Magic's Promise by Mercedes Lackey

other time he'd made his trips home - though he always left much faster than he arrived. . . .
    But he stopped Yfandes before they had traveled more than a candlemark, while fog still wreathed the undergrowth and it was dark beneath the silent trees. The air was damp-smelling, with the tang of rotting leaves, and a hint of muskiness. No birds sang, and nothing rustled the fallen leaves underfoot or the branches overhead. This forest was always quiet, but this morning it was too quiet,
    “ Something's wrong, ” he said, straightening in his saddle, and pulling his cloak a little tighter around his shoulders.
    :I can feel it, too,: Yfandes agreed, :but it's very subtle.:
    This forest-unnamed, so far as he knew - had frightened him to the point of near-hysteria the first time he'd traveled this road. Now he knew why; there was magic here, old magic of the kind that the Tayledras used, that they frequently drained off in order to weaken it, and open the lands to more ''normal ” human settlements The kind of magic that made the Pelagir Hills the changeling-haunted places they were. Anyone with so much as the potential for the Mage-Gift could feel enough to make them unhappy and uncomfortable.
    But this magic had been dormant for a very long time.
    “ I'm going to probe, ” he said, and closed his eyes going in, then opening out -
    The magic was still there, but it lay even deeper below the fabric of the forest than it had the last time he had passed this way. Now that his Gift was fully trained, he could even see the traces that told him it had been drained by the Tayledras at least twice, which meant it should be “ safe. ” The Hawkbrothers never left wild magic behind when they abandoned an area.
    But that draining and abandonment had been long ago - very long ago.
    Yes, the magic still slept, deeper than the taproots or the trees and harder to reach - but it slept uneasily. All magic was akin, and all magic touched all other magic - an affinity that made the Gate-spell possible. But close proximity meant stronger ties to magics that neighbored one another; disturbance to one site frequently disturbed another.
    Vanyel could feel that disturbance in the magics here A resonance with another pole of power at a distance - probably across the Border, and most probably in Baires given that the ruling family was composed of mages Something somewhere was powerfully warping kindred magic fields, and this field housed in the forest was resonating to that disturbance, like a lute string resonating to a touch on the one beside it.
    But it was too far away, and the resonances too tenuous, for Vanyel to determine who was causing it, or where it originated, or even what was being done. Although -
    Vanyel brought himself up out of his scanning-trance, and bit his lip in thought.
    “ 'Fandes, did you get anything? ”
    :No more than you,: she replied uneasily, resuming her pace without his prompting.   - .Except - the root of all this is evil.:
    “ And I know better than to ask you to probe anything I can't reach. But I don't like it either. I like it even less now, with the Border uneasy. It makes me wonder if someone is forcing an issue - and if so, what, and to what end? ”
    :Tell Lissa. That's all you can do for now.:
    He glanced uneasily to either side of him. “ I'm afraid you're right, ladylove, ” he agreed. “ I am afraid you're only too right. ”
     

Four
    Despite everything he'd told himself, despite being adult and with experiences behind him Withen could not even imagine, Vanyel felt his shoulders beginning to knot with anxiety the moment he crossed the gate marking the edge of the Forst Reach lands. By the time he rode through the gate in the wall that surrounded the Great House of the estate, he was fighting to keep himself from hunching down in the saddle like a sullen, frightened child.
    It never changes. Outside these walls I may be a Herald-Mage who can admonish the King himself; inside I'm Vanyel, prodigal