The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  He could almost feel the windows in the keep wall behind him like eyes staring at his back. Waiting for him to fail—again.

  What’s wrong with me, anyway? Why can’t I ever please Father? Why is everything I do wrong?

  He sighed, scuffed the ground with his toe, and wished he could be out riding instead of trying something doomed to failure. He was the best rider in Forst Reach—he and Star had no equals on the most breakneck of hunts, and he could, if he chose, master anything else in the stables.

  And just because I won’t bother with those iron-mouthed brutes Father prefers, he won’t even grant me the accolade there—

  Gods. This time I have to win.

  “Wake up, dreamer,” Radevel rumbled, his voice muffled inside the helm. “You wanted to have at—let’s get to it.”

  Vanyel walked to the center of the practice field with nervous deliberation, waiting until the last minute to get his helm on. He hated the thing; he hated the feeling of being closed in, and most of all hated having his vision narrowed to a little slit. He waited for Radevel to come up to him, feeling the sweat already starting under his arms and down the line of his back.

  Radevel swung—but instead of meeting the blow with his shield as Jervis would have done, Vanyel just moved out of the way of the blow, and on his way past Radevel, made a stab of his own. Jervis never cared much for point-work, but Vanyel had discovered it could be really effective if you timed things right. Radevel made a startled sound and got up his own shield, but only just in time, and left himself open to a cut.

  Vanyel felt his spirits rising as he saw this second opening in as many breaths, and chanced another attack of his own. This one actually managed to connect, though it was too light to call a disabling hit.

  “Light!” Vanyel shouted as he danced away, before his cousin had a chance to disqualify the blow.

  “Almost enough, peacock,” Radevel replied, reluctant admiration in his voice. “You land another like that with your weight behind it and I’ll be out. Try this for size—”

  He charged, his practice blade a blur beside his shield.

  Vanyel just stepped aside at the last moment, while Radevel staggered halfway to the boundary under his own momentum.

  It was working! Radevel couldn’t get near him—and Vanyel was pecking away at him whenever he got an opportunity. He wasn’t hitting even close to killing strength—but that was mostly from lack of practice. If—

  “Hold, damn your eyes!”

  Long habit froze them both in position, and the armsmaster of Forst Reach stalked onto the field, fire in his bloodshot glare.

  Jervis looked the two of them up and down while Vanyel sweated from more than exertion. The blond, crag-faced mercenary frowned, and Vanyel’s mouth went dry. Jervis looked angry—and when Jervis was angry, it was generally Vanyel who suffered.

  “Well—” the man croaked after long enough for Vanyel’s dread of him to build up to full force. “—learning a new discipline, are we? And whose idea was this?”

  “Mine, sir,” Vanyel whispered.

  “Might have guessed sneak-and-run would be more suited to you than an honest fight,” the armsmaster sneered. “Well, and how did you do, my bright young lord?”

  “He did all right, Jervis.” To Vanyel’s complete amazement Radevel spoke up for him. “I couldn’t get a blow on ’im. An’ if he’d put his weight behind it, he’d have laid me out a time or two.”

  “So you’re a real hero against a half-grown boy. I’ll just bet you feel like another Veth Krethen, don’t you?” Jervis spat. Vanyel held his temper, counting to ten, and did not protest that Radevel was nearly double his size and certainly no “half-grown boy.” Jervis glared at him, waiting for a retort that never came—and strangely, that seemed to anger Jervis even more.

  “All right, hero,” he snarled, taking Radevel’s blade away and jamming the boy’s helm down over his own head. “Let’s see just how good you really are—”

  Jervis charged without any warning, and Vanyel had to scramble to get out of the way of the whirling blade. He realized then that Jervis was coming for him all-out—as if Vanyel was wearing full armor.

  Which he wasn’t.

  He pivoted desperately as Jervis came at him again; ducked, wove, and spun—and saw an opening. This time desperation gave him the strength he hadn’t used against Radevel—and he scored a chest-stab that actually rocked Jervis back for a moment, and followed it with a good solid blow to the head.

  He waited, heart in mouth, while the armsmaster staggered backward two or three steps, then shook his head to clear it. There was an awful silence—

  Then Jervis yanked off the helm, and there was nothing but rage on his face.

  “Radevel, get the boys, then bring me Lordling Vanyel’s arms and armor,” the armsmaster said, in a voice that was deadly calm.

  Radevel backed off the field, then turned and ran for the keep. Jervis paced slowly to within a few feet of Vanyel, and Vanyel nearly died of fear on the spot.

  “So you like striking from behind, hmm?” he said in that same, deadly quiet voice. “I think maybe I’ve been a bit lax in teaching you about honor, young milord.” A thin smile briefly sliced across his face. “But I think we can remedy that quickly enough.”

  Radevel approached with feet dragging, his arms loaded with the rest of Vanyel’s equipment.

  “Arm up,” Jervis ordered, and Vanyel did not dare to disobey.

  Exactly what Jervis said, then—other than dressing Vanyel down in front of the whole lot of them, calling him a coward and a cheat, an assassin who wouldn’t stand still to face his opponent’s blade with honor—Vanyel could never afterward remember. Only a haze of mingled fear and anger that made the words meaningless.

  But then Jervis took Vanyel on. His way, his style.

  It was a hopeless fight from the beginning, even if Vanyel had been good at this particular mode of combat. In moments Vanyel found himself flat on his back, trying to see around spots in front of his eyes, with his ears still ringing from a blow he hadn’t even seen coming.

  “Get up,” Jervis said—

  Five more times Vanyel got up, each time more slowly. Each time, he tried to yield. By the fourth time he was wit-wandering, dazed and groveling. And Jervis refused to accept his surrender even when he could barely gasp out the words.

  • • •

  Radevel had gotten a really bad feeling in his stomach from the moment he saw Jervis’ face when Van scored on him. He’d never seen the old bastard that angry in all the time he’d been fostered here.

  But he’d figured that Vanyel was just going to get a bit of a thrashing. He’d never figured on being an unwilling witness to a deliberate—

  —massacre. That was all he could think to call it. Van was no match for Jervis, and Jervis was coming at him all out—like he was a trained, adult fighter. Even Radevel could see that.

  He heaved a sigh of relief when Vanyel was knocked flat on his back, and mumbled out his surrender as soon as he could speak. The worst the poor little snot had gotten was a few bruises.

  But when Jervis had refused to accept that surrender—when he beat at Van with the flat of his blade until the boy had to pick up sword and shield just to get the beating to stop—Radevel got that bad feeling again.

  And it got worse. Five times more Jervis knocked him flat, and each time with what looked like an even more vicious strike.

  But the sixth time Vanyel was laid out, he couldn’t get up.

  Jervis let fly with a blow that broke the wood and copper shield right in the middle—and to Radevel’s horror, he saw when the boy fell back that Vanyel’s shield arm had been broken in half; the lower arm was bent in the middle, and that could only mean that both bones had snapped. It was pure miracle that they hadn’t gone through muscle and skin—

  And Jervis’ eyes were sti
ll not what Radevel would call sane.

  Radevel added up all the factors and came up with one answer: get Lissa. She was adult-rank, she was Van’s protector, and no matter what the armsmaster said in justification for beating the crud out of Van, if Jervis laid one finger in anger on Lissa, he’d get thrown out of the Keep with both his arms broken. If Withen didn’t do it, there were others who liked Liss a lot who would.

  Radevel backed off the field and took to his heels as soon as he was out of sight.

  • • •

  Vanyel lay flat on his back again, breath knocked out of him, in a kind of shock in which he couldn’t feel much of anything except—except that something was wrong, somewhere. Then he tried to get up—and pain shooting along his left arm sent him screaming into darkness.

  When he came to, Lissa was bending over him, her horsey face tight with worry. She was pale, and the nostrils of that prominent Ashkevron nose flared like a frightened filly’s.

  “Don’t move—Van, no—both the bones of your arm are broken.” She was kneeling next to him, he realized, with one knee gently but firmly holding his left arm down so that he couldn’t move it.

  “Lady, get away from him—” Jervis’ voice dripped boredom and disgust. “It’s just his shield arm, nothing important. We’ll just strap it to a board and put some liniment on it and he’ll be fine—”

  She didn’t move her knees, but swung around to face Jervis so fast that her braid came loose and whipped past Vanyel’s nose like a lash. “You have done quite enough for one day, Master Jervis,” she snarled. “I think you forget your place.”

  Vanyel wished vacantly that he could see Jervis’ face at that moment. It must surely be a sight.

  But his arm began to hurt—and that was more than enough to keep his attention.

  • • •

  There wasn’t usually a Healer at Forst Reach, but Vanyel’s Aunt Serina was staying here with her sister during her pregnancy. She’d had three miscarriages already, and was taking no chances; she was attended by her very own Healer. And Lissa had seen to it that the Healer, not Jervis, was the one that dealt with Vanyel’s arm.

  “Oh, Van—” Lissa folded herself inelegantly on the edge of Vanyel’s bed and sighed. “How did you manage to get into this mess?”

  That beaky Ashkevron nose and her determined chin combined with her anxiety to make her look like a stubborn, mulish mare. Most people were put off by her appearance, but Vanyel knew her well enough to read the heartsick worry in her eyes. After all, she’d all but raised him.

  Vanyel wasn’t certain how clear he’d be, but he tried to explain. Lissa tucked up her legs, and rested her chin on her knees, an unladylike pose that would have evoked considerable distress from Lady Treesa. When he finished, she sighed again.

  “I think you attract bad luck, that’s all I can say. You don’t do anything wrong, but somehow things seem to happen to you.”

  Vanyel licked his dry lips and blinked at her. “Liss—Jervis was really angry this time, and what you told him didn’t help. He’s going to go right to Father, if he isn’t there already.”

  She shook her head. “I shouldn’t have said that, should I? Van, all I was thinking about was getting him away from you.”

  “I—I know Liss, I’m not blaming you, but—”

  “But I made him mad. Well, I’ll see if I can get to Father before Jervis does, but even if I do he probably won’t listen to me. I’m just a female, after all.”

  “I know.” He closed his eyes as the room began to swing. “Just—try, Liss—please.”

  “I will.” She slipped off the bed, then bent over and kissed his forehead. “Try and sleep, like the Healer told you, all right?”

  He nodded.

  Tough-minded and independent, like the grandmother who had raised her, Lissa was about the only one in the keep willing to stand up to Lord Withen now that Grandmother Ashkevron had passed on. Not surprising, that, given Grandmother. The Ashkevrons seemed to produce about one strong-willed female in every generation, much to the bemusement of the Ashkevron males, and the more compliant Ashkevron females.

  Lady Treesa (anything but independent) had been far too busy with pregnancy and all the vapors she indulged in when pregnant to have anything to do with the resulting offspring. They went to the hands of others until they were old enough to be usefully added to her entourage. Lissa went to Grandmother.

  But Vanyel went to Liss. And they loved each other from the moment she’d taken him out of the nursery. She’d stand up to a raging lion for his sake.

  So Lissa went in search of their father. Unfortunately that left him alone. And unfortunately Lissa didn’t return when she couldn’t immediately find Lord Withen. And that, of course, left him vulnerable when his father chose to descend on him like the god of thunders.

  Vanyel was dizzy with pain as well as with the medicines the Healer had made him drink when Lord Withen stormed into his tiny, white-plastered room. He was lying flat on his back in his bed, trying not to move, and still the room seemed to be reeling around him. The pain was making him nauseous, and all he wanted was to be left in peace. The very last thing he wanted to see was his lord father.

  And Withen barely gave him enough time to register that his father was there before laying into him.

  “What’s all this about your cheating?” Withen roared, making Vanyel wince and wish he dared to cover his ears. “By the gods, you whelp, I ought to break your other arm for you!”

  “I wasn’t cheating!” Vanyel protested, stung, his voice breaking at just the wrong moment. He tried to sit upright—which only made the room spin the more. He fell back, supporting himself on his good elbow, grinding his teeth against the pain of his throbbing arm.

  “I was,” he gasped through clenched teeth, “I was just doing what Seldasen said to do!”

  “And just who might this ‘Seldasen’ be?” his father growled savagely, his dark brows knitting together. “What manner of coward says to run about and strike behind a man’s back, eh?”

  Oh, gods—now what have I done? Though his head was spinning, Vanyel tried to remember if Herald Seldasen’s treatise on warfare and tactics had been one of the books he’d “borrowed” without leave, or one of the ones he was supposed to be studying.

  “Well?” When Lord Withen scowled, his dark hair and beard made him look positively demonic. The drugs seemed to be giving him an aura of angry red light, too.

  Father, why can’t you ever believe I might be in the right?

  The book was on the “approved” list, Vanyel remembered with relief, as he recalled his tutor Istal assigning certain chapters to be memorized. “It’s Herald Seldasen, Father,” he said defiantly, finding strength in rebellion. “It’s from a book Istal assigned me, about tactics.” The words he remembered strengthened him still more, and he threw them into his father’s face. “He said: ‘Let every man that must go to battle fight within his talents, and not be forced to any one school. Let the agile man use his speed, let his armoring be light, and let him skirmish, but not close with the enemy. Let the heavy man stand shoulder to shoulder with his comrades in the shield wall, that the enemy may not break through. Let the small man of good eye make good use of the bow, aye, and let the Herald fight with his mind and not his body, let the Herald-Mage combat with magic and not the sword. And let no man be called coward for refusing the place for which he is not fit.’ And I didn’t once hit anybody from behind! If Jervis says I did—well—I didn’t!”

  Lord Withen stared at his eldest son, his mouth slack with surprise. For one moment Vanyel actually thought he’d gotten through to his father, who was more accustomed to hearing him quote poetry than military history.

  “Parrot some damned book at me, will you?” Lord Withen snarled, dashing Vanyel’s hopes. “And what does some damned lowborn Herald know about fighting? You listen to me, boy—you are my heir,
my firstborn, and you damned well better learn what Jervis has to teach you if you want to sit in my place when I’m gone! If he says you were cheating, then by damn you were cheating!”

  “But I wasn’t cheating and I don’t want your place—” Vanyel protested, the drugs destroying his self-control and making him say things he’d sooner have kept behind his teeth.

  That stopped Lord Withen cold. His father stared at him as if he’d gone mad, grown a second head, or spoken in Karsite.

  “Great good gods, boy,” he managed to splutter after several icy eternities during which Vanyel waited for the roof to cave in. “What do you want?”

  “I—” Vanyel began. And stopped. If he told Withen that what he wanted was to be a Bard—

  “You ungrateful whelp—you will learn what I tell you to learn, and do what I order you to do! You’re my heir and you’ll do your duty to me and to this holding if I have to see you half dead to get you to do it!”

  And with that, he stormed out, leaving Vanyel limp with pain and anger and utter dejection, his eyes clamped tight against the tears he could feel behind them.

  Oh, gods, what does he expect of me? Why can’t I ever please him? What do I have to do to convince him that I can’t be what he wants me to be? Die?

  And now—now my hand, oh, gods, it hurts—how much damage did they do to it? Am I ever going to be able to play anything right again?

  “Heyla, Van—”

  He opened his eyes, startled by the sound of a voice.

  His door was cracked partway open; Radevel peered around the edge of it, and Vanyel could hear scuffling and whispers behind him.

  “You all right?”

  “No,” Vanyel replied, suspiciously.

  What the hell does he want?

  Radevel’s bushy eyebrows jumped like a pair of excited caterpillars. “Guess not. Bet it hurts.”

  “It hurts,” Vanyel said, feeling a sick and sullen anger burning in the pit of his stomach.