:I don't blame her for being unhappy. I want it over, too. I'm not going to be worth much when we finish this job.: Suddenly Kilchas' shields stopped pulsing, and the color smoothed to an even yellow-gold. :Tell her it won't be long now.:
He Reached out again to his aunt, and let her bring him into the meld, to avoid disturbing Kilchas' fragile control. Then, before the delicate balance could fall apart, he and Savil flung lines of power to Lissandra.
The fourth Guardian was used to working with Savil; she had been waiting for them, and with the smooth timing of a professional acrobat, caught them, and drew herself into the meld. Vanyel had, in the not-too-distant past, had more than one dislocated joint; the snap as Lissandra locked herself into place was a physical sensation very like having a bone put back in the socket. And once she was there, the meld stabilized; a ring instead of an arc. Vanyel breathed a sigh of relief, and Yfandes took that as the signal to bring the Companions into the meld.
They were to be the foundation, the anchoring point, so that none of them would be caught up in the currents of mage-power Vanyel would be using and find themselves lost. Kilchas and Lissandra would be contributing their powers and their presence, and Savil her expertise in handling vrondi, but most of this would be up to Vanyel.
Vanyel had worked this entire procedure out with the Tayledras Adepts of k'Treva, taking several years to research and test his ideas. The Hawkbrothers Moondance and Starwind, and their foster-son Brightstar were the ones that had helped him the most. No one knew node-magic like the Tayledras did; they were bred in and of it, and those that were Mage-Gifted handled it from the time their Gifts first began to manifest, which could be as young as eight or nine. And among'the k'Treva clan, those three were the unrivaled masters of their calling.
In point of fact, it had been the spell that another master of an unidentified Tayledras clan had left behind in Lineas long ago, the one that bound Tashir's family to the protection of the heart-stone there, that had given Van the idea for this in the first place. In that case, the compulsions set by the spell had been relatively simple; guard the heart-stone, discourage the use of magic, keep the stone and the power it tapped out of the hands of unscrupulous mages. While Tayledras normally drained any area they abandoned of magic, they had left the heart-stone in what would become the capital of Lineas because the stone had been bound into another spell meant to Heal a mage-caused fault-line. That spell would take centuries to complete, and meanwhile, only magic was keeping the fault stable. If that magic were to be drained, the devastation caused by the resulting earthquake would be extensive, carrying even into Valdemar. Tashir's family had been selected precisely because they had no Mage-Gift and little talent with Mind-magic; although this would ensure that none of them would succumb to the temptation to use the magic, that meant that the creators of the spell had very little to work with.
Vanyel had all of the Heralds, and all their varied Gifts, to integrate into his spell. So what he planned to do was infinitely more complicated, though the results would be equally beneficial.
First things first, he told himself. Get a good shield up around the four of us. If anything goes wrong, I don't want Tran caught in the backlash.
The shield was the tightest he'd ever built, and when he was finished, the other three Guardians tested it for possible leaks and weak points. Ironically, of the five of them, it was Tantras, who sat outside that shield, who would be in the most danger if anything got loose. The Work Room itself was shielded, and so securely that even sounds from without came through the walls muffled, when they penetrated at all. Each of them had their own personal shields; that, in part, was what had been the cause of the difficulty Van had in melding with Kilchas - those shields never came down, and it was difficult to match shields one to another so that the power would flow between mages without interruption or interference. If the energy Van planned to call up got away from him, he and the others would be protected by their personal shields. The Work Room shields would protect those beyond the doors, but Tran would be caught in between the two. And since he wasn't a mage, he had none of his own. Van had spent many hours manufacturing protections for him, but they'd never been tested to destruction and he had no idea how much they would really take.
:He knows that,: Yfandes reminded him, :And he agreed. Life is a risk; our lives ten times the risk.:
Somehow that only made Vanyel feel guiltier.
But he had no choice; his decision to go ahead was based entirely on Valdemar's need. The problem was that the Mage-Gift had always been rare, and the troubles following Elspeth's passing had resulted in the deaths of more Herald-Mages than could be replaced. It had been appallingly clear to Vanyel after the death of Herald-Mage Jaysen that there weren't going to be enough Guardian-candidates to take over the vacant seat in the Web in the event of another death. Yet the Web was Valdemar's only means of anticipating danger before it crossed the Border. Heralds with no Mage-Gift, but with very powerful Gifts of Mindspeech or FarSight, had been tested in the seats; the Web-spell wouldn't work for them because it was powered by a Mage's own personal energies, and there was no way for a Herald without the Mage-Gift to supply that energy.
What Vanyel proposed was to modify that spell.
For the first time since his Gifts had been awakened, he dropped all but the last of his shields. Every mage ever born could establish a “line” to the mind of another with whom he had shared magic - but Vanyel had a line to every living Herald in Valdemar, by virtue of their being Heralds. When his shields were down, he found himself part of a vast network linking all the Heralds together. As delicate as a snowflake, as intricate as the finest lacework, the strands of power that bound them all were deep-laid, but strong. They pulsed with life, as if someone had joined every star in the night sky to every other star, linking them with faint strands of spun-crystal light. It was beautiful. He'd suspected this network existed from the glimpses he'd caught when following his lines to other Heralds, but this was the first time Vanyel had ever Seen the whole of it. Through his mind, the others Saw the same.
:Amazing,: Kilchas said at last. :Why has no one ever spoken of this before?:
:Probably because unless your Gift is very strong, you can't detect it since the actual linkage is through the Companions,: Vanyel replied. :We share magic with the Heralds without the Mage-Gift through the Companions. That's the other reason I wanted them in the meld; I can See this without them, but with them, I can also manipulate it.:
:This must be what King Valdemar first saw when he created the Web.: Savil's mind-voice was subdued.
:Except that things were a lot less complicated in his day,: Vanyel said dryly :Let's get to this before we lose the meld.: