Storm Warning

by Mercedes Lackey

  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 matched 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 he
lp 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 smooth 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.

  Well, let it. The firebird had never had its body taken over by a near-immortal entity of pure filth, had it?

  He dried his hair and wrapped himself up in his thick robe, then went off to one part of the garden he considered his very own.

  In the southwestern corner of the garden, near the window, he had planted a row of trees screening a mound of grass off from the rest of the garden. In that tiny patch of lawn he had pitched a very small tent, tall enough to stand in, but no wider than the spread of his arms. It wasn't quite a Shin'a'in tent, and it certainly wasn't weatherproof, but that hardly mattered since it was always summer in this garden. Here, at least, he could fling himself down on a pallet, look up at a roof of canvas, and see something that resembled home. And as long as he made no sound, there was no way to know whether or not the tent was occupied. Firesong had made no comment about the tent, perhaps understanding that he needed it, even as Firesong needed some semblance of a Vale.

  A strand of his own damp white hair tangled itself up in his fingers as he pushed open the tent flap, and he shook it loose impatiently. White hair—he looked Tayledras. Just as Tayledras as Firesong or Darkwind. There was no way that anyone would know he was Shin'a'in unless he told them. Was there a reason for that? Firesong had told him it was because of the magic, but if the Star-Eyed had chosen, She could have given him back his native coloring. For a little time, at least.

  He sat down on the pallet; it was covered with a blanket of Shin'a'in weaving—a gift from a Herald, who'd bought it while on her far-away rounds—and it still smelled faintly of horse, wood smoke, and dried grasses. The scent was enough, if he closed his eyes, to make him believe he was home again.

  If the Star-Eyed could remake my body, couldn't She have taken away the magic, too!

  Magic. For a long time, he'd wanted to be a mage. Now he wished She had taken his magic away, but there was always a reason why She did or did not do something.

  He stared at the canvas walls, glowing in the late afternoon sun coming through the windows, and chewed his lower lip.

  If She left me with magic, it is because She wants me to use it for some reason that only She knows. Firesong keeps saying it's my duty to do this, to Her as well as to myself. He felt a flash of hot resentment at that. Hadn't he risked everything to defeat Falconsbane—not just the pain and death of his body, but the destruction of his soul and his self? Wasn't that enough? How much more was he going to have to do?

  Then he flushed with shame and a little apprehension, for he was not the only one to have risked all on a single toss of the dice. What of those who had dared penetrate to Ancar's own land to rid the world of Ancar, Hulda, and Falconsbane? If Elspeth had been captured, she would have been taken by Ancar for his own private tortures and pleasures. Ancar had hated the princess with a passion that amounted to obsession and, given the depravities that Falconsbane had overheard the servants whispering about, Elspeth would have endured worse than anything An'desha had faced.

  Then there was Darkwind. Falconsbane hated Darkwind k'Sheyna more than any human on the face of the world, and only a little less than the gryphons. If Darkwind had been captured, his fate would have been similar to the one Elspeth would have suffered. And as for Nyara—

  Nyara's disposition would have depended on whether or not King Ancar had recognized her as Falconsbane's daughter. If he had, he would have known she represented yet another way to control the Dark Adept, and she might have been kept carefully to that end. But if not—if Ancar had given her back to her father—

  She would have been wise to kill herself before that happened. In her case, it would not have been hate that motivated atrocity, but the rage engendered by having a "possession" revolt and turn traitor. Motivation aside, the result would have been the same.

  As for Skif and Firesong, the former would have been recognized as one of the hated Heralds and killed out of hand; the latter? Who knew? Certainly Falconsbane and Ancar would have been pleased to get their hands on an Adept, and given enough time, anyone could be broken and used, even an Adept of the quality of Firesong.

&
nbsp; No, he was not the only person who had risked everything to bring Falconsbane down, so he might as well stop feeling sorry for himself. Still, it hurt.

  That was precisely what Firesong would likely tell him, if Firesong had been there, instead of teaching young Herald-Mages the very basics of their Gift.

  Firesong.... Once again, a wave of mingled embarrassment and desire traveled outward in an uncomfortable flush of heat. Somehow Firesong had gone from comforter to lover, and An'desha was not quite certain how the transition had come about. For that matter, he didn't think Firesong was quite sure how it had happened. It certainly made a complicated situation even more so.

  Not that I needed complications.

  He flung himself down on his back and stared at the peak of the tent roof. How did a person sort out a new life, a new home, a new identity, and a new lover, all at once?

  It only made the situation more strained that the new lover was trying to be part of the solution.

  Would it be easier if Firesong had been nothing more than a concerned stranger, perhaps even a tentative friend, as Darkwind or the two gryphons were?

  He's being awfully patient, I suppose. Anyone else would have given up on me by now. Surely a stranger would have blown up at him more than once, have cursed him for his timidity, and consigned him to the ranks of those that could not be helped because they would not help themselves.

  On the other hand, sooner or later Firesong's frustration was going to overcome his patience. He wouldn't be able to be impartial; he made no secret of the fact that he wanted, badly, for An'desha to reach his potential as a mage so that the two of them could enjoy a relationship of two equal partners, the kind that the gryphons had.

  But is that what I want? Part of him longed for it with all his heart. Part of him shied away from the very idea. Firesong frightened him sometimes—the Healing Adept was so very certain of himself and what he wanted. Sometimes I don't think he's had a single doubt in his life. How could I ever have anything in common with someone like him! Powerful, charismatic, blindingly intelligent, and handsome enough to be a young god, Firesong was everything An'desha had imagined he could be, back in that long-ago day when he had run away from his Clan. No longer; he had endured too much, and he could never be that naive or hopeful again.