Magic's Price

Stef squeaked, and hid his eyes with his forearm, then peeked under the crook of his elbow. The entire front of the building had burst outward in the time he'd hidden his eyes; the door was splinters, and the right side of the keep had already collapsed outward. There were screams, but no sign of fire, and Stef realized then that what he'd just seen was an explosion of mage-power.

:Get on!: Yfandes ordered, and he scrambled onto her back. She didn't even wait this time until he'd settled himself; she just leapt through the bushes with the Bard clinging to her mane and trying desperately to get a grip on her with his legs.

She raced across the small expanse of clear ground between the bushes and the keep, and crashed through what was left of the door, coming to an abrupt halt just inside. He blinked, his eyes burning from the foul smoke blowing into them, and tried to make out what was going on. Here, inside the building, there were fires, small ones. Furniture burning. Piles of rags, smoldering -

Men.

With horror and nausea, Stefen realized that fully half of what he had thought were burning piles of flotsam were actually burning bodies, aflame with the same blood-red fires Van had used to destroy the raven-thing. And some of the piles were thrashing and screaming.

He tumbled from Yfandes' back as she pivoted, lashing out with hooves and teeth at a man running by. He tried to make some sense of the confusion, looking, without consciously realizing he was doing so, for Van.

And then the fires rose higher, reflecting off a single figure, the red glare concealing until this moment the fact that the man wore shredded Whites. Scarlet mage-fires turned his white-streaked hair into a cascade of ripping shadow threaded with blood. Just beyond, a group of terrified men crouched against the far wall, cowering away from him; some pleading, some simply trying to melt into the stone of the wall in numb fear.

“Vanyel!” Stef shouted. The Herald turned around for a moment, but a movement by one of the men he had cornered made him turn back to face them. It was Vanyel, but not a Van that Stefen recognized. Like Yfandes, his eyes and the mage-focus around his neck glowed an identical, angry red, and beneath the glow the eyes were not sane. His clothing was tattered and bloodstained, and his face disfigured with bruises, but it was not that mistreatment that made him impossible to identify. It was those furious, mad eyes, eyes which held nothing in common with humanity at all.

Vanyel gestured, and one of the men shivering against the wall jerked upright, and stumbled toward him. As he did so, the last of the screaming stopped, though the fires continued to burn in eerie silence. In that silence, the man's whimpering pleas for mercy were sickeningly clear.

Vanyel laughed. “What mercy did you grant me, scum?” he replied in a soft, conversational voice. “It seems to me that I remember you. It seems to me that you were the first and the last to sate yourself. 'Little white mare,' I believe you called me.” He gestured again, and the bandit stooped, like a clumsily-controlled marionette, and picked something up from the floor.

It was the splintered end of a spear-shaft, ragged, but as sharp as anything of metal. The bandit's arms jerked again, and the jagged end of it was placed against his stomach.

The bandit's eyes widened; his mouth opened, but nothing emerged. There was a popping sound, and as the point of the wood penetrated the bandit's clothing, Stefen realized with horror that Vanyel was forcing the brigand to disembowel himself, controlling his body with Mind-magic. “No!” he screamed. “Van, no!”

He flung himself between the two, and faced that frightening mask of insanity, his hands held out in pleading. “Van, you're a Herald, no matter what they did to you, you can't do that to him!”

The red glow died from Van's eyes for a moment; then his jaw hardened, and something like an invisible hand pushed Stefen out of the way. The Bard stumbled and fell to the filthy floor, but was up again in a breath, and right back between the Herald and his victim. The brigand fell onto his back, writhing, then stiffened as Vanyel stepped forward.

“Van - Van, don't! If you do this, you'll be just as bad as he is. Don't let him do that to you! Don't let them make you into something like they are!” Vanyel froze, with his hand still outstretched. Then the angry red glow faded, first from his eyes, then from the pendant at his breast. He blinked, and sanity returned to his face.

He looked around at the carnage he caused, and his face spasmed; his mouth twisted as if he was going to be sick, but his eyes went to two bodies beside a storeroom door, and stayed there. One of those bodies was that of an old man, with the kind of pouch an herb-Healer often carried spilled out on the floor beside him. The other body was too small to be an adult; it had to be a child.

Van's posture betrayed him - tense, and legs slightly bent.

He's going to bolt - Stef realized, wondering if he could tackle the Herald before he broke and ran.

:No, he's not,: Yfandes said firmly, and interposed herself between Vanyel and the door. Something - broke open. And suddenly Stef felt what Vanyel was feeling. Absolute revulsion at the deaths, the massacre he had caused. Despair at the knowledge that he had killed at least one innocent; two if the boy could be counted in that category. Contemptible. Worse than contemptible . . . hateful. Insane. . . .