He closed the eyes of the hawk, then turned within—sought the twist that brought him home—
And opened them again as warm sun flooded through him. Through, because as a spirit-hawk in the real world, he was slightly transparent. A tiercel-vorcel of golden glass....
Was it not exactly like a lovesick tiercel to court a mate with fancy flying? Leaving the Moonpaths, diving from the starry soul-sea into the physical world—was that not the equivalent of skimming a cliff face to attract a lover's eye?
He couldn't help but laugh at himself over it all, still a little giddy from the feel of the soul-sea between the Paths. Should he continue with the analogy and hope that Dawnfire would be impressed? Could they be enough alike somehow that she would fly with him? So many mysteries, but then, there were few answers to begin with in his life's work. That was, he felt, part of its appeal—in searching for Truths, he'd found few absolute ones and thousands of personal ones. He'd follow his heart, wherever it led.
Perhaps his willingness to risk was only adaptability. He felt at home in this Vale of summer nestled amidst cruel winter, as he did wherever he traveled. So many times he'd been berated for his brashness by Kra'heera; perhaps his brashness was but unrefined bravery?
He increased his physical mass, steadied in the chilly breeze above his brothers' Vale. They, too, followed their hearts as certainly as they followed the Goddess' laws. He admired them. They fought for a goal that would come many centuries from their own lifetimes as though it would be enjoyed at day's end.
They were not so different from his own people, who guarded the Plains and the deadly things under it. The Hawkbrothers actively fought; the Shin'a'in had the equally difficult tasks of unending vigilance and precise response. The Kal'enedral and the Hawkbrother Adepts were alike in some respects, were they not? Different but complimentary.
He had seen history drawn in tapestries in Kata'shin'a'in. Was it time now for a new tapestry to be woven?
Ah, if his thread and Dawnfire's could be woven together, it would be like the satisfying ending to a tale, and he would feel reborn....
He angled over the Vale, careful of the sense of wonder that he felt. He couldn't let it blind him to his goal. The point of taking flight this way was to find Dawnfire, to speak with her. Tre'valen scanned the skies, widened his view—and saw something bright hurtling toward him and the Vale.
It was without physical form, a fiery spear of crackling magical energy, larger than two men. It came roaring toward him, rushing, unrelenting, like a storm-driven grass-fire across the Plains—and struck him full in the chest. A shower of splintered mage-energy burst around him and he screamed out.
He fell half a furlong, stunned; recovered; held himself in place with unsteady wingbeats. The next blow was coming, and he warded against it as best he could.
For one moment, he thought that his fears were coming to pass, that the Star-Eyed herself had decided to punish him for his audacity. But no—
No, he was not even the object of the attack. He had been in its bound-path, and it had diverted to him—and through him. He had only been in the way. The second strike was approaching differently; it struck at him, hurt him, but lost little of its power, continuing to its true target. That target was below him, in the Vale.
Starblade—
He Saw the Adept taking the force of the blow and falling to his knees while his bondbird screamed in anger and frustration; Saw him recover. Even as he folded his wings and dove to add his own small—and probably futile—strength, he Saw Kethra fling herself physically over the Adept, and magically join her power to his. Then he watched in astonishment as Starblade gave up control to Kethra, letting her spread the force of the attack over both of them.
It is Falconsbane!
A third blow came, and then a fourth; the pair sagged beneath the force of the brutal attack, their shields eroding. Kethra cried out, face toward the sky, fists clenched, transmuting the attack-energies into another form. A circle of intense cold spread out from her, covering everything it touched with a thick layer of frost. Furniture split and shattered as it was overcome; drinking vessels and pitchers burst; the very structure of the ekele was warping and cracking as it was engulfed in bitter cold.
Falconsbane—
Hyllarr shrieked in agitation and abandoned his perch, falling to the floor and backing against the wall of the ekele as the lethal white circle spread. Already, Tre'valen knew the victims were in pain from the deadly cold—which told him that withstanding the effects of the attack must have been worse even than its transmutation.
Even without ForeSight, the next few moments were writ clear for anyone to see. Help would not come from the rest of the Vale in time. Falconsbane had been merely testing their strength. The next blow would rip through their defenses, and surely channel through from Starblade inside the Vale, into the Vale—
And pour into the Heartstone, shattering it, and sear the country for leagues. The devastation would kill everyone, and unleash a score of wild ley-lines to tear through the landscape.
I must stop this—
He knew he would die.
It did not matter. Too many would be hurt—
:Here!:
He Looked up; Dawnfire was above him in her hawk-form, a blazing creature of glory. She had more than enough power to shield Starblade from the next attack. Whether he would survive the encounter, he could not know, but his brethren must be saved. And here, with him, was Dawnfire....
She had the power. He had the knowledge.
:Now! Together!: he cried, and folded his wings to plummet down. She fell beside him, both of them rushing just ahead of the blast of power that they felt hot on their necks....
Firesong took up the drum and faced the Heartstone, his fingers pattering a little anticipatory run on the taut skin. Darkwind shook out his muscles, a chill of nervousness running down his spine. This was only to be an exploratory venture, a preliminary, to see what the three of them could do with the rogue Stone.
:Haiee!:
It was not so much a call, as a mental shriek of pain. And Darkwind knew immediately whose pain it was.
:Father!: He Reached for power, blindly.
But Firesong reacted first, reaching, clenching fists until his knuckles whitened, flinging the tightest shield Darkwind had ever seen around—
—the Heartstone.
What—
Darkwind had no time for anything other than a gasp of outrage. It was Starblade and Kethra who needed protection, not the damned Stone!
Firesong fell to his knees, hands spread wide, muscles straining as he built shield after shield around the Stone. The Stone flared and a dozen fire-red tendrils stabbed out toward Starblade's ekele, to be stopped short by Firesong's shields. They sought purchase in the inner shields, and half of them penetrated; Firesong built another layer and another, sucking in Power from all around him.
The tendrils were all reaching out to Starblade.
Darkwind's Sight clearly showed him the next huge fire-bolt coming in through the Vale's shields. Streaking down before it were two sun-bright vorcel-hawks. They dove wing to wing, turned as one above Starblade and Kethra's ekele—
—and caught the fire-bolt together. Power flared around his father and his lover, and then all was still, except for the hoarse protests of Hyllarr and a subsiding thrum from the Heartstone. Firesong constricted the shields, his eyes closed tightly in concentration. The tendrils receded.
Darkwind reached his power to Elspeth, without conscious thought of it—and found her doing the same toward him. They wove a counterattack, Lanced it up into the sky—and let it sputter off into nothing. The enemy—Mornelithe Falconsbane, he knew—had aborted his remaining attack and dispersed its power into a huge, flickering mantle over the Vale.
There was no path for a counterattack to follow.
Mornelithe Falconsbane had escaped again.
Chapter Nineteen
"That was Falconsbane!" Elspeth gasped, climbing to
her feet and swaying in her tracks with shock at Darkwind's side. "That was Falconsbane—I know it was! What stopped him?"
"I don't know," Darkwind replied. "I can't tell, Elspeth." His head rang with the echoes of power, and there was no reading anything subtle this close to the Stone. He stepped across the pass-through on the warded threshold that sealed the Stone away from the rest of the Vale, and sent out a fan of questing energy.
The trace was clear and clean, though quickly fading, and it ran back to a center that was not disturbed, but oddly empty.
No—more than empty—
When he realized what he felt, he recoiled and snapped up his own shields. Elspeth crossed the threshold, and Gwena appeared at her side. Both breathed hard from sprinting.
Vree, who had been sunning in the falls area of the Vale, shot overhead, alert for new danger. He abruptly sideslipped and landed in a tree outside the threshold, and sent a mental query, followed by a wordless message of support when he sensed how distraught his bondmate was.
Darkwind waved to warn Vree away, then began running toward a particular remote corner of the Vale—a place where he had sensed, not only the remains of burned-out power, but something more. The kind of emptiness only a Final Strike left behind.
Death.
Someone had died protecting Starblade, and given that it was a power-signature he didn't recognize, he was horribly certain he knew who that someone was.
Hoofbeats gained behind him and Gwena and Elspeth drew up just ahead of him. Elspeth's hand was open to him, and he grasped it and vaulted up onto Gwena's back. Together, they rode crouched, into the far reaches of the Vale. Gwena sprinted and stooped, dodging trees, limbs, and other obstacles. The lush, relaxing decorations of the Vale were now clinging distractions; Gwena could only make speed in clearings.
They were overtaken within moments. Gwena dove off the trail in time to avoid being trampled by Firesong's white dyheli, who streaked past them, lightning-fast and surefooted. The stag bore Firesong clinging bareback, and behind them flew the firebird, streaming controlled false-sparks of agitation along the flowing length of its tail.
By the time Darkwind, Gwena, and Elspeth reached their goal, Firesong was lifting the body of Tre'valen in his arras as if it weighed nothing, his face utterly blank and expressionless. Firesong's complexion had turned ashen; the firebird clutched at his shoulder and cluttered angrily, then fixed its eyes on Tre'valen's lifeless face and went silent.
Firesong looked from Darkwind to Elspeth and back again, but said nothing. There was a chill in his eyes that made Darkwind reluctant to say anything. Elspeth stifled a sob behind her clenched fist; Gwena moved away, stepping backward very deliberately.
Firesong stalked carefully between them, eyes focused straight ahead. He carried his dreadful burden out of the clearing and into the depths of the Vale, without saying a single word to either of them.
Darkwind's thoughts seethed with anger. He killed Tre'valen. He shielded the Stone and not my father, and Tre'valen died for it. And he knows it, the arrogant bastard. Why? Why did he shield the damned Stone? He saw the strike coming before I did—he knew what was going to happen!
"Darkwind—your father," Elspeth said urgently, recalling to him the other casualties in this catastrophe.
"Gods—" he said, despairingly, and headed off at a run again, in the opposite direction that Firesong had taken. The ekele was not that far, but it seemed hundreds of leagues away as he hurtled through the foliage, taking a narrow shortcut. Branches whipped at his face, leaving places that stung until his eyes watered. His lungs ached, his legs felt as unsteady as willow twigs. But there was no time, no time—
Despite the fact that it seemed an eternity since the attack, he and Elspeth reached Starblade's home moments ahead of the rest of the mages of k'Sheyna. Hyllarr was shrieking alarm and outrage to the entire Vale. Darkwind pounded up the steps of the ekele and burst into the main room, and stepped back, shocked by the destruction.
Starblade was sprawled inelegantly across the floor, with Kethra lying atop him in an attitude of protection. He was awake, if dazed; she was not moving. Elspeth pushed past him and reached for Kethra, levering her off the k'Sheyna Adept so that Darkwind could get to his father. She slipped and steadied, after a floorboard shifted under her. All the wood in the room was splintered; moisture covered every part that was not patched in frost. Very little was intact within four arm's spans of Starblade and Kethra; the floor and walls were warped and cracked. This ekele could not possibly be livable again.
Hyllarr quieted as soon as they entered the room, though he continued to shift from one foot to the other, crooning anxiously and craning his neck to watch what they were doing. He came as far as the outer edge of the ice, then waited.
Starblade blinked up at his son, and tried to rise; Darkwind decided that it would be better to help him onto the couch than try to prevent him from moving. Starblade's fingers showed signs of frostbite.
"Falconsbane," Starblade murmured, bringing a trembling hand up to his eyes. "That touch again—filthy—"
He shuddered, and Darkwind got him lying back against a heap of pillows, then ran to fetch water and cups from the far side of the ekele. One cup he handed to Elspeth, who had managed to get Kethra into a sitting position. The other he handed to his father, who seized it in shaking hands and drained it as if it contained the water of life itself. Darkwind daubed his fingers into the pitcher and traced wet fingers across his father's brow and eyes and blew gently, an old mage's technique to help focus concentration.
"What happened?" he asked, as Starblade closed his eyes and lay back again, the lines of pain in his face even more pronounced than ever before.
"I am not certain," Starblade faltered. "It was Falconsbane—he tried my defenses." His face mirrored his confusion and his fear, the fear that he had once again betrayed his Clan.
"It seems he could not break them," Darkwind reminded him. "The beast could not take you, Father. His hold over you is gone forever—do you see?"
Starblade shook his head, though not in negation. "I—he attacked. Kethra tried to protect us both." He propped himself up onto one elbow, with obvious effort, and looked around.
"She's in shock," Elspeth said calmly. "She needs a lot of rest, and she needs her energies restored. But I'm sure she's going to be all right."
By now, they had an audience, but only Iceshadow pushed through to join them. He went first to Kethra, then to Starblade, and seeing that they were only badly shaken and depleted, shook his head.
"It is strange," Iceshadow said in puzzlement. "There was no time for any of us to have protected them. Yet someone did."
"There were hawks," Starblade whispered. "Two shining hawks with wings of fire. They dove from the sun, and sheltered us beneath their wings. That is what protected us."
"That was Tre'valen," said a new voice, flatly. Firesong stood just inside, keeping his face in shadow.
"That was Tre'valen, in spirit-form. And likely that one of k'Sheyna who was taken by the Shin'a'in Goddess." He seemed to be waiting for the name, and Darkwind supplied it, carefully controlling his own anger at the Adept's failure to shield his father.
"Dawnfire," he said, his own voice as expressionless as Firesong's.
Firesong did not even acknowledge that he had spoken "Dawnfire. It was also Dawnfire. That was shamanic magic; it would have been the only thing this Falconsbane could not counter, for it is spirit-born, and he knows not how to use it, nor how to negate it." Firesong bent down for a moment, and laid his hand gently on Starblade's head, above his closed eyes. Starblade did not seem to even notice that he was there, so deep was his exhaustion. "He must have known he could not survive such a blow in spirit-form."
Darkwind kept a tight curb on his tongue, afraid to say anything, lest he lash out with words of challenge. But Firesong straightened, and looked into his eyes.
And the sheer agony Darkwind saw there killed whatever accusations had been forming in his mind. Fi
resong's ageless, smooth face, which bore only confidence scant hours ago, now showed creases of tension and grief.
"I could not shield your father and the Stone, both, Darkwind," Firesong said quietly, with unshed tears making his voice thick. "Tre'valen died because I was a fool. I did not think to look for your enemy; I did not ward the Stone against him. I had to make a choice; your father, or the Vale."
"Look," he said, and picked up a stoneware cup spider-webbed with cracks from the cold. "Look here, how this is like the Stone. All the damage runs from this place, tied to Starblade. And a single blow here—channeled through Starblade—you see?" He dropped the cup, which shattered between his feet.
Indeed, Darkwind did see. That one blow, had Firesong not intervened, would have shattered the Heartstone completely; releasing all the pent-up energies at once.
It would not have created as large a crater as made the Dhorisha Plains, but it would have dug down to bedrock, and killed every living thing within the Vale, and far outside it.
"I am—sorry," Firesong said, and sighed heavily. "You will never know how sorry. I did what I had to. As did Tre'valen."
And with that, he retreated, with the rest of k'Sheyna parting before him.
It was a fair amount of time later when Darkwind left the ekele, having put Starblade and Kethra under the care of Iceshadow and the other mages. Iceshadow was confident that they would both be near recovery by morning; Elspeth had volunteered to stay with them, channeling energies through Gwena to renew what they had lost, helping the k'Sheyna Healers. Vree had wanted to stay with Elspeth.
Darkwind could think of no way to be of use. His own strength was not what it should have been; he had cast much of it into that fruitless counterattack on Falconsbane. And his mind was in a turmoil. He did not know what to do, or to think. He would have been of no use to the Healers, muddled as he was.
So he wandered the Vale instead, coming at last to the curtain of energies that hid the entrance. Snow was falling again. The last daylight dwindled beneath the trees. He I reached the cleft in the hillside, and realized that the odd outcropping of snow there was not snow at all.
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