Magic's Pawn (14 page)

But it was Literature - or rather, an event just before the Literature class - which truly deflated and defeated him.

He had been toying with the idea of petitioning one of the Bards to enroll him in their Collegium before he began the afternoon’s classes, but now he was doubtful of being able to survive the lessons.

Gods, I - I’m as pig-ignorant compared to these trainees as my cousins are compared to me,
he thought glumly, slumping in the chair nearest the door as he and the other two with him waited for the teacher of Literature to put in her appearance.
But
-
maybe this time. Lord of Light knows I’ve memorized every ballad I could ever get my hands on.

Then he overheard Bard Chadran talking out in the hallway with another Bard; presumably the teacher of this class. But when he heard his own name, and realized that they were talking about
him,
he stretched his ears without shame or hesitation to catch all that he could.

“ - so Savil wants us to take him if he’s got the makings,” Chadran was saying.

“Well, has he?” asked the second, a dark, sensuously female voice.

“Shanse’s heard him sing; says he’s got the voice and the hands for it, and I trust him on that,” said Chadran, hesitantly.

“But not the Gift?” the second persisted.

Chadran coughed. “I - didn’t hear any sign of it in class. And it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t compose, or we’d have heard about it. Shanse would have said something, or put it in his report, and he didn’t.”

“He has to have two out of three; Gift, Talent, and Creativity - you
know
that, Chadran,” said the woman. “Shanse didn’t see any signs of Gift either, did he?”

Chadran sighed. “No. Breda, when Savil asked me about this boy, I looked up Shanse’s report on the area. He
did
mention the boy, and he
was
flattering enough about the boy’s musicality that we could get him training as a minstrel if - “

“If-”

“If he weren’t his father’s heir. But the truth is, he said the boy has a magnificent ear, and aptitude for mimicry, and the talent. But no creativity, and no Gift. And that’s not enough to enroll someone’s heir as a mere minstrel. Still - Breda, love,
you
look for Gift. You’re better at seeing it than any of us. I’d really like to do Savil a favor on this one. She says the boy is set enough on music to defy a fairly formidable father - and we owe her a few.”

“I’ll try him,” said the woman, “But don’t get your hopes up. Shanse may not have the Gift himself, but he knows it when he hears it.”

Vanyel had something less than an instant to wonder what they meant by “Gift” before the woman he’d overheard entered the room. As tall as a man, thin, plain-she still had a
presence
that forced Vanyel to pay utmost attention to every word she spoke, every gesture she made.

“Today we’re going to begin the ‘Windrider’ cycle,” she said, pulling a gittern around from where it hung across her back. “I’m going to begin with the very first ‘Windrider’ ballad known, and I’m going to present it the way it should be dealt with. Heard, not read. This ballad was
never
designed to be read, and I’ll tell you the truth, the flaws present in it mostly vanish when it’s sung.”

She strummed a few chords, then launched into the opening to the “Windrider Unchained” - and he no longer wondered what the “Gift” could be.

Because she didn’t just
sing
- not like Vanyel would have sung, or even the minstrel (or, as he realized now, the
Bard)
Shanse would have. No - she made her listeners
experience
every word of the passage; to feel every emotion, to see the scene, to live the event as the originals must have lived it. When she finished, Vanyel knew he would never forget those words again.

And he knew to the depths of his soul that he would never be able to do what she had just done.

Oh, he tried; when she prompted him to sing the next Windrider ballad while she played, he gave it his best. But he could tell from the look in his fellow classmates’ eyes - interest, but
not
rapt fascination - that he hadn’t even managed a pale imitation.

As he sat down and she gestured to the next to take a ballad, he saw the pity in her eyes and the slight shake of her head - and knew then that
she
knew he’d overheard the conversation in the hallway. That this was her way of telling him, gently, and indirectly, that his dream could not be realized.

It was the pity that hurt the most, after the realization that he did not have the proper material to be a Bard. It cut - as cruelly as any blade. All that work - all that fighting to get his hand back the way it had been - and all for nothing. He’d never even had a hope.

Vanyel threw himself onto his bed, his chest aching, his head throbbing -

I
thought nothing would ever be worse than home - but at least I still had dreams. Now I don’t even have that.

The capper on the miserable day was his aunt, his competent, clever, selfless, damn-her-to-nine-hells aunt.

He flopped over onto his stomach, and fought back the sting in his eyes.

She’d pulled him aside right after dinner; “I asked the Bards to see if they could take you,” she’d said. “I’m sorry, Vanyel, but they told me you’re a very talented musician, but that’s all you’ll ever be. That’s not enough to get you into Bardic when you’re the heir to a holding.”

“But - “ he’d started to say, then clamped his mouth shut.

She gave him a sharp look. “I know how you probably feel, Vanyel, but your duty as Withen’s heir is going to have to come first. So you’d better resign yourself to the situation instead of fighting it.”

She watched him broodingly as he struggled to maintain his veneer of calm. “The gods know,” she said finally, “
I
stood in your shoes, once. I wanted the Holding - but I wasn’t firstborn son. And as things turned out, I’m glad I didn’t get the Holding. If you make the best of your situation, you may find one day that you wouldn’t have had a better life if you’d chosen it yourself.”

How could
she
know?
he fumed.
I
hate her. So help me, I hate her. Everything she does is so damned perfect! She never says anything, but she doesn’t have to; all she has to do is give me that
look.
If I hear one more word about how I ‘m supposed to
like
this trap that’s closed on me, I may go mad!

He turned over on his back, and brooded. It wasn’t even sunset - and he was stuck here with his lute staring down at him from the wall with all the broken dreams it implied.

And nothing to distract him. Or was there?

Dinner was over, but there were going to be people gathered in the Great Hall all night. And there were plenty of people his age there; young people who
weren’t
Bard trainees, nor Herald proteges. Ordinary young people, more like normal human beings.

He forgot all his apprehensions about being thought a country bumpkin; all he could think of now was the admiration his wit and looks used to draw at the infrequent celebrations that brought the offspring of several Keeps and Holdings together. He needed a dose of that admiration, and needed its sweetness as an antidote to the bitterness of failure.

He flung himself off the bed and rummaged in his wardrobe for an appropriately impressive outfit; he settled on a smoky gray velvet as suiting his mood and his flair for the dramatic.

He planned his entrance to the Great Hall with care; waiting until one of those moments that occur at any gathering of people where everyone seems to choose the same moment to stop talking. When that moment came, he seized it; pacing gracefully into the silence as if it had been created expressly to display
him.

It worked to perfection; within moments he had a little circle of courtiers of his own flocking about him, eager to impress the newcomer with their friendliness.

He basked in their attentions for nearly an hour before it began to pall.

A lanky youngster named Liers was waxing eloquent on the subject of his elder brother dealing with a set of brigands. Vanyel stifled a yawn; this was sounding
exactly
like similar evenings at Forst Reach!

“So he charged straight at them - “

“Which was a damn fool thing to do if you ask me,” Vanyel said, his brows creasing.

“But - it takes a
brave
man - “ the young man protested weakly.

“I repeat, it was a damn fool thing to do,” Vanyel persisted. “Totally outnumbered, no notion if the party behind him was coming in time - great good gods, the
right
thing to do would have been to turn tail and run! If he’d done it convincingly, he could have led them straight into the arms of his own troops! Charging off like that could have gotten him killed!”

“It worked,” Liers sulked.

“Oh, it worked all right, because nobody in his right mind would have done what he did!”

“It was the
valiant
thing to have done,” Liers replied, lifting his chin.

Vanyel gave up; he didn’t dare alienate these younglings. They were all he had -

“You’re right, Liers,” he said, hating the lie. “It was a valiant thing to have done.”

Liers smiled in foolish satisfaction as Vanyel made more stupid remarks; eventually Vanyel extricated himself from
that
little knot of idlers and went looking for something more interesting.

The fools were as bad as his brother; he could
not,
would
never
get it through their heads that there was nothing “romantic” about getting themselves hacked to bits in the name of Valdemar or a lady. That there was nothing uplifting about losing an arm or a leg or an eye. That there was nothing,
nothing
“glorious” about warfare.

As soon as he turned away from the male contingent, the female descended upon him in a chattering flock; flirting, coquetting, each doing her best to get Variyel’s attention settled on
her.
It was exactly the same playette that had been enacted over and over in his mother’s bower; there were more players, and the faces were both different and often prettier, but it was the identical seript.

Vanyel was bored.

But it was marginally better than being lectured by Savil, or longing after the Bards and the Gift he never would have.

“ - Tylendel,” said the pert little brunette at his elbow, with a sigh of disappointment.

“What about Tylendel?” Vanyel asked, his interest, for once, caught.

“Oh, Tashi is in love with Tylendel’s big brown eyes,” laughed another girl, a tall, pale-complected redhead.

“Not a chance, Tashi,” said Reva, who was flushed from a little too much wine.

She giggled. “You haven’t a chance. He’s - what’s that word Savil uses?”

“Shay’a’chern,”
supplied Cress. “It’s some outland tongue.”

“What’s it mean?” Vanyel asked.

Reva giggled, and whispered, “That he doesn’t like girls. He likes boys. Lucky boys!”

“For Tylendel I’d turn into a boy!” Tashi sighed, then giggled back at her friend. “Oh. what a waste! Are you sure?”

“Sure as stars,” Reva assured her. “Only just last year he broke his heart over that bastard Nevis.”

Vanyel suppressed his natural reaction of astonishment. Didn’t - like girls. He knew at least that the youngling courtiers used “like” synonymously with “bedding.” But - didn’t “like” girls? “Liked” boys?

He’d known he’d been sheltered from some things, but he’d never even guessed about this one.

Was this why Withen –

“Nevis - wasn’t he the one who couldn’t make up his mind
which
he liked and claimed he’d been seduced every time he crawled into somebody’s bed?” Tashi asked in rapt fascination.

“The very same,” Reva told her. “I am
so
glad his parents called him home!”

They were off into a dissection of the perfidious Nevis then, and Vanyel lost interest. He drifted around the Great Hall, but was unable to find anything or anyone he cared to spend any time with. He drank a little more wine than he intended, but it didn’t help make the evening any livelier, and at length he gave up and went to bed.

He lay awake for a long time, skirting the edges of the thoughts he’d had earlier. From the way the girls had giggled about it, it was pretty obvious that Tylendel’s preferences were something short of “respectable.” And Withen -

Oh, he knew now what Withen would have to say about it if he knew that his son was even sharing the same quarters as Tylendel.

All those times he went after me when I was tiny, for hugging and kissing Meke. That business with Father Leren and the lecture on ‘ ‘proper masculine behavior.’’ The fit he had when Liss dressed me up in her old dresses like an overgrown doll. Oh, gods.

Suddenly the reasons behind a great many otherwise inexplicable actions on Withen’s part were coming clear.

Why he kept shoving girls at me, why he bought me that - professional. Why he kept arranging for friends of Mother’s with compliant daughters to visit. Why he hated seeing me in fancy clothing. Why some of the armsmen would go quiet when I came by
-
why some of the jokes would just
stop.
Father didn’t even want a hint of this to get to me.