Winds Of Change v(mw-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  She was quite ready to see the Vale long before they actually reached it. She discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that it was no real effort to keep her Mage-Sight invoked-and since Mage-Sight gave her an enhanced, owl-like view of her surroundings, she left it in force. It occurred to her, as she noted how every living creature and some things that were not alive each bore a faint outline of energy, that this must be what Companions used for night-sight. After all, in order to tap into and manipulate mage-power, you had to be able to See it, and since this kind of Sight worked equally well by day or night, why not use it to give you a nighttime advantage? Yet another Companion power she could explain away, which gave her a perverse feeling of satisfaction.

  Once they approached the shields surrounding the Vale, she had to drop the Sight; the energies there were so powerful they threatened to "blind" her.

  Well, that's one reason not to count on it for night-sight. And if powerful energies can "blind" you-well, that's something to be wary of. Hmm. And something to keep in mind as a weapon.

  The faint tingle of her skin as they passed the entrance to the Vale, as if lightning were about to strike her, told her that they had crossed the shields and protections standing patient guard over the only way in and out. But even if she had not felt that little tingle, she would have known they were inside k'sheyna Vale, for in the space of half a heartbeat they went from deep autumn to high summer. Suddenly her clothing was much too warm.

  Gwena stopped as Darkwind went on ahead, pushing through the foliage draped over the path and vanishing into the shadowy gloom.

  Elspeth dismounted, unfastened her cloak, and draped it over the saddle.

  Even then she was a little too warm; she rolled up the sleeves of her shirt and opened the collar to the balmy night air, heavy with the scent of night-blooming flowers she could not even put a name to.

  This place was the closest thing on earth that she had ever seen to the Havens of scripture and sermon. Too bad I can't bring a little bit of this back with me, she thought wistfully. Fresh fruit and flowers in the dead of winter, hot springs and cool pools to bathe in-trysting nooks, and I can think Of Plenty of people who'd enjoy those! Near-invisible servants. Balmy breezes.

  No wonder Vanyel visited k'treva whenever he was exhausted.

  Darkwind had said more than once that this Vale wasn't even a real showplace of what the Hawkbrothers could do. K'Sheyna, he'd wistfully related, was the smallest of the Clans even when they were at full strength, and the Vale was neglected and run down. Half tended at the very best, with no water-sculptures, no wind-harps-more than half the ekeles untenanted and falling to ruins-no one making vine-tapestries or flower-falls. No concerts except on the rarest of occasions, no artists except Ravenwing and the hertasi. Still, Elspeth found it beautiful beyond her wildest dreams.

  She could only wonder what the rest of the Vales must be like. And could the Heralds create something like this, if only in miniature?

  But-should they?

  She brushed aside a rainbow-threaded dangling vine and wondered about that.

  This Vale was a very seductive, hedonistic place, and many people already thought that the Heralds were a bit too randy as it was. It was also a place that could encourage sloth; she found it very easy to justify sleeping a little later, lingering in the hot spring, or sitting and watching a waterfall and thinking about nothing at all.

  Her footsteps made no sound on the soft sand of the pathway, sand that cradled her feet luxuriously. Everything about this Vale hinted at luxury-a luxury that few outside the Vales enjoyed. In fact, not even the Tayledras "cousins," the Shin'a'in, got to enjoy this sort of life. For that matter, could the Heralds really justify making themselves a private paradise when there were so many other things that needed doing?

  A pair of long-tailed birds sang sweetly nearby, scarcely an arm's length from Gwena, reminding her by their presence that outside the Vale the songbirds had long since gone south. Even if Heralds could justify building a place like this, there was no way that they could justify lounging about in it the way the Tayledras did. Frolicking in flower-bedecked bowers and lounging in hot pools didn't get circuits ridden.

  Too much living like this, and she'd find herself wasting time designing feather-masks and festival-garb instead of getting her work done.

  A feeling of moral superiority crept into her thoughts, and she let it.

  She led Gwena up the path to her loaned ekele and the tiny, sculpted hot Pool beneath it, and felt a bit smug.

  The stone path wound across another just ahead of her, and the murmur of voices to her right warned her that several folk were going to cross ahead of her. She paused-And her sense of moral superiority vanished as soon as the Hawkbrothers came in view.

  "Els-peth," called the first of the group as he caught sight of her,

  "We should like the use of your pool. The hertasi are cleaning several of the others, and yours is the nearest that is prepared. May we?" The mage-light that danced over his head revealed the little group of five pitilessly. The one in the lead, a mage named Autumnwing, was the best off, physically-and he was worn right down to the bone. Overextended, to say the least; his eyes were sunken, his skin pale, and he trembled with weariness. Behind him were two of Darkwind's scouts, both bruised and bloody, and supporting them were two more mages who looked in no better shape than Autumnwing. Even as she watched, one was redressing a wound that gleamed dark and wet, while her partner held the arm steady.

  "What in Havens happened to you?" she exclaimed, before she could stop herself.

  Autumnwing shrugged. "I have been with the rest on the Heartstone; it fluxed again today. Be glad you were not within the Vale, or we would have conscripted you with or without training. But I am not so badthese four met with a pack of Changewolves that had cornered one of k'sheyna's dyheli herds, and if it had not been for them, there might have been a score of Changewolves hounding the Vale itself tonight." As Elspeth's eyes widened, he added, "They are very valiant. Had I been in their place, I fear I would have fled." The arm-wounded woman grunted and said, "Forty-arrow fight." Then she shrugged.

  "P-please," Elspeth stammered, "Feel free to use the spring. I was going to find some food; shall I bring you back some, or send a hertasi with it?"

  "Either," replied one of the scouts wearily. "I could happily eat one of our fallen enemies at this moment, raw, and without salt."

  "I'll take care of it, if you'll pull off the tack," Gwena told her. "I can probably find a hertasi before you can." In answer, Elspeth bent to loose the saddle-girth, and saddle and blanket slid to the ground as she unbuckled the hackamore and hauled it over Gwena's ears. The Companion vanished into the undergrowth.

  "She's gone to recruit you some food," Elspeth told the others, as she bent to retrieve the fallen saddle.

  "Our thanks," Autumnwing told her gravely; she waited for them to make their way past her, then gave them a head start, before following in their wake.

  Hot pools and life in an eternal summer don't compensate for that, she thought, balancing the saddle on her shoulder. And given the Goddess' edicts, I suppose that even in Vales where the Heartstone is whole the mages aren't sitting around discussing water-sculpture.

  So much for moral superiority.

  The Vales must seem like paradise itself when they're out in the Pelagir wilds-but one that wouldn't be there to return to if they weren't out in those wilds to defend it. Is Valdemar any different to a Herald?

  Willfully faulty memory caught up with reality. This wasn't the first time she'd seen Hawkbrothers in such poor condition. The mages, halfhealed Starblade among them, worked themselves to a thread every day, shielding the Vale from attack, and trying to do something about their Heartstone. She had her own experience today to show her the hazards of being a scout on the border of the k'sheyna territory, where every league held new and deadly horrors.

  For that matter, she'd been an inadvertent witness to the worst-save only death-that could befall a
Hawkbrother. She'd seen what had happened to Dawnfire, and she'd been asked to feed power to Kethra one day, when the mage that usually augmented the Healer-shaman was too exhausted to continue. Kethra put Starblade through purest agony that day, explaining only that this was a necessary part of Healing what had been done to him. Elspeth still felt uncomfortable with the memory.

  Although she repeated to herself again and again that it -Was for the better, she still felt like a torturer's apprentice for it.

  We're pampered, we Heralds, she realized, stopping long enough to shift the weight of the saddle to her other shoulder, and shake some of the aches out of the arm that had balanced it. We have everything we need taken care of for us. We live in prepared quarters, we have servants picking up after us. The Hawkbrothers have Vales; we have our rooms at the Collegium. they have hertasi, we have human servants. they have their food and clothing made for them; so do we. Neither of us have physical pleasures that are adequate compensation for what we do.

  She reached the foot of the tree that held her ekele; muted voices and faint splashing told her that the pool was occupied. She hung her saddle and hackamore over the railing at the bottom of the stair, and took herself up the staircase.

  Darkwind had pointed out something about the Vales; that anyone with sufficient magic power could create one. They were really just very large hothouses, with a mage-barrier serving in place of glass. Nothing terribly exotic about a hothouse She pulled aside the door to her ekele, and looked down over the edge of the staircase for a moment. Kerowyn's grueling lessons in strategy and tactics caused her to realize something else as well.

  The ekeles were not simply exotic love nests. They were based directly on the quite defensible treetop homes of the tervardi. How defensible they were could be demonstrated by the ekeles built outside the Vale; once the ladder to the ground had been pulled up, there was virtually no way to reach them. They were warded against fire, even, by set-spells and a transparent resin painted around the tree trunks well past two man-heights.

  Even the ekele here could be made quite defensible simply by destroying the rope-and-truss suspended staircases, making them an excellent place to retreat if the Vale defenses were ever breached.

  Gwena must have found her hertasi right away, for there was a tray of food waiting for her, and the herb tea in the pot was still hot and steeping. She helped herself to bread and meat, and collapsed onto her pillow-strewn pallet.

  My people build walls. The Tayledras put themselves up in the trees. Differences in philosophy, really. More like the Heralds than like the ordinary folk of Valdemar. they think in terms of evasion, the way we do, rather than the stand-and-fight of the Guard.

  She finished as much of her meal as she wanted at the moment, and stripped off her filthy, blood-speckled clothing. Dyheli blood, of course, and not of herself or Darkwind, but it was still going to be a major task to get it out. She could bleach it with magic of course, and she probably would, but that was a waste of mage-power.

  Maybe she'd just shift over to scout clothing. It was more practical for all this woods running, anyway.

  She wrapped a huge towel around herself and descended the staircase, heading for the spring. Occupied or no, she was going to use it. After all, she deserved a good soak as much as her visitors did; she'd just spent her day doing the same things they had done. She had earned a little luxury.

  They all had.

  *Chapter Nine - Kethra and Rris

  Vree stayed calm on Darkwind's shoulder after they passed the protections at the entrance to the Vale, even though until recently the bondbird had not wanted to enter the Vale itself. The rogue energies of the Heartstone had disturbed Vree badly, and the bondbirds of every other scout as well, but the additional shielding on the Stone seemed to be having some beneficial effect.u "Are you all right?" he asked Vree, just to be sure. "We can turn around and leave if you want; I can hold the scouts' meeting at the ekele just as well as here. The mages will just have to climb a rope ladder instead of a staircase, and they'll all have to squeeze into my rooms. I think it would bear their weight." Vree ducked his head a little, and yawned. "Fine. Happy," he replied sleepily. Then, anxiously, "Food soon?"

  "Soon," he assured the bird. "Quite soon. As soon as we get to the meeting." The other scouts would have hungry birds as well; the hertast would have provided a selection of whole game birds and small mammals for the raptors, along with some kind of meal for the birds' bondmates.

  For the first time in a very long time, this would be a meeting of daywatch scouts and scout-mages. Stormcloud would hold a similar meeting for those on night-watch. Yesterday Darkwind had asked them to gather because there was something important to be addressed. He hadn't specified what that was.

  He had been the scouts' representative to the k'sheyna Council during the most divisive period in their history-the period when Starblade, as directed by Mornelithe Falconsbane, was creating rifts between mages and nonmages, to weaken the Clan and make it easier for Falconsbane to destroy them. Darkwind had been willing to serve then, knowing that no one else had the edge he did, having his own father as chief of the Council. It was a bitter truth that his advantage then was not in currying favor, but knowing the other's weaknesses. He had sometimes been able to manipulate his father. Equally painful to recall was the fact that Starblade had done the same to him.

  But now that he was devoting more time to mage-craft, he had less time to spend elsewhere. The scouts were his friends and charges, and with his attentions divided so, they could conceivably suffer for it.

  It was time for a change. Now the question was whether or not he could get the others to agree with him. In general the kind of person who became a successful scout was not the kind who enjoyed being in a position of authority, or who relished dealing with those who were.

  The best place for the gathering was the central clearing that had been used for the celebration, but that was closer to the Heartstone than Darkwind liked, shielding or no shielding. So he had asked them all to gather in the smaller clearing beneath the tallest tree in the Vale; the one that the scouts had used for dancing.

  When he arrived, he found a near replication of the celebration, except that there was no music or dancing, the clothing was more subdued, and the conversation level was considerably quieter. Birds stood on portable perches, the exposed roots of trees, or in the branches, most of them with talons firmly in their dinner, the rest eyeing the mound of fur and feathers with a view to selecting something choice. Brighter mage-lights than those conjured for the celebration hung up in the branches, illuminating everything below with a clear yellow light, sunlike but for its intensity. Tayledras sprawled all over the clearing, eating, talking, or both. Darkwind did a quick mental tally and came up a few names short, as Vree yearned toward the heap of "dinner," making little plaintive chirping noises in the back of his throat.

  "Hungry!" he urged his bondmate, as Darkwind tried not to laugh at the ridiculous sounds he made. The uninitiated were often very surprised at the calls of raptorial birds; most of them, other than the defiant screams of battle and challenge, were very unimpressive chirps, clucks, and squeals. One species, the Harshawk, even croaked, sounding very like a duck with a throat condition. And owls hissed; not the kinds of things one expected to hear from the fierce hunters of the sky.

  But silly sounds notwithstanding, Vree's hunger was very real and quite intense, and the bondbird had more than earned his dinner. Darkwind took him on the gauntlet and tossed him into the air, to give him a little height. Vree gave two great beats of his wings, reaching the lowest of the branches, then dove straight down at the pile, shouldering aside lesser and less-famished birds to get at a fat, choice duck. One of the Harshawks quacked indignantly as the tasty morsel was snatched right from under his talons, and two of the owls hissed angrily at being shouldered aside, but Vree ignored them all. The gyre heaved himself and his prize up into the air, and lumbered off to a nearby branch, where he mantled both wings over it
and tore into it with his sharp, fiercely hooked beak.

  "Here-" Shadowstar shoved sliced meat and bread at Darkwind, and snatched back her fingers, laughing, when he grabbed for it as if he were a hungry forestgyre himself. "Heyla! Sharpset, are we? In yarak?"

  "Something like," he admitted, "It's been a long day, with a mageduel at the end of it." He took a healthy bite of the food, and bolted it, suddenly realizing just how hungry he was. "Where are Summerstar and Lightwing? And-ah-" it took him a moment to remember the names of the mages that had been assigned to help the two scouts.

  Shadowstar beat him to it. "Songlight and Winddance. Gone to get injuries tended again; they ran into Changewolves. Nothing serious." A tentative Mindtouch from an unfamiliar source reassured him.

  "Songlight here. We are mostly soaking bruises, Darkwind. I will stay in Mindtouch and relay to the others, if you like."

  "Please," he replied, taking a seat where he could see the others. "this shouldn't take long." He took out his dagger and rapped the hilt of it on the side of the tree; it rang hollowly, and got him instant attention and instant silence.