Dedicated to the Tayledras and Heralds of our world: police, firefighters, and rescue workers everywhere, whose accomplishments in everyday life outdo anything in fiction.
For long years, the rich northern kingdom of Valdemar, ruled by Queen Selenay and her consort Daren, had been under siege by the forces of Hardorn (Arrows of the Queen, Arrow’s Flight, Arrow’s Fall, By The Sword). Ancar, its ruthless and cunning leader, had first tried treachery against the rival country’s court; that had been foiled by the Heralds of Valdemar, the judges, lawgivers, and law-enforcers of their people. He could not corrupt them, for it was not in the nature of the Heralds, Chosen for their duties by the horselike creatures called “Companions,” to be corrupted. He then tried direct attack—that was foiled by the forces of neighboring Rethwellan to the south, brought by an old promise of aid, long forgotten in Valdemar. Those forces included the mercenary company of the Skybolts, commanded by Captain Kerowyn, grand-daughter of the mage Kethry (whose own story is related in The Oathbound and Oathbreakers). Kerowyn brought more with her than just arms and fighters; she brought with her an ancient and powerful enchanted weapon, the sword her grandmother had borne; Need, who for reasons then unknown could be commanded only by a woman. With her she brought the King of Rethwellan’s own brother, Prince Daren, the Lord Martial of his country, also the younger brother of Selenay’s former treacherous husband. The result was the successful defeat of Ancar’s forces—and the Choosing of both Daren (for he was nothing like his brother) and Kerowyn by Companions, much to the consternation of some of Selenay’s nobles.
And Daren and Selenay had loved each other at first sight.
Five years later, they had produced both progeny and an uneasy peace, although Ancar continued to make attempts across the border, and insinuated spies inside Valdemar. But the one thing of which all felt sure, was that they were safe from magic.
In fact, few people in Valdemar even believed in “real” magic, although the mind-magic of the Heralds was commonplace. An ancient barrier, attributed to the work of the legendary Herald-Mage Vanyel, seemed to hold the working of real magic at bay inside Valdemar’s borders, if not its effects. Further, it seemed as if there was some prohibition about even thinking of real magic; those who discussed it soon forgot the discussions; those who witnessed it soon attributed their memories to dreams. Even old chronicles that spoke of it were forgotten, and those who tried to read them found their interest lagging and put them away without a memory of why they had sought them out in the first place.
But one day, it became plain that this barrier was no longer as effective as everyone believed and hoped. The Queen’s Heir, her daughter by her first marriage, made the decision that the time had come for Valdemar to have the same manner of magic its enemies wielded (Winds of Fate), and perhaps new magics as well.
She fought for the right to seek out the mages of other lands herself—more successfully, after a magically enhanced assassin sent by Ancar nearly killed her—and set off with the sword Need and one other Herald, Skif, to find mages for Valdemar.
She had not gone far beyond Rethwellan when she deduced that she had not done this alone—that the Companions had acted on her behalf, and were, in fact, forcing her toward a goal only they knew. Angered by this, and swearing that she would follow her own path in this venture, Elspeth turned off the road she had been intended to take, and headed instead for Kata’shin’a’in and the nomads of the Dhorisha Plains—who, she hoped, would lead her to the mysterious Hawkbrothers of the Pelagirs. The last of the Herald-Mages, Herald Vanyel, had been reputedly taught by them (Magic’s Pawn, Magic’s Promise, Magic’s Price) and she hoped that she could find either allies or teachers there.
The Shin’a’in had their own set of plans for her, once they learned of her destination. They intended to test her, watch her, and allow her to face some of their enemies as she crossed their land.
Meanwhile, the sword she carried, that she had thought was “only” a magic weapon, proved to be more than that. In her hands it awakened—and proved to be a once-human mage of times so long past that there was no record of her previous life, or anything Need referenced, in the Chronicles of Valdemar.
Together the Heralds, their Companions, and the newly awakened blade crossed the Dhorisha Plains, only to find themselves going from old dangers into new—for the Tayledras territory they headed for, following a map that the Shin’a’in shaman Kra’heera and Tre’valen gave to Elspeth, was as much under siege as the kingdom of Valdemar.
Among the Hawkbrothers, a former mage, Darkwind k’Sheyna, had been fighting his own battle against enemies within and without. Without, were the forces led by the evil Adept and Changemaster, Mornelithe Falconsbane—not the least of which was his half-human daughter, the Changechild Nyara. Within, the Clan was split—physically, for more than half their number, including all of the children and lesser mages, were stranded in the intended site of a new Vale when their Heartstone cracked. And split in leadership, for Darkwind was the leader of a faction that wanted to bring in help from outside to heal their Heartstone and bring back the rest of the Clan—while his father, who led the mages, swore this could not be done.
But Darkwind’s father had been subverted by Falconsbane, and even in the heart of the Vale was still under his control. It was Darkwind’s father, the Adept Starblade k’Sheyna, who had actually caused the fracturing of the stone.
Darkwind was aided by a pair of gryphons and their young, who had served as surrogate parents to him when his own mother died and his father turned strange and alien. Treyvan and Hydona did their best to support him, but despite being powerful mages in their own right, there were few in the Vale who would listen to their advice.
Falconsbane elected to close his hand tighter around k’Sheyna Vale, and sent his daughter—under the ruse that she was escaping his power—to seduce young Darkwind. Nyara herself, sick of her father’s mistreatment, was not aware of Falconsbane’s larger plan. Loyalty to his lover Dawnfire kept Darkwind from succumbing to his attraction to Nyara, but by Falconsbane’s reckoning, it was only a matter of time before he had both father and son in his grasp.
Elspeth, bearing an enormously valuable artifact, and a powerful, if untrained mage herself, aroused Falconsbane’s avarice as soon as she came within his reckoning. He turned some of his creatures that had been searching the Plain for the artifacts guarded by the Shin’a’in to pursue Elspeth. And meanwhile, in pursuit himself of an old hatred for gryphons, he launched an attack on Treyvan and Hydona and their young. And in the wake of the attack, he managed to trap Dawnfire’s spirit in the body of her bondbird, and slay her human body along with the spirit of the bird.
On discovering that the young gryphlets had been contaminated by Falconsbane’s power, Nyara confessed her hand in the matter, and was confined in a corner of the gryphon’s lair.
Elspeth, Skif, and the rest arrived at the borders of the k’Sheyna territory, pursued by Falconsbane’s creatures. Darkwind and the gryphons came to their rescue, and recognized both the sword and the Companions for what they were. Unsure of what to do with them, Darkwind led them back to the lair. There, Skif met Nyara and fell in love with her—and the fascination was mutual.
Things that Nyara knew and confessed proved to Darkwind that his father was in thrall to the evil Adept. He succeeded in breaking Falconsbane’s hold on his father and in destroying the creature through which the control had come, but that alerted Falconsbane to the fact that they now knew who and what he was and, presumably, what he had planned. He permitted Dawnfire to overhear that he was planning to meet with Ancar of Hardorn to discuss an alliance—then allowed her “accidental” escape.
The name meant nothing to Dawnfire, but a great deal to the Heralds. This was their worst fear realized; that Ancar should unite with a truly powerful Adept—
But Need, who had centuries of experience recognizing trickery, pointed out that Dawnfire’s “escape” was a little too easy—and that they would be leaving both the gryphlets and possibly even herself unguarded to disrupt a spurious “meeting.”
So the allies planned a reverse ambush, lying in wait for Falconsbane when he came to take the young ones.
Falconsbane was cannier than they thought; he detected the ambush at the last moment, and mounted an effective counterattack. He attempted to take control of the gryphlets, but Need deflected the magic, and turned it against him, using it to purge the unsuspecting young ones of his taint. He attacked Skif, but before he could kill the Herald, he was attacked by his daughter Nyara, in the first open act of defiance in her life. Nevertheless, Falconsbane’s powerful magics and allies succeeded in taking down both Companions and trapping Hydona.
All would have been lost but for the tenacity of Darkwind and the gryphons—and the intervention of the Shin’a’in Swordsworn, the black-clad servants of the Shin’a’in and Tayledras Goddess, who had been secret players in events all along. They surrounded the combatants and forced Falconsbane to a stalemate.
Snarling in rage, the Adept escaped—barely—leaving behind a trail of blood and the survivors’ hope that a Shin’a’in arrow had been fatal. But the intervention of the Shin’a’in was not complete. The Swordsworn and the two shaman took up Dawnfire—who, trapped in a bird’s body, was fated to fade and “die,” leaving nothing of her human self behind. Before the eyes of the Heralds and the rest, the Goddess herself intervened on Dawnfire’s behalf, transforming her into a shining Avatar in the shape of a vorcel hawk, the symbol of the shamans’ clan, Tale’sedrin.
And in the awed confusion afterward, Nyara vanished, taking Need with her—at the blade’s parting insistence that Nyara required her more than Elspeth did.
But the Clan was united once more, and Darkwind agreed to take up his long-denied powers again, to teach Elspeth the ways of magic, that she might return home an Adept.
So dawns the new day…
Elspeth rubbed her feather-adorned temples, hoping that her fears and tensions would mercifully go, and leave her mind in peace for just once today.
This isn’t what I expected. I wish this were over.
Herald Elspeth, Heir to the Crown of Valdemar, survivor of a thousand and one ceremonies in her twenty-six years, brushed nervously at a nonexistent spot on her tunic and wished she were anywhere but here. “Here” was the southern edge of the lands held by the Tayledras, whom Valdemarans spoke of as the fabled Hawkbrothers. “Here” was a rough-walled cave, presumably hewn by magic, just outside the entrance to k’Sheyna Vale. “Here” was where Elspeth the Heir was stewing in her own juices from anxiety.
Elspeth was still getting used to these people and their magic. As far as she could tell the cave hadn’t been there before yesterday.
Then again—the walls didn’t have that raw, new look of freshly cut stone, and the sandy, uneven floor seemed ordinary. Even the entrance, a jagged break in the hillside, appeared to be perfectly natural, and healthy plants lined the edges. Greenery grew anywhere roots could find a pocket of soil to hold onto. And the smell was as damp and musty as any cave she’d ever seen during her Herald’s training.
Maybe she was wrong. The cave might always have been there, but its entrance may just have been well-hidden.
Now that she thought about it, that would be a lot more like the style of the only Hawkbrother she knew, Darkwind k’Sheyna. He wasn’t inclined to waste time or energy on anything—much less waste magical power. He took a dim view of profligate use of magery, something he’d made very clear to Elspeth in the first days of their acquaintance. If something could be done without using magic, that was the way he’d do it—hoarding his powers and doling them out in miserly driblets.
That was something she didn’t understand at all. When you had magic, shouldn’t you use it?
Darkwind didn’t seem to think so.
Neither did the Chronicles she had read, of Herald-Mage Vanyel’s time and before. Incredible things were possible to an Adept—and that, of course, was why she was here. If she’d dared, she’d have used her powers now, to shape a more comfortable seat than the rock she perched on, just inside the cave’s entrance.
That at least would have given her something to do, instead of working herself up into a fine froth of nerves over the coming ceremony.
She glanced resentfully at Skif; he looked perfectly calm, if preoccupied. His dark eyes were focused somewhere inward, and if he was at all nervous, none of it showed on his square-jawed face. In fact, the only sign that he wasn’t a statue was that he would run a hand through his curly brown hair once in a while.
Elspeth sighed. It figured. He was probably so busy thinking about Nyara that none of this mattered to him. The only thing that being made a Tayledras Wingbrother meant to him was that he’d be able to stay in Hawkbrother territory for as long as it took to find her.
Assuming the sword Need let him find Nyara. The blade not only used magic well, it—she—was a person, a woman who’d long ago traded her aging fleshly body for the steel form of an ensorceled sword. It wasn’t a trade Elspeth would have made. Need could only hear, see, and feel through the senses of her bearer—and in times when her bearer wasn’t particularly MindGifted or when she had no bearer at all, she had drifted off into “sleep.”
She’d been asleep for a long time before Elspeth’s teacher, Herald Captain Kerowyn, had passed her on to her pupil. But something—very probably something Elspeth herself had done—had finally roused her from that centuries-long sleep. Once she was awake, Need was a hundred times more formidable than she had been asleep.
She had quite a mind of her own, too. She had decided, once Elspeth was safely in the hands of the Hawkbrothers and the immediate troubles were over, that the Changechild Nyara required her far more than Elspeth did. So when Nyara chose to vanish into the wild lands surrounding the Tayledras Vale, Need evidently persuaded the catlike woman to take the sword with her.
That left Elspeth on her own, to follow her original plan; find a teacher for Valdemarans with mage-talent, and get training herself. Among the few hundred-odd things she hadn’t planned on was being made a member of a Tayledras Clan. How did I get myself into this? she asked herself.
:Willingly and with open eyes,: her Companion Gwena replied, the sarcastic acidity of her Mindspeech not at all diluted by the fact that it was a mere whisper. :You could have gone looking for Kero’s great-uncle, the way you were supposed to. He’s an Adept and a teacher. You could have followed Quenten’s very clear directions, and he would have taken you as a pupil. If necessary, I would have made certain he took you as a student. But no, you had to follow your own path, you—:
Elspeth considered slamming mental barriers closed against her Companion and decided against it. If she did, Gwena would win the argument by default.
:I told you I wasn’t going to be herded to some predestined fate like a complacent ewe,: she snapped back, just as acidly, taking Gwena entirely by surprise. The Companion tossed her mane as her head jerked up with the force of the mental reply, her bright blue eyes going blank with surprise.
:I also told you,: Elspeth continued with a little less force and just a touch of satisfaction, :that I wasn’t going to play Questing Hero just to suit you and the rest of your horsey friends. I will do my best by Valdemar, but I’m doing it my own way. Besides, how do you know Kero’s uncle would have been the right teacher for me? How do you know that I haven’t done something better than what you planned by coming here and making contact with the Shin’a’in and the Hawkbrothers? Vanyel was certainly a well-trained Adept, and the Chronicles say that the Hawkbrothers trained him.:
Gwena snorted scornfully, and pawed the ground with a silver hoof. :I don’t know whether you’ve done better or worse,: she replied, :but you were asking how you got yourself into this—this—brotherhood ceremony. And I told you.:
Elspeth stiffened. Gwena had been eavesdropping again. :That was a purely rhetorical question,: she said coldly. :Meant for myself. I wasn’t broadcasting it to all and sundry. And I’d appreciate it if you’d let me keep a few thoughts private once in a while.:
Gwena narrowed her eyes and shook her head. :My,: was all she said in reply. :We’re certainly touchy today, aren’t we?:
Elspeth did not dignify the comment with an answer. If anything, Gwena was twice as touchy as she was, and both of them knew why. The only way for Elspeth—or Skif—to be able to remain in the lands guarded by the Tayledras was to be made Wingbrothers to the Clan of k’Sheyna. But that required swearing to certain oaths—which none of their informants had yet divulged, saying only that they’d learn what those pledges were when they actually stepped into the circle to make them.
Elspeth had been trained in diplomacy and statecraft from childhood, and undisclosed oaths made her very nervous indeed. It wasn’t so bad for Skif—he wasn’t the Heir. But for her, well, the things she pledged herself to here could have serious consequences for Valdemar if she wasn’t very careful. She carried with her the Crown’s authority. The fact that a forgotten oath had made a crucial difference to Valdemar in the recent past only pointed up the necessity of being careful what she swore to here and now.
“Nervous?” Skif asked in a low voice, startling her out of her brooding thoughts.
She grimaced. “Of course I’m nervous. How could I not be? I’m hundreds of leagues away from home, sitting in a cave with you, you thief—”
“Former thief,” he grinned.
“Excuse me. Former thief and a bloodthirsty barbarian shaman from the Dhorisha Plains—”
Tre’valen cleared his throat delicately. “Pardon,” he interrupted, in the Tayledras tongue, “But while I am both shaman and bloodthirsty, I am not, I think, a barbarian. We Shin’a’in have recorded history that predates the Mage Wars. Can you say as much, newcomer?”
For a moment, Elspeth was afraid she had offended him, then she saw the twinkle in his eye, and the barely perceptible quirk of one corner of his mouth. Tre’valen had proved to have a healthy sense of humor over the past few days, as they waited out the response of the k’Sheyna Council of Elders to their petition to remain. She had heard him refer to himself as bloodthirsty and a barbarian more than once. In point of fact, the shaman seemed to enjoy teasing and challenging her…
“I stand rebuked, oh Elder of Elders,” she replied formally, bowing as deeply as she could. She was rewarded with his broad grin, which grew broader as she continued, “Of course, the fact that you don’t do anything with all that recorded history has no bearing at all on whether or not you’re barbarians.”
“Of course not,” he replied blandly, evidently well-satisfied with her return volley. “Dwelling overmuch upon the past is the mark of the decadent. We aren’t that, either.”
“Point taken.” She conceded defeat, and turned back to Skif. “So I’m here in a cave waiting for some authority to come along and demand that I swear something unspecified, which may or may not bind me to something I’d really rather not have anything to do with—why should I be nervous?”
Skif chuckled, and she restrained herself from snarling. “Now think a bit,” he told her, fondly, but as if she were thirteen again. “You’ve read the Chronicles. Both Vanyel and his aunt swore the Wingbrother Oaths. They had to, or they couldn’t have gone in and out of the Vales the way they did. If there was nothing in the oaths to bother them, why should you be worried?”
“They do not differ,” Tre’valen said serenely, “and they have not changed in all of our recorded history. Many shaman of the Shin’a’in swear to Wingsib; and believe me, the oaths our Goddess requires of us bind us to far more than your own oaths to your Crown and country. And She can move her hand to chastise us at her will. I think you need not be concerned.”
Well, that was some comfort, anyway. Elspeth had seen for herself how the Shin’a’in Goddess—who was, so Darkwind said, also the Goddess of his people—could and did manifest herself in very tangible fashion. And she had a sure and certain taste of how seriously the Shin’a’in took their oaths to protect their land from interlopers. Well, if Tre’valen knew all about the oaths and felt comfortable with them, she probably didn’t have to worry.
Much.
This would be the first time she and Skif had been permitted inside the Vale of k’Sheyna itself. The Hawkbrother mage—or was it scout?—Darkwind had dismissed it with a shrug as “not what it once was” with no indication of what it could be like; and Tre’valen, if he knew what the Vale was like in its prime, was not telling. Descriptions in the Chronicles of Vanyel’s time had been sketchy, hinting at wonders without ever revealing what the wonders were.
:Probably because they didn’t know,: Gwena said, most of the sarcasm gone from her mind-voice. :Vanyel and Sayv—Savil had too much on their minds to give descriptions of where they’d been. Besides, why describe somewhere no one else would be allowed to visit? It might tempt them to try, and that would be fatal. The Tayledras tend to perforate first and apologize after.:
:Are you snooping in my head again?: Elspeth replied, with a bit less venom than before.
:No, you’re echoing at me,: Gwena told her candidly. :I can’t help it if your surface thoughts echo down our link unless you block them. And I can’t help it if you forget to block because you’re nervy.:
:All right, all right. I stand rebuked. I apologize.: Elspeth carefully put up her lightest shields, and went back to her brooding.
There was a fourth party sharing the title of Wingbrother with them, but shaman Kethra had sworn her vows a long time ago. She was considerably older than Tre’valen, though not as old as his superior, Kra’heera, and she had been a wingsib for at least a dozen years. She was a Healer as well as a shaman, and she was tending to Darkwind’s father, Adept Starblade. Darkwind seemed reluctant to discuss what Mornelithe Falconsbane had done to his father, and Elspeth wasn’t about to press him for answers. She did want to know, however, and badly; not because of morbid curiosity, but because one day she might need to know just how one Adept could so completely subvert another. One of Weaponsmaster Alberich’s precepts was that “anyone can be broken.” If it was possible she might find herself on the receiving end of an attempt to break her, she’d like to know what she could expect…
Elspeth had been a bit surprised that Tre’valen was staying on, though. He had said only that his own master had asked him to remain with k’Sheyna “because it is important.” Whatever it was, it couldn’t have anything to do with what Falconsbane had done to the Clan—Darkwind and Kethra were tending to that.
Could it be because of what had happened to Dawnfire?
The memory was so vividly etched in her mind, she had only to think of the hawk Dawnfire to relive what she’d seen.
The Shin’a’in stood in a rough circle below Dawnfire’s perch. The red-shouldered hawk had taken a position just above the door of the gryphons’ lair, her head up and into the wind, her wings slightly mantled. Then one of the Shin’a’in, a woman, put her hand up to the hawk.
Dawnfire stared measuringly at her for a moment, then stepped down from her perch onto the proffered wrist. The woman turned to face the rest.
Like all the other Shin’a’in who had come to their rescue, this one was clad entirely in black, from her long black hair to her black armor, to her tall black boots. But there was something wrong with her eyes. Something odd.
Elspeth had sensed a kind of contained power about her; the stirrings of a kind of deeply running energy she had never felt before.
The woman raised Dawnfire high above her head and held her there, a position that should have been a torment after only a few moments, no matter how strong she was. Tayledras hawks were the size and weight of small eagles, and Dawnfire was by no means the smallest of the kind. But as the woman continued to hold Dawnfire aloft, the entire group began to hum—softly at first, then as the volume increased, and as the ruins rang with harmonics, Dawnfire started glowing.
At first Elspeth had thought it was just a trick of the setting sun, but the light about the bird grew brighter instead of fading. Then Dawnfire spread her wings and grew larger as well as brighter.
Before long, Elspeth couldn’t even look at her directly; she had averted her eyes, for the light from the hawk was bright enough to cast shadows.
Kra’heera had looked at her and said, “Dawnfire has been chosen by the Warrior.” She hadn’t known what that meant then. She did now.
When the light and sound had faded, and she was able to look at the bird again, she saw that it was no longer a red-shouldered hawk. It was a vorcel-hawk, the emblem of Kra’heera’s Clan, and the largest such bird she had ever seen. Although the light had dimmed, it had not died, and there was an otherwordly look in the hawk’s eyes that had made her start with surprise.
It was the same look as in the eyes of the female warrior who held her—their eyes held neither whites, irises, or pupils—only a darkness, sprinkled with sparks of light that were visible even where Elspeth stood. As if instead of eyes, they had fields of stars.
That was when she had remembered the description of the Shin’a’in Goddess—and had realized exactly what she was looking at. Small wonder the memory was as vivid as it was; it wasn’t every day an ordinary mortal saw a living Goddess and her Avatar.
She eyed Tre’valen with speculation. No matter how casually the elder shaman had treated the event afterward, she wondered if he hadn’t been just as surprised as everyone else by the appearance of his Goddess. From what little she understood, change came to the Plains seldom and slowly. When Kerowyn had regaled them with tales of her Shin’a’in cousins, had she ever said anything about their Goddess creating Avatars? Elspeth didn’t remember anything like that…
So maybe this was something new for them. Maybe that was why Tre’valen was here; to watch for Dawnfire, and to try and figure out the reasons behind his Goddess’ actions.
Well, if that was the case, he must have told the Hawkbrothers, or at least their leaders. On the surface none of this seemed to have anything to do with her—but Elspeth didn’t take anything for granted anymore. After all, why should the Shin’a’in have shown up at all then? Who could have predicted she’d get involved with the Tayledras, and wind up adding their enemies to her own rather formidable list? I ought to ask him later if I’m right about all that. Maybe we can help each other out.
Gwena walked to the entrance of the cave and looked out—impatiently, Elspeth thought. Her Mindspoken words to her Chosen confirmed that. :I wish I knew what it was they were spending so much time doing in there,: she said. :They’ve certainly been keeping us cooling our heels long enough. At this rate, that ceremony of theirs won’t be over until dark.:
Elspeth wondered why she was so impatient—the Companions weren’t the ones being sworn in, even though they wouldn’t be permitted in the Vale until the Heralds were. Evidently, by common consensus, the Tayledras regarded the Companions as creatures that simply didn’t require oaths to hold them.
Hmm. That requires thought. Do they think Gwena is some kind of Avatar herself ? The idea was kind of funny. If they ever listened to her moaning and griping they’d soon lose that particular illusion! I rather doubt Gwena’s hiding that kind of secret.
Not that she hadn’t been hiding other kinds of secrets. This “plan” for Elspeth’s future that the Companions had been plotting, for one. And there were others…
Shortly after Nyara had vanished, taking Need with her, Elspeth noticed that Gwena was missing. Worried about her—since Gwena had been injured in the fight with Falconsbane’s mage-beasts—she had tried to find her Companion, and when she failed, tried to Mindtouch her. When that failed, she had been alarmed and had gone looking for her.
Gwena had been perfectly all right—but she’d been locked in a self-induced trance, shielded even against the prying of Elspeth’s thoughts. And when she’d come out of it, she’d been very unhappy to find her Chosen standing there, tapping her foot impatiently, waiting for an answer.
Under pressure from both Elspeth and Skif, she reluctantly admitted that she had been in contact with another Companion in Valdemar all during this journey. Elspeth had expected that Companion to be her mother’s—and had been both surprised and relieved to find that it was actually Rolan, the Companion of the Queen’s Own Herald, Talia.
Then she had been annoyed, though she hadn’t made much of an issue about it. She hadn’t known that Companions could relay messages that far—and so far as she was aware, no one knew that little fact. Was it just Gwena and Rolan, or could others do it, too? One way or the other, it was one more thing that the Companions had been hiding. So how much more could they do that they hadn’t revealed?
Gwena had said crossly that Elspeth should have expected that “arrangements would be made.” And Elspeth had been forced to agree. After all, she was the Heir, and she’d been allowed to go haring off into the unknown with only one Herald to guard her back. For all that she’d managed to get complete agreement from the Council and Heraldic Circle, it was still rather irresponsible. If Queen Selenay had not had a way to get news about her errant offspring, she’d likely have had strong hysterics before a month was out. Especially after Elspeth departed from the agreed-upon itinerary, and “vanished” into the Dhorisha Plains.
Still, she hadn’t much liked the idea that little reports on her progress were being sent back home, as if she was some kind of child on her first outing without Mama.
On the other hand, Gwena had told them, when Elspeth pressed her for exactly what she’d been telling Rolan, that the “reports” she’d been sending Rolan were edited. “Heavily edited,” in fact, was what the Companion had said, rather glumly. Which was just as well. If Selenay had the smallest inkling just how much danger Elspeth and Skif had gotten themselves into—
She’d have found a way to haul me back, that’s what she’d have done, and plunked me down in nice safe embroidery classes for the rest of my natural life.
How could she possibly explain to her mother that ever since she’d started on this trip—even before she’d started—she’d had the feeling that the Crown wasn’t something she was ever going to wear? Even if she had tried to tell her, Selenay would have taken it the wrong way; she’d have been sure that Elspeth had some premonition of doom, and there she’d be in embroidery class again, away from all possibility of danger.
What an awful idea.
And it wasn’t a premonition of “doom,” or anything like one. It was just the feeling that she was never going to rule. That one of the twins was going to have the throne, and the other—
The other would be King’s Own. Not a bad arrangement, since they aren’t at all alike. Wouldn’t be the first time that sibs were Monarch and Monarch’s Own.
Her fate was something else entirely—though what, she hadn’t the faintest notion. Even though her conscience bothered her now that she was so far away from home, she’d been doing some useful work, assigned to Kerowyn and the Skybolts. And, though she would never have believed it when she left Haven, she was homesick.
She kept telling herself that there wasn’t much she had been doing that couldn’t be done by Talia and Daren… and that though she wasn’t a ForeSeer, she’d never been wrong when she got really strong feelings about something. There was something she had to do, and it was tied up with learning magic.
She’d said as much to Gwena, who’d agreed with her. “Even though you aren’t following the course we’d planned for you,” she’d added.
Too bad. So I’m a stubborn bitch. I do things my way, or not at all, and if Mother, Gwena, and Rolan don’t like it, I’m not at all sorry. So there. Nyah, nyah. She grinned to herself at her own childish thought. Really, it was a very good thing that the messages were going through Rolan to Talia and only then to Selenay. Rolan had more of a sense of humor than Gwena—and a little more tolerance. And Talia knew her former charge very well indeed. Further, Talia had told Elspeth privately that she thought the Queen was reacting like most mothers to the evidences of her daughter growing up and developing a mind of her own.
Badly.
Oh, not as badly as she could have, but all things considered, it was much better for Elspeth to be off beyond Mama’s reach for a while. By the time she returned, it might be possible for Queen Selenay to admit that her daughter wasn’t a foolish, headstrong, stupid child anymore.
I’ve managed to acquire a little sense, anyway…
:Gather yourself, my dear,: Gwena Mindspoke, interrupting her thoughts. :They’re coming for you. Finally.:
* * *
Elspeth glanced out of the corner of her eye at Skif and Tre’valen. Skif looked as if he were concentrating on every word that the Hawkbrother called Iceshadow spoke. Actually, he probably was; his command of the Tayledras tongue wasn’t anywhere near as good as hers. Odd; she’d slipped right into the language as if she had known it most of her life.
Oh, that’s probably because it’s like Shin’a’in, and Kero taught me some of that.
Tre’valen wore that inscrutable face that Kero always put on when she was determined not to let anyone know what she was thinking. “Gambling-face,” she called it.
The more she thought about it, the better she liked the idea of approaching Tre’valen later to see if they could do anything for each other. She felt a lot more comfortable around him—around any of the Shin’a’in, really—than she did around the Tayledras. That was probably because she could read him, a little. He and Kethra reminded her of Kero; well, that shouldn’t surprise her. Kero had trained her, and Kero had, in turn, been trained by a Shin’a’in Swordsworn, so there was a lot of Shin’a’in attitude and thinking patterns in the way Kero looked at things. A good bit of that had rubbed off on her pupil, without a doubt. The Tayledras, however, were very exotic, and Darkwind had been so hard to read that Elspeth had given up even trying.
I wonder if they seem that way to Tre’valen?
They hadn’t had much of a chance to see the Vale; as Gwena had predicted, it was sunset when the Hawkbrothers came for them, and most of the Vale was shrouded in shadows as they passed through it. Elspeth had gotten some impressions that had taken her breath away, however—of luxuriant growth that made any forest she’d ever seen look sparse by comparison, and trees so enormous her mind refused to accept their size. The Companions had trailed along behind as they followed a well-worn path past curtaining vines covered with cascading flowers the size of her hand, and bushes with leaves bigger than a saddle. Elspeth couldn’t wait to see the place in the daytime.
Darkwind himself had come to fetch them, as their sponsor into the Clan; Kethra was Tre’valen’s. With him had come at least a dozen more Tayledras—and Elspeth had done her best not to stare, but it had been very difficult. She had thought that Darkwind was a typical Hawkbrother, and she had been just a little disappointed, given the hints in the Chronicles of how strange the Hawkbrothers were, at his shoulder-length, mottled-brown hair and his drab clothing. The Chronicles had talked about Moondance and Starwind being as “brightly plumaged as firebirds” and she’d cherished images of brilliant colors and weird clothing, maybe things that didn’t look like clothing at all.
She wasn’t disappointed any longer. The dozen Tayledras with Darkwind had been garbed as wildly and beautifully as she could have wished. Every one of them had hair that was waist-length or longer, white as ice, and twined with feathers, crystals, bells, slender chains, or strands of silk matching their—costumes. That was the only word she could arrive at. “Clothing” certainly wasn’t adequate—not for robes with layered sleeves that trailed on the ground, hugged the arm like silken skin, were scalloped, bejeweled, embroidered, and tapestried. “Garb” didn’t describe tunics and gowns that mimicked feathers, leaves, flower petals, frozen waterfalls. Every one of the dozen was unique; every one was incredible and complex. And yet, the costumes weren’t any less functional than, say, Valdemaran Court gear; although she wouldn’t have known how to move in those outfits without tripping over something.
She felt for the first time as if she had truly left the world she knew and had stepped into the pages of a tale.
Even Darkwind—drab, disappointing Darkwind—had been transformed. Although his hair was still shoulder-length, he had somehow managed to get patterns dyed into it. She assumed it was dye; it might not have been. How would she know? It might have been magic. Birds flickered whitely against a dark gold background every time he moved his head, as if his hair was a forest in autumn with doves flying through it. And his costume was as fanciful as the rest—although a little more practical. He had eschewed trailing sleeves and hemlines for embroidery and something that stayed fairly close to his body. But he was just as eye-dazzling in his way as the others were in theirs.
He smiled shyly when he saw the surprise and approval in her expression, but said nothing, simply gesturing for her and Skif to follow him into the depths of the Vale. Kethra led Tre’valen in a similar fashion; the rest of the Tayledras came behind, with mage-lights bobbing above their heads, and the Companions bringing up the rear. Above the walls of the valley and the tops of the towering trees, the sky still glowed blue, with the west a warm gold—in the shelter of the massive branches, dense blue shadows obscured all but the trail they walked.
They had emerged in a clearing, ringed and paved with stone. In the very center of the circular area stood a cracked and half-broken stone with a brazier at its foot, all of it lit by more mage-lights. This strange monolith, she assumed, was the Heartstone—damaged, its wild energies barely restrained by multiple layers of shielding. Darkwind had warned her to keep tight personal shields about her when she was near it; she saw no reason to argue with him. Even through her protections she felt something vaguely wrong with the stone, a kind of sickness about it. It wasn’t something she could put a finger on, or point to, but the uneasy feeling was definitely there.
Iceshadow—wearing an elaborate costume that made him look as if he was half a man and half a delicate, frozen fountain—took his place before the stone. In the transparent, unwavering illumination of the mage-lights, he could have been a dream, an illusion—an ice sculpture brought to life. Then he moved, gracefully, holding up his hands—and with no more preparation than that, Elspeth found herself surrounded by a blue glow that was quite familiar.
Truth Spell? Bright Havens, did we get it from them, or did they get it from Vanyel?
The other question that occurred to her, with a touch of envy, was how Iceshadow had managed to call the spell up with no preparation and in no more than a heartbeat. It took her a good bit of time to call up a Truth Spell, and she was one of the best in her class at that particular exercise. Iceshadow hadn’t even needed to think about it, so far as she had been able to tell. He just gestured, and there it was. That was as impressive as all the lightnings and thunders she’d seen—and cast—fighting Falconsbane and his creatures. Iceshadow had not only cast the spell as easily as breathing, he had made it look effortless.
Iceshadow lowered his arms, and a white horn-tufted owl drifted down out of the trees to land on his shoulder. He watched the three of them serenely for a moment, and then folded his hands in his sleeves. “Do you bring any ill-intent into this Vale?” he asked, conversationally.
Was this the beginning of the oathtaking? It must be. She shook her head, and Skif mouthed the word “No.”
Iceshadow smiled slightly, and continued; still calm, still casual. “Is it your wish to be made a brother of this Clan?”
They both answered with nods.
Now Iceshadow sobered; the owl settled itself and turned unblinking eyes upon them, as if it, too, was weighing the truth of their intent. Elspeth was suddenly hyperaware of everything about her; the faint, cool breeze on her back, the way it stirred Iceshadow’s clothing, Skif’s hair, the fringe on Tre’valen’s sash. The way the blue light from the spell reflected in the onlookers’ eyes. The call of a bird, somewhere out in the Vale. Iceshadow took a deep breath, and spoke, in a soft voice that still carried incredible intensity. “Hear, then, the privileges of brotherhood: to come and go freely within all lands held by Tayledras k’Sheyna; to call upon your brothers in times of need; to ask of us teaching; to make your home among us. Hear also the responsibilities of brotherhood: to keep the secrets of the Clan; to neither bring nor lead strangers among us; to keep our lands and guard them as we do; to answer to our need if no other oath prevents; to teach when it is asked of you, aid when it is asked of you, give shelter and succor to your brothers of the Clan, of Tayledras, and of Shin’a’in. Can you be bound to these conditions?”
“Yes,” Elspeth breathed. It would not have been unreasonable to swear them to absolute secrecy, or to require that they pledge a formal and complicated alliance to the Clan. Skif seemed just as surprised as he answered in the affirmative.
The breeze gusted past again, and the owl roused its feathers, shaking himself vigorously before settling down to resume his stare at them. Iceshadow watched them as unblinkingly as his owl. “Then there is another vow you must make,” Iceshadow continued. “But it is one that you must not make in ignorance. So listen—watch—and heed—”
He gestured again, and as Elspeth caught her breath in startlement, a globe of glowing white mist rose up from the pavement between them, obscuring everything on the other side of the circle. As Elspeth turned her attention from the Hawkbrother to the globe of starlight, she saw that there was a picture forming in it. She bit her lip when the picture cleared, this time with a feeling of incredulity and horror; she had seen her own land ravaged by warfare, but this was beyond anything she had ever dreamed in her worst nightmares. Encased in the glowing globe was the image of a devastated land; the viewpoint was from the edge of a blasted crater so wide she literally could not see the other side. She blinked and swallowed, finding it hard to comprehend destruction on so vast a scale, and nauseated by the very idea that such a thing could have happened. To see a place that must once have been green, been full of people, animals, trees and plants—to see it not only ravaged, but utterly annihilated—the shock of it drove any real thoughts from her head for a moment. Beside her, Tre’valen started in surprise, as if this was something he knew about but had not expected to see here.
“This was the homeland, long and long ago.” Iceshadow’s voice drifted across the silence, a voice filled with such sadness and loss that it seemed as if what Elspeth saw might have happened a day ago, rather than centuries ago. “This was the homeplace of the people called Kaled’a’in. This was all that remained, at the end of the First and Last conflict, the Mage Wars.”
The scene shifted, to a group of armed, subdued people, all with the long black hair and golden skin of the Shin’a’in, gathered on the edge of the crater. There was some confusion as they and their animals—horses, huge dogs, hunting cats, and birds of prey—milled about, and then it was apparent that about half of them were packing up and moving off, away from the crater, while the rest stayed.
“We fled from the destruction, and returned when we could. This was what we found, and there was mourning and confusion. Then came anger, at what had happened, at what had caused it. There was dissent over what the people should do. Some wished to renounce all magic; some, to make further use of magic to keep the Clans alive in this new and alien world. There was no compromise possible between those positions—dissent became argument, and argument became hate. That was when, rather than turn dissent to feud, the two sides agreed to divide, and with this decision came the Sundering of the Clans. Those who renounced magic became the Shin’a’in, while those who sought magery removed themselves from the rest, calling themselvesTayledras, after the birds that they had helped to bring into being. These, our Fathers and Mothers, went north.”
Again the scene shifted, to something that had probably been a forest.
Once.
Now it was another kind of nightmare; instead of lifelessness, twisted and contorted wildlife ran riot. The vegetation grew so thick it formed a solid green wall on either side of the road, except that it was hard to tell some of the flora from some of the fauna. There were plants that groped after the passing Clansfolk, and animals that were rooted to the spot like plants, some watching them with indifferent eyes, others that screamed unendingly. There were creatures she half-glimpsed through the veils of vines hanging from every branch that made Elspeth shudder. As she tried to make sense of confusion of color and motion, the group shown was attacked by things that were horribly worse than the creatures Falconsbane had sent against them—things that seemed to be nothing but teeth and claws, with armored plates covering everything but their joints.
Iceshadow’s voice made her jump. “The five Clans that were now Tayledras found that the lands beyond the homeland were ravaged by the forces of twisted and tainted magic. No human or bird could survive there for long. Either they must starve, for they could not spare a moment from defense to grow or hunt their food, or they must give up defense and perish at the hands of the monsters that inhabited these lands. They despaired, for there was nowhere else for them to go.”
The scene fogged for a moment, and re-formed. The band of Tayledras had made a camp on the top of a hill, the earth scorched bare by fire, with a temporary palisade of thorny branches about the camp—but it was obvious it could not last for long against any kind of attack.
“They knew they could go no farther,” Iceshadow concluded. “So, as their kindred that would become the Shin’a’in would do, they prayed to their Goddess. And She answered. Here is her answer to their plea.”
Nothing Elspeth had watched prepared her for what happened as the mist clouded again.
Suddenly there was no ball of glowing mist with pictures in it before her; suddenly there was no clearing, no Hawkbrothers, no Skif—
—no light, no sound, no world.
Only herself, a sky full of stars stretching in every direction—
—including down—
And out of this starry nothingness arose a white-hot flame that was somehow also a woman. Too bright to see clearly, She changed from moment to moment, and the raw Power emanating from Her made Elspeth tremble. She’d have fallen to her knees—if she could have figured out how to do so in the midst of all this starry space.
I have heard your prayers, She said, in a voice that filled Elspeth’s mind, leaving no room for anything, not even fear. There is a price to be paid for what you ask, and that price is in your lives, and your freedom.
She gestured, and in the palm of Her hand was cupped the weirdly twisted landscape of the forest the Clansfolk had entered. Terrible magics have warped this land, and only magic can heal it again. Therefore I offer this, that you have asked of me. I shall grant you safety here, long enough to establish each of you a Clan holding. I shall teach you the means of creating a place in the midst of the holding wherein you shall dwell in protection. I shall grant you the knowledge of Adepts, to use and concentrate the magic—and a knowledge even Adepts have not—to create a center of such power that the greatest of the mages who caused these changes would look upon you with envy.
To this you shall swear, in return. You will cleanse these lands—restore them to what they were before the Wars. You shall destroy the creatures of evil intent, cherish and succor the innocent victims of this catastrophe, and find shelter for those that are merely animals, meaning neither good nor ill. You shall destroy those old weapons you may find, that they may not be misused again. You shall cleanse the land you hold—and then you shall move on, to another place, to begin again. All of your children that are Mage-Gifted shall follow this path. All who are not shall guard and aid the ones who are. You shall be the Healers and Protectors—and you shall never permit the magics you manipulate here to be used for ill, nor shall you permit strangers within your ranks, unless they be sworn to the Clans. This you must do, at whatever cost to yourselves.
Abruptly, the vision was gone. Elspeth shook her head, blinking and still trembling with reaction, more than a little disoriented. There was nothing now in the clearing but what had been there when they entered; even the glowing mist was gone.
She tried to shake off the effect of the vision—if that was what it had been. She had been there for a moment; she didn’t at all doubt that she had experienced exactly the same thing as those long-ago Hawkbrothers had. What she couldn’t understand was why Skif didn’t seem particularly affected, but Tre’valen looked just as dazed and bedazzled as she felt. Long ago, when she was younger, she had first heard the story of King Valdemar and the first appearance of the Companions, and had thought it a very pretty tale. Now she had the glimmering of what King Valdemar just might have experienced when his prayers were answered. It shook her to the soul. It made her understand why some people became ardent, abject devotees of deities.
Iceshadow was silent for a long moment, while she and Tre’valen gathered their scattered wits. Elspeth thought that he watched her particularly closely, although she couldn’t be sure of that. Finally, he spoke again.
“This is the last oath you must swear—that you will aid your brothers of the Clan in their duty, as your own oaths permit—and that never will you use what is taught you here for the sake of your own power, pride, and status.”
He held his hand up, to forestall their immediate answers. “I shall not ask you to swear never to use it to harm—for one day you may find yourself facing an enemy who would destroy far more than you if he is given the opportunity to do so. But you must never use your learning for selfish purposes, to increase your own importance, to make your life one of pointless leisure, to merely indulge your fancies. Can you swear to that?”
Elspeth heaved a sigh of relief; that was enough like the oaths a Herald took before the Circle that the wording made very little difference. She gave her assent with a much lighter heart, grateful that all of the vows she’d been asked to make seemed to take into account the fact that those outside the Clan had other duties and oaths of their own that might take precedence.
Now as long as both sets of promises never come into conflict, I should be all right.
Throughout the entire oathtaking, the blue glow of the Truth Spell remained steady around all three of them. Now Iceshadow banished the spell with another gesture, just as the deepening blue of the sky above them took on the golden-red streaks of the last moments of sunset. Elspeth looked up for a moment, as some movement against the luminous blue above caught her eye, and discovered that what had attracted her attention was the steady circling of a bird over their clearing. A bird of prey, by the shape.
Nothing unusual, not here in the heart of a Tayledras Clan territory, but something about the bird made her take a second, closer look.
It was big; much bigger than she had thought, at first. In fact, it was easily the size of the largest eagle she had ever seen. But it had the distinctive tail-striping of a vorcel-hawk; that was one bird she would never again mistake for anything else.
A vorcel-hawk the size of an eagle, or larger—and unless it was a trick of the light, it was glowing.
Dawnfire? The thought was inevitable. She glanced back down at Tre’valen, only to see that he was watching the hawk as well, though no one else seemed to notice that it was there. The expression on his face was a most peculiar one; he looked both excited and obscurely disturbed, at one and the same time.
The hawk made a final circle above, then spiraled upward, to be lost in the scarlet-and-golden glory of the sunset. Tre’valen licked his lips and looked down again; reluctantly, it seemed to her. He caught her watching him before she could look away, and something in his eyes made her nod, once, slowly; admitting, without actually saying anything, that she had seen the bird as well.
His lips formed the merest ghost of a smile, and he turned his attention back toward Iceshadow.
* * *
Less time had passed than she had thought. The Tayledras Adept was only now finishing his words of acceptance, admitting them into the Clan as Wingsiblings, and welcoming them as allies and friends.
She shook her head again, feeling another shiver of disorientation. Time was doing strange things around her, today. And Skif didn’t seem to be affected by any of it. Was it because she was a mage, or was it something else entirely?
Or was it just nerves?
Not that it really mattered at the moment. The ceremony wasn’t quite over yet, although the formal pledging of vows was. Darkwind had explained this afternoon as he brought them to the cave to wait, that Iceshadow wanted to talk to her, Skif, and their Companions before he unleashed the rest of the Clan on them.
“He wants to give you a clearer idea of what you’re getting involved with,” he had said; she had wondered at the time if he was joking a little or being completely serious.
But Iceshadow was, indeed, walking across the paving toward them with another strange Hawkbrother at his side, and Darkwind and the Companions following behind. The other Tayledras drifted off, seeming to melt into the luxuriant foliage.
“So, I meet the Heralds at last,” the Adept said, as he got within easy conversational distance of them. “The last of your kind to be within a Clan was—what?” He looked to the other Tayledras for an answer.
“Near seven hundred years ago,” the stranger supplied. Elspeth noticed, now that he was near enough for her to note details, that he was very pale, very tired-looking; there were lines of pain around his eyes and mouth. He made a little grimace. “That was k’Treva, though. They always were—hmm—unconventional.”
“I would say innovative, Starblade,” Iceshadow chided gently. “The experience certainly did them no harm and much good, from all I have heard out of the tales.”
At his naming the stranger, Elspeth took a moment for a second, closer, but covert examination of him. So this was Darkwind’s father? They didn’t look all that much alike, but that could be illness and the differences in their hair as much as anything. Starblade was wearing a more—conservative costume than the rest of his fellows; in fact, there was something about it that seemed very similar to the one Darkwind was wearing; something that invoked birds and their wings, without actually imitating feathers. As if they had been designed by the same mind. Interesting.
“The k’Treva Tayledras that welcomed the Heralds back then—that would have been Moondance and Starwind k’Treva, wouldn’t it?” she replied, obviously startling all three of the Hawkbrothers, and earning a covert grin of approval from Tre’valen. “That was in the Chronicles of Herald Vanyel’s time; I read them, and that was why I came here, to try and find more Tayledras, if I could. The Heralds were Vanyel Ashkevron and his aunt, Savil—Vanyel was the last of the Herald-Mages. The Chronicles said that he spent quite a lot of time there, in k’Treva Vale, especially when he was young, and that Starwind taught him most of what he knew about magic.”
“That is quite true, young one,” Starblade replied, his voice warming a little with what sounded to her like approval. “Or at least, that is what our records told me. Iceshadow, my friend, would it be possible for us to move to somewhere a little less formal for the rest of this?” He gestured apologetically to her, and to Skif and Tre’valen, “I am sorry, but I fear I must beg your indulgence and find a place to sit.”
“What about the fishpond over there?” Darkwind asked, pointing with his chin somewhere behind Iceshadow’s shoulder. “It’s quiet enough, and there shouldn’t be anyone there after the sun sets.”
“Good enough,” his father replied—gratefully, Elspeth thought. “There should be room for your large friends, and seating enough for all of us.”
Iceshadow gestured to the younger Hawkbrother to lead the way; Elspeth followed him, and the rest trailed behind her. By now it was becoming quite dark, and she was grateful for the mage-lights Iceshadow and Starblade produced. She found that distances were deceptive in the Vale; the ornamental fishpond Darkwind spoke of was actually hardly more than a stone’s throw away from the Heartstone circle, and yet it might easily have been halfway across the Vale. Once they had arranged themselves around it, there was no way of telling that the Heartstone was anywhere nearby.
“Well,” Starblade said, once he had settled himself in a comfortable “chair” formed of the roots of a tree with moss cupped where a cushion would be. Elspeth took a second, similar seat, and found it incredibly comfortable. “Iceshadow has asked me to explain to you just what sort of a—ah—situation you have unwittingly involved yourselves in. And since I am the partial cause of that situation, I think it only fair that I make the attempt.”
Elspeth met his eyes and recognized what she saw there. Pain, mental and physical. This conversation was going to cost him something—but she had seen some of that same pain in Darkwind’s eyes whenever he had spoken of his father, and she knew that Starblade had put that pain there. The man was right. It was only fair.
She settled herself and nodded to him, decisively. “Go ahead,” she said. “I don’t think anything you say is going to make us change our minds, but I was trained as a tactician; I like to know what I can expect.” She smiled, slightly. “Good or bad.”
Starblade nodded gravely, and leaned forward. He cradled his right hand around his bandaged left hand—surely there must be a story behind that as well. This was either going to be very short, or very long. Whichever it was, it was going to be interesting.
She had told the truth about not changing her mind; she only hoped what she learned wasn’t going to make her regret her own decisions. It was a little too late for regret now.
It was not, however, too early for strategy. It was never too early, or too late, for that.
“I know you are an Outlander… but I know not how much my son has told you of our troubles here,” Starblade began, with a sober glance at Darkwind, “so I shall tell my tale from the outset, and beg your patience if I repeat what you know.” He glanced down at the pond, with its patient, colorful carp skimming just below the surface of the water. “I shall be as brief as I can.”
He paused for a moment, clearly organizing his thoughts. “Mornelithe Falconsbane,” he said at last. “It all comes down to him.”
Darkwind nodded grimly, but said nothing.
“The Heartstone—” Starblade closed his eyes, but not before Elspeth had seen another shadow of pain pass across them. “Its shattering is his doing, but by my hand. I was foolish and vain; I thought myself clever, and I found out differently. He caught me through my foolishness, and my pride. He broke me, and he used me.”
Terse speech, but obviously each word cost him dearly. “Through me, he set his darkness upon the Heartstone, disrupted our magics, broke it from the inside, and in so doing, caused the deaths of many of our mages. Because of me, three-fourths of the Clan are lost somewhere in the wilderness.”
“How?” Elspeth asked, puzzled. “I mean, how could you lose that many people?”
Starblade toyed with a glass-beaded feather braided into his hair. “When a Clan moves, it is our way to establish the children, the lesser mages, the weak and the old, with the bulk of our scouts and warriors to protect them, at a new site. We send them by means of a Gate, we drain the Stone of its power and send it to the new Stone, then we follow. But when we filled the Stone with all the Clan’s power in preparation for diverting the power to the new site, the Heartstone shattered, and the Adept holding the Gate open died with the shattering. We had no one among us who could use the Heartstone, damaged as it was, to go to them by Gate. We barely know the true location of the rest of the Clan, for the scouts who had found the new place were with them.”
“And they couldn’t reach you without sending badly needed fighters,”
Elspeth supplied. “I take it none of the lesser mages were able to build these Gate things?”
“Only an Adept can master the Gate Spell,” Iceshadow replied. “And we fear that even if they had one who could cast it, the Stone is too unstable and there may be no way of bringing a Gate near to it.”
“All the scouts that knew the overland way to the new Vale are at that Vale,” Darkwind repeated. “Our number would be decimated trying to get to them by foot—leagues traveled are hard-won going North—and they cannot come to us, burdened with the old, the young, the sick.”
His father nodded. “Indeed. So—to make the bad much the worse, Falconsbane continued to work through me, keeping the Clan from reaching for help, keeping the Adepts still remaining from stabilizing the Stone, and keeping those who knew me well at a distance.” Starblade averted his eyes from Darkwind, but the reference was plain enough. “He hoped, I think, to wear us down until he could penetrate our defenses at his leisure and usurp the Stone and the power it still held. But he had not reckoned on our clever allies, the gryphons—and he had not reckoned on the courage and good sense of my son.”
“He couldn’t have guessed Nyara would turn against him, either,” Skif put in, with a hint of pride.
“No—nor the appearance of you and all that you represented,” Tre’valen told him, his eyes showing a hint of sardonic humor. “To tell you true, there was an unexpected marshaling of powers from all sides. Falconsbane certainly did not plan on that, nor the involvement of the Shin’a’in. That was his downfall.”
“If he lives still, he cannot be prospering,” Iceshadow put in. “Shin’a’in arrows found a mark in him; that much we know. And he has lost much in the way of power and creatures.”
“I wonder at that; Shin’a’in do not often miss in such attacks, their Goddess oft assists the arrow to the mark. But, despite that, I doubt that he lives,” Starblade sighed. “I think that the arrows of the Shin’a’in found their mark; that he fled only to die. There has been no sign of him or his creatures, and his escape was by blood-magic… with his own blood. That is an act of finality among mages.”
Elspeth shrugged. “I don’t know one way or the other about him, but the point, it seems to me, is that he has left the Vale in one snarled mess.”
Starblade nodded, and smoothed his braided hair back behind his ears. “My son has said he will teach you in the use of your Mage-Gift; that is a good thing, I think—but he will need to relearn much as he teaches you. It would be hazardous for you to do much practice of that learning within the Vale itself; though you would be protected from threats that are outside the Vale, the Stone is yet dangerous.”
Gwena stamped a hoof and snorted agreement, bobbing her head vigorously. Elspeth nodded; she felt the same. Starblade bore many years’ experience, and knew the magics involved as only a Tayledras Adept could. Better to err on the side of safety.
“I think,” Darkwind said slowly, “that we may practice outside the Vale for some time in relative safety. It will only be as we approach the greater Adept-magics that we will need the shieldings of the Vale.”
“By then, the Council and I should have come to some decision on the Stone,” Iceshadow told them. “Either we shall have begun to heal it ourselves, or we shall have found a way to deal with it.”
He glanced at Elspeth, with a certain amount of expectation in the look. She sighed, knowing what that look meant. “If you’re wondering if you can count on my help with this Heartstone of yours, I do remember those oaths I just took,” she said, with a little shake of her head. “I can’t say I like the idea of mucking about with that much power gone wrong, but what I can do, I will.”
Both Iceshadow and Starblade gave her nods of approval, but she wasn’t quite done. “What I need to know, here, is this—how much more trouble from outside can we expect while we’re doing all this? Starblade, I hope you’ll forgive my asking this, but you were a point of weakness before. Just how vulnerable are you to more meddling?”
Starblade wet his lips with the tip of his tongue before replying. “To meddling—I would say not at all. Even if Falconsbane still lives, and as I said, I do not think that he does, Iceshadow and Kethra have changed all the paths that made me open to him. To have me so his slave again, he would have to have me in his hand. He would break me faster—for I am that much more fragile than I was—but he would have to have me to break me.”
“And?” Elspeth raised an eyebrow.
“And I shall not leave this Vale until I walk through the Gate to a new one,” he told her. “I have been broken and am mending, but I am still weak to be broken again, and will not chance it, for the sake of all of us.”
Elspeth nodded, satisfied, but Skif frowned. “What about attack?” he asked. “Are you weaker to attack than—say Iceshadow?”
Starblade looked mildly surprised by the question. “I—think not,” he said immediately. “The weaknesses I have still require someone who knows me to exploit, and to have me, if not within physical touching, certainly within sight.”
Skif glanced over at Tre’valen, who shrugged. “The only magics I know intimately are those of the Goddess,” he said. “I am of no help nor hindrance in these things. These are good things to know, Starblade. I thank you for telling them.”
“I can’t think of any more questions,” Skif admitted. “I’m no mage, and I’m no help to you. Frankly, I’ll be a lot more help in finding Nyara and that damned sword she carries.”
“Now that I need to know something of,” Starblade said immediately. And Elspeth found herself the focus of every eye in the little clearing.
She fidgeted a little, uncomfortably. “I don’t know as much about Need as I’d like,” she replied, reluctantly. “She predates the Mage Wars, I think. At least, I didn’t recognize anything she showed us when she let us into her memories. So she’s either very old, or from awfully far away.”
“I would say, very old,” Darkwind opined, toying with a feather in a gesture uncannily—and probably unconsciously—like his father. “I would say, she is as old as the oldest artifact I have ever seen. She gave me the impression of great age, as great as any of the things I have stumbled upon in the ruins.”
Elspeth tilted her head back and took a deep breath of the cool, flower-scented air, using the moment to think. “What I do know is she was a member of some kind of quasi-religious order, with gods I never heard of—male and female twins.”
She gave the Hawkbrothers a glance of inquiry; all three of them shrugged as if the reference meant nothing to them either. “Well, even though at one time she’d been a warrior, she called herself a Mage-Smith.” Elspeth closed her eyes for a moment, to call up the memories that Need had shared with her and Skif. “As to how she became a sword in the first place—someone attacked the Order while she was gone—wiped out the older members, enslaved the young girls, stole everything they could carry. The only ones left were Need, who was too old to fight, and a young apprentice. So Need took a special sword that she’d forged spells into, spells of healing and luck—and forged herself into it as well.”
“How?” Iceshadow asked, genuinely interested.
Elspeth shook her head. “It wasn’t something I’d have done. She did some kind of preparation, then she killed her human body with the blade so that she could move her spirit into the sword. Then as long as the girl carried her, Need could give her both the skills of a fighter and of a Mage-Smith.”
All three of the Adepts looked startled at that. “How could that be?” Starblade asked.
“Well, she could operate on her own as a mage, or through her bearer,” Elspeth told him. “Or she could direct her bearer, if the bearer was Mage-Gifted—that was how she worked with me, after I refused to let her take me over. But for fighting skills, you had to let her completely take control of your body.” She grimaced. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t let her, artifact, mage, or no. She didn’t much care for my attitude.”
A hint of smile appeared around Starblade’s mouth; Darkwind grinned openly. “Why am I not surprised by that?” the younger mage said, to no one in particular.
Elspeth was glad that the darkness hid her flush; Darkwind seemed to have an uncanny ability to poke pins into her pride. Maybe it was just ill-luck, or bad timing.
She licked her lips and kept her temper. “I think that she wasn’t used to being thwarted,” she said carefully. “Captain Kerowyn, who had her before I did, told me that I would have to be prepared to counter her, that she’d have me haring off to rescue whatever female nearby was in trouble, whether or not it was a good idea to poke my nose into her problems. That, though, was while she was still—” Elspeth thought a moment. “As I remember, she called it ‘being asleep.’ I gathered that the personality was dormant, unconscious for a long time. Need never told me why.”
“The blade may not have wanted you to know why,” Tre’valen said smoothly. “Certainly, if you contradicted her will, she would not be so free with revealing secrets.”
“That’s true,” she acknowledged. “Anyway, she didn’t start to wake up again until I was at Kata’shin’a’in. So I don’t know as much as I’d like to about her. I think she is likely to take over Nyara; I think that after years of her father molding her to his whim and will, Nyara is inclined to be manipulated like that.”
Skif bristled, and started to say something. Darkwind’s thoughtful statement forestalled him.
“That would not be entirely ill for her,” the Hawkbrother said quietly. “Especially since—it seems, at least to me—Need has no intention of doing anything detrimental. I think she seeks to make her bearer a stronger woman. It is just that she does not like to have her will thwarted.”
Elspeth smiled ruefully. “I can testify to that,” she said.
“It seems to me this might be a good thing for the Changechild,” Starblade added thoughtfully. “Despite what has happened, I—I can feel pity for Nyara. She and I—” he faltered “—we have much, much in common. What Falconsbane did to her—it is very like what he did to me. It may be that this sword, if it has healing magics like those of Kethra and Iceshadow, can reverse some of the things that were done to the girl, even as Kethra is aiding me. I hope that is so. For her sake, and for ours.”
There didn’t seem to be anything else to say; Elspeth sat there awkwardly for a moment, until Iceshadow cleared his throat conspicuously. “If there is naught else that we can tell you—” he said.
Elspeth shook her head; so did Skif. “Not that I can think of,” she replied. “Although I probably will come up with a dozen questions I should have asked just before I drop off to sleep tonight.”
Iceshadow chuckled; Starblade nodded knowingly. “If you can recall them when you wake, feel free to ask them,” Iceshadow said, rising. “In the meantime—we hold celebration, to welcome you to the Clan and Vale. Your fellow k’Sheyna are anxious to see you; they are as curious about you as you are about them.”
In a way, that statement was something of a relief. It meant that the secretive Hawkbrothers were human enough to be curious. For all the time she had spent in Darkwind’s presence, there was more that was a mystery about him and his people than there was that was familiar.
“In that case,” she replied, rising from her own seat, “let’s not keep them waiting any longer.”
* * *
Elspeth followed Darkwind’s direction, as Iceshadow escorted Starblade in another direction—presumably, to rest. “We have had little enough to celebrate, of late,” Darkwind told the two Heralds and their Companions in a quiet voice, as he shepherded them down yet another path bordered by wild growth. “The stalemate with the Stone, the constant harassment on our borders, the separation—it has been difficult for everyone here. Add to that my father’s attempt to foster dissension between the scouts and the mages, and there was more tension than many could bear.”
“That particular dust-up was all because of Falconsbane, wasn’t it?” Skif asked. “I hope that’s been settled. I’d just as soon not find myself in the middle of a private quarrel.”
“You won’t,” Darkwind actually chuckled, as Elspeth hid a sigh of relief. “It’s been settled. I can pledge you, everyone is ready for a good celebration. The fact that you are the cause of it—and are strange Outlanders into the bargain—will make you very popular.”
That gave Elspeth a bit of a qualm; not because she was ill at ease at the idea of being the focus of so many strangers, but because of what Darkwind had called her.
Outlander.
She was a stranger here. There was nothing in this place that would remind her of home. If Darkwind seemed alien to her, his words were a reminder that she must be just as alien to him, and by extension, to his people. She wasn’t used to being the stranger; it made her feel disconnected and unbalanced.
And now, for the first time since she had arrived, she felt completely alone, completely without roots. And felt a wave of terrible homesickness wash over her.
At that moment, she was within a breath of weeping. Her throat closed, and she couldn’t speak. Her eyes clouded, and she stumbled—
But when she looked up, she found herself on the edge of another clearing, but this one was full of light—people.
Her training took over; there were people waiting to meet her out there. She was the Heir to the Throne, she was a Herald. Her homesickness could wait. She must put on a good face for them, impress them, so that they would see that Valdemar was worth aiding.
She blinked once or twice, clearing her eyes. The Companions, Skif, and Darkwind got a pace or two ahead of her, giving her the chance to compose herself further. She took a deep breath, another, then followed them out into the radiant clearing.
She had expected mage-lights, and mage-lights there were in plenty, but the chief illumination came from the moon. The soft, silvery light blurred and softened details; and as she looked around her, she suddenly realized that not all of the exotic occupants of the clearing were human.
Hertasi, the shy lizardlike creatures that were roughly half the height of a very tall man, she had seen once or twice before, in colored beads and satins—and the gryphons of course.
Their presence was a welcome surprise, and she waved at Treyvan when she knew he had seen her. She hadn’t known that the gryphons were coming, and Treyvan’s wide-beaked grin from across the clearing chased away the last of her homesickness. She couldn’t help herself; the gryphon grin was so contagious it left no room for such trivialities. Hydona saw that Treyvan was staring in their direction and turned to see what he was looking at. When she saw them, she nodded; her smile matched her mate’s and welcomed the newcomers with a warmth that surpassed species boundaries.
The gryphons occupied one entire nook of the clearing all by themselves, but beside them were three graceful, horned creatures that Elspeth guessed must be dyheli. And scattered among the Hawkbrothers were a handful of two-legged creatures whose feathers were real, and growing from their heads, not braided into their hair.
Tervardi! Elspeth’s years of protocol schooling kept her from staring, even though she would dearly have loved to. Along with the gryphons and the hertasi, these creatures were the stuff of legend in Valdemar. Legend said the tervardi were shapechangers, that they sprouted wings and turned into real birds when they chose. One of them turned, and Elspeth caught sight of a still, serene face with a mouth rimmed by something that was either a small, flexible beak, or hard, stiff lips. The creature gestured before she turned back to her conversation group, and Elspeth saw the stunted, colorful feathers, the last vestige of her wings, covering her arm.
As she moved hesitantly into the clearing, she realized that the previous occupants were—not ignoring her, but permitting her politely to fit into their group. That was certainly more comfortable than being mobbed and was exactly what a similar gathering of Heralds would have done.
She looked around; there were birds everywhere, some sleeping on perches, some awake and perched on shoulders or poles. The Companions both had joined a small group of mixed humans and nonhumans, along with Tre’valen; somehow, Darkwind and Skif had vanished, she had no idea how, but it left her on her own. With all those people carefully, politely, not looking at her, she felt more conspicuous than she would if they had been staring at her.
She hurried across the rest of the grassy space between her and the gryphons. Odd that of all of that gathering, they were the strangest physically, and the most familiar in every other way…
“Sssso!” Treyvan greeted her, extending a taloned foreclaw in a token of welcome. “You are now Tayledrasss, Clansssssib! Do you feel any different?”
“Well, yes and no,” she replied. “No—I mean, I’m still a Herald, and I’m still everything I was before.”
“But yesss?” Hydona spoke gently. “I think perhapsss it isss homesssicknesss?”
She blinked, surprised, and in an odd way, grateful. “How did you guess?”
The female gryphon nodded at the rest of the gathering. “We arrre the only two of our kind herrre asss well, except for the little onesss. We know how ssstrange you musst feel.”
She flushed, embarrassed that she could have missed something so very obvious. “Of course. It’s just that you and Darkwind are such friends, it never occurred to me—”
Treyvan laughed. “If it neverrr occurred to you, then I would sssay that iss a compliment on how well we have come to fit in herrre!” he exclaimed. “And trrruly, the humansss of the Valesss arrre not that unlike the humansss of our own landsss.”
“Ah,” she replied vaguely, not knowing what else to say. “Oh, where are the little ones?”
“Therrre.” Hydona indicated another corner of the clearing with an outstretched talon; there, in the shadows, the two young gryphlets were sprawled on the grass, listening sleepily to what appeared to be—
A very large wolf ?
—except that it wasn’t speaking, so how could they be listening?
“That isss a kyree; they arrre not often in thisss Vale,” Hydona said, as if she had heard Elspeth’s unspoken questions. “It isss a neuter. It hasss taken a liking to the little onesss and hass been kind enough to tell them taless sssince we arrived. I believe it iss called—” She turned to her mate for help.
“Torrl,” Treyvan supplied promptly. “It wass a great friend of Dawnfire, and iss sstill a great friend of Darrrkwind. Kyree neuterss are often verry fond of little oness of any speciessss; it iss a good thing the children arrre both sstrong Mindspeakersss.”
And that, of course, was how the kyree was “telling tales” to the young gryphlets; directly mind-to-mind, as the kyree who helped Vanyel at the last had spoken to Stefen. Elspeth’s mouth had gone very dry; this was like being inside of a tale herself, the experience being made even more dreamlike under the delicate illumination of mage-lights and moonlight.
She managed not to jump, as something tugged at the hem of her tunic. She looked down quickly; it was one of the hertasi, carrying a tray laden with fruits and vegetables that had been carved into artful representations of flowers. It offered the tray to her, and she took one; she hadn’t the faintest notion of what she’d taken, but she didn’t want to offend the little creature by refusing.
It slipped into the crowd, and she bit cautiously into her “prize.” Crisp and cool, it had a faint peppery taste, and a crunchy texture; encouraged by her success, when the next hertasi came by, this one with a tray of drinks, she took a glass with more enthusiasm.
This proved to be a light wine; she sipped it and continued to chat with the gryphons, deliberately keeping the subject light, asking innocuous questions about the kyree and the other nonhumans, until other Tayledras drifted up to join the conversation. Gradually she began to relax, and to enjoy herself.
When a touch on her elbow made her turn, she found that Darkwind had found his way back to her. He handed her a slice of something breadlike, with something like a tiny, decorative flower arrangement atop it, and slid into the group beside her.
“Your friend Skif and my brother seem to have discovered that they have much in common,” he said by way of joining the conversation, “and they have gone off to discuss weaponry. Knives, I think.”
She shook her head. “That figures. Offer to talk about knives, and you’ll have Skif’s undivided attention for as long as you like. Do I eat this, or wear it?”
He chuckled. “You eat it. I think you will like it; it is smoked fish.”
She nibbled the edge of it, tentatively. The smoked fish she was used to generally had the consistency and texture of a slab of wood, and tasted like a block of salt dipped in fish oil. She was pleasantly amazed at the indescribable blend of delicate flavors. As Darkwind chuckled again at her expression, she devoured it to the last shred.
“I have been asked,” he continued, both to her and to the gryphons, “to request the presence of my good friends Treyvan and Hydona at the waterfall, and my wingsib Elspeth at a gathering of the scouts.”
“Ssso?” Treyvan replied. “What isss at the waterrfall? And whom?”
“Kethra, Iceshadow, and my father, among others,” Darkwind told him. “And, I am told, a very large selection of fresh fish and uncooked meat and fowl. Some of our more sensitive guests, like the dyheli and tervardi, might be distressed by refreshments of that nature, so we took them out of the way.”
“Wissse,” Hydona acknowledged. “But the little onessss—”
“Torrl assures me that they are not too far from falling asleep,” Darkwind answered, “And when they do drift off, the hertasi have promised to keep an eye on them.”
“I am famisshed,” Treyvan said, with a look of entreaty at his mate.
Across the clearing, Elspeth noticed the kyree raising its head from its paws, and looking directly at them.
:Every parent deserves some time without the young,: she heard, just as clearly as if the kyree was her own Companion. :They are too tired to get into mischief that I cannot distract, and anything that wishes to harm them will have to come at them through not only me, but all the defenses of the Vale. And, I suspect, the large white hooved ones.:
Hydona gave in; Elspeth readily understood her reluctance to have the gryphlets out of her sight, considering all that had happened to them, but the kyree was right. If the little ones weren’t safe here, none of them were. They rose to their feet, folded their wings tightly against their sides to avoid knocking anything or anyone over, and took their leave.
Darkwind led the way up and down yet another path; this one ended beneath one of the enormous trees she had only glimpsed through curtains of bushes and vines. There were quite a few Tayledras gathered beneath it, but for the first few moments, all her attention was taken up by the tree itself.
Simply put, it was so large that an entire house could have been built within the circumference of its trunk. A curving staircase had been built around it, leading up to a kind of balcony three stories above the clearing. Soft lights hung from the bottom of the balcony, preventing her from seeing anything above that level, but she had the feeling that the staircase continued upward. When she shaded her eyes and peered upward, she caught sight of other, fainter lights near the trunk, half-obscured by the enormous branches. The Chronicles had once referred to the Hawkbrothers as the “tree-dwelling Tayledras,” and she knew that Darkwind lived in a kind of elaborate platformed treehouse. So it looked as if that was the norm for the Hawkbrothers, rather than a concession to danger.
At least now she knew why they made a point of cultivating those enormous trees. Such marvels could support not one, but several dwellings.
When she turned her attention back to the gathering, she discovered that most of the Tayledras here were dressed very like Darkwind; in relatively “plain” clothing, and with hair either cut or bound up to be no longer than just below the shoulders, dyed in patterns of mottled brown and gold. They looked more like the Shin’a’in than the mages did, and it wasn’t just that their hair wasn’t white…
It’s because they’re scouts, fighters, she realized, after a moment. Like Darkwind, they couldn’t wear clothing that interfered in any way with fighting movements, nor could they afford to indulge themselves with elaborate hairstyles. Like Darkwind, they had a certain economy of movement; nothing dramatic, nothing theatrical—nothing done just for the effect. There were strong, well-trained muscles under those silken tunics, hard bodies that saw furlongs of patrolling every day.
She felt herself relaxing further in their presence, even before Darkwind began introducing them to her. These were people who, although they were familiar with magic, had very little to do with it; they were somehow more down-to-earth than the mages in their sculptural robes. And they were more like Heralds than anyone she had met yet.
She took careful note of the names as they were introduced to her, the habit of someone born into politics. Winterlight and Stormcloud, Brightmoon and Daystar, Earthsong, Thundersnow and Firedance—she matched names with faces, with smiles shy or bold, with personality quirks. Darkwind had explained the Tayledras habit of taking use-names, names that described something of what the person was like. She had to admit that it wasn’t a bad system; it was much easier to match a name with a face when Winterlight (one of the few scouts to grow long hair) had a thick mane that, when he was persuaded to unbraid and unbind it, looked like moonlight pouring down on snow—when Daystar was as sunny of disposition as the twins—and when Firedance was always in motion, never quite still, mercurial in temper and bright with wit. She wondered if she ought to take a use-name as well, though it shouldn’t be hard for them to remember Elspeth, Skif, Gwena, and Cymry. Four names were easier to remember than an entire Clanful.
“These are the k’Sheyna scouts,” Darkwind said, when he’d finished the introductions, confirming her guess that there wasn’t a mage among them. “Not all of them, of course; we still have a full patrol out tonight. But enough for now, I think; any more of us, and you would be overwhelmed with names and faces.”
She smiled, but said nothing. This wasn’t the time to point out that she’d coped with four times their number at ordinary state dinners. True, she had Talia’s and Kyril’s help, and the nobles and dignitaries didn’t look quite so alike…
“You are lucky, Elspeth,” the young fellow called Stormcloud told her. “Truly. We are in festival gear now. If you were to see us tomorrow, you might find it hard to tell one from the other.”
Earthsong nodded vigorously. “There is a tale among Outlanders that we are all mage-born copies of a single Tayledras.”
“I can see how they would think that,” she replied after a moment of consideration, imagining them all garbed in Darkwind’s drab scouting clothing, with their hair bound up against snags. If the women—already slender and athletic—bound their breasts, it would even be difficult to tell male from female. “Of course, I’m sure you don’t do a thing to encourage that now, do you?”
She was pleased when they laughed at her sally; sometimes the most difficult thing about dealing with a new people was finding out what they considered funny. And as she had discovered on her own, knowing what made someone laugh was the surest shortcut to making him your friend.
“Oh, no, of course not!” Firedance exclaimed, eyes wide and round with mock innocence. “Why would we ever do anything like that?”
The others laughed again at his disclaimer, then settled themselves back where they’d been before Darkwind brought her into the clearing. “We were just having some music and a little dancing,” Earthsong said, as he picked up a flat drum. “We thought you might like to see and hear some of it, so we asked Darkwind if he’d go pry you away from the gryphons.”
“Not that we’re great artists,” Winterlight spoke up quietly, “But we do enjoy ourselves, and I think music is better than any amount of words at telling people about each other. A language that needs fewer words.”
“That’s what our Bards say,” she replied, looking for an inconspicuous spot to put herself, and finally giving up and taking a seat on one of the tree’s enormous roots.
Winterlight gestured in agreement, and picked up something that she didn’t recognize; a trapezoidal box strung like a harp. He set it on his lap and pulled a couple of hammers from under the strings, then glanced at Earthsong. The young scout evidently took that for a signal; he began to produce an elaborate rhythm on his flat drum with a single, double-ended stick; Winterlight listened for a moment, then joined him, not by plucking the strings as Elspeth had expected, but by striking them deftly with the hammers. Within a few moments, others had joined in, either on instruments of their own or simply by clapping. Some of their instruments were things that Elspeth recognized; most weren’t, with sounds that were not—quite—like anything she knew.
The music was far from unpleasant. There were unexpected bellsounds in the rhythm, a wailing wind instrument that added an unearthly element like a singing hawk’s scream, and the occasional whistling improvisation by one of the scouts. It was quite infectious, and she found herself clapping along with it.
It wasn’t much longer before the Tayledras got up to dance. Here was another difference between the Hawkbrothers and her own people. At home, folks danced in groups—ring dances or set pieces, with a definite sequence to the steps. The Tayledras danced singly, or in couples, or trios at most, and there was no set pattern to the dance steps. The nearest she had ever seen to this kind of exuberant chaos had been at a Herald celebration when a number of the younger Heralds just in from the field had gotten involved in a kind of dancing contest, demonstrating the wilder steps from their various home villages.
Two or three songs later, she noticed that some of the original contingent had vanished somewhere, and there were a few additions, wearing costumes more like those of mages than of scouts.
She started watching the onlookers as well as the dancers, and figured out from overheard bits of conversation that there were dozens of these little gatherings, scattered all around the Vale, although this was probably the most lively. Several scouts turned up in the next few moments with wet hair, attracted by the sounds of the music from the pools in which they had been swimming. That, it seemed, was the essence of a Tayledras celebration; to roam. People came and went; sampling little bits of this and that, food, music, conversation…
She decided to do as the natives were doing, taking the opportunity to explore the Vale a little, and slipped off by herself, wandering down a randomly chosen path until she heard the sounds of a softer melody than the dancing music.
She discovered a single singer, a woman in silvery-gray, slender as a birch tree, playing a huge diamond-shaped wire-strung harp. There were a half dozen of the mages listening to her, sitting on benches arranged in a half-circle around her, and Elspeth stayed through three songs before moving on.
She found her way back to the original clearing. By now the gryphlets were sound asleep, oblivious to all the light and movement and the sounds of conversation around them. Both Companions were still there, with that relaxed attitude and cheerful, ears-up, tail-switching pose that told her they were enjoying themselves. Their conversational partners were Torrl, the kyree, two of the mages, one of the scouts, and an old hertasi. Seeing them, she relaxed as well, since they were enjoying themselves. As she wandered off again, it occurred to her that this was the one thing that was often missing from parties that the Heralds held—Dirk and Talia’s wedding had included the Companions, but all too often, they were left out of things. As she watched Gwena and Cymry, she made a mental note; when she got home again, that was one thing that would change. She’d find a way to make certain they weren’t left out again. They were as responsible for the success of the Heralds as the Heralds themselves. Surely they deserved that much consideration.
Gwena turned around at that moment and gave her an unmistakable wink before returning to her conversation.
Even if they do snoop in our heads.
But she was smiling as she chose another path, not looking for anything in particular, but thinking that a swim might be nice.
She heard water trickling off to one side, and someone giggling; she didn’t really stop to think, she just started to make her way down the little path.
Suddenly Darkwind slipped in front of her, stopping her before she could part the branches that shielded the end of the path. “Pardon,” he said apologetically. “The marker beside the path—it was turned to face red. It means that—”
The giggling changed to an unmistakable gasp of pleasure. Elspeth found herself blushing. “Never mind,” she whispered, backing up hastily. “I think I have a good idea what it means.”
She turned, and started back toward the clearing; Darkwind intercepted her again. “Oh, no,” he said earnestly. “No, if they had not wanted to be disturbed, the marker would have been blue. No, the red marker means that they would welcome—ah—all other—” he coughed “—participants—”
She blushed even deeper, her ears and cheeks aflame. She’d always been told that the Heralds were uninhibited. It seemed that the Hawkbrothers had even fewer inhibitions.
“I thought perhaps no one had warned you,” he continued. “If, perhaps, you might want to enjoy one of the hot springs, I can take you to one where there is nothing more active than hot water.”
What else could she do but accept gracefully, and hope that by the time they reached this spring, her blushes would have cooled?
A curtain of steam announced the location of the spring, but when Darkwind pulled aside the branches at the entrance and waved her into the area around the pool, she found herself flushing all over again. There were about ten of the Hawkbrothers she remembered seeing at the dancing, all soaking muscles that must certainly be complaining, but they weren’t wearing much except hair.
“Darkwind!” one of them hailed. “Fifteen split-jumps! Beat that, if you can!”
“Oh, yes,” the young woman next to him said mockingly. “Fifteen split-jumps indeed—and now you see him soaking here, because he could scarce walk when he completed the fifteenth!”
“Sunfeather!” the young man exclaimed indignantly. “You weren’t supposed to tell him that!”
Darkwind peeled off his tunic, as Elspeth averted her eyes and slowly took off her boots. “Perhaps you should think less about split-jumps, and more about what Sunfeather’s expectations for the evening were before you tried to displace your hipjoints,” he suggested mildly. “Then you might have the answer as to why she revealed your secret.”
As the rest of the Tayledras teased the discomfited dancer, Darkwind removed the rest of his clothing and slid into the water beside Sunfeather. The spring-fed pool was quite a large one; the dozen Tayledras were scattered about the edge of it, each one of them lounging at full length, and they were hardly taking up more room than a dozen peas in one of the Collegium kitchen’s biggest pots.
The analogy to a pot was a lot more apt than she had thought; when she finally got up enough courage to shed the rest of her clothing, she slid into an unoccupied niche. The hot spring was a good deal hotter than she had thought; not quite painful, but not far from it.
Steam rose about her face and turned her hair limp, but after a moment she stopped thinking she was about to have her hide boiled off, and began to enjoy the heat.
She slipped out again, after a relatively short time; she was not used to turning herself into a scalded turnip. Much to her surprise, someone—perhaps one of the ubiquitous and near-invisible hertasi—had left a towel and robe beside her clothing.
For the rest of the evening, she alternated between the larger clearing and the one the scouts had taken for their dancing. One of the mages treated the group to a guided flight of befriended firebirds—like the fireworks displays at home, except that these fireworks didn’t fade or die. Gwena loved every moment of it, although Elspeth would have liked to have seen the firebirds come closer. The demonstration was very impressive, especially when they flew among the branches of the huge, shadow-shrouded tree. That wouldn’t have been possible with real fireworks.
She lost track of time, wandering around the Vale, as fatigue caught up with her and her nerves relaxed. Finally she found herself back beneath the tree; most of the lights hanging from the balcony had been extinguished, but there were more people, human and not.
They were all “people” to her now, after an evening of trading jokes with hertasi, commiserating with tervardi on the likelihood of a bad winter, and telling the dyheli exactly what had happened to Nyara. So far as the dyheli were concerned, Nyara was still their heroine. She hadn’t known that their entrapment had been a setup by her father, to ensure that the k’Sheyna would look on her favorably. She had acted in the belief that she was saving them. They knew that, and honored her for it.
So the facts of her disappearance were of great interest to them; they promised Elspeth that they would watch for signs of the Changechild, and report anything they learned back to the Tayledras scouts.
All but the most die-hard of dancers had given up by now; Elspeth found herself a seat in the shadows. Tre’valen was the center of a cluster of the scouts, who were trying to persuade him to dance. Finally he shook his head, shrugged, and gestured to the musicians. “Hawk Dance?” Iceshadow called back.
Tre’valen laughed. “Indeed!” he said, taking a stand in the middle of the illuminated area. “What else would I do for you? But only on condition that Darkwind follow with a Wind Dance.”
Elspeth hadn’t seen Darkwind before Tre’valen called out his name, but when he waved agreement from across the clearing, she saw that he had stripped off the fancier over-tunic, and now looked more like the Darkwind she knew, in a deep-cut sleeveless jerkin and tight breeches, his only ornaments the feathers in his hair.
Tre’valen had changed after the ceremony into his Shin’a’in finery of scarlet, black, and gold; embroidered vest with fringe to his knees, fringed and belled armbands. Loose breeches with fringed kneeboots, all of it topped with a horsehair and feather headdress like some strange bird’s crest—he was a striking sight.
The drummer began first; Tre’valen marked the time with one foot, the fringe shivering with each beat. When the instruments came in, Tre’valen leapt into action.
Elspeth soon saw why it was called the “Hawk Dance.” Tre’valen was aloft more often than he was on the ground; whirling, flying, leaping. He never paused, never rested; no sooner did his foot touch the ground than he was in the air again. His arms curved like wings cupping the air. Elspeth’s heart kept time with the beat, her eyes unable to leave him. He didn’t seem much like a human at the moment—more like a creature akin to the tervardi or the firebirds. But then, perhaps that was the essence of being a shaman.
The dance came to an end on a triple beat and one of the highest leaps of the dance that left Tre’valen standing still as stone, exactly in the same place where he had begun the dance. Elspeth had no idea how he had known the music was about to end; she had heard nothing to signal the end of the piece. It left her staring, dumb with astonishment and delight.
Tre’valen sat down on a root amid the shouts and applause of the others. Darkwind took the shaman’s place in the center of the circle, composed himself, and nodded to the musicians.
This time the music began slowly, with a glissando on the odd hammered instrument, followed by another on the harp, a softer echo of the first. Then Darkwind began to dance.
The Tayledras and Shin’a’in music were related; that much was obvious from a root similarity of melody, but dancing and music had changed from the time the two races were one. Either the Shin’a’in had gotten wilder, or the Tayledras had become more lyrical, or both.
Darkwind didn’t leap, he floated; he didn’t whirl, he flowed. He moved as if he had no bones, flew like his own bird, glided and spun and hovered. There was nothing feminine in the dance, for all of that; it was completely, supremely masculine. Besides his supple grace, what Elspeth noticed most of all were his hands—they had to be the most graceful pair of hands she had ever seen.
Darkwind finished the dance like a bird alighting for the night, coming to rest with a final run from the harp. There was a faint sheen of sweat over his body and face, shining in the moonlight. As he held his final pose, he was so completely still that he could have been a silver statue of a forest spirit, looking up in wonder at the stars.
That was the image that Elspeth took with her, as she slipped out of the clearing and found one of the hertasi. She asked the little creature to show her the quarters Darkwind had promised were waiting for her here.
The little lizard grinned at her, and led her down so many twisting dark paths that she was soon lost. Not that it mattered at the moment. Darkwind had also pledged that he would send someone to lead her about until she knew her own way.
She recognized the area, once they got near it; they were very close to the entrance to the Vale, the farthest they could be from the Heartstone and still be inside the Vale shields. The hertasi showed her a staircase winding up the side of a tree. For a moment she was afraid that she would have to climb up several stories, and she wasn’t sure she had the head for it.
But the hertasi scrambled up ahead of her, and her waiting quarters proved to be a mere single story above the floor of the Vale, a set of two rooms built just off the stairs, lighted and waiting for her.
She fell into the bed as soon as the hertasi left her—but for a surprisingly long time she lay looking at the moon, as sleep deserted her.
She felt a little less like a stranger, but no less lonely. Skif had Nyara—or at least, he had the dream of Nyara, wherever he was now. She still had no one.
Only her duty, her omnipresent duty. To learn everything she could about magic; learn it quickly, and bring it home to Valdemar.
That was cold comfort—and no company—on a silvered, moonfilled night…
Darkwind accepted the applause of his fellow scouts along with a damp cloth and a healthy gulp of cold water. It had been a long time since he had performed the Wind Dance in full, although dance was a part of his daily workout. He enjoyed it, and enjoyed the applause almost as much. It was good to know his skill could still conjure approval from his brethren.
The Outlander, Elspeth, had been watching the dancers when Tre’valen began his display. He knew she had enjoyed the Hawk Dance; from the look on her face, she had probably never seen anything quite like it before. He thought she’d enjoyed his dancing as well—and he meant to talk to her afterward. He was disappointed, after he’d caught his breath, to find she had gone.
He settled for a moment to let his muscles recover; he felt them quivering with fatigue as he sat down. He had pushed himself in this Wind Dance, to far closer to his limits than he usually tried to reach. The steps, which appeared deceptively easy, required perfect balance and control and required fully as much effort to sustain as Tre’valen’s more energetic Hawk Dance.
He listened to some of the others discussing dances and dancers past, nodding when someone said something he particularly agreed with. No one else wanted to follow his performance, and some of the players took that as a signal to put their instruments away and rest their weary fingers. As Darkwind settled his back against the tree and slowly sipped his water, he considered the Outlanders—Elspeth in particular. They were less of an enigma than he had feared they would be, although he still wished he knew a great deal more about their culture.
Elspeth was more of a problem than her friend Skif, simply because of her position as his student. She was sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating, often both.
She compounded his own problems as he resumed his position as an Adept. As his father had pointed out, he had a great deal to re-learn; how much, Darkwind was only now figuring out. What Starblade didn’t know was that his son was already giving Elspeth lessons, even while he was retraining his own powers.
Elspeth posed a peculiar hazard, that of half-knowledge. She had full training in the Gifts of mind-magic, though no true training in her mage-powers—but some of the mind-magic disciplines were similar enough to give her a grasp on magery, but without controls. Her sword had at one time provided some guidance and tutelage, but Elspeth had a great deal to learn about even rudimentary magics. Without the blade Need about to keep her in hand, he had not felt safe about having Elspeth walking around loose without beginning those early lessons in basic control.
What he had not reckoned on—although, given her quick temper, he should have anticipated the difficulty—was her impatience with him.
She wanted answers, and she wanted them immediately. And when he was already impatient with himself, he didn’t feel like explaining himself to an Outlander who had barely even seen magic in action before she came south.
Her insistence on forcing years’ worth of learning into a few weeks was enough to drive the most patient of savants to distraction, much less her current teacher. She can be so irritating…
He leaned his head back and stared up into the pattern of faint light and deep darkness created by moonlight, mage-lights, and tree branches. There was randomness, no discernible pattern, just as there was no discernible pattern to his life. A season ago, he would never have been able to imagine the events of the past several weeks. A year ago, he never would have believed his life would change in any meaningful way, except for the worse.
He sighed, and ran his hand through his hair, fluffing it to cool and dry it. Elspeth was a disruption to an already confusing situation. The problem was, she had the infuriating habit of being right now and again in matters of magic—matters in which she had no experience and little knowledge.
He’d dismissed all of her suggestions initially. Then, when she’d been proven right a time or two, he’d thought at first that it was pure luck. No one could always be right or wrong after all, but a day or so ago, he’d finally seen the logic to her ideas’ successes. In general, when she saw something that she thought could be done magically, but that he had never learned, her theories turned out to be, in principle, correct.
One case in point that still annoyed Darkwind was treating the lesser lines of power as if they were a web, and the mage was a spider in the midst of that web. She’d reasoned that anyone working magic within the area a mage defined as his “web” would create a disturbance in the lines of power, which the mage at the center would feel, in the same way a spider felt an insect in its web. The advantage of this was that it was a passive detection system; there was nothing to alert the intruding mage that he’d been detected.
It was nothing he’d been taught. He’d been certain it wouldn’t work—until she sketched a diagram, extended a few tendrils of energy, and proved to him that it would. It had been something of a shock to his already-bruised pride, and he followed along numbly as she refined the idea.
As if it weren’t enough that she was attractive, in her unadorned way. She had to be innovative, too.
The mage-lights dimmed, sending the boughs above vanishing into shadows; and he looked back down from his perusal of the branches to find that everyone had left the clearing but him. The celebration was winding down, as couples and groups sought ekeles or hot springs, and the rest, not ready to seek beds, gathered in the meeting-circle or beside the waterfall.
He stretched his legs, carefully, to make certain they hadn’t stiffened up on him. They weren’t cramping as he’d feared; he was in better shape than he’d thought, apparently. But he didn’t feel much like rejoining the rest who were still celebrating; he rose slowly, and began pacing, making a point of walking as silently as he could. It was a lot easier to do that here, on the clear paths, than out in the forest. There was no point in losing his hard-won scouting skills just because he was resuming his position as an Adept. There was a Tayledras saying: “No arrow shot at a target is ever wasted, no matter how many break.” It meant that no practice or lesson, however trivial it might seem, was a loss.
Now, reclaiming his magery, he was discovering the downside of that saying.
I didn’t realize how much I’d forgotten until I started trying to teach her, he admitted to himself. If she’d just be a little more patient with me…
When something went wrong, Elspeth wasn’t particularly inclined to sit and wait quietly until he got it right again. Magic wasn’t simple; spells had to be laid out methodically, and when something got muddled, a responsible mage couldn’t just erase things and start over. Spells gone awry had to be unmade. Generally Darkwind had to retrace his steps carefully, in order to find out exactly where he’d made those mistakes. Only then could he undo what he’d done, go back to the beginning, and start again, constructing correct paths.
Whenever he was forced to do that, Elspeth would invariably ask questions at the worst possible time, when interruptions would be the most irritating. She never seemed to know when to keep quiet and let him work. Why was she in such a hurry to master every aspect of magic? Mastery took time and practice; surely she was bright enough to realize that.
Even now, he realized, she was irritating him. How can she do that? he asked himself, pausing in his pacing for a moment to examine his reaction. How can she annoy me when she isn’t even here? It has to be me, not her—
As he folded his arms and pondered the question, he recalled something that seemed to have nothing to do with Elspeth. It was the reason why he had given in so quickly to the demand that he perform the Wind Dance. And it had nothing to do with Tre’valen’s request, either; he’d have found some excuse to perform that dance before the evening was over, no matter what.
The reason? Stormcloud’s boast of fifteen consecutive split-jumps.
Challenge. He couldn’t resist it. And Elspeth annoyed him because she challenged him in a way no one else ever had—or at least, no female ever had. He wasn’t facing the challenge of a teacher toward a student’s potential, nor, precisely, was he facing the risks of an explorer. There was, though, that annoying realization that he didn’t have the safety of being able to lord skill over her; he was as uneducated in his way as she. It didn’t sit well with him, but that was the truth of the matter. Therein lay the challenge: she was a virtual equal.
Now that he had identified the source of his irritation, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it. Perversely, he enjoyed the frustration, just as he enjoyed Elspeth’s company though she grated on his nerves.
She was too impatient, but that was not damning. There was no reason why she shouldn’t intrigue him, just as what he was teaching should be a challenge to her. She was, after all, a bright student. Alert and eager.
Hmm. That’s not the only challenge she represents. He enjoyed her company quite a bit more than he was fully willing to admit. Of all the possible partnerings he could have made tonight, he had only considered one. She attracted him quite as much as she irritated him, although he was certain that he was not ready emotionally for anything as deep as he had shared with Dawnfire. And there had only been one consideration that held him back from offering Elspeth a feather tonight.
Sadly, that consideration was a major one; one that was going to require any association with her—other than pure friendship—to be choreographed as carefully as any major spell. She was an Outlander; he had no idea of the ways of her people. It might be that the folk of Valdemar took sexual liaisons very seriously; they might even reserve sexual activity for formal bondmates only. Until he knew more about her and her people, he was not going to take the risk of offending her or her country by propositioning her. Even if she would accept an apology, the offense would continue to taint everything he did or said to her.
Lust is easy to come by, after all. I couldn’t enjoy it with too much worry, anyway. There is simply too much at stake to permit a night of pleasure to complicate matters.
Not to mention the possible repercussions of bedding the designated heir to a foreign monarchy. Who knew where that would lead? He doubted anyone would declare war over it, but what if a liaison with Elspeth would make her subject to problems when she returned home? She was too important a personage.
Ah, now there’s another thing that irritates me!
He began walking again, turning his steps out of the clearing and down the path that led to the waterfall at the end of the Vale. Now that he’d figured out what it was that was bothering him, it might help to have a talk with someone about it. He could do his best to try to watch his own reactions, but there wasn’t a great deal that he could do about Elspeth’s attitude.
It’s this Heir To The Throne business. She never actually says anything about it, but she radiates it. As if—she doesn’t wear a crown, but she carries herself as if she did. As if she is always thinking that she’s being watched and admired, that she is an important person, and expects everyone else to be aware of that.
Never mind that the only Tayledras around who knew of her land were Starblade and Iceshadow, who had studied the old histories. Never mind that even those two had no interest whatsoever in her country and the Heralds who populated it, except as a curiosity and as it had impact in the past on Tayledras concerns.
Treyvan and Hydona might have some ideas about his concerns; they were ambassadors, of sorts—Hydona was female. That could help. In either case they might have some idea how to deal with another Outlander. Particularly an impatient, high-ranking, annoyingly impressive female Outlander.
At the waterfall, all the mage-lights had been extinguished. The moon was still high overhead, though, providing plenty of illumination, pouring down over this end of the Vale and touching the mist rising from the falls with silver. The two he sought were still there, lazing beside the pool like a pair of creatures from legend; both gryphons looked up at his footfall, but to his disappointment he saw that they were not alone. The shaman Tre’valen was with them, and he felt a certain reluctance to discuss one Outlander in front of another. For that matter, he wasn’t certain he wanted to discuss Elspeth with anyone except the gryphons. He trusted them unfailingly.
Nevertheless, since they had seen him and nodded greetings, it would have been impolite to ignore them and walk on. It would be even worse to return the way he came. It isn’t going to do any harm to make some idle chat. And Her Highness Elspeth isn’t a problem I can’t cope with on my own, if I just think carefully before I say or do anything.
So he approached the little group—which, he saw as he grew nearer, included the gryphlets. The little ones were tucked under their mother’s wing, quietly sleeping, curled together into softly huffing balls of wings and limbs.
“Tre’valen brought the younglingsss when they began to fret and did not want to sssleep without usss near. And have you had enough of cccelebration?” Treyvan said softly as he neared. The shaman lounged beside Hydona, along the edge of the pool, his hair wet and rebraided.
Looks as if Tre’valen has been swimming. I didn’t know that the Shin’a’in knew how to swim. I didn’t think there were any bodies of water on the Plains deep enough for them to learn.
“Quite enough, I think,” he replied, and nodded to the shaman. “Your Hawk Dance is very good, Wingbrother. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen better. I should like to see you dance one day in full home regalia, with a proper set of Shin’a’in musicians and singers.”
“If you enjoyed my dance, you should see my brother; I learned it from him.” Tre’valen stretched, and turned to look him straight in the eyes. “I have been greatly curious, Wingbrother, and I think you will be willing to answer an impertinent question. Was it my imagination, or was there an air of desperation about all of this? As if folk were doggedly determined to enjoy themselves?”
Darkwind had been wondering if he was the only one to notice that. “It was not your imagination,” he replied quietly.
“I thought not.” Tre’valen nodded. “Your people escaped the hand of Falconsbane by a very narrow margin. Whether it was the hand of the Goddess or of chance, or both together, there was little they could have done of themselves to free this Clan from his influence. I wondered if they knew how narrow their escape was. Your father, for instance—”
“They know,” Darkwind replied, carefully steering the conversation away from his father. That was another whole situation he was not quite ready to deal with yet. “They simply don’t dwell on it. And they know that our troubles are not yet over, which accounts for that desperate enjoyment you noted.”
“But the urgency iss lesss,” Hydona said. “All that hass occurrred, hass bought k’Sheyna time. Thisss celebration—it wass a good thing. It iss a relief from the tenssion. Bessidesss… other changess arre coming.”
Darkwind decided to leave that typically gryphonish—meaning cryptic—remark alone.
“You could be reading Iceshadow’s mind,” he smiled. “After all the troubles, the fear—”
—and the other things no one wants to talk about, like discovering what had been done to my father—
“It was just a good idea to give everyone something pleasurable to think about for a little while. A relief.” He scratched Hydona’s neckruff absently, and she half-closed her eyes with pleasure. One of the gryphlets rolled over, chirring contentment in its sleep. “A day or two of rest isn’t going to alter the Heartstone question, but it might make all the difference in letting us gain a fresh outlook.”
Tre’valen raised an eyebrow, but said only, “Some look as if they need a rest more than a fresh outlook. Starblade, for instance.”
Don’t ask too many impertinent questions, shaman. I might answer them, and you might not care for the answers. I am not altogether certain that the Shin’a’in are ready to embrace the problems of their cousins, no matter how many Wingsib Oaths are sworn. What you do not officially know, you need not act upon.
Treyvan raised his head from his foreclaws. “You look rrready for a frresh outlook, Darrkwind,” he said, as Darkwind tried unsuccessfully to suppress a yawn. “The outlook you may have frrom yourrrr bed.”
“I think you’re right,” he admitted, glad of the excuse to escape from a conversation that was becoming increasingly uncomfortable. He didn’t particularly want to discuss the problems of k’Sheyna, at least not now, when his tired mind and tongue might let things slip he would rather were not revealed.
The way he felt about Starblade, for instance. His heart was still sore and shaking from the revelation that the cold, critical “father” of the past several years had not been the father who had taught him his first lessons in magic—and who had worn the costumes his son had designed for him with such open pride.
The fact that Starblade had worn one of those costumes tonight, which was not only the Wingsib Oathing, but the first time he had taken part in the social life of k’Sheyna since Darkwind had freed him, had left him on very uncertain emotional ground. In a very real sense, he had a new father—but Darkwind was years older, and there was deep-set pain between them. It was going to take some time before his feelings were reconciled.
He imagined it was much the same for Starblade. The only difference between what he and his father had to cope with was that Starblade had known the truth but had not been able to act upon it, while Darkwind had been able to act but had not known the truth. Equally painful situations.
He yawned again, and this time did not take the trouble to hide it. “I think I must be getting old,” he said. “My ability to celebrate until sunrise is not what it once was. And I did promise young Elspeth that her lessons would continue when we both arose from sleep—” He ignored Tre’valen’s suggestive smirk, “—so rather than finding her waiting at the foot of my ekele, I think I will seek my own bed and see if I might wake before she does.”
“A good plan,” chuckled Tre’valen. “Zhai’helleva.”
“And to you, all,” he replied, and rose from the soft turf beside the pool, brushing off his seat. He retraced his steps, this time heading for the path that ultimately led out of the Vale. Even though he was reconciled with Starblade the fluctuating power of the Heartstone made him uncomfortable, and he disliked having to sleep near it. Starblade and the rest understood, and his “eccentricity” of maintaining a dwelling outside the safe haven of the Vale was no longer a subject of contention.
His path tonight, however, was not a direct one. Three times he had to interrupt his path with detours to avoid trysts-in-progress. He should have expected it, really; the end result of a celebration was generally trysting all over the Vale, of whatever tastes and partners.
So why am I going back to my ekele alone?
He’d never lacked for bedmates before. Actually, if he hadn’t been so choosy—or was it preoccupied—he wouldn’t have lacked for bedmates tonight.
He could say that he mourned for Dawnfire, and that would have been partially true. He missed her every time he thought of her, with an ache that he wondered if he would ever lose. She had been the one that he’d thought would actually work out as more than a bedmate; their interests and pleasures had matched so well. The fact that she hadn’t died made the situation worse, in some ways. She had become something he could see, but could not touch. Now at least, after much thought, the first, sharp sorrow had passed, the sorrow that had been like an arrow piercing his flesh. Now what he felt was the pain of an emotional bolt lodged in place, poisoning his blood with regret.
He also knew that Dawnfire would have been the first to tell him to get on with his life. If she had been with him, if he had lost another lover, she would whisper to him to take a bedmate, and some pleasure, to ease the pain. That was just her way, another thing he had loved her for.
So why hadn’t he taken one or more of those offers for companionship tonight?
Because he didn’t want any of them. They simply didn’t fit his real, if vaguely defined, desires.
And to tell the truth, he wasn’t sure what he wanted. Elspeth was the only person tonight who had attracted him. But along with every other way she made him react, he was afraid—afraid that she might draw him into a deeper relationship than he intended.
She would leave the Vales and return to her Valdemar; and his people were here. There could be nothing lasting between them emotionally, save wistfulness over what might have been. But they would be spending most of their time together, now that she was a Wingsister; it was his duty to teach her, and hers to help defend the Vale for as long as she dwelled here. The Council had made it clear that he was responsible for her. If it turned out that Elspeth was equally attracted to him—that her ways were similar to his people in the matter of loveplay and they became more than casually involved—perhaps they could pursue some of the techniques in which sexual magic could be tuned and sublimated, and in so doing—
No. I couldn’t do it. I just lost Dawnfire, I can’t lose another lover. I’m not made of such stern stuff.
He finally reached the path to his ekele without incident—without encountering anything more hazardous than a flight of moths. That in itself was a pleasant change. The sharp bite to the air and the faint aroma of leaves in their turning reminded him that there were other changes on the wind that were not so pleasant. Autumn was at hand; winter would follow, and although the Vale would remain green and lush, outside it the leaves would fall, and snow and ice-storms would come. Winter would bring a new set of dangers from outside; predators would grow hungry, and the fear that kept them away from the Vale in the summer might not be enough to overcome their hunger’s insistence. Winter would make it difficult for infatuated young Skif to track the Changechild. And it would be much harder for the remains of k’Sheyna to trek across the country in search of the rest of the Clan, if that was ultimately what they had to do to reunite.
Despite the fact that k’Sheyna territory was now much safer than it had been before the confrontation with Mornelithe Falconsbane, Darkwind had reverted to his old habits the moment he passed the barrier at the mouth of the Vale. It only took one slip at the wrong time to make someone a casualty. Tayledras had been killed even in tamed territories, simply by thinking they were secure. He kept to the deepest shadows, walked silently, and kept all senses alert for anything out of the norm. The moon was down beneath the level of the trees by the time he reached his ekele; he kindled a tiny mage-light in the palm of his hand and—with some misgiving—loosed the ladder from its support above and lowered it by means of another exercise of magic. With a tiny spell, he tripped the catch that held the rope-ladder in place.
If this had been in daylight, he’d never have used magic, he’d have had Vree drop the trigger-line to him. He still felt uneasy about using anything except mage-shields outside of the Vale. True, Falconsbane was no longer out there, watching for the telltale stirrings of magic-use and waiting to set his creatures attacking anything outside the protection of the Vale. But caution was a hard habit to break, especially when he wasn’t certain he truly wanted to break it.
Still, the presence of the mage-light made climbing the ladder a lot easier, and the use of the spell eliminated the need to scale the trunk in the dark to release the ladder. It was worth the risk, at least tonight.
Perhaps, now, there were many things that were worth the risk of attempting them…
* * *
Skif could hardly believe what he’d just heard. He rubbed his tired eyes, and stared across the tiny firepit at his new friend. The conversation had begun with knives in general, proceeded to other things, such as forging, tempering, balance and point structure, throwing styles—but it had just taken a most unexpected turn. “Forgive me, but I’m not—ah—as good in speaking Tayledras as Elspeth. Did you say what I think you said?”
Wintermoon chuckled, and passed him a cup of a spicy—but, he’d been assured, nonalcoholic—drink, poured from a bottle he’d asked one of the hertasi to bring. “I will speak in more plain words,” the scout told him, slowly, reaching for one of the sausages warming on the grill above the coals of their fire. “I wish to help you to find the Changechild Nyara. If you tell me ‘aye,’ I shall come with you. You say you have no true learning in woods-tracking; I am not a poor scout. I think I would be of real help.”
:He’s one of the best scouts and trackers in k’Sheyna, Chosen,: Cymry told him. Her ears were perked up, showing her excitement and interest. :He’s being very modest. The dyheli told me he’s one of the few that can even hunt and track by night, maybe even the best.:
He wanted Wintermoon’s help—wanted it badly. He needed it. Without it, all he’d do would be to crisscross k’Sheyna territory, virtually randomly, hoping to come across some sign of Nyara. With Wintermoon’s skillful help, he would be able to mount a systematic search. But was this a test of his oaths and his loyalties?
“I—uh—I don’t know what to say,” he stammered, watching the tall Tayledras with his strange hair and pale eyes. “Wintermoon, I want your help more than I can say, but you’re a scout, a hunter, a good one. What about the Clan? Don’t they need you? I mean, I’m a Wingbrother, but doesn’t that mean I need to think of the good of the Clan first?”
Wintermoon blinked slowly, and turned away toward the trees. He held up a gauntleted wrist. That was the only warning Skif had that something was happening; a heartbeat later, a huge white shape hurtled by his ear, soundlessly. As he winced away, the shape hit Wintermoon’s wrist and folded its wings. It resolved itself into a great white owl, which swiveled its head and stared unblinkingly at him before turning back to Wintermoon, reaching down with its fierce hook of a beak and nibbling the fingers of his free hand gently.
“This is K’Tathi,” Wintermoon said, stroking the owl’s head gently. “Corwith is in the tree above. There are not many Tayledras who bond to the greater owls.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” Skif said pointedly.
“Ah, but I did.” Wintermoon transferred the owl from his wrist to his shoulder, where it proceeded to preen his hair. He sighed, and gave Skif a look full of long-suffering patience.
“There are not many Tayledras who bond to the greater owls. While my bondbirds can hunt by day, they prefer not to. They are also a different species from the hawks and falcons, and there is instinctive dislike between them and the birds of other scouts. It can be overcome, but it requires great patience.” He shrugged, as the fire flared up for a moment from the cooking. The flare flushed the owl with ruddy light. “More patience than I care to give. Thus, I hunt by night, and mostly alone. That makes me something that can be done without when times are not so chancy.”
“In other words, your absence won’t cause any problems?” Skif persisted, clutching the cup.
The owl found Wintermoon’s ear, and began nibbling it. Wintermoon sighed, and gave it his finger instead. “The new plan is for mages to help the scouts,” he explained. “There will be more watchers. Your friend, Elspeth—she is clever, and will make up for my absence. So, I am free to aid you.”
:There is a hole in this, somewhere,: Cymry said.
Skif agreed; he could sense it. “What is it that you aren’t telling me?” he demanded. “Is it something about Nyara?”
The owl let go of Wintermoon’s finger, roused its feathers, and settled, staring at Cymry as if it found her fascinating. Wintermoon nodded. “I thought perhaps you might think that, and yes, it concerns the Changechild. But you must pledge not to take offense.”
:Offense?: he asked Cymry. :Why would I—oh. Of course. They still don’t trust Nyara, they want her under control, and they probably feel the same way about that damn sword.:
:Can you blame them?: she asked reasonably.
:About the sword, no,: he replied. Then, to Wintermoon, “You Tayledras don’t trust Nyara or the blade, do you? The rest of the Clan wants you to go along and make sure she isn’t out there trying to set up some more trouble for you.”
Wintermoon nodded. “Quite. I beg pardon, but that is only the truth of the matter. But, Skif—I do wish to help you, for yourself. You are not schooled in tracking, you have said as much yourself. Think of it this way,” he grinned. “I have no wish for your friend Elspeth to be sending me out in an ice-storm to find you!”
“Oh, I’m not that bad,” he replied with a rueful smile. “I’ve had some field training. But it was all in Valdemar—there were Herald way-stations all over.”
“And you cannot track or trail,” Wintermoon repeated. He turned to Cymry. “Lady, you cannot track or trail, either. Nor can you see as well at night as my Corwith and K’Tathi can. Nor do you know our territory.”
Cymry bowed her head in agreement.
“And, Skif, I would like to help you, for I know that you feel very much for the Changechild.” His face sobered. “I do not know if the Changechild is near as dangerous as the Council think she might be. I think she deserves to have someone looking for her that will give her that benefit. I think it is a good thing for her to have someone besides yourself that will do that. You are a Wingbrother—but an Outlander as well. I am k’Sheyna.”
Skif was well aware of what the Tayledras meant; just as his own word would hold more weight in Valdemar than Wintermoon’s, no matter how many oaths the latter swore, so Wintermoon’s held more weight here. If there were any doubt as to Nyara’s allegiances, Wintermoon’s opinion might well be the deciding factor.
And it would be a very good thing to have company out there in the wilderness…
:Take his offer,: Cymry urged. :He’s a good man; he could become a good friend.:
“All right, Wintermoon,” Skif said decisively. “I would be very, very glad to have you help me. Cymry wants you along, and I never argue with her.”
:Never?: she snorted.
:Well—I never argue with you when you’re right.:
“Good.” Wintermoon rose to his feet, then held up his wrist again. For the second time, a white shape dove past Skif’s ear; this time the owl came in from the side, then swooped up and alighted on Wintermoon’s gauntlet with grace and silence. “This is Corwith,” he said, transferring the owl to his other shoulder. “We three will be most happy to give you our help. Then I shall see you in the morning?”
“Make that when we wake up,” Skif amended. “It’s already morning.”
Wintermoon squinted at the west, where the moon was going down. “So it is. Well, the night is my chosen time of departure, when I am given a choice. That will be good. There will be fewer eyes that will see us leave. Zhai’helleva, Wingbrother. May your dreams bring you peace and good omens.”
“And yours—friend.” On impulse, Skif offered his hand; Wintermoon took it after a moment, clasping first his hand, then his wrist.
As Wintermoon vanished into the darkness under the trees, and Skif turned to climb up into the ekele that had been given him, Cymry reached over and nuzzled his shoulder. :That was well done,: she said warmly. :I like him. I think we might have accomplished more than we realized.:
:I think you’re right,: he answered, yawning. :I’ve got a good feeling about this.:
So good a feeling, that for the first time since Nyara disappeared, he fell asleep immediately, instead of lying awake and staring at the darkness. And for the first time, it was a calm sleep, untroubled by dreams of silken skin and crying, cat-pupiled eyes.
Skif tied the final knots on his packs, expecting at any moment to have a hertasi pop its head over the edge of the treehouse with a summons from Wintermoon. It was difficult to tell time here, where the position of the sun was obscured by the towering trees and where the temperature seldom varied by much, but he thought he’d awakened about noon. There had been cheese, fruit, and fresh bread waiting in the outer room of his little treehouse along with all of his belongings and Cymry’s tack, brought from the gryphon’s lair. By hertasi or one of the scouts, he presumed; they were the only ones who knew where his possessions were, besides, of course, the gryphons. He and Elspeth had stayed with the gryphons since they had first arrived here in k’Sheyna territory; they were kindhearted creatures, but certainly not pack animals; he’d assumed he would have to go fetch all of the gear himself. This was yet another instance of Tayledras thoughtfulness; or at least, of hertasi thoughtfulness. He was even more surprised and delighted to discover that every bit of his clothing had been cleaned and neatly folded before being put in the pack, and all but one of his hidden knives and garrottes from said clothing laid out neatly by the pack.
Old habits die hard.
He descended long enough to clean himself up at a hot spring set up as a kind of bathhouse—and to thank the first hertasi he saw for having his things brought. He found the lizard first. He was a little ashamed that he couldn’t tell the difference between individual lizard-creatures; surely there was a way, and it seemed doltish not to know it. He covered it as best he could by asking the diminutive creature to pass on his thanks to the others. The hertasi didn’t seem to mind. In fact, it thanked him, and showed him where to go to bathe and find provisions for his journey.
Back in the treehouse, he launched into packing feverishly. The strange provisions he’d gotten from a hidden kitchen area—learning only then where all the food for the celebration had come from—weighed much less than the dried fruit and beef and travelers’ bread that the Valdemaran forces, Heralds and Guards alike, carried into the field.
Just so that they were marginally edible. Marginal was all he asked for. They can’t taste any worse than the clay tablets they expect Karsite troops to eat. Starch for shirts or old glue would taste better. That much he was certain of; some folks would rather eat their saddles than the Karsite field rations.
“I trust you are ready?” Wintermoon called up from below, startling him. He went to the balcony, and looked over the edge.
Beneath him were the scout—now with his hair bound up in a tail and wearing clothing identical to the kind Darkwind had worn—and a pair of handsome dyheli stags. One carried a light pack, the other did not even have a cloth on its back. Beside them was Cymry, looking up at him with merry blue eyes, as if she was amused by his startlement.
“I’m ready,” he replied to all of them. “I’m pretty much packed. Look out, I’m going to toss the stuff down.”
Wintermoon and the rest backed up a little, giving him room for the drop. He dropped the saddle and the pack containing his clothing and nonbreakables over the edge of the balcony; he brought the rest down the staircase, slung over his back.
By the time he reached the ground, Wintermoon had already saddled Cymry for him, and was waiting for the rest of the gear. “You should try the Shin’a’in saddles,” the Tayledras scout observed, as Skif pushed aside an enormous leaf that overhung the trail to join them. “I think you both would find them more comfortable.”
“Maybe,” Skif replied, dropping his pack on the ground, and holding up the hackamore for Cymry so that she could slip her nose into it. “But the Shin’a’in don’t have to contend with anything other than the plains. We’ve got a lot of different terrain to cross, a lot of jobs to do, and sometimes we have to be able to sleep in the saddle or strap ourselves on because of wounds.” He faltered for a moment, as an ugly memory intruded; he resolutely ignored it, and continued. “I’ll try their saddles some time, but we’ve put a lot of time and work into that design, and I’m not sure there’s any way to improve it.”
Cymry nodded, which apparently surprised Wintermoon. Skif was going to ask where his birds were, when one of them dropped down out of the tree to land on the laden dyheli’s pack, and the other followed to land on the unladen one’s horns. The stags were both evidently used to this; the second dyheli held his head steady until the owl hopped from the horns to Wintermoon’s shoulder. “Mobile tree branches,” the Tayledras grinned.
“So I see. I told Elspeth that I was going out to hunt for Need,” Skif told the scout, “I told her that I didn’t think we could afford to have a major power like that out loose and not know where it was or what it was doing. She agreed, but I don’t think she believed that was the only reason.”
“I doubt you could fool your friend on matters of the heart,” Wintermoon replied. “At least, not for long. Except, perhaps, for her own; I have noted that few people are good judges of their own hearts.”
Skif flushed, and decided not to answer that statement. “Have you got any ideas about where we should start looking?” he asked instead. “I mean, I know you haven’t had much chance to think about this since last night, but—”
“Actually, I have,” Wintermoon interrupted, surprisingly. “I spent some time last night reviewing what I would do if I were in her place. So I know where she might be, I think—or rather, I know where we need not look. Here—”
He pulled out a map from a pouch at his belt and spread it on the ground. Skif pulled the last buckle on Cymry’s packs tight and crouched down on his heels beside the scout. Cymry craned her neck around to look over his shoulder.
“—here, is the Vale.” Wintermoon pointed at an oval valley on the rim of the crater-wall that marked the rim of the Dhorisha Plains. “Nyara will not have run to the west, neither south nor north; to the west and south were her father’s lands. To the west and north, that is untamed, unhealed, tainted land, full of creatures that are as bad or worse than anything that her father commanded.”
“And she knows this?” Skif asked.
Wintermoon snorted. “She cannot have avoided knowing. No matter how closely he kept her mewed, if she had any contact with the world outside his walls, she would have known. We had intended to bracket the area between this Vale and the new one—well, that is of no matter now. She will not have gone west unless she is an utter fool. Nor will she have gone south.”
“Because that’s the Dhorisha Plains,” Skif said, absently, studying the map.
“Yes. So, that leaves east and north. She may have gone east—she can go east—but here—” he indicated a shaded area on the map. “This pattern means that the lands here are healed. If she goes there, she will encounter farms and settlements. If she goes further, she must meet towns, villages, and people who are unused to seeing creatures that are not wholly human. She will surely encounter trade-roads, traders, caravans. No, I do not think she would go very far to the east.”
“And if she went due north?” Skif asked.
“Ah—again, she will encounter a border, this time the territory guarded by another Clan. They may not be as kindly disposed toward her as we. Certainly, since they will not know her, they will regard her with suspicion and even hostility.” Wintermoon sat back on his heels. “So you see, she must be within this area.” His forefinger described a rough oblong on the map. “Those are the lands we once claimed but we have let run wild, as we pulled back our borders. That is where I think we shall find her.”
Skif nodded, and considered the map. “None of it is very far from where the scouts patrol,” he observed. “In fact, we could go out there and start our search, and come back to the Vale every few days to see how matters are progressing here—and whether or not we’re going to be needed after all.”
“My thought exactly,” the scout said, picking up the map and folding it. He stood up, stowing the folded parchment in his pouch again. “In this way we fulfill our own wishes and our duty to the Clan as well.” He gave Skif an odd sideways grin that Skif returned.
“Why do I have the feeling that you’re as good at that as I am?” he asked slyly. “Getting your own way by threading through rules and obligations, I mean.”
“What, I?” Wintermoon replied, widening his eyes innocently. Then he laughed. “Come, we are birds of the same flock, you and I. We know each other. Yes?” He turned and mounted the second stag bareback, saving Skiff from having to answer that question.
Skif took his time mounting, settling himself into the saddle with a sigh. Not that he didn’t enjoy partnering with Cymry, but it had been a long journey and he’d been glad it looked as if they were staying in one place for a while. Well, it had looked that way, until he’d realized that Nyara was gone and wasn’t coming back. Now they were on the trail again…
:Oh, you won’t be in the saddle as much as you think,: Cymry told him affectionately. :Don’t forget, Wintermoon is going to have to look over the ground out there very closely for clues. Actually, if I were you, I’d let him teach me about tracking in the wild; I think you could learn a lot from him. I know I’ll be paying attention.:
Skif was a little surprised at her matter-of-fact acceptance of this excursion. He had more than half expected her to object to leaving Elspeth on her own—after all, he was supposed to be looking after her, wasn’t he? He was supposed to be her bodyguard, and he was supposed to keep her from getting into too much trouble.
:Elspeth’s quite capable of taking care of herself, Chosen, as she has reminded you more than once.: This time the tone was teasing, lighthearted. But she quickly sobered. :There is no way that Ancar can get to her here—even if he could learn where she was. She’s got to go her own way now, you know that. You know she’s going to have to deal with things you can’t even guess at. Whatever trouble she’s likely to get into, I don’t think it’s going to be anything a couple of arrows or knives would fix.:
Skif ducked out of the way of a branch stretching over the path, and sighed. That, no matter how his pride felt about it, was only the truth. She was a mage now, under the protection and tutelage of mages. He would be as out of his element as if he tried to teach a candlemaking class.
:And I don’t have any of this Mage-Gift, whatever it is,: he added. :Probably I’d only be in the way. Probably I’d get myself in trouble without ever helping Elspeth.:
:Probably,: Cymry agreed. :Nyara, now—that’s something you can do something about. I think you should. If nothing else, when you find her, you’ll discover for yourself if there can be—or ever was—anything between you two. And you’ll finally stop worrying about her.:
While her words were practical, the tone of her mind-voice was unexpectedly sympathetic.
She was his best friend, barring no one else. She knew all of his secrets, even the ugly ones. He stared at the trail ahead and at Wintermoon’s back for a while, thinking about that, thinking about how close they were. :Cymry, were you ever in love?: he asked abruptly.
:Bright Havens, what a question!: she exclaimed. :Me? In love? Why do you want to know?:
After all these years, he’d managed to surprise her. :Because—I don’t know if I’m in love or not—or if I was ever in love with anyone.: Silence fell between them for a heartbeat. :I thought if you were ever in love, you’d be able to tell if I was. Am. Whatever.:
They reached the barrier-shield at the end of the Vale at that moment; the tingling of energies as they crossed it distracted Skif from his question.
When they emerged into slightly cooler air on the other side, Cymry shook her head, and shivered her skin as if she was shaking off flies. :Skif, yes, I do know something of emotional involvement. That doesn’t simplify matters any. You weren’t in love with Elspeth, I can tell you that much,: she said, slowly. :That was a combination of a lot of things, including, my dear Chosen, the fact that you finally saw her as a very attractive woman for the first time and had a predictable reaction.:
He choked; turned it into a cough when Wintermoon looked back at him in inquiry. Cymry wasn’t usually so frank with him.
Or blunt. :You made matters worse, I’m afraid, by acting far too strongly upon those feelings.:
:I’d kind of figured that part out,: he replied wryly. :But now, this time?:
She shook her head. :I honestly don’t know. You have some very strong feelings, but I can’t sort them out any better than you can.:
Well, at least the Companions didn’t know everything. Sometimes he wondered about that. They certainly didn’t go out of their way to dispel the idea that they did.
Skif turned his attention to the woods surrounding the trail, trying to get used to these new forests, so that he could learn to identify what was a sign of danger and what wasn’t. He did the only thing he could do; he assumed that this area was safe, and studied it. Anything that differed from this might be dangerous.
Most of his experience outside of towns consisted of the single circuit he’d made with Dirk when he first got his Whites, and his occasional duty as courier and messenger. At neither time had he really had to deal with wilderness; with places where people simply did not live. He had traveled roads, not game-trails; spent nights in way-stations, not in a tent, or a blanket roll under the open sky. Even on the journey here, the first time he had encountered true wilderness was when they descended into the Dhorisha Plains.
There, on that trackless expanse of grassland, there had been no real sign of the hand of man. Perhaps that was why the Plains intimidated him so much. Never had he felt so completely out of his element.
Maybe that had been why he had persisted in clinging to Elspeth…
Well, here was wilderness again; once outside the Vale, there were no tracks of any kind, for the Tayledras went to great lengths to avoid making them. The only creatures making trails of any sort were wild ones: deer, bear, boar. Even the dyheli did their best to avoid making trails, for trails meant places they could be ambushed. Skif couldn’t help wondering if the only reason Wintermoon rode the dyheli stag now was to keep from leaving human footprints.
The signs of fall were everywhere; in the dying, drying grasses, in the leaves of the bushes which were just starting to turn, in the peculiar scent to the air that only frost-touched leaves made. This wasn’t a comfortable time of the year to be traipsing about in wild country.
On the other hand, it would be harder for anything hostile to hide, once the leaves started falling in earnest. If there was anything noisier for a skulker than a carpet of crisp, freshly fallen dry leaves, Skif had yet to run into it; even in his days as a thief and a street brat, he’d known that, and stayed clear of rich folks’ gardens in the fall. And he was not looking forward to camping out in the cold, riding through chill autumn rains…
On the other hand, it probably wouldn’t get horribly cold this far south, at least, not for a while yet. Game would be plentiful at this time of year, a lot of it birds and animals in their first year—inexperienced, or just plain stupid, which to a hunter translated as “easy to catch.” Darkwind had quoted a Shin’a’in saying about that, one day when Vree brought back a rabbit that couldn’t have been more than two months old: “If it gets caught, it deserves to be eaten.” On the whole, Skif agreed. With fresh meals volunteering their lives to their owls, arrows, and snares, they might not even need to resort to their traveling rations much. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
Cymry’s ears flicked, the way they did when she was Mindspeaking, and he caught the barest edges of something in the back of his mind. But he couldn’t make anything out, just a mental “sound.” It was as if he was several rooms away from two people having a conversation; no matter how hard he strained, all he could hear was a kind of murmur in the distance.
:Who are you talking to?: he asked her, puzzled. He hadn’t thought Cymry could Mindspeak with anyone except himself and another Companion.
:Elivan,: she replied, shortly.
Elivan? Who—
Then the dyheli that Wintermoon was riding turned its head on its long, graceful neck and gave him a look and a nod.
The dyheli? She was Mindspeaking the dyheli? Frustrated, he tried to make sense out of the far-off murmuring, unable to make out a single “word.” Even more frustrating, he caught Wintermoon in a kind of “listening” attitude, and heard a third “voice” join the other two in what sounded like a brief remark.
Whatever they were saying, Wintermoon seemed vastly amused; Skif got a look at his expression as he ducked to avoid a low-hanging vine, and he looked like someone who has just been let in on a private joke.
Skif felt a surge of resentment at being left out. Just how much mind-magic did the Hawkbrother have? Why couldn’t he hear the dyheli, if Wintermoon and Cymry could? And was it only Wintermoon who had that particular Gift, or did all the Tayledras share it?
They’d been free enough with information about real magic; why keep this a secret?
Except that they weren’t exactly keeping it a secret—not from Skif, anyway.
Unless they couldn’t block what they were doing. But in that case, why did Cymry tell him matter-of-factly that she was talking to the stag?
The murmur of far-off voices stopped; finally Wintermoon signaled a halt at the edge of a tiny, crystalline stream. The Tayledras dismounted, and the two dyheli moved up side-by-side to dip their slender muzzles into the water. Another sign of the stags’ intelligence—the pack-laden stag was not being led, and Wintermoon made no move to limit their drinking.
:I could use a drink too, dear,: Cymry prompted him. Skif slid out of his saddle to let Cymry join them. Wintermoon strolled over, stretching to relieve the inevitable stiffness of riding any distance at all.
“We are at the edge of the territory k’Sheyna still patrols,” he said. “After this point, the hazards begin. It may be dangerous to break silence; if I note anything, I shall warn your lady mind-to-mind.”
“Why not warn me?” Skif asked, doing his best not to sound sullen, but afraid that some of his resentment showed through anyway.
Wintermoon only looked mildly surprised. “Because I cannot,” he replied. “The mind-to-mind speech of the scouts is only between scouts and those who are not human.” His brow furrowed as he thought for a moment. “Perhaps you caught the edge of my conversation with Elivan. I apologize if this seemed rude to you, but your Cymry told me that you did not share the Gift of Mindspeech with one other than her—or perhaps another Herald. I thought, then, that you did not hear us.” He shrugged, apologetically. “I am sorry if you thought we had left you out a-purpose. Many Tayledras have this Gift, but I am one of the strongest speakers, as was Dawnfire. Sometimes it only extends to bondbirds. I am fortunate that I share my brother’s ability to speak with other creatures as well, although I do not share his gift of speaking with other humans.”
Skif flushed. That was one possibility that simply hadn’t occurred to him—that Wintermoon might not know that he was aware of the conversation without knowing what was being said. Well, now I feel like a real idiot…
“Is that what makes the nonmages scouts, and not something else?” he asked, trying to cover his misstep.
Wintermoon shook his head, and smiled. “All Tayledras have mind-to-mind speech, usually only with their bondbirds,” he replied. “It is a part of us; one of the many things that the Goddess granted to us to help us survive here, but although those who can speak with other creatures make the best scouts, if they are also mage-born, then mage-craft is oft the course of their life.”
Skif looked beyond him for a moment, across the stream. It didn’t seem any wilder or more threatening there than it did on this side. Frost had laced the trees on both sides of the stream, perhaps because they were more sensitive to it; the leaves were a yellow-brown, and some had already fallen, carpeting the ground and occasionally drifting off on the current of the brook. Jays called somewhere out there—or at least, something with the same raucous scream as a scarlet jay. A hint of movement on the other side of the water caught his eye, and he turned his head slightly just in time to catch the tail of a squirrel whisking over to the opposite side of the trunk—presumably, with a squirrel attached to it, although if what he’d been told was true, that didn’t necessarily follow.
“Just what’s so bad out there?” he asked, curiosity overcoming pride. “It doesn’t look any different to me, but I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
“There—not much,” Wintermoon replied, scanning the trees and the ground beneath them with eyes that missed nothing. “Farther out—I’ve heard there are wyrsa, though at this season they do not run in packs. Bears, of course, and Changebears. Treelions and Changelions, wild boars and Changeboars. Perhaps bukto, and—”
“Wait a moment,” Skif interrupted. Those names—that was something he’d been wanting to ask about, and hadn’t had an opening. “Changebears, Changelions, Changeboars—what are you talking about? Darkwind called Nyara a ‘Changechild,’ does this have anything to do with her?”
“Yes and no,” Wintermoon replied maddeningly. Skif stifled his impatience as Wintermoon paused, as if searching for the proper words. “Do you not recall what you were shown by Iceshadow? How magic, uncontrolled and twisted, warped all that it touched here?”
“Yes, but wasn’t that a long time ago?” he said, thinking back to those images, strange and only half understood. The part where that bright light had appeared to the Hawkbrothers—he’d understood what the Goddess had asked of them, but he hadn’t seen more than that light. Elspeth and the Shin’a’in had plainly experienced more than that.
“Not long enough,” the scout replied, looking soberly out at the innocent-looking land beyond the stream. “There was a time when magic in all its ‘colors’ and ‘sounds’ worked together. The time we call the Mage Wars shattered that order. The structure of magic—and its energies—were stressed to their limits. In the great disaster that ended the Final War, those bonds were broken. Their crystalline patterns, like branches of light to a mage, became as distorted as pine needles dropped to the ground. And every place they touched, on a scale vaster than we can see, they made the land dangerous, and caused creatures that should never have lived to appear.”
Skif shook his head, unable or unwilling to comprehend it. Wintermoon continued.
“When we first came here and established this Vale, the land hereabouts was as fearful as anything you saw before the Lady appeared. We have tamed it somewhat, and it is a fortunate thing that few of the magic-twisted creatures breed true. That also is due in part to Tayledras magery.”
“But some do?” Skif asked.
Wintermoon nodded. “Those we call ‘Changebeasts.’ They plainly have parentage of normal creatures, but they have new attributes, generally dangerous. Changelions, for instance—oft they have huge canine teeth, extending far beyond their jaws, and have a way of being able to work a kind of primitive magic that can keep them invisible even when one looks directly at them, so long as the Changelion does not move. That is… a common Change. Some are unpredictable or unrecognizable.” He hesitated, gathering his thoughts. “When the parentage was human, we call the result a ‘Changechild.’ And—in general—true humans do not—mate with them.”
He glanced sideways at Skif, gauging the effect of his words. Skif didn’t take offense, but he wasn’t going to accept that particular judgment without a fight, either. “Why not?” he asked, bringing his chin up aggressively. “I mean, what’s the difference? Who would care?”
Wintermoon sighed. “Because it is said that to mate with a Changechild is the same as mating with a beast, because the Changechildren are one with the beasts.” He held up a hand to stop the angry words Skif started to speak. “I only say what is commonly thought, not what I think. But you must know that it is the common thought, and there is no escaping it.”
Skif frowned. “So most Tayledras would think—if Nyara and I made a pair of it—that I was some kind of deviant?”
The Hawkbrother sighed. “Perhaps fewer in this Clan than in others, but some would. And outside the Clans altogether, among Outlanders who live in Tayledras lands and hold loyalty to us, or among those who trade with us—there would be no escaping it. They would all feel that way to some degree.”
So I’ll deal with it when—if—it happens. He nodded his understanding, but not his agreement.
Wintermoon continued. “There is another problem as well; there are either no offspring of such a mating, or as often as not, they truly are monsters that are less able to reason than beasts. This, I know, for I have seen it. The few children of such a union that are relatively whole are like unto the Changechild parent. And that is only one in four.”
Not good odds…
Wintermoon flexed his hands. “The likeliest to happen is that there are no children of the union. I would say that is just as well.”
“So Nyara is a Changechild,” Skif said, thinking out loud. “Just what makes her that, and not some—oh—victim of an experiment by her father on a real human child?”
“That there are things the human form cannot be made to mimic,” Wintermoon replied too promptly. “Her eyes, slitted like a cat. Fur-tufts on her ears.”
“Oh?” This time Skif expressed real skepticism. “That’s not what Darkwind told me. He said that it was possible that she’d been modified from a full human. He said that it would take a lot of magic to do it, but that if Falconsbane was using her as a kind of model for what he wanted to do to himself, he might be willing to burn the magic.”
“He did?” Skif’s assertion caught Wintermoon by surprise. “That—would make things easier.” The Hawkbrother chewed his lip for a moment. “That would make her entirely a victim, among other things. That would bring her sympathy.”
“I’ve got another question.” Cymry returned from the stream and came to stand beside him; he patted her neck absently. “What if she wasn’t a Changechild—but she wasn’t a human either?”
Wintermoon shook his head in perplexity. “How could she not be either?”
“If she was someone from a real race of her own—” He chewed his lip, and tried to come up with an example. “Look, you don’t call the tervardi Changechildren, or the hertasi. What makes them different from Nyara?”
“There are many of them,” Wintermoon replied promptly. “They breed true; they have colonies of their own kind, settlements.”
“So how do you know that there aren’t settlements of Nyara’s kind somewhere?” he interrupted. “You didn’t know there were gryphons before Treyvan and Hydona arrived!” He smiled triumphantly.
“Gryphons were upon a list handed down from the time of the Mage Wars,” Wintermoon said immediately, dashing his hopes. “As were the others. Every Tayledras memorizes it, lest he not recognize a friend—or foe. There is nothing on that list that matches Nyara.”
Well, so much for that idea. At least she isn’t on the “foe” list; I suppose I’d better consider us fortunate.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t help wondering if there could be creatures that were like the hertasi that simply hadn’t made the all-important list. Or if there were creatures that had developed since the Mage Wars that couldn’t have made the list because they hadn’t been in existence then…
Oh, this is ridiculous. It doesn’t matter what she is. What matters is what she does. Every Herald he’d met had told him that as he grew up in the Collegium. They had been right then; that should hold true now.
“It will be dark, soon,” Wintermoon said, glancing at the sky. While they had been talking, the quality of the light had changed, to the thick gold of the moments before actual sunset. Filtered through the golden-brown leaves, the effect was even more pronounced, as if the very air had turned golden and sweet as honey.
“Are we going to camp here, or go on?” Skif asked. The question was pertinent; if this had been an expedition with two Heralds, they would camp now, while there was still light. But it wasn’t; Wintermoon had abilities and a resource in his bondbirds that no Herald had.
“We go on,” Wintermoon replied promptly. “Although we will feign to make camp. If there is anyone watching us, they will be deceived. Then once true night falls, we shall move on.”
It didn’t take them long to unload the packs and Cymry’s saddle and make a sketchy sort of camp; Wintermoon unstrung and tied out a hammock, and padded it with a bedroll, then produced a second one and guided Skif in setting it up. That done, they cleared a patch of forest floor and built a tiny fire.
As they sat beside the fire, one of the owls lumbered into their clearing, laden with a young rabbit. It dropped its burden at Wintermoon’s feet, and before it had taken its perch on his shoulder, the second followed with a squirrel in its talons.
“Well,” Wintermoon chuckled, as the second owl dropped its burden beside the first and flew to a perch in the tree above Wintermoon’s head, “it seems that my friends have determined that we shall have a meal, at least.”
“That’s fine by me,” Skif said, and grinned. “I was about to dig out those trail rations.”
“I thought I heard something growling—I thought it might be a beast in the bushes. ’Twas only your stomach,” Wintermoon teased as he began gutting and skinning the rabbit. Both owls hopped down from their perches to stand on the ground beside him, waiting for tidbits.
They took the proffered entrails quite daintily; seeing that, Skif had no hesitation about picking up the squirrel and following the scout’s example. When the darker of the two owls saw what he was doing, it joined him, abandoning Wintermoon.
Skif got two surprises; the first, that this little “squirrel” was built more like a rabbit than the scrawny creatures he was used to—and the second, that the owl took so much care in taking its treats from him that its beak never touched his fingers. “Which one have I got?” he asked Wintermoon. “How hungry is he likely to be?”
“K’Tathi,” the scout replied without looking up. “The scraps will suffice for now; they will hunt again after we make our second camp, this time for themselves. Give him what you wish to spare from your meal.”
Head, entrails, and the limbs from the first joint out seemed appropriate. K’Tathi took everything that was offered with grace, never getting so much as a spot of blood on his gray-white feathers. Skif offered the skin as well, but the owl ignored it, so Skif quickly tossed it into the bushes as he saw Wintermoon do. That would have been foolhardy if they had been planning to stay, for the bloody skins might well attract something quite large and dangerous. But since they weren’t—well, there was sure to be something that would find the skin worth eating, and if there was someone watching them, possibly following them—
Well, if they try to go for the camp and there’s something big, with teeth, still here, they’re going to get a rude surprise.
When he finished his task, he once again followed Wintermoon’s example and spitted it on a sturdy branch to hold over the fire. Meanwhile, the sun continued to set, the sky above the trees turning first orange, then scarlet, then deepening to vermilion-streaked blue. By the time the meat was done, the sky was thick with stars.
He was halfway through his dinner when Wintermoon said abruptly, “I envy you, did you know that?”
He looked up, a little startled, into the ice-blue eyes of the man across the fire. There was no sign of Wintermoon’s dinner, other than the pile of small, neatly stacked bones at his feet, each of them gnawed clean.
What did he do, inhale the thing?
On the other hand—it was in the interest of the scout’s survival to learn to eat quickly. No telling when a meal might be interrupted by an uninvited, unwelcome dinner-guest.
“Why?” he asked, puzzled by the question. “What is there about me to envy? I’m nothing special, especially around Heralds.”
“My—liaisons—tend to be brief, and informal,” the scout replied. “One reason I wished to guide you was because Starspring returned my feathers, and I am at loose ends.”
Skif wondered if he should tender sympathy, surmising from the content that “returned his feathers” meant his lover had dissolved the relationship. But Wintermoon evidently saw something of his uncertainty in his expression and shook his head, smiling.
“No, this was not painful. I have no wish to avoid the Vale, or her. But I simply have no partner now, and there is no one else I care to partner with at the moment. So I am at loose ends, and would just as soon have other things to think on.” He wiped his fingers clean on a swatch of dry grass, and tossed it into the fire. “That is what I envy you, do you see,” he said, watching the grass writhe and catch. “Strong feelings. I have never experienced them.”
Skif coughed, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know that this is anything other than infatuation or attraction to the exotic.”
“Still, it is strong,” Wintermoon persisted. “I have never felt anything strongly. Sometimes I doubt I have the ability for it.”
The statement was offered like a gift; Skif was wise enough to know that when he saw it. He searched his mind for an appropriate response.
:The birds,: Cymry prompted.
“You feel strongly about Corwith and K’Tathi, don’t you?” he countered.
Wintermoon nodded slowly as if that simply hadn’t occurred to him in such a context.
“Well then,” Skif said and gestured, palm upward. “Then I wouldn’t worry. You’re capable. The way I see it, we all feel strongly about things, we just might not know we do. Valdemar is like that for Heralds; we lay our lives down willingly for our country and Monarch when we must, but most of the time, we just don’t think about it. If you encounter someone you can feel strongly about, you will. You haven’t exactly been given much of a choice of potential mates what with three-fourths of the Clan gone, and your tendency to, well, stay to yourself.”
“True.” The scout sat back a little, and only then did Skif realize, as he relaxed, that he had been tensed. “My father thinks that being born without the Gift for magery shows a serious lack in me. Sometimes I wonder if I have other, less visible lacks.”
Before Skif could change the subject, Wintermoon changed it for him—to one just as uncomfortable. “What do you intend when we find Nyara?” the scout asked, bluntly. “We shall, I promise you. I am not indulging in vanity to say that I am one of the finest trackers of k’Sheyna.”
“I—uh—I don’t know,” Skif replied. “Right now, to tell you the truth, all I’m thinking about is finding her. Once we do that—” He shook his head. “It just gets too complicated. I’m going to worry about it when it happens. What she says and does when we find her will give me my direction.”
“Ah,” the scout replied, and fell silent.
After all, I spent less than a week in her company, he thought. I could have been misreading everything about her.
Except that she had saved his life at the risk of her own. She’d attacked her own father, a creature that had held absolute control over her all of her life, and for Skif’s sake.
She’d gone after Falconsbane with nothing; nothing but her bare hands—
—or rather, claws—
And thoughts like that made him realize all over again just how alien she was, yet that realization didn’t change how he felt in the least. Whatever it was, it was very strong and very real.
What’s going to make a difference is what’s happened to her—and what happens to us. If she’s handling the things her father did to her. And if we can find someplace where people will accept her—and maybe even us.
That place might not be Valdemar; that was something he was going to have to admit. They might not be able to deal with someone who had tufted, pointed ears, catlike eyes, and a satiny-smooth pelt of very, very short fur. It wasn’t obvious, but a close examination would show it. The Heralds were open-minded, but were they open-minded enough for that? To accept someone who looked half animal?
And he was going to have to go home eventually…
That question kept him thinking until Wintermoon shook his shoulder. After that, he was too busy breaking camp and following the scout through the darkness to worry about anything else. And when they finally made camp again, he was too tired to think at all.
The two hunters began using a different pattern than a follower might expect; they were on the move from about mid-afternoon to after midnight. With the owls helping him, Wintermoon was completely happy doing most of his scouting after darkness fell, and even Skif’s night-vision gradually improved with practice. He would never be Wintermoon’s equal, but he grew comfortable with searching the forest in the darkness. There were advantages to this ploy that outweighed the disadvantages; the strongest advantage being that with K’Tathi and Corwith scouting for them, there was nothing that was going to surprise them—and nothing that would be able to follow them easily. Few creatures hunted the night by preference, and those few, though formidable, could be watched for. So for several days, they hunted and camped, and remained unmolested even by insects. But Skif knew that the situation could not last. Sooner or later, they were going to run into one of the kinds of creatures that had driven the Tayledras borders back in the first place. Sooner or later, something was going to come hunting them.
That, in fact, was what he was thinking when they paused along a deer trail, and Wintermoon sent the owls up to quarter the immediate vicinity, looking for disturbed areas or other signs of someone who was not especially woodswise. Cymry began acting a little nervous, casting occasional glances back over her shoulder. But Wintermoon, who was sitting quietly on Elivan, didn’t seem to sense anything out of order.
His first real warning that something really was wrong and that Cymry just wasn’t being fidgety was when Wintermoon suddenly tensed and flung up his hand, and Corwith came winging in as fast as a slung shot, landing on his outstretched arm, and hissing with fear and anger. Skif held out his hand as Wintermoon had asked him to do if one of the owls ever came in fast and showing distress. K’Tathi arrived a moment later, and K’Tathi hit his gauntleted wrist as if striking prey. It was the first time that the owl had landed on Skif, and nothing in his limited experience in hawking with merlins and kestrels prepared him for the power and the weight of the bird as it caught his wrist and landed. Those thumb-length talons closing—even with restraint—on his wrist could easily have pierced the heavy leather of the gauntlet. They did not, although the claws exerted such powerful pressure that Skif could not possibly have rid himself of the bird short of killing it. K’Tathi hissed angrily, and swiveled his head away from Skif, pointing back the way he had come.
Before Skif could ask what was wrong, Wintermoon cursed under his breath and the dyheli stag he rode tossed its antlers and reared, its eyes shining in the moonlight, wide with fear. Wintermoon kept his seat easily, but Corwith flapped his wings wildly to keep his balance.
Tilredan, the second stag, the one laden with their provisions and extra gear, bolted; it was Skif’s turn to swear, and not under his breath. But he had reacted too soon; in the next breath, Wintermoon’s mount followed the other stag, and Skif only had Cymry’s warning Mindcall of :Hold on!: before she was hot on his heels.
Hold on? With an owl on one arm?
He dropped the reins—useless in a situation like this one—and grabbed for the pommel of the saddle with his free hand, deeply grateful that he had not given in to Wintermoon and exchanged Cymry’s old saddle for a Shin’a’in model. Shin’a’in saddles had no pommel to speak of…
K’Tathi continued to cling to his wrist, mercifully refraining from using his wings to keep his balance. One strong buffet to the head from those powerful wings would lay Skif out over Cymry’s rump before he knew what had hit him.
Instead, the owl hunched down on the wrist, making himself as small as possible, leaning into the wind of their passing. Skif tried to bring him in close to his body, but he wasn’t sure how much K’Tathi would tolerate.
:What in—: Skif began.
:A pack of something, that scented us and is hunting up our backtrail,: Cymry answered shortly. :Not something we’ve seen before, but something Wintermoon and the others know. Worse than wolves, worse than Changewolves. And smart—we’re running for a place where we can defend ourselves. K’Tathi found it just before Corwith sighted the pack.:
He could only hope that an owl’s idea of what was defensible and theirs was the same; sheer cliffs were fine if you could scale them, and a hole in a tree would be all right if the tree was the size of a house, but otherwise they’d be better off making a back-to-back stand.
And he hoped his idea of “nearby” and the owl’s was the same, too.
For behind him, he heard an uncanny keening sound; not baying, not howling, not wailing—something like all three together. The noise gave him chills and made the hair on the back of his neck stand up, and it sounded as if it was coming from at least eight or nine throats. He glanced back over his shoulder and saw nothing, but his imagination populated the darkness. If he heard eight, how many were really in the pack? Twelve? Twenty? Fifty?
K’Tathi clutched his wrist a little harder, and the deadly talons pricked him through the leather. This was not a good way to carry the bird, but there was no way to turn K’Tathi loose to fly. The dyheli were nearly a match for a Companion in speed, and they were going flat-out; neither owl could have hoped to keep up with them by flying through the canopy, which was why both birds were clinging desperately to their perches on his wrist and Wintermoon’s. But K’Tathi, at least, was having a lot of trouble holding on. If the owl exerted a little more pressure—
:Cymry! Can you talk to K’Tathi?: he asked Cymry, frantically.
Her mind-voice was colored with surprise and annoyance at what probably seemed like a supremely inappropriate question. :Yes, but this is no time—:
He interrupted her. :Tell him not to move, I’m going to try something with him, before he goes through my wrist.:
He pulled his arm to his chest, and brought the bird in close to his body, sheltered against his body. This left the owl unbalanced, with its face shoved against his tunic, but K’Tathi displayed his agility and intelligence; somehow he managed to get himself reversed, so that his head faced forward and his tail and wings were tucked down between Skif’s wrist and his chest. Now the bird wasn’t having to fight the wind by himself, he was braced against Skif. The painful pressure on Skif’s wrist relaxed.
That takes care of one problem.
Cymry’s muscles bunched and flexed under his legs, the sound of hooves drowning out anything else except the chilling cries behind them. The wailing behind them seemed closer. Skif didn’t ask Cymry if it was; it wouldn’t make any difference. They’d either reach safety in time, or not.
He just wished he knew how far it was to that promise of “safety.” If he knew, he might be able to guess whether they had any chance of making it, or whether it might be better to turn and make a stand.
And he wished that he had Wintermoon’s night-sight, far superior to his own. To him, the moon-filled night was full of shadows his eyes couldn’t penetrate. There could be nothing in those patches of darkness, or an enemy, or a hiding place. Though the moon was bright, there were still enough leaves on the trees to keep most of the light from reaching the ground.
The pack behind them cried again; this time there was no doubt in his mind about the peril of their situation. They were closer; if he looked back, he might be able to see them. The brush obscuring the path behind them didn’t seem to be slowing the pack at all. In fact, they were probably breaking a trail for the pursuers to follow along. He’d learned long ago that being the pursued in a chase was more difficult than being the pursuer.
He crouched a little lower over Cymry’s neck; as low as he could without flattening the owl. K’Tathi seemed to realize what he was doing, and didn’t object or struggle, only giving him a warning stab with his talons when he crouched too low for the owl’s comfort. Soft feathers pressed against his chin, and K’Tathi hunched down on his wrist so that the bird’s chest-feathers warmed his hand.
He glanced up; saw the gray bulk of a rock formation looming ahead of them through the trees. In this light, it looked very like the one in which he and Elspeth had sheltered when they first arrived in Tayledras territory. A moment later, he saw that this one was bisected by a good-sized crack. Just like the one he and Elspeth had used.
He seemed to spend a lot of time hiding in rock crevices lately. Whatever had happened to hiding in rooms, behind drapes, or under furniture?
He had a moment to think—Oh, no, not again—and then Cymry braced all four legs for a sudden stop, skidding to a halt beside the dyheli. At least the owls did seem to have some idea of what constituted a good shelter for the rest of the party. The crevice would be a little crowded for three plus the two humans, but it was better than facing what howled on their backtrail with nothing to protect their backs!
All three of them crowded into the narrow crevice between two halves of a huge boulder; the rock was easily two stories tall, and the crevice ended in the stone face of a second stone that was even taller. There was barely enough room for Cymry to turn around, but that was fine; less room for them meant less room for those things out there to try to get past them.
A strangled hoot and the booting of K’Tathi’s head against his chest reminded him to turn the poor owl loose. He raised his arm and launched it clumsily into the air, thrown off by the confined quarters and the fact that the owl was considerably heavier than a merlin. It wasn’t much of a launch, or much help to the owl in gaining the air; K’Tathi hit him in the side of the head with a wing, recovered, and got free of the crevice, just as the pack reached them.
Skif looked up when a note of triumph entered the wailing. A strange, yellowish flood burst through the bushes and into the area around the rocks. Dear gods—
He needn’t wish for night-sight after all. The damned things glowed. Now that he saw them, he wished, perversely, he didn’t have quite such a good view.
They looked—superficially—like dogs; they had the lean, long-legged bodies of greyhounds, the close-cropped ears, the long, snaky tails and pointed muzzles. But their faintly glowing, pale yellow hides were covered with scales, each scale outlined by a darker yellow. Their heads, shaped like an unholy cross between dog and viper, held eyes that burned a sulfurous yellow much brighter than the bodies, and rows of sharply pointed fangs.
They flowed, they didn’t run; they drifted to a halt outside the entrance to the crevice and wound around each other in a vicious, impatient, ever-moving tangle. A snarl of ropes, with teeth at one end. A ball of vipers. They confused the eye and baffled the senses with their hypnotic restlessness. Wintermoon slid off the back of his mount; Skif followed his example a moment later.
They couldn’t get in; the sharp hooves of Cymry and the dyheli bucks awaited them if they tried, not to mention the bows that Skif and Wintermoon unlimbered from the sheathes at each saddle. But those who had taken refuge here couldn’t get out, either.
Stalemate.
Skif strung his bow and nocked an arrow to the string, Wintermoon shadowing every movement. All right, here we are. Now what?
“What are those things?” Skif asked quietly, as the creatures continued to mill about in front of the crevice. He blinked his vision clear as they blurred for a moment. Was that just his tired eyes acting up, or were they doing it?
“Wyrsa,” Wintermoon replied, frowning as he sighted along his arrow. He loosed it in the next moment, but the wyrsa that was his target writhed aside literally as the point touched its hide, evading the deadly metal hunting point in a way that Skif would have said was impossible if he hadn’t seen it himself. He’d never seen anything move so fast in his entire life.
Wintermoon muttered under his breath; Tayledras words Skif didn’t know, but recognized for intention if not content.
The Tayledras nocked another arrow, and sighted, but did not fire. “They have no magic weapons, but they do not tire easily, and their fangs are envenomed,” Wintermoon continued, watching as the beasts flowed about each other. “Once set on a quarry, they do not give up. They know how to weave patterns that confuse the eye, and as you see, they are swift, agile. Alone, we do not consider them a great problem, but together in a pack, they are formidable.”
“Great,” Skif replied, after a moment. “So what do we do about them?”
“We kill them,” the Hawkbrother said calmly, and loosed his arrow. This time, although the beast he aimed at evaded the shaft, the one that was behind it could not get out of the way, and took the arrow straight in the chest.
In any other beast, the wound might not have been fatal. There was no blood, and Skif honestly thought the creature was going to shake the strike off, even though it had looked like a heart-shot. But it stood stock still for a moment, jaws opening soundlessly, then toppled over onto its side. The light died from its eyes, and a moment later, the light faded from its hide, until it was a dull gray shape lying on the darker ground, revealed only by the moonlight.
The entire pack surged to one side, leaving the dead one alone. For a moment they froze in place, unmoving and silent.
He thought for a moment that they might prove Wintermoon wrong, that after the death of one of the pack, they might give up and leave their quarry to go its own way.
But then they all turned burning, hate-filled eyes on Wintermoon, then pointed their noses to the sky and howled again.
The sound was much worse at close range; it not only raised the hair on Skif’s head, it rang in his ears in a way that made him dizzy and nauseous. The pack of wyrsa wavered before his blurring eyes, and he loosed the arrow he had nocked without even aiming it.
Luck, however, was with him. Two of the wyrsa dodged aside, accidentally shoving a third into the arrow’s path. A second wyrsa dropped to the ground, fading as the first had done the moment it dropped. The pack stopped their howling, and tumbled, hastily, out of the way.
They stood near the bushes at the head of the path, this time staring at the cornered quarry. Skif got the feeling that there were cunning minds behind those glowing eyes; minds that were even now assessing all five of them. Two down—how many to go? I can’t make out how many there are of them, they keep blurring together.
They advanced again, as a body, but with a little more separation between each of the beasts, so that they could dodge out of the way without sending another into the line of fire. He and Wintermoon loosed another five or six arrows each without hitting any more of the beasts. At least they had stopped their howling; Skif didn’t think he could have handled much more of that. After the last fruitless volley, Wintermoon nocked his arrow but did not bother to draw it. Instead, he looked out of the corner of his eye at Skif and said, “And have you any notions?”
Skif had been trying to think of something, anything that could be done about the beasts; shook his head, wordlessly. Wintermoon grimaced.
One of the wyrsa separated from the pack when they held their fire, and slunk, belly-down to the ground, to stand just in front of the crevice, as if testing them. When they didn’t fire on it, another joined it, and another, until all of them had gathered directly before the entrance to their shelter. While they were moving one at a time, Skif got a chance to count them. There were eight in all, not counting the two dead.
He’d gone against worse numeric odds, but never against anything with reactions like these creatures had. We’re rather outnumbered.
“If this were a tale,” he offered, “our rescue would come out of the woods at this point. A herd of dyheli, perhaps, something that would come charging up and flatten everything in sight. Or a mage that could kill them with lightning.”
“Would that it were a tale,” Wintermoon muttered, his eyes following every move the beasts made. “The things move too swiftly to shoot.”
If we had a way to distract them, it might be possible to get at some of them before they figured out what we were doing. “Are K’Tathi and Corwith fast enough to avoid those things?” he asked. “Could they—oh, fly down and make strikes at their heads and eyes, keep them busy while we tried shooting?”
Wintermoon shook his head, emphatically.
“No,” he replied. “Owls are agile flyers, and silent, not swift. If they were to dive at the wyrsa, the beasts would have them. I will not ask them to do that.”
Well, so much for that idea. Unless—well, they don’t have to dive at them to distract them.
“All right, what about this,” he said, thinking aloud. “Can they fly just out of reach, and hiss at them, get them worked up into forgetting about keeping an eye on us, maybe tease them into trying to make strikes even though they’re out of reach?”
“Not for long.” Wintermoon frowned. “Not long enough for us to pick off all the wyrsa with arrows.”
“But what if we used the last of the arrows, waited, got the owls to tease them again, then charged them, all of us? Cymry and the dyheli, too?” Skif had a good idea that the hooved ones might account for as many as one wyrsa apiece—that would leave less for him and Wintermoon. “We can always retreat back here if we have to.”
“It is worth a try.” Wintermoon left his arrow nocked, but did not sight it. Even as Skif did the same, two ghostly white shapes swooped down out of the dark treetops, hissing and hooting. The wyrsa looked up, startled, as the owls made another swoop. At the third pass, even though they were plainly out of reach, the nearness of the owls, and the taunting sounds they made, broke through their control. They turned their attention from their trapped quarry and began lunging upward at the birds.
Wintermoon gave the wyrsa a few moments more to fix their attention on the “new” targets—then pulled up his bow and fired his last three arrows, just as fast as he could get them off. Skif did the same.
The wyrsa quickly turned their attention away from the owls, but it was already too late. Each arrow had found a mark; two more wyrsa lay dead, and four were wounded. It seemed that only a heart-shot was effective in killing them; the wounded wyrsa limped, but did not bleed, and in fact took a moment to gnaw off the shafts of the arrows piercing front and hind-quarters.
Now they were even more angry; Skif felt the heat of their gaze as a palpable sensation on his skin, and the hatred in their eyes was easy to read. As he put up his now-useless bow and drew his sword, he thought he read satisfaction in those eyes as well.
Wintermoon drew his sword as well, and K’Tathi and Corwith swooped down again, harrying the wyrsa from above, carefully gauging their flights to keep them just barely out of range. Skif would have thought that the ploy wouldn’t work the second time, but either the wyrsa had not made the connection between the owls and the attack, or now that the last of the arrows was spent, they had reasoned as a human would that the quarry would not be able to use the owls as the cover for an attack.
They grew frustrated by their inability to do anything about the flying pests, and, sooner than Skif would have thought, turned their full attention back to the owls. That was when Wintermoon gave the signal to charge.
Cymry, larger and heavier than the dyheli, charged straight up the middle of the pack, striking with forehooves and kicking with hind, before whirling and retreating to the safety of the crevice. The dyheli came in on either side, just behind her, and trampled the wyrsa that dodged out of the way. They too retreated, as Skif and Wintermoon followed as a second wave, swords out and swinging.
Skif’s world narrowed to his enemies and himself; nothing more. As always, fear temporarily evaporated, replaced by a cool detachment that would last only as long as the battle. Talia had told him that he was really temporarily insane when this came over him—as emotionally dead and uncaring as an assassin. He hadn’t always been this way, but like so many in Valdemar, the war with Ancar had changed him.
He ducked away from snapping jaws, and decapitated one wyrsa. Two more came for him, poisoned fangs gleaming in the moonlight, but one of the dyheli got in a kick that distracted the first, and he fatally disemboweled the second when it couldn’t limp out of the way fast enough.
Cymry screamed a warning, and he ducked the one that the dyheli had kicked; hit it with the flat of the blade, and knocked it into Cymry’s path. She trampled it; bones crunched and popped, and a hoof crushed its skull as it snapped at her.
He saw movement out of the corner of his eye, and struck at a third as it jumped for Wintermoon’s back. His strike wasn’t clean; he only sliced at its foreleg, but that disabled it. Wintermoon finished that one off, and Skif looked around for more of the beasts.
There weren’t any more.
“We did it.” Skif could hardly believe it. It had happened so quickly—he leaned on his sword, panting, his heart still in his mouth over the near-misses he’d had with the creatures’ poisoned fangs. Very near misses; the cloth of his breeches was torn in one place, and his tunic damaged by claws.
“We were lucky,” Wintermoon said flatly. “Very, very lucky. Either these were very stupid wyrsa, or your tactic took them by surprise. One touch of a fang begins to dissolve flesh far worse than any poisonous serpent. And wyrsa often travel in packs twice the size of this one. We would not have defeated a larger pack this easily.”
Skif nodded, and the battle fever that had sustained him drained out of him in a rush, leaving him weak-kneed and panting. He cleaned his sword on a handful of dry grass, and sagged against the stones that had sheltered them. “Havens. No, if there had only been one more of those things, I don’t think we could have done this. I’ve never seen anything move as fast as they did.” He closed his eyes as a rush of exhaustion hit him.
“I think,” Wintermoon said, in a voice as drained-sounding as Skif felt, “that we should camp now.”
* * *
Wintermoon decreed a fire, after they cleared the carcasses of the wyrsa out of the way, pitching them into the forest, upwind of the camp, for scavengers to squabble over. Not the easiest task in the dark; they were heavier than they looked, and their fangs were still deadly and had to be avoided. Then they collected arrows and arrowheads, all that could be found. There were more arrows in their packs, but every arrow was precious, and every broken-off head might be needed. By the time they had the fire going in front of their crevice, there was something out there, fighting over the remains with other somethings, all of them squalling and barking. Skif wondered how they would dare to sleep; he kept glancing at the forest where the noises were coming from, even though he knew the chances that he’d actually see anything were remote. Hopefully, they hadn’t attracted anything too large…
“We stay awake until they carry away the remains,” Wintermoon said, as if answering his thought. Skif was only startled by it for a moment; he was probably pretty transparent, and Wintermoon had read his expression. “Once the carcasses are gone, the scavengers will go. The fire will keep them away until then. The night-scavengers are cowards, and fear fire. We had best not move away from it.”
The Hawkbrother settled down on his blanket roll, got one of his packs and took out a small, fire-blackened pair of pots, and filled both with water from one of their bottles. He looked up to see Skif watching him with puzzlement.
“So long as we are confined to the fire we might as well make use of it,” he said. “The owls will only be able to hunt enough to fill their bellies; they are too weary to hunt for us tonight. I prefer not to resort to unembellished trail rations if I have any choice at all.”
With that, he reached into his pack for a slab of dried venison and a few other things. He broke off bits of meat and dropped them into the first pot, which was already simmering, following that with the multicolored contents of a gray paper packet, and a sprinkling of what looked to be herbs. Into the second pot went more herbs, dried fruit, and several small, round objects that Skif didn’t recognize.
“Can I help?” Skif asked. “I should warn you, I tend to ruin anything I cook on my own, but if you keep an eye on me, I should do all right.”
The scout chuckled, and handed him a wooden spoon. Skif pulled the edges of his cloak a little closer around his body, and stirred the meat pot as he’d been directed. He was very glad of the fire; now that they weren’t moving or fighting, the air, though windless, was very chilly. He expected to see thick frost on the ground in the morning.
“I have needed this myself,” Wintermoon said, breaking the silence. “I am often out alone, and the hertasi do not care to be outside the Vale or their settlements. My lovers have always been casual, so there has never been anyone to share such—domestic chores with.”
“Forgive me if I am stepping beyond the bounds,” Skif said, “but I can’t imagine why. You seemed popular.”
Wintermoon coughed politely. “Well, none of the scouts have felt easy about having long-term affairs with one who hunts the dangerous hours of night by choice, and no woman of the Clans would ever consider a long liaison with a man who has no magic.”
“But you have magic,” Skif felt moved to protest. “Better than mine, in fact.”
Wintermoon shrugged. “It is not magic by Starblade’s definition,” he said, too casually. “I do not know how these things are reckoned in other Clans, but it is that way in k’Sheyna.”
Skif stirred the pot vigorously, and tried to think of a tactful way to approach the subject of Starblade. Darkwind had been so relieved at the release of his father that he was likely to look no further, but Skif did not trust Starblade’s ability to assess his own strengths and weaknesses. Tact had never been his strong suit; he finally gave up searching, and tried bluntness instead.
“What do you think of Starblade?” he asked. “Now, I mean—now that he isn’t being manipulated. Do you trust him?”
“Much the same as I have always thought of him,” came the surprising answer. “Not often, and not a great deal. This revelation has changed very little between Starblade and myself, whatever it has done for Darkwind.”
“But—” Skif began. Wintermoon looked up from his task, briefly, and the firelight flickering over his face obscured whatever faint expression it might have held.
“Starblade disassociated himself from me when testing proved me to have no real magic,” he said carefully. “Do you really wish to hear this? It is not particularly interesting.”
“Why don’t you let me judge that?” Skif replied, just as carefully. “It will help me to know k’Sheyna through you.”
Wintermoon raised an eyebrow at that, but made no other comment. “So, then,” he began. “My mother was a k’Treva mage, who came to k’Sheyna to look for a father for outClan children. She bargained with Starblade for twins, male and female, the male to leave, the female to take back with her. I do not know if my sister had mage-powers, but I did not, and I am told I was a great disappointment to my father. I did not know that, and I only knew he was my father because I was told, for I scarcely saw him.”
“At least you know who yours is,” Skif replied, with a bitterness that took him by surprise. “I don’t. If I have any sibs, I don’t know that, either. Mother never got around to telling me anything; she was too busy teaching me to pick pockets. Then someone decided to get rid of her—a rival thief—and I was on my own.”
He snapped his mouth shut, appalled at the way he had simply blurted that out to a near-stranger; things he hadn’t told anyone except his dear friend Talia.
“You were a thief ? In a city?” Wintermoon seemed more intrigued than anything else. “I should like to hear of this one day. I have never seen a city.”
“You haven’t missed much,” he replied. “Cities aren’t all that impressive. And I’d give a lot to have a brother.”
Once again, the Tayledras dropped his eyes. All of Wintermoon’s apparent attention was again on his half of dinner. “At least I do have Darkwind, that is true. I am actually glad that I am so much older than he; if I had been younger, I would have hated him for stealing Starblade’s love and care. But I was old enough to know that what occurred was no one’s fault, that without magic, I would never represent anything but failure to Starblade, and that Darkwind was no more to be blamed for that than the magic itself, which declined to manifest in me. Still, I stay away a great deal. It is very easy to find myself envying him, and envy oft turns darker.”
He sighed, as Skif nodded. He stared into the fire for a moment and continued. “I think I will never have other than mixed feelings for Darkwind. I do love him. When he was very young, it was easy to love him, for his disposition was sunny, and his mother treated us both as if we were sons of her body. Even as he came into his power, he was not prideful—he rather delighted in the learning, in finding what could be done—in showing it to me, like any young man with a new accomplishment. Magic was like a huge and complex puzzle to him. But at the same time, there was always the envy…”
“I don’t see how you could have gotten away from it,” Skif put in quietly, hoping he wasn’t going to break Wintermoon’s mood by speaking. This was instructive; it gave him an idea of how some of the more complex situations in the Clan had evolved.
“Ah, but I am also jealous,” Wintermoon said with a lightness that did not in the least deceive Skif. “Darkwind has so many things come easily to his hand, from his bondbird to his magic. Things that I must struggle to achieve, and often have not even a hope of having. Women, for instance. If you have gotten the impression that he could have any partner in the Vale that he chose, you are substantially correct. That is not the least because he was—or is—a powerful mage.”
They sat in silence for a while as their dinner cooked, and ate in silence. Finally Wintermoon broke it. “I think, perhaps,” he told Skif, slowly, “that I have said too much. You must think badly of me. I do not ordinarily speak of such things even to friends; I cannot think why I did so now.”
“Maybe because we’re more alike than either of us guessed,” Skif replied. “And, if you don’t mind, I think I’d like to talk. There’s been something bothering me for a long time, and I can’t really talk about it to anyone—at home. They wouldn’t understand.” He looked straight into Wintermoon’s eyes. “I think you might.”
Maybe it was that Wintermoon was so strange—and yet so very like him. Maybe it had something to do with everything the entire Clan had just endured. Maybe it was just time. Skif didn’t know, but when Wintermoon nodded, he drew a deep breath and began choosing the simple, painful words to tell the story of his failure.
“You know we are at war with a country to the east of us, right?”
Wintermoon nodded.
“And I told you that I was a thief, once. Well, for a little while, I was working across the Border, because I’m used to doing things that are—outside a Herald’s usual skills.” He paused for a moment, then continued, keeping his voice as expressionless as he could. “I was supposed to be helping people escape across the Border, and I was working with a series of families that were providing places for escapees to hide as they fled across the country. I lived with one of those families. Hunters, the husband and wife both—he hunted game, she hunted herbs that won’t grow in gardens. They had two children, an older boy and a little girl. They were—kind of the family I never had.”
Wintermoon nodded knowingly. “As Darkwind’s mother played mother to me.”
“Exactly.” His stomach churned, and a cold lump formed in his throat. “I never thought I’d like living out in the middle of nowhere—and I used to tease them about being backwards—but I kind of got to enjoy it. Then we got a message saying there was someone waiting at the next house in, waiting for me to guide him to the place on the Border. I went and fetched him—and damn if he wasn’t just like me. Same background, used to be a thief before he joined Ancar’s army, all that.”
I trusted him. I should have known better, I should have, but I liked him, I trusted him…
“He had to stay a couple of days before it was safe to make the crossing. We talked a lot.”
He acted and reacted just like me, teased the kids, helped with the chores—but I should have known, I should have—
“Anyway, it was finally clear, and he went off. I thought he made the crossing. I left him, though, because I had to check back with the people he’d stayed with before, bring them some news and money. That was when I found out—”
“That they were no longer there,” Wintermoon interrupted. “That the plausible fellow you had trusted was a traitor.”
“How did you know?” Skif’s jaw dropped, and Wintermoon grimaced.
“Because I am older than you, by more than you know,” the Hawkbrother said, gently. “I have seen a great deal. Remember who was the unwitting traitor in our midst. To be effective, one who would betray others must be likable and plausible—while all the time actually being something else entirely. He must be a supreme actor, projecting warmth and humanity, while having a cold, uncaring heart. Someone who was a criminal is likely to be all of these.” He looked up at Skif, thoughtfully. “I do not think he was likely to have been a thief, though he may well have associated enough with them to have collected the tales he traded with you. He is likelier to have been something darker. I would say, one who kills in cold blood for pay.”
Skif blinked, and tried to collect his thoughts. All he could think of to say, was, “How old are you?”
Wintermoon did not seem surprised at the non-sequitur. “You are Darkwind’s age, I would guess. I am sixteen summers his senior.” He half-smiled, wryly. “It is difficult to determine the age of a Tayledras, even if you are of the Clans yourself.”
“Oh.” Skif gathered his scattered and perambulatory wits, and continued his story, but this was the most difficult part to face.
“I—I went back, as fast as I could—but—” He swallowed the knot of grief in his throat. He didn’t close his eyes; if he had, he’d see them, hanging from the crossbeam of their own barn. See what had been done to them by Ancar’s toadies before they were hanged. He still saw them, at night. “The only one left was the little girl; the family had managed to get her out before the troops caught them, and she was hiding in the woods.” Thank the gods, she never saw any of it, never knew what had been done to them. “I got her across the Border; left her with friends. Then—then I went back. Against orders. The bastard shouldn’t have told so many stories; he gave me more clues than he knew, and I know cities. I tracked him down.”
And I did to him what had been done to them before I killed him.
Wintermoon nodded, and waited.
Skif hesitated, then continued. “Nobody ever said or did anything, even though they must have known what I did. And I’d do it again, I swear I would—”
“But part of you is sickened,” Wintermoon said softly. “Because what you did may have been just, in the way of rough justice, but it may have been—excessive.” He stared up at the sky for a moment. “It is better to kill cleanly,” he said, finally. “If you did not, you are at fault. A creature like the one you described is not sane, any more than Mornelithe Falconsbane is—was—sane. But you do not torment something that is so crazed it cannot be saved; you kill it, so that its madness does not infect you.”
Skif was astonished. “After all he did to your people—if you had Falconsbane in front of you now—”
“I would kill him cleanly, with a single stroke,” Wintermoon said firmly. “I learned this lesson when I was a little older than you, now—when I visited similar retribution on a very stupid bandit that had been tormenting hertasi and killing them for their hides. It does no good to visit torments upon a creature of that nature. It teaches him nothing, and makes your nature closer to his. And that is why you are troubled, Wingbrother. You knew this all along, did you not?”
Skif hung his head, and closed his eyes. “Yes,” he admitted, finally. “I did.”
Wintermoon sat in silence a moment longer. “For what it is worth,” he said finally, “what was done, was done in the heat of anger, and in the heat of anger, one loses perspective—and sanity. Now you are sane—and sickened. Do not forget the lesson, Wingbrother—but do not let it eat at you like a disease. Let it go, and learn from it.”
Skif felt muscles relaxing that he hadn’t known were tensed, and a feeling of profound relief. There. It was out in the open; Wintermoon had guessed most of it without Skif having to go into detail. And the result: he had just discovered he wasn’t alone in depravity after all.
“I visited similar retribution upon a stupid bandit, who had been tormenting hertasi and killing them for their hides.”
He would never have guessed from Wintermoon’s serene exterior.
“Others will forgive you this, Wingbrother,” the Tayledras said softly, “but only you can forgive yourself. You must never, never forget.”
“I won’t,” Skif promised, as much to himself as to Wintermoon. “I won’t…” He shook his head, in part, to clear it. “I—after that, though—I got myself assigned back at the capital. I just lost my taste for adventure.”
Wintermoon chuckled. “In that case, Wingbrother, why are you here?”
“I also couldn’t resist Elspeth. It’s strange how, even if you know inside that there isn’t a chance, you’ll pursue something anyway because the thought of it is so attractive. I’ve known it for a long time, but I wouldn’t admit it to myself. Elspeth has her own plan for her life, and my role in it is not as her lover. Still, there it is. The only way they were going to let her make this journey was if I came along.” He smiled, and shrugged. “But, when this is all over, if I’m given a choice, I’d like to have a place like that family had. For me… or maybe for their memory.” Skif pursed his lips, then looked back up at Wintermoon. “Oh, I’d probably be awful at country living—I’d probably have everyone in the county laughing at me, but it would be good trying. I know I’d like to have a home. A family.” He smiled, a little wistfully. “Nobody at Haven would believe that of me.”
“You have seen enough blood, enough death,” Wintermoon surmised. “You fought in battles, as a soldier?”
“Yes.” Once again he was amazed at Wintermoon’s insight. Or was it something more? “Are you talking with Cymry?”
The other man nodded, and poked at the fire.
:I told him only a few things.: Cymry didn’t sound at all apologetic. :When you started talking to him and it looked like you were going to talk about That—I prompted him a little.:
:Why?: He wasn’t angry, not really; Cymry was in and out of his thoughts so much she was part and parcel of him. She was his best and dearest friend; he loved her so deeply that he would sooner cut off his arm than lose her. And if he knew nothing else, he knew that she would never, ever do anything to harm him in any way. She had been a part of the revenge scheme, although she had not known his plan until he’d ambushed the bastard and begun. And even then, she kept silent after her initial protests. He didn’t think she’d even betrayed his secret shame to other Companions. So why reveal it now?
:Because I thought it sounded and felt like you were ready to speak, and he was ready to hear,: she replied, matter-of-factly. :And as much as being ready to speak, you were ready to listen. Was I wrong?:
He shook his head. :No. No, you were right. Thank you, love.:
Wintermoon sat quietly through the silent exchange, and watched Skif and Cymry alternately. When the Companion nodded, he sighed, and smiled thinly. “I hope you are not angered with us,” he said, in half apology. “You see, I had a similar discussion after my ill-conceived vengeance, with Iceshadow. He is not a Mind-Healer, but he is closer to being one than he thinks. He has the insights, at least.”
The Hawkbrother fixed him with a penetrating stare. “I will tell you this, out of my own experience. Although you feel relief now, this is likely to be the source of many sleepless nights for you. You will lie awake, look upon your heart, and find it unlovely. You will be certain that, regardless of what I have said, you are the greatest of monsters. This is a good thing; although you may forgive yourself, you must never come to think that your actions were in any way justifiable. But—” He chuckled, ironically. “As Iceshadow told me, being a sane, honorable human is not always comfortable.”
:He should go set up shop on a mountaintop somewhere,: Cymry said. :He’d make a prime Wise Old Teacher. He’s already got the part about tormenting the students down perfectly.:
Wintermoon drew himself up and stared at her in mock affrontery. “I heard that,” he protested.
:I meant you to.:
Skif grinned, and the grin turned into a yawn. Wintermoon caught it, and pointed an admonishing finger at him.
“We still have work ahead of us, and that work requires rest. As you both know.” He spread out his bedroll by way of making an example, and climbed into it. “Stars light your path, Wingsibs,” he said pointedly, and made a show of turning on his side and closing his eyes. “Wyrsa have no respect for crisis of conscience.”
Well, that about sums the evening up, he thought as he rolled out his own bedroll and crawled into its warmth. And then he thought nothing more, for sleep crept up and ambushed him.