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none at all on the third. I can't see how we'II ever fill it.
    The hall was so quiet he could hear the murmur of voices from one of the farther suites without straining his ears at all. A quick Look gave him identities; Savil and Jays. He paused for a moment and sent the tentative little mind - probe on ahead of him that was the Thought - sensing equivalent of a knock on the door, and got a wave of welcome from both minds before he had taken two steps.
    Now sure of his reception - and that he wasn't interrupting anything - he crossed the remaining distance to Savil's door and pushed it open.
    Savil, her silver hair braided like a coronet on the top of her head, was enthroned in her favorite chair, a huge, blue monstrosity as comfortable as it was ugly. Tall Jaysen (who always looked bleached, somehow) was half-sprawled on her couch, but he rose at Vanyel's entrance- then did a double take, and staggered back a step, hand theatrically clutched to his chest.
    “ My heart! ” he choked. “ Savil, look at your nephew! Barefoot, shaggy - headed, and shabby! Where in Havens has our peacock gone? ”
    “ He got lost somewhere south of Horn, ” Vanyel replied. “ I last saw him in a tavern singing trios with my mind and my wits. I haven't seen either of them in a while, either. ”
    “ Well, you surely couldn't tell it from the reports we got back, ” Jaysen answered, coming quickly forward and clasping his forearms with no sign of the uneasiness he'd once had around the younger Herald.   “ There's three new songs about you out of your year down south, in case you didn't know. Very accurate, too, amazingly enough. ”
    Vanyel sighed. “ Gods. Bards. ”
    Jaysen cocked his graying head to the side. “ You should be used to it by now. You keep doing things that make wonderful songs, so how can they resist? ” He grinned. “ Maybe you should stop. Become a bricklayer, for instance. ”
    Vanyel shook his head and groaned. “ It's not my fault! ”
    Jaysen laughed. “ I'd best be off before that trio wrecks my workroom. Did Savil tell you? I've been given the protégés you'd have gotten if you hadn't been in a combat zone. Count your blessings - one's a farmgirl who had much rather be a fighter than a Herald-Mage, thank you; one's a very bewildered young man who can't for a moment imagine why he was Chosen and as a result has no confidence whatsoever; and the third is an overly confident sharpster who's actually a convicted lawbreaker! ”
    “ Convicted of what? ” Vanyel asked, amused at the woebegone expression on Jaysen's face.
    “ Chicanery and fraud. The old shell-and-pea game at Midsummer Fair; he was actually Chosen on the way to his sentencing, if you can believe it. ”
    “ I can believe it. It's keeping you busy, anyway. ”
    “ It is that. It's good to see you, Van. ” Jaysen hesitated a moment, and then put one hand on his shoulder. “ Vanyel- ” He locked his pale, near-colorless blue eyes with Vanyel's, and Van saw disturbance there that made him, uneasy. “ Take care of yourself, would you? We need you. I don't think you realize how much. ”
    He slipped out the door before Vanyel could respond. Van stared after him with his mouth starting to fall open.
    “ What in the name of sanity was that about? ” he asked, perplexed, turning back to his aunt, who had not left the comfortable confines of her chair. She looked up at him measuringly.
    “ Have you any notion how many Herald-Mages we've lost in the last four years? ” she asked, her high - cheekboned face without any readable expression.
    “ Two dozen? ” he hazarded.
    Now she looked uneasy. Not much, but enough that he could tell. “ Slightly more than half the total we had when you and I came back from k'Treva. We can't replace them fast enough. The Mage-Gift was never that common in the first place, and with a rate of attrition like that - “ She grimaced. “ I haven't told you about this before, because there was nothing you could do