Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  There was no real reason for this interview. They had already been over this several times; once before the entire Council, once with the other three Elders, in detail, and now, for the second time, with his father alone. The Council had heard his story without allowing him to confront them over the situation of being so shorthanded on the border. That, they had assigned to Starblade, as the most senior Adept, and presumably the one who could make a decision about the situation. Perhaps he is supposed to conjure up something, Darkwind thought bitterly.

  Which meant he had to go over this as many times as Starblade wanted in order to get his point made. "I listened carefully to the conversation, what there was of it. The armed men treated the unarmed men with a certain amount of deference, but there was no outward sign that they were not—say—adventurous traders. I thought they might be mages because they were unarmed, so I moved to neutralize them first."

  "You did not spellcast to determine if any of them were using magic of any kind?" Starblade settled back in his green-cushioned chair. In contrast to his son's camouflage outfit, his own elaborate clothing made him look like an exotic, silver-crested, blue-plumaged bird perched in the shrubbery.

  "No, sir," Darkwind replied, allowing a hint of effrontery to carry into his voice. "I did not."

  "And why not?" Starblade asked softly. "You have the power, after all."

  "Because I do not choose to use that power, Father," Darkwind said, holding in his temper with an effort. "You know that. As you know my reasons."

  "As I know your excuses," Starblade snapped. "They are not reasons. You put k'Sheyna in jeopardy because you refuse to use your abilities."

  "I did no such thing. I kept k'Sheyna from jeopardy because I destroyed the interlopers when they would not turn back," Darkwind interrupted. "I did so without the foolish use of magic, which might have attracted more trouble, that close to the border. Despite being shorthanded, I did so with the limited resources at my disposal."

  "Without magic."

  "Without magic," Darkwind repeated. "Because it was not needed, and because other things might have been attracted that it would not have been possible to combat, with only three guards and their birds within range to stand against the threat." He glared at his father. "If you are so insistent on having mages on the border, Father, perhaps you would care to join us for some of our patrols."

  And we can lead you about by the hand.

  They could not have been more of a contrast, he and Starblade. The mage wore his waist-length, silver hair braided with crystals, feathers, and rainbow beads. His costume, of peacock-blue spider-silk, cut and decorated elaborately, was impressive and impractical in the extreme. Darkwind, when he was not in his scout clothing, tended to wear brown or gray, cut closely to his body, high-collared and mostly without ornament; his hair was barely shoulder-length.

  Most of the mages dressed the way Starblade did, though some made concessions to camouflage by wearing white in the winter and leaf-colors in the rest of the year, garments that could blend in with the woods after a fashion. Not that long ago, he had looked like the rest of them.

  This is growing tedious.

  "Father, we have been over this any number of times. I did my duty; I rid k'Sheyna of the interlopers. The point is not that I did or did not get rid of them using magic. The point is that we are chronically shorthanded. We shouldn't be here at all, Father. More than half of k'Sheyna is—elsewhere. What's wrong with us? Why haven't we done something about this situation?"

  "That is none of your concern," Starblade began coldly, drawing himself up and staring at his son in astonishment.

  "It is my concern," Darkwind interrupted. "I'm on the Council, too. I am the representative of the scouts. I'm one of the Clan Elders now, which you seem to have forgotten. And as the scouts' representative, I would like to know exactly what we are doing to drain the Heart-stone, or stabilize it, and rejoin the rest of our Clan." He drew himself up to match his father's pose, and looked challengingly into Starblade's eyes.

  Starblade met the challenging gaze impassively. "That is the business of the mages. If you wish to have a say in the matter—" he smiled, "—you may take up your powers again. Then you may join the mages and have your words heeded."

  Darkwind felt himself flushing with anger, despite his earlier resolutions. "What I choose to do with my powers has nothing to do with the matter. Those of us who are not mages have a right to determine k'Sheyna's future as well." He paused a moment, and added, "That is the tradition, after all—that every voice in a Clan has some say in the running of the Clan."

  Starblade looked past his son's shoulder for a moment and took a long, slow breath. "What you choose to do with your powers is precisely at issue here." He lowered his eyes to meet Darkwind's again, and there was an anger to match his son's in his gaze. "You are risking the lives of your scouts by your refusal to use your magic. Your abilities are required on our boundaries, and yet you will not use them. And I do not accept why you refuse."

  Darkwind closed his eyes, but he could not block the memories.

  * * *

  The Heartstone, a great crystal-laced boulder taller than he, pulsing with all the life and power of the Vale. Its surface glowed with intricate warm red and golden tracings, as the inner circle of Adepts continued to drain the excess mage-energy from the land about them, to empty the nodes and the power-lines so that there was nothing left that could be used to harm.

  That was how the Tayledras left a place; concentrating all the realigned power of the area in their Heartstone; then draining the Heartstone and channeling most of its awesome energy into a new one, at the site of their new Vale.

  Power crackled and seethed, pouring into the stone, as Darkwind held to his position, anchoring the West—outside the circle of Adepts that contained his mother and father. The shunting off of the great stone's energy was a dangerous task and required many protectors and guides from outside the main circle; he was an important part of the linkage. Songwind k'Sheyna was the youngest Adept of his Clan ever to take such a task and quite conscious of the responsibilities involved.

  There was no warning, no unsettling current of unclean energy. Just—a brightening of the stone, more intense than the last, and a disorienting sensation like lightning striking—

  Hell opened in front of him. A blaze of incandescent white, power that scorched him to the soul. Silhouetted against the hellfires, his mother—

  "I don't trust my so-called 'abilities,' Father," he said slowly, shaking off the too-vivid memories. "No one knows why the Heartstone fractured, and the power broke loose."

  Was it his imagination, or did his father start a little?

  "I was the youngest Adept there," he persisted. "I was the only one who had never participated in moving a Heartstone's power before. What if it was something I did, and everything I do magically is forever flawed that way? I will not take that chance, Father, not when what is left of our Clan is at stake."

  Starblade would not look into his son's eyes, but his voice was implacable. He gazed down at his hand as if he had never seen it before, examining the long fingers as he spoke. "I have told you, many times, it was nothing you did or did not do. It... it had nothing to do with you."

  "Can you be certain of that?" He shook his head and started to stand up. "Father, I know exactly what my abilities are with my hands, my senses. I can't count on my magic—"

  Starblade looked up, and his expression had changed to one of scorn. "...If you have no confidence in yourself," the Elder finished. "Your magic is flawed only if you choose to believe it is so. Songwind was not that—fearful. I remember and loved Songwind. He saw his power as a source of pride, and our Clan was proud of him for it. Our children and old ones are gone from us now, and you have refused those powers to defend what is left of us here. I have little respect for you for that, Darkwind."

  The heat of Darkwind's anger cooled to ice, as he felt the blood draining from his face. The golden sunlight drifting through
the windows and making patterns upon the white wooden floor suddenly lost all its warmth. "The Starblade who is my Elder is not the Father I remember either," he replied. "Perhaps a change of name is in order for you, as well. Iceblade, perhaps—or Broken-blade, for you seem to have lost both your courage and your compassion." He stood, while Starblade gaped at him in startled surprise. "You are unwilling to face the fact that circumstances have changed. I think that you are terrified to face that change. I don't know—I only know that you seem to think that we who work without magic are not worth aiding. If you see no reason to help the scouts, Father, then we must take what help we can get—even to calling on the hertasi, the dyheli, and the others of the Hills whose well-being you scorn in your arrogance."

  He started to turn, and had taken one step toward the door, when Starblade's voice stopped him.

  "Arrogance?" the Elder said, as coolly as if Darkwind had not said anything at all. "An interesting choice of words from you. Songwind was the youngest Adept in the Clan—but it has occurred to me of late that perhaps that distinction was not enough for you."

  Darkwind turned back to his father reluctantly. "What is that supposed to mean?" he asked, the words forced from him unwillingly.

  "Songwind was only an Adept. Darkwind is on the Council—is, in fact, an Elder." Starblade shrugged. "That was an opportunity that would not have been given to Songwind for some time—but with the scouts so shorthanded, and poor, newly-bereft Darkwind so eager to join them—and so—charismatic—"

  "If you are suggesting that I have left magic solely for the sake of another kind of power—" Darkwind could feel himself going red, then white, with anger. He struggled to control his temper; an outburst now would win him nothing.

  "I am suggesting nothing," Starblade replied smoothly. "I am only saying that the appearance is there."

  A hundred retorts went through Darkwind's mind, but he made none of them. Instead, he strove for and regained at least an appearance of calm.

  "If that were, indeed, the case, Elder," he said quietly, but with just a hint of the rage that he held tightly bottled within, "it seems to me that I would already have been acting on those ambitions. I should have been moving to consolidate that power, and to manipulate both the non-mages and the weaker mages. As you are well aware, I have been doing no such thing. I have simply been doing the work assigned to me—like any other scout. Like any responsible leader. I never sought the position of leader or Elder, it was pressed upon me; I would never have used personal attraction to get them."

  Starblade smiled, tightly. "I merely suggest, Darkwind, that if you returned to magic you would be forced to give up that position. In fact, in light of the fact that you are out of practice, you might be asked to return to the position of student rather than Adept. And that perhaps—unconsciously—you are reluctant to return to the position of commanded, having been commander."

  "You have hinted that before, Elder," Darkwind answered him grimly. "And the suggestion was just as repellent the first time as it is now. I think I know myself very well now, and there is no such reluctance on my part for that ridiculous reason. If there were anyone else within the scouts who wanted the position, I would give it to him—or her—and gladly."

  And if we were a less civilized people, those words would be cause for a challenge.

  "I have said that I do not know this thing you have become, Darkwind—" Starblade began.

  Darkwind cut him off abruptly with an angry gesture. "Indeed, Elder," he replied, turning on his heel and tossing his last words over his shoulder as he left the outer room of Starblade's ekele. "You do not know me at all, if you think that little of me."

  It was not—quite—the kind of exit he would have liked. There was no door to slam, only a hertasi-made curtain of strung seeds—and it was difficult, if not impossible, to effectively stamp his feet the few steps it took to reach the ladder, without sounding like a child in a temper.

  Which is how he wants me to feel, after all.

  And if he rushed angrily down the ladder, even so short a distance as he needed with his father's tree-dwelling, he risked taking some stupid injury like a sprain or a broken limb. Starblade's ekele was hardly more than a few man-heights from the floor of the Vale, and had several rooms, like a bracelet of beads around the trunk of the huge tree it was built onto. The access leading to it was more like a steep staircase than a ladder.

  So it was quite impossible to descend in any way that would underscore his mood without playing to his father's gloating.

  He settled for vaulting off of the last few feet of it, as if he could not bear to endure Starblade's "hospitality" a moment more. He landed as lightly and silently as only a woods-scout could, and walked away from the ekele without looking back, his purposeful steps taking him on a path that would lead him out of the Vale altogether.

  He knew that he was by no means as calm as he looked, but he was succeeding in this much at least. He was working off some of his anger as he pushed his way through the exotic, semitropical undergrowth that shadowed and sometimes hid the path. The plants themselves were typical of any Tayledras Vale, but the state of rank overgrowth was not.

  The Hawkbrothers always chose some kind of valley for their Clansites, something that could be "roofed over" magically, and shielded from above and on all sides, so that the climate within could be controlled, and undesirable creatures warded off. Then, if there were no hot springs there already, the mages would create them—and force-grow broad trees to make them large enough to hold several ekele.

  The result was always junglelike, and the careful placement of paths to allow for the maximum amount of cover and privacy for all the inhabitants gave a Vale the feeling of being uninhabited even when crowded with a full Clan and all the hertasi that served them.

  It appeared uninhabited to the outsider. To a Tayledras, there was always the undercurrent of little sounds and life-feelings that told him where everyone was, a comforting life-song that bound the Clan together.

  But there was no such song here, in k'Sheyna Vale. Instead of a rich harmony, with under-melodies and counterpoint, the music halted, limped, within a broken consort. Hertasi made up most of the life-sparks about Darkwind, as the little lizard-folk went about their business and that of the Clan, cleaning and mending and preparing food. And that was not right.

  Further, there were no child-feelings anywhere about. Only adults, and a mere handful of those, compared to the number a full Clan should muster.

  Any Tayledras would know there is something wrong, something out of balance, just by entering the Vale.

  Silence; Tayledras that were not mages undertook all the skilled jobs that hertasi could not manage—besides the scouts, there should have been artisans, musicians, crafters. All those activities made their own little undercurrent of noises, and that, too, was absent. The rustle of leaves, the dripping of water, the whisper of the passing of the shy hertasi, sounds that he would never have noticed seemed too loud in the empty Vale.

  Then there were the little signs of neglect; ekele empty and untenanted, going to pieces, so that hertasi were constantly removing debris, and trying to get rid of things before they fell. Springs were littered with fallen leaves. Vegetation grew unchecked, untrimmed, or dying out as rare plants that had required careful nurturing went un-tended.

  It all contributed to the general feeling of desolation—but there was an underlying sense of pain, as well. And that was because not all of the ekele stood empty by choice.

  Half the Clan had moved to the new Vale, it was true, and were now out of reach until a new Gate could be built to them. There were no mages strong enough in the far-away, exiled half of the Clan to build that Gate, and not even the most desperate would choose to take children and frail elders on a trek across the dangerous territory that lay between them. But k'Sheyna-that-remained was at a quarter of its strength, not a half. And most of those were not Adepts. The circle of Adepts that had been charged with draining and moving the Heartsto
ne had been the strongest the Clan could muster; they had taken the full force of the disaster.

  Fully half of those that had remained behind—most of the Adepts—had died in the catastrophe that claimed Darkwind's mother. Many of those that were left were still in something of a state of shock, and, like Darkwind himself, trying to cope with the unprecedented loss of so many mates, friends, and children. The silence left by their absence gnawed at the subconscious of mage and scout alike.

  Only a few went to Darkwind's extreme, and changed their use-name, but he was not completely alone in his reaction. To change a use-name meant that, for all intents and purposes, the "person" described by that name was "dead."

  That was why "Songwind" became "Darkwind." When he had recovered from his burns and lacerations, he repudiated magic altogether. Then, when that move brought him into conflict with his father, he moved out of the family ekele, and took up life on his own, with the scouts and craftsmen who were left.

  Another mage, Starfire, became Nightfire, and became obsessed with the remains of the Heartstone, studying it every waking moment, trying to determine the cause of the disaster.

  And the most traumatized mage of all, Moonwing, became Silence.

  I could have been like Silence, he thought, beating a branch aside with unnecessary force. I could have retreated into myself, and become a hermit. I could have stopped speaking except mind-to-mind. I could be broadcasting my pain to anyone who dared touch my thoughts. I didn't do that; I'm doing something useful.

  But that, evidently, was not enough for Starblade.

  He'll have me as a mage, or not at all. Darkwind scowled at the trail before him, frightening a passing hertasi into taking another route. He should look to the Clan; there are more important problems than the fact that I will not use magic.