Savil exchanged startled looks with the Seneschal's Herald, but it was Healer Andrel who put their thoughts into words.
"By the Lady Bright," he murmured, green eyes gone round with consternation, "what in the Havens is this going to mean?"
Vanyel swam up out of a feverish, fitful nightmare, prodded by an insistent voice in his head. He moaned, and opened dry, hot eyes that ached and burned. His head still pounded, and moving it even a little made his vision blur. He felt as if his whole body was a hot, tight, painfully constrictive garment; it felt like it didn't belong to him.
Sunlight gleamed weakly in through a rocky opening; he could see the river gurgling by just a few paces beyond it. It looked as if he were in a cave, but there were pink marble benches beside the entrance. Caves didn't have pink marble benches. They didn't have cultivated, moss-covered floors, either.
Then he recognized the place for what it was - one of the garden grottoes set into the riverbank. They were popular with courting couples or people seeking a moment of solitude from the Court. Tylendel had often wistfully expressed the wish that they dared to use one -
Tylendel. Grief closed around his throat and stopped his breath.
:No, Vanyel, Chosen. Not now. Mourn later; now get up.:
Without knowing quite how he had gotten there, Vanyel found himself on his feet, leaning heavily on the silky shoulder of a Companion.
His Companion. Yfandes.
He tried to make sense of that, but his head spun too much and he couldn't get a good grip on any of the thoughts that half-formed and then blew away.
:You are ill,: said the worried voice inside his mind. :I cannot care for you. I did not wish to let you away from my protection, but I cannot help you. You have fever, you need a Healer. Move your foot. One step. Another - :
He discovered that he was shaking, and clung a little tighter to the Companion's back. Obedient to that voice in his head, he put one hesitant foot in front of the other, learning quickly that he had to rest most of his weight on the arm clinging to Yfandes' shoulder. He had to close his eyes after the first couple of steps and trust to her to guide him; he was so dizzy and nauseated he couldn't make any sense out of what he was seeing.
They emerged into sunlight that was far too much for his eyes; he opened them once, and shut them again, quickly. The Companion suddenly stepped away from him, and he literally fell into the arms of a strange Herald; and once out of contact with Yfandes there were dozens of voices in his head, all of them clamorous, all of them confusing. He whimpered, tried to pull away, and hid his head in his arms. They hurt, they hurt, and he couldn't make out which were his own thoughts and which belonged to someone else.
:Tell your fool Chosen to shield him, Delian!:
That voice he recognized, although Yfandes had never spoken that sharply to him. The stranger bit off a curse and touched Vanyel's forehead, and the voices cut off. Vanyel opened his eyes again, and wished he hadn't; the world was spinning around with him as the center of the chaos. He shut them immediately, vowing not to reopen them.
"Let me, Tantras." The soft voice was that of yet another stranger.
Two cool hands rested lightly on his head, and brought with them the promise of comfort and the peace of sleep.
He took what they offered, falling into oblivion gratefully. With any luck, he'd never wake up.
The bed looked far too big for the boy; never tall, he seemed to have collapsed in on himself. He was as pale as the sheets and - it might have been his dark hair and naturally fair complexion, but it seemed to her that he looked worse than Tylendel had after his fit. That was something Savil had not thought possible until now.
Tylendel. Oh, my 'Lendel, my poor, poor, 'Lendel.
Unshed tears made a hard knot in her throat and misted her eyes. So she missed the moment that Andrel took his hand away from the boy's forehead and sagged back into his chair with a sigh of weariness, his graying red hair damp with sweat, his freckles twice as evident with his skin so washed out and pale.
It was that sigh that brought her back to the urgent present.
"Andrel?" she said softly. "Can you tell me anything?"
"I did what I could for him - and more, I've got a line established," the Green-robed Healer to the Heralds replied, without looking up. "I want you to follow it - or if you feel you can't, find me a Herald-Mage your equal. I don't believe what I Saw, to be frank, and I want a confirmation."
Savil tightened her jaw, and told herself again that none of this had been Vanyel's fault. Besides, she was the only Herald-Mage at the Palace who was likely to have any feelings of charity toward the boy.
"I'll follow it. Have you got more to say, or - "
"I want you in there first. What I have to say is going to depend on whether you think I've gone over the edge or not."
Savil raised one eyebrow in surprise, but moved in to stand beside the Healer. She reached out for Andrel's soothing Presence as easily as she could have reached for his hand; they'd been lovers, once, and had worked together often, both before and since.
They meshed auras exactly as hand would close on hand, and Savil followed the "line" the Healer had established down past the churning chaos of Vanyel's sleeping surface mind to the dark, grief-stricken core of him. The measure of that grief would have reconciled her to him even had she felt him blameworthy; she'd known the depth of Tylendel's feelings, but it seemed as if Vanyel's had run at least as deep. Certainly his grief and loss were as profound as her own. More -
Oh, gods - it's just what I warned 'Lendel against. He's lost, he's utterly lost without 'Lendel -
But that was not what rocked her back onto her heels with real shock.
Savil had spent most of the past twenty years of her life as the one Herald-Mage most intimately involved in training young Herald-Mages, and the one most often set to identify youngsters with active Gifts and the potential of being Chosen. She had seen children with one, two, or (most commonly) no Gifts. Tylendel had been unusual in having Mindspeech, Fetching, Empathy and the Mage-Gift, all at near-equal strength. Most Heralds or Herald-Mages ftad one or two strong Gifts - and few had as many as three.
Vanyel had them all. Each channel she tested - with the sole exception of Healing - was open; most of them had been forced open to their widest extent. The boy had Mindspeech, Fetching, FarSight, Foresight, as much Empathy as Tylendel had shown, even enough Fire-starting to ensure he'd never need to use a tinderbox again, and the all-important Mage-Gift. His Mindspeech was even of both types, Thought-sensing and Projecting.
And - irony of ironies - as if the gods were taking with one hand and offering a pittance as compensation - the Bardic Gift.
This boy had more Gifts than any five full Heralds - and all of them had come into full activity in less than a day.
To her horror she could See that all the channels were as raw and sensitive as so many open wounds. The channels had not been "opened," they'd been blasted open. It was a wonder the boy wasn't mad with the pain alone.