Magic's Pawn (40 page)

“Savil, you stubborn, headstrong woman,” he chided, as she felt an inrushing of energy from his center to hers. She swayed a little, and he held her upright. “What need could possibly have been so great that you drain yourself to a wraith to Gate yourself here?’’

“This need - “ She pulled back her cloak to show him the boy curled against her side, his face taut with pain.

“God of my fathers - “ He reached out with his free hand and barely touched Vanyel’s brow. He pulled back his hand as if it had been burned. “Goddess of my mothers! What have you brought me, sister?”

“I don’t know,” she said, slumping wearily against him. “He’s been blasted open, and he can’t heal - more than that - I’m too tired to tell you right now. So much has happened, and to both of us - I just can’t think what to do anymore. All I know is that he’s hurting, and I can’t help him, and if I’d left him where he was he’d have destroyed himself at the best, and half the capital at the worst.”

“There is nothing wrong with your judgment, I pledge you that,” Starwind replied, sitting back on his heels and regarding the boy dubiously. “There is such potential there - he frightens me. And such darkness of the soul-no, Wingsister, not
evil;
there is nothing evil in him. Just - darkness. Despair is a part of it, but - denial of what he is and must become is another. Self-willed darkness; he wills himself not to see, I think.”

“You see more than I do,” she told him, rubbing her aching forehead. “I haven’t the right to ask it of you, but - will you help me with him?
Can
you help me?”

The firelight turned the ice of his eyes to blue-gold flame. “You have the right, sister to brother, to ask what you will of me. Did you not gift me with the greatest of all gifts, in the person of my
shay’kreth’ashke? “

She had to smile a little at that. Bringing Starwind another boy long ago had been one of the few unalloyed good things she’d ever done. “Where is Moondance, anyway?’’

:Moondance stands in the snow, defending his head and his lifeblood. Telling the
,stranger-lasha’Kaladra
not to eat me
,: came the laughter-flavored reply.
I
frightened her. She does not trust me, I think.
:

:Kellan
- : Savil Mindspoke tiredly.

:He popped up right under Yfandes’ nose and scared the liver out of her, Chosen
,: Kellan replied apologetically.
:She went for him before we knew who it was. It’s all right now, he’s just making amends
.:

:Bright Havens, Kelt
, you
know him, at least
!: she snapped, her tiredness making her impatient.

:Not anymore
-
:

“I
fear I have greatly changed, Wingsister,” Moon-dance said contritely from the entrance. “And I also fear I had forgotten the fact.”

Savil looked over Starwind’s shoulder and felt her mouth gaping. Starwind put one finger beneath her chin, and shut it for her with a chuckle.

“Great good gods!” she said after a moment of stunned silence. “You
have
changed!”

The Moondance she had known - he hadn’t had the name “Moondance” for long at that point - had been brown-haired and brown-eyed and as ordinary as a peasant hut. Not surprising for one of peasant stock. But now - now the hair was as long and as silver and the eyes as ice-blue as Starwind’s. The lines of his face were still the same; square to Starwind’s triangle, but the cheekbones were far more prominent than Savil remembered, and the body had grown out of adolescent gawkiness and into a slender grace so like Starwind’s that they could have been brothers by birth instead of by blood.

:He even
smells
different
,: Kellan complained.

“How did you
do
that?” Savil demanded.

Moondance made a fluid shrug, and tossed the sides of his white cape over his shoulders, showing that he wore only thin gray breeches and a sleeveless gray leather jerkin with matching boots. Savil shivered at this reminder that the
Tayledras
never seemed to notice the cold. “It’s the magic we use,” he said. “It makes us into what it wants us to be. I think.”

“As always, an oversimplification,” Starwind correcled him fondly. ‘ ‘
Ka’sheeleth
. Savil has brought us a problem. Come look at this boy - “

Moondance drifted over to Savil’s other side, sat on his heels beside her, and studied Vanyel’s face for several breaths.

“Hai’yasha
, “he breathed.
“Shay’a’chern
, hmm? And Lovelost? No, it goes deeper than that.” He reached out as Starwind had, and touched Vanyel’s forehead, but unlike Starwind, did not pull away.
“Ai’she’va
- Holiest Mothers! The
pain!”
His jaw tightened and the pupils of his eyes contracted to pinpoints. “Reft and bereft of
shay ‘kreth ‘ashke.’’
His face took on the tranquillity of a statue. “Pawn he is now - pawn he has been - “ he said, his tone flat, his voice dropping half an octave. “Pawn to what he is and what he wills not to be. But will or no, the pawn is in play - and the play is a trial - “

“And what of the game?” Starwind asked in a whisper.

Moondance hesitated, then life came back to his face as he shrugged again, and his pupils went back to normal. “No way of knowing,” he replied, slowly taking his hand from Vanyel’s forehead. “That depends entirely upon whether he is willing to become more than a pawn. But yours to be the Teaching, I think,” he said, looking up sharply at the Adept. “It is like your powers that he holds. As for Healing, I think that half of it will be his doing - if he Heals at all - “

“And the other half yours,” the Adept stated with an ironic smile.

Moondance turned Vanyel’s wrist up, showing the scar across it - then turned over his own hand, and the firelight picked out the scar that ran from the gold-skinned hand halfway to the elbow, a scar that followed the course of the blue vein pulsing beneath the skin. “Who better?” he asked. “We have something in common, I think.”

Savil swayed again, caught in a sudden dizziness, and Starwind took hold of her shoulders to steady her. “You need rest,” he said in concern. “Will you have it here, or can you ride?’’

Savil thought longingly of just lying down where she was, and then reflected on being able to do so in a bed.

And also on the Companions, out there in the snow and cold, and still in their harnesses.

“The Companions can and will carry double,” she sighed, feeling just about ready to fade away. “If you’re willing to ride them. Or strap us in, I don’t much care which. But I’d like
them
in the warm.”

“Then we ride,” Starwind said, as Moondance scooped Vanyel up in his arms as if he weighed next to nothing. The older Adept rose to his feet and offered her his hand, and it took every scrap of will she had left to her to stumble erect. “It is not far, Wingsister.”

“I hope not,” she told him earnestly, staggering out into the snow, while Moondance put the fire out with a single backward glance. “Because if it isn’t, you’re going to be carrying me as well as the boy.’’

First there was darkness, and the peace that came with being so drugged that there was no thought at all. It was the only time he felt anything like peace, these days, and he welcomed the drugs and the red-haired Healer who brought them. There were times without counting when he hoped that
this
time the Healer had miscalculated - that
this
time he wouldn’t wake.

Then there was pain; unfocused, but somewhere near at hand. Like the touch of sun on skin already reddened and burned. It got past the drugs, somehow; he tried to push it away, but it continued to throb in those half-healed places in his mind, promising him more pain to come.

Then - nothing
but
pain; fire in his veins and under his skin, flames dancing along his nerves and scorching his mind. Gate-fire, Gate-energy - it was unmistakable, and unbearable, and yet it continued long past the moment he thought his sanity would shatter or his heart stop. He screamed, or thought he did. He was lost in it, and there was no way out - not even death, for the pain would not let him die.

Then it was gone. But it left him aching, all the channels burned raw again, and worse, all the memories replaying themselves over and over - Gala dying, Tylendel throwing himself from the Tower, Tylendel lying in state in the Temple -

Then, without warning, the Dream.

He stood blocking the way, a one-mage barricade across Crook-Back Pass. Mage-light from his upraised hand reflected from the impassive faces and hollow, empty eyes of the three wizards who opposed him.

This was
not
like the old dream - the dream of being alone in the ice. This was - something else. He could sense things, shards of meaning, just under the surface of it, but couldn’t seem to bring them out to where he could read them.

But it felt - real. Fearfully real.

“Why do you bother with this nonsense?”

The voice from behind the wizards was sweet, lilting. One more figure paced forward as the ranks of the army backing the wizards parted to let him pass.

“You are quite alone, Herald-Mage Vanyel. “ One of the wizards stepped two paces to the side to allow the newcomer through to the center, to face Vanyel.

He was beautiful; there was no other word for him. A perfectly sculptured face and body, hair and eyes of twilight shadow, a confidence, poise and power so complete they were works of art.

Except for the dark eyes, he could have been Vanyel’s brother; except that he was
too
perfect, he could almost have been a younger Vanyel
.

He was clad in dull black armor, like his soldiers, but carried no weapon. He didn’t need one; he
was
a weapon. He was a weapon with no other purpose than the destruction and death he molded into his power. Unlike the knife which could cut to heal or harm, this weapon would never serve any other purpose than pain. Vanyel knew that as well as he knew himself
.

“You are, “the beautiful young man repeated; smiling, choosing his words to hurt, ‘ ‘quite alone.’’

Vanyel nodded. ‘ ‘You tell me nothing I was not already aware of. I know you. You are
Leareth.”
The word meant
-

‘ ‘
Darkness.’’ Leareth laughed. ‘ ‘I am. Darkness. And these are my servants. A quaint conceit, don’t you think?”

Vanyel said nothing. Every moment he kept Leareth here was one more moment speeding Yfandes down the road with Tylendel
-

- but Tylendel was dead -

“You need not
remain
alone,” Leareth continued, moistening his lips with his tongue, sensuously. “You have only to stretch out your hand to me, Vanyel, and take my Darkness to you
-
and you would never be alone again. We could accomplish much together, we two. Or if you wish
-
I could even
-
‘‘ he stepped forward a pace; two. ‘
I
could even bring back your long-lost love to you. Think of him, Vanyel. Think of Tylendel
-
alive, and once more at your side. ‘‘

“NO!”

He struck at the terrible, beautiful face, struck with all the power at his command
-
and wept as he struck
.

:Dreams, young Vanyel
.: A blue-green voice froze him in mid-strike. :
Nothing but dreams. They vanish into mist if you will it
.:

The army, the pass, Leareth, all whirled away from him into another kind of darkness; this was a darkness that soothed, and he embraced it as eagerly as he had repudiated the other.

Cool, green-gold music threaded into the darkness; not dispelling it, but complementing it. It wound its way into his mind, and wherever it went, it left healing behind it; in all the raw, bleeding places, in all the burning channels. It flowed through him and he sank into it, drifting, drifting, and content to drift. It surrounded him, bathed him in balm, until there was nothing left of hurt in him -

- except the place Tylendel had left behind - the place that still ached so emptily -

The green-gold music was joined by another, a blue-green harmony like the voice that had spoken to dispel the dream. And this music was no longer letting him drift aimlessly. It was leading him; it had wound around his soul and he had no choice but to follow where it wanted him to go.

The blue-green music took the melody, the green-gold faded to a descant, and the voice spoke in his dreams again.
:Look; you wish control
-
here
is your center
-
so
to center and
so
to ground
-
:

The music led him in a dance wherein he found a balance he hadn’t known he craved until he found it. The music spun him around; he spun with it, and he knew that having found this point of equilibrium he would not lose it again.

:So, so, so
, exactly
so
,: the music chuckled.
:Now, you would protect yourself
-
thus
the barrier, see? Dense, and it keeps all out, flexible to your will. Always your will, young Vanyel, it is will and nothing less
-