Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Hydona clearly detailed making an anchor point and shielding, for instance; that was a lot like grounding and centering, and was done for many of the same reasons. When put that way, Elspeth stopped subconsciously resisting the idea of having to effectively double-shield, once against mental intrusions and once against magical attacks. The other thing that made sense was that Hydona had pointed out the sword Need had done all that for her; the sword was in itself a permanent anchor point, radiating a seemingly ungraspable power into the earth, forever acting as a ground for the bearer it was bonded to. Need had shields on it that Hydona doubted were under conscious control anymore—if they ever had been. She seemed to think that they hadn't been; that they were some part of the sword itself, before the spirit came to reside in it.

  So that was how Elspeth had managed to work magic without all the preparations the Hawkbrothers and their large friends deemed necessary. The precautions had been taken, they simply hadn't been taken by her.

  And now that Need was no longer in Elspeth's possession, Elspeth was going to have to learn how to do everything Need had done so that she could manage for herself. With an ironic smile, she thought how easily Need could have become less a sword and more a crutch.

  Oh, Need would have forced her to learn it all anyway. The only reason Need had aided her for as long as she had was because they had been in something of an emergency situation. In all probability, Need would have insisted on her learning to fend for herself as soon as there had been some breathing room.

  Obediently, she "watched" as Hydona led her through the steps of anchoring and shielding, then practiced until they came easily. First, feeling the stable point in the power-flows about her and setting mental "hooks" into it, then erecting a shield against mage-energies that was remarkably similar to mental shields. Hydona drilled her over and over, and after a while the exercises stopped being something foreign and started feeling like second-nature. Best of all, they took about the same effort it took to stay on a galloping horse. She was a little surprised by how quickly it all came to her, but Hydona said nothing of it. She seemed to think it was only natural.

  "Now," the gryphon said, after she'd repeated the patterns until she was weary of them, and thought she could do them in her sleep. "Here isss when you rrreach for powerrr; when you arrre ssafe in yourrr protectionsss, and anchored against fluxesss. Now, there isss a ley-line to the eassst of you; a young one, eassily tamed—but you do not know that. Ssso. Assssume you know nothing. Searrch for it. When you find it, rrreach forr it, asss Need ssshowed you, and ssample it. Sssee if you can usse it, orrr if it isss too ssstrong forr you."

  She closed her eyes, found the line Hydona spoke of, and reached for it, dipping the fingers of an invisible hand into it, as if it were a kind of stream, and she wanted to drink of it.

  She "tasted" it; tested the textures, the strength of the flow and the complexity. It was very tame, and bland. Not terribly strong. Kind of boring, in fact, compared with the rush of power she had gotten when she'd tapped into the node under the gryphons' ruins for the first time.

  I can't do much with this, she thought, and began to trace it out to whatever node it was linked into, without thinking twice about doing so.

  She felt her skull resound with a hard, mental thwap! Her eyes snapped open, and she rocked back on her heels for a moment, staring at the female gryphon, aghast.

  "What did you do that for?" she cried, angrily, "I was just—"

  "You were jussst about to find yourrr way to the Hearrtssstone," Hydona interrupted. "And that, little child, would have eaten you whole, and ssspit out the piecessss. A trrrained and warry Adept can stand againssst it, but not you."

  She licked her lips and blinked. "I thought the Heartstone was shielded. I thought nobody but Adepts could reach it now. Isn't that what all the mages have been working on since we got rid of Falconsbane?"

  "And ssso it isss," Hydona nodded, "But you arrre within the prrotectionsss of the Practice Ground. The ssshieldsss do not extend herrre, so that those who arrre trrrying to Heal the Ssstone can rrreach it without dissrrupting thossse sssame ssshieldsss."

  "So the Adepts healing the Stone come here to work?" she asked. Hydona nodded. Her voice rose with alarm; if the shields didn't extend here—"Isn't it dangerous for us to be here, then? I mean, what if we interfere with what's going on?"

  "Therrre isss no one herrre at the moment," Hydona said calmly. "Arrre you afrrraid?"

  Reluctantly, she nodded. After all she'd heard about the Heartstone and how dangerous it was in its current, shattered state, she wasn't very happy being somewhere that had no protections against it. The idea made her skin crawl a little with uneasiness.

  "Good," Hydona said, with satisfaction. "You ssshould be afrrraid. Verrry afrrraid. It isss nothing to disssregarrd, thisss Ssstone. It isss lightning harrnesssed, but barrrely, in itsss perfect sstate." She refolded her wings, and settled her tail about her forelegs. "Now, why werrre you wanderrring off like that?"

  She shuffled her feet, uncomfortable beneath the gryphon's dark, penetrating gaze. "I—there wasn't much power there," she stammered. "I wanted more than that. I mean, there was hardly enough there to do anything with."

  "Morrre than you think," Hydona scolded gently. "Tcha. You are a child who hasss alwaysss had a forrtune at herrr beck, and hasss never learrrned how to make do with less." The gryphon shook her massive head, and the scent of cinnamon and musk wafted over Elspeth. "You musst learrrn to budget yourrrssself." She cocked her head sideways and watched Elspeth with a knowing eye. "The mossst effective mage I know neverr rossse above Journeyman-classss. He wasss effective becaussse he knew exactly what hisss limitsss werre, and he did everrything possible inssside thossse limitssss. He neverrr perrrmitted lack of powerrr to thwart him; he sssimply found waysss for lesss powerrr to accomplisssh the tasssk."

  That was the harshest speech she'd ever gotten from Hydona, the closest the gryphon had ever come to giving her a scolding.

  Although the thwap a few moments ago was a great deal like one of Kero's "love-taps."

  She rubbed her temple, and considered the similarities between the two teachers. "Delivered for your own good," Kero used to say. Well, this is another land of weapons' work I suppose. And what was it Kero always says? "On the practice ground, the weaponsmaster is the one true God." And this is the same as the practice ground, I guess. She nodded meekly, and Hydona seemed satisfied, at least for the moment.

  "Ssso, do asss I told you in the firrssst place. Find the line, tesst it, and link with it." Hydona sat back on her haunches and gave her a steady, narrowed-eyed look that Elspeth interpreted as meaning she would not permit the slightest deviation from her orders.

  So, with a purely mental sigh, she found the tame, boring line of power again, and tapped into it. The amount of energy possible to get from a source so slight was hardly more than a trickle, compared to the sunlike fury that was the Heartstone. This time, she made the connection without even closing her eyes. The relationship between the inner world of power, unseen by physical eyes, and the outer world no longer confused her. Part of that was simply all the work she'd done with FarSight over the years; another instance of how working with mind-magic made work with real magic much easier.

  Ah, but as Hydona pointed out, less power does not mean less effective power. Mind-magic is still strong. If there are more Heralds with the MageGift, after this I should be able to teach them in a reasonable length of time—not in the six or eight years it takes Quenten's students to become Journeymen. I could just work from their own mind-magic Gifts outward.

  When she finished her assigned task, sealing the connections with a bit of a flourish, Hydona nodded with satisfaction. "Good. Now, channel the powerrr to me." Her beak opened in a hint of amusement at Elspeth's dropped jaw. "What, you did not know sssuch a thing wasss posssible? Becaussse it isss not posssible in mind-magic? Ah, but it isss possible in Healing, isss it not? Asss there are ssssimilaritiesss, there are diferencesss
asss well, and those differencesss might kill you. Trrrussst yourrr intuition, but neverrr asssume any thing."

  What Hydona did not say—because she didn't need to—was that Elspeth needn't think she knew everything just because she was well-versed in the magic of her own people.

  All right, so I'm a bonehead. She reached a tentative "hand" to Hydona, and was relieved to find the gryphon's shields down, and Hydona waiting for her "touch." She had no idea how to proceed with someone who was uncooperative, or worse, unable to cooperate. It took several false starts before she was able to create a channel to Hydona without losing the first one to the ley-line, but once she had it set up, she was able to redirect the power without too much difficulty.

  She was tempted to set up a channel from Hydona to the line, directly, but she had a notion that Hydona would be able to tell the difference, and that the gryphon would not be amused.

  Hydona broke the contact, and Elspeth maintained the channel without drawing any more energy from it while she waited for the gryphon's next instructions.

  "Ssso, you can ssseek, sssample, channel, and sssend. Now we sssshall practice all of thossse," Hydona said genially. "We sssshall prrractice, and prractice, until you can ssseek, sssample, channel and sssend underrr any circumssstancesss."

  Elspeth smothered a groan, and broke her contact with the ley-line neatly, letting its newly-freed power wisp away harmlessly. This was starting to get frustrating. Hydona sounded more and more like Kero with every passing moment. If she starts being any more like Kero, the next thing she's going to do is quote a Shin'a'in proverb at me.

  "It isss sssaid that 'Whatever isss prreparred forr neverrr occurrrssss,'" Hydona quoted. "That isss an ancient Kaled'a'in sssaying. Ssso, let usss prrepare you for finding yourrrssself alone, sssick, wounded, exhaussted, ssssurrounded by enemiessss and needing powerrr, and it will neverrr occurrr. Yesss?"

  Elspeth could only sigh.

  Later, after the gryphons were gone, Darkwind rubbed eyes that ached and burned with the strain of DoubleSight, and was mildly surprised to find Elspeth still there. She sat quietly on a stone bench, leaning against the curved marble wall of their corner of the Practice Ground with her eyes closed. He wondered if she was waiting for him to show her the way out—or just waiting for him.

  He walked up to her, and she stared up at him with eyes as tired as his own. "We should leave, Elspeth," he said carefully, uncertain of her temper, as weary as she looked. "The others will be here soon to work on the Heartstone, and we shall be in the way."

  "We'll be more than in the way, if what Hydona said is any indication," she replied, getting slowly to her feet. "We'd be in danger—and a danger to them. Well, I would be, anyway. Like having a toddling baby underfoot on a tourney field. Nobody would ever hit it on purpose, but... well."

  He nodded, relieved. "There you have it, truly. Would you care to come with me, to find something to eat?"

  She hesitated a moment, then shrugged. "I'm not hungry, though."

  "All the more reason that you should eat," he told her warningly. "Until you are used to it, the manipulating of mage-energies dulls the appetite. You must take care that you do not starve yourself."

  She looked at him in surprise, and must have seen by his expression that he wasn't joking. "Well, that's not such a bad thing if you're on the plump side, but—"

  "Hmm. There are no fat mages," he pointed out as he walked, "except those who habitually and grossly overindulge themselves; those for whom overeating is either a self-indulged vice or a disease. Manipulating mage-energies also costs one in terms of one's own energies, which means that you have just done work, Wingsib. Very hard, physical work, that deceives your own body."

  He led her to the peculiar Gatelike construction called a "pass-through" that led to the Practice Ground. It was yet another way to ensure that the unwary and unready did not intrude on students at practice, or the Adepts at their work. Because of the wall about it, the grounds could not be seen from outside, nor the Vale from within. They were a place and a time unto themselves. And in fact, he sometimes wondered if time moved a bit differently there.

  She shook her head as she recovered from the jolt of disorientation that accompanied the transition across the pass-through. "How do you ever get used to that?" she asked. "That kind of dizzy feeling, I mean."

  He raised an eyebrow at her. "We never do," he said simply. "There is a great deal that we never get used to. We simply cease to show our discomfort."

  She said nothing, but he caught her giving him a speculative look out of the comer of his eye. For his part, he was more concerned with finding one of the hertasi-run "kitchens" before his temper deteriorated. Hunger did that to him, and he couldn't always predict what would set him off when his temper wore thin.

  He didn't want to alienate her; the opposite was more like it, but he often felt as if he was dancing on eggs around her. He wondered if she felt the same around him. There was no cultural ground that they could both meet on, and yet they had a great deal in common.

  The "kitchen" was not a kitchen as such; just a common area, a room in one of the few ground-level structures, that the hertasi kept stocked with fresh fruits, bread, smoked meat, and other things that did not spoil readily. Those Hawkbrothers who either did not have the skill or the inclination to prepare their own meals came here to put together what they pleased. The fare was not terribly varied, but it was good. And at the moment, Darkwind had no inclination to make the trek to his own ekele for food. Not while his stomach was throttling his backbone and complaining bitterly.

  He indicated to Elspeth that she should help herself, and chose some fruit and bread, a bit of smoked meat, and a handful of dosent roots that had a cheesy taste and texture when raw. They found a comfortable spot to sit, in an out-of-the-way clearing, and fell to without exchanging much more than nods.

  "So, what was it that Hydona tutored you in?" he asked, when the edge was off his hunger.

  "Baby-steps." She made a face. "This is childish of me, I know, but she had me tapping into a very low-power ley-line, over and over, until she was certain that I could handle it in my sleep. But I was working the node under the lair with Need, and she knows that!"

  "So you wonder why is she insisting that you work with minimal energy?" he replied, trying very hard to see things through her eyes.

  Elspeth nodded, and nibbled a chasern fruit tentatively.

  He licked the juice of another chasern from his fingers, and tried to answer as he thought Hydona would. "Firstly, there are some sources of power that are much too dangerous even for a single Adept to handle. Yes, even here, in our own territory. I mean besides the Heartstone." He nodded at her look of surprise. "There are pools of tainted magic, like thin-roofed caves, left by the Mage Wars. Difficult to see from the surface, and deadly to fall into. That is what a Healing Adept must deal with, and at the moment, we have none. There are even perfectly natural sources too strong for one Adept to handle by himself—any node with more than seven ley-lines leading into it, for instance, or rogue lines, which fluctuate in power levels unpredictably. Add in the tendency of lines to move, and you find the only way to use these sources is with a group of Adepts, each one supporting the others, each doing a relatively small amount of work so they have a reserve to deal with emergencies."

  "I can see why she doesn't want me to just tap into whatever powerful source I See," Elspeth replied impatiently, "but why is she insisting that I only work with a bare trickle of power when energy is everywhere?"

  "Ah, but it isn't," he replied, happy to at last discover the misconception that was the source of her impatience. "There is a limit on all Gifts, no matter how powerful. There is a limit on how far you, personally, can FarSee, yes?"

  She nodded, slowly, and focused on him intently, paying very close attention to his words.

  "And when you Mindspeak, you can only do so within a given distance, true?" he continued. "Well, power is not everywhere—or rather, great power is not e
verywhere. There are places where there are not even weak ley-lines for a day's ride in any direction. There are places where even the nodes are weaker than the line you worked with today. We are Tayledras, Elspeth, and we are enjoined by the Goddess to cleanse these lands of magic. To that end, we concentrate it here. The energy level is unnaturally high in and around a Vale, even one as damaged as this one, and unnaturally high in and about the lands you call the Pelagir Hills, which we call the Uncleansed Lands."

  She swallowed the bite she had begun with a bit of difficulty. "So you're saying that when I get home, I might find that there's no magic energy to work with?" She looked horrified, and he hastened to assure her.

  "No. I am saying that when you return, you may find you have lower levels of energy available than you have here. Or the power may be there, but buried deeply." He ate the last of his fruit. "That is why there are schools of mages, who build up reservoirs of power that are available to the Masters and Adepts of those schools. And that is why blood-mages build power for themselves by exploiting the pain and death of others. So, you must know how to work subtly. You must learn that raining down blows with pure power is not always the correct response. It was not with some of Falconsbane's creatures; that you witnessed."

  She shook her head; whether stubbornly or for some other reason, he couldn't tell. "Listen," he said, "Hydona believes you are doing well. Once you have mastered the fainter sources of power, and in using the energy you yourself have stored within you, she and Treyvan wish us all to take our places on the border."

  She perked up at that, and he smiled to see her interest. "Really?" she exclaimed. "I've felt so useless. I know you have to learn theory before you practice anything, but—"

  "But you came here to become a weapon against the enemy of your land, I know," he replied. "Now please—I know that you are impatient, but believe me. It is better to use little power rather than too much. Using a poleaxe to kill small game destroys the game thoroughly, rendering it useless. So it is with magic. Too much can attract things you do not wish to have to deal with, as a dead creature can attract things more dangerous than it was to scavenge upon it. Master the subtlety Hydona tries to teach you. There will be time and more than time for the greater magics."