Winds Of Fate v(mw-1 Page 28

  "What woke you?" Skif asked. He sounded back to his old curious self.

  "I think, perhaps, it was the one before you. Kerowyn, you said? She began to speak to me, if crudely. But because I had been asleep for so very long, I was long in waking. Then, as I gradually began to realize what was going on and came to full wakefulness, she brought me to your home." Need fell silent, and all of them-Elspeth Felt Gwena back with her again-waited for her to speak. Gwena finally got tired of waiting.

  "Well?" she snapped. "what then?" Elspeth clearly felt the sword react with surprise. what then? I stayed quiet, of course! The protections about your land are formidable, horse. Someone has changed the nature of the vrondi there. they-"

  "The what?" Elspeth asked, puzzled by the strange reference.

  "The vrondi, child," Need responded, impatiently. "You know what they are! Even though you have no mages within your border, you use the vrondi constantly, to detect the truth!" Unbidden, the memories of first learning the Truth-Spell sprang into her mind.

  "Think of a cloud with eyes," said Herald Teren. "think of the spell and concentrate on a cloud with eyes." She must have spoken it aloud, for the sword responded. "Exactly,..

  Need replied with impatience. "Clouds with eyes. those are vrondi. Did you think they were only creatures of imagination?" Since that was precisely what she had thought, she prudently kept that answer to herself.

  :Someone, somehow, has changed the nature of the vrondi, and they are not the same in your land,: the blade said peevishly :they look now, they look for mage-energies. when they see them, they gather about the mage, and watch, and watch, and they do not stop watching unless they see that the mage is also a Herald, and has one of your talking horses with him.: If a sword could have produced a snort, this one would have. :So I kept silent. What else was I to do? I did not wish to call attention to myself. that was when I drifted back to sleep again.:

  :Not as deeply, I trust,: Gwena responded, dryly.

  :Well, no. And I waited, not only to be able to leave your land, but to be passed to the one I had sensed-you. Not only a fighter, but one with Mage-Talent as well, and Mindspeech.:

  "Then I took you out-"

  :And I woke. just as well, I think. If you will forgive me, child-you need me.: Elspeth groaned inwardly, though not at the pun. The last thing she had any use for was yet another creature with an idea of what she "should" be doing.

  Oh. gods, she thought. just what I wanted. Another guardian. Someone else with a Quest.

  That was not the end of her troubles, as she soon learned.

  Both she and Skif were exhausted, but Skif seemed a little more dazed than she. Possibly it was simply a matter of sex; Need had shown herself to be a little less than friendly to males, and Elspeth had no doubt that the sword had not made mental contact easy on him.

  Skif lay down on the bed, his face a little dazed. Elspeth, though she was tired, also felt as if she needed to get on with her plans quickly, before Need could complicate matters.

  It was possible, of course, that Need could prove to be the magic-teacher she so eagerly sought. Possible-but a last resort, to be considered only when she had exhausted all others. Including seeking the Adept in Lythecare. She wasn't certain of Need's powers, and she wasn't certain if the blade was entirely to be trusted. If she would run roughshod over Skif, what would she do to handicap other Valdemaran males?

  Would she actually sabotage their training? Elspeth couldn't be sure, so she wasn't going to take the chance.

  When the sword had been put in her sheath, with a promise that Elspeth would not again block Need out of her mind without ample warning and cause, she went out for a breath of air, and to begin to explore the tent city. As she had been expecting, there was a logical pattern to the "streets" of Kata'shin'a'in. The farthest tents, those all the way downwind, belonged to the beast sellers. Near to them were those who sold the things one would need for a beast, everything from simple leads and halters for sheep and collars for dogs, to the elaborate tack for parade horses.

  Then came leather workers in general, then the makers of glass, metal and stonework.

  Then textile merchants, and finally, nearest the core city, sellers of food and other consumables.

  The core city itself contained a very few shops. It consisted mostly of the dwellings of those few who remained here all year and the inns.

  There were dozens of those inns, ranging in quality from a mud-walled, dirt-floored, one-room ale house, to a marble palace of three stories, whose supposed amenities ranged from silk streets through mage-crafted delicacies to the very personal and intimate attendance of the servant Of one's choice.

  The innkeeper had not gotten any more explicit than that, but Elspeth reckoned wryly that a whore by any other name still plied his or her trade-presumably, with expertise.

  It might be nice to experience service like that, one day-though without, she thought with a little embarrassment, anything more personal than a good massage.

  But for now, she had a great deal more on her mind than that. For one thing, she had to find Shin'a'in. This was Kata'shin'a'in, "City of the Shin'a'in," after all. Once she found Shin'a'in, she had to get them to talk to her. Then she had to find someone willing and able to put her in touch with Tale'sedrin, Kero's Clan.

  And she reckoned that the best place to find the Shin'a'in would be in the beast market. They not only bred horses, after all, they also had herds of sheep and goats; presumably they bought and sold both.

  Failing that, she would try the textile merchants. The Shin'a'in were great weavers and among those who treasured such pieces of art, their carpets, blankets, and other textiles and embroideries were famed all the way up into Valdemar.

  So she went out to scout the beast market first.

  She had hoped to slip away without disturbing Skif, who had fallen asleep on the bed, exhausted by the strain of the strange day.

  But no matter what Need claimed about her own powers, evidently "attracting Luck" was no longer one of them. She had no sooner gotten outside the door of the inn when Skiff came panting up behind her.

  She sighed and kept from snapping at him. It was fairly obvious that he was not going to let her go out alone. And it wasn't simply more of his mother-henning. The peculiar look in his eyes told her all she needed to know.

  He was infatuated with her.

  And I ought to recognize infatuation when I see it, since I've suffered under it myself.

  He undoubtedly had convinced himself that he was in love with her.

  Wonderful, she thought to herself, as she headed determinedly toward her goal, despite having him trailing along behind her. _just wonderful My partner thinks he's in love with me, my Companion wants me to become some kind of Foretold Hero, my sword has a mind of its own, and I'm going to have to find someone from an elusive tribe of an elusive people all on my own, in a city where I don't even speak the language.

  No, somehow I don't think that attracting Luck is on the list of active spells...Chapterr Fifteen DARKWIND

  Treyvan roused his feathers, fluffing his crest and shaking his head, his claws digging long furrows into the thick weedy turf. He held his head high, his muscles stiff with impatience. Darkwind glanced sideways at him and smiled a little.

  A shadow passed over the scout, and he looked up automatically, but it was only a cloud passing across the sun. Vree was waiting for him back in the forest, away from the temptation of Treyvan's crest feathers.

  "How long have you and Hydona been mated?" he asked, with pretended innocence.

  "Twelve yearsss," the gryphon replied, rousing his feathers again, and casting his own glance upward. "What'sss that got to do with anything?"

  And you've made quite a few mating flights, haven't you?" the scout continued, his smile broadening. Treyvan was so preoccupied he didn't even realize that Darkwind was teasing him.

  "Well," Treyvan said, with a sidelong glance at Hydona. Hydona only roused her own feathers, watching him coyly.
"Yesss."

  "If you've got so much experience at it," he laughed, reaching up to scratch behind Treyvan's ear-tufts, "don't you think you ought to be able to take your time about this one?" Treyvan closed his eyes, wearing an expression of long-suffering patience." You, a human, alwayss in ssseason, with matesss ambusshing you even when you are bathing-you tell me that? You crrreaturess neverrr ssstop.

  Hydona made a choking sound; her mate pointedly looked away from her. Darkwind knew that faint gargling from past exchanges with the pair; she was trying not to chuckle. He raised his eyebrows at her, then gave her a broad wink. She hid her head by turning it to the side, but her shaking shoulders told him she was stifling outright laughter.

  "Anyway," Treyvan continued, in an aggrieved tone, "you know very well that I casst the initial ssspell thiss morrrning. And you know verrry well that until we complete it with the sssecond ssspell, it'sss going to make me itchierrr than a plague of sssand-fleasss. I explained it to you often enough." He shook his head and made a grinding sound with his beak. "I feel asss if my ssskin isss too tight," he complained.

  Darkwind bit his tongue to keep from making a retort to that particular complaint. "In that case," he said, soothingly, "I had probably better leave you two alone."

  "oh, he'll live," Hydona countered, controlling herself and her humor admirably. "Trrruly he will. You're rrready for what we'll do thisss time, I hope? Not like the lassst time?" He flushed at the memory of the "last time," when he had been much younger. He had been close enough to them, and unshielded, so that he had gotten caught up in the extremely potent magic of their mating spell.

  The first spell that Treyvan had mentioned was what actually made the mating fertile; otherwise their sexual activity was purely for enjoyment.

  The second would ensure conception. And despite Treyvan's acerbic comment about "humans always being in season," the fact was that the gryphons were at least as active in that area as any humans Darkwind knew.

  "I'll be fine," he told her. "I'm not fourteen anymore." Hydona laughed. "I'd notisssed," she teased. "Essspecially around Dawnfirrre. When will you be picking a mate?"

  "Uh-" the question took him by surprise, so he settled for a gallant answer. "When I find a mate as magical as you are."

  " Flattererrr," she replied, dryly. "Well, when you do, perhapsss we'll all be rrready to ssssettle a new place together, ssso that we can keep eyesss on each other'sss sssmall onesss." She looked over his head a moment, off into the distance. "That isss the ultimate goal of ourrr being herrre, you know," she said thoughtfully. "We'rrre pioneersss, of a sssort. Our kind came from sssomewhere about herrre, you know, very, very long ago, and Trrreyvan and I are here now to sssee if it isss the time to rrreturn."

  " So you told me," he said," A long time ago.

  She nodded as Treyvan sighed and lay down in the long grass with a long-suffering look.

  Oh, yesss," she said, ignoring her mate, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "We arrre herrre to sssee if we can raissse little ones, brrring them into the magic of the land, and prosssper. If we do well, more will come. You know, ourrr people and yoursss arrre ancient parrrtnersss, from the daysss of the Kaled'a'in. The hertasi, too, and othersss you may not have everrr ssseen beforrre. It would be good if we could be partnersss again." Another surprise; this time, a much greater surprise. He'd been astonished to learn that the gryphons were fluent in the ancient tongue of Kaled'a'in, a language so old that very few of either the Tayledras or the Shin'a'in could be considered "fluent," despite the fact that both their current languages were derived from that parent. But this revelation was a total surprise, for there was nothing in the Tayledras histories to indicate that the two species had been so close.

  While he pondered the implications of that, Hydona reached over and gently bit Treyvan's neck. The male gryphon's eyes glazed and closed, and the cere above his beak flushed a brilliant orange-gold. Obviously, her mind was no longer on the far past, but on the immediate future.

  And from the look on Treyvan's face, his mind had been there for some time.

  Darkwind coughed. "Uh-Hydona?

  "Hmm?" the gryphon replied dreamily, her own eyes bright, but unfocused, her thoughts obviously joined to Treyvan's.

  "Who's watching the little ones?" he asked. "I can't; I've got to be out on patrol. I don't trust this quiet."

  "They'll be fine," Hydona replied, releasing her mate long enough to reply. "They've been told not to leave the nessst, and if they called, nothing could get to them beforrre we'd be on top of it."

  "Are you sure?" he persisted, but Hydona was nuzzling Treyvan's neck again and he knew there was no way he was going to get any sense out of her at the moment.

  "They'll be fine," she mumbled, all her attention centered once more on her mate.

  Despite being under shielding, the sexual euphoria began penetrating even his careful defenses. This was obviously the time to leave.

  As he picked his way through the ruins, a feeling of light-headedness overcame him for a moment. He looked back over his shoulder to see the two of them surging up into the cloudy sky, Hydona a little ahead of Treyvan. Even as he watched, they began an elaborate aerial display, tumbling and spiraling around each other, in a dance that was halfplanned and half-improvisation. This "dance" itself was part of the spell; the rest-Treyvan's extravagant maneuvers-were designed to inflame himself and his mate.

  And judging by the faint excitement he was feeling, even through his shields, it was having the desired effect.

  As he turned his eyes back toward the ground, another moving speck caught his eye. Though it was very high, long experience enabled him to identify it as a red-shouldered hawk, one of the many breeds often used as bondbirds by the Tayledras.

  That made him think reflexively of Dawnfire, whose bird was a redshouldered.

  And that-given all that he'd been exposed to in the past few moments-made his thoughts turn in an entirely different direction than they had been tending.

  Dawnfire rode the thoughts of her bondbird with the same ease that the bird commanded the currents of the sky. Theirs was a long partnership, of seven years' standing, for she had bonded to Kyrr at the tender age of ten. Darkwind's Vree had been with him only four or five years; the bird he had bonded to before that had been a shorter-lived shriekowl, gift of his older brother.

  A shriek-owl was not a practical bird for a scout, but the tiny creatures were perfect for a mage, which was what Darkwind had been in that long-ago, peaceful time. Shriek-owls in the wild seldom lived beyond three years-the bondbird breed in general tripled that lifespan. That was nothing near like the expected lifespan of the scouts' birds-twenty-five to fifty years for the falcons, larger owls, and hawks, and up to seventy-five years for the rarer eagles. And shriek-owls were tiny; scarcely bigger than a clenched fist. They ate mostly insects, flew slowly, and generally flitted from tree to tree inside a very small territory. They could hardly be counted on to be an effective aid either on a scouting foray or to aid in an attack. But the owls were charming little birds, by nature friendly and social-in the wild they nested several to a tree-and the perfect bird for a mage who only needed a bird to be occasional eyes and ears and to pass messages. A mage did not necessarily need to bond to his bird with the kind of emotional closeness that a scout did, nor did he need a bird with that kind of long expected lifespan. All of the mages that Dawnfire knew that she aed, personally, did bond closely with intelligent birds, but it was not as necessary for them as it was for scouts.

  Scouts had to develop a good working, partner-like relationship with their birds, and that required something with a long anticipated lifespan.

  Scouts spent as much as a year simply training their birds, then it took as much as four or five more years to get the partnership to a smooth working relationship. Like the scouts, the lives of the bondbirds were fraught with danger. There had already been casualties among the birds, and Darkwind had warned his corps to expect more. Their enemies knew the import
ance of the birds, as well as the impact a bird's violent death had on his bondmate, and often made the birds their primary targets.

  Dawnfire tried not to think about losing Kyrr, but the fact was that it could happen.

  Darkwind's father Starblade had lost his bird in circumstances so traumatic that the mage had returned to the Vale in a state of shock, and actually could not recall what had occurred. Since he had been investigating a forest fire ignited by firebirds, and since the birds themselves seldom reacted so violently that they set their homes aflame, the other Tayledras assumed that whatever had frightened the firebirds had probably caught and killed Starblade's perlin falcon. That had been a set of very strange circumstances, actually; Dawnfire remembered it quite vividly because her mother had been one of the scouts who had found the mage and had talked it over one long night with friends in her daughter's presence.

  There had been a sortie that had drawn most of the fighters off when word of the fire had reached the Vale. Starblade had gone out to take care of it.