6

Treyvan curled his tail around his haunches and waited beside the cave for his mate. He needed to have a discussion with her that he did not want anyone to overhear. Especially not certain interfering spirits…

It had been two days since their unexpected arrival in the Forest of Sorrows. The gryphlets had taken it all in stride, as they always did, and found excuses to chase things and chew on them at every opportunity. Rris had been as faithful as a hertasi and infinitely patient. Firesong had apparently come to grips with his changing status—that is, not being fawned over—and his dyheli companion remained nonplussed. And Vree—well, Vree had resumed hunting crest-feathers. Treyvan tolerated that. It was something familiar in an unfamiliar environment.

It had taken that long to make certain everything was ready for the Gate to go up—and for Vanyel’s protective spells to come down. When the moment came, it would feel to the gryphons like the magical equivalent of a change in air pressure before a storm, then all would be calm. Valdemar had been alerted, and there would be an escort waiting for Elspeth and her friends at the terminus of the Gate.

That would be at the entrance to the family chapel at Ashkevron Manor. It was the only place still standing intact that Vanyel knew well enough to make into a Gate-terminus. The chapel in Companion’s Field was a ruin, and Elspeth could not honestly assure him that the Palace still looked the way it had when he was still alive. Doors had been sealed up, new doors had been cut—trim and decorations had been added and taken away.

But nothing ever changed in the core building of the Ashkevron home. Elspeth had told them all she recalled hearing some of the family actually boasting about just that. There was even a story that if anyone ever did anything besides add to the buildings, the ghost of some long-dead ancestor would rise out of the grave to haunt the one who dared change what he had wrought.

Firesong had been of two minds about going on with Elspeth, until Vanyel had brought out an argument the spirit had held in reserve. It had been on the afternoon of the first day, when the Hawkbrother had said, dubiously, “It is all very well for Darkwind to follow Elspeth into her land, but what ties have I to such a place? Especially when I have duties elsewhere. And while it is true enough that I have experience with a living Heartstone, well, so does Darkwind. He knew enough before he became a scout to be counted among the Adepts.”

Vanyel had nodded, acknowledging the truth of that. But then he had countered that argument. :It is the duty of the Tayledras to heal places where magic has gone wrong,: he pointed out. :And that is doubly the duty of a Healing Adept, such as you. True?:

“True enough,” Firesong had replied, warily.

:Well, then, is it not the duty of a Tayledras Healing Adept to prevent the misuse of magic that could poison the earth?:

“I—” Firesong had begun, even more warily. “I suppose so—”

:Then what of the consequences if the Heartstone beneath Haven fell into the hands of Ancar and his mages? What if its power were to be mismanaged through ignorance? Isn’t it the duty of a Healing Adept to be as concerned with prevention as with results? Shouldn’t, in fact, a Healing Adept be more concerned with prevention?: Vanyel had simply looked at Firesong, as a teacher looks at a student who has failed to study.

Treyvan had seen Elspeth suppress a smile. He knew that she wouldn’t be able to resist the opportunity to pay Firesong back. “My stepfather has the earth-sense that a lot of the rulers of Rethwellan have,” she had put in. “He says that Ancar does horrible things to the earth-magics in Hardorn—that during the last war he rode through a place where the magics had been so misused that the area was dying, and it made him ill just to ride across it.”

Vanyel had nodded, as if to say, “There—you see?” and had turned his unwavering gaze back to Firesong.

The young Adept had grumbled something under his breath. “This is blackmail, you know,” he had retorted at last. But when Vanyel did not reply, he had shaken his head, and finally given his reluctant agreement to go. “It may be blackmail, but it is also true,” he had admitted, and had gone off to tell his Clan of the change in plans. “I shudder to think how fickle my home Vale will regard me after all these changes of plan.”

Now it was Treyvan’s turn to make a similar decision. Or rather, Treyvan and his mate, together, for he would make no such important decisions without her. They were explorers by choice. They had chosen, together, to be adventurers until the day fortune dashed them on the rocks. Their names would already live on in the stories told by their Clan, Treyvan knew, and perhaps even become legendary after a few more generations. Hadn’t they done enough, after all?

Hydona came winging in from above, fanning her wings to break her dive and landing with practiced ease on the grass beside him. “Do not tell me,” she said, snatching playfully at his crest-feathers. “I think I can guesss alrready. You wisssh usss to go with young Elssspeth and Darrrkwind.”

He felt his eyes going round with surprise, and his beak gaped. “But how did you know?” he exclaimed. “Sssurely I sssaid nothing—”

“No, only you have hung upon everrry worrd of thisss Vanyel, and your earrrtuftssss have twitched each time sssomeone hasss even hinted of the grrryphonsss in the North of Valdemarrr.” She shook her head vigorously, and a loose feather flew off and drifted down like a leaf to land in the grass beside her.

He was chagrined, but he had to admit that she was probably right; he had been that transparent. But how could he not be? Every Kaled’a’in gryphon knew that of all of the gryphon-wings flying for Mage Urtho, fully half of them had never reached the Gate that had taken the Kaled’a’in safely away before Urtho’s stronghold fell. Most of those had been out on the front lines with the army. Of those, some must have died—but surely others had escaped to live elsewhere. There were more than enough mages in Urtho’s army to have set up Gates enough to take those fighting to safety as well, before or after the blast that obliterated Urtho’s stronghold and Ma’ar’s together.

The only way to find out—or at least the only way that would satisfy Treyvan—would be to try to find these gryphons themselves.

“We arrre magesss,” Hydona pointed out thoughtfully. “And both the little onesss have Mage-Gift alssso. We will need to trrain them—ssso why not trrain otherrrsss at the sssame time?”

“What, like Herrraldsss?” The idea had already occurred to him, but he was pleased that Hydona had thought of it as well. “It isss trrrue that it would do the little onesss a grrreat deal of good to have sssome competition bessidesss each otherrr. And it could gain usss valuable alliesss.”

Her beak gaped in a gentle grin. Oh, how beautiful she was! “My thought prrrecisssely. Thisss issss why I have alrrready told Vanyel that if you wisshed to go, I would not arrrgue with sssuch a change in plansss.”

He mock-snapped at her. “Imperrrtinent! Making asssumptionsss—”

“Perrrfectly valid onesss,” she pointed out, reaching out to preen his ears. He submitted to her readily, half-closing his eyes in pleasure. “I, of all alive, know you bessst.”

“Verrry well, then,” he said, with feigned reluctance. “I will misss going to Evendim, but perrrhapsss anotherrr time. If you will have it that way, tell thisss Vanyel that we will be going with Elssspth and our otherrr ssson.” He sighed. “I sssupposse it isss jusst asss well. With the way Gating hasss been lately, who knowsss where we might end up otherrrwissse?”

“Mmm,” she agreed, mouth full of his feathers.

He closed his eyes completely, and gave himself up to her ministrations.

* * *

Ancar started, as a huskily feminine and far-too-familiar voice startled him in the midst of searching through a chest of documents in the war-room.

“Well. What a pleasant surprise. I had not expected to find you here.”

The silky-smooth tone of Hulda’s voice sent a shiver of warning up Ancar’s back. She only sounded this sweet when she wanted something—or when she was about to confront him over something, and she knew she had the upper hand.

He straightened, slowly, schooling his face into an impassive mask. He should not fear this woman. He had already subdued a powerful, half-human Adept to his will. She was no greater in power than this “Falconsbane” creature. He had no reason to fear her anger.

But her appearance was not reassuring. She was impeccably gowned and coiffed, looking as near to demure as she ever got. That meant she had found out something that she didn’t like, and she was going to have it out with him, here and now.

While he smiled and granted her an ironic little bow, his thoughts raced behind his careful shields. Could she have discovered Falconsbane? But how? He had been so careful. No one came near the creature but those servants he himself controlled.

“Why, my dear teacher, how pleasant to see you, after so very long,” he replied carefully. “I had thought that your new young friend was occupying all your time—”

“Enough fencing, child,” she snapped at him. “We both know you’ve been up to something, meddling with energies you shouldn’t have touched! And so does every mage sensitive to the flows of power! Your fumbling created some unpleasant echoes and ripples that are still causing me problems with my own spells, and I wonder how any of your pets are getting anything at all done!”

“My fumblings?” He felt sweat trickling down his back beneath his heavy velvet tunic, and he hoped that he wasn’t sweating anywhere that she would notice. “What are you talking about?” Could it be that she actually didn’t know what he had done?

“Don’t try to toy with me, boy!” she growled. “You were playing with some kind of odd spell or other, and it was either something you made up yourself, or something you got out of one of your damned scraps of half-literate grimoires! Which was it?”

Before he could answer, she cut him off with a gesture. “Never mind,” she said. “Don’t bother to lie to me. I’ll tell you what it was. You were trying to build a Gate, weren’t you?”

He stared at her dumbly as she continued, her strange violet eyes flashing with scorn.

“You haven’t even the sense to fear a Gate Spell, you fool!” she snarled. “Don’t you know what the thing would have done if you hadn’t broken it first? It would have turned back on you and eaten you alive! Building a Gate without knowing where you want it to go, precisely and exactly where, is the kind of mistake that will be your last! You must have used up a lifetime’s worth of luck to escape that fate, you blithering idiot.”

She went on and on at some length in the same vein; he simply hung his head so that she could not see his eyes and nodded like the foolish child she had named him. He stared at his feet as his sweat cooled, and his flush of fear faded. But beneath his submissive behavior, he was wildly excited and he did not want her to realize what she had just told him.

She had answered his every question about the so-called “portal” he had created! It was not a way to pull in node-energy, but was instead something entirely different, a way to create a doorway that would lead him instantly to any place he chose!

She had given him a weapon of incredible power and versatility, without knowing what she had done. Already he could imagine hundreds of ways to use such doorways.

He could simply step through such a door and into the very heart of a citadel. He could move entire armies without wearying them. He could use these doors to obtain anything or anyone he wanted, without worrying about such pesky complications as guards, locks, or discovery…

As she railed on, pacing back and forth like a restless panther in her black velvet, he also realized from what she did not say that she was completely unaware that he had brought anything through his Gate.

She mentioned nothing of the sort, in fact, not even as a horrible possibility. She seemed to be under the impression that he had sensed the Gate turning back on him and, in a panic, had broken the spell, collapsing the Gate upon itself.

He kept his face stiff and expressionless. He answered her, when she demanded answers, in carefully phrased sentences designed to maintain that fiction. The longer he could keep Falconsbane a secret from her, the better.

At least, until the moment that the Adept had recovered enough to bring him openly into the court as a putative ally. That way he would be able to work with Falconsbane without fear of Hulda’s reactions.

She has her friends, the ambassador and his entourage from the Emperor… I should introduce Falconsbane as an envoy from the West, beyond Valdemar. She may even try to win him over. He’d appeal to her, I expect. Perhaps I should even let her seduce him—or him, her. I’m not certain which of the two would be the quicker to take the other…

As she used up her anger, wearing it out against the rock of his submission, her voice dropped and her pacing slowed. Finally she stopped and faced him.

“Look at me,” she demanded. Slowly, as if he were afraid of her continued wrath, he raised his eyes. “Do not ever attempt that spell again,” she said, in a tone that brooked no argument. “It is beyond you. It is far more dangerous than you can guess, and it is well beyond your current ability and skill. Furthermore, it is obvious that you do not have the whole of the instructions for such a spell. Half-understood spells are more dangerous to the caster than to anyone else. Is that understood?”

He nodded, meekly. “Yes, Hulda,” he replied softly. She gave him a sharp look, but evidently did not see anything there to make her suspect his duplicity.

“See that you remember it, then,” she said, and turned on her heel and left in a swirl of velvet skirts.

Ancar could hardly contain his excitement. If Hulda knew enough to identify this Gate Spell simply by the effects it had on the mage-energies of the area, how much more could his captive know? He burned to find out.

But he did nothing. Not immediately, anyway. Hulda almost certainly had someone watching him; she might even be watching him herself. If he ran off now, he would lead her to his captive.

So he continued with the task that had brought him here in the first place; unearthing a long-ignored map of the west and south, which included Valdemar and what little was known of the area beyond that land. If Falconsbane came from anywhere about there, he might be able to identify the spot on this map.

The map lay at the very bottom of the document chest, amid the dust and dirt of years of neglect. Ancar unrolled it to be certain that it was still readable, then rolled it back up and inserted it in a map tube for safekeeping.

Even then he did not hurry off to where his captive waited for him. Instead, he tended to several small problems that needed his personal touch, heard the reports of his seneschal and the keeper of his treasury, and looked over the written reports of those mages watching the border of Valdemar. He stuck the map tube in his belt and pretended to forget it was there.

Only then did he leave the central portion of the palace and stroll in the direction of the wing to which he had moved his captive once the creature began to recover properly.

As far as he could tell, there was no one observing his movements at that point, although there had been at least one guard and two servants covertly keeping an eye on him right up until the moment he began looking over the written reports from his mages.

He allowed himself a small smile of victory and put a little more haste into his steps.

* * *

The new quarters were an improvement over the old, which had been reasonably luxurious, although not what Falconsbane was used to. This was clearly a suite in Ancar’s palace, albeit in a very old section of the palace. Age did not matter; what mattered was that it bore all the signs of having been unused for some time, but it had not been cleaned and refurbished hastily. Some care had been taken to clean and air the place thoroughly, and to ensure that everything was in proper order for the kind of “guest” that the King would consider important.

This somewhat mollified Falconsbane, but only in part. Ancar had not removed or eased the coercions, and his own body continued to betray him with weakness.

He sat now in a supportive chair, padded with cushions. A table within reach bore wine and fruit. Soft light from candles set throughout the room provided ample illumination—making up for the fact that the windows were closely shuttered, and no amount of threat or cajolery on Falconsbane’s part would get the servants to open them. Ancar had delivered his orders, it seemed, and they were not to be disobeyed.

The King had arrived for his daily visit, and there seemed to be much on his mind, not all of it satisfactory. He immediately plunged into a flurry of demands for information, demands which had little or no apparent relationship to each other.

“I cannot properly answer your questions,” Falconsbane said, with more far more seeming patience than he truly felt, “unless you explain to me what your situation is.”

He kept his tone even and calm, pitching it in such a way as to do no more than border on the hypnotic and seductive. He had tried both seduction and fascination a few days ago, in an effort to persuade the upstart to release some of the coercions—and had come up against a surprising wall of resistance. After contemplating the situation, he had come to the conclusion that this resistance to subversion had not come about by accidental or true design.

No, there was someone in Ancar’s life who had once wielded these very weapons against him to control him, someone he no longer trusted. Thus, the resistance. Falconsbane would have to use a more subtle weapon than body or mind.

He would have to use words.

An exasperating prospect. This sort of thing took time and patience. He did not wish to take the time, and he had little love for exercising patience.

However needful it might be.

However, the fact that Ancar had this core of resistance at all told him one very important fact. There was someone in this benighted place that had once controlled the little fool, and who might still do so.

That someone—given Ancar’s biases—was probably female and attractive. That in itself was interesting, because attractive females seldom lost power until they lost their attraction.

He needed to find out more about this woman, whoever, whatever she was. And he needed to discover who had taught the King enough so that the boy was able to command the power of a Gate, however inexpertly and briefly.

Ancar looked away uneasily, as he always did when Falconsbane fixed him with that particular stare. It was as if the youngster found even the appearance of patience unnerving. The soft candlelight touched the boy-King’s face; it was a handsome face, with no hint of the excesses fearfully whispered about among the servants.

Had his own servants whispered? Probably. Had their whispers mattered? Only in that rumors made them fear him, and fear made them obey him. Small wonder the child held the reins, given the fear his servants displayed.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Ancar said. He was lying, but Falconsbane did not intend him to escape so easily.

“You ask me many questions about magic, in a most haphazard manner, and I can see no pattern behind what you wish to know. Yet there must be one. If you will simply tell me what drives these questions, perhaps I can give you better answers.”

Ancar contemplated that for a moment, then rubbed his wrist uneasily. “I have enemies,” he said, after a long moment.

Falconsbane permitted himself a slight snort of contempt. “You are a King. Every King has enemies,” he pointed out. “You must be more specific if I am to help you. Are these enemies within your court, within your land, or outside of both?”

Ancar moved, very slightly.

Falconsbane could read the language of body and expression as easily as a scholar a book in his own language. Ancar had winced when Falconsbane had said, “within your court.” So there were forces working against the King from within. Could the woman Falconsbane had postulated be one of those forces?

“Those within it are the ones that most concern me,” he finally replied, as Falconsbane continued to fix him with an unwavering gaze.

The Adept nodded shrewdly. “Those who once were friends,” he said flatly, making it a statement, and was rewarded once again by that faint wince. And something more. “No,” he amended, “More than friends.” Not relatives; he knew from questioning the servants that Ancar had assassinated his own father. “Lovers?” he hazarded.

Ancar started, but recovered quickly. “A lover,” he agreed, the words emerging with some reluctance.

Falconsbane nodded, but lidded his eyes with feigned disinterest. “Such enemies are always the bitterest and most persistent.” Dared he make a truly hazardous statement? Well, why not? “And generally, their hate is the greatest. They pursue revenge long past the point when another would have given over.”

Slight relaxation told him his shot went wide of the mark. So, this woman was not aware she had lost her powers over the boy!

He made a quick recovery. “But she is foolish not to recognize that you are the one who hates, and not her. So she has lost her power over you, yet thinks she still possesses you.” He smiled very slightly as Ancar started again. Good. Now ask a revealing question. “Why do you permit her to live, if you are weary of her?”

His question had caught the King off-guard, enough that the boy actually answered with the truth. “Because she is too powerful for me to be rid of her.”

Falconsbane held his own surprise in check. Too powerful? The King could not possibly mean that she had secular power; he ruled his land absolutely, and took what he wanted from it. Servants had revealed that much, quite clearly. He could not mean rank, for Ancar had eliminated any other pretender to his throne, and anyone who had force of will or arms to challenge him.

There was only one thing the boy could mean, then. The woman was a more powerful mage than Ancar. Too powerful to subvert, too powerful to destroy. Hence, his desire for an equally powerful ally.

Many things fell into place at that moment, and Falconsbane decided to hazard all on a single cast of the dice. “Ah. Your teacher. A foolish thing, to make a lover of a student. It blinds the teacher to the fact that the student develops a will and a series of goals of his own, eventually; goals that may not match with that of the teacher. And it causes the teacher to believe that love or lust are, indeed, enough to make one blind, deaf, and dumb to faults.”

Blank astonishment covered Ancar’s face for an instant, then once again, he was all smoothness. “I am astonished by your insight,” he replied, as if a moment before he had not had every thought frozen with shock. “Is this a power every Adept has?”

“By no means,” Falconsbane replied lazily, picking up the goblet of wine on the table beside his chair, and sipping it for a moment. “If your loving teacher had such ability to read people, she would never have lost your affections, and we would not now be having this conversation. You would still be in her control.”

Ancar nodded curtly as if he hated having to admit that this unknown woman had ever held him under control.

And he did not contradict Falconsbane’s implication that his teacher was an Adept. Not surprising, then, the bitterness that crept through his careful mask. This young man was a foolish and proud man, and one who despised the notion that anyone could control him, much less a mere woman.

Foolish, indeed. Sex had much to do with power, but little to do with the ability of the wielder to guide it. Falconsbane had seen as many female Adepts in his time as male, and had made a point of eliminating the female rivals as quickly as possible, before they realized that he was a threat. It was easier to predict the thoughts and intentions of one’s own sex, and that unpredictability was what made one enemy more dangerous than another.

This changed the complexion of his plans entirely, however. Ancar was not the dangerous one here; this woman was.

“Tell me of this woman,” Falconsbane said casually. “All that you know.” And as Ancar hesitated, he added, “If I do not know all, I cannot possibly help you adequately.”

That apparently decided the boy. Now, at last, the information Falconsbane needed to put together a true picture of the situation here began to flow into his waiting ears and mind.

He felt a certain astonishment and startlement himself, several times, but he fancied he kept his surprise hidden better than Ancar had. This woman—this Hulda—was certainly an Adept of great power, and if she had not underestimated her former pupil, he would have granted her the accolade of great cleverness as well.

She was, at the minimum, twice, perhaps three times as old as she looked. This was not necessarily illusion; as Falconsbane knew well, exercise of moderation in one’s vices, and access to a ready supply of victims to drain of life-forces, permitted an Adept to reach an astonishing age and still remain in a youthful stasis. One paid for it, eventually, but as Ma’ar had learned, when “eventually” came to pass, all those years might grant one the time needed to find another sort of escape from old age, death, and dissolution.

She had first attempted to subvert the young Heir of Valdemar, that same child he had seen and desired. Had she been aware of the girl’s potential? Probably; even as an infant it should have been obvious to an Adept that the girl would be a mage of tremendous strength when she came into her power. Small wonder that “Hulda”—if that was her real name, which Falconsbane privately doubted—had attempted the girl first, before turning to Ancar as a poor second choice.

Ancar was not entirely clear how and why Hulda had been thwarted from her attempt to control the girl. Perhaps he didn’t know. There was no reason for Hulda to advertise her defeat, after all, or the reasons for it. Ancar had been given the impression at the time—an impression, or rather illusion, that he still harbored—that Hulda had given up on the girl when she had become aware of him.

Falconsbane hid his amusement carefully. There was no point in letting the boy know just how ridiculous a notion that really was. It would gain him nothing, and might lose him yet more freedom if Ancar tightened his coercions in pique. One might choose a handful of wild berries and nuts in preference to a feast of good, red meat, but it would be a stupid choice. So, too, would choosing to subvert Ancar in preference to the young woman.

But apparently she had no options. So, after being routed from Valdemar, Hulda had turned her eyes toward Hardorn and had found fertile ground for her teachings and manipulations in the heir to that throne. She had promised, cajoled, and eventually seduced her way into Ancar’s life, and had orchestrated everything he did from the moment she climbed into his bed until very recently.

But she had been incredibly stupid, for she had forgotten that all things are subject to change, and had grown complacent of late. She neglected her student for other interests. She promised, but failed to deliver upon those promises. Meanwhile Ancar tasted the exercise of power, and he found it a heady and eye-opening draught. He began to crave more of it, and that was when he realized that Hulda held more of it than he did—or ever would, while she lived.

So, although they had once been allies and even partners, they were now locked in a silent struggle for supremacy that Hulda had only now begun to recognize.

Falconsbane toyed with his goblet, listened, and nodded, saying nothing. Certainly he did not give voice to the contempt that he felt for this petty kinglet and mageling. Under any other circumstances he would have been able to crush Ancar like an overripe grape. He still could, if the coercions were eased sufficiently.

He learned also how little Ancar truly knew; how effective Hulda had been in denying him any training that might make him a threat to her power. His obsession with Gates now—if Falconsbane were not certain that the coercions binding him would probably cause the destruction of his mind if Ancar came to harm, he would have encouraged the fool’s obsessions and illusions. The boy did not realize that he had no chance of ever controlling a real Gate. He simply did not have the strength. He had not figured out that a Gate could only go to places he himself had been, and not, as he fondly imagined, to any place he chose. He didn’t really believe, despite the way he had been drained and the warnings in his fragment of manuscript, that Gate-energy came from him and not any outside sources of power like a node or energy-reserves.

Continued experiments would be certain to get him killed, and in a particularly nasty and messy fashion. Despite how much fun it would be to watch as his body was drained to a husk, there was the possibility that the royal whelp could tap Falconsbane’s energy to save himself. That would be difficult to survive in his present state. So Falconsbane dissuaded Ancar from the idea, gently but firmly, pointing out that Hulda had known that he had been tinkering with the spell, and that she would certainly be on the watch for anything else of the sort. “Patience,” he advised, as Ancar frowned. “First, we must rid ourselves of this aged female. Then I shall teach you the secrets of Greater Magics.”

The power struggle between these two held far more promise of turning the tables on Ancar than anything else Falconsbane had yet observed. He noted how Ancar brightened at his last words, and smiled lazily.

“You can rid me of her?” the boy asked eagerly.

Falconsbane waved his hand languidly. “In time,” he said. “I am not yet recovered; I must study the situation—and her. It would assist me greatly if you could manufacture a way to bring me into court, where I could observe her with my own eyes, and see what she is and is not capable of. I may note weaknesses in her armor, and I may know of ways to exploit those weaknesses that you do not.”

Ancar nodded, his face now betraying both avidity and anticipation. “I had planned to introduce you as a kind of envoy, an ambassador from a potential Western ally. You must mask your powers from her, of course—”

“Of course,” Falconsbane interrupted, with a yawn. “But this must wait until I have recovered all of my strength.” He allowed his eyelids to droop. “I am—most fatigued,” he murmured. “I become weary so easily…”

He watched from beneath his lids and Ancar was taken in by his appearance of cooperation. Good. Perhaps the boy would become convinced that the coercions were no longer needed. Perhaps he could be persuaded to remove them, on the grounds that they depleted him unnecessarily. Perhaps he would even remove them without any persuasion, secure in his own power and the thought that Falconsbane was his willing ally.

And perhaps Falconsbane would even be his willing ally.

For now.

7

An’desha felt sick, smudged with something so foul that he could hardly bear himself. It was a very physical feeling, although, strictly speaking, he no longer had a body to feel any of those things with. The spirits had warned him that he would encounter uncomfortable and unpleasant things in Falconsbane’s memories. But neither they nor his own brief glimpses during his years of desperate hiding of what Falconsbane had done with his borrowed body had prepared him for the terrible things he confronted during that first look into Falconsbane’s past.

For most of the day after his first foray into the Adept’s memory, he had withdrawn quickly into his safe haven and had figuratively curled up there, shaken and nauseated, and unable to think. But his “haven” was really not “safe,” and nothing would make the images acid-etched into his own memory go away. Still, he remained knotted about himself, tangled in a benumbed and sickened mental fog, right up until the arrival of some of King Ancar’s servants. It seemed that the King had new plans for his captive; they had come to move the Adept to different quarters.

That move shook him out of his shock, although he had not paid a great deal of attention to Ancar before this. It occurred to him that he did not really know much about the Adept’s captor. Ancar wanted something of Falconsbane—knowledge, power—but he might simply be ambitious and not evil. That made him think that he might be able to find some kind of ally among these people, someone who could help him to overcome Falconsbane and restore him to control of his much-abused body again.

After all, the spirits had not said he would be unable to find help here, they had simply offered him one possible option. And it was a Shin’a’in belief that the Goddess was most inclined to aid those who first put every effort into helping themselves.

So when Falconsbane was settled into his new, and to Shin’a’in eyes, bewilderingly luxurious suite of rooms, An’desha kept his own “ears” open to the gossip of the servants, hoping to learn something about the young King who had them in his possession. After all, if the King was a strong enough mage to put coercions on Falconsbane and keep them in force, he might be strong enough to overcome the Adept. Mornelithe Falconsbane’s contempt of Ancar of Hardorn notwithstanding, the young King might very well have knowledge that would give him an edge even over someone like Mornelithe.

But watching and listening, both to the servants’ gossip and to the questions that Ancar put to Falconsbane, dashed An’desha’s hopes before they had a chance to grow too far. Ancar was just another sort as Falconsbane—younger, less steeped in depravity, with fewer horrific crimes to his account. But that was all too clearly not for lack of trying.

Ancar cared nothing for others, except to determine if and how they might be used to further his own ends. His only concern was for himself, his powers, and his pleasures. If he learned of An’desha’s existence, he would only use that knowledge to get more of an edge over his captive. He might even betray An’desha’s presence to the unwitting Adept in the very moment that he learned of it, if he thought it would gain him something. And he would do so without a second thought, destroying a soul as casually as any other man might eat a radish.

He had brief hopes again, when he learned of the existence of the mysterious woman rival in Ancar’s life—how could a woman who was Ancar’s rival be anything but Ancar’s very opposite? But then Ancar’s own descriptions destroyed the vision of a woman of integrity opposing the King and his henchmen. Even taking Ancar’s words with a great deal of leaven, this Hulda was no more to be trusted than Ancar himself.

He learned far more than he cared to about her, nevertheless. Once he had admitted Hulda’s existence and their former relationship, Ancar answered all of Falconsbane’s questions with casual callousness, describing their relationship in appalling detail, and the things she had taught him, often by example, with a kind of nostalgia. And the woman was just as much a monster as her pupil—perhaps more, for Ancar had no knowledge of anything she might have done before she came into his father’s employ. Seducing the young child she had been hired to teach and protect was the least of her excesses…

It was a horrible education for An’desha. His uncle had claimed that the so-called “civilized” people of the other lands were the real barbarians, and at the moment An’desha would vouch for that wholeheartedly. No Shin’a’in would ever sink to the depths that Ancar described, and as for Falconsbane—

No Shin’a’in would ever believe anyone would do what the Beast had done.

These people were all scum!

He longed, with an intensity that made him sick, for the clean sweep of the Dhorisha Plains and the simpler life of a herd guard. What matter if his kin were sometimes cruel, sometimes taunted him for being a halfbreed? What matter if he had been forced into the life of a shaman? He would never have had to experience any of this, never know that his body had done these things, had performed those acts. He would never have been forced to look into the depths of Falconsbane’s soul and realize that no matter what he saw now, there was probably something much worse in the Adept’s memory that he simply hadn’t uncovered yet.

The most evil men in recent Shin’a’in history were those men who had slaughtered Clan Tale’sedrin, down to the last and littlest child—except for the famed Tarma shena Tale’sedrin who had declared blood-feud, been taken as Swordsworn, then tracked them down and eliminated them all. But compared to Mornelithe Falconsbane, all of the crimes of all of those men combined were a single poisonous weed in the poisoned lands of the Pelagir Hills, or a grain of sand in the glass-slagged crater that had in the long-distant past, become the Plains at the Hand of the Star-Eyed.

The young Shin’a’in huddled inside Falconsbane’s mind—no, it is my mind—as the conversation with Ancar went on and on, trying to hold in his revulsion and mask his presence, and expecting at any moment to be discovered. And An’desha had never in his entire life felt quite so young, petrified with fear, and quite so helpless. Despite the protections the Avatars had taught him, if Falconsbane found him, he would have no way to prevent the Adept from crushing him out of all existence.

But somehow, those protections held. Either Falconsbane was not as all-powerful as he thought, or else the Avatars were more powerful than they claimed.

Ancar left at last, as Falconsbane’s feigned weariness became real weariness. And when he dozed off in the chair, An’desha crept out of hiding, to stare at a candle flame and try to think out his meager options.

Ancar was repulsive, but an old Shin’a’in proverb held that anything could be used as a weapon in a case of desperation. You can kill a man who wishes to destroy you with a handful of maggots if you must. Could An’desha possibly deceive the King long enough to win himself free? I could reveal myself to Ancar as an ally, and think up some story that makes it look as if I have more power than I really do. Well, yes. That was a possibility. And if everything worked properly, he might get his body back if Ancar could overwhelm Falconsbane. But Ancar had no reason to trust An’desha, and every reason to want one more hold over the Adept. What did An’desha have to offer? The knowledge contained in Falconsbane’s memory, assuming it was still there after Falconsbane was gone—yes, he did have that. But he had no practical experience as a mage; no idea how to handle all these energies. And truth to tell, he was terrified of them. If Ancar asked for proof of his power, what could An’desha offer? Not much. Nothing that would convince Ancar, who was a suspicious man and saw deception everywhere.

Well, what went for Ancar also went for the woman. More so, actually, since Ancar wanted Falconsbane to increase his own power, and the woman would naturally want to eliminate both of them once she discovered the conspiracy against her. He would need to offer nothing more than access to Falconsbane—he could turn the tables on both Ancar and Falconsbane, and reveal himself to this “Hulda.” But she was an Adept as well, and she would be just as likely to use An’desha to destroy Falconsbane, then proceed to finish the job by ridding herself of An’desha. What did she need him for, after all? She had power of her own, and no fear of using it. And she was just as depraved as her former pupil. More; after all, she had schooled him in depravity.

There was a last possibility, as disgusting as it was. He could reveal his presence to Falconsbane, and strike a bargain with him. The “coercions” Falconsbane kept thinking about had been put on the Adept, not on An’desha. If Falconsbane cared to remain in a passive mode and simply instruct An’desha, the Shin’a’in might be able to use their powers to free both of them…

Yes, he could try to strike a bargain to that effect. Offer Falconsbane the way out of this gilded trap in return for simple survival; taking no more than he already had, a little corner of the Adept’s mind.

Except that such a bargain would make him no better than Falconsbane; to know everything the creature had done and turn a blind eye to it in the hope of staying “alive” was as nauseating as anything Falconsbane himself had ever done. It would be a betrayal of all those Falconsbane had destroyed. Further, such a plan assumed Falconsbane would actually keep any bargain he made, and nothing of what An’desha knew of him gave any reassurance the Adept would do any such thing.

He felt tied into a hundred knots by conflicting emotions. Only one thing really seemed clear. None of these folk were worth helping. If any of them had ever done a single decent thing in all their lives, they had certainly taken pains to insure it went undiscovered.

I must listen to the Avatars and remain quiet. That was still not only the best plan, it was the only plan. I must help the Avatars as they ask; I must hope they can help me. That is the only plan, the only decent course to take.

:Wise choice, little one.: Tre’valen’s voice rang in his mind, so clearly that he glanced around, startled, looking for another physical presence in the room. But there was no one there; Tre’valen and Dawnfire rarely made physical manifestations since their first appearance. He understood why now; such things made a disturbance that could be sensed, if one were looking for it with the inner eye.

:Let the Falconsbane sleep,: the shaman-Avatar continued. :Meet us upon the Moonpaths, where we cannot be overheard or overlooked.:

With relief, An’desha abandoned his hold on the body he and Falconsbane shared, and turned his focus in the direction Tre’valen had taught him within and without. There was a moment of dizziness, a moment of darkness, and a moment in which he felt he was falling and flying at the same time. Then he found himself standing upon a patch of pristine white sand, in a world made of mist and light, and all that had transpired in the time it took to draw a quick breath.

Tre’valen and Dawnfire were already there, looking quite ordinary, actually, although they glowed with a soft, diffused inner light. It was easier to “see” them here; Tre’valen looked like any of the younger shaman of the Clans, as familiar as his horse or saddle. Lovely Dawnfire on the other hand was garbed in odd clothing that made her look like a slender birch tree wrapped in snow—her hair was long and as white as a snowdrift—and she was as exotic as he had imagined the Hawkbrothers to be when he had first run off to seek them. But her smile and her wink made her still enough like a young scout of the Shin’a’in that he felt comfortable around her.

Except when he looked directly into the eyes of either of them… for they shared the same eyes, eyes without pupil, iris, or white; eyes the same bright-spangled black of a starry night sky. The Eyes of the Warrior… and the single sign that they were truly Her creatures. Those eyes made him shiver with awe and not a little dread, and reminded him that whatever they had been, these two Avatars were not human anymore.

So he tried to avoid looking into their eyes at all; not at all difficult, really, since he tended to keep his own glance fixed firmly on his own clasped hands whenever he spoke with them on the Moonpaths. Strange, how his body here looked like the one he had worn before he left his Clan and home, and not like the strange half-beast creature that Mornelithe Falconsbane had twisted it into.

“We have a new teaching for you, An’desha,” Tre’valen said matter-of-factly. “It should help you seal your control over Falconsbane’s body so that when he sleeps you will not awaken him by moving the body about.”

Even as he spoke, An’desha felt Dawnfire’s mental “hand” brush the surface of his own mind, and he absorbed the lesson effortlessly. And he even managed to smile shyly up into those two pairs of unhuman eyes, in thanks.

He took all the time he needed to study the implanted memory, to examine it and walk its pathway until he was certain he could follow their lesson exactly. And it was a most welcome gift. Such an ability would make things easier for him, for if Falconsbane’s healing body demanded food while he slept, or made other needs known, such things would eventually wake the Adept so that An’desha must quickly and quietly retreat into watchful hiding. Now he would be able to silence the needs of the body before Falconsbane woke, and that would give him more uninterrupted time in full control. It was only when Falconsbane slept soundly, for instance, that An’desha dared to walk the Moonpaths. He feared, and so had the Avatars warned, that if Falconsbane woke while An’desha was “absent,” An’desha would not be able to rejoin his body without the Adept noticing that something was different.

“Be patient, An’desha,” Tre’valen said, but in a voice full of sympathy and kindness. “We know how tempting it must be to try to find some other, quicker way to rid yourself of the beast. But truly, our way is the surest, and even it is uncertain. We give you only a chance, but it is a chance with honor. There would be much less honor in any of the other paths you have contemplated. None of these people are worth the backing, as you yourself thought, much less worth making even temporary allies of them. Even trying to deceive them would be fraught with both peril and dishonor.”

He hung his head in embarrassment and a little shame. Tre’valen was right, of course. And it had been making a choice with no concern for honor that had gotten him here in the first place, a fact that Tre’valen kindly omitted to mention.

“If you are very, very careful,” Dawnfire continued in her high, husky voice, “you will even have ample opportunity to undermine all of them. She knows; She has faith in your good heart. Remember the Black Riders.”

He looked up again and nodded. The Swordsworn seldom miss their marks. The Leshy’a Kal’enedral, never. That was a Shin’a’in proverb as old as the Swordsworn themselves. And yet, in shooting at Falconsbane, ostensibly to kill, they had missed, and had left the body holding both An’desha and Falconsbane alive. Then the Black Riders had appeared, bringing gifts that Falconsbane had thought were for him, but were truly for An’desha—a tiny black horse, the kind given to a child on his birthday, the token that he was ready for his first real horse and would be permitted to pick out a foal to train on his own. And the black ring, the ring Tre’valen had told him was worn only by those sworn to the service of all four faces of the Goddess. An’desha now knew, as Falconsbane did not, that if the Adept had ever held the ring up to strong sunlight, the seemingly opaque black ring would show a fiery heart that contained every color of earth, air, sky and water, a fitting symbol for those sworn to every face of the Shin’a’in Goddess.

And then, after the Black Riders had shown their tokens, Tre’valen and Dawnfire had appeared.

They would not lie. They came to help him; She meant to help him save himself, if it could be done. He must not let this fear and uncertainty break him; must not let the filth of Falconsbane destroy his own soul and all his hopes. There was honor in the world, and kindness, and decency.

He must help those who brought those virtues to his aid, even if it meant that he—

He froze for a moment, as the thought ran on to its inescapable conclusion.

Even if it meant giving up his own chance at life and freedom.

There were things worse than death, after delving into Falconsbane’s mind he knew that. He would be worse than a rabid animal if he chose his own survival over taking the opportunity to stop something like Falconsbane.

And this was a thought that would never have occurred to the “old” An’desha.

Old… He suddenly felt old, a thousand years old, and weary—and very frightened. But quite, quite sure of himself now.

A faintly glowing hand touched his; it was joined by another. He looked up to see the Avatars standing one on either side of him, clasping their hands over the ones he had locked in front of himself. The warmth of their care and concern filled him; their friendship warmed the cold heart of him.

“Thank you, An’desha.” That was all that Tre’valen had to say, but An’desha knew that the Avatar had read his internal struggle and his conclusion and approved. He looked down again, but this time it was with a glow of pride. Whatever else came of this—Her chosen servants had given him their own accolade.

“We did not wish to prompt you into that decision, but now that you have made it, we can be more open with you,” Dawnfire told him. She took her hand from his, although the warmth that had filled him remained, and she cupped some of the mist that eddied about them in her hands. “Look here—” she continued, and the handful of mist glowed, and vague figures formed and sharpened within it. He recognized most of them, both from Falconsbane’s memories and from stolen glimpses through Falconsbane’s eyes.

Two young Hawkbrothers; one ruggedly handsome, though a trifle careworn, and one that he did not recognize, but who was so beautiful that his breath caught. The first was Falconsbane’s old enemy, Darkwind k’Sheyna, the son of the Adept he had corrupted. The second—

“He is Firesong k’Treva, a Healing Adept,” Dawnfire replied to his unvoiced thought. “He is an ally of yours, although neither of you knew it. It was he that came to the aid of k’Sheyna.”

An odd feeling stole over him for a moment, as he stared at that flamboyantly beautiful face. He would like to be more than an ally with that one…

He shook his head dismissively as the two figures faded and two more replaced them. One also, he knew. The Outlander from Northern lands, the young woman whose potential Falconsbane desired to devour. Both dressed in white garments, and both with blue-eyed white horses.

“Elspeth and Skif, both what are called ‘Heralds’ out of Valdemar. The Heralds are Clan-allies to Tale’sedrin,” Tre’valen added, in a decisive tone, and An’desha nodded. That was all he needed. Anyone who had won acceptance of any of the Clans had won it from all. And if they were Clan-allies, An’desha was honor-bound to assist them.

Honor. There it was again. It became easier to understand when one lived it, rather than looking at it from outside.

A single figure took their place, one that could have been a fragile, feminine version of Falconsbane; a young woman with a feline cast to her features, carrying a sword. And, oh, he knew this one from many, many of his worst moments, both within Falconsbane’s memories and as unwilling witness to atrocity. “Nyara,” he said, biting off the word. His gorge rose at the sight of her, but not because she repulsed him but because what had been done to her by her own father repulsed him.

She is my “daughter” as well, because the body that sired her is mine—but I had nothing to do with it. I did not torture her mind and body. And yet her blood is mine, she is of outClan and Shin’a’in breeding as I am. How much responsibility do I have to her? It was not the first time he had asked himself that question, but it was the first time he had felt there was any chance he could do something about the answer.

It was something he would have to think about for a long time. If he had felt old before, he now felt terribly young. His body might be over half a century old, but he often felt as if he were still the boy who had run from his Clan and his responsibilities. His “life,” such as it was, had been lived in moments and glimpses.

“Yes,” Dawnfire replied, “and free of her father. You would find her willing to aid you to the end of her powers. She has a score to settle with Falconsbane.”

Lastly, two other creatures crowded the first out of the mist. Gryphons—and Falconsbane harbored a hatred for gryphons that was quite, quite insane, but these two in particular were apt to trigger rages, for they had eluded and defeated him time and time again, and he would likely do anything for a chance to destroy them.

“Treyvan and Hydona, and you would find them as apt to your aid as Nyara,” said Tre’valen. “They have as much to call Falconsbane to account for as Nyara does. He violated their young, among other things.”

Dawnfire opened her hands and the mist flowed away, losing its colors and dispersing into the starlight that surrounded them.

“These are your allies, An’desha,” Dawnfire said, her face grave and her night-starred eyes looking somewhere beyond him. In that moment she looked like a beautiful but impassive statue. “They approach this land even now, coming to the land of Ancar’s enemies, the land of Valdemar.”

An’desha shook his head, puzzled. How could this mean anything to his situation?

“Ancar wars upon Valdemar and plans another attempt to crush them even now. This is what he wishes Falconsbane’s powers and teachings for, since he has been unable to defeat their defenses in the past.” Tre’valen also looked somewhere beyond An’desha, and he was just as statuelike. “He wishes to become a great emperor, a lord of many kingdoms, but Valdemar stands in his way, by an increasingly lesser margin. These folk we have shown you come to help defend Elspeth’s land. We will speak to them, through an intermediary that they trust, letting them know that Falconsbane has come to roost here.”

An’desha considered that for a moment, seeing something of what their reaction might be to that unwelcome information. “They will know that Falconsbane is their chiefest enemy. So—what am I to do in all of this? What is it that I can do for them that will help them defeat Ancar and Falconsbane? I can do nothing to prevent him from helping Ancar if he chooses.”

“Watch,” Dawnfire said immediately. “Delve the depths of Falconsbane’s memories. Learn all you can of him and of Ancar and Hulda and their plans. We will pass this on as well. You will be the spy that no one can possibly detect; the ideal agent, who is even privy to thoughts. Somewhere, in everything that you learn, there will be a way for your allies to defeat not only Ancar, but Falconsbane as well.”

But that did not necessarily mean that they would be able to help him… and he noticed a curious omission. Neither Dawnfire nor Tre’valen had said anything about mentioning his existence to these “allies”…

And, feeling a little alarmed, he said so. “You say nothing of me—”

Now Tre’valen looked away, and it was Dawnfire who said, with a peculiar expression of mingled apology and determination, “We cannot tell them of your existence, although we will inform the intermediary, who suspects it already. If we let the others know that you live in Falconsbane’s body, they might hesitate to—”

Here she broke off, and An’desha continued, bleakly, with the inescapable. “They might hesitate if it becomes necessary to slay Falconsbane, even if there is no other choice. Is that what you wished to say?”

“The intermediary will know,” Tre’valen pointed out, but a little hesitantly. “She can judge best if they should know as well… but at the moment, she thinks not.”

She thought not, hmm? An’desha pondered that for a moment. How likely was it that these “allies” would come face-to-face with Falconsbane?

But at least three of them were Adepts. When was it necessary for an Adept to come face-to-face with an enemy in order to attack him?

“An’desha, we pledged you that we would do our best to free you and save you. We did not mean to ‘free you and save you’ by slaying you,” Dawnfire said, quickly. “You know we cannot lie to you in this. You have already accepted the risk, have you not?”

He sighed. He had. And word once given could not be taken back without becoming an oath-breaker. They were quite right, and besides, what choice did he have? He either faced a lifetime—presumably a long one—of being a prisoner in his own body, forced to watch Falconsbane commit his atrocities and being unable to do anything to prevent them, or he could retreat into his “safe haven” in Falconsbane’s mind, make himself blind and deaf to all that passed while Falconsbane was awake, and live a kind of prison existence in which he would still know what Falconsbane was doing, even if he refused to actually see it.

Neither was any kind of a life; a living hell was more like it. He had a chance now…

And he certainly did not want Falconsbane making free with his body anymore. The creature must be stopped.

“No matter what happens, we will be with you,” Tre’valen said softly.

That decided him. At least his loneliness and isolation were at an end. These two were friends already; it would be no bad thing to come to an ending, if it were in the company of true friends.

“Well, then,” he said, steeling himself against the horrid memories he must once again face in order to pass the information on to his protectors. “I must begin my part of the bargain. Here is what I have learned of Ancar…”

It took a surprisingly short time to relate, really. It was astonishing how simply sordid those terrible acts Ancar had recited became, when they were told, not to an avid audience of Mornelithe Falconsbane, but to the impassive witnesses of the two Avatars. They seemed neither disturbed nor impressed; they simply nodded from time to time as if making special note of some point. He added his impressions of what Falconsbane had thought, once he came to the end of that recitation. It had not been flattering, for although Ancar had done his best to shock the Adept, Mornelithe had not been impressed either. He had, in fact, considered Ancar to be little more than a yapping pup, barking his importance to an old, bored dragon.

“Things could be worse,” Dawnfire commented, when he came to the end of the recitation. “Falconsbane is still far more interested in regaining control of himself and gaining control of the situation than he is in helping Ancar. He does not know that the Valdemarans are returning to their home, so his thirst for revenge has not yet been awakened against Valdemar. And I suspect he will be investigating this woman Hulda as a possible ally against Ancar, simply because he is not the kind of creature to leave any opportunity without at least looking into it. And meanwhile, Ancar has learned nothing useful from him, which is a good thing, and he intends to withhold real information for as long as possible, which is even better.”

An’desha sighed. “Better than you know. The things that Falconsbane has done to gain his powers—”

He shuddered without really intending to. Tre’valen touched his shoulder with sympathy. “I can soften those memories, if you wish,” he said quietly. “Make them less—immediate. Give you some detachment.”

“Give you the real sense that they are past, and there is nothing that you can do to help or hinder now—but that you can learn from them to prevent such things in the future,” Dawnfire added, when he looked up in hope. “You must never forget that those terrible things were done to other living creatures, An’desha. When those poor victims become only icons, when they lose their power to move you, you will have lost something of your soul.”

“I will only see to it that there is that distance,” Tre’valen said, with a glance at Dawnfire as if he was amused by her preaching. “Your heart is sound, An’desha, and I have no fear that the plight of others will ever cease to move you. If that is what you want—”

“Please!” he cried, and with a touch, some of the feeling of sickness left him, and some of the feeling of having been rolled in filth until he would never be rid of the taste and smell and feel of it.

It was a blessed, blessed relief. He almost felt clean again, and his nausea subsided completely. Now those memories he had stolen from the Adept were at one remove… as if they were things from very distant childhood, clear, but without the terrible immediacy.

“As if they belonged to someone else, and not to you,” Tre’valen said, with a slight smile. “Which they properly do, An’desha. The problem is that they come from your mind, and not Falconsbane’s, and that is what made it seem to you as if they were yours.”

He sighed, and closed his eyes. “Can you—” he began, and then realized that Tre’valen had already shown him what he needed to do to put any new memories at the same distance.

“You are a good pupil, An’desha,” Dawnfire said, a bare hint of teasing in her voice. “You are a credit to your teachers.”

He ducked his head shyly, but before he could reply, an internal tug warned him that he must return to the body he and Falconsbane shared before the Adept awakened.

The others understood without a word; they both touched him again, briefly, filling him with that incredible warmth and caring, and then they were gone.

And he closed his eyes, and sought without, and within—

And opened the very physical eyes of Mornelithe Falconsbane, who still slept in his heavily cushioned chair. Without even consciously thinking of doing so, he had implemented the new lesson even as he returned to the body. Now he was very much in control, although he must make certain that he did nothing abruptly, or made any motion or sound that might wake the Adept.

Still, Falconsbane slept very heavily—and people often walked, talked, and did many other things in their sleep without awakening. An’desha should at least have a limited freedom.

For the first time in years, he had full command of all of his body. He now wore it, rather than being carried by it as a kind of invisible passenger. Senses seemed much sharper now; he became aware of vague aches and pains, of the fact that he was painfully thin, most of the body’s resources having been devoured in that terrible time between the Gates. Small wonder Falconsbane ate much, slept much, and tired easily!

The warning that had brought him back was thirst; alive and growing quickly. Moving slowly and carefully, he reached out for the watered wine on the table beside him, poured himself a goblet, and drank it down. He then settled back again with a feeling of triumph. He had done that, not Falconsbane—and for the first time, he had done so without feeling Falconsbane would wake while he moved!

An’desha marveled at the feel of the goblet in his hands—his hands, at last, his arms and body. And now, he had many, many things to think about. He did not feel up to another swim in the cesspool of Falconsbane’s memories. Not now.

Later, when Falconsbane truly slept; that would be time enough. But for now—now he had another task in front of him. He had felt very young, a few moments ago. He had been very young, a few moments ago.

It was time, finally, to grow up.

By his own will.

8

Elspeth’s head felt full-to-bursting, the way it had when she first began learning mage-craft from Need and Darkwind. Or, for that matter, the way it used to feel back when she was still a Herald-trainee, and had been cramming information on laws and customs into her memory as quickly as she could. She had a wealth of information bubbling like a teapot in her mind, and she still hadn’t sorted it out yet. But she would; she would. It was all a matter of time.

For now, the best thing was to make as simple a plan as possible and go from there—knowing that even simple plans could go awry. First we go through the Gate, then Vanyel dispels his protections on Valdemar so that mages can use magic without going mad, then we pelt for Haven as fast as we can. Seems simple enough. But Elspeth was not inclined to think it would stay simple for very long. There were too many things that could complicate their situation.

Just after the vrondi-watch is dispelled—that’s when Valdemar will be at its most vulnerable. I’d better ask Vanyel if he can make the eastern border protections go down last.

But risk was part of life. She went through some other things that would be trouble. Communication, for one. She was passing plans on to Gwena, who relayed them to Rolan, who presumably told Talia—a complicated chain in which there were any number of chances for a break in that communication.

They were to return to the Ashkevron estate. Right there, possible problems arose.

Supposedly there were already two Heralds waiting for them at the Ashkevron family manor, who supposedly knew everything that Elspeth had passed on to Gwena and Rolan. They were expecting the Gate, were to have warned the family what was coming.

But just how much were the Heralds really told, how much did they understand, and how much were they able to get the Ashkevrons to believe?

Even if they knew all about the Gate, they might not understand what it was. And as for the Ashkevrons believing in magic—that in itself was problematic. Elspeth had on occasion crossed horns with some of the stubborn Ashkevron human oxen, and she knew very well that having been warned and actually doing something about it were two different things.

They were still horse breeders, something that came as no real surprise to Vanyel when she had mentioned it. :They always have been rather set in tradition,: was all he had said. He called it “tradition,” but she and the Queen had another thing or two to call it, when Ashkevrons showed up at court to protest some edict or other simply because “We’ve never done it that way, and we’ve never had a problem.”

Whether it was sticking younglings with needles dipped in cowpox sores to prevent the Great Pox, or creating a common grazing ground for those folk with single livestock (so that the beasts were not inclined to break free of their tiny yards and roam off to larger and presumably greener pastures), if it was something new and different, the Ashkevrons usually opposed it. Most of them stayed on or near the family property even after marriage, although they were no longer as prolific as they had been in Vanyel’s day. Most of them were stolid and stubborn, and had to be shown why something worked, in detail, and with exhaustive explanations, before they would return home to implement it.

There were no Heralds in this generation of Ashkevrons, although there were two Ashkevron officers in the Guard, one apprentice Bard, and one very ancient Healer. And although the stolid Ashkevrons were always mystified that anyone would ever want to leave home, thanks to Vanyel, it was now a tradition (and so, unquestioned) that if you didn’t feel that you fit in, you left.

Still, Elspeth could just imagine what the two Heralds that had been dragged off their circuits to meet them had gone through, trying to explain to the Ashkevrons just what, exactly, was going to happen. Most likely they themselves didn’t even understand it!

The brown-haired, brown-eyed, huskily-built current Lord would blink in puzzlement and say, “You say they’re gonna be a-comin’ through the chapel door? How in Havens they get in there?” And the Herald in question would have to scratch his head and answer that he really didn’t know how, but that they were really going to come through that door—

And then, when the Gate opened—

Gods, it would be a royal mess… she only hoped that everyone would at least keep clear long enough for the Companions to get through. And then the gryphons, both young and old…

Just thinking about what could go wrong gave Elspeth a headache. She closed her eyes and rubbed her temple, then opened them again to meet Darkwind’s concerned glance. She smiled slightly, and he squeezed her hand in reassurance.

Ready or not, it was all about to become moot. They gathered once again in the clearing in front of the cave-mouth that had first served as their portal to Vanyel’s forest—or his current body, it could be argued. Vanyel’s image stood to one side of the Gate he was creating, so thinned and tenuous that he looked like nothing more than a human-shaped wisp of mist. Almost all of his power was going into the building of this Gate—a Gate to a place so far away that Firesong admitted he didn’t think anyone had the temerity to try such a distance. The only feat that dwarfed it was the one that had brought them here, over an even longer distance. But the energy forming that Gate had come from two Adepts, Vanyel and Firesong; this was coming from Vanyel alone.

Then again, Vanyel had resources no merely human mage could command…

The cave-mouth darkened, blackened—and just as suddenly, gave out on a stone-walled corridor, lit with oil lanterns, filled with strange people gaping in slack-jawed amazement.

“It’s up! Go now!” Firesong shouted. Gwena and Cymry didn’t need any urging. They all knew that the strain of this undertaking, even on a being such as Vanyel, was tremendous; he would only be able to hold the Gate open for a limited time.

The Companions bolted across the portal, hooves kicking up great clods of earth from the soft turf. Elspeth and Skif were right on their heels, followed by Darkwind and Firesong with their bondbirds clinging to their shoulders for dear life. Then came Nyara, Firesong’s dyheli, and Rris, and bringing up the rear, the four gryphons.

Gwena and Cymry simply kept moving as they passed through, recovering from the disorientation of Gating much more quickly than Elspeth could. Sound did not travel across the barrier of the Gate, and as Elspeth dove through, she saw mouths moving as if people were shouting, although there was nothing to hear.

She passed into blackness, and through that moment of extreme dizziness that made her feel as if she was falling forever and would never touch the ground. There was nothing to concentrate on; no contact even with her own body. She could be screaming and waving her arms around, and she would never know—and if something went wrong with the Gate, wouldn’t she be left that way forever?

But her momentum carried her forward, out of the complete silence of the Void and into pandemonium. People shouted, hooves clattered on the stone of the corridor, and all of it echoed so much it made all the sounds into meaningless noise. She glanced around, her eyes still blurred, trying to make sense out of the confusion.

She needn’t have bothered. By the time she and Darkwind staggered onto the stone of the Ashkevron corridor and shook their heads clear, the Companions had shoved everyone out of the way and had made enough room even for the gryphons.

Even so, there wasn’t a lot of room. There was a kind of anteroom in front of the chapel door, and that was what the Companions had cleared. Now there was a horde of people jammed into the corridor itself, beyond the anteroom, all of them jabbering. A strange, faintly unpleasant smell struck Elspeth’s nostrils, and she sneezed, wondering what the odd, heavy odor was. Then she remembered; it was fish oil, used for lanterns. She hadn’t had fish oil lamps inflicted on her for nearly two years—no wonder the smell made her sneeze!

It appeared that their arrival had been deemed something of a carnival, and the Ashkevrons were always prone to pounce on an excuse to see a marvel. Everyone on the estate had turned out to see just what was supposed to happen.

Or at least, that was the way it seemed to Elspeth. There were three Heralds in the front of the mob, their Whites gleaming in the light from the lanterns, and not the two that she had been told would be here. She didn’t recognize any of them, not that she necessarily would; Field Heralds seldom came to Haven, and when they did, they would only be one more stranger in Whites to her. But she had hoped that at least one would be a friend; Jeri or Sherril, even Kero. Her heart sank a little, and she hoped she didn’t show her disappointment.

Crowded behind the three Heralds were what appeared to be a hundred other people. All three tried to get past Gwena for what she assumed was a greeting; certainly the relief on their faces spoke volumes for their feelings. Even if her feelings were mixed, theirs certainly were not!

But at that moment, Darkwind and Firesong came stumbling through—then, before anyone could blink, Nyara, the dyheli and Rris—

And then the gryphons, plunging through the Gate as if they were charging an enemy line, then skidding to a halt just past the threshold.

And the crowd went insane with panic.

A crash of thunder that shook the stones under her drowned out most of the screams, but not all, by any means.

I guess someone forgot to tell them about Treyvan and Hydona—

Thunder faded, but not the shrieks. People stared for a moment, then, like cattle, bolted in the direction of freedom and safety.

That was all she had time to think, before the Ashkevron clan snatched up children, turned tail, and fled the scene, leaving behind three white-faced Heralds to guard their retreating backs.

Crashing thunder covered the sound of their retreat for the most part. All Elspeth could do was stand there, torn between laughter and hysteria.

Meanwhile the three Heralds were apparently convinced they were all about to die at the claws of the strange beasts. All three groped after weapons they weren’t wearing, as people shoved and stumbled behind them and thunder crashed again.

Impasse. They were unarmed, but the gryphons weren’t moving. And at this point, they must have been wondering why the two Companions didn’t do anything! The Heralds stared at the gryphons, paralyzed with indecision, as the Gate vanished behind the winged apparitions, and another blast of thunder deafened them all for a moment.

No one moved.

The gryphons stared back. Elspeth was about to say something to break the deadlock—then stopped herself. Treyvan was an envoy. Let him deal with the situation. If she intervened now, it might look as if he needed her intervention. If the Heralds had been armed, it would have been a different story—

In the silence that followed the thunder, Treyvan opened his beak and the three Heralds stepped back a pace as if they expected him to charge them.

“I take it we werrre not exssssspected?” he said, in clear, if heavily accented, Valdemaran.

* * *

Eventually, everything was sorted out as the thunderstorm rolled on outside. The Heralds—Cavil, Shion, and Lisha—recovered from their terror very quickly in the face of Treyvan’s civilized politeness and sunny charm. As she had expected, he soon had the situation under control, and even had the three Heralds laughing weakly at their own fear.

The antechamber and hallways were too crowded a venue for any kind of discussion, however. As soon as the atmosphere settled for a moment, Elspeth suggested they all move into the chapel.

Like most private chapels, this one was devoid of permanent seats and much in the way of decoration. It was basically a simple stone-walled room, empty at this moment, with a stone altar at one end. More lanterns lit it, but these were candle lamps rather than the fish oil, and the honey scent of beeswax was a great deal easier on Elspeth’s nose than the odoriferous oil.

Gwena and Cymry picked their way carefully over the stone floor, leading the way, followed by the dyheli. They took places near the altar. The bondbirds flew up to the rafters and began a vigorous preening, oblivious to whatever their bondmates were up to for the moment. And the gryphons herded the young ones into a window alcove that no longer looked out on the outside, as evidenced by the lack of glazing and the view of another fish oil lamp lighting yet another corridor.

At that point, Lord Ashkevron reappeared, armed to the teeth and wearing a hastily donned, antique breastplate. Elspeth would have laughed if she had not been so amazed at his temerity.

She ran quickly to the front of the room, placing herself between him and the gryphons.

“My Lord!” she shouted, pausing for thunder to die down. “My Lord, there is no danger! These are guests of Valdemar. You were supposed to have been warned they were coming!”

His sword point, held in defensive posture, wavered for a moment, then dropped. He raised the visor of his helm.

“The hell you say!” he exclaimed, regarding the gryphons in puzzlement.

She hastened to assure him that there was no danger, and briefly explained the situation.

He in his turn went cautiously to the doorway and peered in.

Treyvan looked up at just that moment. “Hel-lo,” he said, in a voice that sounded friendly to Elspeth—although who knew how it sounded to Lord Ashkevron. “May we impossse upon your hossspitality and rrremain herrre, good sirrr? I fearrr we would frrrighten yourrr horrrsesss if we went nearrr yourrr ssstablesss. I would not rrrisssk panic to the horsssesss.”

That was enough for Lord Ashkevron; whatever this monster was, it had just demonstrated that it cared not to disturb his precious horseflesh. The gryphons were invited to take over the chapel.

He went off to start collecting the terrified members of his household and explain to them that these were not monsters—or at least, these were monsters that were on the side of Valdemar. Lisha wasted no time in seizing on Elspeth and filling her ears with complaints about how little preparation they’d had.

That was when Elspeth discovered that her worries had been dead on the mark. No one had said anything about the gryphons. In fact, no one had told these three that anyone but Skif and Elspeth were going to arrive—and certainly those assigning them to this task had not been able to explain the manner of Elspeth’s arrival in any way the three Heralds were able to understand.

Meanwhile, the storm raged outside, its fury no doubt further frightening everyone who had fled, who must be certain that in the howling wind they heard the hungry cries of man-eating monsters. Finally Elspeth called a halt to further explanations until they helped Lord Ashkevron collect and calm his household.

It took candlemarks to soothe the nerves of the terrified Ashkevrons, who had been certain that they had just witnessed terrible monsters following their Heir—that she and Skif had, in fact, been fleeing them when they dashed across the threshold of the Gate. The poor folk had been certain that these monsters came from whatever strange place she had been, and were going to eat them all alive as soon as they caught and devoured the Heralds. People had to be hunted out and reassured, one by one; they had fled to every corner of the manor, hiding under beds and behind furniture, in closets and attics, and even cowering in the cellars. Only the storm outside, pouring so hard that it was impossible to see, had kept them from fleeing the building altogether.

Even now, a good half of the inhabitants were still walking softly and fearfully, expecting at any moment that the monsters would show their true nature. Nothing Lord Ashkevron or any of the Heralds could say would convince them otherwise.

Predictably, it was the gryphlets who eventually won over the rest. Lytha and Jerven had begun a game of pounce-and-wrestle as soon as they were settled, including Darkwind in their fun. There was nothing even remotely threatening in their kittenish play, and they soon had Lord Jehan Ashkevron convulsed with laughter. Now those who dared the chapel soon found themselves engaged in cheerful conversation with one or the other of the adults, while the youngsters continued to entertain themselves and anyone else watching them.

With that crisis out of the way, Elspeth and Skif went back to finding out just how things stood—both here, and in the Kingdom as a whole. She could quite cheerfully have shot whoever had made that particular set of omissions. Fortunately, after the gryphons, even the dyheli and Nyara didn’t seem to cause too much consternation. Rris was simply assumed to be a very large dog, and neither he nor Elspeth saw any reason to enlighten anyone on that score—although his occasionally acidic comments had her choking down laughter she would have been hard put to explain if anyone had noticed.

By the time everyone had been found and calmed, and all misunderstandings sorted out, it was well into night.

Elspeth was tired, hungry, and in no mood to deal with anything other than a meal and a warm bed.

“But like it or not,” she said to Darkwind—in Tayledras, so that no one would overhear and be offended—” I’m back at home, which means work, lots of it, starting this very moment. You don’t have to sit through this if you don’t want to, but I have to have a meeting with these Heralds. If they didn’t get the message about the gryphons, there are probably a hundred equally important messages we haven’t gotten.”

“I came to help,” Darkwind said softly, the lines of worry in his face softened by the light from the candle-lamps. “If you do not object to my presence.”

Object? “Not likely,” she said with gratitude. “You probably won’t understand half of what they say, but you should get the sense of it all if you link with my mind.”

Link with my mind—I never thought I would ever say that to anyone, I never thought I would be willing to. She smiled at him, a little shyly. She was so used to linking with him now that it never even caused her a moment of uneasiness; she did it as easily as she opened her thoughts to Gwena.

He smiled, and touched her hand lightly. She gave him a slow wink, then paused for a half breath to settle her thoughts. After speaking only Tayledras for so long, it seemed odd to speak her own tongue again; the words felt strange in her mouth.

Darkwind waited as she attempted to assume an air of authority. At her nod, he followed, as she went right to the corner to interrupt the low-voiced conversation all three Heralds were having with Lord Jehan.

The Heralds started and looked guilty as she cleared her throat. She was struck, at that moment, by how plain and severe their Whites looked, and spared a flicker of thought to wonder if she and Skif looked as outlandish and exotic to them as they looked plain to her.

Although the three Heralds seemed embarrassed—which meant that they had probably been discussing her—Sir Jehan, evidently, was just as blunt and forthright as any of his line, and turned to her immediately.

He was a brown and blocky man; brown eyes, hair, and beard, with a square face and a square build, all of it muscle. He looked nothing like Vanyel. She remembered something her mother had said once, though: “The Ashkevron look usually breeds true, and when it doesn’t, the poor child generally runs off to Haven!”

“Cavil was just saying that no one told him that anyone was coming except you and the other Herald,” he said, with a hearty chuckle. “He keeps insisting that I ought to complain to someone. Can’t understand why. I know how it is. You tell someone, ‘I’m coming and bringing an entourage of a hundred,’ he tells the next fellow, ‘Jehan’s bringing an escort,’ it keeps getting pared down until your host thinks you’re only bringin’ a couple of servants, and when you show up with your hundred, there’s no place to put ’em all.” He shrugged. “It happens. Happens all the time, and no one to blame for it.”

She sighed with relief. There was one good thing about dealing with people like Jehan; once they calmed down, they were usually able to take anything in stride, from gryphons in their chapels to Gates in their doorways.

“Thank you for being so understanding,” she said. “Could I steal Cavil and the others from you for a little? There’s a great deal I have to catch up on.”

“Oh, no fear, no fear,” Jehan replied affably. “I have to go round up the aunties again and let ’em know they aren’t goin’ to be eaten in their beds.” He grinned hugely, showing very white teeth in a very dark beard, then added, “I never believed ’em when they all said you were dead, Lady. Kept telling ’em they were actin’ like a bunch of silly hens, flutterin’ around over nothing.”

And with that odd comment, he sketched a bow and took his leave.

Elspeth turned to Herald Cavil, who looked profoundly embarrassed. He was an older man, thin and harried-looking, with brown hair going gray at the temples. She had a feeling that after today, there would be a lot more gray there. “Just what in Havens was that all about?” she demanded. “About my being dead, I mean.”

He flushed; his cheeks turned a brilliant crimson. “Some of what we need to brief you on, my lady,” he said, quickly, while the other two Heralds nodded. “There have been rumors over the last several months that you were dead and the Council was trying to conceal that fact. Nothing the Queen or Circle could say or do seemed to calm the alarm. We need to proceed back to Haven at all speed, and as openly as possible—”

“We aren’t going to be able to proceed quietly with this menagerie!” she pointed out, interrupting him. “But apparently, that’s going to be all to the good, from what you’re saying. The more people that see me, the better, right?” She shook her head for a moment, and caught Darkwind’s eye. He was rather amused by something, although she couldn’t imagine what. Perhaps it was the notion of trying to conceal the gryphons.

As what? Statuary?

“Of course, with four gryphons along, I wonder if anyone is going to notice me!” she added with a tired smile.

“There is this,” Darkwind put in, speaking slowly in his careful, accented Valdemaran. “The notion of you in company with gryphons is so strange that no one would make it up; it is so strange it must be believed.”

“You don’t intend to bring those creatures to Haven!” Cavil exclaimed without thinking.

She started to snap; caught herself, and answered instead, quietly and calmly, “Treyvan and Hydona are not only envoys from the Tayledras and Kaled’a’in, they are mages in their own right. They have offered to teach any Herald with Mage-Gift. Yes, Mage-Gift. They can do that best at Haven, and they are needed there. I would be doing everyone a disservice if I insisted they remain here until they were sent for.”

The three Heralds exchanged hasty glances, and the one called Shion said, cautiously, “But what of the rest? The other—ah—people?”

A sidelong glance told her that Shion meant Nyara, but she deliberately chose to take her literally.

“Darkwind and Firesong are Tayledras Adepts, and they are just as badly needed as the gryphons, if not more so,” she replied. “And as for the others, Nyara is Skif’s lady, and the dyheli and Rris are envoys from their respective peoples. Everyone with me is either a representative of a potential ally, or someone who is practiced in mage-craft and is willing to teach.”

At the startled looks she got, she could not repress a chuckle. “It’s a strange world out there, my friends,” she added. “You can’t assume that something that looks like an animal isn’t an intelligent person—or that something that looks human is more than a beast. Havens, you should know that from Court duty.”

Cavil shook his head, biting his lip in what was obviously a nervous habit. “Lady, this is the single most confusing day of my life,” he said at last, with honest bewilderment.

He glanced at the single window in the chapel that still faced the open sky. It was made of thick glass that allowed little view, but enough to show that outside it was black night—except when lightning glared across the sky, turning the window into a patch of white. Obviously the storm had not abated in the least since they had arrived. Here inside thick stone walls, most of the fury of the storm was muffled, but it might very well be the worst storm Elspeth had ever seen.

“It is too late to travel tonight,” Cavil said reluctantly. “But in the morning, we must be off. We have taken more time than I like as it is.”

That took her a little aback. “In this storm?” she exclaimed without thinking. “The way it’s raining, it’ll still be going strong in the morning! Can’t we wait until it clears, at least?”

Herald Lisha sighed. “It probably won’t clear, not for two days at least,” she told Elspeth. “Not that I’m a weather-witch or anything, but the weather all over Valdemar has been rotten this year. It got bad around Midwinter, when everyone got hit with that headache, and right before you people popped out of that doorway this storm just blew up out of nowhere. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I’m not exactly young.”

“No one knows what is causing this,” Cavil said glumly, “although many people blame Ancar, and a great many more are convinced he has somehow learned to turn the very weather against us. Lisha understates the case, Lady Elspeth. The weather has been simply hellish.”

Elspeth noticed that Firesong had been listening intently to this entire conversation, and decided to invite him in on it. “Cavil says the weather has been hellish, that this storm is just one example,” she called over to him. He took that as an invitation, and stalked gracefully toward them, his robes flowing about him in a way that made Lisha smile at him appreciatively. “Cavil, Lisha, Shion, this is Firesong k’Treva, another Adept. Firesong, they think Ancar is to blame for the state of the weather. Is this something we need to warn Haven about? Have you any ideas?”

He nodded a greeting to each of the Heralds before replying.

“Of course the weather has been hellish,” he said matter-of-factly while Elspeth translated. He understood Valdemaran far better than he could speak it. “There has been a disturbance in the magical currents here, and that always makes the weather act up, unless someone is working to balance it. Since you have no weather-wizards and earth-witches working to rebalance the weather, it will continue to be bad.”

Lisha’s long face was puzzled, Shion’s round one thoughtful, but Cavil brightened. “You mean Ancar isn’t to blame?”

“In a sense, but it was not deliberate,” Firesong explained. He held up a finger. “First—that moment when all of you were struck with that blinding headache—that was when a powerful packet of energy was flung up here and linked to a physical object in your chief city. That was meant entirely to help you, and indeed you will need it, but it also created great disturbances in the natural order of magic in this land. Weather is influenced by these energy patterns, and so the weather began to turn awry. Now, outside of your land, this Ancar has been mucking about with magic as well, and I suspect without any safeguards at all. That will also stir things up. The forces he has been meddling with are powerful ones, and this has had an effect on the weather over both your lands.”

Lisha had the look of a hunter on the track of game. She leaned forward a little. “So what is basically going on is that magic has been like someone rowing across a pond—while the boat is getting from here to there, the rower creates waves and eddies, whether or not he knows it. He maybe stirs up muck from the bottom if he digs his oars in too deep. Yes?”

Firesong’s eyes darted from Lisha’s face to Elspeth’s as she translated, for Lisha had spoken far too quickly for him to understand her. He laughed when Elspeth was done, and nodded vigorously. “Exactly so, and an excellent analogy. Now—we have just opened and closed a Gate in the midst of all this instability, and that has only made things worse. In fact, in this case, it has turned what would have been only a minor storm into a tempest.” He shrugged. “We do not have these problems, because all Vales have what you call Journeymen and Apprentices balancing the forces while Masters and Adepts work, or doing specific weather-controlling spells to avoid this kind of mess.”

He took on a “lecturing” tone, and he might well have gone on in this vein for some time, except that he caught sight of Elspeth’s expression. She was directing a rather accusatory glare at him, Darkwind, and Treyvan.

“Why didn’t you tell me we’d be doing this to Valdemar?” she demanded, as Firesong broke off, and the three Heralds watched in bewilderment, unable to follow what was going on since she had switched to Tayledras. “Why didn’t any of you let me know?”

Firesong shrugged, and crystals braided into his hair reflected flashes of lightning from outside.

“It would have done you no good to know,” he pointed out. “What would you have been able to do about it? Nothing. You were a great distance away. Your people have no weather-workers, and until that barrier comes down, you will have none coming in. There was no point in mentioning it.”

Shion cleared her throat, her round face telling of her puzzlement and curiosity eloquently. “Please,” she said, “What are you talking about?”

“The weather,” she replied, then took pity on her and gave her a quick translation.

“You mean,” she said at last, “it really is possible to do something other than complain about the weather?”

She smiled and nodded. “Eventually, we will. But right now, the trouble is that all this wonderful new magic is bringing killer storms down on our own heads.”

“Ke’chara, you must think of the other side of this stone,” Darkwind put in, speaking again in Valdemaran. “Ancar is getting this weather—ah—in the teeth. And he is getting it as much as we; it must be at least as much of a hindrance. Consider how much magic he works, and completely without safeguards.”

He sounded positively cheerful about it. Elspeth couldn’t be quite that cheerful, thinking of all the innocent folk who were suffering much more from the wicked weather than Ancar was. But still, it was rather comforting to think that some of Ancar’s chickens at least were coming home to roost.

“Oh, quite,” Firesong said, just as cheerfully, when Elspeth had finished translating. “In actual fact, I would be much surprised if the effect was not a great deal worse over there in his land. He, after all, is the one who has been working the most magic—and it is he and his mages who also care little for the balances of things.”

At Lisha’s ironic nod of agreement, Firesong sighed, and shook his head a little. “On reflection, I fear that I will have a great deal of work ahead of me, once the current troubles are settled.”

Current troubles—as if the war with Ancar wasn’t much more complicated than a brushfire.

“It’s going to take a lot to ‘settle’ Ancar,” Lisha replied, with heavy irony. “I don’t trust the current stalemate, and neither does anyone else in this Kingdom. You’ll have your hands full of more than weather before you’re here long.”

9

Mornelithe Falconsbane stood in the window of his suite, with the shutters flung open wide and a cold wind whipping his hair about his head. He scowled and watched a night-black storm walking toward his “host’s” castle on a thousand legs of lightning. As it neared, the light faded and thunder growled a warning of things to come. The wind picked up and sent the shutters to either side of him crashing against the wall, sending dust and the heavy scent of cold rain into his face. He crossed his arms and watched the storm racing over the empty fields beyond the city walls, lightning licking down and striking the earth for every beat of his heart. This would be a terrible and powerful storm; before it was over, crops would be beaten down in the fields, and many of those fields would lie under water.

He had expected nothing less, given what he already knew.

He waited until the last possible moment before closing windows and shutters against the winds of fury; they howled as if in frustration and lashed at the closed shutters with whips of rain. But the shutters were stoutly built. All the storm could accomplish was to rattle the thick glass of the windows behind them.

Thunder did more than rattle the glass; it shook the palace to the cellars, making all the stones in the walls tremble. Falconsbane felt the vibration under his feet as he turned and walked back to the chair he had abandoned at the first hint of the coming storm.

This was the fourth such storm in the last week. Two of the four had brought little rain, but had sent whirlwinds down out of the clouds and hail to damage roofs and break the glass in windows. Falconsbane had seen one of the whirlwinds firsthand, as it had dropped down out of a black cloud, writhing like a thick snake or the tentacle-arm of a demon. It had withdrawn again without touching ground in the city, but other such whirlwinds had made contact with the ground and wrought great damage out in the countryside. Dead animals had been found high up in the treetops, houses had been destroyed, and crops torn up. There had also been marvels—an unbroken egg driven into the trunk of a tree, straws driven through thick boards.

He had been fascinated by the whirlwinds and the wreckage and bizarre marvels they had left in their wake, but otherwise the storms held no interest for him. In fact, this current outbreak had left him fuming with anger, for he only truly enjoyed storms when he had called them and was in control of them. The cold and damp made his wounds ache, and all his joints complained and stiffened, reminding him painfully that this body was not as youthful as it looked.

And reminding him that he had not even overcome Ancar’s coercions enough to allow him free reign to recreate that youth and renew the spells that had held age in abeyance. If it had not been for those coercions, he would have been able to choose a victim of his own and Heal himself of his damage. One life would give him the energy to cure himself completely. Two would permit him to reverse some of the ravages of age for a time. More than two would permit him to make any changes to himself that he pleased.

And it would be so pleasant if one of those victims could be Ancar himself…

Failing that, he retreated to his favorite chair, the one nearest the fire, and sat warming himself. Daydreaming of revenge and planning his course to obtain it were his only real amusements at the moment.

He probably should be down among Ancar’s courtiers, but this had not been a particularly fruitful day, and he had grown bored rather quickly. He had never had much patience with the witless babble of a court even when it had been his own court. In this current body, he had eliminated holding court altogether. When he wished his underlings to hear something, he gathered them together and told them, then dismissed them. When he wished to hear from them—which was rarely—he ordered them before him and stripped their minds.

But Ancar seemed convinced that a “court” was necessary, although he no longer held audiences or even permitted anyone below the rank of noble near him. Perhaps for a ruler like him, it was. Even though it was mostly a sham, and he himself never appeared before his assembled courtiers.

Still, a reasonable amount of information could be obtained if one had the patience to listen to Ancar’s brainless toadies, and the wit to read real meaning from what the few foreign ambassadors did and did not say. Today, however, had been hopelessly dull. Even Hulda was off somewhere else, leaving him to mouth meaningless pleasantries at fools who could have served far more useful purposes bleeding their lives away in his hands and granting him the power which they could not use.

The very first person Ancar had introduced him to was Hulda, after warning him far too many times about the woman’s perfidy. He had been the consummate gentleman. Hulda amused him. She was quick-witted when she cared to be—much cleverer than she appeared. Complacency was her flaw when it came to Ancar; she obviously still believed she ruled him completely, and if anything would bring her downfall, this complacency would be the cause.

She was much wiser in the ways of magic than her pupil; she knew Falconsbane for a Changechild, for she had made some clever remarks about “changing one’s nature” when Ancar had first introduced them. He could certainly see the attraction she must have had for the boy when he was still young and malleable. She was lushly ripe—perhaps a trifle overblown, but some folk liked their fruit well-seasoned and their meat well-aged. With her curving, voluptuous lines, good features, long flow of dark hair, and her startling violet eyes, she cut quite an impressive figure.

Falconsbane had bowed over her hand, but had caressed the palm, unseen, before he let it go. He had noted the flare of interest in her eyes, and had smiled, and nodded knowingly as she lowered her lids to give him a seductive glance from beneath her heavy lashes.

She, too, was older than she looked, he knew that instinctively—but she was not as old as he was, not even in this body. Thus far he had managed to avoid more than speaking to her without ever seeming to avoid her, a fact that must infuriate and frustrate her. He intended to play her a while, before he decided how to handle her over the long run. Let her pursue him; let him be the enigma. It would make her concentrate on his physical presence and not on the threat he might be to her power.

She did not connect his presence with the Gate, and at this moment, he preferred to keep it that way. She recognized him for a mage of some kind, but she did not appear to have any way of judging his true abilities. That was all to the good. If he decided to make a temporary ally of her, he would reveal to her what he chose. And at the moment, he did not know if he cared to make her an ally. It might be amusing, especially since his exotic nature patently attracted her, but it might also be very dangerous. She was playing some deep game, and had secrets that young fool Ancar had not even guessed at. Falconsbane wanted to know just what those secrets were before he even began to consider her as an ally.

And mages were notoriously jealous of their power; if she guessed him to be any kind of a rival, it would not take her long to decide to eliminate him. She would try to do so subtly, but she would not be hampered by coercions. Becoming involved in a covert mage-struggle at this stage could only further delay his plans for freedom.

In the meantime, it suited him to pique her curiosity, and to cast little tidbits of information to her designed to make her think—rightfully—that Ancar was intriguing against her and that he was an unwitting part of that plan. The best thing he could do would be to set these two openly at each others’ throats. The more tangled this situation got, the better the outcome for him. The more time they wasted struggling for power, the more time he would have to free himself. The more power they wasted, the weaker they would be when he finally succeeded.

He had been looking forward to tangling the situation a bit more, but Hulda had not even put in an appearance at court this afternoon. Falconsbane had quickly become irritated with the inane chatter and had finally retreated to his suite in boredom and disgust. The joint aches warning of an approaching storm had not sweetened his temper in the least.

He slumped in his chair, stared at the fire, and brooded. He could not recall, in any of his lifetimes, having been so completely cut off from control. It was not possible to forget even for a moment that he was the one being controlled. This was, in many ways, worse than being imprisoned, for he was a prisoner in his own body.

The flames danced wildly in the changing drafts from the chimney, sometimes roaring up the chimney, sometimes flattening against the logs, but he could not hear the crackling of the fire for the howling of the wind and the continual barrage of thunder. Every time the flames flattened for a moment, it simply made his rage smolder a little more.

His several days in the heart of Ancar’s court had made it clear that he had been outfoxed by someone he would not even have had in his employ as a menial. He knew how disastrous these storms were, not only to the countryside, but to the energy-fields for leagues around. Even if Ancar didn’t care what they did to his land, Falconsbane was going to have to put all this back before he could work properly. That was what made him the angriest. He had known that the boy was a fool. He had not known the boy was as big a fool as all this.

He did not hear Ancar come in, and was not aware that the young King was in the room until movement at the corner of his vision caught his attention. The noise of the thunder had covered the sounds of the door opening and the boy’s footsteps. That irritated him even more. The brat could come and go as he pleased, even in Falconsbane’s own rooms, and the Adept was powerless to prevent it!

He looked up, and Ancar’s smug expression simply served to ignite his anger.

“What is wrong with you, you little fool?” he snapped furiously. “Why aren’t you doing anything about this storm? Or are you simply such an idiot that you don’t care what it means?”

Ancar stepped back a pace, doubtless surprised by the venom in his voice, the rage in his eyes. “What it means?” he repeated stupidly. “What do you mean by that? How can a storm mean anything at all? How could I do anything about it even if it did mean something?”

For a moment, Falconsbane stared at him in surprise so great that his anger evaporated. How could anyone who had gotten past Apprentice not know weather control, and how magic affected the world about him?

“Hasn’t anyone ever taught you weather-magic?” he blurted without thinking. “Don’t you realize what you and those idiot mages of yours have been doing?”

Ancar could only blink stupidly at him. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he said. “I don’t understand. What have we been doing that makes you so angry?”

Finally, as Ancar continued to stare at him, Falconsbane gathered enough of his temper about him to answer the boy’s unspoken questions.

“Evidently, your teacher Hulda has been hiding more from you than you realized,” he replied testily. “It is very simple; so simple that you should have been able to deduce it from observation alone if you had ever bothered to observe anything. Magical energy is created by living things and runs along natural lines, like water. You do know that much, I hope?”

Ancar nodded silently.

He snorted, and continued, “Well, then, like water, it can be disturbed, perturbed, and otherwise affected by meddling with it. If you meddle a little, the disturbance is so minor that no one would notice it if they were not looking for it. If you meddle a great deal, as if you had just thrown a mighty boulder into a pond, everyone will get splashed and they most certainly will notice. That is how your Hulda knew you were meddling with a Gate. She sensed the ripples in the magical energies, and knew by the pattern they made that you had created a Gate!”

“I know all that—” Ancar began impatiently.

Falconsbane interrupted him, waving him into silence. “Magic also affects the physical elements of the world,” he continued, allowing his irritation to show. “You should have noticed this by now. Hadn’t you even seen that some kind of weather change always follows a working in the more powerful magics? The more subtle the element, the more it will be affected. Meddle with a Gate, and even the earth will resonate. Meddle enough, you might trigger an earthquake if the earth is unstable at that point. But the most subtle elements are air and water—which make weather, you fool. Changes in magical energy change the weather, as the air and water reflect what is happening in the magical fields. You have stirred up the magical fields hereabouts with your little experiments—and now you are reaping the result. Keep this up much more, and you will either be paying a premium price for imported food, or you will have to steal it or starve next year.”

Ancar’s mouth hung open a little with surprise, his eyes going a little wider. Evidently this was all new to him. And by the growing dismay in his expression, it was not a pleasant revelation.

Falconsbane smiled nastily. “Any mage who is any good at all makes certain that he calms the fields if he can after he is finished. Any mage with the power to command others need only tell them to take care of the disturbances, damping them before they cause any great harm. And any mage worthy of his hire could at least steer storms over his enemy’s territory! By the time I became an Adept, I could do it without even thinking about it when I worked my magics in freedom. I still could, if I had that freedom to work without hindrance.” He folded his arms and slumped back down in his chair in a fit of assumed petulance, staring at the flames and ignoring Ancar.

The boy was a fool, but not so great a fool, surely, that he could not understand what Falconsbane had just told him in so many words. Falconsbane could control the weather as he and his own wizards could not—except that Falconsbane was not free to do so. In order to control the weather, Falconsbane must be freed of the coercion spells.

In fact, that was not quite the case. Ancar need only modify the spells in order to give Falconsbane the freedom to work his will on the weather. But Ancar’s education was full of some very massive holes, and one of those seemed to be a lack of shading. Things either were, or they were not; there were no indeterminate gradations. So Mornelithe was hoping that his insulting speech would goad Ancar into freeing him, at least a little—

It worked. As Ancar recovered from his surprise, both at the information and at being spoken to as if he were a particularly stupid schoolboy, his face darkened with anger.

“Well,” he snarled, just barely audible above the rumble of thunder, “if you can do something, then do it, and stop complaining!”

His fingers writhed in a complicated mnemonic gesture, and Falconsbane felt some of the pressure on his powers easing a little. Only a little, but it was a start… a few of the coercions had been dropped. Ancar was not going to release him entirely, but the worst and most confining of the spells were gone.

Without a word, he rose from his chair, and stalked toward the window. Throwing it open with a grandiose gesture, he let the storm come tearing into the room, blowing out all the candles, extinguishing the fire, and plastering his clothing to his body in a breath. He was chilled and soaked in no time, but he ignored the discomforts of both in favor of the impressive show he was creating. Lightning raced across the sky above him, and he flung his arms wide, narrowing his eyes against the pelting rain. A bit of power made his hands glow most convincingly. He didn’t need to make his hands glow, of course, but it made Ancar’s eyes widen with awe in such a satisfactory manner.

He could have done everything from his comfortable chair, of course, without doing much more than lift a finger or two, but that would not have been dramatic enough. Ancar was stupid enough to be more impressed by dramatics than by results. That was probably why he had ended up with such inferior hirelings in the area of magic. Falconsbane did not need gestures to set his will twisting the forces of magic along the paths he chose. Falconsbane did not even need to close his eyes and drop into trance when the spell he wrought was a simple and familiar one.

Falconsbane sent out his probes, riding the wind until he found the center of the storm, and found the corresponding knot of energy in the ley-lines. He could unknot it, of course, but he didn’t want to. Let Ancar’s land suffer a little more. Let him see what a weapon controlled weather could be. Seizing the knot of energy, he gave it a powerful shove, sending it farther down the line and taking the storm with it.

Not too far, though. Just far enough from the capital and palace that it would not make his joints ache or interfere with his sleep tonight. He could not actually undo all the things that had caused the storm in his present state of coercion, and he did not think that Ancar would be inclined to release him completely just so that he could do so. If the fool asked him why he had not sent the storm into the skies of Valdemar, he would tell the boy that the King’s own spells were to blame, interfering with Falconsbane’s magic. That might convince him to release a few more of those coercions.

Or perhaps he wouldn’t care that his farmers’ fields would be flooded, the crops rotting in the sodden earth. It didn’t much matter to Falconsbane, except as an example of how short-sighted Ancar was.

The wind and rain died abruptly. As he opened his eyes, he saw with satisfaction that he had not lost his touch. Already the lightning had lessened and the storm was moving off, clouds fleeing into the distance so rapidly that it was obvious something had made them change their courses. In a candlemark or two, it would be dry and clear around the palace.

Hopefully, this entire exercise had been showy enough to impress the young idiot. He turned to shrug at his captor. “Well,” he said. “There you have it.”

Ancar was nodding wisely, his eyes a little wide as he tried unsuccessfully to cover his amazement. “Very good,” he said carelessly, still trying to cover his earlier slip. “I can see that you know what you are doing.”

Falconsbane simply smiled, then returned to his chair. Now that those particular coercions were off, he relit the candles and the fire with a simple spell. And he noticed, with a twitch of contempt, that Ancar was as impressed by that as he had been by how quickly he had sent the storm away.

“I trust that something brought you here other than a wish for my company,” he said, carefully keeping any hint of sarcasm from his voice. He gestured at the other chair beside the fire. “Pray, join me.”

He was carefully calculating his insolence in being seated in the King’s presence to underscore the fact that he was, current conditions notwithstanding, the King’s equal. And it seemed to be working. Ancar did not say a word about his insulting behavior and, in fact, he took the proffered seat with something as near to humility as Ancar ever came.

“Nothing important,” Ancar said airily. It was a lie, of course, and Falconsbane could read his real intentions as easily as if he could read the boy’s thoughts. Simple deductions, actually; he knew that Ancar had been reviewing progress—or lack of it—along the border of Valdemar. There had been messengers from that border this very day. Despite Ancar’s animosity toward Hulda, in this much he was still of one mind with the sorceress—his hatred of Valdemar. So that particular meeting was probably where Hulda had been this afternoon. It followed that he considered his options to have been exhausted, and now he wanted some help with that particular project from Mornelithe.

“Ah, then since there is nothing in particular you wish to discuss, perhaps you might be willing to satisfy my own curiosity about something,” he said, silkily. “This Valdemar that troubles you—you can tell me something about the land? How did you choose to quarrel with them in the first place?” He studied his own fingernails intently. “It would seem to me that you have been placing an inordinate amount of effort into attempting to conquer them, when so far as I can see, they are fairly insignificant. They have never attacked you, and they always stop at their own border, even when they are winning. Trying to conquer them seems, at least to an outsider, to be a losing proposition.”

He looked up, to see Ancar flushing a little, his eyes showing a hint of anger. But the King did not reply.

He smiled. “And if I understand everything I have heard, now you plan to try for them again. What is the point here? Are you so addicted to defeat that you cannot wait to give them another opportunity to deliver it to you?” As Ancar flushed an even deeper shade, he continued, taunting the boy with the litany of his failures, gleaned from questioning servants, courtiers, and some of Ancar’s other mages. “First you attack them before you are ready, and you naturally suffer a humiliating defeat. Then you attack them without ever bothering to discover if they had found some military allies and suffer a worse defeat. Your people are leaking across the border into their land on a daily basis, and you cannot even manage to insinuate a spy into their midst! Really, Ancar, I should think by now you would know enough to leave these people alone!”

Ancar was nearly purple with anger—and yet he held his peace and his tongue. Ancar did not want to talk about it. Now that was a curious combination…

And to Falconsbane’s mind, that spelled “obsession.”

When one was obsessed with something, logic did not enter into the picture.

When one was obsessed with something, one was often blind to all else. An obsession was a weakness, a place into which a clever man could place the point of his wit, and pry until the shell cracked…

As Ancar sat silently fuming, Falconsbane made some rapid mental calculations, adding up all the information he had been gleaning from courtiers, servants, and underling mages. Ancar was a young male, and any young male hates to be defeated, but that defeat must be doubly bitter coming as it did from the hands of females. He had failed to conquer Valdemar, failed to defeat its Queen, failed to get his hands on its Princess. He had failed a military conquest not once, but twice.

But that was by no means all, as Falconsbane’s probes had revealed. He had tried, with no success whatsoever, to infiltrate a spy into the ranks of the Heralds. The only agents he had in Valdemar itself were relatively ineffective and powerless ones, placed among the lowest of the merchants and peasantry. Mercenary soldiers under yet another female leader had thwarted every single assassination attempt he had made, even the ones augmented by magic.

In short, the Queen and her nearest and dearest seemed to have some kind of charmed existence. They prevailed against all odds, as if the very gods were on their side. Their success mocked Ancar and all his ambitions, and without a doubt, it all maddened him past bearing.

So Falconsbane thought.

Until Ancar finally spoke, and proved to him that in this one respect, he had underestimated the young King.

“I must expand,” he said, slowly, his flush cooling. “I am using up the resources of Hardorn at a rapid rate. I need gold to pay my mages, grain to feed my armies, a hundred things that simply must be brought in from outside. I cannot go South—perhaps you will not believe me, but the Karsites are the fiercest fighters you could ever imagine in your wildest nightmares. They are religious, you see. They believe that if they die in the defense of their land, they rise straight to the feet of their God… and if they take any of the enemies of their God with them, they rise to his right hand.”

Falconsbane nodded, a tiny spark of respect kindling for the King. So he understood the power a religion could hold over an enemy? Mornelithe would never have credited him with that much insight. Perhaps there was more to the boy than the Adept had assumed. “Indeed,” he said in reply. “There is no more deadly an enemy than a religious fanatic. They are willing to die and desperate to take you with them.”

“Precisely,” Ancar sighed. “What is more, their priests have a magic that comes from their God that is quite a match for my own. When you add to all that the mountains that border their land—it is an impossible combination. Those mountains are so steep that there is no place to bring a conventional army through without suffering one ambush or trap after another.”

“Well, then, what about North?” Falconsbane asked, reasonably. And to his surprise, Ancar whitened.

“Do not even mention the North,” the King whispered, and glanced hastily from side to side, as if he feared being overheard. “There is something there that dwarfs even the power Karse commands. It is so great—believe me or not, as you will, but I have seen it with my own eyes—that it has created an invisible fence that no one can pass. I have found no mage that can breach it, and after the few who attempted it perished, not even Hulda is willing to try.”

Falconsbane raised his eyebrows involuntarily. That was something new! An invisible wall around a country? Who—or rather, what—could ever have produced something like that? What was the name of that land, anyway? Iften? Iftel?

But Ancar had already changed the subject.

“Most of all, I cannot go Eastward,” he continued, his voice resuming a normal volume, but taking on an edge of bitterness. “The Eastern Empire is large enough to swallow Hardorn and never notice; the Eastern mages are as good or better than any I can hire, and their armies are vast… and well-paid. And they are watching me. I know it.”

That frightened him; Falconsbane had no trouble at all in reading his fear, it was clear in the widening of his eyes, in the tense muscles of his neck and shoulders, in the rigidity of his posture.

“At the moment, they seem to feel that Hardorn is not worth the fight it would take to conquer it. They had a treaty with my father, which they have left in place, but the Emperor has not actually signed a treaty with my regime. Emperor Charliss has not even sent an envoy until very recently. I believe they are watching me, assessing me. But if I fail to take Valdemar, they will assume that I am weak enough to conquer.” He grimaced. “My father had treaties of mutual defense with Valdemar and Iftel to protect him. I do not have those. I had not thought I would need them.”

“Then do not attempt Valdemar a third time,” Falconsbane suggested mildly.

Ancar’s jaw clenched. “If I do not, the result will be the same. The Emperor Charliss will assume I am too weak to try. They have sent their ambassador here, and an entourage with him, as if they were planning on signing the treaty soon, but they have not deceived me. These people are not here to make treaties, they are here to spy on me. There are spies all over Hardorn by now. I have found some—”

“I trust you left them in place,” Mornelithe said automatically.

He snorted. “Of course I did, I am not that big a fool. The best spy is the one you know! But I am also not so foolish as to think that I have found them all.” He rose and began pacing in front of the fire, still talking. “One of the reasons I am sure that I have been unable to attract mages of any great ability is that the Emperor can afford to pay them far more than I can offer. I am fairly certain that the mages I have are not creatures of his, but there is no way of telling if he has placed mages as spies in my court and outside of it. So long as they practiced their mage-craft secretly, how would I ever know what they were?”

Falconsbane refrained from pointing out that he had just told the boy how he would know, that disturbances in the energy-fields would tell him. Perhaps neither he nor his mages were sensitive to those fields. It was not unheard of, though such mages rarely rose above Master. Perhaps he was sensitive, but only when in trance. If so, that was the fault of his teacher.

Ancar abruptly turned and strode back to the window, standing with his back to Falconsbane and the room, staring at the rapidly clearing clouds.

“This is something I had not seen before,” he said, as if to himself. “And I had not known that magic could wreak such inadvertent and accidental havoc. It would be an excellent weapon…”

Falconsbane snorted softly. It had taken the boy long enough to figure that out.

“Men calling themselves ‘weather-wizards’ have come to me, seeking employment,” he continued. “I had thought them little better than herb-witches and charm-makers. They didn’t present themselves well enough for me to believe them. I shall have to go about collecting them now.”

“That would be wise,” Falconsbane said mildly, hiding his contempt.

Ancar turned again and walked back into the room, this time heading for the door, but paused halfway to that portal to gaze back at Falconsbane.

“Is there anything else you need?” he asked.

Falconsbane was quite sure that if he asked for what he really wanted—his freedom—he would not get it. Ancar was not yet sure enough of him, or of himself. Rightly so. The moment he had that freedom, Falconsbane would squash the upstart like an insect.

But perhaps—perhaps it was time to ask for something else, something nearly as important.

“Send me someone you wish eliminated,” he said. “Permanently eliminated, I mean. Male or female, it does not matter.”

He halfway expected more questions—why he wanted such a captive, and what he expected to do with such a sacrificial victim when he had one. But Ancar’s eyes narrowed; he smiled, slowly, and there was a dark and sardonic humor about the expression that told Falconsbane that Ancar didn’t care why he wanted a victim. He nodded, slowly and deliberately. His eyes locked with Falconsbane’s, and the Adept once again saw in Ancar’s eyes a spirit kindred to his own.

Which made Ancar all the more dangerous. There was no room in the world for two like Falconsbane.

He left without another word, but no more than half a candlemark later, two guards arrived. Between them they held a battered, terrified man, so bound with chains he could scarcely move. When Falconsbane rose, one of them silently handed him the keys to the man’s bindings.

The guards backed out, closing the door behind them.

Falconsbane smiled.

And took his time.

10

Chilling rain poured from a leaden sky, a continuous sheet of gray from horizon to horizon. Elspeth silently thanked the far-away hertasi for the waterproof coats they had made, and tied her hood a little tighter. They rode right into the teeth of the wind; there was little in the way of lightning and thunder, but the wind and sheeting rain more than made up for that lack. The poor gryphons, shrouded in improvised raincapes made from old tents, would have been soaked to the skin if they had not been able to shield themselves from the worst of it with a bit of magic. The rest of them, however, chose to deal with the elements rather than advertise their presence on the road any further. Admittedly, that was less of a hardship for the Tayledras, Elspeth, Skif, and Nyara, with their coats supplied by the clever fingers of the hertasi. She felt very sorry for Cavil, Shion, and Lisha, whose standard-issue raincloaks were nowhere near as waterproof as hertasi-made garments.

Still, rain found its way in through every opening, sending unexpected trickles of chill down arms and backs, and exposed legs and faces got the full brunt of the weather. “I may have been more miserable a time or two in my life, but if so, I don’t remember it,” Skif said to Elspeth.

Nyara grimaced, showing sharp teeth, and nodded agreement. “I do not care to think of spending weeks riding through this,” she said. “It must be bad for the hooved ones, yes? And does not cold and wet like this make people ill?”

On the other side of her, Cavil leaned over the neck of his Companion to add his own commentary.

“Now you see what we’ve been dealing with, off and on, for the past six months or so!” he shouted over the drumming rain, sniffing and rubbing his nose. “The—ah—lady is right; every village is suffering colds or fevers. I hope that we manage to ride out of the storm soon, but I am not going to wager on it. You can’t predict anything anymore!”

Elspeth glanced back at Firesong, who was huddled in his waterproof cape, his firebird inside his hood, just as Vree was inside Darkwind’s. :Isn’t there anything you can do about this?: she asked him. :Can’t you send the rain away, or something? I thought about doing it, but since I’ve never done it before, I’m afraid to try.:

:Rightly,: he replied. :Weather-work done on mage-disturbance storms after the fact is a touchy business. For that matter, weather-work is always a touchy business. I do not know enough about this land, the countryside hereabouts, to make an informed decision. You do not yet have the skill. We do not know what is safe to do with this storm. Anything either of us do to change the weather-patterns could only mean making a worse disaster than this. Ask your friend if this is going to cause severe enough crop damage to cause shortages later.:

“Is this bad enough to cause measurable crop damage?” she shouted back to Cavil. He squinted up at the sky for a moment, as if taking its measure, then shook his head. “It won’t ruin the grazing, and the hay isn’t ripening yet,” he replied. “Most people around here are raising beef cattle, milch cows, and sheep, not crops. If this were farther south—” He shook his head. “We’ve been lucky; storms have been violent, but they haven’t caused any major crop damage yet.”

Yet. The word hung in the air, as ominous as the lowering clouds.

:Then we do nothing,: Firesong said firmly. :There is no point in meddling and making a bad situation worse! We can endure some rough weather; the worst we will suffer is a wetting and a chill. When I have an opportunity to meet with those who have records of normal weather patterns, then I will help reestablish those patterns.: He sighed. :I fear I was only too prophetic when I said there was a great deal of work ahead of me.:

Elspeth shrugged and grimaced slightly, but she could certainly see his point. There was only one benefit the foul weather was bestowing. Cavil could not insist on leaving the gryphons or the Tayledras behind on the excuse that they couldn’t keep up with the Companions. He’d said something of the sort just before they left the Ashkevron manor, but his own Companion had told him tartly that no one was going to go racing to Haven in a downpour. In weather like this, even the Companions could not make very good time.

Darkwind and Nyara rode on horses borrowed from Lord Ashkevron, at that worthy’s insistence. Those horses were what the Lord had referred to as “mudders;” sturdy beasts that could keep up a good pace all day through the worst weather. They were fairly ugly beasts; jug-headed, big-boned, as muscular as oxen, with rough, hairy hides that never could be curried into a shine. But those heavy bones and dense muscles pulled them right through the mire, and their dun-brown coats didn’t show mud as badly as Firesong’s white dyheli or the Companions—all of which were smeared and splattered up to their bellies.

Well, we hardly make a good show, but that’s not such a bad thing, she reflected, shoving a strand of wet hair back under the hood of her cloak. No one even thinks twice about making a State Visit out of us when they see us…

In fact, the three times they had stopped overnight so far, their hosts had been so concerned by their appearance that they had simply hurried them into warm beds, and had meals sent up to their rooms. They had been able to avoid State nonsense altogether.

Elspeth had just discovered something about herself, something she had learned after a mere twelve candlemarks in Cavil, Shion, and Lisha’s presence. Her tolerance for courtly politics had deteriorated to the point of nonexistence after her stay with k’Sheyna. She just didn’t want to hear about it. No gossip, no suppositions, none of it.

At some point during her musing, Skif and Nyara had dropped back as well, leaving her in the lead. Well, that hardly mattered. No one was going to get lost on a perfectly straight road.

Gwena sighed, her sides heaving under Elspeth’s legs. :I will be mortally glad to get to a warm, dry stable,: she said. :The Vales spoiled me.:

The image she sent back included one of both Companions soaking away the cold in one of the hot springs. Elspeth chuckled, a little surprised; she hadn’t realized that Gwena and Cymry had made use of the Vale’s pools, too.

It made sense, of course, since some things in a Vale had to suit not only humans, but the Hawkbrothers’ nonhuman allies. Surely dyheli used the hot springs, so why not the Companions?

:They’ve spoiled me, too, dear,: she replied, feeling her own twinge of longing for those wonderful hot pools. The best she could expect would be a hot bath; not the same thing at all. :We have got to see about creating something like the springs at Haven. Think about coming in for a soak after a freezing rain—:

:Like this one? Oh, don’t remind me!: Gwena moaned. :I can’t even warm up by all the shoving through the mud!:

Elspeth patted her shoulder sympathetically. :It’s almost dark,: she said, with encouragement. :It’s not that far till we stop. I’ll make sure you get something warm to eat, a nice hot mash or something like it, and a fire-warmed blanket.:

Gwena cast a blue eye back at her, an imploring gaze made all the more pathetic by a soaked forelock straggling over the eye. :Please. And don’t forget just because a dozen nobles pounce on you once you’re in the door.:

Any reply she might have made was interrupted by Shion riding up alongside. “Excuse me, Lady,” the Herald said, with a sharp and curious glance at Darkwind. “This man you are with? What exactly is his status?”

Shion and Cavil, both born of noble families, had done their level best to get her to talk—or rather, gossip. They were terribly persistent about things Elspeth considered private matters, asking very prying questions whenever Darkwind was out of earshot. Maybe being with the Tayledras had changed her, but she just didn’t see why questions like this one were any of Shion’s business.

Elspeth narrowed her eyes a bit at that, but kept her tone civil. And she chose to deliberately misunderstand the question. “I suppose that technically he is my equal,” she replied evenly. “He is the son of the leader of Clan k’Sheyna, and an ally in his own right—”

She had a suspicion that this was not what Shion meant, and that suspicion was confirmed when the Herald frowned. “Actually, what I meant was—what is he to you? Why is he here, rather than in his own land?”

Elspeth decided to skate right around the question, and continue to give the answers to the questions Shion did have a right to ask. “He is here because he is one of my teachers in magic, and because he has offered to teach however many of our Heralds who have the Mage-Gift as he can. And yes, he can tell who has it. He tells me that I am likely not the only Herald to have it.” She nodded as Shion bit off an exclamation. “Exactly. Evidently it was never precisely lost, but it was never used for lack of Heralds who could identify it and teach those who had it.” She blinked in surprise as she realized something. “For that matter, I can identify people with it, but I’m not qualified to teach.”

:Yet,: Gwena added.

:Hush, you’ll undermine my credibility,: she replied.

Shion blinked, and licked her lips. “Do—do I have it?” she asked, as if she hoped to hear she did, and feared it at the same time.

Elspeth Looked for a moment at all three of the Heralds, using that new ability, and shook her head. “Not unless it’s latent,” she replied honestly. “None of you do, actually. I should tell you it’s one of the rarer Gifts anyway. About as common as ForeSight, although that wasn’t always the case. People who had it tended to drift out of Valdemar, after Vanyel’s time. Most of the time it was identified and trained as if it was FarSight.”

She paused for a moment, thinking quickly. “Don’t assume I’m something special just because I’m Mage-Gifted. There’ve been plenty of Heralds who were—and are!—it’s just that the Gift wasn’t identified as such. Really, the main reason that I’m the first new Herald-Mage is either a matter of accident or divine providence. If a threat like Ancar had come up before, one of the other Heralds with the Gift would have gone outKingdom to get the training. If it hadn’t come up now, I would still be sitting in Haven, getting beaten on by Kero and Alberich!”

Shion nodded, looking a little disappointed. Elspeth only chuckled. “Look, I wouldn’t worry too much about it if I were you. Any Gift is useful. Any powerful Gift is extremely useful. It’s also extremely dangerous to the bearer and those around. Mage-Gift isn’t an answer to everything, and sometimes it’s less so than mind-magic. What’s more, mages don’t always think to counter mind-magic. When they do think of it, they don’t always succeed.”

“That is because they cannot always counter mind-magic,” Darkwind said, riding up to join the conversation, as Skif moved obligingly out of the way for him. Elspeth smiled thankfully at him; now maybe Shion would stop prying for a little. Although… perhaps she was being too harsh. She was the Heir, and what had happened to her in the Tayledras lands did have some importance for the Kingdom. And it was entirely possible that she was overreacting.

Thank Havens he understands our tongue enough to come rescue me!

Darkwind smiled charmingly at Shion. “There are ways to block some kinds of mind-magic, but they also block all other kinds of magic. A mage-shield powerful enough to block Mindspeaking blocks nearly everything else. So if you wish to keep your enemy from Mindspeaking, you also prevent yourself from working magic upon him.”

Shion shook her head. “It’s too complicated for me,” she replied, and dropped back to ride beside Cavil, leaving Elspeth and Darkwind in the lead.

“Your grasp of my language is improving,” she teased. He shrugged. Vree’s head peeked out from beneath a fold of the hood for a moment. The bondbird looked at the rain in acute distaste, made a ratcheting sound, and vanished back into Darkwind’s voluminous hood. Movement inside the hood showed Vree settling back to wait, probably grumbling to himself.

“My grasp of your language is improving because I am taking most of it from your mind, bright feather,” he replied, giving her a glance that warmed her in spite of the freezing rain. “I thought perhaps I ought to save you from that too-curious colleague of yours.”

“You noticed that, too, did you?” She grimaced. “All three of them are like that. I suppose it’s your exotic nature. It makes them terribly curious.”

“I don’t know…” He stared off ahead for a moment, then switched to Tayledras. “We have been three days on the road now, and it has not stopped, this questioning. Perhaps it is that we Hawkbrothers are more private, but they seem to see nothing amiss with wishing to know everything about me. Not only do they wish to know in detail what I plan to do when we reach Haven, they wish to know things that have no bearing on our mission. How I feel about everything, what my personal opinions are on such and such a thing, and most particularly, all the details of what you and I have done together. They seem to think they have a right to this information. It is—rather embarrassing.”

She shook her head, puzzled and annoyed. “You may be mistaken,” she told him, but with a bit of doubt creeping into her voice. If he had gotten the impression that Shion was being a little too personal—

But I am the Heir. Maybe she’s under orders from Mother to find out as much as she can about the people with me, and what we might have been—ah—involved in.

“Our cultures are very different, after all,” she continued. “What sounds like a question about our personal lives may only be a question about what I was learning with you.”

The look he gave her told her that he didn’t think that he was mistaken, but he let the matter drop. It wasn’t the first time he had complained of the other Heralds’ insatiable questioning, but it was the first time he had mentioned their interest in something that could only be fodder for gossip and could serve no other purpose.

“You will probably get the usual greeting when we arrive,” he said instead, changing the subject. His eyes twinkled when she grimaced and winced.

“If one more person comes up to me and says ‘but I thought you were dead!’ I’m going to strangle him,” she muttered. “I can’t believe people could be so stupid! And what difference would it make if I had been? The twins are perfectly capable, either one of them, of being made Heir. I am not indispensable! I’m only another Herald, if it comes right down to that.”

“But the rumors made it seem as if you were indispensable, ke’chara,” he pointed out. “The rumors must have implied that your government was in a panic and trying to cover that panic. That makes me think that the rumors must have been more than idle nonsense; they must have been spread persistently and maliciously.”

“Persistent and malicious—” Now that had a familiar, nasty ring to it. “Well, that’s Ancar all over,” Elspeth replied. “I can’t think of anyone who deserves that description more. No doubt where it came from. I don’t know what in seven hells he hoped to accomplish, though.”

“Enough unrest would suit him, I suspect.” Darkwind put a hand inside his hood to scratch Vree’s breast-feathers. He had warned Elspeth that he was unused to riding, but he seemed to be doing just fine to her. Of course, it helped that their pace was being held to a fast walk. You had to really work to get thrown at that speed. “He wishes, I think, to make as much disturbance and confusion as possible. The Clans have a game like that, from one created by the Shin’a’in. Artful distraction.”

She shook her head, and water dribbled into her face. “I just can’t believe that disruption would be enough for Ancar.”

Darkwind continued to scratch Vree—which looked rather odd, since he seemed to be feeling around inside his hood for something—and his eyes darkened with thought. “What of this, then,” he said, after a moment. “You say that your younger siblings would make good Heirs. But their father is not your father, am I correct?” At her nod, he continued. “What if the rumors of your death were only a beginning—that once it was believed that you were dead, Ancar then planned to add rumors that your stepfather had contrived your death, in order to have his own children take the throne?”

She stared at him, mouth dropping open. “That—that’s crazy!” she stammered, finally. “No one who knew my stepfather would ever believe that!”

“No one who knew him, you say,” Darkwind persisted. “But this land of yours is a very large one, larger than I had ever guessed. So how many of these people out here truly know him? How can they? How many have even seen him more than once or twice, and at a distance?”

It made diabolical sense. Especially given that Elspeth’s own father—Prince Daren’s brother—had tried to murder her mother and take the throne for himself. People would be only too ready to believe in the murderous intentions of another of the Rethwellan royals.

For that matter, they had been perfectly willing to believe that she might plot against her mother, as if betrayal were somehow inheritable.

Ancar was even clever enough to spread two conflicting sets of rumors. One set, that Prince Daren had connived at Elspeth’s death, and another, that Elspeth was alive and trying to usurp her mother’s throne.

“I hate it,” she said slowly, “And you are probably right. Especially since my first destination was Rethwellan, his land. People would have been only too ready to believe he’d set something up with his brother to get rid of me.”

Darkwind nodded. “And what effect would that have upon the rulers of your land?”

“It—at the very best, it would be a distraction and cause a lot of problems at a time when we don’t need either.” She clenched her jaw. “At the worst, it would undermine confidence in the Queen and everything she stands for. That snake—he is as clever as he is rotten, I swear! He and Falconsbane are two of a kind!”

“Then we must hope he never achieves the kind of power that Falconsbane had,” Darkwind said firmly. “We must work to be rid of him before he does. All the more reason for your friends to be here. We have seen this kind of creature before, and I hope we can second-guess Ancar because of our experience with Falconsbane.”

Clouds were too thick for a real sunset, but the light was beginning to fade. Something large and dark, a building of some kind, was looming up in the distance at the side of the road; the rain was falling too thickly for Elspeth to make out what it was, but out here, it was unlikely to be anything other than their next stop, the manor of Lady Kalthea Lyonnes.

Shion looked up and cried, “Look!” in a tone that confirmed Elspeth’s guess. They all urged their tired mounts into a little faster pace, and within half a candlemark they were pounding at the gates.

Fortunately, after the trouble at the Ashkevron manor, someone always went on ahead to inform their hosts exactly what was coming. This time Lisha had ridden ahead to warn the Lady and her household about the gryphons; there was a certain amount of trepidation on the part of the servants who came out to meet them, but at least no one fled screaming in fear.

Things were sorted out with commendable haste. The gryphons were conducted off to the chapel—chapels seemed to be the only rooms suitable to their size—the Companions and dyheli taken to the stables and a promised hot mash and rubdown. And finally the two-legged members of the party were brought in, still dripping a little, to be presented to their hostess.

“Elspeth!” the Lady cried, clasping Elspeth’s hand and kissing it fervently. “Thank the gods! We heard you were dead!”

Darkwind choked, smothering a laugh, and Elspeth only sighed.

But later that night, after all the fuss was over and everyone had been settled into their rooms, Elspeth sagged into a chair beside the fire and stared into the flames. Perhaps this business of staying with the high-born was a mistake…

On the other hand, no inn would ever accept the gryphons. And at least in this way, word was being spread quickly that she was alive and she had returned with some real help against Ancar.

But another little conversation with Shion and with a cousin of Shion’s who lived here had just proved to her that Darkwind was right. Shion and the others weren’t at all concerned with the welfare of Valdemar—or at least that wasn’t their motivation in cross-examining her. They were just plain nosy. They wanted gossip-fodder, and what was more, if she didn’t give it to them, they were perfectly capable of making things up out of whole cloth!

Shion’s cousin had brought Elspeth her supper, using that as an excuse to ask any number of increasingly impertinent questions. Finally she had concluded, shamelessly, with the question of whether it was true that Hawkbrothers only mated in groups, saying as an excuse that she had read about it in “an old story.” And it was pretty obvious that the cousin also wanted to know if Elspeth had been a member of one of those groups.

When Elspeth asked her where she had heard such nonsense, the girl had demurred and avoided giving an answer, but Elspeth already had a good idea who had prompted it. After all, until she had gone delving into the old Archives, there hadn’t been more than a handful of folk in Valdemar who even knew that the Hawkbrothers existed. So where else would the girl have heard an “old story” about the Tayledras except from Shion?

Elspeth’s jaw tightened. The trouble was, no matter what she said or did, it was likely to make the situation worse. If she dressed Shion down for this, Shion would only be more certain that Elspeth was hiding some kind of dreadful secret. If she forbade any more loose talk, that would only make Shion more circumspect in spreading silly gossip. If she ignored it all, Shion would go right on spreading gossip, and making up whatever she didn’t know for certain. There was no way Elspeth could win at this.

Heralds were human beings, with all the failings and foibles of any other set of humans. Shion’s failing was gossip—harmless enough under most circumstances. Except for this one, where her fantasies could and would cause Elspeth some problems…

A gentle tap at the door made her look up in time to see Darkwind slipping inside. He glanced around the darkened room for a moment, then spotted her at the hearth and came to join her.

“I do not know whether to laugh or snarl, bright feather,” he said without preamble. “And if we had not as many notorious gossips in k’Sheyna as anywhere else, I would probably be very annoyed at this moment.”

“I take it you met Kalinda,” Elspeth said dryly as he took a seat beside the fire.

“Indeed.” His mouth twitched. “I was discussing some trifle with Firesong when she brought us our dinners, then, bold as you please, offered to—ah—‘join our mating circle.’ I confess that I did not know what to say or do.”

Elspeth took one look at his face and broke up in a fit of giggling. That set him off, too, and for the next few moments, they leaned against each other, laughing and gasping for breath. Any glance at the other’s face only served to set them off again.

“I—dear gods!—you must have done something. How did you get her out of there?” she choked, finally.

He shook his head, and held his side. “I did nothing!” he confessed. “It was Firesong. He just looked at the girl and said, ‘the offer is appreciated, but unless you turn male, impossible.’ She turned quite scarlet, and stammered something neither of us understood, then left.”

That sent Elspeth into convulsions again because she could very easily see Firesong doing exactly that. The wicked creature!

Her gales of laughter started Darkwind giggling again, and the two of them laughed until they simply had no more breath to laugh with anymore. She lay with her head against Darkwind’s shoulder while the fire burned a little lower, and only spoke when he moved to throw another branch into the flames.

“I suppose that will take care of Shion for a while,” she said, wiping moisture from the corner of one eye. “I wish I’d thought of that as a solution. But you know, now Shion will probably begin telling everyone that you and Firesong are both shay’a’chern. The gods only know what that will bring out of the corners!”

“I do not care, dearheart,” he replied, stroking her hair. “So long as it saves you grief. And I am certain that Firesong will be positively delighted! I tell you, he is as shameless as a cooperihawk!”

She laughed again, for she had seen the cooperihawks in their rounds of spring matings, which were frequent and undiscriminating.

He chuckled with her and caressed her shoulders, then continued. “I have other confessions to make to you, and none so amusing. I had no idea of the size of your land, of the numbers of your people. I had naively supposed your Valdemar must be like a very large Vale. And I had no idea what your status truly was among your people. And—I now realize that all of my assumptions were based on those ideas.”

“My status is subject to change, my love,” she replied quickly. “As I told you, I am not indispensable.”

“But others believe you are.” He held her for a long moment in silence, his warm hands clasped across her waist. “You have duties and obligations, and they do not include a—long term relationship with some foreign mage.”

She forced herself to remain calm; after all, wasn’t this precisely what she had thought, herself, any number of times? She had known since before she left Valdemar that her freedom was severely restricted. Hadn’t she rebuffed Skif with that very same argument?

But she no longer accepted that argument, as she had not accepted the “fated” path that the Companions had tried to force her to take.

And even though his tongue was saying that he must let her go, his body was saying quite a different thing. He held her tightly, fiercely, as if to challenge anyone who might try to part them.

She must choose her words very carefully. He had opened his heart to her; she must answer the pain she heard under his words. But he would not respect someone who violated all the vows she had made to her own land and people by willfully deserting them, either. The next few words might be the most important she would ever speak in her life.

“I have duties, true enough,” she replied, slowly, turning to stare into his eyes. “I never pretended otherwise. I have to find a way to reconcile those duties with what I want and what you want. I think I can, if you will trust me.”

“You know I do. With my very life, ashke.”

His face looked like a beautiful sculpture by the firelight. Time seemed to slow down. Even Vree was stock-still, watching them both unblinkingly. Darkwind held his breath.

“I think I can be true to Valdemar, Darkwind—and to you. I know there has to be a way. I refuse to lose either of you—you or my native land and my duty to it. I refuse to let you go.”

The last was said so fiercely that his eyes widened for a moment in surprise. “But how can you possibly reconcile them?” he asked at last. “You are your mother’s chosen successor. There is very little freedom for you in that role.”

“I have some ideas,” she replied. “But they hinge on your not knowing what I’m going to do so you can be just as surprised as everyone else. Otherwise people will think that I’m simply acting like a love-struck wench rather than in the best interests of Valdemar.”

He held very still for a moment. “And are you a love-struck wench?”

She reached up, grabbed two handfuls of his hair, and pulled his mouth to hers for a long and passionate kiss.

The touch of his lips made a fire build in the core of her. It made it very difficult to hold to coherent thought. “Of course I am,” she replied calmly.

Darkwind smiled and stroked her hair. He closed his eyes and pulled her closer, strong and comforting, protecting her as a great hawk would mantle over its young in a storm. His touch against her cheek was as gentle as a feather’s, and his sigh of contentment matched her own.

The scent of his body and the smoky warmth of the room blended. She knew she had said the right thing. She had spoken her heart. She had spoken the truth.

The kiss had made her heart race and drove her thoughts into paths entirely foreign to simple discussion. “But I don’t want them to know that. Being love-struck doesn’t mean my brains have poured out my ears!”

“I hope not,” he murmured, “because I am as much in love with your mind as—”

She did not give him the chance to finish the sentence.

* * *

Vree watched the two kiss, then tucked his head to sleep. As far as Vree was concerned, whatever came, whatever they faced, wherever they went, all would now be right with the world.

It was a good bonding. Display done. Mate won. Nesting soon. They would fly high together.

At last, they cleared the area covered by the storm, and the final few days were spent riding under sunnier skies. Sunnier—not sunny; there were no cloudless skies, but at least the roads remained less than mud-pits despite the occasional brief cloudburst. The weather was still odd, though; there were always spectacular sunsets and wild lightning storms at night, although these storms did not necessarily produce rain, and the skies never entirely cleared even when they neared Haven.

The city itself sat under a circle of blue sky, rather than clouds; a nearly perfect circle, in fact, and very odd to Elspeth’s eyes. When Firesong saw that, he nodded to himself, as if this was something he had anticipated but had not necessarily expected.

* * *

At least, when they reached Haven, they were no longer mud-spattered and soggy; they even took a moment to change, when they were within a candlemark or two of the capital. Elspeth had the feeling they were not going to have much of a chance to clean up when they reached the Palace, given the excitement her arrival was generating.

A scant network of signal-towers like the ones in Hardorn had been set up to relay news, although in the foul weather they had been riding through such towers could only be used at night, and often not even then. There were not enough of them to warn their noble hosts that they were coming, but there were enough that by now all of Haven knew the approximate candlemark of when they would appear. Once the weather cleared, they had borrowed a cart from one of their hosts, in which the gryphlets and Rris now rode in excited splendor. In every village along the road, even when it was raining, the entire population turned out to see them pass.

Elspeth felt entirely as if she was riding in a circus procession, but she waved and smiled anyway, noting with a great deal of amusement that no one really paid much attention to her once they caught sight of the gryphons.

By the time they reached Haven, word had traveled ahead of them by those mirror- and lantern-relays, and as she had expected, the road on both sides was lined with people, four and five deep. It was quite obvious at that point that Elspeth was not the attraction; she was not even a close second. After all, she did not look all that much different than any Herald, and the populace around Haven was quite used to seeing Heralds. The gryphons, gryphlets, and Tayledras were the real attention getters, in that order.

Firesong and Treyvan were in their element, waving genially to the crowd, and occasionally throwing up magical “fireworks” that were insignificant in terms of power, but incredibly showy. They were definitely crowd pleasers. Treyvan would take to the air every few leagues to hover above the procession, while the onlookers ooh-ed and ahh-ed. Hydona simply sighed with patience, and trotted quietly behind the wagon. The gryphlets bounced in the bed of the wagon like a pair of excited kittens, bringing more “ohs” and exclamations of “aren’t they adorable.” As had happened at the Ashkevron manor, the gryphlets convinced the crowd that these mighty creatures were not monsters at all.

Elspeth might just as well not have been along. People cheered her in a perfunctory sort of way, then riveted their attention on the Hawkbrothers and gryphons. When either Treyvan or Firesong performed, she could have stripped naked and done riding tricks on Gwena’s back and no one would have noticed.

She had known this would happen. She had rather expected that she might find herself a little jealous. After all, she was used to being the center of attention—the beloved Heir to the Throne, and all of that. She had never been forced to share the focus of all eyes, much less been excluded from that focus.

She was rather surprised when all she felt was relief. And in a way, that simply confirmed what she had been thinking since they had arrived back in Valdemar. She was not really happy being the Heir; she was not truly suited to the job. She had been a lot more comfortable back in the Vale, when no one had treated her any differently than anyone else in the Clan. In fact, with the Hawkbrothers, she was judged only by her merits. She had changed a great deal since she had last seen Haven, and nothing showed that change quite so profoundly as this.

When they reached the outskirts of Haven, the crowd had thickened, to the point where there wasn’t room for a child between the fronts of the buildings and the street. The noise was deafening; the mass of folk dressed in their best dazzling to the eye. And for someone who had spent so many months out in the wilderness, the crowds were enough to give one a feeling of being crushed.

She spared a thought and a glance for Nyara, who had probably never seen this many people in all of her life put together. The Changechild was clinging to Skif’s hand, but seemed to be holding up fairly well.

:She’s all right,: Need said shortly, in answer to Elspeth’s tentative thought. :I managed to get her used to something like this by feeding her some of my old memories. She doesn’t like it much, but then, neither do you.: A good point. Elspeth tendered her thanks, and turned her attention back toward the crowd, watching for ambushes and traps. This would be a good place to hide an assassin, if Ancar had the time to put one in place. People leaned precariously out of windows to watch them pass, cheering wildly, and still paying very little attention to her. It felt like a kind of victory procession. She only hoped the feeling would prove prophetic.

In a way, it was kind of amusing, for the merchants and street vendors had taken advantage of the situation and the advance warning they had of it, to do as much impulse business as they might during a real festival. She noted, chuckling under the roar of the crowd, the number of vendors with merchandise they must have made up specifically for this “processional.” There were people hawking gryphon-and Companion-shaped pastries and candies, cheap flags emblazoned with crude gryphons, hawks, and the arms of Valdemar, toy sellers with carved hawks, Companions, and fat little winged cats with beaks that were undoubtably supposed to be gryphons, and one enterprising fellow with stick-horses with white Companion heads and feathered gryphon heads. He was doing an especially brisk business.

She was relieved and pleased to see a number of people in Guard blue mingled in with the crowd. Kero’s work, no doubt. In fact, she might very well have called in all of the Skybolts to be on assassin-watch. Trust Kero to think of that.

:I’m watching, too, youngling,: Need said unexpectedly. :Keep your eyes sharp, but with all of us working, I think we’ll get any assassin before he gets one of us.:

The crowd continued to be that thick right up to the gates of the Palace/Collegium complex. They passed between the walls and onto the road leading up to the Palace, and there the motley crowd gave way to a crowd of people in discrete knots of Guard Blue, trainee Gray, Healer Green, Bard Red, and Herald White. And it appeared that at least a few of the vendors had penetrated even here—or some enterprising young student had turned vendor himself—for here were the flags they had seen out in the city, being waved just as enthusiastically by usually sober Heralds and Guards. There were, perhaps, a few less gryphons and hawks and a few more of the white horses of Valdemar, but otherwise it looked very much the same. The trainees in particular were loud and enthusiastic, their young voices rising shrilly above those of their elders. It was all but impossible to see much of anything past the crowd. Even the Companions were crowded up behind the humans, tossing their manes, their eyes sparkling with enjoyment.

She caught sight of friends at last among the crowd—some of her year-mates, Keren and Teren, retired Elcarth. The noise was such that she saw their mouths moving, and could only shrug and grin, miming that she would talk to them later.

The procession came to an end at the main entrance to the Palace. It ended there by default, that entrance being the only set of doors large enough to admit the gryphons. There those who were riding dismounted, and an escort of Palace Guards in their dark blue lined up on either side of the group to usher them inside.

Interestingly, Shion, Cavil, and Lisha were neatly cut off from the group and taken aside with the Companions and Firesong’s dyheli. Elspeth was not particularly sorry to see them leave, she only dreaded the gossip that was sure to follow.

The doors opened—and there was Talia, who ignored gryphons, Hawkbrothers, and protocol, and ran with her arms outstretched to catch Elspeth up in a breathless embrace.

They hugged each other tightly, separating only long enough for searching looks, then embracing again. To Elspeth’s surprise, she found herself crying with happiness.

“Oh, stop it, you’ll make me cry, too,” Talia scolded in Elspeth’s ear. “Dear gods, you look wonderful!”

“You look just as wonderful,” Elspeth countered over the cheering.

Talia laughed throatily. “More gray hair, dearheart, I promise you. The children are at the age where someone is always plucking them right out of the arms of trouble, usually by the scruff of the neck. I have to warn you. Your mother has called a full Court, Council and all—”

“So she can prove to everyone at once that I’m still alive. I’d already figured she would.” Good. That meant that she would not have to wait to put her plan into motion. “Right now?”

“Right now—” Talia sounded a bit uncertain, and it was Elspeth’s turn to laugh and put the Queen’s Own at arm’s length.

“Look at me,” she demanded. Talia cocked her head to one side and did. “I’m a little dusty, but I did take the time to change, so we’re all presentable. I’ve survived fire, flood, and mage-storm, almost daily encounters with the nastiest creatures a perverted Adept could create, and daily border patrols. I’m hardly going to be tired out by a mere ride! Bring on your Council—I’ll eat them alive!” And she bared her teeth and growled.

Talia threw her head back and laughed, her chestnut curls trembling, and if there was more gray in her hair, Elspeth couldn’t see it. “All right, you’ve convinced me. Now go convince them!”

She stepped back and bowed slightly, gesturing for all of them to precede her into the Palace. Gryphons included. Lytha and Jerven trotted in the shadow of their mother’s wings, looking curiously all around with huge, alert eyes.

With Talia and the contingent of the Guard bringing up the rear, Elspeth led the procession through the great double doors—for the first time in her memory, both of them thrown open wide—and down the hall that led to the audience chamber. The gryphons’ claws clicked metallically on the marble floor, and the bulk of the Palace muffled the sounds of the crowd outside. Most of the cheering had stopped once they all vanished inside, but there was still some crowd noise. And it was more than likely that Shion, Cavil, and Lisha were being interrogated by all their friends about the ride home and the strange people and creatures that the Heir had brought with her.

The double doors at the end of the hall were thrown open just as they reached them, and a fanfare of trumpets announced them to the expectantly hushed Court.

And it was an announcement of the full complement, as Elspeth had hoped. It included Firesong and Darkwind, as “Ambassadors of the Tayledras;” Nyara as “Lady Nyara k’Sheyna,” leaving the assembled courtiers and power brokers to wonder, no doubt, just what a “k’Sheyna” was; and the gryphons as “Lord Treyvan Gryphon and Lady Hydona and children, ambassadors of Kaled’a’in,” leaving the courtiers of Valdemar even more baffled. Poor Rris; he was not announced, although he trotted at the heels of the gryphlets. But he did not seem disappointed as Elspeth glanced back. He was simply watching everything with that alert expression that told her he was storing it all up, to become yet another tale in the kyrees’ oral history. The dyheli had been taken off with Gwena and Cymry, but he had never shown much interest in being an envoy anyway; he had made it rather clear to Elspeth that he was there mostly to show to Valdemar that there were other intelligent races allied with the Tayledras than just humans and gryphons.

She paused on the threshold, giving the others a chance to compose themselves before striding into the room full of strangers. The room fell silent, and with a whispering rustle of cloth and a creaking of leather, everybody in the room except the four on the dais bent in a bow or curtsy. She paused for another moment, then moved forward, and behind her she heard the same swish of cloth and creaking of leather; the members of Court and Council rising as she passed. Her own eyes were fastened on her mother and stepfather, both in Whites with the royal circlets about their brows, both standing before their thrones, with Heralds flanking them on either hand, and Guards behind the Heralds. One of those Heralds was Kerowyn, who winked broadly as soon as Elspeth was near enough to see her face; the other was Jeri, Alberich’s hand-picked successor. The Guards behind both of them were from Kero’s Skybolts. Elspeth relaxed at the sight of all these old friends. They would understand what she was about to do, even if her mother didn’t.

Selenay’s gold hair was clearly streaked with silver; Prince Daren showed more worry lines at the corners of his eyes and across his forehead. Both of them widened their eyes and frankly stared for a moment at Elspeth before recovering their “royal masks”—she chuckled under her breath, for she was wearing one of her more elaborate sets of hertasi-made working-Whites, and while she was clearly garbed as a Herald, it was not a Herald as Valdemar at large was used to seeing one. She could hardly wait until they got a good look at Firesong, who had chosen to contrast his silver hair and the silver plumage of his firebird with Tayledras mage-robes in a startling shade of blue that could never be mistaken for Guard Blue. In fact, she was not entirely certain how the hertasi had achieved that eye-blinding color. It certainly was nowhere to be found in nature!

The wood-paneled Throne Room was filled to bursting, with every available light-source fully utilized. If the crowds outside had been dazzling, this crowd was dizzying, each courtier in full dress, with as many jewels as possible within the bounds of taste. And some, predictably, had gone beyond the bounds of taste. The place was ablaze with color and light—

:And all of it pales next to Firesong’s self-image,: Gwena commented in the back of her mind. Elspeth stifled a chuckle and kept her face perfectly sober.

She smiled broadly as she neared the throne, but submitted demurely to an “official” greeting, as Selenay announced to the room that her beloved daughter and Heir had returned, and made all the appropriate official motions. Even though she longed to fling her arms around her mother as she had around Talia, that would have to wait until they were in private together.

And by then—

She bowed briefly to her mother, then straightened, and took the steps necessary to place her on the dais in her position as Heir. She turned to face the silent Court, and looked out over the faces of new friends, old, and utter strangers. Firesong winked; so did Treyvan. Nyara managed a tremulous smile. Darkwind simply held her eyes for a long breath.

:Hold onto your feathers, my love,: she Mindsent to Darkwind as she took a deep breath of her own. :I have a surprise for you.:

“Thank you, all of you, for your wonderful greetings,” she said, carefully pronouncing and projecting each word as she had been taught since she was a child, so that every syllable would reach the back of the room. “I have returned, as I promised, with the help that I went to find—and with more, far more. But with your indulgence, I would like to make an announcement before I introduce our new allies and friends. I, Elspeth, daughter of Queen Selenay and Heir to the throne of Valdemar, hereby renounce my claim to the throne of Valdemar, in favor of my siblings, the Princess Lyra and Prince Kris.”

A chorus of whispered comments and oaths came from the courtiers and Guard alike.

“I have been reliably informed by the Companions that both will be Chosen, and thus both are equally suited to the position of Heir to the throne of Valdemar—as I am not.”

The expressions on the faces nearest her—those not in her own party, that is—were so funny she almost burst out laughing. They were utterly, completely stunned; and she had the feeling that her own mother and stepfather wore identical expressions. It looked almost as if someone had run through the crowd, hitting everyone in the back of the head with a board. They could not have been more startled if she had suddenly sprouted wings and horns.

Quickly, before anyone could interrupt, she enumerated her reasons. “As all well know, my blood-father was a traitor and a would-be assassin, and all my life his crimes have hung over my head, clouding confidence in my trustworthiness and ability to rule. With Lyra and Kris there will be no such doubts. I have heard, before I left and as I returned, the same rumors that many of you had heard both before and during my absence—that I was in reality using that absence to plot against my beloved mother. With Lyra and Kris in the position of Heir, no one need worry when I am absent that I may be thinking of taking the throne before my rightful time. The same rumors have always existed outside this Kingdom as well—and once again, when I no longer hold the position of Heir, the fears that I will attempt to usurp the rule of Valdemar as Ancar of Hardorn usurped his father’s throne will be laid to rest. I am not Ancar—and now, no one will ever need to wonder if I could be tempted by the promise of power into following his wretched example.”

There, she thought. Let them think about that, and when they think about it, wonder if those rumors just might have originated with Ancar, since he is so familiar with usurping thrones.

“But there are additional considerations,” she continued quickly, and then surrounded herself in the blink of an eye with a showy glow of magic fires that made everyone gasp and step back a pace. Firesong was grinning and nodding with approval; Darkwind just stared at her, but his mouth was twitching suspiciously. “As you can see,” she went on, in ringing, magic-enhanced tones, “I am the first of the new Herald-Mages of Valdemar! I am the first and only trained Herald-Mage at this moment. There will be others, I promise you, for one of the reasons that I have brought these new allies is to help in the training of new Herald-Mages. And while that is a cause for rejoicing, it is also a cause for concern, for as the sole trained Herald-Mage and the Heir, my loyalties and duties are at terrible odds with one another. As Herald-Mage, I must risk myself and my powers in defense of this Kingdom. As Heir, I must not, ever, place myself in jeopardy! I have been forced to weigh good against good, duty against duty, and I have concluded that my duty to Valdemar is best served by renouncing the throne and taking my place in the front lines of whatever conflict may come. Valdemar needs my skills and strength far more than it needs me beneath the Heir’s coronet.”

Now she turned, to see her stepfather beaming with approval, and her mother doing a creditable imitation of a landed fish. Controlling herself carefully, she concluded her speech.

“Therefore, I ask you—you of the Council and Court, and you, Queen and Consort—to accept my abdication and allow me to take my proper place as one Herald among many. I will always be my mother’s true daughter, but I no longer wish to be a cause of worry and conflict. And I wish to place my abilities, my life, and my honor fully in the service of my land and people.” She looked pleadingly into her mother’s eyes. “Will you say me ‘aye’?”

Selenay never had a chance to respond, for Prince Daren led the Council and Court in a thundering acceptance of her audacious solution.

* * *

It was all over. With weary feet, Elspeth took service corridors rather than the main halls of the Palace. Servants ignored her as just another Herald, although a few stopped to stare at her unique Whites, and one young man paused long enough to whisper, “Herald, that is a fine set of Whites!”

She smiled at him and winked. From the look of him, he had a fine sense of fashion himself. Someone had clearly taken a creative hand to his servants’ livery. He winked back and hurried on.

But on the whole, Elspeth felt rather as if she had been run through a clothes-wringer in the Palace laundry and hung out to dry. Even after her abdication was a fact, there had still been a hundred things to deal with.

The introduction of the rest of the party, for instance, and the explanations of what, exactly, their positions were, and what they brought to Valdemar’s defense. Selenay, still stunned from the abdication, had been taken quite a bit aback by the gryphons, until Hydona had said, quietly, in quite creditable Valdemaran, “I underssstand herrr Majesssty isss the motherrr of twinssss?” and at Selenay’s nod had uttered a long-suffering sigh and continued, “Then we have a grrreat deal in common.”

And since Lytha had chosen that particular moment to bite Jerven’s tail, causing him to squall, and Hydona to reach back absentmindedly and separate them both, Selenay had come out of her stunned trance immediately and graced Hydona with a smile that united them at once in a bond of mother-to-mother. Talia had covered her mouth, hiding a grin. So had Elspeth. No one would ever be able to convince Selenay now that the gryphons were “dangerous animals.”

Firesong had quite dazzled the Court; he seemed born to manipulate crowds. And by the time Court had been formally ended, he had collected a little court of his own, both he and his firebird posing and preening quite shamelessly. Darkwind went almost unnoticed, and so did Nyara.

Which had probably been Firesong’s intent, or at least one of his intentions.

Then there had been the joyful task of greeting all of her old friends, and explaining to them all that she had thought this through very carefully, and yes, it was the best solution to the situation. “Ancar has been focusing on me as a target, one that he knows,” she had continued. “He doesn’t know anything about the twins, and they’re children, much easier to guard day and night because they have no duties. Mother could even send them off into hiding if she had to.”

Of all of them, Kero had understood the best, Kero and her stepfather. But eventually all of them accepted it.

She had made a point of not introducing Darkwind specifically. There was no reason to start up rumors yet, not until after she dealt with Selenay.

Then had come the dreaded confrontation with her mother.

Which turned out not to be a confrontation at all.

She still couldn’t quite believe it. At some point during her absence, Selenay had come to accept the fact that Elspeth was grown up now, and capable of making her own decisions. “You will always be my darling daughter,” she had said, after a long and tear-filled embrace, “but you are also a wise woman, wiser and braver than I am. You have seen the best solution to your divided duties. And while I shall hate seeing you go into danger, I can’t deny you your right to do so.”

That had brought out another freshet of tears from both of them, until Selenay was called to a meeting of the Council. Elspeth, no longer Heir and so no longer required to attend, had gone off to her new quarters.

The rooms were the ones assigned to important and high-ranking guests. She had asked to be installed next to Darkwind, in rooms with a connecting door. She hadn’t spent all of her childhood running about the Palace without learning the layout of the place. She had made very sure that she knew exactly where each and every member of her group had been housed. The Seneschal had given her a startled look that turned to a knowing one, and nodded once.

And now she no longer had to worry about what people thought. It didn’t matter anymore. She was not the Heir; her liaisons were no one’s business but her own.

The feeling of freedom was as heady as a draught of strong wine.

She opened the door, and closed it behind her, letting her eyes adjust to the dim light filtering in through the closed curtains. This should be—yes, was—a suite of two rooms, a public room and a bedroom. She pushed away from the door and sought the latter.

There was a basin and pitcher of water on a washstand in her bedroom; once again she had a twinge of nostalgia for the Vale, but this would have to serve until she could get to the shared bathing room. She splashed some water on her face to wash away the marks of tears, brushed out her hair, and then went back into the sitting room and tapped on the door dividing her rooms from Darkwind’s.

He opened it, clearly startled that there was anyone seeking entrance, and clearly not expecting her. She took advantage of his startlement by flinging herself at him, and within a heartbeat he had recovered quite enough to return her embrace. It was just as heartfelt and passionate as she had hoped, and he left his mind open to her completely, leaving her no doubt whatsoever of how he truly felt. Profound gratitude and relief, a touch of guilt that despite her speech she might have done this only for him, and love and pride.

She was the first to break off the kiss, reluctantly, but he was the first to speak.

“You were magnificent,” he said fervently in his own tongue. “Absolutely magnificent. You made me so proud!”

“Good,” she replied, taking his hand and pulling him into her room. “Now, let’s get to the serious business, before we do or say anything else.”

He nodded quickly, following her inside, and closing the connecting door as he did so. “Of course—you are right, we must make war plans, dealing with this Ancar, and how we can identify and train the new mages—”

“No,” she told him, laying a finger on his lips to stop the flow of words. “That’s serious, but there’s something else that needs settling first. You—and me.”

He blinked at her a moment, taken quite by surprise. “Ah—I’m not sure—exactly what—” He blinked for a moment more, then let out his breath as if he had been holding it for days. “You and I. Well. Perhaps the first thing we should do is sit down.”

She laughed a little. “Good idea.”

The rooms that adjoined one another were deliberately designed so that ambassadors could hold informal court. His would be the mirror image of hers, with a fireplace in the wall the two rooms shared, a desk, several chairs, and a small couch where someone who was ailing or infirm (as many senior diplomats were) could recline at his ease. He led the way to the couch, and she sat down beside him. The light from outside was beginning to fade, but no servant would dare venture in here to light candles until they were called for, which was exactly how she had ordered it. They would be undisturbed until she wished otherwise, for the first time in her life.

“I need to know something right now,” she said, as he visibly searched for words to begin the conversation. “What are your long-term intentions and plans? As regards us, our relationship, that is.”

He swallowed, and took a deep breath. “I’m taking this all very well, am I not?” he replied, with a weak grin. “Actually, you flung a rock into what had been a quiet and ordered pond. I was going to keep myself strictly in the background. I had intended to subordinate myself to your needs and wishes, and keep everything so discreet that no one would ever guess what was going on. Firesong and I had even planned on creating the fiction that he and I were shay’kreth’ashke, just to throw anyone off the scent. After all, we’d already convinced Shion of that. But now—I suppose I don’t need to.”

“No, you don’t,” she replied, then grinned. “In fact, I’d rather like it if you were as blatant as possible. The more ineligible I make myself for the throne, the better. Although I know there is going to be at least one person who would prefer the original plan. Poor Firesong is going to be terribly disappointed!” She gave him an arch look. “After all, it was your hair that he wanted to braid feathers into!”

He stared at her a moment longer, then broke into laughter that came within a hair of hysteria but never quite crossed the line. She smiled but didn’t join him this time. Her neck and stomach were taut with tension, for he still hadn’t answered her question. There was something in her pocket that was burning a fiery hole in her heart.

Finally he calmed, and wiped his eyes. “Well,” he said at last, “my intentions are honorable, at least. I should like very much, Elspeth k’Sheyna k’Valdemar, if you would accept a feather from my bondbird.”

“I hope you have a spare,” she replied, with a chuckle born of intense relief and a desire to shout with joy. “I would like very much to accept, but Vree will never forgive me if you run back into your room and pluck him.”

But to her surprise, he reached into an inner pocket in the breast of his clothing and brought out a forestgyre primary—one with a shaft covered in beadwork of tiny crystals hardly bigger than grains of sand. It had a hair-tie of a silver clasp with two matching silver chains ending in azure crystals.

“I have held this next to my heart for the past several months,” he said solemnly, “never thinking you would be able to wear it openly, and not sure you would even be able to accept it at all.”

Her vision blurred as he spoke the traditional words that signified a Hawkbrother marriage. “Elspeth, will you wear my feather, for all the world and skies to see?”

She took it from him, her hands trembling; started to fasten it into her hair, but her hands shook too much to do so and he had to help her. Her heart raced as if she had been running fast, and she could not stop smiling—her skin tingled and burned, and she wanted to laugh, sing, cry—all of them at once.

Instead, she took out her own gift. “I don’t have a bondbird,” she said. “I don’t know how Gwena will feel about this. I can only hope she feels the way I do.”

She held out the ring on her open palm, a silver ring with an overlay of crystal. Sandwiched between was an intricately braided band of incandescently white horsehair, hairs carefully pulled from Gwena’s tail, one at a time, so that each hair was perfect. She’d had the ring made up by one of the hertasi several months ago, never really hoping she would be able to use it, but unable to give up the dream that she might.

He took it and placed it on his ring finger, and she noticed with a certain amount of pleasure that his hands were trembling as much as hers now. “Hertasi work, isn’t it?” he asked, rather too casually.

She nodded. He looked at the ring closely.

“In fact—I think I know the artisan. Kelee, isn’t it?”

Again she nodded. “I’ve probably had it as long as you’ve had the feather,” she ventured.

He chuckled. “And the hertasi, no doubt, have been chortling to themselves for some time. They are inveterate matchmakers, you know.”

She thought about the sly way that Kelee had looked at her when he had given her the finished ring, and could only sigh and nod.

“Well,” he said at last, after a long silence. “This is a good thing. I think that my parents and Clan would approve.”

Elspeth squeezed his hand and said quietly, “It doesn’t matter if they do or not. My feelings would be the same.”

Darkwind smiled. “Mine as well.”

They embraced again. “Perhaps ‘Darkwind’ is no longer a proper name for me. You have brought too much light into my life for it to apply anymore. I no longer feel like a lowering storm since joining with you, bright feather.”

Elspeth nodded and bit her lower lip. “But… there are still storms approaching.”

“Yes. We have many plans to make, and many to discard. I think that this is likely to be a very late night…”

* * *

I think that this is likely to be a very late night, Talia thought, motioning discreetly to one of the pages near her Council seat. “Go order enough food and wine for all the Councillors, then recruit some of the final-year trainees to serve it and replace the pages,” she whispered to him. He was one of the older pages, and nodded with both understanding and relief. He had served the Queen and Council long enough to know how long one of these emergency sessions could last, and while he might have been disappointed at not being able to listen in on the proceedings, the disappointment was countered by the relief that he would not be stuck in the Council chamber until the sun rose.

There was something to be said for having a limited level of responsibility.

As the pages filed out, to be replaced by wide-eyed youngsters in trainee-Grays, Selenay rose to address her Council. The men and women seated around the horseshoe-shaped table fell silent, and lamplight gleamed on jewels and brilliant court-garb. Behind Selenay, the huge crest of Valdemar seemed to glow.

“I am certain that many of you fear that I am going to oppose this abdication,” she said, with calm and equanimity. Talia knew better than anyone here that the calm was not feigned, it was real. She and Selenay had spent many nights in Elspeth’s absence, trying to find a way to reconcile the conflicts that Elspeth’s duties would place her in when she returned, but both of them had assumed that Elspeth would never want to give up her position as Heir. They had both been wrong, and Elspeth’s elegant solution to the conflict, while creating several more entirely new problems, had solved more than it created.

Selenay locked eyes with each of her Councillors in turn, as Talia assessed their emotional state with her Gift of Empathy. Troubled, most of them, but excited. A bit apprehensive. Afraid that Selenay was going to make difficulties.

“Well,” she said, with a wan smile, “Elspeth is wiser than I, and far more expedient. For the moment, although they are not yet Chosen, I am naming Kris and Lyra joint Heir-presumptives. Since they are so very young, being guarded day and night and kept from much public contact is going to do very little harm to them, and given that I am going to assign their safety into the hands of Guardsmen picked by Herald-Captain Kerowyn and Heralds and their Companions picked by my Consort, I think it unlikely that anyone will be able to threaten them with such formidable nurses on the watch.”

There was overall relief at that, relief so palpable Talia was surprised no one else could feel it, unGifted though they might be.

“It seems to me that the first thing we should do is to ensure that word of Elspeth’s abdication spreads as far and as fast as possible,” the Queen continued. “This will give her a greater margin of safety, and confuse Ancar completely. And at the same time, we should see to it that the reports of her demonstration of magical powers are as exaggerated as possible.” Selenay smiled slyly. “The more Ancar thinks we have, the less he is likely to attempt a sudden attack. Let him believe that Elspeth brought us an army of mages and peculiar creatures, at least until his own spies tell him otherwise. That will give us some breathing space.”

Nods and speculative expressions all around the table. Herald-Captain Kerowyn spoke up—and Talia noticed then with some amusement that in the brief time between when Court had been adjourned and the Council had been called, she had managed to change out of her despised “oh-shoot-me-now” Whites. “This is the time to use those night-message relays, Majesty,” she said. “Ancar will be sure to read the messages if we make certain that at least one of the towers ‘happens’ to reflect to the border when they relay on.” She grinned. “We can thank him for that much, at least. Companions and Heralds may be invaluable for carrying messages that are supposed to be secret, but the towers are unmatched for relaying anything you want your enemy to know.”

“See to it,” Selenay said with a nod, and Kerowyn frowned with thought for a moment, then scribbled down the message she wanted relayed and handed it to one of the trainees to take outside.

“Now, how can we use this situation to our best advantage?” the Queen continued. “We have the potential to gain a lot of time here, if we use it well.” She looked around the table at her Councillors for suggestions. And now the mood had changed, from one of apprehension to one of anticipation and hope.

Talia relaxed further, and surreptitiously gave Selenay the sign that all was well.

For the moment, at any rate. That was all that anyone could count on right now.