Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  But this time, instead of coming to rest upon the path as she always had before, she spoke one word into his mind.

  :Follow.:

  Then she was gone, diving out of the spirit realm with speed he could not match—but leaving behind a glowing trail that he followed back, back, back to his body, to the material world. He sank into himself; feeling crept back to arms and legs, he put on the shell of himself as a comfortable garment.

  He took a deep breath, then opened his eyes to find the Hawk that was Dawnfire poised before him. She watched him; before he could blink his eyes twice, the Hawk passing over her, intensifying the glow of her inner fire. Soon she glowed like a tiny sun, as she had when she first transformed.

  He looked away for a moment, his eyes watering with the brightness. When he looked back, the Hawk no longer perched there.

  In its place was the transparent and radiant form of the woman. He had never seen her this Way in the real world, only in the spirit realm. A woman made of glowing, liquid glass....

  He took a deep breath of surprise, as she examined her hands and a smile crossed her lips. He rose from his cross-legged pose, and approached her; not certain that he should, but unable to keep at a distance. "I was not certain that I could do this, though my teachers assured me it is no great accomplishment for me now," she said, a little shyly. "I was never a mage; I am not really certain how I accomplish the half of what I do."

  This was true speech, and not the stumbling, mind-to-mind talk he had gotten from her aforetimes. He willed his hands to still their trembling and nodded. "I think I can understand how you feel," he replied. "We are not mages, either, we Shin'a'in. That, we leave to Her."

  She dropped her eyes from his hungry gaze. "I wanted—I wished to be with you, in as real a way as I could," she said, slowly. Then she looked up, and there was no mistaking the expression she wore, even though her "face" was little more than air and power. It showed a hunger and a desperation as great as his own. "I am not dead. I'm just—different, and I wanted to be like I was, for a while."

  He had never wanted anything more in his life than to take her hand; he reached for her, shaking a little, stretching one hand across more than a gulf of physical distance—

  And she reached toward him.

  Their hands met—one of solid flesh, one of ephemeral energy. He felt a gentle pressure, warmth—and it was enough, almost. So, they could touch, for just a moment, letting touch and eyes say what words could not.

  He withdrew first; she brought her own hand back and set her face in a mask of calm, although longing still stood nakedly in her eyes.

  He did not know what to say to her. "I am not only here with you for my own sake," she said after a moment of strained silence. "I am here—my teachers tell me that I must speak with you, telling you what I have learned because I can see things anew, being what I am now. Things they did not know, and could not see. Maybe that is why I became what I am—not quite in the spirit world and not quite in the material world."

  He nodded and set his own feelings aside; this was the first time she had said anything like this, the first time that she had given any hint of what Kra'heera wanted to know. Not that he had not asked her questions, for he had. Until now she had shown great distress when he had asked her those questions about her current state, so he had stopped asking them. He feared she might stop coming to him; he was afraid he might have frightened her with all his queries.

  Apparently not. But then, she was a brave woman, and I do not think that she has ever run from what frightened her.

  "When you started asking me questions—I didn't want to think about them, but I had to anyway," she told him slowly. "Like this, there is no sleep, no dreams to run to. Once I started thinking, I started asking questions myself...."

  She stared off somewhere above his head for a moment, and he held his breath, as much to try and still the pain in his heart as in anticipation of what she might say next. She could say she had to go, leave him forever, for the Goddess willed it so.

  This was far from easy for him. He had dreamed of this woman for years, ever since becoming a man. Since he had been initiated as a shaman, the dreams had more power. He had known in the way of the shaman even then that this woman was his soul-partner, and yet he had never seen her. When Kra'heera had asked him to stay and learn of her, he had thought no more of it than any task the Elder Shaman had set him.

  Until she had first come to him on the Moonpaths, this Dawnfire, this transformed Tale'edras. Until he had seen her face, and not the hawk-mask of the Avatar.

  Now he knew who and what she was, and after the initial joy of discovery, the knowledge was a burden and an agony to his soul, for she was untouchable—out of reach—not truly dead, but assuredly not "alive" in the conventional sense. There was no way in which she could become the partner his dreams had painted her as. How could his dreams, the ??? a shaman, which were supposed to be accurate to within a hair, have been so very wrong?

  "There are threats and changes on the winds," she said, finally, bringing his attention back to something besides his own pain. "Terrible changes, some of them—or they have the potential to bring terror, if they are not met and mastered. One is a lost man of your own people, whom we have faced once already. No Shin'a'in, no Tayledras, no Outlander has the answer to these changes, only pieces of the answers."

  He groped after the answers that her words implied. "Are you saying that the time for isolation to end is at hand?" That in itself was a frightening thought, and a change few Shin'a'in would care for.

  "In part." She did not breathe, so she could not sigh, but he had the impression that she did. "It is easy for me to see, but hard to describe. All peoples face a grave threat from the same source, but three stand to lose the most; the Shin'a'in—"

  "For what we guard," he completed. That was a truism, and always had been.

  She nodded emphatically. "Yes. The Tayledras, also, for what we know—and the Outlanders of Valdemar, for what they are. And somehow those threats are as woven together as the lives of the Outlanders and the Sundered Kin have become in these last few days." She shook her head in frustration. "I cannot show you, and I do not have the words that I need; that is the closest that I can come."

  But Tre'valen understood; what she said only crystalized things he had half-felt for some time now. "This is no accident, no coincidence, that things have fallen out as they have," he said firmly.

  "It is less even than you guess," she responded immediately. And that confirmed another half-formed guess—that it had been the careful hands of the gods that had worked to bring them all here together. Him—and the Outlanders. "This path that we are all on was begun farther back than even our enemies know. I can see it stretching back to the time of the Mage Wars. There were cataclysms then that are only now echoing back to us."

  A cold hand of fear gripped his throat at that, driving out other thoughts. "What do you mean?" he asked, carefully.

  She searched visibly for words, her gaze unfocused as though she were watching something that she meant to describe for him, like a sighted woman describing the stars to a blind man. "Neither Urtho nor his enemy were truly aware of what they unleashed upon the world. It is as if what they did has created a real echo, except that this echo, rather than being fainter than the original catastrophe, has lost none of its strength as it moved across time and the face of the world. And now—it returns, it sweeps across our world back to its origin."

  "But what has this to do with us?" Tre'valen cried. "Those were mages of awesome power—what has this to do with us and what we can do? Surely we cannot counter their magics! It is all we can do to hold them away from those who would use them!"

  She shook her head dumbly, at a complete loss for an answer. "I can only tell you what I see," she replied, slowly, unhappily. "You asked me of the past and present, and this is what I see. The future is closed to me."

  He was at as much of a loss as she, and slowly lowered himself to a stone within a
rm's reach of her translucent form.

  They sat together for a long and painful moment, as he tried to think of words to give her; something with a bit of meaning to it.

  "This, I think, must be what Kra'heera sensed when he charged me with remaining here," he said, finally. "He is my senior in much. Perhaps he can give us an answer; perhaps Kethra can, or one of your own people. I shall speak with Kethra and my teachers; I shall relay this to the Kal'enedral...."

  "When you do this, speak of the need to speak to one another, Hawkbrothers, Shin'a'in, and Outlanders all," she said, interrupting him. "That much I do see. There has been overmuch of sundering, of the keeping of secrets. It is time for some of this to end."

  "Secrets...." He looked up at her, and he knew that longing and pain were plain upon his face, plain enough that any child would see and know them and the cause.

  "I must go," she said abruptly; she did not "stand up," so much as gather her energies about her and rise. Her form began to fluctuate and waver, and he held back frustration that she was so near, and yet untouchable except for a moment or two. Despite all that she had told him, his heart cried out for her—his own pain eclipsing the importance of her words.

  She turned toward him; held out her hand. "I—" she said falteringly. He had not expected to hear her speak again, and the sound of her voice made him start in surprise.

  She was in a kind of intermediate form; womanly, with her human face, but a suggestion of great wings. Again, the power in her made her difficult to look at as she wore the glory of the noon sun on her like a garment, but he would not look away, though his eyes streamed tears.

  "I have seen your true heart, and I see your pain, Tre'valen," she said. "I—I share it. Beloved."

  Then she was gone, leaving him with a heart torn in pieces, and a mind and soul gone numb.

  Darkwind waited for his brother at the edge of the Vale, packs in his hand, and shivered as he looked out on the snow. He was not hardened to this weather, not as he would have been at this time last winter. Then he had sheltered outside the protection of the Vale, and most time not spent in sleeping had been spent in the snow.

  He had not gone back to his old ekele except to gather his things and bring them back to the Vale with the help of several friends. He had been one of the first to do so, but now that the Vale no longer troubled the bondbirds, most of the scouts had followed his example and returned to the shelter and safety of the rocky walls and enclosing shields. Probably even Wintermoon would join them when his search was over. Darkwind's brother was stubborn but not foolish.

  Shelter and safety the Vales held indeed—and comfort, which was something only someone who had never been without comfort scorned. This was going to be a hard winter; it had begun that way, and all signs pointed to the weather worsening before spring. The Vale was warm, with hertasi to take care of everyday tasks... difficult to resist such comforts, when the winter winds howled around one's windows and drafts seeped in at every seam. Especially when the ekeles of those within the Vale needed no protections from the cold; when hot springs waited to soak away aches and bruises, when windows could stand open to the breeze—

  Well, they could if one lived on a lower level, at any rate. The ekeles near the tops of the trees tended to find themselves whipped by wilder winds than those near the ground. He smiled through his shivers at recalling when Nightsky had left her windows ajar—and came back after a lesson to find belongings strewn about the room. She had learned quickly that it was as well to leave the windows closed.

  Few lived in those upper levels, in k'Sheyna. With the population so reduced, there was little competition for dwellings nearer the Vale floor. One or two still preferred heights, but never scouts. After returning from a long day on patrol the very last thing anyone cared to do was to climb a ladder for several stories just to get home to rest.

  Darkwind was no different in that respect from any of the rest of the scouts, once the general consensus was reached that a move back to the Vale would be a good thing for all. He had stayed with his father for a brief while, in part to help Kethra at night, then moved into an ekele in the lowest branches. His tree stood near the waterfall end of the Vale, so that both the cool water of the waterfall pools and a nearby hot spring were available. He ran his patrols with Elspeth and her Companion as he had since the coming of autumn, but now he returned with gratitude to the warmth and the comfort of the Vale. And he pitied Wintermoon for his self-chosen exile to the winter-bound forest.

  On the other hand, we can't seem to track down Nyara from within the Vale. I've tried Looking for her, but she and that sword—have shielded themselves too well to spot. I am glad it isn't me out there.

  K'Tathi had flown in just before he and Elspeth went out on patrol, carrying a message; a written one, since it was fairly complicated. Wintermoon and Skif had given a good portion of food to a tervardi temporarily disabled by an encounter with Changelions. Rather than lose any great amount of time, Wintermoon was leaving Skif with the bird-man, and coming in to fetch replacements and enough food over to keep the tervardi fed while he healed. So would Darkwind be so good as to put together thus-and-so, and meet him and his dyheli friends at the mouth of the Vale at sunset?

  Darkwind not only would, he was glad to. It often seemed to him that there was never a great deal he could do for Wintermoon; he and his brother had very little in common, and Wintermoon's position as elder often led to him being the one to lend aid to the younger brother. Wintermoon seldom asked favors of anyone; he was as much a bachelor falcon as Darkwind, if not more so.

  With that in mind, Darkwind went out of his way to root through some of the old storehouses and uncover the last few cold-lights, mage-cloaks, and a fireless stove left from the days when mages in k'Sheyna could lend their powers to making aids to the scouts. It had been a very long time since scouts of k'Sheyna made overnight patrols—and a very long time since any of them had been willing to use mage-made things, for fear that the creatures of the Uncleansed Lands might sense them. He thought that Skif and Wintermoon might well be willing to chance that, since they were between k'Sheyna and the Cleansed Outland. The cloaks kept the wearer warm and dry; there were five, enough for both humans and the Companion and dyheli to sleep beneath. The stove should be good for several weeks of use, or so his testing had confirmed—and should heat the tiny tent his brother and the Outlander shared quite cozily.

  When he asked for permission to take the things, Iceshadow had queried with a lifted eyebrow whether they needed it—or were keeping warm some other way. He had answered the same way that the notion was wildly unlikely. He still was not certain about Outlander prejudices in that regard, but he knew his brother well enough to be certain that young Skif was not likely to become Wintermoon's bedmate unless they encountered some wild magic on the borders that wrought a complete change of sex in either of them.

  The last gray light of afternoon faded and died away, creeping from the forest by imperceptible degrees, and deepening the shadows beneath the trees. He shivered in a breath of cold air that crept across the Veil and hoped that Wintermoon would arrive soon. It had been a very long day, and he was bone weary. He and Elspeth had tracked and driven off a pair of Changelions—perhaps even the same ones that injured that tervardi, in fact—and it had not been an easy task in knee-deep snow. Even Elspeth's Companion had been of little help, not with the snow so deep and soft. The cats, with their snowshoelike paws, had a definite advantage in weather like this.

  It had been snow with ice beneath; they had slipped and slid so often that he reckoned they were both black and blue in a fair number of places. He wanted to get back to his ekele, to the hot pool beneath it. He thought, briefly, about seeking one of the other scouts for company, then dismissed the idea. There were several women of k'Sheyna who were friends, willing and attractive, but none of them were Elspeth....

  Stupid. Don't be an idiot. Don't complicate matters. She's your friend, sometimes your student; be wise enough to leave
it at that. You aren't living a romance-tale, you have work enough and more to do.

  Still—she was a competent partner now as well; he felt more confident in his magic, and so did she. As a team, they were efficient and effective. Working with the gryphons had been a stroke of genius.

  A white shape flickered through the branches ahead, ghosting just under the branches in silence; a breath of snow-fog, with a twin coming in right behind it.

  Vree cried a greeting; not the challenge scream, but the whistling call no outsider ever heard. A long, deep Hooo, hoo-hooo, answered him, and one of the two owls swooped up across the Veil and onto a branch just above Darkwind's head.

  The second followed his brother, and as he flew up to land above, Darkwind made out the distant figure of someone riding through the barren bushes and charcoal-gray tree trunks of the unprotected forest.

  The dyheli waded through the soft snow easily, his thin legs having no trouble with drifts a man would be caught in, his sharp, cleft hooves cutting footholds in the ice beneath. Astride him was Wintermoon. Behind the first dyheli came the second, unladen, his breath puffing frostily out of his nostrils.

  Wintermoon waved as soon as he saw Darkwind, grinning broadly. Since he was not normally given to such things as broad grins, Darkwind was a bit surprised.

  Being with that Outlander has done him some good, then. Loosened him up.

  It occurred to him that Wintermoon might have found himself a real friend—rarer still, a close friend—in the Outlander Herald. Could it be mutual? Perhaps they had learned that they had a lot in common; Skif had struck him as rather a loner himself. A close friend was something, so far as Darkwind knew, his brother had never had before.

  About time, too.

  Wintermoon and the dyheli crossed the Veil and the scout slid from the dyheli's back to land beside his brother. "Darkwind!" he said, obviously pleased. "Thank you for doing this yourself, and thank you for fetching the supplies for me at all. What's all this?" Wintermoon briefly embraced his brother and indicated "this" with a toe to one of the extra bundles. "I did not ask you for nearly so much."