Last Herald Mage: Magic's Pawn Part 25

This is going to be real, it feels real. It's ForeSight. It has to be. Leareth calls me * *Herald-Mage Vanyel,'' and I'm in Whites. I'm dreaming my own death. This is what is going to happen to me, how I'm going to die, if I become a Herald. Alone. In terrible pain, and all alone, fighting a doomed battle.

He s.h.i.+vered harder, chilled by the cold of the dream, chilled even more with fear. He finally threw the covers back, grabbed his robe, and padded into the room with the hot pools, finding his way by moonlight and habit.

For this was not the first time he'd awakened in the middle of the night, dream-chilled and needing warmth. This was just the first time since he'd arrived here that the dream had been clear enough to remember.

He climbed into the uppermost pool, easing himself down into the hot water with a sigh and a s.h.i.+ver. Oh, G.o.ds. I don't want to die like that. They can't want me to have to face that, can they? If they knew about this dream, would they still want me to be a Herald? G.o.ds, I know the answer to that - He eased a little farther down into the hot water, until it lapped at his chin. He was fighting blind, unreasoning panic, and losing. What am I going to do? Oh, G.o.ds - I can't think - I have to get away. I can't stay here. If I do, they *II try and talk me around. Where can I go? I don't even know where "home" is from here. But I can't stay - I'II just go, I'll just pack up and go, and hope something turns up, it's all I can do. It means leaving Yfandes - For a moment that thought was more than he could bear. But - fear was stronger. It's lose her, or lose my life. No. I can't. I can't face an end like that. Besides, he choked on a sob, she just wants me to be a Herald, too - He looked up, judging the hour by the moon. I've got a few hours until dawn. I can be out of the valley and well away before they even start looking for me. And they might not - Starwind still isn't ready to deal with me again; they might just think I've gone off somewhere to be alone, especially if I block Yfandes out now and keep her out.

He climbed out of the pool and dried himself with his robe; he knew exactly where the clothing he'd arrived in was hung - the far end of Moondance's closet. He pulled it on as quickly as he could, taking the heavy cloak and draping it over one arm. One of the packs was in there, too, the one with the rest of his winter clothes. They were too warm to wear in the valley, so he'd never unpacked them, wearing instead Moondance's outgrown things. There was always food out in the room beside the one with the staircase; Tayledras sometimes kept odd hours. He niched enough bread and cheese to last several days and stuffed it into the pack with his clothing.

It took him most of a candlemark to reach the entrance to the valley. If it hadn't been snowing, he might have turned back at that moment - but it was, lightly, enough to cover his tracks. He swung the heavy cloak over his shoulders, braced himself for the shock of the temperature change, and stepped out into the dark and cold, remembering just in time to put up a s.h.i.+eld so that he could not be tracked by his own aura.

"Two steps forward, one step back," Moondance's voice drifted up the ladder - Savil refused to call anything that steep a "staircase" - to Starwind's ekele; it was a good three breaths before Moondance himself appeared. His head poked through the hatchway in the gleaming wooden floor just as a gust of wind made the whole tree sway and creak.

Savil gulped, and gripped the arms of her low chair, looking resolutely away from the windows and their view of the birds flying by below them. Starwind never would tell her what it was they used in those windows instead of gla.s.s - which wouldn't have lasted ten breaths in a high wind. It was the same thing they used for the skylights, only thinner. Some kind of tough, flexible, transparent membrane - and Savil could not bring herself to believe that it would hold if you fell against it. The ekele creaked again, and she shuddered as she saw the window-stuff ripple a little with the warping of the window frames.

"Would you mind explaining that cryptic remark?" she asked, as the rest of Moondance emerged from the "entrance."

"Oh, thy pupil, Wingsister," he said, at his most formal, closing the hatchway against another gust of chill air. The ladder was sheltered, but not entirely enclosed - that would have been impractical - and Starwind couldn't see wasting a mage-barrier on the entrance to his "nest" when the hatchway served perfectly well most of the time. "Bright the day, Master-ashke. "

"Wind to thy wings," Starwind replied automatically, turning away from the window, his gloom brightening a little. "Shay'kreth'ashke, there is no *Master' here for thee."

"Nay, till the day thy wings bear thee upwards, thou'rt my Master.'' Moondance glided across the unsteady floor to Starwind's side, as surefooted as a sailor on a moving deck.

"Enough, I'm drowning," Savil groaned. "G.o.ds, life-bonded - it's enough to make me celibate. What about my pupil? And will you please come away from that window? I keep thinking the next gust is going to pitch you out."

"The window would hold. Besides, no Tayledras has fallen from his ekele in years beyond counting, Wingsister," Starwind said, turning his back to the window and leaning on the ledge.

"So the time is long past for it to happen, and I don't want it to be you, all right?" Another gust made the whole tree groan, and she clutched at the arms of the chair, her knuckles going white.

"Very well," Starwind was actually smiling as he stepped away from the window and folded himself bone-lessly into one of the chairs bolted to the floor of his ekele. He got a certain amount of pleasure out of teasing Savil about her acrophobia.

Each ekele was something like an elaborate treehouse; there was one for each major branch of the King Tree, some twenty in all. Not all were tenanted, and they were mostly used for meditation, sleeping, teaching, and recreation. For everything else, the "place below" served far better. But when a Tayledras needed to think, he frequently retreated to his ekele, sometimes for weeks, touching foot to ground only when he needed to.

An ekele consisted of a single windowed room, varying in size, made of polished wood so light in color that it was almost white, and furnished at most with a few chairs bolted to the floor, a table likewise bolted, and rolled pads stored in one corner for sleeping. Starwind's was one of the highest, hence, one of the smallest. The view was majestic. It was wasted on Savil.

Moondance took a third chair, and sat in it sideways, legs draped over the arms. "Well?" Savil demanded. "Are you going to explain yourself?"

"Your pupil. First, we strive to bring him to not depend upon others. So - then he pulls in upon himself, confiding not even in his Companion, hiding his pain within. Then I try to bring him to confess the pain, to share it, to reach out - "

"So?"

Moondance shrugged, and Savil sensed he hadn't told everything.

"What did you tell him?"

Moondance's moods could be read from his eyes; they were a murky gray-blue. "I - told him of myself. I thought if he could see that he is not the only soul in the world that feels pain, he might be brought to share it."

Savil's eyes narrowed; Moondance was unhappy. "Shayana, did he hurt you? If he did - "

"Na, the only one who hurt me was myself." His eyes cleared, and he gave her a wry smile. "He only pushed me away, is all. So, he hides all day, and this morning he is hiding again. His bed is empty, the hertasi say he went to the end of the vale, and his Companion says he has blocked her out entirely. To put it rudely, Wingsister, he is sulking."

Savil sighed, forgetting to clutch the arms of the chair. "G.o.ds, what are we to do with him?"

Starwind's expression sobered again, and he began to answer - but was interrupted. Both Tayledras snapped to attention; their heads swung to face the window as if a single string had pulled them in that direction.

Two birds shot up from below and hovered there, just outside that window; the white gyrefalcon, and a second, of normal plumage. Starwind leaped out of his chair and flung the window open; the birds swirled in on the blast of wind that entered, and he slammed the window shut again.

Moondance had jumped to his feet, holding both arms out, ready for the birds, the moment Starwind went for the window. The falcons homed for him unerringly and were settling on the leather guards on his forearms before Starwind had finished latching the window closed.

The elder Tayledras held out his arm, and the burl falcon lofted to his forearm with a flutter of pinions, settling immediately.

Both Tayledras stared into their birds' eyes in silent communion. Savil kept as still as she could; while the bond between Hawkbrother and his birds was a strong one, and the magic-bred birds were considerably more than their wild brethren, their minds were something less than that of a very young child, perhaps a trifle superior to a cat, and it didn't take much to distract them.

The white falcon mantled; the buff cried. The Tayledras' eyes refocused, and Savil read "trouble" in the grim lines of their mouths.

"What?" she asked.

"First - tampering, as you had reported it to us, but this time on our grounu and not on k'Vala," Starwind said, soothing his bird by stroking its breast-feathers. "A clutch of colddrakes, from the look of it. Something has made them move, so when we deal with the drakes, we shall have to look farther afield; there are folk settled in that direction under k'Treva protection. This is the first time we have caught the culprit in the act, and I do not intend to take this lightly.''

"I hope you're counting me in that *we'; a clutch of drakes needs every mage you can muster," she said, getting carefully to her feet and bracing herself against the sway of the ekele.

"If you would - you would be welcome." Starwind looked relieved. "But Vanyel - "

"If he's hiding, he'll only come out when he's ready.

He's not going to come to any harm while he's in the vale. How far are these monsters, anyway?"

"Haifa day's footpace; perhaps less," Moondance replied, "The which I do not like. It speaks for them being harried, or even Gated. In which case, why and who?"

"Good questions, both of them," Savil agreed. "Who can we count on?''

"Nothing under an Adept, not with drakes; not even Journeymen should handle drake-swarms, at least not to my mind. Shethka. "

"Don't tell me, we're the only three in any shape to take them on, right?"

"Sunsong is still recovering from moving the firebirds to sanctuary, Brightwind is too old to travel, Stormwing is pregnant."

"Lord and Lady - lock her up!" Savil exclaimed.

"No fear, she's steadied since she reached Adept. No more headlong races into danger just for the thrill. So - Rainstar is out already, with another call from the kyree, as is Fireflight. And that is the total of k'Treva Adepts." Starwind grimaced. "If this were summera"

"If this were summer, it wouldn't be colddrakes, ashke, " Moondance reminded him. "We work with what we have, and grateful that Wingsister Savil is with us."

"Let's get on with it," Savil said, steadying herself for the long climb down, as the Tayledras transferred their birds from forearm to shoulder for the descent. "So far as I'm concerned, I'll take a colddrake over your bed.a.m.ned ladder any time!''

The snow cleared just before dawn, and the sun rose, pale and glorious, s.h.i.+ning through the bare branches of the trees. The forest was filled with light; with the light came a resurgence of Vanyel's good sense.

He sat down on a stump, tired and winded, and suddenly seemed to wake out of the hold of his nightmare. What am I doing out here? he thought, panting. I don't know where I'm going, I don't know what I'm going to do when I get there, I have no idea where I am! I just - hared off into nowhere, like a complete idiot!

He put his pack down at his feet and scooped up some of the new snow in his mitten and ate it; it numbed his tongue, but it didn't do much for his thirst. I can't believe I did anything this stupid.

He wrapped his cloak tighter, and tucked his knees up under his chin, staring at the delicate tracery of white branches against the painfully blue sky. He began to think things through, slowly; one small, painful step at a time.

He flushed with shame. I can't believe I did this. Dammit, I know how much Savil loves me, I've felt it - and Yfandes, and - d.a.m.n, I am a rotten fool. Moondance was just trying to say that it's - easier to have other people around who hurt when you hurt, not that he thought he hurt worse than me. I hurt him by pus.h.i.+ng him away.

His blush deepened. Worst of it is, he'll likely forgive me without my asking. They didn't abandon me yesterday; they were busy - probably over my welfare. They gave me exactly what I wanted; to be left alone. I should have been knocked up against a wall.

He brooded, watching the birch branches swaying in the breeze. He was alone, completely alone, as he had not been since he left Forst Reach. The only thing breaking the silence was the whisper of the breeze and the occasional call of a winter bird. It was the kind of solitude he had sought - and not found - in the ice-dream. And now that he had it, he didn't want it.

Not that this place wasn't peaceful - but a sanctuary, as he had discovered with his little hideaway at the keep, could all too easily become a prison.

When you lock things out, he thought slowly, you lock yourself in. I think maybe that was what Moondance was trying to tell me.

He stared at the white branches, not seeing them, and not really thinking; just letting things turn over in the back of his mind. There was a half-formed thought back there, an important one. But it wasn't quite ready to come out yet.

Finally he sighed, and turned his thoughts back to his own stupidity. Even if that dream is ForeSight, there's probably ways around it. n.o.body's going to force me into being a Herald. I could probably stay here if I asked to. There was no reason to go running off into the wilderness with nothing but what I could carry and no weapons. G.o.ds, what a fool I am!

He swiveled around to look down his backtrail. Even as he watched, the brisk breeze was filling in the last of his tracks with the light, powdery snow.

He groaned aloud. Oh, fine. Just fine. I probably won't be able to find my way back now! I don't need teachers, I need nursemaids!

Then he blinked, caught in sudden astonishment at the tone of his own thoughts. He sat up a little straighter and took stock of himself, and found that he was - feeling alive again. Feeling ready to be alive.

It's like I've been sick, fevered, and the fever just broke. Like I've been broken inside, somehow, and I'm finally starting to feel healed. I haven't felt this - good - since Tylendel - died - He closed his eyes, expecting pain at that thought. There was pain, but not the debilitating agony of loss it had been.

*Lendel, he thought with a tinge of wonder, I still miss you. It still hurts, you not being here. But I guess Moon-dance was right. I have to get on with my life, even though you aren't here to share it.

He opened his eyes on the snow-sparkling forest, and actually managed a weak smile at his own folly. "I really am an idiot, a right royal moon calf. And you'd have been the first to laugh at me, wouldn't you, *Lendel?" He shook his head at himself. "All right, I guess I'd better figure out how to find my way back without a trail to follow."

Then the answer came to him, and he laughed at his own stupidity. "Lord and Lady, it's a good thing you take care of fools. All I have to do is look for mages. It's not like there's too many enclaves of mages out here, after all! The power should be there for even a dunderhead like me to see."

He closed his eyes again, and took a deep breath of the cold, crisp air. Center - ground - and open - well, just like I figured, there they are - The surge of Gate-energy hit him with a shock, knocking him senseless.

When Vanyel came to again, the sun was high overhead, s.h.i.+ning down on his cheek; it was noon, or nearly. He was lying where he'd fallen, on his side, braced between his pack and the stump. He'd curled up around the pack, and the roots from the stump were digging into his side and leg. His ears were ringing - or was it his head? Whatever; it felt as if he'd been graced with one of Jervis' better efforts.

G.o.ds. He glanced up at the sun, and winced. That was a Gate. Nothing else feels like that. Oh, I hurt. It's a good thing I was wrapped up in this cloak when I fell over, or I'd have frozen.

He pushed the pack away, and rolled over onto his stomach. That at least got the sun out of his eyes. He got his knees under him, and pushed himself up off the snow with his arms; he was stiff and cold, but otherwise intact. Only his head hurt, and that in the peculiar "inside" way that meant he'd "bruised" those new senses of his. He knelt where he was for a moment, then pushed his hood back and looked around. It looked as if he'd fallen right over sideways when the shock hit him.

Guess I'd better get moving. Before I turn into a snow-statue. He pulled himself to his feet with the help of the stump, then stamped around the snow for several moments, trying to get his blood moving again.

I hope n.o.body noticed I'm gone. I hope that Gate wasn't somebody out looking for me. I feel enough of a fool as it is.

He hitched his pack over his shoulder, and took his bearings. All right, let's try again. Center - and ground - and open - and If I find out that Moondance had anything to do with this I'll - His head rang again, and he swayed and almost fell, but this time the shock was a clear, urgent, and unmistakable wordless cry for help. It sobered him as quickly as Andrel's bucket of cold water.

There was no "presence" to the cry, not like any of the Gifted or the Tayledras had; it was just simple and desperate. This was no trained mage or Herald. It could only be an ordinary person in mortal fear.

G.o.ds! His head swiveled toward the source of the cry as a needle to a lodestone. And without any clear notion of why he was doing so, except that it was a cry for help, and he had to answer it, Vanyel began stumbling toward the source at a clumsy run.

He had been following a game-trail; now he was right off any path. He ran into a tangle of bushes, and could find no way around it. Driven nearly frantic by the call in his head, he finally shoved his way through it. Then he was in a beech grove; there was little or no growth between the straight, white columns of the trunks, and he picked up his pace until he was at an all-out run.

But the clear, growth-free area was too soon pa.s.sed; his breath was burning in his lungs as the forest floor became rougher, liberally strewn with tangles of briar and rocks, and hillier as well. His cloak kept hanging up on things, no matter how hard he tried to keep it close to his body. He tripped; stumbled wildly into the trunk of a tree, and picked himself up only to trip a second time and fall flat in the snow. The breath was knocked out of him for a moment, but that panicked, pleading voice in his "ear within" would not let him give up. He scrambled to his feet, pulled his cloak loose from a bramble, and started running again.

He must have tripped and fallen a good dozen times over obstacles hidden in the snow, and he surely made enough noise to have warned anything that wasn't deaf of his coming.

Anything that wasn't deaf - or very busy.

Winded, floundering blindly, and unable to focus on anything more than a few feet ahead of him, he fell over a root just as he reached the crest of a low hill, and dropped into a thicket of bushes that crowned it.

He saw the danger before he got up and broke through their protective cover. He froze where he was. The "danger" was too intent on its victims to have paid any attention to the racket he'd been making. Likely an entire cavalry troupe could have come on it unawares.

This was the very edge of the cleared lands of some smallholder; a fertile river-valley, well-watered, sheltered from the worst of the winter weather and summer storms. Arable land like this could well tempt an enterprising farmer out into the possible perils of the Pelagirs. There had been a stockade around the house and barns to guard against those hazards that could be foreseen.

But the stockade, of whole tree trunks planted in a ring around the buildings, was flattened and uprooted. It could not have held more than a few moments against what had come at the settlers out of the bright winter morning.

Vanyel had never seen a colddrake, but he knew what it was from descriptions in far too many songs and tales to count.

Less like a lizard, and more like a snake with short, stubby legs, it was the largest living creature Vanyel had ever seen. From nose to tail it was easily as long as six carts placed end-to-end. Its equine head was the size of a wine barrel; it had row upon row of silvery needle-sharp spines along its crest and down its back, and more spines formed a frill around its neck. It snarled silently, baring teeth as long as Vanyel's hand, and white and sharp as icicles. Its wickedly curved claws had torn the earth around it. Vanyel knew what those looked like; Moondance had a dagger made from one. Those claws were longer than his hand, and as sharp as the teeth. Huge, deep-purple eyes, like perfect cabochon amethysts, were fixed unwaveringly upon its prey, a young woman and her two children. It was a pure silver-white, like the cleanest of snow, and its scales sparkled in the sunlight; it was at least as beautiful as it was deadly.

As one mangled body beneath its forefeet testified, the creature knew very well how to use its wickedly sharp claws and teeth.

But neither tail nor fangs and claws was what held the terrified woman and her two children paralyzed almost within reach. It was the colddrake's primary weapon - the hypnotic power of its eyes.

It stared at them in complete silence, a silence so absolute that Vanyel could hear the woman panting in fear where he lay. The drake was not moving; it was going to bring its prey to within easy reaching distance of it.

Vanyel hadn't res.h.i.+elded since he'd first been impaled upon that dreadful dagger of the woman's fear. He could still sense her thoughts - incoherent, hysteric, and hopeless. Her mind wailed and scratched at the walls that the colddrake's violet gaze had set up around it. She was trapped, they were trapped, their wills gone, their bodies no longer obeying them.

That was how her husband, the children's father, had died; walking right into the creature's grasp, his body obedient to its will, not his own. The beast was slow, that was the true horror of it - if they could just distract it for a crucial moment, break its gaze, they could escape it.

Vanyel could "hear" other minds, too - out there on the opposite side of the clearing. The rest of the extended family - there must have been dozens of them - had made it past the slow-moving drake to the safety and shelter of the woods. Only these four had not; the woman, burdened with her toddlers, and the man, staying to protect them. He could "hear" bits of their anguish, like a chorus wailing beneath the woman's keening fear.

Vanyel stared at the trapped three, just as paralyzed as they were. His mouth was dry, and his heart hammered with fear. He couldn't seem to think; it was as if those violet eyes were holding him captive, too.

There was movement at the edge of his field of vision.

No - not all had fled to the woods. From around the corner of the barn came a man; limping, painfully, slowly, but moving so quietly that the snow didn't even creak beneath his boots. He was stalking the drake. A new set of thoughts invaded Vanyel's mind, fragmentary, but enough to tell him what the man was about.

: - get close enough to stick *im - : It was an old man, a tired, old man; it was the woman's grandfather. He'd been caught in the barn when the thing attacked and knocked the stockade flat, and he'd seen his granddaughter's husband walk into the thing's jaws. He'd recognized the drake for what it was, and he'd armed himself with the only weapon he could find. A pitchfork. Ridiculous against a colddrake.

: - get them eyes off *er an' she kin run fer it - : The colddrake was paying no attention to anything except the prey right before it. The old man crept up behind it without it ever noticing he was there.

The old man knew, with calm certainty, that he was going to die. He knew that his attack was never going to do anything more than anger the creature. But it would break the thing's concentration; it would make it turn its head away for one crucial moment.

His attack was suicidal, but it would give his granddaughter and her children a chance to live.

He came within an arm's length of the colddrake - he poised the pitchfork as casually as if he were about to stab a haybale - and he struck, burying the pitchfork tines in the colddrake's side with a sound like a knife burying itself to the hilt in a block of wood.