It wasn’t much longer before the Tayledras got up to dance. Here was another difference between the Hawkbrothers and her own people. At home, folks danced in groups-ring dances or set-pieces, with a definite sequence to the steps. The Tayledras danced singly, or in couples, or trios at most, and there was no set-pattern to the dance steps. The nearest she had ever seen to this kind of exuberant chaos had been at a Herald celebration when a number of the younger Heralds just in from the field had gotten involved in a kind of dancing contest, demonstrating the wilder steps from their various home villages.
Two or three songs later, she noticed that some of the original contingent had vanished somewhere, and there were a few additions, wearing costumes more like those of mages than of scouts.
She started watching the onlookers as well as the dancers, and figured out from overheard bits of conversation that there were dozens of these little gatherings, scattered all around the Vale, although this was probably the most lively. Several scouts turned up in the next few moments with wet hair, attracted by the sounds of the music from the pools in which they had been swimming. That, it seemed, was the essence of a Tayledras celebration; to roam. People came and went; sampling little bits of this and that, food, music, conversation. . . .
She decided to do as the natives were doing, taking the opportunity to explore the Vale a little, and slipped off by herself, wandering down a randomly chosen path until she heard the sounds of a softer melody than the dancing music.
She discovered a single singer, a woman in silvery-gray, slender as a birch tree, playing a huge diamond-shaped wire-strung harp. There were a half dozen of the mages listening to her, sitting on benches arranged in a half-circle around her, and Elspeth stayed through three songs before moving on.
She found her way back to the original clearing. By now the gryphlets were sound asleep, oblivious to all the light and movement and the sounds of conversation around them. Both Companions were still there, with that relaxed attitude and cheerful, ears-up, tail-switching pose that told her they were enjoying themselves. Their conversational partners were Toni, the kyree, two of the mages, one of the scouts, and an old hertasi. Seeing them, she relaxed as well, since they were enjoying themselves. As she wandered off again, it occurred to her that this was the one thing that was often missing from parties that the Heralds held - Dirk and Talia’s wedding had included the Companions, but all too often, they were left out of things. As she watched Gwena and Cymry, she made a mental note; when she got home again, that was one thing that would change. She’d find a way to make certain they weren’t left out again. They were as responsible for the success of the Heralds as the Heralds themselves. Surely they deserved that much consideration.
Gwena turned around at that moment and gave her an unmistakable wink before returning to her conversation.
Even if they do snoop in our heads.
But she was smiling as she chose another path, not looking for anything in particular, but thinking that a swim might be nice.
She heard water trickling, off to one side, and someone giggling; she didn’t really stop to think, she just started to make her way down the little path.
Suddenly Darkwind slipped in front of her, stopping her before she could part the branches that shielded the end of the path. “Pardon,” he said apologetically. “The marker beside the path - it was turned to face red. It means that - ”
The giggling changed to an unmistakable gasp of pleasure. Elspeth found herself blushing. “Never mind,” she whispered, backing up hastily. “I think I have a good idea what it means.”
She turned, and started back toward the clearing; Darkwind intercepted her again. “Oh, no,” he said earnestly. “No, if they had not wanted to be disturbed, the marker would have been blue. No, the red marker means that they would welcome - ah - all other - ” he coughed “ - participants - ”
She blushed even deeper; her ears and cheeks aflame. She’d always been told mat the Heralds were uninhibited. It seemed that the Hawkbrothers had even fewer inhibitions.
“I thought perhaps no one had warned you,” he continued. “If, perhaps, you might want to enjoy one of the hot springs, I can take you to one where there is nothing more active than hot water.”
What else could she do but accept gracefully, and hope that by the time they reached this spring, her blushes would have cooled?
A curtain of steam announced the location of the spring, but when Darkwind pulled aside the branches at the entrance and waved her into the area around the pool, she found herself flushing all over again. There were about ten of the Hawkbrothers she remembered seeing at the dancing, all soaking muscles that must certainly be complaining, but they weren’t wearing much except hair.
“Darkwind!” one of them hailed. “Fifteen split-jumps! Beat that, if you can!”
“Oh, yes,” the young woman next to him said mockingly. “Fifteen split-jumps indeed - and now you see him soaking here, because he could scarce walk when he completed the fifteenth!”
“Sunfeather!” the young man exclaimed indignantly, “You weren’t supposed to tell him that!”
Darkwind peeled off his tunic, as Elspeth averted her eyes and slowly took off her boots. “Perhaps you should think less about split-jumps, and more about what Sunfeather’s expectations for the evening were before you tried to displace your hipjoints,” he suggested mildly. “Then you might have the answer as to why she revealed your secret.”
As the rest of the Tayledras teased the discomfited dancer, Darkwind removed the rest of his clothing and slid into the water beside Sunfeather. The spring-fed pool was quite a large one; the dozen Tayledras were scattered about the edge of it, each one of them lounging at full length, and they were hardly taking up more room than a dozen peas in one of the Collegium kitchen’s biggest pots.
The analogy to a pot was a lot more apt than she had thought; when she finally got up enough courage to shed the rest of her clothing, she slid into an unoccupied niche. The hot spring was a good deal hotter than she had thought; not quite painful, but not far from it.
Steam rose about her face and turned her hair limp, but after a moment she stopped thinking she was about to have her hide boiled off, and began to enjoy the heat.
She slipped out again, after a relatively short time; she was not used to turning herself into a scalded turnip. Much to her surprise, someone - perhaps one of the ubiquitous and near-invisible hertasi - had left a towel and robe beside her clothing.
For the rest of the evening, she alternated between the larger clearing, and the one the scouts had taken for their dancing. One of the mages treated the group to a guided flight of befriended firebirds - like the fireworks displays at home, except that these fireworks didn’t fade or die. Gwena loved every moment of it, although Elspeth would have liked to have seen the firebirds come closer. The demonstration was very impressive, especially when they flew among the branches of the huge, shadow-shrouded tree. That wouldn’t have been possible with real fireworks.
She lost track of time, wandering around the Vale, as fatigue caught up with her and her nerves relaxed. Finally she found herself back beneath the tree; most of the lights hanging from the balcony had been extinguished, but there were more people, human and not.
They were all “people” to her now, after an evening of trading jokes with hertasi, commiserating with tervardi on the likelihood of a bad winter, and telling the dyheli exactly what had happened to Nyara. So far as the dyheli were concerned, Nyara was still their heroine. She hadn’t known that their entrapment had been a set-up by her father, to ensure that the k’Sheyna would look on her favorably. She had acted in the belief that she was saving them. They knew that, and honored her for it.
So the facts of her disappearance were of great interest to them; they promised Elspeth that they would watch for signs of the Changechild, and report anything they learned back to the Tayledras scouts.
All but the most die-hard of dancers had given up by now; Elspeth found herself a
seat in the shadows. Tre’valen was the center of a cluster of the scouts, who were trying to persuade him to dance. Finally he shook his head, shrugged, and gestured to the musicians. “Hawk Dance?” Iceshadow called back.
Tre’valen laughed. “Indeed!” he said, taking a stand in the middle of the illuminated area. “What else would I do for you? But only on condition that Darkwind follow with a Wind Dance.”
Elspeth hadn’t seen Darkwind before Tre’valen called out his name, but when he waved agreement from across the clearing, she saw that he had stripped off the fancier over-tunic, and now looked more like the Darkwind she knew, in a deep-cut sleeveless jerkin and tight breeches, his only ornaments the feathers in his hair.
Tre’valen had changed after the ceremony into his Shin’a’in finery of scarlet, black, and gold; embroidered vest with fringe to his knees, fringed and belled armbands. Loose breeches with fringed kneebopts, all of it topped with a horsehair and feather headdress like some strange bird’s crest - he was a striking sight.
The drummer began first; Tre’valen marked the time with one foot, the fringe shivering with each beat. When the instruments came in, Tre’valen leapt into action.
Elspeth soon saw why it was called the “Hawk Dance.” Tre’valen was aloft more often than he was on the ground; whirling, flying, leaping. He never paused, never rested; no sooner did his foot touch the ground than he was in the air again. His arms curved like wings cupping the air. Elspeth’s heart kept time with the beat, her eyes unable to leave him. He didn’t seem much like a human at the moment - more like a creature akin to the tervardi or the firebirds. But then, perhaps that was the essence of being a shaman.
The dance came to an end on a triple beat and one of the highest leaps of the dance that left Tre’valen standing still as stone, exactly in the same place where he had begun the dance. Elspeth had no idea how he had known the music was about to end; she had heard nothing to signal the end of the piece. It left her staring, dumb with astonishment and delight.
Tre’valen sat down on a root amid the shouts and applause of the others. Darkwind took the shaman’s place in the center of the circle; composed himself, and nodded to the musicians.
This time the music began slowly, with a glissando on the odd hammered instrument, followed by another on the harp, a softer echo of the first. Then Darkwind began to dance.
The Tayledras and Shin’a’in music were related; that much was obvious from a root similarity of melody, but dancing and music had changed from the time the two races were one. Either the Shin’a’in had gotten wilder, or the Tayledras had become more lyrical, or both.
Darkwind didn’t leap, he floated; he didn’t whirl, he flowed. He moved as if he had no bones, flew like his own bird, glided and spun and hovered. There was nothing feminine in the dance, for all of that; it was completely, supremely masculine. Besides his supple grace, what Elspeth noticed most of all were his hands - they had to be the most graceful pair of hands she had ever seen.
Darkwind finished the dance like a bird alighting for the night; coming to rest with a final run from the harp. There was a faint sheen of sweat over his body and face, shining in the moonlight. As he held his final pose, he was so completely still that he could have been a silver statue of a forest spirit, looking up in wonder at the stars.
That was the image that Elspeth took with her, as she slipped out of the clearing and found one of the hertasi. She asked the little creature to show her the quarters Darkwind had promised were waiting for her here.
The little lizard grinned at her, and led her down so many twisting, dark paths that she was soon lost. Not that it mattered at the moment. Darkwind had also pledged that he would send someone to lead her about until she knew her own way.
She recognized the area, once they got near it; they were very close to the entrance to the Vale, the farthest they could be from the Heartstone and still be inside the Vale shields. The hertasi showed her a staircase winding up the side of a tree. For a moment she was afraid that she would have to climb up several stories, and she wasn’t sure she had the head for it.
But the hertasi scrambled up ahead of her, and her waiting quarters proved to be a mere single story above the floor of the Vale, a set of two rooms built just off the stairs, lighted and waiting for her.
She fell into the bed as soon as the hertasi left her - but for a surprisingly long time she lay looking at the moon, as sleep deserted her.
She felt a little less like a stranger, but no less lonely. Skif had Nyara - or at least, he had the dream of Nyara, wherever he was now. She still had no one.
Only her duty, her omnipresent duty. To learn everything she could about magic; learn it quickly, and bring it home to Valdemar.
That was cold comfort - and no company - on a silvered, moonfilled night. . . .
Chapter 3
Darkwind & Vree
Darkwind accepted the applause of his fellow scouts along with a damp cloth and a healthy gulp of cold water. It had been a long time since he had performed the Wind Dance in full, although dance was a part of his daily workout. He enjoyed it, and enjoyed the applause almost as much. It was good to know his skill could still conjure approval from his brethren.
The Outlander, Elspeth, had been watching the dancers when Tre’valen began his display. He knew she had enjoyed the Hawk Dance; from the look on her face, she had probably never seen anything quite like it before. He thought she’d enjoyed his dancing as well - and he meant to talk to her afterward. He was disappointed, after he’d caught his breath, to find she had gone.
He settled for a moment to let his muscles recover; he felt them quivering with fatigue as he sat down. He had pushed himself in this Wind Dance, to far closer to his limits than he usually tried to reach. The steps which appeared deceptively easy, required perfect balance and control and required fully as much effort to sustain as Tre’valen’s more energetic Hawk Dance.
He listened to some of the others discussing dances and dancers past, nodding when someone said something he particularly agreed with. No one else wanted to follow his performance, and some of the players took that as a signal to put their instruments away and rest their weary fingers. As Darkwind settled his back against the tree and slowly sipped his water, he considered the Outlanders - Elspeth in particular. They were less of an enigma than he had feared they would be, although he still wished he knew a great deal more about their culture.
Elspeth was more of a problem than her friend Skif, simply because of her position as his student. She was sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating, often both.
She compounded his own problems as he resumed his position as an Adept. As his father had pointed out, he had a great deal to re-learn; how much, Darkwind was only now figuring out. What Starblade didn’t know was that his son was already giving Elspeth lessons, even while he was retraining his own powers.
Elspeth posed a peculiar hazard, that of half-knowledge. She had full training in the Gifts of mind-magic, though no true training in her mage-powers - but some of the Mind-Magic disciplines were similar enough to give her a grasp on magery, but without controls. Her sword had at one time provided some guidance and tutelage, but Elspeth had a great deal to learn about even rudimentary magics. Without the blade Need about to keep her in hand, he had not felt safe about having Elspeth walking around loose without beginning those early lessons in basic control.
What he had not reckoned on - although, given her quick temper, he should have anticipated the difficulty - was her impatience with him.
She wanted answers, and she wanted them immediately. And when he was already impatient with himself, he didn’t feel like explaining himself to an Outlander who had barely even seen magic in action before she came south.
Her insistence on forcing years’ worth of learning into a few weeks was enough to drive the most patient of savants to distraction, much less her current teacher. She can be so irritating. . . .
He leaned his head back and stared up into the pat
tern of faint light and deep darkness created by moonlight, mage-lights, and tree branches. There was randomness, no discernible pattern, just as there was no discernible pattern to his life. A season ago, he would never have been able to imagine the events of the past several weeks. A year ago, he never would have believed his life would change in any meaningful way, except for the worse.
He sighed, and ran his hand through his hair, fluffing it to cool and dry it. Elspeth was a disruption to an already confusing situation. The problem was, she had the infuriating habit of being right now and again in matters of magic - matters in which she had no experience and little knowledge.
He’d dismissed all of her suggestions initially. Then, when she’d been proven right a time or two, he’d thought at first that it was pure luck. No one could always be right or wrong after all, but a day or so ago, he’d finally seen the logic to her ideas’ successes. In general, when she saw something that she thought could be done magically, but that he had never learned, her theories turned out to be, in principle, correct.
One case in point that still annoyed Darkwind was treating the lesser lines of power as if they were a web, and the mage was a spider in the midst of that web. She’d reasoned that anyone working magic within the area a mage defined as his “web” would create a disturbance in the lines of power, which the mage at the center would feel, in the same way a spider felt an insect in its web. The advantage of this was that it was a passive detection system; there was nothing to alert the intruding mage that he’d been detected.
It was nothing he’d been taught. He’d been certain it wouldn’t work - until she sketched a diagram, extended a few tendrils of energy, and proved to him that it would. It had been something of a shock to his already-bruised pride, and he followed along numbly as she refined the idea.
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