Magic's Pawn (42 page)

And with that, he jumped down from the pool ledge to the floor, and vanished again.

“Here.” Moondance, a crease of worry between his brows, was back in a few moments with a towel and what looked like folded clothing; green, like his own. “You shall have to care for yourself, I fear. There is trouble, and I have been called to deal with it. Starwind and Savil will be with you shortly.” He hesitated a moment, visibly torn. “Forgive me, I
must
go.”

He put his burdens down on the pool edge and ran back out the doorway before Vanyel could do more than blink.

Gods
-
I
feel like somebody in a tale, going to sleep and waking up a hundred years later. It seems so hard to think
-
like I’m still half asleep
.

He dressed slowly, trying to collect his thoughts, and making heavy work of it. He
did
remember - vaguely - Savil telling him that he was too ill for Andrel to help; and he definitely remembered - despite the fog of drugs about the words - being told that she was going to take him to some friends of hers. He hadn’t much cared what was happening at that point. He’d either been too drugged to care, or been hurting too much.

Presumably Moondance, and the absent Starwind, were the friends she meant. They were fully as strange as those weird masks of beads and feathers that Savil had on her wall. As was this place. Wherever it was.

He pulled the deep green tunic over his head, and suddenly realized something. He wasn’t drugged - and he wasn’t hurting, either. Those places in his mind that had burned - he could still feel them, but they weren’t giving him pain.

Moondance said he Healed me. Is that why it feels like I halfway know him
? Tayledras.
Didn’t Aunt Savil tell us stories about them? I thought that was all those were
-
stories. Not real
. He looked around at the strange room, half-structure, half-natural, each half fitting into the other so well he could scarcely tell where the hand of nature left off and the hand of man began.
Real. Gods, if I were to describe this place, nobody would ever believe me. This
-
II
‘
s all so different. I even feel different
.

He could sense some kind of barrier around him, around his thoughts. At first it made him wary, but he tested it, tentatively, and found that it was a barrier that
he
could control. When he thinned it, he became aware of presences, what must be minds, out beyond the limits of this room. Animals, surely, and birds, for their thoughts were dim and
here
-centered. Then two close together - very bright, but opaque and unreadable. One “felt” like Savil and the other must be the mysterious Starwind. Then two more; just as bright, just as opaque - but one he recognized by the “feel” as being Yfandes. Then a scattering of others…

Yfandes. A Companion
. My
Companion
.

So - it was no hallucination, then. He
had
somehow gotten Herald-Gifts and a Companion.

Gifts I never wanted, at a cost I never thought I’d pay. I’d trade them and half my life to have
-
him
-
back again
.

That hit like a blow to the gut. He descended from the level of the uppermost pool to the floor and sat heavily on one of the stone benches around the edge of the room, too tired and depressed to move.

Oh, ‘Lendel… gods
, he thought, bleak despair overcoming him.
What am I doing here? Why didn’t they just let me die
?

:Do you hate me, Chosen
?: said a bright, reproachful voice in his mind,
:Do you hate me for wishing you to live
?:

:Yfandes
?: He remembered what Savil had said, about how his Companion would pine herself to death if he died, and sagged with guilt.
:Oh, gods, Yfandes, no
-
no, I’m sorry
-
I just
- :

He’d been able to not-think about it when he’d been drugged. He’d been able to concentrate on nothing more complicated than the next moment. Now - now his mind was only too clear. He couldn’t ignore the reality of Tylendel being gone, and there were no drugs to keep him in a vague fog of forgetting.

:You miss him
.: she replied, gently.
:You need him, and you miss him.
:

:Like my arm. Like my heart. I just can’t imagine going on without him. I don’t know what to do with myself; where to go, what to do next.:

If Yfandes had a reply, he never heard it; just at that moment Savil and a second
Tayledras
, this one in white breeches, soft, low boots and jerkin, entered the room. Vanyel started to stand; Savil motioned for him to stay where he was. She and the stranger walked slowly across the stone floor and took places on the bench beside him.

Vanyel was shocked at her appearance. Although her hair had always been a pure silvery white, she’d never looked
old
before. Now she did; she looked every year of her age and more. He recalled what Moondance had said about Tylendel’s death being as hard on her as it was on Vanyel. Now he believed it.

“Aunt Savil,” he said, hesitantly, as she and the stranger arranged themselves comfortably beside him. “Are you all right? I mean - “

“Looking particularly haglike, am I?” she asked dryly. “No, don’t bother to apologize; I’ve got a mirror. I don’t bounce back from strain the way I used to.”

He flushed, embarrassed, and feeling guilty.

“Van, this is Starwind k’Treva,” she continued. “He and Moondance are the
Tayledras
Adepts I told you younglings about a time or two. This,” she waved her hand around her, “is his, mostly, being as he’s k’Treva Speaker.’’

“In so much as any
Tayledras
can own the land,” Star-wind noted with one raised eyebrow, his voice calling up images of ancient rocks and deep, still water. “It would be as correct, Wingsister, to say that this place owns me.”

“Point taken. This is k’Treva’s
voorthayshen
- that’s - how would you translate that,
shayana?”

The
Tayledras
at her side had a triangular face, and his long hair was arranged with two plaits at each temple, instead of one, like Moondance - and
he felt
older, somehow. At least, that was how he felt to Vanyel.

“Clan Keep, I think would be closest,” Starwind said, “Although k’Treva is not a clan as your people know the meaning of the word. It is closer to the Shin’a’in notion of ‘Clan.’ “

His voice was a little deeper in pitch than Moondance’s and after a moment Vanyel recognized the “feel” of him as being the same as the “blue-green music” in his dreams.

“My lord,” Vanyel began hesitantly.

“There are no ‘lords,’ here, young Vanyel,” the Adept replied. “I speak for k’Treva, but each k’Treva rises or falls on his own.”

Vanyel nodded awkwardly. “Why am I here, sir?” he asked - then added, apprehensively, ‘ ‘What did you do to me? I - forgive me for being rude, but I
know
you did something. I feel - different.”

“You are here because you have very powerful Mage-Gifts, awakened painfully, awakened late, and out of control,” the Adept replied. His expression was calm, but grave, and held just a hint of worry. “Your aunt decided, and rightly, that there was no way in which you could be taught by the Heralds that would not pose a danger to you and those about you. Moondance and I are used to containing dangerous magics; we do this constantly, it is part of
what
we do. We can keep you contained, and Savil believes we can teach you effectively. And if we cannot teach you control, then she knows that we can and
will
contain you in such a way that you will pose no danger to others.”

Moondance had not looked like this - so impersonal, so implacable. Vanyel shivered at the detached calm in Starwind’s eyes; he wasn’t certain what the Adept meant by “containing” him, but he wasn’t eager to find out.

“As to what we have done with you - Moondance Healed your channels, which are the conduits through which you direct energy. And I have taught you, a little, while you were in Healing trance. I could not teach you a great deal in trance, but what I have given you is very important, and will go a great way toward making you safe around others. I have taught you where your center is, how to ground yourself, and how to shield. So that now, at least, you are no longer out of balance, and you may guard yourself against outside thoughts and keep your own inside your mind where they belong. And there will be no more shaking of the earth because of dreams.”

So
that
was what had happened - with the music, the colors - and this new barricade around his mind.

Star wind leaned forward a little, and his expression became far more human; concerned, and earnest. “Young Vanyel, we, Moondance and I, we are perfectly pleased to have you with us, to help you. But that is
all
we can do; to help you.
You
must learn control; we cannot force it upon you.
You
must learn the use of your Gifts, or most assuredly they will use you. Magic is that kind of force; I beg you to believe me, for I know this to be true. If you do not use it, it will use you. And if it begins to use you,” his eyes grew very cold, “it must be dealt with.”

Vanyel shrank back from that chill.

“But this is neither the place nor the time to speak of such things,” Starwind concluded, rising. “We have you under shield, and you are too drained to cause any problems for the nonce. Youngling, can you walk? If you can, you would do well with exercise and air, and I would take you to a vantage to show you our home, and tell you a little of what we do here.”

Vanyel nodded, not eager to be left to his aching memories again; he found on rising that he was feeling considerably stronger than he had thought. He couldn’t move very fast, but as long as Starwind and Savil stayed at a slow walk, he could keep up with them.

They went from the bathing room back through the bedroom; it looked even more like a natural grotto than the bathing room had. Vanyel almost couldn’t distinguish the real foliage from the fabric around the bed, and the “furniture,” irregularly shaped chairs, benches and tables with thick green cushions and frames of bent branches, fitted in with the plants so well as to frequently seem part of them. There was a curtained alcove (with more of those leaf-mimicking curtains) that seemed to be a wardrobe, for the curtains had been drawn back at one side enough to display a bit of clothing.

From there they passed into a third, most peculiar room. There was no furniture, and in the center of it, growing up from the stone floor, was the living trunk of a tree, one a dozen people could not have encircled with their arms. Attached to the trunk was a kind of spiral staircase. They climbed this - Vanyel feeling weak at the knees and clinging to the railing for most of the climb-to a kind of covered balcony that gave them a vantage point to see all of Starwind’s little kingdom.

This was a valley - no, a
canyon;
the walls were nearly perpendicular - of hot springs; Vanyel saw steam rising from the lush growth in more places than he could count. Although there was snow rimming the lip of the canyon high above, vegetation within the bowl ran riot.

“K’Treva,” Starwind said, indicating the entire valley with a wave of his hand. “Though mostly only Moondance and I dwell here-below. Beneath, the living-spaces for the
hertasi
and those who do not wish the trees.”

Vanyel looked over the edge of the balcony; below him was a collection of rooms, mostly windowless, but with skylights, the whole too random to be called a “house.”

“There are other living places above - which is where most of us dwell,” Starwind continued, with an ironic smile. “Moondance is not
Tayledras
enough to be comfortable above the ground. The
hertasi
you may or may not see; they serve us, we protect them and allow them to dwell here. They are shy of strangers - even of
Tayledras;
really, only Moondance is a friend to all of them. They are something like a large lizard, but they are full human in wit. If you should see one, I pray you strive not to frighten it. And although you may go where you will here-below, pray do not come here-above without invitation.”

Vanyel looked up, but couldn’t see any sign of these “living places” - only the staircase spiraling farther up the trunk and vanishing into the branches. The very thought of being up that high was dizzying, and he thought it was likely to take a great deal more than an invitation to get him to climb above.

“Tchah - I stand on Moondance’s side,” Savil replied. “I remember the first time I was here, and you made me try to sleep up in one of your perches. Never again, my friend.”

“You have no sense of adventure,” Starwind countered, putting his palms down on the rail and leaning forward a little. “The last thing, one that you may sense, so that you know it is indeed there - the barrier about the vale. It protects us from that which we would not have pass within and it keeps the vale always warm and sheltered. So - this is k’Treva. What we do here - two things. Firstly, we make places where the magic creatures of the Pelagirs may live in peace. Secondly, we take the magic out of those places where they do not live, making the land safe for man. We use the magic we take to make boundaries about the places of refuge, so that none may pass who do not belong. That is what the k’Varda, the Mage-Clans of the
Tayledras
, do. We guard the Pelagirs from despoilers as our cousins, the
Shin’a’in
, guard the Dhorisha Plains.”