Before he had a chance to recover from that shock, Darkwind had launched an attack of his own, but not one he likely would have expected. He attacked the mage's shields with a needle-lance of force, not the mage himself, boring through the protections at their weakest point, where some of the energy daggers had impacted. The blue-white lance split the air between them, and Darkwind held it straight on target, despite the Changechild's best efforts to shake it off. Elspeth readied a second attack, arrows of lightning, but did not launch it, holding it in reserve.
The Changechild sent his unliving creature to attack them; the shambling, bloody thing charged with a speed quite out of keeping with the condition it was in. It was halfway to them before Elspeth realized that it was an attack, but Gwena intercepted it, like a trained war-horse, as if she had dealt with such things all her life. She sidestepped the wicked horns neatly, and twisted sideways to launch a cruel double-hooved kick with her hind legs as the thing passed, that sundered its hips with a meaty thunk and a wet crack.
The dead thing staggered and went down again, and tried to heave itself erect. But it could not struggle upright again, for its hip and one of its hind legs were broken and would no longer bear its weight.
At that same instant, Darkwind penetrated the Changechild's shields, and Elspeth launched the lightning-arrows she had been readying, targeting them at the hole Darkwind had bored and was even now spreading open. The first one missed slightly, impacting just to one side of the hole, splintering as had the mage's own energy-daggers.
The second did not miss, nor did Darkwind's fireball that followed in the arrow's wake.
Within the enemy's shields and contained by them, a storm of utterly silent fireworks erupted. The Changechild stood frozen for a moment, a dark silhouette against a background of coruscating energies—
Then he collapsed to the ground as his shields collapsed around him, and, like the dyheli that had been his victim, did not move again.
They patrolled the border until nightfall and the arrival of Summersky, the scout that was to relieve them, but there wasn't so much as a leaf out of place. As they headed homeward toward the Vale, Elspeth found herself very glad that she was riding. Although Hydona had warned her that a mage-duel would take far more out of her than she would ever believe, she hadn't really understood what the gryphon meant. Now though—now she knew Hydona was not only right, she had understated the case. Mostly all that she wanted right now was a soak in one of the hot springs, a meal, and her bed.
But besides being weary, she was very confused; a poor combination, all things considered. She was dissatisfied with her first foray on k'Sheyna's border. Certainly there were questions that had not been answered adequately.
And as she followed in Darkwind's wake, watching him stride tirelessly along with one hand on Treyvan's shoulder and folded wing, and Vree perched on a padded perch on his shoulder, she tried to reconcile her mixed emotions. It didn't help matters any that from this angle she had such a good view of his tight, muscular....
Hydona trilled to herself, apparently amused by a private joke. The female gryphon walked beside her as her mate strode beside Darkwind, all of them following a dry stream-bed back to the Vale. Hydona's head was easily level with Elspeth's, which was a little unsettling, since it underscored how very large the gryphon was. It was easy to forget that, when one often saw them lounging about like overgrown house cats.
"And what arrre you thinking?" Hydona asked, as if she were following Elspeth's thoughts.
"I'm not sure," she said, frowning, trying to put her emotional reactions into words. "This isn't the first time I've been in combat—it isn't even the first time I've been in magical combat. I think we did all right—"
"You did," Hydona confirmed. "Verrry well, essspecially forr a beginerrr. But asss you pointed out, you have had combat experrrience, and I expected nothing lesss than competence." She cocked her head at Elspeth. "How do you feel you will manage againssst that enemy of yourrrsss?"
She thought for a moment, weighing what she could do now with what she knew Ancar could produce. "Well, providing Ancar hasn't acquired an army of mages, I should be able to do something about him, if I can keep progressing at this rate. I mean, it isn't easy, but so far I haven't lost any body parts. Provided I don't reach an upper limit to my powers in the near future, and Ancar hasn't learned to tap nodes. I know he should be a Master-class mage by now at the very least."
"One should neverrr trrusst an enemy to be placssid. What about yourrr perrrforrrmance?" Hydona asked shrewdly. "How would you rrrate yourssself?"
"Darkwind and I worked together as a team quite well, I think. At least we did once he got around to doing something." There it was; that was what she had been trying to pinpoint as the root of her discontent. "But that was the problem; he gave that damned thing a warning even after we knew it had worked blood-magic!"
She couldn't keep indignation from creeping into her voice, and didn't try. Kero would have cut the interloper down where he stood; filled him full of so many arrows that he would have looked like a hedgehog.
"The oddssss werrre two to one," Hydona responded. "Thrree to one, if we count Gwena. Don't you think that the crrreaturrre dessserrved a fairr warrrning with oddsss like that?"
Elspeth shook her head, stubbornly. "No," she said flatly, and her voice shook a little with intensity. "I don't. We knew he was a blood-mage; there's no point in giving something like that a chance to get away or hurt you. I sure as Havens don't intend to give Ancar a shred of warning. In fact, if I get the chance, I'll ambush him!"
As always, the mere thought of Ancar and what he had done made her blood boil. The tortures he had inflicted on Talia—the rape of his own country—the hundreds, thousands of lives he had thrown away—but most of all, the careless glee he had taken in it all—
No, when she thought of Ancar, all she could think of was the chance of getting him in her power and shredding him. She hated him, she hated everything he'd ever done, and she wanted him dead, safely dead, so that he couldn't hurt anyone any more.
Ever.
In fact, if there was a way to destroy his very soul, she'd do it, so that there wouldn't even be a chance he'd be reborn and start over again, as some mages could.
"You arrre angrrry," Hydona observed. "This enemy of yourrrsss angersss you."
"I'm always angry when I think about Ancar," she replied fiercely. "I can't help it; the man's another Falconsbane, just as evil and as corrupt, and I want him dead as much as any Tayledras could ever have wanted Falconsbane dead." She raised her chin defiantly. "More than that, I want Ancar's liver on a plate, so I can feed it to something vile. I not only want to kill him, I want to hurt him so that he knows some of what his victims felt. I hate him, I'm afraid of him, and if there were any way to put him through what he has put others through, I'd take it."
Hydona shook her head with open admonition. "You arrre too angrrry," she said. "It isss not underrr contrrol, thisss angerrr. Hate will not serrve you herrrre. And ssssuch hate, sssuch angerrr will weaken you. You musst learrrn to contrrrol them, orr they will contrrol you. Thisss I know."
Elspeth grimaced, but kept her lips clamped tight on what she wanted to say. This wasn't the first time she'd heard this particular lecture; the first time, it had come from Darkwind. And it just made her angrier.
How could she not hate the bastard, after everything he'd done to her friends and her land? How could she not hate him after seeing what he had done to his own people? How could she not feel enraged at everything he had done?
And how in Havens could an emotion that strong possibly be a weakness? It was a contradiction in terms.
But there was absolutely no point in getting into an argument over it, so she elected to keep her thoughts to herself, and her tongue on a very short leash, until they reached the sanctuary of the Vale.
Hydona said nothing more.
The gryphons left them once they were well within the "safe" area that was kept under cl
ose watch by the mages, and full of alarms that would be tripped by strangers. By the time they arrived at the shielded entrance to the Vale it was already dark, and her temper had cooled considerably. Not that she had changed her mind about anything she'd said, but she wasn't quite so ready to bite off someone's head over it.
One thing had calmed her down a bit; she discovered that Gwena felt the same as she did—at least about Ancar. The Companion was of two minds about Darkwind warning the Changechild, admitting that there were good reasons for either decision, whether to warn or not—but on the subject of Ancar of Hardorn, Gwena was in full accord with her Chosen.
:The man is a mad dog,: she told Elspeth flatly. :You don't give a mad dog a chance to bite you, and you don't try and cure it. You get rid of it, before it destroys something you love.:
That backing of her own thoughts on the matter made her feel a bit more secure about her own judgment, and that Gwena shared her anger eased her own somewhat. That helped her temper to cool a lot faster.
She was quite ready to see the Vale long before they actually reached it. She discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that it was no real effort to keep her Mage-Sight invoked—and since Mage-Sight gave her an enhanced, owl-like view of her surroundings, she left it in force. It occurred to her, as she noted how every living creature and some things that were not alive each bore a faint outline of energy, that this must be what Companions used for night-sight. After all, in order to tap into and manipulate mage-power, you had to be able to See it, and since this kind of Sight worked equally well by day or night, why not use it to give you a nighttime advantage? Yet another Companion power she could explain away, which gave her a perverse feeling of satisfaction.
Once they approached the shields surrounding the Vale, she had to drop the Sight; the energies there were so powerful they threatened to "blind" her.
Well, that's one reason not to count on it for night-sight. And if powerful energies can "blind" you—well, that's something to be wary of. Hmm. And something to keep in mind as a weapon.
The faint tingle of her skin as they passed the entrance to the Vale, as if lightning were about to strike her, told her that they had crossed the shields and protections standing patient guard over the only way in and out. But even if she had not felt that little tingle, she would have known they were inside k'Sheyna Vale, for in the space of half a heartbeat they went from deep autumn to high summer. Suddenly her clothing was much too warm.
Gwena stopped as Darkwind went on ahead, pushing through the foliage draped over the path and vanishing into the shadowy gloom. Elspeth dismounted, unfastened her cloak, and draped it over the saddle. Even then she was a little too warm; she rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and opened the collar to the balmy night air, heavy with the scent of night-blooming flowers she could not even put a name to.
This place was the closest thing on earth that she had ever seen to the Havens of scripture and sermon. Too bad I can't bring a little bit of this back with me, she thought wistfully. Fresh fruit and flowers in the dead of winter, hot springs and cool pools to bathe in—trysting nooks, and I can think of plenty of people who'd enjoy those! Near-invisible servants. Balmy breezes. No wonder Vanyel visited k'Treva whenever he was exhausted.
Darkwind had said more than once that this Vale wasn't even a real showplace of what the Hawkbrothers could do. K'Sheyna, he'd wistfully related, was the smallest of the Clans even when they were at full strength, and the Vale was neglected and run down. Half tended at the very best, with no water-sculptures, no wind-harps—more than half the ekeles untenanted and falling to ruins—no one making vine-tapestries or flower-falls. No concerts except on the rarest of occasions, no artists except Ravenwing and the hertasi. Still, Elspeth found it beautiful beyond her wildest dreams.
She could only wonder what the rest of the Vales must be like. And—could the Heralds create something like this, if only in miniature?
But—should they?
She brushed aside a rainbow-threaded dangling vine and wondered about that.
This Vale was a very seductive, hedonistic place, and many people already thought that the Heralds were a bit too randy as it was. It was also a place that could encourage sloth; she found it very easy to justify sleeping a little later, lingering in the hot spring, or sitting and watching a waterfall and thinking about nothing at all.
Her footsteps made no sound on the soft sand of the pathway, sand that cradled her feet luxuriously. Everything about this Vale hinted at luxury—a luxury that few outside the Vales enjoyed. In fact, not even the Tayledras "cousins," the Shin'a'in, got to enjoy this sort of life. For that matter, could the Heralds really justify making themselves a private paradise when there were so many other things that needed doing?
A pair of long-tailed birds sang sweetly nearby, scarcely an arm's length from Gwena, reminding her by their presence that outside the Vale the songbirds had long since gone south. Even if Heralds could justify building a place like this, there was no way that they could justify lounging about in it the way the Tayledras did. Frolicking in flower-bedecked bowers and lounging in hot pools didn't get circuits ridden. Too much living like this, and she'd find herself wasting time designing feather-masks and festival-garb instead of getting her work done.
A feeling of moral superiority crept into her thoughts, and she let it. She led Gwena up the path to her loaned ekele and the tiny, sculpted hot pool beneath it, and felt a bit smug.
The stone path wound across another just ahead of her, and the murmur of voices to her right warned her that several folk were going to cross ahead of her. She paused—
And her sense of moral superiority vanished as soon as the Hawkbrothers came in view.
"Els-peth," called the first of the group as he caught sight of her, "We should like the use of your pool. The hertasi are cleaning several of the others, and yours is the nearest that is prepared. May we?"
The mage-light that danced over his head revealed the little group of five pitilessly. The one in the lead, a mage named Autumnwing, was the best off, physically—and he was worn right down to the bone. Overextended, to say the least; his eyes were sunken, his skin pale, and he trembled with weariness. Behind him were two of Darkwind's scouts, both bruised and bloody, and supporting them were two more mages who looked in no better shape than Autumnwing. Even as she watched, one was redressing a wound that gleamed dark and wet, while her partner held the arm steady.
"What in Havens happened to you?" she exclaimed, before she could stop herself.
Autumnwing shrugged. "I have been with the rest on the Heartstone; it fluxed again today. Be glad you were not within the Vale, or we would have conscripted you with or without training. But I am not so bad—these four met with a pack of Changewolves that had cornered one of k'Sheyna's dyheli herds, and if it had not been for them, there might have been a score of Changewolves hounding the Vale itself tonight." As Elspeth's eyes widened, he added, "They are very valiant. Had I been in their place, I fear I would have fled."
The arm-wounded woman grunted and said, "Forty-arrow fight." Then she shrugged.
"P—please," Elspeth stammered, "Feel free to use the spring. I was going to find some food; shall I bring you back some, or send a hertasi with it?"
"Either," replied one of the scouts wearily. "I could happily eat one of our fallen enemies at this moment, raw, and without salt."
:I'll take care of it, if you'll pull off the tack,: Gwena told her. :I can probably find a hertasi before you can.:
In answer, Elspeth bent to loose the saddle-girth, and saddle and blanket slid to the ground as she unbuckled the hackamore and hauled it over Gwena's ears. The Companion vanished into the undergrowth. "She's gone to recruit you some food," Elspeth told the others, as she bent to retrieve the fallen saddle.
"Our thanks," Autumnwing told her gravely; she waited for them to make their way past her, then gave them a head start, before following in their wake.
Hot pools and life in an eternal summer don'
t compensate for that, she thought, balancing the saddle on her shoulder. And given the Goddess' edicts, I suppose that even in Vales where the Heartstone is whole the mages aren't sitting around discussing water-sculpture.
So much for moral superiority.
The Vales must seem like paradise itself when they're out in the Pelagir wilds—but one that wouldn't be there to return to if they weren't out in those wilds to defend it. Is Valdemar any different to a Herald?
Willfully faulty memory caught up with reality. This wasn't the first time she'd seen Hawkbrothers in such poor condition. The mages, half-Healed Starblade among them, worked themselves to a thread every day, shielding the Vale from attack, and trying to do something about their Heartstone. She had her own experience today to show her the hazards of being a scout on the bonier of the k'Sheyna territory, where every league held new and deadly honors.
For that matter, she'd been an inadvertent witness to the worst—save only death—that could befall a Hawkbrother. She'd seen what had happened to Dawnfire, and she'd been asked to feed power to Kethia one day, when the mage that usually augmented the Healer-shaman was too exhausted to continue. Kethia put Starblade through purest agony that day, explaining only that this was a necessary part of Healing what had been done to him. Elspeth still felt uncomfortable with the memory. Although she repeated to herself again and again that it was for the better, she still felt like a torturer's apprentice for it.
We're pampered, we Heralds, she realized, stopping long enough to shift the weight of the saddle to her other shoulder, and shake some of the aches out of the arm that had balanced it. We have everything we need taken care of for us. We live in prepared quarters, we have servants picking up after us. The Hawkbrothers have Vales; we have our rooms at the Collegium. They have hertasi, we have human servants. They have their food and clothing made for them; so do we. Neither of us have physical pleasures that are adequate compensation for what we do.
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