The Last Herald-Mage Trilogy Read online

  She paused, then looked up, very shyly, with none of her usual coquettishness. “We were terribly frightened, milord Van. I mean, I know you and milady Savil are magicians, and I’m sure it all seems very tame to you, but—we’ve never seen magic like that. Furniture—just shouldn’t do that. I’m going to feel funny sitting on a chair for the next week, wondering if it’s going to take it into its head to fly.”

  Vanyel almost felt himself liking her, for the first time in years. “I can’t say I blame you; I keep forgetting most of you have never even seen me do—oh, this.”

  He made a tiny mage-light in the center of the palm of his outstretched hand. It was about all he had the energy for, and it impressed the ladies out of all proportion to its size. They ooh’d and ah’d, but they did not come any nearer.

  “Milord Van,” Melenna said, recapturing his attention, “there’s something you really need to know. Nothing hit anyone. Nothing even came close. Even when those horrid cherubs hit the wall and shattered, no one was cut, no one was hurt. And do you know, that almost made the whole thing scarier.”

  Vanyel nodded; this incident only confirmed his feeling that the youngster couldn’t have been guilty of that wholesale slaughter in Lineas. If he didn’t remember what had happened, it could have been sheer terror that made his mind hide the memory.

  But he found himself seeing the other possibilities.

  That works both ways. He could have done it, just as Lores pointed out. And because he’s basically a good lad, the sheer horror of what he did made his mind hide the memory so deeply there was no sign of it.

  He shivered, in a preoccupied way, and drifted out of the bower, ignoring the following gazes of Treesa, her ladies, and Melenna.

  • • •

  He dressed and ate, all in a fog comprised of weariness and preoccupation. It was hours later when he finally faced the obvious—that he’d put a very vulnerable young man in the hands of someone who had abused him.

  He wouldn’t. Would he? Oh, gods.

  He went looking for Jervis in a state of increasing alarm, and found him in the salle, working out against the pells. And by the time he found the armsmaster, he was ready to kill the man himself if Jervis had even thought of bullying the boy.

  Bluff him. He doesn’t know how worn out I am. If I go on the offensive right away, he won’t have time to think.

  Planting both feet firmly on the sanded wooden floor, he took an aggressive stance, arms crossed over his chest. “Jervis,” he called, loudly enough to be heard over the racket of practice blade against pells.

  The armsmaster pivoted and pulled off his helm. He must have been at the exercise for some time; sweat beaded his brow, and dripped off the ends of his hair. “Aye?”

  Vanyel did not move. “One word for you. I don’t know what this game you’ve been playing with me means, and at this point I don’t dare take any chances. I’m warning you now; harm Medren—harm Tashir—you’ll be dealing with me. Not Herald Vanyel—plain Vanyel Ashkevron. And you know now I can take you; any time, any place; with magic, or without. And I won’t hesitate to use any weapon I’ve got.”

  Jervis flushed; looked dumbfounded. “Harm ’em? Me? What d’you take me for?”

  “The man who broke my arm, Jervis. The man who’s been trying to intimidate me on this very floor for the past week. The man that was too damned inflexible to suit the style to the boy—so he tried to break the boy.”

  Jervis flung his helm down, going scarlet with anger. The helm dented the floor and rolled off. “Dammit, you fool! Don’t you see that was what I was tryin’ t’do? I was tryin’ t’learn your damned style—and for Medren! Hellfire! A fool could see that poor little sprout Medren was no more suited t’ my way then puttin’ armor on a palfrey!”

  Vanyel felt as if someone had just dropped him into a vat of cold water. He blinked, relaxed his stance, and blinked again. Feeling poleaxed is getting to become a regular occurrence, he thought, trying to get his jaw hinged again. His knees were trembling so much with reaction that he wasn’t certain they’d hold him.

  Jervis saved him the trouble. He threw his gear over into his chest at the side of the practice area, stalked over to Vanyel’s side, and took his elbow. “Look,” he said, gruffly, “I’m tired, and we’ve got a lot between us that needs talking about. Let’s go get a damned drink and settle it.”

  • • •

  I shouldn’t be drinking unwatered wine this tired, Vanyel thought, regarding the plain clay mug Jervis was filling with unease.

  It seemed Jervis had already thought of that. “Here,” he said, taking a loaf of coarse bread, a round of cheese, and a knife out of the same cupboard that had held the mugs and wine bottle, and shoving them across the trestle table at Vanyel. “Eat something first, or you’ll be sorry. Not a good idea t’ be guzzling this stuff if you ain’t used t’ it, but there’s some pain between us, boy, and I need the wine t’ get it out, even if you don’t.”

  They were still in the armory, in a little back room that was part office, part repair-shop, and part infirmary. Vanyel was sitting on a cot with his back braced against the wall; Jervis was on the room’s only chair, with the table between and a little to one side of them, a table he’d cleaned of bits of harness and an arm-brace and tools by the simple expedient of sweeping it all into a box and shoving the box under the table with his foot.

  The armsmaster followed his own advice by hacking off a chunk of bread and cheese and bolting it, before taking a long swallow of his wine. Vanyel did the same, a little more slowly. Jervis sat hunched over for a long moment, his elbows on his knees, contemplating the contents of the mug held between his callused hands.

  “Do you begin,” Van asked awkwardly, “or should I?”

  “Me. Your father—” Jervis began, and coughed. “You know I owe him, owe him for takin’ me on permanent. Oh, he owed me some, a little matter of watchin’ his back once, but not what I figured would put me here as armsmaster. So I figure that put me on the debit side of the ledger, eh? Well, that was all right for a while, though it weren’t no easy thing, makin’ fighters out of a bunch of plowboys an’ second an’ third sons what couldn’t find the right end of a spear with both hands an’ a map. Your granther—he reckoned it best t’hire what he needed. Your father—he figured best t’ train his own, an’ that was why he kept me. Gods. Plowboys, kids, it was a damn mess. No, it weren’t easy. But I did it, I did it—an’ then along comes you, first-born, an’ Withen calls in the real debt.”

  The former mercenary sighed, and wiped his forehead with the back of his hand. He gave Vanyel a measuring look before taking another drink and continuing. “I ’spect by now it ain’t gonna come as a surprise t’ hear your old man figured you for—what’re they sayin’ now, shaych?—yeah, figured you for that from the time you came outa the nursery. Times were you looked more girl than boy—gah, that stuck in his craw for sure. Hangin’ about with Liss, fightin’ shy of th’ foster-boys—then you took up with music, an’ gods, he was sure of it. Figured he could cure you if he made sure you never knew there was such a thing, and he got somebody t’ beat you into shape. That somebody was s’pposed t’ be me.”

  He stabbed a gnarled thumb toward his chest and snorted. “Me! Kernos’ Horns! ‘Make the boy a man,’ he says. ‘I don’t care what you have to do, just make ’im a man!’ An’ every day, just about, askin’ me how you was shapin’ up. I been under pressure before, but damn, this was enough t’ make an angel sweat. I owed that man, an’ what the hell was I supposed t’ do? Tell him I never saw no beatin’s turn no kids from fey if that was how they was bent? Tell him there were no few of the mercs his father’d hired was shieldmates, an’ looked about as fey as me an’ fought like hell’s own demons?”

  “You could have tried—”

  Jervis snarled a little. “And lose my place? You think there’s jobs for old mercs ’round any corner? I was fl
at desperate, boy! What in hell was I supposed to do?”

  Vanyel bit back his resentment. “I didn’t know,” he said finally. “I didn’t guess.”

  Jervis grimaced. “You weren’t supposed to, boy. Well, hell, my style suited you, you poor little scrap, ’bout as well as teats on a bull. ’Bout the same as Medren.”

  “If you knew that—” Vanyel bit back his protest.

  “Yeah, I knew it. I just couldn’t face it. Then you went all stubborn on me, you damned well wouldn’t even try, an’ I didn’t know what the hell t’ do! I was ’bout ready t’ bust out, you made me so damned mad, an’ your old da on me every time I turned around—an’ if that weren’t enough, gods, I useta get nightmares ’bout you.”

  “Nightmares?” Vanyel asked. He knew he sounded skeptical, mostly because he was.

  “Yeah, nightmares,” Jervis said defensively. “Shit, you can’t live on the damn Border without seein’ fightin’ sooner or later. An’ you likely t’ get shoved out there with no more sense of what t’ do t’ keep yourself alive than a butterfly. Look, smart boy—you was firstborn; you bet I figured you for bein’ right in th’ front line some day, an’ I figured you for dead when that happened. An’ I don’t send childer outa my damned hands t’ get killed, dammit!”

  His face twisted and his shoulders shook for a moment, and he finished off the wine in his mug at a single gulp. Vanyel could sense more pain than he’d ever dreamed the old man could feel behind that carved-granite face. Somewhere, some time, Jervis had sent ill-prepared “childer” out of his hands to fight—and die—and the wounds were with him still. His own anger began to fade.

  “Well, that’s what you were headin’ straight for, boy, an’ I just plain didn’t know how t’ keep it from happening. You made me so damned mad, an’ then your old man just gave me too much leash. Told me I had a free hand with you. An’ I—lost it. I went an’ took the whole mess out of your hide.”

  He shook his head, staring at the floor, and his hands trembled a little where he was clutching the empty mug. “I lost my damned temper, boy. I’m not proud of that. I’m not proud of myself. Should have known better, but every time you whined, it just made me madder. An’ I was wrong, dead wrong, in what I was trying t’ force into you; I knew it, an’ that made me mad too. Then you pulled that last little stunt—that was it. You ever thought about what you did?”

  “I never stopped thinking about it,” Vanyel replied, after first swallowing nearly half the contents of his own mug. The wine could not numb the memories, recollections that were more acid on the back of his tongue than the cheap red wine.

  He looked fiercely into Jervis’s eyes. “I hated you,” he admitted angrily. “If I’d had a real knife in my hands that day, I think I’d have gone for your throat.” All the bitterness he’d felt, then and after, rose in his gullet, tasting of bile. He struggled against his closing throat to ask the question that had never been answered and had plagued him for more than a decade. “Why, Jervis, why?” he got past his clenched jaw. “If you knew what I was doing, why did you lie and tell Father I was cheating?”

  Silence; Jervis stared at him with anger mixed with shame, but it was the shame that won out. “Because I couldn’t admit I was wrong,” Jervis replied, subdued and flushing a dark red. “Because I couldn’t admit it to myself or anybody else. Couldn’t believe a kid had come up with the answer I couldn’t find. So I told Withen you’d cheated. Half believed it myself; couldn’t see how you’d’ve touched me, otherwise. But I—I’ve had a lot of time t’ think about it. Years, since you left. An’ you turnin’ out the way you did, a Herald an’ all—shit, anybody turned out like that wouldn’t cheat. Came to me after a while I never caught you in a lie, neither. Came to me that the only lies bein’ told were the ones I was tellin’. Then when I started t’ tell myself the truth, began t’ figure out how close I came t’ breakin’ more’n your arm.”

  He hung his head, and he wouldn’t look at Vanyel. And Vanyel found his anger and bitterness flowing away from him like water from melting ice.

  “Boy, I was wrong, and I am sorry for it,” he said quietly. “I told Withen the truth a while back, when they sent you out on the Karsite Border; told him everything I just told you. He didn’t know what they was sendin’ you to, but I did. Damn, I—if anythin’ had happened, an’ I hadn’t told him—”

  He shuddered. “I told him more things, best I could. Told him that he’s got a damned fine son, an’ that there’ve been plenty of shieldmated fighters I’d’a been glad t’ have at m’back, an’ I’d’ve trusted with m’ last coin and firstborn kid—an’ just as many lads whose tastes ran t’ wenchin’ that I’d’ve just as soon set up against a tree an’ shot. Told him if he let that stand between him an’ you, he was a bigger fool than me. Did m’ best for you, boy. Gonna keep on with it, too. Figure if I tell him enough, he might start believin’ me. An’ Van—I’m damned sorry it took me so long t’ figure out how wrong I was.”

  There was profound silence then, while Vanyel waited for his thoughts and emotions to settle into coherency. Jervis was as silent as a man of rock, eyes fixed on the floor. The cricket in the salle broke off its singing, and Vanyel could hear the thud of hooves and sharp commands, faint and muffled, as Tam took one of the young stallions around on the lunge just outside.

  Finally, everything within him crystallized into a new pattern—

  Vanyel took Jervis’ mug from limp fingers and refilled it. But instead of giving it back, he offered the armsmaster his own outstretched hand.

  The former mercenary looked up at him in surprise, one of the first times Vanyel had ever seen the man register surprise, and began to smile, tentatively at first, then with real feeling.

  He took Vanyel’s hand in both of his, and swallowed hard. “Thank you, boy,” he said hoarsely. “I wasn’t sure you’d—you’re a better man than—oh, hell—”

  Vanyel shrugged, and handed him his refilled mug. “Let’s call it truce. I was a brat. And if you hadn’t done what you did, I wouldn’t be a Herald.” And I wouldn’t have had ’Lendel.

  “Listen,” Jervis said, after first clearing his throat. “About Medren—that boy has no future here, a blind man could see that. What with all the right-born boys—an’ I couldn’t see that one bein’ happy as anybody’s dogsbody squire, you know? Figured the only chance for him was the way I came up; merc armsman. Lord Kernos knows he’s got all the brains t’ make officer right quick. So that’s what I was tryin’ to work him to.”

  “There was music.”

  “Yeah, his other shot was maybe music. I’d heard him, boy sounded all right, but what the hell do I know about music? Not a damn thing. But I figured, I figured I could make a damned fine armsman out of him, what with his reactions an’ his brains an’ speed an’ all, if I could just figure out what they’d taught you over to Haven. Been tryin’—damn if I haven’t been tryin’. Could not seem t’get it worked out, an’—shit, Van, hate t’ use th’ boy like a set of pells, but it seemed like th’ only way t’ work it out was to work it out usin’ him. But,” Jervis held up a knotted finger, “just on th’ chance th’ boy was good at the plunkin’ I been damned careful of his hands. Damned careful.”

  Vanyel’s arm began to ache, and he put his mug down to rub it. “I never did get all the feeling back,” he said, still resentful, still feeling the last burn of the anger he’d nursed all these years. “If things hadn’t turned out the way they did—even being careful you could have hurt him, and ruined his chance at music.”

  Jervis visibly stifled an angry retort, but in the face of Vanyel’s own anger, winced and looked away. “Can’t undo what I did, boy,” he said, after an uncomfortable silence. “Nobody can. But the least I can do is keep from makin’ the same mistake twice. An’ I was tryin’. I swear it.”

  Vanyel sat on his anger.

  Jervis gulped his wine. “Truth now, between you an’ me. Wer
e you any good? Did I—”

  “No,” Vanyel said honestly. “I didn’t have the Gift. And it’s taken a while, but I learned how to make up for the lost feeling. You didn’t take anything away from me, not really.”

  Jervis’ shoulders sagged a little. “How about the bastard? Medren, I mean.”

  “I’m sponsoring him into the Bardic Collegium. He’s better than I was at fifteen, and he’s got the Bardic Gift.” Vanyel nodded at Jervis’ swift intake of breath. “Exactly; he’ll make a full Bard.”

  The memory suddenly sprang up, unprompted, of Medren and his succession of bruises—just bruises. Nasty ones, some of them, but not broken bones, not even sprains. No worse than Vanyel had seen his brothers and cousins sport, back in the long ago. And Vanyel began to look a little closer at those memories, while Jervis stared at him askance. Finally he began to smile.

  “It just occurred to me—Medren. With a full Gift. He has been manipulating me, the little demon, using that Gift of his. Doing it just fine, too, and with no Bardic training. Given that, I’d say he’s going to be outstanding, and I think I’d better have a little word with him on the subject of ethics!”

  Jervis chuckled. “I don’t think it’s a-purpose; at least, I don’t think he knows he shouldn’t. He’s another one that’s good at bottom. An’ let me tell you, even without havin’ a decent style, he’s no slouch with a blade!”

  Vanyel cut them both more bread and cheese, and reached for the wine to refill both mugs. He leaned back against the wall, with a feeling that something that had been festering for a long time had begun to heal. He didn’t like Jervis, quite. Not yet, anyway. But he was beginning to see why Jervis had done what he’d done, and beginning to respect the courage that made the armsmaster admit—if belatedly—that he was wrong.