Winds of Change Read online

  “He wants to give you a clearer idea of what you’re getting involved with,” he had said; she had wondered at the time if he was joking a little or being completely serious.

  But Iceshadow was, indeed, walking across the paving toward them with another strange Hawkbrother at his side, and Darkwind and the Companions following behind. The other Tayledras drifted off, seeming to melt into the luxuriant foliage.

  “So, I meet the Heralds at last,” the Adept said, as he got within easy conversational distance of them. ‘ ‘The last of your kind to be within a Clan was - what?” He looked to the other Tayledras for an answer.

  “Near seven hundred years ago,” the stranger supplied. Elspeth noticed, now that he was near enough for her to note details, that he was very pale, very tired-looking; there were lines of pain around his eyes and mouth. He made a little grimace. “That was k’Treva, though. They always were - hmm - unconventional.”

  “I would say, innovative, Starblade,” Iceshadow chided gently. “The experience certainly did them no harm and much good, from all I have heard out of the tales.”

  At his naming the stranger, Elspeth took a moment for a second, closer, but covert examination of him. So this was Darkwind’s father? They didn’t look all that much alike, but that could be illness and the differences in their hair as much as anything. Starblade was wearing a more - conservative costume than the rest of his fellows; in fact, there was something about it that seemed very similar to the one Darkwind was wearing; something that invoked birds and their wings, without actually imitating feathers. As if they had been designed by the same mind. Interesting.

  “The k’Treva Tayledras that welcomed the Heralds back then - that would have been Moondance and Starwind k’Treva, wouldn’t it?” she replied, obviously startling all three of the Hawkbrothers, and earning a covert grin of approval from Tre’valen. “That was in the Chronicles of Herald Vanyel’s time; I read them, and that was why I came here, to try and find more Tayledras, if I could. The Heralds were Vanyel Ashkevron and his aunt, Savil - Vanyel was the last of the Herald-Mages. The Chronicles said that he spent quite a lot of time there, in k’Treva Vale, especially when he was young, and that Starwind taught him most of what he knew about magic.”

  “That is quite true, young one,” Starblade replied, his voice warming a little with what sounded to her like approval. “Or at least, that is what our records told me. Iceshadow, my friend, would it be possible for us to move to somewhere a little less formal for the rest of this?” He gestured apologetically to her, and to Skif and Tre’valen, “I am sorry, but I fear I must beg your indulgence and find a place to sit.”

  “What about the fishpond over there?” Darkwind asked, pointing with his chin somewhere behind Iceshadow’s shoulder. “It’s quiet enough, and there shouldn’t be anyone there after the sun sets.”

  “Good enough,” his father replied - gratefully, Elspeth thought. “There should be room for your large friends, and seating enough for all of us.”

  Iceshadow gestured to the younger Hawkbrother to lead the way; Elspeth followed him, and the rest trailed behind her. By now it was becoming quite dark, and she was grateful for the mage-lights Iceshadow and Starblade produced. She found that distances were deceptive in the Vale; the ornamental fishpond Darkwind spoke of was actually hardly more than a stone’s throw away from the Heartstone circle, and yet it might easily have been halfway across the Vale. Once they had arranged themselves around it, there was no way of telling that the Heartstone was anywhere nearby.

  “Well,” Starblade said, once he had settled himself in a comfortable ‘ ‘chair” formed of the roots of a tree with moss cupped where a cushion would be. Elspeth took a second, similar seat, and found it incredibly comfortable. “Iceshadow has asked me to explain to you just what sort of a - ah - situation you have unwittingly involved yourselves in. And since I am the partial cause of that situation, I think it only fair that I make the attempt.”

  Elspeth met his eyes and recognized what she saw there. Pain, mental and physical. This conversation was going to cost him something - but she had seen some of that same pain in Darkwind’s eyes whenever he had spoken of his father, and she knew that Starblade had put that pain there. The man was right. It was only fair.

  She settled herself and nodded to him, decisively. “Go ahead,” she said. “I don’t think anything you say is going to make us change our minds, but I was trained as a tactician; I like to know what I can expect.” She smiled, slightly. “Good or bad.”

  Starblade nodded gravely, and leaned forward. He cradled his right hand around his bandaged left hand - surely there must be a story behind that as well. This was either going to be very short, or very long. Whichever it was, it was going to be interesting.

  She had told the truth about not changing her mind; she only hoped what she learned wasn’t going to make her regret her own decisions. It was a little too late for regret now.

  It was not, however, too early for strategy. It was never too early, or too late, for that.

  Chapter 2

  The Celebration

  I know you are an Outlander . . . but I know not how much my son has told you of our troubles here,” Starblade began, with a sober glance at Darkwind, “so I shall tell my tale from the outset, and beg your patience if I repeat what you know.” He glanced down at the pond, with its patient, colorful carp skimming just below the surface of the water. “I shall be as brief as I can.”

  He paused for a moment, clearly organizing his thoughts. “Mornelithe Falconsbane,” he said at last. “It all comes down to him.”

  Darkwind nodded grimly, but said nothing.

  “The Heartstone - ” Starblade closed his eyes, but not before Elspeth had seen another shadow of pain pass across them. “Its shattering is his doing, but by my hand. I was foolish and vain; I thought myself clever, and I found out differently. He caught me through my foolishness, and my pride. He broke me, and he used me.”

  Terse speech, but obviously each word cost him dearly. “Through me, he set his darkness upon the Heartstone, disrupted our magics, broke it from the inside, and in so doing, caused the deaths of many of our mages. Because of me, three-fourths of the Clan are lost somewhere in the wilderness.”

  How?” Elspeth asked, puzzled. “I mean, how could you lose that many people?”

  Starblade toyed with a glass-beaded feather braided into his hair. “When a Clan moves, it is our way to establish the children, the lesser mages, the weak and the old, with the bulk of our scouts and warriors to protect them, at a new site. We send them by means of a Gate, we drain the Stone of its power and send it to the new Stone, then we follow. But when we filled the Stone with all the Clan’s power in preparation for diverting the power to the new site, the Heartstone shattered, and the Adept holding the Gate open died with the shattering. We had no one among us who could use the Heartstone, damaged as it was, to go to them by Gate. We barely know the true location of the rest of the Clan, for the scouts who had found the new place were with them.”

  “And they couldn’t reach you without sending badly-needed fighters,” Elspeth supplied. “I take it none of the lesser mages were able to build these Gate things?”

  “Only an Adept can master the Gate Spell,” Iceshadow replied. “And we fear that even if they had one who could cast it, the Stone is too unstable and there may be no way of bringing a Gate near to it.”

  “All the scouts that knew the overland way to the new Vale are at that Vale,” Darkwind repeated. “Our number would be decimated trying to get to them by foot - leagues traveled are hard-won going North - and they cannot come to us, burdened with the old, the young, the sick.”

  His father nodded. “Indeed. So - to make the bad much the worse, Falconsbane continued to work through me, keeping the Clan from reaching for help, keeping the Adepts still remaining from stabilizing the Stone, and keeping those who knew me well at a distance.” Starblade averted his eyes from Darkwind, but the reference was plain enough. �
��He hoped, I think, to wear us down until he could penetrate our defenses at his leisure and usurp the Stone and the power it still held. But he had not reckoned on our clever allies, the gryphons - and he had not reckoned on the courage and good sense of my son.”

  “He couldn’t have guessed Nyara would turn against him, either,” Skif put in, with a hint of pride.

  “No - nor the appearance of you and all that you represented,” Tre’valen told him, his eyes showing a hint of sardonic humor. ‘ ‘To tell you true, there was an unexpected marshaling of powers from all sides. Falconsbane certainly did not plan on that, nor the involvement of the Shin’a’in. That was his downfall.”

  “If he lives still, he cannot be prospering,” Iceshadow put in. “Shin’a’in arrows found a mark in him; that much we know. And he has lost much in the way of power and creatures.”

  “I wonder at that; Shin’a’in do not often miss in such attacks, their Goddess oft assists the arrow to the mark. But, despite that, I doubt that he lives,” Starblade sighed. “I think that the arrows of the Shin’a’in found their mark; that he fled only to die. There has been no sign of him or his creatures, and his escape was by blood-magic . . . with his own blood. That is an act of finality among mages.”

  Elspeth shrugged. “I don’t know one way or the other about him, but the point, it seems to me, is that he has left the Vale in one snarled mess.”

  Starblade nodded, and smoothed his braided hair back behind his ears. “My son has said he will teach you in the use of your Mage-Gift; that is a good thing, I think - but he will need to relearn much as he teaches you. It would be hazardous for you to do much practice of that learning within the Vale itself; though you would be protected from threats that are outside the Vale, the Stone is yet dangerous.”

  Gwena stamped a hoof and snorted agreement, bobbing her head vigorously. Elspeth nodded; she felt the same. Starblade bore many years’ experience, and knew the magics involved as only a Tayledras Adept could. Better to err on the side of safety.

  “I think,” Darkwind said slowly, “that we may practice outside the Vale for some time in relative safety. It will only be as we approach the greater Adept-magics that we will need the shieldings of the Vale.”

  “By then, the Council and I should have come to some decision on the Stone,” Iceshadow told them. “Either we shall have begun to heal it ourselves, or we shall have found a way to deal with it.”

  He glanced at Elspeth, with a certain amount of expectation in the look. She sighed, knowing what that look meant. “If you’re wondering if you can count on my help with this Heartstone of yours, I do remember those oaths I just took,” she said, with a little shake of her head. “I can’t say I like the idea of mucking about with that much power gone wrong, but what I can do, I will.”

  Both Iceshadow and Starblade gave her nods of approval, but she wasn’t quite done. “What I need to know, here, is this - how much more trouble from outside can we expect while we’re doing all this? Starblade, I hope you’ll forgive my asking this, but you were a point of weakness before. Just how vulnerable are you to more meddling?”

  Starblade wet his lips with the tip of his tongue before replying. “To meddling - I would say not at all. Even il Falconsbane still lives, and as I said, I do not think that he does, Iceshadow and Kethra have changed all the paths that made me open to him. To have me so his slave again, he would have to have me in his hand. He would break me faster - for I am that much more fragile than I was - but he would have to have me to break me.”

  “And?” Elspeth raised an eyebrow.

  “And I shall not leave this Vale until I walk through the Gate to a new one,” he told her. “I have been broken and am mending, but I am still weak to be broken again, and will not chance it, for the sake of all of us.”

  Elspeth nodded, satisfied, but Skif frowned. “What about attack?” he asked. “Are you weaker to attack than - say-Iceshadow?”

  Starblade looked mildly surprised by the question. “I - think not,” he said immediately. “The weaknesses I have still require someone who knows me to exploit, and to have me, if not within physical touching, certainly within sight.”

  Skif glanced over at Tre’valen, who shrugged. “The only magics I know intimately are those of the Goddess,” he said. “I am of no help nor hindrance in these things. These are good things to know, Starblade. I thank you for telling them.”

  “I can’t think of any more questions,” Skif admitted. “I’m no mage, and I’m no help to you. Frankly, I’ll be a lot more help in finding Nyara and that damned sword she carries.”

  “Now that I need to know something of,” Starblade said immediately. And Elspeth found herself the focus of every eye in the little clearing.

  She fidgeted a little, uncomfortably. “I don’t know much about Need as I’d like,” she replied, reluctantly. “She predates the Mage Wars, I think. At least, I didn’t recognize anything she showed us when she let us into her memories, So she’s either very old, or from awfully far away.”

  “I would say, very old,” Darkwind opined, toying with a feather in a gesture uncannily - and probably unconsciously - like his father. “I would say, she is as old as the oldest artifact I have ever seen. She gave me the impression of great age, as great as any of the things I have stumbled upon in the ruins.”

  Elspeth tilted her head back and took a deep breath of the cool, flower-scented air, using the moment to think. “What I do know is she was a member of some kind of quasi-religious order, with gods I never heard of - male and female twins.”

  She gave the Hawkbrothers a glance of inquiry; all three of them shrugged as if the reference meant nothing to them either. “Well, even though at one time she’d been a warrior, she called herself a Mage-Smith.” Elspeth closed hei eyes for a moment, to call up the memories that Need had shared with her and Skif. “As to how she became a sword in the first place - someone attacked the Order while she was gone - wiped out the older members, enslaved the young girls, stole everything they could carry. The only ones left were Need, who was too old to fight, and a young apprentice. So Need took a special sword that she’d forged spells into, spells of healing and luck - and forged herself into it as well.”

  “How?” Iceshadow asked, genuinely interested.

  Elspeth shook her head. “It wasn’t something I’d have done. She did some kind of preparation, then she killed her human body with the blade so that she could move her spirit into the sword. Then as long as the girl carried her, Need could give her both the skills of a fighter and of a Mage-Smith.”

  All three of the Adepts looked startled at that. “How could that be?” Starblade asked.

  “Well, she could operate on her own as a mage, or through her bearer,” Elspeth told him. “Or she could direct her bearer, if the bearer was Mage-Gifted - that was how she worked with me, after I refused to let her take me over. But for fighting skills, you had to let her completely take control of your body.” She grimaced. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t let her, artifact, mage, or no. She didn’t much care for my attitude.”

  A hint of smile appeared around Starblade’s mouth; Darkwind grinned openly. “Why am I not surprised by that?” the younger mage said, to no one in particular.

  Elspeth was glad that the darkness hid her flush; Darkwind seemed to have an uncanny ability to poke pins into her pride. Maybe it was just ill-luck, or bad timing.

  She licked her lips and kept her temper. “I think that she wasn’t used to being thwarted,” she said carefully. “Captain Kerowyn, who had her before I did, told me that I would have to be prepared to counter her, that she’d have me hating off to rescue whatever female nearby was in trouble, whether or not it was a good idea to poke my nose into her problems. That, though, was while she was still - ” Elspeth thought a moment. “As I remember, she called it ‘being asleep.’ I gathered that the personality was dormant, unconscious for a long time. Need never told me why.”

  “The blade may not have wanted you to know why,”
Tre’valen said smoothly. “Certainly, if you contradicted her will, she would not be so free with revealing secrets.”

  “That’s true,” she acknowledged. “Anyway, she didn’t start to wake up again until I was at Kata’shin’a’in. So I don’t know as much as I’d like to about her. I think she is likely to take over Nyara; I think that after years of her father molding her to his whim and will, Nyara is inclined to be manipulated like that.”

  Skif bristled, and started to say something. Darkwind’s thoughtful statement forestalled him.

  “That would not be entirely ill for her,” the Hawkbrother said quietly. “Especially since - it seems, at least to me - Need has no intention of doing anything detrimental. I think she seeks to make her bearer a stronger woman. It is just that she does not like to have her will thwarted.”

  Elspeth smiled ruefully. “I can testify to that,” she said.

  “It seems to me this might be a good thing for the Change-child,” Starblade added thoughtfully. “Despite what has happened, I - I can feel pity for Nyara. She and I - ” he faltered “ - we have much, much in common. What Falconsbane did to her - it is very like what he did to me. It may be that this sword, if it has healing magics like those of Kethra and Iceshadow, can reverse some of the things that were done to the girl, even as Kethra is aiding me. I hope that is so. For her sake, and for ours.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything else to say; Elspeth sat there awkwardly for a moment, until Iceshadow cleared his throat conspicuously. “If there is naught else that we can tell you - “ he said.

  Elspeth shook her head; so did Skif. “Not that I can think of,” she replied. “Although I probably will come up with a dozen questions I should have asked just before I drop off to sleep tonight. ‘ ‘

  Iceshadow chuckled; Starblade nodded knowingly. “If you can recall them when you wake, feel free to ask them,” Iceshadow said, rising. “In the meantime - we hold celebration, to welcome you to the Clan and Vale. Your fellow k’Sheyna are anxious to see you; they are as curious about you as you are about them.”