Magic's Price

“I yield,” he conceded. “I don't know how you do it. You always take the hinds, and I can count the number of times I've won on one hand.”

Vanyel replaced the carved pieces in their box with thoughtful care. “I have a distinct advantage,” he said, after a long pause. “Until Randi got so sick that Shavri was spending all her time keeping him going, I helped guard the Karsite Border. I have a lot of experience in taking on situations with unfavorable odds.”

“Ah,” Stef replied, unable to think of anything else to say. He watched Vanyel's hands, admiring their strength and grace, and tried not to think about how much he wanted those hands to be touching something other than game pieces.

Ever since he'd stopped pursuing Van and started keeping things strictly on the level of “friendship,” he'd found himself spending most evenings with the Herald. He was learning an enormous amount, and not just about hinds and hounds. Economics, politics, the things Vanyel had experienced over the years - it was fascinating, if frustrating. Being so near Vanyel, and yet not daring to court him, overtly or otherwise - Stef had never dreamed he possessed such patience.

This was an entirely new experience; wanting someone and being unable to gratify that desire.

It was a nerve-wracking experience, yet it was not completely unpleasant. He was coming to know Vanyel, the real Vanyel, far better than anyone else except Herald Savil. That was not a suspicion; he'd had the fact confirmed more than once, by letting some tidbit of information slip in conversations with Medren. And Medren would give him a startled look that told Stefen that once again, he'd been told something Vanyel had never confided to anyone else.

He knew Van better than he'd ever known any lover. And for all this knowledge, the Herald was still a mystery. He was no closer to grasping what music Vanyel moved to than he had been when this all began.

Which made him think of something else to say after all.

“Van?” he ventured. “You hated it out there - but you sound as if you wish you were back on the Border.”

Vanyel turned those silver eyes on him and stared at him for a moment. “I suppose I did,” he said, finally. “I suppose in a way I do. Partially because it would mean that Randi was in good enough health that Shavri could take her own duties up again -”

Stef shook his head. “There was more to it than that. It sounded like you wanted to be out there.”

Vanyel looked away, and put the last of the pieces in their padded niches. “Well, it's rather hard to explain. It's miserable out there on the lines, you're constantly hungry, wet, cold, afraid, in danger - but I was doing some good.”

“You're doing good here,” Stefen pointed out.

Vanyel shook his head. “It's not the same. Any reasonably adept diplomat could do what I'm doing now. Any combination of Heralds could supply the same talents and Gifts. The only reason it's me is Randi's need and Randi's whims. I keep having the feeling that I could be doing a lot more good if I was elsewhere.”

Stefen sprawled back in his chair, studying the Herald carefully. “I don't understand it,” he said at last. “I don't understand you Heralds at all. You're constantly putting yourselves in danger, and for what? For the sake of people who don't even know you're doing it, much less that you're doing it for them, and who couldn't point you out in a crowd if their lives depended on it. Why, Van?”

That earned him another strange stare from the Herald, one that went on so long that Stef began to think he'd really said something wrong this time. “Van - what's the matter? Did I -”

Vanyel seemed to come out of a kind of trance, and blinked at him. “No, it's quite all right, Stef. It's just - this is like an echo from the past. I remember having exactly this same conversation with 'Lendel - except it was me asking 'Why?' and him trying to tell me the reasons.” Vanyel looked off at some vague point over Stefen's head. “I didn't understand his reasons then, and you probably won't understand mine now, but I'll try to explain. It has to do with a duty to myself as much as anything else. I have these abilities. Most other people don't. I have a duty to use them, because I have a duty to myself to be the kind of person I would want to have as a - a friend. If I don't use my abilities, I'm not only failing people who depend on me, I'm failing myself. Am I making sense?”

“Not really,” Stefen confessed.

Vanyel sighed. “Just say that it's a need to help - could you not sing and play? Well, I can't not help. Not anymore, anyway. And it doesn't matter if anyone knows what I'm doing or not; I know, and I know I'm doing my best. And because of what I'm doing, things are better for other people. Sometimes a great many other people.”

“This is loyalty, right?” Stefen hazarded.

“Only in being loyal to people in general, and not any one land. I could no more have let those farmers in Hardorn be enslaved than I could have our own people.” Vanyel leaned forward earnestly. “Don't you see, Stef? It's not that I'm serving Valdemar, it's that I'm helping to preserve the kind of people who leave the world better than