He felt himself faltering, felt the circle faltering. He steeled himself and poured more energy in. He sensed a change in the tone.
It was weakening, fading away.
That gave him his second wind and the strength to keep his place, to keep the power contained. As it faded, so did his strength, but always just a little behind the tone so that his ability to keep it contained was just enough to do so.
Finally it was gone, faded into an echo, then into nothing.
He opened his eyes, swaying on his feet, and looked around. Firesong leaned heavily on the blade, which was buried to the hilt in a pile of uneven, dull-gray shards. Starblade leaned on Kethra's shoulder, and even as he watched, Iceshadow and Nightjewel sank to the ground together.
Even the gryphons' heads were hanging down with weariness.
But when Treyvan finally raised his head with an effort, and looked into Darkwind's eyes, Darkwind saw satisfaction and triumph that mirrored his own there.
"Brothers," came the weary voice from the center of the circle. "Sisters.
We have succeeded."
"Damn if we haven't," Need said, and even the sword sounded exhausted "Damn if we haven't." Firesong stood erect again, pulling himself up with an effort, and with a single gesture, banished the circle of power beyond them that had contained the rogue Stone for so long. He shared that power among them, equally, giving them all the strength to stand firmly again. Not much more than that, but at least they were no longer about to drop.
Darkwind did not need to close his eyes to sense the burning lens of power that had been the Stone and was now the proto-Gate. It hovered between this world and the world of Gates and ley-lines, affected by both-yet no longer the malignant, near-sentient thing it had been. Now it was only power. And now that the shields were down, the gryphons were able to draw safely on the clean power of their own node.
They lost their weariness, legs straightening, wings refolding with a snap, heads coming up.
Nyara entered the former circle quietly, and Firesong handed Need back to her with a little bow of courtesy before he turned back to the gryphons. "Well," he said, his voice already stronger, as he shared the power they were drawing from the node they had made their own. "And are you ready for the first stage of the move?"
"Lead on, featherrlessss one," Treyvan said, cocking his head sideways." And congratulationssss. That wasss well done." Firesong had that arrogant little smile back, but this time Darkwind was not going to fault him for it. This had been the most brilliant, innovative piece of magic he had ever seen-and, he suspected, was ever likely to see.
"Thank you," Firesong replied with no show of humility at all, false or otherwise. "That was the hardest part. The rest, though it will be tedious, will be much easier."
"Hmm. Yesss. Perrhapsss. It isss not wissse to count the eyassess until they arrre fledged." Hydona roused her feathers with a shake, so much like Vree that Darkwind chuckled despite his weariness. "Ssstill, sssoonesst begun isss sssoonessst done. Let usss deal with thisss prrrotogate of yoursss before it getsss the notion to wanderrr on itsss own." As the rest of them gathered themselves up and headed for the Council Oak, where the hertasi had assembled food and drink, Darkwind sighed with relief and squeezed Elspeth's hand. The worst, indeed, was over.
No matter what else happened, Falconsbane would not be able to destroy the Vale and Stone together. So for now, at least, they were safe.
Or as safe as they were likely to get, with Falconsbane still out there.
Still plotting. Still watching.
Still Falconsbane... a terrible and implacable foe.
*Chapter Twenty-one - The Black Riders
There was a peculiar feeling to the Featherless Fools' Vale today. Falconsbane could not quite put his finger on what it was, but he sensed that they had redoubled their shielding on the Stone again. They had also reduced the number of lines on the Stone to a bare two, but those were the most powerful of all. It would not have been possible to sever either of them-no matter how good that Adept thought he was.
He smiled to himself, fingering the tiny, carved horse-which was not onyx, nor obsidian, nor any other stone he knew. It could not be chipped nor marred in any way at all, no matter what he did to it. It should have been fragile. He had even ordered one of his artisans to strike it with a stone sledgehammer when nothing he had done had affected it in any way. It had chipped the hammer; obviously, it was anything but fragile.
A puzzle; like those who had sent it.
One he did not have time for, as matters stood. He needed to concentrate on his plan for k'sheyna, a plan that required patience and vigilance, but would pay for that patience handsomely. The Bird Lovers could put all the shields they wanted to on that Stone of theirs; they still wouldn't be able to save it. And the moment they dropped the shielding, he would be waiting. He would not fail a second time.
Let them only drop the shield. He had been waiting for days now, buried in his study, gathering his strength, preparing a single, lightning strike that would overwhelm Starblade, burn away his mind, and burn through him to the Stone.
It was a new sort of action for him-and thus, he thought, it would be unexpected and unanticipated. There would be no testing, no struggling of wills. just one single, quick, clean blow, spending all of his power in that strike and holding none in reserve. A reckless kind of action, audacious. Starblade would flare up like a stick of dry kindling, and a moment later, his home would follow, Adept and all. It was not the end he would have chosen for Starblade or his followers, but it would at least be revenge.
Only let them drop the shield-He watched, as patient as a cat at a mousehole, as a lion above a salt lick, knowing that to reestablish those lines they would have to drop the shield-to use the power of the node in the ruins to try to heal the Stone, they would have to drop the shield. Sooner or later, it would have to come down. There was not enough untainted power within the Vale to even begin to heal the Stone.
Assuming it could be healed. He didn't think that was possible. He had hundreds of years of mage-craft behind him, and he would not have cared to try it.
He had caught his attention wandering for a moment and had redoubled his vigilance when a trembling of the shields alerted him to changes within the Vale.
LIGHT!
He fell back onto his couch with a cry of pain, squeezing his watering eyes shut, holding his ears, in a futile reaction to the blinding wall of "light" and "sound" that assaulted his Sight and Hearing.
If he had not been watching the Vale and the emanations of the Stone within it, he might have missed the death of the Stone itself. If he had been concentrating on something in the material world, he would never have noticed what had happened, for the only effect was in the nonmaterial plane. But since he was, and looking right at it with all of his powers-For a moment it blinded his inner eye when it exploded in light and sound. A lesser mage would have been struck unconscious and possibly come away with his Senses damaged.
It did send him graying-out for a moment, and fighting his way back to consciousness. That was all that was possible; to hold tightly to reality and claw his way back-he couldn't think, couldn't do anything else.
When he came back to himself, the Stone was gone.
He could only sit and blink in dumbfounded shock.
At first he simply could not believe what had happened. It made no sense, it was simply not in the Tayledras to have done such a thing. He
thought for a moment that he had been Headblinded; that his Senses had failed him.
Then shock gave way to anger. All his plans-destroyed in a single moment! How could he have so completely misjudged them? They should have tried to save their Stone, not destroy it! This was something those suicidal Shin'a'in might have tried, but never the Tayledras!
He shook his head, growling in bafflement and increasing rage. His head pounded with reaction-pain; his temples throbbed, and a sharp, hot jabbing at the base of his skull warned him that he was overstressi
ng himself. The pain only increased his anger. How could they have done something so completely unexpected, so entirely out of character? More than that, how had they accomplished it, without destroying the Vale as he had intended to do?
His inner eyes were still dazzled, his outer eyes streamed burning tears in reaction, but he strained his Sight toward the Vale anyway, hoping for a glimpse of something that might give him a clue as to how this unknown Adept had worked the impossible.
Then, as the dazzle cleared under the pressure of his will, he got more than a clue. Far more.
Hanging in the between-world where Gates and ley-lines were born, was a lenticular form of pure, shining Power. It occupied the same notspace that the Stone had taken-or rather, that the Power the Stone contained had taken. For a long, stunned moment, he simply stared at it, wondering where it had come from and what it was. It didn't resemble anything that had been in or near the Vale before. It didn't resemble anything he had ever seen before, for that matter. And how had it gotten where the Power-form of the Stone had been? How had those two leylines gotten attached to it? He had never seen lines running to anything but nodes or Stones before.
He realized at that moment that it was the Stone-or rather, it was what had taken the place of the Stone. Whatever that Adept had done to the Stone, destroying it had purified the Power and allowed him to give it a new shape. There were only the two lines leading into it, and it was no longer anything he could use or control-or even touch, directly.
It had become something that answered to one hand only, an that hand was not his. Power with monofocused purpose, and linked t a particular personality.
In fact, it was very like a Gate. Except that there could not be more than a handful of Adepts great enough to create a Gate with power tha was not their own.
He nearly rejected that identification out of hand; even the Bird-Fool would not be so foolhardy as to make a Gate within a node, much les within a Stone! And why create a Gate with so much power in the firs place? You couldn't use it; anything passing through a Gate like tha stood a better-than-even chance of winding up annihilated.
But this was not a Gate, exactly. It was something like a Gate; something that could become a Gate with more shaping. But it was not, in and of itself, a Gate. In fact, the more he examined it, the less like a Gate it became. There was no terminus; it was entirely self-contained There was no structure that it was linked to; it was linked to the half world, a kind of Gate doubled back upon itself. That, in fact, was what gave it all the stability it had.
It was more like one of the little seeking tendrils of power a Gate would spin out, trying to reach its terminus.
As he thought that, he Saw it move, a little; watched it as it swung slightly to the west and north, seeking something-Then he understood. It was seeking something, and that was why it had been made along the pattern of a Gate.
It was seeking the empty vessel that should have held it, the physical container that had been made by the same hands that had shaped its old vessel. The new Stone in the new Vale.
Unbelievable. Incredible. Something he would never have thought of doing, had he been in the same position.
For a moment, he could only blink at the astonishing audacity of it all. Bold, reckless-not only brilliant, but innovative.
A worthy foe. Not another Urtho, of course, but he was no longer Ma'ar. If he were going to be honest with himself-which he tried to avoid-he would have to admit that another Urtho would not find him much of a challenge these days. Or would he? They would both find themselves dealing with limited power... with magic that followed another set of laws, twisted by the end of their own warring.
Pah, I am woolgathering! No wonder the infant stole a march on me!
Infant? No-young, but no infant. Old in cunning and in skill-youthful only in years. I wonder... is he as beautiful as the rest of the Bird Lovers I have seen?
For another moment, he was overcome by a feeling of complete and overpowering lust. And not just for the power-but for the one who had created and conceived this plan. What would it be like to have such a one under his control, subject to his whims and fancies, placing his abilities at Mornelithe's call?
What would it be like to be under the control of such a one... ?
He shook the thoughts away angrily. Ridiculous! These Bird Lovers were winning! He could not permit that! Surely there was something he could do to wrench control of the thing out of their hands.
Wait; go at it backward. What would he do if he had it? What would it mean?
It would attract lines to itself; set in a neutral place, it would soon be the center of a web of lines as complete and complex as the old Stone had owned.
If I had this power-locus, I would have control of the entire energy-web of this area. I could pull all the lines to myself without effort, like a spider whose net spins itself. It would be like my present network of traps and wards, but with such power to tap...His thumb caressed the tiny horse as he chewed his lip, his mind running in furious thought. Then the image of the spider in the web came to him again. And with it, an idea.
So, little mage, we are going to try new magics, are we? He smiled, and his smile turned vicious. Two can play that game. there was a time when I anchored a permanent Gate upon myself, after all.
That had been far, far back in the past, before the so-clever Hawkbrothers had ever stretched their wings over this area. When it had been his, and he had fought to possess it against what seemed to be an endless supply of upstarts. He had been younger then, and willing to try things no one thought possible, for he had already sired a dozen children on as many mothers, human and Changechild, and he was secure in the continuance of his bloodline. And so long as there was someone with direct descent and Mage-Gifts alive, he was immortal. Wild chances had been worth the risk.
No one had ever tried to shift the focus of a permanent Gate from a place to a person. His advisors said it could not be done, that the power would destroy the person.
And yet, in the end, the temporary Gates were all partially anchored in a person, for the energy to create them came from that person. He had thought it worth trying. Permanent Gates had their own little webs of ley-lines, and acted much like small nodes-that was before he had learned of the Hawkbrains and their Heartstones, and had learned to lust after real power. It had seemed a reasonable thing, to try to make himself the center of a web of that kind of power.
So he had researched the magics, then added himself and his own energy-stores to the permanent Gate in his stronghold. He had truly been like a spider in a web then, for whatever he wished eventually came to him, falling into his threads of power. There had been a price to pay-a small one, he thought. After that, he had been unable to travel more than a league from his home, for his fragile body was not able to bear the stress of physical separation for long. On the other hand, he had only to will himself home, and the Gate pulled him through itself, without needing another terminus to step through. His innovation had worked, and then, as now, being home-bound had been a small price to pay for control of all the mage-energy as far as he could See.
He studied the situation, carefully, alert for any pitfalls. The most obvious was that the moment he touched the power-locus, his enemies would know what he was doing. The Adept was guiding it himself, with help from some other mages. How maddening to be able to See all of this and yet be unable to act on it!
So he would have to be subtle. Well, there were more ways of controlling the direction of the power-locus than by steering the thing itself.
There were two lines on it still, and they could be used to bring it closer to him.
Carefully, he touched the line nearer himself, and pulled; slowly, gradually, changing the direction the power-locus was taking. No one seemed to notice.
Falconsbane's smile turned to a feral grin. The hunt was up, but the quarry did not yet know that the beast was on its trail.
Like all good hunters, he needed to rest from time to time. Falconsbane had
pulled the power-locus as far out of line as he cared to for the moment. He had left his servants to themselves for a long while, perhaps too long; they needed to be reminded of his power over them. There were preparations he needed to make here, before he would be ready to make the Gate a part of himself and his stronghold. And before he undertook any of those preparations, or even interfered any more with the power-locus, he needed to rest, eat, refresh himself.
He left his study, and only then noticed that the air in his manor was thick with the heavy smell of incense and lamp oil, of rooms closed up too long and people sweating with fear. He shook his head at the dank taint of it in the back of his throat.
Before he got anything to eat or drink, he needed a breath of fresher air.
He turned around, and was on his way to the top of his tower when every blocked-up and shuttered door and window in his stronghold suddenly flew open with an ear-shattering crash.
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