The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  “That’s not true,” he insisted gently. “Look, Van, it’s not that you aren’t good enough. It’s that you just don’t have the Gift. Can a blind man paint?”

  Vanyel just shook his head, and Tylendel could sense his further withdrawal. “It’s not the same thing,” he said, tightly. “The blind man can’t see a painting. But there’s nothing wrong with my ears.”

  Tylendel searched for something that might reach this wounded corner of his beloved, and finally found it.

  “Ashke, why do you think there are minstrels trained at Bardic? Why do you think that people welcome minstrels when there are Bards about?” He’d asked that same question of Breda, who had all three Bardic Talents: the Gift, the Skill, and the Creativity. Her answer had been enlightening.

  Vanyel shook his head, still tightly bound up inside himself. “Because there aren’t enough Bards to go around, just like there aren’t enough Heralds or Healers.”

  “Wrong,” Tylendel said firmly, “and I have this from Breda. There are times when the Gift gets in the way of the music.”

  “What?” Vanyel’s head whipped around in startlement, and Tylendel saw the shine of tears on his cheek. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Just what I said.” Now was the time to rise and go to Vanyel’s side, and Tylendel did just that. “Listen to me; just what is the Bardic Gift, hmm? It’s the ability to make others feel the things you want them to through music. But when a Bard does that, you can’t keep your mind on the music, can you? You never really hear how beautiful it is; you’re too busy with what the Bard is doing. You never really hear it for itself, and when you remember it, you don’t remember the music, you remember the emotions. There’s another reason; when the Bard performs, you put nothing of yourself into the listening. But when a minstrel performs, or a Bard without the Gift, you get out of the music exactly what you put into the listening.” He chuckled, and reached for Vanyel’s limp hands. “Breda said that in some ways it’s a little like making love with a paid courtesan or with your lover. Your lover may not be as expert, but the experience is a lot more genuine.”

  “Breda said that?” Vanyel faltered.

  “In her cups, yes.” He didn’t add it had been here, in Savil’s quarters, the evening she’d tested and failed Vanyel. Breda had a very soft heart beneath that bony chest; she’d not enjoyed destroying Vanyel’s hopes, even indirectly. “They do say that there’s truth in the bottom of every wine bottle.” He paused, and raised one eyebrow at his lover. “She also said that if you weren’t your father’s heir, they’d snap you up so fast you’d leave your boots behind.”

  “She did?” He could Feel Vanyel uncoiling from around that lump of hurt.

  “She did.” He picked up the lute and put it back in Vanyel’s hands. “And since my personal preference is not for courtesans, however expert—will you play for me?”

  “Just—” Vanyel swallowed, and finally met his eyes. The hurt was still there, but already fading. “—just let me get her in tune.”

  • • •

  To Vanyel Ashkevron from Lord Withen Ashkevron: greetings. I have received good reports of you from Herald Savil, except for the instance of your quarrel with her protege. While I cannot condone your actions, I can understand that it may be irritating to share the same roof with the young man. You must keep your temper and not provoke him further, as it is obvious that he cannot be relied upon to keep his. I am also given to understand that you have abandoned your pretensions as a musician and relegated such nonsense to its proper place; an amusing hobby, no more. I am pleased with this development; it seems to me this is evidence of maturity and acceptance of your proper place in life, and I have sent a small token of my approval. Inscribed by Father Leren Benevy, By my hand and seal, Lord Withen Ashkevron.

  • • •

  To Lord Withen Ashkevron from Vanyel Ashkevron: greetings. I have received your letter and your token, for which my thanks. I am endeavoring to follow all of Herald Savil’s instructions to the best of my ability. I have found her to be a wise and knowledgeable mentor, and hope to better please her in the future. By my hand, Vanyel Ashkevron.

  • • •

  Dearest Son: I Pray with all my Heart that this finds you Well, and that you were not Hurt by that Brutal Boy. I Feared that something of this Nature would Occur from the Instant your Father Told me of this Foolish Scheme and have had Dark and Fell Dreams from the moment you Departed. Savil is plainly Not To Be Relied Upon to keep her Creatures in Order. I pray you, do not Provoke the Barbarian further; I am endeavoring to Persuade your Father to fetch you Home again, but thus far it is All In Vain. I am Prostrate with Worry—and if your Absence were not enough, I have been visited with a Further Grief. My maid Melenna has been rendered With Child—and by your Brother Mekeal! So she Claims, and so Mekeal Admits. Your Father is No Help; he seems to Think it is All Very Amusing. Indeed, I am at my Wit’s End and I know not What To Do! But even in my Extremity, I have not forgotten my Beloved Child, nor that your Birthday is this very day. I enclose a Small Token—All that I could Manage, and not Nearly your Desert. I Beg you that if you are in Need that you will Tell Me at Once. I shall Manage something More from your Father, Hard-Hearted as he is. Your Loving Mother, Lady Treesa Ileana Brendywhin-Ashkevron.

  • • •

  “Purple ink?” Tylendel said incredulously, looking over Vanyel’s shoulder. “Am I really seeing purple ink? And pink paper?”

  “Costs a fortune, and it’s all she’ll use,” Vanyel answered absently, pondering how to reply without setting his mother off again. The pink page lay on the blotter of the desk, its very existence a maternal accusation that he hadn’t written since he arrived here. Beside it were two piles of silver coins—absolutely equal in value.

  One reward for beating up a pervert, one consolation for getting beaten up by a pervert. He sighed. Gods, there are times I wish I was an orphan.

  “May I?” Tylendel asked.

  Vanyel shrugged. “Go ahead. You’ll encounter her eventually, I’m sure. You ought to know what she’s like.”

  Tylendel worked his way through the ornamented and scrolled calligraphy, and gave it back to Vanyel with a grimace that said more than words could have.

  “You think this is bad—you should see the letters she writes to friends, or worse, people she thinks have slighted her. Three, four, and five pages, purple ink and tear-blotches, and everything capitalized.” He sighed again. “And appalling grammar. When she gets really hysterical, she goes into formal mode and she cannot seem to keep her ‘thees’ and ‘thous’ straight.”

  He contemplated the letter for a moment. “What’s really awful, she talks like that, too.”

  Tylendel laughed, threw himself down on the bed, and got back to the book he’d been reading.

  • • •

  Dear Mother: I really am all right. Please don’t worry about me—worry about yourself. If you don’t take care of yourself, if you let your fine sensibilities get the better of you, you’ll make yourself ill. Savil is quite kind, and the problems I had with Tylendel have been taken care of. Every rumor that comes out of this Court is an exaggeration at best and an outright lie at worst, so pay no attention to what your friends are telling you. I am sorry to hear about Melenna; this must be a terrible burden for you. Your present was very kind, and very much appreciated, and far in excess of my needs. I love you, and I think about you often. Be well, Vanyel.

  • • •

  Dear Vanyel; what in Havens is going on? Are you all right? If it’s unbearable, for the gods’ sake let me know and I’ll lead the Seven Corey Swordmaids to your rescue—they’re dying to play avenging angels, although given their figures, it’s more like avenging angles. All my love, Lissa.

  • • •

  Vanyel laughed aloud, and passed the note to Tylendel.

  Tylendel grinned broadly and handed it back to him. �
��Now this one I like. What’re my chances of meeting her?”

  “Pretty good,” Vanyel replied, stretching. “Once the secret’s out about us, Father will disinherit me, Mother will have vapors, and Lissa will show up, sword in hand, to defend me from Father’s wrath. She’s gotten a lot spunkier since she went over to the Coreys to foster. Lord Trevor has just about promised her a commission in the Guard.”

  “Which he can give her, since he’s in charge of recruitment for the Guard,” Tylendel said thoughtfully. “Is that your last letter?”

  “One more after this—”

  • • •

  Dearest Lissa; Don’t worry, it’s all right. I’m fine, and I’m happier than I’ve been in my life here. Savil is on my side against Father, and some of what you’ve been hearing is to keep him happy. Trust me, it really is all right. I love you, and I miss you, Van.

  • • •

  To Vanyel Ashkevron from Evan Leshara; greetings. I believe we have mutual interests and I would be honored and pleased if we could meet to discuss them. I am at your disposal any evening. By my hand and seal, Evan Leshara.

  “’Lendel—” Vanyel said slowly, sorely puzzled by this last note, which had been delivered to the suite by a page that very afternoon. “Who is Evan Leshara?”

  • • •

  Tylendel paced the confines of the bedroom, as restless as a caged wolf. Savil thought both of them were in here; he hadn’t told her that Vanyel had slipped his leash to go see what Evan Leshara wanted. He glanced over at the time-candle; it hadn’t burned down any since the last time he’d looked at it.

  I shouldn’t have let him go. If Leshara figures out the fight was all a ruse—

  Up and back, up and back. It was damned hot for an autumn night, or was it being on edge that was making him sweat? His scalp prickled, and he felt a headache beginning just under his right eye. Shadows cast by the light of the time-candle danced and flickered, shrank and grew.

  —if he figures out the game we’re playing, he’ll be able to use blackmail on Van against me, and me against Staven. Oh, gods, I shouldn’t have let him go. I should have told him to ignore Leshara’s invitation. I should have. I—

  The creak of the garden door broke into his worries, and his tensions evaporated when Vanyel slipped in from the darkness and latched the door behind himself.

  “Ashke?” Tylendel began, then hesitated, seeing the troubled expression in Vanyel’s eyes.

  “He’s a damned persuasive man, this Leshara,” Vanyel said softly, sitting himself in the chair in front of the cold fireplace.

  “That’s why he’s here,” Tylendel replied grimly. “It’s the Leshara countermove to my being here. Since they can’t buy into the Heralds, they’ve sent the one of their kin with the sweetest tongue to get the ear of the Queen, if he can.”

  “He says he’s got it. He said a lot of things. ’Lendel, there was an awful lot of what he said that made sense.”

  “Of course there was!” Tylendel interrupted. “I’ll be willing to bet that half of what he told you was the absolute truth even by my standards. It’s the way he said it, the context, and what he was prompting you to infer from what he told you that counts! You ought to know yourself from what you’ve been writing home that the best possible lie is to tell only the truth—just not all of it!”

  “But ’Lendel.” Vanyel still looked uncertain. “’Lendel, he says his people have been willing to settle for months now, a settlement the Queen approves, and yours refuse to go along with it—”

  “He didn’t tell you what that ‘plan’ was, did he?”

  Vanyel shook his head.

  “To marry my thirty-year-old maiden-cousin who’s never been outside of a cloister to a fifty-year-old lecher, take Staven out of being Lord Holder and put her in,” he said savagely, “which effectively means putting him in, since there’s no way she’d ever be able to stand up to him. She’d dry up and blow away the first time he spoke harshly to her. That’s the Leshara notion of an equitable settlement.” He glared at Vanyel, angry and a little hurt that Vanyel would even consider taking Evan Leshara’s word as the whole truth. “He’s using the fact that Staven’s only seventeen as a way to imply that he’s incompetent, too young to make any kind of rational decision. And a lot of the powers at Court, being old goats themselves, are buying into the idea. After all, seventeen’s only old enough to be told you have to go fight and die for something—it’s not old enough to have any say in the matter!”

  Vanyel’s eyes had gotten very distressed, and he had shrunk back into the chair as far as he could. “’Lendel,” he faltered. “I didn’t mean—I wasn’t doubting you—”

  Tylendel gave himself a mental kick in the posterior for upsetting him. “Ashke, I didn’t mean to shout at you,” he said, kneeling beside the chair and putting one hand on Vanyel’s knee. “I’m sorry—I’m just so damned frustrated. He can say any damned thing he wants, and because I’m a Herald-trainee, I can’t even refute him. It makes me a little crazy, sometimes.”

  Vanyel brightened, and put his hand over Tylendel’s. “That’s all right. I know how you feel. Like me and Father and Jervis.”

  “Something like it.”

  “’Lendel, would you . . .” Vanyel hesitated. “Would you tell me your side?”

  Tylendel took a deep breath. “If I do, I’ll be breaking a promise I made to Savil, not to get you involved.”

  “I’m already involved. I—why? That’s what I really want to know. What’s keeping this thing going?”

  “Something Wester Leshara did,” Tylendel replied, fighting down the urge to get up, grab a horse, and ride out to strangle Wester with his bare hands. The white-hot rage that always filled him whenever he called that particular memory up was very hard to control. “Savil says I have to be absolutely fair—so to be absolutely fair, I’ll tell you that this was in retaliation for a raid that accidentally killed his youngest son. We—our people—went in to stampede his cattle. The boy fell off his horse and wound up under their hooves. But I don’t think that excuses what Wester did.”

  “Which was?”

  “My father had just died; he hired some kind of two-copper conjuror to convince Mother that Father’s ghost wanted to speak with her. She wasn’t very stable—which Wester was damned well aware of, and this pushed her over the edge. We got rid of the charlatan, but not before he’d gotten her convinced that if she found just the right formula, she’d be able to communicate with Father’s spirit. She started taking all manner of potions, trying to see him. Finally she did see him—she ate Black Angel mushrooms.”

  He did not add that he and Staven had been the ones to find her. Vanyel looked sick enough. Tylendel got a lid on his anger, and changed the subject. “What did the bastard want, anyway?”

  “He wanted me to let him know any time I heard anything about you or your family, and he wanted me to talk my father ’round to his side.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  Vanyel grimaced. “I guess I was playing the same game of telling not all of the truth. I told him that I heard more about your people directly from you than I heard casually, and let him draw his own conclusions.”

  Tylendel relaxed, and chuckled. Vanyel brightened a little more. “What about your father?”

  “I told him the truth; that I had been sent here as punishment, because I wouldn’t toe the line at home, and that father would take advice from a halfwit before he’d take it from me. He was rather disappointed.”

  Now Tylendel laughed, and hugged him. “Ashke, ashke, you couldn’t have done better if I’d given you a script!”

  “So I did all right?” Now Vanyel was fairly glowing.

  “You did better than all right.”

  Gods, he thought, seeing Vanyel so elated, he fades like an unwatered flower when he thinks I’m angry at him—and now this—you’d have thought I’d
offered him a Bard’s laurel. Does my opinion mean so much to him? Do I mean so much to him?

  The thought was a sobering one. And it was followed inevitably by another. Maybe Savil’s right. . . .

  “He said he wants to stay in touch with me anyway, just in case I hear something. I told him that was all right with me. In fact, I acted pretty eager about it.” He turned his head a little to one side, and offered, tentatively, “I thought we could sort of tell him what we wanted him to hear.”

  Ha. “We,” not “you.” No, Savil’s not right. He depends on me, but I depend on him, and if he’s leaning on me a little, well, that isn’t going to hurt anyone. He’s just not used to making decisions on his own, that’s all.

  “That’s perfect,” he said, leaning on the arm of the chair. “Absolutely perfect. Now, after facing off the dragon for me, oh noble warrior, in what way can I ever reward you?” He batted his eyelashes at Vanyel, who laughed, and drew himself up as if he sat in a throne. “I’ll do anything—”

  “Oh?” Vanyel replied archly. “Anything?”

  • • •

  “Savil told me something funny today,” Tylendel murmured quietly into Vanyel’s ear. His voice roused Vanyel out of the sleepy half-dream he’d been in ever since he and Tylendel had settled into their favorite spot in all of the Field.

  It was the first time either of them had broken the silence since they’d entered the pine copse.

  The suite had seemed far too stuffy for the warm autumnal evening, even with all the windows open. And Vanyel had scarcely left it since they’d staged their “fight”—except for lessons and the obligatory evenings with Evan Leshara to feed him misinformation. And the appearances he had to make at Court to keep his circle of admirers happy and deceived.

  It was moon-dark, and the chance of anyone seeing them heading out into Companion’s Field together was practically nonexistent. So when Vanyel had looked up from his Religions text and tentatively suggested a walk, Tylendel had shut his own book and flung the garden door open with a mocking bow and a real grin.