The Mage Winds Omnibus

There was a peculiar feeling to the Featherless Fools’ Vale today. Falconsbane could not quite put his finger on what it was, but he sensed that they had redoubled their shielding on the Stone again. They had also reduced the number of lines on the Stone to a bare two, but those were the most powerful of all. It would not have been possible to sever either of them—no matter how good that Adept thought he was.

He smiled to himself, fingering the tiny carved horse—which was not onyx, nor obsidian, nor any other stone he knew. It could not be chipped nor marred in any way at all, no matter what he did to it. It should have been fragile. He had even ordered one of his artisans to strike it with a stone sledgehammer when nothing he had done had affected it in any way. It had chipped the hammer; obviously, it was anything but fragile.

One he did not have time for, as matters stood. He needed to concentrate on his plan for k’Sheyna, a plan that required patience and vigilance, but would pay for that patience handsomely. The Bird Lovers could put all the shields they wanted to on that Stone of theirs; they still wouldn’t be able to save it. And the moment they dropped the shielding, he would be waiting. He would not fail a second time.

Let them only drop the shield. He had been waiting for days now, buried in his study, gathering his strength, preparing a single lightning strike that would overwhelm Starblade, burn away his mind, and burn through him to the Stone.

It was a new sort of action for him—and thus, he thought, it would be unexpected and unanticipated. There would be no testing, no struggling of wills. Just one single, quick, clean blow, spending all of his power in that strike and holding none in reserve. A reckless kind of action, audacious. Starblade would flare up like a stick of dry kindling, and a moment later, his home would follow, Adept and all. It was not the end he would have chosen for Starblade or his followers, but it would at least be revenge.

He watched, as patient as a cat at a mousehole, as a lion above a salt lick, knowing that to reestablish those lines they would have to drop the shield—to use the power of the node in the ruins to try to heal the Stone, they would have to drop the shield. Sooner or later, it would have to come down. There was not enough untainted power within the Vale to even begin to heal the Stone.

Assuming it could be healed. He didn’t think that was possible. He had hundreds of years of mage-craft behind him, and he would not have cared to try it.

He had caught his attention wandering for a moment and had redoubled his vigilance when a trembling of the shields alerted him to changes within the Vale.

He fell back onto his couch with a cry of pain, squeezing his watering eyes shut, holding his ears, in a futile reaction to the blinding wall of “light” and “sound” that assaulted his Sight and Hearing.

If he had not been watching the Vale and the emanations of the Stone within it, he might have missed the death of the Stone itself. If he had been concentrating on something in the material world, he would never have noticed what had happened, for the only effect was in the nonmaterial plane. But since he was, and looking right at it with all of his powers—

For a moment it blinded his inner eye when it exploded in light and sound. A lesser mage would have been struck unconscious and possibly come away with his Senses damaged.

It did send him graying-out for a moment, and fighting his way back to consciousness. That was all that was possible; to hold tightly to reality and claw his way back—he couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything else.

At first he simply could not believe what had happened. It made no sense, it was simply not in the Tayledras to have done such a thing. He thought for a moment that he had been Headblinded; that his Senses had failed him.

Then shock gave way to anger. All his plans—destroyed in a single moment! How could he have so completely misjudged them? They should have tried to save their Stone, not destroy it! This was something those suicidal Shin’a’in might have tried, but never the Tayledras!

He shook his head, growling in bafflement and increasing rage. His head pounded with reaction-pain; his temples throbbed, and a sharp, hot jabbing at the base of his skull warned him that he was overstressing himself. The pain only increased his anger. How could they have done something so completely unexpected, so entirely out of character? More than that, how had they accomplished it, without destroying the Vale as he had intended to do?

His inner eyes were still dazzled, his outer eyes streamed burning tears in reaction, but he strained his Sight toward the Vale anyway, hoping for a glimpse of something that might give him a clue as to how this unknown Adept had worked the impossible.

Then, as the dazzle cleared under the pressure of his will, he got more than a clue. Far more.

Hanging in the between-world where Gates and ley-lines were born, was a lenticular form of pure, shining Power. It occupied the same not-space that the Stone had taken—or rather, that the Power the Stone contained had taken. For a long, stunned moment, he simply stared at it, wondering where it had come from and what it was. It didn’t resemble anything that had been in or near the Vale before. It didn’t resemble anything he had ever seen before, for that matter. And how had it gotten where the Power-form of the Stone had been? How had those two ley-lines gotten attached to it? He had never seen lines running to anything but nodes or Stones before. He realized at that moment that it was the Stone—or rather, it was what had taken the place of the Stone. Whatever that Adept had done to the Stone, destroying it had purified the Power and allowed him to give it a new shape. There were only the two lines leading into it, and it was no longer anything he could use or control—or even touch, directly. It had become something that answered to one hand only, and that hand was not his. Power with monofocused purpose, and linked to a particular personality.

In fact, it was very like a Gate. Except that there could not be more than a handful of Adepts great enough to create a Gate with power that was not their own.

He nearly rejected that identification out of hand; even the Bird-Fools would not be so foolhardy as to make a Gate within a node, much less within a Stone! And why create a Gate with so much power in the first place? You couldn’t use it; anything passing through a Gate like that stood a better-than-even chance of winding up annihilated.

But this was not a Gate, exactly. It was something like a Gate; something that could become a Gate with more shaping. But it was not, in and of itself, a Gate. In fact, the more he examined it, the less like a Gate it became. There was no terminus; it was entirely self-contained. There was no structure that it was linked to; it was linked to the half-world, a kind of Gate doubled back upon itself. That, in fact, was what gave it all the stability it had.

It was more like one of the little seeking tendrils of power a Gate would spin out, trying to reach its terminus.

As he thought that, he Saw it move a little; watched it as it swung slightly to the west and north, seeking something—

Then he understood. It was seeking something, and that was why it had been made along the pattern of a Gate.

It was seeking the empty vessel that should have held it, the physical container that had been made by the same hands that had shaped its old vessel. The new Stone in the new Vale.

Unbelievable. Incredible. Something he would never have thought of doing, had he been in the same position.

For a moment, he could only blink at the astonishing audacity of it all. Bold, reckless—not only brilliant, but innovative.

A worthy foe. Not another Urtho, of course, but he was no longer Ma’ar. If he were going to be honest with himself—which he tried to avoid—he would have to admit that another Urtho would not find him much of a challenge these days. Or would he? They would both find themselves dealing with limited power… with magic that followed another set of laws, twisted by the end of their own warring.

Infant? No—young, but no infant. Old in cunning and in skill—youthful only in years. I wonder… is he as beautiful as the rest of the Bird Lovers I have seen?

For another moment, he was overcome by a feeling of complete and overpowering lust. And not just for the power—but for the one who had created and conceived this plan. What would it be like to have such a one under his control, subject to his whims and fancies, placing his abilities at Mornelithe’s call?

He shook the thoughts away angrily. Ridiculous! These Bird Lovers were winning! He could not permit that! Surely there was something he could do to wrench control of the thing out of their hands.

It would attract lines to itself; set in a neutral place, it would soon be the center of a web of lines as complete and complex as the old Stone had owned.

If I had this power-locus, I would have control of the entire energy-web of this area. I could pull all the lines to myself without effort, like a spider whose net spins itself. It would be like my present network of traps and wards, but with such power to tap…

His thumb caressed the tiny horse as he chewed his lip, his mind running in furious thought. Then the image of the spider in the web came to him again. And with it, an idea. So, little mage, we are going to try new magics, are we? He smiled, and his smile turned vicious. Two can play that game. There was a time when I anchored a permanent Gate upon myself, after all.

That had been far, far back in the past, before the so-clever Hawkbrothers had ever stretched their wings over this area. When it had been his, and he had fought to possess it against what seemed to be an endless supply of upstarts. He had been younger then, and willing to try things no one thought possible, for he had already sired a dozen children on as many mothers, human and Changechild, and he was secure in the continuance of his bloodline. And so long as there was someone with direct descent and Mage-Gifts alive, he was immortal. Wild chances had been worth the risk.

No one had ever tried to shift the focus of a permanent Gate from a place to a person. His advisors said it could not be done, that the power would destroy the person.

And yet, in the end, the temporary Gates were all partially anchored in a person, for the energy to create them came from that person. He had thought it worth trying. Permanent Gates had their own little webs of ley-lines, and acted much like small nodes—that was before he had learned of the Hawkbrains and their Heartstones, and had learned to lust after real power. It had seemed a reasonable thing, to try to make himself the center of a web of that kind of power.

So he had researched the magics, then added himself and his own energy-stores to the permanent Gate in his stronghold. He had truly been like a spider in a web then, for whatever he wished eventually came to him, falling into his threads of power. There had been a price to pay—a small one, he thought. After that, he had been unable to travel more than a league from his home, for his fragile body was not able to bear the stress of physical separation for long. On the other hand, he had only to will himself home, and the Gate pulled him through itself, without needing another terminus to step through. His innovation had worked, and then, as now, being home-bound had been a small price to pay for control of all the mage-energy as far as he could See.

He studied the situation carefully, alert for any pitfalls. The most obvious was that the moment he touched the power-locus, his enemies would know what he was doing. The Adept was guiding it himself, with help from some other mages. How maddening to be able to See all of this and yet be unable to act on it!

So he would have to be subtle. Well, there were more ways of controlling the direction of the power-locus than by steering the thing itself. There were two lines on it still, and they could be used to bring it closer to him.

Carefully, he touched the line nearer himself, and pulled; slowly, gradually, changing the direction the power-locus was taking. No one seemed to notice.

Falconsbane’s smile turned to a feral grin. The hunt was up, but the quarry did not yet know that the beast was on its trail.

Like all good hunters, he needed to rest from time to time. Falconsbane had pulled the power-locus as far out of line as he cared to for the moment. He had left his servants to themselves for a long while, perhaps too long; they needed to be reminded of his power over them. There were preparations he needed to make here, before he would be ready to make the Gate a part of himself and his stronghold. And before he undertook any of those preparations, or even interfered any more with the power-locus, he needed to rest, eat, refresh himself.

He left his study, and only then noticed that the air in his manor was thick with the heavy smell of incense and lamp oil, of rooms closed up too long and people sweating with fear. He shook his head at the dank taint of it in the back of his throat.

He turned around, and was on his way to the top of his tower when every blocked-up and shuttered door and window in his stronghold suddenly flew open with an ear-shattering crash.

Glass splintered and tinkled to the floor. Sunlight streamed in the windows, and a sudden shocked silence descended for a single heartbeat.

Then, with a wild howl, a violent wind tore through his fortress. It came from everywhere and nowhere, tearing curtains from their poles, sending papers flying, knocking over furniture, putting out fires in all the fireplaces, scattering ashes to the farthest corners of the rooms. It raced down the hallway toward him, whipping his hair and clothing into tangles, driving dust into his eyes so that he yelped with the unexpected pain.

Then, before he could react any further than that, it was gone, leaving only silence, chill, and the taste of snow behind.

That wild wind signaled the beginning of a series of inexplicable incidents. They invariably occurred at the least opportune moment. And they made no sense, followed no pattern.

They sometimes looked like attacks—yet did nothing substantial in the way of harm. They sometimes looked as if someone very powerful was courting him—yet no one appeared to follow through on the invitation.

Every time he set himself to work on pulling the power-locus nearer, one of those incidents would distract him.

The single window in his study was open to the sky since that wind had shattered both shutter and glass. A blood-red firebird—or something that looked like one—flew into his study window and dropped a black rose at his feet. It left the same way it had come and vanished into the sky before he could do anything about it.

A troop of black riders kept one of his messengers from reaching him, herding the man with no weapon but fear, running him until his horse foundered, then chasing him afoot until he was exhausted. Then they left him lying in the snow for Falconsbane’s patrols to find. By then, it was too late; the man barely had a chance to gasp out what had happened to him before he died of heart failure, his message unspoken.

All of the broken glass in the windows of his stronghold was replaced somehow in a single hour—but not by clear glass, by blood-red glass, shading the entire fortress in sanguine gloom. He liked the effect, but his servants kept lighting lanterns to try and dispel it a little.

Every root vegetable in the storage cellar sprouted overnight, growing long, pallid roots and stems. The onions even blossomed. His cook had hysterics and collapsed, thinking Mornelithe would blame him.

Two hundred lengths of black velvet appeared in the forecourt, cut to cape-length.

All of the wine turned to vinegar, and all of the beer burst its kegs, leaving the liquor cellar a stinking, sodden mess. Another black rider waylaid the cook’s helper sent to requisition new stores and forced him to follow. There were wagonloads of wine-and beer-barrels, of sacks of roots, all in the middle of a pristine, untouched, snow-covered clearing. With no footprints or hoofprints anywhere about, and no sign of how all those provisions had gotten there.

All of the weather vanes were replaced overnight with new ones. The old weather vanes had featured the former owner’s arms; these featured black iron horses.

A huge flock of blackbirds and starlings descended on the castle for half a day, leaving everything covered with whitewash.

Something invisible got into the stable in broad daylight, opened all the stalls and paddock gates, and spooked the horses. It took three days to find them all.

When the last horse—Falconsbane’s own mount, on the few occasions he chose to ride—was found, it was wearing a magnificent new hand-tooled black saddle, black barding, black tack. And in the saddlebag was a scrying crystal double the size and clarity of the one he had shattered in a fit of pique.

He paced the length of his red-lit study, trying to make some sense of the senseless. It was driving him to distraction, for even those acts that could be interpreted as “attacks” could have been part of a courting pattern. He had done similar things in the past—sent a gift, then done something that said, “see how powerful I am, I can best you in your own home.” The courting of mage-to-mage was sometimes an odd thing, as full of anger as desire… as full of hate as lust.

But if it was courting, who was doing it? It couldn’t be Shin’a’in, for they avoided all forms of magic. It couldn’t be Tayledras; they hated him as much as he hated them.

Who was it, then? He thought he had eliminated any possible rivals—and only rivals would think to court him.

He stopped stark still, as a thought occurred to him. There had been a time when he had fostered the illusion that the mage the Outlanders were so afraid of had been seeking to ally with him. What if he was the one behind all this? It would make sense—black riders to send against white ones—black horses instead of the Guardian Spirits.

He called a servant, who appeared promptly, but showing less fear than usual. He had not blamed any of his servants for the bizarre events that had been occurring lately, and that had given them some relief. Besides, he had been getting tired of the smell of fear in his halls. Why, he hadn’t even killed a slave in days…

“I want you to find Dhashel, Toron, Flecker, and Quorn,” he told the servant. “These are their orders, simple ones. There is a land to the north and east: Hardorn. Its king is one Ancar; he is a mage. He is also the sworn enemy of the two Outlanders with the k’Sheyna, and at war with their land of Valdemar. This much I know. I desire to know more. Much more.” He blinked, slowly, and fixed the servant with his gaze. “Do you understand all of that?”

The servant nodded, and repeated the orders word for word. Falconsbane was pleased; he would remember never to kill or maim this one.

“Now go, and tell them to hurry,” he said, turning back to the couch and his new scrying crystal. “I am eager to hear what they can learn.”

Darkwind rose unsteadily to his feet as Iceshadow tapped his shoulder in the signal that meant Iceshadow was there to relieve him. He staggered out of the former Stone clearing and up the path toward the ekele shared by Nyara and Skif. He was tired, but this couldn’t wait.

Something or someone was diverting the path of the proto-Gate. Every moment spent in rapport with Firesong moving the proto-Gate toward the new Vale was a moment spent in constant battle to keep the Power-point on the right course.

They couldn’t be sure who was doing it, of course, but for Darkwind, Falconsbane was high on the list. It was possible to anchor the proto-Gate temporarily, thank the gods, or they would all have been worn away to nothing, for what they had hoped would take only hours was taking days.

Firesong especially was under stress; since the proto-Gate was linked to him, personally, he had to be the one in charge of directing its path. Although the hertasi swarmed over him, bringing him virtually everything he needed, there was one thing they could not give him, and that was rest.

But since they had learned that the proto-Gate could be anchored, his helpers only needed to work in four-candlemark shifts, and he himself needed only to work for eight.

Darkwind had been very dubious about the wisdom of leaving the proto-Gate unguarded, but they really had no choice. Firesong would be helped into bed at the end of the day and sleep solidly until it was time to work again. So he had held his peace and had hoped that there was no way to interfere with the energy-point without Firesong knowing.

And once the proto-Gate was anchored for the night, it actually seemed that either there was something protecting it, or Falconsbane had not found a way to move it.

He shook his head, and continued on his way. Had he seen what he thought he’d seen this morning, when he and Firesong and Elspeth took the first shift together? Had there been two shining, bright-winged vorcel-hawks flitting away silently through the gray mist of the not-world? And had they, a moment before, been standing guard over the proto-Gate?

In the end, it didn’t matter—except, perhaps, to Firesong. If the Adept knew that Tre’valen had survived in some form, he would be much comforted. Although Firesong hid most of his deeper feelings beneath a cloak of arrogance and flippancy, Darkwind was better at reading him now. The young shaman’s death still grieved him.

Then again, it could have been a trick of the not-world, a place where illusions were as substantial as reality, where nothing was to be trusted until you had tested it yourself. It could even have been a specter of his own half-formed hopes.

There was no denying the fact that someone was trying to steal the proto-Gate, however, and Darkwind was going to assume that it was Falconsbane until he learned otherwise. That meant that some of the nebulous plans the “war council” had discussed before and after the destruction of the Heartstone were going to have to be put into motion.

Darkwind was not certain what Falconsbane intended to do with the proto-Gate, or where he planned to anchor it, for that matter. Presumably on something like a Heartstone, somewhere deep in his own stronghold. If he did that, it would give him access to something that had the potential to become a full permanent Gate. If he knew how to effect the rest of the spell, that is. Firesong did, or at least Darkwind suspected he did. Not too many did, except for Healing Adepts—and not many of those. No one had had the secret in k’Sheyna for as long as Darkwind had been alive.

But even if Falconsbane didn’t know the trick, having the proto-Gate in his control would give him access to a great deal of power.

Nor was that all; unless Firesong freed himself first, access to the proto-Gate meant access to the Adept.

Darkwind did not want to see Firesong—or anyone else, for that matter—in Falconsbane’s hands. Firesong might be able to defeat Mornelithe in a head-to-head battle. He might be able to hold Falconsbane off long enough for someone to help to free him.

Darkwind was not prepared to bet on either of those possibilities. Dealing with Falconsbane had taught him this: it was much safer to overestimate the beast.

He could take over Firesong the way he took my father, and have the power of a Healing Adept to pervert. With that—he could undo anything any Vale has accomplished.

If he had a permanent Gate, he could bypass our shields and send his creatures straight into the mouth of the Vale at no cost to himself. That was another unpleasant scenario.

So it was time to consult Nyara, who alone of all of them was an expert on her father.

Nyara had always liked Darkwind; now, with the pressures of her body and of her father reduced or gone altogether, she had discovered it was possible to simply be his friend. Over the past few days she had found him to be kind, courteous—and oddly protective, determined to keep his people from snubbing her or making her feel uncomfortable. That was not to be expected, particularly not with the pressures that were on him now.

She and Skif were actually working on sword practice; although Need had been putting her through exercises, this was the first time she had ever had an opponent to practice with. She welcomed the physical activity as a release from direct thinking. She did not want to consider what she would do when the time came that they both must leave the Vale. She wanted to go with him, but at the same time she was afraid to. It was much easier to lose herself in the hypnotic dance of steel and footwork.

Darkwind must have been standing at the edge of the practice circle for some time before she and Skif realized he was there. She spotted him first, and signaled a halt; only then did he enter the circle.

“You two look very good,” he said quietly. “I hated to interrupt you, but I think we’re going to have to figure out exactly where your f—Falconsbane is after all.”

She wiped sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, and nodded. “Did you find those maps you were talking about?” Strange; not so long ago, even thinking of her father brought her to the verge of hysteria. Now—well, she was afraid, only a fool would not fear Falconsbane, but she could face that fear.

“They’re in my ekele,” Darkwind replied, with a nod. “Could you two join me there?”

His treehouse was not far, even by Vale standards. Together he and she and Skif took an old set of Shin’a’in maps out of their leather cases and bent over them with something more than mere interest. They worked backward from the spot where Darkwind had first encountered her; Darkwind pointed out landmarks that he knew, as she puzzled her way through the strange notation.

“This would be it, I think,” she said at last, pointing to an otherwise unremarkable spot to the north and west. “I have not had much training in the reading of these things,” she continued apologetically, “but I think this is the likeliest place for my father’s fortress to be.”

Darkwind nodded, marked the place, and rolled up the thick sheets of vellum. “That’s the direction the proto-Gate is being pulled, so that rather confirms that your guess is correct,” he said. “And it confirms my guess as to who is behind this. Firesong is trying to second-guess our would-be Gate-thief, but I don’t think at this point that there could be much doubt about motivation. If it’s Falconsbane, then there is only one real answer. He wants what he’s always wanted: power.”

“The proto-Gate would be irresistible to him,” Nyara agreed, then widened her eyes as something occurred to her. “You know—it is rather odd, but he becomes more predictable under stress, had you noted that? I do not know why, but it is true. I have seen this over and over again, when I was still with him.

The more he is forced to react to the surprises sprung upon him by others, the more likely he is to act as he has always acted, and think it is a clever new plan.”

Darkwind nodded, as if what she had just told him confirmed something he had thought himself. “What do you think he’s planning on doing with the proto-Gate when he captures it?”

“Oh, he will install it in his stronghold,” she said immediately. With no effort at all, she could picture him gloating over his new-won prize as he had gloated over so many in the past. “That is predictable, too. Probably in his study; he is jealous of his things of power and often will not put them where other mages may even see them. He will want such a thing as near to him as may be.”

“That would be a bad place to put a Gate,” Darkwind observed. “A Gate works both ways—”

“No, I suspect he will try to anchor it in a stone or crystal of some kind, rather than as a Gate,” she said, trying to remember if Falconsbane had ever indicated that he knew how to make the Greater Gates. “I am not sure. I believe he knows how to make a Gate but has not the strength. I think he would rather create something to use as a power-pole, to bring in more lines, if he can.”

“What, use it to create his own kind of Heartstone?” Darkwind asked in surprise, and was even more surprised when she nodded. “Make a Heartstone like a Hawkbrother?”

“It seems amazing that he should imitate you,” she told him earnestly, “but he has seen your success. He is not good at creating things. He is good at twisting them to his own ends, or warping them to suit his fancies, but not at creating them. He will imitate you, therefore, and tell himself that he is making something entirely new.”

“So, whatever he tries is going to have a focus,” Darkwind mused. “The personal link will have to be taken from Firesong, of course—but if he has to have a focus, he has to have something physical. Focus; his ideal choice would be something shaped the way the proto-Gate looks in the halfworld. And we can attack that.”

“What are you thinking of ?” Skif asked, sounding just a little belligerent and definitely protective.

Darkwind looked up at the tall Herald, and shook his head. “You are not going to care for my notions,” he said. “No, you are not going to like them at all.”

“Probably not,” Skif agreed. “On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of Falconsbane with all that power.”

“Nor do I.” Darkwind turned back to Nyara. “Before I broach any ideas, there’s something I really need to know, both from you, and from your friend in the sheath.” He nodded at Need. “Do you think you can hold out against your father’s control now? I mean in a face-to-face confrontation; can you hold against his will?”

:Good question, boy. My vote is yes—but she won’t unless she believes she can.:

Nyara looked deeply and carefully into his eyes. “I think so,” she replied after a long moment of thought. “I know that I can for some time if we are not near one another. I think that I can, if we are not in physical contact. If he had me in his hands—” She shrugged, trying to hide her fear, but Darkwind saw it and sympathized with it anyway. “I would have no chance with him, if I were in his hands. But the old means by which he controlled me no longer work. He tried upon me what he perfected upon your father. Because none of this was perfected, there were places where Need and I could break what he had done to me. He would have to work magic—perhaps even cast actual spells—to get new controls on me. And just at the moment he might not realize that.”

“Part of the way he reacts in a typical fashion when he feels himself under pressure?” Darkwind asked.

She nodded. “Especially if he were distracted or busy,” she told him. “The more distractions he has, the more likely he is to revert to what has worked in the past.”

:Absolutely,: Need agreed. :Half the reason I was able to help her so much was because I was watching Kethra Heal your father. His problems are a superior copy of hers. We’ve thrown Falconsbane off-balance by destroying the Heartstone, and he’s reacting predictably, by trying to steal the power it harbored. There are a dozen other things he could do with it, or about it, but instead, he’s doing exactly what I would have predicted for him.:

“I could prolong the moment that he thinks he still has me controlled by feigning it,” Nyara offered, trembling a little inside from fear. “Need might be able to help with that.”

Nyara watched Darkwind turn all that over in his mind—and she wondered. One plan, with a fair likelihood of success, had already occurred to her. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing that she was. She had been thinking about something like this for some time—fearing the idea, yet knowing it had logic to it. And knowing that if she were asked, she would follow through with it. Skif was most definitely not going to like it.

Falconsbane stepped back and surveyed his work, nodding with satisfaction. He had done very well, given the short notice he’d had. And it had been at minimal cost to himself. There were, after all, two ways to create power-poles. The first way was to produce the power from yourself; much in the same way that a Gate was created. That was not the ideal way to proceed, so far as he was concerned.

The other way was to induce it from the body of another—as skilled and powerful a mage as one could subdue. The drawing out of the power would kill the mage in question, of course; there was no way to avoid that. A pity, but there it was.

Then, given the plan he had created, one needed to fix the pole in place—that required another mage. Fixing the pole absolutely required the life of that mage, this time by sacrifice, although Falconsbane had managed to crush the man’s heart with no outward signs and no blood spilt. It would have been a pity to stain the new carpets.

And lastly, in accordance with the plan, he had needed the full power of a human life and the full power of a mage to establish a web of energy linking the power-pole he had created with every possible point in his territory. Naturally that had required a third mage.

It was possible to do all of that from his own resources, but that would have required exhausting himself completely. That wasn’t acceptable at this point. Doing it through others was far less efficient; it took three mages to create what he could have accomplished alone.

The problem with the second method was, of course, that the mages in question would not survive the operation. Which was why the bodies of three of Falconsbane’s former servants were littering the floor of his study. If he had more time, he probably would have done it the hard way, through himself. It was difficult finding even ordinary servants; mages were doubly hard to acquire.

He had thought long and hard on the best way to go about claiming the power-locus. He had not been aided by all the distractions taking place in and around his lands. The black riders were everywhere, and although they seldom did anything, they rattled his guards and made even his fortress servants nervous. Strange birds had been seen in the forest around his stronghold; and now the woods were reputedly haunted as well, by amorphous, ghostlike shapes and faint, dancing lights.

He had decided at last to set up a power-pole as exactly like the waiting Stone as possible, and anchor that within an enormous crystal-cluster he had brought from one of his storage rooms and set up in his study. When he drew the power-locus in near enough, it would snap into the power-pole as it had been intended to do at the Bird-Fools’ new Heartstone. Devising the plan had taken much delving into his oldest memories, and he had been a little disturbed at how much he had forgotten. Too many times for comfort, he’d been forced to return to his library and search through his oldest books. In the end, he’d taken scraps of memory, scraps of old knowledge, and a great deal of guessing.

The difference between what he intended to do and what the Tayledras would have done was that when it snapped into the waiting vessel here, he would be standing between and would be linked to the crystal. When the power-locus and the power-pole merged into one, he would be part of them as well.

It was as inventive in its way as anything that Tayledras Adept had tried; he was quite certain of that. He was thoroughly pleased with his own cleverness. Oh, it was dangerous, surely; the mages who had been sacrificed to give the plan life had advised against it even before they knew they were going to be sucked dry of life and power to fuel it.

“If you aren’t incinerated, you’ll go mad. No one can be part of a Heartstone!” Renthan had told him.

Preadeth had only shaken his head wordlessly, and cast significant looks at the others.

They thought he was insane even to try it—and at that moment, when he caught them exchanging glances and possibly thoughts, he had known who his sacrificial calves were going to be.

They had doubtless been considering revolt—or at least, escape. Escape would mean they might even consider going to the Tayledras with what they knew.

It was just as well he had another use for them. It would have been a pity to kill them outright and waste all that potential.

Using his subordinates to supply the power instead of himself was the last element he had needed to make the plan reasonable as well as possible. It meant that at the end of the Working, he was still standing and still capable of acting, instead of unconscious and needing days of rest. Even at that, he was exhausted when he was done.

He sank down on his couch and considered calling in a fourth man and draining him as well, but discarded the idea. It would cause enough trouble that he had killed three of his underlings. There were those who might read it as a desperation measure. It was, on the whole, a bad idea to kill anyone other than a slave or one of the lower servants. It made everyone else unhappy—and inclined to think about defection. Unhappy servants were inefficient servants. They should know the taste of the whip—but also know that it was only there in extreme circumstances, and that they could bring that whip onto their own backs by their own actions. He lay back on the soft black velvet of the couch, and considered his next few moves. First—find a reason for the deaths of his underlings that would disturb the others the least. The mages in particular were a touchy lot; they tended to think of themselves as allies rather than underlings. They were given to occasional minor revolt. It would not do to give them a reason for one of those revolts—not now, when he could ill-afford the energy to subdue them.

Should he claim they had died aiding him in some great work? That was a little too close to the truth, and the next time he called for help in magic-working, he might trigger one of those mass defections. He did not, as a rule, lose even one of his assistants, much less three of them. The mages weren’t stupid; they might well guess that “aiding” in a great work meant becoming a sacrifice to it.

The deep-red light flooding in from the window was very soothing to his eyes, and eased the pain at his temples, pain caused by nothing more than overstressing himself. Both temples throbbed, there was a place at the base of his skull that felt as if someone was pressing a dull dagger into it, and sharp stabbing pains over each eye whenever he moved his head too quickly. Hard to think, when one was in pain…

But he must think of a way to explain those bodies. He wished he could simply burn them to ash and pretend that he did not know where they had gone. But that might only make the others think their colleagues had run off, and if those three had done so, there might be a good reason for the others to follow their example.

Complications, complications. Everything he did was so complicated. Not like the old days, when he didn’t have to justify himself to anyone. When he only had to issue orders and know he would be obeyed.

The cowards. If they hadn’t been quite so quick to think of conspiring against him he might not have—

Ah. That was the answer. He would have the bodies dragged from his study and hung from the exterior walls in cages, as traitors were. That would be enough. The rest of his underlings should assume that the three had attempted to overcome him and had fallen in the attempt. A good explanation for why he was so weary.

He would not even have to say anything himself, just look angry. No one would dare ask him. The rumors would fly, but there was no reason for anyone to guess the truth.

He rang for a servant, and feigning greater strength than he had, contorted his face into a mask of suppressed rage and ordered the bodies taken away and displayed in the cages. Then he called for stimulants, food and drink, as he always did after a battle. Sometimes habits were useful things. When he demanded rare meat, red wine, and ke-phira, with a body-slave to be waiting in his bed, the servants all assumed that a fight had aroused his blood and his lust.

The servant left and came back with several more; Falconsbane ignored them as they carried the bodies away, lying back on his couch and staring at the shadow-shrouded ceiling. He often did that after a battle of magic, too. When the servant returned at last with the food and drink he had been sent for, he told the man in a flat, expressionless voice to set it down and take himself out. He did his best to look angry, and not tired. The illusion was what mattered right now.

If I were not so pressed, I would manipulate their minds to reinforce the tale that is spreading, he thought, slowly mustering the strength to reach for a cup of drugged wine. Perhaps I should do so anyway.

But at that moment, there came a hesitant tap at the door. He started, and cursed his own jangled nerves, then growled, “Yes? What is it?”

If it’s nonsense, I’ll kill him. If it’s a defection, I’ll set the wyrsa on the fool who ran and see if he can outrun and outlast a pack of forty!

“Sire,” came the timid voice of the servant, muffled by the door, “I beg your pardon for disturbing you, but I’m following your orders. You said to let you know immediately if one of those riders—”

He sat up abruptly, exhaustion and pain completely forgotten. “The riders? Open the damned door, you fool! What about the riders?”

The servant edged the door open, nervously. He peered inside, then slid into the room with one eye on his escape route. There was a small box in his hand.

Falconsbane’s eyes went to it as if drawn there; he stood up and strode over to the man, and stood towering over him, his hands twitching at his sides.

“Sire, one of the riders came right up to the gate just as they were—taking out—” The man gulped, his face pasty white, and Falconsbane repressed the urge to strangle him. He simply tried to ease some of the anger out of his face so that the servant would be able to continue.

“Go on,” he said, more gently than he wanted to. He cursed his own weakness; if he had been stronger, he could have seized the man’s mind and pulled what he wanted right out of it.

“The rider came up and tossed this to the Guard Captain, sire,” the servant continued, after visibly trying to calm himself. “Then—he was just gone. The Guard Captain brought this straight to me, like you ordered.”

“By ‘just gone,’ do you mean that he rode away?” Falconsbane asked carefully. Why didn’t they call me? Or was there no time? Can those riders move that fast? Why isn’t someone chasing them?

“No, sire, I mean he was gone. Like smoke. There, and then not there.” The servant seemed convinced, and there was no real reason for him to lie. “The Guard Captain said so. Said he was gone like he’d been conjured and dispersed.”

Falconsbane pondered the box in his hand; this was the first real evidence that the riders were the manifestations of magic. Was his unknown enemy—or friend—showing his hand a little more? They could not have gone through a Gate; he would have sensed that. Therefore they could only have been temporary conjurations, given life and form only so long as the mage needed them, or creatures from another plane. Minor demons, perhaps? Those he might not be able to sense unless he was actually looking for them.

Of the “gifts” that had been sent to him, only one was magical—and it was useless. He cast an eye at the lenticular scrying crystal as the servant waited nervously for his response, and snorted a little.

Scrying crystal, indeed. It was an excellent crystal. The clarity was exceptional, the lenticular form ideal for scrying, the size quite perfect for a detailed image to form. The problem was, no matter how he bent his will upon it, it would show only one thing. The view of some remote mountain peak, and halfway up the side of the mountain, a strange and twisted castle that he did not recognize. A snowstorm swirled about the castle when the crystal was moved.

He dismissed the servant, and reached for the wine, drinking it down in one gulp, before he returned to his couch and contemplated the box. Like the other, it was beautifully carved, and about the same size. There was no sign of magic anywhere about it.

Nestled in a nest of black velvet padding was a ring. Not just any ring, either—it held no stone, and was not metal, although it was an intricately carved or molded band. Like a wedding ring, exactly like a wedding ring, it was carved with the symbols of harvest, wheat-ears and grapes—except that this ring was made of a shining, cool black substance. He tried, experimentally, to break it, but it was probably of the same stuff as the horse.

In this part of the world, widows sometimes laid aside their wedding bands to wear a black band like this, made of jet, signifying mourning. Was he being warned? But he had no spouse to mourn, and the very last thing he would weep over was the death of his traitorous daughter.

His predilection for black was apparently well known to these riders—or whoever sent them. There had been the rose, the velvet, the horse, and now the ring. And this would certainly gain his attention far quicker than a simple peasants’ gold or silver wedding band.

“I don’t like this,” Darkwind told Firesong unhappily. “I only told you my plan because I hoped you’d have another way of handling this, something that wouldn’t put anyone into danger like this. Even if it is my plan, I don’t like it.”

He had intercepted Firesong as soon as the Adept had anchored the proto-Gate for the night. They had walked back to Firesong’s ekele together, while Darkwind laid bare his thoughts on Falconsbane and what might be done about him.

“Nor do I care for your plan,” Firesong replied, wearily sagging back against the cushions of his couch. “I dislike sending Nyara into peril of this sort. She is a frail prop for all our hopes—and yet there is a certain symmetry in it, in sending her to avenge her own hurts upon her father.”

Darkwind snorted. “Symmetry was not what I had in mind,” he said. He would have gone farther than that, but at that same moment, Nyara and Skif arrived, summoned by one of Firesong’s ever-present hertasi. Skif was unarmed as far as Darkwind could see, but Nyara, as always, had Need; the sword at her side was so much a part of her that he couldn’t imagine her without it.

He took a moment to examine her with the dispassionate eyes of a stranger and was a little surprised. He’d thought of Nyara as small and slender, maybe even spidery; well, perhaps she was, compared to himself and to Skif. But she certainly carried her sword with authority—and from what he’d seen, she knew how to use it well. And what skill she did not possess, the sword could grant to her, if Elspeth was to be believed.

“Sit,” Firesong said, before the other two could say anything. “Please. We have something we need to ask you.” He waved to one of the hovering hertasi, who converged upon the two Outlanders with food and drink.

They took seats; Nyara a little apprehensively, Skif reluctantly. Darkwind didn’t blame them. He’d had the feeling that Nyara knew what he’d had in mind all along, from the nebulous ideas that had formed when he asked her to locate Falconsbane’s stronghold, to the crystallized plan that had sent him looking for Firesong. Skif probably didn’t know what was in Darkwind’s mind, but if it required involving Nyara, he was going to be immediately suspicious.

“I’ll come straight to the point,” Darkwind said. “Before we take this to a larger forum, we need to know something from you.” He waited until they had settled a little, then turned to the Changechild. “Nyara, this afternoon I asked you to help me find your father’s stronghold on the map. You thought you located approximately where it is, correct?”

She nodded, slowly, accepting a cup of tea from one of the hertasi. It was very hard to read her face; long ago she had probably learned how to control her expressions minutely, and that was a habit that was hard to break.

He hated to ask this of her. He hated to put her back where she might need that kind of control. “Well, this is a different question, but related. Could you trace your way back to it—and if you found it, get into it?”

Skif yelped and started to rise; she shook her head at him, and placed one hand on his knee to calm him. It didn’t calm him a bit, but he subsided, looking sharply at both Firesong and Darkwind.

Hmm. Interesting. I thought he was unarmed, but the way his right hand is tensing—he has a knife hidden somewhere near it. If he had a choice, he probably wouldn’t be looking daggers at us, he’d be throwing them.

“Yes to both questions,” she replied steadily. “My problem with finding Father’s hold upon your map was that I could not see the things I know as landmarks. I have a perfect memory for trails, it seems. I never had occasion to use it before I escaped my father, but it is very difficult for me to become lost. I can easily find the stronghold.” She licked her lips, showing the tips of her canine teeth, then took a drink before continuing. “I can find it—and having found it, I know many of the odd ways into it. He does not guard all of them, for many are hidden. Some I was taught, but some I found on my own.”

“Yes, but will he not know of them as well?” Firesong asked gently. “I would not send you into a trap, dear child. Candidly, that would not serve either of us.”

Her lips curved in a faint smile. “I do not think there will be a trap. Since I am only interested in fleeing from him—he thinks—I suspect that the last thing he would look for me to do is return. The ways that I would take inside will be those that only I know, or those that I think he will not bother to trap.”

:I can hide her some, if that’s your next question,: Need said. :I can hold a “reflective” illusion on her, the kind that makes her look like part of the landscape to Mage-Sight. More importantly, while I’m doing that, I can hide myself as well. Watch.:

At that instant, Need ceased to exist, from the point of view of Darkwind’s Mage-Sight. She was nothing more sinister to ordinary sight than an ordinary broadsword, and to Mage-Sight, she and Nyara did not exist, and Skif sat alone on the couch.

“Good. Very good,” Firesong said, leaning forward a bit, his voice warm with approval. “Well, then, you must know that we have a plan, but the one in greatest danger will be you, Nyara. That is a great burden to be placed upon you, and no one will fault you if you say no.”

She shook her head, but not, Darkwind sensed, in denial. “I have been partially to blame for much harm that has come to you,” she said. “I feel that I owe some recompense.”

:It’s not like she’s going to do this alone,: Need added dryly. :I’ve handled what Falconsbane can throw before. Hmph. Maybe if he throws the right stuff at us this time, I can transmute it and take off a little more of what he did to her.:

“I will not count upon that,” Nyara told her blade, and Darkwind thought he detected a tone of friendly chiding in her voice. “I will not even think of it. It serves little purpose, after all. If you can, I shall be grateful, but do not put yourself into jeopardy by an attempt.”

Need couldn’t shrug, but Darkwind got the impression she had. :At any rate, as Nyara and Skif can tell you, I took on this form because there are times when one person can do what an army couldn’t. I’m no expert on Falconsbane, but I don’t think the odds are any worse now than they were back when I froze myself into this blade.:

Darkwind looked at Skif, who growled, but shrugged. “She’s her own woman,” he replied unhappily. “If I tried to make her change her mind, I wouldn’t be doing either of us any good. She wants to go through with this—I’ll do what I can to help.”

“I don’t like it,” he admitted. “I’m scared to death for her, and if I could take her place I would. I won’t pretend otherwise. But let’s just say I learned how stupid it is to try and stop someone from doing something they have to do. It’s even more stupid if you care about them.”

Darkwind read the look Skif gave both of them, however. If Nyara came to any harm at all, Skif would personally collect the damages due.

“More than good!” Firesong applauded. “Well, then, if Nyara is agreed, I think it is time that we took the idea to the rest. We will discover if anyone can knock holes in this plan—or make it safer in any way.”

The gathering in the Council Oak clearing held only part of the usual gathering. Both gryphons, Nyara, Skif, Firesong, Wintermoon, the Companions, Elspeth—and Darkwind himself. No other mages; this would not be a plan that required more mages than they had right here. Starblade and Kethra were back to recovering; Iceshadow and Nightjewel were conserving their strength. And they added no more fighters than Skif and Wintermoon, either. As Need had said, there were times when one—or a handful—could do what an army could not.

Firesong had lost a great deal of his jauntiness in the past few days, and he had put aside his elaborate costumes in favor of simple, flowing clothing like any other mage wore. He could hardly hide the flamboyant bondbird that perched on his shoulder, but other than that, and his incredible beauty, there was nothing that set him apart from the other mages in k’Sheyna.

“Here is the situation as it stands,” Firesong began. Using a handful of stones and a bit of string, he began laying out something that looked rather like a very simple spiderweb. “If I had been looking for this earlier, I might have seen it being built—but it has the feeling of something assembled with haste, and we may be able to take advantage of that.”

“What is it?” Darkwind was baffled. “I assume Falconsbane has something to do with this, whatever it is.”

Firesong flushed, the first time Darkwind had ever seen him truly embarrassed. “Pardon. I forgot that none of you have been working with me upon this. The enemy wants to capture the proto-Gate; to that end he has constructed this web of power-points and interconnecting lines about his stronghold. If you look in the direction of his stronghold with FarSight and Mage-Sight, you will see it.”

Treyvan examined the model, and growled. “Thisss isss a new thing, isss it not?”

Firesong shook his head. “Only new to Falconsbane. I have seen this sort of construction before, and it isn’t half as effective as those who use it think. It has a vulnerability, a severe one. If the connections were weakened all about the edge so that they might snap beneath a good shock, he likely would not note the weakening. And if they snapped, the power would backlash against him in some profound ways.”

“What kind of ways?” Wintermoon wanted to know. “Something grievous, I hope.”

Firesong smiled faintly. “If he was not prepared with a way to ground it or to escape, he would likely be cast into the void between the Gates—as if he entered a Gate and both the Gate and the terminus were then destroyed. That is because of the way he has set up the tensions among his power-poles and his center. Great concentrations of power warp the world-space as Gates do.”

Darkwind shuddered; he had once had a glimpse of that void. He would prefer not to see it again. “That’s not a fate I would wish on anyone,” he said.

“Not even Falconsbane?” Elspeth asked. “I can think of one or two others I would like to see contemplating their deeds for all eternity!”

Firesong continued, as if they had not interrupted him. “Any shock to him would snap these threads of power once they were weakened—that would be the best way, in fact. A shock at the center will have more effect than one at an edge. But the weakening—that would have to be done quickly, so that he did not have a chance to notice what was being done.” He looked up into the gryphons’ faces, expectantly.

Treyvan blinked slowly, his eyes distant. “You rrrequirrre ssswiftly trraveling magesss,” he said. “And at the sssame time, you rrrequirrre sssomeone to infiltrrrate the beassst’sss home.”

“The ssswift onesss mussst be usss, I think,” Treyvan continued. “And the otherrr—Nyarrra.”

“If you are willing, yes,” Darkwind said awkwardly. “I hate to ask you, but if Falconsbane gains control of the proto-Gate, he’ll have an enormous amount of power. It would be the kind of power that normally goes to establish and maintain an entire Vale; protections, Heartstones, Vale-sculpting, and all.”

“He could dessstrroy usss all with a thought,” Hydona replied flatly. “He mussst not have that powerrr.”

“Bring the little ones here,” Darkwind urged. “With the Heartstone gone, there’s no longer a danger to them in staying here.”

Hydona nodded, but Darkwind sensed that she had something else on her mind. She looked to her mate.

After a moment of wordless exchange, Treyvan sighed. “We wisssh sssomething in return,” he said.

“It isss. We requirrre a pricssse. We want k’Sheyna to not dissolve the Vale when you leave. To give it to ussss, Veil, shieldsss, and all.” Treyvan tucked his wings closer in to his body. “We had planned to take it oncssse you left, but—”

“But if you leave it asss it isss, it will be betterrr forr ourrr new Kla’hessshey’messserin,” Hydona interrupted. “We might asss well brrring it into clearrr sky, asshkeyana.”

Darkwind blinked, trying to identify the two words they had just used. They sounded like Tayledras, but weren’t. They weren’t Shin’a’in, either.

“Kaled’a’in?” exclaimed Firesong, as he brought his head up, eyes wide with startlement.

Now that Darkwind knew the tongue, he could translate the words. The second was simply an endearment; “beloved.” But the first—it was complicated. The strictest translation would have been “family,” or “clan,” except that it implied a family made of those who not only were not related by blood—but who might not even be of the same species.

Once again, Firesong beat him to identification. “Pledged-clan?” he exclaimed again. “You’re—you can’t be Clan k’Leshya!”

Wintermoon quite fell off his seat. “The Lost Ones? The Lost Clan?” he exclaimed, his eyes going so wide with surprise Darkwind was afraid he was going to sprain something. “The Spirit Clan? I thought—but—they were nothing but legend!”

Treyvan’s beak gaped in a gryphonic smile. “But we arrre legend, arrre we not? Orrr we werrre, to you.”

Elspeth, Skif, and Nyara were looking completely bewildered, as well they might. As Firesong stared and Wintermoon picked himself back up, Darkwind essayed a hasty explanation.

“At the time of the Mage Wars, a group of Kaled’a’in from several clans, a group of outClansmen, and some of the nonhumans all formed a kind of—of—brotherhood, I suppose. They called themselves—”

“Kena Lessshya’nay, in the Tongue,” Hydona supplied. “It meansss ‘clan bound by ssspirit.’ Ssssomething like yourrr Heraldsss, but without Companionssss. Lessshya’nay could not join, they could only be chossssen, then agrrreed upon by thrrree morre. Ourrr leaderrrsss werrre two. The great Black Gryphon Ssskandrrranon, and the kesss-tra’cherrrn, Amberrdrrrake.”

Treyvan chuckled. “Though neitherrr everrr admitted to being leaderrr of anything!”

“The Spirit Clan supposedly held many of Urtho’s mages, all of the gryphons and hertasi, kyree, tervardi and dyheli, and a fair number of the Kaled’a’in shamans and Healers,” Firesong said to the three Outlanders, leaning forward so that they could hear him. Then he turned to the gryphons, watching them intently. “But during the evacuation of the stronghold, you disappeared.”

Treyvan shook his massive head. “No. Herrre isss what happened. We did not ussse the Gatesss the lessser magesss crrreated to evacuate. We had been sssent away—sssupposssedly to find a rrrefuge forrr the rrrest of you and a mysssterriousss weapon. Ssso we werrre not in Urrtho’sss landsss when the evacuation came. Inssstead of sssouth or easst, we had gone wesssst, we had with usss a Gate made by Urrtho—hisss verry own Grrreat Gate, anchorrred on a wagon. We usssed it while you evacuated to brrring the rrrest of ourr folk to ourrr rrretrreat in the wilderrrnessss. But therrre wasss not time to take everrryone thrrrough it—only Lesssshya’nay. The ressst of you had to take what Gatesss werrre nearrressst you.”

“And the dessstrrruction of the Ssstrrronghold thrrrew you farrrtherrr than intended. We thought you had perrrisshed,” Hydona continued. Then she, too, gaped her beak in a grin. “Imagine ourrr surrrprrrissse to find the legendarrry Kena Trrrevasho, Kena Sheynarsa, and the rrresst still in exissstence. To you, we arrre the Losst Onesss. But to usss, you arrre!”

Firesong shook his head, bemusedly. “Quite amazing. And you still speak the Mother Tongue!”

“Not quite purrrrely, I expect,” Treyvan admitted. “But we have not had the prrresssuresss of the Ssstar-Borrrn to ssshape our language differrrently. Sssshe doess not meddle ssso much with usss asss with you.”

“Thisss all can wait, I think,” Hydona interrupted firmly. “What we need to tell you issss thisss. Sssimply—you knew, Darrrkwind, that we werrre forrrerrrunnerrrsss. Of ourrr kind, you thought. Well, morrre of ourrr people arrre coming, and not jussst ‘ourrr’ kind.”

“Gryphonssss, humanssss, sssome hertasssi. And sssoon.” Treyvan turned to look at Darkwind. “When k’Sheyna began itsss trrroubleesss, we called them. You rrrecall the bookssshelvesss you helped hang? They werrre not meant forrr us. We knew that thisss place would ssshelterrr usss well, and knew you needed help and would not asssk for it—asss Ssskandranon oft sssaid, ‘it isss eassier to beg parrrdon than get perrrmisssion.’ Sssince they did not wisssh to ssstir thingsss up by sssetting too many Gatesss, they have been coming acrosss countrrry.”

Darkwind had the vague feeling that he should have been outraged by this. He wasn’t, but he knew plenty in the Clan who would be. Treyvan, on the other hand, did not look in the least contrite.

“But now, we need magesss, ssswift-trrraveling magesss. Immediately.” He turned his attention to Firesong, who nodded, then back to Darkwind. “With yourrr perrrmisssion, I shall ussse the lessser Gate in the rrruinsss and the powerrr of the node to meet their Gate, and brrring them herrre in time to help. But for that help, we wisssh the Vale. Intact.”

“Is there any reason why k’Sheyna can’t give them the Vale?” he asked. “Any reason at all?”

The only reason Darkwind could think of was, “because we’ve never done it before,” and that did not seem particularly adequate. Nor did he feel that this would be a true breach of Tayledras territoriality. After all, these people—beings—were Tayledras. Sort of.

“Not that I can think of,” he admitted. He licked his lips thoughtfully. “All we know of the Spirit Clan is out of legend—and by knowing you two,” he told the gryphons.

“Leaving a Vale intact—that halves what little power we still possess. And it leaves you with a stronghold. What will we be leaving it to?”

“A Clan like any otherrr,” Hydona replied carefully. “A Clan with perrrhapsss only one thing you do not have, and that isss the trrrained kessstra’cherrrn crraft. But you have bondbirrrdsss that we do not. We have ourrr lazy folk, ourrr ssstupid folk, ourrr occasssional trrroublemakerrr. I think that no one lazy, at leassst, is likely to make the jourrrney—the ssstupid would likely not surrrvive it—and the trroublemakerrr—” she bobbed her head in a gryphonic shrug. “Therrre will alwaysss be thossse. The humanssss, at leassst, are Clansssfolk. We will take any oathssss you rrrrequirrre, and willingly, to have the Vale.”

“I say that this is aid we dare not reject,” Wintermoon said firmly, surprising his brother. “Whatever the cost, ridding us of Falconsbane is worth it.”

“Darkwind, I think that anything you, your brother, and I together supported, the Elders would agree to,” Firesong told him. “But let’s take the advice of the Black Gryphon—that it is easier to beg pardon than gain permission—and go with Treyvan to bring his people through tonight.”

Darkwind wavered for a moment, doubtfully. He would be helping to bring an army into the ragged remains of his own people. Would he destroy them? Or would he save them?

He looked into Treyvan’s soft-edged raptor eyes, and saw there the friend, the surrogate parent, the ever-present, gentle guide.

The one who had put up with having his feathers pulled by a rambunctious small boy—and his crest snatched by a wayward bondbird.

The Vale was full of sunlight and gryphons. Elspeth had never seen anything like it, and the sight took her breath away. Everywhere she looked, there was a gryphon—bathing in a pool, lying along a massive branch or the roof of an ekele, sunbathing on the cliffs around the Vale. Gryphons with colors and markings like peregrines or forestgyres, cooperihawks or goshawks. Gryphons in solid colors of gray, gold, rusty-red. Gryphons with accipiter builds, and gryphons as slim as the lightest of falcons. The only markings they all had in common were patently artificial; the final arm’s length or so of their first six primaries on each wing were white for four hand-spans, then red for another four hand-spans to the tips. Every time a gryphon moved a wing, the flash of red and white caught the eye like a flash of bright light.

And they had arrived hungry. Fortunately, Treyvan and Hydona had explained to all their fellow flyers just what the bondbirds were and that they were not to be eaten. Otherwise there might have been true havoc by now, and a number of damaged Hawkbrothers and gryphons. The poor little hertasi had worked themselves to exhaustion, finding enough to feed all of them, and probably enjoyed every moment of their work. Hydona had promised that after this, they would hunt their own food.

She thought she had never seen anything to match this, not even when the full complement of Heralds and Companions turned out for her mother’s wedding. She would much rather look at the gryphons disporting themselves than at the chaos of arguing Clansmen. She would much rather be doing something about Falconsbane or the Heartstone than either…

She shifted impatiently, and tried to concentrate on the meeting below her. The Council Oak clearing was full and overflowing with every Tayledras who could walk, and all of the newcomers—plus Skif and Nyara, up at the front, but she could scarcely see them past the press of bodies. The people who came with the gryphons had been less of a shock than the gryphons themselves; so much like both the Tayledras and the Shin’a’in that she couldn’t tell any differences, except in speech and a certain uniformity of dress. They had arrived through the Gate bringing with them curious land-boats; like shallow-draft barges, but with pointed prows and places for rudders. These barges were roofed over and equipped with shutters, fitted up inside for sleeping and storage. Luggage, boxes, and bales of goods were piled upon the roofs and lashed down, and they floated above the ground at about knee-height.

Elspeth had thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head when those came through the Veil. She was secretly relieved to find that the Tayledras were equally astonished by the “floating barges;” it made her feel less like a country cousin. Forsaking his place with the Elders, Iceshadow had latched onto one of the mage-pilots of the peculiar constructions, and both of them were whispering to each other even now, ignoring the arguments. She had the feeling that they were planning to spend those waking moments not devoted to moving the proto-Gate to explanations of how the barges were enchanted and worked, and how Heartstones were created and functioned.

The full Clan immediately went into session on demand of a minority of Tayledras who were outraged over this violation of their territory. Wintermoon turned out, surprisingly enough, to be the steadiest voice of reason, reminding the contenders, over and over, that these “Outlanders” were Tayledras—or rather, the Hawkbrothers were Kaled’a’in, and that the coming of those of their own blood could hardly be counted as invasion. Elspeth wished that she could have left him to this thankless task, but she was a member of the Clan, and she had to be there, like every other member of the Clan.

There are several other things my time could be spent more profitably on. Wintermoon could probably wear them down into consent within a day or two, with sheer persistence, with or without her help. I wish they’d simply give up and let the rest of us deal with them later, after things have been settled. Dear gods, this is like having an argument over precedence on the eve of a battle!

She had been here since sunrise, perched on a shoulder-high tree branch at the back of the mob, and she hadn’t heard any variation in the arguments. She stifled a yawn and looked down, catching the amused eyes of Firesong and his new friend, and the shrug of the former.

Firesong was particularly taken by a young man who was supposed to be a kestra’chern, whatever that was, and who had offered to teach him some of the craft when there was time. “I think you would have a talent for it,” Silverfox had said, with a hint of some kind of innuendo that she couldn’t read. “You are a Healing Adept, after all—it would be a useful skill to have.”

Well, that meant that Firesong was not going to be thinking about Darkwind. Not with the lithe and graceful Silverfox, he of the knowing blue eyes and ankle-length ebony hair, giving silent invitations Firesong seemed to find irresistible. And that was just fine with her.

That left one less thing for both Darkwind and herself to worry about, and they certainly had enough on their hands right now. Even without the contention within the Clan.

A stir of activity near the Elders’ seats caught her eye; she was too far away to see what was going on, but there was certainly something happening besides the dreary old arguments.

She sent a silent inquiry to Gwena, who was somewhere on the edge of the clearing, but her Companion sent back a wordless negative. Gwena couldn’t see anything either.

She narrowed her eyes and peered carefully through the screening of branches and bodies. There was someone coming into the Council Oak clearing from outside—

She craned her neck to see, bracing her hands against the branch, and jumped when someone grabbed her wrist. She looked down to find Darkwind tugging her, indicating she should jump down into his arms. “They are calling for us,” he said. “The Shin’a’in have arrived.”

But she obeyed; she jumped and he caught her waist, easing her to the ground with that carefully controlled strength that she never noticed until he did something like this. Together they wound their way through the crowd to the front, where the Elders sat.

As they broke through the final group of Tayledras screening her from the Elders’ circle, she stifled a start of surprise. There was old Kra’heera—but with him were six other Shin’a’in—Shin’a’in of a kind she had seen only twice before. Shin’a’in of the kind called “Swordsworn.”

They crowded in behind Kra’heera, black-clad, some veiled, some not, leading night-black horses. And the veiled ones seemed to shimmer with power, as if they were not quite of this world.

:So we are not,: said a voice in her head, and she stifled another start. One set of ice-blue eyes over a black veil caught her attention; one of those eyes winked, slowly, and deliberately. :Be at peace, little sister-in-power, student of my student.:

“Of course we have known of the coming of the Kaled’a’in,” Kra’heera was saying impatiently. The faces of the Elders remained inscrutable, but there was no doubting the surprise and consternation in the expressions of those who had been arguing against permitting the Kaled’a’in to remain. “She told us they were coming, and bid us find a place for them on the Plains, if they could not find one here, or chose not to dwell here. We did not expect them to come so soon, or we would have told you long before they arrived.” He turned to fix one of the Kaled’a’in spokesmen with an acidic glare. “You were not supposed to arrive until midsummer!”

“She told you?” one of the most ardent opponents said to Kra’heera, feebly.

“We are here to stand as proof of Her word,” one of the veiled ones said, in a strange voice that sounded as if it was coming from the bottom of a well. “Although we are not wont to appear to any save our own. She sent us to prove to you doubters that She approves. Unless you choose to doubt us as well.”

The Tayledras in question paled, and shook his head. Kra’heera snorted, and turned back to the Council. “We have been doing what we can, within the limits of Her decree and our own resources, to give you help with your troubles,” he told them, sharply. “So, I think it little enough to grant our brothers their request, given that they will help us all deal with this Great Beast, our enemy! And so, too, does She think!”

Skif, who was standing near Starblade with Nyara at his hand, blinked, as if he had suddenly realized something. “Now I know where I saw you!” he said to one of the black-clad Shin’a’in. “Not just at the ruins—you were out in the forest, when we were hunting for Nyara!”

The Shin’a’in shrugged. “Some of us,” she said. “Two or three. Keeping an eye on our younger sister, as She asked us to, so that we could vouch for her to you as well. The rest—” she chuckled. “The rest of us have been sending the Falconsbane little trinkets, and harassing his borders, to keep his mind puzzling over things with no meaning, and to distract him from your doings as much as we could.”

:It is no coincidence that we are black riders upon black horses, little sister,: said the voice in her head again. :The Falconsbane knows of your enemy to the north and east—knows that you and yours are white riders. We simply counterfeited something he would expect if that enemy of yours were courting or challenging him; gave him something to think upon, a dangling carrot, as it were, with as many misdirections as we could manage.:

Elspeth stuffed her hand in her mouth to keep from giggling with a kind of giddy relief. The Shin’a’in had been teasing and tormenting Falconsbane. No wonder they’d been able to do as much as they had been! No wonder it seemed as if Falconsbane’s attention was divided! She wondered why they’d been doing this, but whys didn’t really matter at the moment, only that they had.

She turned her attention back to the Council meeting, but after that, there was very little debate—and a great deal of constructive planning.

The plan was set; they were about to put it into motion. While most of the gryphons frolicked in the Vale, and barbarically beautiful Kaled’a’in occupied the attentions of most of k’Sheyna, the Council of Elders had already listened to and given consent to what the little “war council” had put together. Surely Selenay would have had a fit if she’d known what her daughter’s part in this was to be. Thank all the gods that Gwena had decided to keep discreetly silent on the subject, telling Rolan only that Elspeth’s studies “continued.”

The gryphons—those dozen or so of the wing of thirty that were full mages, at any rate—were going to solve one problem for them. With seven pairs making the rounds of Falconsbane’s web of power, the work of weakening his power-threads should be done between sunset and sunrise, easily. Under the cover of darkness, they were less likely to be spotted from below.

Nyara was going to be the arrow striking for Falconsbane’s heart. That was a task Elspeth did not envy her, and she could not imagine how the Changechild managed to be so calm about it. Perhaps it was Need’s steadying effect. Perhaps it was because she knew that if she betrayed any nervousness, Skif would probably fall to pieces.

Meanwhile, as Nyara crept closer and closer to her father’s stronghold, she and Darkwind got to play target to distract him, if they could. The Shin’a’in could no longer play that role; he had started to look for them, and had laid traps for them that would catch them. They had no magic to disarm those traps, not as Darkwind and Elspeth had. The leshya’e Kal’enedral would be occupied in another way; helping Kra’heera and Kethra, confusing Falconsbane’s FarSight and FarVision spells with their shamanic magic, so that he would not See the newcomers to the Vale, and the special energies of all the new mages there. That was vital to their purposes; if Falconsbane had any idea who and what had arrived to augment the powers of k’Sheyna, he would not hesitate, he would throw everything at them that he had, knowing their massed power could take him. Even with the help of the Kaled’a’in, there was no one in all of the new Council who thought the Vale and the three peoples there would survive that unscathed.

So Darkwind and Elspeth were on their own in supplying a needed distraction. Without distractions, Falconsbane might well notice the gryphons, Nyara, or both. If he noticed them—

With Need’s help, she had fashioned a blade that would counterfeit Need at a distance. It had no real power whatsoever—like the sword meant to select the rulers of Rethwellan, all it did was burn mage-energy in a spectacular fashion, radiating power to anyone with Mage-Sight. Gwena would supply the energy for that blade. Elspeth would go imperfectly shielded, at least on the surface, looking as ill-trained as possible. Darkwind would simply be himself. That alone should bring Falconsbane down on them.

They would ride north and west, skirting the edge of what was probably Falconsbane’s territory, as if they were heading in search of something. Any time they met with one of the enemy’s traps, they would destroy it. Any time they found one of his power-sinks, they would drain it. Meanwhile Firesong and the Kaled’a’in mages would be moving the proto-Gate, but with none of the speed they were capable of.

Darkwind hoped that Falconsbane would assume the obvious—that they were trying to distract him from diverting the proto-Gate—and therefore he would not look for something else they were distracting him from.

“I really ought to be used to playing target by now,” she said, as she tightened Gwena’s girth and prepared to ride out into the snow and cold with Darkwind. They looked like a pair of fancy-dress Heralds, the two of them; he wore winter scout gear, which was just as white as any Herald’s uniform, and she had finally pried her Whites out of the grip of the disapproving hertasi. Gwena was champing at her nonexistent bit, ready to go—and Darkwind was going to be riding Firesong’s very dear friend, the dyheli-mage, Brytha.

What was even more amazing than a dyheli-mage, was the fact that Brytha had instantly volunteered for this, before Darkwind could ask any of the other stags to carry him.

:I am not much of mage,: Brytha had said, in the stilted thought-forms of his kind. :I channel power, like Companion. I channel to you; you are less tired, then.:

No one could deny the truth of that; any power that could be given to Darkwind without effort on his part increased his stamina tremendously. But now Elspeth knew why Brytha was white—and why Firesong could accomplish some of the incredible things he’d already done. With that extra reserve of power available, one Healing Adept could act like two, or even three.

That was the edge they had needed to turn this from suicidal to merely horribly dangerous, in Elspeth’s opinion. Or at least, to less suicidal.

“I suppose you should be used to being a target, in those ‘here I am, please, shoot me,’ uniforms you wear,” he replied with a grin, carefully tightening Brytha’s girth.

“Not you, too,” she complained. “Kero calls them the ‘oh, shoot me now’ uniforms. There are perfectly good reasons why we wear white!”

“I like you better in colors,” he said simply and reached out to touch her hand, briefly but gently. “They suit your quiet beauty. White only makes you look remote. An ice-princess. Your spirit is brighter even than my best scarlet.”

She flushed and hung her head to cover it. “Thank you,” she replied carefully. Slowly, she was learning to accept his compliments without any of the doubt she’d have had if they had come from anyone else. And for a moment, she was back in his ekele in memory, surrounded by color and soft silk, warmth and admiration.

Then she shook off the memory. For now, all that was important was the task ahead of them. And for that task, she could not have asked for a better partner than the one she had now. Should they come out of this well enough, they would celebrate in the ekele again, in a similar way.

She mounted up; he followed a moment later, and looked into her eyes. She nodded, and he took the lead, riding out through the Veil and into the quiet cold and the snow.

Treyvan launched himself into the wind, his wings spreading wide to catch the updraft, spiraling higher above the Vale with every wingbeat. Behind and below him, Hydona echoed his launch, and once she reached height, the others followed. It was good to see other gryphons taking to the air again; better still to know that they were here to stay. Counting himself and Hydona, there were thirty-two gryphons in the Vale now, a full wing. The little ones would have many teachers, and doubtless there would be playmates for them before too long. The gryphons who had volunteered for this settlement were all paired, and the balmy temperatures of the Vale had sent several of the pairs into pre-courting. It should be very interesting to see the effect on the Tayledras if they had not moved by the time the true courting began…

They all knew what they were to do. Seven were to go to the south, seven to the north. The web of power gleamed to their inner sight, seen from far above the world; a construction of entirely artificial lines of energy and their anchors, overlaying the natural ley-lines and often conflicting with them. Not exactly a web in shape, only the power-poles were connecting-points. That was what held the whole construction stable—it was all that held the whole construction stable.

That would be to their benefit and Falconsbane’s detriment. Anything that ran counter to the earth’s own ways was subject to extreme stress. Maintaining this web would be much like flying against a headwind. The moment the pressure was released, the entire construction would implode.

The swiftest of the gryphons, two of nearly pure gyrfalcon lineage, would take the farthest points on the web—those two were not Treyvan and Hydona, but a much younger pair, Reaycha and Talsheena. Treyvan and Hydona, as senior mages, would take the nearest points, but they would take more of them, making up in work what they were not putting into flight time. All had agreed that this was the fairest way of apportioning the work; since the time of Skandranon, nothing was decreed within a gryphon wing without a majority consenting to it.

The two older gryphons held the middle heights, providing a marker point for the others to use to orient themselves. It was a moonless night, and on such nights, despite mage-enhanced night-sight, distances were often deceptive.

The first pair gained height above Treyvan and his mate, and shot off, barely visible against the swiftly darkening sky, heading southwest and northwest. Then the second pair gained altitude and took to the sky-trail—then the third—

Finally, only he and Hydona were left, gliding in lazy circles on the Vale-generated thermal. The sky was entirely dark now, with wisps of cloud occluding the stars, and a crisp breeze coming up from below. A good night for a flight.

:Well, my fine-crested lover,: she said, her mind-voice a warm purring in the back of his mind, :are you prepared to enchant me with some fancy flying?:

:Ever so, my love,: he replied, and drove his wings in powerful beats that sent him surging upward and outward, as she did the same. He glanced at her, and felt the familiar warmth of love and lust heating him as she showed her strength and beauty, angling against the wind. :We shall meet at dawn!:

Nyara also left at sunset, riding dyheli-back. She had not expected that boon, but the dyheli themselves had insisted on it. Her partner for this first part of the journey, until the moment that she must go on afoot, was a young female, Lareen. Fresh and strong, she promised laughingly that she could keep her rider well out of any trouble by strength and speed alone. That suited Nyara perfectly; she had no wish for any kind of a confrontation—it would be far better to reach the borders of Falconsbane’s territory without anyone ever getting so much as a glimpse of her.

She had thought that this would be the worst moment of the journey, for Skif had been stiff and silent all during the Council meeting, and she feared he would remain so during the ride. She had not been looking forward to spending what might be their last hours together aching with the weight of his disapproval.

But instead, once the meeting was over, he had taken her aside where no one could overhear them. Except for Need, of course, for the sword had not left her side except for sleep; but the sword had remained silent, and he had ignored the blade entirely.

“Nyara,” he had begun, then faltered for a moment, as he looked into her eyes and gripped her shoulders with hands that shook with tension. His usually expressive face had been so full of anxiety that it had become a kind of mask.

She had remained silent, unsure of what to say, only watching him steadfastly. Should she break the silence? Or would that only make things worse?

He had stared at her as if he thought she would vanish or flee with the first word. “Nyara, you know I don’t like what they’re asking you to do,” he said, finally. His voice was hoarse, as if he were forcing the words out over some kind of internal barrier.

She had stared deeply into his eyes, dark with emotions she could not read, and fear (which she could), and nodded slowly, still holding her peace.

“But I also won’t deny the fact that—that you have a right to do anything you want, and you’re capable of doing it. And I won’t deny you the chance to do what you think is right, what you have to do. You’re your own person, and if I tried to stop you, tried to manipulate you by telling you I love you, which I do, absolutely, completely—” He shook his head with a helpless desperation, his eyes never once leaving hers, a frantic plea for understanding in his gaze. “I won’t do that to you, I won’t manipulate you. Please, understand, I don’t like this, but I won’t stop you, because I know it’s something you have to do.”

She had reached up to touch his cheek gently, a lump born of mingled emotions briefly stopping her voice. Then she had smiled and said lightly, “But I think you have also learned the futility of trying to stop someone who is set on a course from dealing with Elspeth. Yes?”

Her attempt at lightening the mood had worked. He had growled a little, but a tiny smile crept onto his lips, and a little of the worry eased from his face. “Yes. Minx. You would remind me of that, wouldn’t you?” She had sighed as he relaxed his grip on her shoulders and had moved forward so that he could hold her—which is what she had wanted him to do, with equal desperation, ever since this morning.

For a long time they simply stood together, holding each other, taking comfort from each other’s warmth and nearness. “I think what I hate the most is not what you’re doing, but that I can’t be with you,” he had said, finally, his arms tightening around her. “I feel so damned helpless. I hate feeling helpless.”

“We all hate feeling helpless,” she had reminded him. Well, so they did, and she was not feeling less helpless than he, though for different reasons.

Her eyes adjusted to the growing darkness as they rode out into the snow, following, for a while, the tracks of Darkwind and Elspeth. The clean, cold air felt very good on her face; in fact, if their situation had not been so tense, she would have enjoyed this. She had discovered out in her tower that she enjoyed the winter, even with all the hardships she had endured once the weather had turned cold. Now she was adequately clothed for winter in Tayledras scout gear; now she was riding upon the back of a creature built for striding through snow, rather than forcing her own way through the drifts. This was winter taken with pure pleasure.

But tension had her stomach in such sour knots that she had not been able to eat much; her back and shoulders were knotted with anxiety, and she was terribly aware of the burden of the sword at her side and what it meant. Need was cloaking her, presumably, as well as itself, but she absolutely required that cloaking, and she would require every bit of her mentor’s skill and learning to come through this alive.

The alarms and traps should not react to me, she told herself, once again. Father has been otherwise occupied. In no way would he ever expect me to return to him of my own will after attacking him and betraying him. Surely he will not have tampered with the defenses since I left him last. He has been beset by the Shin’a’in, launching his own attacks—when has he had time to reset them? Once I leave Skif and Wintermoon at the border, there should be no difficulty in getting within the territory or the stronghold—

—so why am I as frightened as a rabbit walking into the den of a Changelion?

She shivered, though not with cold, and touched the hilt of the sword unconsciously.

:I’m here, little one,: the sword said calmly. :I’m screening us both for all I’m worth. You can do this; I trained you, and I know.:

Some of the sword’s calm confidence seeped into her own soul and eased the cramps in muscles and stomach. There was no point in getting so knotted up that she would accomplish nothing, after all. No point in worrying until it was time to worry.

The trail widened at that point, and Skif rode up beside her; she turned to smile at him, but it was so dark that although she could see his face, she doubted that he could see hers.

:We should talk like this, Wintermoon says,: came his mind-voice deep inside her head. Although she had never heard it, she knew it for his and it gave her unexpected comfort, like feeling his hand holding and steadying her. :I’m not—very good at it, I should warn you. Have to be this close to you.:

:I will—try,: she replied the same way, stumbling a little despite her practice with Need. Her father had never spoken mind-to-mind with her; he had only used his mind to coerce her, and to hurt her.

:You’d like Valdemar, I think,: he said unexpectedly. :Especially the hills in the south. They’re very beautiful in the winter. You’d probably like the Forest of Sorrows, too; that’s way in the north. There are mountains up there so tall that some of them have never been climbed.:

She Saw the image of the mountains, and the forest at their feet, in his mind; saw it drowsing in the heat of summer, alive with birds in the spring, cloaked in flame in the fall, and sleeping beneath a blanket of snow in winter. :Why so sad a name?: she asked.

:Oh—that’s because of Vanyel,: he replied, and told her the tale, embellished with images out of his own experiences and imagination. That tale led to another—and another—and soon it was midnight and time to stop for a bit of a rest and a chance to check their bearings against the stars.

Wintermoon oriented himself; she and Skif dismounted and walked a short distance. :This—being a Herald, I do not understand,: she told him, as he held her within the warmth of his arms and coat, and they waited for Wintermoon’s two bondbirds to report with their findings.

:Sometimes I don’t understand it either,: he admitted. :I suppose the closest I can come is to say that it’s something I have to do—just as what we’re doing now is something you have to do. But what I do is not because of hate, or anger, or the feeling that I owe it to anyone.:

She moved her cheek against his chest and closed her eyes. :Then why?: she asked simply, longing, suddenly, to understand.

:Would it sound entirely stupid to say that it was out of love?: he asked. :That’s not the whole of it; that’s not even the largest part, but it’s the start.:

She waited, patiently, for the rest of the answer, and it came, in bits and pieces. They were pieces that did not yet fall together to make a whole, but like the pieces of a mirror they reflected bits of him that made her see him a little more clearly. When one assembled a broken mirror, one could still discern an image…

Some of his reason was gratitude—the Heralds had literally saved his life and given him something like a real family. That revelation made her feel kinship and a bitter envy; she had known only brief affection and never any sense of real family. She had, now and again, spied upon the lesser creatures of her father’s stronghold with wonder and jealousy. She had seen fathers who caressed their children with nothing ever coming of those caresses but care; she had seen children greeting their fathers with joy and not fear. And she had seen that strange and wondrous creature, a mother… a creature that could and would die to save the offspring she had given life to. A creature that gave life and love without asking for anything other than love in return—no matter what the child became, no matter what darkness it turned to.

She suppressed another surge of envy. To have that kind of love—what did he need from her?

Somehow he sensed that doubt, and answered it. Not with words, though; with feeling, feelings that she could not possibly doubt. In her mind, he held her close and warmed her.

Their peaceful reverie was broken by his Companion, who stole up beside them and nudged his shoulder. He turned to her after a moment of silent dialogue.

:Cymry says that Elspeth and Darkwind have managed to attract some attention by springing a trap. She doesn’t think Falconsbane is personally involved yet, but now would be a good time to move on while his guards are occupied with trying to catch them.:

The moment passed, but something of it remained. She examined herself carefully, trying to figure out exactly what it was, and finally gave it up.

The terrain became uneasily familiar, and she felt that cold fear rising up her spine and chilling her throat. Soon now—soon. The first of the border-protections was not that far from here; soon she would have to dismount, shed cloak and coat, and key herself up to the point where she could ignore pain and exhaustion, and run like one of the dyheli herself.

:Alone, like bloody hell,: the sword snorted scornfully. :What am I, an old tin pot?:

The image that Need sent to her, of Nyara wielding a tin pot against fearful guards, made her smother a giggle, and completely dispelled the fear. Of course she wasn’t alone! She had Need beside her, Skif behind her—she would never really be alone again!

And somehow, she did, as she and Skif followed Wintermoon deeper into the forest, past the valley where the dyheli herd had been caught by one of her father’s traps so long ago, closer to the border and the first of the barriers that she must cross.

Elspeth had been feeling eyes on the back of her neck for the past league and more, ever since they had sprung the trap meant for a bondbird. A particularly nasty thing, Brytha had spotted it and had alerted them to the fact that there were both physical and magical defenses in the trees as well as on the ground. If Vree had encountered such a thing unprepared, it would certainly have caught and hurt him and might well have killed him. But then, Falconsbane was well aware that harming the bondbird meant harming its bondmate.

The night-shrouded forest had held plenty of traps, not all of them Falconsbane’s. Rocks and roots lurked beneath the snow, to trip even the wariest. Shadows could hide anything—or nothing. Elspeth’s night-sight was not of the best, and she was forced to rely on Gwena’s physical senses entirely—although, truthfully, that meant she could devote most of her attention to her mage-senses, spying out trouble.

Trouble there was, right enough, and it increased the closer they got to Falconsbane’s lands. Alarms, and more traps, some meant to hold, and some meant to kill. Places where Falconsbane’s underlings had simply left things to trip up the unwary, to make them delay. Nothing living, though; Elspeth was not sure if that was a good or bad sign.

Now, with the gray light of dawn creeping over the forest and Vree scouting overhead, she was so tense with anxiety that she felt like a spring too tightly wound—and would have been starting at every little sound, if she had not held herself under careful control. This was the first time she, personally, had played decoy—the Heir to the Throne of Valdemar was far too important to risk as a decoy or bait—and now she knew how Kero and the Skybolts had felt when they were playing this little game.

I can’t show I know we’re in danger, or we stop being such attractive targets…

If everything was going according to plan, the gryphons would be completing their task if they had not already done so. Nyara would be deep inside her father’s stronghold. And very soon they would be free to sprint back for the shelter of the Vale and the protections of a Vale full of mages and Adepts.

Nyara was already inside her father’s lands, if not his stronghold; Skif had relayed that via Cymry just past midnight. He and Wintermoon had seen her safely past the first line of defenses, and had gone to the rally-point, the place she would reach if she could when this was all over. But there was no way of knowing how far she was at this point.

Please, whatever gods there be—Star-Eyed, Kernos, Astera, whatever you call yourselves—let us all come through this with bodies and minds and hearts intact—

Elspeth was exhausted and getting wearier with every passing moment; this business of springing traps was not as easy as it had sounded. Yes, they could use the power of the ley-lines to augment their own—when they could reach them. Some of Falconsbane’s own lines overlaid the natural ones, rendering them inaccessible. And some of the lines were protected against meddling by Falconsbane’s own power. No, nothing was as simple as it had sounded when they first made this plan, and it had not truly seemed all that simple then!

She caught Darkwind’s eye; he smiled at her, but it seemed more than a little strained.

:He’s in about the same shape you are,: Gwena said gently. :And your imagination is not acting up. You are being watched. Imperfectly—the Shin’a’in are doing what they can—but Falconsbane knows you’re here and he knows who you are. :

Well, that was the object of this little excursion, wasn’t it? To take the attention off of Nyara and the gryphons? Nevertheless, she felt a chill run up her back as the feeling of being watched increased, and the malevolence behind the watching “eyes” made itself felt.

:Vree says the gryphons are done!: Darkwind exulted, suddenly. :The last line is loose!:

Distance-Mindspeech was a hazard around Falconsbane—the kind he was watching for, at any rate. But they had something he didn’t; the gryphons Mindspoke to Vree, and he in turn to Darkwind—and all at a level it was doubtful Falconsbane was even aware of, much less could eavesdrop upon.

She and Gwena turned, following Darkwind’s lead as if they had decided they had come far enough on an ordinary patrol, and were turning back.

Ice crawled up her spine, her stomach was one huge knot of fear and nausea, and she kept looking out of the corners of her eyes for the first signs that Falconsbane was going to attack. We can’t run. If we run, he’ll chase us. We can’t hold him off if he goes all-out against us. So we have to look as if we’re just changing directions, and hope that he doesn’t lose interest…

Huh. Better hope that he doesn’t decide he’s not going to let us slip away when he realizes we’re headed away from him!

If only they had some such bond with Nyara. She licked lips gone dry with a tongue just as dry with fear, and felt her stomach tighten a little more.

Nyara crept along the dusty passages between the walls of her father’s stronghold, moving as quietly as only she could. In this, she was her father’s superior; he had never mastered the art of moving without noise, without even the sound of a breath. Then again, he had never had need to. He had never had anyone to fear or avoid.

Not like a certain small girl, who had huddled for hours in these passageways to avoid him—to avoid what he had in store for her.

She felt fear starting to cramp her stomach, and sternly told it to relax. Deep breaths. Slowly. Tension brings mistakes; fear is his weapon.

She was glad of the dust, for all that it might have choked her, had she not come prepared for it. She breathed through a silken cloth wrapped closely around nose and mouth; slowly, evenly, taking each step only after testing the surface before her. The dust meant that no one had walked this passage since she had last been here—and that had been years. The last time—certainly it had been two years or more. The last time she had been here was long before she had even dreamed of escape from her father’s power. And then it had taken a year of planning before she dared to try.

How bitter it had been to learn that the attempt had been watched and planned by Falconsbane all along…

That thought plays into his hands again. No, Nyara; once you were free of him, you did things he had never anticipated you would. You won free of him. You turned his own plan against him. Surely it is he who tastes bitterness now.

She put that old disappointment behind her, throttled her fear again, and concentrated completely on setting each foot down carefully, noiselessly. At the moment, this was the only thing in the universe that was important. What was past could not be changed; the future lay beyond this passageway. This was all that she controlled, this moment of now, and she must control it completely…

So far, Need had detected no alarms or traps in this passageway itself. Perhaps her father did not feel he needed any. Perhaps he trusted in the narrowness of the passage to keep anything of real danger out of it. Certainly it was much too small to permit the movement of an armed man.

But not too small for one small, slender female, armed with only the sword that she kept out and pointed into the darkness before her.

Thirty steps from here was her goal; her father’s study. One of his workrooms; it lay in a suite in the heart of his stronghold, the heart of his power. There was an entrance into this passage from that room; behind a tapestry at the farther end, through the back of a wooden wardrobe that Falconsbane kept some of his special garments in. He knew all about it, of course, for he had built it—but because he knew about it, she did not think he ever thought about it anymore. The passage and the entrance had been there since before she was born, and no one that he knew of had ever used it but him in all that time. If she was very lucky, he might assume that since no one ever had, no one ever would.

:He’s ahead up there,: Need cautioned. :In the suite. No one but him, and he’s busy.:

:Don’t worry about that, kitten. I’m praying enough for both of us. And I’m an expert at it.:

Elspeth sensed something change, like the sharpness in the air before lightning strikes. Alarm shrilled along her nerves, and every hair on her body stood on end. A bitter, metallic taste filled her throat. Gwena snorted and froze where she stood, sensing it as well—Darkwind and Brytha beside them did the same at the same moment. They were no longer being watched…

:Shields!: Darkwind cried. He stuck out his hand, blindly, as they had planned if it came to this; she linked to Gwena and caught his hand, and with it, his link. He was better at shielding; she flung her power to him, taking whatever Gwena could pour into her.

She sensed the blow coming and cringed over Gwena’s neck; he met the blow with one of his own—a defense of offense, something she hadn’t even thought of.

The two bolts of power met over their heads in a silent explosion of power and a shower of very physical sparks that landed in the snow all around him, sizzling and melting the drifts wherever they landed. He took the moment to weave a hasty shield about them both, but it had none of the layering or complexity he needed.

The next bolt came, splashing and burning against the shield, scorching it half away and blinding her. Physically, as well as in Mage-Sight. A thunderclap of sound deafened her in the next instant. They hadn’t had enough time—they hadn’t known Falconsbane could strike like this.

Where did he get all that power? Falconsbane should have been wounded, should have been at less power than he’d had before, not more.

Or unless he had ruthlessly sacrificed many of his underlings, building a network of death-energies stronger than anything they had. Or unless he’d found an ally somewhere…?

Darkwind couldn’t shield all of them; the group was just too big. He reinforced where the shield had burned away, and this time she aided him, weaving light and snow-glare into a dazzle, trying to recreate the kind of shielding they had learned to make in the safety of the Vale.

But Falconsbane was keeping them both off-balance, destroying the rhythm of their dance of power with sheer, brute force. He controlled the situation now; it was his land they walked on, and the land held energy away from them. She whimpered in sudden pain as a lick of flame burned through and across her hand, the hand that held Darkwind’s—but she would not let go, not even if she died in the next moment. Instead, she kneed Gwena closer to Brytha, until their legs were half-crushed between the two mounts to make the physical gap between them smaller. She closed her eyes and sheltered against Darkwind’s back, sweat of fear and exertion running down her back under her coat, feeling him tremble with strain.

Falconsbane did not let up, not even for a heartbeat. Blow after blow rained down on them, driving all sense from her, until the last of the shields eroded, and they clung together, waiting for the strike that would take them both.

Like two golden streaks of light, the two gryphons plummeted down from above. They crashed through the thin lace of branches, ending their dive barely above the ground, and pulling up with wingbeats that sent the snow spraying in all directions. Both screamed again, an unmistakable note of taunting in their voices, as they plunged upward through the tree canopy.

“Run!” Darkwind found his voice. “Run! They’ve made targets out of themselves. If we give him too many to choose from, we may all get away!”

Brytha broke from his paralysis and hurled himself down their backtrail. Gwena followed a moment later, but not directly behind, making herself and Elspeth into yet another target to track on. Above the interlace of bare branches, Hydona and Treyvan had separated as well, sky dancing as if they were courting—but far enough apart that Falconsbane would have to make a choice of victims. Four targets…

When the two young fools rode along the edge of his territory, at first Falconsbane could not believe the testimony of his own senses. It must be an illusion, he thought at first. It is meant to distract me. But the closer the pair came, the clearer they were, despite the best attempts of—whatever it was—that was trying to cloud his scrying. Between midnight and dawn, he knew that the pair were something more than they seemed. By false dawn he knew that one of them was the young Outland woman he had wanted so badly to take for his own. By true dawn, he knew that the other was the fool called Darkwind, and that the girl still carried her artifact.

He had not lived this long by neglecting an opportunity when it was given to him. And he would not botch this chance by holding back, or making testing feints.

There was no point in being prudent or cautious now! Not with this prize in his grasp! He rained blow after blow upon them, heedless of the expenditure of power, heedless of anything about him. Elation held him like a powerful drug, making him laugh aloud with every shred of shielding burned away, giving him an elation he had not felt in decades. He held his arms high and power crackled between his hands, power from his network made of the death-energies of his mages. He was draining that network, but it did not matter, for in moments he would have her, and the Bird-Fool’s power as well, and there would be nothing standing in the way of his revenge and his glory.

The sight of them in his scrying bowl struck like a physical blow, driving the breath from him.

They dove down out of nowhere, interposing themselves between him and his quarry; taunting him, flaunting themselves at him, flying as if they thought agility alone would protect them.

He snarled with overwhelming rage. How dare they step between him and his prey?

Anger and hatred filled him, granted him a strength far beyond anything he normally possessed. They thought to confuse him, did they? They thought he could only strike one of them at a time.

They would learn differently—in the few heartbeats it took for all of them to die!

He gathered his powers—readied the blast to destroy that entire section of his borderlands—

There is no future. There is no past. There is only now, and the target. There is no fear. There is only balance. There is only myself and the task.

She slipped through the false wall in the back of the wardrobe and slid soundlessly into the room. Her eyes focused quickly as she swept them from left to right, once, to orient herself.

She took two steps, raising Need high over her head to give additional momentum to her swing—

And brought the mage-blade down squarely on the huge crystal-cluster that Mornelithe Falconsbane had invested and anchored with all of his power—a crystal that cried out to her of death and pain, and even now was glowing with internal fires of red and angry yellow as he drew upon it—

—out of the pain, the void, rushing upon him like the open mouth of a giant to devour him—

Elspeth picked herself up out of the huge drift of snow she had landed in, slowly. One moment they had been running for their lives, and the next—

She scrambled to her feet, flailing in the deep snow, trying to get herself turned around.

:It’s—all right. I’m fine. Mostly.: Elspeth stopped trying to flail her way out of the snow and relaxed.

Thank the gods. Oh, thank the gods. Although Gwena’s mind-voice sounded—odd. As if—

:I feel as if I have a hangover,: the Companion replied. :I—think I may be sick.: The overtones of nausea that came with the thoughts almost pushed Elspeth into sickness herself.

She got herself back to her feet and turned around, her head pounding, her stomach heaving along with Gwena’s. The Companion was on her knees in another snowdrift, sides heaving as her breath hissed between clenched teeth.

:I will—never again—mock you—when you are—wine-sick,: Gwena managed, closing her eyes as if the sun hurt her.

Elspeth staggered to her side. “Eat some snow,” she urged, holding a handful up to Gwena’s muzzle. “Do it; I think this might be reaction-sickness, and eating snow will help.”

:If you—think so—: Gwena opened her jaws gingerly and accepted a bite of snow, swallowing it quickly. The nausea subsided, and she took another bite. :That helps. Thank you.:

“It’s not going to help the headache though,” Elspeth warned, squinting against the pain in her own head. We’re all alive, I think—

A shadow loomed beside her; Darkwind, leaning on Brytha. He smiled wanly, and the joy that flooded her almost made her forget her pounding head. She would have jumped up, if she could; as it was, he simply let go of Brytha’s shoulder and fell into her arms.

“What happened?” she asked, holding him, being held, and ignoring the chill of the snow penetrating her clothing.

“I think he must have had something ready to hit us with when Nyara destroyed his focus,” Darkwind replied unsteadily. “Most of it aborted, but there was enough left to knock us all head-over-hind. I hope Treyvan and Hydona—”

:Were out of range, thank you.: The hearty mind-voice made her wince, and snow blew up in all directions as the gryphon backwinged to a landing. “Arrre you unwell, childrrren?” he continued, folding his wings and cocking his head to one side. Vree landed beside him, imitating his pose in a way that would have been funny if Elspeth’s head had not hurt so much.

And not only her head. It felt rather as if someone had been beating her with blunt clubs all over her body.

“I sssee,” the gryphon said, although none of them had replied. “Wait a moment.”

He walked over to a little sheltered area amid a cluster of bushes. Within a few moments, he had the earth scraped bare and overlaid with pine boughs. “Herrre. I have made you a nessst,” he said, turning back to them. “Go and wait therrre, all of you. I ssshall brrring back sssome help. Meanwhile, eat ssssnow.”

With that, he launched himself into the air again, vanishing into the bright sky in a few wingbeats.

“I can’t go any further,” he replied. “And Brytha’s not feeling much better than Gwena. Let’s let someone else take charge for a change.”

“Good idea,” she replied, and the four of them collapsed together into the “nest” that Treyvan had made, to share the heat of their bodies and await their rescuers.

Nyara prowled the complex of three rooms, study, library, and workroom, and found only the destruction of a whirlwind in the workroom; Need went quiet for a moment.

:He was here. Kitten, this was mad; he meant to anchor the proto-Gate partially in himself. He’s gone now—pulled right into the void, along with half of the stuff in this room.:

She shivered and started back to the hidden passageway. The sound of people murmuring on the other side of the door made her hurry her steps. They might welcome her as savior—but more likely, they’d welcome her with the points of blades. Mornelithe’s servants were steeped in suspicion and fear. Time to go. :You did great, kitten. I was impressed.:

The Vale had never looked better, and Elspeth felt as if she would like to drink tea and stay in bed for a week. The tea she got, but she wasn’t allowed to seek her bed yet. There were a number of people waiting for all of them, chiefest of whom was Firesong.

Firesong actually looked chagrined. Elspeth had never seen that particular expression on his face before and had not ever thought that she would.

“I have some strange news,” he said, as she sipped the tea that was slowly dulling her headache to a bearable level. She looked at Darkwind, who only shrugged and accepted another mug from the Healing Adept.

“I’m beginning to think that’s the only kind of news we ever have around here,” she said dryly, pulling her blanket a little closer.

Firesong sat back on his heels, and shrugged. “This is—news that will probably not please most of k’Sheyna,” he opined. “It is concerning the proto-Gate. It did not settle where I intended. It was pulled away—very strongly.”

“Not Falconsba—” Elspeth exclaimed, alarmed, when he interrupted her with a shake of his head.

“Nay. But it also did not go to the new k’Sheyna Heartstone.” He sighed, and shook his head. “I am at a loss to explain this. It has gone east and north. Far east and north.” He looked up at her from under long white eyelashes. “To your land, to be precise.”

She blinked, feeling suddenly very stupid. Was there something here she was missing? “Valdemar?” she replied. “But—why? How?”

“Better to ask, who,” Firesong replied, standing up again. “There was a force came out of the north, at the moment of backlash. It used the force of backlash to snatch the power-point out of our hands, and when all was done, it had settled nicely as a Heartstone in the center of your crown city. Or so I surmise, since I cannot imagine any other place with so many of your Companions in one small area.” One corner of his mouth crooked in a slight smile as he nodded at Gwena. “I do suspect that all of them are suffering as much as your—friend—is. The settling of that much power is not an easy thing.”

“North?” Darkwind shook his head. “What in the name of the gods is north of Valdemar’s lands that could do that?”

“The Forest of Sorrows,” she said hesitantly. “The Forest—has always had a reputation for strangeness. Since Vanyel died there, anyway.”

At the name of “Vanyel,” Firesong’s eyes narrowed, and he nodded thoughtfully. “You are ready now,” he said directly to her. “The rest of your training is largely a matter of practice and learning what will work for you. I think you both should go to this Forest.”

“Go?” Darkwind said faintly. Elspeth took a glance at him out of the corner of her eye; he was pale, and looked as if someone had just struck him.

“Yes,” Firesong repeated forcefully. “Go. And you should go with her. It is obvious to a blind man that you wish to—and with all the Kaled’a’in here, there will be nothing that the Clan needs that you alone could provide.” He shrugged. “They may even choose to move back here, which I think would be an excellent thing. But you should—must—go with Elspeth.”

“But—I cannot!” Darkwind cried out, and winced at the sound of his own cracking voice. “I cannot,” he repeated, at a lower volume. “Tayledras never leave their Vales.”

“Sheka,” Firesong said rudely. “My own foster forefathers did so, to help Herald Vanyel in Valdemar when he needed their aid. They have not in centuries, it is true, but this is a time of changes. Or,” he finished, his tone heavy with sarcasm, “had that fact escaped you?”

“Can be accomplished with the help of the Kaled’a’in. Either bringing them here, or your mages there. Now that the Stone is gone, you could use the node in the ruins to create a new one, or build a Gate to the new Vale.” Firesong shrugged, carelessly tossing his hair back over his shoulders. “It matters little to me. My task is done here, and I am returning home.”

“Father—” Darkwind began, then shook his head. “Father has Kethra and the Kaled’a’in and Shin’a’in healers. And Wintermoon. I am being foolish. But—” he licked his lips nervously. “This is not easy.”

“Fledging rarely is,” Firesong said dryly. “I shall leave you to make your decision.”

Firesong stood and smiled, and now they saw that he had been toying with a black rose. At Elspeth’s curious look, he smiled a little wider and said only, “A gift. Brought to me by a scarlet-crested firebird.”

Darkwind’s brow creased in concentration. “But—that breed is from the far north.”

Firesong closed his eyes and sighed, content as any maiden paid a compliment. “Yes, Darkwind—north of Valdemar.”

Elspeth sat quietly as Firesong left them alone in the little clearing below her ekele. She wanted to look away from him, but she was afraid that if she did, he would take it as a rejection.

He stared into his cup for a long, long time, while the tea cooled and both of them were locked inside their own thoughts. Finally, he looked up.

“This will not be easy,” he said awkwardly. “I am—I have never been outside our own lands. I know nothing of the Outlands.”

“There are good people, bad people, and middling people,” she replied as casually as she could. “Just more of them than you’re used to, perhaps. But I would like you to come. I need you; not just the mage—but yourself, Darkwind.”

That last slipped out before she could stop it, but once escaped, she did not want to take it back.

He let out a breath he had been holding in. “I had hoped you would say that,” he said, and took her hand. “I had hoped, but I had not expected it.”

She felt her heart racing, as she put her own hand over his. “So,” she said, dizzy with elation, “shall we go see where all these changes are taking us?”

Once again, Elspeth made up her full packs, with everything she owned, and more—all the possessions she had accumulated in the Vale. It was still the deep of winter, but the expedition that prepared to set out from Kena Lesheyana Vale was not one that was likely to be daunted by a little cold and snow. Not only were there three Adepts in the party, Firesong electing to guide them as far as k’Treva, but there were four gryphons. Granted that two of them were barely fledged, and would make their ground-bound way alongside the riders in between their short flights, but even a young gryphon was likely to give predators pause.

That was something Elspeth had not expected, but she welcomed them completely. Treyvan would not say what his ultimate intentions were, but since he had begun asking for lessons in her tongue, Elspeth suspected that he and Hydona had been elected as the Kaled’a’in ambassadors to Valdemar. It made a certain amount of sense—and the gryphlets would be their wordless assurance to the people of Valdemar that they intended no ill.

I can’t wait to see them in Court. How is the Seneschal going to call their credentials, I wonder?

It would take several weeks to make all the preparations; weeks during which she and Darkwind could help the Kaled’a’in to build the Gate to send the mages and scouts of k’Sheyna on to their new Vale. Once that was complete, there would be nothing more holding Darkwind here—except dark memories of a kind he would do well to leave behind.

She started to shiver, then a hawk cry made her look up. She wasn’t certain why, since hawks cried out all the time in a Vale, but something about that cry compelled her to raise her eyes to the sky.

Above her were two vorcel-hawks, skydancing, courting, circling higher and higher into the sun.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Falcons and horses; bondbirds and Companions. The latter are a what-if portrait of the former—but a bondbird is as unlike a real-world hawk or falcon as a zebra is unlike a Companion.

Yet there is always that longing to have something like a bondbird or a Companion. Dragons are not possible in this world—but this world does hold hawks and horses. The demand on time, money, and special resources is similar for both the dedicated horseman and the falconer.

First, outfitting the human. Both require specialty items it found in stores. A falconer needs a hawking glove, specially constructed for extra protection where the hawk’s talons will be yet flexible enough to handle leash and jesses. They must either make this—expensive in terms of time—or buy it—expensive in terms of money. The horseman requires riding boots if he is going to ride seriously—also expensive.

Next, outfitting the bird or horse. The bird needs a hood—an object very difficult to construct properly, and again expensive either in terms of time or money. She also needs bracelets, jesses, leash, portable perch, transportation box, lining lure—all of which must be made to her size by her falconer. The horse requires tack; hackamore, halter, bit, bridle, saddle, saddle-blanket, and grooming materials—all which must be bought.

Housing bird or horse; here is where the horseman has the advantage over the falconer. The bird must, by federal regulation, have a house of a certain size and construction, a weathering yard of certain size and construction, and a permanent perch in the weathering yard. All these must be constructed on the falconer’s property, for by federal regulations, he must have the bird available for inspection at any reasonable time of the day. There are no boarding stables for birds.

Feeding and veterinary care; expensive propositions for both bird or horse. The bird must have fresh, high-quality food every day—of the kind he would normally eat in the wild. Not hamburger steak, or chicken one can buy in the grocery. Horses eat like—a horse! It is a great deal more difficult to find a vet who will care for a raptor than one who will care for a horse, however, and there is an additional worry. Because hawks and falcons are protected species, if a bird becomes ill and dies, the federal government automatically becomes involved to ensure that a death was due to accident and not mistreatment.

Time and training; again, this is something where the falconer has no choice in the matter. He must work with his bird on a daily basis, whereas if a horseman has boarded out his horse, he can arrange for other riders to take leave to ride on those days when he may not be able to. In training the birds, there are no “bird-breakers.” The falconer must do all of his training himself. Unless, of course, he happens to be so wealthy that like the nobility of old, he can employ a falconer to man “his” birds—though in that case, they will never be “his,” for they will truly answer only to the hand that trained them. By contrast, papers and magazines are full of advertisements for horses in all stages of training. The falconer must have access to land in which to train and exercise, and hunt with his bird. That means that training and hunting with the bird will put many miles on his vehicle. The trained bird requires working every day of the year.

Acquisition; there are captive-bred birds available to both General and Master falconers, but for the Apprentice, obtaining a bird means hours—days—weeks spent attempting to trap a passage redtail or kestrel. The horseman must visit many breeders or dealers and try many horses before he finds one to his liking.

Care; once again, since there are no boarding stables for raptors, the entire burden of care falls to the falconer. And a big bird like a redtail produces an astonishing quantity of leavings. Houses must be scraped and scalded periodically, as must perches; the sand in the house and weathering yard must be raked daily. The bird must be offered his daily bath under conditions that will not leave him open to itching disease. Yards must be inspected and repaired, since many predators—including the large owls—regard a bird on a perch as a meal waiting to be taken.

Outside dangers. Horsemen have to contend with people who honk their car horns at horses being ridden along the side of the road, with dogs who attack horse and rider, and those people who, out of pure maliciousness, will attempt to injure horse, rider, or both. Falconers have to contend with those who are under the mistaken impression that all birds of prey are lawful targets, that birds of prey are taking the game that “belongs to them,” and with those who regard birds of prey as “vermin.” And with those who, out of pure maliciousness, will attempt to injure or kill the bird.

Both sports require substantial investments of time and money. Neither should be undertaken lightly, or without serious thought. For someone considering becoming a horse owner, there are usually excellent stables offering training care and riding. For someone considering falconry, the best place to consult is the State Fish and Game department; they will have further information on falconers and regulations in your area.

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AUTHOR’S NOTE