The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Then you’d have been a Healer, Lady Cinnabar would have been your lady and apprentice instead of Tamsin’s, and I wouldn’t be here,” she interrupted. “I love you just the way you are, Father. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

  And suddenly she realized that she meant exactly that, probably for the first time since she had been a small child.

  She knew that he had needed to extend his empathic sense in order to Heal, and he still hadn’t barricaded himself; he felt that, and his eyes filled with tears.

  He wanted to hear that from me as much as I wanted his approval! she thought with astonishment. How could I have been so blind all this time! Thinking only the child could want approval from the parent—how stupid of me—the parent wants approval from the child just as much.

  “Blade—” he said. She didn’t let him finish. She reached up for him as he reached down for her, and they held each other while his tears fell on her cheeks and mingled with hers.

  It was he who pulled away first, not she; rubbing his nose inelegantly on the back of his hand as he sniffed, and managing a weak smile for her. “Well, aren’t we a pair of sentimental idiots,” he began.

  “No, you’re a pair of sensible idiots, if that isn’t contradictory,” Skandranon interrupted. “You two were overdue for that, if you ask me. And, if you don’t ask me, I’ll tell you anyway, and I am right, as usual. Drake, what can she do now, if anything?”

  “I’ve strengthened and knitted the bone a bit,” Amberdrake replied, looking at her although he answered Skan. “And I’ve done something about the pain. I wouldn’t engage in hand-to-hand, but you can certainly throw a spear, use a sling, or do some very limited swordplay. No shields, sorry; it won’t take that kind of strain.”

  “We don’t have any shields with us, so that hardly matters,” she replied dryly. “Nor bows, either; we had to concentrate on bringing things we could use.”

  “Well… I know how to make a throwing-stick and the spears to go with it, if you know how to use one,” Amberdrake admitted. “That should increase your range. There ought to be some wood in here straight enough for spears.”

  He knows how to make a weapon! She throttled down her surprise, and just nodded. “Yes to both—now let me go replace Tad at the front and you can work your will on him.”

  She almost said magic, but stopped herself just in time. Since the wyrsa hadn’t come calling when her father began his Healing, evidently they did not eat Healing-energy. Which was just as well, under the circumstances. Perhaps it was too localized, or too finely-tuned to be sucked in from afar.

  She stood up, hefted a spear in both hands, marveling at her new freedom from pain, and smiled with grim pleasure at the feel of a good weapon. Tad retreated to the back of the cave, and she took her place beside his father.

  “So, what exactly are those nightmares?” Skan asked: “Have you any idea?”

  She stared out into the rain—the rain had begun early, which meant that the fog had lifted early. That was to their advantage; with four enemies in the cave, she didn’t think that the wyrsa would venture an attack in broad daylight.

  “Tad thinks they’re some kind of wyrsa, maybe changed by the mage-storms,” she told him. “They’re about the size of a horse, and they’re black, and I suppose you already know that they eat magic.”

  “Only too well,” Skan groaned.

  “Well, to counter that advantage, they seem to have lost their poison fangs and claws,” she said. “I don’t think they’re going to try entrancing us again after the first time, but if they start weaving in and around each other, they can hypnotize you if you aren’t careful.”

  “The wyrsa I used to hunt were better at it than that,” Skan observed, watching the bushes across the river tremble. “So they’ve lost a couple of attributes and gained one. Could be worse. One touch of those claws, and you were in poor shape, and that was with the hound-sized ones. A horse-sized one would probably kill you just by scratching you lightly.”

  “I suppose that counts as good news, then.” She sighed. “I think this is a pack of youngsters led by one older female, probably their mother. We don’t know how many there are; two less than when they started, though. I don’t know if you saw it, but Father got one; Tad got one a couple of days ago, with a rockfall. The problem is, no trap works twice on them.”

  “Wyrsa, the size of a horse,” Skan muttered, and shook his head. “Terrible. I’d rather have makaar. I wonder what other pleasant surprises the mage-storms left out here for us to find?”

  She shrugged. “Right now, this is the only one that matters, It’s pretty obvious that the things breed, and breed true, so if we don’t get rid of them, one of these days they’ll come looking for more magic-meals closer to our home.” She turned her gaze on Skandranon for a moment. “And what did happen to your party, other than what I can guess?”

  Skandranon told her, as tersely as she could have wished. She hadn’t known any of the Silvers well, except Bern, who had been her tracking teacher, but it struck her that they had all acted with enormous stupidity and arrogance. Was it only because when they didn’t meet with any immediate trouble that they assumed there wasn’t anything to worry about?

  “Between you and me, my dear,” Skandranon said in an undertone, “I’m afraid the late Regin was an idiot. I suspect that he assumed that since you were a green graduate, probably hurt, and female to boot, you got into difficulties with what to him would have been minor opponents. He was wary at first, but when no armies and no renegade mages appeared, he started acting as if this was a training exercise.”

  She tried not to think too uncharitably of the dead Silver. “Well, we don’t have much experience, and it would be reasonable to think that we might have panicked and overreacted,” she said judiciously. “Still. I’d have thumped that Filix over the head and tied him up once I found the wreck and knew there was something that ate magic about. Why attract attention to yourself?”

  “Good question,” Skan replied. “I wish now I’d done just that.” His mournful expression filled in the rest; she could read his thoughts in his eyes. Or was that her empathic sense operating? If I had, they might still be alive. I should have pulled rank on them.

  She turned her attention back to the outside, for she felt distinctly uneasy having the Black Gryphon confess weakness, even tacitly, to her. And yet, she felt oddly proud. He would not have let her see that, if he were not treating her as an adult and an equal.

  “Well, what it all comes down to is this,” she said grimly. “No one is going to get us out of this except ourselves. We have no way to warn anyone, and what happened to you is entirely likely to happen to them’, unless they’re smarter than Regin was.”

  “Oh, that goes without saying—the closest team to us is led by Ikala,” Skan said—rather slyly, she thought.

  And she clutched her hands on the shaft of the spear as her heart raced a little. Ikala—if I was going to be rescued by anyone.

  She shook her head; this was not some fanciful Haighlei romance tale. “They’re still in danger, and we can’t warn them,” she repeated. “Remember, these damned things get smarter every time we do something! I think they may even get smarter every time they eat more magic. I doubt that they’re native, so Ikala won’t know about them. The best chance we all have to survive is if we four can eliminate these creatures before anyone else runs afoul of them. If they do get nastier every time they eat something, everyone out there could become victims. For all we know—if they share intelligence as Aubri said—they may share their power among each other as they die off. The fewer there are, the more powerful the individuals might become.”

  She was afraid that Skan might think she was an idiot for even thinking the four of them could take on the wyrsa pack, as ill-equipped as they were, but he nodded. “Are you listening to this, Drake?” he called back into the cave.

  “To every word, and I agree,” came the reply. “It’s insane, of course, to think that we can do that, but
we’re used to handling insanely risky business, aren’t we, old bird?”

  “We are!” Skan had actually mustered up a grin.

  But Amberdrake wasn’t finished yet. “And what’s more, I’m afraid that trait runs in both families. Right, Tad?”

  A gusty sigh answered his question. “I’m afraid so,” the young gryphon replied with resignation. “Like father, like son.”

  Skan winked at her. “The basic point is, we have four excellent minds and four bodies to work on this. Well, between your broken bones and our aching ones, we probably have the equivalent of two healthy bodies, rather than four, but that’s not so bad! It could be worse!”

  Blade thought about just a few of the many, many ways in which it could be worse, and nodded agreement. Of course, there are many, many ways in which it could be better, too.

  “So, while those two are back there involved in patching and mending, let me get my sneaky old mind together with your resilient young one, and let’s see if we can’t produce some more, cleverer tactics.” He gryph-grinned at her, and to her surprise, she found herself grinning back.

  * * *

  “That’s it, sir,” Tad said, from back in the cave. “That’s all the weapons we have.”

  “Blade?” There was surprise in her father’s voice. “I thought you said that you didn’t have a bow.”

  “I did!” She left Skan for a moment and trotted back to the fire, to stare at the short bow and quiver of arrows in surprise. “Where did that come from?”

  “I brought it in my pack,” Tad said sheepishly. “I know you said not to bring one because you couldn’t use it, but—I don’t know, I thought maybe you might be able to pull it with your feet or something, and if nothing else, you could start a fire with it.”

  “Well, she still can’t use it, but I can,” Amberdrake said, appropriating it. He looked up at Skan and his son. “You two get out there and start setting those traps before the sun goes down; we’ll get ready for the siege.”

  There would be a siege; Blade only hoped that the traps that the other two were about to set would whittle down the numbers so that the inevitable siege would be survivable. If the mother wyrsa had been angry over the loss of a single young, what would she be like when she lost several?

  Tad and Skan were going out to set some very special single traps—and do it now, while the wyrsa were at a distance. They knew that the wyrsa had withdrawn—probably to hunt—because Blade and her father had used their empathic abilities to locate the creatures.

  It had been gut-wrenching to do so, but it had at least worked. They hoped that the wyrsa would be out of sensing range of small magics, because that was what they intended to use.

  The bait and the trigger both would be a tiny bit of magic holding the whole thing together. That was why it needed Skan and Tad to do the work; they were physically stronger than Blade and her father. When the wyrsa “ate” the magic holding everything in place—

  Deadfalls would crush them, sharpened wooden stakes would plunge through them, nooses would snap around their legs and the rocks poised at the edge of the torrent would tumble in, pulling them under the water. And for the really charming trap, another huge rockfall would obliterate the path and anything that was on it.

  They would have to be very, very clever; the magic had to be so small that the wyrsa would have to be on top of it to sense it. Otherwise it would “eat” the magic from a distance, triggering the trap without its killing anything.

  Meanwhile, Blade and her father gathered together every weapon in their limited arsenal for a last stand.

  It has to be now, she kept telling herself. The wyrsa are nibbling away at Tad and they’ll do the same to Skan. The more they eat, the stronger they get. We have to goad them into attacking before they’re ready, and keep them so angry that they rely on their instincts and hunting skills instead of thinking things over. If we wait, there’s a chance the next party will bumble right into them…

  That would be Ikala and Keenath—and the idea that either of those two could be in danger made a fierce rage rise inside her, along with determination to see that nothing of the kind happened.

  Spears; the long ones, and the short, crude throwing-spears that Amberdrake was making, with points of sharpened, fire-hardened wood. Those were hers, those, and her fighting-knife, which was just a trifle shorter than a small sword. Amberdrake would take the bow, his own fighting-knife, and his throwing-knives. She still had her sling, and that could be useful at the right time.

  There wasn’t much, but it was all useful enough. When she had divided it into two piles, hers and her father’s, she sat down beside him at the fire to help him with the spears. He made the points, she fire-hardened them, until the pile of straight wooden stakes was all used up. Then she took a single brand from the fire, and he put it out.

  She went all the way to the back of the cave and started a huge new fire there, one of the objects being to make the wyrsa believe that they were farther back there than they actually were. She piled about half of their wood, the wettest lot, around it. This wood was going to have to dry out before it caught—and she thought she had that timed about right.

  It’s too bad this cave is stable, she thought wistfully. It would be nice to arrange to get them inside, then drop the ceiling on them.

  Well, in a way, they were going to do that anyway.

  She helped her father drag all of the rest of the driftwood that they had collected to the front of the cave and arrange it along the barricade. There was quite a lot of it, more than she remembered. Tad had certainly been busy!

  And this had better work, because we are using up all of our resources in one attempt. What was it that Judeth always told us! “Never throw your weapon at the enemy!” I hope we aren’t doing that now.

  But being cautious certainly hadn’t gotten them anywhere.

  Strange how it was the younger pair that was so cautious, and the older willing to bet everything on one blow.

  Periodically, she or her father would stop, close their eyes, and open themselves to the wyrsa to check on their whereabouts. It was Amberdrake’s turn to check when he cut his “search” short, and put his fingers to his mouth to utter the ear-piercing whistle they had agreed would be the “call in” signal. Skan came flying back low over the river, with Tad running on the trail a little behind him.

  At that point, the gloom of daylight had begun to thicken to the darkness of night, and they were all ready to take their positions. Blade sent up a petition to the Star-Eyed One that this would all work…

  The Star-Eyed only helps those who help themselves, and those who have planned well don’t need the Star-Eyed’s help. Always remember that, Blade. If you haven’t done your best, you have no reason to hope for the Star-Eyed’s help if it still goes bad.

  She crouched down behind a screen of rock and dead brush, away from their safe haven of nights past and waited, her spear-thrower in one hand, three spears in the other. She hadn’t had time to practice, and she only hoped that she could hit somewhere in her targets, instead of off to one side of them. From where she crouched, she wouldn’t have to make a fatal hit, just a solid one, and they would probably go into the river. There was nowhere for them to hide, even in the darkness, because it wasn’t going to be dark, not completely. Skan had made a quick sortie across the river before they went off to set traps and had returned with rotten wood riddled with foxfire. Any time she saw one of the chunks of foxfire vanish, she was supposed to throw.

  They had planned as well as they could. Now it was just a matter of waiting…

  And I never was very good at waiting!

  She kept quiet, tried not to fidget, and listened for sounds up the trail.

  * * *

  Skan had an advantage over all of the others; he knew where each trap was, because he felt the mage-energy. And he would know as they were triggered; because he would sense that, too. Under any other circumstances, the tiny bits of energy he and Tad had invested in the t
riggers would have vanished in the overall flows of energies, but with nothing around to mask them, they “glowed” to him like tiny fires in the distance.

  And he tensed, as he felt the first of them “go out.”

  That was the strangling-noose…

  He wished he had Drake’s empathic ability as well. It would be nice to know if their trap had gotten anything.

  They had been careful to set things that worked differently—though hopefully the pups would venture over here slowly, and would be so greedy to get at the bits of magic that none of them would realize that the magic-bits and the traps had anything to do with each other.

  The next one is the set of javelins, and if there’s a group, it should take out several. And they’ll be cautious after they spring that one.

  The javelins, hidden under brush, were far enough away from the trigger that he was fairly certain that the pups would make no connection between the two.

  And there it goes! In his mind’s eye, another little glowing “fire” went out.

  Two down, two to go.

  One trap working from above, one from in front. One takes out a single pup, one takes out several. No pattern there, and nothing in the way of a physical trigger to spot.

  The next trap would take out a single pup again and it worked from the ground. That would be the foot-noose. He felt his chest muscles tighten all over as he “watched” that little spark of energy, and waited for the pups to regain their courage. He knew that at least he and Tad were safe from detection tonight; they’d used up all but a fraction of their personal energies making the traps. There was nothing to distract the pups from the bait.

  Time crawled by with legs of lead, and he began to wonder if he and Tad had done their work a little too well. Had he discouraged the pups? Or would the loss of several more goad them into enough rage to make them continue?