Magic's Price v(lhm-3

by Mercedes Lackey

“Good night, Vanyel,” came from the darkness. “I appreciate this.”

  You'll appreciate me more in the morning, Vanyel thought ironically. And I hope you leave before there're too many people in the corridor, or you'll end up with people thinking you are shaych.

  But -”Good night, Stefen,” he replied. “You're welcome to stay as long as you like.” He smiled into the darkness. “In fact, you're welcome any time. Consider yourself my adoptive nephew if you like.”

  And chew on that for a while, lad, Vanyel thought as he turned over and stated at the embers of the dying fire. I have the feeling that in the morning, you'll thank me for it.

  Four

  Hard surface beneath him. Too even to be dirt, too warm to be stone. Where?

  Van woke, as he always did, all at once, with no transition from sleep to full awareness. And since he was not where he expected to be, he held himself very still, waiting for memory to catch up with the rest of him.

  A slight headache between his eyebrows gave him the clue he needed to sort himself out. Of course. I'm sleeping - virtuously - alone. On the floor. With a hangover. Because there's a Bard who's altogether too beautiful and too young in my bed. And I'll bet he doesn't wake up with a hangover.

  He heard Yfandes laughing in the back of his mind. :Poor, suffering child. I shall certainly nominate you for sainthood.:

  Van opened his eyes, and the first morning light stabbed through them and straight into his brain. :Shut up, horse.: He groaned and closed his eyes tightly.

  :No you don't,: Yfandes said sweetly. :You have an appointment. With Lissandra, Kilchas, Tran, and your aunt. Remember?:

  He stifled another groan, and opened his eyes again. The sunlight was no dimmer. :Now that you've reminded me, yes. I have done stupider things in my life than get drunk the night before a major spellcasting, I'm sure, but right now I can't recall any.:

  :I can,: Yfandes replied too promptly.

  He knew better than to reply. In the state he was in now, she'd be a constant step ahead of him. Some day, he vowed to himself, I'm going to find out how to make a Companion drunk, and when she wakes up, I'll be waiting.

  So there was nothing for it but to crawl out of his bedroll, aching in every limb from a night on the hard floor, to stare resentfully at the youngster who'd usurped his bed. Stefen lay sprawled across the entire width of the bed, a beatific half-smile on his face, and deaf, dumb and blind to the world. Dark red hair fanned across the pillow - Van's pillow - not the least tangled with restless tossing, as Van's was. No dark circles under Stefen's eyes - oh, no. The young Bard slept like an innocent child.

  Vanyel snarled silently, snatched up his towels and a clean uniform, and headed for the bathing room.

  The room was very quiet this early in the morning, and every sound he made echoed from the white-tiled walls. He might well have been the only person alive in the Palace; he couldn't hear anything at all but the noise he made. After plunging his head under cold water, then following that torture with a hot bath, he was much more inclined to face the world without biting something. In fact, he actually felt up to breakfast, of sorts; perhaps a little bread and a great deal of herb tea.

  Stefen was still blissfully asleep, no doubt, which made Van's room off limits. Well, it was probably too early for any of the servants to be awake.

  He dressed quickly, shivering a little as the chill morning air hit his wet skin, and headed down the deserted hallways to the kitchen, where he found two cooks hard at work. They were pulling hot loaves from the ovens, anonymous in their floured brown tunics and trousers, their hair caught up under caps. They gave him startled looks - it probably wasn't too often that a Herald wandered into their purview - but they gave him a pot of tea and a bit of warm bread when he asked them for it, and he took both up to the library.

  The Palace library was a good place to settle; the fire was still banked from last night, and a little bit of work had it crackling cheerfully under new logs, filling the empty silence. Vanyel chose a comfortable chair near it, his mug of tea on the hearthstone beside him, and nibbled at his bread while watching the flames and basking in the heat. The last of the headache faded under the gentle soothing warmth of the tea. Yfandes, having sensed, no doubt, that he had reached the limits of his patience, had remained wisely silent.

  :Are you up to this?: she asked, when his ill-humor had turned to rueful contemplation of his own stupidity. :It won't hurt to put it off another day, or even two.:

  He leaned back in his chair and tested all the channels of his mind and powers. :Oh, I think so, No harm done, other than to my temper. Sorry I snapped.:

  She sent no real thoughts in reply to that, just affection. He closed everything down and thought about the planned session. They would be working magic of the highest order, something so complicated that no one had ever tried it before.

  If he'd had any choice, Vanyel wouldn't be doing it now - but the ranks of the Herald-Mages had thinned so much that there was no one to replace any of the four Guardians should something happen to one of them. There were no spare Herald-Mages anymore. The Web, the watch - spell that kept the Heralds informed of danger, required four experienced and powerful mages to make it work; a Guardian of the Web was effectively tied to Haven - not physically, but psychically - as long as he or she was a Guardian. One fourth of the Guardians' energy and time were devoted to powering and monitoring the Web.

  Van intended to change all that.

  He had been gradually augmenting a mage-node underneath Haven for the past several years. He was no Tayledras, but he was Hawkbrother-trained; creating a new node probably would have been beyond him, but feeding new energy-flows into an existing node wasn't. He intended to power the new Web-spell with that node, and he intended to replace the Guardians with all the Heralds of Valdemar, Mage-Gifted or no.

  And lastly, he intended to set the new Web-spell to do more than watch Valdemar; he intended to make it part of Valdemar's defenses, albeit a subtle part.

  He was going to summon vrondi, the little air-elementals used in the Truth Spell, and summon them in greater numbers than anyone ever had before. Then he was going to “purpose” them; set them to watching for disturbances in the fabric of mage-energy that lay over Valdemar, disturbances that would signal the presence of a mage at work.

  No one but a mage would feel their scrutiny. It would be as if there was something constantly tapping the mage's shoulder at irregular intervals, asking who he was.

  And if the mage in question was not a Herald, it would report his presence to the nearest Herald-Mage.

  This was just the initial plan; if this worked, Vanyel intended to elaborate his protections, using other elementals besides vrondi, to keep Valdemar as free as he could from hostile magics. He wasn't quite certain where to draw the line just yet, though. For now, it would probably be enough for every mage in Valdemar to sense he was being watched; it would likely drive a would - be enemy right out of his mind.

  Well, sitting there thinking about it wasn't going to get anything accomplished.

  Vanyel rose reluctantly from his chair, left his napkin stuffed into his mug on the hearth, and left the comforting warmth of the library for the chilly silence of the stone-floored corridors.

  He headed straight for the Work Room; the old, shielded chamber in the heart of the Palace that had been used for apprentice Herald-Mages to practice their skills under the eyes of their teachers. But there were no apprentices here now, and every Herald-Mage stationed in Haven had his or her own private workrooms that would serve for training if any new youngsters with the Mage-Gift were Chosen.

  Now the heavily shielded room could serve another purpose; to become the Heart of the new Web.

  Tantras was already waiting for him when he arrived, arranging the furniture Vanyel had ordered. A new oil lamp hung from a chain in the center of the room. Directly beneath it was a circular table with a depression in the middle. Around it stood four high-backed, curved benches. Over in one corner, Tran was
wrestling a heavy chair into place, putting it as far from the table as possible.

  The older Herald looked up as Van closed the door behind him, raked graying hair out of his eyes with one hand, and smiled.

  “Ready?” Vanyel asked, taking his seat, and putting his mage-focus, a large, irregular piece of polished tiger-eye, in the depression in the center. He hadn't been able to find a piece of unflawed amber big enough to use as a Web-focus, and fire-opals were too fragile to use in the Web. Fortunately when he'd replaced Jaysen as Guardian, he'd learned that he worked as well with Jaysen's tiger-eye as with opal and amber; flawless tiger-eye was much easier to find.

  Vanyel looked back over his shoulder at his friend. “About as ready as I'm ever likely to be,” Tantras replied, shrugging his shoulders. “This is the first time I've ever been involved with one of these high-level set-spells of yours. First time I've ever worked with one Adept, much less two.”

  “Nervous?” Vanyel raised an eyebrow at him. “I wouldn't blame you. We've never tried anything like this before.”

  “Me? Nervous? When you're playing with something that could fry my mind like a breakfast egg?” Tran laughed. “Of course I'm nervous. But I trust you. I think.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence -” Van began, when the door behind him opened and the other three Herald-Mages entered in a chattering knot.

  The chattering subsided as they took their places around the table; Savil directly across from Van in the West, Kilchas in the South, Lissandra in the North.

  Savil hadn't changed much in the last ten years; lean and spare as an aged greyhound, she moved stiffly, and seldom left Haven anymore. Her hair was pure silver, but it had been that color since she was in her early forties. Working with node-magic was the cause, the powerful energies bleached hair and eyes to silver and blue, and the more one worked with it, the sooner one went entirely silver. She placed her mage-focus, a perfect, unflawed natural crystal of rose-quartz, opposite the tiger-eye. She pursed her lips and contemplated the arrangement, then adjusted her stone until one side of the crystal was just touching the tiger-eye before she sat down. She smiled briefly at Vanyel, then her blue eyes darkened as she began opening up her own channels. Her face lost expression as she concentrated. What wrinkles she had were clustered around her eyes and mouth; there was nothing about her that told her true age, which was just shy of eighty.

  On the other hand, Kilchas looked far older than Savil, although in reality he was twenty years younger. A wizened, shriveled old tree of a man, he had more wrinkles than a dried apple, hair like a tangle of gray wire and a smile that could call an answering grin from just about anyone. At the moment, that smile was nowhere in evidence. He set his focus-stone touching Vanyel's and Savil's. A piece of translucent, apple-green jade, he'd had it carved into the shape of a pyramid. He fussed with it a moment until its position satisfied him. Then he took his seat and lowered his eyelids to concentrate, frowning a little, and his eyes were lost in his creased and weathered face.

  Lissandra was the most senior of the Guardians, despite being younger than Vanyel. She had been a Guardian for much longer even than Savil. She had assumed the Northern quadrant along with her Whites, and although she was not quite Adept status, she wasn't far from it. Outside of her duties as a Herald-Mage, she specialized in alchemy, in poisons and their antidotes. Taller than many men, and brown of hair, eyes and skin, her movements were deliberate, and yet oddly birdlike. She had always reminded Vanyel of a stalking marsh-heron.

  Like a heron, she wasted no motion; she dropped her half-globe of obsidian in precisely the right place, and sat down in her chair, planting her elbows on the table and steepling her fingers in front of her face.

  Tantras settled gingerly in his chair in the corner as Vanyel reached for the lamp, dimming it until everything outside the table was hardly more than a dim shadow. He reached into his belt pouch and felt for the final stone he'd selected for this spell; a single flawless quartz-crystal, perfectly formed, unkeyed, and as colorless as pure water.

  And I must have gone through five hundred-weight of quartz to find it.

  He closed his hand around it, a sharp-edged lump wrapped carefully in silk to insulate it, and brought it out into the light. The silk fell away from it as he placed it atop the other four, and it glowed with light refracted through all its facets.

  Lissandra nodded her approval, Kilchas' eyes widened, and Savil smiled.

  “I take it that we are ready?” Vanyel asked. He didn't need their nods; as he lowered all of his barriers and brought them into rapport with him, he Felt their assent.

  Now he closed his eyes, the better to concentrate on bringing them all completely into rapport with himself and each other. He'd worked with Savil so many times that he and his aunt joined together with the firm clasp of longtime dancing partners.

  :Or lovers,: she teased, catching the essence of the fleeting thought.

  He smiled :You're not my type, dearest aunt. Besides, you'd wear me out.:

  He reached for Kilchas next, half expecting a certain reticence, given that Van was shaych - but there was nothing of the sort.

  :I'm too old to be bothered by inconsequentials, boy,: came the acid reply, strong and clear. :You don't spend most of your life in other peoples' heads without losing every prejudice you ever had.:

  Kilchas' mind meshed easily enough with theirs - not surprising, really, given that he was the best Mindspeaker in the Circle - but Vanyel found it very hard to match the vibrations of his magic. The old man was powerful, but his control was crude, which was why he had never gotten to Adept status; he was much like a sculptor used to working with an axe instead of a chisel. Every time Van thought he had their shields matched, the old man would Reach toward him impatiently, or his shields would react to the presence of alien power, and the protections would flare, which had the effect of knocking the meld of Van and his aunt away.

  Vanyel opened his eyes, clenching his teeth in frustration, and saw Kilchas shaking his head. “Sorry about that, lad,” he said gruffly. “I'm better at blasting things apart than putting them together. And I'm 'fraid some things have gotten instinctive.”

  “Would you object to having me or Savil match everything for you?” Vanyel asked, unclenching his fists and twisting his head to loosen his tensed shoulder muscles.

  “You mean - you take over?” Kilchas frowned. “I thought Heralds didn't do that. Isn't that the protocol?”

  “Well, yes and no,” Savil replied, massaging her temples with her fingertips. “Yes, that's the protocol, but the protocol was never meant for Mindspeaking Adepts, especially not with the strong Gifts my nephew and I have. Van and I can get in there, show you what to do, then get out again without leaving anything of ourselves behind. Occasionally rules were made to be broken.”

  “You're sure?” Kilchas said doubtfully. “I don't want to find myself not knowing if an odd thought is a bit of one of you, left over from this spellcasting, or someone trying to squeak past my shielding.”

  “I'm positive,” Van told him. “It's how the Tayledras trained me. One of them would take over, walk me through something, then get out and expect me to imitate them.”

  Kilchas sighed, and placed both his palms flat on the tabletop. “All right, then. Savil, by preference, Van. You're the one directing this little fireworks show - I'd rather you had your mind on that, and not distracted with one old man's wavering controls.”

  “Good enough.” Vanyel nodded, relieved that it was nothing more personal than that; Kilchas' reasoning made excellent sense. “Let's try this again.”

  This time he waited, watching, for his aunt to take over Kilchas' mage-powers and bring them into harmony with her own, putting into place a much finer level of control than he had learned on his own. Not to fault Kilchas - for all that his hobby was the peaceable one of astronomy, he'd been primarily an offensive combat mage. He hadn't had much time to learn the kind of control Van and Savil had, nor had he any reason.


  :So we take a shortcut,: Yfandes said softly. .-There's nothing wrong with a shortcut. I wish this were going faster, though.:

  :So do I, love,: Van replied, watching the edges of Kilchas' shields for the moment when the fluctuations ended, since that would signal Savil's success. :I take it that the others are impatient?:

  :Kilchas' Rohan is petrified,: she said frankly. :He's afraid Kilchas isn't up to this. Lissandra's Shonsea just wants it over; she's not happy about this, but she's confident that Lissandra can handle her part.:

  :I don't blame her for being unhappy. I want it over, too. I'm not going to be worth much when we finish this job.: Suddenly Kilchas' shields stopped pulsing, and the color smoothed to an even yellow-gold. :Tell her it won't be long now.:

  He Reached out again to his aunt, and let her bring him into the meld, to avoid disturbing Kilchas' fragile control. Then, before the delicate balance could fall apart, he and Savil flung lines of power to Lissandra.

  The fourth Guardian was used to working with Savil; she had been waiting for them, and with the smooth timing of a professional acrobat, caught them, and drew herself into the meld. Vanyel had, in the not-too-distant past, had more than one dislocated joint; the snap as Lissandra locked herself into place was a physical sensation very like having a bone put back in the socket. And once she was there, the meld stabilized; a ring instead of an arc. Vanyel breathed a sigh of relief, and Yfandes took that as the signal to bring the Companions into the meld.