Winds Of Fate v(mw-1 Read online

  "My little love, if you can contrive a way for Starblade to see you, I should very much be pleased," Mornelithe said caressingly. "It would enlarge my vengeance so well, to know that he knew that I had an agent in place on his ground, subverting his beloved son. It would be delicious to know how his mind must burn, and yet he could do and say nothing about it."

  "I do not think I can manage that," she told him timidly. "He never leaves the Vale, and I may not go within it."

  "Ah, well," Mornelithe said, waving the idea aside. "If you can, it would be well. But if not, I am not going to contrive it at the moment." His expression grew abstracted for a moment.

  She ventured another question. "Is there something that I should know, my lord?" He looked down at her, and smiled, shaking his head. "It is no matter.

  There are other matters requiring my attention just now, a bit weightier than this. My vengeance has waited long, and it can wait a little longer." She sighed with relief, thinking that he was finished with her, that he had forgotten about Treyvan and Hydona-Only to have her hopes crushed.

  "The gryphons," he said, suddenly looking down at her again, and piercing her with his eyes. "Tell me about the gryphons. Everything." Compelled by his will, she found herself reciting all that she knew about them, in a lifeless, expressionless voice. Their names, the names of their two fledglings; what they looked like, where they nested. Why they had chosen to nest there.

  And that there was going to be another mating flight shortly.

  He sat straight up at that-and she huddled in on herself, shivering, her teeth chattering, free from his compulsion and sick inside with her own treachery.

  She looked up at him, from under her lashes. His eyes were blank, his thoughts turned entirely within. Even his guardian-beasts were quiet, holding their breath, not wanting to chance disturbing him.

  Then-he stared down at her, and pointed his finger at her, demandingly, the talon fully extended. "More!" he barked, his words and will lashing her like barbed whips. "Tell me more!" But she had nothing more to tell him, and so he punished her, lashing her with his mind, inflicting pain that would leave no outward signs, nor anything that a Healer could read, but whose effects would linger for days.

  And the more he hurt her, the more she yearned for him, burned for him, until the pain and desire mingled and became one obscene whole.

  She groveled and wept, and did not know whether she wept because of her shame or because of her need.

  Finally he released her, and she lay where he left her, panting and spent, but still afire with longing for him.

  "Enough," he said, mildly, softly. "You will learn more. I will call YOU again, when my other business has been attended to, and you will tell me what you have learned. You will try to ensnare Darkwind, if you can, but you will learn more of the gryphons."

  "Yes," she whispered.

  "You will return here to me when I call you."

  "Yes," she sobbed.

  "You will remember that my reach is long. I can punish you even in the heart of the k'sheyna Vale if I choose. Starblade has put my stamp on their Heartstone, and I can reach within at my will." His eyes glittered, and he licked his lips, slowly, deliberately.

  "Yes.

  "Do not think to truly escape me. I created you, flesh of my flesh, my dearest daughter, and I can destroy you as easily as I created you." He reached down and ran a talon along her chin, lifting her eyes to meet his, and in spite of herself, she thrilled to his touch.

  She said nothing; she only looked helplessly into his eyes, his glittering, cold, cruel eyes.

  Should you try to hide, should you reach k'sheyna Vale I will call you even from there. And when you come to me, you will find that what you have enjoyed at my hands will be paradise, compared to what I deal you then." He held her in the ice of his gaze. "You do understand, don't you, my dear daughter?" She wept, silent tears running down her cheeks, and making the mage-light above his head waver and dance-but she answered him. Oh, yes, she answered him.

  "Yes, Father.

  "And what else?" he asked, as he always asked. "What does my daughter have to tell her doting father?" And she answered, as she always answered.

  I-I-I-love you, Father. I love you, Father. I love and serve only you." And her tears poured down her cheeks as she repeated it until he was satisfied.

  *Chapter Fourteen ELSPETH

  Kata'shin'a'in was a city of tents.

  At least that was the way it looked to Elspeth as she and Skif approached it. They had watched it grow in the distance, and she had wondered at first what it was that was so very odd about it; it looked wrong somehow, as if something about it was so wildly different from any other city she had ever seen, that her mind would not accept it.

  Then she realized what it was that bothered her; the colors. The city was nothing but a mass of tiny, brightly-colored dots. She could not imagine what could be causing that effect-was every roof in the city painted a different color? And why would anyone do something as odd as that? Why paint roofs at all? What was the point?

  As they neared, the dots resolved themselves into flat conical shapes which again seemed very strange.

  Brightly colored, conical roofs? What kind of odd building would have a conical roof?

  Then she realized: they weren't buildings at all, those were tents she was looking at. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of tents.

  Now she understood why Quenten had said that Kata'shin'a'in "dried up and blew away" in the winter. Somewhere amidst all that colored canvas there must be a core city, with solid buildings, and presumably inns and caravansaries.

  But most of the city was made up of the tents of merchants, and when trading season was over, the merchants departed, leaving behind nothing at all.

  She glanced over at Skif, who was eyeing the city with a frown.

  "What's the matter?" she asked.

  "Just how are we ever going to find the Tale'sedrin in there?" he grumbled. "Look at that! There's no kind of organization at all-"

  "That we can see," she interrupted. "Believe me, there's organization in there, and once we find an inn, we'll find someone to explain it to us.

  If there wasn't any way of organizing things, no one would ever get any business done, they'd be spending all their time running around trying to find each other. And when in your entire life have you ever known a successful disorganized trader?" His frown faded. "You have a point," he admitted.

  "I don't like this," complained Gwena.

  "I am perfectly well aware that you don't like this," Elspeth replied crisply.

  "I think this is a mistake. A major mistake. It's still not too late to turn back." Elspeth did not reply, prompting Gwena to continue. "If you turned around now, we could be in Lythecare in-" Elspeth's patience finally snapped, and so did the temper she had been holding carefully in check. "Dammit, I told you I won't be ~ into doing something, like I was the gods' own sheep! I don't believe in Fate or Destiny, and I'm not going to let you lot move me around your own private chessboard! I will do this my way, or I won't do it at all, and you and everyone else can just find yourself another Questing Hero! Do you understand me?" Her only answer was a deep, throaty chuckle, and that was absolutely the final insult. She was perfectly ready to jump out of the saddle and walk to Kata'shin'a'in at that point.

  "And. Don't. Laugh. At. Me!" she snarled, biting off each mental word and framing them as single words, instead of an entire thought, so that her anger and her meaning couldn't possibly be misunderstood.

  Absolute mental silence; then Gwena replied-timidly, as Elspeth had never heard her speak in her life with her Companion, "But I wasn't laughing." Her temper cooled immediately. She blinked.

  It hadn't really sounded like Gwena. And she'd never known a Companion to lie. So if it wasn't Gwena who was it?" she asked. "If it wasn't you, who was it?"

  "I-: Gwena replied hesitatingly, lagging back a little as Skif rode on ahead, blithely oblivious to what was going on behind him. "I-don't know."
A chill crept down Elspeth's spine; she and Gwena immediately snapped up their defensive shields, and from behind their protection, she Searched all around her for someone who could have been eavesdropping on them. It wasn't Skif; that much she knew for certain. The mind-voice had a feminine quality to it that could not have been counterfeited.

  And it wasn't Cymry, Skif's Companion; other Companions had only spoken to her once, the night of Talia's rescue. She could not believe that if any of them did so again that it would be for something so petty as to laugh at her. that was as unlikely as a Companion lying.

  And besides, if it had been Cymry, Gwena would have recognized her mind-voice and said something.

  Kata'shin'a'in stood on relatively treeless ground, in the midst of rolling plains. While there were others within Mindhearing distance-there were caravans both in front of and behind them-there was no one near.

  Certainly not near enough to have provoked the feeling of intimacy that chuckle had.

  In fact, it was incredibly quiet, except for the little buzz of ordinary folk's thoughts, like the drone of insects in a field.

  The chill spread from her spine to the pit of her stomach, and she involuntarily clutched her hand on the hilt of her sword.

  "You-: said a slow, sleepy mind-voice gravelly and dusty with disuse as she and Gwena froze in their places. "Child. You are... very like... my little student Wlyana. Long ago... so very, very long ago." And as the last word died in her mind, Elspeth gulped; her mind churned with a chaotic mix of disbelief, astonishment, awe, and a little fear.

  It had been the sword that had spoken.

  Skif looked back over his shoulder. "Hey!" he shouted, "Aren't you coming? You're the one who wanted to go here in the first place." But something about their pose or their expressions caught his attention, and Cymry trotted back toward them. As he neared them, his eyebrows rose in alarm.

  "What's wrong?" he asked urgently. Then, when Elspeth didn't immediately reply, he brought Cymry in knee-to-knee with her and reaching out, took her shoulders to shake her. "Come on, snap out of it!

  What's wrong? Elspeth!" She shook her head, and pushed him away. "Gods," she gulped, her thoughts coming slowly, as if she was thinking through mud. "Dear gods. Skif-the sword-"

  "Kero's sword?" he said, looking into her eyes as if he expected to find signs that she had been Mindblasted. "What about it?"

  "It talked to me. Us, I mean. Gwena heard it, too." He stopped peering at her and simply looked at her, mouth agape.

  "No," he managed.

  "Yes. Gwena heard it, too." Her Companion snorted and nodded so hard her hackamore jangled.

  A sword?" He laughed, but it was nervous, very nervous. "Swords don't talk-except in tales-"

  "But. I am a sword... from a tale. Boy." The mind-voice still had the quality of humor, a rich, but dry and mordant sense of humor..And horses don't talk... except in tales, either." Skif sat in his saddle like a bag of potatoes, his mouth still gaping, his eyes big and round. If Elspeth hadn't felt the same way, she'd have laughed at his expression. He looked as if someone had hit him in the back of the head with a board.

  His mouth worked furiously without anything coming out of it. Finally," It talks!" he yelped.

  "Of course I talk." It was getting better at Mindspeech by the moment, presumably improving with practice. "I'm as human as you are. Or I was.

  Once"

  "You were?" Elspeth whispered. "When? How did you end up like that? And why-" A long story," the sword replied. "And one that can wait a little longer.

  Get your priorities, child. Get in there, get shelter. Get a place to sit for a while. then we'll talk, and not before." And not one more word could any of them get from it, although the Companions coaxed and cajoled along with the two Heralds. And so, with all of them wondering if they'd gone quite, quite mad, they entered the trade-city of Kata'shin'a'in.

  The inn was an old one; deep paths had been worn into the stone floors and the courtyard paving, and the walls had been coated so many times with whitewash that it was no longer possible to tell whether they had been plaster, brick or stone. The innkeeper was a weary, incurious little old man who looked old enough to have been the same age as his inn. The stone floors and the bathhouse indicated that the place had once catered to prosperous merchants, but that was no longer the case.

  Now it played host to a variety of mercenaries, and the more modest traders, who would form caravans together, or take their chances with themselves, their own steel, and a couple of pack animals.

  Their room was of a piece with the inn; worn floor, faded hangings at the window, simple pallet on a wooden frame for a bed, a table-and no other amenities. The room itself gave ample evidence by its narrowness of having been partitioned off of a much larger chamber.

  At least it was clean.

  Elspeth took Need from her sheath, laid the sword reverently on the bed, and sat down beside it-carefully-at the foot. Skif took a similar seat at the head. The Companions, though currently ensconced in the inn's stable, were present in the back of their minds.

  So now is the time to find out if I'm having a crazy-weed nightmare.

  "All right," she said, feeling a little foolish to be addressing an apparently inanimate object, "We've gotten a room at the inn. The door's locked. Are you still in there?"

  "Of course I'm in here," replied the sword acerbically. Both she and Skif jumped. "Where else would I be?" Elspeth recovered first, and produced a wary smile. "A good question, I guess. Well, are you going to talk to us?"

  "I'm talking, aren't I? What do you want to know?" Her mind was a blank, and she cast an imploring look at Skif. "What your name is, for one," Skif said. "I mean, we can't keep calling you 'sword." And"Hey, you' seems kind of disrespectful."

  "My holiest stars, a respectful young man!. the sword chuckled, though there was a sense of slight annoyance that it had been the male of the two who addressed her. "What a wonder! Perhaps I have lived to see the End of All things!"

  "I don't think so," Skif replied hesitantly. "But you still haven't told us your name." Trust a man to want that. It's-: There was a long pause, during which they looked at each other and wondered if something was wrong. "Do you know, I've forgotten it? How odd. How very odd. I didn't think that would happen." Another pause, this time a patently embarrassed one.

  "Well, if that doesn't sound like senility, forgetting your own name! I suppose you'd just better keep calling me"Need." It's been my name longer than the one I was born with anyway." Skif looked at Elspeth, who shrugged. "All right-uh-Need. If that doesn't bother you." When you get to be my age, very little bothers you." chuckle "When you're practically indestructible, even less bothers you. there are advantages to being incarnated in a sword." Elspeth saw the opportunity, and pounced on it. "How did you get in there, anyway? You said you used to be human."

  :It's easier to show you than tell you,: the blade replied :that's why I wanted you locked away from trouble, and sitting down.: Abruptly, they were no longer in a shabby old that was long past being first quality. They were somewhere else entirely.

  Another dry mental room in an inn A forge; Elspeth knew enough to recognize one for what it was. Brick-walled, dirt-floored. She seemed to be inside someone else's head, a passive passenger, unable to do more than observe.

  She rubbed the sword with an oiled piece of goatskin, and slid it into the wood-and-leather sheath with a feeling of pleasure. Then she laid it with the other eleven blades in the leather pack. three swords for each season, each with the appropriate spells beaten and forged into them.

  A good year's work, and one that would bring profit to the Sisterhood.

  Tomorrow she would take them to the Autumn Harvest Fair and return with beasts and provisions.

  Her swords always brought high prices at the Fair, though not as high as they would be sold for elsewhere. Merchants would buy them and carry them to select purchasers, in duchys and baronies and provinces that had nothing like the Sisterhood of Spell and
Sword. But before they were sold again, they would be ornamented by jewelers, with fine scabbards fitted to them and belts and baldrics tooled of the rarest leathers.

  She found this amusing. What brought the high price was what she had created; swords that would not rust, would not break, would not lose their edges. Swords with the set-spell for each season; for Spring, the spell of Calm, for Summer, the spell of Warding, for Fall, the spell of Healing, and for Winter, the spell that attracted Luck. Valuable spells, all of them.

  Daughter to a fighter, and once a fighter herself, though she was now a mage-smith, she knew the value of being able to keep a cool head under the worst of circumstances. Spring swords generally went to young fighters, given to them by their parents. the value of the spell of Warding went without saying; to be able to withstand even some magic was invaluable to-say-a bodyguard.