The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  Dearest Vanyel; if only you were here! I can’t tell you how much I miss you. The Corey girls are quite sweet, but not terribly bright. A lot like the cousins, really. I know I should have written you before this, but I didn’t have much of a chance. Your arm should be better now. If only Father wasn’t so blind! What I’m learning is exactly what we were working out together.

  Vanyel took a deep breath against the surge of anger at Withen’s unreasonable attitude.

  But we both know how he is, so don’t argue with him, love. Just do what you’re told. It won’t be forever, really it won’t. Just—hold on. I’ll do what I can from this end. Lord Corey is a lot more reasonable than Father ever was and maybe I can get him talked into asking for you. Maybe that will work. Just be really good, and maybe Father will be happy enough with you to do that. Love, Liss.

  He folded the letter and tucked it away. Oh, Liss. Not a chance. Father would never let me go there, not after the way I’ve been avoiding my practices. “It won’t be forever,” hmm? I suppose that’s right. I probably won’t live past the next time Jervis manages to catch up with me. Gods. Why is it that nobody ever asks me what I want—or when they do ask, why can’t they mean it and listen to me?

  He blinked, and looked again at the little figures below, still pounding away at one another, like so many tent pegs determined to drive each other into the ground.

  He turned restlessly away from the window, stood up, and replaced the lute in the makeshift stand he’d contrived for it beside his other two instruments.

  And everywhere I turn I get the same advice. From Liss—“don’t fight, do what Father asks.” From Mother—crying, vapors, and essentially the same thing. She’s not exactly stupid; if she really cared about me, she could manage Father somehow. But she doesn’t care—not when backing me against Father is likely to cost her something. And when I tried to tell Father Leren about what Jervis was really like—

  He shuddered. The lecture about filial duty was bad enough—but the one about “proper masculine behavior”—you’d have thought I’d been caught fornicating with sheep! And all because I objected to having my bones broken. It’s like I’m doing something wrong somewhere, but no one will tell me what it is and why it’s wrong! I thought maybe Father Leren would understand since he’s a priest, but gods, there’s no help coming from that direction.

  For a moment he felt trapped up here; the secure retreat turned prison. He didn’t dare go out, or he’d be caught and forced into that despised armor—and Jervis would lay into him with a vengeful glee to make up for all the practices he’d managed to avoid. He looked wistfully beyond the practice field to the wooded land and meadows beyond. It was such a beautiful day; summer was just beginning, and the breeze blowing in his open window was heady with the aroma of the hayfields in the sun. He longed to be out walking or riding beneath those trees; he was as trapped by the things he didn’t dare do as by the ones he had to.

  Tomorrow I’ll have to go riding out with Father on his rounds, he gloomed. And no getting out of that. He’ll have me as soon as I come down for breakfast.

  That was a new torment, added since he’d recovered. It was nearly as bad as being under Jervis’ thumb. He shuddered, thinking of all those farmers, staring, staring—like they were trying to stare into his soul. This was not going to be a pleasure jaunt, for all that he loved to ride. No, he would spend the entire day listening to his father lecture him on the duties of the Lord Holder to the tenants who farmed for him and the peasant-farmers who held their lands under his protection and governance. But that was not the worst aspect of the ordeal.

  It was the people themselves; the way they measured him with their eyes, opaque eyes full of murky thoughts that he could not read. Eyes that expected everything of him; that demanded things of him that he did not want to give, and didn’t know how to give even if he had wanted to.

  I don’t want them looking to me like that! I don’t want to be responsible for their lives! He shuddered again. I wouldn’t know what to do in a drought or an invasion, and what’s more, I don’t care! Gods, they make my skin crawl, all those—people, eating me alive with their eyes—

  He turned away from the window, and knelt beside his instruments; stretched out his hand, and touched the smooth wood, the taut strings. Oh, gods—if I weren’t me—if I could just have a chance to be a Bard—

  In the days before his arm had been hurt he had often imagined himself a Court Bard, not in some out-of-the-way corner like Forst Reach, but one of the Great Courts; Gyrefalcon’s Marches or Southron Keep. Or even the High Court of Valdemar at Haven. Imagined himself the center of a circle of admirers, languid ladies and jewel-bedecked lords, all of them hanging enraptured on every word of his song. He could let his imagination transport him to a different life, the life of his dreams. He could actually see himself surrounded, not by the girls of Treesa’s bower, but by the entire High Court of Valdemar, from Queen Elspeth down, until the visualization was more real than his true surroundings. He could see, hear, feel, all of them waiting in impatient anticipation for him to sing—the bright candles, the perfume, the pregnant silence—

  Now even that was lost to him. Now practices were solitary, for there was no Lissa to listen to new tunes. Lissa had been a wonderful audience; she had a good ear, and knew enough about music to be trusted to tell him the truth. She had been the only person in the keep besides Treesa who didn’t seem to think there was something faintly shameful about his obsession with music. And she was the only one who knew of his dream of becoming a Bard.

  There were no performances before his mother’s ladies, either, because he refused to let them hear him fumble.

  And all because of the lying, bullying bastard his father had made armsmaster—

  “Withen—”

  He froze; startled completely out of his brooding by the sound of his mother’s breathless, slightly shrill voice just beyond the tiny door to the library. He knelt slowly and carefully, avoiding the slightest noise. The last thing he wanted was to have his safe hiding place discovered!

  “Withen, what is it you’ve dragged me up here to tell me that you couldn’t have said in my solar?” she asked. Vanyel could tell by the edge in her voice that she was ruffled and not at all pleased.

  Vanyel held his breath, and heard the sound of the library door being closed, then his father’s heavy footsteps crossing the library floor.

  A long, ponderous silence. Then, “I’m sending Vanyel away,” Withen said, brusquely.

  “What?” Treesa shrilled. “You—how—where—why? In the gods’ names, Withen, why?”

  Vanyel felt as if someone had turned his heart into stone, and his body into clay.

  “I can’t do anything with the boy, Treesa, and neither can Jervis,” Withen growled. “I’m sending him to someone who can make something of him.”

  “You can’t do anything because the two of you seem to think to ‘make something of him’ you have to force him to be something he can never be!” Treesa’s voice was muffled by the intervening wall, but the note of hysteria was plain all the same. “You put him out there with a man twice his weight and expect him to—”

  “To behave like a man! He’s a sniveler, a whiner, Treesa. He’s more worried about damage to his pretty face and delicate little hands than damage to his honor, and you don’t help matters by making him the pet of the bower. Treesa, the boy’s become nothing more than a popinjay, a vain little peacock—and worse than that, he’s a total coward.”

  “A coward! Gods, Withen—only you would say that!” Lady Treesa’s voice was thick with scorn. “Just because he’s too clever to let that precious armsmaster of yours beat him insensible once a day!”

  “So what does he do instead? Run off and hide because once—just once—he got his poor little arm broken! Great good gods, I’d broken every bone in my body at least once by the time I was his age!”

&nbs
p; “Is that supposed to signify virtue?” she scoffed. “Or stupidity?”

  Vanyel’s mouth sagged open. She’s—my gods! She’s standing up to him! I don’t believe this!

  “It signifies the willingness to endure a little discomfort in order to learn,” Withen replied angrily. “Thanks to you and your fosterlings, all Vanyel’s ever learned was how to select a tunic that matches his eyes, and how to warble a love song! He’s too damned handsome for his own good—and you’ve spoiled him, Treesa; you’ve let him trade on that pretty face, get away with nonsense and arrogance you’d never have permitted in Mekeal. And now he has no sense of responsibility whatsoever, he avoids even a hint of obligation.”

  “You’d prefer him to be like Mekeal, I suppose,” she replied acidly. “You’d like him to hang on your every word and never question you, never challenge you—”

  “Damned right!” Withen roared in frustration. “The boy doesn’t know his damned place! Filling his head with book-learned nonsense—”

  “He doesn’t know his place? Because he can think for himself? Just because he can read and write more than his bare name? Unlike certain grown men I could name—gods, Withen, that priest of yours has you parroting every little nuance, doesn’t he? And you’re sending Van away because he doesn’t measure up to his standards of propriety, aren’t you? Because Vanyel has the intelligence to question what he’s told, and Leren doesn’t like questions!” Her voice reached new heights of shrillness. “That priest has you so neatly tied around his ankle that you wouldn’t breathe unless he declared breathing was orthodox enough!”

  —ah, Vanyel thought, a part of his mind still working, while the rest sat in stunned contemplation of the idea of being “sent away.” Now Treesa’s support had a rational explanation. Lady Treesa did not care for Father Leren. Vanyel was just a convenient reason to try to drive a wedge between Withen and his crony.

  Although Vanyel could have told her that this was exactly the wrong way to go about doing so.

  “I expected you’d say something like that,” Withen rumbled. “You have no choice, Treesa, the boy is going, whether you like it or not. I’m sending him to Savil at the High Court. She’ll brook no nonsense, and once he’s in surroundings where he’s not the only pretty face in the place he might learn to do something besides lisp a ballad and moon at himself in the mirror.”

  “Savil? That old harridan?” His mother’s voice rose with each word until she was shrieking. Vanyel wanted to shriek, too.

  He remembered his first—and last—encounter with his Aunt Savil only too well.

  • • •

  Vanyel had bowed low to the silver-haired stranger, a woman clad in impeccable Heraldic Whites, contriving his best imitation of courtly manner. Herald Savil—who had packed herself up at the age of fourteen and hied herself off to Haven without word to anyone, and then been Chosen the moment she passed the city gates—was Lissa’s idol. Lissa had pestered Grandmother Ashkevron for every tale about Savil that the old woman knew. Vanyel couldn’t understand why—but if Lissa admired this woman so much, surely there must be more to her than appeared on the surface.

  It was a pity that Liss was visiting cousins the one week her idol chose to make an appearance at the familial holding.

  But then again—maybe that was exactly as Withen had planned.

  “So this is Vanyel,” the woman had said, dryly. “A pretty boy, Treesa. I trust he’s something more than ornamental.”

  Vanyel went rigid at her words, then rose from his bow and fixed her with what he hoped was a cool, appraising stare. Gods, she looked like his father in the right light; like Lissa, she had that Ashkevron nose, a nose that both she and Withen thrust forward like a sharp blade to cleave all before them.

  “Oh, don’t glare at me, child,” the woman said with amusement. “I’ve had better men than you try to freeze me with a look and fail.”

  He flushed. She turned away from him as if he was of no interest, turning back to Vanyel’s mother, who was clutching a handkerchief at her throat. “So, Treesa, has the boy shown any sign of Gift or Talent?”

  “He sings beautifully,” Treesa fluttered. “Really, he’s as good as any minstrel we’ve ever had.”

  The woman turned and stared at him—stared through him. “Potential, but nothing active,” Savil said slowly. “A pity; I’d hoped at least one of your offspring would share my Gifts. You can certainly afford to spare one to the Queen’s service. But the girls don’t even have potential Gifts, your four other boys are worse than this one, and this one doesn’t appear to be much more than a clotheshorse for all his potential.”

  She waved a dismissing hand at him, and Vanyel’s face had burned.

  “I’ve seen what I came to see, Treesa,” she said, leading Vanyel’s mother off by the elbow. “I won’t stress your hospitality anymore.”

  • • •

  From all Vanyel had heard, Savil was, in many ways, not terribly unlike her brother; hard, cold, and unforgiving, preoccupied with what she perceived as her duty. She had never wedded; Vanyel was hardly surprised. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to bed Savil’s chill arrogance. He couldn’t imagine why warm, loving Lissa wanted to be like her.

  Now his mother was weeping hysterically; his father was making no effort to calm her. By that, Vanyel knew there was no escaping the disastrous plan. Incoherent hysterics were his mother’s court of last resort; if they were failing, there was no hope for him.

  “Give it up, Treesa,” Withen said, unmoved, his voice rock-steady. “The boy goes. Tomorrow.”

  “You—unfeeling monster—” That was all that was understandable through Treesa’s weeping. Vanyel heard the staccato beat of her slippers on the floor as she ran out the library door, then the slower, heavier sound of his father’s boots. Then the sound of the door closing—

  —as leaden and final as the door on a tomb.

  CHAPTER 2

  VANYEL STUMBLED OVER to his old chair and collapsed into its comfortable embrace.

  He couldn’t think. Everything had gone numb. He stared blankly at the tiny rectangle of blue sky framed by the window; just sat, and stared. He wasn’t even aware of the passing of time until the sun began shining directly into his eyes.

  He winced away from the light; that broke his bewildered trance, and he realized dully that the afternoon was gone—that someone would start looking for him to call him for supper soon, and he’d better be back in his room.

  He slouched dispiritedly over to the window, and peered out of it, making the automatic check to see if there was anyone below who could spot him. But even as he did so it occurred to him that it hardly mattered if they found his hideaway, considering what he’d just overheard.

  There was no one on the practice field now; just the empty square of turf, a chicken on the loose pecking at something in the grass. From this vantage the keep might well have been deserted.

  Vanyel turned around and reached over his head, grabbing the rough stone edging the window all around the exterior, and levered himself up and out onto the sill. Once balanced there in a half crouch, he stepped down onto the ledge that ran around the edge of the roof, then reached around the gable and got a good handhold on the slates of the roof itself, and began inching over to his bedroom window.

  Halfway between the two windows, he paused for a moment to look down.

  It isn’t all that far—if I fell just right, the worst I’d do is break a leg—then they couldn’t send me off, could they? It might be worth it. It just might be worth it.

  He thought about that—and thought about the way his broken arm had hurt—

  Not a good idea; with my luck, Father would send me off as soon as I was patched up; just load me up in a wagon like a sack of grain. “Deliver to Herald Savil, no special handling.” Or worse, I’d break my arm again, or both arms. I’ve got a chance to make that hand work again—m
aybe—but if I break it this time there isn’t a Healer around to make sure it’s set right.

  Vanyel swung his legs into the room, balanced for a moment on the sill, then dropped onto his bed. Once there, he lacked the spirit to even move. He slumped against the wall and stared at the sloping, whitewashed ceiling.

  He tried to think if there was anything he could do to get himself out of this mess. He couldn’t come up with a single idea that seemed at all viable. It was too late to “mend his ways” even if he wanted to.

  No—no. I can’t, absolutely can’t face that sadistic bastard Jervis. Though I’m truly not sure which is the worst peril at this point in the long run, Aunt Ice-and-Iron or Jervis. I know what he’ll do to me. I haven’t a clue to her.

  He sagged, and bit his lip, trying to stay in control, trying to think logically. All he knew was that Savil would have the worst possible report on him; and at Haven—the irony of the name!—he would have no allies, no hiding places. That was the worst of it; going off into completely foreign territory knowing that everybody there had been told how awful he was. That they would just be waiting for him to make a slip. All the time. But there was no getting out of it. For all that Treesa petted and cosseted him, Vanyel knew better than to rely on her for anything, or expect her to ever defy Withen. That brief flair during their argument had been the exception; Treesa’s real efforts always lay in keeping her own life comfortable and amusing. She’d cry for Vanyel, but she’d never defend him. Not like Lissa might well have—

  If Lissa had been here.

  When the page came around to call everyone to dinner, he managed to stir up enough energy to dust himself off and obey the summons, but he had no appetite at all.

  The highborn of Forst Reach ate late, a candlemark after the servants, hirelings and the armsmen had eaten, since the Great Hall was far too small to hold everyone at once. The torches and lanterns had already been lit along the worn stone-floored corridors; they did nothing to dispel the darkness of Vanyel’s heart. He trudged along the dim corridors and down the stone stairs, ignoring the servants trotting by him on errands of their own. Since his room was at the servants’ end of the keep, he had a long way to go to get to the Great Hall.