Magic's price

by Mercedes Lackey

  Van had made his way to the side of the bed by the end of this speech; he sat down on it rather abruptly, and stared at his young cousin. “He can - what?”

  “He sings pain away.” Medren shrugged, and the cloth of his red-brown tunic strained over his shoulders. “We don't know how, we only know he can. Found it out when I had that foul case of marsh-fever and a head like an overripe pumpkin.”

  Vanyel grimaced in sympathy; he'd had a dose of that fever himself, and knew the miserable head and bone aches it brought with it.

  “Stef didn't know I was in the room; came in and started practicing. I started to open my mouth to chase him out, I figured that was the last thing I needed, but after the first two notes I couldn't feel any headache. Point of fact, I fell asleep.” Medren leaned forward, and his words tumbled out as he tried to tell Vanyel everything at once. “I woke up when he finished, he was putting his gittern away, and the headache was coming back. Managed to gabble something out before he got away from me, and we tried it again. Damned if I didn't fall asleep again.”

  “That could have been those awful herbal teas the Healers seem to set such store by,” Vanyel reminded him. “They put me to sleep -”

  “Put you to sleep, sure, but they don't do much about the head. Besides, we thought of that. Got at Breda when I cured up, told her, got her to agree to play victim next time she had one of her dazzle-headaches, and it worked for her, too.” He took a deep breath, and looked at Vanyel expectantly.

  “It did?” Vanyel was impressed despite his skepticism. Breda, as someone with the Bardic Gift, wasn't easily influenced by the illusions a strong Gift could weave. Besides, so far as he knew, nothing short of a dangerous concoction of wheat-smut could ease the pain of one of her dazzle-headaches.

  Medren spread his hands. “Damned if I know how he does it, Van. But Stef's had a way of surprising us over at Bardic about once a week. Only eighteen, and he's about to make Full Bard. Just may beat me to it. Anyway, you were telling me how Randale hates to take those pain-drugs because they make him muddled -”

  “But can't endure more than an hour without them, yes, I remember.” Vanyel threw the abused boots in the corner and leaned forward on his bed, crossing his arms. “I take it you think we can use this Stefen instead of the drugs? I'm not sure that would work, Medren - the reason Randi hates the drugs is that his concentration goes to pieces under them. How can he do anything and listen to your friend at the same time?”

  Medren swatted the curtains away again, jumped to his feet and began pacing restlessly, keeping his eyes on Vanyel. “That's the whole beauty of it - this Wild Talent of his seems to work whether you're consciously listening or not. Honest, Van, I thought this out - I mean, if it would work when Breda and I were asleep, it should work under any circumstances.”

  Vanyel stood up, slowly. This Wild Talent of Stefen's might not help - but then again, it might. It was worth trying. These days anything was worth trying. . . .

  And they had tried anything and everything once the Healers had confessed themselves baffled. Hot springs, mud baths, diets that varied from little more than leaves and raw grains to nothing but raw meat. There had been no signs of a cure, no signs of improvement, just increasing pain and a steadily growing weakness. Nothing had helped Randale in the last year, not even for a candlemark. Nothing but the debilitating, mind-numbing drugs that Randi hated.

  “Let's go talk to Breda,” Van said abruptly, kneeling and fishing his outdoor boots out from under the bed. He looked up to catch Medren's elated grin. “Don't get excited,” he warned. “I know you're convinced, but this may be nothing more than pain-sharing, and Randi's past the point where that's at all effective.” He stood up, boots in hand, and pulled them on over his damp stockings. “But as you pointed out, it's worth trying. Astera knows we've tried stranger things.”

  Medren kept pace with his uncle easily, despite Vanyel's longer legs and ground-devouring strides. After all, he had just spent his Journeyman period completely afoot, in the wild northlands, where villages were weeks apart. Fortunately it was also the shortest Journeyman trial in the history of the Collegium, he reflected wryly, recalling his aching feet, sore back, and the nights he spent half-frozen in his little tent-shelter. And it wasn't even winter yet! Three months up there gave me enough material for a hundred songs. Although so far half of them seem to be about poor souls freezing to death -

  Medren watched his uncle out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge his feelings, but he couldn't tell what Van was thinking. In that, as in any number of things, Vanyel hadn't changed much in the past few years, though he had altered subtly from the uncle Medren had first encountered.

  Gotten quieter, more focused inside himself. Doesn't even talk to anybody about himself anymore, not even Savil. Medren frowned a little. Uncle Van isn't doing himself any favors, isolating himself like that.

  Vanyel had the kind of fine-boned, ascetic face that aged well, with no sign of wrinkling except around the eyes and a permanent worry-line between his brows. His once-black hair was thickly streaked with white, but that wasn't from age, that was from working magic with what he and his aunt, Herald-Mage Savil, called “nodes.” Medren had gathered from Vanyel's complicated explanations that these node-things were collecting points for magical energy - and that they were infernally hard to deal with.

  For whatever reason, the silver-streaked hair, when combined with the ageless face and a body that would have been the envy of most of Medren's peers, made Vanyel's appearance confusing - even to those who knew him. Young - old, and hard to categorize.

  Add eyes the color of burnished silver, eyes that seemed to look right through a person, and you had the single most striking Herald in Whites. . . .

  Medren frowned again. And the least approachable.

  His nephew guessed that Vanyel had been purposefully learning how to control his expressions completely in the same way a Bard could. Probably for some of the same reasons. Not even a flicker of eyelid gave his thoughts away; over the past couple of years control had become complete. Even Medren, who knew him about as well as anyone, never knew what was running through his mind unless Van wanted him to know.

  Vanyel was as beautiful as a statue carved from the finest alabaster by the hand of a master. But thanks to that absolute control, he was also about as remote and chill as that same statue.

  Which is the way he wants it, Medren sighed. Or at least, that's what he says. “I can't afford hostages,” he says. 'I can't let anyone close enough to be used against me.” He doesn't even like having people know that he and I are as friendly as we are-and we're related. He thinks it makes me a target. . . .

  There actually had been at least one close scrape, toward the end of the Tashir affair. Medren hadn't realized how close that scrape had been until long after, in his third year at Bardic. And in some ways, Van was absolutely right, in that he couldn't afford close emotional relationships. If he'd been the marble statue he resembled, his isolation would likely have been a good thing.

  But he wasn't. He was a living human being, and one who would not admit that he was desperately lonely.

  To the lowest hells with that. If he doesn't find somebody he can at least talk to besides Savil, he's going to go mad in white linen one of these days. He's keeping everyone else sane, but who can he go to?

  Nobody, that's who. Medren gritted his teeth. Well, we'll see about that, uncle. If you can resist Stef, you're a candidate for the Order of Saint Thiera the Immaculate.

  They left the Palace itself, and followed a graveled path toward the separate building housing the Bardic Collegium; a three-storied, gray stone edifice. The first floor held classrooms, the second, the rooms of such Bards as taught here, and the third, the rooms of the apprentices and Journeymen about to be made Masters. There were only two of the latter, himself and Stefen. Some might have objected to being roomed with Stef, for the younger boy was shaych, and made no bones about it - but not Medren.

  Not with Va
nyel for an uncle, Medren reflected, with tolerant amusement. Not that Stefs anything like Van. If uncle's a candidate for the Order of Saint Thiera, Stefs a candidate for the Order of the Brothers of Perpetual Indulgence! No wonder he writes good lovesongs; he's certainly had enough experience!

  One of the brown-tunicked Bardic apprentices passed them, laboring under a burden of four or five instruments. They stepped off the path long enough to let her pass; her eyes widened at the sight of Vanyel, and she swallowed and sketched a kind of salute as they passed by her. Van didn't notice, but Medren did; he winked at her and returned it.

  Medren had gotten Stef as a roommate before this, back when he was an apprentice. That was surely an experience! I'm not sure which was stranger for me; Stef as he arrived, or Stef once he figured out what he was. Medren mentally shook his head. What a country-bred innocent I was!

  Stef had arrived at the Collegium in the care of Bard Lynnell; barely ten, and frightened half to death. He had no idea what was going on, or why this strange woman had plucked him off his street corner and carried him off. Lynnell wasn't terribly good with children, and she hadn't bothered to explain much to young Stefen. That had been left to Medren, the only apprentice at the time who had no roommate.

  And first I had to explain that this wasn't a bordello. He'd thought Lynn was a procurer.

  Lynnell had heard the boy singing on the street corner, attracting good crowds despite being accompanied only by an unskilled hag with a bodhran. While the Bard had no talent for taking care of children, she was both skilled and graced with the Bardic Gift herself. She had recognized Stefen's Gift with the first notes she heard. And she knew what would happen if that child was left unprotected much longer - some accident would befall him, he could be sold to a whoremaster, some illness left untreated could ruin his voice for life - there were a thousand endings to this child's story, and few of them happy.

  Until Lynnell had entered it, anyway. One thing about Lynn; she goes straight for what she wants so fast that most people are left gaping after her as she rides out of sight.

  She'd made enough inquiries to ascertain that the crude old woman playing the drum and collecting the coins was not Stefs mother, nor any kind of relative. That was all it took for her to be on the sunny side of legality; once that was established, she had invoked Bardic Immunity and kidnapped him.

  Then dumped him on me. Medren smiled. Glad she did. He may have gotten me into trouble, but it was generally fun trouble.

  There were some who opined that Stefen's preference for his own sex stemmed from some experience with that nasty old harridan that was so appalling he'd totally repressed the memory. Privately Medren thought that was unlikely. So far as he was able to determine, she'd never laid a finger on Stefen except for an occasional hard shaking, or a slap now and then.

  From everything Stef said, when she was sober, she knew where her money was coming from. She wasn't cruel, just crude, and not too bright. So long as her little songbird kept singing, she wasn't going to do anything to upset him.

  He held the door to the Bardic Collegium open for his uncle, and followed closely on his heels.

  All that Stef had suffered from was neglect, physical and emotional. The emotional neglect was quickly remedied by every adult female in the Collegium, who found the half-starved, big-eyed child irresistible.

  Stefs spirits certainly revived quickly enough once he discovered the attention was genuine - and also learned he was to share the (relative) luxuries of the Bardic Collegium.

  Like a roof over his head every night, a real bed, all he could eat whenever he wanted it, Medren thought, following Vanyel up the narrow staircase to the second floor. Poor little lad. Whatever his keeper had been spending the money on, it certainly wasn't high living. Drugs, maybe. The gods know Stefs death on anybody he catches playing with them.

  Bard Breda's rooms were right by the staircase; Collegium lore had it that she'd picked that suite just so she could humiliate apprentices she caught sneaking in late at night.

  The fact was that she had chosen those rooms because she was something of an Empath and something of a chiru-geon; she'd gotten early herbalist training before her Gift was discovered. Bardic apprentices tended to get themselves in trouble with alarming regularity. Sometimes that trouble ended in black eyes - and occasionally in worse. Breda's minor Talents had come to the rescue of more than one wayward apprentice since the day she'd settled in to teach.

  Like every other female in the place, she'd taken a liking to Stef, which was just as well. Once Stef had reached the age of thirteen his preferences were well established - and his frail build combined with those preferences got him into more fights than the rest of the apprentices combined. Breda had patched Stefen up so many times she declared that she was considering having the Healers assign him to one of their apprentices as a permanent case study.

  Vanyel paused outside the worn wooden door, and knocked lightly.

  “Come,” Breda replied, her deep voice still as smooth as cream despite her age, and steadier than the Palace foundations. Vanyel pushed the door ajar, and let them both into the dim cool of Breda's quarters.

  Medren often suspected that Breda was at least half owl. She was never awake before noon, she stayed alert until the unholiest hours of the dawn, and she kept the curtains drawn in her rooms no matter what time of day or night it was. Of course, that could have been at least in part because she was subject to those terrible headaches, during which the least amount of light was painful . . . still, walking into her quarters was like walking into a cave.

  Medren peered around, trying to see her in the gloom, blinking as his eyes became accustomed to it. He heard a chuckle, rich and throaty. “By the window. I do read occasionally.”

  Medren realized then that what he'd taken for an empty chair did in fact have the Bard in it; he'd been fooled by the shadows cast by the high back. “Hullo, Van,” the elderly Bard continued serenely. “Come to verify your scapegrace nephew's tale, hmm?”

  “Something like that,” Vanyel admitted, finding another chair and easing himself down into it. “You must admit that most of the rumors of cures we've chased lately have been mist-maidens.”

  Medren groped for a chair for himself; winced as the legs scraped discordantly against the floor, and dropped down onto its hard wooden seat.

  “Sad, but true,” Breda admitted. “I must tell you, though, I was completely skeptical, myself. I'm difficult to deceive at the best of times; when I have one of my spells I really don't have much thought for anything but the pain. And that youngling dealt with the pain. I've no idea how, but he did it.”

  “So I take it you're in favor of this little experiement?” Medren thought Van sounded relieved, but he couldn't be sure.

  A faint movement from the shadows in the chair signaled what might have been a shrug. “What have we got to lose? The boy can't hurt anyone with that Wild Talent, so the very worst that could happen is that the King will have one of our better young Journeymen providing appropriately soothing background music for the audiences. He'll have to have someone there entertaining in any case - someone with the Gift, to keep those ambassadors in a good mood. No reason why it can't be Stefen. The boy's amazingly good; very deft, so deft that even most Gifted Bards don't notice he's soothing them.”

  “No reason at all,” Vanyel agreed. “Especially if he's that good. Can he do both at once?”

  “Can you Mindspeak with 'Fandes and spellcast at the same time?” Breda countered.

  “If the spell is familiar enough.” Vanyel pondered. “But I don't know, he's not very experienced, is he? Medren told me he's still a Journeyman.”

  “He may not be experienced, but he's a damned remarkable boy,” Breda replied, with an edge to her voice. “You ought to pay a bit more attention to what’s going on under your nose, Van, the lad's been the talk of the Collegium for the past couple of years. That's why we kept him here for his Journeyman period instead of sending him out. The boy's got al
l three Bardic requirements, Van, not just two. The Gift, the ability to perform, and the creative Talent to compose. Three of his ballads are in the common repertory already, and he's not out of Journeyman status.”

  Vanyel coughed. “I stand rebuked,” he replied, a hint of humor in his voice. “Well, let's give this Stefen a chance. Do you want to tell him, or shall I?”

  Breda laughed. “You. I'd just gotten comfortable when you two sailed in. And at my age, one finds stairs more than a little daunting.”

  Vanyel rose, and Medren scrambled to join him. “You're just lazy, that's all,” he mocked gently. “You can outdance, outfight, outdrink, and outlast people half your age when you choose.”

  “That's as may be,” Breda replied as Vanyel turned toward the door, her own voice just as mocking. “But right now I don't choose. Let me know how things work out, youngling.”

  Medren felt a hand between his shoulderblades propelling him out the door and into the corridor. “Just for that,” Vanyel said over his shoulder as he closed the door, “I think I'll see that someone tells you - some time next week.”

  A pungent expletive emerged, muffled, through the door. Medren hadn't known Breda knew that particular phrase . . . though anatomically impossible, it certainly would have been interesting to watch if she'd decided to put his uncle in that particular position....

  Stefen - or rather, Stefen's appearance - came as something of a surprise to Van. Vanyel had been expecting something entirely different - a youngster like Medren, but perhaps a little plainer, a little taller. At some point he'd formed a vague notion that people gifted with extraordinary abilities tended to look perfectly ordinary.

  Stefen was far from ordinary -

  Van hung back when they'd gotten to the room Medren shared with the boy, prompted by the feeling that Stefen might be uneasy in his presence. Stef had just been leaving, in fact. Medren intercepted him right at the door, and Vanyel had lingered in an alcove while Medren explained to the boy what they wanted of him. That gave Van ample opportunity to study the musician while the youngster remained unaware of the Herald's scrutiny.