Winds Of Change v(mw-2

by Mercedes Lackey

  "I hope that most of you have guessed why I asked for these meetings-" he began.

  Shadowstar stood up, interrupting him. "We pretty much figured it out," she said dryly, as the others nodded. "We were talking it all over before you got here. And we're all agreed that while we don't want to lose you as our leader, you deserve a rest, and you aren't going to get one at the rate you're going." Nods all around confirmed her words, and Darkwind felt an irrational surge of relief-both that the scouts still wanted him as leader, and that they were willing to let him go.

  "Have any of you got a candidate in mind?" he asked. Surprisingly, it was one of the mages who answered him.

  "Winterlight," the young man said promptly. "He did it before you had the position, and now that we aren't at each others' throats, he says he would be willing to take it again." Darkwind turned to his old friend, one of the oldest scouts in the Clan, raising an eyebrow inquisitively. Winterlight coughed and halfsmiled." I know the job," he answered, confirming the mage's words.

  "And since it's no longer the trial that it was-" Darkwind grinned openly. "Then as far as I am concerned, the position is yours, my friend-if the rest agree, that is." He was going to open the meeting up to discussions, but the others forestalled him with their unanimous assent. Even the bondbirds seemed pleased with the choice. It was a good one; although he was not a mage, Winterlight seldom dyed his hair, and wore it long, as a mage did. So he looked like a mage, and he was a contemporary of Starblade and Iceshadow, which made him doubly acceptable to the Elders of the Council.

  "As long as the night-watch agrees, then, it's yours," he told Winterlight happily. "And if they come up with a different candidate, you'll have to deal with that yourself."

  "If they come up with a different candidate, we'll split the duties," Winterlight replied immediately. "I've had my fill of dissension." Darkwind shrugged. "That's fine with me," he responded.

  Winterlight smiled. "It wasn't just a rest that the youngsters decided you need," he said, in a confidential whisper. "I overheard one of them saying that you've been living like a sworn celibate and you needed to take that pretty Outlander off to a bower and-" The rest of Winterlight's whispered suggestion made Darkwind flush so hard he was afraid he was glowing.

  The rest of the scouts howled with laughter.

  Winterlight just smiled enigmatically and asked if Darkwind needed to borrow any feathers. Darkwind deliberately turned his attention first to Vree to make sure the gyre was all right, then to his food, both to cover his confusion. When he looked beside him again, Winterlight was gonebut the Shin'a'in shaman Kethra had taken his place.

  Oh, my. I wonder what I owe this pleasure to.

  He brushed invisible crumbs from his tunic, self-consciously. Kethra was another source of confusion entirely for him, and not just because she was his father's lover.

  Although that was a part of it" Is Father well?" he asked her, quickly.

  She nodded, her bright green eyes as cool and unreadable as a falcon's, and smoothed her long black hair in back of her ears. She wore a bird-fetish necklace that sparkled in the magelight, and a braided length of cord adorned with feathers hung from her left temple.

  " He is relatively well," she told him, as the assembled scouts collected their birds as if at an unspoken signal, and drifted not-too-casually off, back to their respective ekeles. There wasn't any people-food left, and the few carcasses that remained were taken by those who lived outside the Vale.

  Kethra, however, was not leaving. "There are some things I need to discuss with you before I proceed to the next steps with him. They concern you, and your relationship to him."

  "What about it?" he asked, more brusquely than he intended. Suddenly it seemed as if everyone in k'sheyna was interested in his private life! Am I to be allowed no thoughts to myself? He glanced around the clearing, hoping for a distraction, but all of the scouts who had thronged the area had evaporated like snow in the summer sun, as if there was some kind of conspiracy between them and the Shin'a'in. She only pursed her lips and shook her head at him, allowing him no evasions.

  "I need to know what you think of him now-and what you think of me." She fixed him with an unflinching gaze. "You know I am Starblade's lover." He flushed, painfully embarrassed. "Yes," he said shortly. "And Iceshadow told me why-why it was necessary."

  "What did he tell you?" she asked. "Humor me." He averted his eyes for a moment, but she recaptured them. "Because so many of the things that were done to Father, and the magics that were cast to control him, were linked with sex, it has required sexually oriented Healing to undo them. That meant Father's Healer should be a lover as well." Kethra nodded, and leaned back, her slender hands clasped around one knee. "That is quite true," she said quietly, "And in case you had wondered, I knew that was the case when I came here at Kra'heera's request. But had you also deciphered that I am your father's love as well as his lover, and he has become mine as well?" Darkwind tried to look away in confusion, and found that he could not. "I-it had occurred to me," he admitted. "I am not blind, and your attitude toward one another shows." She set her jaw with the perpetual half-smile that shaman always seemed to have. "And what do you think of that?" she asked bluntly, a question he had not expected. "What do you think of me, when you picture me in that role?" Gods of my fathers. She would ask that. "I am confused," he said, as honestly as he could. "I do not know what to think. I admire you for yourself, shaman. You are a very strong, talented, and clever woman.

  You force my father to be strong again, as well. I think that he must need this, or you would not do it. I see you encourage him to go to his limits; you permit him to do for himself what he can. Yet you do not let him fall when you can steady him, and you match your talents with his when he cannot do something alone."

  "You are describing a partner," Kethra said calmly. "An equal.

  Someone who is likely to go on being one for the foreseeable future." He nodded, reluctantly, aware that his uneasiness was making him sweat.

  "And this makes you ill at ease." She stated it as an observation rather than a question. "Uncomfortable in my presence whether or not I am with your father." He sighed. "Yes, lady. It is not just because you are a shaman, though there is something to that." Kethra chuckled. "Shaman make you nervous?" Darkwind took a deep breath and chose his words carefully. "Shaman as a rule can make one uncomfortable by seeing more than one would like. That is not the whole of it, though. I do not know what to say to you, or how to treat you. You are the first of my father's lovers who has been a full partner since my mother's death. And when I am looking objectively at my memories, it seems to me that you have more patience and compassion than my mother had. And yet-"

  "And yet, what of your loyalty to your true mother, now that I have come to replace her? Surely I seem an interloper. I suffer by comparison with your memory of her."

  "It is easy to regard someone who is dead as without peer," he told her candidly. "I have lost enough friends and loved ones to be aware of that." He cocked his head to one side, and nibbled his lower lip. This was, possibly, one of the oddest conversations he had ever taken part in.

  "Say this. I know that I can call you friend. I think if you will give me time, I can even come to call you more than that. Will this serve?"

  Her smile widened, and she reached out a hand to clasp his, warmly.

  "It will serve," she told him. "Friend alone would have served; I am pleased you think of me that well. I was not sure, Darkwind. You are adept at hiding your true feelings-you have had need to, I know. That is not unique to Tayledras, Shin'a'in, or any other people. Trust me, we shaman need to hide our feelings ourselves sometimes, to struggle through pain." He shrugged. "We all have needed to hide true feelings here, to one extent or another. Events have made it necessary." She nodded. "Well, at least you and I have looked beneath the masks, and not run from what we have found." He smiled, impressed by her steadfast sense of humor. "Now the unpleasant news. Your father is still far from recover
ed. It will not take weeks or even months to cure him; it will be a matter of years." He took a deep breath and ran his hand through his hair. He felt his shoulders slumping, and remembered that it made a poor impression of strength, but he knew Kethra would see through any attempts to hide his emotions, either by words or body language. He closed his eyes. "I had thought so, but I had not liked to believe it. Father has always been so--strong. He has always recovered quickly from things. Are you quite certain of this?" A deep, somewhat strained male voice spoke from behind them.

  "You must believe it, my son," said Starblade. Darkwind jerked his head up and turned to face him. Starblade wore a thin, loose-cut restinggown that Songwind... Darkwind had designed for him a decade ago.

  The Adept walked slowly into the clearing, and now that he knew the truth, Darkwind saw the traces of severe damage done to him, physically as well as mentally.

  Starblade found a space beside Kethra and joined her. "You must. I am but a shadow of what I was. In fact," he chuckled as if he found the idea humorous, "I have considered changing my use-name to Star shadow. Except that we already have a Shadowstar, and that would be confusing for everyone." Darkwind clenched his hands. It wasn't easy hearing Starblade confess to weakness; it was harder hearing him admit to such profound weakness that he'd thought of altering his use-name. That implied a lasting condition, as when Songwind had become Darkwind, and sometimes an irreparable condition.

  Starblade sat carefully down beside the shaman, and took her hand in his. His left hand-the one that Darkwind had pierced with his dagger as part of his father's freeing from Mornelithe Falconsbane. It showed a glossy, whitened scar a half-thumblength long now that the bandages had been removed. "I hope that you and I have reconciled our differences, MY son," he said, as Darkwind tried not to squirm, "because I must tell you that I do not trust my decision-making ability any more than I can rely on my faded powers." Darkwind started to blurt out a protest; his father stopped him. "oh, not for the small decisions, the everyday matters. But for the decisions that affect us all deeply-and the ones I made in the past-I do not feel that I can continue without another view to temper mine. In our Healings, I see my actions laid on bare earth, without order. As I am rebuilt, Kethra helps me to understand the motivations behind those actions. and reject those that Falconsbane engineered. It is a slow process, Darkwind.

  I do not know which of the decisions I have made were done out of pride, out of good judgment, or out of the direction of our enemies.

  I need you, my son; I need your vision, and I need your newly regained powers. More so: k'sheyna needs them." Now Darkwind was numb. At the moment, all he could do was to nod. But this-this was frightening, inconceivable. Even at his worst, when Starblade had been trying to thwart him at every turn, he had been in control, he had been powerful. He had been someone who at least could be relied upon to know what he was doing, a bastion of strength. Full of certainty.

  This was like hearing that the rock beneath the Vale was sand, and that the next storm could wash it away.

  Kethra and Starblade both were waiting for some kind of response, so he got himself under some semblance of control, and gave them one.

  "What is it you want me to do?" he asked.

  "I want your opinions, your thoughts," Starblade told him, his lined and weary face showing every day of his age. "I need them. The most pressing concern is the Heartstone; what do you think we should do about it? You know enough to make some educated guesses about it.

  We cannot stabilize it, not without help. I do not think that we can drain it, either. When we try, it fluxes unpredictably. And after you have given me your opinion, I want your help in doing whatever it is that we must to end this trouble-I want you to take my place as the key of the Adepts' circle."

  He shook his head at that, violently. "Father, I can't. I haven't even begun to relearn all I've forgotten and-"

  "The strength of your will and youth will counter that lack of practice," Kethra said, interrupting him. "The key need not be the most experienced Adept, but he must be the strongest, and you are that." Starblade coughed, then settled himself, fixing Darkwind with a sincere look. "I will explain it to you in this light, then. Your mother and I raised you to be a strong and responsible person, Scout or Mage. Now, the strength that I taught you has been taken from me. You are at least in part the vessel of my old personality. I would appreciate relearning what I was from you, and learning your strength." Given a choice, he would have told them it was impossible; turned and fled from the Vale, back to his ekele. But he had no choice, and all three of them knew that. He bowed to their will. "If that is truly what you want," he said unhappily. "If it is, then I shall." Thank you," Starblade said, simply. As Kethra stood up, he rose to his feet to place one hand on his son's shoulder. "This-confession has cost me a great deal, but I think it has gained me more. I have given over wanting you to be a copy of me, and I wish that Wintermoon and I had not drifted so far apart that I cannot say those same words to him and be believed. Perhaps in time, he will not be lost to me. I do not wish you to be anything but yourself, Darkwind. Whatever comes of this, it will have happened because you went to the limit of your abilities, and not the sum of my expectations. In all that happens, I shall try to be your friend as well as your father." With those words, which surprised him more than anything else that had happened tonight, Starblade turned and walked slowly back into the shadows, with Kethra at his side.

  Vree swooped down off his perch, and backwinged to a new one beside his bondmate. He swiveled his head, turning it upside down to stare at Darkwind from a new angle, as only a raptor would do. Hard to manage, with his crop bulging as if the bird had swallowed a child's ball. And possibly the silliest pose any bird could take.

  "Sleepy," he announced. "Sleep now?" Darkwind held out his gauntlet automatically, and Vree swiveled his head back and hopped onto his bondmate's wrist. "I think so," he replied, absently, all the while wondering if, after all this, he still could get to sleep.

  He flailed up out of slumber, arms windmilling wildly, with sparkling afterimages of confused dream-scenes still in his mind and the impression of someone shaking him.

  Someone was shaking him. "What?" he gasped. "Who?" The hammock-bed beneath him felt strange, the proportions of the room all wrong.

  Light flared, and he blinked, dazzled; the shaker was Sathen, the hertasi who usually tended Starblade's ekele for him. The little lizard was holding a lit lantern in one claw, with the other on Darkwind's shoulder.

  And the proportions of the room were wrong because he was not in his own ekele, he was in Starblade's, in the guest quarters. Vree dozed on, oblivious, on a block-perch set into the wall, one foot pulled up under his breast-feathers and his head hunched down so far there was nothing visible in the soft puff of white and off-white but a bit of beak.

  I need to find Father a new bondbird, came the inconsequential thought, as Sathen waited patiently for him to gather his wits and say something sensible.

  "What?" he obliged, finally. "What's wrong?"

  "Trouble," the little hertasi whispered. "Trouble-call it is, from Snowstar. Needing mage. Needing mages," he corrected. "More than one. ~ Marvelous. Well, I'm probably the least weary. "What for?" he asked.

  It couldn't be for combat; by the time he reached Snowstar's patrol area, any combat would have been long since resolved. He reached for his clothing and pulled on his breeches. Well, at least this means that someone else will have to take our patrol in the morning. And I don't have to be the one to decide who it is.

  "Basilisk," Sathen said, his nostrils closing to slits as he said it. The lizard-folk did not like basilisks-not that anyone did, but basilisks seemed to prefer hertasi territories over any others.

  Darkwind groaned, and pulled his tunic over his head, thinking as quickly as his sleep-fogged mind would permit. "Go leave a message for Winterlight that-ah-Wingsister Elspeth and I went out to deal with the basilisk, and he'll have to get someone else on day-watch to cove
r for us. Then go wake up the Outlander and tell her I'll be coming for her in a moment." Fortunately Elspeth's ekele was not that far from Starblade's. She wasn't going to like being awakened out of a sound sleep-but then, who did? She took the oath, he told himself a little smugly as he pulled on his boots. He splashed water from the basin Sathen had left onto his face to wake himself up. She might as well find out what it means.

  Besides, being shaken awake in the middle of the night might also shake up that attitude problem of hers. And once she saw a basilisk for herself, he had a shrewd notion that she might start paying better attention to him when he told her something. Particularly about the dangers that lurked out in the Uncleansed Lands, and how you couldn't always deal with them combatively.

  This would be a good exercise in patience for her, as well; now that he thought about it, he realized he couldn't have planned this encounter more effectively.

  Other than staging it by daylight instead of darkness.

  For a basilisk could not be moved by magic power-it grounded attacks out on itself, sent the power out into the earth, and ignored the attackers. And it could not be moved by force.