Winds of Change (6 page)

Gwena stamped a hoof and snorted agreement, bobbing her head vigorously. Elspeth nodded; she felt the same. Starblade bore many years’ experience, and knew the magics involved as only a Tayledras Adept could. Better to err on the side of safety.

“I think,” Darkwind said slowly, “that we may practice outside the Vale for some time in relative safety. It will only be as we approach the greater Adept-magics that we will need the shieldings of the Vale.”

“By then, the Council and I should have come to some decision on the Stone,” Iceshadow told them. “Either we shall have begun to heal it ourselves, or we shall have found a way to deal with it.”

He glanced at Elspeth, with a certain amount of expectation in the look. She sighed, knowing what that look meant. “If you’re wondering if you can count on my help with this Heartstone of yours, I
do
remember those oaths I just took,” she said, with a little shake of her head. “I can’t say I
like
the idea of mucking about with that much power gone wrong, but what I can do, I will.”

Both Iceshadow and Starblade gave her nods of approval, but she wasn’t quite done. “What I need to know, here, is this - how much more trouble from outside can we expect while we’re doing all this? Starblade, I hope you’ll forgive my asking this, but you were a point of weakness before. Just how vulnerable are you to more meddling?”

Starblade wet his lips with the tip of his tongue before replying. “To meddling - I would say not at all. Even il Falconsbane still lives, and as I said, I do not think that he does, Iceshadow and Kethra have changed all the paths that made me open to him. To have me so his slave again, he would have to have me in his hand. He would break me faster - for I am that much more fragile than I was - but he would have to have me to break me.”

“And?” Elspeth raised an eyebrow.

“And I shall not leave this Vale until I walk through the Gate to a new one,” he told her. “I have been broken and am mending, but I am still weak to be broken again, and will not chance it, for the sake of all of us.”

Elspeth nodded, satisfied, but Skif frowned. “What about attack?” he asked. “Are you weaker to attack than - say-Iceshadow?”

Starblade looked mildly surprised by the question. “I - think not,” he said immediately. “The weaknesses I have still require someone who
knows
me to exploit, and to have me, if not within physical touching, certainly within sight.”

Skif glanced over at Tre’valen, who shrugged. “The only magics I know intimately are those of the Goddess,” he said. “I am of no help nor hindrance in these things. These are good things to know, Starblade. I thank you for telling them.”

“I can’t think of any more questions,” Skif admitted. “I’m no mage, and I’m no help to you. Frankly, I’ll be a lot more help in finding Nyara and that damned sword she carries.”

“Now
that I
need to know something of,” Starblade said immediately. And Elspeth found herself the focus of every eye in the little clearing.

She fidgeted a little, uncomfortably. “I don’t know much about Need as I’d like,” she replied, reluctantly. “She predates the Mage Wars, I think. At least, I didn’t recognize anything she showed us when she let us into her memories, So she’s either very old, or from awfully far away.”

“I would say, very old,” Darkwind opined, toying with a feather in a gesture uncannily - and probably unconsciously - like his father. “I would say, she is as old as the oldest artifact I have ever seen. She gave me the impression of great age, as great as any of the things I have stumbled upon in the ruins.”

Elspeth tilted her head back and took a deep breath of the cool, flower-scented air, using the moment to think. “What I do know is she was a member of some kind of quasi-religious order, with gods I never heard of - male and female twins.”

She gave the Hawkbrothers a glance of inquiry; all three of them shrugged as if the reference meant nothing to them either. “Well, even though at one time she’d been a warrior, she called herself a Mage-Smith.” Elspeth closed hei eyes for a moment, to call up the memories that Need had shared with her and Skif. “As to how she became a sword in the first place - someone attacked the Order while she was gone - wiped out the older members, enslaved the young girls, stole everything they could carry. The only ones left were Need, who was too old to fight, and a young apprentice. So Need took a special sword that she’d forged spells into, spells of healing and luck - and forged
herself
into it as well.”

“How?” Iceshadow asked, genuinely interested.

Elspeth shook her head. “It wasn’t something I’d have done. She did some kind of preparation, then she killed her human body with the blade so that she could move her spirit into the sword. Then as long as the girl carried her, Need could give her both the skills of a fighter and of a Mage-Smith.”

All three of the Adepts looked startled at that. “How could that be?” Starblade asked.

“Well, she could operate on her own as a mage, or through her bearer,” Elspeth told him. “Or she could direct her bearer, if the bearer was Mage-Gifted - that was how she worked with me, after I refused to let her take me over. But for fighting skills, you had to let her completely take control of your body.” She grimaced. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t let her, artifact, mage, or no. She didn’t much care for my attitude.”

A hint of smile appeared around Starblade’s mouth; Darkwind grinned openly. “Why am I not surprised by that?” the younger mage said, to no one in particular.

Elspeth was glad that the darkness hid her flush; Darkwind seemed to have an uncanny ability to poke pins into her pride. Maybe it was just ill-luck, or bad timing.

She licked her lips and kept her temper. “I think that she wasn’t used to being thwarted,” she said carefully. “Captain Kerowyn, who had her before I did, told me that I would have to be prepared to counter her, that she’d have me hating off to rescue whatever female nearby was in trouble, whether or not it was a good idea to poke my nose into her problems. That, though, was while she was still - ” Elspeth thought a moment. “As I remember, she called it ‘being asleep.’ I gathered that the personality was dormant, unconscious for a long time. Need never told me why.”

“The blade may not have wanted you to know why,” Tre’valen said smoothly. “Certainly, if you contradicted her will, she would not be so free with revealing secrets.”

“That’s true,” she acknowledged. “Anyway, she didn’t start to wake up again until I was at Kata’shin’a’in. So I don’t know as much as I’d like to about her. I think she
is
likely to take over Nyara; I think that after years of her father molding her to his whim and will, Nyara is inclined to be manipulated like that.”

Skif bristled, and started to say something. Darkwind’s thoughtful statement forestalled him.

“That would not be entirely ill for her,” the Hawkbrother said quietly. “Especially since - it seems, at least to me - Need has no intention of doing anything detrimental. I think she seeks to make her bearer a stronger woman. It is just that she does not like to have
her
will thwarted.”

Elspeth smiled ruefully. “I can testify to that,” she said.

“It seems to me this might be a good thing for the Change-child,” Starblade added thoughtfully. “Despite what has happened, I - I can feel pity for Nyara. She and I - ” he faltered “ - we have much, much in common. What Falconsbane did to her - it is very like what he did to me. It may be that this sword, if it has healing magics like those of Kethra and Iceshadow, can reverse some of the things that were done to the girl, even as Kethra is aiding me. I hope that is so. For her sake, and for ours.”

There didn’t seem to be anything else to say; Elspeth sat there awkwardly for a moment, until Iceshadow cleared his throat conspicuously. “If there is naught else that we can tell you - “ he said.

Elspeth shook her head; so did Skif. “Not that I can think of,” she replied. “Although I probably will come up with a dozen questions I should have asked just before I drop off to sleep tonight. ‘ ‘

Iceshadow chuckled; Starblade nodded knowingly. “If you can recall them when you wake, feel free to ask them,” Iceshadow said, rising. “In the meantime - we hold celebration, to welcome you to the Clan and Vale. Your fellow k’Sheyna are anxious to see you; they are as curious about you as you are about them.”

In a way, that statement was something of a relief. It meant that the secretive Hawkbrothers were human enough to be curious. For all the time she had spent in Darkwind’s presence, there was more that was a mystery about him and his people than there was that was familiar.

“In that case,” she replied, rising from her own seat, “let’s not keep them waiting any longer.”

Elspeth followed Darkwind’s direction, as Iceshadow escorted Starblade in another direction - presumably, to rest. “We have had little enough to celebrate, of late,” Dark-wind told the two Heralds and their Companions in a quiet voice, as he shepherded them down yet another path bordered by wild growth. “The stalemate with the Stone, the constant harassment on our borders, the separation - it has been difficult for everyone here. Add to that my father’s attempt to foster dissension between the scouts and the mages, and there was more tension than many could bear.”

“That particular dust-up was all because of Falconsbane, wasn’t it?” Skif asked. “I hope that’s been settled. I’d just as soon not find myself in the middle of a private quarrel.”

“You won’t,” Darkwind actually chuckled, as Elspeth hid a sigh of relief. “It’s been settled. I can pledge you, everyone is ready for a good celebration. The fact that you are the cause of it -
and
are strange Outlanders into the bargain - will make you very popular. “

That gave Elspeth a bit of a qualm; not because she was ill-at-ease at the idea of being the focus of so many strangers, but because of what Darkwind had called her.

Outlander.

She was a stranger here. There was nothing in this place that would remind her of home. If Darkwind seemed alien to her, his words were a reminder that she must be just as alien to him, and by extension, to his people.
She
wasn’t used to being the stranger; it made her feel disconnected and unbalanced.

And now, for the first time since she had arrived, she felt completely alone, completely without roots. And felt a wave of terrible homesickness wash over her.

At that moment, she was within a breath of weeping. Her throat closed, and she couldn’t speak. Her eyes clouded, and she stumbled -

But when she looked up, she found herself on the edge of another clearing, but this one was full of light - people.

Her training took over; there were people waiting to meet her out there. She was the Heir to the Throne, she was a Herald. Her homesickness could wait. She must put on a good face for them, impress them, so that they would see that Valdemar was worth aiding.

She blinked once or twice, clearing her eyes. The Companions, Skif, and Darkwind got a pace or two ahead of her, giving her the chance to compose herself further. She took a deep breath, another, then followed them out into the radiant clearing.

She had expected mage-lights, and mage-lights there were in plenty, but the chief illumination came from the moon. The soft, silvery light blurred and softened details; and as she looked around her, she suddenly realized that not all of the exotic occupants of the clearing were human.

Hertasi,
the shy lizardlike creatures that were roughly half the height of a very tall man, she had seen once or twice before, in colored beads and satins - and the gryphons of course.

Their presence was a welcome surprise, and she waved at Treyvan when she knew he had seen her. She hadn’t known that the gryphons were coming, and Treyvan’s wide-beaked grin from across the clearing chased away the last of her homesickness. She couldn’t help herself; the gryphon grin was so contagious it left no room for such trivialities. Hydona saw that Treyvan was staring in their direction and turned to see what he was looking at. When she saw them, she nodded; her smile matched her mate’s and welcomed the newcomers with a warmth that surpassed species boundaries.

The gryphons occupied one entire nook of the clearing all by themselves, but beside them were three graceful, horned creatures that Elspeth guessed must be
dyheli.
And scattered among the Hawkbrothers were a handful of two-legged creatures whose feathers were real, and growing from their heads, not braided into their hair.

Tervardi!
Elspeth’s years of protocol schooling kept her from staring, even though she would dearly have loved to. Along with the gryphons and the
hertasi,
these creatures were the stuff of legend in Valdemar. Legend said the
tervardi
were shapechangers, that they sprouted wings and turned into real birds when they chose. One of them turned, and Elspeth caught sight of a still, serene face with a mouth rimmed by something that was either a small, flexible beak, or hard, stiff lips. The creature gestured before she turned back to her conversation-group, and Elspeth saw the stunted, colorful feathers, the last vestige of her wings, covering her arm.

As she moved hesitantly into the clearing, she realized that the previous occupants were - not ignoring her, but permitting her politely to fit into their group. That was certainly more comfortable than being mobbed and was exactly what a similar gathering of Heralds would have done.

She looked around; there were birds everywhere, some sleeping on perches, some awake and perched on shoulders or poles. The Companions both had joined a small group of mixed humans and nonhumans, along with Tre’valen; somehow, Darkwind and Skif had vanished, she had no idea how, but it left her on her own. With all those people carefully, politely,
not
looking at her, she felt more conspicuous than she would if they had been staring at her.