She reached the foot of the tree that held her ekele; muted voices and faint splashing told her that the pool was occupied. She hung her saddle and hackamore over the railing at the bottom of the stair, and took herself up the staircase.
Darkwind had pointed out something about the Vales; that anyone with sufficient magic power could create one. They were really just very large hothouses, with a mage-barrier serving in place of glass. Nothing terribly exotic about a hothouse. She pulled aside the door to her ekele, and looked down over the edge of the staircase for a moment. Kerowyn's grueling lessons in strategy and tactics caused her to realize something else as well.
The ekeles were not simply exotic love nests. They were based directly on the quite defensible treetop homes of the tervardi. How defensible they were could be demonstrated by the ekeles built outside the Vale; once the ladder to the ground had been pulled up, there was virtually no way to reach them. They were wanted against fire, even, by set-spells and a transparent resin painted around the tree trunks well past two man-heights.
Even the ekele here could be made quite defensible simply by destroying the rope-and-truss suspended staircases, making them an excellent place to retreat if the Vale defenses were ever breached.
Gwena must have found her hertasi right away, for there was a tray of food waiting for her, and the herb tea in the pot was still hot and steeping. She helped herself to bread and meat, and collapsed onto her pillow-strewn pallet.
My people build walls. The Tayledras put themselves up in the trees. Differences in philosophy, really. More like the Heralds than like the ordinary folk of Valdemar. They think in terms of evasion, the way we do, rather than the stand-and-fight of the Guard.
She finished as much of her meal as she wanted at the moment, and stripped off her filthy, blood-speckled clothing. Dyheli blood, of course, and not of herself or Darkwind, but it was still going to be a major task to get it out. She could bleach it with magic of course, and she probably would, but that was a waste of mage-power.
Maybe she'd just shift over to scout clothing. It was more practical for all this woods running, anyway.
She wrapped a huge towel around herself and descended the staircase, heading for the spring. Occupied or no, she was going to use it. After all, she deserved a good soak as much as her visitors did; she'd just spent her day doing the same things they had done. She had earned a little luxury.
They all had.
Chapter Nine
Vree stayed calm on Darkwind's shoulder after they passed the protections at the entrance to the Vale, even though until recently the bondbird had not wanted to enter the Vale itself. The rogue energies of the Heartstone had disturbed Vree badly, and the bondbirds of every other scout as well, but the additional shielding on the Stone seemed to be having some beneficial effect.
:Are you all right?: he asked Vree, just to be sure. :We can turn around and leave if you want; I can hold the scouts' meeting at the ekele just as well as here. The mages will just have to climb a rope ladder instead of a staircase, and they'll all have to squeeze into my rooms. I think it would bear their weight.:
Vree ducked his head a little, and yawned. :Fine. Happy,: he replied sleepily. Then, anxiously, :Food soon?:
:Soon,: he assured the bird. :Quite soon. As soon as we get to the meeting.: The other scouts would have hungry birds as well; the hertasi would have provided a selection of whole game birds and small mammals for the raptors, along with some kind of meal for the birds' bondmates.
For the first time in a very long time, this would be a meeting of day-watch scouts and scout-mages. Stormcloud would hold a similar meeting for those on night-watch. Yesterday Darkwind had asked them to gather because there was something important to be addressed. He hadn't specified what that was.
He had been the scouts' representative to the k'Sheyna Council during the most divisive period in their history—the period when Starblade, as directed by Mornelithe Falconsbane, was creating rifts between mages and nonmages, to weaken the Clan and make it easier for Falconsbane to destroy them. Darkwind had been willing to serve then, knowing that no one else had the edge he did, having his own father as chief of the Council. It was a bitter truth that his advantage then was not in currying favor, but knowing the other's weaknesses. He had sometimes been able to manipulate his father. Equally painful to recall was the fact that Starblade had done the same to him.
But now that he was devoting more time to mage-craft, he had less time to spend elsewhere. The scouts were his friends and charges, and with his attentions divided so, they could conceivably suffer for it.
It was time for a change. Now the question was whether or not he could get the others to agree with him. In general the kind of person who became a successful scout was not the kind who enjoyed being in a position of authority, or who relished dealing with those who were.
The best place for the gathering was the central clearing that had been used for the celebration, but that was closer to the Heartstone than Darkwind liked, shielding or no shielding. So he had asked them all to gather in the smaller clearing beneath the tallest tree in the Vale; the one that the scouts had used for dancing.
When he arrived, he found a near replication of the celebration, except that there was no music or dancing, the clothing was more subdued, and the conversation level was considerably quieter. Birds stood on portable perches, the exposed roots of trees, or in the branches, most of them with talons firmly in their dinner, the rest eyeing the mound of fur and feathers with a view to selecting something choice. Brighter mage-lights than those conjured for the celebration hung up in the branches, illuminating everything below with a clear yellow light, sunlike but for its intensity. Tayledras sprawled all over the clearing, eating, talking, or both. Darkwind did a quick mental tally and came up a few names short, as Vree yearned toward the heap of "dinner," making little plaintive chirping noises in the back of his throat.
:Hungry!: he urged his bondmate, as Darkwind tried not to laugh at the ridiculous sounds he made. The uninitiated were often very surprised at the calls of raptorial birds; most of them, other than the defiant screams of battle and challenge, were very unimpressive chirps, clucks, and squeals. One species, the Harshawk, even croaked, sounding very like a duck with a throat condition. And owls hissed; not the kinds of things one expected to hear from the fierce hunters of the sky.
But silly sounds notwithstanding, Vree's hunger was very real and quite intense, and the bondbird had more than earned his dinner. Darkwind took him on the gauntlet and tossed him into the air, to give him a little height. Vree gave two great beats of his wings, reaching the lowest of the branches, then dove straight down at the pile, shouldering aside lesser and less-famished birds to get at a fat, choice duck. One of the Harshawks quacked indignantly as the tasty morsel was snatched right from under his talons, and two of the owls hissed angrily at being shouldered aside, but Vree ignored them all. The gyre heaved himself and his prize up into the air, and lumbered off to a nearby branch, where he mantled both wings over it and tore into it with his sharp, fiercely hooked beak.
"Here—" Shadowstar shoved sliced meat and bread at Darkwind, and snatched back her fingers, laughing, when he grabbed for it as if he were a hungry forestgyre himself. "Heyla! Sharpset, are we? In yarak?"
"Something like," he admitted, "It's been a long day, with a mage-duel at the end of it." He took a healthy bite of the food, and bolted it, suddenly realizing just how hungry he was. "Where are Summerstar and Lightwing? And—ah—" it took him a moment to remember the names of the mages that had been assigned to help the two scouts.
Shadowstar beat him to it. "Songlight and Winddance. Gone to get injuries tended again; they ran into Changewolves. Nothing serious."
A tentative Mindtouch from an unfamiliar source reassured him. :Songlight here. We are mostly soaking bruises, Darkwind. I will stay in Mindtouch and relay to the others, if you like.:
:Please,: he replied, taking a seat where he could see the others. :T
his shouldn't take long.:
He took out his dagger and rapped the hilt of it on the side of the tree; it rang hollowly, and got him instant attention and instant silence.
"I hope that most of you have guessed why I asked for these meetings—" he began.
Shadowstar stood up, interrupting him. "We pretty much figured it out," she said dryly, as the others nodded. "We were talking it all over before you got here. And we're all agreed that while we don't want to lose you as our leader, you deserve a rest, and you aren't going to get one at the rate you're going."
Nods all around confirmed her words, and Darkwind felt an irrational surge of relief—both that the scouts still wanted him as leader, and that they were willing to let him go.
"Have any of you got a candidate in mind?" he asked. Surprisingly, it was one of the mages who answered him.
"Winterlight," the young man said promptly. "He did it before you had the position, and now that we aren't at each others' throats, he says he would be willing to take it again."
Darkwind turned to his old friend, one of the oldest scouts in the Clan, raising an eyebrow inquisitively. Winterlight coughed and half-smiled. "I know the job," he answered, confirming the mage's words. "And since it's no longer the trial that it was—"
Darkwind grinned openly. "Then as far as I am concerned, the position is yours, my friend—if the rest agree, that is."
He was going to open the meeting up to discussions, but the others forestalled him with their unanimous assent. Even the bondbirds seemed pleased with the choice. It was a good one; although he was not a mage, Winterlight seldom dyed his hair, and wore it long, as a mage did. So he looked like a mage, and he was a contemporary of Starblade and Iceshadow, which made him doubly acceptable to the Elders of the Council.
"As long as the night-watch agrees, then, it's yours," he told Winterlight happily. "And if they come up with a different candidate, you'll have to deal with that yourself."
"If they come up with a different candidate, we'll split the duties," Winterlight replied immediately. "I've had my fill of dissension."
Darkwind shrugged. "That's fine with me," he responded.
Winterlight smiled. "It wasn't just a rest that the youngsters decided you need," he said, in a confidential whisper. "I overheard one of them saying that you've been living like a sworn celibate and you needed to take that pretty Outlander off to a bower and—"
The rest of Winterlight's whispered suggestion made Darkwind flush so hard he was afraid he was glowing.
The rest of the scouts howled with laughter.
Winterlight just smiled enigmatically and asked if Darkwind needed to borrow any feathers. Darkwind deliberately turned his attention first to Vree to make sure the gyre was all right, then to his food, both to cover his confusion. When he looked beside him again, Winterlight was gone—
—but the Shin'a'in shaman Kethra had taken his place.
Oh, my. I wonder what I owe this pleasure to.
He brushed invisible crumbs from his tunic, selfconsciously. Kethra was another source of confusion entirely for him, and not just because she was his father's lover.
Although that was a part of it—
"Is Father well?" he asked her, quickly.
She nodded, her bright green eyes as cool and unreadable as a falcon's, and smoothed her long black hair in back of her ears. She wore a birdfetish necklace that sparkled in the magelight, and a braided length of cord adorned with feathers hung from her left temple.
"He is relatively well," she told him, as the assembled scouts collected their birds as if at an unspoken signal, and drifted not-too-casually off, back to their respective ekeles. There wasn't any people-food left, and the few carcasses that remained were taken by those who lived outside the Vale.
Kethra, however, was not leaving. "There are some things I need to discuss with you before I proceed to the next steps with him. They concern you, and your relationship to him."
"What about it?" he asked, more brusquely than he intended. Suddenly it seemed as if everyone in k'Sheyna was interested in his private life! Am I to be allowed no thoughts to myself? He glanced around the clearing, hoping for a distraction, but all of the scouts who had thronged the area had evaporated like snow in the summer sun, as if there was some kind of conspiracy between them and the Shin'a'in. She only pursed her lips and shook her head at him, allowing him no evasions.
"I need to know what you think of him now—and what you think of me." She fixed him with an unflinching gaze. "You know I am Starblade's lover."
He flushed, painfully embarrassed. "Yes," he said shortly. "And Iceshadow told me why—why it was necessary."
"What did he tell you?" she asked. "Humor me."
He averted his eyes for a moment, but she recaptured them. "Because so many of the things that were done to Father, and the magics that were cast to control him, were linked with sex, it has required sexually oriented Healing to undo them. That meant Father's Healer should be a lover as well."
Kethra nodded, and leaned back, her slender hands clasped around one knee. "That is quite true," she said quietly, "And in case you had wondered, I knew that was the case when I came here at Kra'heera's request. But had you also deciphered that I am your father's love as well as his lover, and he has become mine as well?"
Darkwind tried to look away in confusion, and found that he could not. "I—it had occurred to me," he admitted. "I am not blind, and your attitude toward one another shows."
She set her jaw with the perpetual half-smile that shaman always seemed to have. "And what do you think of that?" she asked bluntly, a question he had not expected. "What do you think of me, when you picture me in that role?"
Gods of my fathers. She would ask that. "I am confused," he said, as honestly as he could. "I do not know what to think. I admire you for yourself, shaman. You are a very strong, talented, and clever woman. You force my father to be strong again, as well. I think that he must need this, or you would not do it. I see you encourage him to go to his limits; you permit him to do for himself what he can. Yet you do not let him fall when you can steady him, and you match your talents with his when he cannot do something alone."
"You are describing a partner," Kethra said calmly. "An equal. Someone who is likely to go on being one for the foreseeable future."
He nodded, reluctantly, aware that his uneasiness was making him sweat.
"And this makes you ill at ease." She stated it as an observation rather than a question. "Uncomfortable in my presence whether or not I am with your father."
He sighed. "Yes, lady. It is not just because you are a shaman, though there is something to that."
Kethra chuckled. "Shaman make you nervous?"
Darkwind took a deep breath and chose his words carefully. "Shaman as a rule can make one uncomfortable by seeing more than one would like. That is not the whole of it, though. I do not know what to say to you, or how to treat you. You are the first of my father's lovers who has been a full partner since my mother's death. And when I am looking objectively at my memories, it seems to me that you have more patience and compassion than my mother had. And yet—"
"And yet, what of your loyalty to your true mother, now that I have come to replace her? Surely I seem an interloper. I suffer by comparison with your memory of her."
"It is easy to regard someone who is dead as without peer," he told her candidly. "I have lost enough friends and loved ones to be aware of that." He cocked his head to one side, and nibbled his lower lip. This was, possibly, one of the oddest conversations he had ever taken part in. "Say this. I know that I can call you friend. I think if you will give me time, I can even come to call you more than that. Will this serve?"
Her smile widened, and she reached out a hand to clasp his, warmly. "It will serve," she told him. "Friend alone would have served; I am pleased you think of me that well. I was not sure, Darkwind. You are adept at hiding your true feelings—you have had need to, I know. That is not unique to Tayledras, Shin'a'
in, or any other people. Trust me, we shaman need to hide our feelings ourselves sometimes, to struggle through pain."
He shrugged. "We all have needed to hide true feelings here, to one extent or another. Events have made it necessary."
She nodded. "Well, at least you and I have looked beneath the masks, and not run from what we have found."
He smiled, impressed by her steadfast sense of humor. "Now the unpleasant news. Your father is still far from recovered. It will not take weeks or even months to cure him; it will be a matter of years."
He took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair. He felt his shoulders slumping, and remembered that it made a poor impression of strength, but he knew Kethra would see through any attempts to hide his emotions, either by words or body language. He closed his eyes. "I had thought so, but I had not liked to believe it. Father has always been so—strong. He has always recovered quickly from things. Are you quite certain of this?"
A deep, somewhat strained male voice spoke from behind them.
"You must believe it, my son," said Starblade. Darkwind jerked his head up and turned to face him. Starblade wore a thin, loose-cut resting-gown that Songwind... Darkwind had designed for him a decade ago. The Adept walked slowly into the clearing, and now that he knew the truth, Darkwind saw the traces of severe damage done to him, physically as well as mentally.
Starblade found a space beside Kethra and joined her. "You must. I am but a shadow of what I was. In fact," he chuckled as if he found the idea humorous, "I have considered changing my use-name to Starshadow. Except that we already have a Shadowstar, and that would be confusing for everyone."
Darkwind clenched his hands. It wasn't easy hearing Starblade confess to weakness; it was harder hearing him admit to such profound weakness that he'd thought of altering his use-name. That implied a lasting condition, as when Songwind had become Darkwind, and sometimes an irreparable condition.
Starblade sat carefully down beside the shaman, and took her hand in his. His left hand—the one that Darkwind had pierced with his dagger as part of his father's freeing from Mornelithe Falconsbane. It showed a glossy, whitened scar a half-thumblength long now that the bandages had been removed. "I hope that you and I have reconciled our differences, my son," he said, as Darkwind tried not to squirm, "because I must tell you that I do not trust my decision-making ability any more than I can rely on my faded powers."
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