The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  Once there, he waited in the sheltering darkness of the doorway to assess the situation in the room beyond.

  As usual he was nearly the last one to table; as far as he could tell, only his Aunt Serina was missing, and she might well have eaten earlier, with the children. Carefully watching for the best opportunity to do so undetected, he slipped into his seat beside his brother Mekeal at the low table during a moment when Lord Withen was laughing at some joke of Father Leren’s. The usually austere cleric seemed in a very good mood tonight, and Vanyel’s heart sank. If Leren was pleased, it probably didn’t bode Vanyel any good.

  “Where were you this afternoon?” Mekeal asked, as he wiggled over to give Vanyel a place on the bench, interrupting his noisy inhalation of soup.

  Vanyel shrugged. “Does it matter?” he asked, trying to sound indifferent. “It’s no secret how I feel about that nonsense, and it’s no secret how Jervis feels about me. So does it really matter where I was?”

  Mekeal chuckled into his bowl. “Probably not. You know Jervis’ll just be harder on you when you do get caught. And you’re going to get caught one of these days. You’re looking for another broken arm, if you’re lucky. If that’s the way you want it, on your head be it.”

  So Father hasn’t said anything yet—Vanyel thought with surprise, his spoon poised above the soup. He glanced over at the head table. Lady Treesa was in her accustomed place beside her lord. And she didn’t look any more upset than she usually did; she certainly showed no signs of the hysterics Vanyel had overheard this afternoon.

  Could she actually have stood up for me, just this once? Could she have gotten him to back down? Oh, gods, if only!

  The renewal of hope did not bring a corresponding renewal of appetite; the tension only made his stomach knot up all the more. The room seemed far too hot; he loosened the laces of his tunic, but that didn’t help. The flames of the lamps on the wall behind him made the shadows dance on the table, until he had to close his eyes and take several deep breaths to get his equilibrium back. He felt flushed and feverish, and after only a few mouthfuls of the thick, swiftly cooling soup that seemed utterly tasteless, he signaled to a servant to take it away.

  He squirmed uncomfortably on the wooden bench, and pushed the rest of his meal around on his plate with one eye always on the high table and his father. The high table was high; raised on a dais a good hand above the rest of the room, and set at the head of the low table like the upper bar of a “T.” That meant that it overlooked and overshadowed the low table. Vanyel could feel the presence of those sitting there looming over him even at those few times when he wasn’t watching them. With each course his stomach seemed to acquire another lump, a colder and harder one, until he finally gave up all pretense of eating.

  Then, just at the dessert course, when he thought he might be saved, his father rose to his feet.

  Lord Withen towered over the table as he towered over Vanyel and everything belonging to Forst Reach. He prided himself on being a “plain man,” close enough in outlook to any of his men that they could feel easy with him. His sturdy brown leather tunic and linen shirt were hardly distinguishable from the garb of any of the hireling armsmen; the tunic was decorated with polished silver studs instead of copper, but that was the only token of his rank. The tunic strained across his broad shoulders—and across the barest hint of a paunch. His long, dark hair was confined in a tail at the nape of his neck by a silver band, his beard trimmed close to his square jawline.

  Vanyel’s changeling appearance, especially when contrasted with Mekeal’s, may have been one reason why Withen seemed to be irritated whenever he looked at his eldest son. Vanyel was lean, and not particularly tall; Mekeal was tall and muscular, already taller than Vanyel although he was two years younger. Vanyel’s hair was so black it had blue highlights, and his eyes were a startling silver-gray, exactly like his mother’s—and he had no facial hair to speak of. Mekeal’s eyes were a chestnut brown, he already had to shave, and his hair matched his father’s so closely that it would not have been possible to tell which of them a particular plucked hair came from.

  Mekeal made friends as easily as breathing—

  I never had anyone but Lissa.

  Mekeal was tone-deaf; Vanyel lived for music. Mekeal suffered through his scholastic lessons; Vanyel so far exceeded his brother that there was no comparison.

  In short, Mekeal was completely his father’s son; Vanyel was utterly Withen’s opposite.

  Perhaps that was all in Withen’s mind as he rose and spared a glance for his first-and-second-born sons, before fixing his gaze on nothing in particular. The lanterns behind Withen danced, and his shadow reached halfway down the low table. As that stark shadow darkened the table, it blackened Vanyel’s rising hope.

  “After due consideration,” Withen rumbled, “I have decided that it is time for Vanyel to acquire education of a kind—more involved than we can give him here. So tonight will be the last night he is among us. Tomorrow he will begin a journey to my sister, Herald-Mage Savil at the High Court of Valdemar, who will take official guardianship of him until he is of age.”

  Withen sat down heavily.

  Treesa burst into a tearful wail, and shoved herself away from the table; as she stood, her chair went over with a clatter that sounded, in the unnatural silence that now filled the Great Hall, as loud as if the entire table were collapsing. She ran from the room, sobbing into her sleeve, as Withen maintained a stony silence. Her fosterlings and ladies followed her, and only Melenna cast an unreadable glance over her shoulder at Vanyel before trailing off in the wake of the others.

  Everyone in the silent room seemed to have been frozen by an evil spell.

  Finally Withen reached forward and took a walnut from the bowl before him; he nestled it in his palm and cracked it in his bare hands. Vanyel jumped at the sound, and he wasn’t the only one.

  “Very good nuts last year, don’t you think?” Withen said to Father Leren.

  That seemed to be the signal for the entire room to break out in frantic babbling. On Vanyel’s right, three of his cousins began laying noisy bets on the outcome of a race between Radevel and Kerle on the morrow. On his right, Radevel whispered to Mekeal, while across the table from him his youngest brother Heforth exchanged punches and pokes with cousin Larence.

  Vanyel was pointedly ignored. He might just as well have been invisible, except for the sly, sidelong looks he was getting. And not just from the youngsters, either. When he looked up at the high table once, he caught Father Leren staring at him and smiling slyly. When their eyes met, the priest nodded very slightly, gave Vanyel a look brimming with self-satisfaction, and only then turned his attention back toward Withen. During that silent exchange—which nobody else seemed to have noticed—Vanyel had felt himself grow pale and cold.

  As the dessert course was cleared away, the elders left the hall on affairs of their own, and a few of the girls—more of Vanyel’s cousins—returned; a sign that Lady Treesa had retired for the night.

  The boys and young men remaining now rose from their seats; the young usually reigned over the hall undisturbed after dinner. With the girls that had returned they formed three whispering, giggling groups; two sets of four and one of eleven—all three groups blatantly closing Vanyel out. Even the girls seemed to have joined in the conspiracy to leave him utterly alone.

  Vanyel pretended not to notice the muttering, the jealous glances. He rose from the bench a few moments after the rest had abandoned him, making it a point of honor to saunter over to stare into the fire in the great fireplace. He walked with head high, features schooled into a careful mask of bored indifference.

  He could feel their eyes on the back of his neck, but he refused to turn, refused to show any emotion at all, much less how queasy their behavior was making him feel.

  Finally, when he judged that he had made his point, he stretched, yawned, and turned. He surve
yed the entire room through half-closed eyelids for a long moment, his own gaze barely brushing each of them, then paced lazily across the endless length of the Great Hall, pausing only to nod a cool good night to the group nearest the door before—finally!—achieving the sanctuary of the dark hallway beyond it.

  • • •

  “Ye gods, you’d think he was the Heir to the Throne!” Sandar exclaimed, rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands. “Queen Elspeth herself wouldn’t put on such airs!”

  Eighteen-year-old Joserlin Corveau stared after the lad for a long moment, putting his thoughts together. He was the oldest of the fosterlings, and the latest-come. Really, he wasn’t properly a fosterling at all, nor a close cousin. A true cousin, childless after many years, had decided on Joserlin as his Heir and (as he himself was not in the best of health) requested he be fostered to Lord Withen to learn the ways of governance of one’s Holdings. He was broad and tall as any of the doors to the keep, and even Jervis respected the power of his young muscles. After a single practice session with young Jos, Jervis had decreed that he was old enough to train with Withen’s armsmen. After seeing the way Jervis “trained” the boys, Jos had been quite content to have it so.

  Some of the younger boys had made the mistake of thinking that his slow speech and large build meant that he was stupid. They had quickly discovered their mistake when he’d gotten them with well-timed jokes.

  He liked to say of himself that while he didn’t think quickly, he did think things through all the way. And there were aspects of this vaguely disturbing evening that were not adding together properly in his mind.

  Meanwhile the rest of his group continued dissecting Withen’s least-beloved offspring.

  “He thinks he is the Heir to the Throne,” giggled Jyllian, swishing her skirts coquettishly. “Or at least, that the rest of us are that far below him. You should see him, lording it over us in the bower!” She stuck her nose in the air and mimed looking down it while playing a make-believe lute. “But just try and get anything out of him besides a song! Brrr! Watch the snow fall! You’d think we were poison-vellis, the way he pulls away and goes cold!”

  Mekeal snorted, tossing his head. “Thinks he’s too good for you, I s’ppose! Nothing high enough for him but a lady of the blood-royal, no doubt! Thinks girls like you aren’t lofty enough.”

  “Or not pretty enough,” snickered Merthin. “Havens, give it a thought—none of you little lovelies are even a close match for His Majesty’s sweet face. Can’t have his lady less beautiful than he is, after all.”

  “I don’t doubt.” Larence put in his bit, coming up behind Merthin. “Well, he’ll find he’s not the only pretty face when he gets to the High Court. He just might find himself standing in somebody’s shadow for a change! Take my word for it, dear little Vanyel is going to get a rude awakening when he gets to Haven.”

  “Dammit, it’s not fair,” Mekeal grumbled, face clouding at this reminder of Vanyel’s destination. “I’d give my arm to go to Haven! I mean, think of it; the best fighters in the country are there—it’s the center of everything!” He flung his hands wide, nearly hitting Merthin, in a gesture of total frustration. “How’m I ever going to get a—an officer’s commission or any kind of position when nobody with any say at Court is ever going to see me? That’s why they sent m’sister off to be fostered right near there! You have a chance to get noticed at Court! She’s going to be an officer, you can bet on it, an’ best I’ll ever get is maybe a Sector command, which means not one damn thing! I need to be at Court; I ain’t going to inherit! I’m the one that should be going, not Vanyel! It’s not fair!”

  “Huh. You’ve got that right,” Larence echoed, shifting his feet restlessly. “Dammit, we’re all seconds, thirds—we all need a chance like that, or we’ll be stuck doing nothing at the end of nowhere for the rest of our lives! We’re never going to get anywhere, stuck off here in the back of beyond.”

  “And think of the ladies,” added Kerle, rolling his eyes up and kissing his hand at the ceiling. “All the loveliest darlings in the kingdom.”

  He ducked, laughing, as Jyllian feinted a blow at his head, then shook her fist at him in mock-anger.

  “Dammit, think a bit,” Mekeal persisted. “What in Haven’s name has he done to deserve getting rewarded like that? All he does around here is play he’s a minstrel, look down that long nose of his at the rest of us, and shirk every duty he can!” Mekeal glowered and pounded his fist into the palm of his other hand to emphasize his words. “He’s Mother’s little darling, but—there’s no way she’d have talked Father into sending him off, you all saw how she acted! So why? Why him, when the rest of us would die to get a chance to go to the capital?”

  Joserlin continued to stare off into the dark; he was still putting together what he’d been observing. Everyone looked expectantly at him when Mekeal subsided and he cleared his throat. They all knew at this point that he was not the bright intellectual light among his brothers and cousins that Vanyel was, but he had a knack of seeing to the heart of things, and they wanted to hear if he had an answer for them. He usually did, and as they had half expected, this time was no exception.

  “What makes you all think it’s a reward?” he asked quietly.

  The astonishment in the faces turned to his, followed by the light of dawning understanding, made him nod as he saw them come to the same conclusion he had made.

  “You see?” he said, just as quietly as before. “It isn’t a reward for Vanyel—it’s an exile.”

  • • •

  Vanyel didn’t have to control his trembling when he reached the safe, concealing shelter of the hallway, but he didn’t dare pause there. Someone might take it into his or her head to follow him.

  But what he could do—now that he was out of the range of prying, curious eyes and ears—was run.

  So he did, though he ran as noiselessly as he could, fleeing silently behind his shadow through the dim, uncertain light of the hallways. His flight took him past the dark, closed doorways leading to the bower, to bachelor’s hall, to the chapel. His shadow sprang up before him every time he passed a lantern or torch, splaying out thin and spidery on the floor. He kept his head down so that if anyone should happen to come out of one of those doorways, they wouldn’t see how close he was to tears.

  But no one appeared; he reached the safe shelter of the servants’ wing without encountering a single soul. Once there he dashed heedlessly up the stone staircase. Someone had extinguished the lanterns on the staircase itself; Vanyel didn’t care. He’d run up these stairs often enough when half blind from trying not to cry, and his feet knew the way themselves.

  He hit the top landing at a dead run, and made the last few feet to his own door in a few heartbeats. He was sobbing for breath as he fumbled out his key in the dark and unlocked it—and the tears were threatening to spill.

  Spill they did as soon as he got the door open. He shut and locked it behind him, leaning his back against it, head thrown back and resting against the rough wood. He swallowed his sobs out of sheer, prideful refusal to let anyone know of his unhappiness, even a servant, but hot tears poured down his cheeks and soaked into the neck of his tunic, and he couldn’t make them stop.

  They hate me. They all hate me. I knew they didn’t much like me, but I never knew how much they hated me.

  Never had he felt so utterly alone and nakedly vulnerable. At that moment if he could have ensured his death he’d have thrown himself out of his window. But as he’d noted earlier, it wasn’t that far to the ground, and pain was a worse prospect than loneliness.

  Finally he stumbled to his bed, pulled his clothing off, and crawled under the blankets, shivering with the need to keep from crying out loud.

  But despite his best efforts, the tears started again, and he muffled his sobs in his pillow.

  Oh, Liss—oh, Liss—I don’t know what to do! Nobody cares, nobody giv
es a damn about me, nobody would ever risk a hangnail for me but you—and they’ve taken you out of reach. I’m afraid, and I’m alone, and Father’s trying to break me, I know he is.

  He turned over, and stared into the darkness above him, feeling his eyes burn. I wish I could die. Now.

  He tried to will his heart to stop, but it obstinately ignored him.

  Why can’t they just leave me alone? He closed his burning eyes, and bit his lip. Why?

  He lay in his bed, feeling every lump in the mattress, every prickle in the sheets; every muscle was tensed until it ached, his head was throbbing, and his eyes still burned.

  He lay there for at least an eternity, but the oblivion he hoped for didn’t come. Finally he gave up on trying to sleep, fumbled for the candle at his bedside, and slid out into the stuffy darkness of the room. He grabbed up his robe from the foot of the bed and pulled it on over his trembling, naked body, and began crossing the floor to the door.

  Though the room itself was warm—too warm—the tiled floor was shockingly cold under his feet. He felt his way to the door, and pressed his ear against the crack at the side, listening with all his might for any sounds from the corridor and stairs beyond.

  Nothing.

  He cautiously slipped the inside bolt; listened again. Still nothing. He cracked the door and peered around the edge into the corridor.

  It was thankfully empty. But the nearest lantern was all the way down at the dead end.

  He took a deep breath and drew himself up; standing as tall and resolutely erect as if he were Lord of the Keep himself. He walked calmly, surely, down the empty corridor, with just as much arrogance as if all his cousins’ eyes were on him. Because there was no telling when one of the upper servants who had their rooms along this hall might take it into their heads to emerge—and servants talked. Frequently.