Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Kethry sheathed her sword and snatched her daughter up with such relief washing over her that her knees were weak. Jadrie buried her face in her mother's shoulder and only then burst into tears.

  And only then did Kethry look down to the river itself, to see what had frightened her otherwise fearless child half out of her wits.

  Tarma was already down there, kneeling beside someone. A body—but a wreck of one. Shin'a'in, by the coloring; a shaman, by what was left of the clothing. Tarma had gotten him turned onto his back, and his chest was a livid network of burn lines, as if someone had beaten him with a whip made of fine, red-hot wires. Kethry had seen her share of tortured bodies, but this made even her nauseous. She could only hope that what Jadrie had seen had been hidden by river water or mud.

  Probably not, by the way she's crying and shaking. My poor baby—

  The man stirred, moaned. Kethry bit back a gasp; the man was still alive! She couldn't imagine how anyone could have lived through that kind of punishment. Tarma looked up at the bank, and Kethry knew that cold anger, that look of someone's going to pay.

  And get the child out of here.

  Kethry didn't need urging; she picked up Jadrie, and stumbled back to the camp as fast as she could with the burden of a six-year-old in her arms.

  By now the rest of the Shin'a'in were boiling up out of the camp, like wasps churning from a broken nest; wasps with stings, for every hand held some kind of weapon. Kethry waved back at the river, and gasped out something about the Healer—she wasn't sure what, but it must have made some kind of sense, for Liha'irden's Healer, the man who had nursed Tarma back to reluctant life so many years ago, put on a burst of speed that left the rest trailing in his wake.

  Kethry slowed her own pace, as the Clansfolk streamed past her. Jadrie had stopped crying, and now only shivered in her arms, despite the heat. Kethry held her closer; Jadrie was both the sunniest and the most sensitive of the children so far. So far she had never seen anything to indicate that the world was not one enormous adventure.

  Today—she had just learned that adventures can be dangerous.

  Today, she had learned one of life's hardest lessons; that the universe is not a friendly place. And Kethry sat down in the shade of the nearest tent, and held her as she cried for the pain of that lesson. She was still crying when angry and frightened voices neared, passed the tent walls, and continued in the direction of the Healer's tent.

  When Jadrie had cried herself to exhaustion, Kethry put her to bed in the tent she and Tarma shared with the four children, gathered her courage, and started for the Healer's tent herself.

  There was no crowd outside the tent, and the gathered Clansfolk appeared to have dispersed, but the entire encampment was on the alert now. Though there was no outward difference, Kethry could feel the tension, as if a storm sat just below the horizon, out of sight, but not out of sensing range.

  She met Tarma coming out of the tent, and the tight lines of anger around her partner's mouth told her everything she needed to know.

  "Warrl can guard the children. Do we stay here," she asked, "or do we ride?"

  Tarma paused for a moment, and in that silence, the keening wail with which the Shin'a'in mourned their dead began. Her eyes narrowed, and Kethry saw her jaw harden.

  "We ride," the Shin'a'in said around clenched teeth.

  They followed the river northward all day, then, when it dived beneath the cliff, up the switchback trail at the edge of the Dhorisha Plains. They reached the top at about sunset, but pushed on well past dusk, camping after dark in the midst of the pine-redolent Pelagiris Forest. Tarma had been silent the entire trip; Kethry burned to know what had happened, but knew she was going to have to wait for her partner to speak in her own good time.

  Being an Adept-class mage meant that Kethry no longer had to be quite so sparing of her magical energies; she could afford to make a pair of witch-lights to give them enough light to gather wood, and to light the fire Tarma laid with a little spark of magic. It wasn't a very big fire—in this heat, they only needed it to sear the rabbit they shared—but Tarma sat staring into the last flames after she'd finished eating. Light from the flames revealed the huge trees nearest their campsite, trees so old and so large that Tarma could not encircle them with her arms, and so tall that the first branchings occurred several man-heights above the ground. Most of the time, the place felt a little like a temple; tonight, it felt more like a tomb.

  "He didn't tell us much before he died," Tarma said finally. "By his clothing, what was left of it, he was For'a'hier—that's Firefalcon Clan."

  "Are they—all gone, do you think?" Kethry could not help thinking of what had happened to Tale'sedrin, but Tarma shook her head.

  "They're all right. We sent someone off to them, but he told us he was on his own. Firefalcon has always been—different; the Clan that produces the most shaman, even an occasional mage. They're known to roam quite a bit, sometimes right off the Plains. This one was a laj'ele'ruvon, a knowledge-seeker, and he had come seeking up here, in Tale'edras territory—the shaman of Firefalcon have a lot more contact with the Tale'edras than the rest of us do. Whatever happened to him, happened here in the Forest."

  "You don't think the Hawkbrothers—" Somehow that didn't ring true, and Kethry shook her head, even as Tarma echoed the gesture.

  "No—there's a Hawkbrother mixed up in it somehow, he said that much before he died, but it was no Tale'edras that did that. I think he was trying to tell me the Hawkbrother was in trouble, somehow." Tarma rubbed her temple, her expression baffled. "I've been trying to think of a way that a Hawkbrother could possibly get into trouble, and I—"

  Something screamed, just above their heads. Kethry nearly jumped out of her own skin, squeaked, and clutched Need's hilt.

  The scream came again, and this time Kethry recognized it for what it was; the call of the owl-eagle, a nocturnal predator with the habits and silent flight of an owl, but the general build of an eagle. She might not have recognized it, except that a pair were nesting near the Keep, and her husband Jadrek spent hours every evening in delighted observation of them.

  Tarma stood up, stared into the tree canopy, then suddenly kicked earth over the fire, dousing it. When Kethry's eyes had adjusted to the dark, she could hardly believe them. Hovering overhead was an owl-eagle, all right, a much bigger bird than either of the pair she'd seen before—and stark white.

  "That's a Tale'edras bird," Tarma said grimly. "They say the birds their mages use turn white after a while. I think he's been sent for help."

  As if in reply, the owl-eagle screamed once more and flew off to the north and west, landing on a branch and looking back for all the world like it expected them to follow it. Kethry put her hand on her partner's arm to restrain her for a moment. "What are we going to do about the horses?"

  "Damn. Release them, I guess. They'll head straight back to camp in the morning." Tarma didn't look happy about the decision, but there wasn't much else they could do; they certainly couldn't leave them, nor could they ride them through dark woods when they couldn't see where to put their feet. And leading them would be just as bad as riding them.

  On the other hand, walking back to camp across the Plains in midsummer—

  "Let's just leave them unhobbled, and try to get back before morning," Kethry suggested. "They won't stray until then." Tarma grimaced, but pulled the hobbles from her mare's feet and threw them on the pile of tack, while Kethry did the same. When she looked up, the owl-eagle was still there, still waiting. He didn't move until they were within a few arm-lengths of the tree—and then it was only to fly off and land in another tree, farther to the north and west. Kethry had had a little niggling doubt at first as to whether her partner had read the situation correctly, but now she was sure; the bird wanted them to follow.

  It continued to lead them in that fashion for what felt like weeks, though by the moon shining directly down toward the tree branches, it wasn't much past midnight. It was impossible to tell
where they were, now that they'd left the road; one enormous tree looked like every other enormous tree. For the past several candlemarks, she'd been feeling an increase in ambient mage-energies; her skin prickled so much with it that she felt forced to shield herself, and she wasn't entirely sure that time was passing at its normal rate.

  "Where are we?" she whispered finally to her partner.

  Tarma stopped for a moment and peered up at the moon. "I don't know," she admitted. "I'm lost. Someplace a lot west and some north of where we started. I don't—I don't think we're in the Pelagiris Forest anymore; I think we're in Pelagir Hills country. I wish we'd brought Furface with us, now."

  "I hate to admit it, but I agree—" Kethry began.

  And that was when an enormous, invisible fist closed around them.

  The bird shrieked in alarm, and shot skyward. Tarma cursed; Kethry was too busy trying to breathe.

  It's the paralysis-spell, she thought, even as she struggled to get a little more air into her lungs. But she couldn't breathe in without first breathing out, and every time she did that, the hand closed tighter on her chest. That's—supposed—to—be—

  A darkness that had nothing to do with the hour dimmed the moonlight, and her lungs screamed for air.

  —lost—

  Blackness swooped in like a stooping hawk, and covered her.

  Her chest hurt; that was the first thing she knew when she woke again. She opened her eyes as she felt something cool and damp cross her brow, and gazed with dumb surprise up into a pair of eyes as blue as Tarma's, but in an indisputably male face crowned with frost-white hair.

  Indisputably? Not—quite. There was something unusual about him. Not that he was she'chorne, that she had no trouble spotting. Something like that, and not even remotely evil, but very, very different.

  Beyond the face were bars glinting and shining as only polished metal could; and two light sources, one that flared intermittently outside of her line of sight, and one that could only be a witch-light, hovering just outside the bars.

  The stranger smiled wanly when he saw that she was awake, and draped the cloth he'd been using to bathe her forehead over the edge of a metal bowl beside him. "Forgive me, lady," he said in oddly-accented Shin'a'in. "I did not intend to lure anyone into captivity when I sent out my bond-bird."

  "That owl-eagle was yours?" she said, trying not to breathe too quickly, since every movement made her chest ache the more.

  "Aye," he replied, "I sent her for my own kin, but she saw your magic and came to you instead. Now she is frightened past calling back."

  "But I didn't—" Kethry started to say, then saw the wary look in the Hawkbrother's eyes. We're being watched and listened to. For some reason, he doesn't want whoever caught us to know his bird can See passive mage-shields, the way Warrl can. She struggled to sit up, and the Hawkbrother assisted her unobtrusively.

  They were in a cage, one with a perfectly ordinary lock. Beside them was another—with no lock at all—holding Tarma. The Shin'a'in sat cross-legged in the middle of the contraption, with a face as expressionless as a stone.

  Only her eyes betrayed that she was in a white-hot rage; so intense a blue that her glance crackled across the space between them.

  Both cages sat in the middle of what looked like a maze; perfectly trimmed, perfectly trained hedges taller than a man on horseback, forming a square "room" with an opening in each "wall." Beyond the opening, Kethry thought she saw yet more hedges.

  "As you see," said a new voice, female, with an undertone of petulance, "I plan my prisons well."

  The owner of the voice moved into the pallid light cast by the witch-ball; Kethry was not impressed. Face and body attested to overindulgence; the mouth turned down in a perpetual sneer, and the eyes would not look into hers directly. Even allowing for the witch-light, her complexion was doughy, and her hair was an indeterminate no-color between mouse-brown and blonde. Her clothing, however, was rich in a conspicuous, overblown way, as if her gown shouted "See how expensive I am!" It was also totally inappropriate for the middle of a forest, but that didn't seem to bother the wearer.

  "For the mages," their captor said, gesturing grandly, "a cage which nullifies magic, with a lock that can only be opened by an ordinary key." She held up the key hanging at her belt. "And since I am as female as you, the spirit-sword won't work against me. Even if you could reach it."

  Now Kethry saw the blade hanging just outside the cage door, just out of reach.

  Of arms. That's her first mistake.

  "For the warrior, a prison that only magic can unlock."

  She giggled girlishly, without the sneer ever changing. Tarma said nothing; Kethry decided to follow her example. Their jailer posed, waiting, doubtless, for one of them to ask why they were being held. Finally, when she got no response, she scowled and flounced off in the direction of the light that flared and subsided, somewhere beyond the bushes surrounding the clearing where their cages sat.

  "When her wits aren't out wandering, who is this woman?" Tarma asked, in a lazy drawl. "And what in the name of the frozen hells does she want with us?"

  The Hawkbrother crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against the bars of the cage, and grimaced. "Her name is Keyjon, and all her magics are stolen," he said, an anger as hot as Tarma's roughening his voice. "As for what she wants—nothing from you, except to be used against me. As my friend was, to his death."

  The Firefalcon shaman. He knows the lad died. She tried to read beyond the Hawkbrother's lack of expression, and couldn't.

  "We're to be used to get what?" Tarma asked.

  "Something she cannot steal from me, though she has tried, and blunted her stolen tools on my protections." He pointed his chin in the direction of the flaring and dying light. "She has firebirds."

  At Kethry's swift intake of breath, he nodded. "I see you know them."

  "One of the qualifications for entering the higher levels of a White Winds school used to be the Test of the Firebird." She stared at the light, wishing she could see beyond the bushes. "They're too rare now. I only saw one once, at a distance."

  "They are not rare here, only endangered by such as she." The Hawkbrother's face darkened. "She wishes me to make them her familiars. She also wishes me, and she is as like to get that as the other, which is to say, when the rivers of hell boil."

  At that, Kethry laughed in astonishment. "Windlady—go ahead! Give her the birds! The first time she loses her temper with one of them on her shoulder—"

  But the young man was shaking his head. "Nay, lady. She knows that as well as you or I. What she means by 'familiar' is 'complete slave.' I would not condemn any living thing to such a fate, even if the dangers of her having such control over something so dangerous were not obvious."

  Kethry thought of the things that could be done with a tamed and obedient firebird at one's command, and shuddered again. The dangers were obvious. There was a history of the mage-wars purportedly written by the wizard-lizard Gervase that hinted the firebirds had been deliberately bred as weapons.

  She couldn't imagine a circumstance terrible enough to make her breed something like firebirds as a weapon. Frighten one, and send it flaming through a village, touching off the thatched roofs, the hay in the stables…

  "She was born of mage-talented parents, and given all she desired," the Hawkbrother continued. "But she came to desire more and more, and her own small talent could not encompass her ambition, until she discovered her one true gift—that she could steal spells from any, and power from any, and use that power to weave those spells at no cost to herself. Thus she enriched herself at the expense of others, and the more power she had, the more she sought."

  To shake the thought from her mind, she stood up, slowly, and walked the few steps to the bars of the cage, mentally measuring the distance between the bars and Need. And as she studied the blade and how it was hung, another thought occurred to her. I'm Adept-class. My power is unlimited, for all practical purposes. Could I become li
ke her?

  The Hawkbrother stole silently up beside her, but his eyes were on the light beyond the hedges. "It is not power and wealth that corrupt, my lady, but the lust for power and wealth. When that lust takes precedence over the needs of others, corruption becomes true evil. That you even consider that you could become like Keyjon is a sign that you are not like to do so. She has never once considered anything but what she wanted."

  "Well said," Tarma replied, her expression wary. "I'm Tarma shena Tale'sedrin; this is my she'enedra, Kethry."

  "Stormwing k'Sheyna," he said, and a little rueful humor crept into his expression. "A use-name chosen when I was young and very full of myself, and now so hardened in place that I dare not change it."

  Tarma's expression remained the same. "So how is it that you know this woman?"

  "I confess; a dose of the same folly that caused me to name myself for the powerful thunder cloud," he replied slowly. "I thought I could help her, I thought that if she had a friend, she could learn other ways. In short, I thought I could change her, redeem her, when others had not been able to." He shrugged. "I thought, at the worst, I was so much stronger than she that there was little she could do to harm me. I thought I could not be tricked; did not even guess that she was planning deeper than I anticipated, that she was using me to come at my charges, the firebirds. Now, not only do I pay for my folly, but others as well."

  "What happened to the Firefalcon shaman?" Tarma asked harshly.

  A muscle at the edge of his eyelid twitched; nothing else moved. "She caught him, coming to see me, and flung him into the cage holding the birds, making certain to panic them. She knew that if I once used my powers to control them, she could steal that control." His eyes were very bright with tears that he was holding back. "He knew it, too, and even as they lashed him with their flame, he told me to hold fast." He looked from Tarma to Kethry and back. "Will you forgive me when I close my ears to your cries?"