Magic's Pawn

by Mercedes Lackey

  Savil sighed, forgetting to clutch the arms of the chair. “Gods, what are we to do with him?”

  Starwind’s expression sobered again, and he began to answer - but was interrupted. Both Tayledras snapped to attention; their heads swung to face the window as if a single string had pulled them in that direction.

  Two birds shot up from below and hovered there, just outside that window; the white gyrefalcon, and a second, of normal plumage. Starwind leaped out of his chair and flung the window open; the birds swirled in on the blast of wind that entered, and he slammed the window shut again.

  Moondance had jumped to his feet, holding both arms out, ready for the birds, the moment Starwind went for the window. The falcons homed for him unerringly and were settling on the leather guards on his forearms before Starwind had finished latching the window closed.

  The elder Tayledras held out his arm, and the burl falcon lofted to his forearm with a flutter of pinions, settling immediately.

  Both Tayledras stared into their birds’ eyes in silent communion. Savil kept as still as she could; while the bond between Hawkbrother and his birds was a strong one, and the magic-bred birds were considerably more than their wild brethren, their minds were something less than that of a very young child, perhaps a trifle superior to a cat, and it didn’t take much to distract them.

  The white falcon mantled; the buff cried. The Tayledras’ eyes refocused, and Savil read “trouble” in the grim lines of their mouths.

  “What?” she asked.

  “First - tampering, as you had reported it to us, but this time on our grounu and not on k’Vala,” Starwind said, soothing his bird by stroking its breast-feathers. “A clutch of colddrakes, from the look of it. Something has made them move, so when we deal with the drakes, we shall have to look farther afield; there are folk settled in that direction under k’Treva protection. This is the first time we have caught the culprit in the act, and I do not intend to take this lightly.’’

  “I hope you’re counting me in that ‘we’; a clutch of drakes needs every mage you can muster,” she said, getting carefully to her feet and bracing herself against the sway of the ekele.

  “If you would - you would be welcome.” Starwind looked relieved. “But Vanyel - “

  “If he’s hiding, he’ll only come out when he’s ready.

  He’s not going to come to any harm while he’s in the vale. How far are these monsters, anyway?”

  “Haifa day’s footpace; perhaps less,” Moondance replied, “The which I do not like. It speaks for them being harried, or even Gated. In which case, why and who?”

  “Good questions, both of them,” Savil agreed. “Who can we count on?’’

  “Nothing under an Adept, not with drakes; not even Journeymen should handle drake-swarms, at least not to my mind. Shethka. “

  “Don’t tell me, we’re the only three in any shape to take them on, right?”

  “Sunsong is still recovering from moving the firebirds to sanctuary, Brightwind is too old to travel, Stormwing is pregnant.”

  “Lord and Lady - lock her up!” Savil exclaimed.

  “No fear, she’s steadied since she reached Adept. No more headlong races into danger just for the thrill. So - Rainstar is out already, with another call from the kyree, as is Fireflight. And that is the total of k’Treva Adepts.” Starwind grimaced. “If this were summer…”

  “If this were summer, it wouldn’t be colddrakes, ashke, “ Moondance reminded him. “We work with what we have, and grateful that Wingsister Savil is with us.”

  “Let’s get on with it,” Savil said, steadying herself for the long climb down, as the Tayledras transferred their birds from forearm to shoulder for the descent. “So far as I’m concerned, I’ll take a colddrake over your bedamned ladder any time!’’

  The snow cleared just before dawn, and the sun rose, pale and glorious, shining through the bare branches of the trees. The forest was filled with light; with the light came a resurgence of Vanyel’s good sense.

  He sat down on a stump, tired and winded, and suddenly seemed to wake out of the hold of his nightmare. What am I doing out here? he thought, panting. I don’t know where I’m going, I don’t know what I’m going to do when I get there, I have no idea where I am! I just - hared off into nowhere, like a complete idiot!

  He put his pack down at his feet and scooped up some of the new snow in his mitten and ate it; it numbed his tongue, but it didn’t do much for his thirst. I can’t believe I did anything this stupid.

  He wrapped his cloak tighter, and tucked his knees up under his chin, staring at the delicate tracery of white branches against the painfully blue sky. He began to think things through, slowly; one small, painful step at a time.

  He flushed with shame. I can’t believe I did this. Dammit, I know how much Savil loves me, I’ve felt it - and Yfandes, and - damn, I am a rotten fool. Moondance was just trying to say that it’s - easier to have other people around who hurt when you hurt, not that he thought he hurt worse than me. I hurt him by pushing him away.

  His blush deepened. Worst of it is, he’ll likely forgive me without my asking. They didn’t abandon me yesterday; they were busy - probably over my welfare. They gave me exactly what I wanted; to be left alone. I should have been knocked up against a wall.

  He brooded, watching the birch branches swaying in the breeze. He was alone, completely alone, as he had not been since he left Forst Reach. The only thing breaking the silence was the whisper of the breeze and the occasional call of a winter bird. It was the kind of solitude he had sought - and not found - in the ice-dream. And now that he had it, he didn’t want it.

  Not that this place wasn’t peaceful - but a sanctuary, as he had discovered with his little hideaway at the keep, could all too easily become a prison.

  When you lock things out, he thought slowly, you lock yourself in. I think maybe that was what Moondance was trying to tell me.

  He stared at the white branches, not seeing them, and not really thinking; just letting things turn over in the back of his mind. There was a half-formed thought back there, an important one. But it wasn’t quite ready to come out yet.

  Finally he sighed, and turned his thoughts back to his own stupidity. Even if that dream is ForeSight, there’s probably ways around it. Nobody’s going to force me into being a Herald. I could probably stay here if I asked to. There was no reason to go running off into the wilderness with nothing but what I could carry and no weapons. Gods, what a fool I am!

  He swiveled around to look down his backtrail. Even as he watched, the brisk breeze was filling in the last of his tracks with the light, powdery snow.

  He groaned aloud. Oh, fine. Just fine. I probably won’t be able to find my way back now! I don’t need teachers, I need nursemaids!

  Then he blinked, caught in sudden astonishment at the tone of his own thoughts. He sat up a little straighter and took stock of himself, and found that he was - feeling alive again. Feeling ready to be alive.

  It’s like I’ve been sick, fevered, and the fever just broke. Like I’ve been broken inside, somehow, and I’m finally starting to feel healed. I haven’t felt this - good - since Tylendel - died -

  He closed his eyes, expecting pain at that thought. There was pain, but not the debilitating agony of loss it had been.

  ‘Lendel, he thought with a tinge of wonder, I still miss you. It still hurts, you not being here. But I guess Moon-dance was right. I have to get on with my life, even though you aren’t here to share it.

  He opened his eyes on the snow-sparkling forest, and actually managed a weak smile at his own folly. “I really am an idiot, a right royal moon calf. And you’d have been the first to laugh at me, wouldn’t you, ‘Lendel?” He shook his head at himself. “All right, I guess I’d better figure out how to find my way back without a trail to follow.”

  Then the answer came to him, and he laughed at his own stupidity. “Lord and Lady, it’s a good thing you take care of fools. All I have to do is look for m
ages. It’s not like there’s too many enclaves of mages out here, after all! The power should be there for even a dunderhead like me to see.”

  He closed his eyes again, and took a deep breath of the cold, crisp air. Center - ground - and open - well, just like I figured, there they are -

  The surge of Gate-energy hit him with a shock, knocking him senseless.

  * * *

  When Vanyel came to again, the sun was high overhead, shining down on his cheek; it was noon, or nearly. He was lying where he’d fallen, on his side, braced between his pack and the stump. He’d curled up around the pack, and the roots from the stump were digging into his side and leg. His ears were ringing - or was it his head? Whatever; it felt as if he’d been graced with one of Jervis’ better efforts.

  Gods. He glanced up at the sun, and winced. That was a Gate. Nothing else feels like that. Oh, I hurt. It’s a good thing I was wrapped up in this cloak when I fell over, or I’d have frozen.

  He pushed the pack away, and rolled over onto his stomach. That at least got the sun out of his eyes. He got his knees under him, and pushed himself up off the snow with his arms; he was stiff and cold, but otherwise intact. Only his head hurt, and that in the peculiar “inside” way that meant he’d “bruised” those new senses of his. He knelt where he was for a moment, then pushed his hood back and looked around. It looked as if he’d fallen right over sideways when the shock hit him.

  Guess I’d better get moving. Before I turn into a snow-statue. He pulled himself to his feet with the help of the stump, then stamped around the snow for several moments, trying to get his blood moving again.

  I hope nobody noticed I’m gone. I hope that Gate wasn’t somebody out looking for me. I feel enough of a fool as it is.

  He hitched his pack over his shoulder, and took his bearings. All right, let’s try again. Center - and ground - and open - and If I find out that Moondance had anything to do with this I’ll -

  His head rang again, and he swayed and almost fell, but this time the shock was a clear, urgent, and unmistakable wordless cry for help. It sobered him as quickly as Andrel’s bucket of cold water.

  There was no “presence” to the cry, not like any of the Gifted or the Tayledras had; it was just simple and desperate. This was no trained mage or Herald. It could only be an ordinary person in mortal fear.

  Gods! His head swiveled toward the source of the cry as a needle to a lodestone. And without any clear notion of why he was doing so, except that it was a cry for help, and he had to answer it, Vanyel began stumbling toward the source at a clumsy run.

  He had been following a game-trail; now he was right off any path. He ran into a tangle of bushes, and could find no way around it. Driven nearly frantic by the call in his head, he finally shoved his way through it. Then he was in a beech grove; there was little or no growth between the straight, white columns of the trunks, and he picked up his pace until he was at an all-out run.

  But the clear, growth-free area was too soon passed; his breath was burning in his lungs as the forest floor became rougher, liberally strewn with tangles of briar and rocks, and hillier as well. His cloak kept hanging up on things, no matter how hard he tried to keep it close to his body. He tripped; stumbled wildly into the trunk of a tree, and picked himself up only to trip a second time and fall flat in the snow. The breath was knocked out of him for a moment, but that panicked, pleading voice in his “ear within” would not let him give up. He scrambled to his feet, pulled his cloak loose from a bramble, and started running again.

  He must have tripped and fallen a good dozen times over obstacles hidden in the snow, and he surely made enough noise to have warned anything that wasn’t deaf of his coming.

  Anything that wasn’t deaf - or very busy.

  Winded, floundering blindly, and unable to focus on anything more than a few feet ahead of him, he fell over a root just as he reached the crest of a low hill, and dropped into a thicket of bushes that crowned it.

  He saw the danger before he got up and broke through their protective cover. He froze where he was. The “danger” was too intent on its victims to have paid any attention to the racket he’d been making. Likely an entire cavalry troupe could have come on it unawares.

  This was the very edge of the cleared lands of some smallholder; a fertile river-valley, well-watered, sheltered from the worst of the winter weather and summer storms. Arable land like this could well tempt an enterprising farmer out into the possible perils of the Pelagirs. There had been a stockade around the house and barns to guard against those hazards that could be foreseen.

  But the stockade, of whole tree trunks planted in a ring around the buildings, was flattened and uprooted. It could not have held more than a few moments against what had come at the settlers out of the bright winter morning.

  Vanyel had never seen a colddrake, but he knew what it was from descriptions in far too many songs and tales to count.

  Less like a lizard, and more like a snake with short, stubby legs, it was the largest living creature Vanyel had ever seen. From nose to tail it was easily as long as six carts placed end-to-end. Its equine head was the size of a wine barrel; it had row upon row of silvery needle-sharp spines along its crest and down its back, and more spines formed a frill around its neck. It snarled silently, baring teeth as long as Vanyel’s hand, and white and sharp as icicles. Its wickedly curved claws had torn the earth around it. Vanyel knew what those looked like; Moondance had a dagger made from one. Those claws were longer than his hand, and as sharp as the teeth. Huge, deep-purple eyes, like perfect cabochon amethysts, were fixed unwaveringly upon its prey, a young woman and her two children. It was a pure silver-white, like the cleanest of snow, and its scales sparkled in the sunlight; it was at least as beautiful as it was deadly.

  As one mangled body beneath its forefeet testified, the creature knew very well how to use its wickedly sharp claws and teeth.

  But neither tail nor fangs and claws was what held the terrified woman and her two children paralyzed almost within reach. It was the colddrake’s primary weapon - the hypnotic power of its eyes.

  It stared at them in complete silence, a silence so absolute that Vanyel could hear the woman panting in fear where he lay. The drake was not moving; it was going to bring its prey to within easy reaching distance of it.

  Vanyel hadn’t reshielded since he’d first been impaled upon that dreadful dagger of the woman’s fear. He could still sense her thoughts - incoherent, hysteric, and hopeless. Her mind wailed and scratched at the walls that the colddrake’s violet gaze had set up around it. She was trapped, they were trapped, their wills gone, their bodies no longer obeying them.

  That was how her husband, the children’s father, had died; walking right into the creature’s grasp, his body obedient to its will, not his own. The beast was slow, that was the true horror of it - if they could just distract it for a crucial moment, break its gaze, they could escape it.

  Vanyel could “hear” other minds, too - out there on the opposite side of the clearing. The rest of the extended family - there must have been dozens of them - had made it past the slow-moving drake to the safety and shelter of the woods. Only these four had not; the woman, burdened with her toddlers, and the man, staying to protect them. He could “hear” bits of their anguish, like a chorus wailing beneath the woman’s keening fear.

  Vanyel stared at the trapped three, just as paralyzed as they were. His mouth was dry, and his heart hammered with fear. He couldn’t seem to think; it was as if those violet eyes were holding him captive, too.

  There was movement at the edge of his field of vision.

  No - not all had fled to the woods. From around the corner of the barn came a man; limping, painfully, slowly, but moving so quietly that the snow didn’t even creak beneath his boots. He was stalking the drake. A new set of thoughts invaded Vanyel’s mind, fragmentary, but enough to tell him what the man was about.

  : - get close enough to stick ‘im - :

  It was an old
man, a tired, old man; it was the woman’s grandfather. He’d been caught in the barn when the thing attacked and knocked the stockade flat, and he’d seen his granddaughter’s husband walk into the thing’s jaws. He’d recognized the drake for what it was, and he’d armed himself with the only weapon he could find. A pitchfork. Ridiculous against a colddrake.

  : - get them eyes off ‘er an’ she kin run fer it - :

  The colddrake was paying no attention to anything except the prey right before it. The old man crept up behind it without it ever noticing he was there.

  The old man knew, with calm certainty, that he was going to die. He knew that his attack was never going to do anything more than anger the creature. But it would break the thing’s concentration; it would make it turn its head away for one crucial moment.

  His attack was suicidal, but it would give his granddaughter and her children a chance to live.

  He came within an arm’s length of the colddrake - he poised the pitchfork as casually as if he were about to stab a haybale - and he struck, burying the pitchfork tines in the colddrake’s side with a sound like a knife burying itself to the hilt in a block of wood.

  The drake screamed; its whistling shriek shattered the dreadful silence, and nearly shattered Vanyel’s eardrums. It whipped its head around on its long, snaky neck, and it seized the old man before he even let go of the pitchfork. With a snap of its jaws that echoed even above its shrill screeching, it bit the old man’s head neatly off his shoulders.

  Vanyel screamed as he felt the old man die - and the oldster’s desperate courage proved to be too much of a goad for him to resist.

  Anger, fear, other emotions he couldn’t even name, all caught him up, raised him to his feet, drove him out into the open and exploded out of him with a force that dwarfed the explosion he’d caused when Starwind had tried to make him call lightning.

  He was thinking just enough to throw up a shield around the woman and her children with one shouted word. Then he hit the drake with everything he had in him. The blast of raw power caught the drake in the side and sent it hurtling up over the roof of the house - high into the sky - and held it suspended there for one agonizing moment while Vanyel’s insides felt as if they were tearing loose.