Last week, I bunched up the happy chapters. Van and Tylendel talked more in those three chapters than Talia and Dirk did in three books. They’ve been so happy and sweet.
Their relationship has been especially good for Vanyel, who was able to relax and feel loved, which, in addition to being nice for him and Tylendel, dramatically improved his relationship with his aunt. I’m unwilling to objectify teenage characters, but the half-naked man-wrestling was pretty cute.
Yeah, that’s over now.
Now we need to look at that fourth letter from the beginning of chapter seven. Not right away, of course. First, we should look at the touching scene where Tylendel persuades Vanyel to play for him, and tells Vanyel that his gift for music isn’t wasted because he lacks the Bardic Gift of manipulating an audience’s emotions. In a lot of YA literature, protagonists handle their issues by acting like they’re thirty. Van and Tylendel are not generally so mature. I love that, on the only occasion that Tylendel transcends his adolescence, he does it to bring Vanyel this moment of healing, to counter Vanyel’s sense of inadequacy and show him that he’s worthy of love. Tragically, Tylendel’s case of adolescence will be terminal.
Re-reading Vanyel is hard on the soul. I’ve spent the last week preparing for this blog post through acts of self-care. I’m all about chocolate and comfortable socks. Still, I feel like I’m running an obstacle course. Last week, we warmed up over a broken arm, some crushed dreams, a scary forest, ice nightmares, and an alarming prostitute. This week we’re doing the live-fire exercise with some murders, the only Renunciation in Valdemaran history, two suicides, and one attempted suicide. I don’t remember feeling relentlessly slammed the first time I read this, probably because I didn’t know what was coming. People, Vanyel doesn’t die until the end of book three. We’re looking at a trilogy that contains easily 2.5 solid books’ worth of the Traumapocalypse.
Vanyel’s fourth letter is from Evan Leshara, a representative of the family that is embroiled in a feud with Tylendel’s family. Leshara was misled by the previous chapter’s fake fight, and thinks that Vanyel may be a partisan to the Leshara’s cause. Tylendel explains the underlying issues in detail—these families have been tormenting each other in creative ways for a long time. You’ll hardly notice, because Tylendel’s brother Staven is killed almost immediately after Lendel’s family history lesson. Like many fictional twins, Tylendel and his brother are psychically linked. And if there’s one thing you can count on Mercedes Lackey to do, it’s demonstrate the downside of a psychic link. Tylendel’s reaction to his brother’s death is essentially a Mage-powered grand mal seizure followed by magical backlash that leaves Tylendel comatose.
Rather than calling in a Healer to assess Tylendel’s physical and emotional state, Savil decides that the best treatment for this is the tender loving care of his teenage boyfriend. Consequently, Tylendel’s significant psychological problems go undetected until shortly after he’s used Vanyel to power a magical Gate to the Leshara estate and unleashed some creepy demonic dogs in revenge for his brother’s death. Gala repudiates him and then sacrifices herself to protect the Leshara. Then, Savil and some other Heralds ride through the Gate (still powered by Vanyel) to clean up the mess and bring the boys home. But when Savil tries to take the Gate down, its energy surges back in to Vanyel. In the chaos, Tylendel throws himself off the temple in the Companions’ Grove. While the Death Bell tolls, Vanyel disappears.
Vanyel is found, and Chosen, by the Companion Yfandes, who puts Shields around him while they are in physical contact. This is vitally necessary because the energy from Tylendel’s Gate blasted open the channels of Vanyel’s potential, and he now has All The Gifts. There isn’t a channel full of potential emotional stability, though, so Vanyel’s powers pose a serious risk to himself and others. An overheard thought drives Vanyel to attempt suicide. His nightmares are dangerous to people who try to wake him up. His uncontrolled Empathy makes half the students at the Collegium depressed. Vanyel does manage to reach a resolution with his father, by emerging from a drugged stupor just enough to punch him. Withen’s visit to Haven was triggered by news about Van and Tylendel, but he seems genuinely alarmed by Vanyel’s condition.
Through a combination of shielding Vanyel, strengthening his bond with Yfandes, and drugging him, Savil and Andrel the Healer get Vanyel well enough to travel to k’Treva Vale, to be trained by the Hawkbrothers. Next week’s blog post on chapters 11-14 will have more hot springs and fewer deaths.
Ellen Cheeseman-Meyer teaches history and reads a lot.
Nope, still not over it.
Aren’t the creepy demonic dog things actually some evil mage’s orc-like things, that we’ll see in the Winds and Gryphon books?
First thing I have to say is that I never cry while reading books. I love reading, but the printed word does not have the power to affect me that way. Yet I was sobbing like a baby throughout this entire section, one of only two times that has happened to me. So pardon the wall of text, but I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about this section.
First, I HATE Tylendel. Any sympathy I might have felt for him for losing his twin went right out the window when he reacted to it by using his lover as a living battery to summon a bunch of demons to eat innocent people. Despite what is said in “Brightly Burning,” I think Gala was absolutely right to repudiate him the way she did. As for what he did to Vanyel…I know Vaneyl “consented” to helping him, but I don’t think Vanyel really understood what he was consenting to. Tylendel is flat-out evil here, and his trauma doesn’t come close to justifying it.
Second, Jacen (apologies if I’m misspelling it, it’s been 10 years since I’ve read the book) is almost as awful here. Like Tylendel, he reacts to a tragedy by trying to commit murder in revenge; the difference is only a matter of degree. He proposes that Vanyel should be left attached to the gate until it drained his life completely, attempted murder morally if not legally. Then, he lets Vanyel hear his thoughts about how it would be so much better if Vanyel died. That might be forgivable if he were some random butler or stable boy, but he’s not: he’s a Herald-Mage, someone who’s supposed to have mastered shielding his thoughts. At the very least, it was inexcusable negligence. At worst, it was another attempt to kill Vanyel by deliberately driving him to suicide. First time I read this, I thought Jacen’s companion should have followed Gala’s example and given him the middle hoof.
Finally, we have Savil. Her sins are more of omission rather than comission in this section, so I’m more forgiving of her than of Tylendel and Jacen, but she’s still awfully stupid. First, as you pointed out she should have gotten Tylendel help from a Healer, whether he wanted it or not. Maybe it would have done some good, maybe not, but at least she should have tried. Second, and more important from my teenage perspective, she should NEVER have left Vanyel–her emotionally and phyically scarred teenage nephew who’s just lost his lifebonded and gained telepathy in the same hour–alone under the care of someone who’s already proposed leaving him to die. Savil, WTF?
So in short, we’re putting Vanyel through every trauma possible here, convincing him that it’s his fault, and the Heralds–those paragons of virtue that the “Arrows” books convinced us were infailable–actively or passively making everything worse. No wonder I needed half a box of kleenex just to get through this.
A lot of the unbelievable stuff is because plot. But a larger question – aren’t the “demons” not demons but really constructs (wyrsa)? And if so, where did Tylendel summon them from? They live in the Pelegir Hills.
Or was this a retcon?
Thinking about it and to defend Tyl, I’m inclined to interpret Gala’s “You are not my Chosen” statement literally. That Tyl wasn’t himself when he went all vengeance demon on the Leshara. I find this headcannon particularly useful given how reincarnation works in Valdemar. I posit there was a disconnect between Tyendel/Stefan’s essential self (soul?) and the self that’s Tyl’s driver’s seat. It’s less about evil and more about broken. Of course that dumps more of the responsibility on the grown-up Heralds, but since their twin wasn’t just murdered, I don’t feel a need to cut them any slack.
@3 Wyrsa! That’s the name I was thinking of. I don’t know if they were always supposed to be them or not, but the description is the same.
I first read these books long enough ago that I don’t recall my preteen reactions towards Tylendel, but on rereading this time I have to agree with Lsana. I almost wonder if Tylendel suffered a psychotic break in the aftermath of his twin’s death, though you’d think Gala would have picked up on that, even if he is shutting her out. (And shutting her out means that he was sane enough to know that what he was doing was wrong…)
But the way Tylendel uses Vanyel is cold and calculating and utterly cruel. He doesn’t inform Vanyel of all the risks of using him as a battery, he doesn’t tell him the plan to MURDER INNOCENT PEOPLE, and he makes no plans for Vanyel to escape in the aftermath, even assuming the revenge succeeded. I think he probably intended to die and for Vanyel to die with him. After all, he was the only good thing in Vanyel’s life, right? So–adolescent, yes, sure, but maybe also adolescent sociopath.
(Vanyel is an idiot for going along with it without asking questions, for not trying to drag Tylendel back to sanity or even reporting on him. But that’s a very teenage kind of idiocy, and Vanyel has also been culturally conditioned to believe that Whatever a Herald Does Is Right.)
@2, regarding Jacen – I think you’re missing the key third possibility, that as a Herald, a person who is supposed to be thinking for the good of the Kingdom and its ordinary citizens, Jacen should maybe not be having that kind of crap thought in the first place. Or, because you sometimes think things that aren’t nice even when you know you shouldn’t, some part of Heraldic training should include some kind self-imposed conditioning to notice and check yourself when you start thinking that way – so that IF Vanyel heard Jacen’s “it would be easier if he just died” thought, he also heard a very loud follow-on thought of “OMG I cannot believe I just thought that when the central precept of my entire life is that every person is important.” Or a mental whack upside the head from his Companion.
I agree with those who have suggested that Tylendel had a psychotic break. That’s the best possible explanation for the whole thing – Tylendel should never have been Chosen if he was ordinarily capable of doing what he did, but the circumstances were certainly not ordinary, in ways that made him essentially a new person. If he’d had a chance to live past that incident (or, even better, a chance to heal without having that incident) he might well have returned to being the better person he presumably once was.
The overall impression left by this section is that people are Chosen to be Heralds because they have phenomenal powers, and not because they would in any way be good at the job as described.
@6, you said: The overall impression left by this section is that people are Chosen to be Heralds because they have phenomenal powers, and not because they would in any way be good at the job as described.
That’s actually a really good point, and not one I’d previously considered: Do we ever run into people in Valdemar with strong Gifts who aren’t Chosen? I recall the mad weather-witch from Arrow’s Flight, but I’m not sure I can think of any others. (Perhaps I’m just not well-read enough in the Valdemaran corpus.) Are there Heralds who have no Gifts at all, not even weak ones? In other words, are the Companions Choosing all the Gifted people, and only the Gifted people in Valdemar?
In which case, perhaps the “Heralds are Perfect People” thing comes not because Heralds are innately better people, but because they presumably have Companions who are generally able to read their minds and act as a check on their worse impulses. The Companions Choose ordinary people who have Gifts, and then make them better by training, expectations, and constant oversight.
@7, I really hope there are ungifted Healers. In a perfect world, I’m imagining a system where Healers with Gifts are distributed for use in imaging and oncology, and ordinary people who care a lot sweat their butts off to learn how to Heal people without any kind of magic, sort of the way we heal people out here in the real world.
@6 Yes, if you read the whole series, there’s an overall theme that Companions Choose those with at least latent Gifts who have the right moral core to be Heralds. The bond strengthens those Gifts, so pretty much all Heralds have at least a trace of a usable Gift after training, even if it’s weak (although in practice it seems like nearly all of them have at least some Mindspeech because plot, although Talia is a notable exception). Probably there are a number of people not Chosen who have latent Gifts that are never expressed.
If that weren’t true, and everyone with a hint of a Gift is Chosen, then eventually you’d be culling the Gifts out of the general population, because Heralds don’t tend to marry or form relationships with non-Heralds, and their duty, with the exception of the royal line, tends to preclude having children (although Vanyel clearly managed it, but mostly by being a sperm donor for a close friend, and I think Talia had children too, but as Queen’s Own, she’s generally not out in the field).
There are also clearly going to be some people with Gifts that are not Chosen, either because they don’t have the right moral core (in which case they might go rogue if their Gifts activate, although this doesn’t seem to happen very often), or because they have a more important Gift – in particular, the Healing Gift generally supercedes any regular Heraldic Gift because it’s rarer and more needed – see the Owl-Mage trilogy where Keisha, as an apprentice Healer, actually refuses being Chosen in favor of her sister.
I think, though, more than even the guidance of the Companions themselves, there’s some evidence that the “gods” or the Havens provide needed Gifts. Some Heralds comment that Gifts tend to appear when they are needed, and more Heralds are Chosen when more will be needed to defend against a threat. So while it’s somewhat unbelievable, it’s not really impossible to think that the Heraldic Gifts are generally given to those that will grow up to be Chosen, and those that aren’t Chosen never have more than latent abilities.
That doesn’t explain the Healing Gift though (or Bardic, but while that’s still “magic” in the sense of being beyond normal human capability, it doesn’t have the profound effects on other people that the Heraldic or Healing Gifts can). Healers aren’t regulated by Companions. Yet someone with that kind of ability to manipulate the human body could probably be rather devastating with it if he wanted to be. It’s sort of handwaved by having all the Healers we meet have a desire to help people similar to the Heralds’ desire to help people, but that doesn’t explain why we never see any rogue Healers (except for a couple of vague references to possibly-deliberate plagues, but the implication, if any, is that a real mage from out-kingdom did it, because Real Magic (TM) can apparently do practically anything, if Ma’ar is any indication).
I think it’s worth pointing out almost no one’s in good position to make clear-headed decisions in these chapters. I don’t remember how Savil responded to the death of Tylendel’s twin, so she might not have an excuse for her actions. I also don’t remember what’s the mythos around lifebonds are at this point. They might have been operating under the assumption that “love conquers all” without realizing that Vanyel’s and Tylendel’s traumas were going to interact so badly.
Which brings me around to the point that I should probably reread this series to see how it deals with trauma and survivors as compared to Elizabeth Bear or Sarah Monette’s work. Nuance is not one of Misty’s strong points but it would be interesting. I’m not going to because there isn’t enough chocolate in the world for that.
Well, not all Gifted people are Chosen – there was that weather-witch in “Arrow’s Flight”, who clearly had very strong Foresight, and at some point it is mentioned in the books that there were also some people with it in the clergy.
Why we never heard about Gifts being misused in Valdemar I have no idea. Or used for personal gain, for that matter. Not everybody born with a Gift would be suitable for being a Herald, after all. And yes, being Chosen helps some of the potential Gifts to activate, but it is not a requirement.
There are certainly enough villainous foreign mages encountered in other Velgrath books, and that lone Mindspeaker, too.
Logically, all mages who were born in Valdemar during the centuries of Vanyel’s “wonderful” magic-embargo, and whose Gift became active must have been driven mad, too.
BTW, the whole “more people being Chosen in preparation for calamities thing” isn’t really divine intervention as such, but the result of another of Vanyel’s spells, which collates all of Heraldic and Companion predictive abilities and directs them accordingly.
Re: the whole thing with Tylendel – one of the things which sticks with me in the whole thing is this: the story of Vanyel happens approximately half-way through the “lifetime” of the kingdom of Valdemar, and one of the things which becomes apparent is the way the Heralds have only just become a major force in the kingdom by that time. The Collegium is described as being brand spanking new, and the Heralds and their apprentices are rattling around in it like peas in a drum. Heck, there aren’t even formal classes for the new trainees on the Herald side yet – they’re all on the apprenticeship system. So when we’re looking at the conduct of the Heralds in Vanyel’s era, we’re looking at a different cultural and social context to the one Talia grew up in.
(Worth noting: at this time they don’t have a core piece of what might be termed “infrastructure” that exists in Talia’s time – the formalised system which advises the Companions of who to Choose and pings the Heralds about weird events happening isn’t in place yet. It doesn’t get put in place until about the second book of this particular series, if I’m remembering correctly – it’s effectively Vanyel’s magical Adept piece. Prior to this, it’s very much informal and ad hoc, and depended very strongly on a Herald knowing about a situation).
The second thing to note is that the whole thing was genuinely unprecedented in the history of Valdemar, and in the history of the Heralds and the Companions. So it isn’t surprising things got done wrong – this isn’t something they’d drilled in. There was literally nothing to compare things against, and nothing to work with. This event, in many ways, set the precedents for a lot of future ones.
Tylendel was noted as being an oddity among the Herald-mage trainees, both for being gay, and for having the strong combination of gifts he had. He was also unusual for being a twin (and a twin whose sibling hadn’t been Chosen, which was apparently unusual enough that Savil specifically raises it as a reason why Tylendel should dissociate himself from his brother and family). He was further unusual in that his family was involved in a (highly contentious) feud with some others, to the extent this feud was probably a factor in the lateness of Tylendel’s Choosing (it’s implied his mage gift came very early, and he was effectively wrecking the household for a period of years prior to Gala Choosing him). It is implied (by the way Savil is being coached in putting Tylendel through therapy) that Tylendel’s degree of attachment to his twin and his consequent attachment to the family and feud dynamics is also highly unusual, and possibly toxic. I find myself wondering whether Gala wasn’t a fairly young Grove-born Companion[1] born to Choose Tylendel in an effort to salvage him.
Further, the attack which killed Tylendel’s twin happened at a time when Tylendel was deliberately in contact with his twin – a regularly scheduled mind-link, where Tylendel had deliberately dropped his shields to a certain extent to facilitate communication. Tylendel was quite literally there in his mind as his twin died, and the backlash was at least part of what caused the siezure. It seems likely the siezure and the magical backlash could have caused a certain degree of brain injury, and we’re only just starting to recognise the degree to which these can affect personality and behaviour.
So there’s this one very unusual person, in extremely unusual circumstances, who has effectively been pulled into the Heralds as what can best be described as a salvage effort, at the core of the whole mess. One of the things Savil was hoping was that Vanyel’s bond with Tylendel would actually prevent Tylendel from going rogue. The problem is, Savil tends to be very much along the same lines as her brother Withen (Vanyel’s father) when it comes to emotional intelligence. She’s a practical sort at heart, and has enough trouble recognising her own emotions, much less the dynamics of anyone else’s emotional relationship. So she forgot an important piece of information she’d observed earlier (namely that Tylendel was the dominant, leading partner in the relationship), and didn’t have the emotional context to recognise Vanyel was still far too dependent on Tylendel’s friendship and caring to be able to seriously oppose him in any way. I suspect Savil also wasn’t emotionally intelligent or experienced enough to recognise the difference between grief and psychosis in the way Tylendel was acting.
It’s interesting to note how this whole clusterfsck (and the later one surrounding Lavan Firestarter) actually influenced a lot of what was going on in the Collegium in Talia’s time. One thing which can be said for the Heralds is that they learn from their mistakes, and take steps to ensure past problems won’t repeat themselves in exactly the same fashion.
[1] It’s pointed out later (in the Mage Winds series, I think) that the Grove-born Companions are “new souls”, as opposed to the ones who are born as a result of Companion breeding, who are generally reincarnations. As such, the younger Grove-born tend to be fallible.
@12, Gala wouldn’t have to be a young Grove-born companion to be fallible, she could be a reincarnated Herald and still be plenty fallible. It seems to me that we see Companions make all kinds of mistakes, regardless of experience level.
It’s interesting to me, governmentally, that the local equivalent of law enforcement is aware of Tylendel’s family feud and hasn’t put a stop to things. On circuit, Talia jumps right into a feud, because you have to put a stop to that crap before someone poisons a well, so Heralds have quite possibly internalized that lesson somehow by that point (oh, and the last Mags book was all about a family feud), but it’s a sort of obvious lesson, yeah? And the laws against murder should be worth enforcing.
Which, I guess, is the problem with having law enforcement that stops by every 9 months. Forensic investigation and so on do not get a lot of play in that environment.
@@@@@ 8. RiceVermicelli
There are indeed ungifted healers, there is a clear distiction made between those with herb craft and those with healing gifts, and there is more than one kind of healing gift, mention is made of the rarity of mind healers in some of the short stories. To reference Keisha in the Owl trilogy again while she does have a healing gift her initial mentor has such a minor gift that he can’t help her learn about her gift, although he does help her learn about herb craft as using that where possible is advisable even for those with a gift because the energy for a healing comes from the healer.
Bards and Healers are Gifted but not Chosen. The Weatherwitch was also Gifted but not Chosen. Her Gift emerged following the traumatic death of her child, but she would have had potential that a bond with a Companion could have developed. So either she was otherwise not Herald material, or Companions don’t see any point in knowing the weather. Once she regained her sanity, she was being trained by a local priestess, so perhaps there are more Gifted in Valdemaran religious orders.
@2 – Before Vanyel tried to kill himself, Savil tells him that if she had known what Tylendel witnessed when his brother died, they would have had a court case that would have ended the feud. That would have been great information for Tylendel to have. Maybe more of his education should have focused on the legal process, and less on esoteric explanations of why he shouldn’t love his brother. So I’m with you, there, in re. Savil and Jaysen (who advised Savil on helping Lendel handle his family issues, in addition to everything else).
“I do not know you. You are not my Chosen.” Oh god, Gala, BREAK MY HEART why don’t you.
I think I’m split on Tylendel’s ultimate nature. A psychotic break seems likely, and yet… One of the first times we meet him, Savil’s talking to him about the whole twin thing, and she’s terrified beyond all measure. He gets incredibly angry, and Savil thinks at least two or three times about how she’s still trembling from it, even much later in the conversation. And then Van, when he links minds with Tylendel, is also surprised at the amount of anger he has. So… it looks like serious anger issues may have precipitated his psychotic break. Honestly, their relationship reads as abusive as soon as Van’s thinking, “I just want to help him with this one thing, so we can go back to normal.” And then how Ty used Van, and abandoned him as soon as they got there, with Van collapsing? Not cool man.
re: Jaysen, Van heard Jays’ thoughts and also thoughts from basically everyone in his rather large range. And they all blamed him, for some reason. I guess the whole “Oh we were faking it thing” didn’t really get around to any of the Heralds, even though it should have after the seizure thing. But then they all seem to have expected Van to be a hell of a lot more mature than most 16yo are. That’s why it was so huge.