Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Vree cowered against Darkwind's chest, making tiny sounds of acute distress and pain.

  :Now you're going to be minus that feather until you molt, unless I can imp it back in.:

  :Hurts,: Vree wailed. :Scared!:

  :l know it hurts. You should be glad he didn't pull it out, or bite your tail off.: Darkwind caressed the gyre until he stopped trembling, as Elspeth bent to pick up the feather and offered it to him.

  He took the gesture at face value, and not for the one implied by Hawkbrother custom. :Tell Treyvan you're sorry,: he told Vree sternly, holding the bondbird out to the gryphon's face, within easy reach of that enormous beak.

  Maybe this will impress him enough that he won't try the game again. He sighed. I certainly hope so.

  The gyre looked up into the huge amber eyes as Darkwind held him up to the gryphon's face. :S-s-s-sorry,: the bird stuttered—no mean feat, mentally. :S-s-s-sorry!:

  He certainly sounded sincere.

  :Promise you won't do it again,: Darkwind ordered.

  Vree shook, and slicked down all his feathers with unhappiness. :Not snatch again,: he agreed. :Not ever. Never, never, never, never.:

  Darkwind transferred the bird from his wrist to the padded shoulder of his jerkin, where Vree huddled against his hair, actually pushing himself into the hair so that it partially covered him, hiding. Darkwind examined the feather carefully, hoping that it hadn't been too badly damaged. Vree depended on his tail for steering; the loss of one feather might not seem like a great deal, but it would make a difference in his maneuverability.

  "You did a good job," he remarked to Treyvan, whose crest was rising slowly again. "It's a nice clean cut, only cracked the shaft a little. I won't need to use one of last year's set. I should be able to imp this one back in with no problems."

  The gryphon chuckled. "It isss in part Vree'sss doing. If he had not turrned, I ssshould not have been able to catch the tail featherssss. If he did not turrrn, I wasss going to catch him and hold him, then let him go."

  "He'd have been frightened to death. Well, I think you've finally made an impression on him," Darkwind replied—not chuckling, though he wanted to, for fear of hurting the bird's feelings. "He finally sees you as a bigger, hungrier, meaner version of a bondbird, and not something like a glorified firebird. To tell you the truth, I think he's just fascinated by beautiful feathers, like your crest and the firebirds' tails. He snatches their feathers all the time."

  Treyvan's crest rose completely, with mock indignation. "I ssshould hope we arrre not glorrrified firrrebirds," he snorted. "I am a vain birrrd, and I appreciate that he findsss my cressst ssso attrrractive, but we arrre not anything like firrrrebirrdssss."

  "What are you, though?" Elspeth asked, suddenly. "I mean, you don't really look like anything I know of—other than vaguely like hawk-eagles and falcons."

  "Oh, well, we arrre not anything you know," Hydona replied, vaguely. "Not hawk, not falcon. It isss not asss if sssomeone took bitsss and piecesss of birrrd and cat and patched usss togetherrr, afterrr all!"

  "Yes, but there are supposed to be gryphons north and west of Valdemar," Elspeth persisted. "But there aren't any in any of the inhabited lands I know—so where do you two come from?"

  "Wessst." Hydona shrugged. "You would not know the place. Even the Hawkbrotherrsss had not hearrrd of it."

  Elspeth wasn't giving up that easily. "Well, is that where your kind comes from? Is that why there aren't any gryphons in Valdemar?"

  Treyvan gave her a droll look out of the corner of his eye. "If you arrrre asssking if we arrre a kind of Changechild orrrr Pelagirrr monssterrrr," he replied, "I can tell you that we arrre not, and thanksss be to Sssskandrrranon forrr that. We werrrre crreated by one of the Grreat Magessss, the Mage of Ssssilence, whom we knew asss Urrrtho. That wasss a long time ago, beforrre the Mage Warrrs. He crrrreated the herrrtasssi asss well, and othersss. That wasss hisss grrreat powerrr and joy, to crrreate new crrreaturessss. Ssso they sssay."

  Before Elspeth could leap in with another question, Hydona yawned hugely and looked up at the sky. "It isss late," she said abruptly, "and I am hungerrred, even if Trrreyvan isss not."

  "Not hungerrred enough forrr falcon," Treyvan chuckled. "But a nicsse clawful of geesssse, now—orrr a young deerr...."

  Hydona parted her beak in a gryphonic smile. "I think we will leave you now, Darrrkwind."

  "Until tomorrow, then," he said, smoothing Vree's feathers with one hand. "Sleep well, and pass my affections on to Lytha and Jerven."

  "Mine, too," Elspeth piped up, to Darkwind's surprise.

  "Tomorrrrow," Treyvan agreed. The two gryphons moved off down a side path that would take them to the entrance of the Vale; they couldn't possibly take off from within it, for the interlacing branches of the great trees would make it too difficult for them to fly without damage to themselves or the trees.

  Elspeth looked after them for a moment, then made a little shrug and turned back to Darkwind. From her expression, there was a lot going on behind her eyes.

  "Is there something bothering you?" he asked, thinking she might have questions about the lesson just past.

  But her observations had nothing to do with magic. "They are certainly very good at avoiding questions they don't care to answer," she pointed out dryly. "This isn't the first time I've tried to pin them down about where they come from and what they are, and their answers have always been pretty evasive."

  "You can trust them," he felt moved to protest.

  "Oh, I have no doubt of that; after all, Need trusted them, and she's about the most suspicious thing in the universe. But they seem to have as many secrets as a Companion!" This, with a glance at Gwena, who shook her head and mane and snorted. "I had the feeling that they hadn't told the Tayledras much more than they've told me."

  He nodded slowly. She was absolutely right about that, anyway. He hadn't quite realized how little he knew about them, really. The fact that they had been his friends for so long had obscured the fact that what he knew about them was only what they had chosen to reveal.

  There had been any number of surprises from them, lately. The fact that they were fluent in the ancient Kaled'a'in tongue, for instance, and just how much of a mage Treyvan really was. That they spoke of Urtho as if they knew the lost history of the Mage Wars in much greater detail than any Tayledras did.

  As if that history hadn't been lost to their people, whoever and wherever those people were.

  Interesting. Very interesting. But it was so frustrating! They didn't even work at being mysterious, the way Elspeth's friend Skif did. They just were.

  It gave him enough food for thought that he remained silent all the way back to Elspeth's ekele, and from the expression on her face, she found plenty of room for speculation there herself.

  Chapter Eleven

  Skif packed the new supplies he had gotten from the hertasi carefully; Cymry needed to be able to move with the same agility she had without packs once they got back on the trail. Lumpy and unbalanced packs would not make either of them very happy.

  "You look like a Hawkbrother," Elspeth observed from the rock beside him; like everything in the Vale, it had been made to look natural, while being placed in the perfect position to be used as a seat, and had been carefully sculpted to serve that very purpose. She sat cross-legged with a patch of sun just touching her hair. There were already a few white threads in it; he wondered how long it would be before she was completely silver. Wintermoon had confided that Elspeth was handling more of the powerful energies of node-magic in her first few months than most Tayledras Adepts touched in a year or more. And she spent a great deal of time in the unshielded presence of the Heartstone. While Wintermoon was quite certain that none of this would harm her, he did warn Skif that her training and the discipline needed to handle such powers might cause some changes in his friend, and not just physical ones.

  Indeed, there were some changes since he had left the Vale. Elspeth seemed a little calmer, and consid
erably more in control of her temper. She no longer reminded him of Kero, or her mother... she was only, purely, Elspeth. His very dear friend—but no more. He could not imagine anyone having a romantic attachment to this cool, contemplative person; it would be like having a fixation on a statue.

  He glanced up at her and smiled. "So do you," he said. "It suits you."

  She really did look like a Hawkbrother; she was growing her hair longer, and although it wasn't yet the stark white of a mage, or the mottled camouflage colors of a scout, she had somehow learned the Tayledras tricks of braiding it so that it stayed out of the way without looking severe. And the tunic and trews she wore—flowing silk in deep burgundy, cut so that the tunic fastened up the side with little antler-tips—well, it suited her much better than anything she'd ever worn at home.

  "What happened to your Whites?" he asked.

  She laughed. "They disappeared, and I have the feeling I won't see them again until we're ready to leave. I have the feeling that the hertasi disapprove of uniforms on principle. Whenever I ask about them, the hertasi give me this look, and say 'they're being cleaned.' It's been weeks now, and they're still being cleaned."

  "Mine are probably with yours," Skif said. "Wintermoon wouldn't let me bring them; he said they weren't even suited to winter work. He made me get scouts' gear."

  She chuckled a little. "I'm beginning to agree with Kerowyn about Whites," she told him. "At least, about the way they're made. You get tired of them. They can't have changed in hundreds of years—you know, we really could stand to have a style choice, at least."

  He shrugged. "Probably nobody ever thought much about it." He lifted the pack experimentally. It was about as heavy as he wanted Cymry to carry, and after all, it wasn't as if they were cut off from k'Sheyna and more provisions. "That's going to do it, I think."

  Elspeth measured the pack with her eyes. "What's that—two weeks' rations at the most?"

  "About. We'll be back in by then." He fastened both packs to Cymry's saddle, and turned back to Elspeth. "I'm sorry I didn't have any news for you."

  She shrugged. "I'll tell you the truth, big brother—I really don't think it's all that important for me to get Need back, even assuming she'd be willing to return to me, which I doubt. I think it is important for you to find Nyara, for both your sakes."

  He flushed but didn't reply to that directly. Another change; she was either much improved at reading body language or she had picked up an uncanny ability to intuit things. "I don't know how much you're aware of the weather in here, but we're just about on to winter out there," he said. "We won't be able to cover as much ground once it starts snowing."

  She didn't seem concerned. "Take as much time as you need. Our orders haven't changed; no one needs us back home, and I need training as complete as I can get. Gwena says that things haven't deteriorated with Ancar and Hardorn any more than they had the last time we got word. It might simply be the weather. They're already into winter up there."

  "And no one, sane or insane, attacks in winter." He nodded. "With luck, you'll be ready by spring."

  He had other, unspoken thoughts. And with more luck, your Darkwind will be willing to come along when we leave. He smiled, but only to himself. Elspeth wasn't the only one good at reading body language.

  Elspeth shifted her position a little. "Well, we've also got the possibility of some new allies. According to Gwena, there's some indication that Talia, Dirk, and Alberich are getting somewhere in negotiating with the Karsites."

  "The—what?" He felt his eyebrows flying up into his hairline with astonishment. Last thing he had heard, people were simply grateful that the Karsites were too embroiled with Ancar and their own internal politics to harass the Border they shared with Valdemar. "When did all this start?"

  "Early fall—about when we reached here," she said. "Sorry; I forgot that I didn't hear about it until after you left." She looked up and frowned a little. "Let me see if I can tell you this all straight; I've been getting it in bits and pieces. Alberich got some tentative contacts with someone supposedly official in the Karsite army through a really roundabout path. It was supposed to be someone he knew and tentatively trusted."

  "From Karse?" He could hardly believe it. "How did anything get out of Karse?"

  "Convolutedly, of course; Gwena said the pathway involved traders and the renegade faction of the Sunlord that keeps allegiance with Valdemar." She raised an eyebrow. "Not the most secure line of communication, and the message was pretty vague. Sort of—'we might be willing to talk to you people if you happened to show up at this place and time'; he wasn't sure he trusted it at all, but it was the first positive gesture we've had from those people in hundreds of years, so he didn't want to dismiss it out of hand."

  "He wouldn't, and he'd be right," Skif agreed. "But it could have been a trap, counting on the idea that he might be homesick."

  She snickered. "Surely. Anybody who'd think that doesn't know Alberich. Anyway, that was about a month ago; he and Eldan and Kero checked the stories out, and they seemed to be genuine. Two weeks ago, they were actually approached officially. Then a week ago Mother arranged for Talia and Dirk to go down to the Border, the Holderkin lands, and meet an envoy from the Karsite government."

  "Which means the Sun-priests." He tried the thought out in his mind. "Any idea what started all this?"

  Elspeth started to chuckle. He gave her a quizzical glance.

  "If Gwena is relaying what Rolan told her correctly—it's as convoluted as the Karsites are. The infighting settled this fall—and the Priest-King suddenly seems to be a Queen now. The envoys are half women, and Talia had picked up a kind of grim 'we're all women together' kind of feeling from them, though whether that's their feeling about her, or the Priest-Queen's feeling about Selenay, I don't know."

  "Interesting," Skif said absently. In either case, the chances of coming to an agreement were much better.

  "That's only the first factor. Ancar has been harassing them much more than he has us, probably because they don't have that anti-magic defense we do. That, it seems, was bad enough, but now he's stealing the Sun-priests' pet demons, and that was absolutely the last straw." She grinned like a horse trader who's just sold an ill-tempered Plains-pony as a Shin'a'in stud. "That must have doubly stuck in their throats—not only to have to come to us, the unholy users-of-magic, but to have to admit that they were using magic themselves!"

  "Ah, if I know Talia, she was very careful about not rubbing their noses in the fact." He shook his head and chuckled. "That's something I would have had a hard time doing."

  "You and me both," she admitted. "Anyway, that's where things stand at home. With luck, we can at least get them to promise not to harry our borders until Ancar is dealt with once and for all."

  Skif rubbed the back of his neck, and stared off into the distance. North and east. "I'd like to be there," he said, more than half to himself. "I really would. Peace with our old enemy... Havens, wouldn't that be something!"

  "I'll believe it when it happens," she replied. "For now, it's enough to know we aren't the only ones that Ancar's been hurting. That at least opens up the possibility of uniting against a common enemy."

  He shook off his reverie. "Amazing. But I have my own job to take care of. Standing here and biting my nails over something happening hundreds of leagues away is not going to accomplish much of anything."

  "I have patrol with Darkwind," she told him. "We're taking an evening shift, with one of the scouts that flies an owl. He's got some beasties hanging about at night that he wants a mage to have a look at."

  "Gryphons, too?" he asked with interest. He liked Treyvan and Hydona a great deal, and his sole regret in going out with Wintermoon was that he was unable to learn more about them.

  "No, they're going to stay with the little ones; we monopolize enough of their time as it is." She started to chuckle.

  "What's so funny?" Skif wanted to know.

  "Oh, just their kyree-friend, Rris. The kyree are usu
ally so dignified; Torrl is, anyway. But Rris is like—like a big puppy. All bounce and friendliness. But what's funniest is that he's just full of stories about 'my famous cousin, Warrl.'"

  That sounded familiar, somehow. "Warrl. That—that can't be the same kyree that was Kero's teacher's bondmate, is it?"

  She nodded vigorously. "The same. And hearing the same stories Kero used to tell us told from the kyree point of view is an absolute stitch!"

  He sighed. Another thing he was missing. Well, he couldn't be here and out there at the same time, and on the whole, he was doing better and more productive work out there. There had been an encounter with another pack of wyrsa—this time on their terms, and he and Wintermoon had destroyed them. There'd been more of those gandels that they'd had to lure into a pit-trap—and some smaller, but still nasty, encounters.

  All of which meant hazards no k'Sheyna scout would have to face, something that Winterlight, the new scout-leader, had been quick to point out to the Council. Permission to return to the search had been readily given.

  Though several of Wintermoon's friends told him he was crazy, staying out in the winter-bound forest when he could be warm and comfortable in the Vale, in his off-duty hours, anyway.

  Skif still wasn't quite certain of Wintermoon's motivation, but the scout had told him repeatedly that even if he had been running patrols, he would have continued to live in his ekele outside the Vale. That to him, winter camping was no great hardship.

  If that was the way he felt, Skif would take his words at face value.

  "We'd better get going, then," he said. "Wintermoon should have gotten the cold-weather gear together by now." Already he wanted to be back on the hunt....

  "Darkwind and Gwena are probably waiting for me. I'd better go get my scout gear on." She bounced to her feet and planted a kiss on his cheek. "See you in about two weeks?"

  "Right." He patted her on the head as if she were a very small child; she mock-snarled at him. "Don't get into too much trouble, all right?"