Chapter Text

Vanyel sat in front of his desk in Haven, staring at the blank sheet of canvas in front of him, trying not to shiver. It was colder here than in Sunhame, and proving to be a bad winter; during a storm while he was still at the House of Healing, the snow had drifted up against the Heralds’ Wing and blocked the doors, and they had needed to dig themselves out. Tran had told him about it.

Nonetheless, it was worth the brutal weather to be home. Even worth the double Gate-crossing – Savil’s Kellan hadn’t wanted her trying the full distance, so she had Gated to Horn and Kilchas had done the rest. It had been worse than he’d expected, maybe because of the lingering backlash from the blood-magic – it wasn’t like he could have told anyone about that, and three weeks should have been long enough to recover, but apparently hadn’t been. After clawing his way back to semi-consciousness at some point in the middle of the first night, he had endured a few very bad candlemarks – it had felt like about a hundred years – before the Healers admitted that poppy-syrup really wasn’t strong enough.

The following days were a haze. Savil had been there for much of it, sitting stiffly in a chair by his bedside, speaking only to ask if he needed anything. Carefully not touching him. She was clearly still angry, and avoiding the conversation they eventually needed to have. And he was doing the same.

Shavri had come a few times, with Jisa. Vanyel knew she had accompanied Tantras back to Haven immediately after the battle, while Randi traveled down south to join Queen Karis for her crowning. It couldn’t have been easy for her to be separated from her lifebonded, and he had the impression she had done a great deal to hold things together in his absence, but she hadn’t spoken of it to him. He only remembered Jisa crawling into the narrow bed with him, telling a rambling story that he tried to follow even as he drifted in and out.

Tantras had come, once – looking awful, but at least he was out of bed. Vanyel remembered asking a concerned question, though not the words he’d said, and in any case Tran had brushed him off. Don’t you worry about me now.

Melody, who had inexplicably decided to return to Haven with them, had come once to check on him, though she hadn’t stayed long – he hadn’t been coherent enough to hold a conversation.

If Randi had ever made time to visit, Vanyel must have been asleep for it.

Today was his first evening back in his own rooms, though Andrel, against his protests, had refused to clear him for full duties. It was true that he was still very weak; he had made it across the grounds from Healers’ on his own feet, but it had been a near thing. At least his head no longer hurt, and his mind was clear.

Shavri had invited him over for supper, but he had declined, claiming he had some work he needed to think about, which wasn’t exactly a lie. It wasn’t urgent, or related to anything Randi had specifically asked of him – but if he kept making that excuse, he was never going to find time.

Savil hadn’t visited him today, or even reached out with Mindspeech. He was trying to ignore the sting. Yfandes was busy with something or other, and he hadn’t told her what he was doing. She still seemed so uncomfortable and reluctant every time certain questions came up, and it hurt, every time, the reminder of that distance. He had slipped into the habit of blocking her from his surface thoughts again, leaving only their Mindspeech channel. It made things harder in his day-to-day life, without her constant unasked support, and he didn’t know what to do about it in the long run.

I need to understand.

He didn’t know where to start. A destiny he had taken for granted – twelve years of cautious, fraught conversations – the Shadow-Lover, offering him a choice given to few mortals, telling him it was a matter of probabilities, holding him, listening – a familiar candlelit room with the dusty light of nebulas shining through the windows – a goddess standing on a path made of moonbeams, her eyes holding all of the night sky, telling him he was on the best path. But not what that meant.

My life makes no sense.

But that was just an excuse. He had to at least try to make sense of it, because this was reality. I have to be able to cope with the truth, he had told the Star-Eyed Goddess. Wasn’t it time that he actually tried to do that? Even if there were still so many places in his mind that he didn’t want to go, because he was weary and raw and there were mistakes he couldn’t ever undo.

All information is worth having.

Start with what he knew, and then maybe he could find the edges of what he didn’t know, and figure out the right questions to ask.

Leareth. He wrote the man’s name on the center of his canvas, and drew a circle around it.

The man was still such a bundle of contradictions in Vanyel’s head. And there was uncertainty, there, confusion that he wasn’t sure how to resolve even in principle. He had told Leareth once that he wasn’t sure how he could ever believe anything he said. And the mage had said something in return… He ought to find his notes of it, make sure he remembered correctly.

If I told you that two plus two is four, you would not disbelieve it simply because we are enemies.

Facts, he could sometimes check independently. Actions spoke louder than words. Maybe there wasn’t a way to ever be sure, but that wasn’t unique to Leareth. You can never be certain, not of anything in this world.

A phrase Leareth had spoken to him, once.

Well. Start with what Leareth claimed to be, and think about ways to verify it. He was demonstrably immortal, though his body had died before – a note of surprise. Like Taver. Vanyel ought to make time to look in the Archives, see if he could find any other information on the Groveborn Companions, but one thing was certain: it wasn’t Taver’s first death. He’d known that already, it was part of the lore, but somehow it had been rote and hadn’t really sunk in. Taver had been the first Monarch’s Own Companion, there since the very beginning, and he never aged, but he had died by violence more than once. And come back, years or decades later – though in the meantime, there had been other Groveborn Companions who took his place. He had known that as well, and never really questioned it, never thought to wonder at how strange the whole thing was.

How? He didn’t know how Taver’s sort of immortality worked, but maybe the Companions did. Maybe he could convince Yfandes to tell him, and make inroads on figuring out whatever Leareth had done.

Stay on track. Leareth had found a way to become immortal, and claimed to have done in service of fixing the problems he saw in the world. Which apparently he hadn’t done yet, even after centuries, a point against – but maybe not a strong one. Some problems were hard. And Vanyel had, actually, rather good evidence that Leareth had done a great deal for the flourishing of a number of kingdoms. The Eastern Empire was surely better off as a result of his education system, for one, and there were so many other things that bore his mark–

–Like a trap-spell in Highjorune, ruthless in design and implementation.

Leareth was remarkably comfortable with killing people, for someone who claimed to see every living being as a light in the world. Then again, Vanyel thought bitterly, he himself was a lot more comfortable with it now. It had only taken twelve years of being a Herald, and four years of war, to convince him that sometimes killing did save more people in the long run. And Leareth had been doing this for hundreds – thousands? – of years. Maybe it was no surprise he was willing to be ruthless.

Leareth had a plan, which he thought would succeed, of which Vanyel knew only those fragments he could surmise. Leareth wanted the land that Valdemar was on, presumably to found an empire and institute reforms. He seemed pleased at the prospect of directing those reforms at a distance, through Vanyel–

Wait. There was something he hadn’t thought through. Leareth had come into this with a plan, probably well-thought-out, but he was no fool – he would respond to new information. And he’d had plenty of time to reconsider his options. He might have an entirely different plan by now.

Or, more likely, a dozen plans, ready for every contingency.

Vanyel caught himself gritting his teeth and forced his jaw to relax. Took a deep breath and let it out. He’s smarter than me. More experienced. He has all the advantages–

Assuming he wanted to kill Leareth, what were the chances that the mage would even let it get as far as a face-to-face fight, at the pass or anywhere? If he thought Vanyel was coming to kill him, he would do everything he could to stop him short – and Leareth was better than him at everything except, maybe, raw power. The only way he could possibly beat him was by calling down Final Strike – and for that, he had to find the man at all.

I’m such an idiot. Vanyel fought the urge to curl up in a ball on the floor and cry. Not productive. Maybe he had been making a mistake, this whole time, but there was no point trapping himself in regret. All he could do was start with the current situation, and do his best.

Even if it was already too late to win.

Focus. What else did he know? He tried to have me killed again. And there was another note of confusion there, that he tried to flag. It didn’t quite fit. He couldn’t put his finger on why – it did seem like something Leareth would try to do, even if he was telling the truth about his intentions, and even if he deeply and truly believed Vanyel was trying to do the right thing. After so many centuries, with his plan finally in motion, the man had to be incredibly unwilling to take even small risks, if he could avoid it. Vanyel was a risk.

And yet.

He closed his eyes, pressing his hands to his face. Think. There were a few different, if entangled, questions here. What did Leareth ultimately want? Were his theories about the world, and what would accomplish that end, correct? What was his plan?

Questions he didn’t know the answers to for certain, but they had answers, and it wasn’t like he had zero information. He could start to make guesses even now – saying ‘I don’t know’ was a choice as well, and one that got him nowhere.

That was Leareth. What about the rest? There were other forces working here, and he understood them much less.

The Star-Eyed. The Shadow-Lover. He drew two more circles, off the the side of the notes he had been scribbling down.

They had a stake in the matter. He knew that much. Less certain whether there was an answer to the question of what they wanted, that he would be able to understand. But maybe he could make an approximation. Maybe there were analogies in the mortal world that were close enough.

What are gods, even? A question that drifted up from nowhere, surprising him. He remembered childhood mornings in the temple, bored stiff, listening to Leren drone on about the divine. I was never curious. It had always seemed somehow fake, not something that could matter to him at all. Except, clearly, that was wrong.

Again, he had at least some information. The Star-Eyed worked with the Tayledras – why? To cleanse the Pelagirs of the wild magic left by the Mage Wars, they said. She had some kind of pact with the Shin’a’in as well, according to lore, but he knew much less about it. Guard the Dhorisha plains, according to the songs. Guard the plains from what? Why?

The Star-Eyed had let him talk to ‘Lendel, for some reason. If a human with legible goals had been doing that, what would they have been trying to accomplish? He had absolutely no idea. Start by looking at the outcome, then.

…Which had been mainly to knock out Melody’s block, and leave him a complete mess just before the Battle of Deerford. He couldn’t think why the Star-Eyed Goddess would have wanted that.

He scribbled down a note. Come back to it later. Move on. The Star-Eyed had given him information, that wasn’t actually very helpful, and only when he pushed. And the outcome of that had been…

Well, he had almost killed himself by accident, but if the Star-Eyed Goddess had wanted him dead, it felt like there should have been less convoluted ways to arrange it.

–Unless the Shadow-Lover didn’t share that goal?

He froze. I didn’t think of that. I’m an idiot. There was an assumption he had been taking for granted, that he hadn’t even noticed he was making. Maybe the gods weren’t working for the same things.

What did the Shadow-Lover want?

For Vanyel to remain alive, it seemed like. The Shadow-Lover’s presence was always comforting, Vanyel felt safe and cared for when he was there, but he was just as cryptic as the Star-Eyed, and he might have been only a facet of a much greater and more alien god. Built to serve some specific purpose.

Maybe he’s built to be comforting.

In which case it meant very little, that Vanyel felt safer in his arms than anywhere else. It wasn’t clear if he ought to trust that at all.

Oh, and while he was on the subject of gods, there was Vkandis. Who had apparently personally intervened in the Battle of Sunhame, or at least the aftermath of it. The simplest explanation was that Vkandis wanted the war to be over, except that it wasn’t that simple at all, because the war had been three years old by the time any of it had happened, and surely Vkandis could have stopped it at any time with a show of divine force to the priesthood and the King. Presumably. Maybe. Unless there was some reason His power was limited, and He had been unable to act any sooner.

How much did the gods know? Were they perfectly omniscient, or could they miss things? Maybe what had happened on Sovvan had been an entirely unintended side effect of Vanyel’s vision with the Star-Eyed. That world looked different from the one where the gods were incapable of ever making mistakes.

Hells, did either the Star-Eyed or the Shadow-Lover – or Vkandis, while he was on the subject, though the Sunlord of Karse seemed to have had relatively few opinions on him – did they overhear what he spoke about with Leareth in the dreams? He didn’t have enough information to know the answer.

In fact, on the topic of the dream, he still didn’t have a real theory of how Foresight worked – maybe no one did, certainly no one had written a good treatise on it – but it seemed likely one of them had caused it, to set him on the path of his destiny. I was always a pawn of the gods.

The simplest explanation was that they wanted him to fight Leareth, or so it had seemed twelve years ago, but that didn’t quite explain the conversations. No matter how he sliced it, talking to Leareth seemed to make it less likely he would end up fighting the mage. Oh, there was the argument that it gave him more information, a better chance at winning that fight – but surely Leareth was wringing out just as much information about him.

It didn’t make sense. He had observations, yes, but it was difficult to figure out how to put all of them together into a picture that made any sense. The only part that seemed certain was that he ought to be very, very uncertain of all his conclusions.

I would bet fifty silvers that Leareth has a theory.

Yet again, the thought startled him, but it shouldn’t have. Of course Leareth would have been collecting information on the gods. He’d as good as said that they were meddling with his plans, and he would want to understand what was happening, to find ways around it.

One area where the two of them might want the same thing.

…Was that true? Think it through. If Leareth thought of him as an enemy, it would be in his interest to tell him as little as possible. Still, so far Leareth had told him a great deal, though Vanyel was sure it had been carefully selected and filtered. In fact, looking back over the years, it seemed like Leareth had been telling him as much as he could without revealing any specifics of his plan.

What did that mean?

…Well, it implied that Leareth cared about knowledge for its own sake. Which didn’t feel false, but didn’t feel like everything either. Leareth was disciplined; he would take only calculated risks, and only if he thought they bore a greater benefit. The last thing he would do was risk the outcome of his plan for his principles.

He thinks that he’s right, and that telling the truth is the best way to convince me of that.

Vanyel turned the thought over in his head. It clicked into place; it felt true. How much did that mean?

Leareth could be putting on an elaborate act. If anyone could pull it off, he could, with his centuries of experience. But it would be a very elaborate act, a costly one – he had given Vanyel the background he needed to build the new Web, for one, and maybe he couldn’t have predicted the exact outcome but he could certainly have predicted something in that general direction. And Vanyel couldn’t think of a goal towards which such a complex deception would be the best and most straightforward path.

Maybe it’s not the best plan. But that felt deeply false. If there was one thing that he felt like he truly knew about Leareth, it was that he would try to find the best path to any particular goal. Maybe he could still be wrong – he was human, after all, and fallible – but it ought not to be a mistake that Vanyel, so young and inexperienced in comparison, would be able to notice.

Maybe it was an act – but if so, it was the most impressive and thorough act ever performed, and with an unclear destination. The simpler explanation was that Leareth was telling the truth, at least about his ultimate goals.

Simpler. Vanyel closed his eyes again. I’m missing something. He had various points of evidence, and many of them seemed to point towards that result. There was a background assumption there, hiding. If he hadn’t seen any of those pieces of evidence – if all he had known was that an immortal mage with incredibly ambitious, centuries-long plans existed at all – which would he have thought was more likely? That said mage was doing it for some selfish agenda, or for the good of humanity at large?

No, the former doesn’t seem so much more likely. It had tripped him up, before, because seeking immortality in order to better the world seemed like such a bizarre thing to do. On some level, he had been assuming that doing so for selfish power, or just to avoid death, was far more likely – but now that he had pulled that statement out into the light, it didn’t feel right. He would be just as surprised if someone told him about such a mage; it would seem just as strange and inexplicable.

Hells, if Leareth just wanted to live forever in luxury, undisturbed, it seemed like he was going about it exactly the wrong way, with his flashy plots catching the attention of the gods.

It felt like the earth was teetering under him. Center and ground. He reached for the pen, drew an arrow, wrote down the words that would make it real. Leareth is telling me the truth. It was something he had noticed in the past, that the act of writing something helped him notice if he really believed it. When he didn’t, there was a feeling to it like tripping on an uneven flagstone, or playing a chord wrong. As though somehow his sloppy assumptions were fine in the realm of thought, but embarrassing when pinned down on paper.

This didn’t feel sloppy. He was far from certain, and he knew it – and there were pieces of evidence that might move him further in one direction or another – but it felt reasonable.

For a moment he just stared at the canvas, now covered in notes, lines and diagrams. It would be simpler if he were just my enemy. This was a premise, not a conclusion – it didn’t answer his other questions, and didn’t tell him what to do. Not yet.

But it was progress. All information is worth having.

Tantras was sitting in his bed, trying without much success to read a book, and the knock on the door startled him. His hands spasmed, crumpling the pages of the book as he dropped it, and he swore quietly.

He was inexplicably jumpy, lately. It was nearly as frustrating as the constant, equally inexplicable fatigue. He had to be sleeping fourteen candlemarks a night at least, and even then he could barely keep his eyes open in the daytime. It wasn’t so bad once he was up and moving, but it was nearly impossible to start moving. He had been glancing at the door and his boots and cloak beside it all morning, with every intention of getting up, and somehow he was still in bed.

His heart was still racing. :Delian?: he reached out, apropos of nothing.

:It’s all right, Chosen: Delian sent a faint wash of reassurance and love along their bond. Weeks had passed before he could do even that much from a distance. It had hurt, that night when Delian came to him – came back to him – when he fell into endless blue eyes and felt the his once-Companion trying to reach him, to connect to the raw, jagged edges of the gaping void where something had been and wasn’t anymore. Not the right shape anymore. Even now their bond was weaker than it had been.

Which was partly his fault. He needed Delian, desperately, and reaching for him was always the first thing he did when he woke – but it was disconcerting as well. Each time they Mindtouched was uncanny; part of him still expected Taver, and the rest of him flinched away from the note of wrongness. Sometimes he avoided it for candlemarks, trying to put off the unavoidable reminder that led to a pit of grief.

And, as the Mindhealer in Haven who had come to see him at the House of Healing – Terrill, that was his name – had pointed out, rather sharply, he had mixed feelings about the whole thing. He had lost one Companion; maybe it was only reasonable that he couldn’t quite trust their bond anymore, couldn’t quite feel safe. Still, when the loneliness and emptiness hit him hardest, he would flee to the stables, braving the wind and snow, just to reassure himself that Delian was real enough to touch.

He had thought Taver would always be there. Immortal, strange Taver, who had bonded and lost and bonded again so many times. At the very least, he hadn’t thought that he would still be around when Taver was gone.

Steadied a little by that brief contact, even if it was unnerving, he stood up and made his way to the door, a little unsteadily. He didn’t feel well, but it was impossible to put his finger on anything specific. Just a diffuse wrongness.

Standing in front of the door, it took him a moment to remember why he was there. Right. Someone had knocked. Were they even still there? His sense of time wasn’t so good, recently, but he must have taken a while. He thinned his shields just enough to sense for nearby minds. Oh. There was someone still there. An unfamiliar mind, with the glow of the Gifted.

Glancing down at his sleeping-robe, he thought about going to find something else to wear, but he had already made whoever it was wait long enough. He unbolted and opened the door.

“Hello?” His voice came out hoarse, and he stifled a yawn. “S-sorry, I’m still…”

“Still waking up? That’s fine.” The plump woman in green robes smiled at him. She had a broad, freckled face and bright green eyes that were oddly owlish. “Herald Tantras, right?”

He nodded, and tried to remember what one was supposed to say next. It was embarrassing how difficult he found it to form sentences, lately. Almost as embarrassing as still being in bed at noon.

“I’m Melody,” the woman said before he could think of anything, and reached out. That was easy; he knew what he was supposed to do, and he gripped her arm in return.

“It’s nice to meet you, Melody.” And then he couldn’t think what to say next, because he didn’t know why she was here, and he couldn’t figure out the words to ask. He hadn’t been expecting anyone from Healers’ today, and he didn’t recognize her, though her name sounded vaguely familiar.

“May I come in?” she said finally. “I’d like to talk to you a little, if you’re up for that now.”

“I mean. I guess. If you want.” His voice sounded wooden to his own ears.

She nodded, and then raised her eyebrows. Right. He stepped aside, moving out of her way, and pointed vaguely at the chair where Shavri usually sat. She was just about the only one who still came to visit him; he’d had a lot of well-wishers at first, and he had done his best to be friendly to them, but they had trailed off. No wonder. He had to be very boring to be around. Boring and useless.

Do you really think that’s true? An echo of a thought that only half-belonged to him – it was a redirection-pattern that Terill had put in for him, and it was very distracting. And irritating, because it clearly was true that he wasn’t much use to anyone right now, even if it might not stay that way forever. He shook his head, trying to find the thread of his thoughts again.

Melody had settled into the chair. He stood beside the bed, looking blankly at her. Right. “Do you want something to drink?” He didn’t actually know if he had anything to offer her. Water, maybe.

She blinked about him. “I could do with tea, if you want to ring for a page to bring us some. How about you? Have you eaten today?”

He had to think about it for a long moment, and the answer embarrassed him. “No. Forgot.”

She didn’t chastise him, or make any comment about how his Companion should have reminded him. “Why don’t I order something for both of us, then?”

He nodded agreement, and then sagged back onto the bed, suddenly too exhausted to stand. Watched as she got up, rang the bell for a servant, and hovered by the doorway until someone answered – barely thirty seconds later, and he managed to notice his confusion, that it was faster than usual. Maybe Shavri had asked them to prioritize his requests. He wouldn’t put it past her.

The child in Palace livery who had answered sneaked a wide-eyed look past Melody. A lot of people were giving him those looks, since he’d come back to Haven. Not that he remembered the first few days of it very clearly, or the journey beforehand. The Healers had been giving him strong painkillers for his ribs, and he had been content to spend nearly all his time sleeping. It was better, when he was asleep, even if the vague wrongness that wasn’t quite pain followed him into his dreams.

Melody sat down to wait, and he realized he still didn’t know why she was here. He raised his head and looked expectantly at her.

“Oh,” she said, blinking again. “I think I forgot to fully introduce myself. I’m the Mindhealer who was covering Horn and Dog Inn.” She spoke quickly. Her eyes were restless, and her hands, darting around like small birds. “I went to Sunhame with the invasion, and it was rather exhausting, so now I’m switching with Terill and taking some time in Haven. Anyway. I know you’ve seen Terill a few times, but I have a lot more experience working with Heralds than he does. Wanted to see if there’s anything I can do to help.”

He just stared at her for a moment, trying to catch up.

She folded her hands over her knees. “I’m sorry, maybe I talked too fast. Should I–”

“No, I got it.” He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose for a moment, trying to push back the fog.

“It’s all right if you need a bit to think about it,” Melody said. “And it doesn’t have to be now. I can come back when you’re not so tired.”

“I’m always this tired.” He lowered his hand, and tried to smile at her. “Sorry, I… If you want to help, I guess that would be good. I just… Terill said he couldn’t do much. Said I needed time.”

“Terill would say that. I don’t think it’s necessarily the case. I mean, I do think it’s true that things will get easier for you over time, but I also think we can speed that up.” She smoothed down her skirt again. “People say one of my flaws is that I’m very impatient. Well, maybe. But I do think we can do some things to help now, so why not? If you’re up for it, of course. I know how much effort it takes.”

He ought to say yes. Everyone had been telling him that it wasn’t his fault, that he could take as long as he needed, that they were just grateful he was alive and safe – and it didn’t matter. There was still a kingdom to run. Randi needed a King’s Own, and currently Shavri of all people was doing her best to fill that role, but he knew the toll it had to be taking on her. They needed him functional, and he wasn’t, not right now.

If only he wasn’t so damned tired. His head felt full of glue.

There was a knock on the door, and Melody rose and went to open it. He heard her murmuring something, low, he couldn’t quite catch the words – and then she was back, using her foot to push his end-table between them, and setting down a tray on it. She poured herself a cup of tea from the pot, then lifted the covers from the two plates. “Here. Tea or wine?”

“Wine,” he said, and looked at the plate without much enthusiasm. Fish stew. He wasn’t hungry at all, but he did feel lightheaded. Probably because he hadn’t eaten. I’m such an idiot.

–Another wrenching sideways motion in his thoughts. Be gentle with yourself. He grimaced. Shut up, Terill.

Melody held out the cup, and he took it and sipped the watered wine. It was chilled, and he hadn’t realized how dry his mouth was. If someone had asked him if he was thirsty, he would probably have said no, but he eagerly gulped the drink.

“Slow down,” Melody said. She frowned. “If you’re that thirsty, I’ll get you some water as well.” She stood up and went to the other side of his room, the desk and study separated from his bedroom by a half-wall, returning with the jug of water that must have been out on his desk since last night – he remembered Shavri going to refill it for him. It was full. Did I really forget to drink any water since yesterday? No wonder he wasn’t feeling well. Gods – did he need a nursemaid?

“Eat, and take some time to think about it.” Melody slid her chair closer. She held out the brimming cup of water she had poured, and he took it, then the spoon she offered.

The water slaked his thirst, and he felt the headache he hadn’t realized he had fading. As for the stew, it was well spiced, but it still tasted like nothing. He ate mechanically, forcing himself to chew and swallow one mouthful after another, until he couldn’t anymore. He set the spoon down.

“So?” Melody said, eyebrows raised.

He took a deep breath. “I’ll try. Now’s fine. Wasn’t doing anything else anyway.”

“Thank you.” She smiled; it flitted across her face, there and gone. “Let’s start with some basics. Anything you share with me is completely private. I might take notes, but they’ll be in code. Are your rooms soundproofed?”

She waited while he tried to catch up again. “Yes,” he said finally. Van had done it for him once, years ago, and said it would last a decade.

“Good. Please do feel free to ask me questions at any time, if there’s something you’re confused or concerned about. I don’t bite. Anyway. We’ve never met before, so – tell me about you. What’s it like to be in your head, right now?”

Well, that was certainly straight to the point. And not easy to answer. He closed his eyes. :Delian?: Sometimes his Companion could help him find a few moments of alertness, sharing energy along their bond.

:I’m here, Chosen: A pause. :I’m glad you’re doing this:

He forced his eyes open, even though his eyelids felt very heavy, and tried to hide another yawn. “Um. I don’t… It’s hard to explain.”

“I’m a Mindspeaker as well, if Mindspeech is easier,” Melody offered.

Maybe it would be. His range was pathetic, lately – he had tried reaching one of the other Heralds on the opposite side of the city, and hadn’t been able to hold the link more than ten seconds – but Melody was less than a yard away. :Thank you: he sent. The flavour of her mind was sharp and clean, obscurely reminding him of an architect’s pencil-sketch, all lines and corners. He wouldn’t have expected it to be comforting, but it was.

:You’re very welcome, Herald Tantras. Now, talk to me? Don’t worry about making sense, just give me some words:

He nodded. :I just – I can’t make myself do anything. I’m tired all the time: But it was more than that. He had been exhausted before, at various points during the war; there had always been so much to do, his duties keeping him awake into the early hours of the morning and dragging him out of bed at dawn, and then some emergency would come up and he would be awake all night handling it. He had snapped at people, made incredibly foolish mistakes, dozed off in meetings, written messages that he reread and found made no sense, but still. This was different. :I think about getting out of bed and I just can’t. It’s like I don’t care anymore: Even though he did care, or at least thought he did. The guilt and shame gnawed at him whenever he was awake enough to dwell on it. Terrill had told him not to let it, that he needed to be gentle with himself, and he tried, but still.

:Thank you, Herald Tantras: Melody sent, after a long pause during which he had failed to find any more words. :That all makes sense to me, and it’s not too surprising you’re feeling this way, given what happened – but I imagine it is very frustrating. You’re a Herald. I’ve known a lot of Heralds, and I know what you’re like. How much you care. And how badly the Kingdom needs you. I imagine you’re pretty upset with yourself, that you can’t help:

You couldn’t lie with Mindspeech, and there was no judgement at all in her mindvoice. :I’m trying not to be: he sent. :I know feeling guilty just makes it worse:

:That’s what Terrill told you, I imagine?: A pause. :I mean, there’s truth in it. No amount of pressure you put on yourself is going to give you more energy, right now. It is likely you’ll only feel worse if you let it eat at you. But it’s all right to be frustrated, that something very important to you isn’t being met. It makes sense. I don’t think it ever works very well to just ignore our emotions and tell them to go away:

He nodded. Somewhat to his surprise, his eyes were stinging and his throat felt tight. He hadn’t cried much in recent weeks, and never in front of someone else, not since those first minutes when Delian had come for him, which had been more from the quasi-physical pain of the newly-forming bond than because he was sad.

:I think this is important: Melody sent. :May I use my Gift?:

He nodded without speaking, thinking that he appreciated her asking. Terill never did, and it could be very jarring when it caught him off-guard.

The corners of the room softened – and suddenly he was sobbing. :Sorry: he tried to send, helplessly, and wasn’t sure if he had even reached her.

:Don’t be. It’s all right: He could feel her presence, bright and clean and thoroughly unperturbed, and it helped. :What are you feeling?:

:Don’t know: His body felt very heavy; he gave in to the urge to be horizontal, and curled up on his side on top of the covers. :Confused. Hurts:

:I imagine so. Hey, it’s all right – it’s safe to feel it. Try to just sit with it for a bit. Don’t run away. Your mind has enough space to hold it:

He thought she was putting more of her Gift in, judging by the fact that it felt like the inside of his head was melting.

Taver. The grief surged in him, all the pain he had been too numb to feel, the part of him forever screaming into nothingness. Taver, why?

–A spreading tangle of threads, one of them was torn off, and Taver had known this was coming–

His Companion had seen the future. Had made a decision, in full knowledge of what was coming, maybe not the specifics of the time and place, but the shape of it. I didn’t choose it, Tantras thought, bitterness and anger mixing, hot, somehow even more painful. It’s not fair.

–Since when had any of their lives ever been fair? Randi, who had never wanted to be a King. Shavri, who had never asked to be lifebonded to one. Mardic, living on for years without his Companion, going out into the field again to fight for his kingdom. Gods, Vanyel…

It’s not right. Not fair for them either. What was it that Shavri had said to him, years ago? He could see her tearstained face perfectly in his mind. If lifebonds happen for a reason, she had said, if the Hawkbrothers are right and it’s a sign the gods are meddling – do I have to believe that the rest happened for a reason as well? Because if that’s true, I don’t want to be in this world.

He hadn’t understood at the time, and her words had frightened him. Now, though, it made more sense.

Did he want to be in the world anymore?

Not allowed to give up.

–And the room snapped back into place, the corners were corners again and his nose was running, his eyelids puffy and raw. He was numb again, heavy, pinned to the bed by his own weight.

“That’s interesting,” he heard Melody say, under her breath. There was a creak and a shifting of robes as she stood up, and then he felt the bed shift slightly as she settled onto it. “Herald Tantras? Talk to me.”

“Sorry.” His voice emerged as a croak.

“It’s all right. You don’t need to keep apologizing for having feelings.” She seemed to have settled on the less-intimate option of speaking out loud. Her voice was as calm and unruffled as ever. “I was Mindtouching you, so I did catch some surface thoughts. Probably not everything. Please tell me if anything I’m saying is wrong. You were thinking about Taver. Feeling grief. Thinking that it was unfair, what he did, and feeling angry. Then there were some things I missed. You were thinking about some of your friends. Something about Shavri and lifebonds?”

He was impressed she had picked up that much; even for a very strong Thoughtsenser, like he was – had been, before, anyway – it was hard to interpret surface thoughts that weren’t deliberately formed into Mindspeech. Most people’s thinking was rambling, full of digressions and side-trails and deeply personal shorthand, all going by at lightning-speed. Incomprehensible to an outsider.

“Something she said to me once,” he said, dragging himself into a sitting position and rubbing at his eyes. They still burned. “We were talking about Vanyel.”

“Oh.” For the first time, he caught a flicker of something in her face; if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought she was angry. Right. Melody knew Vanyel. She would have seen him in Dog Inn, when he was having whatever problem Savil hadn’t wanted to talk about. She had her expression under control again, though, and now it was hard to believe it had really slipped in the first place. “Go on,” she said.

He tried to gather his thoughts into some kind of coherent order. “I was thinking, just, about how I’m not the only one who’s lost something.” He closed his eyes. There was a confused, writhing wrongness, everywhere and nowhere. “Not fair. Doesn’t matter.” It was hard to speak. Hard to breathe. He scrubbed at his face, then raised his eyes to hers. “Can’t give up. Have to keep fighting.”

She met his eyes steadily, mildly. “I know. Herald Tantras, you will recover from this. Delian Chose you again, right? Companions don’t make mistakes, not that kind. He wouldn’t have Chosen you if you weren’t the best person for this.”

Did he believe that?

“I’m not sure Delian did Choose me,” he said, slowly. “Felt different. He said the words, but – it didn’t click. Still doesn’t quite.” He shook his head. “I think maybe he just decided to come back to me.”

“Because he loves you.” Melody’s voice was soft. “Maybe. But anyway, that’s not the only reason I think this. Human beings are very, very resilient. We can almost always find a way. I’m not saying it’s going to be easy. It might never be easy – not like it was before.”

It had always been easy for him, hadn’t it? He’d had his fears and doubts, like everyone, but he had never really struggled. It felt like weakness – and a wry smile came to his lips. What would you tell Van about that?

Melody, maybe guessing the direction of his thoughts, smiled as well. “Exactly. It doesn’t make you a bad person. You’re going to find a way to cope – and, honestly, I don’t think it’s even going to take that long. I think a year from now, you’ll look back on this and–”

He stared at her, aghast. “A year? That’s–”

“Really not a very long time,” she interrupted him right back, then lowered her voice. “Listen. I know about what the Kingdom’s going to be facing, in the north. And that we’ve still got years before it happens. We need you at top form five years from now, or ten – which means we very much need not to push you too hard right now.” Her shoulders shifted, one corner of her mouth twitching briefly upwards. “You were around in seven eighty-nine. I’m sure you remember what it was like for Vanyel.”

He remembered. It had to have been five years before Van was really carrying a full workload. And then the war came and I sent him out there alone, and nearly broke him.

“Right,” Melody said. “Herald Tantras, what’s happening with you right now is normal. The fogginess, not being able to get out of bed – this is how you’re grieving. It might not ever go away entirely, but it won’t be this bad forever either, and you’ll find ways to work around it. Trust me.”

He nodded, shakily.

She stood up, brushing down her robes. “That might be enough for today. Don’t want to tire you out too much, or you’ll not want to see me again. How are you feeling? If you’re a bit shaken up, that’s very normal, and we can find someone else to spend some time with you if you’d rather not be alone.” She smiled. “Someone less tiring than me.”

Wind blowing through a desolate pass–

(Vanyel had been expecting the dream. It tended to come when there was something new he had learned, or something of import had happened, and last night certainly counted. He was as prepared as he was ever going to be.)

“Herald Vanyel.”

“Leareth.” He nodded to the man, and then started to walk, across the uneven, slippery ice and snow between them. He nearly slipped and fell, once, but caught himself. Leareth only watched him, calm, with perhaps a hint of curiosity in his black eyes.

When they were only a few yards apart, he reached with the false-magic of the dreamland, shaped a stool. Sat. He raised his hand and summoned a heat-spell.

“There,” he said. “Should be a bit easier to talk like this. I think we have a lot of talking to do.”

Leareth nodded, and shaped his own chair, sitting as well. “What do you wish to speak of, Herald Vanyel?”

He took a deep breath. “A lot of things, that we should have talked about a long time ago. To start, though, something I’d like an explanation for. I’m pretty sure you tried to have me killed – and I don’t mean like the last time, where ‘pretty sure’ just means I couldn’t think of anyone else more likely to have done it.”

(There was no going back, from here. He hadn’t wanted to reveal to Leareth that he knew about the Order of Astera, because as long as Leareth didn’t know that he knew, there was a possible advantage. But there was a downside, too. There were things he couldn’t learn, questions he couldn’t ask, if he wasn’t willing to share certain things with Leareth, and this was one of them. He had decided that he needed to have that information himself, more than he needed Leareth not to have it.)

“I know that you’re responsible for the Temple of Astera,” he said. “I’d lay odds of eight out of ten that you founded it, and I’m very, very sure that you designed their courier-network, and still make use of it for your own record-keeping and spy-communications. It’s a very clever system and I’m impressed. But anyway. A priest called Father Leren, who was magically controlled, tried to kill me. You knew about it. It wasn’t Vedric’s plot. I found the original message to him.”

(He couldn’t actually read it, of course, because he didn’t have Leren’s number-key or the key of whoever had sent the message in the first place. Yfandes had said she would think about ways around that, but had ended up admitting it was a very difficult problem. He wasn’t sure how hard she had really tried. She was unhappy about the whole thing.)

Leareth’s face showed little, but he had settled into an even deeper stillness, the closest he would ever come to freezing from shock. He was surprised, Vanyel thought. Caught off guard.

“That message is from a number of years ago,” Vanyel said calmly. “In fact, the timing works out if I assume you set it in motion as soon as you were able to find out my family name.”

(Leareth wouldn’t have known it from the dream itself, though he had been able to send out mercenaries with his first name and description, like the mage who had cornered him in k’Treva. The circumstances of Vanyel’s Choosing had been kept fairly confidential within the Heraldic Circle, for good reason, but he had been promoted to Whites in late summer of 790, and there would have been some amount of discussion on the Council. Enough that it seemed likely a spy based in Haven, but not necessarily the Palace itself, and with orders to find out all they could about a Herald-Mage Vanyel, would have been able to learn his surname by late 790 or early 791, quite possibly before his first real conversation with Leareth. Leave a few months for that message to make its way to Leareth, a few months for him to formulate plans, and another few months for the response – and that matched the date on which Leren had in fact received the message, in late summer of 791. After which point there would have been no opportunity to act on it, because Vanyel had visited his family exactly twice, and once only for a day. He had asked Savil, and confirmed that Leren had visited him multiple times when he was recovering from the Gate, which made no sense on the face of it, they had never been close, but fit if his orders were to wait for a moment when Vanyel was vulnerable. The control-spell had most likely been the same one that the other priestess had carried; the Temple had brought her to Haven for trial, managing to avoid whatever fate had befallen Leren by dint of having Herald Dakar accompanying her at all times, and Savil had examined the spell on her before undoing it. It was a very general background compulsion, something like a Truth Spell in form – it would have no effect most of the time, except to force her to obey any orders received by message under a particular header. Which he didn’t think had ever actually happened, with her, and it wasn’t her fault she had been bespelled, so the Temple had let her go.)

“In any case,” Vanyel said, surprised by how well he was able to keep his voice level. “I don’t blame you for setting up a contingency-plan like that, initially. But it does leave me wondering a bit about your current intentions towards me, and I thought it would be good to have that out in the open.” The wind whipped a strand of silver hair into his face, and he pushed it aside. “Leareth, do you see me as an enemy right now? Do you want me dead? Because I’m really and truly not sure.”

Silence.

Finally, Leareth moved, lifting his hands, holding them out palm up. “I do not want you dead, Herald Vanyel. I would like to offer an apology, and an explanation, though it is not much of one. I took many measures, a decade ago. In the years since, I believed I had countermanded all of them. It appears that I was wrong, and I missed one. Perhaps the message I sent was waylaid. I did not obtain sufficient confirmation of its receipt, and that is my error.” He bowed his head for a moment. “I am sorry.”

“Gods.” Vanyel wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. “You mean – it was an accident? You made a mistake?”

Leareth lifted his head, and smiled thinly. “I am human, Herald Vanyel. I am not infallible.”

“Well. I guess not.”

(Oddly enough, Vanyel believed him. Maybe because he didn’t think Leareth could have faked the tiniest hint of embarrassment that crept through in his posture, though his face was as impassive as ever. Maybe because it was exactly the sort of thing that would happen, sooner or later, to anyone who tried their hand at plans as complicated as Leareth’s.)

“How many contingency-plans were there?” he said.

“Seventy-three,” Leareth said smoothly.

(That seemed…like overkill. Overly complicated. Like mistakes were predictable, at that point, and Leareth ought to have been able to predict it – not just the difficulty and time spent to shut down so many contingency plans, but the chance they would get tangled up, interfering with each other, unforeseen consequences. Maybe Leareth had judged that worth it at the time, when he had no reason not to push as hard as he could for Vanyel’s death.)

“Missing one out of seventy-three isn’t so bad,” Vanyel said. “I won’t take it personally. Apology accepted. Though if you actually want me alive, I’d appreciate it if you could try to be more careful. I survived it, this time, but it was extremely not fun.”

Leareth nodded. Waited.

(He would wait as long as he had to, Vanyel thought. He had been waiting for twelve years. He was a very patient man – and wouldn’t anyone be, if they’d had centuries to learn?)

“Which brings me to the rest of what I have to say,” he said. “I’ve been thinking. About what you claim to be trying to do, and why. And I’m not sure about it, but I think maybe you’re telling the truth, at least when it comes to what you care about.”

(In the icy wind of the dream, Leareth had lit a candle – well, a mage-light – for Tylendel. You were loved, he had said. You will never be forgotten. Maybe he could have faked that, maybe enough skill could replace true caring, but there had been so many other times. Vanyel wasn’t sure it was possible for someone who didn’t deeply care to imitate it so well. Even Lancir had eventually agreed that Leareth believed he was doing the right thing – though he had claimed the man was all the more dangerous for it. An ideologue, fighting to protect what he saw as sacred, willing to cross any line, sacrifice anything and everything, to that end. And Vanyel hadn’t been sure how to feel about that criticism, because it felt like giving up, like walking away, to say that there were problems forever beyond one’s reach. At least Leareth was trying.)

“And if you are telling the truth,” Vanyel said, “then maybe I should be helping you. Because you’re right that the world is kind of a disaster, and it’s been that way for millennia, and – and it seems like no one else is trying to fix it.” He paused, gathering his thoughts. “I still have questions that I need answered, before I’m going to be willing to trust you. I don’t know what your plan is, or why it involves invading my kingdom – and I would want to know details, because I can’t just take it on faith that you know what you’re doing. I mean, it looks like the gods want to stop you. Like they think something very, very bad is going to happen if you succeed. Which is a bad sign – but you’re right, if they had our best interests at heart things would look different. So maybe that’s not as big a strike against you as it looks. Still, I need a lot more information before I can judge.”

Silence. Leareth only waited, meeting his eyes unflinchingly.

“A few more things,” he said. “I want to cooperate on trying to figure some things out. I get the sense you don’t totally understand the gods either, and it seems like if you want to pull off something against their wishes, you need to understand them and their goals. I’m assuming you’ve been gathering information about them for millennia, and have a theory. Well, I have some information as well, that you probably don’t have. If you’re willing, I propose a trade.”

(It was a gamble. He was a long way from sure that Leareth was someone he ought to ally with. Ten years ago, he might have told himself he couldn’t take the risk, but the way he thought about it had changed. Wasn’t there a risk either way? If Leareth was telling the truth, then it mattered whether or not he succeeded, there would be real consequences if he didn’t; even if those consequences were that the world stayed the same, the status quo was awful, and Vanyel wanted no part in maintaining it, even just by his inaction. And, it hadn’t occurred to him at first but it should have – if he simply stood aside, wouldn’t the gods just find another tool? Letting that happen would be a decision also. No – if Leareth’s goals were good, and he had any chance at all at success, it was Vanyel’s moral duty to help. Given that, he needed to find out if it was true, and he didn’t see a path to that information unless he was willing to take this leap. And hope that, if it turned out he was wrong, this would be a mistake he could recover from.)

“So?” Vanyel said, quietly. “What do you say? It’s fine if you need a minute to think about it.”

Leareth nodded. If he was shocked, or even surprised, it wasn’t showing. “I would like to take some time to think over your offer,” he said. “As for your general sentiment, I am glad beyond words that we have come far enough to consider this. I was not sure it would be possible, starting from the positions that we did.”

Vanyel nodded. “I’m glad as well. Even if it turns out I’m wrong and you don’t want the same things I do at all, I’ll be glad I knew you.”

(The words had slipped out before he could think about them. Did he mean it? Yes. He did.)

“And I that I knew you, Herald Vanyel.” Leareth’s eyes looked past him for a moment, into the distance. “I have learned from you.”

“Really?” Vanyel looked dubiously at him, eyebrows raised. “I would’ve thought anything I had to say, you’d have heard a thousand times before.”

“I would have thought so as well, Herald of Valdemar.” Again, that thin smile. “And yet there are conversations I have had with you, on topics I had not revisited in many centuries. It has been valuable.”

“That’s flattering.”

(Vanyel was distantly aware of his heart pounding; he had expected this to be stressful, and he was right; but the cold peace of the dream held it at bay. It had some small amount of the quality that the Shadow-Lover’s white place did – it was easier to think here, and not just because Leareth was such a quick conversation partner. Strange, he thought.)

“Herald Vanyel, I would make an offer of my own, while I consider yours,” Leareth said. “Consider this to be a show of good faith, and you owe nothing in return.” He leaned forwards very slightly on the stool, hands clasped over his knees, the wind flattening his heavy black cloak against his back. “I will tell you a little of my theories around magic. I am sure you have wondered what mage-energy is, and from where it comes…”

Vanyel woke gasping, shaking, all the tension he had been carrying hitting him at once. Center and ground. Blearily, he rolled over onto his back, sent a mage-light just above his head, then lay still for a moment, forcing himself to take slow, deep breaths, trying to slow his hammering pulse. Any other time, he would have reached for Yfandes, he craved her presence, but he didn’t feel like explaining it to her right now. He hadn’t told her what he intended to do, though he had talked through bits and pieces of his thinking and she hadn’t disagreed. Just made her general discomfort clear.

Your Companions are god-touched beings, Leareth had said, and I do not trust the agenda of any god.

Yfandes was Yfandes. She had Chosen him, and stayed with him ever since, even though it couldn’t have been easy for her at all. What had she said to him, all those years ago? You are my Chosen and I will never, ever leave you. No matter what. That part isn’t conditional on anything. In some sense, she didn’t have a choice. It was baked into her, part of what Companions were. No more voluntary than a lifebond – but no less real for that.

I wouldn’t ever repudiate you, she had insisted after Deerford, I don’t know how you can even think that. And it hadn’t been a lie – she was still with him, even though he had done the unthinkable and used blood-magic. He hadn’t even gotten around to telling Leareth about it, yet; it felt a long way from the top of his list of priorities. It was in the past. He had tried his best to learn from those mistakes that had fallen upstream of that decision, but he couldn’t take back the choice itself.

Yfandes loved him, and he wasn’t sure anything could change that – but he didn’t understand everything about her motivations, either. She wasn’t human.

You might do well to ask yourself what goals they work for, Leareth had said. And why.

It wasn’t something he wanted to think about. It was a dangerous path, that led nowhere good, to start distrusting his own Companion. She was supposed to be the one who kept him on track, who helped him become stronger, so that he could fulfill his duties as a Herald. Serve Valdemar.

Except that he wasn’t sure that serving Valdemar was the right goal, anymore. At the very least it was incomplete. The world was a lot bigger than just his kingdom, and everyone in it was just as human, mattered just as much, as the people who happened to live on one side of an imaginary line drawn on a map.

He sat up, massaging his forehead. Think about it later. He had to write down the dream before he forgot.

I’ll talk to her in the morning, he promised himself. No, that wouldn’t work – he had a Council meeting first thing. After lunch, then.