Vanyel snarled silently, snatched up his towels and a clean uniform, and headed for the bathing room.
The room was very quiet this early in the morning, and every sound he made echoed from the white-tiled walls. He might well have been the only person alive in the Palace; he couldn't hear anything at all but the noise he made. After plunging his head under cold water, then following that torture with a hot bath, he was much more inclined to face the world without biting something. In fact, he actually felt up to breakfast, of sorts; perhaps a little bread and a great deal of herb tea.
Stefen was still blissfully asleep, no doubt, which made Van's room off limits. Well, it was probably too early for any of the servants to be awake.
He dressed quickly, shivering a little as the chill morning air hit his wet skin, and headed down the deserted hallways to the kitchen, where he found two cooks hard at work. They were pulling hot loaves from the ovens, anonymous in their floured brown tunics and trousers, their hair caught up under caps. They gave him startled looks - it probably wasn't too often that a Herald wandered into their purview - but they gave him a pot of tea and a bit of warm bread when he asked them for it, and he took both up to the library.
The Palace library was a good place to settle; the fire was still banked from last night, and a little bit of work had it crackling cheerfully under new logs, filling the empty silence. Vanyel chose a comfortable chair near it, his mug of tea on the hearthstone beside him, and nibbled at his bread while watching the flames and basking in the heat. The last of the headache faded under the gentle soothing warmth of the tea. Yfandes, having sensed, no doubt, that he had reached the limits of his patience, had remained wisely silent.
:Are you up to this?: she asked, when his ill-humor had turned to rueful contemplation of his own stupidity. :It won't hurt to put it off another day, or even two.:
He leaned back in his chair and tested all the channels of his mind and powers. :Oh, I think so, No harm done, other than to my temper. Sorry I snapped.:
She sent no real thoughts in reply to that, just affection. He closed everything down and thought about the planned session. They would be working magic of the highest order, something so complicated that no one had ever tried it before.
If he'd had any choice, Vanyel wouldn't be doing it now - but the ranks of the Herald-Mages had thinned so much that there was no one to replace any of the four Guardians should something happen to one of them. There were no spare Herald-Mages anymore. The Web, the watch - spell that kept the Heralds informed of danger, required four experienced and powerful mages to make it work; a Guardian of the Web was effectively tied to Haven - not physically, but psychically - as long as he or she was a Guardian. One fourth of the Guardians' energy and time were devoted to powering and monitoring the Web.
Van intended to change all that.
He had been gradually augmenting a mage-node underneath Haven for the past several years. He was no Tayledras, but he was Hawkbrother-trained; creating a new node probably would have been beyond him, but feeding new energy-flows into an existing node wasn't. He intended to power the new Web-spell with that node, and he intended to replace the Guardians with all the Heralds of Valdemar, Mage-Gifted or no.
And lastly, he intended to set the new Web-spell to do more than watch Valdemar; he intended to make it part of Valdemar's defenses, albeit a subtle part.
He was going to summon vrondi, the little air-elementals used in the Truth Spell, and summon them in greater numbers than anyone ever had before. Then he was going to “purpose” them; set them to watching for disturbances in the fabric of mage-energy that lay over Valdemar, disturbances that would signal the presence of a mage at work.
No one but a mage would feel their scrutiny. It would be as if there was something constantly tapping the mage's shoulder at irregular intervals, asking who he was.
And if the mage in question was not a Herald, it would report his presence to the nearest Herald-Mage.
This was just the initial plan; if this worked, Vanyel intended to elaborate his protections, using other elementals besides vrondi, to keep Valdemar as free as he could from hostile magics. He wasn't quite certain where to draw the line just yet, though. For now, it would probably be enough for every mage in Valdemar to sense he was being watched; it would likely drive a would - be enemy right out of his mind.
Well, sitting there thinking about it wasn't going to get anything accomplished.
Vanyel rose reluctantly from his chair, left his napkin stuffed into his mug on the hearth, and left the comforting warmth of the library for the chilly silence of the stone-floored corridors.
He headed straight for the Work Room; the old, shielded chamber in the heart of the Palace that had been used for apprentice Herald-Mages to practice their skills under the eyes of their teachers. But there were no apprentices here now, and every Herald-Mage stationed in Haven had his or her own private workrooms that would serve for training if any new youngsters with the Mage-Gift were Chosen.
Now the heavily shielded room could serve another purpose; to become the Heart of the new Web.
Tantras was already waiting for him when he arrived, arranging the furniture Vanyel had ordered. A new oil lamp hung from a chain in the center of the room. Directly beneath it was a circular table with a depression in the middle. Around it stood four high-backed, curved benches. Over in one corner, Tran was wrestling a heavy chair into place, putting it as far from the table as possible.
The older Herald looked up as Van closed the door behind him, raked graying hair out of his eyes with one hand, and smiled.
“Ready?” Vanyel asked, taking his seat, and putting his mage-focus, a large, irregular piece of polished tiger-eye, in the depression in the center. He hadn't been able to find a piece of unflawed amber big enough to use as a Web-focus, and fire-opals were too fragile to use in the Web. Fortunately when he'd replaced Jaysen as Guardian, he'd learned that he worked as well with Jaysen's tiger-eye as with opal and amber; flawless tiger-eye was much easier to find.
Vanyel looked back over his shoulder at his friend. “About as ready as I'm ever likely to be,” Tantras replied, shrugging his shoulders. “This is the first time I've ever been involved with one of these high-level set-spells of yours. First time I've ever worked with one Adept, much less two.”
“Nervous?” Vanyel raised an eyebrow at him. “I wouldn't blame you. We've never tried anything like this before.”
“Me? Nervous? When you're playing with something that could fry my mind like a breakfast egg?” Tran laughed. “Of course I'm nervous. But I trust you. I think.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence -” Van began, when the door behind him opened and the other three Herald-Mages entered in a chattering knot.