Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "Gods!" he looked up from his plate with the expression of a stunned sheep. "Vanyel and Tylendel - lifebonded?"

  She nodded unhappily. "I'm pretty damned sure of it; what's more, so are Mardic and Donni, and if anyone would recognize a bonding, it would be another bonded pair. I expected grief, mourning; the natural responses for a youngster who's lost his first love under rotten bad circumstances - I did not expect to find the kind of gaping emotional wounds I saw before he started shutting me out today. I’ve never seen that depth of feeling before in anyone, Herald, or no, except Mardic and Donni. So tell me; what the hell do I do about a broken lifebond?"

  He shook his head, obviously at a loss. "I can't tell you; I don't know. I don't Heal minds, I Heal bodies. And I don't know of anyone who Heals hearts."

  She sighed, and looked down at her congealing dinner. "That's what I was afraid you'd tell me. I have more bad news; the relationship between them was one where 'Lendel was the leader and Van the follower. Van had gotten totally dependent on 'Lendel for all his emotional needs. I tried to warn 'Lendel, but - " She shrugged. "And to put the snow on the mountain, Van's got some guilt he's hiding from me, and all I can think is that he's convinced he cursed 'Lendel because he seduced Tylendel. Mind you, he didn't; from all I know I'm positive the seduction, if seduction it was, was mutual, but - there it is."

  "Jaysen," Andrel said positively.

  She nodded. "Good bet, my friend. Jays has got all those Kleimar prejudices about same-sex pairings. He accepted 'Lendel, but mostly after I rammed his prejudices right up in his face. But Vanyel? Vanyel wasn't even a Herald-candidate when he and 'Lendel paired. Jays hasn't said a word, but you can bet on what he was thinking when he was keeping watch on him. Resentment that Van is alive and 'Lendel dead would be the least of it."

  "And Vanyel picked it up," Andrel said sadly.

  "Probably." She took a bite, found it catch in her throat, and gave up trying to eat, shoving the plate away. "From what I can tell, he's sensitive enough to pick up things you've forgotten for years and do it right through your shielding. Ah, gods."

  She rested both elbows on the table, and covered her sore eyes with her hands. A moment later she felt one of Andrel's hands stroking her hair, and dropped her own back on the table, giving him a good long look across the candleflames. His deeply green eyes were fixed on her face, reflecting a profound concern.

  "And what about you?" he asked, barely above a whisper.

  "I am trying to reach out to him," she said, feeling old and tired and about ready to give up. "I think I've convinced myself that none of this was any more his fault than it was anyone else's. I bloody well hope so, or he's going to be getting knives in the gut from me, too. And he doesn't deserve that. The rest - gods, I don't know what to do."

  "That isn't what I meant," he replied, taking his hand away from her hair, and reaching for her wrist. "I want to know how you're weathering this. Need a shoulder?"

  "Want the truth?" She tensed all over, trying to keep from bawling like a little child. "Yes, I need a shoulder, and no, I am not taking this well. I want 'Lendel back, Andy - he was my soul-son, and I loved him, and I want him back with me."

  Her voice cracked; she lost her veneer of calm, and just dissolved into tears. Andrel got up, gracefully, and without letting go of her wrist; he moved around the table, and pulled her to her feet, then led her over to the couch and gave her that shoulder she needed so badly.

  The peaceful night rocked; Vanyel convulsed, wailing -

  His cry sounded like something in its death agonies, and made Savil's hair stand on end.

  The room trembled; literally. The walls shook as Vanyel's muscles spasmed.

  His eyes were wide open, but saw nothing, and his pupils dilated with fear. He convulsed again, and the very foundation of the Palace rocked. The bed shook as if it were alive. His lute fell from the wall, landing with a sickening crack that surely meant it was broken past all repair; his armor-stand crashed over and scattered his equipment across the floor, and Savil was tossed from his bedside to the floor before she realized it.

  She picked herself up off the floor beside his bed without thinking about safety or bruises, and flung herself at him again.

  He thrashed beneath her, fighting her with a paranormal strength; he couldn't know where he was or who she was. All she could read from him was terrible agony - and beneath the pain, confusion, panic, entrapment. She caught his wrists and tried to pinion them against the pillows; then tried to pin him down with the blankets. His chest arched against hers, he screamed, and the walls shook again.

  Mardic lay in the corner behind her, quite unconscious; Donni had his head in her lap and she was trying to protect him from falling objects with her own body. Vanyel had thrown him against the wall when this nightmare - or whatever it was - had started, and Mardic had made the mistake of trying to touch his mind to wake him.

  :Donni - : Savil used a moment of lull to Mindtouch her pupil, taking a tiny fragment of her attention from the attempt - attempt, for it wasn't succeeding - to shield Vanyel, to get him under some kind of control. : - Donni, how's Mardic?:

  :He's all right, just stunned,: came the reassuring reply. : - I can spare you something. Catch this, quick - :

  The girl "threw" her a mental line, and began sending additional, sorely-needed energy down it as soon as Savil "caught" it.

  It helped to keep Savil from blacking out as Vanyel lashed out with his mind, but that was about all.

  Jaysen was coming on the run; Savil could Feel him reaching out to find out what the hell was going on, and Felt the panic in his mind when he realized they had a powerful Gifted trapped in a pain-loop and hallucination. He all but broke down the door, trying to get in, and flung himself into the affray without a second thought.

  "Shield him, dammit," he shouted, throwing himself across Vanyel's legs, as the walls (but, thank the gods, not the foundations again) shook.

  "I'm trying, " she snapped back, giving up on the uneven struggle to pin Vanyel down, and settling for securing his arms. "He breaks them as fast as I get them up!"

  Jaysen succeeded in getting Vanyel physically restrained where she, being lighter, had failed. He added his strength to Savil's and Donni's on the crumbling shields they were trying to get on the boy. But it wasn't even stalemate; they were losing him to his own nightmares.

  Andrel appeared. Savil didn't even see or Sense him run in; he was just there all in an instant. But instead of flinging himself into the melee, he grabbed their arms and pulled both of them off the boy.

  Then he reached down for something at his feet, and came up with a bucket of icy water. He doused the boy, bed and all, without a heartbeat of hesitation.

  The convulsions stopped as Vanyel came abruptly awake.

  He sat up - stared - then he suddenly went limp.

  The room stopped shaking.

  "Savil, get me a blanket," Andrel ordered quietly. "Jays, help me get him out of that wet bed before he goes into shock, then get the bedding stripped before the mattress gets soaked."

  By the time Savil returned with the goosedown comforter from her bed, the two men had pulled the half-stunned boy from the tangled mess of water-soaked bedcoverings, and the bedding was piled on the floor. Andrel was carefully shaking the boy's shoulders while Jaysen supported him.

  Behind them, Mardic was groggily climbing to his knees, Donni steadying him, but the two of them waved Savil off when she made a half-step in their direction.

  :.We're all right,: Donni Mindspoke. ;I'II get Mardic into bed myself, and then I'll come make up the bed in here again.:

  Savil turned her attention back to the boy, knowing she could trust Donni to deal with the situation if she had said she could.

  "Come on, Vanyel," Andrel was saying, coaxingly. "Come on, lad, come back to us. Wake up, come out of it."

  Vanyel blinked, blinked again, and sense came back into his eyes. He looked about him, momentarily confused, then the destruction about him see
med to register on him. He closed his eyes, a soft, hardly audible moan coming from the back of his throat.

  And for one instant, Savil was nearly flattened beneath an overwhelming load of blackest despair, terrible guilt, and a grief so heavy she felt her knees start to give way beneath the weight of it.

  Then it was gone; absolutely cut off, and so completely that for a moment even she doubted that she had felt it.

  But one look at Andrel and Jaysen convinced her otherwise; the former was deeply shaken, and the latter white-lipped.

  She expected tenderness and concern from Andrel - but strangely enough, it was Jaysen who carefully got the boy into a chair, wrapped in the comforter; and from the chair back into the bed when Donni had stripped it of the wet coverings and remade it. It was Jaysen who stayed beside him, leaving Savil free to see to it that Mardic was truly all right. Savil wasn't in a mood to ask questions about his apparent change of heart.

  Mardic was fine, and relatively cheerful. "I'll have a godsawful headache," he told her; "Poor Van thought I was going to kill him, took me for an enemy in his dream. When he realized it was a dream, he pulled most of it - "

  "Most of it?" Savil choked. "He flattened you, and he pulled most of it?"

  "Near as I can tell." Mardic put both hands to his temples and massaged a little. "Well when he pulled the blow, the energy overflowed into those raw channels and hurt him, and he went over the edge; couldn't control anything. Then - I think - he lost his center and got lost in his own pain. Andrel had the right notion; physical shock is what gave him something to home in on."

  "But you are going to be all right?"

  He gave her half a grin. "If you'll let me get some sleep."

  Savil took the statement as an unsubtle request and made a hasty exit.

  She got back just in time to see Andrel give Vanyel some kind of sedative to drink. But it was Jaysen who sat with the boy until Andrel's sedative took effect. And it was Jaysen who righted the armor-stand, and picked up the broken-backed lute from the floor with a wince at seeing the fine instrument so ruined.

  "I'll see to getting this fixed, if it can be," he said, when he saw Savil watching him before she knelt to put out the fire. They daren't have a fire here while Vanyel was asleep, nor candles burning, either - not unless Andrel could do something to keep him from going into another fit.

  "Jays, what am I going to do with him?" she asked, quietly, standing up with a wince as a pulled muscle in her back told her what a fool she'd been. He motioned that she should precede him out the door, and she half turned to see his face as she walked past him. "He's sick with backlash, and he's getting sicker, not better. His channels are all raw; you can't Mindtouch him without doing that to him, throwing him into convulsions. That was what set all this off, Mardic trying to soothe him out of a bad dream. What am I going to do the next time he has a nightmare?"

  Jaysen shrugged helplessly, and shut the door behind her. She made a circuit of the common room, setting candles erect and lighting them. "If you don't know, be damned if I do. Andy, can we keep him sedated long enough to heal?''

  Andrel grimaced, looking as if he'd swallowed something sour. "With any other patient I'd tell you where to put that question - what I just gave the boy was argonel."

  Jaysen and Savil both started with surprise, and in Savil's case the surprise was not unmixed with shock. "Great good gods, Andy!"

  "Ease up; he's safe enough," Andrel interrupted her, throwing himself down on the couch with his usual lack of concern for the furniture. He groaned, stretched, and then raised an eyebrow at the Seneschal's Herald. "Jaysen, may I mention that you have lovely legs?"

  Jaysen, who was attired only in shirt and hose and only just now really realized this, blushed a furious scarlet, but refused to be distracted. "Argonel, Andy - " he began, taking a chair and crossing his legs primly.

  "He's burning it off at a respectable rate, or I wouldn't have given it to him," Andrel replied. "The benefit of it is that it's a muscle relaxant and a sedative; he won't be able to go into convulsions again even if you Mindtouch him. I won't speak for him tossing the Palace around, but he won't go into physical convulsions. As for him healing, well that depends entirely on what you mean."

  Savil took another chair, flopping down into it with a tired thud as loud as the one Andrel had made connecting with the couch cushions.

  "Physically," she said, flatly. "Pure physical healing. Backlash symptoms, exhaustion, blood loss. I'll worry about raw channels later."

  "Yes, I can keep him sedated long enough for the effects of backlash to wear off, for his physical energy to recover and for him to replace the blood he lost. I can combine the argonel with jervain, and dull out all the Gift-senses enough so that they aren't so sensitive. That might let the channels heal. I don't know for sure; I've never seen nor read of anything like this, Gifts being blasted open like his were."

  "Mentally?" Jaysen prodded, frowning. "Emotionally?"

  "At this point I don't think even Lance can help him," Andrel replied sadly. "You both felt - "

  Jaysen nodded, ruefully. "That's - I think perhaps I picked up something more than either of you," he said, a shadow of guilt crossing his face. "He - he thinks that everything he touches is doomed, cursed. Because of - what he and 'Lendel were. And I know exactly where he got that particularly poisonous little thought. Only it isn't a 'little thought' anymore. It's as much an obsession as Tylendel’s was."

  He hung his head, and wouldn't look at her. "I never thought - " he faltered. "I never guessed - I thought he was just a user - "

  Savil was not feeling charitable just now. "Damn right, you never thought," she snapped. "You never thought at all! You and your damned provincial - "

  "Savil," Andrel said, warningly, his head turned slightly to the side, nodding at the door to Vanyel's room.

  She subsided. If she got angry, Van might pick it up; it might set him off again. "Sorry, Jays," she finally said grudgingly, not feeling sorry at all.

  "At least you didn't send somebody out to cut their wrists," he answered unhappily.

  She winced. "No - I just - hell, this isn't getting us anywhere. Andy, you think you can get him physically recovered, right?"

  Candlelight reflected in his eyes, which had gone inward-looking. "I would say yes, cautiously."

  "Let's worry about that, then, for a couple of days. I have a germ of an idea, but whether or not I can pull it off is going to depend very strongly on whether or not you can get Vanyel fit to ride.''

  "If I can't get him to that point in the next couple of weeks or so, it's never going to happen," Andrel replied.

  "What's the chance we can do something about the way he's barricading himself - or even help him get some of his power under his own control?''

  He pondered her question while the fire crackled beside him. "Why don't you ask your Companions? He may be able to barricade against you, but I doubt he can do much against Yfandes."

  She pressed her hand to her eyes and shook her head. "Gods, why in hell didn't I think of that?" And at the same time, Mindsent :Kellan?: knowing that Jaysen was doing the same with Felar.

  -.Here,: came the reply, immediately.

  She sent their dilemma in a complicated thought-burst, and waited while Kellan digested the information, and possibly conferred with Felar and Yfandes.

  :Yfandes says that the bonding is weak,: came the reply, flavored with the acid tang of concern. :It fades in and out - and it hurts the boy, sometimes, to speak with her.:

  :Can we do anything about that?: Jaysen fell into the rapport, and if there was anything other than genuine distress there on Vanyel's behalf, Savil couldn't feel it. Through him, she could Hear Felar.

  :Physical contact,: Felar said shortly.

  Kellan agreed. :As much as possible. That is what strengthens the bonding; now she cannot help him to get control of what he does.:

  :And if the bond is strengthened?: Jaysen asked.

  :Perhaps,: said Felar.
/>   :A hope,: added Kellan.

  Jaysen looked into Savil's eyes from across the room, and nodded, a little grimly. At this point they would accept even a hope, however tenuous.

  Nothing hurt much, now, not since he'd drunk that fiery stuff the red-haired Healer had given him. Those places inside him, the mind-things, that had burned so - they still burned, but remotely, as if the hurting belonged to somebody else. He couldn't concentrate on much of anything for very long, and none of it really seemed to matter.

  Only the empty place in him was pretty much the same; only that continued to ache in a way the Healer's potions couldn't seem to touch. The place where Tylendel had been - and now -

  But the potions let him sleep, a sleep without dreams. And he'd had the snow-dreams again - that was what had thrown him into that fit.

  Oh, gods - he'd thought - he'd thought they'd never come again. He'd thought 'Lendel had driven them away.

  But they weren't the dreams about being walled in by ice, so maybe 'Lendel had -

  Maybe not. He couldn't tell. It was the other dream, anyway. Clear, vivid as no other dream he'd dreamed had ever been, and much more detailed than the last time he'd had it.

  He'd been in a canyon, a narrow mountain pass with walls that were peculiarly smooth. He'd known, in the dream, that this was no real pass - that this passage had been created, cut armlength by armlength, by magic.

  He'd known, too, that the magic had been wrong, skewed. It had an aura of pain and death about it, as if every thumblength of that canyon had been paid for in spilled blood.

  It had been night; cloudy, with a smell of snow on the wind. Where he stood the canyon had narrowed momentarily, choked by avalanches on either side. He'd been very cold, despite the heavy weight of a fur cloak on his shoulders; his feet had been like blocks of the ice that edged the canyon walls.

  He had felt a feeling of grim satisfaction, when he'd seen that at this one point the passage was wide enough for two men, but no more. And he knew that he had somehow caused those blockages, to create a place where one man could, conceivably, hold off an army.