would know exactly what Gifts or actions were required to counter it. Heralds with those Gifts would find themselves in the saddle and heading for the spot whether or not they had been summoned. The Chronicles were not clear about how he had done this, only that it definitely worked, and there was a great deal of relief knowing that the Kingdom no longer depended on having four powerful Herald-Mages to act as guardians.
Vanyel had done something else at that time, though whether or not it was part of the alterations to this 'Web' or not, the Chronicles were unclear. He had summoned-something. Or rather, he had summoned things. Having called them, he did something to them or with them, somehow gave them the job of watching for mages and alerting Heraldmages to their presence in Valdemar.
What happened when there weren't any more Herald-Mages? she wondered.
Did they just keep watching, or what? Have they been trying to alert Heralds, or not?
At least this accounted for something Kero had said, about why Quenten and the rest of the Skybolts' mages couldn't stay inside Valdemar.
'He said it felt like there was someone watching him all the time,' she'd told Elspeth. 'Like there was someone just behind his shoulder, staring at him. Waking or sleeping. Said it just about drove him crazy.' That certainly made a good enough reason for Elspeth; she didn't think she would want to stick around anywhere that she felt eyes on her all the time.
Unless, of course, she was a truly powerful mage, one able to shield herself against just about anything. One that knew she was so much the superior of other mages that she felt totally confident in her ability to hide from the enemy.
Like Hulda, maybe? We still don't know everything she can do. We've been assuming she was just Ancar's teacher and attributing all his success to Ancar himself... But what if it's really Hulda, letting him think he's in control, while she is really the power and the mind behind his actions?
Again, that would explain a great deal, particularly Ancar's obsession with eliminating Talia, Selenay, and Elspeth.
It could be he simply hated suffering defeat at the hands of women.
But it also could be Hulda, egging him on. If he felt somehow shamed at being defeated by females, she could be playing on that shame, making him obsessive about it. After all, she had very little to lose. If Ancar was goaded into defeating Valdemar, she won. And if he lost, or was killed during the conflict-she would be there to inherit his kingdom and pick up the pieces. And Hulda would never repeat his mistakes...It all made hideous sense, a good explanation of otherwise inexplicable behavior. And Elspeth didn't like the explanation one bit. Ancar as an enemy was bad enough. But the idea of an enemy like Hulda who had been plotting for decades-It was enough to send a chill down the toughest of spines. It was more than enough to give Elspeth nightmares for three nights running.
Elspeth closed the book she'd been reading, fighting down a queasy sensation in her stomach.
She had just finished reading the passages in the Chronicles about Tylendel, Vanyel's first lover; his repudiation and his suicide. It didn't make for easy reading; it had been written, not by the Chronicler of the time, but by a non-Herald, a Healer, who had been a friend of Tylendel' s mentor. Evidently the Heralds had all been affected so strongly by this incident that they were unable to write about it.
But that was not why she was fighting uneasy feelings.
Tylendel-at seventeen-had evidently been able to construct something called a 'Gate' or a 'Gate Spell,' which enabled him to literally span distances it would take a Companion days or even weeks to cross.
Her blood ran cold at the idea, and even though the author had hinted that the mage who used this spell had to know precisely where he was going, that fact was no comfort. Hulda had been to Valdemar-and it would not be very difficult to insert other agents into Valdemar simply to learn appropriate destinations.
What if Ancar were to control this spell? What if he were able to get it past the protections? There would be no stopping him; he would be able to place agents anywhere he chose.
In fact-Hulda had been in the Palace. For years. There was probably very little she didn't know about the Palace.
She could place an agent in the Queen's very bedroom, if she chose, and all the guards in the world would make no difference.
That might even be how that assassin got onto the Palace grounds. She shuddered. I think I'm going to have nightmares again...This had not been an easy day for reading. Elspeth was just as disturbed by the Chronicle she had completed before this one, the one describing Vanyel's last battle.
The Herald-Mage had commanded tremendous power; so tremendous that the author had made an offhand comment to the effect that he could have leveled Haven if he so chose. Granted, Haven was a smaller city then than it was now, but-the power to level a city?
It simply didn't seem possible, destruction on that kind of scale seemed absurd on the face of it. Yet for the
