The vrondi swirled around him, thinking it over. Then, just when he was beginning to worry -
:YES!: they cried, and seized on the line of power - and vanished.
And he let go of Savil, of the meld, and let himself fall.
“Gods,” Kilchas moaned.
Vanyel raised his head from the table, where he'd slumped forward. “My sentiments exactly.” Kilchas was half-lying on the table with his hands over his head, fingers tangled in his gray mane.
“I think,” Lissandra said, pronouncing the words with care, “That I am going to sleep for a week. Did your thing with the vrondi work?”
“They took it,” Vanyel replied, staring at the single globe of iridescent crystal in the center of the table where the grouping of five stones had been. “Every mage inside the borders of Valdemar is going to know he's being watched. That's going to make him uncomfortable if he doesn't belong here, or he's up to no good. The deeper inside Valdemar, the more vrondi he'll attract, and the worse he'll feel.”
“And he'll have to shield pretty heavily to avoid detection,” Savil added, leaning into the back of her chair and letting it support all her weight. “The vrondi are quite sensitive to mage-energy. And they're curious as all hell; I suspect wild ones will start joining our bound ones in watching out for mages just for the amusement factor.”
“That's good - as far as it goes.” Lissandra reached out and touched the globe in the center with an expression of bemusement. “But it doesn't let us know we have mages working on our territory, not unless you can get the vrondi to tell us.”
“I do have some other plans,” Vanyel admitted. “I'd like to get the vrondi to react to strange mages with alarm - and since they're now bound into the Web, that in itself would feed back to the Heralds. But I haven't got that part worked out yet. I don't want them to react that way to Herald-Mages, for one thing, and for another, I'm not sure the vrondi are capable of telling mages apart.”
“Neither am I,” Savil said dubiously. “Seems to me it's enough to let mages know they're being watched. If you're guilty, that alone is enough to make you jumpy.”
Kilchas had managed to stand up while they were talking; he reached for the globe and tried to pick it up. His expression of surprise when he couldn't made Vanyel chuckle weakly.
“That's a heart-stone now,” he said apologetically. “It's fused to the table, and the table is fused to the stone of the Palace and the bedrock beneath it.”
“Oh,” Kilchas replied, sitting down with a thump. Vanyel banished the shields, then turned to the only person in the room who hadn't yet spoken a single word.
Van leaned against the back of his chair, and faced Tantras. “Well?” he asked.
Tran nodded. “It's there, all right. There's something there that wasn't a part of of me before -”
“What about the trouble-spots?” Vanyel asked.
The other Herald closed his eyes, and frowned with concentration. “I'm trying to think of a map,” he said, finally. “I'm working my way around the Border. It's like Reading an object; I get a kind of sick feeling when I come up on some place where there're problems. I'll bet it would be even more accurate if I had a real map.”
Vanyel sighed, and slumped his shoulders, allowing his exhaustion to catch up with him. “Then we did it.”
“I never doubted it,” Savil retorted.
:Nor I,: said the familiar voice in his head.
“Then it's time for me to go fall on my nose; I think I've earned it.” Vanyel got to his feet, feeling every joint ache. “I think all of us have earned it.”
“Aye to that.” Lissandra copied him; Kilchas levered himself up with the aid of the table, and Savil needed Tantras' help to get her onto her feet. Vanyel headed for the door and pulled it open, leaving the others to take care of themselves. Right now all he could think about was his bed-and how badly he needed it.
He walked wearily down the corridor leading out of the Old Palace and toward his quarters, doing his best not to stagger. He was so tired that it would probably look as if he was drunk, and that wouldn't do the Heraldic reputation any good....
:Oh, I don't know,: Yfandes chuckled. :You might get more invitations to parties that way.:
:I might. But would they be parties I'd want to attend?:
:Probably not,: she acknowledged.
It didn't occur to him until he was most of the way to the Herald's Wing that his bed might not be unoccupied. . . .
But it was; he pulled his door open to find his room empty, the bed made, and no sign of his visitor anywhere. Evidently the servants had already cleaned and tidied his quarters; there was nothing out of the ordinary about the room.
He clung to the doorframe, surprised by his own disappointment that the young Bard hadn't at least stayed long enough to make some arrangements to get together again.
This time with a little less wine. . . .
That disappointment made no sense; he'd only met the boy last night. And he couldn't afford close friends; he'd told himself that over and over.
Anybody you let close is liable to become a target or a hostage, he repeated to himself for the thousandth time. You can't afford friends, fool. You should be grateful that the boy came to his senses. You can talk to him safely in Court. You know very well that after yesterday you're going to be seeing him there every day. That should certainly be enough. He had no idea what he was offering you last night; it was the wine and his hero-worship talking. You're too old, and he's too young.
But his bed, when he threw himself into it, seemed very cold, and very empty.
Five
A door closed, somewhere nearby. Stefen stretched, only half-awake, and when his right hand didn't hit the wall, he woke up entirely with a start of surprise. He found himself staring at a portion of wood paneling, rather than plaster-covered stone. It was an entirely unfamiliar wall.
Therefore, he wasn't in his own bed.
Well, that wasn't too terribly unusual. Over the course of the past couple of years, he'd woken up in any number of beds, with a wide variety of partners. What was unusual was that this morning he was quite alone, and every sign indicated he'd gone to sleep that way. He rubbed his eyes, and turned over, and blinked at the room beyond the bed-curtains. There on the floor, like a mute reproach, was a rumpled bedroll.
Looks like I did go to bed alone. Damn.
A pile of discarded clothing, unmistakably Heraldic Whites, lay beside the bedroll.
So it wasn't a dream. Stefen sat up, and ran his right hand through his tangled hair. I really did end up in Herald Vanyel's room last night. And if he slept there and I slept here- Stefen frowned. He's shaych. I certainly made an advance toward him. He was attracted. What went wrong?