There was a peculiar feeling to the Featherless Fools’ Vale today. Falconsbane could not quite put his finger on what it was, but he sensed that they had redoubled their shielding on the Stone again. They had also reduced the number of lines on the Stone to a bare two, but those were the most powerful of all. It would not have been possible to sever either of them - no matter how good that Adept thought he was.
He smiled to himself, fingering the tiny, carved horse - which was not onyx, nor obsidian, nor any other stone he knew. It could not be chipped nor marred in any way at all, no matter what he did to it. It should have been fragile. He had even ordered one of his artisans to strike it with a stone sledgehammer when nothing he had done had aflected it in any way. It had chipped the hammer; obviously, it was anything but fragile.
A puzzle; like those who had sent it.
One he did not have time for, as matters stood. He needed to concentrate on his plan for k’Sheyna, a plan that required patience and vigilance, but would pay for that patience handsomely. The Bird Lovers could put all the shields they wanted to on that Stone of theirs; they still wouldn’t be able to save it. And the moment they dropped the shielding, he would be waiting. He would not fail a second time.
Let them only drop the shield. He had been waiting for days now, buried in his study, gathering his strength, preparing a single, lightning strike that would overwhelm Starblade, burn away his mind, and burn through him to the Stone.
It was a new sort of action for him - and thus, he thought, it would be unexpected and unanticipated. There would be no testing, no struggling of wills. Just one single, quick, clean blow, spending all of his power in that strike and holding none in reserve. A reckless kind of action, audacious. Starblade would flare up like a stick of dry kindling, and a moment later, his home would follow, Adept and all. It was not the end he would have chosen for Starblade or his followers, but it would at least be revenge.
Only let them drop the shield -
He watched, as patient as a cat at a mousehole, as a lion above a salt lick, knowing that to reestablish those lines they would have to drop the shield - to use the power of the node in the ruins to try to heal the Stone, they would have to drop the shield. Sooner or later, it would have to come down. There was not enough untainted power within the Vale to even begin to heal the Stone.
Assuming it could be healed. He didn’t think that was possible. He had hundreds of years of mage-craft behind him, and he would not have cared to try it.
He had caught his attention wandering for a moment and had redoubled his vigilance when a trembling of the shields alerted him to changes within the Vale.
LIGHT!
He fell back onto his couch with a cry of pain, squeezing his watering eyes shut, holding his ears, in a futile reaction to the blinding wall of “light” and “sound” that assaulted his Sight and Hearing.
If he had not been watching the Vale and the emanations of the Stone within it, he might have missed the death of the Stone itself. If he had been concentrating on something in the material world, he would never have noticed what had happened, for the only effect was in the nonmaterial plane. But since he was, and looking right at it with all of his powers -
For a moment it blinded his inner eye when it exploded in light and sound. A lesser mage would have been struck unconscious and possibly come away with his Senses damaged.
It did send him gray in-out for a moment, and fighting his way back to consciousness. That was all that was possible; to hold tightly to reality and claw his way back - he couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything else.
When he came back to himself, the Stone was gone.
He could only sit and blink in dumbfounded shock.
At first he simply could not believe what had happened. It made no sense, it was simply not in the Tayledras to have done such a thing. He thought for a moment that he had been Headbiinded; that his Senses had failed him.
Then shock gave way to anger. All his plans - destroyed in a single moment! How could he have so completely misjudged them? They should have tried to save their Stone, not destroy it! This was something those suicidal Shin’a’in might have tried, but never the Tayledras!
He shook his head, growling in bafflement and increasing rage. His head pounded with reaction-pain; his temples throbbed, and a sharp, hot jabbing at the base of his skull warned him that he was overstressing himself. The pain only increased his anger. How could they have done something so completely unexpected, so entirely out of character? More than that, how had they accomplished it, without destroying the Vale as he had intended to do?
His inner eyes were still dazzled, his outer eyes streamed burning tears in reaction, but he strained his Sight toward the Vale anyway, hoping for a glimpse of something that might give him a clue as to how this unknown Adept had worked the impossible.
Then, as the dazzle cleared under the pressure of his will, he got more than a clue. Far more.
Hanging in the between-world where Gates and ley-lines were born, was a lenticular form of pure, shining Power. It occupied the same not-space that the Stone had taken - or rather, that the Power the Stone contained had taken. For a long, stunned moment, he simply stared at it, wondering where it had come from and what it was. It didn’t resemble anything that had been in or near the Vale before. It didn’t resemble anything he had ever seen before, for that matter. And how had it gotten where the Power-form of the Stone had been? How had those two ley-lines gotten attached to it? He had never seen lines running to anything but nodes or Stones before. He realized at that moment that it was the Stone - or rather, it was what had taken the place of the Stone. Whatever that Adept had done to the Stone, destroying it had purified the Power and allowed him to give it a new shape. There were only the two lines leading into it, and it was no longer anything he could use or control - or even touch, directly. It had become something that answered to one hand only, and that hand was not his. Power with monofocused purpose, and linked to a particular personality.
In fact, it was very like a Gate. Except that there could not be more than a handful of Adepts great enough to create a Gate with power that was not their own.
He nearly rejected that identification out of hand; even the Bird-Fools would not be so foolhardy as to make a Gate within a node, much less within a Stone! And why create a Gate with so much power in the first place? You couldn’t use it; anything passing through a Gate like that stood a better-than-even chance of winding up annihilated.
But this was not a Gate, exactly. It was something like a Gate; something that could become a Gate with more shaping. But it was not, in and of itself, a Gate. In fact, the more he examined it, the less like a Gate it became. There was no terminus; it was entirely self-contained. There was no structure that it was linked to; it was linked to the half-world, a kind of Gate doubled back upon itself. That, in fact, was what gave it all the stability it had.
It was more like one of the little seeking tendrils of power a Gate would spin out, trying to reach its terminus.
As he thought that, he Saw it move, a little; watched it as it swung slightly to the west and north, seeking something -
Then he understood. It was seeking something, and that was why it had been made along the pattern of a Gate.
It was seeking the empty vessel that should have held it, the physical container that had been made by the same hands that had shaped its old vessel. The new Stone in the new Vale.
Unbelievable. Incredible. Something he would never have thought of doing, had he been in the same position.
For a moment, he could only blink at the astonishing audacity of it all. Bold, reckless - not only brilliant, but innovative.
A worthy foe. Not another Urtho, of course, but he was no longer Ma’ar. If he were going to be honest with himself - which he tried to avoid - he would have to admit that another Urtho would not find him much of a challenge these days. Or would he? They would both find themselves dealing with limited power . . . with magic that followed another set of laws, twisted by the end of their own warring.
Pah, I am woolgathering! No wonder the infant stole a march on me!
Infant? No - young, but no infant. Old in cunning and in skill - youthful only in years. I wonder . . . is he as beautiful as the rest of the Bird Lovers I have seen?
For another moment, he was overcome by a feeling of complete and overpowering lust. And not just for the power - but for the one who had created and conceived this plan. What would it be like to have such a one under his control, subject to his whims and fancies, placing his abilities at Momelithe’s call?
What would it be like to be under the control of such a one. . . ?
He shook the thoughts away angrily. Ridiculous! These Bird Lovers were winning! He could not permit that! Surely there was something he could do to wrench control of the thing out of their hands.
Wait; go at it backward. What would he do if he had it? What would it mean?
It would attract lines to itself; set in a neutral place, it would soon be the center of a web of lines as complete and complex as the old Stone had owned.
If I had this power-locus, I would have control of the entire energy-web of this area. I could pull all the lines to myself without effort, like a spider whose net spins itself. It would be like my present network of traps and wards, but with such power to tap. . . .
His thumb caressed the tiny horse as he chewed his lip, his mind running in furious thought. Then the image of the spider in the web came to him again. And with it, an idea. So, little mage, we are going to try new magics, are we? He smiled, and his smile turned vicious. Two can play that game. There was a time when I anchored a permanent Gate upon myself, after all.
That had been far, far back in the past, before the so-clever Hawkbrothers had ever stretched their wings over this area. When it had been his, and he had fought to possess it against what seemed to be an endless supply of upstarts. He had been younger then, and willing to try things no one thought possible, for he had already sired a dozen children on as many mothers, human and Changechild, and he was secure in the continuance of his bloodline. And so long as there was someone with direct descent and Mage-Gifts alive, he was immortal. Wild chances had been worth the risk.
No one had ever tried to shift the focus of a permanent Gate from a place to a person. His advisors said it could not be done, that the power would destroy the person.
And yet, in the end, the temporary Gates were all partially anchored in a person, for the energy to create them came from that person. He had thought it worth trying. Permanent Gates had their own little webs of ley-lines, and acted much like small nodes - that was before he had learned of the Hawkbrains and their Heartstones, and had learned to lust after real power. It had seemed a reasonable thing, to try to make himself the center of a web of that kind of power.
So he had researched the magics, then added himself and his own energy-stores to the permanent Gate in his stronghold. He had truly been like a spider in a web then, for whatever he wished eventually came to him, falling into his threads of power. There had been a price to pay - a small one, he thought. After that, he had been unable to travel more than a league from his home, for his fragile body was not able to bear the stress of physical separation for long. On the other hand, he had only to will himself home, and the Gate pulled him through itself, without needing another terminus to step through. His innovation had worked, and then, as now, being home-bound had been a small price to pay for control of all the mage-energy as far as he could See.
He studied the situation carefully, alert for any pitfalls, The most obvious was that the moment he touched the power-locus, his enemies would know what he was doing. The Adept was guiding it himself, with help from some other mages. How maddening to be able to See all of this and yet be unable to act on it!
So he would have to be subtle. Well, there were more ways of controlling the direction of the power-locus than by steering the thing itself. There were two lines on it still, and they could be used to bring it closer to him.
Carefully, he touched the line nearer himself, and pulled; slowly, gradually, changing the direction the power-locus was taking. No one seemed to notice.
Falconsbane’s smile turned to a feral grin. The hunt was up, but the quarry did not yet know that the beast was on its trail.
Like all good hunters, he needed to rest from time to time. Falconsbane had pulled the power-locus as far out of line as he cared to for the moment. He had left his servants to themselves for a long while, perhaps too long; they needed to be reminded of his power over them. There were preparations he needed to make here, before he would be ready to make the Gate a part of himself and his stronghold. And before he undertook any of those preparations, or even interfered any more with the power-locus, he needed to rest, eat, refresh himself.
He left his study, and only then noticed that the air in his manor was thick with the heavy smell of incense and lamp oil, of rooms closed up too long and people sweating with fear. He shook his head at the dank taint of it in the back of his throat.
Before he got anything to eat or drink, he needed a breath of fresher air.
He turned around, and was on his way to the top of his tower when every blocked-up and shuttered door and window in his stronghold suddenly flew open with an ear-shattering crash.
Glass splintered and tinkled to the floor. Sunlight streamed in the windows, and a sudden shocked silence descended for a single heartbeat.
Then, with a wild howl, a violent wind tore through his fortress. It came from everywhere and nowhere, tearing curtains from their poles, sending papers flying, knocking over furniture, putting out fires in all the fireplaces, scattering ashes to the farthest corners of the rooms. It raced down the hallway toward him, whipping his hair and clothing into tangles, driving dust into his eyes so that he yelped with the unexpected pain.
Then, before he could react any further than that, it was gone, leaving only silence, chill, and the taste of snow behind.
That wild wind signaled the beginning of a series of inexplicable incidents. They invariably occurred at the least opportune moment. And they made no sense, followed no pattern.
They sometimes looked like attacks - yet did nothing substantial in the way of harm. They sometimes looked as if someone very powerful was courting him - yet no one appeared to follow through on the invitation.
Every time he set himself to work on pulling the power-locus nearer, one of those incidents would distract him.
The single window in his study was open to the sky since that wind had shattered both shutter and glass. A blood-red firebird - or something that looked like one - flew into his study window and dropped a black rose at his feet. It left the same way it had come and vanished into the sky before he could do anything about it.
A troop of black riders kept one of his messengers from reaching him, herding the man with no weapon but fear, running him until his horse foundered, then chasing him afoot until he was exhausted. Then they left him lying in the snow for Falconsbane’s patrols to find. By then, it was too late; the man barely had a chance to gasp out what had happened to him before he died of heart failure, his message unspoken.
All of the broken glass in the windows of his stronghold was replaced somehow in a single hour - but not by clear glass, by blood-red glass, shading the entire fortress in sanguine gloom. He liked the effect, but his servants kept lighting lanterns to try and dispel it a little.
Every root vegetable in the storage cellar sprouted overnight, growing long, pallid roots and stems. The onions even blossomed. His cook had hysterics and collapsed, thinking Mornelithe would blame him.
Two hundred lengths of black velvet appeared in the forecourt, cut to cape-length.
All of the wine turned to vinegar, and all of the beer burst its kegs, leaving the liquor cellar a stinking, sodden mess. Another black rider waylaid the cook’s helper sent to requisition new stores and forced him to follow. There were wagonloads of wine- and beer-barrels, of sacks of roots, all in the middle of a pristine, untouched, snow-covered clearing. With no footprints or hoofjprints anywhere about, and no sign of how all those provisions had gotten there.
All of the weather vanes were replaced overnight with new ones. The old weather vanes had featured the former owner’s arms; these featured black iron horses.
A huge flock of blackbirds and starlings descended on the castle for half a day, leaving everything covered with whitewash.
Something invisible got into the stable in broad daylight, opened all the stalls and paddock gates, and spooked the horses. It took three days to find them all.
When the last horse - Falconsbane’s own mount, on the few occasions he chose to ride - was found, it was wearing a magnificent new hand-tooled black saddle, black barding, black tack. And in the saddlebag was a scrying crystal double the size and clarity of the one he had shattered in a fit of pique.
He paced the length of his red-lit study, trying to make some sense of the senseless. It was driving him to distraction, for even those acts that could be interpreted as “attacks” could have been part of a courting pattern. He had done similar things in the past - sent a gift, then done something that said, “see how powerful I am, I can best you in your own home.” The courting of mage-to-mage was sometimes an odd thing, as full of anger as desire ... as full of hate as lust.
But if it was courting, who was doing it? It couldn’t be Shin’a’in, for they avoided all forms of magic. It couldn’t be Tayledras; they hated him as much as he hated them.
Who was it, then? He thought he had eliminated any possible rivals - and only rivals would think to court him.
He stopped stark still, as a thought occurred to him. There had been a time when he had fostered the illusion that the mage the Outlanders were so afraid of had been seeking to ally with him. What if he was the one behind all this? It would make sense - black riders to send against white ones - black horses instead of the Guardian Spirits.
Now that he thought about it, the idea made more and more sense. . . .
He called a servant, who appeared promptly, but showing less fear than usual. He had not blamed any of his servants for the bizarre events that had been occurring lately, and that had given them some relief. Besides, he had been getting tired of the smell of fear in his halls. Why, he hadn’t even killed a slave in days. . . .
“I want you to find Dhashel, Toron, Flecker, and Quorn,” he told the servant. “These are their orders, simple ones. There is a land to the north and east: Hardorn. Its king is one Ancar; he is a mage. He is also the sworn enemy of the two Outlanders with the k’Sheyna, and at war with their land of Valdemar. This much I know. I desire to know more. Much more.” He blinked, slowly, and fixed the servant with his gaze. “Do you understand all of that?”
The servant nodded, and repeated the orders word-for-word. Falconsbane was pleased; he would remember never to kill or maim this one.
Good service deserved reward, after all.
“Now go, and tell them to hurry,” he said, turning back to the couch and his new scrying crystal. “I am eager to hear what they can learn.”
Darkwind rose unsteadily to his feet as Iceshadow tapped his shoulder in the signal that meant Iceshadow was there to relieve him. He staggered out of the former Stone clearing and up the path toward the ekele shared by Nyara and Skif. He was tired, but this couldn’t wait.
Something or someone was diverting the path of the proto-Gate. Every moment spent in rapport with Firesong moving the proto-Gate toward the new Vale was a moment spent in constant battle to keep the Power-point on the right course.
They couldn’t be sure who was doing it, of course, but for Darkwind, Falconsbane was high on the list. It was possible to anchor the proto-Gate temporarily, thank the gods, or they would all have been worn away to nothing, for what they had hoped would take only hours was taking days.
Firesong especially was under stress; since the proto-Gate was linked to him, personally, he had to be the one in charge of directing its path. Although the hertasi swarmed over him, bringing him virtually everything he needed, there was one thing they could not give him, and that was rest.
But since they had learned that the proto-Gate could be anchored, his helpers only needed to work in four-candlemark shifts, and he himself needed only to work for
Darkwind had been very dubious about the wisdom of leaving the proto-Gate unguarded, but they really had no choice. Firesong would be helped into bed at the end of the day and sleep solidly until it was time to work again. So he had held his peace and had hoped that there was no way to interfere with the energy-point without Firesong knowing.
And once the proto-Gate was anchored for the night, it actually seemed that either there was something protecting it, or Falconsbane had not found a way to move it.
He paused for a moment, as that thought triggered a memory. Protecting it. . . .
He shook his head, and continued on his way. Had he seen what he thought he’d seen this morning, when he and Firesong and Elspeth took the first shift together? Had there been two shining, bright-winged vorcel-hawks flitting away silently through the gray mist of the not-world? And had they, a moment before, been standing guard over the proto-Gate?
In the end, it didn’t matter - except, perhaps, to Firesong. If the Adept knew that Tre’valen had survived in some form, he would be much comforted. Although Firesong hid most of his deeper feelings beneath a cloak of arrogance and flippancy, Darkwind was better at reading him now. The young shaman’s death still grieved him.
Then again, it could have been a trick of the not-world, a place where illusions were as substantial as reality, where nothing was to be trusted until you had tested it yourself. It could even have been a specter of his own half-formed hopes.
There was no denying the fact that someone was trying to steal the proto-Gate, however, and Darkwind was going to assume that it was Falconsbane until he learned otherwise. That meant that some of the nebulous plans the “war council” had discussed before and after the destruction of the Heartstone were going to have to be put into motion.
Darkwind was not certain what Falconsbane intended to do with the proto-Gate, or where he planned to anchor it, for that matter. Presumably on something like a Heartstone, somewhere deep in his own stronghold. If he did that, it would give him access to something that had the potential to become a full permanent Gate. If he knew how to effect the rest of the spell, that is. Firesong am, or at least Darkwind suspected he did. Not too many did, except for Healing Adepts - and not many of those. No one had had the secret in k’Sheyna for as long as Darkwind had been alive.
But even if Falconsbane didn’t know the trick, having the proto-Gate in his control would give him access to a great deal of power.
Nor was that all; unless Firesong freed himself first, access to the proto-Gate meant access to the Adept.
Darkwind did not want to see Firesong - or anyone else, for that matter - in Falconsbane’s hands. Firesong might be able to defeat Mornelithe in a head-to-head battle. He might be able to hold Falconsbane off long enough for someone to help to free him.
Darkwind was not prepared to bet on either of those possibilities. Dealing with Falconsbane had taught him this: it was much safer to overestimate the beast.
He could take over Firesong the way he took my father, and have the power of a Healing Adept to pervert. With that - he could undo anything any Vale has accomplished.
Horrible thought.
If he had a permanent Gate, he could bypass our shields and send his creatures straight into the mouth of the Vale at no cost to himself. That was another unpleasant scenario.
So it was time to consult Nyara who alone of all of them was an expert on her father.
Nyara had always liked Darkwind; now, with the pressures of her body and of her father reduced or gone altogether, she had discovered it was possible to simply be his friend. Over the past few days she had found him to be kind, courteous - and oddly protective, determined to keep his people from snubbing her or making her feel uncomfortable. That was not to be expected, particularly not with the pressures that were on him now.
She and Skif were actually working on sword practice; although Need had been putting her through exercises, this was the first time she had ever had an opponent to practice with. She welcomed the physical activity as a release from direct thinking. She did not want to consider what she would do when the time came that they both must leave the Vale. She wanted to go with him, but at the same time she was dance of steel and footwork.
Darkwind must have been standing at the edge of the practice circle for some time before she and Skif realized he was there. She spotted him first, and signaled a halt; only then did he enter the circle.
“You two look very good,” he said quietly. “I hated to interrupt you, but I think we’re going to have to figure out exactly where your f - Falconsbane is after all.”
She wiped sweat from her forehead with her sleeve, and nodded. “Did you find those maps you were talking about?” Strange; not so long ago, even thinking of her father brought her to the verge of hysteria. Now - well, she was afraid, only a fool would not fear Falconsbane, but she could face that fear.
“They’re in my ekele,” Darkwind replied, with a nod. “Could you two join me there?”
His treehouse was not far, even by Vale standards. Together he and she and Skif took an old set of Shin’a’in maps out of their leather cases and bent over them with something more than mere interest. They worked backward from the spot where Darkwind had first encountered her; Darkwind pointed out landmarks that he knew, as she puzzled her way through the strange notation.
“This would be it, I think,” she said at last, pointing to an otherwise unremarkable spot to the north and west. “I have not had much training in the reading of these things,” she continued apologetically, “but I think this is the likeliest place for my father’s fortress to be.”
Darkwind nodded, marked the place, and rolled up the thick sheets of vellum. “That’s the direction the proto-Gate is being pulled, so that rather confirms that your guess is correct,” he said. “And it confirms my guess as to who is behind this. Firesong is trying to second-guess our would-be Gate-thief, but I don’t think at this point that there could be much doubt about motivation. If it’s Falconsbane, then there is only one real answer. He wants what he’s always wanted; power.”
“The proto-Gate would be irresistible to him,” Nyara agreed, then widened her eyes as something occurred to her. “You know - it is rather odd, but he becomes more predictable under stress, had you noted that? I do not know why, but it is true. I have seen this over and over again, when I was still with him.
The more he is forced to react to me surpnses sprung upon him by others, the more likely he is to act as he has always acted, and think it is a clever new plan.”
Darkwind nodded, as if what she had just told him confirmed something he had thought himself. “What do you think he’s planning on doing with the proto-Gate when he captures it?”
“Oh, he will install it in his stronghold,” she said immediately. With no effort at all, she could picture him gloating over his new-won prize as he had gloated over so many in the past. “That is predictable, too. Probably in his study; he is jealous of his tilings of power and often will not put them where other mages may even see them. He will want such a thing as near to him as may be.”
“That would be a bad place to put a Gate,” Darkwind observed. “A Gate works both ways - ”
“No, I suspect he will try to anchor it in a stone or crystal of some kind, rather than as a Gate,” she said, trying to remember if Falconsbane had ever indicated that he knew how to make the Greater Gates. “I am not sure. I believe he knows how to make a Gate but has not the strength. I think he would rather create something to use as a power-pole, to bring in more lines, if he can.”
“What, use it to create his own kind of Heartstone?” Dark-wind asked in surprise, and was even more surprised when she nodded. “Make a Heartstone like a Hawkbrother?”
“It seems amazing that he should imitate you,” she told him earnestly, “but he has seen your success. He is not good at creating things. He is good at twisting them to his own ends, or warping them to suit his fancies, but not at creating them. He will imitate you, therefore, and tell himself that he is making something entirely new.”
“So, whatever he tries is going to have a focus,” Darkwind mused. “The personal link will have to be taken from Firesong, of course - but if he has to have a focus, he has to have something physical. Focus; his ideal choice would be something shaped the way the proto-Gate Looks in the halfworld. And we can attack that.”
“What are you thinking of?” Skif asked, sounding just a little belligerent and definitely protective.
Darkwind looked up at the tall Herald, and shook his head. “You are not going to care for my notions,” he said. “No, you are not going to like them at all.”
“Probably not,” Skif agreed. “On the other hand, I don’t like the idea of Falconsbane with all that power.”
“Nor do I.” Darkwind turned back to Nyara. “Before I broach any ideas, there’s something I really need to know, both from you, and from your friend in the sheath.” He nodded at Need. “Do you think you can hold out against your father’s control now? I mean in a face-to-face confrontation; can you hold against his will?”
:Good question, boy. My vote is yes - but she won’t unless she believes she can.:
Nyara looked deeply and carefully into his eyes. “I think so,” she replied after a long moment of thought. “I know that I can for some time if we are not near one another. I think that I can, if we are not in physical contact. If he had me in his hands -” She shmgged, trying to hide her fear, but Darkwind saw it and sympathized with it anyway. “I would have no chance with him, if I were in his hands. But the old means by which he controlled me no longer work. He tried upon me what he perfected upon your father. Because none of this was perfected, there were places where Need and I could break what he had done to me. He would have to work magic - perhaps even cast actual spells - to get new controls on me. And just at the moment he might not realize that.”
“Part of the way he reacts in a typical fashion when he feels himself under pressure?” Darkwind asked.
She nodded. “Especially if he were distracted or busy,” she told him. “The more distractions he has, the more likely he is to revert to what has worked in the past.”
:Absolutely,: Need agreed. :Half the reason I was able to help her so much was because I was watching Kethra Heal your father. His problems are a superior copy of hers. We‘ve thrown Falconsbane off-balance by destroying the Heart-stone, and he’s reacting predictably, by trying to steal the power it harbored. There are a dozen other things he could do with it, or about it, but instead, he’s doing exactly what I would have predicted for him.:
“I could prolong the moment that he thinks he still has me controlled by feigning it,” Nyara offered, trembling a little inside from fear. “Need might be able to help with that.”
Nyara watched Darkwind turn all that over in his mind - and she wondered. One plan, with a fair likelihood of success, had already occurred to her. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing that she was. She had been thinking about something like this for some time - fearing the idea, yet knowing it had logic to it. And knowing that if she were asked, she would follow through with it. Skif was most definitely not going to like it.