Magic's Promise

Lores wheeled to glare again, but the look in Vanyel's eyes cowed him. 'That Companion showed up; he began breaking down the door. The guard got me, I sent for reinforcements - I thought it was a demon - more men showed up about the time the de- Companion got the door smashed in and started to run off with the boy. That whip was in the guardhouse and I grabbed it - figuring demon or not, it was horse-shaped.' He shrugged. 'You know the rest.'

'Didn't you even try the boy under Truth Spell?' Vanyel snarled, out of patience with the lack of thought, the complete bullheaded stupidity of the man.

Lores looked baffled. ' 'Truth Spell'? Why? What's that got to do with me?'

'Goddess Incarnate! Any Herald can work first-stage Truth Spell! Didn't your mentor ever -' Vanyel paused at the dumbfounded look on Lores' face. 'Your mentor never told you?'

Lores shook his head.

“Gods,” Vanyel strode over to the adolescent, who was still slumped over his own knees. 'Tashir?' he said, gently, kneeling beside him. He braced himself when the young man looked up, it still made his heart lurch to see those eyes, that face - and that dazed, lost, and pleading expression. 'Tashir, do you remember anything that happened tonight? Anything at all?''

Tashir's eyes were still not focusing well; he shook his head dumbly.

Vanyel shook him gently. 'Think. Dinner. Do you remember your father calling you up at dinner?'

'I...' The boy's voice was quite low, almost a match for Vanyel's baritone. 'I think so. Yes. He ... wanted me to go somewhere.'

'Where, Tashir?' Vanyel prompted.

'I ... don't remember.'

'Do you remember arguing with him?'

A hesitant nod. There were shadows under Tashir's eyes that had nothing to do with the way the light was falling on him. 'I didn't want to go. He wanted to send me somewhere. I don't remember where, I just remember that I didn't want to go. I told him I wouldn't. He hit me.'

'Did he hit you very often?'

The eyes cleared for a moment, bright with fear. 'Often enough,' the boy confessed cautiously. 'When I was around too much. I tried not to get in his way. Sometimes he'd get mad about something, and take it out on me. But not in front of people, not before tonight.'

“So he hit you. Then he sent everyone else away. What then?'

'He . . . came around the table. He grabbed me before I could get away, twisted my arm up behind my back, and made me go with him to his study. And ...'

The eyes clouded again.

'And?'

'I don't remember!' Tashir wailed softly. 'Please, I don't remember!”

Vanyel set in motion the spell that called the vrondi, the mindless air elemental that could not abide the emotional emanations associated with falsehood. In his hands, because he could give it energy beyond its own, the vrondi would be able to settle within the youngster's mind: he would be incapable of lying so long as it was there. Vanyel watched the vrondi settle into place, a glowing blue mist like a visible aura about Tashir's head and shoulders. He would not see it, but Vanyel and Lores certainly could. He glanced over at Lores, and saw the older man's lips compress, his face grow speculative.

'Are you sure, Tashir?' he urged. 'Think. Your father took you up to his study; what happened in the study?'

'I don't remember!” Tashir whimpered. 'I don't!”

Vanyel sighed, and dismissed the vrondi with a word. The mist dissolved, faded away, but slowly, not all at once as it would have if it had met with a lie. There was only one other thing he could try. He reached out tentatively with a Mindtouch.

Tashir should not have been able to detect it. But suddenly he jerked away, his eyes wild and unreasoning,