Darkwind had been struggling for several days now to maintain his dignity, his composure, and above all, the signature Tayledras detachment, and failing dismally. The cause, ever and always, was Elspeth. He wondered if all teachers felt like this, or if he was particularly blessed - or cursed - with a student so intelligent and quick that she threatened to run right over her hapless instructor.
“I can’t keep ahead of her, and sometimes it’s all I can do to fly apace with her,” he confessed to Treyvan, as he helped the gryphon affix a set of shelves onto a wall of an interior room, a bit of work that only small, nimble, human hands could manage. Treyvan and his mate had expanded the original lair quite a bit since things calmed down, reconstructing the original walls of the building that had stood here, then creating several rooms where there had once been only two. Why the gryphon would want shelves, he had no idea - but then, there were a great many things he still didn’t know about the gryphons. For all he knew, they collected hertasi carvings and wanted to display them.
Darkwind hammered on a stake and tied support cords from it. Finished, flat boards such as the gryphons had discovered were hard to come by, and he wasn’t going to waste them on wall mounts; he was using a variation on the Tayledras’ ekele construction, that of anchored, co-supporting lines.
“Ssso what iss the trouble?” the gryphon asked genially. “You have had much more tutelage than she, and access to more knowledge.” He lounged in the corner and watched Darkwind with half-lidded golden eyes, not out of laziness, but because he had just eaten, and the gryphons, like the raptors Darkwind knew so well, rested after filling their crops.
“I can’t do everything,” Darkwind admitted, with a touch of annoyance. He shook his hair out of his way, and aligned the support he was working on with the others. “I haven’t actively worked magic in years, and my memory of what to do is a little foggy. My magical skills are - well - as stiff as muscles get if not exercised regularly. And, the Mage-Gift fades if not used.”
“Asss any other attribute,” the gryphon agreed. “Asss in hunting, sswordsskill, or musssic.”
“Well, mine’s creaky with disuse,” Darkwind sighed, “And I can’t re-learn everything I’d forgotten and teach Elspeth, too. It was all right when she didn’t know anything about mage-craft, because I could set her to work on something basic, while I practiced something else. But now - that won’t work anymore,”
The gryphon stopped in the middle of a laIy stretch, and blinked at him, claws still extended, back arched. “Ssshe isss that quick?”
“She’s that quick,” Darkwind told him, setting the last support firmly into the wall. “The problem is that her people have made quite a science of mind-magic, and she’s very good at it. Although she says she isn’t particularly outstanding.” He snorted. “Either it’s the one and only time I’ve caught her being modest, or her people are frightening mind-mages. Good enough to stand equal with an Adept.”
“And in mind-magic there isss enough sssameness to give her a basssisss in true magic,” Treyvan supplied. “Isss there alsso enough sssameness to causse her trouble?”
Darkwind wedged the heavy shelf into the support-loops and eyed it critically, ignoring the question for the moment. “How level do these have to be?” he asked. “What are they for?”
“Booksss,” Treyvan replied, completing his stretch. “Jussst booksss, many of them. Ssso long asss they do not fall, it iss level enough.”
Books? Where is he getting books? He sighted along the shelf again. It slanted just a bit, but not enough for most people to notice. Or it just might be the uneven stone floor that gave the illusion that it slanted; it was hard to tell. It would certainly do for books - wherever the gryphons had gotten them. And whatever they planned to do with them. He couldn’t imagine them reading, either -
“Yes,” he admitted, finally. “There is just enough that mind-magic has in common with true magic to make her ask me some really difficult questions and to occasionally get her in trouble. And that’s the problem - if she’s asking me questions, I’m distracted from polishing my own skills. And when she gets into trouble, it’s sometimes difficult to get her out again, because I am, well, rusty. I’ve forgotten most of the specifics. It’s more annoying than anything else at the moment, but it’s going to be dangerous when facing an enemy.”
And how would I explain that to her countrymen? “I’m sorry, but I seem to have let your princess get killed. I hope you have a spare?”
“Can you not asssk anotherrr Adept to train herrr?” the gryphon asked, his crest-feathers erect with interest.
He sighed, put his back to the wall, and slid down it to sit braced against the cool stone. “That’s just the difficulty, you see. I sponsored her as Wingsib; unless I really get into trouble, she’s my problem and my responsibility. We don’t have that many Adepts in the first place, and, frankly, none to spare to teach Elspeth.”
Besides, I can just imagine what would happen if she were to pull one of her impertinent little questions on, say, Iceshadow. And how would I explain that? “I’m sorry, but your princess seems to have gotten a bit singed. Don’t worry, truly, I’m sure everything will grow back as good as new. “
Treyvan scratched meditatively for a moment, then said, “Well, what of me?”
Darkwind frowned, not understanding the gryphon’s question. “What about you?” he asked.
The gryphon coughed, and cocked his head to one side. “It ssseemsss to me that I could train herrr. I am Masssterrr, and my ssskillssss, while not Adept-classs, arrre quite finely honed and in usssse. I am sssurely good enough to ansswer herrr quessstionsss, get her out of tanglesss, and drill you both. Anything I cannot deal with, you can sssurely an ssswer, sso long as the child isss not breathing firrre down yourr neck.” His beak gaped in that familiar gryphon grin. “Besssidess, I doubt ssshe will give me asss much backtalk asss sssshe givess you!”
This was the answer to all his problems. He’d known the gryphon was some kind of mage. He’d seen it proven, and levels were largely a matter of power rather than skill, once one reached anywhere near to Master.
“Would you?” he said eagerly. “Would you really do that?”
The gryphon made a chirring sound, something between a snort and a chuckle. “I ssssaid that I would, did I not? Of courssse I will. It will be amusssing to teach a human again.” He eyed Darkwind speculatively. “What isss more, featherrrless sson, I sshall drrrill you asss well. I sshall assk Hydona to help me.”
Darkwind suddenly had the feeling a sparrow must have when caught out in a storm. He could bluff Elspeth when he didn’t know an answer or concoct a spur-of-the-moment fake that would hold until he recalled the real answer. He wouldn’t be able to do that with Treyvan.
And what was more, by the glint in Treyvan’s eye, the gryphon knew he’d been doing exactly that.
On the other hand, he needed the drill badly, and Treyvan was the only one likely to offer. He didn’t like to go to the other mages and beg for their help; many of them were working themselves into the ground, first shielding, then trying to Heal the Heartstone. The rest, now that the rift between mages and non-mages had been dealt with, were often working the borders with the scouts. Thanks to them there were proper patrols and reasonable work shifts, and the scouts were no longer spread so thin that if one of them were ill or injured, it meant a gaping hole in their border coverage. Those holes were how Falconsbane had gotten in and out of their territory at his leisure.
But that meant there was no one Darkwind really wanted to ask to help him re-train. Except Starblade - but there were too many things between Starblade and he that had yet to be resolved. Besides, Starblade had task enough in simply being healed.
“There isss ssomething more about Elssspeth, iss there not?” Treyvan asked. The gryphons’ perceptiveness was a constant source of annoyance for Darkwind. It was impossible to be self-indulgent around them. “You have feelingsss beyond the ssstrictly necesssarrry. Sssomething - hmm - perrsssonal?”
He flushed. “Not really,” he replied, more stiffly than he would have liked. “I’m attracted to her, of course. But that would happen with any beautiful young woman that became my pupil. It’s a natural occurrence in the student-teacher relationship, when both student and teacher are young, and their ages are close.” He winced at saying that; he’d sounded pompous, and he’d come perilously close to babbling. But better that than have Treyvan think there was more between them.
“Of coursse,” Treyvan said blandly. Too blandly. He could hardly take exception to that. He could suspect that Treyvan was teasing him, but he could prove nothing - which was, of course, exactly what Treyvan wanted. So long as Darkwind couldn’t prove a real insult, the gryphon could tease ail he wanted.
Crazy gryphon. Treyvan and his sense of humor, he thought sourly. He’d laugh at his own funeral.
“Anyway,” he continued, as if Treyvan had said nothing at all, “With you drilling her, that won’t come up. I will be too busy with my learning, as will she, and I sincerely doubt she will have any interest in you as a ... uhm. . . . I wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you.”
“Oh,” Treyvan replied, a definite twinkle in his eyes, “I won’t.”
Darkwind gritted his teeth; Treyvan was trying to annoy him, and there was no point in letting the gryphon know he was succeeding. That would only encourage him.
And after all, Treyvan had put up with plenty of harassment from Darkwind’s bondbird, Vree. The forestgyre had a fascination for Treyvan’s crest-feathers, and attempted to snatch them any time he had the chance, no matter how often or forcefully Darkwind warned him off. Sometimes, much to Treyvan’s discomfort, he succeeded in getting a claw on them, too. Once when Treyvan was in molt, he’d even managed to steal one.
I suppose I can put up with a little teasing. Unlike Vree, Treyvan is at least not snatching at body parts in his joking.
But he would rather that Treyvan had chosen another subject for the teasing besides his feelings toward Elspeth. . . .
* * *
Hydona hissed and clacked her beak to get Elspeth’s attention; Darkwind ignored her, for he had learned that Treyvan would use any moment of distraction to send lances of carefully tempered power at the Hawkbrother’s shields. And Treyvan was watching him very carefully without seeming to; the advantage of the placement of the eyes on gryphon heads. They had excellent peripheral vision; a full three-quarters of a circle, and sharper than Darkwind could believe.
Despite Treyvan’s comment about asking his mate, Darkwind had not expected that both gryphons would show up to tutor them. But when he and Elspeth traveled across the pass-through to the Practice Ground, four wings, not two, lifted to greet them.
“Hydona hass more patience than I,” Treyvan had said jovially. “And ssshe hasss taught morrre than I. Ssshe thought ssshe might be a better teacherr for Elssspeth.” His eyes glinted. “That leavesss me morre time to tutorr you.”
Hydona trilled. “Tutorr orr torturrre?”
“What about the young ones?” Darkwind had asked, worriedly, trying to ignore Hydona’s remark. “The Heart-stone still isn’t safe for little ones to be near, even with all the shielding we’ve put on it.”
“They are at the lair,” Treyvan had replied. “The evening of the celebrrration had an unexpected outcome. The kyree, Torrl, hasss decided to ssstay with usss to aid yourr folk in ssscouting, and hisss young cousin, Rris, arrrrived yesssterday to join him. Rris watches the younglingsss. He ssays he isss glad to do ssso.” Treyvan grinned hugely. “It ssseemss that we are sssuch thingss of legend that it isss worrth it to him to be the brrrunt of the younglingsss’ gamesss to be nearrr usss.”
Darkwind could only shake his head. The kyree were large, yes, but by no means the size of a half-grown gryphlet. Lytha and Jerven could bowl him over without even thinking about it; they would certainly give that poor kyree plenty of reasons to regret his offer.
I can just imagine the games they‘II get up to. Pounce and Chase, Scream and Leap, Who-Can-Send-Rris-Rump-Over-Tail. ...
Unless, of course, Rris was very agile - or very clever. If the former, he could probably dodge the worst of their rough-and-tumble games, and if the latter, he could think of ways to keep them out of mischief without getting flattened.
“I hope this Rris has a great deal of patience, my friend,” was all he had said. “Your offspring are likely to think he’s some kind of living tumble-toy.”
Treyvan had only laughed. “Think on Torrl,” he had replied. “Young Rrisss isss asss clever asss hisss cousin, and verrry good, I am told, with younglingsss. All will be well.”
Then Darkwind had no more time to worry about the well-being of the brave young kyree who had taken on the task of tending Jerven and Lytha, for their father launched him straight into a course of practice aimed at bringing him up to full and functional Adept status in the shortest possible period of time. It was aggressive, and Treyvan proved to be a merciless teacher.
Interestingly enough, he proceeded very differently from the way that Darkwind had initially been taught. In his years of learning before, he had mastered the basics of manipulating energies and shielding, then learned the offensive magics, then the defensive. But the first thing that Treyvan drilled him in were the Master-level defensive skills.
As now; he was constructing a structure of shields, onionlike in their layering, while Treyvan watched for any sign of weakness in them and attacked at that point. The object was to produce as many different kinds of shields as possible, so that an enemy who might not know every kind of shield a Tayledras could produce would be defeated by one, perhaps the third, fourth, or fifth.
The outermost was not so much shield as misdirection; it bent the mental eye away from the wearer and refracted the distinct magical image of the mage into resembling his surroundings, as if there was no one there. Beneath that was a shield that deflected energy, and beneath that, one that countered it. Yet deeper was one that absorbed energy and transmuted it, passing it to the shield beneath it, which simply resisted, like a wall of stone, and reflected the incoming energy back out through the previous layer. It was the transmutational shield that was giving Darkwind trouble. It would absorb Treyvan’s attacks, right enough, but it wasn’t transmuting the energy-lances into anything he could use.
“Hold,” Treyvan said, finally, as Hydona lectured Elspeth on the need to establish a shield and a grounding point first, before reaching for node-energy. He had been trying to get that through her head for the past two days; finally, with someone else telling her exactly the same thing, it looked as if she was going to believe that he was right.
No, she’s going to believe the information was right, he chided himself. That’s what’s important, not the source of the information. If hearing it from Hydona is what it takes, then fine, so long as she learns it now and not the hard way -
No one in k’Sheyna had ever learned that lesson “the hard way,” not within living memory, but there were tales of a mage of k’Vala who had seized a node without first establishing a grounding point, and discovered that the node was rogue. Nodes could go feral, flaring and dying unpre-dictably, without the stabilizing focus of a Heartstone. The node he seized had done just that; it flared, and with no ground point to hold him and shunt the excess away and no shield to shelter him, he had burned up on the spot, becoming a human torch that burned for days - or so the tales said.
In fact, it had probably happened so fast that the mage had no notion of what had gone wrong. But whether the tales were true or not, it was still a horrible way to die.
Maybe all she needed was for it to be a female that taught her, he thought, watching as her grave eyes darkened and lightened according to her mood. Her weapons’ teacher, the Tale‘sedrin-kin that she worships so, is a female; and so is her oldest friend. And her Companion is female. Maybe she just responds better to female teachers.
A reasonable thought -
Thwap!
A mental “slap across the side of his head” woke him to the fact that he was supposed to be working, not woolgathering. Once again, Treyvan had taken advantage of the fact that his attention had wandered to deliver a stinging reminder of what he was supposed to be doing.
Damn you, gryphon. That hurt.
With his “ears” still ringing, he turned his attention back to his teacher, whose twitching tail betrayed his impatience.
“If you do not pay heed, I ssshall do more than ssswat you, Darrrkwind,” Treyvan warned him. “That isss the third time today your thoughtsss have gone drrrifting.”
He grunted an assent, without mentioning that each time
Elspeth had been the cause of his wit-wandering. He needn’t have bothered. Treyvan brought it up on his own.
“Can you not worrrk about a young female without having yourrr mind drrift?” he asked acidly. “Humanss! Al-waysss in sseasson!”
Darkwind felt his neck and ears heat up as he flushed. “That’s not it,” he protested. Treyvan cut his protests short.
“It mattersss not,” the gryphon growled. “Now watch thiss time. Thisss is how the transsssmutation ssshould look to you. Crreate the texturrre sso, pussh it frrrom you asss if rrreleasssing a brreath. Halt it herrre frrom yourr body.”
Darkwind blotted everything out of his mind except the sense of the power-flows, and the magic that the gryphon manipulated. As Treyvan built the proper shield, step by slow, tiny step, Darkwind finally saw what he had forgotten.
Treyvan had woven a complex texture into the shield, in one area directing power only in, and in another place filtering it out, giving him two power flows - one from himself, the other ready to take in energy directed at him by an enemy, and transmute it. That was the problem; he’d only allowed for the single power-flow from himself. The energy coming in from outside took over the field that was supposed to channel power from himself into the first shield. Back-pressure, as in a wellspring, with only the inevitable leaks to relieve that pressure. Once there, since it wasn’t shield-energy, it eddied or stood idle - or worse, waited to react with another “color” of magic - in all cases, more than frustrating. Potentially deadly, in fact. It never reached the transmutational part of the Working; so it never channeled to the last shield.
Mentally cursing himself, he rebuilt his shields; this time the transmutational shield worked correctly, giving him two shields for the personal-energy cost of one. At least for as long as the enemy chose to sling spellweapons at him.
“Now, you know how thisss ssshield can be countered, yess?” Treyvan asked, when the shields had been tested and met with his approval.
“Two ways - well, three, if you count just blasting away with more energy than the shunt can handle,” Darkwind replied. “The first is to find the shunt - where he’s grounded - and use it to drain energy out of the shield-hooking into it yourself, and taking the energy back. If that happens, the shield starts draining the mage that’s holding it. If you do that fast enough, all his shields will collapse before he can react.”
Treyvan’s crest-feathers rose with approval. “And?”
“Attack where the mage isn’t expecting it,” he said. “That can be one of two things - attacking through the shunt, which is structurally the weakest part of the shield, or attacking with something else entirely.” He thought for a moment. “At this point, if I were the attacker, I’d go for something completely unexpected. Like ... a physical attack. Send Vree in to harass him. Toss an illusion at him. Demonsbane - throw a rock at him to make him lose his concentration!”
Treyvan laughed. “Good. Now - could you have done what the sssword Need did? Could you now transssmute the energy of an attack and sssplit it?”
He thought about that for a moment; thought about exactly what the sword had done. “Yes,” he said finally. “But only by doing what she did - holding no shields at all between the attack and the transmutation-layer. That might work for a thing made of metal and magic, but it would be pretty foolhardy for a flesh-and-blood creature.”
Treyvan nodded. “Neverrrthelesss,” he said, pointing a talon at Darkwind, “It did worrk. And ssso long asss Falconsssbane kept launching magical attackss against heir, it continued to worrrk. Only if he had ssseen what ssshe wass doing and launched a physical attack, or ssome otherr type of magic, would he have failed. He ssufferrred frrrom sshort sssight.”
Darkwind countered that statement with one of his own. “We were lucky,” he said flatly. “Falconsbane was overconfident, and we were damned lucky. I have the feeling that if he’d had the time to plan and come in force, he could have taken us, all the Shin’a’in, and maybe even their Goddess on, and won.”
Treyvan hissed softly. “Your thoughtsss marrch with mine, featherlesss ssson,” he said, after a pause. “And it isss in my mind that we ssshall not alwayss be ssso lucky.”
“In mine, too.” Darkwind nodded toward Elspeth, and tried to lighten the mood. “For one thing, that woman seems to attract trouble.”
The gryphon’s beak snapped shut, and he nodded. “Yesss, sshe doess. Sshe hass attracted you, forr one. Ssso, let usss sssee if you can conssstruct thossse ssshields cor-rrectly a ssecond time - and thisss time, hold them againssst me.”
Elspeth paid careful attention to every hissed word Hydona spoke, finding it unexpectedly easy to ignore the fact that her teacher was a creature larger than the biggest horse she had ever seen, with a beak powerful enough to snap her arm off at a single bite. Even with a motivation to pay attention such as that, the gryphon already made more sense than Darkwind did. Neither she nor the gryphons were native speakers of the Tayledras tongue; Hydona was being very careful about phrasing things in unambiguous terms that Darkwind likely thought were intuitively obvious.
Another case for being careful about what you assume in translation. Interesting. That is a consideration I would expect of a Court-trained person, not a creature like Hydona.
Hydona related everything she taught Elspeth to the mind-magic Elspeth already knew. That made a lot more sense than Darkwind’s convoluted explanations of power-flows and energy-fluxes. They seemed clear to him, apparently, and seemed to make sense, except when he tried to fake; she had seen bluffs in enough Court functions to recognize the signs.
Hydona clearly detailed making an anchor point and shielding, for instance; that was a lot like grounding and centering, and was done for many of the same reasons. When put that way, Elspeth stopped subconsciously resisting the idea of having to effectively double-shield, once against mental intrusions and once against magical attacks. The other thing that made sense was that Hydona had pointed out the sword Need had done all that for her; the sword was in itself a permanent anchor point, radiating a seemingly ungraspable power into the earth, forever acting as a ground for the bearer it was bonded to. Need had shields on it that Hydona doubted were under conscious control anymore - if they ever had been. She seemed to think that they hadn’t been; that they were some part of the sword itself, before the spirit came to reside in it.
So that was how Elspeth had managed to work magic without all the preparations the Hawkbrothers and their large friends deemed necessary. The precautions had been taken, they simply hadn’t been taken by her.
And now that Need was no longer in Elspeth’s possession, Elspeth was going to have to learn how to do everything Need had done so that she could manage for herself. With an ironic smile, she thought how easily Need could have become less a sword and more a crutch.
Oh, Need would have forced her to leam it all anyway. The only reason Need had aided her for as long as she had was because they had been in something of an emergency situation. In all probability, Need would have insisted on her learning to fend for herself as soon as there had been some breathing room.
Obediently, she “watched” as Hydona led her through the steps of anchoring and shielding, then practiced until they came easily. First, feeling the stable point in the power-flows about her and setting mental “hooks” into it, then erecting a shield against mage-energies that was remarkably similar to mental shields. Hydona drilled her over and over, and after a while the exercises stopped being something foreign and started feeling like second-nature. Best of all, they took about the same effort it took to stay on a galloping horse. She was a little surprised by how quickly it all came to her, but Hydona said nothing of it. She seemed to think it was only natural.
“Now,” the gryphon said, after she’d repeated the patterns until she was weary of them, and thought she could do them in her sleep. “Here isss when you rrreach for pow-errr; when you arrre ssafe in yourrr protectionsss, and anchored against fluxesss. Now, there isss a ley-line to the eassst of you; a young one, eassily tamed - but you do not know that. Ssso. Assssume you know nothing. Searrch for it. When you find it, rrreach forr it, asss Need ssshowed you, and ssample it. Sssee if you can usse it, orrr if it isss too ssstrong forr you.”
She closed her eyes, found the line Hydona spoke of, and reached for it, dipping the fingers of an invisible hand into it, as if it were a kind of stream, and she wanted to drink of it.
She “tasted” it; tested the textures, the strength of the flow and the complexity. It was very tame, and bland. Not terribly strong. Kind of boring, in fact, compared with the rush of power she had gotten when she’d tapped into the node under the gryphons’ ruins for the first time.
I can’t do much with this, she thought, and began to trace it out to whatever node it was linked into, without thinking twice about doing so.
She felt her skull resound with a hard, mental thwap! Her eyes snapped open, and she rocked back on her heels for a moment, staring at the female gryphon, aghast.
“What did you do that for?” she cried, angrily, “I was just-”
“You were jussst about to find yourrr way to the Hearrtssstone,” Hydona interrupted. “And that, little child, would have eaten you whole, and ssspit out the piecessss. A trrrained and warry Adept can stand againssst it, but not you.”
She licked her lips and blinked. “I thought the Heartstone was shielded. I thought nobody but Adepts could reach it now. Isn’t that what all the mages have been working on since we got rid of Falconsbane?”
“And ssso it isss,” Hydona nodded, “But you arrre within the prrotectionsss of the Practice Ground. The ssshieldsss do not extend herrre, so that those who arrre trrrying to Heal the Ssstone can rrreach it without dissrrupt-ing thossse sssame ssshieldsss.”
“So the Adepts healing the Stone come here to work?” she asked. Hydona nodded. Her voice rose with alarm; if the shields didn’t extend here - “Isn’t it dangerous for us to be here, then? I mean, what if we interfere with what’s going on?”
“Therrre isss no one herrre at the moment,” Hydona said calmly. “Arrre you afrrraid?”
Reluctantly, she nodded. After all she’d heard about the Heartstone and how dangerous it was in its current, shattered state, she wasn’t very happy being somewhere that had no protections against it. The idea made her skin crawl a little with uneasiness.
“Good,” Hydona said, with satisfaction. “You ssshould be afrrraid. Verrry afrrraid. It isss nothing to disssregarrd, thisss Ssstone. It isss lightning harrnesssed, but barrrely, in itsss perfect sstate.” She refolded her wings, and settled her tail about her forelegs. “Now, why werrre you wanderrring off like that?”
She shuffled her feet, uncomfortable beneath the gryphon’s dark, penetrating gaze. “I - there wasn’t much power there,” she stammered. “I wanted more than that. I mean, there was hardly enough there to do anything with.”
“Morrre than you think,” Hydona scolded gently. “Tcha. You are a child who hasss alwaysss had a forntune at herrr beck, and hasss never learrrned how to make do with less.” The gryphon shook her massive head, and the scent of cinnamon and musk wafted over Elspeth. “You musst learrrn to budget yourrrssself.” She cocked her head sideways and watched Elspeth with a knowing eye. “The mossst effective mage I know neverr nossse above Journeyman-classss. He wasss effective becaussse he knew exactly what hisss limitsss werne, and he did evemything possible inssside thossse limitssss. He neverrr perrrmitted lack of powerrr to thwart him; he sssimply found waysss for lesss powerrr to ac-comph’sssh the tasssk.”
That was the harshest speech she’d ever gotten from Hydona, the closest the gryphon had ever come to giving her a scolding.
Although the thwap a few moments ago was a great deal like one of Kero’s “love-taps.”
She rubbed her temple, and considered the similarities between die two teachers. “Delivered for your own good,” Kera used to say. Well, this is another land of weapons’ work I suppose. And what was it Kera always says? “On the practice ground, the weaponsmaster is the one true God. “And this is the same as the practice ground, I guess. She nodded meekly, and Hydona seemed satisfied, at least for the moment.
“Ssso, do asss I told you in the firrssst place. Find the line, tesst it, and link with it.” Hydona sat back on her haunches and gave her a steady, narrowed-eyed look that Elspeth interpreted as meaning she would not permit the slightest deviation from her orders.
So, with a purely mental sigh, she found the tame, boring line of power again, and tapped into it. The amount of energy possible to get from a source so slight was hardly more than a trickle, compared to the sunlike fury that was the Heartstone. This time, she made the connection without even closing her eyes. The relationship between the inner world of power, unseen by physical eyes, and the outer world no longer confused her. Part of that was simply all the work she’d done with FarSight over the years; another instance of how working with mind-magic made work with real magic much easier.
Ah, but as Hydona pointed out, less power does not mean less effective power. Mind-magic is still strong. If there are more Heralds with the MageGift, after this I should be able to teach them in a reasonable length of time - not in the six or eight years it takes Quenten‘s students to become Journeymen. I could just work from their own mind-magic Gifts outward.
When she finished her assigned task, sealing the connections with a bit of a flourish, Hydona nodded with satisfaction. “Good. Now, channel the powerrr to me.” Her beak opened in a hint of amusement at Elspeth’s dropped jaw. “What, you did not know sssuch a thing wasss posssible? Becaussse it isss not posssible in mind-magic? Ah, but it isss possible in Healing, isss it not? Asss there are ssssimilaritiesss, there are diferencesss asss well, and those differen-cesss might kill you. Trrrussst yourrr intuition, but neverrr ass-sume any thing.”
What Hydona did not say - because she didn’t need to - was that Elspeth needn’t think she knew everything just because she was well-versed in the magic of her own people.
All right, so I’m a bonehead. She reached a tentative “hand” to Hydona, and was relieved to find the gryphon’s shields down, and Hydona waiting for her “touch.” She had no idea how to proceed with someone who was uncooperative, or worse, unable to cooperate. It took several false starts before she was able to create a channel to Hydona without losing the first one to the ley-line, but once she had it set up, she was able to redirect the power without too much difficulty.
She was tempted to set up a channel from Hydona to the line, directly, but she had a notion that Hydona would be able to tell the difference, and that the gryphon would not be amused.
Hydona broke the contact, and Elspeth maintained the channel without drawing any more energy from it while she waited for the gryphon’s next instructions.
“Ssso, you can ssseek, sssample, channel, and sssend. Now we sssshall practice all of thossse,” Hydona said genially. “We sssshall prrractice, and prractice, until you can ssseek, sssample, channel and sssend underrr any circumssstancesss.”
Elspeth smothered a groan, and broke her contact with the ley-line neatly, letting its newly-freed power wisp away harmlessly. This was starting to get frustrating. Hydona sounded more and more like Kero with every passing moment. If she starts being any more like Kero, the next thing she’s going to do is quote a Shin‘a‘in proverb at me.
“It isss sssaid that ‘Whatever isss prreparred forr neverrr oc-currrssss,’ “ Hydona quoted. “That isss an ancient Kaled’a’in sssaying. Ssso, let usss prrepare you for finding yourrrssself alone, sssick, wounded, exhaussted, ssssurrounded by enemiessss and needing powerrr, and it will neverrr occurrr. Yesss?” Elspeth could only sigh.
Later, after the gryphons were gone, Darkwind rubbed eyes that ached and burned with the strain of DoubleSight, and was mildly surprised to find Elspeth still there. She sat quietly on a stone bench, leaning against the curved marble wall of their corner of the Practice Ground with her eyes closed. He wondered if she was waiting for him to show her the way out - or just waiting for him.
He walked up to her, and she stared up at him with eyes as tired as his own. “We should leave, Elspeth,” he said carefully, uncertain of her temper, as weary as she looked. “The others will be here soon to work on the Heartstone, and we shall be in the way.”
“We’ll be more than in the way, if what Hydona said is any indication,” she replied, getting slowly to her feet. “We’d be in danger - and a danger to them. Well, I would be, anyway. Like having a toddling baby underfoot on a tourney field. Nobody would ever hit it on purpose, but. . . well.”
He nodded, relieved. “There you have it, truly. Would you care to come with me, to find something to eat?”
She hesitated a moment, then shrugged. “I’m not hungry, though.”
“All the more reason that you should eat,” he told her warningly. “Until you are used to it, the manipulating of mage-energies dulls the appetite. You must take care that you do not starve yourself.”
She looked at him in surprise, and must have seen by his expression that he wasn’t joking. “Well, that’s not such a bad thing if you’re on the plump side, but - ”
“Hmm. There are no fat mages,” he pointed out as he walked, “except those who habitually and grossly overindulge themselves; those for whom overeating is either a self-indulged vice or a disease. Manipulating mage-energies also costs one in terms of one’s own energies, which means that you have just done work, Wingsib. Very hard, physical work, that deceives your own body.”
He led her to the peculiar Gatelike construction called a “pass-through” that led to the Practice Ground. It was yet another way to ensure that the unwary and unready did not intrude on students at practice, or the Adepts at their work.
Because of the wall about it, the grounds could not be seen from outside, nor the Vale from within. They were a place and a time unto themselves. And in fact, he sometimes wondered if time moved a bit differently there.
She shook her head as she recovered from the jolt of dis-orientation that accompanied the transition across the pass-through. “How do you ever get used to that?” she asked. “That kind of dizzy feeling, I mean.”
He raised an eyebrow at her. “We never do,” he said simply. “There is a great deal that we never get used to. We simply cease to show our discomfort.”
She said nothing, but he caught her giving him a speculative look out of the comer of his eye. For his part, he was more concerned with finding one of the hertasi-ma “kitchens” before his temper deteriorated. Hunger did that to him, and he couldn’t always predict what would set him oif when his temper wore thin.
He didn’t want to alienate her; the opposite was more like it, but he often felt as if he was dancing on eggs around her. He wondered if she felt the same around him. There was no cultural ground that they could both meet on, and yet they had a great deal in common.
The “kitchen” was not a kitchen as such; just a common area, a room in one of the few ground-level structures, that the hertasi kept stocked with fresh fruits, bread, smoked meat, and other things that did not spoil readily. Those Hawkbrothers who either did not have the skill or the inclination to prepare their own meals came here to put together what they pleased. The fare was not terribly varied, but it was good. And at the moment, Darkwind had no inclination to make the trek to his own ekele for food. Not while his stomach was throttling his backbone and complaining bitterly.
He indicated to Elspeth that she should help herself, and chose some fruit and bread, a bit of smoked meat, and a handful of dosent roots that had a cheesy taste and texture when raw. They found a comfortable spot to sit, in an out-of-the-way clearing, and fell to without exchanging much more than nods.
“So, what was it that Hydona tutored you in?” he asked, when the edge was off his hunger.
“Baby-steps.” She made a face. “This is childish of me, I know, but she had me tapping into a very low-power ley-line, over and over, until she was certain that I could handle it in my sleep. But I was working the node under the lair with Need, and she knows that!”
“So you wonder why is she insisting that you work with minimal energy?” he replied, trying very hard to see things through her eyes.
Elspeth nodded, and nibbled a chasern fruit tentatively.
He licked the juice of another chasern from his fingers, and tried to answer as he thought Hydona would. “Firstly, there are some sources of power that are much too dangerous even for a single Adept to handle. Yes, even here, in our own territory. I mean besides the Heartstone.” He nodded at her look of surprise. “There are pools of tainted magic, like thin-roofed caves, left by the Mage Wars. Difficult to see from the surface, and deadly to fall into. That is what a Healing Adept must deal with, and at the moment, we have none. There are even perfectly natural sources too strong for one Adept to handle by himself - any node with more than seven ley-lines leading into it, for instance, or rogue lines, which fluctuate in power levels unpredictably. Add in the tendency of lines to move, and you find the only way to use these sources is with a group of Adepts, each one supporting the others, each doing a relatively small amount of work so they have a reserve to deal with emergencies.”
“I can see why she doesn’t want me to just tap into whatever powerful source I See,” Elspeth replied impatiently, “but why is she insisting that I only work with a bare trickle of power when energy is everywhere?”
“Ah, but it isn’t,” he replied, happy to at last discover the misconception that was the source of her impatience. “There is a limit on all Gifts, no matter how powerful. There is a limit on how far you, personally, can FarSee, yes?”
She nodded, slowly, and focused on him intently, paying very close attention to his words.
“And when you Mindspeak, you can only do so within a given distance, true?” he continued. “Well, power is not everywhere - or rather, great power is not everywhere. There are places where there are not even weak ley-lines for a day’s ride in any direction. There are places where even the nodes are weaker than the line you worked with today. We are Tayledras, Elspeth, and we are enjoined by the Goddess to cleanse these lands of magic. To that end, we concentrate it here. The energy level is unnaturally high in and around a Vale, even one as damaged as this one, and unnaturally high in and about the lands you call the Pelagir Hills, which we call the Uncleansed Lands.”
She swallowed the bite she had begun with a bit of difficulty. “So you’re saying that when I get home, I might find that there’s no magic energy to work with?” She looked horrified, and he hastened to assure her.
“No. I am saying that when you return, you may find you have lower levels of energy available than you have here. Or the power may be there, but buried deeply.” He ate the last of his fruit. “That is why there are schools of mages, who build up reservoirs of power that are available to the Masters and Adepts of those schools. And that is why blood-mages build power for themselves by exploiting the pain and death of others. So, you must know how to work subtly. You must learn that raining down blows with pure power is not always the correct response. It was not with some of Falconsbane’s creatures; that you witnessed.”
She shook her head; whether stubbornly or for some other reason, he couldn’t tell. “Listen,” he said, “Hydona believes you are doing well. Once you have mastered the fainter sources of power, and in using the energy you yourself have stored within you, she and Treyvan wish us all to take our places on the border.”
She perked up at that, and he smiled to see her interest. “Really?” she exclaimed. “I’ve felt so useless. I know you have to learn theory before you practice anything, but - ”
“But you came here to become a weapon against the enemy of your land, I know,” he replied. “Now please - I know that you are impatient, but believe me. It is better to use little power rather than too much. Using a poleaxe to kill small game destroys the game thoroughly, rendering it useless. So it is with magic. Too much can attract things you do not wish to have to deal with, as a dead creature can attract things more dangerous than it was to scavenge upon it. Master the subtlety Hydona tries to teach you. There will be time and more than time for the greater magics.”
He watched her face; she seemed thoughtful, and he hoped she believed him, because whether she knew it or not, her life depended on believing him - and sooner than she might think.
For Hydona had not meant that suggestion in jest, that both of them take up a scout’s position on the border of k’Sheyna. When they did that, there were no longer any shields, any protections, or any rules. It would be only themselves and the gryphons, and it might well be that there were things out there that were more powerful and deadly than Momelithe Falconsbane.
So now I’m a scout on the border of the Tayledras territories. In the Pelagirs. Me, who never even rode circuit. Mother would have a cat. Elspeth’s heart raced every time a bird called an alarm or a stray twig broke, even though she knew very well that potential danger was likely to be upon them long before there were any such warnings. Gwena was jumpy too, and that didn’t help her nerves any. She had all her shields down toward Gwena, and whatever her Companion felt, she felt, and vice versa.
Or was it that Gwena was jumpy after all? The Companion was ill at ease, but it didn’t quite have the feeling of nerves.
:All right,: she said, suddenly suspicious. :What are you hiding this time?:
:I wasn‘t hiding it - at least, not from you,: the Companion temporized. :I’ve been keeping something from the others. Well, maybe I have and maybe I haven’t - I mean, I don’t know how much they‘ve guessed about Cymry and me. So I wasn’t really hiding it from you, but -:
Elspeth choked and coughed to cover it. :Gwena, dear, you can stop babbling, all right? I’d say the Tayledras know plenty about you two, from the way Darkwind dances around you, and they aren‘t telling me about what they know, either. So you might as well let this great secret out, whatever it is, because even if I don’t know about it, they probably do. :
She couldn’t hide her resentment at that, and didn’t try. It was obvious - would have been plain even to a child - that the Hawkbrothers considered the Companions something quite special, according them more reverence than they even got at home in Valdemar. But the Tayledras wouldn’t discuss the Companions at all without one of them being present, as if they were determined not to offend the Companions or reveal something they shouldn’t.
And even if there was nothing to this dancing about the bushes, it drove Elspeth to distraction.
:Well,: Gwena said slowly, :I would have to tell you soon, anyway. It’s not really all that complicated. Now that you know how to channel mage-energies, and you know how to feed someone else and be fed in turn - well - I can feed you.:
Elspeth was past being surprised. She simply nodded. :And of course it would have been no use telling me this before I had the skill, I know.: She closed her eyes and counted to ten, very, very carefully. :You aren’t keeping anything else back, are you?:
:No,: Gwena replied in a subdued voice. :No, not really. I can feed you if you need it, but I’m subject to the same limitations you are. Except - :
Elspeth counted to ten a second time. .-Except?:
Gwena waited a long time, and Elspeth sensed that she was choosing her words very carefully. : Except that you and I are a special pairing; so special that distance doesn‘t matter between us. That’s all. I’m - different that way. It’s like a lifebonded pair working together. Ask Darkwind about that some time, if you like; there are things a pair can do that even two Adepts working together can’t do.:
A vague memory fluttered at the back of her mind; something about a dark, windy night, the night when Gwena had Chosen her.
But the memory escaped before she could grasp it and she gave up trying to get it back after a fruitless moment of concentrating. :I won’t say I’m unhappy to hear that,: she told Gwena sincerely. :If things ever go badly for us, you and I might need that edge. I - don’t suppose this means you‘re a mage, too - does it?:
:Oh, no!: Gwena replied, her mind-voice bright with relief. :No, not at all! I can just tap into nodes, energy-lines, and fields. All Companions can, just most of them can’t use it for more than - oh, the usual. Healing themselves quickly, extended endurance, and running faster than a horse can. And they certainly can‘t feed their Chosen. That’s why we‘re white, you know - ask Darkwind about node-energy and bleaching.:
She sat up straighter, and looked up in the tree above her at Darkwind, who was “taking the tree-road.” Except that right now he was just sitting; letting Vree do his scouting for him before they all moved on to another spot on their patrol. “Darkwind?” she whispered.
He looked down at her, but did not give her the hand signal that indicated she should be quiet.
“Gwena says I should ask you about node-energy and bleaching. She says that’s why Companions are so white, because they use node-power to increase speed and endurance.” She shook her head, still trying to figure it out.
But Darkwind seemed to get the point immediately; his eyes lit up, and he grabbed the branch beneath him. He swung down off his branch perch like a rope dancer, to land lightly beside her. “So! That is the piece of the puzzle that I have missed!” he said cheerfully. “I think you need not fear lack of nodes and power in your land, if all your Companions are able to tap them to enhance their physical abilities. That must mean that there is no scarcity of mage-energy.”
Well, that was a great weight off her mind. “About bleaching?” she prompted.
He tugged at his own hair, and she noticed that white roots were starting to show and that the color had faded to a dull tan. “Use of node-energy gradually bleaches a mage; the color-making dies in skin, hair, and eyes, and the color that is already there is leeched away. I do not lie when I say that magery changes a person. So - your Companions use node-energy, and thus are blue-eyed, silver-coated, gray-hooved.”
:Silver-hooved,: Gwena said with dignity. He chuckled softly, and tapped her nose.
“If you insist, my lady.” He turned back to Elspeth. “My hair is not white, because as a scout I dye it. Tayledras all live with node-energy, whether we are mages or no, so nonmages bleach as well. Mages are silver-haired usually in their fifth year of practice; any other member of the Clan will have made the change at, oh, thirty summers, or thereabouts. Even with dye, I must renew the color every few days now that I am a mage again.”
Elspeth could only cast her eyes upward. “It’s like continuous sun on them, then? No wonder dye won’t take on them,” she said. “The gods know we’ve tried often enough - you know, it’s damned hard to disguise a big white horse!”
:Sorry,: Gwena put in. :Can’t help it.:
“In a trade-off between endurance and the rest of it, and being unable to disguise them, I think I’ll take the endurance,” Elspeth said, as much for Gwena’s ears as Darkwind’s. And for Gwena’s ears only, :I’II take you just the way you are, oh great sneak,: and felt Gwena’s rush of pleasure, much like a pleasantly embarrassed flush.
He shrugged. “It is the choice I would make. Besides, now that you are a mage, you may make her seem any color you choose, by illusion.”
Before she could answer that, he was back up in the tree again, swarming up the trunk like a squirrel, and hooking the branches above him with the peculiar weapon-tool he kept in a sheath on his back. She still didn’t see how he could possibly climb that quickly, even with the spike-palmed climbing gloves he wore; humans shouldn’t be able to climb like that.
She was about to ask him what was going on, when he gave her the hand signal indicating that she should remain quiet. She and Gwena froze, statue still, trusting to the bushes they sheltered in to keep them from sight.
She didn’t dare let down her shields to probe about her. Darkwind had warned her of the danger of that, and after hearing more about Mornelithe Falconsbane and the creatures he had commanded, she was inclined to listen to him and believe. But she was free enough to use every other sense, and she did. At first she couldn’t tell that there was anything at all out of the ordinary, but then she realized that the forest was a little top quiet. No birdcalls, no wind stirring the branches, nothing but the little ticks the red and golden leaves made as they fell.
:Elspeth?: came the tentative mental touch, as soft as the caress of a feather. :Vree has found someone. I sense only a void, which means that there is someone inside a shield where Vree sees a two-legged creature.:
Darkwind had told her that he would use Mindspeech only if he had determined that an enemy could not hear it, and had explained that he would test with a quick mental probe of his own, too swift to fix on. She had wanted to object, but it was his land and he was used to scouting it; she had to assume he knew what he was doing. And evidently he did....
:We’re going to have to work out what I should do if someone ever does catch a probe and lock horns with you,: she interjected, sending a mental picture of stags in full battle.
A rush of chagrin accompanied his reply. :You are right. But - not now.:
:No,: she agreed. :Not now. What do you want me to do? Should I try a probe? Are the gryphons going to get in on this?:
:Not unless there is no other choice,: he replied firmly. :We need to keep their existence as quiet as possible; there are surely others besides Falconsbane who might covet them or the small ones. And you may try a mind-magic probe, but I think you will encounter the same shields as I have. No, you and I will confront and warn him. If he does not heed the warning, we will deal with him - :
He broke off his link with her so suddenly that she was afraid that something had locked him in mental battle after all. But then, a heartbeat later, his mind-voice returned. :There is an additional complication,: he said dryly; she looked up to find him looking down at her with a face full of irony. :It seems our intruder is a Changechild.:
Her first thought had been: it must be Nyara. Her second thought had been that it couldn’t be Nyara, but that it must be another of her father’s creatures, running wild with Falconsbane gone. She tried a mental probe and discovered that just as Darkwind had said, the creature had very strong shields, well beyond her ability to counter. So the only way to learn anything about it was to confront it.
As she and Darkwind watched the intruder from their respective hiding-places, she knew all of her guesses about it had been wrong.
She didn’t know whether to be relieved that this interloper was not their Nyara, or not. If it had been Falconsbane’s daughter, the situation between herself and Darkwind would have been complicated enormously. Her own instincts warred with her on the subject; she trusted Nyara to a limited extent, and she certainly felt that the Changechild had been greatly wronged and abused, but -
But Nyara was incredibly, potently, sexually attractive. She couldn’t help herself. Elspeth would have to have been blind not to see that Darkwind had wanted her as much as Skif had and that if anything had kept them from becoming intimate, it wasn’t lack of attraction. She suspected that his own innate suspicion, lack of opportunity, and perhaps something on Nyara’s part had kept him from playing the role of lover. As it was, that night before Dawnfire had returned to them, trapped in the body of her bondbird, it had been Skif, not Darkwind, who had taken that role. And, perhaps, guilt had kept Darkwind at arm’s length. Guilt, that kept him from taking a new lover when his former love was a captive, confined to a bird’s body by the temptress’ father.
But Falconsbane was dead, or the next thing to it, and Dawnfire was out of reach of any of them. That left him free. And if he encountered Nyara before Skif did, would he be able to stand against temptation a. second time? Especially if Nyara were to make overtures?
Knowing men, she didn’t think so.
But at the same time, discovering that this stranger was not Nyara was a disappointment. However brief their acquaintance had been, Elspeth liked Nyara, and felt a great deal of sympathy for her. And she sometimes spared a moment to worry about her, put there in the wild lands that k’Sheyna no longer held, with a mage-sword who might not even like her. She had few or no provisions, no shelter against the coming winter unless she had somehow found or made one. . . .
Well, this wasn’t the time to worry about their errant Changechild. Not with another standing on k’Sheyna lands, within k’Sheyna borders - and by the blood on its hands and the circle about its feet, one who was up to no good.
Elspeth had done enough hunting in her time not to be sickened by the blood of a butchered deer. What made her ill were the fact that it was a dyheli that had been slain, and the signs that the butchery had taken place before it was dead, not after.
Blood-magic. Wasn’t that what Darkwind and Quenten both mentioned, but wouldn’t talk about?
Well, here it was - a “blood-mage” - and now that she knew what to Look for, she Sensed the power that the mage had drawn into himself as a result of his work. It wasn’t power she could have used under any circumstances; in fact, it made her a little nauseous to brush against it just long enough to figure out what it was. But it was power, and she had a notion that the death of a thinking, reasoning creature like a dyheli would have given this mage four times the strength that a deer would have. Perhaps more, depending on how long it had suffered.
Easy power, easily obtained, from a source you can find anywhere. And if you’re sadistic by nature, a source that gives pleasure when exploited. No wonder Ancar is attracted to it.
If Nyara was feline in nature, this creature was serpentine. As he moved about, disposing of his victim, he glided rather than walked, and many of his motions had a bone-lessness to them that made her shiver in an atavistic reaction to the evocation of “snake.”
Odd. The hertasi don’t do that to me, and they aren‘t half as human. I wonder why this thing does?
What exposed skin she saw - mostly hands and a glimpse of cheek - gleamed in the late afternoon light, with a kind of matte reflectivity that hinted at hard, shiny scales.
He dressed for deep cold, rather than the autumnal chill of the season; heavy leather boots, thick hose, a fur-lined tunic and cloak, and a heavy velvet shirt beneath the tunic. The colors were curious; a strange, dappled golden brown shading into deep orange - colors that blended surprisingly well into the foliage. Whatever else he was, this Changechild was canny. If he lay unmoving in the heart of a thicket, no one would ever see him.
The Changechild looked up at the first rustle of leaves, and froze in a combat-ready crouch. Darkwind dropped out of the branches like a great hawk coming to land, his knees flexed, and his hands in front of him, wary and ready to launch into an attack or defense as the need arose. The creature faced her fully now, and she saw that beneath the hood of his cloak, his face was curiously flat, with a thin, lipless mouth, and unblinking eyes as round as marbles. He straightened, but did not relax his wary pose.
Neither did Darkwind.
“You trespass,” the Hawkbrother said clearly and slowly, in the most common of the trade-tongues used hereabouts. “You trespass upon the lands of the Tayledras k’Sheyna, and you pollute those lands with blood needlessly spilled.”
That thin mouth stretched in what might have passed for a smile in any other creature. He straightened with arrogant self-assurance. “Not needlessly,” he said, “and who or what are you to tell me what I may or may not do?”
“Tayledras k’Sheyna,” Darkwind replied flatly. “These are our lands. We do not permit this. You will depart, taking your filth with you.”
The mouth stretched a little more, and the creature’s hands flexed a little. “What? Run from a single foe? I think not.”
He made no gesture, but the circle he had drawn about his feet in blood flamed with sullen power -
- and, horribly, the disemboweled dyheli on the ground beside him heaved itself to its feet. It stood swaying a little, a gaping hole where its belly should have been, its eyes red with that same sullen power, and a dull glow about its hooves and horns.
“You are only one,” the Changechild said softly. “One single Hawkbrother is hardly a threat. This weak creature was not enough. I think you will do to serve me.”
Elspeth did not need Darkwind’s signal to step from concealment, with Gwena at her side. She took up her position near enough to the Hawkbrother that they could not easily be separated, but distant enough that they would not interfere with each other.
“We are Tayledras k’Sheyna,” Darkwind said, firmly, but with no hint of anger. “And you will leave now.”
This time Hydona was not around to keep her from using the strongest source of power she could Sense, and there was a three-line node not more than a furlong from where they stood. She tapped into it, quickly; to her Othersight it glowed with healthy green fire, and touching it was a pleasant jolt, as if she took a deep draught of cold spring water on a hot day. She established her link and channeled power to herself and her shields before the stranger had a chance to respond to Darkwind’s challenge. She kept the level of her outermost shield the same so as not to warn him; at minimal strength, the kind of mage-shield a beginner would build. But, like a paper screen hiding a stone barrier, beneath the disguising energies of the first shield was a second, and it was linked to the node-power.
It was just as well that she did, because the Changechild’s reply was to attack.
He was no Falconsbane, but he was no Apprentice, either. He chose his target cleverly, launching his initial onslaught against Elspeth rather than Darkwind. Perhaps he was deceived by the rudimentary outer shield, or perhaps he was under the impression that a female would be less prepared and less aggressive than a male.
If that was the case, he judged wrongly.
She Saw his attack as he launched it; a flight of white-hot energy-daggers that he flung at her with both hands. She anticipated the direction of his attack by his eyes - and was ready in time to reflect them straight back at him, holding up mirror-shielded hands that doubled the flame-bright weapons back on themselves and sent them back on their original path. That must have been something of a shock to him, for he did not even deflect them properly, much less reabsorb them. They impacted on his shields, splintering silently into a thousand shard-sparks, and he flinched away.
Before he had a chance to recover from that shock, Darkwind had launched an attack of his own, but not one he likely would have expected. He attacked the mage’s shields with a needle-lance of force, not the mage himself, boring through the protections at their weakest point, where some of the energy daggers had impacted. The blue-white lance split the air between them, and Darkwind held it straight on target, despite the Changechild’s best efforts to shake it off. Elspeth readied a second attack, arrows of lightning, but did not launch it, holding it in reserve.
The Changechild sent his unliving creature to attack them; the shambling, bloody thing charged with a speed quite out of keeping with the condition it was in. It was halfway to them before Elspeth realized that it was an attack, but Gwena intercepted it, like a trained war-horse, as if she had dealt with such things all her life. She sidestepped the wicked horns neatly, and twisted sideways to launch a cruel double-hooved kick with her hind legs as the thing passed, that sundered its hips with a meaty thunk and a wet crack.
The dead thing staggered and went down again, and tried to heave itself erect. But it could not struggle upright again, for its hip and one of its hind legs were broken and would no longer bear its weight.
At that same instant, Darkwind penetrated the Changechild’s shields, and Elspeth launched the lightning-arrows she had been readying, targeting them at the hole Darkwind had bored and was even now spreading open. The first one missed slightly, impacting just to one side of the hole, splintering as had the mage’s own energy-daggers.
The second did not miss, nor did Darkwind’s fireball that followed in the arrow’s wake.
Within the enemy’s shields and contained by them, a storm of utterly silent fireworks erupted. The Changechild stood frozen for a moment, a dark silhouette against a background of coruscating energies -
Then he collapsed to the ground as his shields collapsed around him, and, like the dyheli that had been his victim, did not move again.
They patrolled the border until nightfall and the arrival of Summersky, the scout that was to relieve them, but there wasn’t so much as a leaf out of place. As they headed homeward toward the Vale, Elspeth found herself very glad that she was riding. Although Hydona had warned her that a mage-duel would take far more out of her than she would ever believe, she hadn’t really understood what the gryphon meant. Now though - now she knew Hydona was not only right, she had understated the case. Mostly all that she wanted right now was a soak in one of the hot springs, a meal, and her bed.
But besides being weary, she was very confused; a poor combination, all things considered. She was dissatisfied with her first foray on k’Sheyna’s border. Certainly there were questions that had not been answered adequately.
And as she followed in Darkwind’s wake, watching him stride tirelessly along with one hand on Treyvan’s shoulder and folded wing, and Vree perched on a padded perch on his shoulder, she tried to reconcile her mixed emotions. It didn’t help matters any that from this angle she had such a good view of his tight, muscular. . . .
Hydona trilled to herself, apparently amused by a private joke. The female gryphon walked beside her as her mate strode beside Darkwind, all of them following a dry stream-bed back to the Vale. Hydona’s head was easily level with Elspeth’s, which was a little unsettling, since it underscored how very large the gryphon was. It was easy to forget that, when one often saw them lounging about like overgrown house cats.
“And what arrre you thinking?” Hydona asked, as if she were following Elspeth’s thoughts.
“I’m not sure,” she said, frowning, trying to put her emotional reactions into words. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been in combat - it isn’t even the first time I’ve been in magical combat. I think we did all right - ”
“You did,” Hydona confirmed. “Verrry well, essspe-cially forr a beginerrr. But asss you pointed out, you have had combat experrrience, and I expected nothing lesss than competence.” She cocked her head at Elspeth. “How do you feel you will manage againssst that enemy of yourrrsss?”
She thought for a moment, weighing what she could do now with what she knew Ancar could produce. “Well, providing Ancar hasn’t acquired an army of mages, I should be able to do something about him, if I can keep progressing at this rate. I mean, it isn’t easy, but so far I haven’t lost any body parts. Provided I don’t reach an upper limit to my powers in the near future, and Ancar hasn’t learned to tap nodes. I know he should be a Master-class mage by now at the very least.”
“One should neverrr trrusst an enemy to be placssid. What about yourrr perrrforrrmance?” Hydona asked shrewdly. “How would you rrrate yourssself?”
“Darkwind and I worked together as a team quite well, I think. At least we did once he got around to doing something.” There it was; that was what she had been trying to pinpoint as the root of her discontent. “But that was the problem; he gave that damned thing a warning even after we knew it had worked blood-magic!”
She couldn’t keep indignation from creeping into her voice, and didn’t try. Kero would have cut the interloper down where he stood; filled him full of so many arrows that he would have looked like a hedgehog.
“The oddssss werrre two to one,” Hydona responded. “Thrree to one, if we count Gwena. Don’t you think that the crrreaturrre dessserrved a fairr warrrning with oddsss like that?”
Elspeth shook her head, stubbornly. “No,” she said flatly, and her voice shook a little with intensity. “I don’t. We knew he was a blood-mage; there’s no point in giving something like that a chance to get away or hurt you. I sure as Havens don’t intend to give Ancar a shred of warning. In fact, if I get the chance, I’ll ambush him!”
As always, the mere thought of Ancar and what he had done made her blood boil. The tortures he had inflicted on Talia - the rape of his own country - the hundreds, thousands of lives he had thrown away - but most of all, the careless glee he had taken in it all -
No, when she thought of Ancar, all she could think of was the chance of getting him in her power and shredding him. She hated him, she hated everything he’d ever done, and she wanted him dead, safely dead, so that he couldn’t hurt anyone any more.
Ever.
In fact, if there was a way to destroy his very soul, she’d do it, so that there wouldn’t even be a chance he’d be reborn and start over again, as some mages could.
“You arrre angrrry,” Hydona observed. “This enemy of yourrrsss angersss you.”
“I’m always angry when I think about Ancar,” she replied fiercely. “I can’t help it; the man’s another Falconsbane, just as evil and as corrupt, and I want him dead as much as any Tayledras could ever have wanted Falconsbane dead.” She raised her chin defiantly. “More than that, I want Ancar’s liver on a plate, so I can feed it to something vile. I not only want to kill him, I want to hurt him so that he knows some of what his victims felt. I hate him, I’m afraid of him, and if there were any way to put him through what he has put others through, I’d take it.”
Hydona shook her head with open admonition. “You arrre too angrrry,” she said. “It isss not underrr contrrol, thisss angerrr. Hate will not serrve you herrrre. And ssssuch hate, sssuch angerrr will weaken you. You musst learrrn to con-trrrol them, orr they will contrrol you. Thisss I know.”
Elspeth grimaced, but kept her lips clamped tight on what she wanted to say. This wasn’t the first time she’d heard this particular lecture; the first time, it had come from Darkwind. And it just made her angrier.
How could she not hate the bastard, after everything he’d done to her friends and her land? How could she not hate him after seeing what he had done to his own people? How could she not feel enraged at everything he had done?
And how in Havens could an emotion that strong possibly be a weakness? It was a contradiction in terms.
But there was absolutely no point in getting into an argument over it, so she elected to keep her thoughts to herself, and her tongue on a very short leash, until they reached the sanctuary of the Vale.
Hydona said nothing more.
The gryphons left them once they were well within the “safe” area that was kept under close watch by the mages, and full of alarms that would be tripped by strangers. By the time they arrived at the shielded entrance to the Vale it was already dark, and her temper had cooled considerably. Not that she had changed her mind about anything she’d said, but she wasn’t quite so ready to bite off someone’s head over it.
One thing had calmed her down a bit; she discovered that Gwena felt the same as she did - at least about Ancar. The Companion was of two minds about Darkwind warning the Changechild, admitting that there were good reasons for either decision, whether to warn or not - but on the subject of Ancar of Hardorn, Gwena was in full accord with her Chosen.
:The man is a mad dog,: she told Elspeth flatly. :You don’t give a mad dog a chance to bite you, and you don’t try and cure it. You get rid of it, before it destroys something you love.:
That backing of her own thoughts on the matter made her feel a bit more secure about her own judgment, and that Gwena shared her anger eased her own somewhat. That helped her temper to cool a lot faster.
She was quite ready to see the Vale long before they actually reached it. She discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that it was no real effort to keep her Mage-Sight invoked - and since Mage-Sight gave her an enhanced, owl-like view of her surroundings, she left it in force. It occurred to her, as she noted how every living creature and some things that were not alive each bore a faint outline of energy, that this must be what Companions used for night-sight. After all, in order to tap into and manipulate mage-power, you had to be able to See it, and since this kind of Sight worked equally well by day or night, why not use it to give you a nighttime advantage? Yet another Companion power she could explain away, which gave her a perverse feeling of satisfaction.
Once they approached the shields surrounding the Vale, she had to drop the Sight; the energies there were so powerful they threatened to “blind” her.
Well, that’s one reason not to count on it for night-sight. And if powerful energies can “blind” you - well, that’s something to be wary of. Hmm. And something to keep in mind as a weapon.
The faint tingle of her skin as they passed the entrance to the Vale, as if lightning were about to strike her, told her that they had crossed the shields and protections standing patient guard over the only way in and out. But even if she had not felt that little tingle, she would have known they were inside k’Sheyna Vale, for in the space of half a heartbeat they went from deep autumn to high summer. Suddenly her clothing was much too warm.
Gwena stopped as Darkwind went on ahead, pushing through the foliage draped over the path and vanishing into the shadowy gloom. Elspeth dismounted, unfastened her cloak, and draped it over the saddle. Even then she was a little too warm; she rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and opened the collar to the balmy night air, heavy with the scent of night-blooming flowers she could not even put a name to.
This place was the closest thing on earth that she had ever seen to the Havens of scripture and sermon. Too bad I can’t bring a little bit of this back with me, she thought wistfully. Fresh fruit and flowers in the dead of winter, hot springs and cool pools to bathe in - trysting nooks, and I can think of plenty of people who’d enjoy those! Near-invisible servants. Balmy breezes. No wonder Vanyel visited k’Treva whenever he was exhausted.
Darkwind had said more than once that this Vale wasn’t even a real showplace of what the Hawkbrothers could do. K’Sheyna, he’d wistfully related, was the smallest of the Clans even when they were at full strength, and the Vale was neglected and run down. Half tended at the very best, with no water-sculptures, no wind-harps - more than half the ekeles untenanted and falling to ruins - no one making vine-tapestries or flower-falls. No concerts except on the rarest of occasions, no artists except Ravenwing and the hertasi. Still, Elspeth found it beautiful beyond her wildest dreams.
She could only wonder what the rest of the Vales must be like. And - could the Heralds create something like this, if only in miniature?
But - should they?
She brushed aside a rainbow-threaded dangling vine and wondered about that.
This Vale was a very seductive, hedonistic place, and many people already thought that the Heralds were a bit too randy as it was. It was also a place that could encourage sloth; she found it very easy to justify sleeping a little later, lingering in the hot spring, or sitting and watching a waterfall and thinking about nothing at all.
Her footsteps made no sound on the soft sand of the pathway, sand that cradled her feet luxuriously. Everything about this Vale hinted at luxury - a luxury that few outside the Vales enjoyed. In fact, not even the Tayledras “cousins,” the Shin’a’in, got to enjoy this sort of life. For that matter, could the Heralds really justify making themselves a private paradise when there were so many other things that needed doing?
A pair of long-tailed birds sang sweetly nearby, scarcely an arm’s length from Gwena, reminding her by their presence that outside the Vale the songbirds had long since gone south. Even if Heralds could justify building a place like this, there was no way that they could justify lounging about in it the way the Tayledras did. Frolicking in flower-bedecked bowers and lounging in hot pools didn’t get circuits ridden. Too much living like this, and she’d find herself wasting time designing feather-masks and festival-garb instead of getting her work done.
A feeling of moral superiority crept into her thoughts, and she let it. She led Gwena up the path to her loaned ekele and the tiny, sculpted hot pool beneath it, and felt a bit smug.
The stone path wound across another just ahead of her, and the murmur of voices to her right warned her that several folk were going to cross ahead of her. She paused -
And her sense of moral superiority vanished as soon as the Hawkbrothers came in view.
“Elspeth,” called the first of the group as he caught sight of her, “We should like the use of your pool. The hertasi are cleaning several of the others, and yours is the nearest that is prepared. May we?”
The mage-light that danced over his head revealed the little group of five pitilessly. The one in the lead, a mage named Autumnwing, was the best off, physically - and he was worn right down to the bone. Overextended, to say the least; his eyes were sunken, his skin pale, and he trembled with weariness. Behind him were two of Darkwind’s scouts, both bruised and bloody, and supporting them were two more mages who looked in no better shape than Autumn-wing. Even as she watched, one was redressing a wound that gleamed dark and wet, while her partner held the arm steady.
“What in Havens happened to you?” she exclaimed, before she could stop herself.
Autumnwing shrugged. “I have been with the rest on the Heartstone; it fluxed again today. Be glad you were not within the Vale, or we would have conscripted you with or without training. But I am not so bad - these four met with a pack of Changewolves that had cornered one of k’Sheyna’s dyheli herds, and if it had not been for them, there might have been a score of Changewolves hounding the Vale itself tonight.” As Elspeth’s eyes widened, he added, “They are very valiant. Had I been in their place, I fear I would have fled.”
The arm-wounded woman grunted and said, “Forty-arrow fight.” Then she shrugged.
“P - please,” Elspeth stammered, “Feel free to use the spring. I was going to find some food; shall I bring you back some, or send a hertasi with it?”
“Either,” replied one of the scouts wearily. “I could happily eat one of our fallen enemies at this moment, raw, and without salt.”
:I’ll take care of it, if you ‘II pull off the tack,: Gwena told her. :I can probably find a hertasi before you can.:
In answer, Elspeth bent to loose the saddle-girth, and saddle and blanket slid to the ground as she unbuckled the hackamore and hauled it over Gwena’s ears. The Companion vanished into the undergrowth. “She’s gone to recruit you some food,” Elspeth told the others, as she bent to retrieve the fallen saddle.
“Our thanks,” Autumnwing told her gravely; she waited for them to make their way past her, then gave them a head start, before following in their wake.
Hot pools and life in an eternal summer don ‘t compensate for that, she thought, balancing the saddle on her shoulder. And given the Goddess‘ edicts, I suppose that even in Vales where the Heartstone is whole the mages aren’t sitting around discussing water-sculpture.
So much for moral superiority.
The Vales must seem like paradise itself when they’re out in the Pelagir wilds - but one that wouldn ‘t be there to return to if they weren ‘t out in those wilds to defend it. Is Valdemar any different to a Herald?
Willfully faulty memory caught up with reality. This wasn’t the first time she’d seen Hawkbrothers in such poor condition. The mages, half-Healed Starblade among them, worked themselves to a thread every day, shielding the Vale from attack, and trying to do something about their Heartstone. She had her own experience today to show her the hazards of being a scout on the bonier of the k’Sheyna territory, where every league held new and deadly honors.
For that matter, she’d been an inadvertent witness to the worst - save only death - that could befall a Hawkbrother. She’d seen what had happened to Dawnfire, and she’d been asked to feed power to Kethia one day, when the mage that usually augmented the Healer-shaman was too exhausted to continue. Kethia put Star-blade through purest agony that day, explaining only that this was a necessary part of Healing what had been done to him. Elspeth still felt uncomfortable with the memory. Although she repeated to herself again and again that it was for the better, she still felt like a torturer’s apprentice for it.
We’re pampered, we Heralds, she realized, stopping long enough to shift the weight of the saddle to her other shoulder, and shake some of the aches out of the arm that had balanced it. We have everything we need taken care of for us. We live in prepared quarters, we have servants picking up after us. The Hawkbrothers have Vales; we have our rooms at the Collegium. They have hertasi, we have human servants. They have their food and clothing made for them; so do we. Neither of us have physical pleasures that are adequate compensation for what we do.
She reached the foot of the tree that held her ekele; muted voices and faint splashing told her that the pool was occupied. She hung her saddle and hackamore over the railing at the bottom of the stair, and took herself up the staircase.
Darkwind had pointed out something about the Vales; that anyone with sufficient magic power could create one. They weie really just very large hothouses, with a mage-barrier serving in place of glass. Nothing terribly exotic about a hothouse. She pulled aside the door to her ekele, and looked down over the edge of the staircase for a moment. Kerowyn’s grueling lessons in strategy and tactics caused her to realize something else as well.
The ekeles were not simply exotic love nests. They were based directly on the quite defensible treetop homes of the tervardi. How defensible they were could be demonstrated by the ekeles built outside the Vale; once the ladder to the ground had been pulled up, there was virtually no way to reach them. They were wanted against fire, even, by set-spells and a transparent resin painted around the tree trunks well past two man-heights.
Even the ekele here could be made quite defensible simply by destroying the rope-and-truss suspended staircases, making them an excellent place to retreat if the Vale defenses were ever breached.
Gwena must have found her hertasi right away, for there was a tray of food waiting for her, and the herb tea in the pot was still hot and steeping. She helped herself to bread and meat, and collapsed onto her pillow-strewn pallet.
My people build walls. The Tayledras put themselves up in the trees. Differences in philosophy, really. More like the Heralds than like the ordinary folk of Valdemar. They think in terms of evasion, the way we do, rather than the stand-and-fight of the Guard.
She finished as much of her meal as she wanted at the moment, and stripped off her filthy, blood-speckled clothing. Dyheli blood, of course, and not of herself or Darkwind, but it was still going to be a major task to get it out. She could bleach it with magic of course, and she probably would, but that was a waste of mage-power.
Maybe she’d just shift over to scout clothing. It was more practical for all this woods running, anyway.
She wrapped a huge towel around herself and descended the staircase, heading for the spring. Occupied or no, she was going to use it. After all, she deserved a good soak as much as her visitors did; she’d just spent her day doing the same things they had done. She had earned a little luxury.
They all had.