Magic's Price

Meke's warhorse mares were in this stable, along with the foals too young to sell. They watched him calmly as he passed them, some whickering as they caught his scent and recognized him for a stranger. That brought him the attention of one of the stablehands, a scruffy young man who came out of a loose-box at the sound of the first mare's call, grinning when he saw that it was Vanyel.

“Milord Herald,” he said. “Can I serve ye?”

“I just want to borrow a hunter,” he said. “ 'Fandes is tired and all I want to do is take a ride through Wyrfen Woods. Has Father got anything that needs exercise?”

“Oh, aye, a-plenty.” The stablehand scratched his sandy head for a moment, thinking. “Habout Blackfoot yonder?” He pointed about three stalls down at a sturdy bay hunter-mare with a fine, intelligent eye. “Not too many can handle her, so she don't ever get all th' workin' she could use. She got a touchy mouth an' goes best neck- reined, an' she's a spooker. Needs some'un with light hands an' no nonsense. Reckon ye can still ride abaht anything, eh?”

“Pretty well,” Vanyel replied. “I gentle all of the foals out of Star's line, if I have the time. I like your watchdogs, by the way -” He waved at the warhorse-mares, who were still keeping an eye on him. “- they're very effective.”

“They are, that,” the stablehand agreed, grinning, and showing that he, like Vanyel's old friend Tam, had lost a few teeth to the hooves of his charges. “Better at night. Anybody they dunno in here, an' they be raisin' a fuss. Leave one or two loose, and they be out o' their boxes - heyla!” He illustrated with his hands and the handle of his rake for a wall. “Got us one thief an' three o' them uncanny things that way. That old Stud breeds better'n he shows.”

“I should hope!” Vanyel laughed, and went to fetch saddle and harness for his assigned mount.

Blackfoot was exactly as predicted: very touchy in the mouth, and working well under pressure of neck-rein and knee. Vanyel took her back to the stable long enough to switch her bridle for a bitless halter; as far as he was concerned, with a beast that touchy, it was better not to have a bit at all. If he had to rein her in, he was strong enough to wrestle her head down, and no horse out of Withen's hunter-line would ever run when she couldn't see.

He took one of the back ways into the Wood rather than the road through the village. Right now he didn't feel sociable, and the villagers would want him to be “Herald Vanyel Demonsbane,” which was particularly trying. So he followed the bridle path out through the orchards, which were currently in fruit, but nowhere near ripe, so there was no one working in them. The apple trees were first, then nut trees, then the hedge that divided the orchards from the wild woods.

Riding a horse was entirely different from riding Yfandes; the mare required his skill and his attention. She tested him to see what she could get away with most of the way to the Wood, and subsided only when they had passed through a break in the hedge and the bridle path turned into a game trail. The silence of the Wood seemed to subdue her, and she settled down to a walk, leaving Vanyel free to turn most of his concentration inward.

Wyrfen Wood was still avoided by everyone except hunters and woodcutters, and those who had to pass it traveled the road running right through the middle of it. The place had frightened Van half to death the first time he'd ridden through it; even dormant, he'd had enough Mage-Gift to sense the old magics that had once permeated the place. Those energies were mostly drained now, but there was still enough lingering to make anyone marginally sensitive uneasy. Animals felt it certainly, birds were few, and seldom sang, and Blackfoot's ears flickered back and forth constantly, betraying her nervousness.

Vanyel had made a fair number of exploratory trips into the Wood over the years, and he was used to it - or at least as used to residual magics as anyone ever got. He was aware of the dormant magic, but only as a kind of background to everything else, and a possible source of energy in an emergency. For all that Wyrfen Wood was an eerie place, it was relatively harmless.

Except that it attracted things from outside that were not harmless, and gave them an excellent place to hide. ...

Which brought him right around to one of the very things he needed to think out.

The mare had slowed to a careful walk, picking her way along a game trail that was a bare thread running through the dense undergrowth. Vanyel let her have her head, settled back in the saddle, and spoke his thoughts aloud to the silent trees.

“There aren't enough Herald-Mages. There won't be enough Herald-Mages for years, even if Karse stops being a major threat tomorrow. That means the Heralds are going to have to start taking the place of Herald-Mages. Right?”

Blackfoot's ears flicked back, and she snorted.

“Exactly. Most people, including the Heralds themselves, don't think they can. But that's because they're looking at Heralds as if they were-were-what? Replacements? No . . . substitutes. And when you substitute something, you're usually replacing something superior with something inferior, but - you substitute something like the original. And Heralds aren't necessarily like Herald-Mages at all.”

He thought about that, while Blackfoot picked her way across a dry creek-bed.