Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  But it was alive, there was absolutely no doubt in her mind about that. It recognized the two of them, and it welcomed her and Gwena both and would do so in the future. They "belonged" now. It would give her whatever power she needed, so long as she was in reach. That was what it was supposed to do.

  Here was the moment of truth that made her Tayledras; a Heartstone's power was meant for the good of the Clan as a whole—which in her case, was all of Valdemar—and not to be used for an individual's needs. The shielding and the Veils that protected a Vale, the power to sculpt the rocks and create the springs, the force that grew the trees that supported up to a dozen ekeles apiece, all this came from the Heartstone. Excess energies were cleansed and stored there, for the use of all.

  And for the moment, all that she wanted it to do was to help her create a mage-shield around Haven. For the protection of all. She sensed Firesong's approval as she began.

  Not too much protection, for that would block Mindspeech and other Gifts, but about the same as the Vales had when they were not under siege. Firesong understood what she wanted, and lent his own expertise, guiding her, but letting her set her own pace. He had done this before and cheerfully encouraged her as he showed her exactly what needed to be done. But she needed to do the actual work; this was her land, her "Vale," her Heartstone.

  To her surprise, she discovered that most of what was needed was already in place; either Vanyel's work, or Firesong's, or both. Much of it had a feeling of great age about it. It was possible that there had been mage-shields here before, and they had simply faded with time, leaving behind a framework for her to invest with the new power at her disposal. All she needed to do, really, was to give the shield its proper shape, and define her protections....

  When she opened her eyes again, she was sweating with exertion and very tired, but Firesong nodded at her with the satisfaction of a teacher who has just seen his student complete a lesson perfectly. "Good!" he said. "Excellent! Now, since that shield is linked with this Heartstone, and not to you, it will hold even after you are gone or dead. That is the advantage of a Heartstone; the magics linked to it are perpetuated long past the death of the caster. Any other spells fade when the caster becomes depleted or dies. Distance can weaken the magic, too. That is why, when an Adept creates a Great Work, he tries to remain with it as much as possible—or else he does it in concert with others of his school and links it to their collective powers. That way the burden can be shared, or even passed on to students. The White Winds and Blue Mountain mages work that way, for instance."

  That made sense. She wiped her forehead with a handkerchief and nodded. "I can see that—but there are magical devices and artifacts. I distinctly remember Need showing us that she used one to make spell-impregnated swords. Doesn't that imply that some magic can be put into things permanently?"

  Firesong made a face, and shrugged. "Surely. But I do not know how to do so. Perhaps, at some point, that so-stubborn blade may be willing to show us. Until then I must go on as I have."

  Well, that made sense, too. She changed the subject. "Should we go see how the gryphons are doing? Treyvan said his batch might be able to start doing something about the wizard-weather today, and I'd like to be there when they start."

  "So they are come along that quickly?" Firesong said, with pleasure and surprise. "Wonderful! I should like to see this as well, and select those who might need extra tutoring. We cannot begin teaching them combative magics soon enough. Every hour we gain against the Beast must be used."

  Together they left the room, closing the door behind them and blowing out the lantern beside it. Elspeth was surprised at how well the gray wood of the door seemed to fade into the gray stone of the wall in the half-light of the corridor, and Firesong winked at her. "Camouflage of a sort," he told her. "Those who do not need to find this room, probably will not be able to, even though they will no longer 'forget' it existed. This is not a spell, just good building. That was, in part, how it managed to remain overlooked all these years."

  They took the steps up to the ground floor, then found one of the corridors leading to a door into the gardens. Treyvan was teaching his "fledgling mages" in an old building in the gardens, a storage shed that had been built in the form of an ornamental tower, complete to being made of stone. It was only three stories tall, but it had a good flat roof and a fine view of the countryside on clear days. It had been placed in a grove of dwarf trees and proportioned to them, so that it appeared to be much taller than it really was. On a clear day, one could see every detail of Elspeth's old pottery shed from its rooftop.

  This was not a clear day, however, and the view from the top could be a perilous one in ugly weather. And it had been ugly, ever since the new Heartstone came to rest here. That should change over the course of the next few days; it would take a while to get the local patterns to return. Now the Stone was properly activated, properly shielded, and under supervision. Firesong had done a little about the mage-born storms plaguing the capital, but he had been too busy to learn as much as he needed to about the countryside, so he had erred on the side of caution, refusing to do very much. Another storm had threatened all day without breaking, bringing high winds and moisture-filled clouds in from the east. The wind whipped their clothes around them; Firesong had dressed for working in the dust of the Heartstone room, wearing relatively subdued grays and greens, but his costume was still that of a Tayledras mage, and as the wind caught his sleeves and hems, it made him look as if he were being attacked by his own clothing. The firebird narrowed its eyes to slits and clung to the padding of his shoulder, hunching down and practically gluing itself to his neck. His hair streamed out behind him, a creature of a hundred wildly whipping tentacles.

  :I would not want to have to comb out that hair,: Gwena commented. Elspeth agreed; when the wind got through with it, he'd probably spend hours teasing out all the knots. No wonder the scouts wore theirs short!

  :Oh, he'll find someone who's willing to comb it out for him, Gwena,: Elspeth responded cheerfully. :I've heard rumors of a lovely young Bard!:

  Elspeth smelled rain as another gust hit her face, and winced. The grounds were already sodden, and another drenching would turn the gardens into a swamp. Well, maybe Treyvan would be able to do something about this before it did more than smell like rain. The farmlands north of here were parched; if they could just get some of this precipitation up there, the farmers would bless them for the rest of the season.

  She and Firesong hurried along one of the gravel-covered paths to the tower. It was easy to see even at a distance a pair of golden-brown wings waving energetically at the top. The rest of the gryphon—and all of his pupils—lay hidden behind the stone coping around the tower's edge.

  :Treyvan's in fine fettle,: Gwena said, with an excited laugh. For the moment, even Gwena had put the lowering threat of Ancar out of her mind. :I'm down below the tower, but I've been able to follow the whole lesson, except while you and I were "talking" to the Heartstone, of course. He's just about ready to have the new mage-trainees try out their weather-working, but I told him you were coming, so he's waiting for you. He wants you and Firesong to see them at work, I think. These are very cooperative students, and they work well together.:

  They rounded a hedge that had been hiding the base of the tower, and there was Gwena, with two other Companions beside her, all of them looking with interest at the tower top. One of those Companions was Rolan; Elspeth recognized him immediately. But she couldn't make out who the other was. Even for a Herald, it was sometimes hard to tell Companions apart.

  :I'm Sayvil, dear,: came the dry mind-voice she had heard a time or two before. :And interested to see how the new teacher was coming. I didn't know gryphons could be mages, although kyree can, and you know about hertasi and dyheli mages, I presume. He's doing a fine job; I wouldn't change a thing.:

  Oh, so Sayvil was another one of those Companions who knew something of magic? Wasn't that interesting…..

  Was that why sh
e Chose Kero? Or was there some other motivation? It would certainly help to have a Companion who knew about magic in charge of someone who had come riding into your Kingdom wearing a magic sword!

  Well, that could wait. There were too many other things that she needed to know. :I'll let him know you approve, my lady,: she replied, just as dryly, and got an amused chuckle for her pains.

  The bottom stories of the tower were used mostly for storing gardening implements, and the top for storing seeds and bulbs, and wintering dormant plants. The whole building had a pleasant earthy smell about it although it was terribly dark, and she and Firesong had to grope after the ladder. The tiny windows in the sides of the tower were proportioned to make it look as if it were twice the size it actually was, and since the stone walls were a handspan thick, they let in very little light. The "ladders" here were an interesting cross between a ladder and a staircase with alternating steps, made so that they could be climbed by someone with both hands full. Not that Elspeth would want to, but the gardeners scampered up and down them all day without thinking twice about it.

  There was more light from the open hatch to the roof, and that made the last of their climb a bit easier. They poked their heads up through the open hatchway cautiously, just as a couple of fat drops fell with identical splats onto the wood beside their heads.

  "You are in good time, younglingssss," Treyvan said. "You have ssssaved usss frrrom needing to worrk in the wet." The male gryphon took up half of the roof space; the rest was occupied by two youngsters in trainee Grays, and three adults in Whites. Elspeth didn't recognize any of them. Of the three adults, one could not have been more than twenty at most; the other two were somewhere around thirty. The young one was blond and had the look of a Northerner about him; the other two, male and female, both with brown hair, had the stocky build of the folk on the Rethwellan border. The two trainees were probably in their last year; one was thin and very dark, the other plump and fair.

  "I will make introductionsss when we arrre finissshed," the gryphon added hastily, as another set of raindrops joined the first. "Ssstudentsss, you may begin."

  Elspeth was a little surprised to see, as they looked at each other and immediately meshed their powers, that he must have directed them to work as a group rather than separately. On the other hand, since the object was not just to train these people, but to actually do something about a bad situation with the weather, his strategy made sense.

  The older of the two trainees handled the wind; he began to leech energy away from the weather system that had created this storm in the first place, an odd knot in the sky to the east of Haven. Elspeth couldn't quite see the point of this particular tactic; the wind did begin to die down, but that left the storm simply sitting there, right over the capital itself, ready to dump rain on them at any moment. But then the youngster passed the energy he had taken to the oldest of the Heralds, and that lady, rather than trying to change the direction of the existing wind, used the power to start another system north of Haven. Elspeth closed her eyes, and saw what they were Seeing, a "landscape" of weather, exactly like the sculptured terrain in a sandtable. The trainee was taking "sand" from a "hill" in the east and giving it to the woman. She was putting that "sand" in the south, creating another hill, there, while the second trainee began to scoop "sand" from the north and pass it along to the woman as well. The air made a kind of thin "liquid" flowing over the sand, too light to move it, but forced to move according to the way it had been sculpted. Where there was a slope, it "flowed" downhill, picking up force. So now there was a new wind that blew in from the south, heading north—

  Which, by all reliable reports, could really use the rain that had been dumped uselessly on the capital for the past several weeks. Two more of the Heralds added something else, sculpting the "sand" further, one pulling the air to the north, and one pushing, out of the south. But these two had added something new, to create that push and pull. The one in the north was making things cool and wet, and to the south warm and dry. Elspeth opened her eyes, and saw that the storm really was moving in a new direction; by concentrating, she Saw that "sandtable" as an overlay on the "real" world.

  When she had finished making her depression, the second trainee simply held the water in the clouds until they began to move into the north and west and, finally, out of sight.

  Firesong smiled; Elspeth "watched" what they were doing using her Mage-Sight and "outer eyes" at once, completely enthralled by the clever way they were accomplishing their goal together. Now she saw why Firesong didn't want to work any weather-magic without knowing the land around them. It was something that could all too easily go wrong.

  On the other hand, this was an application of fairly minor Gifts with major results, and she could well imagine what kind of havoc such weather control could wreak on or before a battle. Bring in a really major storm, and dump a month's worth of rain at once on a battlefield, and you created a quagmire. Force the enemy to come to you across it, and he was exhausted before he reached your lines.

  "Well done!" Treyvan said, as the last of the clouds disappeared into the north, leaving behind a warm, cloudless blue sky without even the scent of rain. With a sigh of relief, the five new mages released their hold on the storm, certain now that it was going to behave, and turned to their strange teacher with glowing faces full of the pride of accomplishment. They deserved that glow; even among the Tayledras, Elspeth had never seen mages work together that well. That alone was an accomplishment of major proportions.

  "Very well done," Firesong put in. "Fine control, good judgment, and the systems you set up should hold long enough for the rain to travel to where it should have gone in the first place. You are learning quickly. That you work together is a wondrous thing—all of you together can do far more than one of you alone."

  One of the Heralds, clearly quite exhausted, sat down on the coping around the edge of the roof. "I'll admit that I was disappointed when my Mage-Gift proved to be just as minor as my FarSight, but now," he shook his head, "I'm not certain I'm ever going to call any Gift 'minor' anymore. The idea of actually steering a storm around the sky—in the wrong hands, something like that could be devastating. I don't want to think of someone hitting fields before harvest with hail. You could starve the whole country that way."

  :Good man,: Gwena said from below. :He's thinking, and in combat terms.:

  "You're right, and think about hitting a line of foot-soldiers with hail, while you're at it. FarSight and Mage-Gift are a good pairing," Elspeth told him. "You can use the first to make certain you don't dump a storm where it can harm someone, or at least someone on your own side, and just now you saw what you can do with the second."

  :Kero would tell you that there is no such thing as a "minor" mage, only a mage who doesn't know how to make the best use of what power he has,: Sayvil observed from below, making all of them start. :Most of her mages were what they call "earth-witches"—mages of similar power to you. But they knew all about holding what you have in reserve until you are in a position where a little application of magic will bring a big result. Think of it as waiting until your enemy is off-balance, then pushing.:

  The three Heralds exchanged glances, and nodded; the two trainees just looked very solemn and a little frightened. Elspeth couldn't blame them. They were very young to be thinking of going into battle—only partially trained, and with a new Gift they had no appreciable experience in using—but that was just what they were going to be doing, and soon.

  "Listen, we ought to introduce ourselves," the Herald who had spoken said hastily, perhaps hoping to avoid another unsolicited comment from Sayvil. "I'm Herald Rafe—this is Brion and this is Kelsy."

  "We're Anda and Chass," said the first trainee shyly. "You're Elspeth, right? Is this the Hawkbrother friend of yours? The one who is a warrior and a mage?"

  She nodded. "I'm Elspeth. This is Firesong, not Darkwind. Firesong has never been anything but a mage, but we don't hold that against him!"

  Fi
resong made a face at her, and his firebird gave an audible snort, something that made all five of the students stare and chuckle.

  "Darkwind is going through some old books right now, looking for some charts. I'm sure you'll meet him some time soon." She smiled impartially at all five of them. "Actually, my only purpose at the moment, besides watching what you were doing, was to bring Firesong up here to introduce you to him."

  Quickly she turned to the Healing Adept and explained in Tayledras what the differences were between a Herald and a Trainee. Then she switched back to speech the others would understand. "So what you have here is a very mixed group of ages and experiences. I'm amazed that they work so well together."

  Firesong nodded. "I wish to take these for a day or so, as I think you were hoping. If they can add their powers to work the weather, they can surely add them to shield."

  "I have no objection," Treyvan said, cocking his head to one side. "You know more of thisss than I. Gryphonsss are sssolitarrry magesss, mossstly."

  "Thanks, both of you." Elspeth turned back to the group. "He'll be another of your mage-teachers, for a couple of specific lessons, probably within the next couple of days."

  "In fact, at the moment, we are fairly disorganized," Firesong concluded, granting them all one of his dazzling smiles. "I pledge you, we will do better soon!"

  "I sssurely hope sssso," Treyvan hissed wryly. "But Firesssong, if you would ssstay here for a moment, I ssshould like you to begin now, and explain sssomething to thessse ssstudentsss forrr me."

  That was clearly a dismissal, and Elspeth ducked back down through the trapdoor. By the time she reached the ground, only Gwena remained of the Companions that had been watching from below.