Finally she exhausted herself; she hung in her jesses with her heart beating so hard she could scarcely breathe, listening to it thunder in her ears, growing sicker and weaker with every moment she stayed inverted. She had gone, as any raptor would, from a state of uncontrolled panic to a state of benumbed shock.
She was hanging facing the wall, not the room beyond, and its bizarre occupant; she didn't even hear the footsteps coming toward her because of the sound of her own heart.
Suddenly there was a hand behind her back, and another under her feet. She clutched convulsively as she was lifted back up onto the perch. She released the hand as soon as she was erect, transferring her grip to the sturdy wood, as the Changechild took his gloved hand away, and smiled enigmatically down on her.
"Having trouble, dear child?" he purred, stepping back a pace or two to observe her. The glove was the only article of clothing he was wearing, and now he pulled it off, and tossed it on a shelf next to her perch. He really didn't need much in the way of clothing—long, silky, tawny-gold hair covered him from head to toe—except for certain strategic areas.
If she could have blushed, she would have. It wasn't as if she hadn't seen nude males before, certainly there was no nudity taboo among the Tayledras, but he seemed to flaunt his sexuality like some kind of weapon. It was somehow obscene, even though he wasn't doing anything overtly to make it so. It was all in posture, unspoken body language.
He seemed to sense her embarrassment and take amusement from it—and that made it even more obscene.
He looked like a cat—a lynx—and he moved like a cat as he padded back to his couch. That was where she had seen him when the light came up; reclining with indolent grace on a wide couch piled high with silken pillows, in black and golden tones that matched his hair. He resumed his position with studied care, and a fluidity not even a real cat could have matched, then rested his head on one hand to watch her with unwinking, slitted eyes.
Her feet twitched a little and she teetered on the perch.
That was when she realized just how helpless she truly was. He didn't need the jesses, except to keep her from falling to the floor every time she bated. Without Kyrr, she was as helpless in this body as a newborn chick. She could do simple things that were largely a matter of reflex—like perching—but anything more complicated than that was out of the question. She could no more fly now than she could in her own body.
She stared at him in despair; he smiled, and slowly, sensuously, licked his lips.
"I," he said, in a deep, echoing voice, "am Mornelithe Falconsbane. You made the fundamental mistake of attacking me. And I am afraid that you, dear child, are my prisoner. To do with as I will."
Fear chilled her, and made all her feathers slick tight to her body, as he said that. Mornelithe Falconsbane—this must be the Adept that Darkwind's Changechild had fled from; the Adept that had trapped and tormented her dyheli herd—his name did not invoke a feeling of comfort in a Tayledras.
"It's a pity that you managed to have yourself trapped in that bird's body," he continued. "The ways that I may derive pleasure from it are so limited, but I'm sure you can be flexible."
He mock-sighed and lowered his lids over his slitted, green-golden eyes, looking at her through thick lashes. She clutched the perch nervously, swaying back and forth, her mouth dry with fear as she waited for him to do something.
He raised a single finger. The door beside his couch opened, and a human in golden-brown leather that clung to his body as if it had been sewn around him entered the room, carrying a deep pannier. He went straight to her perch, as she flapped in alarm, and put the basket down underneath it. Then he untied her jesses from the ring, tied a leather leash to it instead, and attached the leash to her jesses.
Then he turned his back on her and left her, all without saying so much as a single word.
She looked down into the basket. Cowering in fear, and looking up at her, were three live mice.
Now her stomach growled with hunger, even while her mind rolled with nausea. She stared down at the mice, ravenous, and feeling just as trapped as they were.
She was starving—this was food. And she didn't have the slightest idea of how to kill and eat it.
Kyrr would, but Kyrr was gone.
Then it hit her. Kyrr was gone. Not waiting patiently in the back of the bird's mind, but gone completely. Dead. Part of her soul, her heart, her life—gone without a trace. She was completely alone, in a way she had not been since she was ten.
The grief that descended over her was so total that she forgot everything, including her hunger.
Oh, Kyrr—
Her beak gaped, but nothing happened. Not even a single sob.
She couldn't cry, she wasn't even human anymore. How could she mourn as a hawk? She didn't know, and the inability to cry out her pain and loss redoubled it. They were both lost, she and Kyrr—and they would never come home again.
She closed her eyes and rocked from foot to foot, trapped in a sea of black grief, drowning in it.
A satisfied chuckle made her snap her head up and open her eyes wide. Mornelithe was watching her with amusement.
Her grief turned to rage in the blink of an eye; she mantled and screamed at him, her cry piercing the silence and shattering it—though she was careful to keep a tight grip on the rough wood of her perch as she shrieked her defiance at him.
He found that even more amusing; his smile broadened, and his chuckle turned into a hearty laugh.
"Perhaps you won't be a disappointment after all, clever bird-child." He caressed her with his eyes, and her rage spilled away, leaving her weak and frightened again.
He returned his gaze to something in his lap, and as he shifted a little, she could see that it was a dark crystal scrying-stone. He stared at it, his gaze suddenly going from casual, to penetrating—and what he saw in it made him frown.
Chapter Twenty
DARKWIND
Starblade turned away from the little knot of Tayledras Adepts and Healers surrounding Dawnfire's ekele in despair, and sought the sanctuary of his own ekele. The fools were trying to thrash out what could have killed Dawnfire, and why—when it was obvious, as obvious a taint on the girl's body as the taint on his own soul, and the contamination that had cracked the Heartstone.
He knew it the moment he saw it. And he could not say a single word.
He felt old, old—burdened with secrets too terrible to hide that he could not confess to anyone, weary with the weight of them, sick to his bones of what he had done. As he had so many times, he climbed the stairs to his ekele, then sought the chamber at the top, and stood looking down on the Vale, wondering if this time he could find the strength to open the window and hurl himself to the ground.
But the crow on his shoulder flapped to its perch as soon as he entered the room, and sat there watching him with cold, derisive eyes. And he knew, even as he fought the compulsion to turn away from the window and suicide, that Mornelithe Falconsbane still had his soul in a fist of steel, and there was nothing he had that he could call his own. Not his thoughts, not his will, not his mind.
He flung himself down on the sleeping pad, hoping to lose himself in that dark oblivion—but sleep eluded him, and Falconsbane evidently decided to remind him of what he was.
The memory-spell seized him—
Smoke wreathed through the trees as he paused in an area he had thought safe, and the acrid fumes made him cough. The fire was spreading, far faster than it should have. For a moment, Starblade wondered if perhaps he should go back for help. But other emergencies had emptied the Vale of all but apprentices and children, and he had a reputation to maintain. He was an Adept, after all, and a simple thing like a forest fire shouldn't prove too hard to handle. He sought shelter from the smoke down in a little hollow, a cup among some hills, and closed his eyes to concentrate on his first task.
No, you fool, Starblade cried at his younger self. Go back! Get help! Nothing trivial would frighten that many firebirds!
But this was a vision of the past, and his younger self did not heed the silent screaming in his own mind.
He reached out with his mind, seeking the panic-stricken firebirds first of all. Until he could get them calmed and sent away, he would never be able to put the flames out. One by one he touched their minds; turned their helpless panic into a need for escape instead of defense, and sent them winging back to the Vale. One of the beast-tenders, the Tayledras who spoke easily to the minds of animals, would take care of them. He had afire to quench.
There were more firebirds than he had expected, and they were in a complete state of mindlessness. It took time to calm them.
But while he had stood there like a fool, the fire had jumped the tiny pocket of greenery where he worked, and ringed him. He opened his eyes, weary with the effort of controlling the birds, to find himself surrounded by a wall of flame and heat. The leaves were withering even as he watched, the vegetation wilting beneath the heat of the hungry flames. Fear chilled him, even as the heat made him break into a sweat. That was when he realized, when he reached for the power to quench it, that he had exhausted himself in calming the birds—
—and that he was cut off from the node and the nearest ley-lines. Something had sprung up while he worked; something had arisen to fence him away from the power he needed, not only to quell the fire, but even to save himself. He was enveloped in a wall of shielding as dangerous as the wall of flame.
Smoke poured into the hollow; something brushed against his leg, and he glanced down to see that a rabbit, blind with panic, had taken shelter behind his ankle. The heat increased with every passing moment; it wouldn't be long before this little valley was afire, like the rest of the forest here. He was not clothed for afire; he had run out in his ordinary gear, a light vest and breeches. He had nothing to protect him from the flames, nothing to breathe through. There was only one thing he could do—wrap the remains of his power about him in as strong a shield as he could muster, and run—
As the nearest flames licked toward him, he sent his bird up into the safety of the skies, and sprinted for what he hoped was the easiest way out. Straight into hell.
On the sleeping pad, his body writhed in remembered agony, his mouth shaping screams of pain he was not permitted to voice.
Flames licked his body, hungry tongues reaching out from burning scrub, a tree trunk. There was no pain at first—just a kind of warm pressure, a caress as he ran past. Then came the pain, after the flame had touched-red heat that blossomed into agony. Sparks fell on him as he dashed under a falling, blazing branch. He wrapped his hair around his mouth, and still the air he breathed scorched his lungs. Within moments, there was nothing but pain—and the fear of a horrible death that drove his legs.
Then—cool, smokeless air. He burst out past the fire-line, into the unburned forest. Freedom.
But not from pain. He fell into a stream, moaning, extinguishing his smoldering leather clothing and hair. The stream cooled him but did nothing for the pain, for the horrible burns where the skin was blackened and crisped on his arms. How long he lay there, he did not know. Smoke wreathed over him, but the flames did not grow nearer. He could not tell if it was the smoke that darkened his sight—or his pain. Only that, after a dark, breathless time of agony, salvation loomed out of the smoke, a spirit of mercy—vague and ghostlike.
NO! he screamed. NO! Don't believe him! Kill yourself, draw your knife, kill yourself while you have the chance!
He reached out toward the mist-wreathed shape, who seemed to be someone he knew, yet could not identify. Hazy with an intimation of power, the stranger's white hair was a beacon that drew his eyes. White hair—a Tayledras Adept, surely. Yes, he knew this one; he must. Rainwing? Frostfire? Both were recluses. No matter—he managed a croak, and the other started and turned his steps in Starblade's direction.
No— he moaned. No—
"I thought I heard someone Call," said the other, stooping over him in concern. "I see I was right."
His lips shaped words he could not speak for lack of breath. "Help me—"
Silver hair wove a web of light that dazzled his eyes. The Adept's own eyes, gilded-silver, held his. "I will have to take you to my home," the other said worriedly. "The fire has cut us off from Tayledras Vale. But I can tend you there, never fear. Will that be all right?"
Starblade nodded, giving consent, and as a consequence of that consent, relaxed all of his defenses. And as the other bent closer over him, to lift him in amazingly strong arms, he thought he saw a peculiar gleam in the other's eyes....
He awoke again, resting on something soft, his arms thrown over his head, with a tawny silken coverlet swathing him from chest to feet. He still hurt, but he was no longer covered with angry, blackened burns, and he took a deep, experimental breath to find his lungs clear again.
Then he tried to move his arms—and couldn't.
He tried harder, struggling against silk rope that bound him hand and foot—with no better success. A deep chuckle answered his efforts.
He twisted his head to face the source of the sound.
"So eager to take leave of my hospitality?" said the tall, catlike Changechild, smiling as he paced toward the couch on which Starblade lay tethered. The creature had modeled himself on a lynx; was clothed mostly in his own tawny-silk hair, but wearing a supple, elaborately tooled and beaded leather loincloth. "How—uncivilized of you."
It—he—smiled, with sensuously parted lips. Starblade wrestled furiously against his bonds. "My Clan will know where I am," he warned. "Even if you kill me, they will know where I am, and they will—"
"They will do nothing," the Changechild yawned, examining the flex of his own fingers for a moment, admiring his needle-sharp talons. "You accepted my offer of help, consented to come away with me. You will leave no trail of distress for them to follow—and you are behind my walls and shields now. Call all you like, they will not hear you."
Starblade snarled his defiance. "You forget, Misborn—I am Tayledras. My bird will bring them here!"
He sought for Karry's mind with his own, even as the Changechild moved slightly aside and gestured. "If you mean that—it tried foolishly to attack me."
Starblade followed the gesture to a shadow-shrouded corner, where something thin and almost-human looked up with wild, unfocused eyes, its hands and mouth full of feathers.
Perlin falcon feathers.
Karry's feathers.
Silent tears ran into his hair; silent sobs shook his body. None of it brought Karry back.
The crow cawed; it sounded like scornful laughter.
The Changechild sat on the edge of the couch, and flicked away the covering, leaving him naked and unprotected, even by a thin layer of silk. He shrank away, involuntarily. "I am called Mornelithe, rash birdman," the creature said, idly gliding a talon along Starblade's side. "I think I shall take another name, now. Falconsbane." He glanced sharply at Starblade, who continued to fight his bonds, though his eyes blurred with the tears for Karry he would not—yet—shed. "And believe me, my captive. In a shorter time than you dream possible, you will have another name for me." He paused, and a slow, lascivious smile curled the corners of his mouth. "Master," he said, savoring the word.
Then he bent over his captive and transfixed him with a pair of green, slit-pupiled eyes, that grew and grew until they filled Starblade's entire field of vision.
"I think we shall begin the lessoning now."
Mercifully, he could no longer remember that lessoning, not even under the goad of Mornelithe's spell. It involved pain; it also involved pleasure. Both hovered at the edge of endurance. Mornelithe was a past master at the manipulation of either, of combining the two. When it was over, Mornelithe had the keys to his soul.
He knelt before the Changechild, abasing himself as fully as he could; worshiping his Master, and detesting himself for doing so. All that was in his line-of-sight at the moment was the golden marble of the floor, and Mornelithe's clawed feet. Thankfully,
he had not yet been required to kiss them this time.
"Ah, birdman," Mornelithe chuckled. "You grovel so charmingly, so gracefully. It is almost a pity to let you up."
Starblade felt himself flush with shame, then chill with fear. Too many times in the past, such seemingly casual words had led to another "lesson."
"You have learned your place in the scheme of things quite thoroughly, I think," Mornelithe continued. "It is time to let you return to your lovely home."
Instead of elation, the words brought a rush of sickness. Bad enough, what he had become—but to return to the Vale, bringing this contamination with him—
He wanted to refuse. He wanted to rise, take the dagger at his belt, and slay his tormentor. He wanted to take that same dagger and slay himself.
He tried to assert his will; he closed his eyes and concentrated on placing his hand on the hilt of that dagger. He was an Adept—he had training, experience, his own personal powers. His will had been honed to an instrument like the Starblade of his use-name. Surely he could reclaim himself again. Yes... yes, he could. He could feel his will stirring, and opened his mouth to denounce his captor.
"Yes, Master," he heard himself say softly. "If it is your will."
He felt his lips stretching in an adoring smile; his head lifted to meet Mornelithe's unwinking eyes. His hand did not move from the floor.
There were two Starblades inside his mind. One worshiped Mornelithe and looked to his Master for all direction. That was the one that was in control, and there was no unseating it. But buried deep inside, away from all control, bound and gagged and able only to feel, was the real Starblade.
Mornelithe could have destroyed even this remnant; he had not, only because it amused him to see his victim continue to suffer, long after the contest of wills had ended.
"I do not entirely trust you, dear friend," Mornelithe said, softly, as he reached down and touched Starblade's cheek. "You were a stubborn creature, and I do not entirely trust you away from my sight. So, I shall send you a watcher, also—one that the rest will take for your new bondbird. Here—"
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