Magic's Price

He heard Yfandes laughing in the back of his mind. :Poor, suffering child. I shall certainly nominate you for sainthood.:

Van opened his eyes, and the first morning light stabbed through them and straight into his brain. :Shut up, horse.: He groaned and closed his eyes tightly.

:No you don't,: Yfandes said sweetly. :You have an appointment. With Lissandra, Kilchas, Tran, and your aunt. Remember?:

He stifled another groan, and opened his eyes again. The sunlight was no dimmer. :Now that you've reminded me, yes. I have done stupider things in my life than get drunk the night before a major spellcasting, I'm sure, but right now I can't recall any.:

:I can,: Yfandes replied too promptly.

He knew better than to reply. In the state he was in now, she'd be a constant step ahead of him. Some day, he vowed to himself, I'm going to find out how to make a Companion drunk, and when she wakes up, I'll be waiting.

So there was nothing for it but to crawl out of his bedroll, aching in every limb from a night on the hard floor, to stare resentfully at the youngster who'd usurped his bed. Stefen lay sprawled across the entire width of the bed, a beatific half-smile on his face, and deaf, dumb and blind to the world. Dark red hair fanned across the pillow - Van's pillow - not the least tangled with restless tossing, as Van's was. No dark circles under Stefen's eyes - oh, no. The young Bard slept like an innocent child.

Vanyel snarled silently, snatched up his towels and a clean uniform, and headed for the bathing room.

The room was very quiet this early in the morning, and every sound he made echoed from the white-tiled walls. He might well have been the only person alive in the Palace; he couldn't hear anything at all but the noise he made. After plunging his head under cold water, then following that torture with a hot bath, he was much more inclined to face the world without biting something. In fact, he actually felt up to breakfast, of sorts; perhaps a little bread and a great deal of herb tea.

Stefen was still blissfully asleep, no doubt, which made Van's room off limits. Well, it was probably too early for any of the servants to be awake.

He dressed quickly, shivering a little as the chill morning air hit his wet skin, and headed down the deserted hallways to the kitchen, where he found two cooks hard at work. They were pulling hot loaves from the ovens, anonymous in their floured brown tunics and trousers, their hair caught up under caps. They gave him startled looks - it probably wasn't too often that a Herald wandered into their purview - but they gave him a pot of tea and a bit of warm bread when he asked them for it, and he took both up to the library.

The Palace library was a good place to settle; the fire was still banked from last night, and a little bit of work had it crackling cheerfully under new logs, filling the empty silence. Vanyel chose a comfortable chair near it, his mug of tea on the hearthstone beside him, and nibbled at his bread while watching the flames and basking in the heat. The last of the headache faded under the gentle soothing warmth of the tea. Yfandes, having sensed, no doubt, that he had reached the limits of his patience, had remained wisely silent.

:Are you up to this?: she asked, when his ill-humor had turned to rueful contemplation of his own stupidity. :It won't hurt to put it off another day, or even two.:

He leaned back in his chair and tested all the channels of his mind and powers. :Oh, I think so, No harm done, other than to my temper. Sorry I snapped.:

She sent no real thoughts in reply to that, just affection. He closed everything down and thought about the planned session. They would be working magic of the highest order, something so complicated that no one had ever tried it before.

If he'd had any choice, Vanyel wouldn't be doing it now - but the ranks of the Herald-Mages had thinned so much that there was no one to replace any of the four Guardians should something happen to one of them. There were no spare Herald-Mages anymore. The Web, the watch - spell that kept the Heralds informed of danger, required four experienced and powerful mages to make it work; a Guardian of the Web was effectively tied to Haven - not physically, but psychically - as long as he or she was a Guardian. One fourth of the Guardians' energy and time were devoted to powering and monitoring the Web.

Van intended to change all that.

He had been gradually augmenting a mage-node underneath Haven for the past several years. He was no Tayledras, but he was Hawkbrother-trained; creating a new node probably would have been beyond him, but feeding new energy-flows into an existing node wasn't. He intended to power the new Web- spell with that node, and he intended to replace the Guardians with all the Heralds of Valdemar, Mage-Gifted or no.

And lastly, he intended to set the new Web-spell to do more than watch Valdemar; he intended to make it part of Valdemar's defenses, albeit a subtle part.

He was going to summon vrondi, the little air-elementals used in the Truth Spell, and summon them in greater numbers than anyone ever had before. Then he was going to “purpose” them; set