Magic's Promise by Mercedes Lackey Page A

son, with habits we don't talk about, and tastes best politely ignored. Gods, when are they ever going to accept me for who I am ?
    :Perhaps never. Perhaps when you accept yourself, Chosen.:
    The unsolicited reply nettled him a little.
    :Perhaps,: she continued, :when you know who you are, and know it well enough that you can't be reduced to an adolescent just by riding through the gates.:
    He glanced down at Yfandes' ears, and then ahead, down the road to the destination that was causing him such discomfort. :Are you saying I don't know who I am ?:
    She didn't reply, but picked her pace up to a trot - the easy kind-and rounded the final curve and hill that brought them within sight of Forst Reach itself, bulking heavy and gray against the brilliant autumn sky.
    The building had once been a defensive keep, and still had something of that blocky, no - nonsense look about it. It had long since been renovated and converted into a dwelling far more comfortable, though even at this distance Vanyel could see the faint outline of the moat under the lush grass surrounding it. Surrounded as it was by newer, smaller outbuildings of whitewashed stucco, it resembled a vast and rather ill-natured gray granite hen squatting among a flock of paler chicks.
    Someone had been watching for him. Vanyel saw a small, fairly androgynous figure leave a position on a little rise beside the road and run toward the main building. It vanished somewhere in the vicinity of one of the old postern gates, which were now doors, and Vanyel assumed he (or she, though it was probably a page) had gone to tell the rest of the household that he had arrived. Heralds were distinctive enough to be spotted at any distance, and few enough that it would be safe to assume that any Herald coming to Forst Reach was going to be Vanyel.
    Sure enough, people began emerging from doors all over the building, and by the time Vanyel and Yfandes reached the main doors - impressive black oaken monstrosities that had been set into a frame in what had once been the gateway to the center court - there was a sizable group waiting for him.
    There was the usual babble of greetings - Treesa wept all over him, Withen gingerly clapped him on the shoulder, his brothers all followed Withen's example. There was the usual little dance when Withen told a page to “ take Vanyel's horse ” and Van- again- had to explain that Yfandes wasn't a horse, she was a Companion and his partner and that he would see to her. And as usual, Withen looked puzzled and skeptical, as if he was wondering if his son wasn't a bit daft.
    But Vanyel was firm - as usual - and got his way. Because if he hadn't insisted (and the first visit home, he hadn't) Yfandes would be stripped of tack and given a good rubdown, then locked into a stall like the “ valuable animal ” she seemed to Withen to be. Van hadn't known what had happened that time until she wistfully Mindspoke him at dinner, asking if he'd come let her out, since she couldn't reach the lock on the door of the stall.
    That night he had gone immediately down to the stable leaving his dinner half-eaten, and with profligate use of magic, created a new split door to the outside in one of the big loose boxes Withen used for mares in foal. Whenever he came home now, that stall was Yfandes', no matter if he had to move a mare out and scour it down to the wooden floor with his own two hands first. And no matter what sort of contrivance Withen had installed on the new door to keep it locked, Vanyel magicked it so that Yfandes could come and go as she pleased. Maybe Withen wondered why the box never had to be cleaned; certainly the stablehands did. But Withen never seemed to grasp that Yfandes was exactly what his son said she was; a brilliant, thinking, creative lady, with all of a great lady's manners and daintiness, who just happened to be living in a horse's body.
    Yfandes was still moderately amused. But Vanyel frequently thought that it was a good thing he'd never