Mercedes Lackey: Magic's Price

Stef. Twenty years. 'Lendel had died at seventeen. Van had met Stef when the Bard was seventeen. There was time enough, between 'Lendel's death and now - Stef was exactly the right age to have been born about that time.

More things sprang to mind. The Dreamtime encounter with 'Lendel-the things he had said - the way the Tayledras treated Stef and the way Savil had taken the Bard under her wing after that - it was all beginning to make a pattern.

The way he called me ashke without ever knowing the word. No. Yes. What other answer is there? He came back to me, 'Lendel came back as Stef, somehow - and Savil and the Hawkbrothers knew -

But there was no opportunity to think about this revelation, for the first of Master Dark's forces had just begun to round the bend in the trail, and it was time to put his plans into motion.

As little bloodshed as I can manage, particularly with the fighters. They could be spell-bound, ignorant-whatever.

The clouds he had been calling loomed above the mountains, hiding the peaks, and full of lightning-crackles just waiting to be released. Vanyel was happy to oblige them; he called lightnings down out of them to lash the ground just ahead of the first rank, as he simultaneously illuminated himself with a blinding blue glare of mage-light.

The lightning exploded the trail in front of him, the ice-covered rocks screaming as the powerful force lashed them, heating them enough to turn the ice into steam in an eyeblink. Vanyel kept his eyes sheltered by his forearm, so that he alone was not blinded. The first ranks of the forces were, however; black-armored men stumbled blindly forward, pushed by the ranks behind them, shouting in fear and anger.

All right, that's one point of difference from the dreams, already. I fought them magic-against-weaponry, I didn't intimidate them right off.

The chaos calmed, as Vanyel stood, ready, energies making his mage-focus glow the same blue as the light behind him, his hands tingling with power. The ranks of armed men and strange beasts stirred restively, the fighters watching him through the slits in their helms. In this much, too, the dreams had been right. Under the armor, they were a motley lot, and only half of them looked human; but they were armed and armored with weapons and protection made of some dull black stuff, and carried identical round, unornamented black shields. And the stumbling chaos he had caused had been righted in short order; that argued for a great deal of training together. This was the army he had taken it for.

The ranks in front parted, as in the dreams, and a wizard stepped through. There was no doubt of what he was, he was unarmed and unarmored, and the Power sat heavily in him, making him glow sullenly to Mage-Sight. But it was the power of blood-magic -

As was the power of the second, the third, and the fourth.

Four-to-one, then Master Dark to follow. Vanyel flexed his fingers, and hoped Yfandes had gotten Stef to safety by now. Let's see if these lads know how to work together, or if I can divide them -

Stefen hung on and closed his eyes, fighting his own panic. He'd never been on - or even near! - anything going this fast before. The ground rushing by his feet and the violent lurching as Yfandes leapt obstacles were making him sick and frightened, with the kind of fear that no rational thought was going to overcome.

They had already covered the same amount of ground that had taken the three of them a day, and now Stef was quite lost.

:I'm doing a kind of Fetching, Bard, only I'm doing it with us. That's why we seem to be jumping a great deal, and why you're sick. Besides, you two got rather sidetracked. You had to come at the Pass obliquely. I'm going straight back.:

Stef gulped. She's doing Fetching, only with us. No wonder my stomach thinks it got left behind - it may have. . . .

Lights showed up ahead, against the dark of the trees. Torches along the top of a wall-the lights of the Guard post. Stef couldn't believe it. It hadn't been nearly long enough -

But it was. Yfandes thundered into the lighted area in front of the gate, as sentries came piling down off the walls -

She stopped with all four hooves set, in a shower of snow-and bucked. Violently.

Stefen wasn't expecting that. He flew over her head and landed in a snowbank -

He thought he was going to land all right, but his breath was knocked out of him and his head cracked against a buried log and he saw nothing but stars -

- and heard hoofbeats vanishing into the distance, followed by a babble of voices.

Hands hauled him out of the snow; he shook his head to clear his eyes and immediately regretted doing so. His head felt like it was going to explode, and colored lights danced in front of him. But his vision cleared enough for him to see as he looked up that one of the people striding out of the gate was the Commander.

She recognized him immediately. “Great good gods!” she exclaimed. “What in the nine hells are you doing here? Where's the Herald?”

His head was swimming, and his vision blacking out, but he managed to get all of his message out -

The Commander turned white, and barked a series of orders. The alarm bell began ringing. So did Stef's ears. The Commander's aide shoved Stef over to one side, and men and women began pouring out of the barracks, hastily arming and armoring themselves as they ran into their ranks. Stef wasn't sure if he was going to be able to stand much longer; his knees were going weak. The post Healer emerged, took one look at him, and started toward him, arms forward.

And that was all Stef knew, before the ground quietly but violently introduced itself and darkness came over him.

Vanyel trembled with exhaustion - but the nodes were still pouring their power into him, and two of the wizards lay charred and dead on the icy ground in front of him. Of the other two, one had tried to flee and been cut down by his own men, and the other was a mindless, drooling thing that crawled over to the side of the trail and lay there curled on its side.

There's another difference. I didn't defeat the wizards, in the dream. I fought them to a standstill. He assessed the damage to himself, and came up relatively satisfied. There was a slight wound to his right leg; blood was running down his leg and into his boot to freeze there. He was a bit scorched, but really, the damage so far was light.

Although a young boy who'd never been in combat - as I was then-would have been convinced that every hurt was fatal. That may be the reason for that “difference”; it may not be a difference at all. Well. Now it's time for Master Dark to appear.

The front ranks parted again, and a single, elegantly black-clad figure paced leisurely through, lit by red mage-light as Vanyel was lit by blue. Right on cue.

The young man was wearing black armor and clothing that had to be a conscious parody of Heraldic Whites. He was absolutely beautiful, with a perfectly sculptured face and body. Somehow that face looked oddly familiar -

It could just be that the face was so perfect, it looked like the statue of a god.

Of course, if I didn't care how I wasted power, I could look like anything I wanted, too.

He was a reverse image of Vanyel in every way, from sable hair to ebony eyes to night-black boots.

“Why do you bother with this nonsense?” he asked, sweetly, his lips curving in a sensual smile. “You are quite alone, Herald-Mage Vanyel.” His voice was a smooth, silky tenor; he had learned the same kind of perfect control over it that he had over his body.

The familiarity of his features bothered Vanyel. At first he thought it was because he very closely resembled the Herald himself, but there was more to it than that. A kind of racial similarity to someone-