Magic's Promise

: It's about time,: came Yfandes' sardonic comment.

He was startled - and then angry. He very nearly made some kind of nasty retort back to her, but she was blocking, and he wasn't so angry that he'd try to breach her shields just to tell her off. For one thing, he wasn't sure he could - for another, the attempt might give him away to Vedric.

But he certainly wanted to...

The next several days were some of the worst Valdir had ever spent. He played his fingers to the bone every night until the last customer left. He dodged Bel, not always successfully, by day. He took her beatings with teeth- gritting meekness, avoided her increasingly heavy-handed attempts to trap him, and did his best to minimize the damage she inflicted. He was cold at night, and starved by day; Bel's idea of 'meals' being scarcely enough to keep a mouse alive. And his own unhappy thoughts kept him awake more often than not.

He went back to the former maid Reta's tiny house faithfully every two days, only to be turned away with nothing.

Then, finally, after close to a fortnight - an endless series of attempts to see the old woman and being turned away from her door - Reta finally agreed to speak with him again.

'I wasn't sure you'd be back.' Reta held the door open for him, and he slipped past her into the tiny, painfully neat sitting room. She closed the door carefully, and sat down on her settle beside the hearth. Valdir took the only other seat, a stool. The old woman regarded him thoughtfully while he curbed his impatience, and hoped that this time some more information would be forthcoming.

'No, I wasn't certain you'd be back,' she repeated.

'Why wouldn't I?' he asked, just as quietly, as he ignored the hollow feeling in his stomach. He'd been here long enough that the meager rations and short sleep were beginning to affect him, and while he'd recharged his mage - energies fully, his physical energies were becoming exhausted. He woke up five and six times a night, cramping with cold, and even with the supplementary food he was spending his pittance of earnings on, he was beginning to have spells of light-headedness. Most of his money was going to buy Yfandes grain, anyway. But Reta held the key, he was sure of it. If only he could persuade her to part with the information. Her - or whatever power had controlled her the first time he came to her door.

'This isn't a tale of high adventure,' she pointed out dryly. 'And it isn't a bedroom farce. It's not terribly interesting, it's not good song-fodder, and it's sad.'

'Sad?' He raised an eyebrow. 'Why sad?'

She examined the hands she held folded in her lap, as if they were of great interest. 'That poor child Ylyna, she never really had a chance to grow up. Oh, she was grown in body, but - They kept her a child, a frightened child they could manipulate. I find that sad.'

'They' meaning the Mavelans. 'Why didn't you say something?' he asked, trying to understand what could have led her to stand by and watch, and not act.

She shrugged. 'Who would have listened? I was Her Highness' personal maid, as I was Deveran's mother's. Deveran would have thought me either besotted or bewitched. He wasn't known for thinking much of women in the first place.' She shook her head and stared at the ring on her finger. The peculiar, dull white stone seemed to brighten for a moment, and her voice and expression became abstracted, as it had the first time she'd spoken openly.

It's happening again! Valdir held his breath, all his exhaustion, his personal concerns forgotten, hoping against hope...

'No, Deveran had no faith in the good sense or the honesty of women. After all, his own mother had betrayed him by dying when he most needed her, or so his own father kept claiming. And Ylyna - not a virgin, possibly mad, and surely little better than a trollop - certainly didn't help matters.'

Valdir could not stay silent; he protested such inexcusable, willful blindness. 'But the way she treated Tashir -'

'Was likely the way she'd been treated.' The old woman shook her head again, continuing to stare at the stone of her ring. 'When you reach my age, you have generally seen a great deal. Adults who have been beaten as children beat their own children. And - other things. I sometimes wonder if that isn't what Holy Lerence meant when he said 'the sins of the fathers shall be taken up by the sons.'“ Her eyes grew even more thoughtful - or entranced. She didn't seem to be paying any attention to him.

There was something stirring here. Again he felt some Power moving under the powers he could detect easily. Gods! I don't dare try to probe for it. The frustration maddened him. He could feel it, something deep, and powerful, it vibrated so that he felt it rather than 'detected' it; the way he could sometimes 'feel' the vibrations of a note too low to actually hear.

But it was stronger this time, much stronger, and it seemed to be stirring to his good, for the old chambermaid was saying things she hadn't more than hinted at before.