Magic's Promise

down and beat up anymore! You can't make a fool and a target of me the way you do with Medren! I know what I'm doing, damn you, and my style is a match for yours on any damned field!'

Jervis pulled off his battered helm with his shield hand, and sweat - darkened tendrils of gray - blond hair fell into his eyes. 'That's enough,' he said. 'I've seen what I wanted t' see. Seems those songs got a grain of truth in 'em.'

Vanyel choked his temper down. 'I trust you won't require any more sparring sessions, armsmaster?''

Jervis gave him another long, measuring look. 'I didn't say that. I'll be wantin' t' practice with you again, master Vanyel.'

And he turned on his heel and left Vanyel standing in the middle of the salle, entirely uncertain of who had won what.

Have we got a truce ? Have we ? Or is this another kind of war?

“My Shadow-Lover, bear me into light,'' Vanyel sang softly, as the odd, minor chords blended one into another, each leaving a ghost of itself hanging in the air for the next to build from. This new gittern did things to this particular song that carried it beyond the poignant into the unearthly. He paused a moment, brushed the last chording in a slow arpeggio, and finally opened his eyes.

Medren sat on the edge of the bed, his mouth open in a soundless 'O.'

Vanyel shook off the melancholy of the song with an effort. 'How long have you been there?' he asked, racking the gittern on its stand, and uncoiling from his window seat.

'Most of the song,' Medren shivered. 'That's the weirdest love song I ever heard! How come I never heard it before?'

'Because Treesa doesn't like it,' Vanyel replied wryly, stretching his fingers carefully. 'It reminds her that she's mortal.' He saw the incomprehension on Medren's face, and elaborated. 'The lover in the song is Death, Medren.'

'Death? As -' the boy gulped, '- a lover?'

The stricken look on the boy's face recalled him to the present, and he chuckled. 'Oh, don't look that way, lad. I'm in no danger of throwing myself off a cliff. I have too much to do to go courting the Shadow-Lover.'

The boy's face aged thirty years for a moment. 'But if He came courting you-'

I'd take His kiss of peace only too readily, Vanyel thought. Sometimes I'm so damned tired. He thought that - but smiled and said, 'He courts me every day I'm a Herald, nephew, but He hasn't won me yet. What brings you here?'

'Oh,' Medren looked down at his hands. 'Jervis. Some of the other kids - they told me he's got something special going today. For me.'

Vanyel thought of the 'sparring session' and went cold. And a seed of an idea finally sprouted and flowered. He stood, and walked slowly to the bed, to put his hand lightly on Medren's shoulder. 'Medren, would you rather deal with Jervis, or be sick?'

'What?' The boy looked up at him with the same incomprehension in his eyes he'd shown when Vanyel had spoken of the Shadow-Lover.

“I have just enough of the Healing-Gift that I can make you sick.' That wasn't exactly what he would do, but it was close enough. 'Then I can keep you sick; too sick to go to practice, anyway.' There was measles in the nursery; that would keep the boy down for a good long time.

'Will I lose my voice?' The boy looked up at him with the same complete trust Jisa had, and that shook him.

He grinned, to cover it. 'No, you'll just come out in spots, like Brendan. In fact, I want you to sneak into the nursery and spend a candlemark with Brendan when I 'm done with you.” As much as I'm going to depress his body, if he isn't fevered by nightfall I'll eat my lute. “Make sure nobody sees you, and go straight to your mother after and tell her you have a headache.'

'As long as I won't lose my voice,' Medren said, grinning, 'I think I can take spots and itching.'

'It won't be fun.'

'It's better than being beat on.'