Mercedes Lackey: Magic's Pawn

It was the people themselves; the way they measured him with their eyes, opaque eyes full of murky thoughts that he could not read. Eyes that expected everything of him; that demanded things of him that he did not want to give, and didn't know how to give even if he had wanted to.

I don't want them looking to me like that! I don't want to be responsible for their lives! He shuddered again. I wouldn't know what to do in a drought or an invasion, and what's more, I don't care! Gods, they make my skin crawl, all those - people, eating me alive with their eyes -

He turned away from the window, and knelt beside his instruments; stretched out his hand, and touched the smooth wood, the taut strings. Oh, gods - if I weren't me - if I could just have a chance to be a Bard -

In the days before his arm had been hurt he had often imagined himself a Court Bard, not in some out-of-the-way corner like Forst Reach, but one of the Great Courts; Gyrefalcon's Marches or Southron Keep. Or even the High Court of Valdemar at Haven. Imagined himself the center of a circle of admirers, languid ladies and jewel-bedecked lords, all of them hanging enraptured on every word of his song. He could let his imagination transport him to a different life, the life of his dreams. He could actually see himself surrounded, not by the girls of Treesa's bower, but by the entire High Court of Valdemar, from Queen Elspeth down, until the visualization was more real than his true surroundings. He could see, hear, feel, all of them waiting in impatient anticipation for him to sing - the bright candles, the perfume, the pregnant silence –

Now even that was lost to him. Now practices were solitary, for there was no Lissa to listen to new tunes. Lissa had been a wonderful audience; she had a good ear, and knew enough about music to be trusted to tell him the truth. She had been the only person in the keep besides Treesa who didn't seem to think there was something faintly shameful about his obsession with music. And she was the only one who knew of his dream of becoming a Bard.

There were no performances before his mother's ladies, either, because he refused to let them hear him fumble.

And all because of the lying, bullying bastard his father had made armsmaster -

"Withen - "

He froze; startled completely out of his brooding by the sound of his mother's breathless, slightly shrill voice just beyond the tiny door to the library. He knelt slowly and carefully, avoiding the slightest noise. The last thing he wanted was to have his safe hiding place discovered!

"Withen, what is it you've dragged me up here to tell me that you couldn't have said in my solar?" she asked. Vanyel could tell by the edge in her voice that she was ruffled and not at all pleased.

Vanyel held his breath, and heard the sound of the library door being closed, then his father's heavy footsteps crossing the library floor.

A long, ponderous silence. Then, "I'm sending Vanyel away," Withen said, brusquely.

"What?" Treesa shrilled. "You - how - where - why? In the gods' names, Withen, why?"

Vanyel felt as if someone had turned his heart into stone, and his body into clay.

"I can't do anything with the boy, Treesa, and neither can Jervis," Withen growled. "I'm sending him to someone who can make something of him."

"You can't do anything because the two of you seem to think to 'make something of him' you have to force him to be something he can never be!" Treesa's voice was muffled by the intervening wall, but the note of hysteria was plain all the same. "You put him out there with a man twice his weight and expect him to - "

"To behave like a man! He's a sniveler, a whiner, Treesa. He's more worried about damage to his pretty face and delicate little hands than damage to his honor, and you don't help matters by making him the pet of the bower. Treesa, the boy's become nothing more than a popinjay, a vain little peacock - and worse than that, he's a total coward."

"A coward! Gods, Withen - only you would say that!" Lady Treesa's voice was thick with scorn. "Just because he's too clever to let that precious armsmaster of yours beat him insensible once a day!"

"So what does he do instead? Run off and hide because once - just once - he got his poor little arm broken! Great good gods, I'd broken every bone in my body at least once by the time I was his age!"

"Is that supposed to signify virtue?" she scoffed. "Or stupidity?"

Vanyel's mouth sagged open. She's - my gods! She's standing up to him! I don't believe this!

"It signifies the willingness to endure a little discomfort in order to learn," Withen replied angrily. "Thanks to you and your fosterlings, all Vanyel's ever learned was how to select a tunic that matches his eyes, and how to warble a love song! He's too damned handsome for his own good - and you've spoiled him, Treesa; you've let him trade on that pretty face, get away with nonsense and arrogance you'd never have permitted in Mekeal. And now he has no sense of responsibility whatsoever, he avoids even a hint of obligation."

"You'd prefer him to be like Mekeal, I suppose," she replied acidly. "You'd like him to hang on your every word and never question you, never challenge you - "

"Damned right!" Withen roared in frustration. "The boy doesn't know his damned place! Filling his head with book-learned nonsense - "

"He doesn't know his place? Because he can think for himself? Just because he can read and write more than his bare name? Unlike certain grown men I could name - gods, Withen, that priest of yours has you parroting every little nuance, doesn't he? And you're sending Van away because he doesn't measure up to his standards of propriety, aren't you? Because Vanyel has the intelligence to question what he's told, and Leren doesn't like questions!" Her voice reached new heights of shrillness. "That priest has you so neatly tied around his ankle that you wouldn't breathe unless he declared breathing was orthodox enough!"

- ah, Vanyel thought, a part of his mind still working, while the rest sat in stunned contemplation of the idea of being "sent away." Now Treesa's support had a rational explanation. Lady Treesa did not care for Father Leren. Vanyel was just a convenient reason to try to drive a wedge between Withen and his crony.

Although Vanyel could have told her that this was exactly the wrong way to go about doing so.

"I expected you'd say something like that," Withen rumbled. "You have no choice, Treesa, the boy is going, whether you like it or not. I'm sending him to Savil at the High Court. She'II brook no nonsense, and once he's in surroundings where he's not the only pretty face in the place he might learn to do something besides lisp a ballad and moon at himself in the mirror."

"Savil? That old harridan?" His mother's voice rose with each word until she was shrieking. Vanyel wanted to shriek, too.

He remembered his first - and last - encounter with his Aunt Savil only too well.

Vanyel had bowed low to the silver-haired stranger, a woman clad in impeccable Heraldic Whites, contriving his best imitation of courtly manner. Herald Savil - who had packed herself up at the age of fourteen and hied herself off to Haven without word to anyone, and then been Chosen the moment she passed the city gates - was Lissa's idol. Lissa had pestered Grandmother Ashkevron for every tale about Savil that the old woman knew. Vanyel couldn't understand why - but if Lissa admired this woman so much, surely there must be more to her than appeared on the surface.

It was a pity that Liss was visiting cousins the one week her idol chose to make an appearance at the familial holding.