sensitive hands inside his cloak, and peered across the open Field through the sunlight. 'Since it was Gate-energy that blew his channels open - '
'Probably,' Savil interrupted.
'All right, probably blew his channels open - he's going to be doubly sensitive to it for the rest of his life. He'll likely know when someone's opening a Gate within a league of him. And actually going through one may touch off another fit. Which is why - '
' - you drugged him to the teeth. I have no objection; it's a little awkward, but that's why we have the kind of saddles for our Companions that we do.'
They crunched their way across Companion's Field, now covered with the first snowfall of the season. Savil repeated a quieting exercise for every step she made, for she knew she needed to establish absolute calm within herself; she would be Gating to her absolute physical limits (in terms of the distance she planned to cover) and that would take every reserve she had.
In light of that, she had turned everything (other than establishing the Gate itself) over to the hands of others. Mardic and Donni had done all her packing, Lissa had taken care of Vanyel's, and Lissa had taken charge of the boy once Andrel was finished with him. They were all waiting at the Grove Temple at this very moment.
'So why else don't you like Gating?' Andrel asked, while the Field around them glowed under the sun.
'Because when I get there, I'm going to be pretty damned worthless,' she replied dryly, 'And I'd better hope the Talisman performs the way Starwind claimed it was supposed to, or we'll be a pretty pathetically helpless pair, Vanyel and I.'
'Why don't you do what Tylendel did, use someone else's energy?'
'Because I don't really know what he did,' she said, after a long pause that was punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps breaking through the light crust of snow. 'None of us do. That may be why we ended up feeding the energy back through poor Van instead of grounding and dissipating it. I personally do not care to take the chance of doing that to another living soul and neither do any of the others. Vanyel lived through it; someone else might not. And it may well be that you have to have a lifebound pair to carry it off at all. So,' she shrugged, 'we do this the hard way, and I fall on my nose on the other side.'
They entered the Grove, the leafless trees making a lacework of dark branches against the bright blue sky.
The peace of the Grove never left it, no matter what the season was. That was one reason why Savil had chosen to set up the Gate here. The other was that it was the safest place on the Palace grounds that she could put a Gate; no one but Heralds ever came here without invitation. There should be no accidents caused by a stranger wandering by at the wrong moment.
The group waiting by the Temple, which looked today as if it had been newly-made of the same pure snow that covered the ground around it, was a small one. Jaysen, Donni and Mardic, and Lissa. There were only two Companions there; Kellan and Yfandes. Companions tended to avoid the Grove except when a Herald died. Vanyel was slumped over in Yfandes' saddle, wrapped in the warmest cloak Savil could find and strapped down securely enough that his Companion could fight or flee without losing him.
Avert - Savil thought, a little superstitiously. Let there be no reason for her to have to fight. We've had enough bad fortune without that.
She went first to his side; his hands had been loosely tied together at the wrist and the bindings were hooked over the pommel of the saddle. The stirrup-irons were gone, probably stored in one of the packs bundled behind his saddle; the stirrup-leathers had been turned into straps binding his calves to the saddle itself. He was belted twice at the waist; once to the pommel, once to the high cantle, using rings on the saddle meant for exactly that purpose. He was not going to come off.
Andrel reached her side; he reached up and pried open one of Vanyel's eyelids. The boy didn't react at all, and his pupils were mere pinpoints. The Healer's eye unfocused for a moment as he 'read' the boy; then he nodded with satisfaction.
'He should be all right, Savil. No more drugs, though, after this. Not even if those friends of yours - '
Savil shook her head. 'They don't like this kind of drug. Not for any reason. Drugs like you've been giving him are too easy to abuse.'
'I don't like them either, but there are times you've got no other choice, and this was one of them.' Andrel touched the boy's hand; his green eyes darkened as he brooded for a moment. 'Gods. I hope you're right about these people. His channels haven't healed at all, not really.'
'If they can't help us, no one can.' Savil turned her back on her semi-conscious charge and faced the door of the Temple, and put herself into the right mindset to invoke her spell.
To build a Gate -
It was the most personal of spells. Only one person could build a Gate, because only one mind could direct the energy needed to build it. The spell-wielder had to have a very exact notion of where the Gate was to exit, and no two people ever had precisely the same mental image of a place. In any event, only Savil had ever been in the k'Treva territory of the Pelagirs. She couldn't be 'fed' by another Herald-Mage, since she would need every bit of her attention for the Gate itself and would have none to spare to channel incoming energy. Lastly, because the energy had to be so intimately directed, it could come from only one place -
From within the builder of the Gate. Or - perhaps - one soul-bound to the builder of the Gate? A lifebond was at such a deep level that it wasn't conscious, so perhaps that was why Tylendel had succeeded in using Vanyel as his source of energy.
The kind of power needed to build a Gate was the kind that could be stored, could be planned for. But like a vessel that could only hold so much liquid, a mage could only hold so much energy within himself. Savil had prepared for this; she could replenish herself within a day when the spell was completed and the Gate dismissed. But for that critical period of twenty-four candlemarks she would be exhausted - physically, mentally, and magically.
No time to think of that. Get to it, woman. First, the Portal, then the Weaving.
The Temple door had been used so many times before as one end of a Gate that it needed no special preparation. She needed only to - reach -
