The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Meanwhile, we are anything but. I like it,” Skandranon said. “Just don’t keep us awake at night, scampering through our quarters, all right, Amberdrake?”

  Shalaman chuckled at this, as did Amberdrake. So did Leyuet. If the King had been having second thoughts, he would have put Winterhart in the Royal Apartments. All was well.

  He relaxed back onto his cushion; his opinion was not needed in this, but he did need to know what they were planning, for Palisar and Silver Veil would have to be informed.

  I shouldn’t be relaxed, he tried to tell himself. This is a perilous and horrible situation. There is a killer among us, a killer who is likely also a traitor, who kills in terrifying and obscene ways. It could be anyone! Well, almost anyone. Four ladies of the Court are dead—I did not know them, but still, I should not be sitting here thinking about being able to enjoy a meal for the first time in days…

  On the other hand, there was nothing more that he could do, and his Emperor was acting again like the Shalaman he knew, the warrior, the leader.

  And he was seeing a side to the foreigners, especially Amberdrake, that he had never, ever guessed. They had seemed so different from the Haighlei before this moment—alien, tricky, crafty, possibly deceitful.

  Amberdrake, in particular, had seemed too opaque to be trustworthy. How could he not have noticed that this very opacity was like Silver Veil’s mannered detachment?

  I thought that Silver Veil was unique. Is this how all northern kestza’chern are! Oh, perhaps not. Anyone can call himself a kestra’chern, after all. We have kestra’chern who are hardly worthy of the name. And there have been very few even of the good ones who have risen to the rank of Advisor.

  But here were two who were worthy of the name and the highest of ranks—Silver Veil and Amberdrake—and an equally brilliant soul, if of a different order, in Winterhart. The strangers had turned out to be not so strange after all, despite their odd ways and their even odder friends, the gryphons.

  Perhaps—one day I shall venture to read the gryphons. If they can be the friends of Amberdrake, then I think I should be in no danger of harm…

  With a start, he realized that the conference was coming to an end, at least as far as he was concerned.

  “You may go, Leyuet,” Shalaman said, dismissing him with a wave of his hand. “We have taken up enough of your rest as it is. In the morning, see that Palisar and Silver Veil learn of what we have discussed, but keep it all among yourselves.”

  Unspoken, but obvious to Leyuet—he should keep to himself the King’s near-debacle in the matter of honor.

  It was not the first time that he had kept such things to himself. That was something of the nature of a Truthsayer; he examined and watched the King more often than the King himself knew.

  He rose, smiled his farewells, and bowed himself out.

  But not to go to his rooms.

  Silver Veil would probably learn of all of this from Amberdrake, he could make sure of that in the morning. But the rest of this was critical enough that Palisar should hear of it now.

  Let Shalaman preserve his illusion that his Advisors wasted time on sleep when there was a delicate situation to be handled. Leyuet knew his duty, and so did Palisar. It would be a long night, but one well-spent.

  Besides, he thought, humming a little to himself, suddenly I seem to have much more energy than I did earlier.

  I wonder why that is?

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Skandranon woke early and went scouting on the wing, just after dawn, despite the late hours they had all kept the night before. He was restless and found it hard to sleep with so many problems burning away at him.

  First and foremost, of course, was who the murderer was, and how he was accomplishing his crimes.

  Skan was so angry that his muscles were all tight, but it was not the kind of hot, impulsive anger that had driven him in the past. This was a slow, smoldering rage, one that would send him wherever he had to go, to do whatever he had to do to catch the culprit. And when he caught the blackguard—well, he would probably wish that Leyuet and his Spears of the Law had gotten there first. Whoever this smelly chunk of sketi is, he has to be getting into those rooms somehow. Maybe he left some sign on the roofs. Maybe I can find it. I doubt that Leyuet’s people were really looking for it, not after they’d made up their minds that Drake or I had killed those people.

  He flung himself off the railing of his balcony and up into the air with a great lunge of his hind legs—a lunge no longer accompanied by the plaint of his muscles, although there was a tiny creak of his joints that was probably unavoidable. At least his campaign of reconditioning himself had worked. The creaking was because of the damp, and there wasn’t much to be done about that. This place was always damp; cool and damp by night, hot and damp by day. The climate made for some spectacular foliage, thick with lushly beautiful flowers that were even now sending their fragrances up on warm thermals, but it was also rather bad for middle-aged joints.

  It belatedly occurred to him as he took to the air and began a series of slow, lazy circles in the damp morning air that he made a dreadfully conspicuous target. It isn’t as if their are a lot of creatures the size of a horse or larger, pure white, flying about in the sky around here. If someone who happened to like one of those women happened to decide to take the law into his own hands, I could be in deep—

  Something sent a warning shrilling along his nerves.

  Only years of dodging the inventive weaponry used by Ma’ar’s soldiers—and the fact that his fighting instincts were coming back with a vengeance—saved him at that moment.

  He thought later that he must have caught a hint of swift movement coining up from below, movement so subtle it didn’t register consciously. His nerves just screamed a sudden alarm at him, and he sideslipped in the air, violently and unpredictably altering his path.

  What in—oh, sketi!

  And an arrow passed through the part of the sky where his chest had been a moment before, actually whiffling through his outermost three primaries on his left wing without touching the wing itself.

  It was close enough that he reached out, still without thinking, to snatch it out of the sky.

  A foolish move, of course—although it did give him the satisfaction that his reactions were quite good enough now that he caught it. He spiraled violently away before a second arrow could follow it, scanning the ground below him for signs of the archer.

  There was nothing, of course. Whoever had sent off the shot wasn’t willing to risk a second. And he wasn’t about to show himself with a bow in his hand, either.

  The arrow was plain, quite ordinary, without owners’ marks or fancy fletching. It was probably nothing more than a plain target arrow, one of a hundred thousand like it in this city alone. It might not even have been shot at him; someone might have been stupid, overly exuberant, or a very bad hand with a bow.

  Oh, yes. Surely. And pigs are flying in parade formation around the sun at this moment.

  There was no point in pretending that this arrow had come zinging at him with any innocence involved in its flight. Someone down there on the ground did not like him. Someone in the Palace wanted him perforated. Suddenly he could hardly wait for a particular barrel to arrive with the augmented “diplomatic” corps. For some reason, even by day, it was harder to hit a black target in the air than a white one. Human perception, perhaps.

  But this arrow carried far more implications than that. For someone among the Haighlei to bypass law, custom, and protocol and go shooting at Skandranon personally meant that the situation had eroded to a very dangerous point indeed. These people simply did not do that. They were so law-abiding that it was ridiculous.

  And neither he, nor anyone else, had taken that possibility into their considerations last night. It might be a lot more dangerous to be the chief suspect of all these killings now than they had thought. That put Amberdrake in a very precarious position.

  I think I’d better talk to Drake. Quickly
. Besides, the sky is not a healthy place to be at the moment.

  Mere heartbeats later, he was backwinging to a landing on Amberdrake’s balcony—and Amberdrake, much to his surprise, was pushing his way through the curtains to meet his early-morning visitor.

  The kestra’chern looked as if he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep, either. His eyes were red and a little swollen with a hint of dark circles beneath them, his long hair was tangled, and the loose robe of rich, multicolored silk was something he had clearly just pulled on when he heard Skan’s wings outside his bedroom.

  It’s a good thing that Winterhart sleeps as deeply as she does, or I’d be in trouble. She hates being wakened too early. At least Drake will put up with it.

  He made one of the better landings of the last several months, at least, touching down gracefully and sending Amberdrake’s hair whipping around his face with the wind from his wings.

  “Drake, we have more trouble,” he said shortly, as Amberdrake looked up at him, with one hand absently rubbing his temple, a sure sign the kestra’chern had a headache. Well, there were a lot of headaches in the Palace this morning. “Look.” He held out the arrow, and Amberdrake took it. “Someone thinks foreigners make great targets, especially flying foreigners. That could change, though. Walking targets in silk robes might be next on the target range.”

  Amberdrake chewed his lip thoughtfully, his brows knitted with worry. “Meant to warn, or to strike?” he asked, coming straight to the point.

  “To strike, unless they were counting on my being able to dodge it,” Skan told him bluntly. “The thing is, you don’t get out of the way as well as I do, especially if you’re on a balcony or in a corridor. We might want to rethink this plan of ours; Winterhart isn’t going to be very happy with me if you end up full of holes.”

  You’re not a warrior-hero, Drake, he thought silently, willing the kestra’chern to be sensible. You were never meant to be on the front lines. You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. Don’t pretend to be something you aren’t.

  “If I become the chief suspect, I can keep to my rooms,” Amberdrake pointed out reasonably. “In fact, if I become the chief suspect, I’ll have a good reason to keep to my rooms. The others will be here in a few days, I’ll have guards enough then to keep me safe, don’t you think?”

  “You can never have enough guards,” Skan muttered, but he nodded reluctantly. “I want to go on the record as thinking this is a very bad idea, though,” he continued. “You aren’t and never were a fighter, no matter what most of the Kaled’a’in are. You never got any closer to the front lines than the Healers’ tents. You haven’t got a fighter’s instincts. I—”

  “Skan, you forget what I was before I was a kestra’chern,” Amberdrake interrupted softly. “I haven’t been sheltered from violence my entire life. I weathered the flight from Ma’ar’s troops as a boy, I weathered the war with his army, and I managed to do all right on the journey into the West. And I may not be a fighter, but I’ve kept myself in shape the whole time.”

  If that remark was supposed to annoy the gryphon, it fell wide of the mark. “I’ve gotten myself back in shape, too, Drake,” Skan said, just as pointedly. “I make a better target than you. I’m not human, and I am a fighter, with plenty of practice at dodging whatever is thrown or shot at me.”

  “You make a much more conspicuous target than I do, and I’d say that disqualifies you,” Amberdrake snapped, then looked contrite. “I’m sorry; I’m short on sleep and on tolerance, and this hasn’t helped. I promise, I will be very careful, but this thing is too important not to take some risks in order to get it solved. Is that enough?”

  Skan closed his eyes for a moment, trying to quell the sick feeling he had in the pit of his stomach when he thought of pulling that same arrow in his talon out of Amberdrake. Odd. I was always the one who went charging off into danger, and it never bothered me like this. But put Drake on the line of fire—The sick feeling rose to his crop, and he fought the nausea down. Is this how my friends felt about me! I can’t stand the idea of him being in danger! I not only want to protect him, I want to keep him out of it!

  Yet wasn’t it Amberdrake’s right to decide what he did, what he volunteered for? I certainly didn’t need anyone telling me what to do with my life, and I’d have resented anything Drake did to “protect” me. And he is right, damn him. These murders are going to wreck everything with the Haighlei and may send us into a war neither side can win if we can’t solve them.

  “If you aren’t careful,” Skan said savagely, through a clenched beak, “what this enemy of ours does to you will be nothing compared to what I’ll do to you if you get hurt!”

  “Fair enough.” Amberdrake ran a hand through his long, tangled hair, and smiled wanly up at Skan, who glowered down at him. “As long as I’m awake, why don’t you tell me everything you said to the people back home, and what they said to you. The less Winterhart knows, the better, and I don’t want to worry Zhaneel, but I need to know what you’ve ordered. If I’m going make a target out of myself, the least you can do is keep me completely informed.”

  Of all the nerve! Skan folded his wings tightly, and gave Amberdrake a nasty look. “That’s not fair, Drake,” he growled. “That’s blackmail.”

  “So it is.” Amberdrake nodded agreeably, then pulled his robe more tightly around himself, folded his arms, and leaned against the wall. It constantly amazed Skan how the man could look so attractive even when he was disheveled. “You might as well talk because I’ll continue to make you feel guilty until you tell me what I want to know. I’m very good at it—as you very well know.”

  Damn him. He is good at it. All he has to do is put on a certain expression—or drop the right word or two. He could have been my mother.

  Skan growled wordlessly and gave in. “Mostly, I told them what was going to happen. If they’re going to insist that I’m their leader, then in a situation like this one, damn if I’m not going to get arbitrary.”

  Amberdrake nodded as if he had expected something of the sort. “And who were ‘they’? You mentioned Judeth; who else was in on the conversation?”

  “Judeth, Snowstar, Vikteren, Aubri. That was the most Kechara could handle over the distance, and she simply repeated to me what Judeth and Vikteren were saying rather than relaying their mind-voices.” He tilted his head to one side. “I put Snowstar in charge of White Gryphon, taking my place indefinitely. He didn’t like it, but he agreed. Vikteren is staying, too. Judeth and Aubri are coming here themselves.”

  I think Snowstar guesses I plan to put him in charge permanently. I’m no leader—and I think once people get used to deferring to Snowstar in this emergency, they won’t have any more trouble deferring to him ever again. I suspect he’d have been made the Kaled’a’in k’Leshya Clan Leader if Lionwind hadn’t been so charismatic and capable.

  “Your idea or theirs?” Amberdrake asked, raising an eyebrow in inquiry.

  “Theirs mostly, but—hell, Drake, we’ve worked together before, and I’d rather have them than some green gryphlet who thinks I’m only a legend.” He turned away from Amberdrake for a moment and gazed back north, in the direction of the settlement. All that was visible past the buildings of the city and Palace were trees, but his heart knew where home was, and he wished he could be back there now.

  And yet—no, he wouldn’t have missed this for the world. He felt his blood stirring again, felt effective for the first time in years. “I told them to bring black feather-dye with them. I’m going to be the Black Gryphon again.”

  He expected Amberdrake to protest, but there was only silence from the kestra’chern. He turned back to see his friend nodding.

  “Oddly enough, this is not a surprise,” Amberdrake said, startling him a little. The kestra’chern smiled at Skan’s reaction. “You are remembering who you are, after being made into someone else by the needs of others. Others may not see it, but a close friend or a kestra’chern can. I am a kestra’chern. Accurate perception is par
t of the job.”

  “So it is.” Skan bowed slightly in his direction. “Well, I told them what the situation was here—that we had an enemy who was more interested in taking us out than confronting us. I told them that there was no point in arguing about whether or not we were going to do something about him, because we couldn’t afford not to.”

  “True enough. We discussed that to death last night.” Amberdrake sighed, and leaned his head back against the stone of the wall. “Who’s coming, then?”

  “No mages,” Skan said quickly. “Judeth wanted Vikteren there; he didn’t want to go because we’re still getting magestorms and you never know what they’re going to kick up. I thought about it, and agreed with him—more because these people don’t want mages around than because I think he’s right about being indispensable.”

  “There is Snowstar, after all,” Amberdrake pointed out with a smile. “Vikteren would be very useful, if we could just keep the fact that he’s a mage a secret.”

  “Oh, yes, we all know Snowstar is more powerful than he is, and there are half a dozen others as good as he is. Still.” Skan clicked his beak a little. “On more reflection, I would still want him in place in White Gryphon. He does have a knack for handling situations no one else has ever seen or heard of before. So he stays. The main thing I told them, though, was that I had to get to the heart of this mess, or I might not have a settlement to come back to—” he snapped his beak, “—or else, the Black Gryphon Skandrarion might come back to a blackened city. That would be bad. So all I wanted on this job were experienced Silvers with good sense and good judgment—which ought to let out Aubri, but I’m sentimental,” he added with a gape-grin.