Magic's Promise

conferred in Mindspeech. 'It's complicated, and there's a lot of 'ifs' and 'buts.' It may take us a while to unravel them, but the explanation fits the current evidence.'

Jervis just shook his head. 'If that's magery, then it's too much for me, Van,' he said, yawning. 'I'll leave that to you. I'll just show you that room and let you deal with it, eh?'

'I'll do that,' Vanyel replied, then turned his mind to looking for the traces that would tell him what kind of things had torn the hall to shreds-because that would tell him a great deal about how strong the enemy was - and importantly, might even give a clue as to who.

But in the end, he and Savil sought their beds without any answers but one. How strong was very. Adept at least.

Because the traces that would have distinguished what the trap-spell had unleashed had been skillfully wiped away. All that remained was the heavily camouflaged spell itself (which only an Adept could have detected under the camouflage) and the bare traces of magic that had alerted them in the first place.

Jervis and Tashir were already asleep when they gave up.

'Sleep?' he asked Savil, hoping she'd answer in the affirmative.

'We might as well. We aren't going to get anything more tonight.' She stretched once, and began burrowing into her blankets, practically radiating exhaustion. Vanyel realized then what kind of strain she was under - all this complicated, involved sorcery, and maintaining her position as the Web's Eastern Guardian. He resolved to take more of the burden from her as soon as he could. This was not fair to her, nor was it good for her.

I wonder if there's a way to tie all the Heralds into the Web, as power-source at least. That would take fully half the burden off the Guardians.

'Want me to put out the candles?' he asked, glancing around at the burning tapers still bedecking corners of the kitchen.

She opened one eye thoughtfully. 'No. Just leave them, if you would. It isn't as if we need to hoard them, and I don't think I want to go to sleep in darkness for a while.'

Vanyel thought it over a moment, and nodded. 'You know what, teacher-mine?' he said softly. 'Neither do I.'

She chuckled wearily, and closed her eyes again. 'Absurd, isn't it? Here we are, two of the ranking Herald- Mages in Valdemar - afraid of the dark.''

He wrapped himself up in his own blankets. 'If you promise not to tell anyone, I won't either.'

A light snore was his only answer, and he fell asleep with the comforting glow of the candles all about them.

The tiny room vibrated with power.

It was a round room; stone-walled and wooden-floored-and-ceilinged. The walls were pale sandstone, the rest pale birch. The pillar of stone clearly reached higher than the ceiling and lower than the floor. And the room, with barely enough space to walk around the dark pillar was, very clearly, set up with permanent shields, like those in the communal magic Work Room at the Palace in Haven. Small wonder neither he nor Savil had detected this artifact before. Vanyel set a cautious hand to the pillar of charcoal-gray, highly polished stone, as Tashir and Jervis watched him curiously. It was warm, not cool, and felt curiously alive.

And very familiar.

This was a Tayledras heart-stone. The Vale of k'Treva had such a stone, a place where the physical, material valley itself merged and melded with the energy-node and intersection of power-flows 'below' it. Such a stone was the physical manifestation of the energies fueling the Tayledras magics, and this physical manifestation was peculiarly vulnerable to tampering. So the heart-stones were guarded jealously - and always deactivated when Tayledras left a place.

This one should not be here, except, perhaps, as a dead relic of former inhabitants. It should not be alive, and more, responding to his touch, physical and magical, upon it.

'This -' he faltered, and pulled his hand away with a wrench. 'Jervis, you were right. This is not something I would expect here. I'm going to have to Mindtouch it.'

'Anything we can do to help?' the armsmaster asked quietly.

'To tell you the truth, I'd rather you took Tashir out to the Great Hall to see if you can help him remember,'