Twice Darkwind tried to wake up; twice he turned over to climb out of bed. Twice he closed his eyes again, and fell right back to sleep. And since no one came to fetch him, and there was hardly ever any noise around Starblade’s ekele, he slept until well past midmorning unaware of how long he’d been dreaming.
When he finally awakened and stayed awake, he lay quietly for a moment, feeling confused and a bit disoriented. The light shouldn’t have been coming in at that angle…
Then it finally occurred to him why it was doing so.
I haven’t overslept like this in I can’t think how long.
Feeling very much as if he’d done something overly self-indulgent, he snatched his newly cleaned clothing from a shelf and hastily donned it. There was no one in the ekele except Vree, who was still dozing. He vaulted the stairs to the ground and hurried down to Elspeth’s ekele only to find her gone.
He was both embarrassed and annoyed. Annoyed that she had left without him; embarrassed because she’d needed to. She had at least left a note.
It looked like gibberish, until he realized that she had apparently spelled things the way they sounded to her.
Takt tu Starblaad n Winrlit sins we r not owt. Taa sed tu werk on bordr majik wit grifons. We r al waading fer u wen u waak up.
It took him a moment to puzzle out that she had checked with Starblade and Winterlight about what she and he should do since they weren’t on patrol. He surmised that they had both asked her to work on border protections under the gryphons’ tutelage. All three of them were expecting Darkwind whenever he got there. She hadn’t even told him where they were working. They could be anywhere.
Once again, as with everything Elspeth did, he had mixed feelings. Pleased that she had taken it upon herself to find something useful to do; miffed that she hadn’t consulted him.
He snatched a quick meal, and wondered if he should try to find Winterlight. Presumably the scout leader would know where they were.
Then it occurred to him that he hadn’t bothered to ask the most obvious “person.” Vree. The forestgyre was still back at Starblade’s ekele. Undoubtedly, recovering from the way he’d stuffed himself yesterday.
He sent out a mental call, and was rewarded within a few moments by a flash of white through the high branches. He held out his arm, and Vree winged in, diving down to the ground and pulling up with spread wings in a head-high stall. He dropped delicately down onto Darkwind’s wrist.
The gyre chirped at him, and inclined his head for a scratch. :Messages?: he asked.
:From Horse,: Vree replied. Horse—with the mental emphasis of importance—could only mean the Companion.
Vree’s intelligence was limited; he had to get messages in pieces. :Who is the message from Horse about?:
:Female and Big Ones.: Vree leaned into the scratch, his eyes half-closed in pleasure.
:What is the message?: He had long ago given up being impatient with this slow method of finding things out. It was simply the way Vree and every other bondbird worked.
:At magic-place,: Vree replied.
Well, he wouldn’t have to ask Vree to track them down. Good thing, too, since Vree was still drowsy from a long night of digestion. He’d be so fat Darkwind wouldn’t be able to find his keelbone if he was fed that way all the time. Interesting, though, that the Companion could talk to Darkwind’s bird. He wasn’t surprised, but it wasn’t something that Gwena had shown she could do—or wanted to do—before this.
And he wasn’t going to have to leave the Vale, which was a bit of a relief. His backside was still a little sore and stiff from the ride yesterday.
:Do you need to leave the Vale?: he asked Vree. After all, the poor bird had been in here for more than a day. The gyre turned his head upside down as he considered the question and his bondmate.
:No,: Vree decided. :Head not itch.: That was how he had described the way that rogue powers of the Heartstone had affected him; that his head had itched. It had taken Darkwind a while before he had figured out that the bird meant inside his head, not outside.
:Go back to Starblade’s, then,: Darkwind told him. :Or hunt, if you want—just don’t go too far from the Vale. I’m going to the magic-place and I don’t want you in there. Your head would really itch.:
:Yes,: Vree agreed, and half-spread his wings, waiting for Darkwind to launch him. The scout gave him a toss, and the gyre gained height rapidly, disappearing into the branches above.
No need to guess what the “magic-place” was: the Practice Ground. It was entirely possible to direct the border defenses from in there, although it would require great patience and careful shielding to keep the Heartstone from affecting whatever the three of them did in there.
Maybe that was the idea.
It’ll certainly test the integrity of my shielding. And if I can shield against the Stone and work at the same time—I just might be ready to help handle the Stone myself. The gods only know that there’ll be no peace for k’Sheyna until I do.
Well, if they were waiting for him, they were probably wondering if he’d fallen down a well or something. He’d better go prove he was still alive.
* * *
He had heard a mutter of conversation before he crossed the pass-through in the barrier that divided the rest of the Vale from the Practice Ground. The sudden silence that descended as he appeared told him that he had been the topic of discussion between Elspeth and the gryphons. He suppressed a surge of irritation at being talked about.
“Sorry I slept so late,” he said, trying not to let his irritation show. “What are we doing?”
“Conssstructing ward-off ssspellsss,” Hydona said mildly, as if she hadn’t snapped her beak shut in mid-syllable the moment he came into view. “Elssspeth had one of the hertasssi look in on you, but you were sssleeping ssso deeply we decsssided you mussst need the ressst.”
His irritation faded a little. At least they had checked on him before doing anything on their own. This particular task was not something he would have expected for the four of them. Ward-offs were simple things, but they had to be constructed and set carefully, another task of patience. Intended to discourage rather than hurt, ward-offs were the first line of defense on the border; the more intelligent the creature that encountered one, the more likely it was to be affected by it. A basilisk, for instance, would not be deterred by one, but a Changewolf probably would, unless it happened to be very hungry. Humans certainly would be; especially wanderers, peddlers, and the like—people who had crossed into Tayledras lands by accident.
Treyvan roused his golden-edged crest and refolded his wings with the characteristic rasp of feathers sliding across feathers. “You and I arrre not to make ward-offsss. Ssstarblade hasss a tasssk forrr usss; to move ley-linessss,” he said. “We work while Elsspeth watchesss. We are to diverrrt them to the node beneath the lairrr, sssevering them from the Heartssstone.”
Darkwind frowned. That came under the heading of “tedious and necessary,” as well. But anything to do with the Heartstone had its own share of danger involved. Certainly this was not beneath his abilities. It was along the lines of doing his share to work with the imbalanced Stone.
“Do you have any idea why we’re doing this?” he asked.
“Thessse are minorrr linesss,” Treyvan told him. “Ssstarrblade wantsss all the minorrr linesss rrremoved, to sssee if they can be, and to sssee if thisss weakensss the Ssstone.”
“Hmm. It could well be that once the minors are removed, the majors could be split into minors, and diverted in the same manner to other nodes, perhaps other Heartstones if there were any near.”
Treyvan gave him one of those enigmatic, purely-gryphonish expressions of his, the one that always looked to Darkwind like “I know something you would dearly like to know.” He spoke slowly. “It isss not imposssible.”
Darkwind nodded, watching Elspeth with his Othersight; taking note of how she built the ward-off layer by layer, with the deft and delicate touch of a jeweler.
Showing no signs of impatience. And no signs of attitude, either.
And that irritated him all over again. Why couldn’t she just have been reasonable in the first place?
Because no one put things to her in a way she understood, he reminded himself. She’s as much an alien here as the gryphons, no matter how comfortable she looks or how well she seems to fit in.
And she did look as if she fit in, wearing the clothing he’d had made for her instead of those glaring white uniforms or the barbarian getup she’d had in her packs. She didn’t quite look Tayledras, not with that hair—but until she spoke, no one would know she was not one of the Tayledras allies.
Get your mind on the task, Darkwind, and off the female.
“Hasn’t anyone tried this line-diverting with the Stone before?” He couldn’t believe that they hadn’t. It seemed like the logical sort of thing to do.
“Yesss,” the gryphon said, switching his tail restlessly. “But it did not worrk. And not asss we will be worrrking. Parrrtially the Sstone ressissted having the linesss taken; and parrrtially it rrreclaimed them within a day. We will give the linesss a new anchorrr, fixing them in place, rrrather than letting them find theirrr own anchorrr. Beforrre, they werrre allowed to drrrift, and the Sstone rrreclaimed them.”
Elspeth put the final lock on the ward-off, and sent it away to settle into its place on the border. In his mind’s eye it drifted away like a gossamer scarf blown by a purposeful wind—or a drift of fog with a mind of its own.
“I’m done,” she announced, dusting off her hands. “Your turn.” She took a seat nearby, her face alight with interest. “I thought these lines were like rivers or something. I didn’t know you could change where they went.”
“Generally only the little ones,” Darkwind told her as he stretched. “At least, the major lines take all the mages of a Clan to reroute. That’s something we do when we start a Vale; we find a node or make one, then relocate all the nearest big lines to it, so that we can drain the wild magic of an area into the Heartstone.”
“It isss much like crrreating a riverrrrbed before therrre isss a rrriver,” Hydona said. “When the waterrr comess, it will follow the courssse laid forrr it. Ssso isss the wild magic to the grreaterrr linesss. The grrreaterrr linesss have theirrr bankssss widened. The unsssettled magicsss join theirrr flow.”
“I can see how that would make sense. And when you leave, you drain the magic from the Stone—along a new-made set of ‘riverbeds,’ I assume,” Elspeth said, with a measure of surety in her voice.
“That, or a series of reservoirs are made temporarily.”
“Then what?” she asked Darkwind.
“Then we sever the lines and let them drift back into natural patterns, and physically remove the Stone,” he told her as he concentrated more of his attention on the complex of shields and probes he would need to handle his task. Shields against the Heartstone, some set to deflect energy away, some to resist, sensory probes to know what it was doing. Heartstones were not precisely aware, they certainly weren’t thinking creatures, yet they were alive in a sense and normally tractable. But this one was no longer normal.
“But didn’t you redirect the greater ley-lines in the first place to get rid of wild magic?” she asked, puzzled. “Or am I missing something?”
At least this time she didn’t phrase it in a way that made me sound like I didn’t know what I was talking about.
“We did—” This juggling of preparations and explanations was going to get him into trouble if he wasn’t very careful, which, again, was probably Treyvan’s intention. In a job like this, “trouble” had the potential of being very serious indeed. The gryphons were merciless in their testing. “We do. And by the time we leave, it’s gone, changed into a stable form. The magic we’re draining… isn’t in its natural state.” Set the shield just—so—got to be able to sense through it without getting blinded if the Stone surges—
“It doesn’t belong here, and certainly not in a random state. Once we finish, the only thing left is the natural magic flow.”
“Ah, so you take down the Stone and leave, and everything goes back to the way it was before the Mage Wars.” Both he and Hydona had already explained the natural flow of magic energy to her; how it was created by living things, how it collected in ley-lines and reservoirs in the same way that water collected in streams and lakes.
“Probably not exactly, but at least a human can live here without fear that his children will have claws or two heads. And there won’t be any other Changecreatures there either, unless they manage to get past our lands somehow.” I’ll need a secondary shield to slap between the end of the severed line and the Stone… “And when we leave, we take the innocent or harmless mage-created creatures with us, so they don’t have to fear the full-humans who inevitably arrive.”
Her face changed subtly at that, as if it was something that hadn’t occurred to her until that moment. He would have liked to know what she was thinking.
Well, time enough for that later.
“I would like you behind as many shields as you can put up,” he told her. “I do not know what is likely to happen; there has been so much work with the Stone that it may have changed the way it is likely to react. Can you watch through my ‘eyes,’ or Treyvan’s?”
She nodded and extended a tentative “hand” to him, waiting for him to take it.
Well, that’s promising. She didn’t just fling a link at me without asking. He took her up, making certain that everything including surface thoughts was well-shielded against casual probes. He didn’t think she would intrude, but there were always accidents. Some of his personal thoughts were less than flattering to her; most he would rather not share with anyone. Treyvan indicated his readiness to act with a nod and a “hand” of his own. He settled into partnership with the gryphon with the same ease that one half of an acrobatic team has with the other.
But Treyvan waited for him to initiate the action. The gryphon’s intention was clear; he meant to observe the act as a backup in case of trouble but to otherwise let Darkwind take the lead. The Heartstone glowered before them, sullen red, pulsing irregularly, with odd cracklings of random energy discharge flowing over and through it. The lines were anchored firmly in its base, concentrated amidst the major lines like roots from a crystalline tree of lightning, their rainbow-patterned raw power transformed by the stone itself.
Was he ready?
He would have to find out sooner or later. Might as well get it over with.
:All right, old friend,: he Mindsent. :Let’s make this one clean and quick.:
* * *
Clean it was; quick, it was not.
The Stone resisted their attempts to sever the lines, as Treyvan predicted; he was not prepared for the uncanny way in which it reacted when he severed the first of them, though.
He formed his own power into a thin, sharp-edged “blade,” sliding it into the join of Stone and line, intending to excise the line as if cleaning a rabbit hide. To his surprise, though, it Felt precisely like trying to cut the leg from an old, tough, and overcooked gamebird; he encountered a flexible resistance that was at once yielding and entangling.
He changed his tactic; changed from trying to cut his way through the join, to burning his way through. It resisted that as well, so he changed to a mental image of wielding bitter cold at the join, to make it brittle, then breaking it away. That worked, but it was a good thing he had secondary shields ready to protect the raw “ends,” because the moment he got the line loose and held in one of his “hands,” he Sensed movement from the Stone.
He passed the line to Treyvan, protected the end with an expanding shield. Just in time. The Stone itself created tiny tentacles of seeking power, probing after the line it had lost. Thin, waving strands of sullen red energy groped toward him, lengthening as they searched. The hair on the back of his neck rose as they came to him, then ignored him, and sought after the line. For one frightening moment, he thought they were coming after him, that the Stone knew he had taken the line and wanted retribution. They reminded him of the filaments of energy cast out in the creation of a Gate, the filaments that sought for and found the terminus at the other end and drew the two “together.” They found the line—and slid along the surface of the shield protecting the severed end. Before they could seek further, perhaps touch past the sides of the shield, Treyvan hauled the line out of reach.
He shivered, watching the red fingers weaving and groping after the line. There was something very wrong about this. In all of his training, in all of the tales he had ever heard, there had been nothing like this behavior noted in a Heartstone.
Fortunately, these tentacles were neither as powerful nor as persistent as the Gate-energies; they receded into the seething chaos of the Stone moments after they pulled the line out of reach. But he certainly remained aware of them—and aware that the Stone might have more surprises.
He did not like the feeling that it knew exactly what he had done, and was angry with him.
With one “eye” on the Stone, he and Treyvan put their strength into relocating the line and, to some extent, the pathway it would take in the future. Moving the line was a great deal like pulling one end of a very heavy, very long rope—a rope that was, perhaps, as thick as his waist. The line resisted being moved from its accustomed course, just by pure inertia. By the time he got the severed end within easy distance of the new node, he felt as if he had run a long uphill race.
Treyvan’s mind was focused on his and Hydona’s home. He manipulated the node beneath the lair; that was appropriate, since he was the most familiar with it. He created a kind of “sticky,” or “rough-surfaced” place on it; at least that was the analogy Darkwind used for himself. Whatever he did, it made the raw end of the line seek it as soon as Darkwind removed the shield; they joined, jumping together as a thread will jump to a silk-rubbed amber bead, or a bit of iron to a magnet. Then he ran magical pressure along the line, to straighten and broaden it slightly, so it would seat in place easier.
Darkwind studied the join for a moment, and mentally shook his head. :I don’t want to take any chances, this time,: he said to Treyvan, feeling Elspeth in the back of his mind, watching with interest. :I didn’t like what the Stone did back there, and I don’t want it to recapture these lines. Let’s armor and shield the joining.:
:A good plan,: Treyvan agreed.
It was probably not necessary. They were probably doing far more work than they needed to. But Darkwind could not get those seeking tentacles of power out of his mind—
—and the more I weaken the Stone, the less chance it has of turning the tables on us when we finally drain it. Or whatever we do when we finally take it down.
He was aware that he was thinking of the Stone as if it were a living, sentient creature. A discomforting fact of magic, also, was that often thinking about something made it happen, especially with skilled Adepts. Magery was not a matter of spell components and rituals at Adept level, it involved a high measure of subconscious skill and influencing of the physical world.
He had no doubt that there were others among the Hawkbrothers who thought of the Stone as having a mind—a half-mad, malicious one, to be sure. Personifying a problem was also not unheard of among people of all ages and races, much less mages. It might, by now, have a kind of mind. That might even be the root cause of its behavior back there. If it did, the last thing he wanted to do was underestimate it.
So he and Treyvan spent some time in ensuring that the Stone would not be able to get that particular ley-line back. And the next. And the next. Four lines later, and he was quite ready to call an end to the exercise.
So, he surmised, was Treyvan. When he disengaged his attention from Othersight and glanced over at the gryphon, poor Treyvan’s crest drooped, and his neck-ruff had a decidedly wilted look about it.
:That’s enough,: he said. :We know this will hold. And even weakened, my father could do this alone. In fact, if I can do this, any pair of the Adepts should be able to. I think I’ll advise that they work in pairs, though. I don’t think anyone should ever turn an unguarded back on that Stone from now on.:
Treyvan acknowledged his decision with a weary nod, and broke the link. As Darkwind brought all of his attention and concentration back to his physical body, the gryphon slumped over his foreclaws and sighed.
“That Sstone isss mossst ssstubborn, Darrkwind,” the gryphon complained, his crest-feathers slowly rising. “I have neverrr ssseen anything like it.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Darkwind urged. “I’m too tired to really trust my shields.”
“I agrreee,” Hydona rumbled, and turned to lead the way across the pass-through. On the other side of the barrier, Treyvan resumed his interrupted observation.
“I have neverrr ssseen anything like the way the Ssstone behaved,” he repeated, his voice troubled, and his crest rising and falling a little with his agitation.
“You mean the way it tried to reach after the line once we severed it?” Darkwind asked. “By the way,” he added in an aside to Elspeth, “Treyvan is right in that what you Saw wasn’t normal behavior for a Heartstone. It’s not supposed to reach out after things like that on its own.”
The gryphon shuddered. “It acted asss if it werre alive and thinking. It issss jussst a node. Nodesss arrre not sssupposssed to be alive!”
“Yes and no,” Darkwind replied. “Although this is sheer speculation on my part, I must remind you. But I have seen another kind of magic-imbued object act like that; when you build a Gate, the energy integrated into the portal does the same thing.”
“Yesss, but not on itsss own,” Treyvan corrected. “You make it do sssso!”
“Initially, perhaps,” Darkwind argued, “but eventually, a mage can work parts of the spell without consciously thinking on it. After a while the process proceeds without direction—”
A flash of white in the branches up above should have warned him, but he was too tired to think of more than one thing at a time, and his mind was already occupied with the problem of the Heartstone. So it wasn’t until Vree had made three-fourths of his dive at Treyvan’s crest that he realized what was about to happen. And by then it was too late.
“NO!”
This time, Treyvan was tired, irritable—
Vree reached out claws to snatch and encountered something he had not expected.
Treyvan had suffered the bondbird’s behavior enough.
Vree found himself flying straight for Treyvan’s enormous beak; easily large enough to engulf the bird.
Darkwind reached out his hand in a useless gesture. He didn’t even have time to think. It was all happening too fast. Vree frantically tried to pull up out of the dive.
Too late.
Crack.
The sound of Treyvan’s beak snapping shut echoed across the Vale like nothing that had ever been heard there before. Like the sound of an enormous branch snapping in two, perhaps, or the jaws of a huge steel trap closing.
Or the hands of a giant slapping together. Clouds of songbirds took wing in alarm.
Vree screamed in pain and dove for the safety of Darkwind’s wrist. Treyvan spat out the single tail-feather he’d bitten off with an air of aggrieved triumph.
Darkwind heaved a sigh of relief. Treyvan was a carnivore, as much a raptor as Vree was; something he never forgot. Vree was lucky; incredibly lucky—
Because Treyvan hadn’t missed. He’d snapped off exactly what he intended to. The gryphons’ reflexes were as swift and sure as the fastest goshawk, and if Treyvan had chosen, it would have been Vree’s neck that was broken, not a tail-feather.
:I warned you,: Darkwind said, as Elspeth hovered between sympathy for the badly frightened bird and the laughter she was obviously trying to repress. :I warned you, and you wouldn’t listen!:
Treyvan fixed the trembling, terrified bondbird with a single glaring eye. “You arrre jussst forrrtunate that I wasss not hungerrred,” he hissed, and Darkwind “heard” him echoing his words in simple thought-images the bondbird would have no difficulty understanding. “You may not farrrre so well a sssecond time.”
Vree cowered against Darkwind’s chest, making tiny sounds of acute distress and pain.
:Now you’re going to be minus that feather until you molt, unless I can imp it back in.:
:Hurts,: Vree wailed. :Scared!:
:I know it hurts. You should be glad he didn’t pull it out, or bite your tail off.: Darkwind caressed the gyre until he stopped trembling, as Elspeth bent to pick up the feather and offered it to him.
He took the gesture at face value, and not for the one implied by Hawkbrother custom. :Tell Treyvan you’re sorry,: he told Vree sternly, holding the bondbird out to the gryphon’s face, within easy reach of that enormous beak.
Maybe this will impress him enough that he won’t try the game again. He sighed. I certainly hope so.
The gyre looked up into the huge amber eyes as Darkwind held him up to the gryphon’s face. :S-s-s-sorry,: the bird stuttered—no mean feat, mentally. :S-s-s-sorry!:
He certainly sounded sincere.
:Promise you won’t do it again,: Darkwind ordered.
Vree shook, and slicked down all his feathers with unhappiness. :Not snatch again,: he agreed. :Not ever. Never, never, never, never.:
Darkwind transferred the bird from his wrist to the padded shoulder of his jerkin, where Vree huddled against his hair, actually pushing himself into the hair so that it partially covered him, hiding. Darkwind examined the feather carefully, hoping that it hadn’t been too badly damaged. Vree depended on his tail for steering; the loss of one feather might not seem like a great deal, but it would make a difference in his maneuverability.
“You did a good job,” he remarked to Treyvan, whose crest was rising slowly again. “It’s a nice clean cut, only cracked the shaft a little. I won’t need to use one of last year’s set. I should be able to imp this one back in with no problems.”
The gryphon chuckled. “It isss in part Vree’sss doing. If he had not turrned, I ssshould not have been able to catch the tail-featherssss. If he did not turrrn, I wasss going to catch him and hold him, then let him go.”
“He’d have been frightened to death. Well, I think you’ve finally made an impression on him,” Darkwind replied—not chuckling, though he wanted to, for fear of hurting the bird’s feelings. “He finally sees you as a bigger, hungrier, meaner version of a bondbird, and not something like a glorified firebird. To tell you the truth, I think he’s just fascinated by beautiful feathers, like your crest and the firebirds’ tails. He snatches their feathers all the time.”
Treyvan’s crest rose completely, with mock indignation. “I ssshould hope we arrre not glorrrified firrrebirds,” he snorted. “I am a vain birrrd, and I appreciate that he findsss my cressst ssso attrrractive, but we arrre not anything like firrrrebirrdssss.”
“What are you, though?” Elspeth asked, suddenly. “I mean, you don’t really look like anything I know of—other than vaguely like hawk-eagles and falcons.”
“Oh, well, we arrre not anything you know,” Hydona replied, vaguely. “Not hawk, not falcon. It isss not asss if sssomeone took bitsss and piecesss of birrrd and cat and patched usss togetherrr, afterrr all!”
“Yes, but there are supposed to be gryphons north and west of Valdemar,” Elspeth persisted. “But there aren’t any in any of the inhabited lands I know—so where do you two come from?”
“Wessst.” Hydona shrugged. “You would not know the place. Even the Hawkbrotherrsss had not hearrrd of it.”
Elspeth wasn’t giving up that easily. “Well, is that where your kind comes from? Is that why there aren’t any gryphons in Valdemar?”
Treyvan gave her a droll look out of the corner of his eye. “If you arrrre asssking if we arrre a kind of Changechild orrrr Pelagirrr monssterrrr,” he replied, “I can tell you that we arrre not, and thanksss be to Sssskandrrranon forrr that. We werrrre crreated by one of the Grreat Magessss, the Mage of Ssssilence, whom we knew asss Urrrtho. That wasss a long time ago, beforrre the Mage Warrrs. He crrrreated the herrrtasssi asss well, and othersss. That wasss hisss grrreat powerrr and joy, to crrreate new crrreaturessss. Ssso they sssay.”
Before Elspeth could leap in with another question, Hydona yawned hugely and looked up at the sky. “It isss late,” she said abruptly, “and I am hungerrred, even if Trrreyvan isss not.”
“Not hungerrred enough forrr falcon,” Treyvan chuckled. “But a nicsse clawful of geesssse, now—orrr a young deerr…”
Hydona parted her beak in a gryphonic smile. “I think we will leave you now, Darrrkwind.”
“Until tomorrow, then,” he said, smoothing Vree’s feathers with one hand. “Sleep well, and pass my affections on to Lytha and Jerven.”
“Mine, too,” Elspeth piped up, to Darkwind’s surprise.
“Tomorrrrow,” Treyvan agreed. The two gryphons moved off down a side path that would take them to the entrance of the Vale; they couldn’t possibly take off from within it, for the interlacing branches of the great trees would make it too difficult for them to fly without damage to themselves or the trees.
Elspeth looked after them for a moment, then made a little shrug and turned back to Darkwind. From her expression, there was a lot going on behind her eyes.
“Is there something bothering you?” he asked, thinking she might have questions about the lesson just past.
But her observations had nothing to do with magic. “They are certainly very good at avoiding questions they don’t care to answer,” she pointed out dryly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve tried to pin them down about where they come from and what they are, and their answers have always been pretty evasive.”
“You can trust them,” he felt moved to protest.
“Oh, I have no doubt of that; after all, Need trusted them, and she’s about the most suspicious thing in the universe. But they seem to have as many secrets as a Companion!” This, with a glance at Gwena, who shook her head and mane and snorted. “I had the feeling that they hadn’t told the Tayledras much more than they’ve told me.”
He nodded slowly. She was absolutely right about that, anyway. He hadn’t quite realized how little he knew about them, really. The fact that they had been his friends for so long had obscured the fact that what he knew about them was only what they had chosen to reveal.
There had been any number of surprises from them, lately. The fact that they were fluent in the ancient Kaled’a’in tongue, for instance, and just how much of a mage Treyvan really was. That they spoke of Urtho as if they knew the lost history of the Mage Wars in much greater detail than any Tayledras did.
As if that history hadn’t been lost to their people, whoever and wherever those people were.
Interesting. Very interesting. But it was so frustrating! They didn’t even work at being mysterious, the way Elspeth’s friend Skif did. They just were.
It gave him enough food for thought that he remained silent all the way back to Elspeth’s ekele, and from the expression on her face, she found plenty of room for speculation there herself.
Skif packed the new supplies he had gotten from the hertasi carefully; Cymry needed to be able to move with the same agility she had without packs once they got back on the trail. Lumpy and unbalanced packs would not make either of them very happy.
“You look like a Hawkbrother,” Elspeth observed from the rock beside him; like everything in the Vale, it had been made to look natural, while being placed in the perfect position to be used as a seat, and had been carefully sculpted to serve that very purpose. She sat cross-legged with a patch of sun just touching her hair. There were already a few white threads in it; he wondered how long it would be before she was completely silver. Wintermoon had confided that Elspeth was handling more of the powerful energies of node-magic in her first few months than most Tayledras Adepts touched in a year or more. And she spent a great deal of time in the unshielded presence of the Heartstone. While Wintermoon was quite certain that none of this would harm her, he did warn Skif that her training and the discipline needed to handle such powers might cause some changes in his friend, and not just physical ones.
Indeed, there were some changes since he had left the Vale. Elspeth seemed a little calmer, and considerably more in control of her temper. She no longer reminded him of Kero, or her mother… she was only, purely, Elspeth. His very dear friend—but no more. He could not imagine anyone having a romantic attachment to this cool, contemplative person; it would be like having a fixation on a statue.
He glanced up at her and smiled. “So do you,” he said. “It suits you.”
She really did look like a Hawkbrother; she was growing her hair longer, and although it wasn’t yet the stark white of a mage, or the mottled camouflage colors of a scout, she had somehow learned the Tayledras tricks of braiding it so that it stayed out of the way without looking severe. And the tunic and trews she wore—flowing silk in deep burgundy, cut so that the tunic fastened up the side with little antler-tips—well, it suited her much better than anything she’d ever worn at home.
“What happened to your Whites?” he asked.
She laughed. “They disappeared, and I have the feeling I won’t see them again until we’re ready to leave. I have the feeling that the hertasi disapprove of uniforms on principle. Whenever I ask about them, the hertasi give me this look, and say ‘they’re being cleaned.’ It’s been weeks now, and they’re still being cleaned.”
“Mine are probably with yours,” Skif said. “Wintermoon wouldn’t let me bring them; he said they weren’t even suited to winter work. He made me get scouts’ gear.”
She chuckled a little. “I’m beginning to agree with Kerowyn about Whites,” she told him. “At least, about the way they’re made. You get tired of them. They can’t have changed in hundreds of years—you know, we really could stand to have a style choice, at least.”
He shrugged. “Probably nobody ever thought much about it.” He lifted the pack experimentally. It was about as heavy as he wanted Cymry to carry, and after all, it wasn’t as if they were cut off from k’Sheyna and more provisions. “That’s going to do it, I think.”
Elspeth measured the pack with her eyes. “What’s that—two weeks’ rations at the most?”
“About. We’ll be back in by then.” He fastened both packs to Cymry’s saddle, and turned back to Elspeth. “I’m sorry I didn’t have any news for you.”
She shrugged. “I’ll tell you the truth, big brother—I really don’t think it’s all that important for me to get Need back, even assuming she’d be willing to return to me, which I doubt. I think it is important for you to find Nyara, for both your sakes.”
He flushed but didn’t reply to that directly. Another change; she was either much improved at reading body language or she had picked up an uncanny ability to intuit things. “I don’t know how much you’re aware of the weather in here, but we’re just about on to winter out there,” he said. “We won’t be able to cover as much ground once it starts snowing.”
She didn’t seem concerned. “Take as much time as you need. Our orders haven’t changed; no one needs us back home, and I need training as complete as I can get. Gwena says that things haven’t deteriorated with Ancar and Hardorn any more than they had the last time we got word. It might simply be the weather. They’re already into winter up there.”
“And no one, sane or insane, attacks in winter.” He nodded. “With luck, you’ll be ready by spring.”
He had other, unspoken thoughts. And with more luck, your Darkwind will be willing to come along when we leave. He smiled, but only to himself. Elspeth wasn’t the only one good at reading body language.
Elspeth shifted her position a little. “Well, we’ve also got the possibility of some new allies. According to Gwena, there’s some indication that Talia, Dirk, and Alberich are getting somewhere in negotiating with the Karsites.”
“The—what?” He felt his eyebrows flying up into his hairline with astonishment. Last thing he had heard, people were simply grateful that the Karsites were too embroiled with Ancar and their own internal politics to harass the Border they shared with Valdemar. “When did all this start?”
“Early fall—about when we reached here,” she said. “Sorry; I forgot that I didn’t hear about it until after you left.” She looked up and frowned a little. “Let me see if I can tell you this all straight; I’ve been getting it in bits and pieces. Alberich got some tentative contacts with someone supposedly official in the Karsite army through a really roundabout path. It was supposed to be someone he knew and tentatively trusted.”
“From Karse?” He could hardly believe it. “How did anything get out of Karse?”
“Convolutedly, of course; Gwena said the pathway involved traders and the renegade faction of the Sunlord that keeps allegiance with Valdemar.” She raised an eyebrow. “Not the most secure line of communication, and the message was pretty vague. Sort of—‘we might be willing to talk to you people if you happened to show up at this place and time’; he wasn’t sure he trusted it at all, but it was the first positive gesture we’ve had from those people in hundreds of years, so he didn’t want to dismiss it out of hand.”
“He wouldn’t, and he’d be right,” Skif agreed. “But it could have been a trap, counting on the idea that he might be homesick.”
She snickered. “Surely. Anybody who’d think that doesn’t know Alberich. Anyway, that was about a month ago; he and Eldan and Kero checked the stories out, and they seemed to be genuine. Two weeks ago, they were actually approached officially. Then a week ago Mother arranged for Talia and Dirk to go down to the Border, the Holderkin lands, and meet an envoy from the Karsite government.”
“Which means the Sun-priests.” He tried the thought out in his mind. “Any idea what started all this?”
Elspeth started to chuckle. He gave her a quizzical glance.
“If Gwena is relaying what Rolan told her correctly—it’s as convoluted as the Karsites are. The infighting settled this fall—and the Priest-King suddenly seems to be a Queen now. The envoys are half women, and Talia had picked up a kind of grim ‘we’re all women together’ kind of feeling from them, though whether that’s their feeling about her, or the Priest-Queen’s feeling about Selenay, I don’t know.”
“Interesting,” Skif said absently. In either case, the chances of coming to an agreement were much better.
“That’s only the first factor. Ancar has been harassing them much more than he has us, probably because they don’t have that anti-magic defense we do. That, it seems, was bad enough, but now he’s stealing the Sun-priests’ pet demons, and that was absolutely the last straw.” She grinned like a horse trader who’s just sold an ill-tempered Plains-pony as a Shin’a’in stud. “That must have doubly stuck in their throats—not only to have to come to us, the unholy users of magic, but to have to admit that they were using magic themselves!”
“Ah, if I know Talia, she was very careful about not rubbing their noses in the fact.” He shook his head and chuckled. “That’s something I would have had a hard time doing.”
“You and me both,” she admitted. “Anyway, that’s where things stand at home. With luck, we can at least get them to promise not to harry our borders until Ancar is dealt with once and for all.”
Skif rubbed the back of his neck, and stared off into the distance. North and east. “I’d like to be there,” he said, more than half to himself. “I really would. Peace with our old enemy… Havens, wouldn’t that be something!”
“I’ll believe it when it happens,” she replied. “For now, it’s enough to know we aren’t the only ones that Ancar’s been hurting. That at least opens up the possibility of uniting against a common enemy.”
He shook off his reverie. “Amazing. But I have my own job to take care of. Standing here and biting my nails over something happening hundreds of leagues away is not going to accomplish much of anything.”
“I have patrol with Darkwind,” she told him. “We’re taking an evening shift, with one of the scouts that flies an owl. He’s got some beasties hanging about at night that he wants a mage to have a look at.”
“Gryphons, too?” he asked with interest. He liked Treyvan and Hydona a great deal, and his sole regret in going out with Wintermoon was that he was unable to learn more about them.
“No, they’re going to stay with the little ones; we monopolize enough of their time as it is.” She started to chuckle.
“What’s so funny?” Skif wanted to know. “Oh, just their kyree-friend, Rris. The kyree are usually so dignified; Torrl is, anyway. But Rris is like—like a big puppy. All bounce and friendliness. But what’s funniest is that he’s just full of stories about ‘my famous cousin, Warrl.’”
That sounded familiar, somehow. “Warrl. That—that can’t be the same kyree that was Kero’s teacher’s bondmate, is it?”
She nodded vigorously. “The same. And hearing the same stories Kero used to tell us told from the kyree point of view is an absolute stitch!” He sighed. Another thing he was missing. Well, he couldn’t be here and out there at the same time, and on the whole, he was doing better and more productive work out there. There had been an encounter with another pack of wyrsa—this time on their terms, and he and Wintermoon had destroyed them. There’d been more of those gandels that they’d had to lure into a pit-trap—and some smaller, but still nasty, encounters.
All of which meant hazards no k’Sheyna scout would have to face, something that Winterlight, the new scout-leader, had been quick to point out to the Council. Permission to return to the search had been readily given.
Though several of Wintermoon’s friends told him he was crazy, staying out in the winter-bound forest when he could be warm and comfortable in the Vale; in his off-duty hours, anyway.
Skif still wasn’t quite certain of Wintermoon’s motivation, but the scout had told him repeatedly that even if he had been running patrols, he would have continued to live in his ekele outside the Vale. That to him, winter camping was no great hardship.
If that was the way he felt, Skif would take his words at face value.
“We’d better get going, then,” he said. “Wintermoon should have gotten the cold-weather gear together by now.” Already he wanted to be back on the hunt…
“Darkwind and Gwena are probably waiting for me. I’d better go get my scout gear on.” She bounced to her feet and planted a kiss on his cheek. “See you in about two weeks?”
“Right.” He patted her on the head as if she were a very small child; she mock-snarled at him. “Don’t get into too much trouble, all right?”
“Hah! Me?” With a wave, she was gone.
* * *
The first snow of the season was going to be a substantial one. “Does winter always start so—enthusiastically?” Skif asked his guide, as they arranged things in the shelter they had rigged beneath the overhanging limbs of a huge pine. It was a very small shelter, compared to the way-stations the Heralds used, but it was big enough for two if no one moved much. Skif couldn’t begin to guess what it was made of; some kind of waterproof silk, perhaps. Wintermoon had taken it from a pouch scarcely bigger than a rolled-up shirt. Light for now came from a tiny lantern holding a single candle suspended from the roof; not much, and not very bright.
Wintermoon shrugged. “Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” he replied. “Often it depends upon what the mages have done. Great fluxes in the energy-flow of magic can change the weather significantly, usually to make it worse.”
“Now he tells me,” Skif said to the roof of the tent. “Havens, if I’d known that, I’d have kept everyone out of that to-do with Falconsbane!”
“Oh, that was not significant,” the Hawkbrother replied carelessly. “Not enough to make any real difference. Building a Gate, now—one has to make certain that the weather is going to hold clear for several days, if one has a choice, or any storm will worsen. If they manage to drain the Heartstone—that would be significant, very much so. That is why we try always to work the greater magics in stable times of the year.”
“For a nonmage you certainly know a lot,” Skif observed. Wintermoon only laughed.
“One must, if one is Tayledras. As one must know horses, even if one is a musician or weaver, if one is also Shin’a’in. Magic is so much a part of what we do that we all of us are affected by it, if only in the bleaching of hair and eyes.” He completed rigging his own sleeping place, and eyed Skif’s pad of pine boughs dubiously. “Are you certain that you wish to sleep upon that? It looks very cold and stiff, and I brought a second hammock.”
“I’m used to it,” Skif replied. “I’m not used to being suspended like a bat.”
“Well, it is warmer so.” Wintermoon looked out of the flap of the tent, and resecured it. “This will be a heavy storm. I think we will be here until well past midmorning at the least. Nothing is like to be moving this night, not even a cold-drake.”
“Comforting. At least nothing can wrap us up in our tent and carry us away.” The two owls, Corwith and K’Tathi, had perches in one corner of the shelter; packs took up the remaining space, including beneath Wintermoon’s hammock, making the area very crowded. Cymry and the dyheli had a lean-to rigged against the side of the shelter, and were huddled together under blankets.
:Are you all right?: he asked his Companion. :If you’re too cold, we’ll find some other way—:
:No worse than if I’d been up north,: she told him. :Better, in fact. The snow may be heavy, but it isn’t that cold, really. And the dyheli are warm, and good company.:
Well, if she wasn’t going to complain, he wasn’t going to worry.
Hawkbrother winter gear was a lot better than his own; lighter, for one thing. Instead of relying on layers of wool, fur and leather for their bedrolls and heavy-weather coats, they had something light and fluffy sandwiched between layers of what he knew to be waterproof spider silk, because the hertasi had told him so. No cloaks for them, either. Cloaks were all very well if you were spending most of your time on horseback, but not if you were trying to make your way through a pathless forest. Cloaks caught on every outstretched twig; the slick-finished coats did not.
“Would we were mages,” Wintermoon observed wistfully. “We could make lights, heat—I have a brazier, but it needs a smoke hole, and that lets in as much cold as the brazier supplies heat in any kind of wind.”
“According to Elspeth, an Adept doesn’t need to make heat; he can ignore the cold.” Skif shook his head. “I don’t know about that.”
“Oh, that is possible, but there is a price in weariness,” Wintermoon told him. “Keeping warm requires some kind of power, whether it be the power of the fire, or the power of magic. If she has not learned that yet, she will.”
“Ah.” He felt a bit better. “I thought that sounded a bit too much like—well—magic.”
“Tayledras magic is no more than work with tools other than hands,” Wintermoon laughed. “Or so I keep telling my mage-friends. My brother said that. I think of all the mages I know, he is the most sensible, for he never relies on his power when his hands will do.”
It occurred to Skif that, given that philosophy, Darkwind was probably the best teacher Elspeth could have. She tended to fall prey to enthusiasm about anything new, and look to it as the solution for every problem. Darkwind should keep her from falling prey to that fault. “Are you changing our tactics now that we’ve had heavy snow?” he asked.
“Actually, it will be easier.” Wintermoon slid into his hammock with a sigh; bundled up to the neck as he was, he looked like a human-headed cocoon. “The trees are leafless, snow covers the ground. Nyara will be hard put to hide the signs of her passing, of her living. The owls will most probably find her. We, though—we will be facing more of the hunters, and performing our secondary task for the Clan. The season of stupid young is over, the season of dying old not yet on us. This is the season of hunger for the hunters. This is when we truly prove our worth to k’Sheyna.”
Skif climbed into his own bedroll, and shivered as he waited for it to warm around his body. The hot springs and summerlike atmosphere of the Vale seemed a world away. “The Clan means a lot to you, doesn’t it? Even though—”
“Though my father rejected me, the Clan saw to it I was not left parentless,” Wintermoon said firmly. “It is more than simple loyalty. K’Sheyna is my family in every way that matters. Can you understand that, who had no real family? I sometimes wonder.”
“Maybe if I hadn’t been Chosen…” Skif listened to the soft ticking of snow falling on the fabric of the shelter, listened to the creaking of boughs in the forest beyond. “I do have a family, you know. More fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters than I can count. The Heralds gave me that, and they are my family in every way that counts.”
“So—the Heralds are a kind of Clan?” Wintermoon asked curiously. “A Clan that is not related by blood, but by—purpose.”
“I guess we are.” It was an intriguing thought, one that had its own logic. Interesting. “I want my own family, though. Eventually. Well, I told you all about that.”
“Where?” Wintermoon wanted to know. “Have you a place that has won your heart?”
His first thought was that farmhouse, so long ago. That was something he had to think about. “Back at Haven, I suppose, though it could be anywhere. Come to that, there’s a lot of peace here. More than there is at home.” Now that he thought about it, if there was any one place he’d seen in all of his travels that he felt called to him, it was here. “The Vale seems serene, tranquil. I don’t really understand why you don’t spend more time there.”
“Appearances can be deceiving,” Wintermoon replied dryly. “If you were at all sensitive to the currents of magic, you would find it less than peaceful, even if the Stone were intact. And every Vale is under a constant state of siege. When it isn’t, it is time to move on to a new one. But you—how could you bear to leave the city? I should think you would miss the people and all the doings. There must be much to keep you busy there.”
“Not that much.” He considered the question. “It’s just as easy to be lonely in a city as out in the wilderness. Easier, really. It’s harder to get to know someone when you meet in a crowded place. People can freely ignore you in the city; they can assume they don’t have any responsibility for you. When there are fewer people, I think they begin assuming some kind of responsibility, simply because you naturally do the same.”
“Perhaps. But let me show you how a Vale appears to me, before you assume that it is a kind of wonderland.” There was silence for a moment. “Take the Vale itself; there is the constant undercurrent of magic, even in a Vale with an intact Heartstone, because magic is how the place is maintained. It is as if there were always bees droning somewhere nearby, or something humming in a note so low it is felt more than heard. Then there are ever the hertasi underfoot.” Wintermoon sighed. “They mean well, but they are so social they are nearly hive-minded. They cannot understand that one might wish to be without company.”
“I’d noticed that,” Skif chuckled. “If I’m not asleep, there always seemed to be a hertasi around wanting to know if I needed anything.”
“And if you are asleep, they are there still. It can get tiresome,” Wintermoon said with resignation. “They also do not see that some of us can live without certain luxuries. For instance—did they steal your clothing?”
Skif blinked with surprise. “Why—yes—”
“They do not approve of it,” Wintermoon told him. “I am certain of that. It is too plain, too severe. You will not see it again until you are ready to leave. And even then, I fear they will have made alterations to it.”
Skif choked on a laugh.
“Oh, no doubt this is amusing, but what if one prefers simpler clothing? What if one prefers to make one’s own food? What if one would rather his quarters were left undisturbed? Then there is the matter of my Clansfolk.”
“What about them?” Skif asked.
“Several matters. The one which concerns both of us is the attitude that those with little magic are less important.” Wintermoon’s voice conveyed faint bitterness. “It matters not that someone must do the hunting, must keep the borders secure, must meet with the Shin’a’in and arrange for those few things we cannot make. There are a hundred things each day that must be done that need no magic. Yet those of us whose magic is only in the realm of thought and not of power are, at least in this Clan, often discounted.”
“That might only be because of Starblade,” Skif pointed out. “It could change.”
“Indeed. It may, and I hope it will. But if it does not—you, Wingsib, will, soon or late, find yourself accounted of less worth than your friend Elspeth.”
The bedroll warmed, and Skif relaxed into it. “That wouldn’t be anything new,” he replied drowsily. “Back home, after all, she’s the Queen’s daughter, and I’m nobody important.”
“Ah.” The tiny candle dimmed and died, leaving them in the darkness. On the other side of the tent wall, one of the dyheli snored gently, a purring sound like a sleepy cat. “They also do not much care for Changecreatures.”
“You mean Nyara.” Skif forced himself to think of her dispassionately. “Well, we’ll worry about that when we find her. No point in getting worked up over something that hasn’t happened yet.”
“They have other prejudices,” Wintermoon warned. “Outsiders in general tend to be met with arrows and killing-bolts. And that is not the k’Sheyna way only; that holds for all Clans. Only your acceptance by the Shin’a’in and the presence of your Companions kept you from gaining a similar welcome.”
Skif yawned. “I’m sorry, Wintermoon, but I’m drifting off. I wish I could concentrate on what you’re saying, but I can’t.”
The Tayledras sighed. “I suppose it is just as well,” he admitted. “I am losing track of my thoughts.”
Skif gave up trying to fight off sleep. “We can take this up in the morning, maybe,” he muttered after a while. And he never heard Wintermoon’s answer.
* * *
There was too much light coming in the tower window.
Nyara unwrapped herself from her furs and winced as cold air struck her. She wrapped a single wolfskin about her shoulders, and moved cautiously to the narrow slit in the eastern wall. She looked out of her tower window on a world transformed, and panicked.
Snow. The forest is covered in snow!
It was at least knee-deep; deeper in some places. The wall below her glittered with patches of ice—predictably, wherever there were hand-and foot-holds.
What am I going to do ?
She wasn’t ready for this. She still hadn’t worked out a way of getting up and down her wall in snow and ice, and he wasn’t nearly good enough a hunter yet.
All the game must have gone into hiding, or worse, into hibernation; it will see me coming long before I’m in range, and I can’t run or leap as fast; it’ll be like trying to run in soft sand, but so cold.
Her mind ran around in little circles, like a frightened mouse—and it was that image that enabled her to get hold of herself.
Stop that, she told herself sternly. She forced herself to sit and think, as Need had taught her; to use all that energy that was going into panic for coming up with answers.
The first, and most immediate problem, was how she was going to get down out of the tower to hunt in the first place.
And she had already come up with one possibility; she just hadn’t done anything about it yet. Well, now she was going to have to.
We have plenty of rope, and no one is going to cross all that snow without leaving tracks a baby rabbit could see, so there’s no harm in using a rope to get up and down with. No one will get in here to use it without my knowing. I can just secure one end of the rope up here and climb down that way. That isn’t perfect, but then, what is?
And as for game, well, whatever hampered her would also hamper the game. In fact, as cold as it was, she could even think about creating a hoard for emergencies; if she hung the carcasses just inside the tower, they’d stay frozen. If she put them high enough, they’d be out of reach of what scavengers were brave enough to venture inside with her scent all over everything. She could even take deer, now, and not worry about spoilage.
And since she hadn’t bothered the deer yet, they did not yet regard her as a predator. Snow would be at least as hard on them as it was on her.
I can pull the carcasses easier through the snow, too; I won’t have to try to cut them up to carry them back…
With a plan in mind, at least for getting into and out of her shelter, and the possibility of new game to augment the old, she looked down on the forest with curiosity rather than fear.
She had never seen snow before, not like this. Falconsbane had copied the Tayledras, whether he admitted it or not, keeping the grounds of his stronghold free of ice and snow, and warmed to summer heat. He had hated winter; hated snow and ice, and spent most of the wintry days locked up inside his domain, whiling away the hours in magery or pleasure. The only time she had ever seen snow was when she had ventured to the gates, and had looked out on a thin slice of winter woods and trampled roadway from the tiny and heavily barred windows. She was not permitted on the tower tops, lest she attempt to climb down and escape, and the windows in wintertime were kept shuttered and locked against the season.
She had always dreaded the coming of winter, for during the winter months her father often became bored. It was difficult for his creatures to move through the snow; even more difficult for them to slip into the Hawkbrothers’ lands unseen. And of course, Falconsbane would not venture outside unless it was an absolute emergency, so his own activities were greatly curtailed. Humans tended to keep to their dwellings in winter, and the intelligent creatures to band together, so the opportunities for acquiring victims were also reduced. He dared not be too spendthrift with the lives of his servants, for there were only so many of them, and fewer opportunities to get more. They were trapped within the walls, too, and if he pushed them too far, they might become desperate enough to revolt. Even he knew that. So Falconsbane’s entertainments had to be of his own devising.
When he grew bored, he often designed changes he wished to make in his own appearance, and worked them out on her, an activity that, often as not, ranged from mildly to horribly painful. And when that palled, there were other amusements in which she became his plaything; the old games she now hated, but had then both loathed and desired.
No, until now, winter had not been her favorite season. Spring and fall had been best—spring, because her father was out of the stronghold as often as possible, eager to escape the too-familiar walls, and fall, because he was seizing his last opportunities to get away before winter fell.
But this year, the coming of winter had not induced the fear that it had in the past.
Odd. I wonder why?
Then she realized that all the signs of winter that she had learned to fear were things Falconsbane had created; the increasing number of mage-lights to compensate for the shortening days, the rising temperature in the stronghold, and the shuttering of the windows against the gray sky.
Any mage might do those things—there were other signs in Falconsbane’s stronghold that marked the season of fear.
Forced-growth of strange plants brought in to flower in odd corners, creating tiny, often dangerous, mage-lit gardens. Many of those plants were poisonous; some had envenomed thorns, or deadly perfumes. It was one of her father’s pleasures to see who would be foolish enough to be entrapped by them.
More slaves in the quarters reserved for those Falconsbane intended to use up, slaves usually young and attractive, but not terribly bright. Her father tended to save the intelligent, warping their minds to suit his purposes, keeping them for two or even three years before pique or a fit of temper brought their twisted lives to a close.
Strained expressions on the faces of those who hoped to survive the winter and feared they might not. Sometimes, usually in the darkest hours of the winter, her father’s temper exceeded even his formidable control—though most of the victims were those former “favorite” slaves…
There had been none of that this year. The shortening of the days had not signaled anything to her, and she had simply reacted to the long nights by sleeping more. There had been no blazing of lights in every corner to wake old memories, merely the flickering of her own friendly fire. There was no tropic heat to awaken painful unease, only the need to move everything closer to the firepit, and to build up a good supply of wood.
This place that she lived in could be called squalid, compared to the lush extravagancies of an Adept’s lair, but it was hers. She had made it so with pride, the first place she could truly call her own, unfettered by her father’s will. The wood and rope and furs were placed by her desires alone, with the advice and help of Need, who had become a trusted friend. Taken as a sum of goods, it was insignificant; taken in its context, it was delightful.
The view from her window surprised her with unexpected beauty; the ugliest tangles of brush and tumbled rock had been softened by the thick blanket of snow.
It was astonishing; it took her breath away. She simply admired it for many long moments before turning her thoughts back to the reality that it represented.
It could also be deadly to one who had no real experience in dealing with it.
For a moment, a feeling of helplessness threatened to overwhelm her with panic again.
She quelled it. No point in getting upset—I have Need. She can always help me solve any problems that come up. If we have to, she can deal with them with magic.
She turned her mind to her sword—
And met only blankness.
* * *
She never quite remembered the first few hours; hours when she had huddled in her furs, alternately weeping and howling. It was a good thing nothing dangerous had come upon her then; she would have been easy prey.
When she exhausted herself completely, she fell asleep, doing so despite her fears, despite her despair, she had drained herself that badly. When she woke again, in the mid-afternoon, the sheer, unthinking panic was gone, although the fear remained. Somehow she managed; that day, and the next, and the next.
She found game, building a blind beside the pond where the ducks and geese came to feed, and covering it with snow. She caught a goose that very night, and not content with that, hung it in her improvised larder to freeze and scoured the forest for rabbits. She didn’t catch any of those, but she discovered a way to fish in the ice-covered ponds, using a bit of metal found in the tower, scuffed until shiny, as bait.
She hauled wood up to her shelter, and kept it reasonably warm and dry; made plans for a blind up in one of the trees above a deer-trail, so that she could lie in ambush for one.
Somehow she kept panic from overwhelming her at the thought that the sword was no longer protecting her from detection.
For if something had happened to Need, she would have to protect herself. She had no choice, not if she wanted to live. Sooner or later, something would come seeking her.
She spent hours crouched beside the fire, bringing up everything Need had ever told her about shielding, about her own magic. Then she spent more hours constructing layer after layer of shields, tapping into the sluggish power of the sleeping forest and into her own energies. But to tap into her own power, she needed a great deal of rest and food—which brought her right back to the problem of provisions. She decided that she must start hunting deer; that there was no choice, that it was the only way to buy her the necessary days of rest and recovery when she built up her shielding. The rest of the time—the hours of darkness before sleep finally came—she spent bent over the sword, begging, pleading with it to come back to life. Prodding and prying at it, to try and discover what had gone wrong. Something must have; there was no reason for the blade to simply fall silent like that, not without warning.
And all with no result. The blade was a sword now; no more, no less. A weapon that she could not even use properly, for without Need’s skill guiding her, she was as clumsy as a child in wielding it.
Finally, after trying so hard on the evening of the third day that she worked herself into a reaction-headache, she gave up, falling into an exhausted sleep, a sleep so deep that not even her despair penetrated it. A dreamless sleep, so far as she knew.
When she woke again, quite late on the morning of the fourth day, the clouds had vanished overnight, and sun blazed down through the windows of her tower with cold, clear beams. When she looked out of her window, she had to pull back with her eyes watering. It was too bright out there; too bright to see. The sun reflected from every surface, and although there were shadows under the trees, they were not dark enough to give her eyes any rest.
Now she knew what her father’s men had meant when they spoke of “snow blindness.”
There was no way she was going to be able to see out there without getting a headache, unless she found some way to shade her eyes.
Shading her eyes probably wouldn’t do that much good; there would still be all the light reflecting up from the snow.
Wait, though, she could change her eyes. After all of Need’s lessons, she had a little control over her body; she might be able to make her eyes a little less sensitive, temporarily… perhaps darken them to let less light through…
:It’s about time you started looking inside yourself for answers,: came the raspy, familiar mind-voice.
She whirled, turning away from the light, peering through shadows that were near-black in contrast with the intense sunlight. “You’re back!” she cried, staring at the vague shape of the sword leaning against the firepit where she had left it the night before.
:I never left,: Need said smugly. :I just decided to let you see you could manage completely on your own for a while.:
Anger flared; she took a deep breath and fought it down. Anger served no purpose unless it was channeled. Anger only weakened her and could be used as a weapon against her. She reminded herself that Need never did anything without a good reason.
Anger faded enough so that she was in control, not the emotion. She tried not to think of the fear, the first hours of desperation—of all the endless hours when she had been certain that she would not live through this season. That would only make her angry again.
“Why?” she asked bluntly. “Why did you do that to me? I didn’t do anything to warrant being punished, did I?”
The sword didn’t answer directly. :Look around you. What do you see? The game stocked away, the firewood, all the defenses you constructed.:
She didn’t have to look, she knew what was there. “Get to the point,” she snapped. “Why did you leave me alone like that? Why did you leave me defenseless?”
:Did I do any of that, any of the things you’ve accomplished in the last few days? Did I hunt the game, catch the fish, rig that hidden ladder to the top?: There was a certain quality in Need’s words that overrode Nyara’s anger completely. “No,” Nyara admitted slowly. She had done quite a bit, now that she thought about it. Without any help at all.
:Did I rig all these shields?: the sword persisted. :Did I figure out the way to make them cascade, so that the only one under power is the first one unless something contacts it?:
“No,” Nyara replied, this time with a bit of pride. “I did that.” Given that her magic was pathetically weak compared to Need’s, or even the least of the mages that her father controlled, she really hadn’t done too badly.
:If I really was destroyed tomorrow, would you be able to get away, to hide, to keep yourself alive?: The sword waited patiently for an answer, and the answer Nyara had for her was a very different one than the one she would have had a few days ago.
“I think so,” she said, nodding to herself. “Yes, I think so. Was that the point?”
:It was. Four days ago if I had asked that question, you would have said you couldn’t do without me. Now you know that you can.: Need’s mind-voice conveyed a hint of pride. Nyara smiled a little, despite the remains of her anger.
Need chuckled at her smile. :It wouldn’t be easy for you to do without me, and any number of creatures could take you in a heartbeat, but I would give you even odds of being able to hide and stay hidden if you chose that route over fighting. You were coming to depend on me too much, and I am not invincible, dear. I can be hurt, or even destroyed. Your father could have done it, if he’d known how. Any of the Tayledras Adepts could. You needed to know you could survive if I was not here.:
Nyara considered that for a moment and let her anger cool. Another of Need’s ongoing lessons—anger used to make her incoherent; now, once it was under control, it made her think with a little more focus. That could be a problem, too; being too focused meant that you could miss something, but it was better than being paralyzed and unable to think at all.
“What about what you’ve been doing to fix what Father did to me?” she asked. “I can’t do that. And it isn’t finished—”
:It may never be finished,: Need told her frankly. :It could take a Healing Adept—which I am not—years to change all the things that were done to you. But you are doing some of that for yourself. If you didn’t recognize the problems and want the changes, if you weren’t consciously helping me, there wouldn’t be any changes. I can’t work against resistance, my dear.:
“Oh.” Nyara couldn’t think of anything else to say.
:There’s something else I want you to consider.:
A breath of chill breeze came in the window. Nyara shivered and moved away from it, returning to the warmth of her furs. She wrapped up in them, cuddling down into their warmth, and let her eyes readjust to the darkness of her tower room. “What?” she asked, expecting something more along the same theme—perhaps something about using her own magic more effectively.
:What do you want?: asked the voice in her mind.
The question took her completely by surprise. “Wh-what do you mean by that?” she stammered.
:It’s a question no one has ever asked you before—and one that you were never in a position to decide, anyway,: Need said patiently. :But you are out here in the wilderness. No one knows where you are yet. You are in a position to decide exactly what is going to happen to your life because there’s no one here to affect you, to do things you don’t expect and haven’t planned for. So what do you want? Assume all the power in the world—because, my dear, you have many powerful people who consider you a friend worthy of helping, and they might just do that if you came to them and asked it of them.: The sword’s voice warmed. :You are quite worthy of being helped, child, though I don’t want you to come to depend on it.:
What did she want? To be left alone was the first thing that sprang to her mind—
To be left alone… there were no complications out here. Nothing to get in the way of simply living. No emotional pain—that is, when Need wasn’t deserting her! This was the first time in her life that she had been in a position of control over her own actions and reactions. There was something very attractive about that.
But—no. It was lonely out here. She was often too busy to think about the isolation, but in the dark of the night, sometimes, she felt lonely enough that she had to fight back tears. At first, she had been too busy to think about it, and then Need had been enough company, but now she wished there was someone else to talk to, now and again. Someone who wasn’t a teacher, who was just a friend.
Or… maybe a little more than a friend? The frequent urges of her body had not gone away, they had simply become less compulsory, and more under her own control.
But if she didn’t want to be left alone, that meant rejoining some portion of the outside world. North meant other Birdkin Clans, and she had been warned they were far less tolerant of Changechildren. South was Dhorisha. There were only two real directions for her, east to the real “outside” world, or west, back to the k’Sheyna Vale.
There were problems with both directions. Should she leave the area entirely, and try to find someplace in the east where she could go?
But then what could she do? She would have to find some way to support herself. She had to eat—there was little or no hunting in lands that were farmed. She would have to have clothing, and a place to live, and in civilized lands, one couldn’t wear rough-tanned furs or live in a cave. Even assuming there were caves about to live in.
“I could go to the lands where the Outsiders came from. When I am there, I can track and hunt,” she said aloud. “I could hire out as a hunter or a guide… or maybe as some kind of protector.”
Need indicated tentative agreement. :True, but what are the drawbacks of running off like that, into places you know nothing about and where you have no friends? Remember, out there, no one has ever seen anything quite like you. They might not treat you well, they might greet you with fear or hatred, and you would be one against many if it came to hostility.:
There was another option—one in which her alien appearance might be of some use. “I could… hire out as a bed-partner.” There. She didn’t like the idea, but it was a viable one. It was one thing she was well-trained in. Skif had certainly been pleased.
Again, Need indicated tentative agreement, but with reservations. :You could do that, and you would probably do very well. But is that what you want? I thought that was the point of this discussion.:
She sighed. “No, it isn’t what I want. It would be a choice, but not a good one. I suppose—if I had to, it would be better than starving. But I don’t have to go east, do I?” If she didn’t go east—
Then she went west. Back to k’Sheyna. Back to where the Outland strangers were…
No point in avoiding it. The one person in the whole world that she thought of with longing was that stranger. The young man called Skif—who was with k’Sheyna. And the only Hawkbrothers in the world who might look upon her with a certain amount of kindness were the k’Sheyna. She had helped them, after all—fought against her father’s controls. She was the reason they had known that one of their own was Falconsbane’s slave. In a sense, they did owe her a debt…
In more than a sense, so did Skif. She had saved his life at the risk of her own.
And they had shared so much in such a relatively short period of time, enough that the intensity of her feelings had frightened her. That was more than half the reason why she had run away from him. She did not want him near her while her father’s directives still ruled her so closely.
Not while she wanted him so very badly…
:I rather thought so,: Need said, following her thoughts, with a feeling of wry humor. :I rather thought that your Skif would be in the equation somewhere.:
“Is there anything wrong with that?” she asked defensively, a little apprehensive that Need would not approve. After all, when she had been a woman, she had been celibate. And now that she was a sword, did she still understand feelings?
:No, child, there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. I think your emotions are quite healthy. I think it’s just as well that you feel this way, especially since he’s out here looking for you.:
She held quite still, rigid with surprise. What?
Nyara had never experienced such mixed emotions in her life, all of them painfully intense. Elation and fear. Joy and dismay. She hugged her furs to herself and trembled.
:I rather imagined you’d react this way.: The sword all but sighed, but there was an undercurrent of satisfied humor. :I suppose I have seen true love often enough to recognize it when it smacks me between the quillions. From at least a dozen of my bearers. And lately—first that sorceress who went into repopulating the Plains all by herself, then that Kerowyn child, and now you. I am beginning to feel like a matchmaker. Perhaps I should give up my current calling and set up as a marriage broker. Very well.:
Nyara fought all of her emotions down enough to get some kind of answer out. “Very well, what?” she asked.
:We know what you want. So. Now we get you ready for it. That young man needs and wants a partner, youngster—not a little girl, not just a bedmate, not someone he has to drag about like an anchor and rescue at regular intervals. So, we’d better start building you in that direction. If,: the sword finished, with a hint of dry sarcasm, :that suits you.:
She sat up straighter. A partner. Someone who could stand alone, but chose to stay with another. Someone who just might come rescue him once in a while.
“Yes,” she said, quietly, calmly, with her chin up. “That suits me very well.”