Valdemar 09 - [Mage Winds 01] - Winds of Fate

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I wish I’d been able to ask her more questions,” he said, chewing at his lower lip as he thought. “I wish I’d been able to think of more questions.”

  “It ssseemss clear enough,” Treyvan said lazily, stretching his forelegs out into the sun a little more. “Ssshe isss exactly what sshe ssseemsss.”

  “A Changechild, used to try out the changes her master wanted to perform on his own body—used as a sex toy when he wished.”

  “Yesss,” Hydona nodded. “And usssed alssso to rrraissse and hold powerrr for him. You did not ssssee that upon herrr?”

  He looked up at the sky in exasperation. “Of course! I missed that aspect completely! I could not imagine why Falconsbane would allow her to keep her Mage-Gift intact, when an Adept should be able to block it or render it useless by burning the channels. But if she didn’t have enough to challenge him—but did have enough to carry power—”

  “Ssshe would make the perrrfect vesssel,” Treyvan concluded.

  “Exactly,” Hydona replied. “He could ussse herrr to carrrry powerrr from hisss sacrificesss; he could generrr ate powerrr frrrom herrr by hurrrting herrr.”

  “And best of all,” Darkwind concluded grimly, “he could exhaust her power without touching his own. That made it possible for him to work spells that don’t disturb the energy-flows around here at all, because it’s all internal power. That is how he’s been doing things without my sensing them!”

  “Sssensing them?” Treyvan opened one eye. “I thought you had given up yourrr mage-sssskillsss.”

  “I have,” he replied firmly. “But I can still sense the power flows and the disturbances when someone tampers with them. As long as I’m not inside the Vale, that is.”

  “That Heartssstone isss a problem, Darrrkwind,” Treyvan said, unexpectedly. “It isss distorting everrry thing in the area of the Vale, asss if it were a thick, warped pane of glasss. And when thingsss come into thiss area, like the ssserpent, it isss attracting them. I am ssssurprisssed that no one in therre hasss noticed the problemsss.”

  Darkwind shook his head, compressing his lips tightly. “If I say what I’d like to—well, that’s Vale business, and the Elders’ business, and you—”

  “Are Outssssidersss,” Treyvan replied, rolling his eye in exasperation. “And if your father dissscovered you had been ssspeaking of Vale busssinesss to Outsssid erssss, what then? Would he cast you out? It might be worth it, Darrkwind. Thisss isss involving more than jussst k‘Sssheyna. The broken Heartssstone beginsss to affect the area out-ssside the Vale.”

  “No.” He shook his head emphatically. “I have a duty to my Clan, and to what the Tayledras are supposed to be. I guess—” he thought for a moment, “I suppose I’m just waiting for the moment that they all bury themselves, and I can find out where k‘Vala or k’Treyva are now, and I can go get some help.”

  “May that be ssssoon,” Hydona sighed.

  “Too true.” He eyed the sun and stood up, then hesitated a moment. “You know my personal reasons for giving up magic—and—well, I wouldn’t admit it to anyone but you, but—I’m beginning to think that may have been, well, a little short-sighted.”

  Treyvan tilted his head. “I will not ssay that I told you the ssame.”

  “I know you did. But now,” he frowned, “if the Heartstone is attracting uncanny things, it is probably a good idea not to rescind that vow. Look what happened to the one mage who tried casting spells outside the Vale.”

  “A good point,” Treyvan acknowledged. “But you ssstill show Adept-potential, do you not? Would that not attract creaturesss asss well ass sspellcasssting?” He tilted his head the other way. “A dissstinct liability to a ssscout, I would sssay.”

  He flushed. “Treyvan, I’m not stupid. I thought of that. I swore I wouldn’t spellcast. I never swore I wouldn’t keep my shields.”

  Treyvan laughed aloud. “Good. You are asss canny as I could wish, flightlesss ssson.”

  He had to laugh, himself. “Well, Nera has things well in hand for now, you have youngsters to get back to, and I—I guess I’d better finish out my patrol, tell Dawnfire the good news if she doesn’t know already, and figure out how best to phrase Nyara’s request to the Elders.”

  Treyvan chuckled. “Ssshe won’t be moving far or fasst for a few dayss, if I’m any judge of human ssshapesss. You’ll have ssome time to think.”

  Darkwind sighed. “I hope so,” he replied. “It isn’t going to be easy. Starblade is not going to like this.”

  Chapter Eleven

  ELSPETH

  Skif peered through the foggy gloom of near-dawn, wishing he had eyes like a cat. He watched for possible trouble, as Elspeth stood—literally—on her saddle, trying to read the signpost in the middle of the crossroads. Gwena stood like a stone statue; a distinct improvement over a horse in a similar situation.

  Before they had left Bolthaven, Elspeth had taken Quenten’s advice quite literally—and very much to heart. For one thing, she’d consulted with him about disguises, in lieu of being able to ask Kerowyn. Now they wore something more in the line of what a pair of prosperous mercenaries would wear. “Mercs would be best,” Quenten had decided, after a long discussion, and taking into consideration the fact that no amount of dye would stain the Companion’s coats. “Tell people who ask you’ve been bodyguards for a rich merchant’s daughter, and that’s where you got the matched horses. If you say you’re mercs, no one will bother you, and you can wear your armor and weapons openly. Just put a coat of paint on those shields, or get a cover for them.”

  They’d given him carte blanche, and a heavy pouch of coin. He’d grinned when Skif lifted an eyebrow over the selection of silks and fine leathers Quenten’s agent brought back from the Bolthaven market, clothing that was loose and comfortable, and so did not need to be tailored to them to look elegant.

  “We want you two to look prosperous,” he’d said. “First of all, only a prosperous merc would be able to afford horses like yours, even if you did get them in the line of duty. And secondly, a prosperous merc is a good fighter. No bandit is ever going to want to bother a mercenary who looks as well-off as you will. The last place a merc puts his money is in his wardrobe. If you can afford this, you’re not worrying about needing cash for other things.”

  “But the jewelry,” Skif had protested. “You’ve turned most of our ready cash into jewelry!”

  “A free-lance merc wears his fortune,” Quenten told him. “If you need to buy something, and you don’t want to spend any of those outland gold coins because it might draw attention to you, break off a couple of links of those necklaces, take a plate from the belt, hand over a ring or a bracelet. That’s the way a mere operates, and no one is going to turn a hair. Very few mercs bother with keeping money with a money-changing house, because it won’t be readily accessible. In fact, only about half of even bonded mercs have a running account with the Mercenary’s Guild, for the same reason. Where you’re going, every merchant and most good inns have scales to weigh the gold and silver, and they’ll give you a fair exchange for it.”

  Skif thought about what he said, then sent Quenten’s agent back to the bazaar to exchange the rest of their Valdemaren and Rethwellan gold and silver for jewelry. He had to admit that the ornaments he got in exchange, a mixture of brand new and worn with use, were a great deal less traceable than the Valdemaren coin. He felt like a walking target—his old thief instincts acting up again—but he knew very well that when he was a thief, he’d never, ever have tackled two wealthy fighters, especially when they walked with their hands on their hilts and never drank more than one flagon of wine at a sitting. Quenten had been right; a wealthy, cautious fighter was someone that tended not to attract trouble. Still, he’d complained to Elspeth their first night on the road that he felt like a cheap tavern dancer, with his necklaces making more noise than his chain-mail.

  Elspeth had giggled, saying she felt like a North-Province bride, with all her dowry around her neck, but she had no objections to foll
owing Quenten’s advice.

  He still resented that, a little. He’d made a similar suggestion—though he had suggested they dress as a pair of landed hill-folk rather than merec—and she had dismissed the notion out of hand. But when Quenten told them to disguise themselves, she had agreed immediately.

  Maybe it was simply that he’d suggested plain, unglam orous hill-folk, and Quenten had suggested the opposite. Skif had the feeling she was beginning to enjoy this; she was picking up the kind of swaggering walk the other well-off mercs they met had adopted, and she had taken to binding up her hair with bright bands of silk, and some of the strands of garnet and amethyst beads Quenten had bought. There were eye-catching silk scarves trailing from the hilt of Need, and binding the helm at her sad dlebow. She looked like a barbarian. And he got the distinct impression she liked looking that way. Her eyes sparkled the moment they crossed into a town and found a tavern, and she began grinning when other mercs sought them out to exchange stories and news. One night she’d even taken up with another prosperous female free-lance, Selina Ironthroat, and had made the rounds of every tavern in town.

  The gods only know what they did. I don’t even want to think about it. At least she came back sober, even if she was giggling like a maniac. If half the stories those other mercs told me about Selina are true, her mother would never forgive me.

  Not only that, she took the inevitable attempts at assassinations with a cheerful good humor that amazed him.

  He’d expected her to explode with anger the first time it happened. She had been the center of a gossiping clutch of Guild merec, but as the evening wore on, one by one, they’d drifted off, leaving her alone for a moment. That was when a merc with almost as much gold around his neck as she wore had tried to get her to go off with him—and presumably into his bed.

  He readied himself for a brawl. Then she’d shocked the blazes out of him. She’d laughed, but not in a way that would make the man feel she was laughing at him, and said, in a good approximation of Rethwellan hill-country dialect, “Oh, now that is a truly tempting offer, ‘tis in very deed, but I misdoubt ye want to make me partner there feel I’ve left ’im alone.”

  She’d nodded at Skif, who simply gave the merc The Look. Don’t mess with my partner. And turned back to his beer, with one cautious eye on the proceedings.

  “He gets right testy when he thinks he’s gonna be alone, truly he does,” she continued, a friendly grin on her face, her eyes shining as she got into her part. “Ye see, his last partner left ‘im all by ’imself one night, and some sorry son of a sow snuck up on ‘im when he wasn’t payin’ attention, an’ hit ’im with a bottle.” Her face went thoughtful for a moment. “ ‘Twas sad, that. ’E not only took it out on ‘is partner, gods grant th’ puir man heals up quick, ’e took it out on th’ lads as took the puir fellow off. He hates havin’ no one to watch ‘is back, he truly do.”

  The other merc looked at Skif, who glowered back; gulped, and allowed as how he, too, hated having no one to guard his back.

  “Then let’s buy you a drink, lad!” she’d exclaimed, slapping him so hard on the back that he’d staggered. “When times be prosperous, ‘tis only right t’ share ’em. No hard feelin’s among mercs, eh? Now, where are ye bound for?”

  Oh, yes, indeed, she looked, and acted, the part; a far cry from the competent but quiet princess of Valdemar, who never had seen the inside of a common tavern in her life.

  As he waited for her to decipher the sign, he wondered, as he had wondered several times before this, if she wasn’t enjoying it a bit too much.

  She dropped down into her saddle by the simple expedient of doing just that, her feet slipping down along the sides as she fell straight down—and he winced. That was one of Kero’s favorite tricks, and it always made men wince.

  “We’re on the right road if we go straight ahead,” she said. “That’s ‘Dark Wing Road,’ and we don’t want it; it’s going into the Pelagiris Forest in a couple of leagues, and it doesn’t come out until it hits the edge of the Dhorisha Plains. No towns, no inns, no nothing. We want this one; it’s still the Pelagiris Road, and in a while it’ll meet the High Spur Road, and that takes us to Lythecare.”

  On the map, this “Dark Wing Road” had looked to be a very minor track, but it was just as well-maintained in reality as the High Spur Road they expected to take. Of course, now that she’d pointed out what it was, it was obvious that it went in the wrong direction, but with all this dark mist confusing his senses—“I’m all turned around in this fog,” he complained.

  “That’s what you get for being a city boy,” she replied, ridiculously cheerful for such an unholy hour. “Get you off of the streets, and you can’t find your way around. ” She sent Gwena to join him, then took the lead. His Companion followed after with no prompting on his part, the fog muffling the sounds of hooves and the jingle of harness.

  His nose was cold, and the fog had an odd, metallic taste and smell to it. He hated getting up this early at the best of times; the fog made it that much worse.

  “You’re just as much city-bred as me,” he countered, resentfully, a harder edge to his voice than he had intended. “Since when did you get to be such an expert on wilderness travel?”

  She swiveled quickly and peered back at him, hardly more than a dark shape in the enshrouding fog. “What’s wrong with you?” she asked, astonishment and a certain amount of edge in her voice as well.

  “Nothing,” he said quickly—then, with more truth—“Well, not much. I hate mornings; I hate fog. And there’s something that’s been bothering me—you’re different. It’s as if you’re turning into Kero.”

  Or even Selina Ironrhroat.

  “So what if I am?” she countered. “Who would you rather have next to you in trouble—Kero, or mousy little princess Elspeth, who would have let you try and figure out where we were going and what we were doing? What’s wrong with turning into Kero? That’s assuming that I am; I happen to think you’re wrong about that.”

  Now it was his turn to be surprised. He’d never heard her refer to herself as a “mousy little princess” before. And while she had sometimes railed about things to him, she’d never turned on him before. “Uh—” he replied, cleverly.

  “Or is it just that I won’t let you take care of me? Is that the problem?” He heard the annoyance in her voice that meant she was scowling. “You’ve been sulking since we left Bolthaven, and I’m getting damned tired of it. As long as I let you make all the decisions, everything was fine—but this is my trip, and I’m the one with the authority, and you know it. I pull my own weight, Skif. I was perfectly capable of doing this trip by myself, in fact, I was ready to. I admit I didn’t think about disguises—and you were right about that idea. But the fact is, if I’d been able to go on my own, I was intending to travel by night and hide by day. And if anyone saw me, I was going to pretend I was a ghost-rider and scare the blazes out of him. ”

  “It’s not that you’re making the decisions. It’s just the changes in you. You’re so—hearty,” he said feebly. “You’re kind of loud, actually. Everybody notices us, wherever we go. I thought the point was to keep from drawing attention to ourselves.”

  She snorted, and it wasn’t ladylike. “You think these costumes aren’t going to draw attention to us? Come on, Skif, we’re walking advertisements for the life of the mere! Sure, I’m loud. That’s what a woman like Berta would be. Like Selina Ironthroat. I spent that night studying her, I’ll have you know. I’m competing for men’s money in a man’s world, and I’m doing damn well at it, and the more I advertise that fact, the more jobs I’ll be offered. In fact, I’ve been offered jobs, quite a few of them; I turned them down, saying we were going off to take another job with a caravan we were picking up at Kata‘shin’a‘in.”

  “Oh,” he replied, feeling overwhelmed. Admittedly, he hadn’t thought much about the part he was supposedly playing. Certainly not the way she had. She had everything ; motives, background, character—even an imagi
nary job that would give them an excuse to turn down any other offers.

  “Don’t cosset me, Skif,” she said, her voice roughened with anger. “I’m sick to death of being cosseted. Kero wouldn‘t, and you know it. This is exactly the kind of job she’d love. She’d be right beside me, slapping those drunks on the back—and if she had to, I bet she’d be hauling them off to bed with her, too.”

  “Elspeth! ” he yelped, before he thought.

  “There!” she said triumphantly. “You see? What’s the matter, don’t you think I know about the simple facts of a man and a woman? An ordinary man and woman, not Heralds, the kind of people who are driven by the needs of the moment? Just what, exactly, are you trying to protect me from? The idea that drunk strangers grab each other and hop into strange beds and proceed to forn—”

  He tried, but he couldn’t help himself. He emitted an inarticulate moan.

  “—each other’s tails off?” she finished, right over the top of him. “And I deliberately didn’t use any of the ten or so rude words I know for the act, just to avoid bruising your delicate sensibilities. I can swear with the worst of the merec if I have to, and I know hundreds of filthy jokes, and furthermore, I know exactly what they mean! I’ve spent lots of time with Kero’s Skybolts, and they treated me just like one of them. Skif, I grew up. I’m not the little sister that you used to leave candy for. And I don’t need you to shelter me from what I already know!” A pause, during which he tried to think of something to say. “Stop treating me like a child, Skif. I’m not a little girl anymore. I haven’t been for a long time.”

  And that’s the problem, he thought, unhappily. She wasn’t a little girl anymore, and he wasn’t sure how to act around her. It wasn’t that competence in women bothered him—he loved Talia dearly, and he looked up to Kero as to his very own Captain, for she was one of the few at Court to whom his background meant nothing in particular. It was seeing that confidence in Elspeth that bothered him. He couldn’t help but think that it wasn’t confidence, it was a foolish overconfidence, the headiness of freedom.