Finally the Gate was complete; the courtyard winked out with a wrench that felt as if someone had torn Vanyel's guts out, and in its place was the corridor just outside the Ashkevron family chapel.
Vanyel's knees gave out and he collapsed. He had just enough energy to wince a little as half the wall collapsed between him and the Gate.
There was nothing but pain now; and he lacked even the strength to weep.
Jervis was shaking him; he tried to push the man's hands away, but it was like a babe trying to push away the hand of an adult. "Go," he panted, too spent even to moan. "Can't - hold it - stable."
There's nothing left. I overestimated again -
He could feel the Gate pulsing with the beating of his own heart. In a moment it would collapse.
"Go - now," he tried to urge the armsmaster. He was so tired; he'd give anything to be able to rest, beyond the pain.
Shadow-Lover -
Death had long since lost any fear for him. He had been courted by the Shadow-Lover for so long that His embrace would be welcome, if only it would bring him peace. There was nothing left - not even his will.
But Jervis had enough will for two.
"I'm not goin' without you!" the old man growled, as the palace walls cried in a hundred agonized voices around them. "You remember what you said about giving up? Dammit, Van, don't do it now! There's nobody to pick up your load if you give up on me!”
The words reached through the haze of pain and weakness as nothing else could have. He struggled to his feet, Jervis supporting him, as the palace bucked around them. Jervis started for the open Gate, more than half dragging him over the rubble, and finally draped his arm across his own shoulders and carried him through the Gate itself.
He'd thought there could be no worse pain than passing that Gate.
He discovered a heartbeat later that he was wrong.
There was a flash of light on metal as Jervis' boots clattered onto the stone of the corridor floor. It was training, a training that refused to admit to having no strength, that made him squirm sideways in Jervis' grip.
But it wasn't quite enough. There was a rush of dark cloth toward them, and the hard impact of something driving into his stomach and jerking upward-
“Leren!” Jervis roared. "What in - "
And pain that blacked out everything else sent him bonelessly to the floor as Jervis let go of him.
Somewhere - in some other world beyond the pain - there was a sound of scuffling. All he knew was the pain, the agony that was the center of him, as he lay on his side and clutched his stomach, something hot and wet trickling between his fingers.
Heal - I have to Heal myself- He had just enough Healing-Gift to save himself. He reached, feebly, - no strength -
:Chosen!: Yfandes' mind-voice, faint and far-off - and a brief, unsteady surge of energy from her to him, all unlooked-for; energy that could Heal him.
But something else brushed his mind, a sense of dark and evil wings.
It was with Leren. A dark force that ruled Leren, and it was poised to strike at the armsmaster.
He had a choice; save himself - or save Jervis.
Which was not a choice at all.
No!
Vanyel took that borrowed strength and hurled it at the unprotected, unsuspecting darkness like a spear of light.
It penetrated.
But it did not kill. The darkness fled, wounded, but not conquered, as Vanyel began fading into a darkness of his own.
Gods – Leren - controlled.
Jervis' voice. "Bastard got distracted. Got him with a chair," the man said, from that other world. "He won't be going anywhere for a while. Boy - boy, did he mark you?"
It was becoming very hard to breathe; his frantic gasps after air just made the pain worse, and didn't seem to be bringing anything into his lungs.
Someone rolled him onto his back and he cried out.
"Lady's tits!" Jervis swore. "Bloody bastard!"
Vanyel opened his eyes, but he couldn't see anything but a tiny spot of brightness in a sea of black. The blackness called him -
Jervis slapped his face lightly, and the blackness receded for a moment. “Don't leave on me, boy," he said urgently, supporting Vanyel in his lap. "Stay with me!"
Vanyel did his best to obey, as Jervis bellowed somewhere over his head for a Healer, but he was cold, and getting colder, and there didn't seem to be any room for anything but agony.
He tried to open his eyes again, when he heard frantically running feet. There was a strange Herald in Whites on his left, and a swirl of green robes as a Healer dropped down beside him on his right.
"Gods!" he heard the latter swear, in an audible panic. There were hands pulling his away, and a wash of weakening that followed a gush of something, warmth that poured out of him, and over the hands that replaced his. "I - oh, gods, we're losing him!"
"Like hell!" ''I - "
Everything - voices, vision, even the pain - began to fade. Everything except the stranger kneeling at his left side. Though his face remained oddly shadowed, there was a soft, argent glow about him, like starlight, that brightened with each passing moment.
:Take my hand, Herald Vanyel.:
Vanyel blinked, struggled against his fading sight, tried to hold to consciousness.
:My hand.: The strange Herald held his right hand out to Vanyel, and there was entreaty in that mind-voice :Will you not take it?:
The urgency in the request pulled at him; this was important. Important that he fight past the pain to obey the stranger. Moved by some deep conviction that he didn't understand, he found a tiny crumb of strength; just enough to move the fingers of his left hand and place them, sticky and warm with his own blood, into the stranger's outstretched palm. The stranger's hand closed over his, and his lips curved in a smile of triumph.
He was standing. The pain was gone.
So was the wound. The strange Herald still held his hand, but about them was - nothing. Only a kind of peaceful, tranquil gray emptiness.
The stranger's face was still shadowed - except for the eyes, a blazing glory of sapphires and light, a light never seen in Vanyel's world.
Not in the mortal world that Vanyel knew. Not the natural world.
Therefore this was not the natural world - and this was no mere Herald.
Vanyel released the stranger's hand and sank slowly to one knee, unable to look away from those incandescent eyes. Then the stranger smiled, and the smile was as brilliant and overpowering as the gaze. That smile was no sight for mortal eyes, and Vanyel managed to drop his gaze before he was lost to it. He bowed his head over his knee in profound obeisance to the Power that had chosen to wear the guise of a human, and a Herald.