Magic's Pawn

roots that were each as thick as his leg. He put his back against the trunk and slid down it to be cradled where the roots joined the tree.

Tyiendel pondered his choice for a moment. 'Well, I can only see two ways I can talk and look at you at the same time, and since I don't fancy shouting across the clearing - '

Before Vanyel had time to react, he'd stretched himself out along the ground and put his head in Vanyel's lap. ' - much better,' he sighed.

Vanyel froze.

'Van,' Tyiendel said quietly, closing his eyes, 'I won't hurt you. Not for any reason. I like being near you, with you. I need to touch people; and I won't ever hurt you.'

Vanyel relaxed a little.

'I like this grove, too, though hardly anyone else seems to. It feels like there's no time in here.' He kept his eyes closed, and Vanyel saw a little pain-crease between his eyebrows.

He gets those headaches; he told me last night - I wonder - if he'd mind - if it would help -

Vanyel hesitated for a moment, then began massaging Tylendel's temples with gentle fingertips.

The trainee chuckled and Vanyel felt his shoulders relax. 'You have about a hundred years to stop doing that,' he said. 'I think I have the headache you claimed.'

'You were going to tell me about you and Gala and being Chosen,' Vanyel prompted, though the thought made him a little uncomfortable still. 'I mean, you practically got my whole life story last night, and I still don't know that much about you.'

'To begin at the beginning - I have a twin, Staven. He's the elder by about an hour. Nothing like me, by the way; he's taller, thinner, darker, and much handsomer. He's the leader, I'm the follower. We've had a primitive sort of mind-link ever since we were born. Things happened between us all the time. Things like - oh, I blacked out when he fell down the well; he acted like he'd broken his leg when I broke mine. We always knew what the other one was up to.' He took a deep breath. 'People knew all about that, but I had other Gifts, too, that I could use. Besides that mind-link, from the time I was about nine I had a touch of Thought-sensing for people besides Slav, and I had an ability to - make accidents happen to people I didn't like.'

'Did that cause you problems?' Vanyel asked. 'With other people, I mean. I should think they wouldn't much appreciate that last.'

Tylendel shook his head slightly. 'It didn't crop up often enough for people to really notice - or if they did, they were too afraid of my father to say anything about it. I didn't do it often, the accident-causing, I mean; it made me sick, after. Staven sometimes tried to egg me on, but it wasn't something I'd give in to him about.' Tylendel paused, and bit his lip; his expression flickered briefly into one both dark and brooding before it lightened again. 'It was the link between me and Staven that was the strongest and most predictable of the Gifts; it was pretty much limited to physical sensations, but once we figured out how to use it - '

Vanyel chuckled. 'I bet you were unholy terrors.'

Tylendel echoed the chuckle, and winked at him. 'I wouldn't mind having a link like that with you.'

Vanyel blushed, but answered with exactly what he was thinking. 'I wouldn't mind either.'

Tylendel's expression sobered. 'Now comes the part where things got odd. Staven matured pretty early; by twelve he was as tall as most at fifteen, and all the girls were starting to flirt with him. And not just the girls, but grown women as well. I think he got all his share of female-attraction and mine, if you want to know the truth. That summer we were hosting a tournament and everything from goosegirls to visiting highborn were after him and he was acting like a young and randy rooster in a henyard. It all climaxed - if you'll forgive the expression - when one of the ladies who'd come to visit Mother dropped him a note that said in no uncertain terms that she'd be quite pleased to find him in her bed that night - well - '

He closed his eyes for a moment, then looked up into Vanyel's face, his own expression ironic. 'Understand, I was just as curious as any twelve year old about what Doing It was like. I said I'd cover for him if he let me - uh - eavesdrop.''

'Something tells me it didn't go according to plan,' Vanyel guessed.

'Dead in the black,' Tylendel said soberly. 'I was 'with' him for about as long as it took for things to get interesting. I had been feeling odd from the start, but I tried to ignore it, and concentrated on the link. Then things got - I don't know how to describe it, except that I started losing my grip on me and started merging with him. And the more I concentrated, the stranger it all got. It was a bit like those times I'd made accidents happen; the room faded in and out, I was in a kind of sickish fever, my heart was racing - and I couldn't tell what was 'me' and what was Slav. Under any other circumstances I think I would have quit and shut everything down, but I was stubborn and I was a little afraid of Stav making fun of me for diving out, after this was over. I kept holding to that link, figuring that if I could just weather it out, things would get fun again. Then - ' He shook his head a bit, and his mouth twitched. 'Just as things were about to come to the cusp for Staven, something - broke loose in me. I just barely remember the start of it; like I'd suddenly been dropped into a fire. I was in unbelievable pain. It felt like being in the middle of a lightning storm, and from the wreck I made of our room, that's exactly what I may have created. Something about what was going on, something about the link I had with Staven, triggered all my potential Gifts - explosively. I was unconscious for about a day, and when I woke up - '

He shuddered. ' - nothing would ever be the same.'

He closed his eyes, and Vanyel stroked his forehead. His mouth was tight, with lines of unhappiness at the corners. Far off in the distance, Vanyel could hear meadows wifts crying like the lost souls of ghost-children.

'So there I was;' Tylendel continued, his voice thin and strained. 'I had the Mage-Gift, Thought-sensing, Fetching, a bit of Empathy - none of it predictable, none of it controlled, and all of it likely to burst out at any moment.' He took a look at Vanyel's face and read the puzzlement there. 'Gods, I keep forgetting you aren't a trainee. Fetching - that means I can move things without touching them; Empathy means I can feel what someone else is feeling, which is why I knew when you had that nightmare last night. Thought-sensing - if someone isn't shielding, I can tell what they're thinking. The Mage-Gift is harder to explain, but it's what makes it possible for a Herald-Mage to do magic.'

'You can tell what I'm thinking?' Vanyel said dubiously. He would have liked being able to share Tylendel's