Iceshadow was silent for a long moment, while she and Tre'valen gathered their scattered wits. Elspeth thought that he watched her particularly closely, although she couldn't be sure of that. Finally, he spoke again.
"This is the last oath you must swear—that you will aid your brothers of the Clan in their duty, as your own oaths permit—and that never will you use what is taught you here for the sake of your own power, pride, and status."
He held his hand up, to forestall their immediate answers. "I shall not ask you to swear never to use it to harm—for one day you may find yourself facing an enemy who would destroy far more than you if he is given the opportunity to do so. But you must never use your learning for selfish purposes, to increase your own importance, to make your life one of pointless leisure, to merely indulge your fancies. Can you swear to that?"
Elspeth heaved a sigh of relief; that was enough like the Oaths a Herald took before the Circle that the wording made very little difference. She gave her assent with a much lighter heart, grateful that all of the vows she'd been asked to make seemed to take into account the fact that those outside the Clan had other duties and oaths of their own that might take precedence.
Now as long as both sets of promises never come into conflict, I should be all right.
Throughout the entire oathtaking, the blue glow of the Truth Spell remained steady around all three of them. Now Iceshadow banished the spell with another gesture, just as the deepening blue of the sky above them took on the golden-red streaks of the last moments of sunset. Elspeth looked up for a moment, as some movement against the luminous blue above caught her eye, and discovered that what had attracted her attention was the steady circling of a bird over their clearing. A bird of prey, by the shape.
Nothing unusual, not here in the heart of a Tayledras Clan territory, but something about the bird made her take a second, closer look.
It was big; much bigger than she had thought, at first. In fact, it was easily the size of the largest eagle she had ever seen. But it had the distinctive tail-striping of a vorcel-hawk; that was one bird she would never again mistake for anything else.
A vorcel-hawk the size of an eagle, or larger—and unless it was a trick of the light, it was glowing.
Dawnfire? The thought was inevitable. She glanced back down at Tre'valen, only to see that he was watching the hawk as well, though no one else seemed to notice that it was there. The expression on his face was a most peculiar one; he looked both excited and obscurely disturbed, at one and the same time.
The hawk made a final circle above, then spiraled upward, to be lost in the scarlet-and-golden glory of the sunset. Tre'valen licked his lips and looked down again; reluctantly, it seemed to her. He caught her watching him before she could look away, and something in his eyes made her nod, once, slowly; admitting, without actually saying anything, that she had seen the bird as well.
His lips formed the merest ghost of a smile, and he turned his attention back toward Iceshadow.
Less time had passed than she had thought. The Tayledras Adept was only now finishing his words of acceptance, admitting them into the Clan as Wingsiblings, and welcoming them as allies and friends.
She shook her head again, feeling another shiver of disorientation. Time was doing strange things around her, today. And Skif didn't seem to be affected by any of it. Was it because she was a mage, or was—it something else entirely?
Or was it just nerves?
Not that it really mattered at the moment. The ceremony wasn't quite over yet, although the formal pledging of vows was. Darkwind had explained this afternoon as he brought them to the cave to wait, that Iceshadow wanted to talk to her, Skif, and their Companions before he unleashed the rest of the Clan on them.
"He wants to give you a clearer idea of what you're getting involved with," he had said; she had wondered at the time if he was joking a little or being completely serious.
But Iceshadow was, indeed, walking across the paving toward them with another strange Hawkbrother at his side, and Darkwind and the Companions following behind. The other Tayledras drifted off, seeming to melt into the luxuriant foliage.
"So, I meet the Heralds at last," the Adept said, as he got within easy conversational distance of them. "The last of your kind to be within a Clan was—what?" He looked to the other Tayledras for an answer.
"Near seven hundred years ago," the stranger supplied. Elspeth noticed, now that he was near enough for her to note details, that he was very pale, very tired-looking; there were lines of pain around his eyes and mouth. He made a little grimace. "That was k'Treva, though. They always were—hmm—unconventional."
"I would say, innovative, Starblade," Iceshadow chided gently. "The experience certainly did them no harm and much good, from all I have heard out of the tales."
At his naming the stranger, Elspeth took a moment for a second, closer, but covert examination of him. So this was Darkwind's father? They didn't look all that much alike, but that could be illness and the differences in their hair as much as anything. Starblade was wearing a more—conservative costume than the rest of his fellows; in fact, there was something about it that seemed very similar to the one Darkwind was wearing; something that invoked birds and their wings, without actually imitating feathers. As if they had been designed by the same mind. Interesting.
"The k'Treva Tayledras that welcomed the Heralds back then—that would have been Moondance and Starwind k'Treva, wouldn't it?" she replied, obviously startling all three of the Hawkbrothers, and earning a covert grin of approval from Tre'valen. "That was in the Chronicles of Herald Vanyel's time; I read them, and that was why I came here, to try and find more Tayledras, if I could. The Heralds were Vanyel Ashkevron and his aunt, Savil—Vanyel was the last of the Herald-Mages. The Chronicles said that he spent quite a lot of time there, in k'Treva Vale, especially when he was young, and that Starwind taught him most of what he knew about magic."
"That is quite true, young one," Starblade replied, his voice warming a little with what sounded to her like approval. "Or at least, that is what our records told me. Iceshadow, my friend, would it be possible for us to move to somewhere a little less formal for the rest of this?" He gestured apologetically to her, and to Skif and Tre'valen, "I am sorry, but I fear I must beg your indulgence and find a place to sit."
"What about the fishpond over there?" Darkwind asked, pointing with his chin somewhere behind Iceshadow's shoulder. "It's quiet enough, and there shouldn't be anyone there after the sun sets."
"Good enough," his father replied—gratefully, Elspeth thought. "There should be room for your large friends, and seating enough for all of us."
Iceshadow gestured to the younger Hawkbrother to lead the way; Elspeth followed him, and the rest trailed behind her. By now it was becoming quite dark, and she was grateful for the mage-lights Iceshadow and Starblade produced. She found that distances were deceptive in the Vale; the ornamental fishpond Darkwind spoke of was actually hardly more than a stone's throw away from the Heartstone circle, and yet it might easily have been halfway across the Vale. Once they had arranged themselves around it, there was no way of telling that the Heartstone was anywhere nearby.
"Well," Starblade said, once he had settled himself in a comfortable "chair" formed of the roots of a tree with moss cupped where a cushion would be. Elspeth took a second, similar seat, and found it incredibly comfortable. "Iceshadow has asked me to explain to you just what sort of a—ah—situation you have unwittingly involved yourselves in. And since I am the partial cause of that situation, I think it only fair that I make the attempt."
Elspeth met his eyes and recognized what she saw there. Pain, mental and physical. This conversation was going to cost him something—but she had seen some of that same pain in Darkwind's eyes whenever he had spoken of his father, and she knew that Starblade had put that pain there. The man was right. It was only fair.
She settled herself and nodded to him, decisively. "Go ahead," she said. "I don't think anyt
hing you say is going to make us change our minds, but I was trained as a tactician; I like to know what I can expect." She smiled, slightly. "Good or bad."
Starblade nodded gravely, and leaned forward. He cradled his right hand around his bandaged left hand—surely there must be a story behind that as well. This was either going to be very short, or very long. Whichever it was, it was going to be interesting.
She had told the truth about not changing her mind; she only hoped what she learned wasn't going to make her regret her own decisions. It was a little too late for regret now.
It was not, however, too early for strategy. It was never too early, or too late, for that.
Chapter Two
"I know you are an Outlander... but I know not how much my son has told you of our troubles here," Starblade began, with a sober glance at Darkwind, "so I shall tell my tale from the outset, and beg your patience if I repeat what you know." He glanced down at the pond, with its patient, colorful carp skimming just below the surface of the water. "I shall be as brief as I can."
He paused for a moment, clearly organizing his thoughts. "Mornelithe Falconsbane," he said at last. "It all comes down to him."
Darkwind nodded grimly, but said nothing.
"The Heartstone—" Starblade closed his eyes, but not before Elspeth had seen another shadow of pain pass across them. "Its shattering is his doing, but by my hand. I was foolish and vain; I thought myself clever, and I found out differently. He caught me through my foolishness, and my pride. He broke me, and he used me."
Terse speech, but obviously each word cost him dearly. "Through me, he set his darkness upon the Heartstone, disrupted our magics, broke it from the inside, and in so doing, caused the deaths of many of our mages. Because of me, three-fourths of the Clan are lost somewhere in the wilderness."
"How?" Elspeth asked, puzzled. "I mean, how could you lose that many people?"
Starblade toyed with a glass-beaded feather braided into his hair. "When a Clan moves, it is our way to establish the children, the lesser mages, the weak and the old, with the bulk of our scouts and warriors to protect them, at a new site. We send them by means of a Gate, we drain the Stone of its power and send it to the new Stone, then we follow. But when we filled the Stone with all the Clan's power in preparation for diverting the power to the new site, the Heartstone shattered, and the Adept holding the Gate open died with the shattering. We had no one among us who could use the Heartstone, damaged as it was, to go to them by Gate. We barely know the true location of the rest of the Clan, for the scouts who had found the new place were with them."
"And they couldn't reach you without sending badly-needed fighters," Elspeth supplied. "I take it none of the lesser mages were able to build these Gate things?"
"Only an Adept can master the Gate Spell," Iceshadow replied. "And we fear that even if they had one who could cast it, the Stone is too unstable and there may be no way of bringing a Gate near to it."
"All the scouts that knew the overland way to the new Vale are at that Vale," Darkwind repeated. "Our number would be decimated trying to get to them by foot—leagues traveled are hard-won going North—and they cannot come to us, burdened with the old, the young, the sick."
His father nodded. "Indeed. So—to make the bad much the worse, Falconsbane continued to work through me, keeping the Clan from reaching for help, keeping the Adepts still remaining from stabilizing the Stone, and keeping those who knew me well at a distance." Starblade averted his eyes from Darkwind, but the reference was plain enough. "He hoped, I think, to wear us down until he could penetrate our defenses at his leisure and usurp the Stone and the power it still held. But he had not reckoned on our clever allies, the gryphons—and he had not reckoned on the courage and good sense of my son."
"He couldn't have guessed Nyara would turn against him, either," Skif put in, with a hint of pride.
"No—nor the appearance of you and all that you represented," Tre'valen told him, his eyes showing a hint of sardonic humor. "To tell you true, there was an unexpected marshaling of powers from all sides. Falconsbane certainly did not plan on that, nor the involvement of the Shin'a'in. That was his downfall."
"If he lives still, he cannot be prospering," Iceshadow put in. "Shin'a'in arrows found a mark in him; that much we know. And he has lost much in the way of power and creatures."
"I wonder at that; Shin'a'in do not often miss in such attacks, their Goddess oft assists the arrow to the mark. But, despite that, I doubt that he lives," Starblade sighed. "I think that the arrows of the Shin'a'in found their mark; that he fled only to die. There has been no sign of him or his creatures, and his escape was by blood-magic... with his own blood. That is an act of finality among mages."
Elspeth shrugged. "I don't know one way or the other about him, but the point, it seems to me, is that he has left the Vale in one snarled mess."
Starblade nodded, and smoothed his braided hair back behind his ears. "My son has said he will teach you in the use of your Mage-Gift; that is a good thing, I think—but he will need to relearn much as he teaches you. It would be hazardous for you to do much practice of that learning within the Vale itself; though you would be protected from threats that are outside the Vale, the Stone is yet dangerous."
Gwena stamped a hoof and snorted agreement, bobbing her head vigorously. Elspeth nodded; she felt the same. Starblade bore many years' experience, and knew the magics involved as only a Tayledras Adept could. Better to err on the side of safety.
"I think," Darkwind said slowly, "that we may practice outside the Vale for some time in relative safety. It will only be as we approach the greater Adept-magics that we will need the shieldings of the Vale."
"By then, the Council and I should have come to some decision on the Stone," Iceshadow told them. "Either we shall have begun to heal it ourselves, or we shall have found a way to deal with it."
He glanced at Elspeth, with a certain amount of expectation in the look. She sighed, knowing what that look meant. "If you're wondering if you can count on my help with this Heartstone of yours, I do remember those oaths I just took," she said, with a little shake of her head. "I can't say I like the idea of mucking about with that much power gone wrong, but what I can do, I will."
Both Iceshadow and Starblade gave her nods of approval, but she wasn't quite done. "What I need to know, here, is this—how much more trouble from outside can we expect while we're doing all this? Starblade, I hope you'll forgive my asking this, but you were a point of weakness before. Just how vulnerable are you to more meddling?"
Starblade wet his lips with the tip of his tongue before replying. "To meddling—I would say not at all. Even if Falconsbane still lives, and as I said, I do not think that he does, Iceshadow and Kethra have changed all the paths that made me open to him. To have me so his slave again, he would have to have me in his hand. He would break me faster—for I am that much more fragile than I was—but he would have to have me to break me."
"And?" Elspeth raised an eyebrow.
"And I shall not leave this Vale until I walk through the Gate to a new one," he told her. "I have been broken and am mending, but I am still weak to be broken again, and will not chance it, for the sake of all of us."
Elspeth nodded, satisfied, but Skif frowned. "What about attack?" he asked. "Are you weaker to attack than—say—Iceshadow?"
Starblade looked mildly surprised by the question. "I—think not," he said immediately. "The weaknesses I have still require someone who knows me to exploit, and to have me, if not within physical touching, certainly within sight."
Skif glanced over at Tre'valen, who shrugged. "The only magics I know intimately are those of the Goddess," he said. "I am of no help nor hindrance in these things. These are good things to know, Starblade. I thank you for telling them."
"I can't think of any more questions," Skif admitted. "I'm no mage, and I'm no help to you. Frankly, I'll be a lot more help in finding Nyara and that damned sword she carries."
"Now that
I need to know something of," Starblade said immediately. And Elspeth found herself the focus of every eye in the little clearing.
She fidgeted a little, uncomfortably. "I don't know much about Need as I'd like," she replied, reluctantly. "She predates the Mage Wars, I think. At least, I didn't recognize anything she showed us when she let us into her memories, So she's either very old, or from awfully far away."
"I would say, very old," Darkwind opined, toying with a feather in a gesture uncannily—and probably unconsciously—like his father. "I would say, she is as old as the oldest artifact I have ever seen. She gave me the impression of great age, as great as any of the things I have stumbled upon in the ruins."
Elspeth tilted her head back and took a deep breath of the cool, flower-scented air, using the moment to think. "What I do know is she was a member of some kind of quasi-religious order, with gods I never heard of—male and female twins."
She gave the Hawkbrothers a glance of inquiry; all three of them shrugged as if the reference meant nothing to them either. "Well, even though at one time she'd been a warrior, she called herself a Mage-Smith." Elspeth closed her eyes for a moment, to call up the memories that Need had shared with her and Skif. "As to how she became a sword in the first place—someone attacked the Order while she was gone—wiped out the older members, enslaved the young girls, stole everything they could carry. The only ones left were Need, who was too old to fight, and a young apprentice. So Need took a special sword that she'd forged spells into, spells of healing and luck—and forged herself into it as well."
"How?" Iceshadow asked, genuinely interested.
Elspeth shook her head. "It wasn't something I'd have done. She did some kind of preparation, then she killed her human body with the blade so that she could move her spirit into the sword. Then as long as the girl carried her, Need could give her both the skills of a fighter and of a Mage-Smith."
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