Storm Warning (4 page)

Steam curled up from the water as An’desha gingerly lowered himself into the soaking-pool of Firesong’s miniature Vale.
A Vale in the heart of Valdemar
—
no larger than a single Gathering-tent. I would not have believed that such a thing was possible, much less that it could be done with so little magic—yet here it is.

It was amazing how much could be created without the use of any magic at all. Most of this enchanted little garden had been put together by ordinary folk, using nonmagical materials. There were only two exceptions; the huge windows, and the hot pools. The windows were not the tiny, many-paned things with their thick, bubbly glass, that An’desha had seen in all of the Palace buildings, which would not have done at all for the purpose. These eight windows, two to each side of the room, went from floor to ceiling in a single flawless triangular piece. Each had been made magically by Firesong, of the same substance used by the Hawkbrothers for the windows in their tree-perching ekeles. He had also created a magical source for the hot water for the pools. The rest, this garden that bloomed in the dead of winter, and the pseudo-
ekele
above it, was all built by ordinary folk, mainly due to Firesong taking shameless advantage of the Queen of Valdemar’s gratitude and generosity.

Firesong felt that if he
must
remain here as the Tayledras envoy to primitive Valdemar, then by the Goddess, he would have the civilized amenities of a Vale!

Valdemar.
An‘desha had never heard of this land until a year ago. As a child and even a young man among the Clans, he had not heard of much beyond the Walls; indeed, the only places beyond the Walls he had learned of as a youngster were the Pelagiris Forest and the trade-city of Kata’shin’a’in. The Shin’a’in as a general rule cared very little for the world beyond the Plains; only Tale’sedrin of all the Clans had any measure of Outland and outClan blood.

In some Clans—such as An‘desha’s—such foreign breeding was occasionally considered a minor disgrace—not a disgrace for the child, but for the Shin’a’in parent. “Could he not draw to him a single woman of the Plains?” would come the whispers, or “Was she so unpleasant that no Shin’a’in man cared to partner her?” So it had been for An‘desha, child of such an alliance—and perhaps that was why his own Clan had never so much as mentioned the lands outside the Dhorisha Plains. Perhaps they had feared that talking about the lands Outside would excite an un-Shin’a’in wanderlust in him, a yearning for far places and strange climes.

Well, I found both
—
without really wanting either.

The blood-path Adept who had flamboyantly named himself Mornelithe Falconsbane had never heard of Valdemar, either, until the two white-clad strangers from that land had come into the territory of Clan k’Sheyna of the Hawkbrothers.

An’desha had been a silent, frightened passenger in his own body, which Falconsbane had usurped by magic and trickery. With the Adept possessing him, he had learned just who those strangers were and something of their land. He’d had no choice in the matter, since he was a hidden fugitive within the body that Falconsbane had stolen years ago.

He should have died; that was what always happened before, when Falconsbane took a body. But he hadn’t; perhaps the reason was that he had fled, rather than trying to resist the interloper.

A prisoner in my own body....
He closed his eyes and sank a measure deeper into the hot water. So odd ... the memories of those years of hiding, when he had no control over the actions of his own body, seemed more solid and real than this moment, when the body he had been bom into was once again his.

An‘desha’s had been only the last in a long series of bodies Falconsbane had appropriated as his own. All that was required, or so it seemed, was for the victim to be gifted with mage ability and to have been a descendant of a mage called Ma’ar. If those remote memories were to be trusted, Ma‘ar had lost his first life—or body, depending on your point of view—in the Mage Wars of so long ago it made An’desha dizzy to think about the passage of years between that moment and this.

He slipped down to his chin into the hot water, and closed his eyes tighter, letting the steam rise around his face. His face now, and not the half-feline face of Mornelithe Falconsbane. His own body, too, for the most part, though it was more muscular now than it had been when Falconsbane helped himself to it and tried to destroy the original owner. Falconsbane had made a hobby of body sculpting, trying out changes on his daughter before adopting them himself. He had indulged in some extensive modifications to An‘desha’s body, changes An’desha had been certain he would have to endure even after Falconsbane had been driven out and destroyed.

But his own actions, risking real soul-death to rid the world of Falconsbane, had earned him more than just his freedom. Not only had he regained his body, most of the modifications had vanished when the Avatars of the Goddess “cured” him of what had been done to him.

There were only two things they could not give him again; the original colors of his hair and eyes. His hair was a pure, snowy white now, and his eyes a pale silver, both bleached forever by the magic energies that Falconsbane had sent coursing through this body, time and time again. So now. when An’desha gazed into a mirror, it always took a moment to recognize the reflection as his own.

The hot water forced his muscles to relax some, but he feared he would have to resort to stronger measures to release all the tension.

This place is so strange
.... Let Firesong wallow in being the exotic and sought-after alien; An’desha was not comfortable here. The only people he really knew were Nyara, the mage-sword Need, and Firesong, the Tayledras Adept. Of the three, the only one he spent any time at all with was Firesong. Nyara was very preoccupied with her mate, the Herald called Skif—and at any rate, it was hard to face her, knowing she was the offspring of his body when Falconsbane had worn it, knowing what his body had done to hers. Now that the crisis was over, Nyara seemed to feel the same way; although she was never unkind, she often seemed uncomfortable around him.

As for the ancient mage-sword that housed the spirit of an irreverent and crotchety sorceress, the entity called Need had her nonexistent hands full. She was engrossed in training Nyara, helping
her
adjust to this new land. Need was quite used to adjusting to new situations; she had been doing so for many centuries; in this, he had nothing in common with her.

And as for Firesong—

He flushed, and it wasn’t from the heat of the water cradling him.
I don’t understand,
he thought, his logic getting all tangled up with his feelings whenever he so much as thought about Firesong.
I just don’t understand. Why this, and why Firesong?
Not that the Shin’a’in had any prejudice about same-sex pairings, but An’desha had
never
felt even the tiniest of stirrings for a male before this. But Firesong—oh, Firesong was quickly becoming the emotional center of his universe. Why?

His thoughts circled, tighter and tighter, like a hawk caught in an updraft, until he physically shook himself loose. He splashed warm water on his face and sat up straighter.

Don’t get unbalanced. Concentrate on ordinary things; deal
with
all
of this a little at
a
time. Think of ordinary
things, peaceful things. They keep telling you not to worry, to rest
and
recover
and
relax.

He opened his eyes and deliberately focused on the garden around him, looking for places that might seem a little barren, a trifle unfinished. He had discovered a surprising ability in himself. It was surprising, because the nomadic Shin’a’in were not known for growing much of anything, and Falconsbane had been much more partial to destroying rather than creating when he had been active.

I never thought I’d be a gardener. I thought that was something only Tayledras did.
He
loved
the feel of warm earth between his fingers; seeing a new leaf unfold gave him as much pleasure as if he had created a poem. Though the plants were cold and alien, in their own way they were like him. They struck a chord in him the way open sky and waving grass inspired his ancestors, and the scent of fresh greenery renewed him. An‘desha had an affinity with ornamental plants, with plants of all kinds now, and a patience with them that Firesong lacked. The Adept enjoyed the effect of a finished planting, but he was not interested in creating it, nor in nurturing it. Though Firesong had dictated the existence of the indoor garden, planned the general look of it, and sculpted the stones, it was An’desha who had filled it with growing things, and given it life. In a sense, this fragile garden was An’desha: body, mind, and soul.

An’desha had not confined his efforts to the indoor garden surrounding the pools, hot and cold, and the waterfall that Firesong had created here. He had extended the plantings to cold-hardy species outside the windows, deciding that as long as the windows were that tall, there was no reason why he couldn’t create the illusion that the indoor garden extended out into the outdoors. So, for at least the part of the year when the outside gardens were still green, this could have been a shady grotto in any Tayledras Vale.

The illusion was not quite perfect, and An’desha studied the intersection of indoors and outdoors, frowning slightly. He had matched the pebbled pathway between the beds of ornamental grasses indoors and out, but the eye still saw the windowpane before the vegetation outside it. He moved to the smooth rock edge of the pool and laid his chin down on his crossed arms to study it further.

There must be a way to make the window more of an accidental interruption to the flow of the gardens, the sweep of the planting.

Bushes, he decided. If I have some bushy plants in here, and more that will outline a phantom pathway beyond the glass, that will help the illusion.
With just a little magical help, he’d accelerate the growth of a few more cuttings, and he’d have them at the right height in a week or two.

He had worried when Firesong came up with these clever ideas that the original “owners” of this bit of property might object to all the changes. Firesong’s little home was in the remotest comer of a vast acreage called “Companion’s Field,” and the horselike beings that partnered the Heralds of Valdemar could very well have objected to their privacy being invaded. But they didn’t seem to mind the presence of the Adept and his compatriots; in fact, they had contributed to the landscaping with suggestions of their own that made the ekele blend in with the surroundings, just as any good
ekele
should. From outside, the mottled gray and brown stone of the support pillars blended with the trunks of the trees masking it, and the second story was hidden among the branches. Firesong had chosen this particular place after he had heard of a legend that told of a Herald Vanyel, supposedly Firesong
and
Elspeth’s ancestor, trysting with his beloved in this very grove of trees; after that, nothing would do but that his own
ekele
be here as well.

Firesong had insisted on building his “nest” in Companion’s Field in the first place, rather than in the Palace gardens, precisely because he did not want any hint of the alien buildings of Valdemar to jar on his awareness.

Then again, Firesong was a law unto himself; he could afford to dictate even to a Queen in her own Palace how he would and would not live. Firesong was the most powerful practicing Adept in this strange land, and he did not seem to have a moment’s hesitation when it came to exploiting that fact. Eventually Elspeth and Darkwind might come to be his equals in power, but he had been a full Adept from a very tender age, and had a great deal more experience than either the k’Sheyna Hawkbrother or the Valdemaran Herald.

And perhaps he has isolated himself for my sake, and not his own.
That could very well be the case. An’desha stared into the tree-shadows on the other side of the window, and sighed.

He, more than anyone else, knew just how tenuous his stability was. For all intents and purposes, he was
still
the young Shin’a’in of fifteen summers who had run away from his Clan in order to be schooled in magic by the Shin’a’in “cousins,” the Hawkbrothers. For most of his tenure within Falconsbane’s mind, he had no more than brief glimpses of what Falconsbane had been doing. He had no real experience of those years; he might just as well never have lived them. In a very real sense, he hadn’t. Most of the time he had been hidden in the darkness, snatching only covert glimpses of what Falconsbane was doing.
I was afraid he’d sense me watching through his eyes
—
and what he was doing was horrible.

If he chose, he
could
delve into Falconsbane’s memories now; mostly, he did not choose to do so. There was too much there that still made him sick; and it all frightened him with the thought that Falconsbane might
not
be gone after all. Hadn’t
he
hidden within the depths of Falconsbane’s mind for years without the Dark Adept guessing he was there? What was to keep the far more experienced and practiced Adept from having done the same? He had only Firesong’s word that Mornelithe Falconsbane had been destroyed for all time. Firesong himself admitted he had never before seen anything like the mechanism Falconsbane had used for his own survival. How
could
Firesong be so certain that Falconsbane had not evaded him at the last moment? An‘desha lived each moment with the fear that he would look into the mirror and see Mornelithe Falconsbane staring out of his eyes, smiling, poised to strike. And this time, when he struck at An’desha, there would be no escape.