Winds of Change

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Yes,” he admitted, finally. “There is just enough that mind-magic has in common with true magic to make her ask me some really difficult questions and to occasionally get her in trouble. And that’s the problem - if she’s asking me questions, I’m distracted from polishing my own skills. And when she gets into trouble, it’s sometimes difficult to get her out again, because I am, well, rusty. I’ve forgotten most of the specifics. It’s more annoying than anything else at the moment, but it’s going to be dangerous when facing an enemy.”

  And how would I explain that to her countrymen? “I’m sorry, but I seem to have let your princess get killed. I hope you have a spare?”

  “Can you not asssk anotherrr Adept to train herrr?” the gryphon asked, his crest-feathers erect with interest.

  He sighed, put his back to the wall, and slid down it to sit braced against the cool stone. “That’s just the difficulty, you see. I sponsored her as Wingsib; unless I really get into trouble, she’s my problem and my responsibility. We don’t have that many Adepts in the first place, and, frankly, none to spare to teach Elspeth.”

  Besides, I can just imagine what would happen if she were to pull one of her impertinent little questions on, say, Iceshadow. And how would I explain that? “I’m sorry, but your princess seems to have gotten a bit singed. Don’t worry, truly, I’m sure everything will grow back as good as new. “

  Treyvan scratched meditatively for a moment, then said, “Well, what of me?”

  Darkwind frowned, not understanding the gryphon’s question. “What about you?” he asked.

  The gryphon coughed, and cocked his head to one side. “It ssseemsss to me that I could train herrr. I am Masssterrr, and my ssskillssss, while not Adept-classs, arrre quite finely honed and in usssse. I am sssurely good enough to ansswer herrr quessstionsss, get her out of tanglesss, and drill you both. Anything I cannot deal with, you can sssurely an ssswer, sso long as the child isss not breathing firrre down yourr neck.” His beak gaped in that familiar gryphon grin. “Besssidess, I doubt ssshe will give me asss much backtalk asss sssshe givess you!”

  This was the answer to all his problems. He’d known the gryphon was some kind of mage. He’d seen it proven, and levels were largely a matter of power rather than skill, once one reached anywhere near to Master.

  “Would you?” he said eagerly. “Would you really do that?”

  The gryphon made a chirring sound, something between a snort and a chuckle. “I ssssaid that I would, did I not? Of courssse I will. It will be amusssing to teach a human again.” He eyed Darkwind speculatively. “What isss more, featherrrless sson, I sshall drrrill you asss well. I sshall assk Hydona to help me.”

  Darkwind suddenly had the feeling a sparrow must have when caught out in a storm. He could bluff Elspeth when he didn’t know an answer or concoct a spur-of-the-moment fake that would hold until he recalled the real answer. He wouldn’t be able to do that with Treyvan.

  And what was more, by the glint in Treyvan’s eye, the gryphon knew he’d been doing exactly that.

  On the other hand, he needed the drill badly, and Treyvan was the only one likely to offer. He didn’t like to go to the other mages and beg for their help; many of them were working themselves into the ground, first shielding, then trying to Heal the Heartstone. The rest, now that the rift between mages and non-mages had been dealt with, were often working the borders with the scouts. Thanks to them there were proper patrols and reasonable work shifts, and the scouts were no longer spread so thin that if one of them were ill or injured, it meant a gaping hole in their border coverage. Those holes were how Falconsbane had gotten in and out of their territory at his leisure.

  But that meant there was no one Darkwind really wanted to ask to help him re-train. Except Starblade - but there were too many things between Starblade and he that had yet to be resolved. Besides, Starblade had task enough in simply being healed.

  “There isss ssomething more about Elssspeth, iss there not?” Treyvan asked. The gryphons’ perceptiveness was a constant source of annoyance for Darkwind. It was impossible to be self-indulgent around them. “You have feelingsss beyond the ssstrictly necesssarrry. Sssomething - hmm - perrsssonal?”

  He flushed. “Not really,” he replied, more stiffly than he would have liked. “I’m attracted to her, of course. But that would happen with any beautiful young woman that became my pupil. It’s a natural occurrence in the student-teacher relationship, when both student and teacher are young, and their ages are close.” He winced at saying that; he’d sounded pompous, and he’d come perilously close to babbling. But better that than have Treyvan think there was more between them.

  “Of coursse,” Treyvan said blandly. Too blandly. He could hardly take exception to that. He could suspect that Treyvan was teasing him, but he could prove nothing - which was, of course, exactly what Treyvan wanted. So long as Darkwind couldn’t prove a real insult, the gryphon could tease ail he wanted.

  Crazy gryphon. Treyvan and his sense of humor, he thought sourly. He’d laugh at his own funeral.

  “Anyway,” he continued, as if Treyvan had said nothing at all, “With you drilling her, that won’t come up. I will be too busy with my learning, as will she, and I sincerely doubt she will have any interest in you as a ... uhm. . . . I wouldn’t worry about it, if I were you.”

  “Oh,” Treyvan replied, a definite twinkle in his eyes, “I won’t.”

  Darkwind gritted his teeth; Treyvan was trying to annoy him, and there was no point in letting the gryphon know he was succeeding. That would only encourage him.

  And after all, Treyvan had put up with plenty of harassment from Darkwind’s bondbird, Vree. The forestgyre had a fascination for Treyvan’s crest-feathers, and attempted to snatch them any time he had the chance, no matter how often or forcefully Darkwind warned him off. Sometimes, much to Treyvan’s discomfort, he succeeded in getting a claw on them, too. Once when Treyvan was in molt, he’d even managed to steal one.

  I suppose I can put up with a little teasing. Unlike Vree, Treyvan is at least not snatching at body parts in his joking.

  But he would rather that Treyvan had chosen another subject for the teasing besides his feelings toward Elspeth. . . .

  * * *

  Hydona hissed and clacked her beak to get Elspeth’s attention; Darkwind ignored her, for he had learned that Treyvan would use any moment of distraction to send lances of carefully tempered power at the Hawkbrother’s shields. And Treyvan was watching him very carefully without seeming to; the advantage of the placement of the eyes on gryphon heads. They had excellent peripheral vision; a full three-quarters of a circle, and sharper than Darkwind could believe.

  Despite Treyvan’s comment about asking his mate, Darkwind had not expected that both gryphons would show up to tutor them. But when he and Elspeth traveled across the pass-through to the Practice Ground, four wings, not two, lifted to greet them.

  “Hydona hass more patience than I,” Treyvan had said jovially. “And ssshe hasss taught morrre than I. Ssshe thought ssshe might be a better teacherr for Elssspeth.” His eyes glinted. “That leavesss me morre time to tutorr you.”

  Hydona trilled. “Tutorr orr torturrre?”

  “What about the young ones?” Darkwind had asked, worriedly, trying to ignore Hydona’s remark. “The Heart-stone still isn’t safe for little ones to be near, even with all the shielding we’ve put on it.”

  “They are at the lair,” Treyvan had replied. “The evening of the celebrrration had an unexpected outcome. The kyree, Torrl, hasss decided to ssstay with usss to aid yourr folk in ssscouting, and hisss young cousin, Rris, arrrrived yesssterday to join him. Rris watches the younglingsss. He ssays he isss glad to do ssso.” Treyvan grinned hugely. “It ssseemss that we are sssuch thingss of legend that it isss worrth it to him to be the brrrunt of the younglingsss’ gamesss to be nearrr usss.”

  Darkwind could only shake his head. The kyree were large, yes, but by no means the size of a half-grown gryphlet. Lytha and Jerv
en could bowl him over without even thinking about it; they would certainly give that poor kyree plenty of reasons to regret his offer.

  I can just imagine the games they‘II get up to. Pounce and Chase, Scream and Leap, Who-Can-Send-Rris-Rump-Over-Tail. ...

  Unless, of course, Rris was very agile - or very clever. If the former, he could probably dodge the worst of their rough-and-tumble games, and if the latter, he could think of ways to keep them out of mischief without getting flattened.

  “I hope this Rris has a great deal of patience, my friend,” was all he had said. “Your offspring are likely to think he’s some kind of living tumble-toy.”

  Treyvan had only laughed. “Think on Torrl,” he had replied. “Young Rrisss isss asss clever asss hisss cousin, and verrry good, I am told, with younglingsss. All will be well.”

  Then Darkwind had no more time to worry about the well-being of the brave young kyree who had taken on the task of tending Jerven and Lytha, for their father launched him straight into a course of practice aimed at bringing him up to full and functional Adept status in the shortest possible period of time. It was aggressive, and Treyvan proved to be a merciless teacher.

  Interestingly enough, he proceeded very differently from the way that Darkwind had initially been taught. In his years of learning before, he had mastered the basics of manipulating energies and shielding, then learned the offensive magics, then the defensive. But the first thing that Treyvan drilled him in were the Master-level defensive skills.

  As now; he was constructing a structure of shields, onionlike in their layering, while Treyvan watched for any sign of weakness in them and attacked at that point. The object was to produce as many different kinds of shields as possible, so that an enemy who might not know every kind of shield a Tayledras could produce would be defeated by one, perhaps the third, fourth, or fifth.

  The outermost was not so much shield as misdirection; it bent the mental eye away from the wearer and refracted the distinct magical image of the mage into resembling his surroundings, as if there was no one there. Beneath that was a shield that deflected energy, and beneath that, one that countered it. Yet deeper was one that absorbed energy and transmuted it, passing it to the shield beneath it, which simply resisted, like a wall of stone, and reflected the incoming energy back out through the previous layer. It was the transmutational shield that was giving Darkwind trouble. It would absorb Treyvan’s attacks, right enough, but it wasn’t transmuting the energy-lances into anything he could use.

  “Hold,” Treyvan said, finally, as Hydona lectured Elspeth on the need to establish a shield and a grounding point first, before reaching for node-energy. He had been trying to get that through her head for the past two days; finally, with someone else telling her exactly the same thing, it looked as if she was going to believe that he was right.

  No, she’s going to believe the information was right, he chided himself. That’s what’s important, not the source of the information. If hearing it from Hydona is what it takes, then fine, so long as she learns it now and not the hard way -

  No one in k’Sheyna had ever learned that lesson “the hard way,” not within living memory, but there were tales of a mage of k’Vala who had seized a node without first establishing a grounding point, and discovered that the node was rogue. Nodes could go feral, flaring and dying unpre-dictably, without the stabilizing focus of a Heartstone. The node he seized had done just that; it flared, and with no ground point to hold him and shunt the excess away and no shield to shelter him, he had burned up on the spot, becoming a human torch that burned for days - or so the tales said.

  In fact, it had probably happened so fast that the mage had no notion of what had gone wrong. But whether the tales were true or not, it was still a horrible way to die.

  Maybe all she needed was for it to be a female that taught her, he thought, watching as her grave eyes darkened and lightened according to her mood. Her weapons’ teacher, the Tale‘sedrin-kin that she worships so, is a female; and so is her oldest friend. And her Companion is female. Maybe she just responds better to female teachers.

  A reasonable thought -

  Thwap!

  A mental “slap across the side of his head” woke him to the fact that he was supposed to be working, not woolgathering. Once again, Treyvan had taken advantage of the fact that his attention had wandered to deliver a stinging reminder of what he was supposed to be doing.

  Damn you, gryphon. That hurt.

  With his “ears” still ringing, he turned his attention back to his teacher, whose twitching tail betrayed his impatience.

  “If you do not pay heed, I ssshall do more than ssswat you, Darrrkwind,” Treyvan warned him. “That isss the third time today your thoughtsss have gone drrrifting.”

  He grunted an assent, without mentioning that each time

  Elspeth had been the cause of his wit-wandering. He needn’t have bothered. Treyvan brought it up on his own.

  “Can you not worrrk about a young female without having yourrr mind drrift?” he asked acidly. “Humanss! Al-waysss in sseasson!”

  Darkwind felt his neck and ears heat up as he flushed. “That’s not it,” he protested. Treyvan cut his protests short.

  “It mattersss not,” the gryphon growled. “Now watch thiss time. Thisss is how the transsssmutation ssshould look to you. Crreate the texturrre sso, pussh it frrrom you asss if rrreleasssing a brreath. Halt it herrre frrom yourr body.”

  Darkwind blotted everything out of his mind except the sense of the power-flows, and the magic that the gryphon manipulated. As Treyvan built the proper shield, step by slow, tiny step, Darkwind finally saw what he had forgotten.

  Treyvan had woven a complex texture into the shield, in one area directing power only in, and in another place filtering it out, giving him two power flows - one from himself, the other ready to take in energy directed at him by an enemy, and transmute it. That was the problem; he’d only allowed for the single power-flow from himself. The energy coming in from outside took over the field that was supposed to channel power from himself into the first shield. Back-pressure, as in a wellspring, with only the inevitable leaks to relieve that pressure. Once there, since it wasn’t shield-energy, it eddied or stood idle - or worse, waited to react with another “color” of magic - in all cases, more than frustrating. Potentially deadly, in fact. It never reached the transmutational part of the Working; so it never channeled to the last shield.

  Mentally cursing himself, he rebuilt his shields; this time the transmutational shield worked correctly, giving him two shields for the personal-energy cost of one. At least for as long as the enemy chose to sling spellweapons at him.

  “Now, you know how thisss ssshield can be countered, yess?” Treyvan asked, when the shields had been tested and met with his approval.

  “Two ways - well, three, if you count just blasting away with more energy than the shunt can handle,” Darkwind replied. “The first is to find the shunt - where he’s grounded - and use it to drain energy out of the shield-hooking into it yourself, and taking the energy back. If that happens, the shield starts draining the mage that’s holding it. If you do that fast enough, all his shields will collapse before he can react.”

  Treyvan’s crest-feathers rose with approval. “And?”

  “Attack where the mage isn’t expecting it,” he said. “That can be one of two things - attacking through the shunt, which is structurally the weakest part of the shield, or attacking with something else entirely.” He thought for a moment. “At this point, if I were the attacker, I’d go for something completely unexpected. Like ... a physical attack. Send Vree in to harass him. Toss an illusion at him. Demonsbane - throw a rock at him to make him lose his concentration!”

  Treyvan laughed. “Good. Now - could you have done what the sssword Need did? Could you now transssmute the energy of an attack and sssplit it?”

  He thought about that for a moment; thought about exactly what the sword had done. “Yes,” he said finally. “But
only by doing what she did - holding no shields at all between the attack and the transmutation-layer. That might work for a thing made of metal and magic, but it would be pretty foolhardy for a flesh-and-blood creature.”

  Treyvan nodded. “Neverrrthelesss,” he said, pointing a talon at Darkwind, “It did worrk. And ssso long asss Falconsssbane kept launching magical attackss against heir, it continued to worrrk. Only if he had ssseen what ssshe wass doing and launched a physical attack, or ssome otherr type of magic, would he have failed. He ssufferrred frrrom sshort sssight.”

  Darkwind countered that statement with one of his own. “We were lucky,” he said flatly. “Falconsbane was overconfident, and we were damned lucky. I have the feeling that if he’d had the time to plan and come in force, he could have taken us, all the Shin’a’in, and maybe even their Goddess on, and won.”

  Treyvan hissed softly. “Your thoughtsss marrch with mine, featherlesss ssson,” he said, after a pause. “And it isss in my mind that we ssshall not alwayss be ssso lucky.”

  “In mine, too.” Darkwind nodded toward Elspeth, and tried to lighten the mood. “For one thing, that woman seems to attract trouble.”

  The gryphon’s beak snapped shut, and he nodded. “Yesss, sshe doess. Sshe hass attracted you, forr one. Ssso, let usss sssee if you can conssstruct thossse ssshields cor-rrectly a ssecond time - and thisss time, hold them againssst me.”

  Elspeth paid careful attention to every hissed word Hydona spoke, finding it unexpectedly easy to ignore the fact that her teacher was a creature larger than the biggest horse she had ever seen, with a beak powerful enough to snap her arm off at a single bite. Even with a motivation to pay attention such as that, the gryphon already made more sense than Darkwind did. Neither she nor the gryphons were native speakers of the Tayledras tongue; Hydona was being very careful about phrasing things in unambiguous terms that Darkwind likely thought were intuitively obvious.

  Another case for being careful about what you assume in translation. Interesting. That is a consideration I would expect of a Court-trained person, not a creature like Hydona.