Magic's Promise

'Yeah, nightmares,” Jervis said defensively. 'Shit, you can't live on the damn Border without seein' fightin' sooner or later. An' you likely t' get shoved out there with no more sense of what t' do t' keep yourself alive than a butterfly. Look, smart boy - you was firstborn; you bet I figured you for bein' right in th' front line some day, an' I figured you for dead when that happened. An' I don't send childer outa my damned hands t' get killed, dammit!''

His face twisted and his shoulders shook for a moment, and he finished off the wine in his mug at a single gulp. Vanyel could sense more pain than he'd ever dreamed the old man could feel behind that carved-granite face. Somewhere, some time, Jervis had sent ill-prepared 'childer' out of his hands to fight - and die - and the wounds were with him still. His own anger began to fade.

'Well, that's what you were headin' straight for, boy, an' I just plain didn't know how t' keep it from happening. You made me so damned mad, an' then your old man just gave me too much leash. Told me I had a free hand with you. An' I - lost it. I went an' took the whole mess out of your hide.'

He shook his head, staring at the floor, and his hands trembled a little where he was clutching the empty mug. 'I lost my damned temper, boy. I'm not proud of that. I'm not proud of myself. Should have known better, but every time you whined, it just made me madder. An' I was wrong, dead wrong, in what I was trying t' force into you; I knew it, an' that made me mad too. Then you pulled that last little stunt - that was it. You ever thought about what you did?'

'I never stopped thinking about it,' Vanyel replied, after first swallowing nearly half the contents of his own mug. The wine could not numb the memories, recollections that were more acid on the back of his tongue than the cheap red wine.

He looked fiercely into Jervis's eyes. 'I hated you,' he admitted angrily. 'If I'd had a real knife in my hands that day, I think I'd have gone for your throat.' All the bitterness he'd felt, then and after, rose in his gullet, tasting of bile. He struggled against his closing throat to ask the question that had never been answered and had plagued him for more than a decade. 'Why, Jervis, why?” he got past his clenched jaw. 'If you knew what I was doing, why did you lie and tell Father I was cheating?'

Silence; Jervis stared at him with anger mixed with shame, but it was the shame that won out. 'Because I couldn't admit I was wrong,' Jervis replied, subdued and flushing a dark red. 'Because I couldn't admit it to myself or anybody else. Couldn't believe a kid had come up with the answer I couldn't find. So I told Withen you'd cheated. Half believed it myself; couldn't see how you'd've touched me, otherwise. But I - I've had a lot of time t' think about it. Years, since you left. An' you turnin' out the way you did, a Herald an' all - shit, anybody turned out like that wouldn't cheat. Came to me after a while I never caught you in a lie, neither. Came to me that the only lies bein' told were the ones I was tellin'. Then when I started t' tell myself the truth, began t' figure out how close I came t' breakin' more'n your arm.'

He hung his head, and he wouldn't look at Vanyel. And Vanyel found his anger and bitterness flowing away from him like water from melting ice.

'Boy, I was wrong, and I am sorry for it,' he said quietly. 'I told Withen the truth a while back, when they sent you out on the Karsite Border; told him everything I just told you. He didn't know what they was sendin' you to, but I did. Damn, I - if anythin' had happened, an' I hadn't told him -'

He shuddered. 'I told him more things, best I could. Told him that he's got a damned fine son, an' that there have been plenty of shieldmated fighters I'd'a been glad t' have at m'back, an' I'd 'ye trusted with m' last coin and firstborn kid - an' just as many lads whose tastes ran t' wench-in' that I'd've just as soon set up against a tree an' shot. Told him if he let that stand between him an' you, he was a bigger fool than me. Did m' best for you, boy.

Gonna keep on with it, too. Figure if I tell him enough, he might start believin' me. An' Van - I'm damned sorry it took me so long t' figure out how wrong I was.'

There was profound silence then, while Vanyel waited for his thoughts and emotions to settle into coherency. Jervis was as silent as a man of rock, eyes fixed on the floor. The cricket in the salle broke off its singing, and Vanyel could hear the thud of hooves and sharp commands, faint and muffled, as Tarn took one of the young stallions around on the lunge just outside.

Finally, everything within him crystallized into a new pattern -

Vanyel took Jervis' mug from limp fingers and refilled it. But instead of giving it back, he offered the armsmaster his own outstretched hand.

The former mercenary looked up at him in surprise, one of the first times Vanyel had ever seen the man register surprise, and began to smile; tentatively at first, then with real feeling.

He took Vanyel's hand in both of his, and swallowed hard. 'Thank you, boy,' he said hoarsely. 'I wasn't sure you'd - you're a better man than - oh, hell -'

Vanyel shrugged, and handed him his refilled mug. 'Let's call it truce. I was a brat. And if you hadn't done what you did, I wouldn't be a Herald.” And I wouldn't have had 'Lendel.

'Listen,' Jervis said, after first clearing his throat. 'About Medren - that boy has no future here, a blind man