The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  His attack was suicidal, but it would give his grand-daughter and her children a chance to live.

  He came within an arm’s length of the colddrake—he poised the pitchfork as casually as if he were about to stab a haybale—and he struck, burying the pitchfork tines in the colddrake’s side with a sound like a knife burying itself to the hilt in a block of wood.

  The drake screamed; its whistling shriek shattered the dreadful silence, and nearly shattered Vanyel’s eardrums. It whipped its head around on its long, snaky neck, and it seized the old man before he even let go of the pitchfork. With a snap of its jaws that echoed even above its shrill screeching, it bit the old man’s head neatly off his shoulders.

  Vanyel screamed as he felt the old man die—and the oldster’s desperate courage proved to be too much of a goad for him to resist.

  Anger, fear, other emotions he couldn’t even name, all caught him up, raised him to his feet, drove him out into the open and exploded out of him with a force that dwarfed the explosion he’d caused when Starwind had tried to make him call lightning.

  He was thinking just enough to throw up a shield around the woman and her children with one shouted word. Then he hit the drake with everything he had in him. The blast of raw power caught the drake in the side and sent it hurtling up over the roof of the house—high into the sky—and held it suspended there for one agonizing moment while Vanyel’s insides felt as if they were tearing loose.

  Then the power ran out, and it fell to the earth, bleeding in a hundred places, every bone in its body shattered.

  And Vanyel dropped to his knees, then his hands, then collapsed completely, to lie spent in the open field under the pale winter sun, gasping for breath and wondering what he had done.

  • • •

  Savil surveyed the last of the colddrake carcasses, and turned to Starwind, biting her lip in anxiety. “Where’s the queen-drake?”

  “No sign of her,” he replied, shortly, holding to his feet with pure will. He’d taken the brunt of the attack, and he was dizzy and weak from the effort of holding the center while Savil and Moondance closed the jaws of the trap about the colddrake swarm.

  “I have not seen her, either,” Moondance called up the hill. He was checking each carcass in case one should prove to be an immature queen. It was unlikely to see a swarm with a juvenile queen, but it wasn’t unheard of, either.

  Yfandes had consented to carry the Tayledras double—the need to get to the place where the drake swarm was before the swarm reached inhabited areas was too great for any other consideration. Starwind had then served as the “bait” afoot, while Moondance on Yfandes and Savil on Kellan had been the arms of the trap.

  “No queens,” he said, flatly, having checked the sixth and final body.

  The fight had stripped the snow from the hilltop, exposing the blackened slope. The six drakes lay upon the scorched turf in twisted silver heaps, like the baroque silver ornaments of a careless giantess strewn across black velvet.

  “Ashke, are you well?” Moondance asked anxiously, leaving the last of the bodies and climbing the hill with a certain amount of haste. Starwind looked as if his legs were going to give out on him at any moment, and Yfandes had moved up to lend him her shoulder as support. He leaned on it with a murmur of gratitude as the Healer-Adept reached his side.

  “I will do well enough, once I have a chance to breathe,” the elder Tayledras replied, as Moondance added his support to Yfandes’. “I am more worried that we did not find the queen.”

  “Do you suppose,” Savil began—

  Then all three of them felt an incredible surge of raw, wild power—and it had Vanyel’s “presence” laced through it.

  • • •

  “M’lord?”

  Someone was tugging at his shoulder. Vanyel lifted his head from his arms; that was just about the limit of his capabilities right now.

  “Gods,” he said, dazedly, as the stocky young cloak-shrouded woman at his side tried to get him to sit up. “Oh, please—just—don’t do that right now.”

  “M’lord? Ye be hurt?” she asked, thick brows knitting with concern. “Ye bain’t hurt, best ye get inside fore ’nother them things comes.”

  “Aren’t . . . anymore,” he replied heavily, giving in to her urging and hauling himself into a sitting position. The sun seemed very bright and just on the verge of being painful to his watering eyes.

  Gods, it’s one of the holders. She’s going to lay into me for not coming sooner, he thought, squinting at her, and already wincing in anticipation of harsh words. She’s going to want to know why I didn’t save the old man, or come in time to save the young one. What can I tell her? How can I tell her it was because I was too scared to move until the old man threw himself at the thing?

  “Ye saved us, m’lord,” she said, brown eyes wide, the awe in her voice plain even to Vanyel’s exhausted ears. “Ye came t’ save us, I dunno how ye knew, but, m’lord, I bain’t got no way t’ thank ye.”

  He stared at her in amazement. “But—”

  “Be ye with the bird-lords, m’lord? Ye bain’t their look, but they be the only mages abaht that give a bent nail fer folks’ good.”

  “Bird-lords?” he repeated stupidly.

  “Tchah, Menfree, ’tis only a boy an’ he’s flat paid out!” The newcomer was an older woman, a bit wrinkled and weathered, but with a kindly, if careworn, face. She bunched her cloak around her arms and bent over him. “Na, lad, ye come in, ye get warm an’ less a’muddled, an’ then ye tell yer tale, hmm?”

  She took Vanyel’s elbow, and he perforce had to get up, or else pull her down beside him. The next thing he knew, he was being guided across the ruts of the plowed field, past the carcass of the colddrake (he shuddered as he saw the size of it up close) up to the battered porch of the house and into the shadowed doorway.

  He was not only confused with exhaustion, but was feeling more than a little awkward and out of place. These were the kind of people he had most tried to avoid at home—those mysterious, inscrutable peasant-farmers, whose needs and ways he did not understand.

  Surely they would turn on him in a moment for not being there when they needed help.

  But they didn’t.

  The older woman pushed him down onto a stool beside the enormous fireplace at the heart of the kitchen, the younger took his cloak and pack, and a boy brought him hot, sweetened tea. When one of the bearded, dark-clad men started to question him, the older woman shooed him away, pulling off her own dun cloak and throwing it over a bench.

  “Ye leave th’ boy be fer a bit, Magnus; I seen this b’fore with one a’ them bird-laddies. They does the magickin’, then they’s a-maundered a whiles.” She patted Vanyel on the head, in a rather proprietary sort of fashion. “He said there bain’t no more critters, so ye git on with takin’ care a’ poor old Kern an’ Tansy’s man an’ let this lad get hisself sorted.”

  Vanyel huddled on the stool and watched them, blinking in the half-dark of the kitchen, as they got their lives put back together with a minimum of fuss. Someone went to deal with the bodies, someone saw to the hysterical young mother, someone else planned the rites. Yes, they were mourning the deaths; simply and sincerely, without any of the kind of hysterics he’d half feared. But they were not allowing their grief to get in the way of getting on with their lives, nor were they allowing it to cripple their efforts at getting their protections back in place.

  Their simple courage made him somehow feel very ashamed of himself.

  It was in that introspective mood that the others found him.

  • • •

  “—I know it was a stupid thing to do, to run off like that, but—” Vanyel shrugged. “I won’t make any excuses. I’ve been doing a lot of stupid things lately. I wasn’t thinking.”

  “Well, don’t be too hard on yourself. Foresight dreams have a way of doing that
to people,” Savil said, crossing her legs and settling back on her stool beside the hearth. “They tend to get you on the boil and then lock up your ability to think. You wouldn’t be the first to go charging off in some wild-hare direction after waking up with one, and you probably won’t be the last. No, thank you, Megan,” she said to the wide-eyed child who offered her tea. “We’re fine.”

  If the settlers had been awed by Vanyel, they’d been struck near speechless by the sight of the Tayledras. They didn’t know a Herald from a birch tree, but they knew who and what the Hawkbrothers were, and had accorded them the deference due a crowned head.

  All three of the adults were weary, and relief at finding both that Vanyel was intact and that the queen-drake was indisputably deceased had them just about ready to collapse. So they’d taken the settlers’ hospitality with gratitude, settling in beside the hearth and accepting tea and shelter without demur.

  Vanyel had waited just long enough for them to get settled before launching into a full confession.

  “So when I finally managed to acquire some sense,” he continued, “I figured the best way to find my way back would be to look for where all the mage-energy was. I did everything like you told me, Master Starwind, and I opened up—and the next thing I knew it was nearly noon. Somebody’d opened up a Gate—I think somewhere nearby—and it knocked me out cold.”

  “Ha—I told you those things were Gated in!” Savil exclaimed. “Sorry, lad, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Then what?”

  “Well, I didn’t think there was anyone around here but Tayledras, so I thought one of them had done it. I started to open up again to find the vale, and I heard a call for help. I got here, and when I saw that colddrake—kill the old man—I just—I just couldn’t stand by and not do anything. I didn’t even think about it. I wish I had, I think I overdid it.”

  “With a colddrake, particularly a queen, better overkill,” Savil replied, exchanging a look of veiled satisfaction with Starwind. “You may have acted a fool, but it put you in the right place at the right time, and I am not going to berate you for it.”

  “Aunt Savil, I—” He flushed, and hunched himself up a little. “I got here before the old man came out. I didn’t do anything until he—I mean—I was just hiding in the bushes. I guess,” he said, in a very small voice, “I guess Father’s right. I am a coward. I could have saved him, and I didn’t.”

  “Did you know you could have saved him?” Moondance asked, quietly, his square face still. “Did you know that your mage-powers would work against the drake?”

  “Well—no.”

  “You ran toward the danger when you Mindheard the call for help, right?” Savil asked. “Not away?”

  “Well—yes.”

  “And you simply froze when you saw the strange monster. You did not flee?” Starwind raised one long eyebrow.

  “I guess that’s what happened.”

  “I think perhaps you have mistaken inexperience for cowardice, young Vanyel,” Starwind said with conviction. “A coward would have run away from a plea for help. A coward would have fled at the first glimpse of the drake. You were indecisive—but you remained. It is experience that makes one decisive, and you have precious little of that.”

  “M’lord Starwind?” One of the homespun-clad men of the settlement was standing diffidently at the Tayledras’ elbow.

  “Phellip, I wish you would not call me ‘lord,’” Starwind sighed, shaking his head. “You hold your lands under our protection, yes, but it is a simple matter of barter, foodstuffs for guardianship, and no more than that.”

  “Aye, m’—Master Starwind. Master, this drake—she just be chance-come, or be there anythin’ more to it?”

  Starwind turned to look at him more closely, and with some interest. “Why do you ask that?”

  Phellip coughed, and flushed. “Well, m’lord, I was born ’n bred west a’ here. M’people held land a’ Magelord Grenvis—he were all right, but—well, when ’is neighbors had a notion t’ play war, they useta bring in drakes an’ th’ like aforehand.”

  “And you think something of the sort might be in the offing? Phellip, I congratulate you on your foresight. The thought had only just occurred to me—”

  “Da?” One of the boys couldn’t contain himself any longer, and bounced up beside his father. “Da, there gonna be a war? With fightin’ an’ magic an’—”

  Phellip grabbed the loose cloth of the boy’s tunic and pulled him close. “Jo—I want ye t’ lissen t’ what m’lord Starwind is gonna tell ye—m’lord, you tell ’im; ’e don’ believe ’is ol’ man that fightin’ ain’t good fer nothin’ but fillin’ up graveyards.”

  “Young man,” Starwind fixed the boy with an earnest stare. “There is nothing ‘fine’ about warfare. There is nothing ‘glorious’ about battle. All that a war means to such as you and I is that people we know and love will die, probably senselessly; others will be crippled for life—and the fools who began it all will sit back in their high castles and plot a way to get back what they lost. If there were to be a war—which, trust me, Phellip, I shall try most earnestly to prevent—the very best you could hope for, young man, would be to see these lovely fields around you put to the torch so that you would face a very hungry winter. That is what warfare is all about. The only justifiable fight is a defensive one, and in any fight it is the innocents who ultimately suffer the most.”

  The boy didn’t look convinced.

  Vanyel cleared his throat, and the boy shot a look at him. “Pretty exciting, the way that drake just nipped off that fool old man’s head, wasn’t it, Starwind?” he drawled, in exaggerated imitation of some of the young courtiers of his own circle.

  The boy paled, then reddened—but before he could burst into either tears or angry words, Vanyel looked him straight in the eyes so fiercely that he could not look away.

  “That’s what you’ll see in a war, Jo,” he said, harshly. “Not people in tales getting killed—your people getting killed. Younglings, oldsters—everybody. And some fool at the rear crowing about how exciting it all is. That’s what it’s about.”

  Now Jo looked stricken—and, perhaps, convinced. Out of the corner of his eye Vanyel saw the farmer nodding in approval.

  Out of nowhere, Vanyel felt a sudden rush of kindred feeling for these people. Suddenly they weren’t faceless, inscrutable monoliths anymore—suddenly they were people. People who were in some ways a great deal more like him than his own relatives were. They had lives—and loves and cares.

  Their outlook on warfare was certainly closer to his than that of any of his blood relations.

  They aren’t that much different than me. Except—except that I can do something they can’t. I can—I can protect them when they can’t protect themselves. And they can do things I can’t. But I could learn to grow a carrot if I had to. It probably wouldn’t be a very good carrot, but I could grow one. They won’t ever be able to blast a colddrake.

  What does that mean, really? What does that say about my life? Why can I do these things, and not someone else—and what about the people out there who—who send drake-swarms out to eat helpless farmers? If I can protect people like this from people like them—doesn’t that mean—that I really have to?

  He looked up and saw his aunt’s eyes; she was watching the children at their chores, cleaning and chopping vegetables for a stew. Her expression was at once protective and worried.

  It’s the way Savil feels—it’s got to be. That’s why she’s a Herald.

  And suddenly Tylendel’s words came back to him; so clearly that it seemed for a moment as if Tylendel were sitting beside him again, murmuring into his ear.

  “. . . it’s a kind of hunger. I can’t help it. I’ve got these abilities, these Gifts, and I can’t not use them. I couldn’t sit here, knowing that there were people out there who need exactly the kind of help I can give them and not make the effort
to find them and take care of them.”

  Now he understood those words. Oh, the irony of it; this part of Tylendel that he had never been able to comprehend—now it was clear. Now that Tylendel was gone—now he understood.

  Oh, gods—

  He closed his eyes against the sting of tears.

  Oh, yes—now he understood. Because now he felt that way, too.

  Too late to share it.

  CHAPTER 14

  :WELL?: To all appearances, Savil was asleep beside the settlers’ stone hearth as she Mindspoke Starwind in Private-mode. In actuality, despite her weariness she was anything but sleepy, and was watching the fire through half-slitted eyes as she waited for the opportunity to confer with him. Her single word contained a world of overtones that she was fairly certain he’d pick up.

  :Interesting, on several levels,: he replied. He was lying on his back, arms beneath his head, his eyes also closed.

  The settlers—Savil had learned before the evening was over that they were calling their lands “Garthhold,” and that there were seven loosely-related families in the group—had offered the Tayledras and their friends unlimited hospitality. All four of them were bone-tired even after rest and tea, and it was agreed among the three adults that it would be no bad thing to take them up on it. They refused, however, to put anyone out of his bed. So after a dinner of bread and stew, they made it plain that they intended to sleep by the fireside. The four of them were currently rolled up in their cloaks, on sacks of straw to keep them off the stone of the floor, beside the glowing coals of the kitchen hearth.

  Vanyel was genuinely asleep. Savil wasn’t certain of Moondance; he was curled on his side, his face to the fire, as peaceful and serene as a child’s.

  By all rights, he should really be asleep. There’d been several injuries related to the colddrake’s attack and the hasty escapes, and Moondance had had his hands full Healing them. Then he had delegated himself magical assistant to getting the stockade back up. It had saved the Garthholders no end of effort to have the logs spell-raised back into place. He should have been exhausted.