Winds of Change

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Elspeth,” he said, with cheerfulness that didn’t sound too forced, “Once we recover from being run like rabbits, did you have any plans for this afternoon?”

  Starblade eased himself down onto the couch beside the huge block-perch Hyllarr had taken for his own, and scratched beneath the hawkeagle’s breast-feathers. Hyllarr all but purred, pulling one foot up in complete contentment.

  In this alone, Hyllarr was like Karry, but in no other way. Starblade was grateful for that. There were no poses, no lifts of the head, nothing to haunt him. Hyllarr was Hyllarr, and unique. Uniquely intelligent, uniquely calm, uniquely charming. He had succeeded in charming Kethra, who had been immune to the blandishments even of Darkwind’s flirt-of-a-bird, Vree. Hyllarr had her securely enchanted.

  Kethra settled beside him, with an amused glance at the bird. “I have no idea how you’re going to carry him around once he’s well, ashke,” she said. “He’d be a burden even for someone like Wintermoon. I can’t even begin to think how you’re going to have him with you.”

  “I shall worry about that when the time comes,” he told her serenely. He already had some notions on the subject. Perhaps a staff across the shoulders. ... “Is your kinsman coming?”

  “He should be here at any moment,” she began, when footsteps on the staircase heralded their visitor. And, as Starblade had expected, it was Tre’valen who appeared at the doorway - a Tre’valen who, to Starblade’s pained but keen eyes, was a young man in serious emotional turmoil.

  Starblade had been seeing the signs of trouble in Tre’valen’s face for some time now, but it had never been as obvious as it was now. So, he had been right to ask the shaman here. There was something going on, and the Clan needed to know what it was.

  “Sit, please, shaman,” he said mildly.

  Tre’valen obeyed, but with a glance at Starblade that told the Hawkbrother that this shaman was quite well aware Starblade had not asked him here to exchange pleasantries.

  Good. In these times, it was no longer possible to hide behind a veil of politeness. Some of the others of the Clan had relaxed, thinking that now that the Adept was here, as their troubles would be over. They had not stopped to consider the fact that Firesong was here to solve only one of the Clan’s problems. When he had dealt with the Stone, he would be gone. Then there would remain the rest of the puzzle-box. How to safely reunite the Clan. What to do about Dawnfire. What to do about this Territory. How to deal with Falconsbane’s daughter, who was a danger - and in danger - as long as there was any chance her father was still alive.

  How to discover Falconsbane’s fate. What to do about him if he still lived. . . .

  “There was a time,” he began, “when I could afford to hint, to be indirect. I no longer have the strength for such diplomacy. Tre’valen, your Wingsibs of the Clan know why Kethra is here, why Kra’heera asked us to allow her to stay. She was already a Wingsister, and there was obviously a great need for her help.”

  Kethra’s left hand found his right, and she squeezed it, but said nothing.

  Starblade smiled at her, and took strength and heart from her support. “Kra’heera asked us to grant the same status to you, and the same hospitality, but with no explanations. I had not pressed you for such an explanation, but I think the time has come for one.”

  Tre’valen looked very uncomfortable and glanced at Kethra.

  “You need not look to me for aid, Clanbrother,” she replied to his unspoken question. “I am in agreement with Starblade.”

  Tre’valen sighed. “It is because of Dawnfire,” he said, awkwardly.

  Starblade nodded. “I had already surmised that,” he said dryly. “I should like to hear what the reasons are.”

  Tre’valen was clearly uncomfortable, more so than Starblade thought the situation warranted. “Kra’heera wished me to seek her out - if I could find a way to bring her to me - and speak with her as much as I might. It seemed to him quite clear that she has become some kind of avatar of the Star-Eyed, but it is not an avatar we recognize. But it also does not seem to be anything your people had seen before, either. He wanted me to discover what the meaning of this was, if I could. This is a new thing, an entirely new thing. We have had no direction upon it. Kra’heera does not know what to think.”

  He paused, and rubbed the side of his nose, averting his eyes from Starblade’s unflinching gaze.

  “New things simply do not occur often in the Plains, ashke,” Kethra put in. “The Star-Eyed has been a Lady more inclined to foster the way things are rather than bring on changes.”

  But Starblade was watching Tre’valen very closely, and there was more, much more, that Tre’valen had not told j them. For a moment he was at a loss as to what it could be.

  Then the memory of the young shaman’s face, gazing up at a bird that might have been Dawnfire, suddenly intruded. He had not seen that particular expression of desire very often, but when he had, it always meant the same thing.

  “You long for her, do you not?” Starblade asked quietly, and to his own satisfaction, he watched Tre’valen start, and’ begin to stammer something about emotions and proper detachment.

  “Enough,” Kethra interrupted her younger colleague. “Starblade is right, and I should have recognized this when’ I saw it. You have become fascinated - enamored. With Dawnfire. I think perhaps you may have fallen in love with her.”

  “I - have - ” Tre’valen looked from one to the other of them, and capitulated, all at once. “Yes,” he replied, in a low, unhappy voice. “I have. I tried to tell myself that I was simply bedazzled, but it is not simple, nor it is bedazzlement. I - do not know what ‘love’ is, but if it means that one is concerned for the other above one’s own self - I must be in love with her, with that part of her that is still human in spirit. And I know not what to do. There is no precedent.”

  It was one thing to suspect something like that. It was quite another to hear confirmation of it from Tre’valen’s own mouth. Starblade looked to his beloved for some kind of an answer, and got only a tight-lipped shrug. She did not know what to make of this, either.

  A nasty little tangle they had gotten into ... a worse thing still to offend a deity. If indeed, they were doing so.

  “Do I take it that the Star-Eyed has offered you no signs?” Starblade said delicately. “No hint as to how Her feelings run in this matter?”

  Tre’valen shook his head. “Only that She has permitted us to continue to meet, either in this world or in the spirit realms. And she has granted Dawnfire the visions that I told you, the ones I do not understand, about ancient magic returning. And about the need for peoples to unite and change in some way.”

  Starblade closed his eyes for a moment, but no answers came to him, so he analyzed the few facts in the matter. Dawnfire was not dead, at least not in the accepted sense. But she was no longer anything like a human being. Mornelithe Falconsbane had destroyed her body, but left her spirit - her soul - alive and in her bondbird. Such a tragedy would have meant a slow fading until at last there was nothing of the human left, leaving a mentally crippled raptor to live as long as it could. But in this, there was a powerful being that had shown Her interest in the situation by creating some kind of different creature out of Dawnfire. Dawnfire was not like the leshy’a Kal’enedral, who were entirely of the spirit-world, yet could, on occasion, intervene in the physical realm. And not like a mage, who could on occasion intervene in the spirit world. She seemed to dwell in both worlds at once, and yet truly touched neither.

  The Shin’a’in face of the Goddess - her Warrior face, in fact - seemed to have created her, then abandoned her. It was most unwise to second-guess a deity; what appeared to have been abandoned may have, in fact, been left to mature.

  “All that I can say is that I warn you to be careful,” he said at last. “These are strange waters that you swim in, and I know not what lurks beneath the surface. Whatever it is, is fearsome, shaman.”

  “I know,” Tre’valen said at last, after a long
pause. “I know this. The Star-Eyed marked Dawnfire for her own, but to what purpose, She has not revealed. She might not approve of my - inclinations and intentions.”

  Starblade could only shrug. “I am not a shaman,” he pointed out. “You are. I say only - be careful and consider first what is best for Dawnfire and those you have sworn to serve.”

  “I shall.” Tre’valen stood, and moved toward the door. “I will keep you closely informed from this moment of what I see. And - of what I feel.”

  He bowed, turned, and descended the stairs quickly, but the air of trouble he had brought with him remained. Kethra held Starblade’s hands wordlessly for a long time afterward.

  Darkwind tossed his head, and sent his soaking-wet hair whipping over his shoulder. Sweat poured down his forehead and stung his eyes, but external vision did not matter. Internal vision did.

  No matter that he had picked a quarrel with Elspeth not half a candlemark before they joined Firesong in the glade that he had made into their Working Place. No matter that I he had left her without a reply to the hurtful words he had not truly meant, but said anyway. Once across the invisible I boundary, he and Elspeth were two halves of a working whole, and there was no quarrel dividing them.

  He frankly had not expected that of her. He had been faintly surprised when her power joined to his with no hesitation. But he could not be less than she, his pride would not permit it.

  But he wondered, in a tiny, unoccupied section of his mind, if he had deliberately quarreled with her in hopes that she would storm off, making it impossible for them to practice with Firesong driving them?

  Firesong lived up to his use-name; his power-signature crackled with illusory flames, and he used music, drumbeats, to focus it. That made it easier, rather than harder, for Darkwind to follow him; all of his training as a dancer came to the fore, guiding him where he might otherwise I have stumbled blindly. So Darkwind had gone Firesong one better; now in the circle he danced his magic, eyes closed, moving in place.

  I am going to be much leaner before this is all over . .. and a better dancer.

  Elspeth, interestingly enough, chose to follow his dancing with a manifestation of power he had heard of, but had never seen; lightweaving. She created patterns of energy that matched his dancing and Firesong’s drums, uniting them, in a way that he didn’t understand, but fit well.

  It seemed that Firesong didn’t understand it either, for the first time Elspeth had woven her light-web he had been drilling them in the creation of a kind of containment vessel that was meant to contract down around something and hold it -

  Firesong had been startled and had lost the beat - Darkwind had seen only the pattern and danced it - and the web contracted around Firesong.

  The Adept had managed to extract himself from it before it closed convulsively and vanished with a little pop, but it had clearly been a near thing. They had afforded him a bit of a thrill. Ever since then he had guided them through a refinement of this technique; honing it down and making a weapon of it. Sometimes making a real weapon of it; Darkwind Felt something beginning to form before him. Firesong was about to create an enemy for them to face - a very real enemy, for all that it was made of mage-energy.

  He changed his steps, and Felt the light above him weaving into a protection. And he sensed Firesong’s surprise. He guessed that Firesong had intended Elspeth to weave a mage-blade, or even two, for them to fight with. But Elspeth had her own ideas. Perhaps the weariness of his dance steps had told her that defense would be better than offense. Whatever; he followed the pattern she sketched, and the power wove about them into an hourglass-shaped flow, a double-lobed shield, and the fire-creature Firesong had conjured hissed about the outside in frustration, unable to burn a way through. Since the walls of energy flowed, it could not focus its flames on any one place long enough to do any significant damage; the lances of energy dissipated and swirled, but did not burn through.

  It sends out extensions of itself, as tongues of flame. Hmm. I think I can work with that.

  The next time the creature attacked, Darkwind changed his steps. The protection suddenly became “sticky,” if energy could be sticky.

  An attractant, perhaps. Whatever the name of his defense might be, Darkwind caught the tongue of the creature’s energy, and before Firesong had a chance to react, he spun the fire-shape into his shields, integrating it and making its power his.

  The drumming stopped; Darkwind danced on for a moment, letting the power return into the flow of the ley-line beneath them, rather than permitting it to drain away into the air to hang like lightning threatening to strike. Then he stopped and opened his eyes, to gaze somewhat defiantly at their instructor.

  “That was not at all a bad solution,” Firesong said, calmly. “Not what I had in mind, but not at all bad.”

  “Darkwind couldn’t have fought that thing off,” Elspeth said flatly, with no inflection at all. “He was already exhausted from everything else you’d sent at us today.”

  “So you improvised a defense and solution in one; I like that.” Firesong smiled at Elspeth, and Darkwind fought down a surge of irrational anger. “The Shin’a’in say - when you do not like the fight, change the rules. I have often found that to be a useful solution.”

  Firesong looked no more weary than if he had just taken a fast walk across the Vale. Not a hair was out of place, nor a thread of clothing, for all of his furious drumming.

  I should have known. Perfect, as always.

  As Darkwind had anticipated, Firesong had been - very popular among the k’Sheyna, human and non. Power and beauty are both powerful attractants, and Firesong had both in abundance. He, in return, accepted the attentions as only his due - and his devotees seemed to find his very insolence appealing.

  Including Elspeth.

  And as for the hertasi - well, his borrowed ekele swarmed with them. He would not even have had to dress, feed, or bathe himself if he had chosen otherwise. Perhaps he hadn’t.

  Now, Darkwind, your claws are showing.

  But how could he have gone through this past training session without a hair out of place?

  Because he’s a greater mage, a greater Adept, than you or anyone in your Clan has ever seen, that’s how. He’s likely enhanced his endurance for year upon year. Elspeth and the rest are perfectly right to admire him. And there is nothing wrong with him being proud of himself and what he can do. . . .

  “I think that you are near to ready,” Firesong said, standing up, and putting the drum away in the elaborate padded chest he used as a seat. “You work remarkably well together. We can begin planning what we will be doing with your rogue Stone tomorrow, hmm?”

  Darkwind nodded, but Firesong wasn’t done yet. Elspeth headed straight out of the clearing, going for the hot spring and a long soak, but Firesong caught Darkwind by the elbow before he had a chance to leave.

  “There is trouble between you and the Outlander,” he said, making it a statement rather than a question. Darkwind couldn’t meet his eyes, nor could he say anything. “There are also thorns between you and me.”

  Darkwind faced him, resentment smoldering. “Nothing I cannot deal with,” he said - keeping himself from snarling.

  Firesong gave him a most peculiar look as he retook his position on the padded chest. He crossed his legs and intertwined his slender fingers across one knee.

  Then he spoke.

  “Darkwind, I have been working magery since I was barely able to walk,” the Adept said slowly. “My hair was white by the time I was ten. I have ever had a fearsome example to live up to, for my great-great-many-times-greatgrandfather was one Herald Vanyel Ashkevron out of Valdemar. Even as Elspeth’s was, though she knows it not.”

  “But - ” Darkwind was surprised he managed to get that much out, stunned as he was, “ - how?”

  “A long tale, which I shall make as short as I may.” The Adept held up his hand, and his firebird came winging out of the tree cover above, a streak of white and gold lightning that
alighted haughtily on his wrist. “This is the tradition, as it was handed down from Brightstar’s foster-parents, Moondance and Starwind. One of k’Treva wished a child and there was no one in the Clan she favored. Moondance and Starwind also longed to be parents. Vanyel was well favored by all within the Clan, and consented to be father to twins, one of whom was my forefather, Brightstar. But in Valdemar, also longing for a child, was the King’s Own and lover of the Monarch, Shavri. Vanyel obliged her in part so that it would seem that Randale was able to father children, which he was not. That child, Jisa, wedded the next Monarch, Treven, a cousin of the King, and from that line of descent springs yon Outlander.”

  Firesong chuckled at Darkwind’s expression.

  I must look like a stunned ox.

  “Nay, cousin, we of k’Treva are not so well-versed in Outlander doings as you think. It is simply that Brightstar knew of his half-sister and her young suitor, and that the Ashkevron blood calls to blood; we know each other, though she does not know how.” Now Firesong raised one wing-like eyebrow. “That may be the source of the Outlander’s fascination with my humble self.”

  Darkwind snorted. “As if you could ever be humble,” he said sardonically.

  “It has happened a time or two, but not recently.” Firesong shrugged, and transferred his firebird to his shoulder. “I thought a word to you was appropriate. I have much more training than you, more thorough, and more consistent. I have never abandoned my magic. Considering all you have - experienced - you do far better than I had expected. Take that for what it is worth. There is more I would say when the time is appropriate.”

  He hung his head for a moment, then raised it again and brushed the moon-white hair from his forehead. Then he stood, an inscrutable expression on his face, and left by the trail Elspeth had taken, white-feathered firebird on his shoulder.

  I should at least apologize to her, if he is not with her, Darkwind thought, finally. Or even if he is with her . . . though I doubt I could.

  So eventually he, too, followed the pathway out of the clearing to the end of the Vale where Elspeth’s ekele stood. He waited for a moment, listening at the entrance to the hot spring near her tree. There were splashing sounds; someone was definitely in there. There was no “in use” marker at the entrance. . . .