Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Darkwind stared at a patch of the exposed bark of the parent-tree, just past his father's shoulder, and kept his face completely expressionless. At least it sounded like most of the tirade was over. This was mild compared to the insults Starblade had hurled at him at the beginning of the session.

  Then again, it might simply be that Starblade had run out of insults.

  Starblade shook his fist in the air, not actually threatening Darkwind but the implication was there. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear I couldn't be your father! I've never—"

  "That's enough, Starblade," interrupted old Rainlance tiredly. "That is quite enough."

  The quiet words were so unexpected, especially coming from Rainlance, that both Starblade and his son turned to stare in surprise at the oldest of the four Elders. Rainlance never interrupted anyone or raised his voice. Except that he had just done both.

  "By now we all know that you think your s—hmm, Darkwind—is the greatest fool ever born. We also know precisely why you think that." Rainlance leveled a penetrating stare at Starblade that froze him where he sat. "The fact is, I've known you a great deal longer than Darkwind, and I think there are times when you allow some of your opinions to unbalance your judgment. This is one of them. It just so happens I've never shared your peculiar prejudice against the Changechildren. I won't go into why, right now, but I have several good reasons, strong ones, to disagree with you on that. And I also do not share your view of Darkwind's incompetence." He coughed, and shook his head. "In point of fact, I think Elder Darkwind has done a fine job up until now, a very fine job. His peers trust him, he has never let his private opinions interfere with his judgment, and I don't see any reason to make a snap decision about this Other of his. I don't see any reason, in fact, why we shouldn't continue to help her."

  Rainlance looked pointedly at the other Elder, Iceshadow, who shrugged, the crystals braided into his hair tinkling like tiny wind chimes. "She's not a danger where she is," Iceshadow said. "She hasn't caused any trouble—"

  "That we know of," snapped Starblade.

  Iceshadow gave Starblade a look of disapproval, and Darkwind knew he'd scored at least one point. Iceshadow hated to be interrupted. "Very well. If you insist on that phrasing. That we know of. Frankly, I see no harm in letting her stay where she is until she's healthy, and considering her request for safe passage then."

  Rainlance nodded. Starblade frowned angrily, then pounced. "Under strict watch. Darkwind may be a gullible boy being led by a pair of come-hither eyes and a sweet voice, but I'm not so sure this Other may not be playing a deeper game. I say she stays under strict watch, with careful observers."

  "You can't get more careful than hertasi," Iceshadow remarked to the ceiling of his ekele. "And if she's leading Darkwind around by his urges, that ploy won't work on hertasi. Even stubborn, pigheaded old—ah—mages will admit to that."

  It was Iceshadow's turn to receive a glare, but the Elder ignored it, winking broadly at Darkwind when Starblade turned away in disgust.

  "I think the hertasi will do as watchers," Rainlance said smoothly, soothingly, as he sought to heal the split in the Council. "They are certainly quite competent. But I do agree she should be kept as far from the Vale itself as possible. And if she causes any trouble—"

  "If she even looks like she's causing any trouble," Starblade growled.

  Rainlance raised his voice a little, and annoyance crept into it. "—she'll have to be dealt with."

  "She'll find herself bound and staked, and you can tell her so!" Starblade shouted.

  "Are you quite finished?" Rainlance shouted back, his temper frayed to the snapping point. "I'd like to get on with this if I may!"

  Starblade sank back into his seat with an inarticulate mumble, confining himself to angry glares at anyone who happened to glance at him.

  Rainlance closed his eyes for a moment and visibly forced himself to calm down. Darkwind had no sympathy to spare for him; he'd been on the receiving end of his father's tempers too often to feel sorry for anyone else.

  "Really, Darkwind," Rainlance continued, opening his eyes, his voice oozing reason and conciliation. "You must see this in the perspective of the Vale and Clan as a whole. We really can't take her into the Vale. We can't take the chance, however slim, that she might be some kind of infiltrator."

  "I'm not asking for her to be brought into the Vale," Darkwind replied, echoing Rainlance's tone as much as he was able. "I'm just asking that she be allowed nearer. Right now she's in jeopardy; she's hurt, and she can't run the way the hertasi can. I doubt she'd be able to get away if something comes over the border, especially if it's something that's come hunting especially for her. She can't run, she can't hide, and Mage-Gifted or not, she probably can't protect herself from any kind of trained mage."

  Iceshadow shook his head regretfully; Darkwind got the feeling that if this hadn't been so serious an issue, he was so annoyed with Starblade right now that he would have been glad to agree with Darkwind just for a chance to spite his father. "No. It's just not possible. And I'm sure she realizes that, even if you don't. After all, look at what she is and what we are—we're enemies. Or at least, she's been on the enemy side. And yet she came to us, supposedly for help. She admitted she was going to use us as a kind of stalking horse. No, she stays where she is, and that's the end of it."

  "Well," said Starblade, his voice penetrating the silence that followed Iceshadow's speech like a set of sharp talons, his eyes narrowed, and a tight little smile on his lips. "Since you seem so worried about her, since you brought her into our boundaries in the first place—and since she is in your territory—I think it's only fair that you be the one to undertake her protection. Even if it means you have to fall back on magery." He looked around at the other Elders. "Isn't that fair?"

  "I don't know—" Rainlance began.

  "I'd say it is," Iceshadow said firmly. "I've never been happy that when Songwind left us, his magic did as well, Darkwind. I understand your feelings, but I've never been happy about it. You could be quite a mage if you'd give it another try."

  Rainlance shrugged. Starblade cast his son a look of triumph. "It seems there's a consensus," he said smugly.

  Darkwind managed not to jump up and hit him, scream at the top of his lungs, or do anything else equally stupid and adolescent. In fact, his reaction, so completely under control, seemed to disappoint his father. He thought quickly, and realized that, unwittingly, his father had not only left him an out, he'd given the scout a chance to do something he'd been campaigning for all along. He'd have to phrase this very carefully.

  "Very well, Elders," he replied, nodding to each of them in turn. "I am overruled. Nyara may stay, under the eyes of the hertasi. I will undertake to keep the Changechild protected—using all the resources at my disposal. Is that your will?"

  Rainlance nodded. "That's fine," Iceshadow said. Starblade looked suspicious, but finally gave his consent.

  "Done," said Rainlance. "You have the Council's permission, as stated."

  "Good," Darkwind said. "Then if that is the consensus, I will have the other scouts keep an eye out for her and stand by for trouble, I will recruit whatever dyheli I can find to stand guard, and I have no doubt there will be plenty of volunteers, since she helped save one of their herds—I will ask Dawnfire to look for help among the tervardi, and I will see if the gryphons are willing to work some of their protective magics."

  He managed not to grin at Starblade's expression. For once, he'd managed to outmaneuver his father.

  But there was no feeling of triumph as he left the meeting; the fight had been too hard for that. Instead, he was weary and emotionally bruised.

  Like someone's been beating me with wild plum branches.

  He climbed down out of the ekele before anyone else. It would have been a courtesy to wait for the eldest to descend first, but he wasn't feeling particularly courteous right now—and he really didn't want to chance his father ambushing him for a little more emotional abuse.
It was dark enough around here that he should be able to escape, provided he did the unexpected. And he was getting rather good at doing that....

  So he hurried off into the cover of the thick undergrowth, taking exactly the wrong path—one leading to the waterfall at the head of the Vale, instead of the exit. It passed the Heartstone, though not near enough to see the damaged pillar of stone, its cracked and crazed exterior only hinting at the damage echoed across the five planes, and visible to anyone with even a hint of Mage-Sight.

  He felt it, though, as he passed; an ache like a bruised bone, a sense of impending illness, a disharmony. If he'd had any doubts about it Healing itself earlier, they were dispelled now. It hadn't Healed itself, it had only gotten worse. Now it left a kind of bitter, lingering aftertaste in the back of his mind; if it had been a berry he'd tasted, he would have labeled it "poisonous" without hesitation.

  So he did something he had never thought he would do in his lifetime. He shielded himself against it.

  The air immediately seemed cleaner, and the sour sense of sickness left him. There was only the hint of incenselike smoke from the memorial brazier at its foot, the flame that commemorated the lives lost when the Heartstone fractured. Now all he had to contend with was the bad taste the meeting had left in his mouth.

  He started to look for a way to double back to the path he wanted to take, when he remembered that there was another hot spring at the foot of the waterfall. It wasn't a big waterfall, but it was a very attractive one; it had been sculpted by Iceshadow himself, back when the Vale had first been constructed, and the cool water of a tiny stream fell into a series of shallow rock basins to end in the hot pool of the spring below. Each of the basins had been tuned, although Darkwind had no idea how something like that was done. The music of the falls was incredibly soothing.

  Just what I need right now.

  That decided him; instead of retracing his steps, he took the path all the way to the end. And as if to confirm that he had made the right decision, as he entered the clearing containing the pool, the moon rose above the tree level, touching the waterfall, and turning it into a shower of flowing silver and diamond droplets. If you didn't know better, you'd swear there was nothing wrong here in the Vale, it's that peaceful.

  And no one, absolutely no one, was there.

  Of course, that might have been because this particular pool had once been a popular trysting spot, and there was not a great deal of romance going on in the Vale anymore. Most of the young Tayledras were scouts, and they seldom came this far in now. As for the rest—Darkwind suspected the mages were suffering, perhaps without realizing it, from the same, sickened feeling the Heartstone induced in him. That was not the sort of sensation likely to make anyone think of lovemaking....

  He wondered how many of them had thought to cut themselves off from the Stone. Not many, he decided, shedding his clothes and leaving them in a heap beside the pool. It's their power, their lifeblood. They'd rather feel ill than lose their connection to it. They wouldn't be able to draw on it if they shielded themselves against it.

  Idiots.

  Then he left all thought of them behind, as he plunged in a long, flat dive into the hot water of the pool.

  He came to the surface, and floated on his back, letting it soothe the aches in his muscles as it forced him into a state of relaxation. Only then did he realize how tightly he had been holding himself, and how many of those aches were due to tension.

  He drifted for a while, losing himself deliberately in the sound of the falling water, the changing patterns of the sparkling droplets, the silence.

  "Turning merman?" said a shadow at the entrance.

  He swam lazily to the edge, rested his arms on the sculpted rim, and looked up into Dawnfire's amused eyes. She looked down on him, a faint smile playing on her lips, her hair loose, her boots in her hand. "Not that I'm aware of," he said lightly. "Unless you saw something I didn't know about."

  "Probably not." She knelt down beside him, put her boots down beside her, then unexpectedly seized his head in both her hands, leaned down to water-level, and presented him with the most enthusiastic—and expert—kiss he'd ever had from her. His mouth opened under her questing tongue, and he clutched the rim with both hands, convulsively.

  What—she never gets aggressive—He became aware that not all the heat coursing through his veins was due to the temperature of the water. He closed his eyes, went passive, and let her lips and tongue play with his, until he was breathless. Her hair fell around him, enveloping him in her own silken waterfall.

  She released him, and he nearly slid under.

  "That was for going back and saving my dyheli," she said, sitting back on her heels, balancing there as if she had no weight at all.

  "I didn't—exactly—" He regretted having to confess that he had very little to do with it, if that was what she had in mind for a reward.

  She dismissed everything he was going to say with a wave of her hand. "I know, there's that Changechild involved in it, and it did the magic—but you stayed with them, and you Mindcalled them. They'd never have found their way out without that."

  "It" did the magic. She doesn't know Nyara is female.... His attention was captured and held, as she began removing her clothing in the most provocative way, slowly, teasingly. He found himself watching her with parted lips. First the tunic-lacings loosened, then pulling the garment slowly over her head. Then the breeches, inching them down over her hips, sliding them a little at a time down her long, lithe legs—all the while maneuvering so that the shirt covered all the strategically important parts of her. Then the shirt followed the tunic at the same tantalizingly slow speed.

  At that moment she seemed just as exotic as Nyara, and just as desirable.

  Nyara—If she doesn't know Nyara's a female, there's no harm in not telling her—

  She was down to a short chemise now, and she winked, once, then vanished into the shadows, reappearing before he had time to think why she had left.

  "I put the 'in use' marker at the entrance," she said. "Not that there's anyone likely to be here tonight. I knew you were at the meeting, and I waited to catch you to thank you properly. But you didn't go the way I thought you would. I had to chase you, loverhawk."

  She stood in an unconscious pose at the rim, moonlight softening the hard muscles, and turning her into something as soft and quicksilver as a Changechild.

  "I wanted to avoid Father," he said, filling his eyes with her.

  "I thought so," she said, and laughed. "I figured, knowing you, that as long as you were here you'd probably decide to soak him out of your thoughts. I've been checking every pool between here and Rainlance's ekele."

  "I'm glad you found me," he said softly.

  She sat on the rim, slid out of the chemise, and into his arms. "So am I," she whispered, and buried her hands in his damp hair, her lips and tongue devouring him, teasing him, doing things no woman had ever done to him before.

  His hands slid down her back, to cup her buttocks and hold her against him. She strained into the embrace, as if she wanted to reach past his skin, to merge with him. Her kiss took on a fiercer quality, and she worked her mouth around to his neck, biting him softly just beneath his ear, while he ran his hands over every inch of her, re-exploring what had become new again, and making her shiver despite the heat of the pool. He gasped as she nuzzled the soft skin behind his ear, then worked her way back to the hollow of his throat, and gasped again when she untangled her fingers from his hair, and slid them down his chest, slowly—teasingly.

  "Not in here—" he managed to whisper, as he grew a little light-headed from the combined heat of the water and his blood.

  She laughed, low and throatily. "All right." She began to back up, one tiny step at a time, rewarding him for following her with her clever fingers, which were now hard at work well below the waterline and threatening to make his knees go to jelly at any moment.

  They reached the edge of the pool, right beside the waterfall,
where some kind soul had left a pile of waterproof cushions and mats. She turned away from him to hoist herself up on the rim.

  He caught her by the waist, lifted her up, and held her there, nibbling his way up the inside of her thighs until it was her turn to gasp. She buried her hands in his wet hair and her fingers flexed in time with her breathing.

  Then she clutched two fistfuls of hair, pulled him away, and swore at him, half laughing. "Get up here, you oaf!" she hissed, "Or I'll get back in the water and do the same to you! You just might drown!"

  "We can't have that," he chuckled, and joined her; tumbling her into the cushions, nibbling and touching, making her squeal with laughter and surprise.

  He only had the upper hand for a moment. Then she somehow squirmed out from beneath him, and pulled a wrestler's trick on him. Then she had him on his back, bestriding him, a wicked smile on her face as she lowered herself down, a teasing hair's breadth at a time.

  He arched to meet her, his hands full of her breasts, catching her unawares. She cried out and arched her back, driving herself down onto him.

  Their minds met as their bodies met, and the shared pleasures enhanced their own, as she felt his passion and he experienced every touch of his fingers on her flesh.

  She roused him almost to the climax, again and again, building the passion higher and higher, until he thought he would not be able to bear another heartbeat—Then she loosed the jesses, and they soared together.

  "Dear—gods," he whispered, as they lay together in a trembling symmetry of arms and legs.

  She giggled. "The reward of virtue."

  "I think I shall strive to be virtuous," he mumbled, then exhaustion took him down into sleep before he could hear her reply. If she even made one. Verbally.

  When he woke, she had moved away from him to lie in a careless sprawl an arm's length away. He'd expected as much; he'd learned over the past few months that she was a restless sleeper—after more than once finding himself crowded onto a tiny sliver of sleeping pad. The moon was just retreating behind the rock of the waterfall. He slipped into the pool for a moment, to rinse himself off after his exertions, warm up his muscles, and to cross to the other side without rustling the undergrowth. That would surely wake her, as the sound of someone swimming would not.