The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  You watched it happen. And you didn’t do anything to stop it, cousin. And you didn’t bother to defend me to Father, either. None of you did.

  Radevel, instead of being put off, inched a little farther into the room. “Hey,” he said, brightening, “you should have seen it! I mean, whack, an’ that whole shield just split—an’ you fell down an’ that arm—”

  “Will you go to hell?” Vanyel snarled, just about ready to kill him. “And you can take all those ghouls lurking out there with you!”

  Radevel jumped, looked shocked, then looked faintly offended.

  Vanyel didn’t care. All that mattered was that Radevel—and whoever else was out there—took themselves away.

  Left finally alone, Vanyel drifted into an uneasy slumber, filled with fragmented bits of unhappy dreams. When he woke again, his mother was supervising the removal of his younger brother Mekeal and all Mekeal’s belongings from the room.

  Well, that was a change. Lady Treesa usually didn’t interest herself in any of her offspring unless she had something to gain from it. On the other hand, Vanyel had been a part of her little court since the day he’d evidenced real talent at music about five years ago. She wouldn’t want to lose her own private minstrel—which meant she’d best make certain he healed up all right.

  “I won’t have you racketing about,” she was whispering to Mekeal with unconcealed annoyance on her plump, pretty face. “I won’t have you keeping him awake when he should be sleeping, and I won’t have you getting in the Healer’s way.”

  Thirteen-year-old Mekeal, a slightly shrunken copy of his father, shrugged indifferently. “’Bout time we went to bachelor’s hall anyway, milady,” he replied, as Lady Treesa turned to keep an eye on him. “Can’t say as I’ll miss the caterwauling an’ the plunking.”

  Although Vanyel could only see his mother’s back, he couldn’t miss the frown in her voice. “It wouldn’t hurt you to acquire a bit of Vanyel’s polish, Mekeal,” Lady Treesa replied.

  Mekeal shrugged again, quite cheerfully. “Can’t make silk out o’ wool, Lady Mother.” He peered through dancing candlelight at Vanyel’s side of the room. “Seems m’brother’s awake. Heyla, peacock, they’re movin’ me down t’ quarters; seems you get up here to yourself.”

  “Out!” Treesa ordered; and Mekeal took himself off with a heartless chuckle.

  Vanyel spent the next candlemark with Treesa fussing and weeping over him; indulging herself in the histrionics she seemed to adore. In a way it was as hard to deal with as Withen’s rage. He’d never been on the receiving end of her vapors before.

  Oh, gods, he kept thinking confusedly, please make her go away. Anywhere, I don’t care.

  He had to keep assuring her that he was going to be all right when he was not at all certain of that himself, and Treesa’s shrill, borderline hysteria set his nerves completely on edge. It was a decided relief when the Healer arrived again and gently chased her out to give him some peace.

  The next few weeks were nothing but a blur of pain and potions—a blur endured with one or another of his mother’s ladies constantly at his side. And they all flustered at him until he was ready to scream, including his mother’s maid, Melenna, who should have known better. It was like being nursemaided by a covey of agitated doves. When they weren’t worrying at him, they were preening at him. Especially Melenna.

  “Would you like me to get you a pillow?” Melenna cooed.

  “No,” Vanyel replied, counting to ten. Twice.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” She edged a little closer, and leaned forward, batting her eyelashes at him.

  “No,” he said, closing his eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Shall I—”

  “No!” he growled, not sure which was worse at this moment, the pounding of his head, or Melenna’s questions. At least the pounding didn’t have to be accompanied by Melenna’s questions.

  Sniff.

  He cracked an eyelid open, just enough to see her. She sniffed again, and a fat tear rolled down one cheek.

  She was a rather pretty little thing, and the only one of his mother’s ladies or maidservants who had managed to pick up Treesa’s knack of crying without going red and blotchy. Vanyel knew that both Mekeal and Radevel had tried to get into her bed more than once. He also knew that she had her heart set on him.

  And the thought of bedding her left him completely cold.

  She sniffed a little harder. A week ago he would have sighed, and apologized to her, and allowed her to do something for him. Anything, just to keep her happy.

  That was a week ago. Now— It’s just a game for her, a game she learned from Mother. I’m tired of playing it. I’m sick to death of all their games.

  He ignored her, shutting his eyes and praying for the potions to work. And finally they did, which at least gave him a rest from her company for a little while.

  • • •

  “Van?”

  That voice would bring him out of a sound sleep, let alone the restless drug-daze he was in now. He struggled up out of the grip of fever-dreams to force his eyes open.

  Lissa was sitting on the edge of his bed, dressed in riding leathers.

  “Liss—?” he began, then realized what riding leathers meant. “—oh, gods—”

  “Van, I’m sorry, I didn’t want to leave you, but Father said it was now or never.” She was crying; not prettily like Lady Treesa, but with blotched cheeks and bloodshot eyes. “Van, please say you don’t mind too much!”

  “It’s . . . all right, Liss,” he managed, fighting the words out around the cold lump in his throat and the colder one in his gut. “I . . . know. You’ve got to do this. Gods, Liss, one of us has to get away!”

  “Van—I—I’ll find some way to help you, I promise. I’m almost eighteen; I’m almost free. Father knows the Guard is the only place for me; he hasn’t had a marriage offer for me for two years. He doesn’t dare ruin my chances for a post, or he’ll be stuck with me. The gods know you’re safe enough now—if anybody dared do anything before the Healer says you’re fit, he’d make a protest to Haven. Maybe by the time you get the splints off, I’ll be able to find a way to have you with me. . . .”

  She looked so hopeful that Vanyel didn’t have the heart to say anything to contradict her. “Do that, Liss. I—I’ll be all right.”

  She hugged him, and kissed him, and then left him.

  And then he turned to the wall and cried. Lissa was the only support he had had. The only person who loved him without reservations. And now she was gone.

  After that, he stopped even pretending to care about anything. They didn’t care enough about him to let Liss stay until he was well—so why should he care about anything or anyone, even enough to be polite?

  • • •

  “Armor does more than protect; it conceals. Helms hide faces—and your opponent becomes a mystery, an enigma.”

  Seldasen had that right. Just like those two down there.

  The cruel, blank stares of the helm-slits gave no clues to the minds within. The two opponents drew their blades, flashed identical salutes, and retreated exactly twenty paces each to end at the opposite corners of the field. The sun was straight overhead, their shadows little more than pools at their feet. Twelve restive armored figures fidgeted together on one side of the square. The harsh sunshine bleached the short, dead grass to the color of light straw, and lit everything about the pair in pitiless detail.

  Hmm. Not such enigmas once they move.

  One fighter was tall, dangerously graceful, and obviously well-muscled beneath the protection of his worn padding and shabby armor. Every motion he made was precise, perilous—and professional.

  The other was a head shorter. His equipment was new, the padding unfrayed, the metal lovingly burnished. But his movements were awkward, uncertain, perhaps fearful.

  Still, if he f
eared, he didn’t lack for courage. Without waiting for his man to make a move, he shouted a tremulous, defiant battle cry and charged across the sun-burnt grass toward the tall fighter. As his boots thudded on the hard, dry ground, he brought his sword around in a low-line attack.

  The taller fighter didn’t even bother to move out of his way; he simply swung his scarred shield to the side. The sword crunched into the shield, then slid off, metal screeching on metal. The tall fighter swept his shield back into guard position, and answered the blow with a return that rang true on the shield of his opponent, then rebounded, while he turned the momentum of the rebound into a cut at the smaller fighter’s head.

  The pale stone of the keep echoed the sound of the exchange, a racket like a madman loose in a smithy. The smaller fighter was driven back with every blow, giving ground steadily under the hammerlike onslaught—until he finally lost his footing and fell over backward, his sword flying out of his hand.

  There was a dull thud as he hit his head on the flinty, unforgiving ground.

  He lay flat on his back for a moment, probably seeing stars, and scarcely moving, arms flung out on either side of him as if he meant to embrace the sun. Then he shook his head dazedly and tried to get up—

  Only to find the point of his opponent’s sword at his throat.

  “Yield, Boy,” rumbled a harsh voice from the shadowed mouth-slit of the helmet. “Yield, or I run you through.”

  The smaller fighter pulled off his own helm to reveal that he was Vanyel’s cousin Radevel. “If you run me through, Jervis, who’s going to polish your mail?”

  The point of the sword did not waver.

  “Oh, all right,” the boy said, with a rueful grin. “I yield.”

  The sword, a pot-metal practice blade, went back into its plain leather sheath. Jervis pulled off his own battered helm with his shield hand, as easily as if the weight of wood and bronze wasn’t there. He shook out his sweat-dampened, blond hair and offered the boy his right, pulling him to his feet with the same studied, precise movements as he’d used when fighting.

  “Next time, you yield immediately, Boy,” the armsmaster rumbled, frowning. “If your opponent’s in a hurry, he’ll take banter for refusal, and you’ll be a cold corpse.”

  Jervis did not even wait to hear Radevel’s abashed assent. “You—on the end—Mekeal.” He waved to Vanyel’s brother at the side of the practice field. “Helm up.”

  Vanyel snorted as Jervis jammed his own helm back on his head, and stalked back to his former position, dead center of the practice ground. “The rest of you laggards,” he growled, “let’s see some life there. Pair up and have at.”

  Jervis doesn’t have pupils, he has living targets, thought Vanyel, as he watched from the window. There isn’t anyone except Father who could even give him a workout, yet he goes straight for the throat every damned time; he gets nastier every day. About all he does give them is that he only hits half force. Which is still enough to set Radev on his rump. Bullying bastard.

  Vanyel leaned back on his dusty cushions, and forced his aching hand to run through the fingering exercise yet again. Half the lute strings plunked dully instead of ringing; both strength and agility had been lost in that hand.

  I am never going to get this right again. How can I, when half the time I can’t feel what I’m doing?

  He bit his lip, and looked down again, blinking at the sunlight winking off Mekeal’s helm four stories below. Every one of them will be moaning and plastering horse liniment on his bruises tonight, and boasting in the next breath about how long he lasted against Jervis this time. Thank you, no. Not I. One broken arm was enough. I prefer to see my sixteenth birthday with the rest of my bones intact.

  This tiny tower room where Vanyel always hid himself when summoned to weapons practice was another legacy of Grandfather Joserlin’s crazy building spree. It was Vanyel’s favorite hiding place, and thus far, the most secure; a storage room just off the library. The only conventional access was through a tiny half-height door at the back of the library—but the room had a window—a window on the same side of the keep as the window of Vanyel’s own attic-level room. Any time he wanted, Vanyel could climb easily out of his bedroom, edge along the slanting roof, and climb into that narrow window, even in the worst weather or the blackest night. The hard part was doing it unseen.

  An odd wedge-shaped nook, this room was all that was left of the last landing of the staircase to the top floor—an obvious change in design, since the rest of the staircase had been turned into a chimney and the hole where the roof trapdoor had been now led to the chimney pot. But that meant that although there was no fireplace in the storeroom itself, the room stayed comfortably warm in the worst weather because of the chimney wall.

  Not once in all the time Vanyel had taken to hiding here had anything new been added to the clutter or anything been sought for. Like many of the old lord’s eccentricities, its inaccessibility made it easy to ignore.

  Which was fine, so far as Vanyel was concerned. He had his instruments up here—two of which he wasn’t even supposed to own, the harp and the gittern—and any time he liked he could slip into the library to purloin a book. At the point of the room he had an old chair to sprawl in, a collection of candle ends on a chest beside it so that he could read when the light was bad. His instruments were all safe from the rough hands and pranks of his brothers, and he could practice without anyone disturbing him.

  He had arranged a set of old cushions by the window so that he could watch his brothers and cousins getting trounced all over the moat while he played—or tried to play. It afforded a ghost of amusement, sometimes. The gods knew he had little enough to smile about.

  It was lonely—but Vanyel was always lonely, since Lissa had gone. It was bloody awkward to get to—but he couldn’t hide in his room.

  Though he hadn’t found out until he’d healed up, the rest of his siblings and cousins had gone down to bachelor’s hall with Mekeal while he’d been recovering from that broken arm. He hadn’t, even when the Healer had taken the splints off. His brothers slandered his lute playing when they’d gone, telling his father they were just as happy for Vanyel to have his own room if he wanted to stay up there. Probably Withen, recalling how near the hall was to his own quarters, had felt the same. Vanyel didn’t care; it meant that the room was his, and his alone—one scant bit of comfort.

  His other place of refuge, his mother’s solar, was no longer the retreat it had been. It was too easy for him to be found there, and there were other disadvantages lately; his mother’s ladies and fosterlings had taken to flirting with him. He enjoyed that, too, up to a point—but they kept wanting to take it beyond the range of the game of courtly love to the romantic, for which he still wasn’t ready. And Lady Treesa kept encouraging them at it.

  Jervis drove Mekeal back, step by step. Fools, Vanyel thought scornfully, forcing his fingers through the exercise in time with Jervis’ blows. They must be mad, to let that sour old man make idiots out of them, day after day—maybe break their skulls, just like he broke my arm! Anger tightened his mouth, and the memory of the shuttered satisfaction he’d seen in Jervis’ eyes the first time Vanyel had encountered him after the “accident” roiled in his stomach. Damn that bastard, he meant to break my arm, I know he did; he’s good enough to judge any blow he deals to within a hair.

  At least he had a secure hiding place; secure because getting into it took nerve, and neither Jervis, nor his father, nor any of the rest of them would ever have put him and a climb across the roof together in the same thought—even if they remembered the room existed.

  The ill-assorted lot below didn’t look to be relatives; the Ashkevron cousins had all gone meaty when they hit adolescence; big-boned, muscled like plow horses—

  —and about as dense—

  —but Withen’s sons were growing straight up as well as putting on bulk.

  Vanyel w
as the only one of the lot taking after his mother.

  Withen seemed to hold that to be his fault, too.

  Vanyel snorted as Mekeal took a blow to the helm that sent him reeling backward. That one should shake up his brains! Serves him right, too, carrying on about what a great warrior he’s going to be. Clod-headed beanpole. All he can think about is hacking people to bits for the sake of “honor.”

  Glorious war, hah. Fool can’t see beyond the end of his nose. For all that prating, if he ever saw a battlefield he’d wet himself.

  Not that Vanyel had ever seen a real battlefield, but he was the possessor of a far more vivid imagination than anyone else in his family. He had no trouble in visualizing what those practice blades would be doing if they were real. And he had no difficulty at all in imagining the “deadlie woundes” of the ballads being inflicted on his body.

  Vanyel paid close attention to his lessons, if not to weapons work. He knew all of the history ballads and unlike the rest of his peers, he knew the parts about what happened after the great battles as well—the lists of the dead, the dying, the maimed. It hadn’t escaped his notice that when you added up those lists, the totals were a lot higher than the number of heroes who survived.

  Vanyel knew damned well which list he’d be on if it ever came to armed conflict. He’d learned his lesson only too well: why even try?

  Except that every time he turned around Lord Withen was delivering another lecture on his duty to the hold.

  Gods. I’m just as much a brute beast of burden as any donkey in the stables! Duty. That’s bloody all I hear, he thought, staring out the window, but no longer seeing what lay beyond the glass. Why me? Mekeal would be a thousand times better Lord Holder than me, and he’d just love it! Why couldn’t I have gone with Lissa?

  He sighed and put the lute aside, reaching inside his tunic for the scrap of parchment that Trevor Corey’s page had delivered to him after he’d given Lissa’s “official” letters into Treesa’s hands.

  He broke the seal on it, and smoothed out the palimpsest carefully; clever Lissa to have filched the scraped and stained piece that no one would notice was gone! She’d used a good, strong ink though; even though the letters were a bit blurred, he had no trouble reading them.