It was the image of the Swarm shredding cushions, furnishings, and tapestries that interested him now; an image he sent swiftly to Savil, who seized on it with an exclamation. Jervis raised his eyebrow.

“We think we may have an explanation for all the destruction,” Vanyel explained absently, as he and Savil conferred in Mindspeech. “It's complicated, and there's a lot of 'ifs' and 'buts.' It may take us a while to unravel them, but the explanation fits the current evidence.”

Jervis just shook his head. “If that's magery, then it's too much for me, Van,” he said, yawning. “I'll leave that to you. I'll just show you that room and let you deal with it, eh?”

“I'll do that,” Vanyel replied, then turned his mind to looking for the traces that would tell him what kind of things had torn the hall to shreds-because that would tell him a great deal about how strong the enemy was - and importantly, might even give a clue as to who.

But in the end, he and Savil sought their beds without any answers but one. How strong was very. Adept at least.

Because the traces that would have distinguished what the trap-spell had unleashed had been skillfully wiped away. All that remained was the heavily camouflaged spell itself (which only an Adept could have detected under the camouflage) and the bare traces of magic that had alerted them in the first place.

Jervis and Tashir were already asleep when they gave up.

“Sleep?” he asked Savil, hoping she'd answer in the affirmative.

“We might as well. We aren't going to get anything more tonight.” She stretched once, and began burrowing into her blankets, practically radiating exhaustion. Vanyel realized then what kind of strain she was under - all this complicated, involved sorcery, and maintaining her position as the Web's Eastern Guardian. He resolved to take more of the burden from her as soon as he could. This was not fair to her, nor was it good for her.

I wonder if there's a way to tie all the Heralds into the Web, as power-source at least. That would take fully half the burden off the Guardians.

“Want me to put out the candles?” he asked, glancing around at the burning tapers still bedecking corners of the kitchen.

She opened one eye thoughtfully. “No. Just leave them, if you would. It isn't as if we need to hoard them, and I don't think I want to go to sleep in darkness for a while.”

Vanyel thought it over a moment, and nodded. “You know what, teacher-mine?” he said softly. “Neither do I.”

She chuckled wearily, and closed her eyes again. “Absurd, isn't it? Here we are, two of the ranking Herald-Mages in Valdemar - afraid of the dark.''

He wrapped himself up in his own blankets. “If you promise not to tell anyone, I won't either.”

A light snore was his only answer, and he fell asleep with the comforting glow of the candles all about them.

The tiny room vibrated with power.

It was a round room; stone-walled and wooden-floored-and-ceilinged. The walls were pale sandstone, the rest pale birch. The pillar of stone clearly reached higher than the ceiling and lower than the floor. And the room, with barely enough space to walk around the dark pillar was, very clearly, set up with permanent shields, like those in the communal magic Work Room at the Palace in Haven. Small wonder neither he nor Savil had detected this artifact before. Vanyel set a cautious hand to the pillar of charcoal-gray, highly polished stone, as Tashir and Jervis watched him curiously. It was warm, not cool, and felt curiously alive.

And very familiar.

This was a Tayledras heart-stone. The Vale of k'Treva had such a stone, a place where the physical, material valley itself merged and melded with the energy-node and intersection of power-flows “below” it. Such a stone was the physical manifestation of the energies fueling the Tayledras magics, and this physical manifestation was peculiarly vulnerable to tampering. So the heart-stones were guarded jealously - and always deactivated when Tayledras left a place.

This one should not be here, except, perhaps, as a dead relic of former inhabitants. It should not be alive, and more, responding to his touch, physical and magical, upon it.

“This -” he faltered, and pulled his hand away with a wrench. “Jervis, you were right. This is not something I would expect here. I'm going to have to Mindtouch it.”

“Anything we can do to help?” the armsmaster asked quietly.

“To tell you the truth, I'd rather you took Tashir out to the Great Hall to see if you can help him remember,” Vanyel said, trying to keep the fascination of the heart - stone from recapturing him. “There isn't much you can help me with, and you two being here would be a little distracting. But if you'd poke your nose in here from time to time -”

“Anything I should watch for?”

“Well,” Vanyel replied wryly, “if I'm turning blue, that's probably a sign something's wrong. Other than that, trust your own judgment.”

Jervis' answering laugh was gruff, and sounded a little like churning gravel, but it proved that of the four of them, he was the one least affected by their macabre surroundings. “All right, let me take the boy out, and we'll see if we can make some progress.”

“Thanks.” And thank you, Jervis, that we can trust each other now. I don't think I could be doing this otherwise. Without waiting to see them go, Vanyel turned back to the stone pillar, and placed both palms and his forehead against it -

And it took him into itself.

For a very long time he was conscious only of the incredible, seething maelstrom of the energy-node itself. It was like plunging into the heart of the sun, and yet remaining curiously unscathed and untouched. It was different from tapping into the node; there he was outside, separate from the energy he sought to control, and he was dealing with a single, thin stream of force. Now he was a part of the force, with no intent - or chance - to control it. But control was not what he wanted; he wanted only observation, and answers.

But to have an answer, one must first ask a question. He framed it in his mind, carefully inserting all the nuances into it he could.

In words, it would have been a simple, “Who left this here?” In thought it was infinitely more complex than that; asking “who” specifically, and “who” as a class. The heart-stone was not an intelligence, but it remembered. And every question that was balanced by an answer would call that answer out of the stone. Vanyel got a very clear picture of Tayledras Adepts; several of them, all of them radiating great power, including one with the peculiar blue-green aura of the rare Healer-Adept. That particular Adept was much clearer, and lingered longer in the mind, and the implication was that it was this Healer-Adept that was responsible for having left both stone and node still in their active state.

If Vanyel could have started with surprise, he would have. Although they could, and on occasion did, act as ordinary Healers, Tayledras Healer-Adepts concerned themselves with Healing, not people, but environments. At restoring the balance nature had intended. At Healing the hurts that either magic or the hand of man had dealt there. That a Healer-Adept would have deemed it necessary to leave this potentially disastrously-dangerous energy source in lands soon to be settled by ordinary humans - that seemed to indicate that there was a terrible need that overrode all other considerations.

“Why?” he asked, urgently.

And felt himself being drawn down - deeper - below the bedrock, and into the roots of the earth itself. And he realized with a shock that the pillar was that deeply rooted, too.

There was tension here, a tension that increased as he went deeper, a vast pressure to either side of him that squeezed him until he could scarcely breathe. And still the force that had seized him to answer his question drew him deeper, and deeper still, to a point where the rock began to warm about him.