Winds of Change (60 page)

He closed his eyes and gave himself up to the rhythm; sensing Elspeth holding firm beside him. Sensing Firesong waiting, poised above the waiting Stone, choosing his moment -

Then, he
struck.

Need rang as she impacted the Heartstone pointfirst, but instead of the shriek of agony that Darkwind had expected, there came a single bell-like tone.

The sound filled the air and filled his soul; carried all other sounds away, drowning them, and he sensed that they
must
contain it, or it would ring through the Vale and shatter everything in its path.

Nyara threw herself into the drumming, and though he could no longer hear it, he felt it. He threw all of his power and will into the effort of holding - holding - holding until he thought he must fall.

He felt himself faltering, felt the circle faltering. He steeled himself and poured more energy in. He sensed a change in the tone.

It was weakening, fading away.

That gave him his second wind and the strength to keep his place, to keep the power contained. As it faded, so did his strength, but always just a little behind the tone so that his ability to keep it contained was just enough to do so.

Finally it was gone, faded into an echo, then into nothing.

He opened his eyes, swaying on his feet, and looked around. Firesong leaned heavily on the blade, which was buried to the hilt in a pile of uneven, dull-gray shards. Starblade leaned on Kethra’s shoulder, and even as he watched, Iceshadow and Nightjewel sank to the ground together. Even the gryphons’ heads were hanging down with weariness. But when Treyvan finally raised his head with an effort, and looked into Darkwind’s eyes, Darkwind saw satisfaction and triumph that mirrored his own there.

“Brothers,” came the weary voice from the center of the circle. “Sisters. We have succeeded.”

:Damn if we haven’t,:
Need said, and even the sword sounded exhausted.
:Damn if we haven’t.:

Firesong stood erect again, pulling himself up with an effort, and with a single gesture, banished the circle of power beyond them that had contained the rogue Stone for so long. He shared that power among them, equally, giving them all the strength to stand firmly again. Not much more than that, but at least they were no longer about to drop.

Darkwind did not need to close his eyes to sense the burning lens of power that had been the Stone and was now the proto-Gate. It hovered between this world and the world of Gates and ley-lines, affected by both - yet no longer the malignant, near-sentient thing it had been. Now it was only power. And now that the shields were down, the gryphons were able to draw safely on the clean power of their own node.

They lost their weariness, legs straightening, wings refolding with a
snap,
heads coming up.

Nyara entered the former circle quietly, and Firesong handed Need back to her with little bow of courtesy before he turned back to the gryphons. “Well,” he said, his voice already stronger, as he shared the power they were drawing from the node they had made their own. “And are you ready for the first stage of the move?”

“Lead on, featherrlessss one,” Treyvan said, cocking his head sideways. “And congratulationssss. That wasss
well
done.”

Firesong had that arrogant little smile back, but this time Darkwind was not going to fault him for it. This had been the most brilliant, innovative piece of magic he had ever seen - and, he suspected, was ever likely to see.

“Thank you,” Firesong replied with no show of humility at all, false or otherwise. “That was the hardest part. The rest, though it will be tedious, will be much easier.”

“Hmm. Yesss. Perrhapsss. It isss not wissse to count the eyassess until they arrre fledged.” Hydona roused her feathers with a shake, so much like Vree that Darkwind chuckled despite his weariness. “Ssstill, sssoonesst begun isss sssoon-essst done. Let usss deal with thisss prrroto-Gate of yoursss before it getsss the notion to wanderrr on itsss own.”

As the rest of them gathered themselves up and headed for the Council Oak, where the
hertasi
had assembled food and drink, Darkwind sighed with relief and squeezed Elspeth’s hand. The worst, indeed, was over. No matter what else happened, Falconsbane would not be able to destroy the Vale and Stone together. So for now, at least, they were safe.

Or as safe as they were likely to get, with Falconsbane still out there.

Still plotting. Still watching.

Still Falconsbane ... a terrible and implacable foe.

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?