Tempest

by Mercedes Lackey

  Kelvren was placated by this, and let his hackles drop somewhat. He became aware that he was illuminating the four as much as any of the magelights dotted around the walkway. He raised his head and looked around over the others’ heads and noticed something odd about the lights. The lights looked as if they pointed toward him. In fact, every magelight in sight was flaring toward him, as if they were candles, and a breeze blew their flames in Kelvren’s direction. Something here was very strange.

  Silverfox had apparently noticed the phenomenon, too, and ventured, “Kel, there are some situations that are different now, and you have some changes ahead. No small number of things have happened that relate to you, and we need to explain what they are.”

  Without acknowledging Silverfox at all, Kelvren suddenly snapped his gaze to Sifyra and loudly said, “You called me Sky Warrior, not Wingleader. Ever since I have been Wingleader of k’Valdemar, you have called me by my rank.”

  :I call you as you are, with the respect due to you.:

  Silverfox ushered Kelvren along, although the gryphon was reluctant to break his stare at the dyheli. “That is part of what we need to explain to you. We just don’t want to do it out here. Let’s get to the receiving room at our ekele, shall we?” Ayshen and Drusi vanished in a burst of hertasi speed, presumably going on ahead. Nightwind and Darian followed the irate gryphon through the vine-fall, and Darian said, soothingly, “You’re probably just famished, Kel. You know how you get when you’re hungry.”

  Grrr. I am not a gryphlet!

  The dyheli stayed several body lengths back, but always within sight.

  Kelvren grumbled, “It isn’t hunger that has me angry. It’s the feeling that I am being handled because I’m as dangerous as a leaking oil bomb. I feel like I always have eyes upon me, and not in the way the hertasi are always watching. It feels like I have scouts ready to slay me with bowshot and Mages ready to vaporize me at any moment. It is like I can hear the whispers of their thoughts with Mindspeech, and the whispers are all about how to be rid of me.”

  To his shock, Silverfox replied with disarming frankness, “That is fairly accurate.”

  Darian started, “Some of the—” and was cut short by an explosion.

  The walkway magelight nearest to Kelvren at that moment disintegrated with a loud crack, sending hot shards of glass all around, and a whip-crack of light the width of a human thumb lanced from the explosion into Kelvren’s wing feathers. Everyone flinched, and when Kelvren recoiled from the explosion, the magelight on the other side of the path did the same thing when he leaped near it. The magelights, made to last for decades of steady light, hadn’t faded—they’d detonated.

  Quite literally, the glowing gryphon’s eyes blazed.

  “Maybe you should stay toward the center of the path,” Darian suggested.

  Everyone agreed, and they all edged away from Kelvren.

  • • •

  The ekele of Firesong and Silverfox had expanded constantly since their arrival from Haven. Broad walkways now led to new levels, where decks large enough to host a half-dozen gryphons or thirty humans served as the roofs of tall gathering rooms beneath.

  Silverfox led Kelvren into the largest of these rooms, laid out as a much more comfortable version of an enclosed council circle. The center of focus was a huge pile of lounge cushions with a graduated, curving stone perch nearby. Serving shelves and various amenities were placed artistically in every direction, mostly formed of sinuously curved blonde wood. Two heavy tables were laden with slabs of beef and swine, one side cooked, the other raw. Heavy glass carafes of beer and honeywater were chilling off to the side, and a hertasi-sized bounty of baked goods completed the layout. The floor was hard-tiled in sandy colors, but when Kelvren stepped in, he could feel that he stepped not only onto hard stone but also through several layers of shields. He noticed one other thing immediately after seeing the meal laid out: Aside from the carafes, the room had been cleared of anything easily breakable.

  Firesong leaned by the only other exit, his arms folded, and commented, “You do know how to light up a room, don’t you?”

  Silverfox almost soundlessly joined Firesong, and guided him by one elbow to the nest of cushions. Darian and Nightwind followed Kelvren through the shields and inside, and the dyheli stayed outside. Kel was fine with that, and centered his gaze on the food he’d been promised.

  Firesong gingerly removed the day’s mask, and with it the six long falls of braided hair and feathers that obscured his scarred ears. Kelvren knew Firesong’s appearance startled most people, Tayledras or not, but after years, most people had come to think of the masks as Firesong’s actual face. Only in private, with close friends like Kelvren or Silverfox, would he let himself be seen unmasked, because neither of them cared what he looked like—for very different reasons, of course. For Silverfox, it was love. For Kelvren, it was indifference. The gryphon didn’t care about what a horror Firesong’s face was—he only cared about someone’s “need to be hurt.” If someone was beautiful but tyrannical, they needed to be hurt. If someone was ugly but kind, they didn’t need to be hurt. Firesong was ugly to the nearly exposed bone by human standards. Much of his face had been burned away by molten metal, but Kelvren only cared about his quality of character. Because of that, Firesong didn’t “need to be hurt.”

  “I am here for two reasons, Firesong,” Kelvren growled. “Food and courtesy.”

  “Food first,” Firesong wisely replied. Kel needed no further invitation to dig into the meal—very literally. He immediately sat down on his haunches and grasped a great chunk of meat with his talons and hooked his beak in, pulling away deep bites.

  Firesong leaned into his mate’s touch. Once his overmask was set aside, the thin, perforated leather undermask that matched his skin color was peeled away by Silverfox’s gentle fingers. After Silverfox laid both masks across the perch, he retrieved cold water for both of them. Darian and Nightwind each sunk back into heavily padded chairs.

  “I want to talk to you about power,” Firesong finally said.

  “Still eating,” Kelvren replied. Firesong sighed and waited. Darian cleaned out an ear with a finger. Nightwind took a boot off and emptied it of grit. Kel packed his gullet well, downing a carafe of beer to follow the first helpings of meats. The sounds were enough to make any prey animal flee.

  “Are you ready to—” Firesong began.

  “No,” Kel replied.

  Darian worked on the other ear now, and Nightwind rubbed at her foot. Firesong picked and scratched reflexively at some of the burn scars on his forehead and scalp, though they had been unchanged for years now. His expectedly dramatic presentation could not overcome the focus of a hungry and perturbed gryphon.

  Silverfox lit some incense and waited Kelvren out. Finally sated, for the present, Kel lay down to face Firesong.

  “I want to talk to you about power,” Firesong began again.

  “I want you to tell me what isss happening in k’Valdemar. What madnesss has overtaken everyone? And what did all of you do to me?” Kelvren growled, despite his packed throat and crop.

  “It isn’t madness. It’s all completely logical,” Firesong replied.

  “Most madnesssses are completely logical, to thossse who are mad. I am outssside this madnessss.”

  “You may judge the supposed amount of madness for yourself, but we’ll explain things as they are,” Silverfox replied, seating himself on some of Firesong’s cushions.

  Firesong took a deep breath, and started in.

  “We need you to look at our history, Kel. Of White Gryphon, of the Far Flights, of k’Vala and k’Valdemar and the Storms. Think of what we have lived through and what we have seen. Remember how many strange things, and awful things, we have experienced. Think of what you have experienced. You were trapped by a cold-drake once, yes? And you know how dyheli can control minds and bodies and that some Adepts and
Masters can do the same, yes?”

  Kel nodded, thinking he knew where this was going. “Of late, I know that very well, and I don’t like it. At all. I don’t like it. But go on.”

  “There are creatures from beyond—that is the only way to describe it simply—and demons, and there are even shapechangers that are a part of our world. Now consider what has happened, from where we could understand it. You, k’Valdemar’s Wingleader, vanished in a conflict inside Valdemar, in an area riddled with Change Circles. Your teleson went silent. We searched for you, using probes of magic above and below our world, and could not find you. We despaired, and took risks of our own, and could not find you. We nearly risked invoking Kal’enal for you.”

  This mollified Kelvren just a little. Calling upon Kal’enal always means a heavy price, if the call is answered at all. Velgarthian deities only help those who are out of other options or chances, and the further from hopeless someone is, the more it costs them. That they even seriously considered it for me means a lot.

  “Suddenly, there was a faint, far-away detection of a Gate, and not long after, a flare, of a new node. And then, after a pause we narrowed down to Deedun, something fast aimed directly for us and closed in,” Silverfox added, while Firesong had a drink.

  Firesong resumed the explanation. “In Oversight, you looked like nothing less than a fireball headed our way, or a major demon. Then the—whatever it was—you, it turned out, making a show of it, which I understand—scouted over all of our allies. You actually left a wake behind you that disturbed the Lines at the time. You never knew this. Treyvan saved you by creating a node under you, and then, before he had any chance to calm you—or the node’s energy—down, you left. You made your now-famous Flight and then aimed yourself for home. Only, to everyone at home, you looked like a possible attacker coming from the heart of Valdemar—again, a place full of Change Circles, and no stranger to demon infiltration.” He paused to let that sink in.

  Darian leaned back, and hooked his elbows over the chair’s back. “While you were in flight, the Companions relayed a short form of what happened, though they knew very few details. It was only in the last candlemark before you landed that we recognized it was actually, possibly, you.”

  “Ssso you asssumed I was a thrrreat, not your Wingleader rrreturning,” Kelvren added up.

  Darian just gestured in a way that conveyed “obviously.” “Worse than that, there was a reasonable possibility that you were another creature trying to look like our missing Wingleader. We wanted it to be you, Kel, but wanting something against facts leads to ruin. Remember k’Sheyna. And if it was some creature using you, or the appearance of you, it probably knew all of our secrets and relationships. We had to be sure it was really you.”

  That explains why the new “Wingleader,” as she claimed, was so caustic to me. If I was an impostor, she wanted me to know they were aware of the possibility and that they’d kill me before I even crossed the red line. She even goaded me to try something.

  Kelvren mulled that over for around twenty seconds before deciding he had room for more beer. “Then I want to know this,” he demanded between gulps, “You knew who I was quickly. So. Why have I not been greeted as a hero, and why are so few people coming near me?”

  Firesong frowned, and answered, “Two main reasons. They treat you like you’re diseased because you came back changed in a way that threatens all of us, Kel. I had to fight for you to stay in the Vale at all, and you aren’t allowed anywhere closer to the Heartstone than this. Here is the ugly truth, Kel.” Firesong leaned forward, with as deadly serious an expression as Kelvren had ever seen on him. “Every time you move, you draw in more energy. Ambient, anchored, focused, it is all affected, and you draw it toward you. It strains your body intensely, so you have to discard it. You used Lightcasting before, but at the same time, you were flying, which only drew in more energy. If you discard the energy in your sleep, it could be in a wild form, in any amount, in any direction. Gryphons gather the energy needed to live by movement—you learned that as a gryphlet; that’s what gryphon wingbeats are for, as much as maneuvering. If you move, you gain energy. If you fly, you gain even more energy, which in turn keeps you flying. But now, if you move at all, you gain too much energy. And, if you stop moving, you starve your new need for energy. And if you don’t use that energy, you burn.”

  Kelvren looked very alarmed. I know from my magecraft training how to ground and center, but that requires, well, ground. Is he saying I could fly and just erupt into flame because I couldn’t ground? Or that I’d only fly if I were continually casting? This is awful . . .

  “And, if you move in areas with heavily structured spellwork, like k’Valdemar, you draw their energy toward you and disrupt the structure.”

  Skies above, it gets more awful.

  “That explains why the magelights exploded,” Nightwind offered.

  Firesong glanced at the others. “Magelights exploded?”

  Darian replied, “Ho, yes. From the stone core through the glass. Blazing hot, too. Their stored energy arced straight into him.”

  Firesong went deep into thought. “That bears out what we learned when we tried so much of, one could say, the usual things while Healing. You weren’t there for all of that, Darian. It wasn’t that the spells didn’t work, it was that they lost cohesion.” Firesong had done so much teaching over the past several years that he’d developed a habit of explaining things, even if it wasn’t needed. It was a significant difference from his purposely enigmatic, brash flair of twenty years ago. “The manner wasn’t just disruptive, it was disjunctive. Disruption would be like a loud noise drowning out a chant so it couldn’t be heard. Disjunction would be breaking the chant into random, very loud noise.”

  Darian finished, “Which is what the Cataclysm was, eleven hundred some years ago. Two massive, radiating, cascading disjunctions. I remember my lessons, Firesong. So, again, you are proven right by insisting we keep Kel on isolated, evacuated paths. You can gloat about being right again.”

  “I’ve never stopped,” Firesong absently replied, and pointed two fingers at Kelvren. “But it emphasizes that we can’t allow you to fly, and we must keep you away from crafting circles and the like, because you could catastrophically harm even established spellwork just by being too near to it.” Firesong sat back, cracking his spine and shoulders, adjusting to his new position. “Our Heartstone is robust, but we feed it by careful alignment of the Lines we draw to it. Imagine what would happen if you got near the Heartstone during its daily tuning. You would be like dropping a boulder into a clear, steady stream.”

  “Sketi.”

  “Yes. Sketi.”

  “I can’t stay here!” Kelvren blurted, and jumped to his feet. “Why would you tell me this here, in the Vale? I should be far away from here!”

  “You’re safe enough for the moment, inside the protections in this room, Kel. So stay calm, and digest a while. No one is exploding just yet,” Firesong reassured.

  “Yet,” he says. Yet! I would be afraid enough if it was only I who could burn up, but this means I threaten everyone by even existing!

  Silverfox said, “We may have thought of some things that can be done.”

  Kelvren looked up and around, twitching his ears in agitation, and paced in figure-eights. “You may have ideas, but you aren’t the only clever ones. I remember Nightwind said I was held—” he nearly spat the word, “—for over six days. What happened at Deedun?”

  “Ah. That is another situation.” Firesong looked to Silverfox, and it was clear that the next part would be bad news. They both look to Darian, who got up to stand squarely before Kelvren.

  He spoke slowly and steadily, clearly trying to be as calming as he could be. “Kelvren, you—as we understand it all, and from what we learned in your mind—we know you did the right things. We know you were gryphon fierce, and brave, noble, and heroic.”

 
“As it should be,” Kel replied.

  “But—Valdemar is not doing well at the moment. The border wars, the attacks in Haven and on the Traderoads, and the Storms, plus lesser-known troubles, have resulted in the Heralds, Guard, and no small amount of the Valdemaran population supporting them being far away from the center of the country. The Crown could only assist so much with the bad times deep inside their borders and could spare only so many Heralds. In short, the small keeps, holders, barons, trade leaders, and so on have fallen back upon their own troops and tightened their local control. They are infighting, in the absence of the system that stabilized Valdemar before. It isn’t just Deedun that is troublemaking. The trouble is all over.”

  Kel blinked blankly at Darian.

  “This means that ambitious, greedy, or scared people are using rumors as weapons, to gather influence, and so, overwhelmingly, your noble actions on Valdemar’s behalf, has been interpreted by many as, ah . . . as the Crown bringing in monsters from the Pelagirs and using the might of the terrifying Hawkbrothers against the small folk of Valdemar.”

  Kelvren screamed in rage, and by the way the others winced and fell back, it actually hurt them. “That is untrue! Untrue! Wrong! It is not how it is! I did what was right for an ally!”

  Firesong yelled back, “We know! We know! But our truth is not what they see!”

  Kelvren continued to rage. “Then they are liars, and they twist what happened! I defended the Crown and its troops! I was a good ally!”

  Again, Firesong shouted. “We know! But that’s bad too! Some of us argue that by acting as a full combatant and not a scout, you pulled us into Valdemar’s internal struggles, and we can’t afford that! K’Valdemar’s current position is precarious enough as it is!”

  Kelvren fumed, beak shut, but his sides heaved in fast, deep breaths. His nares whistled with each inhalation. “Which ultimately means what, exactly?” he snapped at the four.