Mardic moved farther into the room; Donni stayed by the door. They reached out to one another, arms extended, and hands not quitetouching, and -
Where there had been two auras there was now one; a golden-green flow over and around them that was seamless - and considerably morethan either aura had been alone. Savil blinked in surprise. “Just when did you two start to do that?” she asked.
“The night - when we had to get the Temple open,” Mardic supplied. “When we had to get the arrow up, and then even more when we meshed in the Healing-meld. That’s when what you’d been showing us sort of fell into place. So, well, now any Herald-Mage could teach us, and really, given what we do together, it probably ought to be Jaysen, or Lancir. But Jaysen hasn’t got anyone right now.’’
“Piffle. You’d make a three-hour tale of a limerick,” Donni sniffed. “Savil, we asked Jaysen; he said he’d take us if you allow it.’’
Savil put down her pen, and closed her gaping mouth. “I think I may kiss you both,” she replied, as Donni gave Mardic an “I told you so” grin. “I was trying to think of a way to get you another mentor and coming up blank because I ‘m the only one who knows how to teach concert work. Bless you, loves.”
She rose and took both of them in her arms; they returned the embrace; their support as much mental as physical.
“Savil,” Donni said quietly, as she released them with real reluctance. “What are you going to do with Vanyel? He’s - he’s still so broken - and everything here has just gotto keep reminding him of ‘Lendel. It’s too bad you can’t take him somewhere really different.”
“Gods, that’s only too true,” she replied.
-really different- gods- oh, gods, thank you for bright little proteges!
“Donni,” she said slowly, “I think you may just have found my answer for me. Now I’m even more grateful to you for finding yourselves a new teacher.’’
“You’ve got an idea?”
Savil nodded. “And kill two birds with one stone. Those things the Leshara had brought in - they hadto be from the Pelagirs, just like what ‘Lendel conjured in retribution. I’d have had to go out there anyway, to find out who’s been tampering. So - what I’m going to do is take Vanyel there to some friends of mine, the Hawkbrothers. They’re self-appointed guardians of the Pelagirs, so they should be told if there’s been a mage tampering with their creatures. And they follow a different discipline; maybe they can help Van. And if they can’t, I know they can at least contain him.”
“But you really think they can help him?” Donni asked hopefully.
“Well, Ican’t; I know for a fact that Starwind is better than I am. Besides, if we keep Van drugged much longer, Andrel is afraid he’ll become addicted, but if we take him off - “
“He could wreck the Palace.” Mardic nodded solemnly. “When are you taking him?”
“When - within the next few days, I think. The sooner the better.” She looked over his head, to the Wingsister talisman on her wall. “The only problem is that to find Starwind k’Treva and Moondance k’Treva I’ll have to go to them -because they don’t evercome out of the Pelagirs. That means two things. I’ll have to build a Gate, and I’ll have to hope that I still know howto find them.”
Eleven
“Gods, I hateGating,” Savil muttered to Andrel, squinting against the glare of sun on snow as she scanned the sky for even a hint of cloud.
“Why? Other than the recent rotten associations - “
“It’s damned dangerous at the best of times. It plays fast and loose with local weather systems, for one thing; it’s a spell that sets up a local energy field, a kind that disrupts any kind of high-energy weather pattern that’s around it. Usually for the worse.” She closed her eyes, centered and grounded, and extended her Mage-Gift sense up and out, looking farther afield for anything that mightmove in while she had the Gate up. To her vast relief there didn’t seem to be anything of consequence anywhere nearby; the only energy-patterns she could read were a few rising air currents over warm spots, too small to be any hazard.
She sighed. “Well, the weather’s not going to cause any problems. How was the lad?”
“Drugged to his teeth, and I would stake my arm that he won’t be able to count to one before some time tonight. And I am damned glad you told me that you were planning on Gating out of here.” Andrel tucked his long, sensitive hands inside his cloak, and peered across the open Field through the sunlight. “Since it was Gate-energy that blew his channels open - “
“Probably,” Savil interrupted.
“All right, probablyblew his channels open - he’s going to be doubly sensitive to it for the rest of his life. He’ll likely know when someone’s opening a Gate within a league of him. And actually going through one maytouch off another fit. Which is why - “
“ - you drugged him to the teeth. I have no objection; it’s a little awkward, but that’s why we have the kind of saddles for our Companions that we do.”
They crunched their way across Companion’s Field, now covered with the first snowfall of the season. Savil repeated a quieting exercise for every step she made, for she knew she needed to establish absolute calm within herself; she would be Gating to her absolute physical limits (in terms of the distance she planned to cover) and that would take every reserve she had.
In light of that, she had turned everything (other than establishing the Gate itself) over to the hands of others. Mardic and Donni had done all her packing, Lissa had taken care of Vanyel’s, and Lissa had taken charge of the boy once Andrel was finished with him. They were all waiting at the Grove Temple at this very moment.
“So why else don’t you like Gating?” Andrel asked, while the Field around them glowed under the sun.
“Because when I get there, I’m going to be pretty damned worthless,” she replied dryly, “And I’d better hope the Talisman performs the way Starwind claimed it was supposed to, or we’ll be a pretty pathetically helpless pair, Vanyel and I.”
“Why don’t you do what Tylendel did, use someone else’s energy?”
“Because I don’t really know what he did,” she said, after a long pause that was punctuated only by the sound of their footsteps breaking through the light crust of snow. “None of us do. That may be why we ended up feeding the energy back through poor Van instead of grounding and dissipating it. I personally do not care to take the chance of doing that to another living soul and neither do any of the others. Vanyel lived through it; someone else might not. And it may well be that you have to have a lifebound pair to carry it off at all. So,” she shrugged, “we do this the hard way, and I fall on my nose on the other side.”
They entered the Grove, the leafless trees making a lacework of dark branches against the bright blue sky.
The peace of the Grove never left it, no matter what the season was. That was one reason why Savil had chosen to set up the Gate here. The other was that it was the safest place on the Palace grounds that she could put a Gate; no one but Heralds ever came here without invitation. There should be no accidents caused by a stranger wandering by at the wrong moment.
The group waiting by the Temple, which looked today as if it had been newly-made of the same pure snow that covered the ground around it, was a small one. Jaysen, Donni and Mardic, and Lissa. There were only two Companions there; Kellan and Yfandes. Companions tended to avoid the Grove except when a Herald died. Vanyel was slumped over in Yfandes’ saddle, wrapped in the warmest cloak Savil could find and strapped down securely enough that his Companion could fight or flee without losing him.
Avert-Savil thought, a little superstitiously. Let there be no reason for her tohave to fight. We’ve had enough bad fortune without that.