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  She stood up; so did he. She moved off a little, experimentally. He followed.

  More than followed; he came closer and put his arms around her, and she stiffened. She couldn't help herself; it just happened automatically, without thinking. She didn't want him to touch her-not like that. Not with the touch of a lover.

  "Don't!" he said, sharply.

  "Don't what?" she asked, just as sharply, trying to pull away without being obvious about it.

  "Don't be like that, don't be so cold, Elspeth," he replied, softening his tone a little. "You never used to be like this around me."

  "You never used to follow me like a lovesick puppy," she retorted, getting free of him, walking away a little to get some distance, and turning to face him. "You used to be my 'big brother' until all this started."

  "That was before I paid any attention to-how much you'd grown up," he responded. "All right, so I was a fool before, I wasn't paying any attention to what was in front of my nose, but I've-" Oh, gods, it's a bad romantic play! She didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Both would have been so full of anger that they would have made her incoherent.

  "You've been paying too much attention to idiot balladeers," she interrupted, rudely. "All of which say that the young hero is supposed to finally notice the beauty of the young princess, fall madly in love, rescue her and carry her off to some ivy-wreathed tower to spend the rest of her days in sheltered worship." She took a deep breath, but 'the anger didn't fade. "I've heard all of that horse manure before, I didn't believe in it then, and I don't now. You're not a hero and neither am I. I'm not a beauty, I just happen to be the only woman who's a Herald around here. I don't need rescuing, and I don't want to be sheltered!"

  "But-" he said weakly, taking a step back, and overwhelmed with her vehemence.

  "Stop it, Skif!" she snapped. "I've been nice, I've hinted, I've tolerated this, and I am not going to take any more! Leave me alone! If you can't treat me as your partner, go home. Nothing is going to happen to me in the middle of the Dhorisha Plains, for Haven's sake!" She waved her arm out at the expanse of trackless grass to the south of them.

  "There're half a dozen Shin'a'in out there right now, and I doubt any of them is going to let something get past them."

  "That's not the point, Elspeth," he said, pleadingly. "The point is that I-"

  "Don't you dare say it," she snarled. "Don't you dare say that you love me! You don't love me, you love what you think I am. If you loved me, you wouldn't keep trying to prove you were better than me, that I should follow your lead, let you take over, permit you to make all the decisions."

  "But I'm not-"

  "But you are," she retorted. "Every decision I make, you find a reason not to like. Every job I try to do, you try to do better. Every idea I have, you oppose, Except in those times when I'm acting, thinking, like a good little girl, who shouldn't bother her pretty head about warfare, and should go where she's been told and learn the pretty little magics she's been told to learn."

  "I'm not like that!" he bristled, "Some of my best friends are female!"

  She very nearly strangled him.

  "So-any female you're not interested in can be a human being, is that it?" she said, her voice dripping scorn. "But any female you want had better keep her proper place? Or is it just that every female who outranks you can have her position and be whatever she needs to be, and anyone who's your peer had better let you be the leader? Oh that's noble, that truly is. How nice for you, how terribly broad-minded."

  "Just who do you think you are?" he shouted.

  "Myself, that's who!" she shouted back. "Not your inferior, not your underling, not your child to take care of! Not your doll, not your toy, not your princess, and not your property!" And with that, she turned and stalked off into the grass, knowing she could lose him in a scant heartbeat-and knowing that Gwena could find her immediately if Elspeth needed her.

  She ducked around a hillock, and dropped down into the dusty smelling grass. She held her breath, and listened for his footsteps, waited for him to blunder by in pursuit of her, but there was nothing.

  "Gwena?" she Mindcalled, tentatively.

  "He's just sitting here on his bedroll," she said, and the disapproval in her mind-voice was thick enough to cut. "that was cruel." Elspeth slammed her shields shut before Gwena could reproach her any further. She didn't want to hear any more from that quarter. Gwena was on Skif's side in this, like some kind of matchmaking mama. She'd escaped her real mother's reach, and she wasn't about to let someone else take over the position.

  She lay back into the fragrant grass; it was surprisingly comfortable, actually-and looked up at the night sky. The night was absolutely clear, and the stars seemed larger than they were at home.

  Her back and neck ached with tension; her hands had knotted themselves into tight fists. Her stomach was in an uproar, and her throat tight.

  This was no way to handle a problem.

  She tried to empty her mind, just empty it of all the anger and frustration, the need that was driving her out into the unknown, and the heavy burden of responsibility she was bearing. Gradually the tension drained out of her. Her stomach calmed, her hands relaxed. She concentrated on the muscles in her back and neck until they UN-knotted.

  She stopped thinking altogether. She simply-was. Watching the stars, letting the warm, ever-present breeze blow over her, inhaling the dry, dusty scent of the grasses she lay in, feeling the earth press up against her back.

  This place felt very much alive, as if the warm earth itself was a living being. It calmed her; she found her tension all drained out of her, down into the earth, which accepted it into a tranquillity that her unhappiness could not disturb.

  Gwena's right. I was cruel. She felt her ears flushing hotly, and yet if she had the chance to do it over, there was nothing she would not have repeated. What happened to us? there was a time I would have gladly heard him say he loved me. there was even a time when I might have been able to fall in love with him. Gwena was right; I could do so much worse.

  Tears filled her eyes; they stung and burned. Not from what she had done to Skif-he was resilient, he'd survive. But from what she was going to face in the years ahead. If we all survive this, I probably will do worse. I'll probably have to marry some awful old man, or a scrawny little boy, just to cement an alliance. We'll need all the help we can get, and that may be the only way to buy it. If I took Skif, I'd at least have someone who loves me for a little while...But that wasn't fair to him; it was wrong, absolutely wrong. She'd be using him and the affection he was offering, and giving him nothing in return. She didn't love him, and there was no use pretending she did.

  Furthermore, he was a Mindspeaker; he'd know.

  Besides, when she married that awful old man, whoever he was, she'd have to break with Skif anyway, so what was the point?

  What was the point of all of this, at all? When it all came down to it, she was just another commodity to be traded away for Valdemar's safety.

  And intellectually, she could accept that. But emotionally?? she asked the stars fiercely as tears ran down into her hair. Why do I have to give up everything? why can't I have a little something for myself? that's not being selfish, that's just being human! Talia has Dirk, Kero has Eldan, even Mother has Daren... Why isn't there anyone for me.

  There was no answer; she held back fierce sobs until her chest ached.

  Maybe she wasn't as sophisticated as she had thought, after all. Maybe all her life she had believed in the Bardic ballads, where, after long struggle, the Great True Love comes riding out of the shadows.

  All right, maybe it's childish and stupid, but I've seen it happen-Happen for other people. That fact was, the notion was childish and stupid-and worse, if she spent all her time waiting for that One True Love, she'd never get anything done for herself.

  But, oh, it hurt to renounce the dream...Chapter Nineteen INTERLUDE

  Dawnfire woke all at once; her heart racing with fear, but her body held in
a strange kind of paralysis. She couldn't see anything. All she could feel was that she was so hungry she was almost sick, and that she was standing; her position seemed to be oddly hunched over, but-No, it wasn't hunched over, it was a perfectly normal position-for Kyrr's body. She was still in the body of her bondbird. Only-Kyrr was gone. She was alone.

  She opened her beak to cry out, and couldn't-and then the paralysis lifted, and a hazy golden light came up about her, gradually, so that her eyes weren't dazzled.

  She was on a perch.

  As she teetered on the perch, clutching it desperately, trying to find her balance without Kyrr to help her, she saw that there were bracelets on her legs, and jesses attached to them, and that the jesses were fastened to a ring on the perch.

  The light came up further; she moved her head cautiously at the sound of a deep-throated chuckle to discover that now she could see the entire room. An empty, windowless room-except for a bit of furniture, one couch, and its occupant.

  She couldn't help herself; panic made her bate, and she flapped uncontrolled right off the perch. She couldn't fly even if she hadn't been jessed; she hadn't Kyrr's control-and she hung at the end of the leather straps, upside-down, swinging and twisting as she beat at the air and the perch with her wings.

  I can't get back up!

  That sent her into a further panic, and she flailed wildly in every direction but the right one, with no result whatsoever. She twisted and turned, tangled herself up, and banged her beak against the perch support, and never once got a claw on the perch itself.

  Finally she exhausted herself; she hung in her jesses with her heart beating so hard she could scarcely breathe, listening to it thunder in her ears, growing sicker and weaker with every moment she stayed inverted.

  She had gone, as any raptor would, from a state of uncontrolled panic to a state of benumbed shock.

  She was hanging facing the wall, not the room beyond, and its bizarre occupant; she didn't even hear the footsteps coming toward her because of the sound of her own heart.

  Suddenly there was a hand behind her back, and another under her feet. She clutched convulsively as she was lifted back up onto the perch.

  She released the hand as soon as she was erect, transferring her grip to the sturdy wood, as the Changechild took his gloved hand away, and smiled enigmatically down on her.

  "Having trouble, dear child?" he purred, stepping back a pace or two to observe her. The glove was the only article of clothing he was wearing, and now he pulled it off, and tossed it on a shelf next to her perch. He really didn't need much in the way of clothing-long, silky, tawny-gold hair covered him from head to toe-except for certain strategic areas.

  If she could have blushed, she would have. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen nude males before, certainly there was no nudity taboo among the Tayledras, but he seemed to flaunt his sexuality like some kind of weapon. It was somehow obscene, even though he wasn't doing anything overtly to make it so. It was all in posture, unspoken body-language.

  He seemed to sense her embarrassment and take amusement from it-and that made it even more obscene.

  He looked like a cat-a lynx-and he moved like a cat as he padded back to his couch. That was where she had seen him when the light came up; reclining with indolent grace on a wide couch piled high with silken pillows, in black and golden tones that matched his hair. He resumed his position with studied care, and a fluidity not even a real cat could have matched, then rested his head on one hand to watch her with unwinking, slitted eyes.

  Her feet twitched a little and she teetered on the perch.

  That was when she realized just how helpless she truly was. He didn't need the jesses, except to keep her from falling to the floor every time she bated. Without Kyrr, she was as helpless in this body as a newborn chick. She could do simple things that were largely a matter of reflex-like perching-but anything more complicated than that was out of the question. She could no more fly now than she could in her own body.

  She stared at him in despair; he smiled, and slowly, sensuously, licked his lips.

  "I," he said, in a deep, echoing voice, "am Mornelithe Falconsbane.

  You made the fundamental mistake of attacking me. And I am afraid that you, dear child, are my prisoner. To do with as I will." Fear chilled her, and made all her feathers slick tight to her body, as he said that. Mornelithe Falconsbane-this must be the Adept that Darkwind's Changechild had fled from; the Adept that had trapped and tormented her dyheli herd-his name did not invoke a feeling of comfort in a Tayledras.

  It's a pity that you managed to have yourself trapped in that bird's body," he continued. "The ways that I may derive pleasure from it are so limited, but I'm sure you can be flexible." He mock-sighed and lowered his lids over his slitted, green-golden eyes, looking at her through thick lashes. She clutched the perch nervously, swaying back and forth, her mouth dry with fear as she waited for him to do something.

  He raised a single finger. The door beside his couch opened, and a human in golden-brown leather that clung to his body as if it had been sewn around him entered the room, carrying a deep pannier. He went straight to her perch, as she flapped in alarm, and put the basket down underneath it. Then he untied her jesses from the ring, tied a leather leash to it instead, and attached the leash to her jesses.

  Then he turned his back on her and left her, all without saying so much as a single word.

  She looked down into the basket. Cowering in fear, and looking up at her, were three live mice.

  Now her stomach growled with hunger, even while her mind rolled with nausea. She stared down at the mice, ravenous, and feeling just as trapped as they were.

  She was starving-this was food. And she didn't have the slightest idea of how to kill and eat it.

  Kyrr would, but Kyrr was gone.

  Then it hit her. Kyrr was gone. Not waiting patiently in the back of the bird's mind, but gone completely. Dead. Part of her soul, her heart, her life-gone without a trace. She was completely alone, in a way she had not been since she was ten.

  The grief that descended over her was so total that she forgot everything, including her hunger.

  Oh, Kyrr-Her beak gaped, but nothing happened. Not even a single sob.

  She couldn't cry, she wasn't even human anymore. How could she mourn as a hawk? She didn't know, and the inability to cry out her pain and loss redoubled it. They were both lost, she and Kyrr-and they would never come home again.

  She closed her eyes and rocked from foot to foot, trapped in a sea of black grief, drowning in it.

  A satisfied chuckle made her snap her head up and open her eyes wide.

  Mornelithe was watching her with amusement.

  Her grief turned to rage in the blink of an eye; she mantled and screamed at him, her cry piercing the silence and shattering it-though she was careful to keep a tight grip on the rough wood of her perch as she shrieked her defiance at him.

  He found that even more amusing; his smile broadened, and his chuckle turned into a hearty laugh.

  "Perhaps you won't be a disappointment after all, clever bird-child.

  He caressed her with his eyes, and her rage spilled away, leaving her weak and frightened again.

  He returned his gaze to something in his lap, and as he shifted a little, she could see that it was a dark crystal scrying-stone. He stared at it, his gaze suddenly going from casual to penetrating-and what he saw in it made him frown.

  Chappter Twenty DARKWIND

  Starblade turned away from the little knot of Tayledras Adepts and Healers surrounding Dawnfire's ekele in despair, and sought the sanctuary of his own ekele. The fools were trying to thrash out what could have killed Dawnfire, and why-when it was obvious, as obvious a taint on the girl's body as the taint on his own soul, and the contamination that had cracked the Heartstone.

  He knew it the moment he saw it. And he could not say a single word.

  He felt old, old-burdened with secrets too terrible to hide that he could not confess to a
nyone, weary with the weight of them, sick to his bones of what he had done. As he had so many times, he climbed the stairs to his ekele, then sought the chamber at the top, and stood looking down on the Vale) wondering if this time he could find the strength to open the window and hurl himself to the ground.

  But the crow on his shoulder flapped to its perch as soon as he entered the room, and sat there watching him with cold, derisive eyes. And he knew, even as he fought the compulsion to turn away from the window and suicide, that Mornelithe Falconsbane still had his soul in a fist of steel, and there was nothing he had that he could call his own. Not his thoughts, not his will, not his mind.

  He flung himself down on the sleeping pad, hoping to lose himself in that dark oblivion-but sleep eluded him, and Falconsbane evidently decided to remind him of what he was.

  The memory-spell seized him Smoke wreathed through the trees as he paused in an area he had thought safe, and the acrid fumes made him cough. The fire was spreading, far faster than it should have. For a moment, Starblade wondered if perhaps he should go back for help. But other emergencies had emptied the Vale of all but apprentices and children, and he had a reputation to maintain. He was an Adept, after all, and a simple thing like a forest fire shouldn't prove too hard to handle. He sought shelter from the smoke down in a little hollow, a cup among some hills, and closed his eyes to concentrate on his first task.