Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  On the other side of the pool, he used his shirt to dry himself and pulled on the rest of his clothing. He hated to leave her like that.

  But she is as curious as two cats, and I am not certain I want to answer all the questions she is likely to have when she wakes.

  She would ask about the rescue, and she would also want to know about the Changechild. And when she found out that Nyara was female—

  I am not ready to fend off fits of jealousy, he thought, wearily. Father's accusations are bad enough. Hers would be worse. And there is no reason for them.

  Yet. Not that he hadn't entertained a fantasy or two.

  But they are only fantasies and will remain so, he told his conscience firmly. Still, they are things I would rather she did not know about. She is not old enough to accept them calmly, for the simple daydreams that they are. However satisfying. Or accept that sometimes the fantasy can be as fulfilling as the reality.

  He moved quickly and quietly along the paths of the Vale, pausing now and then to take his bearings. Once outside, he went on alert. Although this was where the scouts had their ekeles, they did not equip them with retractable ladders for nothing.

  But the night lay over the forest as quietly as a blanket on a sleeping babe. Only twice did he pause at an unusual sight or sound. The first time, it was a pair of bondbirds, huge, snow-winged owls, chasing each other playfully. He recognized them as K'Tathi and Corwith, and relaxed a little. If they were up, it meant the trail was under watch. The second time he stopped was to hail his older half brother, Wintermoon, the bondmate of those owls, who knelt beside the trail, dressing out a young buck deer.

  Wintermoon, one of two children of Starblade's contracted liaison with a mage of k'Treva, had none of either parent's Mage-Talents, and only enough of Mind-magic to enable him to speak with his bondbird. The other child, a girl, had apparently inherited it all, but she was with k'Treva and out of Starblade's reach. The Adept had never forgiven his eldest son for his lack of magery, and Wintermoon had responded by putting as much distance between himself and his father as Clan and Vale would permit. He had no wish to leave k'Sheyna; he had an amazing number of friends and lovers for so taciturn and elusive an individual—it was simply that he also had no wish to deal with a father who had nothing but scorn for him.

  "Good hunting," Darkwind said with admiration, eyeing the size of the buck's rack. "Wish I could do that well in the daylight!" He had no fear that Wintermoon had taken anything other than a bachelor; his brother was too wise in the stewardship of the forest to make a stupid mistake in his choice of prey.

  Wintermoon laughed; part of his attempt to put distance between himself and Starblade had been to bond exclusively to owls. He had become completely nocturnal, and was one of the night-hunters and night-scouts, and encountered his father perhaps twice in a moon, if that often. "It becomes easier as time goes on. And K'Tathi there lends me his eyes; that's most of it."

  "How does—" Darkwind began, puzzled.

  Wintermoon followed the thought with quicksilver logic. "He perches above my head. I simply have to adjust my aim to match. Practice enough against trees, and it's not so bad. So, little brother, do you want any of this?"

  Darkwind shook his head. "No, I'm fine for the next few days. Dawnfire could use some, though. She was telling me her larder was a little bare."

  That should make up for my leaving her like that.

  "I'll see she gets it. All's clear the way back to your place. Fair skies—"

  That was a clear dismissal—and really, about as social as Wintermoon ever got outside of the walls of his ekele. "Wind to thy wings," Darkwind responded, and continued up the trail. He didn't entirely release his hold on caution, but he did relax it a little. Wintermoon was completely reliable; if he said it was clear, he didn't mean just the trail, he meant for furlongs on either side.

  Once at his ekele, he woke Vree up to let down the ladder-strap, for him. There was still enough moon for the gyre to see, though he complained every heartbeat, and went back to sleep immediately, without waiting for Darkwind to climb up.

  Even though he was relaxed and utterly weary, he couldn't help thinking about Nyara, as he drifted off to sleep. He found himself thinking of her suspiciously, the way his father would.

  Or Wintermoon, for that matter. He's more like Father than he knows. Or will admit.

  He wished he'd been able to persuade the Elders to allow her closer. And not just for her protection. No, it would have been much easier to keep a watchful eye on her, if she'd been, say, in one of the dead scouts' abandoned ekeles.

  Of course, Starblade would have opposed that out of its sheer symbolism.

  Still, she was within reach. The hertasi were clever and conscientious. There were the gryphons, three or four tervardi, several dyheli herds, and Dawnfire between here and the Vale, and her only other escape routes lay across the border, into the Outlands.

  I can't see her going back that way, he yawned, finally giving in to sleep. She was running away. Why in the name of the gods would she ever run back?

  Chapter Thirteen

  INTERLUDE

  Nyara huddled before her father, abject terror warring with another emotion entirely.

  Pure, wanton desire.

  She hated it, that need, that fire that drove her to want him—and even as she hated him, she hated herself for feeling it.

  Even though she could not control that need, even though she knew it was built into her; as he had sculpted her flesh to suit him, he had also sculpted her mind and her deepest instincts.

  It didn't matter; none of it mattered. Half the time she suspected he had inserted that same self-hatred into her, purely for amusement.

  And when he had called her this night, she had obeyed the call. That was built into her, too, for all that she had run away from him, for all that she had deluded herself, telling herself that she could, would resist him. She could not, and had not, and now she groveled here at his feet, longing for his touch, hating and fearing it. Despising herself for thinking that she could escape him so easily.

  It had been no trouble to deceive the little hertasi who guarded her; they were not creatures of the night, and a simple illusion of her slumbering form in the darkness of the little cave they had given her was enough to satisfy them.

  She had not lied. Until tonight, she had thought she could escape his reach. She had not purposefully misled the hertasi Healer, either—her weakness and pain were not feigned, nor were her injuries. But what the Healer did not know, was the extent to which she could ignore pain and fight past weakness when she had to.

  That was how she had found the strength to counter her father's magic and free the dyheli herd. That was how he had forced her to come to him when he called, overriding the pain with his own commands.

  And, as usual, he said nothing at first; merely smiled and waited until she had abased herself sufficiently to drive home how helpless she was, how much of her life lay within his power.

  If she resembled a cat, Mornelithe Falconsbane was a feline; one that stood upon two legs, and walked, and talked, but there his connection with humanity ended. Long silky hair poured uncut down his back, the color a tawny gold that he maintained magically, else he would have been as bleached-silver as any Tayledras Adept. Long, silky hair grew on most of his face, carefully groomed and tended by a made-servant whose only role was to brush her master whenever he called. His slit-pupiled eyes were a golden-green, like watery beryls; his canines sharper and more pronounced than hers. His pointed ears were tufted at the tips, and the silky hair continued down his spine in a luxurious crest, ending at the clefts of the buttocks. For the rest, he was as perfectly formed and conditioned as a human could be, with a body any sculptor would have wept to see.

  As Nyara knew, intimately.

  Since he had emerged from his stronghold to call her to the border of k'Sheyna and the beginnings of his domain, he had chosen to dress for the occasion in soft, buckskin leather that perfectly
matched his hair. Darkwind's disparaging comments to the contrary, Mornelithe seldom wore elaborate costumes; in fact, within his own quarters, he went nude as often as not.

  Which Nyara also knew, intimately.

  She knelt before him until her legs ached from the stones and bits of branch beneath them—which he would not permit her to clear away. He lounged on a blanket of fur spread over a fallen tree trunk by a servant, making him an impromptu throne. The golden mage-light above his head glistened on his hair, the tips of the fur, and on the bat-wings of his two giant guardian-beasts, half wolf, half something she could not even name, creatures whose heads loomed even with his when he stood.

  Some of her scars had come from the teeth of those beasts, lessenings in her proper place in the scheme of things, and the proper demeanor to display. Thus she had learned not to move until told, or speak until spoken to.

  "Well," he said at last, his voice deep, calm, smooth and soothing. There was a wealth of warm amusement in his voice, which meant he was pleased. She soon discovered why.

  "You took my invitation to flee to the Birdfools as if you had thought of it yourself, dear daughter," he chuckled. "I am proud of you."

  She burned with humiliation. So it had all been his idea, from the inattentive guards, to the captive dyheli herd. Without a doubt, he had planned everything, knowing how she would react to anything he presented in her path. She should have known....

  "You followed my plan to the letter, my child," he said with approval. "I am very pleased with you. I assume that they invoked a Truth-Spell upon you?"

  "Of a kind," she whispered, shivering with shamed pleasure as his approval warmed and excited her. "The Birdkin do not trust me, yet. They keep me in a dwelling of sorts at the border, with hertasi and one Birdkin scout to watch."

  "One scout only?" Mornelithe threw back his head and laughed, and the guardian-beasts hung out their tongues in frightening parodies of a canine grin. "They trust you more than you think, little daughter, if they set only one to watch you. Are there no other watchers on you?"

  She could not help herself; she was compelled to answer truthfully. But she could make him force it out of her a word at a time, and perhaps he would grow tired before he learned all the truth. Let him think it was fear that tied her tongue. "Two," she whispered.

  "Hertasi?"

  She shook her head. He frowned, and she trembled. "Tervardi, then?"

  She shook her head again, hope growing thin that he would lose interest.

  "Surely not dyheli? No?" His frown deepened, and she lost any hope of hiding her friends' identities. "What are they? Speak!"

  He reached out a tendril of power to curl about her. A hand of pain tightened around her mind, though not so much that she could not speak. Her body convulsed. "Gryphons," she whimpered, through tears of agony and anger. "Gryphons."

  The pain ceased, and she slumped over her knees, head hanging, hands clasped together tightly. She fought to control her tears, so that he would not know how she had come to like the pair, and so have yet another weapon to hold over her.

  "Gryphons." His voice deepened, and the guardian-beasts growled. "Gryphons, here. This requires—thought. I will have more of these gryphons out of you, my child. But later."

  She looked up, cheeks still wet with tears. He was looking past her, into the dark forest, his mind elsewhere than on her. Then he took visible hold of himself, and gazed down on her, smiling when he saw her tears. He leaned down, and lifted a single drop on a long, talon-tipped finger, and licked it off, slowly, with sensuous enjoyment, his eyes narrowed as he watched her closely.

  She shook with a desire she could not control, and that only he could command. He smiled with satisfaction.

  "This Birdfool," he said, leaning back into his fur. "His name."

  "Darkwind," she told him.

  His eyes lit up from within, and again he laughed, long and heartily, and this time the beasts laughed with him in gravelly growls. "Darkwind! The son of my dear friend Starblade! What a delicious irony. Has Starblade seen you, my dearest?"

  She shook her head, baffled by his words.

  "What a pity; he'd have been certain to recognize you, as you would recognize him if you saw him." He laughed again, and she dared a question.

  "I have seen him, this Starblade?"

  "Of course you have, my precious pet. He was my guest here for many days." Mornelithe's smile deepened, and he licked his lips. "Many, many days. You dined upon his pet bird, do you not recall? And I gave him the crow to replace it, once he learned his place beneath me.

  Nyara's eyes widened, as she remembered the Tayledras Mornelithe had captured and broken; how she had been so jealous of the new captive, who had taken her place, however briefly, in Mornelithe's attentions. How she had so amused Mornelithe with her jealousy that he had chained her in the corner of his bedroom, like a pet dog, so that she was forced to watch him break the new captive to his will.

  And he, the former captive, without a doubt would remember her.

  "My little love, if you can contrive a way for Starblade to see you, I should very much be pleased," Mornelithe said caressingly. "It would enlarge my vengeance so well, to know that he knew that I had an agent in place on his ground, subverting his beloved son. It would be delicious to know how his mind must burn, and yet he could do and say nothing about it."

  "I do not think I can manage that," she told him timidly. "He never leaves the Vale, and I may not go within it."

  "Ah, well," Mornelithe said, waving the idea aside. "If you can, it would be well. But if not, I am not going to contrive it at the moment."

  His expression grew abstracted for a moment.

  She ventured another question. "Is there something that I should know, my lord?"

  He looked down at her, and smiled, shaking his head. "It is no matter. There are other matters requiring my attention just now, a bit weightier than this. My vengeance has waited long, and it can wait a little longer."

  She sighed with relief, thinking that he was finished with her, that he had forgotten about Treyvan and Hydona—

  Only to have her hopes crushed.

  "The gryphons," he said, suddenly looking down at her again, and piercing her with his eyes. "Tell me about the gryphons. Everything."

  Compelled by his will, she found herself reciting all that she knew about them, in a lifeless, expressionless voice. Their names, the names of their two fledglings; what they looked like, where they nested. Why they had chosen to nest there.

  And that there was going to be another mating flight shortly.

  He sat straight up at that—and she huddled in on herself, shivering, her teeth chattering, free from his compulsion and sick inside with her own treachery.

  She looked up at him, from under her lashes. His eyes were blank, his thoughts turned entirely within. Even his guardian-beasts were quiet, holding their breath, not wanting to chance disturbing him.

  Then—he stared down at her, and pointed his finger at her, demandingly, the talon fully extended. "More!" he barked, his words and will lashing her like barbed whips. "Tell me more!"

  But she had nothing more to tell him, and so he punished her, lashing her with his mind, inflicting pain that would leave no outward signs, nor anything that a Healer could read, but whose effects would linger for days.

  And the more he hurt her, the more she yearned for him, burned for him, until the pain and desire mingled and became one obscene whole. She groveled and wept, and did not know whether she wept because of her shame or because of her need.

  Finally he released her, and she lay where he left her, panting and spent, but still afire with longing for him.

  "Enough," he said, mildly, softly. "You will learn more. I will call you again, when my other business has been attended to, and you will tell me what you have learned. You will try to ensnare Darkwind, if you can, but you will learn more of the gryphons."

  "Yes," she whispered.

  "You will return here to me when I
call you."

  "Yes," she sobbed.

  "You will remember that my reach is long. I can punish you even in the heart of the k'Sheyna Vale if I choose. Starblade has put my stamp on their Heartstone, and I can reach within at my will." His eyes glittered, and he licked his lips, slowly, deliberately.

  "Yes."

  "Do not think to truly escape me. I created you, flesh of my flesh, my dearest daughter, and I can destroy you as easily as I created you." He reached down and ran a talon along her chin, lifting her eyes to meet his, and in spite of herself, she thrilled to his touch.

  She said nothing; she only looked helplessly into his eyes, his glittering, cold, cruel eyes.

  "Should you try to hide, should you reach k'Sheyna Vale I will call you even from there. And when you come to me, you will find that what you have enjoyed at my hands will be paradise, compared to what I deal you then." He held her in the ice of his gaze. "You do understand, don't you, my dear daughter?"

  She wept, silent tears running down her cheeks, and making the mage-light above his head waver and dance-but she answered him. Oh, yes, she answered him.

  "Yes, Father."

  "And what else?" he asked, as he always asked. "What does my daughter have to tell her doting father?"

  And she answered, as she always answered.

  "I l-l-l-love you, Father. I love you, Father. I love and serve only you." And her tears poured down her cheeks as she repeated it until he was satisfied.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ELSPETH

  Kata'shin'a'in was a city of tents.

  At least that was the way it looked to Elspeth as she and Skif approached it. They had watched it grow in the distance, and she had wondered at first what it was that was so very odd about it; it looked wrong somehow, as if something about it was so wildly different from any other city she had ever seen, that her mind would not accept it.