Magic's Pawn v(lhm-1

by Mercedes Lackey

  "Why? Other than the recent rotten associations - "

  "It's damned dangerous at the best of times. It plays fast and loose with local weather systems, for one thing; it's a spell that sets up a local energy field, a kind that disrupts any kind of high-energy weather pattern that's around it. Usually for the worse." She closed her eyes, centered and grounded, and extended her Mage-Gift sense up and out, looking farther afield for anything that might move in while she had the Gate up. To her vast relief there didn't seem to be anything of consequence anywhere nearby; the only energy-patterns she could read were a few rising air currents over warm spots, too small to be any hazard.

  She sighed. "Well, the weather's not going to cause any problems. How was the lad?"

  "Drugged to his teeth, and I would stake my arm that he won't be able to count to one before some time tonight. And I am damned glad you told me that you were planning on Gating out of here." Andrel tucked his long, sensitive hands inside his cloak, and peered across the open Field through the sunlight. "Since it was Gate-energy that blew his channels open - "

  "Probably," Savil interrupted.

  "All right, probably blew his channels open - he's going to be doubly sensitive to it for the rest of his life. He'll likely know when someone's opening a Gate within a league of him. And actually going through one may touch off another fit. Which is why - "

  " - you drugged him to the teeth. I have no objection; it's a little awkward, but that's why we have the kind of saddles for our Companions that we do."

  They crunched their way across Companion's Field, now covered with the first snowfall of the season. Savil repeated a quieting exercise for every step she made, for she knew she needed to establish absolute calm within herself; she would be Gating to her absolute physical limits (in terms of the distance she planned to cover) and that would take every reserve she had.

  In light of that, she had turned everything (other than establishing the Gate itself) over to the hands of others. Mardic and Donni had done all her packing, Lissa had taken care of Vanyel's, and Lissa had taken charge of the boy once Andrel was finished with him. They were all waiting at the Grove Temple at this very moment.

  "So why else don't you like Gating?" Andrel asked, while the Field around them glowed under the sun.

  "Because when I get there, I'm going to be pretty damned worthless," she replied dryly, "And I'd better hope the Talisman performs the way Starwind claimed it was supposed to, or we'll be a pretty pathetically helpless pair, Vanyel and I."

  "Why don't you do what Tylendel did, use someone else's energy?"

  "Because I don't really know what he did," she said, after a long pause that was punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps breaking through the light crust of snow. "None of us do. That may be why we ended up feeding the energy back through poor Van instead of grounding and dissipating it. I personally do not care to take the chance of doing that to another living soul and neither do any of the others. Vanyel lived through it; someone else might not. And it may well be that you have to have a lifebound pair to carry it off at all. So," she shrugged, "we do this the hard way, and I fall on my nose on the other side."

  They entered the Grove, the leafless trees making a lacework of dark branches against the bright blue sky.

  The peace of the Grove never left it, no matter what the season was. That was one reason why Savil had chosen to set up the Gate here. The other was that it was the safest place on the Palace grounds that she could put a Gate; no one but Heralds ever came here without invitation. There should be no accidents caused by a stranger wandering by at the wrong moment.

  The group waiting by the Temple, which looked today as if it had been newly-made of the same pure snow that covered the ground around it, was a small one. Jaysen, Donni and Mardic, and Lissa. There were only two Companions there; Kellan and Yfandes. Companions tended to avoid the Grove except when a Herald died. Vanyel was slumped over in Yfandes' saddle, wrapped in the warmest cloak Savil could find and strapped down securely enough that his Companion could fight or flee without losing him.

  Avert - Savil thought, a little superstitiously. Let there be no reason for her to have to fight. We've had enough bad fortune without that.

  She went first to his side; his hands had been loosely tied together at the wrist and the bindings were hooked over the pommel of the saddle. The stirrup-irons were gone, probably stored in one of the packs bundled behind his saddle; the stirrup-leathers had been turned into straps binding his calves to the saddle itself. He was belted twice at the waist; once to the pommel, once to the high cantle, using rings on the saddle meant for exactly that purpose. He was not going to come off.

  Andrel reached her side; he reached up and pried open one of Vanyel's eyelids. The boy didn't react at all, and his pupils were mere pinpoints. The Healer's eye unfocused for a moment as he "read" the boy; then he nodded with satisfaction.

  "He should be all right, Savil. No more drugs, though, after this. Not even if those friends of yours - "

  Savil shook her head. "They don't like this kind of drug. Not for any reason. Drugs like you've been giving him are too easy to abuse."

  "I don't like them either, but there are times you've got no other choice, and this was one of them." Andrel touched the boy's hand; his green eyes darkened as he brooded for a moment. "Gods. I hope you're right about these people. His channels haven't healed at all, not really."

  "If they can't help us, no one can." Savil turned her back on her semi-conscious charge and faced the door of the Temple, and put herself into the right mindset to invoke her spell.

  To build a Gate -

  It was the most personal of spells. Only one person could build a Gate, because only one mind could direct the energy needed to build it. The spell-wielder had to have a very exact notion of where the Gate was to exit, and no two people ever had precisely the same mental image of a place. In any event, only Savil had ever been in the k'Treva territory of the Pelagirs. She couldn't be "fed" by another Herald-Mage, since she would need every bit of her attention for the Gate itself and would have none to spare to channel incoming energy. Lastly, because the energy had to be so intimately directed, it could come from only one place -

  From within the builder of the Gate. Or - perhaps - one soul-bound to the builder of the Gate? A lifebond was at such a deep level that it wasn't conscious, so perhaps that was why Tylendel had succeeded in using Vanyel as his source of energy.

  The kind of power needed to build a Gate was the kind that could be stored, could be planned for. But like a vessel that could only hold so much liquid, a mage could only hold so much energy within himself. Savil had prepared for this; she could replenish herself within a day when the spell was completed and the Gate dismissed. But for that critical period of twenty-four candlemarks she would be exhausted - physically, mentally, and magically.

  No time to think of that. Get to it, woman. First, the Portal, then the Weaving.

  The Temple door had been used so many times before as one end of a Gate that it needed no special preparation. She needed only to - reach -

  She raised her hands, closed her eyes, and centered herself so exactly that everything about her vanished from her attention. There was only the power within her, and the place where the Gate would begin.

  I call upon the Portal -

  She molded the power into a frame upon the physical frame of the doorway; building it layer upon layer until it was strong enough to act as an anchor to hold this place when she warped space back upon itself.

  Then she began spinning out threads of energy from the framework; they drifted outward, seeking.

  This is the place, she told them, silently willing them to find the real-world counterpart of the image in her mind. Where the rocks are so and the trees grow thus and the feel of the earth is in this manner -

  They spun out, longer, finer, more attenuated. When they weakened, she fed them from within herself, spinning her own substance out and feeling it drawn out of
her.

  Now she was losing strength; it felt exactly as if she were bleeding from an open wound. And the power was not merely draining from her anymore, it was being pulled from her by the Gate itself. This was the point of greatest danger for a Herald-Mage; she was having to fight the Gate to keep from being drained right down to unconsciousness.

  Then one of those questing power-threads caught on something, out beyond the farthest range of her sensing; another followed -

  There was a silent explosion of light that she could see even through her closed lids, and the Gate Wove itself in an instant into a temporary, but stable, whole.

  She dropped her hands, opened her eyes, and swayed with uttermost exhaustion; Kellan was there beside her in time for her to catch the pommel of her saddle to keep from falling.

  The door of the Temple was no longer within the doorframe. Instead, the white marble - glowing now, even in the bright sunlight - framed a strange and twisted bit of landscape.

  "That's where you're going?" Jaysen said doubtfully, looking at the weird shapes of rock, snow and sand that lay beyond the portal. It was snowing there, from black, lowering clouds; fat flakes drifting down through still, dark air. Savil nodded.

  "That's it; that's the edge of the Pelagirs near Star-wind's territory. The other end is a cave entrance, so we'll have some shelter on the other side until Starwind and Moondance get there."

  "And if they don't?" Jaysen asked. "Savil, I don't like to think of you two alone out in a place like that. The boy is next to useless, and you're exhausted."

  "Jays, it's quite possible that they'd take one look at you and kill you if they didn't see me right there with you," she said, clinging to the saddle and trying to muster enough strength to climb into it. "They're unbelievably territorial and secretive, and for good reasons - think for a minute, will you? They have to have known someone was tampering, stealing creatures they thought safely locked up. If they see a stranger and Sense he's Mage-Gifted, they're likely to strike first and ask questions of the corpse. And I mean that literally. I'm taking enough risk bringing the boy in, and he's plainly in need of help, and branded as mine. "

  She gave up trying to be self-sufficient. "Boost me up, will you?" she asked humbly.

  Jaysen went her one better; with the help of Andrel he lifted her into place. "Have you got everything you need?"

  "I think so." In actual fact, she was too tired to think; it was all she could do to keep her mind on the next step of the journey. "Toss the firewood through."

  Four heavy bundles of dry, seasoned wood went through the Gate to land in the snow on the other side.

  Vanyel whimpered beside her; she could see his face was creased with lines of pain. He's feeling it, like Andy thought he might. Better hurry.

  "Mardic - " she said quietly. "Donni - "

  Savil's proteges came solemnly to her stirrup; she held out her hands to them, and shared a moment of mind-melded intimacy with them that was more than "farewell"; it was a sharing of gifts. Her pride in them and love and blessing - and their love and well-wishing for her.

  "Lissa - "

  The girl came to stand beside her students.

  "I can't begin to thank you," Savil began, awkward, as ever, with words.

  "Thank me by bringing Van home well," Lissa replied earnestly. "That's all I want." She reached up and squeezed Savil's hand once, then backed away.

  The youngsters moved out of the way, and Jaysen and Andrel came to take their place without any prompting. She gave a hand to each, closing her eyes again, and opening herself to them in a melding even more intimate than she had shared with her students, for there were no secrets among the three of them, and nothing held back. What she had not told Mardic and Donni was that there might be no returning from this journey. If she failed with Vanyel, he might well destroy both of them, his Gifts were that powerful. Even now he moaned again in his drug-induced slumber, feeling the Gate energies despite a dose of narcotic that would have rendered a less sensitive Gifted unconscious for a week.

  For a moment, she was angry. He could kill us, and do it without knowing what he was doing. Oh, gods. Gods, you owe him, dammit! You've taken his love - at the least give him something in return.

  But she was too tired, too depleted to sustain even her anger at Fate or the gods or - whatever. Especially when this might really be farewell.

  So this was a moment when she asked forgiveness of her friends for anything she might have done in the past - and they asked for and received the same from her.

  When she raised her heavy, weary head, the two pairs of eyes, green and gray, that met hers were bright with tears that would not be shed - at least not now. She squeezed their hands, and let go; they stepped away from her as she straightened in her saddle, took a deep breath, and faced the Gate and the gray landscape beyond it. It looked no more welcoming now than it had before, and dallying wasn't going to make the leaving easier.

  :All right, Kellan,: she Mindspoke :Let's go.:

  And they rode into the stomach-churning vertigo she had come to hate.

  Savil huddled beside the fire with her legs curled under her, forcing herself to stay awake. There was, thank the gods, no wind; the cave was warming fairly quickly. It smelled of damp, though, and of the musty taint of the half-rotten leaves that had blown in here with the autumn winds. That damp meant that if she let the fire die, it would chill down very quickly, a chill that would penetrate even their thick wool cloaks.

  Once she'd taken the Gate down, she'd had just enough strength to lay the fire, and start it with the coal she'd brought in a fire-safe. After that she'd sunk to the sand next to it, pulling Vanyel close in beside her. He was curled up against her now, bundled with her inside her cloak, his head in her lap; he shook like a reed in the wind. From time to time he moaned and his hand groped for something that seemed to elude him; she soothed him back into sleep, stroking his hair until he finally recognized that she was still with him and calmed a little.

  The Gate-crossing had been hard on him, as hard as she'd feared. When she'd gone to take him from Yfandes' back, he'd been half-roused out of his drugged daze; his eyes had been wide open, his jaws clenched. He had been held paralyzed, not by the drugs, but by unfocused and overwhelming terror and pain. It had taken a candlemark to get him soothed down again.

  Somewhere just outside were Kellan and Yfandes, standing a watchful guard in the falling snow. Still in their tack, poor things - she'd barely been able to get Vanyel unstrapped from the saddle before collapsing beside him. She had nearly forgotten to activate the Wing-sister Talisman. It had taken Kellan's sharp reminder to shake her out of her fog of exhaustion long enough to stab her finger and let the prescribed three drops of her blood fall on it.

  Memory came, then, as sharply defined as if she had bid farewell to the Hawkbrothers scant days ago instead of years.

  * * *

  "Blood calls to blood, and heart to heart," Starwind told her gravely, his ice-blue eyes focused inward. He held his slashed palm above the Wingsister Talisman of silver wire and crystals, and his blood dripped onto the heart-stone of the piece, dyeing the clear crystal a vivid ruby.

  Savil watched, silently, feeling the power flowing and weaving itself into the intricate design of rainbow crystal and silver wire.

  This was nothing like the kind of magic she was used to using; it really wasn't much like that the Hawkbrothers had taught her, either. This was older magic, much older, dating, perhaps, from the times of the Mage Wars, the wars that had wrecked the world and left the Pelagirs a twisted, magic-riddled ruin. She shivered a little, and Starwind looked up, one of his brief and infrequent smiles lighting his face for a moment.

  He closed his hand; Moondance touched the back of it, and he opened it again. The slash in his palm had been Healed with the speed of a thought. At eighteen the young outlander now calling himself "Moondance" was well on his way to becoming that rarest of mages, a Healer-Adept.

  Starwind fixed the Talisman in its pla
ce on the mask of feathers and crystal beads; it resembled a palm-sized diadem perched on the brow of the mask above the eye-slits. He handed the whole mask to her, and nodded at the Talisman. "When you need us again, come to us, and let three drops of your own blood fall upon the heart-stone. I shall know, and come to you."

  In all those years since, the heart-stone's bright scarlet had not faded. She only hoped that the set-spell had not faded either. It did seem to her that the heart-stone began pulsing with a dim, inner light from the moment that her blood touched it. But that could have been the flickering of the fire, or the wavering of her own vision; she was too spent to tell, and too drained to begin to sense power even if it was moving under her own nose.

  Vanyel stirred at her side, curling his knees tighter against his chest. She shifted a bit, glad that the floor of the cave was covered in several inches of dry, soft sand.