“Who, why, and how?” Stormcloud asked succinctly. “There is an Adept out there—”
“But again, this isn’t like anything he’s ever done before,” said Winterlight.
“That we know of,” Darkwind added. “He might have decided to change his tactics. And it might not be him—or her—at all. It might be another Adept entirely. ‘Why’ is another good question; why take them at all, and why try to make it look as if they never existed?”
“To confuse us?” Stormcloud asked facetiously. “And make us think we’re crazy?”
“Why not?” was Dawnfire’s unexpected reply as she sat straight up, with a look of keen speculation on her face. “He has to know how badly the Heartstone has been affecting us. If we were only in sporadic contact with those particular creatures, erasing their very existence might make us uneasy about our own sanity.”
Winterlight nodded, slowly, as if what she had said had struck a note with him, too. “A good point. But the question is, what are we going to do about it?”
“About losing neutral territory—there’s not much we can do,” Darkwind sighed. “We could make things uncomfortable for the things moving in, I suppose; uncomfortable enough that they might move back without our having to force a confrontation we haven’t the manpower to meet.”
“Like some really nasty practical jokes?” For the first time in the meeting, Stormcloud’s eyes lit up. “Krawn and I could take care of that. Now that it’s summer, there are a lot of things we can do to make them miserable, as long as we have your permission.” He grinned evilly. “I know where there are some lovely fire-wasp nests. And Krawn can bring in absolute swarms of other corbies. They aren’t going to be able to leave anything outside without having it stolen or fouled.”
“Do it,” Darkwind told him. “And don’t stretch yourself too thin, but if you can extend your reach into Dawnfire’s and Winterlight’s areas, do so.”
“I can,” Stormcloud replied, with barely concealed glee. “The thing about tricks is that they’re more effective if they’re sporadic and unpredictable. Krawn is going to love this.”
“What about the power-theft?” asked Winterlight anxiously. “We can’t do anything about that—as well try to bail water with a basket—but surely someone should.”
“I’ll tell the mages,” Darkwind said, “But I can’t promise anything. They might seal off the leaks, they might not. There’s no predicting them these days.”
“And my missing creatures?” Dawnfire was giving him that look of pleading he found so hard to resist, but there wasn’t anything he could do that would satisfy her.
“They’ll have to stay missing,” he said, and held up his hand to forestall a protest. “I know, I know, it’s not right, but we haven’t enough guardians to spare to send even one into the neutral territory to find out what happened to them and protect the rest.”
“If your gryphon friends were the ones missing,” she said, her eyes sparking with momentary anger, “would you still be saying that?”
“Yes, I would,” he replied. “If they had nested outside our boundaries. And even then, well, anything Treyvan and Hydona couldn’t take care of themselves, I rather doubt we could handle. But I promise this much; if you and Kyrr can catch our predator in the act, we’ll see what can be done to save whoever he’s after. And if we can catch him in the act, we may have a chance at figuring out a defense for the rest of your friends.”
Dawnfire obviously didn’t like the answer, but she knew as well as he did that it was the only one he could give her.
“Anything else?” he asked, stifling a yawn, and casting a look at the windows. The sky beyond the branches was a glorious scarlet; they had spoken until sunset, and if the others were to get back to their ekele before dark, they’d have to leave soon. “I’m going to have to get out on patrol before dawn to make up for stealing a couple of hours of Amberwing’s time so I could go to the blamed meeting. So I’ve got a short night ahead of me.”
“I think we’ve covered everything,” Winterlight said, after a moment of silence. “I’ll catch up with the others, and let them know what we’ve decided.”
He got up from the couch, and started down the stairs. Stormcloud followed him, then paused at the top of the stairs just long enough for a slow wink.
Dawnfire glanced at the windows, at the heavy branches standing out blackly against the fire of the sunset. “Are you really that tired?” she asked. She didn’t get up from the couch.
“Not if you’re going to stay a while,” he replied, with a slow smile.
“You haven’t taken back your feather,” she said, somehow gliding into his arms before he was aware she had moved. “And I certainly don’t want mine back. Of course I’ll stay a while.”
The scent of her, overlaid with the musky trace of her bird, was as intoxicating as tran-dust, and the soft lips she offered to him made his blood heat to near-boiling. He lost himself in her, their two minds meeting and melding, adding to the sensuality of the embrace. Her hands caressed the small of his back and slid down over his hips; his right was buried in her hair at the nape of her neck, his left crushed her to him.
He had just enough wit to remember he still had to pull up his ladder.
So did she, fortunately. “Go secure the door. The sunset, if I recall correctly, is incredible from upstairs.”
She pushed him away; he moved down the stairs in a dream. The trapdoor was still unlatched; he brought the ladder up, rung by rung, and rehung it, latched down the trapdoor, and keyed the mage-light to a dim blue.
Then he ran up the two flights of stairs to the sleeping room.
She was waiting, clothed only in her loosened hair, curled like a white vixen on the dark furs of his bedspread, her hair flowing free and trailing behind her like a frozen waterfall.
She turned a little at his footfall, and smiled at him, holding out her hand—and they didn’t see a great deal of the sunset.
:Brother comes, fast,: said Vree. Then, with an overtone of surprise, : Very fast.:
Vree’s alert interrupted what had been an otherwise completely dull and uneventful patrol along the dry streambed that formed part of the k‘Sheyna border. It hadn’t always been dry—in fact, a week ago, there had been a stream here. Evidently not only ley-lines were being diverted.
Darkwind had not been overly worried when he discovered the condition of the stream; the diversion could easily have had perfectly natural causes. It could have gone dry for a dozen reasons, including the “helpful” work of beavers. But it was one more thing to investigate....
That was when Vree’s call alerted him. Before Darkwind had a chance to wonder just what that “fast” meant, he heard the pounding of hooves from up-trail. A moment later, a dyheli stag plunged over the embankment above him, coming to a halt in a clatter of cleft hooves, and a shower of sand and gravel. The graceful, antelope-like creature was panting, his flanks covered with sweat, his mane sodden with it. As Dawnfire slid from his back, he tossed his golden head with its three spiraling horns and Mindspoke Darkwind directly.
:Cannot run more-help my brothers—:
Then he plunged back into the brush, staggering a little from exhaustion, as Darkwind turned toward his rider.
“What-” “There’s a dyheli bachelor herd just outside the boundaries,” she said, her words tumbling over each other with her urgency. “They’re trapped in a pocket valley, one they can’t climb out of. I don’t know what chased them in there, or even if they just went in there last night figuring it was a good place to defend in the dark—but they’ve been trapped, and they’re going mad with fear—”
“Whoa.” He stopped the torrent of speech by placing his hand over her lips for a moment. “Take it slowly. What’s holding them there?”
“It‘s—it’s like a fog bank, and it fills the outer end of the valley,” she replied, her voice strained, “Only it’s bluish, and anything that goes into it doesn’t come out alive. Darkwind, we have to get them out of t
here!”
“You say they’re outside the borders?” he persisted. She nodded, her enormous, pale-silver eyes fixed on his.
“I—” he hesitated, presented with the pleading in her expression. I shouldn’t. It’s outside, it could be a diversion to get several of us out there—it could be an attempt to ambush us-But her eyes persuaded him against his better judgment. “I—all right, ashke. I’ll come look at the situation. But I can’t promise anything.”
It took them a while to reach the spot, even with the assistance of two more dyheli from a breeding herd inside k‘Sheyna borders. By the time they reached the valley, the situation had worsened. The fog had crowded all the young dyheli bucks into the back of the valley, and they milled around the tiny space in a state of complete, unthinking panic. Trampling everything beneath their churning hooves, with horns tossing, their squeals of desperation reached to Darkwind’s perch on the hill above them.
He studied the situation, his heart sinking. The sides of the valley—it was really a steep cup among the hills, with a spring at the bottom—were rocky, and far too steep to bring the dyheli up, even if they’d been calm. In their current state of panic, it was impossible.
The fog was mage-born, that much he could tell, easily. But the mage himself was not here. There was no one to attack, and no way to counter such a nebulous menace. Even calling up a wind—if he could have done so—would not have dispersed the evil cloud.
It roiled beneath him, a leprous blue-white, thick and oily, too murky to see into. Twice now, he’d seen young bucks overcome with fear and madness, try to break through into the clear air beyond. They had never come out on the other side.
“We have to do something!” Dawnfire pleaded. He hesitated a moment, then gave her the bad news.
“There isn’t anything we can do,” he said, closing his mental shields against the tide of fear and despair from below. The dyheli were so panicked now that they weren’t even capable of thinking. “Maybe the rain tonight will disperse it in time to save them.”
“No!” she shouted, careless of what might overhear her. “No, we can’t leave them! I’m a guardian, they’re my responsibility, I won’t leave them!”
“Dawnfire—” he took her shoulders and shook them. “There isn’t anything we can do, don’t you understand that? They’re too panicked to get harnesses on and haul them up—even if we had enough people here to try! And I won’t call in all the scouts from their patrols. It’s bad enough that I left mine! Don’t you see, this could easily be a diversion, to clear the way for something else to come in over the border while it’s unguarded!”
She stared at him, aghast, for a long moment. Then, “You coward!” she spat. “You won’t even try! You don’t care if they die, you don’t care what happens to anyone or anything, all you care about is yourself! You won’t even use your magic to save them!”
As the envenomed words flew, Darkwind kept a tenuous grip on his temper by reminding himself of how young Dawnfire was. She’s only seventeen, he told himself. She lives and breathes being a guardian, and she doesn’t understand how to lose. She was barely assigned her duties when the Heartstone blew. She doesn’t mean what she’s saying....
But as her words grew more and more hurtful and heated in response to his cool silence, he finally had enough. His temper snapped like a dry twig, and he stopped the torrent of abuse with a mental “slap.”
And as she stood, silent and stunned, he folded his arms across his chest and stared at her until she dropped her eyes.
“You say you are a guardian. Well, you pledged an oath to obey me, your commander, and abide by my decisions. Have you suddenly turned into a little child, regressed to the age of ten, when sworn oaths mean only ‘until I’m tired of playing’? No?” He studied her a moment more, as she went from red to white and back again. “In that case, I suggest you calm yourself and return to your assigned patrol. If you comport yourself well and if you can keep yourself under control, I will consider leaving you there, rather than reassigning you elsewhere. Is that understood?”
“Yes, Elder,” she replied, in a voice that sounded stifled.
“Very well,” he said. “Go, then.”
Chapter Seven
ELSPETH
“Elspeth?”
Despite the anxious tone of Skif’s voice, Elspeth didn’t look up from her book. “What?” she said, absently, more to respond and let Skif know she’d heard him than a real reply. She was deep in what was apparently a firsthand description of the moments before Vanyel’s final battle.
It was then that we saw how the valley walls had been cut away, to widen the passage, and the floor of the vale had been smoothed into a roadway broad enough for a column of four. And all this, said Vanyel, was done by magic. I knew not what to think at that moment.
“Elspeth, don’t you think we should be getting out of here?” Skif persisted. “On the road, I mean.” She looked up from her page, and into Skif’s anxious brown eyes. There was no one else to overhear them; they were the only ones in the library archives, where the oldest Chronicles were stored.
Sunlight damaged books, so the archive chamber was a windowless room in the center of the library. Smoke and soot damaged them as well, so all lighting was provided by smokeless lanterns burning the finest of lamp oil, constructed to extinguish immediately if they tipped over. No other form of lighting was permitted—certainly not candles. Elspeth realized, as she looked into Skif’s anxiety-shadowed face, that she didn’t know what time it was. If any of the Collegium bells had rung, she hadn’t noticed them.
Her stomach growled in answer to the half-formed question, telling her that it was past lunchtime, if nothing else.
She rubbed her eyes; she’d been so absorbed in her reading that she hadn’t noticed the passage of time. “Why?” she asked, simply. “What’s your hurry?”
He grimaced, then shrugged. “I don’t like the idea of riding off south with just the two of us, but since you seem so set on it—I keep thinking your getting the Council to agree was too easy. They didn’t argue enough.”
“Not argue enough?” she replied, making a sour face. “I beg to differ. You weren’t there. They argued plenty, believe me. I thought they’d never stop till they all fell over from old age.”
“But not enough,” he persisted. “It should have taken weeks to get them to agree to your plan. Instead—it took less than a day. That doesn’t make any sense, at least, not to me. I keep thinking they’re going to change their minds at any minute. So I want to know why we aren’t getting out of here before they get a chance to.”
“They won’t change their minds,” she said, briefly, wishing he’d let her get back to her researches. “Gwena says so.”
“What does a Companion have to do with the Council changing its mind?” he demanded.
That’s what I would like to know, she thought. Gwena’s playing coy every time I ask. “I don’t know, but ask yours. I bet she says the same thing.”
“Huh.” His eyes unfocused for a moment as he Mindspoke his little mare; then, “I’ll be damned,” he replied. “You’re right. But I still don’t see why we aren’t getting on the road; everything we need is packed except for your personal gear. I should think you’d be so impatient to get out of here that I would be the one holding us back.”
She shrugged. “Let’s just say that I’m getting ready. What I’m doing in here is as important as the packing you’ve been doing.”
“Oh?” He shaded the word in a way that kept it from sounding insulting, which it could easily have done.
“It’s no secret,” she said, gesturing at the piles of books around her. “I’m researching magic in the old Chronicles; magic, and Herald-Mages, what they could do, and so forth. So I know what to look for and what we need. ”
If he noticed that some of those Chronicles were of a later day than Vanyel’s time, he didn’t mention it. “I suppose that makes sense,” he acknowledged. “Just remember, the Council could change their d
ecision any time, no matter what Gwena says.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” she replied, turning her attention back to her page. After a moment, Skif took the hint; she heard him slip out of his chair, and leave the room.
But her mind wasn’t on the words in front of her. Instead, she gave thought to how much Skif’s observations mirrored her own.
This was too easy. There was no reason why the Queen should have agreed to this, much less the Circle and Council. The excuse of the magical attack on Bolton, the Skybolts’ deeded border town, was just that; an excuse. She had checked back through the Chronicles of the past several years, and she had uncovered at least five other instances of magical attacks on Border villages, all of which looked to her as if they showed a weakening of the Border-protections. The records indicated no such panic reaction as she’d seen in the Council Chamber; rather, that there was a fairly standard way of responding. A team of Heralds and Healers would be sent to the site, the people would be aided and removed to somewhere safer, if that was their choice, then the incident was filed and forgotten.
Farther back than that had been Talia’s encounter with Ancar, that had signaled the beginning of the conflicts with Hardorn. There had been long discussions about what to do, how to handle the attacks of mages; Elspeth remembered that perfectly well. And there had been some progress; the Collegium made a concerted effort, checking the Chronicles following Vanyel’s time, to determine how Heralds without the Mage-Gift could counter magical attacks. Some solutions had been found, the appropriate people were briefed and trained—
And that was all. The knowledge was part of the schooling in Gifts now, but there was no particular emphasis placed on it. Not the way there should have been, especially following Ancar’s second attempt at conquest.
File and forget.
For that matter, there was even some evidence that Karse had been using magic, under the guise of “priestly powers.” No one had ever followed up on that, not even when Kero had made a point of reminding the Council of it.
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