Last Herald Mage: Magic's Pawn Part 19

Jaysen moved swiftly to gather the unconscious boy in his arms; blood from the boy's sleeves stained the front of his Whites, but Jaysen didn't seem to notice.

Vanyel's head sagged against the Herald's chest. Despite being moved, he showed no signs of reviving.

Savil helped Andrel to rise and go to him. The Healer reached out a hand that shook uncontrollably and checked the pulse at the hinge of Vanyel's jaw, lifted an eyelid, then shook his head.

"Nearer than I like, and he lost too much blood, given what he's been through," Andrel said, grimacing. "Jays, can you and Felar get him back into his bed as of a candlemark ago?"

"No," Savil interrupted. "No, you leave that to me and Yfandes. Jays, give him to me as soon as I get mounted."

She pushed her way through the silent, shocked crowd and found Yfandes waiting as close to the open door as she could get. The Companion looked deeply into Savil's eyes, her own eyes back to a quiet, depthless sapphire, then went to her knees for the Herald to mount.

Savil mounted, and Yfandes rose gracefully to her feet, not in the least unsteady on the smooth marble. Savil held out her arms, amazed by her own calm, and Jaysen lifted the limp form of Vanyel up into place before her. She cradled the boy against her shoulder, wrapping Andrel's cloak about both of them; he was no burden at all, really - almost too light a weight for the ease of her heart and conscience.

Oh, lad, lad - she sighed, nudging Yfandes lightly with her heels to tell her to go on. Poor little lad - we've made a right "mess of your life, haven't we? And all for lack of listening to you. I don't know who is guiltier, me or Withen.

She held him a bit tighter as Yfandes headed at a gentle walk toward the beckoning beacon of the open door of her suite. He was all the legacy Tylendel had left to her, and she pledged the silent sleeper in the Temple behind her that she would take better care of him from this moment on.

And the first task is to put you back together, my poor, bewildered, heart-broken lostling. If ever I can.

Ten.

Years later - or so it seemed - Savil finally crawled into some clothing. She wanted, she needed, to collapse somewhere; wanted rest as a starving man wants bread, but dared not leave Vanyel alone. She finally dragged the chair Jaysen had been using close to the bedside and wrapped herself in the first warm thing that came to hand (which turned out to be Andrel's fur-lined cloak), intending, despite her exhaustion, to stay awake as long as possible.

But she dozed off, some time around dawn, and woke at the sound of a strangled sob.

She fought her way out of the tangled embrace of the cloak; when she got her head free of the folds of the hood, the first things she saw were Vanyel's silver eyes looking at her with a kind of accusative sorrow.

"Why?" he whispered mournfully. "Why did you stop me?"

Savil finally untangled the rest of her, sat up in her chair, and took a quick look around. As she'd ordered, Mardic was still standing weary guard over the door to the rest of the suite, and Donni was drowsing, slumped against the door to the garden. Vanyel was not going to give them the slip a second time, however unlikely the prospect seemed. It hadn't seemed possible the last time.

She gave Mardic a jerk of her head and a Mindsent order; :Out, love, this needs privacy,: and woke Donni with a quick Mindtouch. Donni came completely awake as soon as Savil touched her, a talent the Herald-Mage envied. She pulled herself to her feet with the help of the doorframe at her back. Then both of them left for their own quarters, closing the door into the common room of the suite behind them.

Savil got up stiffly, every joint aching, and sat on the side of the bed, taking both of Vanyel's hands in her own. They were like ice, and bloodless-looking. "I stopped you because had to," she replied. "Because - Vanyel, self-destruction is no answer. Because we've already lost one we loved - and I couldn't lose you, too, now - "

"But I deserve to die - " His voice was weak, and broke on the last word.

And he wouldn't look her in the eyes.

Oh, G.o.ds - what was going through that head of his? What had he convinced himself of? "For what?" she asked, her voice sounding rough-edged even to her. "Because you made some mistakes? G.o.ds, if that was worthy of a death sentence, I should have been sharing that knife!"

His hands were chilling hers; she tried to warm them, chafing them as gently as she could. "Listen to me, Vanyel - this whole wretched mess was one mistake piled on top of another. I made mistakes; I should have watched *Lendel more carefully, I should have insisted he talk to Lancir when his brother was killed. That's one of Lancir's jobs; to keep our heads clear and our minds able to think straight. Dammit, I knew what *Lendel was capable of where Staven was concerned! And he would not have been able to hide that obsession from a MindHealer! *Lendel made mistakes - the G.o.ds themselves know that. He should have thought before he acted; I'd been trying to get him to do that. We - the Heralds - accept mental evidence! All he had to do was ask for a hearing, and we'd have had the material we needed from his own mind to put the Leshara down. You made mistakes, yes, but you made them out of love. He needed help, asked you for it, and you tried to help him the only way anyone had ever taught you was right. And, G.o.ds, even Gala made mistakes!"

Her voice was harsh with tears, and with her own guilt, and she was not ashamed to let him hear it. "Van, Van, we're only simple, fallible mortals - we aren't saints, we aren't angels - we fall on our faces and make errors and sometimes people die of them - sometimes people we love dearly - "

She choked on a sob, and bowed her head.

He freed a hand and touched her cheek hesitantly; his fingers were still snow-cold. She caught and held it, and looked back up into his eyes, seeing worse than grief there before he dropped them.

"You thought the world would be better with you out of it, is that it?"

He nodded, dumbly, and his hands trembled in hers.

"Did you stop to think how I would feel? You were *Lendel's love. Didn't you think I'd come to care for you at least a bit, if only for his sake?"

How was she to reach him - when she'd never been good with words? "I've buried him today. Did you think I'd be indifferent about burying you as well? What about Jaysen? I'd left him to watch you. How do you think he feeis right now about his carelessness? What do you think he'd have felt if you'd died? And - G.o.ds help us - what did you think Yfandes would do?"

I "I thought - I thought she'd find somebody better," he faltered, his voice quavering a bit.

"She'd die, lad; Companions very seldom outlive their Chosen. And she Chose you. If you die, she dies; she'd probably pine herself to death, and she does not deserve that."

He shrank into himself, pulling even farther away from her, and she cursed her clumsy words, her inability to tell him what she really meant without hurting him further. "Van - oh, h.e.l.l - I'm not saying any of this the way I wanted to. Listen to me; you're sick, you need to rest and get well. We'll deal with this later, all right? Just - don't take yourself out of this world right now, there are folks who'll have holes in their lives if you go. And I'm one of them."

He nodded; he didn't look convinced, but now she had exhausted what little eloquence she possessed, and didn't know what else to say to him.

So she tried one last tactic. Let me just keep him alive - if I can do that, maybe we can help him.

"Will you promise me, on your word of honor, that you won't try to do yourself in again? If you will, I'll trust you, and I won't leave guards on your doors."

He swallowed, pulled his hands out of hers, and whispered, haltingly, "I - promise. Word of honor." He still wouldn't look her in the face, but she trusted that sworn word.

She nodded. "Accepted. Now is there anything, anything at all, that I can do for you?" Maybe - "Need to talk?"

He shook his head, and she sensed his complete withdrawal, and cursed again. Dammit, just when I need Lance the most, he's not here.

"Sure?" She persisted, even in the face of defeat; that was her nature. "Vanyel - Vanyel, you're the only person I've got who knew *Lendel from the inside the way I did. If - if you need somebody to mourn witha"

He shook his head again, avoiding her eyes altogether, and she sighed, giving up. "If you change your mind-well, rest, lad. Get better. Call, if you need anything - mind or voice, either, I'll hear you."

He nodded slightly, and closed his eyes again, leaning back and turning his face to the wall. That face was as white as the pillows beneath it, and it made her hurt all over again to see that lost look of his. She waited for another response or a request of some kind, but he slipped right back into an uneasy, shallow slumber. Finally she eased off the bed, gathered up Andrel's cloak from the chair, and left him alone.

Andrel arrived at sunset in response to her invitation to fetch his cloak and share food and thoughts. They'd had more than one intimate little supper in their lives, many of them in this very room, but none so gloom-ridden. Mardic and Donni had gone off to cautiously interview some of Vanyel's circle of admirers, to see if there was someone else they could contact that might help to bring him out of this mental abyss.

Savil's Hawkbrother masks on the wall behind Andrel's left shoulder gazed at her from dispa.s.sionate and empty eyeholes. Candles flickered on the table between them.

Neither of them had much interest in food at the moment; both their minds were on the boy sleeping behind the closed door behind Savil's chair. "What we need," she told Andrel glumly, eating a dinner she did not taste, "is Lancir. We need his MindHealing; the boy's pulling farther away from touching with every moment he's awake, and I cannot get him to let me inside. He's barricading himself again; a different kind of barricade than that old arrogance, but it's there all the same. And Lance b.l.o.o.d.y would be out of touch right now.''

He sighed, his breath making the candleflame flutter, and pushed his own food around on his plate with his fork. "I have to agree with you. Is there no chance you can get Lance back via Gate?''

She shook her head, shoving her frustration back down out of her way. She'd already been over this with Jaysen. "Not without knowing where he is, and he's not a strong enough Thought-senser to read a Broadcast-sending. And we don't know what route he's taking home; could be one of half a dozen. If something were wrong with Elspeth we could afford to send out half-a-dozen Heralds to look for him, but - Vanyel just is not that important." Her tone turned acid. "Or so I've been told."

Andrel frowned, and his eyebrows met. "He may become that important; I'm s.h.i.+elding him as much as I can, but his trauma is still leaking through. Half the trainees are depressed to the point of tears right now, Gifted Bardic, Healer, and Herald, and it's all due to Vanyel's leakage."

"Well what do you expect?" she countered, letting him see her very real anger.

"You saw the strength and depth of his Gifts. Even with raw channels he's Broad-sending without knowing it, and he has no more notion of how to s.h.i.+eld than how to fly! And it's not every day you've got one half of a lifebonded pair left after the other half suicides. If he were trained, he'd be leaking. But n.o.body else believes how strong he is; they all think I'm letting my affection for Tylendel magnify everything that was connected with him out of all proportion to reality."

"G.o.ds!" he looked up from his plate with the expression of a stunned sheep. "Vanyel and Tylendel - lifebonded?"

She nodded unhappily. "I'm pretty d.a.m.ned sure of it; what's more, so are Mardic and Donni, and if anyone would recognize a bonding, it would be another bonded pair. I expected grief, mourning; the natural responses for a youngster who's lost his first love under rotten bad circ.u.mstances - I did not expect to find the kind of gaping emotional wounds I saw before he started shutting me out today. I've never seen that depth of feeling before in anyone, Herald, or no, except Mardic and Donni. So tell me; what the h.e.l.l do I do about a broken lifebond?"

He shook his head, obviously at a loss. "I can't tell you; I don't know. I don't Heal minds, I Heal bodies. And I don't know of anyone who Heals hearts."

She sighed, and looked down at her congealing dinner. "That's what I was afraid you'd tell me. I have more bad news; the relations.h.i.+p between them was one where *Lendel was the leader and Van the follower. Van had gotten totally dependent on *Lendel for all his emotional needs. I tried to warn *Lendel, but - " She shrugged. "And to put the snow on the mountain, Van's got some guilt he's hiding from me, and all I can think is that he's convinced he cursed *Lendel because he seduced Tylendel. Mind you, he didn't; from all I know I'm positive the seduction, if seduction it was, was mutual, but - there it is."

"Jaysen," Andrel said positively.

She nodded. "Good bet, my friend. Jays has got all those Kleimar prejudices about same-s.e.x pairings. He accepted *Lendel, but mostly after I rammed his prejudices right up in his face. But Vanyel? Vanyel wasn't even a Herald-candidate when he and *Lendel paired. Jays hasn't said a word, but you can bet on what he was thinking when he was keeping watch on him. Resentment that Van is alive and *Lendel dead would be the least of it."

"And Vanyel picked it up," Andrel said sadly.

"Probably." She took a bite, found it catch in her throat, and gave up trying to eat, shoving the plate away. "From what I can tell, he's sensitive enough to pick up things you've forgotten for years and do it right through your s.h.i.+elding. Ah, G.o.ds."

She rested both elbows on the table, and covered her sore eyes with her hands. A moment later she felt one of Andrel's hands stroking her hair, and dropped her own back on the table, giving him a good long look across the candleflames. His deeply green eyes were fixed on her face, reflecting a profound concern.

"And what about you?" he asked, barely above a whisper.

"I am trying to reach out to him," she said, feeling old and tired and about ready to give up. "I think I've convinced myself that none of this was any more his fault than it was anyone else's. I b.l.o.o.d.y well hope so, or he's going to be getting knives in the gut from me, too. And he doesn't deserve that. The rest - G.o.ds, I don't know what to do."

"That isn't what I meant," he replied, taking his hand away from her hair, and reaching for her wrist. "I want to know how you're weathering this. Need a shoulder?"

"Want the truth?" She tensed all over, trying to keep from bawling like a little child. "Yes, I need a shoulder, and no, I am not taking this well. I want *Lendel back, Andy - he was my soul-son, and I loved him, and I want him back with me."

Her voice cracked; she lost her veneer of calm, and just dissolved into tears. Andrel got up, gracefully, and without letting go of her wrist; he moved around the table, and pulled her to her feet, then led her over to the couch and gave her that shoulder she needed so badly.

The peaceful night rocked; Vanyel convulsed, wailing - His cry sounded like something in its death agonies, and made Savil's hair stand on end.

The room trembled; literally. The walls shook as Vanyel's muscles spasmed.

His eyes were wide open, but saw nothing, and his pupils dilated with fear. He convulsed again, and the very foundation of the Palace rocked. The bed shook as if it were alive. His lute fell from the wall, landing with a sickening crack that surely meant it was broken past all repair; his armor-stand crashed over and scattered his equipment across the floor, and Savil was tossed from his bedside to the floor before she realized it.

She picked herself up off the floor beside his bed without thinking about safety or bruises, and flung herself at him again.

He thrashed beneath her, fighting her with a paranormal strength; he couldn't know where he was or who she was. All she could read from him was terrible agony - and beneath the pain, confusion, panic, entrapment. She caught his wrists and tried to pinion them against the pillows; then tried to pin him down with the blankets. His chest arched against hers, he screamed, and the walls shook again.

Mardic lay in the corner behind her, quite unconscious; Donni had his head in her lap and she was trying to protect him from falling objects with her own body. Vanyel had thrown him against the wall when this nightmare - or whatever it was - had started, and Mardic had made the mistake of trying to touch his mind to wake him.

:Donni - : Savil used a moment of lull to Mindtouch her pupil, taking a tiny fragment of her attention from the attempt - attempt, for it wasn't succeeding - to s.h.i.+eld Vanyel, to get him under some kind of control. : - Donni, how's Mardic?: :He's all right, just stunned,: came the rea.s.suring reply. : - I can spare you something. Catch this, quick - : The girl "threw" her a mental line, and began sending additional, sorely-needed energy down it as soon as Savil "caught" it.

It helped to keep Savil from blacking out as Vanyel lashed out with his mind, but that was about all.

Jaysen was coming on the run; Savil could Feel him reaching out to find out what the h.e.l.l was going on, and Felt the panic in his mind when he realized they had a powerful Gifted trapped in a pain-loop and hallucination. He all but broke down the door, trying to get in, and flung himself into the affray without a second thought.

"s.h.i.+eld him, dammit," he shouted, throwing himself across Vanyel's legs, as the walls (but, thank the G.o.ds, not the foundations again) shook.

"I'm trying, " she snapped back, giving up on the uneven struggle to pin Vanyel down, and settling for securing his arms. "He breaks them as fast as I get them up!"

Jaysen succeeded in getting Vanyel physically restrained where she, being lighter, had failed. He added his strength to Savil's and Donni's on the crumbling s.h.i.+elds they were trying to get on the boy. But it wasn't even stalemate; they were losing him to his own nightmares.

Andrel appeared. Savil didn't even see or Sense him run in; he was just there all in an instant. But instead of flinging himself into the melee, he grabbed their arms and pulled both of them off the boy.

Then he reached down for something at his feet, and came up with a bucket of icy water. He doused the boy, bed and all, without a heartbeat of hesitation.

The convulsions stopped as Vanyel came abruptly awake.

He sat up - stared - then he suddenly went limp.

The room stopped shaking.

"Savil, get me a blanket," Andrel ordered quietly. "Jays, help me get him out of that wet bed before he goes into shock, then get the bedding stripped before the mattress gets soaked."

By the time Savil returned with the goosedown comforter from her bed, the two men had pulled the half-stunned boy from the tangled mess of water-soaked bedcoverings, and the bedding was piled on the floor. Andrel was carefully shaking the boy's shoulders while Jaysen supported him.

Behind them, Mardic was groggily climbing to his knees, Donni steadying him, but the two of them waved Savil off when she made a half-step in their direction.

:.We're all right,: Donni Mindspoke. ;I'II get Mardic into bed myself, and then I'll come make up the bed in here again.: Savil turned her attention back to the boy, knowing she could trust Donni to deal with the situation if she had said she could.

"Come on, Vanyel," Andrel was saying, coaxingly. "Come on, lad, come back to us. Wake up, come out of it."

Vanyel blinked, blinked again, and sense came back into his eyes. He looked about him, momentarily confused, then the destruction about him seemed to register on him. He closed his eyes, a soft, hardly audible moan coming from the back of his throat.

And for one instant, Savil was nearly flattened beneath an overwhelming load of blackest despair, terrible guilt, and a grief so heavy she felt her knees start to give way beneath the weight of it.

Then it was gone; absolutely cut off, and so completely that for a moment even she doubted that she had felt it.

But one look at Andrel and Jaysen convinced her otherwise; the former was deeply shaken, and the latter white-lipped.

She expected tenderness and concern from Andrel - but strangely enough, it was Jaysen who carefully got the boy into a chair, wrapped in the comforter; and from the chair back into the bed when Donni had stripped it of the wet coverings and remade it. It was Jaysen who stayed beside him, leaving Savil free to see to it that Mardic was truly all right. Savil wasn't in a mood to ask questions about his apparent change of heart.

Mardic was fine, and relatively cheerful. "I'll have a G.o.dsawful headache," he told her; "Poor Van thought I was going to kill him, took me for an enemy in his dream. When he realized it was a dream, he pulled most of it - "

"Most of it?" Savil choked. "He flattened you, and he pulled most of it?"

"Near as I can tell." Mardic put both hands to his temples and ma.s.saged a little. "Well when he pulled the blow, the energy overflowed into those raw channels and hurt him, and he went over the edge; couldn't control anything. Then - I think - he lost his center and got lost in his own pain. Andrel had the right notion; physical shock is what gave him something to home in on."

"But you are going to be all right?"

He gave her half a grin. "If you'll let me get some sleep."

Savil took the statement as an unsubtle request and made a hasty exit.