Magic's Pawn

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?'

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

Twelve

“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