Winds of Change (52 page)

Elspeth openly admired him. That was just as difficult to take. How short a step was it from admiration to something else more personal - more physical?

It was only then, when he caught himself seething with completely unwarranted jealousy, that he realized the trend his thoughts were taking.
All right. Stop right there. Think whatever you like, but be careful about anything you say. Right now it would be the easiest thing in the world to say something that would completely alienate her
-
to make accusations that you have no right to make.

Elspeth wouldn’t react well to that. And never mind that it galled that Firesong’s power and beauty were enough to make anyone inclined to throw themselves at his feet. If Elspeth chose to join the crowd, Darkwind had no say in the matter.

You don‘t own her. She consented to share pleasure with you. That gives you no rights, remember that. She can continue to share your bed
and
Firesong‘s and you have no right to demand that she cleave only to you. She can throw you over for Firesong if she wants. That is up to her.
“You’re thinking very hard,” Elspeth said, glancing at him.

“I’m thinking that – l am likely to be very irrational about Firesong.” That was all the warning he could bear to give her. But hopefully, it would be enough. “He is right when it comes to magic, anyway. I’ve never seen anyone as skilled or as powerful as he is, except maybe Falconsbane.”

“He’s going to try something different with the Stone, no one even guessed could be done,” she said. “We knew he was going to be doing
something
like that, but I honestly didn’t think he was going to include us in it.” She gave him a lopsided smile. “I guess we must be good for something after all.”

Darkwind suddenly saw a way to get some of his own pride back, especially if the Adept planned on training the two of them together. Firesong wasn’t the only one who could be innovative.

Gwena joined them a moment later, and Darkwind swallowed down some of the things he wanted to ask Elspeth.
Is she attracted to him? Just how attracted is she? Is she thinking of asking
him
to continue her teaching? And if he’s teaching her magic, does that mean she goes to k’Treva after the Stone is dealt with?

He shouldn’t care, and he couldn’t help himself. He had no holds on her. She shared his bed sometimes. He shared hers. She was not truly of the Vales; she was an Outlander. All the arguments against Skif and Nyara’s success together held true for the two of them, too.

Tayledras simply didn’t leave their Vales. How could he continue the work he had sworn to do, if he left the Vale? He was a Hawkbrother; a Pelagirs healer of ruined lands. He could never leave the Vale, the Pelagirs - it was impossible. She was the Heir to a throne, vital to the safety and government of her land. She couldn’t stay here.
That
was impossible.

She would go, and he would stay, no matter what happened here. He began building himself a kind of emotional bulwark to save what was left of his pride and heart. He would have to watch his tongue, and not
drive
her away - she would be leaving soon enough. He would deal with that when it came. He would fight back the tears that he knew, somehow, would come when his Wingsib Elspeth left.

There was little enough in his life now. No need to act like his namesake - Darkwind, an approaching storm-cloud. It made no sense to ruin what there was, least of all by voicing his own foolishness.

“Elspeth,” he said, with cheerfulness that didn’t sound
too
forced, “Once we recover from being run like rabbits, did you have any plans for this afternoon?”

Starblade eased himself down onto the couch beside the huge block-perch Hyllarr had taken for his own, and scratched beneath the hawkeagle’s breast-feathers. Hyllarr all but purred, pulling one foot up in complete contentment.

In this alone, Hyllarr was like Karry, but in no other way. Starblade was grateful for that. There were no poses, no lifts of the head, nothing to haunt him. Hyllarr was Hyllarr, and unique. Uniquely intelligent, uniquely calm, uniquely charming. He had succeeded in charming Kethra, who had been immune to the blandishments even of Darkwind’s flirt-of-a-bird, Vree. Hyllarr had her securely enchanted.

Kethra settled beside him, with an amused glance at the bird. “I have no idea how you’re going to carry him around once he’s well,
ashke,”
she said. “He’d be a burden even for someone like Wintermoon. I can’t even begin to think how you’re going to have him with you.”

“I shall worry about that when the time comes,” he told her serenely. He already had some notions on the subject. Perhaps a staff across the shoulders. ... “Is your kinsman coming?”

“He should be here at any moment,” she began, when footsteps on the staircase heralded their visitor. And, as Starblade had expected, it was Tre’valen who appeared at the doorway - a Tre’valen who, to Starblade’s pained but keen eyes, was a young man in serious emotional turmoil.

Starblade had been seeing the signs of trouble in Tre’valen’s face for some time now, but it had never been as obvious as it was now. So, he had been right to ask the shaman here. There was something going on, and the Clan needed to know what it was.

“Sit, please, shaman,” he said mildly.

Tre’valen obeyed, but with a glance at Starblade that told the Hawkbrother that this shaman was quite well aware Starblade had not asked him here to exchange pleasantries.

Good. In these times, it was no longer possible to hide behind a veil of politeness. Some of the others of the Clan had relaxed, thinking that now that the Adept was here, as their troubles would be over. They had not stopped to consider the fact that Firesong was here to solve only
one
of the Clan’s problems. When he had dealt with the Stone, he would be gone. Then there would remain the rest of the puzzle-box. How to safely reunite the Clan. What to do about Dawnfire. What to do about this Territory. How to deal with Falconsbane’s daughter, who was a danger - and
in
danger - as long as there was any chance her father was still alive.

How to discover Falconsbane’s fate. What to do about him if he still lived. . . .

“There was a time,” he began, “when I could afford to hint, to be indirect. I no longer have the strength for such diplomacy. Tre’valen, your Wingsibs of the Clan know why Kethra is here, why Kra’heera asked us to allow her to stay. She was already a Wingsister, and there was obviously a great need for her help.”

Kethra’s left hand found his right, and she squeezed it, but said nothing.

Starblade smiled at her, and took strength and heart from her support. “Kra’heera asked us to grant the same status to you, and the same hospitality, but with no explanations. I had not pressed you for such an explanation, but I think the time has come for one.”

Tre’valen looked very uncomfortable and glanced at Kethra.

“You need not look to me for aid, Clanbrother,” she replied to his unspoken question. “I am in agreement with Starblade.”

Tre’valen sighed. “It is because of Dawnfire,” he said, awkwardly.

Starblade nodded. “I had already surmised that,” he said dryly. “I should like to hear what the reasons are.”

Tre’valen was clearly uncomfortable, more so than Starblade thought the situation warranted. “Kra’heera wished me to seek her out - if I could find a way to bring her to me - and speak with her as much as I might. It seemed to him quite clear that she has become some kind of avatar of the Star-Eyed, but it is not an avatar we recognize. But it also does not seem to be anything your people had seen before, either. He wanted me to discover what the meaning of this was, if I could. This is a new thing, an entirely new thing. We have had no direction upon it. Kra’heera does not know what to think.”

He paused, and rubbed the side of his nose, averting his eyes from Starblade’s unflinching gaze.

“New things simply do not occur often in the Plains,
ashke,”
Kethra put in. “The Star-Eyed has been a Lady more inclined to foster the way things
are
rather than bring on changes.”

But Starblade was watching Tre’valen very closely, and there was more, much more, that Tre’valen had not told j them. For a moment he was at a loss as to what it could be.

Then the memory of the young shaman’s face, gazing up at a bird that
might
have been Dawnfire, suddenly intruded. He had not seen that particular expression of desire very often, but when he had, it always meant the same thing.

“You long for her, do you not?” Starblade asked quietly, and to his own satisfaction, he watched Tre’valen start, and’ begin to stammer something about emotions and proper detachment.

“Enough,” Kethra interrupted her younger colleague. “Starblade is right, and I should have recognized this when’ I saw it. You
have
become fascinated - enamored. With Dawnfire. I think perhaps you may have fallen in love with her.”

“I - have - ” Tre’valen looked from one to the other of them, and capitulated, all at once. “Yes,” he replied, in a low, unhappy voice. “I have. I tried to tell myself that I was simply bedazzled, but it is not simple, nor it is bedazzlement. I - do not know what ‘love’ is, but if it means that one is concerned for the other above one’s own self - I must be in love with her, with that part of her that is still human in spirit. And I know not what to do. There is no precedent.”

It was one thing to suspect something like that. It was quite another to hear confirmation of it from Tre’valen’s own mouth. Starblade looked to his beloved for some kind of an answer, and got only a tight-lipped shrug.
She
did not know what to make of this, either.

A nasty little tangle they had gotten into ... a worse thing still to offend a deity. If indeed, they were doing so.

“Do I take it that the Star-Eyed has offered you no signs?” Starblade said delicately. “No hint as to how
Her
feelings run in this matter?”

Tre’valen shook his head. “Only that She has permitted us to continue to meet, either in this world or in the spirit realms. And she has granted Dawnfire the visions that I told you, the ones I do not understand, about ancient magic returning. And about the need for peoples to unite and change in some way.”

Starblade closed his eyes for a moment, but no answers came to him, so he analyzed the few facts in the matter. Dawnfire was not dead, at least not in the accepted sense. But she was no longer anything like a human being. Mornelithe Falconsbane had destroyed her body, but left her spirit - her soul - alive and in her bondbird. Such a tragedy would have meant a slow fading until at last there was nothing of the human left, leaving a mentally crippled raptor to live as long as it could. But in this, there was a powerful being that had shown Her interest in the situation by creating some kind of different creature out of Dawnfire. Dawnfire was not like the
leshy’a
Kal’enedral, who were entirely of the spirit-world, yet could, on occasion, intervene in the physical realm. And not like a mage, who could on occasion intervene in the spirit world. She seemed to dwell in both worlds at once, and yet truly touched neither.

The Shin’a’in face of the Goddess - her Warrior face, in fact - seemed to have created her, then abandoned her. It was most unwise to second-guess a deity; what appeared to have been abandoned may have, in fact, been left to mature.

“All that I can say is that I warn you to be careful,” he said at last. “These are strange waters that you swim in, and I know not what lurks beneath the surface. Whatever it is, is fearsome, shaman.”

“I know,” Tre’valen said at last, after a long pause. “I know this. The Star-Eyed marked Dawnfire for her own, but to what purpose, She has not revealed. She might not approve of my - inclinations and intentions.”

Starblade could only shrug. “I am not a shaman,” he pointed out. “You are. I say only - be careful and consider first what is best for Dawnfire and those you have sworn to serve.”

“I shall.” Tre’valen stood, and moved toward the door. “I will keep you closely informed from this moment of what I see. And - of what I feel.”

He bowed, turned, and descended the stairs quickly, but the air of trouble he had brought with him remained. Kethra held Starblade’s hands wordlessly for a long time afterward.

Darkwind tossed his head, and sent his soaking-wet hair whipping over his shoulder. Sweat poured down his forehead and stung his eyes, but external vision did not matter.
Internal
vision did.

No matter that he had picked a quarrel with Elspeth not half a candlemark before they joined Firesong in the glade that he had made into their Working Place. No matter that I he had left her without a reply to the hurtful words he had not truly meant, but said anyway. Once across the invisible I boundary, he and Elspeth were two halves of a working whole, and there was no quarrel dividing them.

He frankly had not expected that of her. He had been faintly surprised when her power joined to his with no hesitation. But he could not be less than she, his pride would not permit it.

But he wondered, in a tiny, unoccupied section of his mind, if he had deliberately quarreled with her in hopes that she would storm off, making it impossible for them to practice with Firesong driving them?

Firesong lived up to his use-name; his power-signature crackled with illusory flames, and he used music, drumbeats, to focus it. That made it easier, rather than harder, for Darkwind to follow him; all of his training as a dancer came to the fore, guiding him where he might otherwise I have stumbled blindly. So Darkwind had gone Firesong one better; now in the circle he
danced
his magic, eyes closed, moving in place.