Firesong felt that if he must remain here as the Tayledras envoy to primitive Valdemar, then by the Goddess, he would have the civilized amenities of a Vale!
Valdemar. An'desha had never heard of this land until a year ago. As a child and even a young man among the Clans, he had not heard of much beyond the Walls—indeed, the only places beyond the Walls he had learned of as a youngster were the Pelagiris Forest and the trade-city of Kata'shin'a'in. The Shin'a'in as a general rule cared very little for the world beyond the Plains; only Tale'sedrin of all the Clans had any measure of Outland and outClan blood.
In some Clans—such as An'desha's—such foreign breeding was occasionally considered a minor disgrace—not a disgrace for the child, but for the Shin'a'in parent. "Could he not draw to him a single woman of the Plains?" would come the whispers, or "Was she so unpleasant that no Shin'a'in man cared to partner her?" So it had been for An'desha, child of such an alliance—and perhaps that was why his own Clan had never so much as mentioned the lands outside the Dhorisha Plains. Perhaps they had feared that talking about the lands Outside would excite an un-Shin'a'in wanderlust in him, a yearning for far places and strange climes.
Well, I found both—without really wanting either.
The blood-path Adept who had flamboyantly named himself Mornelithe Falconsbane had never heard of Valdemar, either, until the two white-clad strangers from that land had come into the territory of Clan k'Sheyna of the Hawkbrothers.
An'desha had been a silent, frightened passenger in his own body, which Falconsbane had usurped by magic and trickery. With the Adept possessing him, he had learned just who those strangers were and something of their land. He'd had no choice in the matter, since he was a hidden fugitive within the body that Falconsbane had stolen years ago.
He should have died; that was what always happened before, when Falconsbane took a body. But he hadn't; perhaps the reason was that he had fled, rather than trying to resist the interloper.
A prisoner in my own body.... He closed his eyes and sank a measure deeper into the hot water. So odd.... the memories of those years of hiding, when he had no control over the actions of his own body, seemed more solid and real than this moment, when the body he had been born into was once again his.
An'desha's had been only the last in a long series of bodies Falconsbane had appropriated as his own. All that was required, or so it seemed, was for the victim to be gifted with mage ability and to have been a descendant of a mage called Ma'ar. If those remote memories were to be trusted, Ma'ar had lost his first life—or body, depending on your point of view—in the Mage Wars of so long ago it made An'desha dizzy to think about the passage of years between that moment and this.
He slipped down to his chin into the hot water, and closed his eyes tighter, letting the steam rise around his face. His face now, and not the half-feline face of Mornelithe Falconsbane. His own body, too, for the most part, though it was more muscular now than it had been when Falconsbane helped himself to it and tried to destroy the original owner. Falconsbane had made a hobby of body sculpting, trying out changes on his daughter before adopting them himself. He had indulged in some extensive modifications to An'desha's body, changes An'desha had been certain he would have to endure even after Falconsbane had been driven out and destroyed.
But his own actions, risking real soul-death to rid the world of Falconsbane, had earned him more than just his freedom. Not only had he regained his body, most of the modifications had vanished when the Avatars of the Goddess "cured" him of what had been done to him.
There were only two things they could not give him again; the original colors of his hair and eyes. His hair was a pure, snowy white now, and his eyes a pale silver, both bleached forever by the magic energies that Falconsbane had sent coursing through this body, time and time again. So now, when An'desha gazed into a mirror, it always took a moment to recognize the reflection as his own.
At least I see the face of a half-familiar stranger, and not that of a beast. However handsome that beast had made himself.
The hot water forced his muscles to relax some, but he feared he would have to resort to stronger measures to release all the tension.
This place is so strange.... Let Firesong wallow in being the exotic and sought-after alien; An'desha was not comfortable here. The only people he really knew were Nyara, the mage-sword Need, and Firesong, the Tayledras Adept. Of the three, the only one he spent any time at all with was Firesong. Nyara was very preoccupied with her mate, the Herald called Skif—and at any rate, it was hard to face her, knowing she was the offspring of his body when Falconsbane had worn it, knowing what his body had done to hers. Now that the crisis was over, Nyara seemed to feel the same way; although she was never unkind, she often seemed uncomfortable around him.
As for the ancient mage-sword that housed the spirit of an irreverent and crotchety sorceress, the entity called Need had her nonexistent hands full. She was engrossed in training Nyara, helping her adjust to this new land. Need was quite used to adjusting to new situations; she had been doing so for many centuries; in this, he had nothing in common with her.
After seeing changes over the course of a few hundred years, I would imagine that there is very little that surprises her anymore.
And as for Firesong—
He flushed, and it wasn't from the heat of the water cradling him. I don't understand, he thought, his logic getting all tangled up with his feelings whenever he so much as thought about Firesong. I just don't understand. Why this, and why Firesong! Not that the Shin'a'in had any prejudice about same-sex pairings, but An'desha had never felt even the tiniest of stirrings for a male before this. But Firesong—oh, Firesong was quickly becoming the emotional center of his universe. Why?
Firesong. Ah, what am I to do! Is he my next master!
His thoughts circled, tighter and tighter, like a hawk caught in an updraft, until he physically shook himself loose. He splashed warm water on his face and sat up straighter.
Don't get unbalanced. Concentrate on ordinary things: deal with all of. this a little at a time. Think of ordinary things, peaceful things. They keep telling you not to worry, to rest and recover and relax.
He opened his eyes and deliberately focused on the garden around him, looking for places that might seem a little barren, a trifle unfinished. He had discovered a surprising ability in himself. It was surprising, because the nomadic Shin'a'in were not known for growing much of anything, and Falconsbane had been much more partial to destroying rather than creating when he had been active.
I never thought I'd be a gardener. I thought that was something only Tayledras did. He loved the feel of warm earth between his fingers; seeing a new leaf unfold gave him as much pleasure as if he had created a poem. Though the plants were cold and alien, in their own way they were like him. They struck a chord in him the way open sky and waving grass inspired his ancestors, and the scent of fresh greenery renewed him. An'desha had an affinity with ornamental plants, with plants of all kinds now, and a patience with them that Firesong lacked. The Adept enjoyed the effect of a finished planting, but he was not interested in creating it, nor in nurturing it. Though Firesong had dictated the existence of the indoor garden, planned the general look of it, and sculpted the stones, it was An'desha who had filled it with growing things, and given it life. In a sense, this fragile garden was An'desha: body, mind, and soul.
An'desha had not confined his efforts to the indoor garden surrounding the pools, hot and cold, and the waterfall that Firesong had created here. He had extended the plantings to cold-hardy species outside the windows, deciding that as long as the windows were that tall, there was no reason why he couldn't create the illusion that the indoor garden extended out into the outdoors. So, for at least the part of the year when the outside gardens were still green, this could have been a shady grotto in any Tayledras Vale.
The illusion was not quite perfect, and An'desha studied the intersection of indoors and outdoors, frowning slightly. He had ma
tched the pebbled pathway between the beds of ornamental grasses indoors and out, but the eye still saw the windowpane before the vegetation outside it. He moved to the smooth rock edge of the pool and laid his chin down on his crossed arms to study it further.
There must be a way to make the window more of an accidental interruption to the flow of the gardens, the sweep of the planting.
Bushes, he decided. If I have some bushy plants in here, and more that will outline a phantom pathway beyond the glass, that will help the illusion. With just a little magical help, he'd accelerate the growth of a few more cuttings, and he'd have them at the right height in a week or two.
If I use evergreens, perhaps I can even take the edge off the transition between indoors and outdoors even in winter.
He had worried when Firesong came up with these clever ideas that the original "owners" of this bit of property might object to all the changes. Firesong's little home was in the remotest corner of a vast acreage called "Companion's Field," and the horselike beings that partnered the Heralds of Valdemar could very well have objected to their privacy being invaded. But they didn't seem to mind the presence of the Adept and his compatriots; in fact, they had contributed to the landscaping with suggestions of their own that made the ekele blend in with the surroundings, just as any good ekele should. From outside, the mottled gray and brown stone of the support pillars blended with the trunks of the trees masking it, and the second story was hidden among the branches. Firesong had chosen this particular place after he had heard of a legend that told of a Herald Vanyel, supposedly Firesong's and Elspeth's ancestor, trysting with his beloved in this very grove of trees; after that, nothing would do but that his own ekele be here as well.
Firesong had insisted on building his "nest" in Companion's Field in the first place, rather than in the Palace gardens, precisely because he did not want any hint of the alien buildings of Valdemar to jar on his awareness.
Strange. I would have thought that Darkwind would be the one to feel that way, not Firesong. Darkwind was a scout; at one point, he could not even bear to live within the confines of a Vale! But Darkwind dwells quite comfortably in the Palace with the Queen's daughter, and it is Firesong who insists on removing himself to the isolation of this place.
Then again, Firesong was a law unto himself; he could afford to dictate even to a Queen in her own Palace how he would and would not live. Firesong was the most powerful practicing Adept in this strange land, and he did not seem to have a moment's hesitation when it came to exploiting that fact. Eventually Elspeth and Darkwind might come to be his equals in power, but he had been a full Adept from a very tender age, and had a great deal more experience than either the k'Sheyna Hawkbrother or the Valdemaran Herald.
And perhaps he has isolated himself for my sake, and not his own. That could very well be the case. An'desha stared into the tree-shadows on the other side of the window, and sighed.
He, more than anyone else, knew just how tenuous his stability was. For all intents and purposes, he was still the young Shin'a'in of fifteen summers who had run away from his Clan in order to be schooled in magic by the Shin'a'in "cousins," the Hawkbrothers. For most of his tenure within Falconsbane's mind, he had no more than brief glimpses of what Falconsbane had been doing. He had no real experience of those years; he might just as well never have lived them. In a very real sense, he hadn't. Most of the time he had been hidden in the darkness, snatching only covert glimpses of what Falconsbane was doing. I was afraid he'd sense me watching through his eyes—and what he was doing was horrible.
If he chose, he could delve into Falconsbane's memories now; mostly, he did not choose to do so. There was too much there that still made him sick; and it all frightened him with the thought that Falconsbane might not be gone after all. Hadn't he hidden within the depths of Falconsbane's mind for years without the Dark Adept guessing he was there? What was to keep the far more experienced and practiced Adept from having done the same? He had only Firesong's word that Mornelithe Falconsbane had been destroyed for all time. Firesong himself admitted he had never before seen anything like the mechanism Falconsbane had used for his own survival. How could Firesong be so certain that Falconsbane had not evaded him at the last moment? An'desha lived each moment with the fear that he would look into the mirror and see Mornelithe Falconsbane staring out of his eyes, smiling, poised to strike. And this time, when he struck at An'desha, there would be no escape.
Firesong was teaching An'desha the Tayledras ways of magic, and every lesson made that fear more potent. It had been magic that brought Falconsbane back to life—could more magic not do the same?
But by the same token, An'desha was as afraid of not learning how to control his powers as he was of learning their mysterious ways. Firesong was a Healing Adept; surely he should be the best person of all to help An'desha bind up his spiritual wounds and come to terms with all that had happened to him. Surely, if there were physical harm to his mind, Firesong could excise the problem. Surely An'desha would flower under Firesong's nurturing light.
Surely. If only I were not so afraid....
Afraid to learn, afraid not to learn. There was an added complication as well, as if An'desha needed any more in his life. The first time he had voiced his temptation to let the magic lie fallow and untapped within him, Firesong had told him, coolly and dispassionately, that there was no choice. He must learn to master his magics. Falconsbane never possessed a descendant who was anything less than Adept potential. That potential did not go away; it probably could not even be forced into going dormant.
In other words, An'desha was still possessed of all the scorching power-potential of Mornelithe Falconsbane, an Adept that even Firesong would not willingly face without the help of other mages. The power remained quiescent within the Shin'a'in, but if An'desha were ever faced with a crisis, he might react instinctively, with only such training as he vaguely recalled from rummaging through Falconsbane's memories.
On the whole, that was not a good idea. Especially if the objective was to keep anything in the area alive.
To wield the greater magics successfully, the mage must be confident in himself and sure of his own abilities, else the magic could turn on him and eat him alive. Falconsbane had no lack of self-confidence; unfortunately, that was precisely the quality that An'desha lacked.
I cannot even bear to meet all the strangers here, and it is their land we dwell in! Stupid of course—they would not eat him, nor would they hold Falconsbane's actions against him. But the very idea of leaving this sheltered place and walking the relatively short distance to the Palace, crowded with curious strangers, made him want to crawl under the waterfall and not come out again.
So he remained here, protected, but cowering within that protection.
He found it difficult to believe that no one here would hold against him the evil Falconsbane had done. He had such difficulty facing those stored memories that he could not imagine how people could look at him and not be reminded of the things "he" had done.
And I don't even know the half of them... the most I know are the things he did to Nyara. The truth was, he didn't want to know what Falconsbane had done—never mind that Firesong kept insisting that he must face every scrap of memory eventually. Firesong told him, over and over again, that he needed to deal with every act, however vile, and mine it for its worth.
He decided that he had stewed enough in the hot water; any more, and he was going to look like cooked meat. There were no helpful little hertasi here in Valdemar to attend to one's every need—a fact Firesong complained of bitterly—but An'desha had grown up in an ordinary Shin'a'in Clan on the Plains. That was a place where if a person did not do things for himself—unless he was incapacitated and needed help—they did not get done. He had brought his own towels and robes to leave beside the pool, with extras for Firesong when he should reappear, and made use of those now.
This hot pool was the mirror image of a cold one on the other side of the garden. It had a sm
ooth backrest of sculptured rock, taller than the user's head; hot water welled up from a place in the center of the pool, and a waterfall showered cooler water down from above, from an opening at the top of the backrest. The whole was surrounded by screening "trees" and curtains of vines; Firesong did not particularly care if someone wandered by and got an eyeful, but An'desha was not so uninhibited.
Firesong's white firebird flew gracefully across the garden room as he climbed out of the pool and dried himself off. It landed beside the smaller, cooler pool that supplied the waterfall, in a bowl Firesong had built for it to bathe in. It plunged in with the same enthusiasm as the humblest sparrow, sending water splashing in all directions as it flapped and rolled in the shallow rock basin. When it finally emerged from its bath, it looked terrible, as if it had some horrible feather disease, and its wings were so soaked it could scarcely fly. It didn't even bother to try; it just hopped up onto a higher perch to preen itself dry with single-minded concentration. Hawkbrothers usually had specially-bred raptors as bondbirds, but in this, as in all else, Firesong was an exception.
An'desha got along quite well with the bird, whose name was Aya; especially after he had coaxed some berrybushes the bird particularly craved to grow, blossom, and bear fruit out of season in this garden. Aya was happy here; he did not seem to miss the Vales at all.
Even the firebird felt more at home here than he did.
He recognized the fact that he was feeling sorry for himself, and he didn't much care. The firebird paused in its preening, as if it had read his thoughts, and gave him a look of complete disgust before shaking out its wet tail and turning its back on him.
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