He faltered, for Vanyel was looking at him in a way that made him feel as if he had sold himself. “- he didn't ask me to do anything like make them buy things. Just to put them in a pleasant mood; make them feel good, and allow him to drop the fact that I was the King's Bard to impress them. That was all! I didn't do anything wrong!”
Vanyel was still looking at him doubtfully.
“Did I?” he asked, in a very small voice.
The Herald weighed the box in his hand. Stefen felt worse with every passing moment. He'd intended this to be a love-offering, and instead the thing had turned into a viper and bitten them both.
Finally Van opened the box, and took the amber out. Stef heaved a sigh of relief. Vanyel stared at the beautiful thing, and shook his head. “You didn't do anything wrong - but only by accident and the fact that I don't think your friend wanted you to get into trouble,” he said, in a low voice. “You came so close to misuse of your powers that I shudder to think about it. You must never use your Gift to manipulate people except at the orders of the Crown, Stef. You can be stripped of it, if you do. And it's wrong, Stef, it's just plain wrong. What if this man had been unscrupulous, and had been trying to sell trash - and what if he'd actually asked you to influence people to buy? What if he'd drastically overpriced his wares and asked you to make them think he was giving them a bargain? What if he'd brought in those who couldn't afford his merchandise and told you to make them want it enough to buy it no matter what?”
“Stop!” Stef cried, horribly ashamed of himself. Now he almost wished he had sold himself; it seemed more honest.
“Stef -”Vanyel caught his hand and drew him down beside his chair. “Stef, I didn't want to make you feel bad. You didn't do any of those things; you didn't misuse your powers. But it was a very near thing. You can thank that merchant for being an honest fellow, and not leading you into temptation.”
Stefen vowed silently to think about what he was being asked to do before he did it. And he marveled a little at this change in himself. A year ago he would have done any of those things, and never considered them wrong.
“Van,” he said quietly, “Being with you . . . you've shown me that it's as wrong to play with peoples' minds and emotions as it is to steal -” He hesitated a moment, then added, “In a way, it is stealing from them. It's stealing their right to think and feel at their own will. I wouldn't have understood that before I met you, but I do now.”
Vanyel relaxed completely, and closed his hand around the amber half-globe. “Then I can wear this, Stef, and I will, gladly, and I'll use it knowing it was a gift of love and honor.” He bowed his head and chuckled. “I suppose that sounds rather pretentious and pompous, like something out of a ballad - but it's how I really feel, Stef.”
“If you thought any differently, you wouldn't be Vanyel,” Stef replied, flushing happily as Van pulled the chain over his head and laid his right hand on Stef's shoulder.
“You give me too much credit, lover,” Vanyel said quietly. “I'm as prone to being a fool as anyone else. And just now, I'm a very sore fool. Could I possibly get you to use those talented hands of yours to unknot my shoulders?”
“And give me a chance to have my hands on you?” Stef grinned. “Of course you could, and I will. Gladly.”
Vanyel finished off his wine in a single gulp, peeled off his tunic, kicked off his boots, and sagged back into his chair. Stefen got up and moved around behind him, and began kneading his shoulders with steady, firm pressure.
“What's wrong, Van?” he asked. “You just got back with everything the King asked you for and more.”
“Sometimes I feel like everything I've done is useless,” Vanyel said dispiritedly. “Randi is going to be dead before the year's out, every enemy Valdemar has will take that as a signal to strike while Treven is so young, and a good half the treaties we made will fall apart, because they were made with Randale and not Trev. Karse is likely to declare holy war on us any day. The West is full of half-mad mage-born, any one of whom might be another Krebain, but with wider plans. I have a personal enemy out there somewhere; I don't know who or why, only that he, she, or it is a mage.”
Stefen dug his thumbs into Vanyel's shoulders a little harder and tried to think of things to say that would make a difference. “Randale is the mind behind the Crown, but about half of the work is being done by Trev and the Council,” he offered. “Trev's bright, especially on short-term planning, and Randale's doing long-range planning that ought to hold good for the next five years. Trev's a little too idealistic, maybe, but he'll get that knocked out of him soon enough - and Jisa is practical enough for two. They'll be all right.”
“How do you know so much about this?” Vanyel asked suddenly, after a long silence.
“I'm right there whenever Randale is working, and I'm beginning to be able to listen to what's going on while I'm in trance.” Stefen was rather proud of that. It wasn't much compared with the kinds of things Vanyel could do, but it was more than he'd been able to manage before Van's trip.
“That's pretty impressive,” Vanyel told him, without even a trace of patronization. “Bards usually don't have a Gift that requires being in trance, and I'm surprised you learned how to manage that on your own. What about Jisa and Trev?”
“I spent a lot of time with them after you'd gone,” Stef replied, working on Van's neck, flexing and stroking as though he were playing an instrument. The muscles were very stiff, so tight they were like rope under tension, and Stef had no doubt they were giving Van a headache of monumental proportions. “With Jisa especially. The Seneschal is the only one who doesn't underestimate her, and he likes it that way.”
“A very wise lady,” Vanyel said, his voice a little muffled. “Did you know she's my daughter, and not Randi's?”
It should have been a shock. Somehow it wasn't. “No. But it makes sense. She's very like you, you know.” He thought about the situation for a moment. “Obviously Randale must know; I mean, a Healer like Shavri can prevent any pregnancy she cares to, so it wasn't an accident, which means she wanted Jisa. ...”
“Shavri was desperate for a child, and the two of them asked me to help. I've never told anyone but you, not even my parents,” Van replied. “I have three other children, but the only one I ever see is Brightstar, the boy Starwind and Moondance are raising. The others are a mage-Gifted girl one of the other Tayledras has, named Featherfire, and a girl two of Lissa's retired shaych Guards are raising, who has no Gifts at all so far as I can tell.”
Stefen wasn't sure how he should be feeling about these revelations. “Why?” he asked finally. “I mean, why did you do it? I can see why Shavri would have asked you, rather than somebody else, but why the others?”
Vanyel sighed, and flexed his shoulders. “For pretty much the same reasons as Shavri had. People I knew and cared for wanted a child, but for one reason or another couldn't produce one without outside help. Featherfire's mother isn't shaych, but there wasn't a single Tayledras male she felt the right way about to have a child with. She had twins; Brightstar is Feather's brother.”
Stef recalled all the fantasies he'd had about his parentage, how he'd never known who even his mother was. “Do you ever wish you'd - I don't know, had more of a hand in their raising?” He worked his thumbs into the nape of Vanyel's neck, with the silky hair covering both hands. “I know they've got parents who really want them, but -”
“That's just it; they have parents who really want them,” Van replied. “Ah, that's it, that's the worst of the aches, right there. I see what 'Fandes means about musicians having talented hands. Really, love, the only reason Brightstar and Jisa know I'm their father is that it's necessary for them to know. Brightstar evidently has all my Gifts; Jisa could get backwash from a magical attack on me, because she has Mage-Gift in potential. They have to be prepared. Feather-fire is so like her mother they could be twins, and Arven doesn't even carry potential as far as I was able to check. They all know who their real parents are - the ones who love
them.”
He chuckled then. “What's funny?” Stef asked.
“Oh, just that whatever it is that makes someone shaych, it probably isn't learned or inherited. Brightstar has a half dozen young ladies of the Tayledras with whom he trades feathers on a regular basis, and he'd probably have more if he had the stamina.”
“Trades feathers?” Stef said with puzzlement.
“Tayledras custom. When you want to make love to someone you offer them a feather. If you want a more permanent relationship, it's a feather from your bondbird.”
“Oh.” That gave his fertile imagination something to work on. And feathers were easier come by in the dead of winter than, say, flowers. . . .
Van was finally relaxing under his hands. In fact, from the way his head kept nodding, the Herald was barely awake. Which meant Stef could probably coax him into bed without too much trouble.
Of course, he may not get much sleep. Stefen sighed contentedly, and slowly ran his fingers through Vanyel's hair, grateful just for his lover's presence.
Van relaxed for the first time in three months, and gave himself over completely to the gentle strength of Stef's callused hands. Stef felt the cold more than most - he was so thin it went straight to his bones - so he'd built the fire up to the point where he was comfortable. That meant that even without his tunic, Van basked in drowsy warmth.
The mage-focus glowed just above his heart, touching him with a different sort of warmth. That piece of amber was truly extraordinary. It might have been made for him, fitting into his cupped hand perfectly, meshing with his power-patterns and channeling them with next to no effort on his part. Given how things had worked out, perhaps it had been; in the same way that the rose-quartz crystal he'd given Savil years ago had seemingly been made for her, though it had been given to him.
He'd told Stef the truth, though; if the Bard had bought the thing with dishonorable coin, he couldn't have worn it. If Stef had failed to realize why that kind of perversion of his Gift was wrong, Vanyel would have had misgivings every time he put it on.
Stef had changed, though Van had never tried to change him. He'd become a partner, someone Van could rely on, despite his youth. And because he's my partner, he had to know about Jisa and the others. Partners shouldn't have secrets from one another. That information could be important some day. It's good to be able to tell someone-especially him. . . .
It was so easy to relax, letting all his responsibilities slide away for a moment. He felt himself drifting off into a half-doze, and didn't even try to stop himself.
PAIN!
He didn't realize that he'd jumped to his feet until he found himself staring at Stef from halfway across the room. He blinked, and in that instant between one breath and the next, knew -
Kilchas! That pain was Herald-Mage Kilchas, and he was dying. Or being killed. Suddenly. Violently.
An unexpected side effect of the new Web. Unless someone was magically cut out of the Web, every Herald would know when another Herald died, as the Companions already knew.
And as Vanyel knew that something was wrong.
The Death Bell began tolling, and he grabbed his tunic from the back of the chair beside the one he'd been sitting in, pulling it on hastily over his head. Something was wrong, something to do with Kilchas, and he was the only one who might be able to see what it was. But he had to get there.
Stef fell back a step, startled. “Van, what did I -”
The Death Bell tolled, drowning out the rest of his words.
Stef had been at Haven long enough to know what that meant. But he'd never seen a Herald react to it the way Vanyel had - and he'd never heard of a Herald who had reacted before the tolling of the Bell.
“Van?” he said, and the Herald stared at him as if he'd never seen him before.
“Van?” he said again, which seemed to break Vanyel out of whatever trance he'd gotten stuck in. Vanyel grabbed his uniform tunic and began pulling it on over his head.
“Van,” Stef protested, “It's the Death Bell. There's nothing you can do, and even if there were, you just got back! You're tired, and you've earned a rest! Let somebody else take care of it.”
Van shook his head stubbornly, and bent down to reach for his boots. “I have to go - I don't know why, but I have to.”
Stefen sighed, and got both their cloaks; his, that had been draped on a hook behind the door, and Vanyel's spare from the wardrobe. As soon as the Herald straightened up from pulling his boots on, Stef handed him the white cloak and swung his own scarlet over his shoulders. Vanyel paused, hands on the throat-latch of his garment.
“Where are you going?” he asked, in a startled voice.
Stefen shrugged. “With you. If you're going to run off the first night you're home, at least I can be with you.”
“But Stef -” Vanyel protested. “You don't have to-”
“I know,” he interrupted. “That's one reason why I'm doing it anyway, lover.” He held the door open for the Herald, and waved him through it. “Come on. Let's get going.”
Someone had already beaten Vanyel to the scene; there were lights and moving shadows at the base of one of the two flat-topped towers at the end of Herald's Wing. The storm had blown off some time after Vanyel got in; the sky was perfectly clear, and the night windless and much colder than when he'd arrived. The slush had hardened into icy ridges that he and Stef slipped and stumbled over to get to the death-scene.
Kilchas lay facedown on the hardened snow, one arm twisted beneath him, head at an unnatural angle. He was dressed in a shabby old tunic and soft breeches, with felt house-shoes. Treven, cloak wrapped tightly around him, knelt beside the body. A very young, blond Guardsman stood next to him, holding a lantern that shook as the hand that held it trembled. “- there was this kind of cry,” he was saying, as Van stumbled within hearing distance. “I looked up at the tower, and he was falling, limplike; like somebody'd thrown a rag doll over. I ran to - to catch him, to try to help, but he was -” The young man shuddered and gulped. “So I came to get help, my lord.”
“Which was when you bowled me over in the corridor,” Treven said coolly, touching the body's shoulder with care. “You can go get me a Healer, but I think he'll just confirm that the poor old man died of a broken neck and smashed skull.” Though the young Heir spoke with every sign of complete composure, Van Felt him shaking inside. This was Trev's first close-up look at the violent death of a fellow human, and all his calm was pretense.
Not that it ever got easier emotionally with time and repetition; it was just easier to be calm about taking care of it.
“Trev.” Vanyel touched the young man's shoulder at the same time as he spoke; Trev and the Guardsman both jumped. The lantern swung wildly in the Guardsman's hand, making the shadows jerk and dance, and making the body appear to move for an instant.
“Trev, I'll take it from here if you want, but I think you've got things well in hand.” His first impulse had been to take over; this, after all, was not the first time he'd seen death near at hand - it was not even the first time he'd seen the death of someone he knew and cared for. No, that had happened so often he'd given up counting the times. . . . But taking over from Trev would have meant shoving the young Heir into the position of hanger-on, when what he needed to do was start assuming his authority. The sooner he started doing so, the more readily others would accept that authority when Randi died.
So even if the young Heir didn't have any experience in handling situations like this, Trev should be the one in charge.
Treven took a deep breath, and looked very much as if he wanted to hand that authority right back to Van. But instead, he said only, “This really isn't my area of expertise, Herald Vanyel. Would you mind having a look here?”
Van nodded. Beside him, Stef shivered, and pulled his cloak a little tighter. Vanyel knelt down beside the white-faced Heir, and examined the body without visible sign of emotion, though he wanted to weep for the poor old man. “The neck is broken, and the front of the sk
ull as well,” he said quietly. He looked up, though all he could see of the top of the tower was the dark shape of it against the sky. “Kilchas has an observatory up on the top of this tower,” he told Treven. “Did he say anything about going up there tonight?”
Another pair of heralds had joined them; Tantras and Lissandra; Lissandra huddled in on herself, as though she was too cold for her cloak to warm her. “Oh, gods,” the woman said brokenly. “Yes, he told me that he was going up there if it cleared at all tonight. Phryny was conjuncting Aberdene's Eye, or some such thing. Only happens once in a hundred years, and he wanted to see it. He was so excited when it cleared up at sunset -” She sobbed, and turned away, hiding her face on Tran's shoulder. He folded his cloak around her, and looked down at the three kneeling in the snow.
“Poor old man,” Tantras said hoarsely. “He must have gotten so wrapped up in what he was doing that he forgot to watch his step.”
“There're probably ice patches all over the top of that tower,” Trev replied, “And the parapet is only knee-high. It's only enough to warn you that you're at the edge, not save you from falling.” He stood up, folding dignity around himself like a new cloak that was overlarge, stiff, and a trifle awkward. “Guard, would you please see that Kilchas' body is taken to the Chapel? I'll inform Joshel, and have him see to what's needed from there.” The Guardsman stood up, saluted, and trudged toward the Guard quarters, leaving the lantern behind. Before too long his dark blue uniform had been absorbed into the night.
Treven turned to Vanyel. “Thank you, Herald Vanyel. If Tantras and Lissandra don't mind, I'll have them stay with me to get things taken care of. You've just come in from a long journey, and you should get some rest.” He coughed uncomfortably, as if he wasn't sure what to say or do next.
Vanyel started to object, but realized that he didn't have any grounds for objection. It looked like an accident. Everyone else accepted it as an accident.
But Van didn't - couldn't - believe that it was.
Nevertheless, all he had to go on were vague and ill-defined feelings. Nothing even concrete enough for a Herald to accept.
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