Magic's Promise

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Already?” This was more than he'd dared hope. “Why?”

  “Liss an' her company, dolt.” Meke finished wrapping the off hind ankle and straightened with another grunt, this time of satisfaction. “Got soldiers out here with pay burnin' their pockets oif, and nothin' to spend it on. There're only two ladies down at Forst Reach village that peddle their assets, and three over to Greenbriars, and it's top far to walk except on leave-days anyway. So they sit in camp and drink issue-beer and gripe. Can you see a merchant allowin' a situation like that to go unrelieved? There's a good girl,” he said to the mare, patting her ample rump. “We'll be off in a bit.”

  :Keep brushing. You can talk and brush at the same time. :

  Vanyel resumed the steady strokes of the brush, working his way down Yfandes' flank. “Would there be any instrument makers, do you think?” Forst Reach collected a peddling fee from every merchant setting his wagon up at the two Fairs, Spring and Harvest. Withen found that particular task rather tedious - and Vanyel hoped now he'd entrusted it to Mekeal.

  Meke sucked on his lip, his hand still on the mare's shoulder. “Now that I think of it, there's one down there already. Don't think we'll likely get more than one. Why?”

  “Something I have in mind,” he replied vaguely. And, to Yfandes, :Lady-my-love, do you think I can interest you in a little trip?: She sighed. :So long as it's a little trip.: :This soft life is spoiling you.:

  :Mmh,: she agreed, blinking lazily at him. :I like being spoiled. I could get used to it very quickly.: He chuckled, and went to get her gear.

  Before Vanyel even found someone who knew which end of Fair Field the luthier was parked in, he had picked up half a dozen trifles for Shavri and Jisa.

  He paused in the act of paying for a jumping jack, struck by the fact that they were so uppermost in his mind.

  What has gotten into me? he wondered. I haven't thought about them for a year, and now - Well, I haven't seen them for a year. That's all. And if I can give Shavri a moment of respite from her worry - He pocketed the toy and headed for the grove of trees at the northern end of the field.

  He spotted the faded red wagon at once; there was an old man seated on the back steps of it, bent over something in his hands.

  Shavri, bent over a broken doll some child in the House of Healing had brought to her. Looking up at me with a face wet with tears. Me, standing there like an idiot, then finally getting the wits to ask her what was wrong. “1 can't bear it, Van, I can't - Van, I want a baby -” He shoved the memory away, hastily. “Excuse me,” Vanyel said, after waiting for the carver perched on the back steps of his scarlet traveling - wagon (part workshop, part display, and part home) to finish the wild rose he was carving from a bit of goldenoak. He still hesitated to break the old man's concentration in the middle of such a delicate piece of work, but there wasn't much left of the afternoon. If he was going to find the purported luthier -

  But the snow-pated craftsman's concentration had evidently weathered worse than Vanyel's gentle interruption.

  “Aye?” he replied, knobby fingers continuing to shape the delicate, gold-sheened petals.

  “I'm looking for Master Dawson.”

  “You're looking at him, laddybuck.” Now the oldster put down his knife, brushed the shavings from his leather apron, and looked up at Vanyel. His expression was friendly in a shortsighted, preoccupied way, his face round, with cloudy gray-green eyes.

  “I understand you have musical instruments for sale?”

  The carver's interest sharpened, and his eyes grew less vague. “Aye,” he said, standing, and pulling his apron over his head. There were a few shavings sticking to the linen of his buff shirt and breeches, and he picked at them absently. “But - in good conscience I can't offer 'em before Fair-time, milord. Not without Ashkevron permission, any rate.”

  Vanyel smiled, feeling as shy as a child, and tilted his head to one side. “Well, I'm an Ashkevron. Would it be permissible if I made it right with my father?''

  The old man looked him over very carefully. “Aye,” he said, after so long a time Vanyel felt as if he was being given some kind of test. “Aye, I think 'twould. Come in the wagon, eh?”

  Half a candlemark later, with the afternoon sun shining into the crowded wagon and making every varnished surface glow, Vanyel sighed with disappointment. “I'm sorry, Master Dawson, none of these lutes will do.” He picked one at random off the rack along the wall of the wagon interior, and plucked a string, gently. It resonated - but not enough. He put it back, and locked the clamp that held it in place in the rack. “Please, don't mistake my meaning, they're beautiful instruments and the carving is fine, but - they’re - they're student's lutes. They're all alike, they have no voice of their own. I was hoping for something a little less ordinary.” He shrugged, hoping the man wouldn't become angered.

  Strangely enough, Dawson didn't. He looked thoughtful instead, his face crossed by a fine net of wrinkles when he knitted his brows. “Huh. Well, you surprise me, young milord - what did you say your name was?”

  Vanyel blushed at his own poor manners. “I didn't, I'm sorry. Vanyel.”

  “Vanyel – that - Vanyel Ashkevron - my Holy Stars! The Herald?” the luthier exclaimed, his eyes going dark and round. “Herald Vanyel? The Shadow -”

  “Stalker, Demonsbane, the Hero of Stony Tor, yes,” Vanyel said wearily, sagging against the man's bunk that was on the wall opposite the rack of instruments. The instrument maker's reaction started a headache right behind his eyes. He dropped his head, and rubbed his forehead with one hand. “Please. I really - get tired of that.”

  He felt a hard, callused hand patting his shoulder, and he looked up in surprise into a pair of very sympathetic and kindly eyes. “I 'magine you do, lad,” the old man said with gruff understanding. “Sorry to go all goose-girl on you. Just - person don't meet somebody folks sing about every day, an' he sure don't expect to have a hero come strollin' up to him at a Border Harvest Fair. Now - you be Vanyel, I be Rolf. And you'll have a bit of my beer before I send you on your way - hey?''

  Vanyel found himself smiling. “Gladly, Rolf.” He started to pick his way across the wagon to the door at the rear, but the man stopped him with a wave of his hand.

  “Not just yet, laddybuck. As I was startin' to tell you, I got a few pieces I don't put out. Keep 'em for Bards. And I got a few more I don't even show to just any Bard - but bein' as you are who you are - an' since they say you got a right fine hand with an instrument -” He opened up a hatch in the floor of the crowded wagon, and began pulling out instruments packed in beautifully wrought padded leather traveling bags. Two lutes, a harp - and three instruments vaguely gittern-shaped, but-much larger.

  Rolf began stripping the cases from his treasures with swift and practiced hands, and Vanyel knew that he had found what he was looking for. The lutes-which were the first cases he opened-bore the same relationship to the instruments on the wall as a printed broadside page bears to an elegant and masterfully calligraphed and ornamented proclamation.

  He took the first, of a dark wood that glowed deep red where the light from the open door struck it, tightened a string, and sounded a note, listening to the resonances.

  “For you, or for someone else?”

  “Someone else,” he said, listening to the note gently die away in the heart of the lute.

  “High voice or low?”

  “High now, but I think he may turn out to be a baritone when his voice changes. He's my nephew; he's Gifted, and he is going to be a fine Bard one day.”

  “Try the other. That one is fine for a voice that don't need any help, it's loud, as lutes go - and all the harmonics are low. The other's better for a young voice, got harmonics up and down, and a nice, easy action. That one he'd have to grow into. The other'll grow with him.”

  Vanyel looked up in surprise at the old man.

  Rolf gave him a half-smile. “A good craftsman knows how his work fits in the world,” he said. “I got no voice, but I got the ear. T
ruth is, the ear is harder to find than the voice. Though I doubt you'd find a Bard who'd agree.”

  Vanyel nodded, and picked up the second lute, this one of wood the gold of raival leaves in autumn. He tightened a string and sounded it; the note throbbed through the wagon, achingly true. He tried the action on the neck; easy, but not mushy.

  “You were right,” he said, holding the chosen instrument out to the luthier. “I'll take it. No haggling.” He looked wistfully over at the other. “And if I didn't already have a lute I love like an old friend. ...”

  Rolf waggled his bushy eyebrows, and grinned, as he took the golden lute from Vanyel and began carefully replacing it in its bag. “Care to try a friend of a new breed?” He nodded at the gittern-shaped objects.

  “Well . . . what are those things?”

  “Something new. Been trying gitterns with metal strings, 'stead of gut; you tell me how it came out.” He laid the chosen lute carefully down on his bunk, and stripped the case from the first of the gitterns. “I keep 'em tuned; this one is a fair bitch to demonstrate if I don't. Hoping to get to Haven one day, show 'em to the Collegium Bards.”

  “Great good gods.” Vanyel's jaw dropped. “Twelve strings? I should say”

  “Fingers like a gittern. That one's like it; the other has six. Use metal harpstrings.”

  Vanyel took it carefully, and struck a chord -

  It rang like a bell, sang like an angel in flight, and hung in the air forever, pulsing to the beat of his heart.

  He closed his eyes as it died away, lost in the sound; and when he opened them, he saw Rolf grinning at him like a fiend.

  “You,” he said, sternly, “are a terrible man, Rolf Dawson.”

  “Oh, I know,” the old man chortled. “It don't hurt that the inside of this wagon's tuned, too. That's one reason why them student lutes sound as good as they do. But that lady'll sound good in a privy.”

  “Well, I hope you're prepared to work your fingers to the bone,” Vanyel replied, snatching up the leather case and carefully encasing his gittern. “Because when I take her back to Haven and Bard Breda hears her, she will send packs of dogs out to find you and bring you there!”

  Rolf chuckled even harder. “Why d'you think I pulled her out and had you try her? You're going to do half my work for me, Herald Vanyel. With you t'speak for me, an' that lady, I won't spend three, four fortnights coolin' my heels with the other luthiers, waitin' my turn to see a Collegium Bard”

  Vanyel had to chuckle himself. “You are a very terrible man. Now - you might as well tell me the worst.”

  “Which is?”

  He felt a twinge for his once-full purse. Well, what else did he have to spend money on? “How much I owe you.”

  Vanyel shut the door to his room behind him, and set his back against it, breathing the first easy breath he'd taken since he left his chamber this morning. “Gods!” he gasped. “Sanctuary at last! Hello, Medren. Oh, you brought wine-thank you, I need it badly.”

  The boy looked up from tuning the new strings on his new lute. Giving it to him had given Vanyel one of the few moments of unsullied joy he'd had lately, a reaction worth ten times what Vanyel had paid.

  Medren grinned. “Mother?”

  “That was this morning,” Vanyel replied, pushing away from the door, heading for the table beside the window seat and the cool flask of wine Medren had brought. “I swear, she chased me all over the keep, with stars in her eyes and the hunt in her blood.”

  Poor Melenna. Gods. She's driving me insane, but I can't bring myself to hurt her. I've been the cause of so much hurt, I can't bear any more.

  “And lust in her -”

  “Medren!” Vanyel interrupted. “That's your mother you're slandering!”

  “- heart,” the boy finished smoothly. “What did you do?”

  “I took a bath,” Vanyel replied puckishly. “I took a very long bath. When I finally came out, she'd given up.”

  “So who was chasing you this time, if it wasn't Mother?”

  “Lord Withen. On the Great Sheep Debate. Meke wants to keep the sheep on Long Meadow until spring shearing; Father wants yearling cattle back there immediately, if not sooner.” Vanyel groaned, and held both hands to his head. “If it wasn't for the fact that once this door is shut they leave me alone-gods, the Border was more peaceful!”

  Water droplets beaded the side of the flask and ran down the sides as Vanyel picked it up. “Whoever gets you as protege will bless you for your thoughtfulness, lad.” He poured himself a goblet of wine, and took it with him to sip while he stood over Medren at the window seat. No breath of air stirred without or within, and even the birds seemed to have gone into sun-warmed naps. “That instrument still as much to your liking?”

  Medren nodded emphatically, if with a somewhat preoccupied expression. He was tuning the last string, a frown of concentration making his young face look adult.

  Vanyel warmed inside, as he picked up his own lute.

  It takes so little to make the child so happy - and gods, the talent.

  “Well, then,” he said, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder, “Ready for your les - ”

  The boy winced away from the light touch on his shoulder. Not in emotional reaction - but in physical pain.

  Vanyel snatched his hand away as if it had been a red-hot iron he'd inadvertently set on the bare skin of the boy's back. “Medren! What did I-”

  “It's all right,” the boy said, and shrugged-which called up another grimace of pain. “Just-old Jervis reckoned we all ought to see how you could trick somebody into dropping his shield and then come in overhand. Guess who got to be the victim.” His tone was so bitter Vanyel could taste it in the back of his own mouth. “Like always.”

  The blur of the blade coming for him, always coming for him; the weight of the shield on his arm getting heavier by the moment. The shock of each blow that he couldn't dodge; shock first and then pain. Breath burning in lungs, side aching with bruises; cramps knotting his calves. Stumbling backward, head reeling, vision clouding.

  “Van?”

  Cold sweat down his back and the taste of blood in his mouth. Bitter, absolute humiliation. Metallic taste of hate and fear.

  “Hey, Vanyel-are you all right?”

  Vanyel shook his head to clear it, and locked down his own agitation as best he could, but the memories were crowding in on him so vividly he was almost reliving that moment so many years ago when Jervis finally got him in a corner he couldn't escape.

  “I'm all right.” His left arm began to ache, and he massaged the arm and wrist, reflexively. It still aches, after all these years. I still have numb fingers. Oh, gods, not Medren.

  “We could skip the lesson,” he began, with carefully suppressed emotion.

  “No!” Medren exclaimed, clutching the lute to his chest and jumping to his feet. “No, it's nothing! Really! I'm fine!”

  “If you're sure,” Vanyel said, wondering how much of that was bravado on the boy's part.

  “I'm sure. I got some horse-liniment, I'd have rubbed it on right after, but I didn't want to stink up your room.'' The boy grinned half-heartedly and sat down again, his eyes anxious.

  “I've got something better than that - if you aren't afraid I'll seduce you!”

  The boy made an impudent face at him. “You had your chance, Vanyel. What's this stuff you got? I don't mind telling you my shoulder hurts like blazes.”

  “Willow and wormwood in ointment, with mint to make it smell reasonable. I always have some.” He put his lute down and leaned over to rummage in the chest at the foot of his bed. “I'm one of those people who bruise just thinking about it. Get your shirt off, would you?”

  When he turned around with the little jar in his hand, the boy had stripped to the waist, revealing a nasty bruise the size of his hand spreading all over the left shoulder. It was an ugly thing; purple the next thing to black in the center, blue-gray and red mottled through it.

  Crack like lightning striking as the shield split. S
udden darkness, dizziness. Waking to Lissa's anxious face, and a pain in his left arm that sent the blackness to take him again.

  “Good gods!”

  Medren shrugged with one shoulder. “I bruise that way. Looks worse than it is, I guess. Young Mekeal took one just as hard and you can't hardly see a mark on him.” He looked longingly at the pot of salve. “Vanyel, you going to stand there and stare all day, or use that stuff?”

  “I'm sorry, Medren.” He shook off his shock; got several fingersful of the ointment, and began to massage it as gently as possible into the bruised area, working his way from the edges inward. The boy hissed with pain at first, then gradually relaxed.

  Vanyel, on the other hand, was profoundly disturbed, and growing tenser by the moment, his own shoulder muscles knotting up like snarled harpstrings. Gods, what can I do? Damned if I'll let Jervis ruin Medren the way he ruined me - but how? If I force a confrontation, he'll only take it out on Medren. If I take him on myself - gods, I do not trust my temper, not with that old bastard. Not with the hair-trigger I've got right now. He'd make one wrong move, or say something at the wrong time - and I'd kill him before I could stop myself. What can I do? What can I do?

  “Lady Bright,” the boy sighed. “I feel like I got a shoulder again, instead of a piece of pounded meat.”

  “Medren, is there any way you can avoid practices until you're safely out of here?” Vanyel asked.

  Medren considered a moment. “Now and again,” he said, slowly. “Not on a regular basis.”

  “Are you sure?” Vanyel pursued, urgently. “Isn't there any place you can hide?”

  “Not since they opened up the back of the library. Anyplace I go, they'll find me, eventually. Isn't there anything you can do?”

  Vanyel shook his head with bitter regret. “I wish there were. I can't think of anything at the moment. I'll work on it; if there's a way out for you, I'll find it. Look, avoid him as much as you can. Try and stay out of his line-of-sight when you can't avoid the practices. If he doesn't actually see you in front of him, sometimes you can manage to keep from becoming his target for the day.”