Magic's Pawn (41 page)

It spun him walls to keep others out of his mind; he saw the way of it and spun them thicker, harder - then raveled them again down to the thinnest of barricades, knowing he could build them up again when he wanted to.

Then the blue-green music faded, leaving the green-gold to carry the melody alone. It sang to him then, sang of rest, sang of peace, and he dreamed. Dreamed of waking, moving to another’s will, to drink and care for himself and sleep again. But no more dreams that hurt, only dreams full of the verdant music.

Then he woke - truly woke, not dreams of waking - to the sound of it; breathy, haunting notes that wandered into and out of melodies that he half recognized, but couldn’t identify. There was a scent of ferns; a smell of growing things, a whiff of freshly-turned earth, and a hint of something metallic. Behind the music, he heard the sound of gently falling water.

He was no longer drugged. And the mind-channels within him no longer burned and tormented him.

He opened his eyes, slowly.

He thought for one mad moment that he was somehow suspended in a tree. He was surrounded on all sides by greenery, and luxuriantly-leaved branches hung over his head. Then he saw that while the branches were real, and the leaves, they were not the same organism. The branches supported huge ferns whose fronds draped down like a living canopy over his bed, and the greenery about him was a curtaining of multi-layered, multi-shaded green fabric hung from a framework of more branches, each layer as light and transparent as a spiderweb, and cut to resemble a cascade of leaf shapes. He had never in his life imagined that there could be so many colors of green.

Weak beams of sunlight threaded past the fern fronds. The blankets - if that was what they were - were a darker green, like moss, and felt as soft as velvet, but were thick and heavy.

He tried to sit up, and discovered that he couldn’t. He was absolutely spent, with no strength left at all.

The music beyond the curtains finished with a breathless, upward-spiraling run, and a few moments later, the curtains parted.

Vanyel blinked in surprise at the young man who stood there, framed by the green of the curtain material; he knew he was staring, and rudely, but he couldn’t help himself. He’d never seen anyone who looked like this -

A young man - silver-haired as any oldster, with hair longer than most women had, and with eyes of light blue that measured and weighed him, full of secrets and thoughts that Vanyel couldn’t begin to read. He wore a sleeveless green jerkin, and breeches of a darker green, and in the hand that held back the curtains there was a white flute that looked as if it had been carved from luminescent, opaque crystal.

Vanyel suddenly realized that, indeed, he
couldn’t
read the young man’s thoughts; there was
presence
there, but nothing spilling over into his own mind.

He stammered out the first things in his mind - not terribly clever, and certainly not original but - “W-w-where am I? W-w-who are you?”

The young man tilted his head to one side a little, and Vanyel saw a faint hint of smile as he replied, very slowly and with a strange accent, “Well. ‘Where am I?’ you ask me - better than I had feared. I had half dreaded hearing
“who
am I?’ young Vanyel.” He tilted his head the other way, and this time the smile was definite. “You are in k’Treva territory in the Pelagir Hills, and before you ask, your aunt, our Wingsister Savil, brought you here. We are her friends; she asked us to help her with your troubles. I am Moondance k’Treva; I am
Tayledras
, and I have been your Healer. That is my bed you are lying in. Do you like it? Starwind says it is a foolish piece of conceit, but
I
think that this is only because he did not think of it first.”

Vanyel could only blink at him in bewilderment.

Moondance shook his head, ruefully. “I go too fast for you. Simple things first. Are you hungry? Thirsty? Would you like to bathe?”

All at once he
was
hungry - and thirsty - and disgustingly aware that his skin was crawling with the need for a bath.

“All three,” he said, a little hesitantly.

“Then we remedy all three.” Moondance pulled the curtains back to the foot and the head of the bed, and -

- and reached to pull off the blankets. At which point Vanyel realized that he was quite nude beneath the bed-coverings. He flushed, and clutched at the blanket.

Moondance gave him an amused look. “Who do you think it was that undressed you and put you where you are?” he asked. “I pledge you, it was not the Eastern Wind.”

Vanyel flushed again, but did not release the blanket.

“So, so - here, my modest one - “ Moondance reached up to one side among the hangings, and detached something which he tossed onto the blankets. Vanyel reached for it - a wrap-robe of something green and silken that was, thankfully, much more substantial than the hangings. As Moondance pointedly turned his back, he eased out of the bed and wrapped it around himself.

And reached for one of the bed-supports as dizziness made the room spin around him.

“That will
never do.”
There was a cool touch between his eyes, and the room steadied.

“Come,” Moondance was just in front of him, holding out his hands encouragingly. “Keep your eyes on me - yes. A step. Another. You have been long abed, young Vanyel, you must almost learn to walk again.”

The
Tayledras
Healer walked backward, slowly, as Vanyel followed, looking only at his eyes. But he did not move to give the boy support in any way, except the one time Vanyel stumbled and nearly fell. Then Moondance caught him; held him until he could find his balance again, and only when Vanyel was standing firmly again did he draw away.

Vanyel was vaguely aware that they had crossed a threshold into another room, but just
walking
was costing him so much sweating, concentrated effort he didn’t dare look around any. It seemed to take years before Moondance stopped, caught his elbow, and guided him to a seat on a smooth rock ledge that rimmed a raised pool of water so hot that it steamed.

“Now, look about you.” Moondance waved at the pool and the rest of the room. “This is the pool for washing. Here is soap. When you are clean, go
there
, the pool for resting.”

Though the pool Vanyel was sitting beside was deep, it was quite small. Next to the “pool for washing” was another, much larger, much deeper, and slightly above it, with an opening in the side that spilled hot water down into this pool. Both pools looked natural; rock-sided and sandy-bottomed.

“I think even weak as you are, you shall be able to find your way there. I shall return with food and drink.” The young man hesitated a moment - then with the swiftness of a stooping hawk, leaned over and kissed Vanyel full on the lips. “You are very welcome, young Vanyel,” he said, before Vanyel had a chance to get over his surprise. “We are pleased to have you, Starwind and I, and not just for the sake of Wingsister Savil.”

He vanished before Vanyel had a chance to react.

Vanyel found that if he moved slowly and carefully he didn’t exhaust himself. He shed the robe and eased himself into the water with a sigh, and soaped and rinsed until
he finally
felt clean again. His pool emptied itself over the side and down a channel in the floor - and where the water went from there he couldn’t say. He had figured by now that this was some kind of hot spring, which accounted for the metallic tang in the air.

With Moondance gone, he had a chance to get a good look around while trying to sort himself out. There didn’t appear to be any “doors” as such in this dwelling; just doorways. This bathing room was multileveled; highest level was the “pool for resting” which cascaded to the next level and the “pool for washing,” which in turn was above the “floor” and the channel carrying the water away that was cut into it. There were no windows in the walls of natural rock; the whole was lit by a skylight taking up the entire ceiling, and there were green and flowering plants and ferns standing and hanging everywhere. There was only one entrance into this room - that led back to the bedroom, also rock-walled and roofed with a skylight, from what Vanyel could see of it.

The ledge between the pools was
not
that high, though it took far more of Vanyel’s strength to get over it than he would have believed. Once in the larger pool he discovered that his surmise was right; crystalline hot water bubbled up from the sand in the center of the pool; someone had improved on nature by forming the rock of the pool sides below the waterline into smooth benches.

It was wonderful; the water was about as hot as was comfortable, and was forcing him to relax whether or not he wanted to. He closed his eyes and sat back, deliberately thinking of absolutely nothing, and only opened them again when he heard light footsteps crossing the stone floor below him.

It was, as he expected, Moondance, who had brought with him an earthenware beaker of what proved to be cider and a plate of sliced bread and cheeses and fruit.

“Eat lightly,” the young man warned, climbing to Vanyel’s level and setting his burdens down on the rim of the pool at Vanyel’s right hand. “You have been three weeks without true food, and spent more than one of those days drugged.”

“Three weeks?”

Moondance shrugged. “You needed Healing, of a kind your good Healer Andrel could not give you. I think perhaps no Healer among your folk could have given you such Healing; they know nothing of the Healing of hurts caused by magic, only of illness and wounding.
That
is a study only a few have made, and most of those few
Tayledras
. Eat, young Vanyel. There are herbs in the bread and the drink to strengthen you.”

“Where - where is Savil?” he asked, suddenly a little worried at being alone with a stranger.

“With Starwind. She was very weary, both in body and in soul. This - thing that has happened. It has been a deep grief to her, as well to you. Her heart is as sore, I think. They are old friends, my
shay’kreth’ashke
and Savil, and there are no secrets between them, and much love. She has need of such love. Perhaps more than you, for
she
has had no one to lend her support.”

Vanyel had looked up at him sharply at that - with the word
ashke
striking him with the force of a cold slap in the face, making his heart pound painfully.

Moondance looked down at him, something speculative in his glance. He weighed Vanyel for a moment, then cleared his throat and looked away, deliberately. “I have a thing to say to you, a thing I wish you to think upon.”

Vanyel put down his cider, and waited, apprehensively, to hear the rest.

“I have shared your thoughts; I know more of you than anyone, except, perhaps, your
shay’kreth’ashke
.”

Moondance changed his position so that he was sitting with his back to the pool, leaning his weight against his hands and staring up at the clouds visible through the skylight. He was being very careful
not
to look at Vanyel.

“As you have guessed from my words,” he said, “I am
shay’a’chern
. As is Starwind. As you.” Now he gave Vanyel a very brief, sidelong glance. “I am a Healer-Adept and I Heal more than people - I Heal
places
. I know the natural world as only one who wishes to restore it to its rightful balances can. This is the thing I wish to tell you; in all the world, there are more creatures than just man that make lifetime matings. Among them, some of the noblest - wolves, swans, geese, the great raptors-all creatures man could do worse than emulate, in many, many ways. And with all of them,
all
, there are those pairings, from time to time, within the same gender. Not often, but not unheard of either.”

Vanyel found himself unable to move, and unable to anticipate the direction this was taking.

Now Moondance dropped his eyes to catch and hold Vanyel’s in a joining of glances and wills that was unbreakable.

“There is in you a fear, a shame, placed there by your own doubts and the thoughts of one who knew no better. I tell you to think on this: the
shay ‘a ‘chern
pairing occurs
in nature
. How then, ‘unnatural’?
Usual
, no; and not desirable for the species, else it would die out for lack of offspring. But not
unnatural
. The beasts of the fields are innocent as man can never be, who has the knowledge of good and evil and the choice between, and they do not cast out of their ranks the
shay ‘a ‘chern
. There was between you and your
shay ‘kreth ‘ashke
much love - only love. There is no shame in loving.”

Vanyel couldn’t breathe; he could only see those ice-blue eyes.

“This I think I have learned: where there is love, the form does not matter, and the gods are pleased. This I have observed: what occurs in nature, comes by the hand of nature, and if the gods did not approve, it would not be there. I give you these things as food for your heart and mind.”

Once again, before Vanyel could move, he bent deliberately and kissed him, but this time on the forehead.

“I leave you for a moment with both kinds of nourishment.” He smiled, and gave Vanyel a slow wink. “Since you are not to stay in the pool forever, I must needs find you clothing.
I
would not mind, but your aunt grows anxious and wishes to see you awake and aware, and we would not wish to put her to the blush, hmm?”