The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  He nodded, dumbly, and his hands trembled in hers.

  “Did you stop to think how I would feel? You were ’Lendel’s love. Didn’t you think I’d come to care for you at least a bit, if only for his sake?”

  How was she to reach him—when she’d never been good with words? “I’ve buried him today. Did you think I’d be indifferent about burying you as well? What about Jaysen? I’d left him to watch you. How do you think he feels right now about his carelessness? What do you think he’d have felt if you’d died? And—gods help us—what did you think Yfandes would do?”

  “I thought—I thought she’d find somebody better,” he faltered, his voice quavering a bit.

  “She’d die, lad; Companions very seldom outlive their Chosen. And she Chose you. If you die, she dies; she’d probably pine herself to death, and she does not deserve that.”

  He shrank into himself, pulling even further away from her, and she cursed her clumsy words, her inability to tell him what she really meant without hurting him further. “Van—oh, hell—I’m not saying any of this the way I wanted to. Listen to me; you’re sick, you need to rest and get well. We’ll deal with this later, all right? Just—don’t take yourself out of this world right now, there are folks who’ll have holes in their lives if you go. And I’m one of them.”

  He nodded; he didn’t look convinced, but now she had exhausted what little eloquence she possessed, and didn’t know what else to say to him.

  So she tried one last tactic. Let me just keep him alive—if I can do that, maybe we can help him.

  “Will you promise me, on your word of honor, that you won’t try to do yourself in again? If you will, I’ll trust you, and I won’t leave guards on your doors.”

  He swallowed, pulled his hands out of hers, and whispered, haltingly, “I—promise. Word of honor.” He still wouldn’t look her in the face, but she trusted that sworn word.

  She nodded. “Accepted. Now is there anything, anything at all, that I can do for you?” Maybe— “Need to talk?”

  He shook his head, and she sensed his complete withdrawal, and cursed again. Dammit, just when I need Lance the most, he’s not here.

  “Sure?” She persisted, even in the face of defeat; that was her nature. “Vanyel—Vanyel, you’re the only person I’ve got who knew ’Lendel from the inside the way I did. If—if you need somebody to mourn with . . .”

  He shook his head again, avoiding her eyes altogether, and she sighed, giving up. “If you change your mind—well, rest, lad. Get better. Call, if you need anything—mind or voice, either, I’ll hear you.”

  He nodded slightly, and closed his eyes again, leaning back and turning his face to the wall. That face was as white as the pillows beneath it, and it made her hurt all over again to see that lost look of his. She waited for another response or a request of some kind, but he slipped right back into an uneasy, shallow slumber. Finally she eased off the bed, gathered up Andrel’s cloak from the chair, and left him alone.

  • • •

  Andrel arrived at sunset in response to her invitation to fetch his cloak and share food and thoughts. They’d had more than one intimate little supper in their lives, many of them in this very room, but none so gloom-ridden. Mardic and Donni had gone off to cautiously interview some of Vanyel’s circle of admirers, to see if there was someone else they could contact that might help to bring him out of this mental abyss.

  Savil’s Hawkbrother masks on the wall behind Andrel’s left shoulder gazed at her from dispassionate and empty eyeholes. Candles flickered on the table between them.

  Neither of them had much interest in food at the moment; both their minds were on the boy sleeping behind the closed door behind Savil’s chair. “What we need,” she told Andrel glumly, eating a dinner she did not taste, “is Lancir. We need his Mindhealing; the boy’s pulling further away from touching with every moment he’s awake, and I cannot get him to let me inside. He’s barricading himself again; a different kind of barricade than that old arrogance, but it’s there all the same. And Lance bloody would be out of touch right now.”

  He sighed, his breath making the candleflame flutter, and pushed his own food around on his plate with his fork. “I have to agree with you. Is there no chance you can get Lance back via Gate?”

  She shook her head, shoving her frustration back down out of her way. She’d already been over this with Jaysen. “Not without knowing where he is, and he’s not a strong enough Thoughtsenser to read a Broadcast-sending. And we don’t know what route he’s taking home; could be one of half a dozen. If something were wrong with Elspeth we could afford to send out half-a-dozen Heralds to look for him, but—Vanyel just is not that important.” Her tone turned acid. “Or so I’ve been told.”

  Andrel frowned, and his eyebrows met. “He may become that important; I’m shielding him as much as I can, but his trauma is still leaking through. Half the trainees are depressed to the point of tears right now, Gifted Bardic, Healer, and Herald, and it’s all due to Vanyel’s leakage.”

  “Well, what do you expect?” she countered, letting him see her very real anger. “You saw the strength and depth of his Gifts. Even with raw channels he’s Broad-sending without knowing it, and he has no more notion of how to shield than how to fly! And it’s not every day you’ve got one half of a lifebonded pair left after the other half suicides. If he were trained, he’d be leaking. But nobody else believes how strong he is; they all think I’m letting my affection for Tylendel magnify everything that was connected with him out of all proportion to reality.”

  “Gods!” he looked up from his plate with the expression of a stunned sheep. “Vanyel and Tylendel—lifebonded?”

  She nodded unhappily. “I’m pretty damned sure of it; what’s more, so are Mardic and Donni, and if anyone would recognize a bonding, it would be another bonded pair. I expected grief, mourning, the natural responses for a youngster who’s lost his first love under rotten bad circumstances—I did not expect to find the kind of gaping emotional wounds I saw before he started shutting me out today. I’ve never seen that depth of feeling before in anyone, Herald or no, except Mardic and Donni. So tell me; what the hell do I do about a broken lifebond?”

  He shook his head, obviously at a loss. “I can’t tell you; I don’t know. I don’t Heal minds, I Heal bodies. And I don’t know of anyone who Heals hearts.”

  She sighed, and looked down at her congealing dinner. “That’s what I was afraid you’d tell me. I have more bad news; the relationship between them was one where ’Lendel was the leader and Van the follower. Van had gotten totally dependent on ’Lendel for all his emotional needs. I tried to warn ’Lendel, but—” She shrugged. “And to put the snow on the mountain, Van’s got some guilt he’s hiding from me, and all I can think is that he’s convinced he cursed ’Lendel because he seduced him. Mind you, he didn’t; from all I know I’m positive the seduction, if seduction it was, was mutual, but—there it is.”

  “Jaysen,” Andrel said positively.

  She nodded. “Good bet, my friend. Jays has got all those Kleimar prejudices about same-sex pairings. He accepted ’Lendel, but mostly after I rammed his prejudices right up in his face. But Vanyel? Vanyel wasn’t even a Herald-candidate when he and ’Lendel paired. Jays hasn’t said a word, but you can bet on what he was thinking when he was keeping watch on him. Resentment that Van is alive and ’Lendel dead would be the least of it.”

  “And Vanyel picked it up,” Andrel said sadly.

  “Probably.” She took a bite, found it catch in her throat, and gave up trying to eat, shoving the plate away. “From what I can tell, he’s sensitive enough to pick up things you’ve forgotten for years and do it right through your shielding. Ah, gods.”

  She rested both elbows on the table, and covered her sore eyes with her hands. A moment later she felt one of Andrel’s hands stroking her hair, and dropped her own back on the table, giving
him a good long look across the candleflames. His deeply green eyes were fixed on her face, reflecting a profound concern.

  “And what about you?” he asked, barely above a whisper.

  “I am trying to reach out to him,” she said, feeling old and tired and about ready to give up. “I think I’ve convinced myself that none of this was any more his fault than it was anyone else’s. I bloody well hope so, or he’s going to be getting knives in the gut from me, too. And he doesn’t deserve that. The rest—gods, I don’t know what to do.”

  “That isn’t what I meant,” he replied, taking his hand away from her hair and reaching for her wrist. “I want to know how you’re weathering this. Need a shoulder?”

  “Want the truth?” She tensed all over, trying to keep from bawling like a little child. “Yes, I need a shoulder, and no, I am not taking this well. I want ’Lendel back, Andy—he was my soul-son, and I loved him, and I want him back with me.”

  Her voice cracked; she lost her veneer of calm, and just dissolved into tears. Andrel got up, gracefully, and without letting go of her wrist. He moved around the table, and pulled her to her feet, then led her over to the couch and gave her that shoulder she needed so badly.

  • • •

  The peaceful night rocked; Vanyel convulsed, wailing—

  His cry sounded like something in its death agonies, and made Savil’s hair stand on end.

  The room trembled, literally. The walls shook as Vanyel’s muscles spasmed.

  His eyes were wide open, but saw nothing, and his pupils dilated with fear. He convulsed again, and the very foundation of the Palace rocked. The bed shook as if it were alive. His lute fell from the wall, landing with a sickening crack that surely meant it was broken past all repair; his armor-stand crashed over and scattered his equipment across the floor, and Savil was tossed from his bedside to the floor before she realized it.

  She picked herself up off the floor beside his bed without thinking about safety or bruises, and flung herself at him again.

  He thrashed beneath her, fighting her with a paranormal strength; he couldn’t know where he was or who she was. All she could read from him was terrible agony—and beneath the pain, confusion, panic, entrapment. She caught his wrists and tried to pinion them against the pillows, then tried to pin him down with the blankets. His chest arched against hers. He screamed, and the walls shook again.

  Mardic lay in the corner behind her, quite unconscious; Donni had his head in her lap and she was trying to protect him from falling objects with her own body. Vanyel had thrown him against the wall when this nightmare—or whatever it was—had started, and Mardic had made the mistake of trying to touch his mind to wake him.

  :Donni—: Savil used a moment of lull to Mindtouch her pupil, taking a tiny fragment of her attention from the attempt—attempt, for it wasn’t succeeding—to shield Vanyel, to get him under some kind of control. :—Donni, how’s Mardic?:

  :He’s all right, just stunned,: came the reassuring reply. :—I can spare you something. Catch this, quick—:

  The girl “threw” her a mental line, and began sending additional, sorely-needed energy down it as soon as Savil “caught” it.

  It helped to keep Savil from blacking out as Vanyel lashed out with his mind, but that was about all.

  Jaysen was coming on the run; Savil could Feel him reaching out to find out what the hell was going on, and Felt the panic in his mind when he realized they had a powerful Gifted trapped in a pain-loop and hallucination. He all but broke down the door, trying to get in, and flung himself into the affray without a second thought.

  “Shield him, dammit,” he shouted, throwing himself across Vanyel’s legs, as the walls (but, thank the gods, not the foundations again) shook.

  “I’m trying,” she snapped back, giving up on the uneven struggle to pin Vanyel down, and settling for securing his arms. “He breaks them as fast as I get them up!”

  Jaysen succeeded in getting Vanyel physically restrained where she, being lighter, had failed. He added his strength to Savil’s and Donni’s on the crumbling shields they were trying to get on the boy. But it wasn’t even stalemate; they were losing him to his own nightmares.

  Andrel appeared. Savil didn’t even see or Sense him run in; he was just there all in an instant. But instead of flinging himself into the melee, he grabbed their arms and pulled both of them off the boy.

  Then he reached down for something at his feet, and came up with a bucket of icy water. He doused the boy, bed and all, without a heartbeat of hesitation.

  The convulsions stopped as Vanyel came abruptly awake.

  He sat up—stared—then he suddenly went limp.

  The room stopped shaking.

  “Savil, get me a blanket,” Andrel ordered quietly. “Jays, help me get him out of that wet bed before he goes into shock, then get the bedding stripped before the mattress gets soaked.”

  By the time Savil returned with the goosedown comforter from her bed, the two men had pulled the half-stunned boy from the tangled mess of water-soaked bedcoverings, and the bedding was piled on the floor. Andrel was carefully shaking the boy’s shoulders while Jaysen supported him.

  Behind them, Mardic was groggily climbing to his knees, Donni steadying him, but the two of them waved Savil off when she made a half-step in their direction.

  :We’re all right,: Donni Mindspoke. :I’ll get Mardic into bed myself, and then I’ll come make up the bed in here again.:

  Savil turned her attention back to the boy, knowing she could trust Donni to deal with the situation if she had said she could.

  “Come on, Vanyel,” Andrel was saying, coaxingly. “Come on, lad, come back to us. Wake up, come out of it.”

  Vanyel blinked, blinked again, and sense came back into his eyes. He looked about him, momentarily confused, then the destruction about him seemed to register on him. He closed his eyes, a soft, hardly audible moan coming from the back of his throat.

  And for one instant, Savil was nearly flattened beneath an overwhelming load of blackest despair, terrible guilt, and a grief so heavy she felt her knees start to give way beneath the weight of it.

  Then it was gone, absolutely cut off, and so completely that for a moment even she doubted that she had felt it.

  But one look at Andrel and Jaysen convinced her otherwise; the former was deeply shaken, and the latter white-lipped.

  She expected tenderness and concern from Andrel—but strangely enough, it was Jaysen who carefully got the boy into a chair, wrapped in the comforter, and from the chair back into the bed when Donni had stripped it of the wet coverings and remade it. It was Jaysen who stayed beside him, leaving Savil free to see to it that Mardic was truly all right. Savil wasn’t in a mood to ask questions about his apparent change of heart.

  Mardic was fine, and relatively cheerful. “I’ll have a godsawful headache,” he told her. “Poor Van thought I was going to kill him, took me for an enemy in his dream. When he realized it was a dream, he pulled most of it—”

  “Most of it?” Savil choked. “He flattened you, and he pulled most of it?”

  “Near as I can tell.” Mardic put both hands to his temples and massaged a little. “Well, when he pulled the blow, the energy overflowed into those raw channels and hurt him, and he went over the edge; couldn’t control anything. Then—I think—he lost his center and got lost in his own pain. Andrel had the right notion; physical shock is what gave him something to home in on.”

  “But you are going to be all right?”

  He gave her half a grin. “If you’ll let me get some sleep.”

  Savil took the statement as an unsubtle request and made a hasty exit.

  She got back just in time to see Andrel give Vanyel some kind of sedative to drink. But it was Jaysen who sat with the boy until Andrel’s sedative took effect. And it was Jaysen who righted the armor-stand, and picked up the
broken-backed lute from the floor with a wince at seeing the fine instrument so ruined.

  “I’ll see to getting this fixed, if it can be,” he said, when he saw Savil watching him before she knelt to put out the fire. They daren’t have a fire here while Vanyel slept, nor candles burning, either—not unless Andrel could do something to keep him from going into another fit.

  “Jays, what am I going to do with him?” she asked, quietly, standing up with a wince as a pulled muscle in her back told her what a fool she’d been. He motioned that she should precede him out the door, and she half turned to see his face as she walked past him. “He’s sick with backlash, and he’s getting sicker, not better. His channels are all raw; you can’t Mindtouch him without doing that to him, throwing him into convulsions. That was what set all this off, Mardic trying to soothe him out of a bad dream. What am I going to do the next time he has a nightmare?”

  Jaysen shrugged helplessly, and shut the door behind her. She made a circuit of the common room, setting candles erect and lighting them. “If you don’t know, be damned if I do. Andy, can we keep him sedated long enough to heal?”

  Andrel grimaced, looking as if he’d swallowed something sour. “With any other patient I’d tell you where to put that question—what I just gave the boy was argonel.”

  Jaysen and Savil both started with surprise, and in Savil’s case the surprise was not unmixed with shock. “Great good gods, Andy!”

  “Ease up; he’s safe enough,” Andrel interrupted her, throwing himself down on the couch with his usual lack of concern for the furniture. He groaned, stretched, and then raised an eyebrow at the Seneschal’s Herald. “Jaysen, may I mention that you have lovely legs?”

  Jaysen, who was attired only in shirt and hose and only just now really realized this, blushed a furious scarlet, but refused to be distracted. “Argonel, Andy—” he began, taking a chair and crossing his legs primly.

  “He’s burning it off at a respectable rate, or I wouldn’t have given it to him,” Andrel replied. “The benefit of it is that it’s a muscle relaxant and a sedative; he won’t be able to go into convulsions again even if you Mindtouch him. I won’t speak for him tossing the Palace around, but he won’t go into physical convulsions. As for him healing, well that depends entirely on what you mean.”