Magic's Promise

by Mercedes Lackey

  As for the startling resemblance between Lord Vedric and Tashir -

  “ 'E said th' boy could be 'is, 'e didn't know,” one of the chambermaids - a pretty one that Valdir suspected of getting gossip fodder via pillow talk - had whispered, sniggering, to Valdir. “ 'E said th' girl couldn' keep 'er skirts down, an' that she'd bribed 'er way inta lots o' beds, takin' the place o' th' girls as was s'pposed t' be there. Said 'e'd found 'er in 'is bed more'n once, an' that 'e didn't know it were 'is own 'alf-sister an' not the wench 'e'd called fer till mornin'. That was why 'e were tryin' t' keep th' boy heir, so 'e says; tryin' t' do right by 'im, like, just in case.” She sniggered again. “I 'card 'nough fr'm m' cousin 'bout 'Er 'Ighness an”er light-skirt ways I believe'im.”

  And the cousin, it seemed, had been one of Ylyna's personal maids. More importantly, she had been out of the palace the night everyone else had been killed. The chambermaid had promised an introduction in a day or two.

  “You gonna sit there all night diddlin' that thing, or you gonna play?” Bel growled, breaking into his thoughts. With a start and a cowed look, he began playing.

  The young girl scampered back to her duties, leaving Valdir alone with the last surviving member of the palace staff, her cousin. The woman pondered him for a moment, then, a trifle reluctantly, invited him into her tiny parlor. The cousin was old; that surprised Valdir. And the odd look she gave him as he took the seat she indicated surprised him more.

  “Why are ye askin', lad?” she queried, as she settled into her own chair. “If it's just morbid curiosity...”

  He rubbed the bruise Bel had gifted him with this morning - it matched the first - and tried to get her measure. She was a bit younger than Savil, and small, but proudly erect. There was something very dignified about her, and out of keeping with her purported position; she didn't hold herself with the air of a servant. She was plainly clothed, in dark wool dress and white linen undertunic, but the wool was fine lambswool, tightly woven, and costly, and the linen as fine as he had ever seen on his mother. She watched him from under half-closed lids. Her eyes seemed full of secrets.

  She had been out of the palace that fatal evening, the girl had told him, because she had been here, in the home of her aged mother, who had fallen and could not be left alone at night. There was a great deal about her that prompted Valdir to trust in her honesty; enough that he decided to tell her a certain measure of the truth.

  “I want to find out what really happened,” he said, as sincerely as he could manage. “The stories I've heard so far don't make a lot of sense. If there's something that needs to be told, perhaps I'm the one to tell it. A minstrel can tell an unpleasant truth with more success, sometimes, than anyone else. I'm a stranger, with no interests to protect. It might be I'd be believed more readily than a Linean.”

  She looked away from him, and her face was troubled. “I don't know,” she said, finally. “This ...” She looked down at her hands, and her attention seemed to be caught by a ring she wore.

  It was an unusual ring in the fact that it was so very plain; burnished, unornamented silver, centered with a dull white stone. The stone was nothing Valdir recognized; it looked like an ordinary, water-worn quartz pebble.

  Then her attention was more than caught -

  The stone flared with an internal, white flame for a moment, and it seemed that she could not look away from it.

  The woman's face took on a blankness of expression he'd only seen in the spell-bound.

  Valdir felt the back of his neck chill. There was a Power moving somewhere, one he didn't recognize. He longed to be able to unshield and probe, and maddeningly knew he dared not. This felt almost like someone was working a Truth Spell, only the feel of this was old – old -

  “Lady Ylyna-” she said, in a strangely abstracted voice. “At the bottom of this, it all comes down to Lady Ylyna.”

  “Tashir's mother?” Valdir asked, biting his lip in vexation when it occurred to him that his words might break whatever spell it was that held her. But her expression remained rapt, and he ventured more. “But – how -”

  “She was hardly more than a child when she came here,” the woman said, still gazing into the stone of her ring, “but I've never seen a more terrified girl in my life. She'd been the ignored one, until Deveran refused to take any girl to wife that had mage-powers. Then she was valuable, and you can believe her family kept the strings on her. She was terrified of them. She was so happy when she was first pregnant - Deveran made a great deal of her, you see. But then Tashir came early - there was no telling him that it was just accident the boy looked like his uncle. So he only came to her to get her pregnant, and once pregnant, he ignored her until the children were born.”

  “But - “

  She didn't seem to hear him. “He ignored the boy, too. She was scarcely old enough to have left off with dolls, she hadn't a clue what to do with a child. Then the letters started coming - letters from Baires, with the royal seal on them, from The Mavelan. She never let us see them, but they terrified her. And she took it all out on the boy. The other children, the ones that took after Deveran, they had nursemaids, and careful watching, but not Tashir. He was left to her. Poor child. Half the time she petted and cosseted him like a lapdog - that was when her letters seemed to be good. The other half of the time she'd take a riding crop to him till the poor boy was bruised all over. That was when the letters frightened her. Then the boy started showing wizard-power, and it got worse. I watched her watching him one day - I've never seen such jealousy in my life on a human face.”

  “Why would she be jealous of him?” Valdir wondered aloud.

  The old woman shook herself, and gave him a sharp look. “I've said more than I intended,” she told him, almost accusingly.

  He tried to look innocent and trustworthy. “But what you've said is important.''

  She rose and walked slowly across the tiny sitting room to the door, and opened it. “Come back in two days,” she said, in tones that brooked no argument. “I may decide to tell you more then.”

  Nearly ready to burst with frustration, Valdir left, doing his best to show none of it.

  She shut the door behind him, and he wandered back down to the Row, looking for a good place to set out his hat for a few more hours.

  He still had to eat, after all.

  :How much of this can you trust?: Yfandes asked.

  :Well, I'm hardly going to be able to run Truth Spell on her,: he replied, staring up into the darkness and listening to old Petar snoring loud enough to shake the chimney down. :Although-gods help me, it seems as if something was doing that for me. And you have to admit, this report of alternate petting and abuse certainly explains some of his reaction toward women. Mothers in particular.:

  :But it doesn't explain what happened that night.:

  One of the two girls murmured in her sleep. Vanyel shivered, and pulled his blanket a little closer. The cold of the dirt floor was seeping through his thin straw pallet. :There's more. I know there's more. I think she - or whatever it was that made her talk - is testing me, and I don't know why. Gods, and the questions I have - why allow only blood relations to serve the Remoerdis Family? And why does it feel as if the old lady is - Gifted? Or geased, bespelled. Or both, I don't know. And I don't dare test her to find out, with Vedric in the city:

  :Mm,: she agreed. :Wise. What's he up to?:

  :Being utterly charming,: Valdir replied. :He's got the locals coming more and more over to his side. And he's agreeing with them on every point. It's hard to believe that this is the same man my sister called a viper.:

  :Interesting. And these Lineans are a hard-headed lot.:

  :It would just about take an angel to change their minds about the Mavelans,: Vanyel told her. :But Vedric seems to be doing just that.:

  Petar snorted, coughed, and turned over. There was silence for a moment, then he snorted again, and the snores did not resume.

  :Take the chance to get to sleep while you can,: Yfandes advised dry
ly.

  But sleep refused to come.

  Tonight had been particularly bad. Not only had Bel made another try, but Valdir had fended off the attentions of someone else as well.

  Even if he hadn't taken Bel's glare as warning that she meant what she'd said about not taking up with her customers, he'd have avoided this one. Shaych, yes - but in a way that made Valdir's skin crawl as much as Bel did. The man hadn't been physically repulsive, but there was something twisted about him, something unhealthy. Like a fine velvet glove over a taloned hand. The man had looked at him with a hunger that made him shiver with reaction even now. He had reminded Vanyel - not Valdir - of the mage that had called himself “Krebain.”

  I don't know what to think anymore. If I'm not shaych, then why can't I just do what Bel wants and get it over with? If I am, then why did that hunter revolt me? He turned onto his side, curling into a ball against the cold, the ache of his empty stomach, the misery his own uncertainty was causing.

  And today - gods. That sick little game I was playing on the serving girls. Leading them on - knowing I was leading them right down a dead end. Yes, I got information - but I was actually enjoying deluding them, having a little power over them. Gods, that was sick. And I would have gone right on playing little sex-flirtation games if 'Fandes hadn 't threatened to kick me into next week. I'm turning into something I don't much like.

  He curled up a little tighter. I don't even know my own feelings any more.

  He tightened his lips in exasperation. Look, Van, you’re supposed to have been trained in logic. So why don't you try putting things into some kind of category, you goose? Maybe you don't know what you feel, but you certainly know what you don't feel. You 've been agonizing over that enough lately! Then figure out what it is that everything you don't care for has in common.

  : It's about time,: came Yfandes' sardonic comment.

  He was startled - and then angry. He very nearly made some kind of nasty retort back to her, but she was blocking, and he wasn't so angry that he'd try to breach her shields just to tell her off. For one thing, he wasn't sure he could - for another, the attempt might give him away to Vedric.

  But he certainly wanted to...

  The next several days were some of the worst Valdir had ever spent. He played his fingers to the bone every night until the last customer left. He dodged Bel, not always successfully, by day. He took her beatings with teeth-gritting meekness, avoided her increasingly heavy-handed attempts to trap him, and did his best to minimize the damage she inflicted. He was cold at night, and starved by day; Bel's idea of “meals” being scarcely enough to keep a mouse alive. And his own unhappy thoughts kept him awake more often than not.

  He went back to the former maid Reta's tiny house faithfully every two days, only to be turned away with nothing.

  Then, finally, after close to a fortnight - an endless series of attempts to see the old woman and being turned away from her door - Reta finally agreed to speak with him again.

  “I wasn't sure you'd be back.” Reta held the door open for him, and he slipped past her into the tiny, painfully neat sitting room. She closed the door carefully, and sat down on her settle beside the hearth. Valdir took the only other seat, a stool. The old woman regarded him thoughtfully while he curbed his impatience, and hoped that this time some more information would be forthcoming.

  “No, I wasn't certain you'd be back,” she repeated.

  “Why wouldn't I?” he asked, just as quietly, as he ignored the hollow feeling in his stomach. He'd been here long enough that the meager rations and short sleep were beginning to affect him, and while he'd recharged his mage - energies fully, his physical energies were becoming exhausted. He woke up five and six times a night, cramping with cold, and even with the supplementary food he was spending his pittance of earnings on, he was beginning to have spells of light-headedness. Most of his money was going to buy Yfandes grain, anyway. But Reta held the key, he was sure of it. If only he could persuade her to part with the information. Her - or whatever power had controlled her the first time he came to her door.

  “This isn't a tale of high adventure,” she pointed out dryly. “And it isn't a bedroom farce. It's not terribly interesting, it's not good song-fodder, and it's sad.”

  “Sad?” He raised an eyebrow. “Why sad?”

  She examined the hands she held folded in her lap, as if they were of great interest. “That poor child Ylyna, she never really had a chance to grow up. Oh, she was grown in body, but - They kept her a child, a frightened child they could manipulate. I find that sad.”

  “They” meaning the Mavelans. “Why didn't you say something?” he asked, trying to understand what could have led her to stand by and watch, and not act.

  She shrugged. “Who would have listened? I was Her Highness' personal maid, as I was Deveran's mother's. Deveran would have thought me either besotted or bewitched. He wasn't known for thinking much of women in the first place.” She shook her head and stared at the ring on her finger. The peculiar, dull white stone seemed to brighten for a moment, and her voice and expression became abstracted, as it had the first time she'd spoken openly.

  It's happening again! Valdir held his breath, all his exhaustion, his personal concerns forgotten, hoping against hope...

  “No, Deveran had no faith in the good sense or the honesty of women. After all, his own mother had betrayed him by dying when he most needed her, or so his own father kept claiming. And Ylyna - not a virgin, possibly mad, and surely little better than a trollop - certainly didn't help matters.”

  Valdir could not stay silent; he protested such inexcusable, willful blindness. “But the way she treated Tashir -”

  “Was likely the way she'd been treated.” The old woman shook her head again, continuing to stare at the stone of her ring. “When you reach my age, you have generally seen a great deal. Adults who have been beaten as children beat their own children. And - other things. I sometimes wonder if that isn't what Holy Lerence meant when he said 'the sins of the fathers shall be taken up by the sons.'“ Her eyes grew even more thoughtful - or entranced. She didn't seem to be paying any attention to him.

  There was something stirring here. Again he felt some Power moving under the powers he could detect easily. Gods! I don't dare try to probe for it. The frustration maddened him. He could feel it, something deep, and powerful, it vibrated so that he felt it rather than “detected” it; the way he could sometimes “feel” the vibrations of a note too low to actually hear.

  But it was stronger this time, much stronger, and it seemed to be stirring to his good, for the old chambermaid was saying things she hadn't more than hinted at before.

  “What other things was she doing?” Valdir prompted in a whisper, hands clenched together so tightly they ached. This was it. This was what he was looking for. The secret no one knew. The key to it all.

  She sounded as if she was talking to herself. “When Tashir grew older - and handsomer - she started looking at him differently. The gods know Deveran hadn't come to her bed for four years, and wouldn't allow any male servants near her, only women. She had never had any pleasure except in bed, I think. I wonder if that wasn't the only thing she thought she could do well.” The old woman was gazing deeply into her stone and not at all at him now, and her voice was very low, so that he had to strain to hear it. She shifted just a little, and he caught the sharp smell of lavender from the folds of her dress. “Tashir began looking more and more like his uncle, and he was still terrified of her. Of her, who never frightened anyone, and couldn't even command respect from her servants. It must have been too seductive to resist, that combination; fear, and the handsome young face and body. She set out to seduce her own son into her bed.”

  Valdir froze. No - that's - my gods -

  She continued on, still speaking in that same, dreamy voice, as if she was speaking only to herself. “That frightened him even more, I think, once he realized what was going on. Poor child. I hardly believed it at first; I just tho
ught the petting was getting a little - overwarm. She'd use any excuse to get her hands on him. Any excuse at all.”

  Valdir licked his dry lips, but couldn't make his voice work.

  Reta sighed. “And Deveran either didn't know or didn't care; I tend to think the latter. He had what he wanted; three sons indisputably his, and likely to reach maturity. What happened to Tashir didn't matter. The only person who cared what was happening to him was the old armsmaster, the one Deveran had retired. Karis. He had taken to teaching the boy, when he saw no one else would. He protected him as much as he could. Which wasn't much, but it was something. He gave the boy a place to hide- and a person to look up to who was stable, sane, and fond of him.”

  “A good man?”

  And possibly another way to get Tashir to open up -

  “A very good man. A pity he was in the palace with the rest of them.”

  Valdir wanted to curse, and restrained himself only by a strong effort of will.

  “Finally it got to the point that Tashir couldn't keep her away - and that wizard-power of his intervened. He had a kind of fit; smashed half the bower before it was over. That was when Deveran decided.”

  “Decided what?” Valdir asked.

  At that moment, the power faded abruptly. One breath it was there. Then it was gone. Her eyes finally came back to their normal sharp focus. “What?” she asked him, looking up at him suddenly.

  Gods - the spell's broken. Oh, Lady of Light, help me persuade her. Would she finish the sentence? Could he convince her on his own? “You were going to tell me what Deveran had decided to do about Tashir,” he prompted. “That night.”

  “Oh.” She shrugged, indifferently. “That. I thought everyone knew about that.”