
But it wasn't enough; not quite. He needed to see how the thing had looked when it dropped its disguise, and where it had gone afterward.
He forced himself to let the time-stream start up again; his heart lurched when he saw Savil enter the room. No, not now, he told himself, forcing himself to be cold and unemotional. It's not the time for that - not while I'm tapping a node. I can't afford to give up concentration for emotion.
He regained control over himself, just as his aunt turned away from him and put up her wards.
Even though he was watching the woodpile, he didn't see it actually change; the creature was that fast. He froze time again; catching it in mid-leap and Savil in mid-turn.
Well, at least I'm not slipping,, he thought, still locked in that icy detachment. That creature isn't anything I've ever encountered before. It was mostly like a raven, but with toothed beak, evil red eyes, and powerful legs that ended in feet bearing knife-sharp, hand-sized talons.
Not even the Tayledras knew all of the creatures that roamed the Pelagirs, but somehow this bird-thing didn't have the feeling of anything natural - if that word could ever be applied to a beast from that magic-haunted area. Still, the bird looked wrong; the teeth were too long for it to be able to actually eat with them, and those claws were no good for anything except rending. Certainly it couldn't perch on anything like a tree limb with those talons. And how would it feed young?
Vanyel could not leave his own position, but he could let the beast continue its leap, little by little, until he could see all of it. He did so, steadfastly ignoring the look of fear on his aunt's face, the panic as she realized she could not ready a blast of mage-energy before it reached her. It was thumb-lengths away from her when he stopped the thing again, and close examination of the rear proved what he had suspected. It had no genital slit; in fact, it had nothing at all, not even a vent. It was as featureless behind as a feather-covered egg.
It was a construct, a one-of-a-kind, probably created specifically for this task out of a real raven. The only way it could obtain nourishment would be magically; it was utterly dependent on the mage that created it, and there would be no young that might escape the mage's control. That meant that the mage who had targeted Savil was at the least more ruthless than Vanyel, and very likely more powerful as well.
Power doesn't count for everything, Vanyel thought, clenching his jaw on a rising tide of anger. There's skill, and there's how much you're willing to pay for what you want. I want this bastard, and I don't intend to lose him.
He sped up the time-stream, skipping ahead to the moment when Savil was already dead and he had started to kick in the doorway. He watched dispassionately as the bird-thing, wounded and bleeding, again assumed its guise of a pile of wood, this time beside the door. He watched as he allowed himself to be overcome with grief, and the creature took that moment of distraction to slip out the door.
He tracked it as it fled from the Palace by the first exit. It paused just long enough to attack one lone Companion, down and in shock with the loss of her Chosen - the others came to Kellan's aid, but too late. The thing rose up in triumph and fled, its talons and beak red with the mingled blood of Herald and Companion, while the rest of the herd shrieked their impotent anger after it.
And still he tracked it. North. North for several days' ride, on wings sped by more magic, until it dropped back down to earth, exhausted and weakened by its injury. He sensed from its primitive thoughts that it was going to stay there for at least a week, healing. It knew it was safe enough. No one knew it was there . . . and no one could follow it that quickly.
That was all he could bear to see. He let loose his control of the spell, and it dissolved away, leaving him sitting alone in the middle of the empty, ruined room, with dawn just beginning to color the sky outside the windows, and Stefen huddled in a cloak just inside the door.
“They t-told me not to disturb you,” the Bard stuttered, looking pale and wan in the thin, gray light. “But nobody said I couldn't wait here until you w-were done. Van, I'm sorry, I w-wish I could do something -”
“You can,” Vanyel replied shortly. “You can guard the door and keep everyone else out.” There was hurt in Stef's eyes at his coldness, but he ignored it. :'Fandes?: he called.
The rage in her mind-voice colored everything a bloody red. :Gods damn them to the lowest hells! That thing got Kellan on its way out, Van -:
:I know that,: he interrupted. :And I'm about to extract a little revenge right now. Will you link and cover my back while I go hunting?:
:Hunt away,: she snarled, :I'm right behind you.: That was all the assurance he needed. Once again he dove into the node, pulled in all the raw power he could hold through the buffering effect of his amber focus, and launched himself out again with all his channels scorched and tender but still perfectly functional.
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