Literature / Last Herald-Mage Trilogy

A prequel of sorts to many of Mercedes Lackey's Heralds of Valdemar novels, The Last Herald-Mage is a trilogy that gives the "real story" of title character Vanyel Ashkevron.

When the trilogy begins (in Magic's Pawn), Vanyel is a vain, somewhat petty fifteen-year-old with no manifested powers, sexual confusion, a simpering, weak-willed mother, and an abusive, prejudiced father who lets a brutish weapons master break Vanyel's arm in an attempt to "teach him to be a man". Although Vanyel's only real passion is for music, his father orders him to go to Haven to be fostered by his much-feared Aunt Savil, a Herald of Valdemar. Initially miserable in Haven, Vanyel finds happiness as he becomes aware of his gay identity, studies an appropriate style of combat, and falls in love with Savil's trainee Tylendel.

Unfortunately, his unquestioning devotion to Tylendel causes tragedy when he helps the trainee, now grieving over his brother's death, to obtain a book of dark spells: not only does Tylendel use forbidden magic, murder several innocent people, and ultimately commit suicide out of guilt, but a massive flood of mystical energy unnaturally opens multiple magical channels into Vanyel.

The remainder of Magic's Pawn concerns Vanyel's acceptance of his newfound responsibilities as a powerful Herald-Mage; in Magic's Promise, he tries to solve a mystery in another country while dealing with excruciating loneliness; and in Magic's Price, now famous, infamous, and exhausted, he finds new old love just before he has to face down a mage with the power to destroy Valdemar.

Winds of Fury and Storm Breaking, later-set novels, have Vanyel and Stefan/Tylendel's ghosts appear as characters, hundreds of years after their deaths. In the Valdemar anthologies, Sword of Ice features Savil in the short story Sword of Ice, while Vanyel appears in that book in "Chance" and "In the Forest of Sorrows", as well as in No True Way in "Vixen" and Seasons in "A Midnight Clear".

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This work contains the following tropes:

• Abusive Parents: While Treesa is merely silly and weak-willed, Withen's determination to turn Vanyel into "a toy version of [him]self" (per Savil in Magic's Pawn) leads him to outright cruelty: he allows an armsmaster to break Vanyel's arm, calls him a "perverted little catamite", and generally makes himself despicable until Magic's Price, wherein he becomes merely obnoxious.
  • Poor Tashir's father despised him in the belief that he was as Lores says,"the worst kind of bastard". Not to mention his mother Ylyna: her constant Mood Whiplash towards him meant that Tashir was pretty much the only person in the entire castle who was afraid of her (not even the servants followed her orders); it was that, combined with his good looks and her twisted view of sexuality, that led her to attempt to groom and seduce him.
• Adults Are Useless: They get almost nothing right in the first three-quarters of Magic's Pawn.
  • Vanyel's mother encourages his artistic and effeminate qualities in order to indulge her own yen for courtly love, treating him like a plaything; his father, meanwhile, is a narrow-minded homophobe who neither understands him nor makes any effort to, instead pushing his armsmaster to "make a man" of him by any means necessary. Armsmaster Jervis, who later admits to having known better, lets his loyalty and sense of indebtedness to Withen and his own frustration with Vanyel's bratty behavior drive him to bully the boy until he actually breaks Van's arm in a fit of rage — and even after this, Withen still takes Jervis's side rather than his son's.
  • The Heraldic Circle ^note The Collegium hasn't actually been founded yet, training newly Chosen is done on a master-apprentice system does little better. Savil treats Vanyel coldly, writing him off as the shallow peacock he acts like; it takes Tylendel to figure out what's wrong with Vanyel and convince Savil not to abandon him by fostering him out, which would have further exacerbated his abandonment issues. Savil knows that Tylendel isn't rational where his family is concerned, but takes him at his word when he says he's fine, not providing him with adequate emotional support and counseling after his telepathically-linked twin brother is murdered by their longtime enemy. And after Tylendel's suicide, very few people aren't too wrapped up in their grief and horror over Tylendel's death to spare any concern for Vanyel, who's just witnessed a horrific supernatural slaughter and the suicide of his mind-linked lover, and whose newly-awakened and completely uncontrolled Mindhearing makes him all too sensitive to the thoughts of blame and resentment directed towards him from those who didn't know the truth about their relationship.
  • There's also the whole mess that is Tashir's childhood and early adolescence: his father abuses him out of belief that Tashir isn't his son, and his mother alternatively treats him like a treasured pet and screams and throws things at him (because he's literally the only person in the palace who she can control). This goes on for years, culminating in Ylyna attempting to seduce Tashir, and his father deciding to disinherit him and send him to the maternal family that is not only their hereditary enemies, but Tashir is terrified of. Despite there being a Heraldic Envoy to the Bairean court, and everyone in the palace being related to Tashir's father to some degree, not a single person seems to have suggested to Deveran that he lay off the poor kid, get rid of him by fostering him out to another noble family, or perhaps take Tashir to the Heartstone in the palace basement that would have confirmed his paternity in about three seconds. Or even that Ylyna's increasingly obvious mental instability meant that she shouldn't be around children or tweens without supervision? Not to mention that it's implied that Tashir tried to tell someone about his mother's molesting him several times, and was ignored or dismissed because of his status as The Unfavorite. Tashir had one friendly adult on his side, the palace armsmaster, who had no power to protect him or influence the nobles around him. It's so bad that his Companion is revealed to be 'something of a Mind-Healer', and Yfandes pretty much states it's the equivalent of Heralds with rare Gifts showing up just before they're needed.
• All Gays Are Pedophiles: Averted and discussed repeatedly throughout Magic's Promise, as people keep expecting Vanyel to hit on minors, including his own twelve-year-old nephew, and he keeps explaining that he's not interested.
• All Gays are Promiscuous: Subverted, as people assume Vanyel has an undending stream of male groupies. In reality, he notes that "Savil sees more action in bed than I do." By the beginning of Magic's Price, he been outright celibate for years.
• Altar Diplomacy:
  • She doesn't appear herself except in a short story in the anthology novel Changing the World, but old Queen Elspeth the Peacemaker, the ruler during Magic's Pawn, married a noble from Iftel to help keep the peace. When her husband died, she never remarried but kept her options open and even pitted prospective suitors against each other to Valdemar's advantage. All the while her true love, a common-born Bard who understood that she couldn't put their happiness first, supported her and met with her in secret.
  • In Magic's Promise, King Randale can't marry Shavri, his King's Own Herald — not for the conflict of interest but because he needs to be available for an alliance-marriage in much the same way . To that end and because she desperately wants a baby, Shavri (willingly and with Randi's full knowledge and consent) conceives a child with Vanyel, to end rumors of Randi's sterility.
  • In Magic's Price, Randi's heir Treven marries Jisa before he takes the throne. Vanyel is outraged, but Trev rationally explains that there aren't any good candidates for an alliance-marriage in the current political situation, plus he and Jisa are already Lifebonded.
• Ambadassador: By Magic's Price, Vanyel is in demand as a diplomat as well as being Valdemar's most powerful warrior.
• Ambiguous Situation: The Mage Winds trilogy that came out shortly after this one contains a revelation about Leareth - that he's an ancient and long dead mage practicing Parasitic Immortality on men of his bloodline, and any individual incarnation being killed is only a setback. With that in mind, it's entirely possible that Krebain wasn't actually Leareth's apprentice, as Vanyel assumes, but a previous incarnation.
• Action Girl: Vanyel's favorite sister, Lissa Ashkevron, becomes a successful soldier.
• And I Must Scream: Over the course of the series, we see several spells or psychic techniques that take over a person's body while leaving their minds more or less intact but helpless to stop whatever is about to happen.
  • When they come Back for the Finale of Storm Breaking there's also a suggestion that being trapped haunting a forest fighting the enemies of Valdemar for seven hundred years with limited contact with anyone else ended up really wearing on Vanyel, Yfandes, and Tylendel/Stefan, for all that they were happy enough at first. They were there for a lot longer than they expected or wanted to be.
• Aristocrats Are Evil: Generally averted; some are bad, but most don't appear to be much worse than your average person.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: When they die, Vanyel, Yfandes and Stefen become the guardians of the Forest of Sorrows. In the short story In The Forest Of Sorrows, Vanyel explains to a child he's rescued that he's aware of and can feel every tree and plant in the titular Forest, every breeze that moves through it, and every creature within. Centuries later, the three spirits anchor themselves to Stefen's old harp so they can be Back for the Finale of Storm Breaking, performing one final Heroic Sacrifice and at last getting to move on to the Heraldic afterlife.
• The Atoner: In the afterlife, Tylendel knew he had exploited Vanyel's love and dedication to him, so he chooses to be reincarnated in hopes of atoning for his betrayal.
• Battle Couple: Mardic and Donni.
  • Vanyel's two lifebonds avert this. In the first, Vanyel didn't have powers yet. He had some combat training, but it never got put to the test as he simply wasn't in any combat situations and wasn't inclined to think of violence anyway. In the second Stefen, while a strong Bard, is a Non-Action Guy.
• Beauty Equals Goodness: Certainly the case for the ethereally gorgeous Tayledras, and for the Companions as is always the case in this setting. Moondance was a normal-looking peasant boy but took on the usual Tayledras look over time as his power changed him. Vanyel is also constantly described as gorgeous when he's not a wreck.
• Beauty Is Bad: Leareth and Krebain are strikingly beautiful and magically charismatic, but Vanyel can see that unlike good beautiful people they deliberately used magic to change their appearance. He compares that to using makeup, and Makeup Is Evil.
• Big Bad: Leareth, in Magic's Price, though he's mentioned several times before that.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: As Starwind says of the Ashkevrons, "This is not a family, it is a small army. And half of them are mad." Not only are they headed by a hysterical woman and an abusive father, but they're breeding like rabbits. Some are itching for a war for no better reason than that Forst Reach doesn't have enough room for so many heirs.
• Blessed with Suck: Being the most gifted person in Valdemar means Vanyel winds up nearly friendless, worked to the bone, and sent on nigh-impossible missions. Much of this can be blamed on the Big Bad who slowly and systematically kills off each and every one of the other Herald-Mages and Mage-Gifted Trainees over Vanyel's whole career, giving him an ever-worsening burden and finally leaving him as the titular Last Herald-Mage.
• Blood Magic: Used by the main antagonist in all three books.
• Boring, but Practical: The vrondi that Vanyel brings into his anti-magic system are merely supposed to watch for non-Herald mages and alert the nearest Herald-Mage if they see one. After the Herald-Mages are gone, the vrondi simply swarm unknown mages and watch them incessantly — the resulting discomfort becomes Valdemar's anti-magic defense because mages are unable to tolerate the constant feeling of Being Watched.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Vanyel is responsible for The Magic Goes Away aspect of the setting, in response to becoming the last Herald-Mage. Having noticed that the people thought of Herald-Mages as better and more important than "plain Heralds", Van cast a great spell that caused Valdemarans to be unable to think of magic in the present tense unless directly threatened by magic or mages. He removes both this and the above spell in Winds of Fury, as they've lasted for long enough that enemies of Valdemar understood and could exploit them, and because magic being an Outside-Context Problem for Valdemarans caused them a lot of problems.
• Brawn Hilda: Bel, the hard-drinking, mannish, lecherous proprietor of the Inn of the Green Man.
• Break the Cutie: Probably four out of five events in Vanyel's life qualify for this.
• Broken Ace: Between his grief for Tylendel, abusive father, and awareness of his grim destiny, our hero has developed enough issues to give any imaginary shrink a field day.
• Brother–Sister Incest: Rumored between Ylyna and Vedric Mavelan before her marriage ^note and a major reason Tashir's father was so paranoid about her being around other men and treated Tashir so badly.
  • A gossiping maidservant tells Vanyel that Vedric more or less confirmed it, "and he'd no idea that it was his own half-sister and not the wench he'd called for until daylight." However, given Ylyna's mental instability, twisted attitudes towards sexuality (this time confirmed by someone who'd actually known her) and that she wasn't more than fourteen when she married... one wonders what Ylyna's POV of that situation was.
• Brought Down to Normal: In the short story Vixen, Vanyel breaks his leg and the Healer treating him gives him a medicine with a side effect of suppressing his gifts - meaning that when a monster attacks the village they're staying in, he's effectively given a Drama-Preserving Handicap as his physical, magical, and fighting skills are largely off the table. The Healer calls for help, which arrives Just in Time in the form of a Friendly Neighborhood Spider.
• Bungled Suicide: Vanyel attempts to kill himself twice after Tylendel's death. The first time, Yfandes Chooses him in time to pull him out of despair (and the river). The second time, he slits his wrists, but he cuts 'across' instead of 'down,' and bleeds out too slowly to escape rescue.
• Bury Your Gays: the main character is both gay and Doomed by Canon. While Vanyel goes through some angst over being gay in a medieval-era fantasy world, his sexuality had nothing to do with his tragic death - it would have happened either way. It's heavily implied in later-set books that Vanyel's outrageous heroics while alive was responsible for a huge advance in acceptance of same-sex relationships in his home country, especially after his death.
• Busman's Holiday: A dark running joke is that whenever Vanyel takes a vacation at Forst Reach, he ends up dragged into a crisis that ends with him half dead. Vanyel wryly mentions that it'll probably be safer for him to parade up and down the Karsite border.
• Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": The trilogy, and indeed the series that it's a part of, never uses the word "gay". Instead Vanyel "likes men", or uses the Tayledras word "shay'a'chern", which in Valdemar gets contracted and popularized as "shaych".
• Calling the Old Man Out: Vanyel, Lissa, and Savil all call Withen out quite thoroughly when he comes to Haven to berate the traumatized Vanyel.
• Camp Gay: Vanyel in Magic's Pawn. His father knows he's gay because he likes music and fancy clothes. He remains gay, but becomes considerably less camp as he acclimates to the warrior's life.
• Camp Straight: mentioned in Promise; at one point, Vanyel goes into an imitation of 'the most languid fop in Haven', who isn't gay, but acts that way in order to provoke insults about his sexuality. He loves fighting duels, but he's so ferocious that no one will fight him anymore, so he uses the gay insults as excuses to challenge the makers to duels.
• Card-Carrying Villain: Krebain and Leareth are positively gleeful about their evil schemes.
• Cassandra Truth: In Price, Savil tells Vanyel that two seemingly-accidental deaths were assassinations. Vanyel, distracted by all of the other crises going on, dismisses her warnings; she becomes the third victim the same night.
• Cast from Hit Points: Mages are capable of a kind of suicide attack that obliterates everything nearby. It's called "Final Strike". Also, Shavri drains her own life force into Randale, meaning that she won't long outlive his terminal illness.
• Celibate Hero: Vanyel, from a few months before Magic's Promise begins until he gets together with Stefen in Magic's Price. He has a few lovers off-screen but they're always short term.
• Chronic Hero Syndrome: A feature of Heralds and of Tayledras is described as a "hunger" to use what they have for the good of others, and to be unable to look away if they can help. It takes until just about the end of the first book for Vanyel to understand and feel it himself.
• Church Militant: Runs Karse after an upset loss to Vanyel.
• Closet Key: Tylendel for Vanyel.
• Continuity Nod: a slightly creepy one. In Arrows of the Queen (which is later chronologically, but earlier in publishing order) Keren tells Talia the story of the Death Bell "there used to be a little chapel in Companion's field - it was torn down ages ago, there's only the bell tower now". In Pawn, Tylendel throws himself from the bell tower of the chapel in Companion's field, and when he's lying in state in the same chapel later, Vanyel makes his first suicide attempt. The chapel may have been torn down for Vanyel's sake, because no one wanted the most powerful Herald-Mage ever to be reminded of his life-bonded's suicide and his own attempt at same, or after he was gone as Tylendel's repudiation and fate are a dark spot even to Heralds born long after his time.
• Cool Big Sis: Liss, the only person at Forst Reach willing to stand up for Vanyel to Withen.
• Cool Old Lady: Despite getting on in years, Savil is still pretty badass, one of the only Heralds able to gate and the first person to figure out Lord Dark's plan.
• Cosmic Deadline: As with a lot of Mercedes Lackey's other works, the bulk of each book is a lovingly detailed, almost Slice of Life exploration of the characters and the setting, and then in the last quarter or so everything starts to happen very quickly and the Big Bad finally shows up.
• Covers Always Lie: Averted; with a bit of thought you can pick the book scenes being depicted on each cover (though on the cover of Magic's Pawn Vanyel should be wearing civilian clothes). The cover for Magic's Promise is so accurate you can almost hear the dialogue; it also clearly shows the Word of God inspiration for Vanyel's character description - Michael Praed in his iconic role as Robin of Sherwood - so accurately that it could be a portrait.
• Crappy Holidays: Vanyel hates the Valdemaran holiday of Sovven Night (implied to be a combination of All Saints' Eve and All Souls' Day) because that was when Tylendel died.
• Cruel to Be Kind: It's implied that Gala repudiated Tylendel to spare him from having to experience her dying moments. Then again that very act was agonizingly painful.
• Crystal Ball: Herald-Mages in Magic's Price use crystals or gems as focus stones for larger magical works. When Vanyel casts a major spell to rework the Web and bind it to a Node, five of these gets fused into the stereotypical 'ball', though it's actually the tip of a new Heartstone.
• Early-Installment Weirdness: Gala is just much less present in the mind of her Chosen than is common in books written later. Tylendel doesn't spontaneously lash out in Revenge for his brother's murder, he plans for weeks and recruits Vanyel to help him, but she seems to be unaware until he opens a Gate. Of course it may be that that other Companions' later suspension of Mind over Manners is a direct result of her being hands off.
• Eat the Summoner: Van is proficient at turning summoned demons back on those who called them up, something that it doesn't appear most mages can do.
• Dance Battler: Based on descriptions of his combat style, Vanyel likely fits this trope. Appropriate, given his passion for music.
• Dark Lord: Just in case you missed the turning animals into assassins, army of black-clad slave mooks, employment of a gang of thieves and rapists, and sexually-charged taunting of Vanyel, Leareth sometimes calls himself "Lord Dark".
• Defiled Forever: Averted twice. First, Stefen thinks Vanyel doesn't want him because he knows of Stefen's extensive sexual history, but he's wrong — Vanyel just hadn't realized Stefen was more than a star-struck, hero-worshiping virgin trying to explore his sexuality ^note  Which was almost exactly the case with Tashir in Magic's Promise. Later, Stefen sees Vanyel's rapists escaping a burning building and muses that "they didn't matter. What mattered was Van."
• Depraved Bisexual: Krebain and Leareth. They both attempt to seduce Vanyel, who does see Krebain's attraction as genuine even as he's horrified by the depths the man will sink to. Leareth's intense sexual presence, Van sees as just another weapon — it has nothing to do with love or even attraction.
• Did You Just Have Sex?: An unusual example occurs in Magic's Pawn, as Savil realizes via Empathy what Tylendel and Vanyel have been doing.
• Dirty Mind-Reading: Tylendel with Staven due to Twin Telepathy (it backfires horribly). A lonely Tylendel apparently once asked Gala if he could 'listen in' next time she was with a stallion; her teasing after he hooked up with Vanyel suggests she was threatening to do the same to him.
• The Dog Bites Back: Near the end of Magic's Price, a healer forced into working with the bad guys who have captured and tortured Vanyel takes revenge on them by removing the block that's keeping Vanyel from using his magic. Unfortunately, Vanyel isn't remotely sane by that point, and kills everybody, including the healer and a child who was another innocent victim of the bandits.
• Don't Fear the Reaper: As elsewhere in Valdemar, Death is either the male Shadow Lover or the female Lady Death, appearing according to the viewer's prefence
  • An in-universe piece of music is a love song to the Shadow-Lover portraying Death as a gentle, compassionate entity who can bring the singer peace. Vanyel sings it at one point and thinks to himself that he would welcome Death's kiss if it came. At the end of Magic's Promise, he finds himself facing the Shadow Lover and told to decide whether to die and be at peace or go on with a life that will only become harder, lonelier, and more painful. Knowing what will happen to those he loves without him, Van chooses to live. Death is well-pleased and gives him some comfort before sending him back. Tellingly, Van's vision of Death wears Heraldic Whites, making him a figure who also understands the weight of duty.
  • In the same scene, another newly-dead character is able to talk briefly to Vanyel, explaining that Lady Death granted him that favor.
• Doomed by Canon: The broad strokes of Vanyel's story — including his death — were described in Arrows of the Queen, the first-written book set in Valdemar.
• Double Standard: Deveran Remoerdis, the king of Baires, made sure his queen never had a chance to be alone with a man, due to his obsession with paternity. In Valdemar, Vanyel tells Withen "I know good and well you've been with women other than Mother" and doesn't seem to regard it as dysfunctional, but also tells Stefen that he doesn't think Treesa would cheat on Withen because "I think she truly loves Father, in her own way".
• Dramatic Irony: Milked for all it's worth. The audience already knows much of Vanyel, Tylendel and Stefen's fate and it's painful to see Vanyel try to fight the Foregone Conclusion.
• Dreaming of Things to Come: Vanyel foresees his own death in Magic's Pawn, a couple of decades before it happens.
• Driven to Suicide: In Magic's Pawn, Savil fully believes that Gala's death was suicide. Tylendel throws himself off a chapel roof shortly afterwards, and Vanyel makes two failed attempts to follow him. In Magic's Price, after Vanyel's Heroic Sacrifice defeating Leareth, Stefen is about to poison himself, but Vanyel's ghost stops him.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Stefen spends decades working for the right to spend eternity with Vanyel in the Forest of Sorrows.
• Eerie Pale-Skinned Brunette: Vanyel has pale skin, silver eyes, blue-black hair, and a level of mystical power that scares the stuffing out of most people who recognize him. However he also qualifies as Raven Hair, Ivory Skin considering how many people pant after him.
• The Empath: Tylendel has a touch of empathy. Vanyel, Shavri, and Jisa have considerably more.
• Even the Guys Want Him: Two of the book-finale villains (both male) whom he encounters try to seduce him, though he recognizes that it's not for love or even attraction, just power.
• Evil Sorcerer: Krebain, Vedric Mavelan, and Leareth.
• Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Withen hates Vanyel's musical interests so much that, despite being a reasonably talented performer, the son feels compelled to hide while he practices.
• A Fate Worse Than Death: Surviving after the death of one's Companion or lifebond.
• Faux Affably Evil: Krebain, in his one meeting with Vanyel.
• Feuding Families: The Frelennye and Leshara.
• Foregone Conclusion: Between the title of the trilogy and the bits of the story revealed in other books, we already know that Vanyel — like every other Herald-Mage — won't survive the trilogy.
• Foreseeing My Death: In Magic's Pawn, he dreams of dying in single combat against an enemy mage. The dreams stop after he meets and defeats Krebain, but they start up again in Price, where he dreams of facing Leareth. Neither dream is entirely accurate to the final confrontation, which he 'wins' at a terrible cost.
• Frame-Up: Perpetrated by most of the Mavelan family against Tashir.
• Friendly Neighborhood Spider: The short stories Vixen and A Midnight Clear feature giant, psychic hunting-spiders. After "Melody" lost her home to a cave in she comes to the rescue of Van, his friend Vixen, and the village they were trying to save, killing and eating a monster threatening them and telling them she preferred to die doing something noble. Instead the villagers adopt her as their champion and give her a new home, and Van works a spell so that she can speak out loud. In the second story, she's had eight spiderlings and she and most of them hibernate over the winter, but two, lamb-sized and dressed in sweaters the doting villagers made for them, help Vanyel and Vixen address a bandit attack.
• Friends with Benefits: Suggested to be the case between Savil and a number of men over the years.
• Gayngst: Vanyel in Magic's Pawn.
• Generation Xerox:
  • From Vanyel's generation: Mekeal looks almost exactly like Withen, while Lissa is pretty much a copy of her aunt Savil in her youth.
  • From Stefen's generation: Young Medren is basically young Vanyel plus a Bardic gift and minus the homosexuality, and frequently refers to "young Meke", who is probably his oldest half-brother. One of Mekeal's daughters is mentioned to have been Chosen. This gets discussed for Treven and Jisa, as they can't be sure Treven won't develop the same health problems as Randale and it's known that Jisa will become King's Own when her mother Shavri dies.
  • The narration in Magic's Pawn mentions the Ashkevron family manages to produce "one strong-willed woman per generation". These women have seemingly been in order: Vanyel's Grandmother, Savil, Lissa and presumably Ariel (Mekeal's daughter that has been Chosen when Magic's Price starts).
    • Near the end of Brightly Burning, a book set roughly two hundred years later, an Ashkevron woman shows up who fits Savil and Lissa's mold and even has the "Ashkevron nose".
  • It's noted that everyone in the Ashkevron family looks and acts exactly like the previous generation. Anyone who doesn't (Vanyel, Savil, Lissa, Medren) tends to head off to Haven.
  • Vanyel, evaluating his daughter Jisa for Gift potential, realizes that just like him she has an astonishing degree of potential Mage-Gift, though if she's not blasted open the way he was she'll never be a mage. This sparks an upwelling of protectiveness and a bit of envy. She also takes after her mother, actively expressing both Empathy and Thoughtspeech, and he rightly expects that she'll be Monarch's Own after Shavri dies.
• Genki Girl: Gala comes off as a playful, giggling young Companion who teases her Chosen at every opportunity. It makes her O.O.C. Is Serious Business moment all the more shocking.
• Glowing Eyes of Doom: Vanyel acquaints a particularly nasty band of brigands with this trope during a Roaring Rampage of Revenge. Combined with Red Eyes, Take Warning for extra scare value.
• Gone Horribly Right: Vanyel turns the Karsites' military magic against them so effectively that they not only lose the relevant battle, but also wind up establishing a Church Militant dedicated to rooting out magicians... whether inside or outside their own borders.
• Good Colors, Evil Colors: Heralds dress in head-to-toe white while on the job. Lord Dark's Mook army wears all-black armor.
• Good Is Not Nice: Savil's impatience and caustic tongue.
• Greater-Scope Villain: Leareth has engineered the events of the first two books, as well as taking advantage of the Karsite War to kill off Herald-Mages. Vanyel doesn't even realize what's going on until the third book.
• Great Offscreen War: For all that it looms in the background and is a major part of the Vanyel's story, the Karsite War is never actually depicted. Magic's Pawn happens before the war, Vanyel was on vacation in Magic's Promise and he's been retired from the front lines in Magic's Price. A short story in Sword of Ice features Vanyel's dalliance with a Guardsman he meets on the border but it's really about their downtime.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: Brodie, a reclusive Healer blackmailed into helping Lord Dark's brigands.
• Healing Hands: One form of supernatural ability is healing; Vanyel has a little of it, but Shavri and Andrel have a lot more.
• Heel–Face Turn: Jervis. When Vanyel returns to his family home in Magic's Promise, he assumes that Jervis is bullying Medren the way that he used to bully Van. He's taken completely by surprise when Jervis admits that he's regretted his treatment of Vanyel for years and, in his clumsy way, has been trying to do better by Medren. By the later portion of the book, Jervis has become a confidant to Vanyel and proves invaluable in helping poor Tashir.
• Heel Realization: Jaysen in Magic's Pawn, when he realizes that he really doesn't want to be the kind of guy who drives angsty teenagers to suicide; later Vanyel, after realizing how badly his drive for revenge has led him to treat Stefen.
  • Lord Withen has one of these of his own somewhere in between books, as evidenced by the way he treats Vanyel in Magic's Price vs Magic's Promise and especially Magic's Pawn.
• Heroic Bastard: While Medren doesn't really have the skill set to go around kicking ass, he certainly averts the Bastard Bastard stereotype by being a loving nephew to Vanyel and a good friend to Stefen.
• Heroic BSoD: Vanyel after Tylendel's suicide and, later, after ending his Roaring Rampage of Revenge against his former captors.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Vanyel, Yfandes, Donni, Mardic, and Gala.
• Heteronormative Crusader: Withen, Jaysen, and Father Leren.
• Holding Out for a Hero: By Magic's Price Valdemarans have come to regard Herald-Mages as solidly superior to "plain Heralds". When Withen discusses local problems with his son, Vanyel asks why he hadn't asked Haven to send a Herald to help and is told that they did but he got a Telepath, not a mage. Feeling insulted and like Haven wasn't taking the problem seriously, Withen gave the Herald busywork and sent her back thinking she'd solved the problem, and Forst Reach tried to handle it on their own.
• Honor-Related Abuse: The verbal and physical treatment that Withen delivers to Vanyel, out of horror at Vanyel's homosexuality.
• Hourglass Plot: Vanyel and Tylendel and Vanyel and Stefen are chock full of this trope
  • At one point Vanyel plays his fingers to bits and Tylendel uses an ointment of marigold and cinnamon to heal his fingers. Vanyel and Stefen's Meet Cute involve Stefen playing his fingers to bits and Vanyel using Tylendel's ointment to heal Stefen's fingers. It's the earliest hint of the Reincarnation Romance.
• Hurt/Comfort Fic: There are some distinctly hurt-comfort aspects to Vanyel's life as portrayed in the trilogy, particularly late in Magic's Price when he's captured by bandits and nursed back to health and sanity by Stefan.
  • There is also the short story "Chance" by Mark Shepherd, which expands on the anecdote told in the second book of Vanyel hooking up with Guardsman Jonne. It features Vanyel's clothes getting cut to pieces in a mage attack, followed by Jonne taking him to a hot spring in a crystal cave and giving him an After-Action Patch-Up that then leads to sex. Compared to his characterization in the second two books, Van is more willing than usual to take a break from his duty and enjoy the moment. Maybe he just likes that Jonne's a few years older than he is and Straight Gay, so he doesn't feel like he's cradle-robbing and isn't reminded of Tylendel.
  Fortunately, Vanyel's injuries were bad only above the waist.
• Hysterical Woman: Treesa actually seems to take pride in embodying this trope. Hinted as a case of Obfuscating Stupidity as when actually attacked, Treesa is shown to be fairly calm, sensible and level headed. It's possible she just likes being a Drama Queen.
• Identical Stranger: Tashir and his Evil Uncle in the second book both bear a striking resemblance to Tylendel, one as a teen and one showing what a Tylendel who'd lived into adulthood might have looked like, which certainly doesn't make Van's life any easier.
• Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: Each novel of the trilogy is called "Magic's P_____":
  • Magic's Pawn
  • Magic's Promise
  • Magic's Price
• If You Kill Him, You Will Be Just Like Him!: Stefen convinces Vanyel of this with regard to the men who had kidnapped and raped the latter.
• I Have You Now, My Pretty: Krebain and Leareth, to Vanyel.
• Image Song: Mercedes Lackey is a songwriter and lyricist, and her album Shadow Stalker: Songs from Vanyel's time contains several songs about Vanyel, from his initial breaking and healing, to the incidents which earned him his Red Baron titles, to an overview appropriately titled "Magic's Price"
• Inadequate Inheritor: The way Withen sees Vanyel. Being Chosen means he can no longer be Withen's heir, which he would have been glad about if not for everything else happening at that time.
• Incompatible Orientation: Vanyel and the many women who lust after him.
• Incorruptible Pure Pureness: Heralds tend to this, as elsewhere in the series, but they display more flaws in this trilogy than is usual elsewhere. There's Tylendel, of course, the only Chosen to actually completely turn away from what's right, but there's also Savil and how her Good Is Not Nice tendencies actually hurt people, and Jaysen's homophobia. Vanyel doesn't ever quite get to benefit from the sense of brotherhood and community with other Heralds because his Obfuscating Stupidity act had them hating the violent bigot they thought he was when he was Chosen, and later he's so strong and renowned that he's half-worshipped and slightly feared. Herald Lores in Magic's Promise was so horrified by the Highjorune Palace massacre and so certain that the newly-Chosen Sole Survivor was the cause that he beat Tashir's Companion with a whip assuming he was a demon, shutting out his own Companion's protests. Even Vanyel himself! Once, he starts relieving his sense of powerlessness and frustration by manipulating servants, but Yfandes tells him to knock it off or she'll kick him; he's also very harsh even to allies when on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
• Intellectual Animal: Any given Companion is a highly intelligent, magically-gifted angelic being with a horselike body. The kyree are kind of the same, but they're an uplifted wolflike species instead.
• Interrupted Suicide: Vanyel, twice, in Magic's Pawn, and Stefen in Magic's Price. Both cases resulted from grief at the death of a lifebonded lover.
• It's Not You, It's My Enemies: Why Vanyel considers breaking up with Stefen. Yfandes talks him out of it.
• Jacob and Esau: Treesa dotes on Vanyel, while Withen prefers Mekeal (or possibly just any son who isn't Vanyel).
• Kick the Dog: Withen's letting Jervis break Vanyel's arm. Vanyel's coldness toward Stefen while out for revenge against Savil's killer. An outlaw gang's decision to take turns raping a helpless captive. Maybe even Vanyel's use of a magically-altered bird to gain revenge on Leareth. There aren't a lot of perfect characters in these books.
• Kick the Morality Pet: Poor Stefen, dealing with a vengeance-obsessed Vanyel in Magic's Price. Luckily, Van comes around before he completes his Face–Heel Turn.
• Kissing Cousins: The grandson and great-granddaughter of Elspeth the Peacemaker, Treven and Jisa, turn out to be lifebonded and marry in secret before King Randale, Jisa's father, dies. This causes some upset but people become resigned to it. They are not actually related, as Randale was infertile and she was sired by Vanyel, but this is a closely-guarded secret.
• Knight in Sour Armor: When Vanyel arrives in Haven, Savil saves him from his father's minions' bullying but also tells him, "You're an imposition. It's your job to see you become less of one." Yfandes also comes across as this, at least in her conversations with Stefen.
• Last of His Kind: Vanyel becomes this, as advertised in the trilogy's title.
• LGBT Representation in Media: This trilogy was very progressive in 1989-1990, when it came out. Van is unquestionably its hero and someone striving to do good and be moral, and unquestionably gay.
• Lighter and Softer: Years after completing the trilogy, Mercedes Lackey featured Vanyel in a pair of short stories in the Valdemar anthology books, stories set at some ambigious point betwen the first two novels. In Vixen and A Midnight Clear Vanyel and a sardonic Healer friend help out at a tiny, remote village. While they're not without tension, the expectation that Van sacrifice himself for others is much less pronounced, he's not horribly injured or in despair, and he has various friends taking on a lot of the load, as well as civilians who don't fear and distrust him - they're so open-minded they can take in Friendly Neighborhood Spiders, so they're not bothered by a mere Herald-Mage no matter how powerful. Consequently he seems much happier and more stable than he generally gets to be in the trilogy proper.
• Lonely at the Top: As Vanyel discovers when he becomes the most valuable (and feared) person in Valdemar. At one point he's enjoying a moment of camaderie with another Herald he's met on the road, only to see it turn to fear and awe the moment he mentions his name.
• Loophole Abuse: Herald-Mage Savil wards her spellbooks so she'll know if another mage has used them. When Tylendel becomes obsessed with revenge, he gets around it by having Vanyel handle the books and turn the pages for him.
• The Lost Lenore: Vanyel doesn't heal from Tylendel's death until the latter returns to him as Stefen, around eighteen years later.
• Lover and Beloved: Played with. Savil says that confident, experienced Tylendel was the leader and Vanyel the follower in their relationship, although they don't have the age difference generally associated with this trope. By contrast, Vanyel is nearly twice Stefen's age, but seems not to have any more confidence or sexual experience than the younger man.
• The Magic Goes Away: After this trilogy, true magic becomes a forgotten art in Valdemar. It takes centuries — and a bit of direct intervention by Vanyel himself — before there are Herald-Mages again.
• Magical Native American: Tayledras are something of a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to idealized, generic Native Americans.
• Magical Queer: Two Tayledras, Starwind and Moondance, pulling double duty. Vanyel is also a gay man with magical powers, but his personality and philosophy don't really fit this trope.
• Make It Look Like an Accident: The Big Bad of the series spends decades taking out Herald-Mages without raising alarm. When their numbers are down to four, two of them die in tragic accidents which Savil thinks could be murders. (She's right, and her death is an obvious assassination).
• Makeup Is Evil: When Vanyel finds himself attracted to Big Bad Krebain on first sight he's dismayed by his own reaction. Beauty Equals Goodness! This isn't right!
  But then he thought, "Artificial - that's really what he is. He's changed himself, I'm sure of it - like painting his face, only more so. If I had a lot of power and didn't care how I used it, I suppose I'd make myself beautiful too."
• Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: Tashir, due to rumors of his mother's promiscuity and the fact that his looks came entirely from her side of the family. As it turns out, he actually is Deveran's legitimate son.
• Meet Cute: Vanyel and Stefen meet after Stefen plays for the king. What makes this a Meet Cute is that Stefen's just played his hands to bits and is rather snappish and irritable towards one of the kingdom's most famous and feared Heralds.
• A Mind Is a Terrible Thing to Read: Shortly after Tylendel's suicide, Vanyel realizes that most of the Heralds around him wish Vanyel had been the one to die and 'Lendel had lived.
• Mindlink Mates: Vanyel and Tylendel; Vanyel and Stefen; Donni and Mardic; Starwind and Moondance; Randale and Shavri; Treven and Jisa are all permanently-bonded couples. The trilogy's term for this phenomenon is "lifebonding".
• Mind over Manners: Regardless of how important Vanyel's intel-gathering is, there's no way around the fact that he reads people's minds without their consent.
• Misplaced Retribution: After Evan Leshara has Tylendel's brother Staven assassinated, Tylendel attempts to magically butcher the entire Leshara family and their guests on the Valdemaran equivalent of Halloween. This is why Gala repudiates him before she goes to her death.
• The Mole: Vanyel always knew that Father Leren was irritating, but he didn't expect him to attempt murder in the service of the Karsites' Church Militant.
• Momma's Boy: Treesa loves bragging on Vanyel and showing him off, but she doesn't love him quite enough to stand up to Withen most of the time.
• Mundane Utility: The villagers who adopt Melody the giant talking heroic spider as their protector in Vixen have by the follow up A Midnight Clear come to see some extra benefits of being friends with giant spiders, namely that spider-silk in large quantities is very useful and when a giant spider feeds on an animal it liquefies and slurps out the insides leaving skin, bone, and claws behind, which makes preparing the skin and hides convenient and easy.
• Mutant Draft Board: Vanyel being the last Herald-Mage is also the last mage in Valdemar for centuries. In other countries, mages are everywhere. Some are employed by the state, noble houses usually keep some on retainer, and some are Wandering the Earth. In Valdemar, by Magic's Price the only non-enemy mages around are Heralds. As anti-magic sentiment sweeps Karse, its non-institutional mages flee the country into Valdemar. Vanyel advises that any of them who aren't Chosen be moved along quickly to some other country and has No Sympathy for anyone subject to the Being Watched spell he sets up - apparently at this time he and Valdemarans in general find mages who weren't drafted to be inherently suspicious.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Vanyel after helping Tylendel obtain the forbidden book; Savil after realizing she should have had Tylendel examined by a Mind-Healer; Jaysen on "sen[ding] someone out to cut his wrists"; and Vanyel when his failure to listen to Savil's warning about a magical attack leads to her death, and again after he murders a child.
• Mooks: Both the outlaw gang and the soldiers controlled by Leareth fall into this category.
• Never Found the Body: After Vanyel's Heroic Sacrifice, all that Stefen can find of Vanyel is his half-melted necklace and a few strands of hair from Yfandes' mane. It's implied the rest of them was disintegrated by the Final Strike.
• Never Speak Ill of the Dead: There are hints that Vanyel heavily idealized Tylendel's memory. Tylendel, while a generally kind and easygoing young man could be extremely mercurial, close-off and impulsive at times (all three contributed to his death). Vanyel, in the later books makes no mention of any of these traits and constantly thinks that Tylendel could have handled X better.
  • A good example is how Vanyel thinks that Tylendel would have slept with Stefan in a heartbeat. Tylendel's POV shows that he's fairly inexperienced and very careful about choosing lovers, having rejected Vanyel's advances at first.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Valdemar has a war with Karse between the first two books and Vanyel serves in it, replacing five other Herald-Mages in an extended Offscreen Moment of Awesome during which he demonstrates that summoning demons against him is a very bad idea. This unfortunately leads to Karse fearing him, and by extension other Heralds and their assorted Gifts, on an existential level that has them becoming more fundamentalist and causing a lot of problems for Valdemar and their own people over the next several hundred years until Solaris becomes the Son of the Sun.
  • Vanyel's solution upon finding himself the last Herald-Mage actually ensures that he's the last for quite some time. The quest the heroes go on in Winds of Fate to find a mage to teach Heralds could have happened pretty much immediately after Leareth died and stopped killing Valdemaran mages. Van's Brainwashing for the Greater Good spell making people struggle to think about magic ensures that it's an Outside-Context Problem every time it's used against Valdemar. The vrondi-spell was also very hard on people born in Valdemar with the Mage-Gift, such as Paxia in Weight of a Hundred Eyes.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Leareth is hinted to have engineered or encouraged the events of the first book. Which created Valdemar's most powerful mage - and the man who would eventually kill him.
  • It even goes beyond that: Leareth is a re-incarnation of Ma'ar, who will eventually re-incarnate again as Mornelithe Falconsbane, Big Bad of the Wings trilogy - who will have his soul finally shredded to bits beyond all hope of rebirth by Firesong, Vanyel's descendant.
• Noble Male, Roguish Male: In the third book Van is the Noble to Stefan's Rogue. This doesn't apply to Van and Tylendel, though - Tylendel was reckless, but Vanyel in those days wasn't particularly interested in duty or nobility of purpose.
• Noble Wolf: A pack of kyree, Uplifted Animals resembling enormous wolves, come to Vanyel's aid as a Wingbrother of the Tayledras after his encounter with bandits. The Hot Spring clan gives him, Stefan, and Yfandes shelter in their hot spring caves and a chance to recover, a final place of safety before pushing on to face Leareth.
• No Body Left Behind: Intriguingly suggested. Yfandes explains that Companions who don't die in combat are "Called" instead of just 'falling over;' Stefen at the end of his life is Called, and the Herald escorting him can't find his body afterward (or at least doesn't find it before his Companion distracts him).
• Noodle Incident: In Magic's Price, a chirra who loves roses looks for them everywhere - even in Stefen's hair - ever since a certain Herald-Mage made some for her out of snow. Replies Vanyel "She'd just carried me through a three-day snowstorm, and she deserved a treat."
• Nurse with Good Intentions: Haven's Healers trying to help Vanyel in Magic's Pawn are just not able to do so without setting off his psychic injuries, which is very dangerous given his Power Incontinence. Savil has to take him to the Tayledras, who're better equipped for such an unusual case.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome: There are twelve years between Magic's Pawn and Magic's Promise, and nine years between Magic's Promise and Magic's Price. Vanyel does quite a few very impressive things in those years, hinted at by having him be incredibly Famed In-Story. Some of the specific ones, like the source of a number of his epithets, are portrayed in Filk songs, but of course those are sparing on detail and may play up the drama of the events.
  • In Promise he also says he'll relate a story about a badass bard but does it offscreen.
• Oddly Common Rarity: This trilogy is the record holder for the number of lifebonds within the series. The main Heralds of Valdemar timeframe only gets that number by having two or three of them in the Arrows trilogy and adding a new one about once a trilogy; lifebonds are discussed in Mage Storms as being astonishingly rare. Some of these make some sense with the reasoning that one lifebonded is required to help another - Tylendel in his fall from grace uses Vanyel and accidentally empowers him and then returns as Stefan who supports and helps him, and Shavri who manages to keep Randale alive through years of illness. But there are also Mardic and Donni, Starwind and Moondance, and Treven and Jisa, who don't seem to have similar "reasons".
• Orcus on His Throne: There's a different villain in each book but they're all united in having worked remotely until the climax, only actually showing up as Vanyel comes to meet them. Krebain had been working for the Lesharas in Valdemar but was living and operating near Tayledras territory, so far away that a Gate was required to get near at all. Vedric was really only interested in the little country of Lineas and didn't leave his "throne" so much as he stood up when Vanyel poked around near it. Leareth, the overall Big Bad, was ambigiously involved with both of the other villains, was working to kill off Herald-Mages and Trainees for decades, and sent constructs and hirelings out to do his bidding. By the time Van rides out to meet him he's collected an army that Van heads off.
• Parent–Child Incest: Attempted by Ylyna towards Tashir, a situation that causes no end of trouble.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: The main temptation of Herald-Mages
  • In Pawn, Tylendel conjures magical assassins and sets them on the Leshara family in revenge for his brother's death. It results in a chain of tragedy that ends in his own suicide.
  • In Price, Vanyel indulges in this twice: first, he magically tortures the construct creature that kills Savil, and then he incinerates most of a bandit gang who captures and assaults him. Fortunately, Stef is able to hold him back from a truly unforgivable act.
• Plucky Girl: Nothing, including Withen Ashkevron, keeps Lissa down.
• Power Incontinence: Vanyel suffers from this when he first gets his powers. He hasn't learned how to shield or control his powers yet, but because they didn't develop naturally, every use is still incredibly painful. Added to that is the fact that he is suicidally depressed due to the death of his lifebonded, and the physical trauma due to his attempted suicide. They end up needing to keep him heavily drugged until he is just well enough to send away for healing, to stop him from succeeding at levelling the Palace in a nightmare.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Working with high levels of magic in this setting gradually gives mages Mystical White Hair amd changes their eyes to blue. Vanyel notes in Promise that he seems to be more resistant to the bleaching effect than his Tayledras friends as his black hair is shot with an increasing amount of white rather than being all-white already. By the end of Price he's gone totally white-haired, but his eyes remain silver.
• Pragmatic Hero: Like all Heralds, Vanyel would do anything in the service of Valdemar.
• Pretty Boy: Vanyel, Stefen, and Medren. Not to mention Tylendel who is reincarnated as Stefen and Tashir, who very strongly resembles him.
• Professional Sex Ed: Withen hires a female prostitute for Vanyel in an attempt to 'set him straight'. It doesn't work.
• Promoted to Parent: Oddly enough, Vanyel becomes a version of this to his own child, Jisa. Between Pawn and Promise, Vanyel serves as a glorified sperm donor to Shavri (It Makes Sense in Context), because she desperately wants a child and her lifebonded, King Randale, is sterile. In the early scenes of Promise he categorically states that Randale is Jisa's father, not him, and he's much happier being her 'Uncle Van' anyway. But by the time of Price, Randale is so sick he really only has two modes, 'patient' and 'king', and Shavri is spending all her time and energy keeping him going. Not only is Vanyel now on permanent assignment to the palace as Acting Monarch's Own, he's the one Jisa goes to for pretty much everything worse than a splinter.
• Psychic Link: Between Mindspeaking Heralds and their Companions. There's also one between Lifebonded partners.
• Psychic Static: After Vanyel is captured in Magic's Price, Yfandes tells Stefen to think about how cold he is (they're in a snowy forest) because their enemies might be able to pick up his Van-centered distress. Thoughts about the snow and cold, on the other hand, are normal and won't alert anyone.
• Rape and Revenge: Stefen interrupts Vanyel while he's dishing out the second part.
• Rape as Drama: An outlaw gang rapes Vanyel. It takes him a while to recover.
• Rape Discretion Shot: In Magic's Price (fortunately) all we witness of the assault is a sketchy description of how it sounded.
• Rape Leads to Insanity: In the first book Krebain attacks a village girl and in a show of power does something to her that leaves her a vacant-eyed wreck. Moondance says months with Tayledras Mind-Healers can bring her back but she'll never be the same, will always fear men, and sex will only ever bring pain, so it may be better to wipe her and start over.
  • The spell put on him to make him helpless contributes, but after Leareth's thugs assault Van he's really not himself, to the point of killing a child as soon as he had use of his powers back.
• Really Gets Around: Stefen, prior to falling for Vanyel.
• Real Women Don't Wear Dresses: A perennial problem with Mercedes Lackey. The Ashkevrons get "one strong-willed woman in a generation" who's got masculine interests and abilities and is considered as a person; the others are all more feminine and consistently called weak and "empty-headed". Lady Treesa gets a lot more contempt and is the subject of more dehumanizing language (such as "creature") than her harsh sister-in-law Savil or her husband, who's far more abusive from the start but gets extensive Character Development that redeems him.
• "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Savil, Lissa, and Vanyel deliver a relay version of this to Withen after he shows up to berate Vanyel for his homosexuality in Magic's Pawn.
• Red Baron: Vanyel is "Demonsbane", the "Shadow Stalker" and the "Hero of Stony Tor"; Leareth also goes by Lord Dark.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: Vanyel's and Yfandes's eyes glow red when angry.
• Reincarnation: Several Companions in the 'modern-day' era (i.e. Arrows trilogy, By the Sword, Mage Winds, Mage Storms, Owl Trilogy) have suspiciously similar names to Heralds in Vanyel's time. After the revelation in Storm Warning that Heralds are sometimes reincarnated as Companions, Lackey has since confirmed that Savil was reincarnated as Kerowyn's Companion Sayvil, and Vanyel's friend Tantras came back as Kris' Companion Tantris. Dallen, Companion to Mags in the Collegium Chronicles and Herald Spy books, is also the reincarnation of an unspecified Herald who knew Tylendel.
• Reincarnation Romance: Tylendel is reincarnated as Stefen, allowing him and Vanyel to renew their lifebond.
• Replacement Goldfish: Tashir bears a strong resemblance to Tylendel (as Vanyel last saw him, a dozen years ago), and Vanyel feels strongly tempted to accept his proposition. Fortunately, given the disturbing moral issues, he remains chaste.
  • Also done by Tashir: he's calmer around Jervis than almost anyone else at the Ashkevron estate, because Jervis closely resembles the court armsmaster who was the closest thing Tashir had to a father figure. Vanyel's Empathy means that he can see the subconscious connection Tashir's mind makes.
• Retcon: During Magic's Promise Vanyel examines young Jisa's Gifts and consults with Yfandes, who says if the then six-year-old girl needs to be trained she'll be Chosen at eight or ten. Van then informs her parents of this and says that as the next Monarch's Own she won't have a "bonded" Choosing until she gets the office and bonds with Taver, the Monarch's Own Companion. This fits in with a statement in the Arrows trilogy, that the Monarch's Own Companion normally Chooses someone who's already a Herald or at least in training. Then, in Magic's Price Van reflects that the now fifteen-year-old Jisa hasn't been Chosen despite being beloved by Companions because she won't be until her mother dies and Taver Chooses the next Monarch's Own Herald. Later canon follows this, with the same situation happening in the Mags books.
  • This may be because Companions in the first trilogy were more remote and mysterious than they tend to come off as in later books, where close emotional bonds and frequent chatter back and forth are the norm.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge: There are a lot of these: from Tylendel against the Leshara; from Vanyel against the magically-altered bird that killed Savil; and from Vanyel again after an outlaw gang tortures and rapes him.
• Rule of Symbolism: the original DAW paperback covers have illustrations of scenes from the books, with thick borders on either side with smoke-like depictions of important secondary characters and tree-related illustrations: the first has thin branches covered in blossoms, the second has thicker branches bearing fruit and the final book simply has dead leaves falling.
• Running Gag: a couple in Magic's Promise; in the first quarter of the book, just about everyone Vanyel runs into that he knows by name (and some complete strangers) tell him that he looks like Hell. In the middle section, Melenna's increasingly ridiculous attempts to seduce Vanyel, climaxing with Vanyel sleeping in the stables with Yfandes.
• Screw the Money, I Have Rules!: One of the songs details Vanyel's confrontation with an enemy lord abusing his farmers, who offers Vanyel anything he could possibly want if he'll just go away. Vanyel's response — given in implausibly flowery language, presumably due to bardic license — amounts to "I don't need your damned money and I'm not letting you hurt these people."
• Settle for Sibling:
  • Melenna has sex with Mekeal after Vanyel turns her down, a decision that results in Medren.
  • In Magic's Promise, Vanyel recognizes the new wife of another of his brothers as one of the women Treesa once tried to get him interested in.
• Sexy Discretion Shot: While themes dealing with sexual identity, homophobia, and even rape permeate the book, the amount of sex actually shown is very small, and it's always very vague. Usually there's either some kissing or some leering, then a skip forward to the postcoital bliss or trauma.
• Shipper on Deck: Medren sets up Vanyel and Stefen.
• Situational Sexuality: Because of his issues dealing with women, Tashir wants to be gay and hits on Vanyel. This trope probably also plays a role in Vanyel's rape by the brigands, as one of them says, "Pup's as good as a woman!"
• Slave Mooks: Vanyel suspects that Leareth has taken over his soldiers' minds.
• Sliding Scale of Parent-Shaming in Fiction: Withen appears to be Type III, a bad person, in the first book, but even if he doesn't quite get it when he finds his son suicidal that does seem to stir him to want to do better. Twelve years later in the second book he's between Type I and Type II, showing better aspects of himself while still causing stress and upset to Vanyel. In the third book he's gone through enough Character Development to be regarded more sympathetically.
• So Happy Together: Magic's Price gives Vanyel much needed closure, he finally reconciles with his family and his lifebond comes back to him in the form of Stefen. Shortly after Savil is killed and Vanyel goes on the revenge quest that will claim his life.
• Stalker with a Crush: Melenna goes to extremes in her doomed efforts to seduce Vanyel. In Magic's Promise he has to repeatedly resort to sleeping in the stables upon finding her naked in his bed.
• The Summation: Much of the plot of Magic's Promise revolves around discovering what happened in the palace in Highjorune, which requires quite a lot of investigation as Truth Spell and asking Tashir's Companion aren't on the table as solutions. Eventually Vanyel lays out his findings and conclusions on Savil, Jervis, and Tashir.
• Superhero Paradox: Mages, especially Herald-Mages, tend to attract magical threats. Vanyel tries to argue that magic is not the solution to every problem, but by Magic's Price there's a stigma against "plain Heralds" that neither he nor Stefen can ultimately dispel.
• Superpower Lottery: Vanyel wins it, although it's not a pleasant experience.
• Title Drop: a blink and you'll miss it example: in the penultimate scene of Magic's Price, Stefan comes to the Forest of Sorrows to commit suicide, only to be stopped by Vanyel's ghost. When he arrives at his chosen spot, he spends several hours playing, culminating in a song he's never performed in public, which he's left a copy of for the Bardic archives: written for Vanyel, it's called 'Magic's Price'.
• There Are No Therapists:
  • Halfway averted: although there are no therapists as we think of them, Mind Healers can supposedly recognize and, to some degree, treat insanity. Unfortunately, no one ever seems to turn to them for this, so their utility remains in doubt. Possibly because in all the other series they're extremely rare.
  • Vanyel ends up being a victim of this. In the first book, Van desperately needs some kind of help right after he's Chosen, but the only MindHealer among the Heralds is too busy cleaning up the mess Tylendel made. Lendel himself might have been stopped if someone had noticed his mind was breaking, but Van was able to cover for him, and so both are ignored until it goes too far. In the second and third book, Vanyel is clearly suffering from PTSD due to the Karsite War and lingering emotional problems from Tylendel's death. People recognize he has a problem but no one knows what to do about it except get him away from Haven and work so he can come down.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In one of the first conscious uses of his newly found powers Vanyel kills a colddrake queen and overdoes it with a spectacular explosion of power. His aunt and mentor, Savil, comments that with that kind of monster it's better to overkill.
• To Serve Man: The two Friendly Neighborhood Spiderlings in Upon A Midnight Clear, presented with bandits threatening the village, inject venom to liquiefy their insides and then eat them. Vanyel is concerned about this and the implications of the village's beloved guardians being willing to eat people, but his worry is waved off by the other characters.
  “They’re adorable. And they can go from adorable to bloodthirsty killer in the blink of an eye.”
• Troubled Abuser: The only character alive that actually knew Tashir's mother ^note Aside from the brother who probably molested her and later cast the spell that killed her says outright that she thinks this is the reason behind Ylna's treatment of Tashir.
• The Twink: Early!Vanyel and Stefen.
• Twin Telepathy: Tylendel and Staven.
• Undressing the Unconscious: In Magic's Price, after Vanyel's Gift channels are blasted open, he's eventually sedated and taken to a Hawkbrother Vale for healing. He wakes up nude under a bedsheet, and Moondance freely admits to undressing Vanyel on his arrival.
• Unequal Rites: About midway through Vanyel's career, the general public begins to see Herald-Mages as better than "plain Heralds." Van tries to counter this by promoting non-mage Heralds as specialists in their own fields, but it doesn't really take.
• Uniqueness Value: Vanyel's skill set is so uniquely valuable that he hardly ever gets a moment's rest. This also becomes true of Herald-Mages in this trilogy, since by the third book there are only four left.
  • Stefan as well. His painblocking ability is unique not only among Bards but all Gifted. He ends up being worked to the bone by Healers and King Randale... until he puts his foot down and insists on some boundaries.
• Upper-Class Twit: Aside from all that preening and sniping, young!Vanyel looks down his nose on peasants... until he meets a few and realizes that he has more in common with them than he does with most of the aristocrats he knows.
• Vain Sorceress: Both Krebain and Leareth use magic to make themselves look like beautiful men. Unfortunately, Van recognizes this as a misuse of power and is not at all enticed by their appearance.
• War Crime Subverts Heroism: After being captured and assaulted in Magic's Price, Van massacres most of the men who raped him — and two people who were innocent, including a child. He hangs on to his morality because 1. he was clearly not sane in that instant, and 2. Stefen and Yfandes talk him down before he can knowingly torture their leader to death.
• Welcome to the Big City: Treesa has a hard time adjusting to life at Haven in Magic's Price.
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Vanyel's father, Withen Ashkevron.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Stefen gives this to Vanyel a lot, usually when Vanyel has just been snippy with him, but on one occasion when he finds Vanyel in the middle of slaughtering a gang of outlaws.
• White and Red and Eerie All Over: The witch Ke'noran, villain of the short story In The Forest of Sorrows, is tall, red-eyed, and white-skinned, and wants to murder a child to make use of his latent Gifts.
• Will They or Won't They?: Due to the age difference and the fact that people close to Vanyel become targets, it takes a while for him and Stefen to consummate their love.