And it could not be done, save for the Mindspeaker among the Heralds.
Valdemar's greatest advantage remained its communications. Tactics could be put hand in hand with strategy from the Palace, thanks to Mindspoken dispatches, read in condensed battle-code, from field scoutings. Valdemar's second advantage was knowledge of the land; Heralds on circuit for so many generations had kept precise maps. Whether the land was high or low, wet or dry, resources could be moved rapidly with a minimum of waste.
Ancar had taken a bite from the side of Valdemar; Selenay and Kerowyn were ensuring that he did not find it an easy bite to digest. Treyvan's mages harried his mages, concentrating all their power on simply disrupting whatever spells had been set, by targeting the mages for specific, personalized nuisance attacks as well as attempting to break the spells themselves. This, evidently, was a strategy no one had used here. Ancar had not anticipated that FarSeers could identify his mages at a distance, and pass that information to mages who could then tailor their spells to suit. It did seem to be helping. And the Guard and Skybolts ran constant hit-then-run-away attacks against his lines, never letting Ancar's troops rest quietly, and doing their best to disrupt the supply lines.
The good news was that the civilian evacuation was working. There were a minimum of civilian casualties, those mostly too stupid or stubborn to leave when they were told to. This was something Hydona could not understand. How could humans be so attached to things and property that they would lose their lives simply to stay with those things? Nesting for the deranged.
She watched the youngsters a moment more, her heart aching with the need to cuddle them, human and gryphlet alike. But they had not noticed her, and she would not disturb their moment of joy for the world. Too often, the appearance of a parent meant the bad news that the parent would be away for a while. And while the younglings were amazingly resilient and seemed able to play no matter what, there were dark fears lurking beneath their carefree exteriors. When Mummy or Daddy came to say they would be "away," there was always that fear that "away" would mean far away, like Teren and Jeri, and Darkwind and Elspeth—and they might not come back again....
Hydona slipped out again, with a nod of thanks to the Guard and a feather touch for three of the Companions. Her pupils were ready for the front lines; soon all of the mages would be with the troops, and it would be time for that dreaded "going away." Treyvan and Hydona would have to leave the little ones, to take personal command of the mage-troops.
But as she neared the Palace, she saw a horse being led? to the stables, and took a second, sharper look at it.
Rough gray coat; dense muscles; huge, ugly head—
It was! It was a Shin'a'in battle mare!
She spread her wings and bounded a few steps, taking to the air to fly the rest of the distance to the Palace. As she neared, she saw someone—one of the gray-clad trainees—waving frantically to her.
She backwinged to a landing, trying not to knock the poor child off her feet, as the girl braced herself against the wash from her wings.
"There's some 'un t' see ye, Lady," the girl said. "What I mean is, she's seen th' Queen, now she wants t' see one o' ye gryphons."
"Do I go to herrr, orrr doesss ssshe come to me?" Hydona asked logically.
"I come to you, Lady," replied the black-clad Shin'a'in Swordsworn, who emerged from the door behind the trainee. To Hydona's amazement she used Kaled'a'in, not Shin'a'in or Valdemaran.
This plethora of tongues could get to be very confusing, she thought fleetingly as the Shin'a'in sketched a salute.
"It would, of course, be far too difficult for you to enter this door," the woman continued. "I bring greetings Lady, from your kin—"
Then before Hydona could say or do anything, the woman closed her eyes in concentration and began to rattle off a long series of personal messages, messages that were, unmistakably, from Hydona's kin and friends still in the Kaled'a'in Vale. There were something like twenty of them, and the poor trainee simply stood there in bafflement while the Swordsworn recited.
Hydona simply absorbed it all, lost in admiration. "Rrremarkable. How did you do that?" she asked when the Shin'a'in was done.
The woman smiled. "I was shaman-trained before the Star-Eyed called me to this," she said simply. Hydona nodded. Since half of the shamanic training required memorization of verbal histories, twenty messages would be no great burden.
Then Hydona noticed something else. The woman was not black-clad, as she had thought, but was garbed in very deep blue.
Well, at least she is not here on blood-feud! That would have been a complication no one needed right now.
"I am here," the woman said, answering Hydona's unspoken question, "for the same reason that you are here. I am the emissary from my people to k'Valdemar, and in token of that, I brought the Queen a true alliance gift. And I see no reason why you should not know it, since shortly all will." She smiled widely. "It is good news, I think, in a time of bad. Tayledras, Kaled'a'in, and Shin'a'in have united, and are holding open safe exit routes upon the Valdemar border to the west and south. Those places will stay in safe hands. Should all fail, the people of k'Valdemar can do as they did in their past—retreat, and find safe-havens. We, our warriors and yours, shall stay and survive, and work to set all aright."
Hydona felt limp with relief. That had been her unvoiced, worst fear—that somehow Falconsbane would raise the western border against Valdemar, and trap everyone between an army of his creatures and Ancar's forces.
And—k'Valdemar? So, the Kingdom of Valdemar was being counted as one great Clan. And by all the Clans... ?
Shin'a'in, Tayledras, and Kaled'a'in... Hydona could guess at only one thing that could have pried the Shin'a'in out of their Plains, or the Tayledras from their forests—
She sent a glance of inquiry at the woman, who nodded significantly and cast her eyes briefly upward.
So. She had sent forth an edict, had She? Interesting. Very interesting. It made sense, as much as anything did these days—and after all, Treyvan and Hydona had been part of bringing it all about. Of course, it was also entirely possible that the Star-Eyed was being opportunistic.
She could be claiming responsibility for events that simply happened, as if it were part of a great Cosmic Plan. Most of this uniting of the Clans and People could have been dumb luck. Still, for whatever reason it happened, there it was, and it was a relief indeed.
This Shin'a'in must have ridden day and night to get here as fast as she did, even with Tayledras Gating to get her to the Vale nearest the Valdemar border!
"Yourrr parrrdon," Hydona said, as she read the signs of bone-deep, profound fatigue that the woman's control had hidden with fair success. "I am keeping you frrrom a rrressst that isss sssurely well-earrrned."
"And I will accept your pardon and take that rest," the woman said, with a quick smile of gratitude. "And when you meet me later—I am called Querna, of Tale'sedrin." Then she turned to the poor, baffled trainee, who could not have been much older than twelve or thirteen, and spoke in careful Valdemaran. "My thanks, child. I have discharged the last of my immediate duties, and I will now gladly take your guidance to the room you spoke of."
"Thank you, warrriorrr! Rrressst well!" Hydona called after her. How many languages did these people know? Hydona felt a moment of embarrassment at her growling accent. Ah, but accents were unimportant as long as words were understood. And those words! Treyvan would be so pleased!
She hurried to find her mate, to give him the good news, with a lightness of step she hadn't felt in a long time.
Now, if their tactics of mistake and harassment would hold, if the innocents could escape, if they could only hold Hardorn's forces long enough for their real weapon to find its mark, then they could celebrate. All the People and their friends together, and the children....
Chapter Fifteen
Firesong rode in front of Skif and Elspeth, telling himself that there was no reason to give in to depression. Things were no
different now than they had been when this journey began, but giving himself encouraging lectures did not really help. For the past several days he had hidden his growing and profound unhappiness, feigning a careless enjoyment of his role. There was no point in inflicting any further strain on the others, who had their own worries and stresses.
But this land was appalling. The farther into it they came, the worse it got, as if the closer they went to Ancar's "lair," the worse his depredations on his land and people.
Firesong had grown up around the gray and brown of lightbark and willow, sighing-leaf, loversroot and sweet-briar, but the overcast and mud of Hardorn were different, even if the colors were the same as those Vale plants and trees. The grays and browns of Hardorn were those of life departed, not the colors of the life itself. The colors of his robes that had seemed so outrageously bright in Valdemar were sullen and sad. It felt like life had seeped away into the ever-present mud, and he had faded like the colors.
Intellectually, he knew that he had not been prepared for the experience of so many people living together in their cities and towns, and for the problems that caused. Tayledras simply did not live like that, giving each person in a Vale a reasonable amount of space and privacy—and outside their Vales, the land was always wild and untamed in every sense. However, he fancied he had come to grips with the way folk lived here, and certainly he had even come to appreciate some of the advantages.
But that had been in Valdemar, not Hardorn. This was not just his reaction to seeing folk crowding themselves like sheep in a pen, and not only his reaction to the joyless and uncreative lives most of them led. That, in itself, was quite bad enough. For most of these folk, their days were an unending round of repetitive labor, from sunup to sundown, tasks that varied only with the season, and not much even then. A dreadful amount of time was spent simply in obtaining enough food for themselves and their families. The "wizard-weather," as folks called it here, had been hard on Valdemar, but it was only a small part of what was destroying Hardorn.
There were better ways, ways to make an ordinary man's life more fulfilling—he had seen that much in Valdemar—but Skif told him that the ruler of this land wanted things this way. A hungry man is concerned with the filling of his belly and not with attempts to free himself from a vile overlord. Being forced to toil to exhaustion each day left no one any time to think of aught but how the next day's toil could be endured.
In Valdemar, at least, while the poorest folk did labor mightily to feed themselves, they also had some leisure, some time to devote to things outside that round of work. Time to make things purely for the sake of ornament, time to talk, time to sing and dance.
But here... here there was no escape from grueling labor, for before one could even work to gain one's bread, one must labor in the service of the King. Only after much work was put in—tilling the King's fields, mending the King's roads, minding the King's herds—could one return to one's own tiny holding and work for one's own self. And this went on, every day, week in, week out, with never a holiday and never a day of rest.
And meanwhile, the very land itself suffered. Firesong had never seen anything like this, and had only heard of it from his own teachers. Few mages, even those following dark and blood-stained paths, ever did this to the lands they claimed, for they planned to use those lands and took thought not to use them up.
All things living produced tiny amounts of mage-energy which gathered like dew and flowed down into the ley-lines and thence to the nodes. There was some energy available at the sources, weak, but easy to tame, and accessible to a Journeyman. There was more to be had from the lines, though it was stronger, and took a Master's hand. And the magic of nodes, of course, was something only an Adept could ever hope to control. All this power flowed naturally, in good time, and as both King and mage, Ancar should have husbanded those resources. But Ancar was not content with that. His magics forced the energy from the land, taking the life with it. Small wonder that folks felt drained and without hope! Ancar was stealing their life-force away from them, from their children, from their crops and their animals!
Ancar was a study in malicious negligence, who had risen to power by gradual theft overshadowed by visible force.
The only bright side to all of this was that what Ancar was doing was relatively easy to cure. Even the cure itself was the essence of simplicity.
Dispatch the monster. Get rid of him, and he would no longer be a leech on the side of this land. His lingering spells would decay, ley-lines would drift back to normal, and things would, in time, return to normal.
Even Ancar's wizard-weather was not as violent as it could have been. He had not been creating any great pools of power to disturb weather patterns as had happened purely by accident in Valdemar, as the Haven Heartstone in turn woke other long-dormant places. Those wells of power had collected without the kind of control and supervision there would have been if there had been a Vale of Tayledras in charge. The weather over Valdemar was steadying now, and centuries'-worth of aged power, steeped into the rocks and trees, was unfolding like a fresh flower-bloom.
Once Ancar was dead, the weather in his land would also return to normal.
But this place made him itch to have the job done and be gone. The despair here spread like a slow poison into his own veins, and made his muscles tight. The sooner they were all gone from here, the sooner he would be able to get back to Valdemar and begin Healing the damage there. He could nudge the land into some kind of magical order, so that Elspeth and her Heralds could work their magics properly. Despite the arrogant poses he kept, mainly for his own amusement, Firesong knew he could only influence the natural order, not control it. Healers, hunters, artists, and farmers knew that.
They passed a knot of farmers in their fields, filthy and mired, stooping over a plot of tubers, half of which were already rotting in the ground. Their threadbare, shabby clothes were nearly the same color as the mud they labored in. Their faces were blank and bleak, with no strength wasted on expression. He shuddered and turned away.
This place was cancerous. Its slow death was palpable, and came from the capital, enforced by marauding soldiers, steel-handed police, and insidious magics. Falconsbane was not much better, but he had never drunk up the life of his land the way these fools were.
The mood of the place had infected Firesong enough that things that had been amusing in the beginning of this trek no longer seemed clever. He had ceased to ask Aya to wear his ribbons, although when the firebird made his flights to attract the customers, he carried his trailing ribbons in his claws rather than wearing them. And he himself no longer donned that silly turban or bright robes until just before they came to a village. There was nothing to distinguish him from Darkwind, save length of hair.
Soon, he told himself. It will be over soon.
All that really gave him pleasure was to brighten the hearts of the children with his magic tricks, and to know that they were going home with enough money to buy their families a few days of decent meals.
If there were any food to buy.
That might be enough to hold them in hope until help really came, for the carnival was within a few days of the city where Ancar held abode.
Soon. Soon.
He fretted about Nyara, about her ability to handle what was surely the most onerous position in this little band, and about her mental stability, given her background. He would have fretted more, if not for Need. The sword spoke to him often, as often as he wished; they had spoken together of this more than once. He believed Need when she assured him that she could hold Nyara if the strain became too much to bear and she snapped beneath it. She had more than once proved herself equal to the task of controlling an adult mage; he had no doubt she could control Nyara if she had to, at least physically. Firesong, as one familiar with Healer-skills, recommended that Nyara's body could be influenced to calm or comfort her. Need understood.
He had confidence that between them, Skif and the blade could bring Nyara back
to her senses if something went horribly wrong. But none of that would be good for Nyara, or help her own sense of self-worth in any way, and he prayed that it would never come to a testing.
There was one source of personal irritation that he could do nothing about. He had not had a lover since they left Valdemar—and for Firesong, who had not slept alone for any length of time since he was old enough to send feathers to suitors, this was an irritation indeed. There had been that charming young Bard in Haven... but that had been all. Nothing in Vanyel's Forest, of course. Nor on the road between the Gate and Haven. And from Haven to this moment, nothing again. No one in the carnival had even approached him.
He would not, even for a moment, consider Darkwind. Not that Darkwind wasn't devastatingly attractive. It simply would not be fair. Elspeth did not understand all the nuances of Tayledras courting-play or customs, and she might well be hurt and unhappy if Firesong—
Besides, Darkwind had not reacted in any way as if he was interested in Firesong, which was irritating in itself, though Darkwind could hardly be faulted for personal tastes. Still. There it was. Even if Elspeth could be persuaded it was all completely harmless, Darkwind was simply not going to play.
There was Skif, however... Skif had not shown any interest either, but that could be for lack of opportunity.
He considered that for a bit longer. Nyara had such a warped childhood that there was nothing she took for granted. If he made it clear to her that there was nothing in this but a kind of exchange between friends—
She would still feel badly. I would damage her self-esteem. She would be certain that she is worthless to Skif if he "must" go elsewhere for a partner. I cannot do that to a friend. And to do that to someone already under as much as she is—would be as if I plunged a blade into her back.
Nothing came without a price. There was no hope for it. Unless someone else in this carnival approached the outsiders, he would just have to remain chaste.
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