The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  She wrenched her attention away from the unanswerable problem of what to do about the boys, and contemplated the structure of the Gate. The portal at this end was an ornamental gazebo in the center of the blasted garden. Through the arch of the entrance lay the dark of the ruinous cottage yard.

  “I don’t see any problem,” she replied, after study. “I can bring us out in the Grove Temple, if that’s all right.”

  “That should do,” Jaysen said, eyeing the sky on the other side of the portal, which was flickering with lightnings. “Good gods—why did that blow in? There wasn’t a storm due.”

  “Don’t look so surprised, Jays,” she growled, needed to lash out at something and using his absentmindedness to make him the target. “I’ve told you a dozen times that Gating plays merry cob with the weather. That’s why I don’t like to use Gates. It’s going to get worse when I reset it, and all hell will break out when I collapse it.”

  He pursed his lips and frowned, but didn’t reply, just waved at her with his free hand. She let go of Vanyel, who sagged back to his knees, too weakened to stay standing without her support. She raised both her hands high above her head, and made an intricately weaving little gesture. Filaments of dull red light floated from the Gate toward her, and were caught up on her fingers by that complex weaving. When she had them fast, she clenched her hands on them and sent her will coursing down them in a surge of pure, commanding power, the filaments turning from red to white as her will flowed back along them.

  When the wave of white reached the Gate, the portal misted over, then flared incandescently. When the light died, the scene framed in the gazebo arch was that of Companion’s Field, seen by the fitful flashes of lightning, as viewed from the porch of the Grove Temple.

  Savil reached down and caught the fabric of Vanyel’s tunic, pulling him to his feet again. She dragged him with her as she followed closely on Jaysen’s heels. He hurried across the Gate threshold, pushing Tylendel before him; she half-ran a step behind him, dragging Vanyel with her by main force.

  The Gate-crossing hit her with its all-too-familiar, sickening sensation of falling. Then—hard, smooth marble was beneath her feet, and they were home.

  Lighting struck a nearby tree, and thunder deafened her for a moment. She cleared out of the path of the Gate and Kellan and Felar darted across, ears laid back, as soon as she and Vanyel were out of the way.

  She let go of Vanyel, who stumbled the two steps to one of the pillars and clung to it. She turned to face the Gate even as another bolt struck nearby. The Gate was going unstable, wavering from red to white and back again, the instability in the energy fields mirrored in the increasing fury of the lightning storm overhead. She raised her hands and began the dismissal—and encountered unexpected resistance.

  She tried again, wincing at the crack of thunder directly above her. There was something wrong, something very wrong. The Gate was fighting her.

  “Jays”—she shouted over the growl of thunder and the whine of the wind—“I need a hand, here.”

  Jaysen let go of Tylendel to add his strength to hers—their united wills worked at the spell-knot, forcing it to unravel faster than it could knit itself back up again.

  With a surge of wild power that brought a half-dozen lightning strikes down on the Belltower of the Temple itself, the Gate collapsed—

  Then again the unexpected; the Gate-energy, instead of dissipating back into the air and ground, flared up, and surged back down the one conduit left to it. The force-line that had tied it into Vanyel. Savil Saw it—but not in time to stop it.

  Vanyel screamed in agony, convulsing, clutching the pillar as the released power arced back into him—and from him, a second, weaker arc leapt to Tylendel.

  Tylendel jerked into sudden alertness—and uttered the most painful cry of despair Savil had ever heard; it was a cry that would haunt her nightmares for the rest of her life.

  She pivoted and grabbed for him as quickly as she could as Vanyel collapsed in a moaning heap at the foot of the pillar.

  But it was too late. No longer held in deceptive docility by his shock, he dodged her outstretched hand. She saw his face in another of the lightning flashes; his eyes were all pupil, his face a twisted mask of nothing but pain. He looked frantically about him with those terrible eyes that held no sanity at all, dodged her again, and then dashed past her into the tangled trees of the Grove.

  Jaysen gave chase; Savil limped after both of them. Lightning was striking so often overhead now that the sky was almost as bright as day. She tried to use the line of their shared magic to get at Tylendel’s mind as she ran, hoping to bring him back to her, but stumbled in shock and fell when she touched his thoughts. There was nothing to get a hold on—the boy was a chaotic, aching void of grief and loneliness. It was so empty, so unhuman, that for a moment she could only crouch in the cold, dry grass and listen to her overworked heart beat in panic. It took every ounce of discipline she had to get her own mind back under control after touching that terrible, all-consuming sorrow.

  Belatedly she thought of Vanyel. If anyone could reach Tylendel, surely he could.

  She lurched painfully to her feet and stumbled back toward the Temple. In the lightning flashes she could make out the younger boy staggering blindly out of the Temple, clutching himself as if he were freezing—saw him stumble and fall on his shoulder, without trying to save himself.

  Then she saw Tylendel dart out of the tree-shadows to her right and race past her, past his fallen lover, and back into the Temple itself.

  And her heart went cold with a sudden premonition of disaster.

  She forced her exhausted legs into a stumbling parody of a run, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  Just as she reached the place where Vanyel lay, panting and moaning in pain, she saw his head snap up as if in response to a call only he could hear. He seemed to be looking up at the Tower that held the Death Bell. She heard him cry out something unintelligible, and followed his horror-stricken glance—

  —and saw Tylendel poised against the lighting-filled sky, arms spread as if to fly—

  —and saw him leap—

  He seemed to hang in the air for a moment, as if he had somehow mastered flight.

  But only a moment; in the next heartbeat he was falling, falling—she couldn’t tell if the scream she heard was hers, or Vanyel’s, or both. It wasn’t Tylendel’s; his eyes were closed, and his mouth twisted and jaw clenched in a rictus of pure grief.

  She felt the impact of his body with the unforgiving ground as if it had been her own body that had fallen—

  —and the scream ended.

  Jaysen stopped dead beside her, frozen in mid-step.

  She whimpered in the back of her throat, and Jaysen walked slowly to the crumpled thing lying on the ground, not twenty paces from where she now stood. He went to his knees beside it, then looked up, and she saw him shake his head slowly, confirming what she already knew.

  And at that moment, the Death Bell began solemnly tolling.

  She stumbled to Jaysen’s side, each step costing her more in pain than she had felt in a lifetime of sacrifice to Queen and Circle. She went heavily to her knees, and gathered up the limp, pitiable body to her breast.

  She held him, cradling him against her shoulder, gently rocking a little as if she held a small child. Tears coursed silently down her face to mingle with the rain that was pouring from the sky; it seemed that the whole world echoed her grief. Jaysen knelt beside her, his head bowed, his shoulders shaking with sobs, as the Companions gathered about them and the Death Bell tolled above them.

  It was only when the rest of the Heralds arrived to take their burden from them that they thought of Vanyel, and sent someone to look for him.

  But the boy was gone.

  CHAPTER 9

  VANYEL STUMBLED THROUGH the pouring, frigid rain. He was half-blinded with grief, with no hope
of finding comfort anywhere in this world. There was nothing left for him—nothing.

  He’s dead—oh, gods, he’s dead, and it’s all my fault—

  His whole body seemed to be on fire, a slow, smoldering pain that was burning away at him from the inside the way the ice of his dream had chilled him.

  There was no reason to fight ice or fire anymore. Let either or both eat him; he couldn’t care.

  Rain pounded him, hail struck like slung stones. His head reeled and pounded with his pulse. He hurt, but he welcomed the pain.

  It’s all I deserve. It was all my fault—

  He couldn’t see where he was going, and he didn’t give a damn. He tripped and fell any number of times, but bruises and cuts didn’t matter; he just picked himself back up and kept running in whatever direction he happened to be facing.

  His whole universe had collapsed the moment Tylendel had thrown himself off that tower. Somewhere down in the depths of his soul was the dim thought that if he ran far enough, ran fast enough, he might run off the edge of the world and into an oblivion where there would be no more feeling, and no more pain.

  He didn’t run off the edge of the world, quite. He ran off the bank into the river.

  The ground just disappeared under his feet, and he flailed his arms wildly as he half-fell, half-tumbled down the bank and somersaulted at the bottom into the icy water. It closed over his head, and the cold shocked him into an instant of forgetfulness; he lost the desire for oblivion as instinct took over, and he fought back to the surface.

  He gulped air, shook water out of his eyes, and in a flash of lightning saw an oncoming tree limb too late to dodge it. He managed to turn away from it, but it hit him across the back of the head and knocked him under again. The second time his head broke the surface, he was dazed and unthinking; in another glare of lighting he saw the branches of a bush beside him and grabbed at them—

  They were too far away, far out of his frantic reach—

  Then the bush shook violently, and seemed to stretch toward him. He snatched at the ends of the branches—

  He caught them, somehow; they cut into his hand, but he managed to pull himself into the shallows.

  He had just enough strength left to crawl halfway up into the rain-slick bank, and just enough mind left to wonder why he’d bothered to save himself.

  He lay facedown in the sodden, dead grass on the bank; chilled and numb, and growing colder, and wracked with anguished guilt and mourning.

  ’Lendel, ’Lendel, it was all my fault—oh, gods, it was all my fault—I should have told Savil. I should have tried to stop you.

  He sobbed into the rough grass, the damp-smelling earth, longing inarticulately for the power of a god to reverse time, to unmake all that had happened.

  I’m sorry—oh, please, someone, take it all back! If you have to have someone, take me instead! Make it a dream, oh, gods—please—

  But it wasn’t a dream; no more than the rain that was diluting his tears, or the icy water that tugged at his legs. And no god intervened to unmake the past. The wintry cold was closing in on him, chilling the fire along his veins; he was too weak to move, and too tired, and far too grief stricken to care. It occurred to him then that he might die here, as alone as Tylendel had died.

  It was no less than his deserts, and he changed his prayers. Please— he asked, desperately, of powers that were not answering. Please—let me die.

  He thought of every mistake he had made, every wrong turning, and moaned. I deserve to die, he thought in anguish, closing his eyes. I want to die.

  :No.: The mind-voice was bright, bright as a flame, and sharp as steel, piercing his dark hope for death. :No, you must not. You must live, Chosen.:

  He raised his head a little, but couldn’t get his eyes open, and really didn’t want to. :You don’t know,: he thought bleakly back at the intruder. :Let me alone. No one wants me, nobody should want me; I kill everything I care for.:

  But someone grabbed him by the back of the collar and half-dragged him up the bank. He tried to twist away, but his body wouldn’t work right anymore, and all he did was thrash feebly. Heartbeats later the rain was no longer pounding his back, and the green-smelling, soft moss under his weakly moving hands was dry; he’d been pulled into some kind of shelter. Whatever had him let go of his collar, after lowering him gently down onto the moss; he managed to get his eyes open, but with the lightning fading off in the distance, he could see nothing but darkness.

  Something warm and large lay down beside him with a sigh. A soft nose nuzzled his cheek—

  —like Gala had—

  The sensation brought up memories that cut him into little shreds. He brought his knees up under his chest and curled up on himself, sobbing uncontrollably, driven to the edge of sanity by grief and loneliness.

  :—but I am here—:

  He brought his head up a little, and looked for the speaker with vision blurred by tears—and in a last glare of the lightning met a pair of glowing sapphire eyes—eyes so full of compassion and love that he knew their owner would forgive him anything. That love reached out for him, and flowed over into him. It couldn’t erase his loss, but it could share the pain—and it didn’t blame him for what had happened.

  He uncurled, and groped for the smooth white neck and shoulder the way he had seized on the branches of the bush to keep from drowning.

  He sobbed himself into exhaustion on that shoulder, wept until he hadn’t the strength to shed another tear, and into a kind of fevered half-sleep. And all the while, that bright voice murmured, like a litany, over and over, into his mind—

  :I am here, my Chosen. I love you. I will never leave you.:

  • • •

  “Savil, we found him.” Mardic burst into the room that had been Vanyel’s and Tylendel’s, dripping from head to toe, and shivering in the draft from the door behind him.

  As he turned to close the door, Savil dredged up energy she hadn’t dreamed she still possessed, and started to rise. Jaysen and Healer Andrel simultaneously seized her shoulders and pushed her back down into her chair.

  “Where?” she demanded, in a voice hoarsened by weeping. “Who found him? Is he all right?”

  “I dunno, the Companions found him; Yfandes did, anyway,” Mardic replied vaguely, swaying with weariness, looking colorless with exhaustion in the yellow candlelight. “She found him on the garden side of the river and dragged him into a grotto. Tantras thinks he’s sick, something like backlash, but he can’t tell for sure. He’s trying to persuade her to let him bring Van back here so Andrel can take care of him.”

  Savil shook her head, trying to make sense of his words. “Mardic, what are you trying to tell me? What has Yfandes got to do with anything?”

  “She won’t let anyone lay a finger on him, Savil,” Mardic replied, blinking, and still shivering despite the warmth of the room. “She’s adamant about it; damned near took Tantras’ hand off when he tried to get at Van. She told my Fortin that she doesn’t trust us to protect him and keep him under shield properly—that we won’t understand what we’ve got—that he’s hurt, all torn up inside his mind, and we can’t begin to help him—”

  “Mardic,” Jaysen said, slowly, “are you saying that Yfandes Chose Vanyel? The only full-grown Companion in the Field that hasn’t Chosen—the Companion that hasn’t Chosen for over ten years—and now she’s Chosen Vanyel?”

  “She didn’t come out and say so, but I guess she did,” Mardic said, fatigue slurring his words as he slumped against the doorframe. “I dunno why in hell she’d be curled up around him like he was her foal otherwise, and not letting us near him. We think he’s unconscious; he isn’t moving, and he isn’t responding when we talk to him, but Yfandes won’t let anyone close enough to get a good look at him.”

  Savil exchanged startled looks with the Seneschal’s Herald, but it was Healer Andrel who put their
thoughts into words.

  “By the Lady Bright,” he murmured, green eyes gone round with consternation. “What in the Havens is this going to mean?”

  • • •

  Vanyel swam up out of a feverish, fitful nightmare, prodded by an insistent voice in his head. He moaned, and opened dry, hot eyes that ached and burned. His head still pounded, and moving it even a little made his vision blur. He felt as if his whole body was a hot, tight, painfully constrictive garment; it felt like it didn’t belong to him.

  Sunlight gleamed weakly in through a rocky opening; he could see the river gurgling by just a few paces beyond it. It looked as if he were in a cave, but there were pink marble benches beside the entrance. Caves didn’t have pink marble benches. They didn’t have cultivated, moss-covered floors, either.

  Then he recognized the place for what it was—one of the garden grottoes set into the riverbank. They were popular with courting couples or people seeking a moment of solitude from the Court. Tylendel had often wistfully expressed the wish that they dared to use one—

  Tylendel. Grief closed around his throat and stopped his breath.

  :No, Vanyel, Chosen. Not now. Mourn later; now get up.:

  Without knowing quite how he had gotten there, Vanyel found himself on his feet, leaning heavily on the silky shoulder of a Companion.

  His Companion. Yfandes.

  He tried to make sense of that, but his head spun too much and he couldn’t get a good grip on any of the thoughts that half-formed and then blew away.

  :You are ill,: said the worried voice inside his mind. :I cannot care for you. I did not wish to let you away from my protection, but I cannot help you. You have fever, you need a Healer. Move your foot. One step. Another—:

  He discovered that he was shaking, and clung a little tighter to the Companion’s back. Obedient to that voice in his head, he put one hesitant foot in front of the other, learning quickly that he had to rest most of his weight on the arm clinging to Yfandes’ shoulder. He had to close his eyes after the first couple of steps and trust her to guide him; he was so dizzy and nauseated he couldn’t make any sense out of what he was seeing.