The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  TITLES BY MERCEDES LACKEY

  available from DAW Books:

  THE NOVELS OF VALDEMAR:

  THE HERALDS OF VALDEMAR

  ARROWS OF THE QUEEN

  ARROW’S FLIGHT

  ARROW’S FALL

  THE LAST HERALD-MAGE

  MAGIC’S PAWN

  MAGIC’S PROMISE

  MAGIC’S PRICE

  THE MAGE WINDS

  WINDS OF FATE

  WINDS OF CHANGE

  WINDS OF FURY

  THE MAGE STORMS

  STORM WARNING

  STORM RISING

  STORM BREAKING

  VOWS AND HONOR

  THE OATHBOUND

  OATHBREAKERS

  OATHBLOOD

  THE COLLEGIUM CHRONICLES

  FOUNDATION

  INTRIGUES

  CHANGES

  REDOUBT

  BASTION

  THE HERALD SPY

  CLOSER TO HOME

  CLOSER TO THE HEART

  BY THE SWORD

  BRIGHTLY BURNING

  TAKE A THIEF

  EXILE’S HONOR

  EXILE’S VALOR

  VALDEMAR ANTHOLOGIES

  SWORD OF ICE

  SUN IN GLORY

  CROSSROADS

  MOVING TARGETS

  CHANGING THE WORLD

  FINDING THE WAY

  UNDER THE VALE

  NO TRUE WAY

  CRUCIBLE

  WRITTEN WITH LARRY DIXON:

  THE MAGE WARS

  THE BLACK GRYPHON

  THE WHITE GRYPHON

  THE SILVER GRYPHON

  DARIAN’S TALE

  OWLFLIGHT

  OWLSIGHT

  OWLKNIGHT

  OTHER NOVELS:

  GWENHWYFAR

  THE BLACK SWAN

  THE DRAGON JOUSTERS

  JOUST

  ALTA

  SANCTUARY

  AERIE

  THE ELEMENTAL MASTERS

  THE SERPENT’S SHADOW

  THE GATES OF SLEEP

  PHOENIX AND ASHES

  THE WIZARD OF LONDON

  RESERVED FOR THE CAT

  UNNATURAL ISSUE

  HOME FROM THE SEA

  STEADFAST

  BLOOD RED

  FROM A HIGH TOWER

  A STUDY IN SABLE *

  Anthologies:

  ELEMENTAL MAGIC

  ELEMENTARY

  *Coming soon from DAW Books

  And don’t miss

  THE VALDEMAR COMPANION

  edited by John Helfers and Denise Little

  MAGIC’S PAWN copyright © 1989 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

  MAGIC’S PROMISE copyright © 1990 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

  MAGIC’S PRICE copyright © 1990 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

  Author’s Note copyright © 2016 by Mercedes R. Lackey.

  All Rights Reserved.

  Cover art courtesy of Shutterstock.

  Individual novel cover art by Jody A. Lee.

  Cover design by G-Force Design.

  Map by Larry Dixon.

  DAW Book Collectors No. 1716.

  Published by DAW Books, Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014.

  All characters and events in this book are fictitious.

  Any resemblance to persons living or dead is strictly coincidental.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal, and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage the electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  eBook ISBN 978-0-7564-1142-8

  DAW TRADEMARK REGISTERED

  U.S. PAT. AND TM. OFF. AND FOREIGN COUNTRIES

  —MARCA REGISTRADA

  HECHO EN U.S.A.

  Version_1

  Contents

  Also by Mercedes Lackey

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Map

  MAGIC’S PAWN CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  MAGIC’S PROMISE CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  MAGIC’S PRICE CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  EPILOGUE

  Songs of Vanyel’s Time

  INTRODUCTION

  I’VE BEEN WRITING for thirty years, professionally.

  I began writing a lot earlier than that, as so many of us did; I wrote Andre Norton fanfiction, long before I knew there actually was such a thing as fanfiction. I published short stories in my high school “literary magazine,” which were all, of course, fantasy or science fiction. I continued writing through college, and after college, and somewhere in the back of my mind there was always this dream to write for a living.

  I made my first professional sale in 1985, to Marion Zimmer Bradley for one of her Darkover anthologies. But my first published story was a Tarma and Kethry story for Fantasy Book magazine that was published in the same year (the anthology wasn’t published until 1986, I believe). By that time, besides working on short fiction, I had started my first book. I scrapped that, after only about ten thousand words, realizing that I didn’t (yet) have the skills to pull what I wanted to do off. Later (much later!) that became another trilogy for another company. I then started what would become the first of the Arrows of the Queen trilogy.

  I sold short stories while working as a computer programmer by day and writing in every bit of my free time. With the help of C. J. Cherryh, I got the manuscript of my first books whipped into shape fit to be seen by a publisher at the same time. C. J. was the one who told me to “commit trilogy” when I presented her with my result. I rewrote them many times under her tutelage, and eventually the books were bought. Several further revisions later, the first two books came out in 1987 and the last in 1988. Elizabeth (Betsy) Wollheim was just starting in her new role as editor-in-chief at DAW, and I think I was one of the first authors who she got to work with from the very beginning.

  Once the last of the Arrows books were done, Betsy came to me for more material—but the Herald-Mage book
s were not what got done at that point. Instead, I put together some of the Tarma and Kethry stories that I had been doing for magazines and the Sword and Sorceress anthologies, and presented Betsy with Oathbound and Oathbreakers. That was where I tied those stories into the same world as Valdemar. So for my next trick—

  Somehow I had to explain how these lands outside of Valdemar did have real magic, and Valdemar did not. In the Arrows books I had established that Valdemar only had what I referred to as “Mind Magic” (psionics), but no “real” magic. I figured establishing a whole world, the Kingdom of Valdemar, and the Heralds was going to be hard enough without having to come up with a logical system of magic on top of that. (Word to the wise: know your limitations!) But during the course of manuscript revisions, Betsy had said, “This is a fantasy; there has to be some real magic in it.” After a lot of thought, I decided to put in the token “real magic” by having my protagonist, Talia, reading about “The Last Herald-Mage,” Vanyel, who obviously did have “real magic.”

  And I promptly forgot about that until Betsy wanted another trilogy.

  That was when it occurred to me that I had a built-in protagonist (Vanyel), I already knew—thanks to the Tarma and Kethry stories—how I wanted magic to work, and I had a built-in conflict: just how did Vanyel become the last Herald-Mage? So to me at least, the logical conclusion was that I should write about Vanyel.

  However, there was one small potential problem. I had established in those few paragraphs at the beginning of Arrows of the Queen that Vanyel was gay . . . and this was back in the late 1980s. While there were any number of established SF/F writers who had portrayed openly gay characters (Marion Zimmer Bradley, Samuel R. Delaney, and Jessica Salmonson, just to name a few), it was still possible that creating a trilogy about a gay protagonist was going to get me, and DAW into a lot of hot water—especially since my target audience was teens and young adults as well as adults. I pointed this out to Betsy.

  Betsy said, “Go for it.”

  So I did. And none of us looked back.

  I was very honored to receive the Lambda Award for the last book of the trilogy, although the presenters of the award made it clear that they were actually giving the award for the entire trilogy and not just the third book.

  And I’ve gotten many letters over the years, and many people personally thanking me for writing the trilogy, either because it allowed them to understand a sibling or friend who had just come out, or because it let them know that there were other people out there who were just like them.

  It’s the latter group I want to say a final thing to.

  I’m thrilled that I was the source of material that helped you get through a dreadful and trying time in your life. I could not be happier for you. But you were the ones doing the heavy lifting. You were the ones who knew that you were not going to let the world put you in a corner. You were the ones who were actively looking for something to validate what you knew, deep inside, was perfectly normal. If you hadn’t found The Last Herald-Mage, you would have found some other writer’s work. Maybe Marion’s Darkover. Maybe one of Samuel Delaney’s books. Maybe one of Charles de Lint’s. You would have found someone and something, because you were looking, and determined not to give up, and that would have given you that boost to keep you going.

  You are the real heroes. I am proud and thrilled to have been part of your journey, but you began the journey, and you kept up with it until you came out on top. It was all you. I’m just glad to have been a part of it.

  —Mercedes Lackey

  Claremore, Oklahoma

  MAGIC’S

  PAWN

  Dedicated to:

  Melanie Mar—just because

  and

  Mark, Carl, and Dominic

  for letting me bounce things off them

  CHAPTER 1

  “YOUR GRANDFATHER,” said Vanyel’s brawny, fifteen-year-old cousin Radevel, “was crazy.”

  He has a point, Vanyel thought, hoping they weren’t about to take an uncontrolled dive down the last of the stairs.

  Radevel’s remark had probably been prompted by this very back staircase, one that started at one end of the third-floor servants’ hall and emerged at the rear of a linen closet on the ground floor. The stair treads were so narrow and so slick that not even the servants used it.

  The manor-keep of Lord Withen Ashkevron of Forst Reach was a strange and patchworked structure. In Vanyel’s great-great-grandfather’s day it had been a more conventional defensive keep, but by the time Vanyel’s grandfather had held the lands, the border had been pushed far past Forst Reach. The old reprobate had decided when he’d reached late middle age that defense was going to be secondary to comfort. His comfort, primarily.

  Not that Vanyel entirely disagreed with Grandfather; he would have been one of the first to vote to fill in the moat and for fireplaces in all the rooms. But the old man had gotten some pretty peculiar notions about what he wanted where—along with a tendency to change his mind in mid-alteration.

  There were good points—windows everywhere, and all of them glazed and shuttered. Skylights lighting all the upper rooms and the staircases. Fireplaces in nearly every room. Heated privies, part and parcel of the bathhouse. Every inside wall lathed and plastered against cold and damp. The stables, mews, kennel, and chickenyard banished to new outbuildings.

  But there were bad points—if you didn’t know your way, you could really get lost; and there were an awful lot of places you couldn’t get into unless you knew exactly how to get there. Some of those places were important—like the bathhouse and privies. The old goat hadn’t much considered the next generation in his alterations, either; he’d cut up the nursery into servant’s quarters, which meant that until Lord Withen’s boys went into bachelor’s hall and the girls to the bower, they were cramped two and three to a series of very tiny attic-level rooms.

  “He was your grandfather, too,” Vanyel felt impelled to point out. The Ashkevron cousins had a tendency to act as if they had no common ancestors with Vanyel and his sibs whenever the subject of Grandfather Joserlin and his alterations came up.

  “Huh.” Radevel considered for a moment, then shrugged. “He was still crazy.” He hefted his own load of armor and padding a little higher on his shoulder.

  Vanyel held his peace and trotted down the last couple of stone stairs to hold the door open for his cousin. Radevel was doing him a favor, even though Vanyel was certain that cousin Radevel shared everyone else’s low opinion of him. Radevel was far and away the best-natured of the cousins, and the easiest to talk round—and the bribe of Vanyel’s new hawking gauntlet had proved too much for him to resist. Still, it wouldn’t do to get him angry by arguing with him; he might decide he had better things to do than help Vanyel out, gauntlet or no gauntlet.

  Oh, gods—let this work, Vanyel thought as they emerged into the gloomy back hall. Did I practice enough with Lissa? Is this going to have a chance against a standard attack? Or am I crazy for even trying?

  The hallway was as cold as the staircase had been, and dark to boot. Radevel took the lead, feet slapping on the stone floor as he whistled contentedly—and tunelessly. Vanyel tried not to wince at the mutilation of one of his favorite melodies and drifted silently in his wake, his thoughts as dark as the hallway.

  In three days Lissa will be gone—and if I can’t manage to get sent along, I’ll be all alone. Without Lissa . . .

  If I can just prove that I need her kind of training, then maybe Father will let me go with her—

  That had been the half-formed notion that prompted him to work out the moves of a different style of fighting than what he was supposed to be learning, practicing them in secret with his older sister Lissa: that was what had ultimately led to this little expedition.

  That, and the urgent need to show Lord Withen that his eldest son wasn’t the coward the armsmaster claimed he was—and that he could succeed on m
artial ground of his own choosing.

  Vanyel wondered why he was the only boy to realize that there were other styles of fighting than armsmaster Jervis taught; he’d read of them, and knew that they had to be just as valid, else why send Lissa off to foster and study with Trevor Corey and his seven would-be sword-ladies? The way Vanyel had it figured, there was no way short of a miracle that he would ever succeed at the brute hack-and-bash system Jervis used—and no way Lord Withen would ever believe that another style was just as good while Jervis had his ear.

  Unless Vanyel could show him. Then Father would have to believe his own eyes.

  And if I can’t prove it to him—

  —oh, gods. I can’t take much more of this.

  With Lissa gone to Brenden Keep, his last real ally in the household would be gone, too; his only friend, and the only person who cared for him.

  This was the final trial of the plot he’d worked out with Liss; Radevel would try to take him using Jervis’ teachings. Vanyel would try to hold his own, wearing nothing but the padded jerkin and helm, carrying the lightest of target-shields, and trusting to speed and agility to keep him out of trouble.

  Radevel kicked open the unlatched door to the practice ground, leaving Vanyel to get it closed before somebody yelled about the draft. The early spring sunlight was painful after the darkness of the hallway; Vanyel squinted as he hurried to catch up with his cousin.

  “All right, peacock,” Radevel said good-naturedly, dumping his gear at the edge of the practice ground, and snagging his own gambeson from the pile. “Get yourself ready, and we’ll see if this nonsense of yours has any merit.”

  It took Vanyel a lot less time than his cousin to shrug into his “armor”; he offered tentatively to help Radevel with his, but the older boy just snorted.

  “Botch mine the way you botch yours? No thanks,” he said, and went on methodically buckling and adjusting.

  Vanyel flushed, and stood uncertainly at the side of the sunken practice ground, contemplating the thick, dead grass at his feet.

  I never botch anything except when Jervis is watching, he thought bleakly, shivering a little as a bit of cold breeze cut through the gambeson. And then I can’t do anything right.