Magic's Pawn

by Mercedes Lackey

  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.

  Because an army was what was coming down that canyon.

  He’d sent for help, sent Yfandes and Tylendel -

  Tylendel? But Tylendel was dead -

  - but he’d also known that help was unlikely to arrive in time.

  He had waited until they were almost on him, suspecting nothing, and knowing that they could not see him yet because he willed it so. Then he had raised his right hand high over his head, and a mage-light had flared on it; so bright that the front ranks of that terrible army winced back, and their shadows fell black as the heart of night on the snow behind them. He had said nothing; nothing needed to be said. He barred the way; that was all the challenge required.

  They were heavily armored, those fighters; armor of some dull, black stuff, and helms of the same. They carried the weight of that armor as easily as Vanyel wore his own white fur cloak. They bore unornamented round shields, again of the same dull, black material, and carried long broadswords.
For the rest, what could be seen of their clothing under the armor and their cloaks over it, they were a motley lot. But they moved with a kind of sensitivity to the presence of the next-in-line that had told Vanyel in the dream that they had been drilled together by a hand more merciless than ever Jervis had been.

  They stared at him, and none of them moved for a very long time -

  Until the front ranks parted, and the wizard stepped through.

  Wizard he was, and no doubt; Vanyel could feel the Power heavy within him. But it was Power of the same kind as that which had cut this canyon; paid for in agony. And when it was gone, there would be no more until the wizard could torture and kill again. Vanyel had all the power of life itself behind him; the power of the sleeping earth, of the living forest -

  He spread his arms, and the life-energy flowed from him, creating a barricade across the valley -

  - like the barricade across his heart -

  - and a shield behind which he could shelter. He faced the wizard, head held high, defiance in the slightest movement, daring him to try and pass.

  But the ranks of the fighters parted again, and the first wizard was joined by a second, and a third. And Vanyel felt his heart sinking, seeing his own death sentence written in those three-to-one odds.

  Still, he had stood his ground -

  Until Mardic touched his mind.

  It had hurt, that touch; salt on raw flesh. He’d interpreted it as an attack of the wizards, and had struck back, struck to kill, and only as he’d made his strike had realized that -

  - a dream, oh, gods - it’s a dream, it isn’t real, and that’s Mardic -

  And had tried to pull the blow; had pulled the blow, but that sent the aborted power coursing back down places that burned in agony when it touched them. And he’d tried to stop the flow, but that had only twisted things up inside him, until he was a thrashing knot of anguish and he didn’t know where he was or what he was doing. It all hurt, everything hurt, everything burned, and he was trapped in the pain, in the torment, crying out and knowing no one could hear him, and lost - he couldn’t feel his body anymore, couldn’t hear or see; he was foundering in a sea of agony -

  Then a shock - like being struck -

  He found himself gasping for breath, frozen to his teeth, but back in a normal body that hurt in a normal way.

  Then he had blacked out for a moment; came to with the Healer shaking him, talking to him.

  He was soaking wet, and shivering.

  Mardic? What about Mardic?

  The Herald Jaysen was holding him upright, more than half supporting him -

  Tylendel, dead, crumpled at Jaysen’s feet. My fault, oh, gods, my fault -

  The grieving came down on him, full force; but somewhere at the back of his mind he knew that they were feeling what he was feeling and he clamped down on it - closed that line off -

  In the stunned, mental silence he heard Jaysen’s anguished thoughts, as clearly and intimately as if he was speaking them into Vanyel’s ear.

  :Gods - oh, gods, I didn’t know, I didn’t guess - I thought he was playing with the boy, I thought he was - oh, gods, what have I done?:

  He shuddered away from the unwanted sympathy, from the mind-words that were like acid in his wounds, and blocked that line just as ruthlessly.

  Then had come the potions - and the numbness. The blessed unfeeling. He drifted, nothing to hold him, not even his worry for Mardic. It was pitchy dark, they hadn’t left a single flame in the room, which under the circumstances was probably wise. Scraps of what he now knew were thoughts drifted over to him; now Savil’s mind-voice, now Jaysen’s (dark with guilt, and Vanyel wondered why), now Mardic’s.

  If he had been on his feet, he would have staggered with relief at hearing that last. I didn’t kill him - thank the gods, I didn’t kill him.

  He drifted farther, until he couldn’t hear anything anymore. Until he lost even his own thoughts. Until there was nothing left but sleep, and the sorrow that never, ever left him.

  Savil stood beside the garden door with one hand on the frame, and prayed. She didn’t pray often; most Heralds didn’t. Praying usually meant asking for something - and the kind of person that became a Herald tended to be the kind that didn’t look outside of himself for help until the last hope had been exhausted.

  For Savil, at least, it had gotten to that point.

  Just beyond the window, bundled in quilts and blankets and half-lying against Yfandes’ side, Vanyel dozed in the sun, still kept in a sleepy half-daze by Andrel’s potions. Jaysen had carried him out there, with his own mind so tightly shielded against leaking his thoughts that Savil fair Saw him quivering under the strain. Jaysen would be back for the boy in another two candlemarks, which was all Andrel would allow in this cold. This was the third day of the routine; there had been no real repetition of the crisis that had precipitated it, but Savil more than half expected one every night.

  Vanyel sighed in sleep, and one arm stole out of the blankets to circle around Yfandes’ neck. The Companion nuzzled his ear, and instead of pulling away, he cuddled closer to her.

  But before Savil had a chance to really take in this first, positive sign that the Herald-Companion bond was taking root in the boy, someone pounded on her outer door. She half-turned, and heard Donni pattering across the common room to answer it. There was a murmur too indistinct to make but.

  The voice from outside the door strengthened. “Please, I’m Van’s sister - let me at least talk to my aunt - “

  Savil started, and strode quickly across Vanyel’s room, pulling open the door. There could only be one of Vanyel’s sisters likely to show up on her doorstep at this point, the one that had fostered out in hopes of a career in the Guard.

  “Let her in, Donni,” Savil said - and blinked in surprise. The girl in the doorway could have been herself at seventeen or eighteen.

  God help her - no wonder she went for the Guard, Savil thought irrelevantly. She’s got that damned Ashkevron nose.

  Evidently the same thought was running through the girl’s mind. “You must be my Aunt Savil,” she said forthrightly, standing at what was almost “attention” in the doorway. “You have the nose. I’m Lissa. Can I help?”

  Savil decided that she liked this blunt girl. “Perhaps, I don’t know yet,” she replied. “First, Lissa, come in and tell me what you’ve heard.”

  Lissa turned away from the garden door with a shudder. “He looks like he’s been dragged through the nine hells facedown,” she said.

  “And at that he looks better than he did three days ago,” Savil replied. She would have said more, but there was another pounding on the suite door and a voice she knew only too well rumbled angrily when Donni answered it.

  “Like bloody hell she’s too busy,” Lord Withen Ashkevron snarled. “I didn’t bloody ride my best horse to foundering to be put off with a’too damned busy!’ Now where in hell is she?”

  Savil, with Lissa at her side, strode across to the door, flung it open, and stood facing Withen with her back poker-straight, feet slightly apart, arms crossed over her chest.

  “What do you want, Withen?” she asked flatly, narrowing her eyes in mingled annoyance and apprehension.

  “What the hell do you think I want?” he growled, ignoring Lissa and Donni as if they weren’t there, placing his fists on his hips, and taking an aggressive, wide-legged stance. “I want to know what the hell you’ve been doing with the boy I sent you! I sent him down here for you to make a man out of him, not turn him into a perverted little catamite!” His face darkened and his voice rose with every word. “I - “

  “I think that’s more than enough, Withen,” she snapped, cutting him off before he could build up to whatever climax he had in mind. “I, I, I - dammit, you blustering peabrain, is that all you ever think of? Yourself? Vanyel almost died four days ago, he almost died again three days ago, and he could die or go mad in the next candlemark, and all you can think of is that he did something your back-country prejudice
s don’t approve of! Gods above and below, you can’i even call him by his bloody name, just ‘the boy’!”

  She advanced on him with such anger in her face that he actually fell back a pace, alarm and surprise chasing themselves across his eyes. Lissa moved with her, and stood beside her with every muscle tensed, and her fists clenched into hard knots.

  “You come storming in here when we’ve maybe - maybe - got him stable, without so much as a ‘please’ or a ‘may I,’ you don’t even ask if he’s in any shape to put two words together in a sensible fashion! Oh, no, all you can do is scream that I ‘ve made him into a catamite when you sent him to be made into a man. A man!” She laughed, a harsh cawing sound that clawed its way up out of her throat. “My gods - what the hell did you think he was? Tell me, Withcn, what kind of a man would send his son into strange hands just because the poor thing didn’t happen to fit his image of masculinity?”

  Savil ran out of things to say - but Lissa hadn’t.

  “What kind of a man would let a brutal bully break his son’s arm for no damned reason?” the girl snarled. “What kind of a man would drive his son into becoming an emotional eunuch because every damned time the boy looked for a little bit of paternal love he got slapped in the face? What kind of a man would take anyone’s word over his son’s with no cause to ever think the boy was a liar?’’ Lissa faced down her father as if he had become her enemy. “You tell me, Father! What right do you have to demand anything of him? What did you ever give him but scorn? When did you ever give him a single thing he really needed or wanted? When did you ever tell him he’d done well? When did you ever say you loved him?”

  Withen backed up another two paces, his back against the wall beside the door, his expression that of someone who has just been poleaxed.

  Savil found her tongue again. “A man - may all the gods give you what you deserve, you fathead! What kind of a man would care more for his own reputation than his son’s life?’’ She was backing him into the corner now, unleashing on Withen all the pain and frustration and anger she’d been keeping bottled up inside her over the past week. He had gone pale - and started to try to say something, but she cut him off.