Magic's Pawn (33 page)

He
listened
to the mind-voice of the one beside him with all his strength, ignoring the pain it cost, hoping beyond hope that the Herald would somehow give him the chance to get away - get away and do something to make this right. If the Herald would just - go away for a moment, or - or better yet, fall asleep -

Jaysen
was
tired; though he’d done less magic than Savil, and had more time to rest, he was still very weary. He’d set himself up in the room’s really comfortable chair; the one Tylendel had sometimes fallen asleep in. Vanyel could feel Jaysen’s mind drifting over into slumber, and held his breath, hoping he’d drift all the way.

Because he’d gleaned something else from those minds out there -

Because the Death Bell had rung for him, despite what he’d done, Tylendel was being accounted a full Herald and tomorrow would be buried with all the honors.

Tomorrow. But tonight - he was in the Temple in the Grove. And if he could get that far, Vanyel was going to try to right the wrongs he had done to all of them, atoning with the only thing he had left to give.

Jaysen’s thoughts slipped into the vague mumbles of sleep, and in the next moment a gentle snore from the chair beside the bed told Vanyel that he was completely gone.

Vanyel turned over, deliberately making noise.

Jaysen continued to snore, undisturbed.

Vanyel sat up, slowly, taking stock of himself and his surroundings.

About a candlemark later, he was dressed; even if he had
not
needed to move slowly for fear of waking the Herald, he would have had to for weakness. He had even needed to hold onto the furniture at first, because his legs were so unsteady. Even now his legs trembled with every step he took, but at least he was moving a bit more surely.

He stole soundlessly across the floor and unlatched the door, opened it just enough to squeeze himself through, and shut it again. It was dark out here, a still, cloudless night. He wouldn’t be seen, but it was a long way to the Grove.

He steeled himself and stepped shakily onto the graveled path that ran from his door through the moonlit garden.

But someone had been waiting for him.

Yfandes glided out of the darkness to his side almost before he had made five steps along that path.

:No
-
: she said, sternly, barring his way.
:You are ill; you should be in bed
.:

For a moment he was ready to collapse right where he stood.

-
gods, she’s going to stop me
-

Then he saw a way to get Yfandes to help him - without her knowing she was doing so.

-.Please
-
: He directed everything he could on part of the truth. He couldn’t lie mind-to-mind, he knew that, but he
didn’t
have to reveal everything unless Yfandes should ask a direct question about it. And besides that, the link to her was fading in and out (and it hurt, like everything else) and he would bet she wouldn’t want to force anything.
-.Pleased, Yfandes, I
have
to
-
: he faltered.: -
to say
-
good-bye
.:

She bowed her head almost to the earth as he let his grief pour out over her.
-.Very well
,: he heard, the mind-voice heavy with reluctance. .
I
will help you. But you must rest, after
.:

:I will
,: he promised, meaning it, though not in the way she had intended.

She went to her knees so that he could mount; he, once the best rider at Forst Reach, could not drag himself onto her back without that help. His arms and legs trembled with weakness as he clung to her back, and if it had not been that she could have balanced a toddler there and not let it fall, he would have lost his seat within the first few moments.

He concentrated on his weariness, on how physically miserable he was feeling, and spent not so much as an eyeblink on his real intentions. He closed his eyes, both to concentrate, and because seeing the ground move by so fast in the moonlight
was
making him nauseated and disoriented again.

He had had no notion of how fast the Companions could travel at a so-called walk. She was stepping carefully up to the porch of the Grove Temple long before he had expected her to get there; the clear ringing of her hooves on the marble surprised him into opening his eyes.

:We are here
,: she said, and knelt for him to dismount.

The marble of the Temple porch glistened wetly in the moonlight, and he could see candlelight shining under the door. He slid from Yfandes’ back, and “listened” with this new, mental ear for other minds within the Temple.

None.

He shivered in the cold wind; he’d dressed carefully, in the black silk tunic and breeches Tylendel had thought he looked best in, and once off Yfandes’ warm, broad back the wind cut right through his clothing.

:Not for long
,: she admonished, as he clung to the doorframe and negotiated unlatching the door into the Temple itself.

:No, Yfandes
,: he said, sincerely. :
Not for long
.:

He got the door open and closed again - then, as quietly as he could, locked it.

There was no clamor from the opposite side, so he assumed she had not heard the bolt shoot home. He turned, bracing himself for what he was about to do, and faced the altar.

The Temple itself was tiny; hardly bigger than the common room of their suite. It had been built all of white marble, within and without. The walls took up the candlelight, and reflected it until they fairly glowed. There were only two benches in it, and the altar. Behind the altar were stands thick with candles; behind the candles, the wall had been carved into a delicate bas-relief; swirling clouds, the moon, stars and the sun - and in the clouds, suggestions of male and female faces, whose expressions changed with the flickering of the candles.

Before the altar stood the bier.

Vanyel’s legs trembled with every step; he made his way unsteadily to that white-draped platform, and looked down on the occupant.

They’d dressed Tylendel in full Whites; his eyes were closed, and there was no trace of his grief or his madness in that handsome, peaceful face. His hands were folded across his waist, those graceful, strong hands that had held so much of comfort for his beloved. He looked almost exactly as he had so many mornings when Vanyel had awakened first. His long, golden curls were spread against the white of the pallet, a few of them tumbled a little untidily over his right temple; long, dark-gold lashes lay against his cheeks. Only the pose was wrong. Tylendel had never, in all the time Vanyel had known him, slept in anything other than a sprawl.

Vanyel reached out, hesitantly, to touch that smooth cheek - almost believing, even now, that he had only to touch him to awaken him.

But the cheek was cold, as cold as the marble of the altar, and the eyes did not flutter open at his touch. This was no child’s tale, where the sleeping one would wake again at the magic touch of the one who loved him.

“Please, ‘Lendel, forgive me,” he whispered to the quiet face, and took the knife from the white sheath on Tylendel’s belt. “I - I’m going to try to - pay for all of what I did to you.”

His hands shook, but his determination remained firm.

Quickly, before he could lose his courage, he bent and kissed the cold lips - hoping that this, too, would be forgiven, and caught in a grief too deep for tears. Then he knelt on the icy white marble of the floor beside the bier, and braced the hilt of the dagger between his knees, clasping his hands with the dagger between his wrists, resting them on either side of the blade-edge.

“ ‘Lendel, there’s nothing without you. Forgive me - if you can,” he whispered again, both to Tylendel and the brooding Faces behind the altar.

And before he could begin to be afraid, he pulled both wrists up along the knife-edges, slashing them simultaneously.

The dagger was as sharp as he had hoped - sharper than he had expected. He cut both wrists almost to the bone; gasped as pain shot up his arms, and the knife fell clattering to the marble, released when his legs jerked involuntarily.

He sagged with sudden dizziness, and fell forward over his bent knees; his head bowed over his hands, his arms lying limp on the marble floor. Blood began to spread on the white marble; pooled before him under his slashed wrists. He stared at it in morbid fascination. Red on white. Like blood on the snowIt was only at that moment that Yfandes seemed to realize what it was he was doing. She screamed, and began kicking at the door. But it was far too late; his eyes were no longer focusing properly anymore, and his wrists didn’t even hurt. But he was feeling so cold, so very cold.
:I’m sorry
,: he thought muzzily at the frantic Companion, beginning to black out, and feeling himself falling over sideways.
: Yfandes, I’m sorry… you’ll find someone… better than me. Worthy of you
.:

“Gone?” Savil’s voice broke. “What the hell do you mean,
gone?”

“Savil, I swear to you, the boy was asleep. I dozed off for a breath or two, and when I woke up he was gone,” Jaysen answered, one hand clutched at the side of his head on a fistful of hair, his expression frantic and guilt-ridden. “I thought maybe he’d gone to the privy or something, but I can’t find him anywhere.”

Savil swung her legs out of the bed and rubbed her eyes, trying to think. Where would Vanyel have gone, and in the name of the gods,
why
?

But in a heartbeat she had her answer - the frightened, frantic scream of a Companion rang across the river, and her Kellan’s voice shrilled into her head.

:Savil
-
the boy
-
: and an image of where he was and what he had done.

From the stricken look on Jaysen’s face, his own Felar had given him the same information.

“Gods!”
Savil snatched her cloak from the chair beside her bed and ran out in her bare feet, through the common room, and headed for the door of Vanyel’s room, Jaysen breathing down her neck.

She hit the garden door at a dead run, and it was a damned good thing that it wasn’t locked, because if it had been, she’d have broken it off the hinges. The cold of the night slapped her in the face like an impious hand;
that
stopped her for a moment, but
only
a moment. In the next instant Felar and Kellan pounded up at a gallop. Felar skidded around in a tight pivot, presenting his hindquarters to his Chosen, who leapfrogged up into his seat with an acrobatic skill that would have had Savil muttering about “show-offs” had the situation been less precarious. Instead, she waited for Kellan to come to a dead halt, and clambered onto her back anyhow, her bedgown rucked up around her legs. Kellan launched herself into a full, frantic gallop as Savil clung on as best she could.

Now Savil was a breath behind Jaysen, as the young Seneschal’s Herald led the way across the nearest bridge and up the Field to the Temple of the Grove. Nor were they the only two summoned by the frantic screaming, mind and voice, of Yfandes. Heralds and trainees were boiling out of the Palace like aroused fire ants, rendezvousing with their Companions, and heading across the river at breakneck speed.

But Jaysen and Savil were the first two on the scene; it was their dubious privilege to see Yfandes trying to batter down the solid bronze door of the Temple single-handedly, and not budging it by so much as a thumbs’-breadth. Her hooves were screeching across the metal, leaving showers of sparks in their wake, and her anguished screams were far too like a human’s for comfort.

Jaysen vaulted off Felar’s back and hit the ground at a run, ducking fearlessly under Yfandes’ flying hooves to make a trial of the door himself.

“It’s locked from the inside,” he shouted unnecessarily, as Savil slid from Kellan’s back to limp to his side. He put his shoulder against the door, and rammed it, with no more luck than Yfandes had had.

“Vanyel!” Savil put her mouth up against the crack between door and frame, and shouted through it. “Van, lad, let us in!”

She put her ear to the crack and listened, but heard nothing.
:Kellan
-
:

:Yfandes says he’s still alive, but unconscious and weakening
,: came the grim reply, as Yfandes danced in place, her sapphire eyes gone nearly black with anguish.

“Somebody get me a mage-light on that damned tower!’’

It was Mardic; he had his hands on Donni’s shoulders and was staring up at the tower. Donni was holding a crossbow with a bulky missile cocked and ready.

Savil responded first, running far enough back from the door that she could see the top of the Belltower. It was glowing faintly, but obviously too faintly for Donni to make out a target. Savil raised her hands, and sent up such a burst of power that the entire top of the tower flowered with light.

While Mardic closed his eyes and scowled in concentration, Donni raised the crossbow, squinted carefully along it, and fired.

The oddly-shaped arrow flew strangely, and slowly, trailing something light colored behind it - and in a moment, Savil realized why and what it was. Donni had been a bright little apprentice-thief when she’d been Chosen; this was a grapnel-arrow, meant to carry a light, but strong line through an open window and catch on the sill. Mardic had a very weak, but usable Fetching-Gift; he had invoked it to help the arrow carry something heavier than a light line. A climbing-rope.