The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  :He even smells different,: Kellan complained.

  “How did you do that?” Savil demanded.

  Moondance made a fluid shrug, and tossed the sides of his white cape over his shoulders, showing that he wore only thin gray breeches and a sleeveless gray leather jerkin with matching boots. Savil shivered at this reminder that the Tayledras never seemed to notice the cold. “It’s the magic we use,” he said. “It makes us into what it wants us to be. I think.”

  “As always, an oversimplification,” Starwind corrected him fondly. “Ka’sheeleth. Savil has brought us a problem. Come look at this boy—”

  Moondance drifted over to Savil’s other side, sat on his heels beside her, and studied Vanyel’s face for several breaths.

  “Hai’yasha,” he breathed. “Shay’a’chern, hmm? And Lovelost? No, it goes deeper than that.” He reached out as Starwind had, and touched Vanyel’s forehead, but unlike Starwind, did not pull away. “Ai’she’va—Holiest Mothers! The pain!” His jaw tightened and the pupils of his eyes contracted to pinpoints. “Reft and bereft of shay’kreth’ashke.” His face took on the tranquility of a statue. “Pawn he is now—pawn he has been—” he said, his tone flat, his voice dropping half an octave. “Pawn to what he is and what he wills not to be. But will or no, the pawn is in play—and the play is a trial—”

  “And what of the game?” Starwind asked in a whisper.

  Moondance hesitated, then life came back to his face as he shrugged again, and his pupils went back to normal. “No way of knowing,” he replied, slowly taking his hand from Vanyel’s forehead. “That depends entirely upon whether he is willing to become more than a pawn. But yours to be the Teaching, I think,” he said, looking up sharply at the Adept. “It is like your powers that he holds. As for Healing, I think that half of it will be his doing—if he Heals at all—”

  “And the other half yours,” the Adept stated with an ironic smile.

  Moondance turned Vanyel’s wrist up, showing the scar across it—then turned over his own hand, and the firelight picked out the scar that ran from the gold-skinned hand halfway to the elbow, a scar that followed the course of the blue vein pulsing beneath the skin. “Who better?” he asked. “We have something in common, I think.”

  Savil swayed again, caught in a sudden dizziness, and Starwind took hold of her shoulders to steady her. “You need rest,” he said in concern. “Will you have it here, or can you ride?”

  Savil thought longingly of just lying down where she was, and then reflected on being able to do so in a bed.

  And also on the Companions, out there in the snow and cold, and still in their harnesses.

  “The Companions can and will carry double,” she sighed, feeling just about ready to fade away. “If you’re willing to ride them. Or strap us in, I don’t much care which. But I’d like them in the warm.”

  “Then we ride,” Starwind said, as Moondance scooped Vanyel up in his arms as if he weighed next to nothing. The older Adept rose to his feet and offered her his hand, and it took every scrap of will she had left to her to stumble erect. “It is not far, Wingsister.”

  “I hope not,” she told him earnestly, staggering out into the snow, while Moondance put the fire out with a single backward glance. “Because if it isn’t, you’re going to be carrying me as well as the boy.”

  • • •

  First there was darkness, and the peace that came with being so drugged that there was no thought at all. It was the only time he felt anything like peace, these days, and he welcomed the drugs and the red-haired Healer who brought them. There were times without counting when he hoped that this time the Healer had miscalculated—that this time he wouldn’t wake.

  Then there was pain, unfocused, but somewhere near at hand. Like the touch of sun on skin already reddened and burned. It got past the drugs, somehow; he tried to push it away, but it continued to throb in those half-healed places in his mind, promising him more pain to come.

  Then—nothing but pain, fire in his veins and under his skin, flames dancing along his nerves and scorching his mind. Gate-fire, Gate-energy—it was unmistakable, and unbearable, and yet it continued long past the moment he thought his sanity would shatter or his heart stop. He screamed, or thought he did. He was lost in it, and there was no way out—not even death, for the pain would not let him die.

  Then it was gone. But it left him aching, all the channels burned raw again, and worse, all the memories replaying themselves over and over—Gala dying, Tylendel throwing himself from the Tower, Tylendel lying in state in the Temple—

  Then, without warning, the Dream.

  He stood blocking the way, a one-mage barricade across Crook-Back Pass. Mage-light from his upraised hand reflected from the impassive faces and hollow, empty eyes of the three wizards who opposed him.

  This was not like the old dream—the dream of being alone in the ice. This was—something else. He could sense things, shards of meaning, just under the surface of it, but couldn’t seem to bring them out to where he could read them.

  But it felt—real. Fearfully real.

  “Why do you bother with this nonsense?”

  The voice from behind the wizards was sweet, lilting. One more figure paced forward as the ranks of the army backing the wizards parted to let him pass.

  “You are quite alone, Herald-Mage Vanyel.” One of the wizards stepped two paces to the side to allow the newcomer through to the center, to face Vanyel.

  He was beautiful; there was no other word for him. A perfectly sculptured face and body, hair and eyes of twilight shadow, a confidence, poise, and power so complete they were works of art.

  Except for the dark eyes, he could have been Vanyel’s brother; except that he was too perfect, he could almost have been a younger Vanyel.

  He was clad in dull black armor, like his soldiers, but carried no weapon. He didn’t need one; he was a weapon. He was a weapon with no other purpose than the destruction and death he molded into his power. Unlike the knife which could cut to heal or harm, this weapon would never serve any other purpose than pain. Vanyel knew that as well as he knew himself.

  “You are,” the beautiful young man repeated, smiling, choosing his words to hurt, “quite alone.”

  Vanyel nodded. “You tell me nothing I was not already aware of. I know you. You are Leareth.” The word meant—

  “Darkness.” Leareth laughed. “I am. Darkness. And these are my servants. A quaint conceit, don’t you think?”

  Vanyel said nothing. Every moment he kept Leareth here was one more moment speeding Yfandes down the road with Tylendel—

  —but Tylendel was dead—

  “You need not remain alone,” Leareth continued, moistening his lips with his tongue, sensuously. “You have only to stretch out your hand to me, Vanyel, and take my Darkness to you—and you would never be alone again. We could accomplish much together, we two. Or if you wish—I could even—” He stepped forward a pace; two. “I could even bring back your long-lost love to you. Think of him, Vanyel. Think of Tylendel—alive, and once more at your side.”

  “NO!”

  He struck at the terrible, beautiful face, struck with all the power at his command—and wept as he struck.

  :Dreams, young Vanyel.: A blue-green voice froze him in mid-strike. :Nothing but dreams. They vanish into mist if you will it.:

  The army, the pass, Leareth, all whirled away from him into another kind of darkness; this was a darkness that soothed, and he embraced it as eagerly as he had repudiated the other.

  Cool, green-gold music threaded into the darkness, not dispelling it, but complementing it. It wound its way into his mind, and wherever it went, it left healing behind it; in all the raw, bleeding places, in all the burning channels. It flowed through him and he sank into it, drifting, drifting, and content to drift. It surrounded him, bathed him in balm, until there was nothing left of h
urt in him—

  —except the place Tylendel had left behind—the place that still ached so emptily—

  The green-gold music was joined by another, a blue-green harmony like the voice that had spoken to dispel the dream. And this music was no longer letting him drift aimlessly. It was leading him; it had wound around his soul and he had no choice but to follow where it wanted him to go.

  The blue-green music took the melody, the green-gold faded to a descant, and the voice spoke in his dreams again. :Look; you wish control—here is your center—so to center and so to ground—:

  The music led him in a dance wherein he found a balance he hadn’t known he craved until he found it. The music spun him around; he spun with it, and he knew that having found this point of equilibrium he would not lose it again.

  :So, so, so, exactly so,: the music chuckled. :Now, you would protect yourself—thus the barrier, see? Dense, and it keeps all out, flexible to your will. Always your will, young Vanyel, it is will and nothing less—

  It spun him walls to keep others out of his mind; he saw the way of it and spun them thicker, harder—then raveled them again down to the thinnest of barricades, knowing he could build them up again when he wanted to.

  Then the blue-green music faded, leaving the green-gold to carry the melody alone. It sang to him then, sang of rest, sang of peace, and he dreamed. Dreamed of waking, moving to another’s will, to drink and care for himself and sleep again. But no more dreams that hurt, only dreams full of the verdant music.

  Then he woke—truly woke, not dreams of waking—to the sound of it; breathy, haunting notes that wandered into and out of melodies that he half recognized, but couldn’t identify. There was a scent of ferns, a smell of growing things, a whiff of freshly-turned earth, and a hint of something metallic. Behind the music, he heard the sound of gently falling water.

  He was no longer drugged. And the mind-channels within him no longer burned and tormented him.

  He opened his eyes, slowly.

  He thought for one mad moment that he was somehow suspended in a tree. He was surrounded on all sides by greenery, and luxuriantly-leaved branches hung over his head. Then he saw that while the branches were real, and the leaves, they were not the same organism. The branches supported huge ferns whose fronds draped down like a living canopy over his bed, and the greenery about him was a curtaining of multi-layered, multi-shaded green fabric hung from a framework of more branches, each layer as light and transparent as a spiderweb, and cut to resemble a cascade of leaf shapes. He had never in his life imagined that there could be so many colors of green.

  Weak beams of sunlight threaded past the fern fronds. The blankets—if that was what they were—were a darker green, like moss, and felt as soft as velvet, but were thick and heavy.

  He tried to sit up, and discovered that he couldn’t. He was absolutely spent, with no strength left at all.

  The music beyond the curtains finished with a breathless, upward-spiraling run, and a few moments later, the curtains parted.

  Vanyel blinked in surprise at the young man who stood there, framed by the green of the curtain material; he knew he was staring, and rudely, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d never seen anyone who looked like this—

  A young man—silver-haired as any oldster, with hair longer than most women had, and with eyes of light blue that measured and weighed him, full of secrets and thoughts that Vanyel couldn’t begin to read. He wore a sleeveless green jerkin, and breeches of a darker green, and in the hand that held back the curtains there was a white flute that looked as if it had been carved from luminescent, opaque crystal.

  Vanyel suddenly realized that, indeed, he couldn’t read the young man’s thoughts; there was presence there, but nothing spilling over into his own mind.

  He stammered out the first things in his mind—not terribly clever, and certainly not original but—“W-w-where am I? W-w-who are you?”

  The young man tilted his head to one side a little, and Vanyel saw a faint hint of smile as he replied, very slowly and with a strange accent, “Well. ‘Where am I?’ you ask me—better than I had feared. I had half dreaded hearing ‘who am I?’ young Vanyel.” He tilted his head the other way, and this time the smile was definite. “You are in k’Treva territory in the Pelagir Hills, and before you ask, your aunt, our Wingsister Savil, brought you here. We are her friends; she asked us to help her with your troubles. I am Moondance k’Treva; I am Tayledras, and I have been your Healer. That is my bed you are lying in. Do you like it? Starwind says it is a foolish piece of conceit, but I think that this is only because he did not think of it first.”

  Vanyel could only blink at him in bewilderment.

  Moondance shook his head, ruefully. “I go too fast for you. Simple things first. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Would you like to bathe?”

  All at once he was hungry—and thirsty—and disgustingly aware that his skin was crawling with the need for a bath.

  “All three,” he said, a little hesitantly.

  “Then we remedy all three.” Moondance pulled the curtains back to the foot and the head of the bed, and—

  —and reached to pull off the blankets. At which point Vanyel realized that he was quite nude beneath the bedcoverings. He flushed, and clutched at the blanket.

  Moondance gave him an amused look. “Who do you think it was that undressed you and put you where you are?” he asked. “I pledge you, it was not the Eastern Wind.”

  Vanyel flushed again, but did not release the blanket.

  “So, so—here, my modest one—” Moondance reached up to one side among the hangings, and detached something which he tossed onto the blankets. Vanyel reached for it—a wrap-robe of something green and silken that was, thankfully, much more substantial than the hangings. As Moondance pointedly turned his back, he eased out of the bed and wrapped it around himself.

  And reached for one of the bed-supports as dizziness made the room spin around him.

  “That will never do.” There was a cool touch between his eyes, and the room steadied.

  “Come,” Moondance was just in front of him, holding out his hands encouragingly. “Keep your eyes on me—yes. A step. Another. You have been long abed, young Vanyel, you must almost learn to walk again.”

  The Tayledras Healer walked backward, slowly, as Vanyel followed, looking only at his eyes. But he did not move to give the boy support in any way, except the one time Vanyel stumbled and nearly fell. Then Moondance caught him, held him until he could find his balance again, and only when Vanyel was standing firmly again did he draw away.

  Vanyel was vaguely aware that they had crossed a threshold into another room, but just walking was costing him so much sweating, concentrated effort he didn’t dare look around any. It seemed to take years before Moondance stopped, caught his elbow, and guided him to a seat on a smooth rock ledge that rimmed a raised pool of water so hot that it steamed.

  “Now, look about you.” Moondance waved at the pool and the rest of the room. “This is the pool for washing. Here is soap. When you are clean, go there, the pool for resting.”

  Though the pool Vanyel was sitting beside was deep, it was quite small. Next to the “pool for washing” was another, much larger, much deeper, and slightly above it, with an opening in the side that spilled hot water down into this pool. Both pools looked natural, rock-sided and sandy-bottomed.

  “I think even weak as you are, you shall be able to find your way there. I shall return with food and drink.” The young man hesitated a moment—then with the swiftness of a stooping hawk, leaned over and kissed Vanyel full on the lips. “You are very welcome, young Vanyel,” he said, before Vanyel had a chance to get over his surprise. “We are pleased to have you, Starwind and I, and not just for the sake of Wingsister Savil.”

  He vanished before Vanyel had a chance to react.

  Vanyel found that if he moved slowly and c
arefully he didn’t exhaust himself. He shed the robe and eased himself into the water with a sigh, and soaped and rinsed until he finally felt clean again. His pool emptied itself over the side and down a channel in the floor—and where the water went from there he couldn’t say. He had figured by now that this was some kind of hot spring, which accounted for the metallic tang in the air.

  With Moondance gone, he had a chance to get a good look around while trying to sort himself out. There didn’t appear to be any “doors” as such in this dwelling, just doorways. This bathing room was multileveled; the highest level was the “pool for resting” which cascaded to the next level and the “pool for washing,” which in turn was above the “floor” and the channel carrying the water away that was cut into it. There were no windows in the walls of natural rock; the whole was lit by a skylight taking up the entire ceiling, and there were green and flowering plants and ferns standing and hanging everywhere. There was only one entrance into this room—that led back to the bedroom, also rock-walled and roofed with a skylight, from what Vanyel could see of it.

  The ledge between the pools was not that high, though it took far more of Vanyel’s strength to get over it than he would have believed. Once in the larger pool he discovered that his surmise was right; crystalline hot water bubbled up from the sand in the center of the pool; someone had improved on nature by forming the rock of the pool sides below the waterline into smooth benches.

  It was wonderful; the water was about as hot as was comfortable, and was forcing him to relax whether or not he wanted to. He closed his eyes and sat back, deliberately thinking of absolutely nothing, and only opened them again when he heard light footsteps crossing the stone floor below him.

  It was, as he expected, Moondance, who had brought with him an earthenware beaker of what proved to be cider and a plate of sliced bread and cheeses and fruit.

  “Eat lightly,” the young man warned, climbing to Vanyel’s level and setting his burdens down on the rim of the pool at Vanyel’s right hand. “You have been three weeks without true food, and spent more than one of those days drugged.”