Valdemar 09 - [Mage Winds 01] - Winds of Fate Read online

  “Sybarite,” Darkwind said, laughing.

  :Feels good,: the bird agreed. :Scratch:

  :Report, featherhead,: he told the gyre, :Or no more scratches.:

  Vree actually heaved a sigh, and reluctantly complied. The bondbirds had some limited abilities at relaying and reporting messages; while Darkwind was in the Vale, he depended on Vree to keep in contact with the rest of the scouts under his command. Vree had messages from most of the scouts; all those who had not reported in person before Darkwind went to the Council meeting this afternoon.

  Most of the messages were simple enough, even by Vree’s standards: “Nothing to report,” “All quiet,” “All is well.” A normal enough day; he’d been half expecting that something disastrous would happen while he was out of touch, but it seemed that all the scouts had things well in hand.

  All except for the handful of scouts who shared the southern boundary with him.

  Those sent back messages that there were problems. Three of them said that they had turned their watch over to the night-scouts and would meet him at his ekele, to make their reports in person. Vree could not imitate the emotional overtones of those Mind-sent messages, relayed through their birds to Vree, but the terse quality did not auger well.

  He swore silently to himself; the last time he’d had to take reports in person, he and the rest of the scouts had faced a week-long incursion of magically-twisted creatures that ultimately cost them two scouts and the only mage who had deigned to work with them.

  That had been shortly after he’d joined the scouts, and before they made him their spokesperson. He could only hope that if this was the situation they faced again, they were sufficiently aware of the problems now to deal with it without more losses.

  :Home?: Vree asked hopefully when he’d finished listening to the last of those messages.

  :Yes,: he confirmed, to the bird’s delight. :Meet me there.: He let Vree hop back down to his wrist and tossed the heavy gyre into the air; Vree pushed off and flapped upward, driving himself up through the branches with thunderous wing-claps. Darkwind waited until he had disappeared, then started off through the forest at a trot—not on one of the usual paths, but on a game-trail—heading for his ekele.

  He never took the same route twice; he never approached his ekele the same way. While he ran, as silently as only a Tayledras scout could, he kept his mind as well as his other senses open, constantly on the alert for traces of thought that were out of the ordinary, for the scent of something odd, for a color or texture where it didn’t belong, or movement, or the sound of a footfall in the forest beyond him.

  Other scouts had not been that cautious. Rainwind hadn’t; he’d been ambushed halfway between the Vale and his ekele after a long soak in one of the springs. He’d been lucky; his bondbird had spotted one of the ambushers first, so he had only had to deal with one enemy. The creatures had not sported the kind of poisoned fangs and claws so many others had and he’d escaped with only a permanent limp from a lacerated thigh.

  Others had not been so fortunate; they had been just as careless, and had paid for it with limbs or lives.

  That was the cost of living outside the Vale. No single Tayledras could hope to shield more than his ekele, even if he were an Adept-class mage. Since most of the scouts weren‘t, they paid the price of freedom in personal safety.

  But anyone who lived out here felt it was worth that cost.

  There were too many other things that were bad about living in the Vale these days; it was good to have a little distance from the Heartstone, and space between themselves and the mages.

  The run stirred up his blood, and made him feel a little readier to face whatever trouble was coming. He Felt the presence of the other scouts long before they knew he was there. Out of courtesy, they had not climbed to his ekele while he was not in it; instead, they waited below, patiently, while Vree perched above, impatiently.

  :Hungry,: Vree complained, as soon as his keen eyes spotted Darkwind approaching. The three scouts waiting caught the edge of the Mind-sent plaint, and he Felt their attention turning toward him, little brushes of thought, as they each tested for him and found him with their individual Gifts.

  They waited until he came into view, though, before tendering some very subdued greetings. And not the usual ‘ “zhai’helleva,” either; Winterlight and Stormcloud only raised their hands in a kind of sketchy salute, and Dawnfire tendered him a feather-light mental caress, a promise of things to come, but also carrying overtones of deep concern.

  This did not indicate good news at all.

  He signaled to Vree, who swooped down and landed on one of the lower branches. Although he could not see the bird, hidden as he was by growth, he knew what Vree was up to. The gyre sidled along the branch to the trunk, and pulled a strap on the hook holding his rope ladder out of reach. The ladder dropped down to the ground with a clattering of wooden rungs; Darkwind motioned the others to precede him, and followed after with the strap that was attached to the end of the ladder tucked into his belt.

  The others were far above him on the ladder; he had to go slowly, as he was bringing the end of it up with him. They were already hidden in the branches when he was only halfway up. His ekele, like those of the other scouts, was actually more elaborate than any of those inside the Vale. It had to be; it had to withstand winter winds and summer downpours, snow and hail, and the occasional “visit” from some of the distinctly hostile creatures from the Outlands.

  At last, after penetrating the growth of the first boughs, he reached the place where the ladder-release was fastened to the bark of the trunk. He hooked the end of the ladder back in place, and followed his guests up through the trapdoor in the floor of the first chamber of the ekele.

  The tree holding his home was an amazing forest giant, but it was nothing like the trees that supported a half-dozen ekele apiece, back in the Vale. Like them, though, it was a huge conifer, with a girth more than ten men could span with outstretched arms, and an arrow-straight trunk that towered without a single branching up for several man-heights above the forest floor. The first branches concealed his ladder; his ekele began, well sheltered, another man-height above that.

  He pulled himself up onto the floor, closed and locked the trapdoor, then went to the glazed window of the first chamber, unlocked the latch at the side, and held it open for Vree. The forestgyre dove through it in a rush, landing on his outstretched arm, then hopped to his shoulder. Darkwind shut the window and relatched it, then turned to climb the stairs to join his guests.

  The entire ekele was built of light, strong wood, stained on the outside to resemble the bark of the tree, but polished to a warm gold within. The first chamber was nothing more than a single, barren room, meant to buffer the effects of the wind coming up from below; there were all-weather coats hung on pegs on the wall, some climbing-tools and weapons, but that was all. The other scouts had already gone ahead of him, following a staircase built into the side of the trunk, a stair that spiraled up to the next chamber.

  Each chamber was built upon the one below it, in a snailshell-like spiral pattern, using the huge branches as supports for the floor. The next chamber was one commonly used for the gathering of friends; it was considerably larger than the entrance chamber, and covered an arc fully one-third of the circumference of the trunk. Heated in winter by a clever ceramic stove that he also used for cooking, it supplied warm air to the two chambers above it. One of those was a sleeping room, the other, a storeroom and study. To bathe, he had to descend to the ground. As soon as his head and shoulders had cleared the doorsill—if one could rightly call an entrance that was placed in the floor a “door”—Vree hopped off his shoulder and bounced sideways toward his perch, in the ungainly sidling motion of any raptor on the ground. The floor and wall-mounted perch was a permanent fixture of the room, placed in the corner, where it could be braced against two of the walls, and near one of the windows. Vree leapt up onto it, roused his feathers, and yawned, waiting for his
dinner.

  Aside from the perch and the stove, the only other permanent features of the room were the low platforms affixed to the floor. Those platforms, upholstered in flat cushions, now hosted the three scouts: Winterlight, Stormcloud, and Dawnfire.

  Three of the best. If they have problems, it’s not from incompetence.

  Winterlight was the oldest of all of them; he had held the position of Council-speaker and Elder but had given it to Darkwind with grateful relief when the others suggested him.

  Now I know why he gave it up. I’d gladly give it back.

  He seldom dyed his hair; longer than his waist, he generally kept the snow-white fall in a single braid as thick as his own wrist. Winterlight was actually Starblade‘s elder by several years but was of such a solitary nature that he had lived outside the Vale for most of his life. He was also unusual in that he flew two bondbirds; a snow-eagle, Lyer, by day; a tuft-eared owl, Huur, by night. Both birds had mated, and although the mates had not bonded to the scout, they provided extra security for Winterlight’s ekele, nesting near each other in a rare show of interspecies tolerance, for given the chance, owls and eagles would readily hunt and even kill one another. Huur and Lyer’s offspring had been in high demand as bondbirds.

  Had been—but the reduced population and the absolute dearth of children meant that this year’s crop of nestlings would probably go unbonded, and fly off to some other Clan to seek mates. Unless one of the scouts chose to bond to a second bird, or lost his bird before the eyases fledged and became passagers. Darkwind had briefly toyed with the notion of bonding to an owlet, but Vree had displayed a great deal of jealousy at the idea, and he had discarded it, albeit regretfully.

  Stormcloud might have been a mage, but as a child his Gift was not deemed “enough” by Starblade and the other Adepts, and now he refused to enter training at all. His argument, using their own words against them in a direct quote, was “It’s better to have a first-quality scout than a second-class mage.”

  And I don’t blame you, old friend. No matter what Father says about “ingratitude and insolence. ” I’d have said and done the same as you.

  He was Darkwind’s oldest and best friend, their friendship dating back to when they were both barely able to walk. His features differed from the aquiline Tayledras norm considerably, with a round chin and a snubbed nose. He alone among k‘Sheyna cut his hair short, with a stiff, jaylike crest. He flew a white raven, Krawn, that was as loquacious as Starblade’s crow was silent. Krawn was easily the brightest of all the corbies flown in k’Sheyna, and very fond of practical jokes, as was Stormcloud. It was a measure of how serious the situation among the scouts was that neither Krawn nor his bondmate had played any of their famous jokes for months.

  Dawnfire flew a red-shouldered hawk, Kyrr, a bird as graceful—and as sought-after for mating—as her bondmate. Dawnfire cast Darkwind a look full of promise as he entered the room, and he marveled that he, of all the scouts, had captured her fancy. She typified the opposite end of the extreme from Stormcloud; in her the aquiline Tayledras features had been refined to the point that she resembled the elfin tervardi, the lovely flightless bird-people she often worked with. That was her strongest Gift; she Mindspoke the nonhuman races with an ease the others could only envy, and communicated equally well with animals of all sorts. Her hair, now bound tightly into three braids, was as long as Winterlight’s when she let it down. An errant beam of light reflected from the snow-goose lanterns touched her head, giving her an air of the unearthly as Darkwind watched her.

  That light was provided during the day by four windows, all of which could be opened, that were glazed with a flexible substance as clear as the finest glass, but nearly impossible to break. Tayledras artisans created it; how, Darkwind had no idea, but it was as impervious to wind and weather as it was to breakage. By night, the light came from Darkwind’s single concession to magic; mage-lights captured in the lanterns, that began glowing as dusk fell, and increased their pure light as the external sunlight faded.

  Darkwind dug into his game-pouch as soon as his feet touched the floor of the room; Vree had waited long enough. He came up with a half rabbit; a light meal by Vree’s standards, but enough to hold him until the discussion was over. Vree looked up at him with an expression of inquiry when presented with the rabbit. :?: the bird said, reminding Darkwind of his hunger.

  :More, later,: he promised the bird. :I have a duck waiting for you.:

  Vree chirped a happy acknowledgment, and began tearing the meat from the bones, gulping it down as fast as he could. One thing the bondbirds were not, and that was dainty eaters.

  “So,” he said, leaving Vree to his snack, and sitting cross-legged on one of the couches. “What’s the problem?”

  “The barrier-zone,” said Winterlight succinctly, his hands resting palm-down on his knees, a deceptively tranquil pose. “We’ve got some real problems on the south. Things moving in, things and people, and we don’t like the look of either. They’re coming in from that bad patch of Outland, and it looks like they’re settling. They’re making dens, lairs, and fortified homes. I don’t like it, Darkwind; it’s got a bad feel to it, these creatures aren’t overtly evil, but they make the back of my neck crawl. They’re inside the old k‘Sheyna boundaries now, and not just in the old ’barren’ zone. You know how one bird will ‘crowd’ another, getting closer and closer until the other one either has to peck back or be forced off a perch? That’s what it feels like they’re doing to us.”

  “I’ve got the same,” Stormcloud told him, wearing a slight frown. “And I’ve got enough Mage-Gift to read some other things as well. There’s a new node that’s being established just off my area, and a lot of ley-lines have been diverted to feed it. There’s a new line going off that node, too—and it’s feeding straight into Outland territory, into one of the places we know that Adept has made his own. It’s bad, Darkwind, it’s feeding him a lot of power, and anyone that can divert lines is damned good. He’s pulled some of the lines away from us completely. And I’ve caught him trying to read the Vale for power, too. I think he might be planning to use one of the lines to tap into the Vale itself.”

  Darkwind frowned. “This is a new tactic for him, isn’t it? He’s never stolen power before that I can recall.”

  “Exactly,” Stormcloud said, and bit his lip. “I don’t like it, Darkwind. And I like it even less that our own mages haven’t sensed him doing anything. Unless that was what this meeting you had to attend was all about—?”

  Darkwind shook his head. “No. At least, that wasn’t on the agenda. So unless they’re keeping it from me—and they could be, I’ll admit—they haven’t noticed either the new node or the diversion of the ley-lines.”

  Winterlight snorted his contempt. “You could probably start a mage-war out here and they’d never notice inside the Vale. They’re lost in their own little dream of what-was-once. Even if they were alert, the Heartstone just blanks out everything that’s not in there with them.”

  Darkwind’s frown deepened a trifle; that was not the way it was supposed to be. The Heartstone was supposed to sensitize the mages to what was going on with energies outside the Vale, not destroy or bury their sensitivity. But he realized that Winterlight was right; that was another of the side effects he disliked about being inside the Vale. When he was within the shield-area, it was as if he had been cut off from the energy-flows outside.

  No one had said anything about that, not even right after the Heartstone shattered—which meant either that the effect was new, another developing side effect of living next to the broken stone—

  —or it’s been that way since the disaster, and nobody noticed. Which is just as bad.

  Dawnfire had been silent up until now; he turned toward her and raised an eyebrow.

  “Well,” she said, with a frown that matched his own, “Stormcloud is the one who knows energies, and Winterlight’s Huur is absolutely the best at spying. So I’ll just say that I think the same things have be
en happening in my area, but I’d like someone to check to be sure. What I have that they don’t is a network of allied species acting as my informants—hertasi, dyheli, tervardi, and a few humans who aren’t fond of civilization. Most of the humans are a little crazy, but they’re sharp enough when it comes to noticing what’s going on around them.”

  Darkwind nodded; Dawnfire was the one who had suggested taking volunteers among the nonhumans in the first place, and she had proved the idea was viable by establishing a network outside the k‘Sheyna boundaries.

  “Well, some of my informants are missing,” she said, some of her distress coming through despite her best efforts to control it. “And when I sent someone to try and find them, there was nothing. They haven’t just disappeared, they’ve gone without a trace. That wouldn’t be too hard to do with dyheli, but hertasi have real homes—they actually build furnishings for their caves and hollow trees—and tervardi build ekele, and even those are gone. It’s as if they never existed at all.”

  “Gone?” Darkwind repeated. “How could anyone make a tree vanish?”

  Dawnfire shook her head. “I don’t know—though the trees themselves don’t vanish, just the hollows and ekele. But the caves do vanish; there’s solid earth and rock where the cave used to be. At least, that’s what my bird tells me.”

  Winterlight frowned. “Could that be illusion?”

  “It could,” she acknowledged with a nod. “Kyrr can’t tell illusion from the real thing, and she’s not particularly sensitive to magic. I wasn’t about to ask her to test it. But my tervardi and hertasi aren’t mages, either, so they wouldn’t have used illusion to conceal their homes. Something took them, then covered its tracks by making it look as if there had never been anything living there.”