Winds of Change

by Mercedes Lackey

  Only let them drop the shield -

  He watched, as patient as a cat at a mousehole, as a lion above a salt lick, knowing that to reestablish those lines they would have to drop the shield - to use the power of the node in the ruins to try to heal the Stone, they would have to drop the shield. Sooner or later, it would have to come down. There was not enough untainted power within the Vale to even begin to heal the Stone.

  Assuming it could be healed. He didn’t think that was possible. He had hundreds of years of mage-craft behind him, and he would not have cared to try it.

  He had caught his attention wandering for a moment and had redoubled his vigilance when a trembling of the shields alerted him to changes within the Vale.

  LIGHT!

  He fell back onto his couch with a cry of pain, squeezing his watering eyes shut, holding his ears, in a futile reaction to the blinding wall of “light” and “sound” that assaulted his Sight and Hearing.

  If he had not been watching the Vale and the emanations of the Stone within it, he might have missed the death of the Stone itself. If he had been concentrating on something in the material world, he would never have noticed what had happened, for the only effect was in the nonmaterial plane. But since he was, and looking right at it with all of his powers -

  For a moment it blinded his inner eye when it exploded in light and sound. A lesser mage would have been struck unconscious and possibly come away with his Senses damaged.

  It did send him gray in-out for a moment, and fighting his way back to consciousness. That was all that was possible; to hold tightly to reality and claw his way back - he couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything else.

  When he came back to himself, the Stone was gone.

  He could only sit and blink in dumbfounded shock.

  At first he simply could not believe what had happened. It made no sense, it was simply not in the Tayledras to have done such a thing. He thought for a moment that he had been Headbiinded; that his Senses had failed him.

  Then shock gave way to anger. All his plans - destroyed in a single moment! How could he have so completely misjudged them? They should have tried to save their Stone, not destroy it! This was something those suicidal Shin’a’in might have tried, but never the Tayledras!

  He shook his head, growling in bafflement and increasing rage. His head pounded with reaction-pain; his temples throbbed, and a sharp, hot jabbing at the base of his skull warned him that he was overstressing himself. The pain only increased his anger. How could they have done something so completely unexpected, so entirely out of character? More than that, how had they accomplished it, without destroying the Vale as he had intended to do?

  His inner eyes were still dazzled, his outer eyes streamed burning tears in reaction, but he strained his Sight toward the Vale anyway, hoping for a glimpse of something that might give him a clue as to how this unknown Adept had worked the impossible.

  Then, as the dazzle cleared under the pressure of his will, he got more than a clue. Far more.

  Hanging in the between-world where Gates and ley-lines were born, was a lenticular form of pure, shining Power. It occupied the same not-space that the Stone had taken - or rather, that the Power the Stone contained had taken. For a long, stunned moment, he simply stared at it, wondering where it had come from and what it was. It didn’t resemble anything that had been in or near the Vale before. It didn’t resemble anything he had ever seen before, for that matter. And how had it gotten where the Power-form of the Stone had been? How had those two ley-lines gotten attached to it? He had never seen lines running to anything but nodes or Stones before. He realized at that moment that it was the Stone - or rather, it was what had taken the place of the Stone. Whatever that Adept had done to the Stone, destroying it had purified the Power and allowed him to give it a new shape. There were only the two lines leading into it, and it was no longer anything he could use or control - or even touch, directly. It had become something that answered to one hand only, and that hand was not his. Power with monofocused purpose, and linked to a particular personality.

  In fact, it was very like a Gate. Except that there could not be more than a handful of Adepts great enough to create a Gate with power that was not their own.

  He nearly rejected that identification out of hand; even the Bird-Fools would not be so foolhardy as to make a Gate within a node, much less within a Stone! And why create a Gate with so much power in the first place? You couldn’t use it; anything passing through a Gate like that stood a better-than-even chance of winding up annihilated.

  But this was not a Gate, exactly. It was something like a Gate; something that could become a Gate with more shaping. But it was not, in and of itself, a Gate. In fact, the more he examined it, the less like a Gate it became. There was no terminus; it was entirely self-contained. There was no structure that it was linked to; it was linked to the half-world, a kind of Gate doubled back upon itself. That, in fact, was what gave it all the stability it had.

  It was more like one of the little seeking tendrils of power a Gate would spin out, trying to reach its terminus.

  As he thought that, he Saw it move, a little; watched it as it swung slightly to the west and north, seeking something -

  Then he understood. It was seeking something, and that was why it had been made along the pattern of a Gate.

  It was seeking the empty vessel that should have held it, the physical container that had been made by the same hands that had shaped its old vessel. The new Stone in the new Vale.

  Unbelievable. Incredible. Something he would never have thought of doing, had he been in the same position.

  For a moment, he could only blink at the astonishing audacity of it all. Bold, reckless - not only brilliant, but innovative.

  A worthy foe. Not another Urtho, of course, but he was no longer Ma’ar. If he were going to be honest with himself - which he tried to avoid - he would have to admit that another Urtho would not find him much of a challenge these days. Or would he? They would both find themselves dealing with limited power . . . with magic that followed another set of laws, twisted by the end of their own warring.

  Pah, I am woolgathering! No wonder the infant stole a march on me!

  Infant? No - young, but no infant. Old in cunning and in skill - youthful only in years. I wonder . . . is he as beautiful as the rest of the Bird Lovers I have seen?

  For another moment, he was overcome by a feeling of complete and overpowering lust. And not just for the power - but for the one who had created and conceived this plan. What would it be like to have such a one under his control, subject to his whims and fancies, placing his abilities at Momelithe’s call?

  What would it be like to be under the control of such a one. . . ?

  He shook the thoughts away angrily. Ridiculous! These Bird Lovers were winning! He could not permit that! Surely there was something he could do to wrench control of the thing out of their hands.

  Wait; go at it backward. What would he do if he had it? What would it mean?

  It would attract lines to itself; set in a neutral place, it would soon be the center of a web of lines as complete and complex as the old Stone had owned.

  If I had this power-locus, I would have control of the entire energy-web of this area. I could pull all the lines to myself without effort, like a spider whose net spins itself. It would be like my present network of traps and wards, but with such power to tap. . . .

  His thumb caressed the tiny horse as he chewed his lip, his mind running in furious thought. Then the image of the spider in the web came to him again. And with it, an idea. So, little mage, we are going to try new magics, are we? He smiled, and his smile turned vicious. Two can play that game. There was a time when I anchored a permanent Gate upon myself, after all.

  That had been far, far back in the past, before the so-clever Hawkbrothers had ever stretched their wings over this area. When it had been his, and he had fought to possess it against what seemed to be an endless supply of upstarts.
He had been younger then, and willing to try things no one thought possible, for he had already sired a dozen children on as many mothers, human and Changechild, and he was secure in the continuance of his bloodline. And so long as there was someone with direct descent and Mage-Gifts alive, he was immortal. Wild chances had been worth the risk.

  No one had ever tried to shift the focus of a permanent Gate from a place to a person. His advisors said it could not be done, that the power would destroy the person.

  And yet, in the end, the temporary Gates were all partially anchored in a person, for the energy to create them came from that person. He had thought it worth trying. Permanent Gates had their own little webs of ley-lines, and acted much like small nodes - that was before he had learned of the Hawkbrains and their Heartstones, and had learned to lust after real power. It had seemed a reasonable thing, to try to make himself the center of a web of that kind of power.

  So he had researched the magics, then added himself and his own energy-stores to the permanent Gate in his stronghold. He had truly been like a spider in a web then, for whatever he wished eventually came to him, falling into his threads of power. There had been a price to pay - a small one, he thought. After that, he had been unable to travel more than a league from his home, for his fragile body was not able to bear the stress of physical separation for long. On the other hand, he had only to will himself home, and the Gate pulled him through itself, without needing another terminus to step through. His innovation had worked, and then, as now, being home-bound had been a small price to pay for control of all the mage-energy as far as he could See.

  He studied the situation carefully, alert for any pitfalls, The most obvious was that the moment he touched the power-locus, his enemies would know what he was doing. The Adept was guiding it himself, with help from some other mages. How maddening to be able to See all of this and yet be unable to act on it!

  So he would have to be subtle. Well, there were more ways of controlling the direction of the power-locus than by steering the thing itself. There were two lines on it still, and they could be used to bring it closer to him.

  Carefully, he touched the line nearer himself, and pulled; slowly, gradually, changing the direction the power-locus was taking. No one seemed to notice.

  Falconsbane’s smile turned to a feral grin. The hunt was up, but the quarry did not yet know that the beast was on its trail.

  Like all good hunters, he needed to rest from time to time. Falconsbane had pulled the power-locus as far out of line as he cared to for the moment. He had left his servants to themselves for a long while, perhaps too long; they needed to be reminded of his power over them. There were preparations he needed to make here, before he would be ready to make the Gate a part of himself and his stronghold. And before he undertook any of those preparations, or even interfered any more with the power-locus, he needed to rest, eat, refresh himself.

  He left his study, and only then noticed that the air in his manor was thick with the heavy smell of incense and lamp oil, of rooms closed up too long and people sweating with fear. He shook his head at the dank taint of it in the back of his throat.

  Before he got anything to eat or drink, he needed a breath of fresher air.

  He turned around, and was on his way to the top of his tower when every blocked-up and shuttered door and window in his stronghold suddenly flew open with an ear-shattering crash.

  Glass splintered and tinkled to the floor. Sunlight streamed in the windows, and a sudden shocked silence descended for a single heartbeat.

  Then, with a wild howl, a violent wind tore through his fortress. It came from everywhere and nowhere, tearing curtains from their poles, sending papers flying, knocking over furniture, putting out fires in all the fireplaces, scattering ashes to the farthest corners of the rooms. It raced down the hallway toward him, whipping his hair and clothing into tangles, driving dust into his eyes so that he yelped with the unexpected pain.

  Then, before he could react any further than that, it was gone, leaving only silence, chill, and the taste of snow behind.

  That wild wind signaled the beginning of a series of inexplicable incidents. They invariably occurred at the least opportune moment. And they made no sense, followed no pattern.

  They sometimes looked like attacks - yet did nothing substantial in the way of harm. They sometimes looked as if someone very powerful was courting him - yet no one appeared to follow through on the invitation.

  Every time he set himself to work on pulling the power-locus nearer, one of those incidents would distract him.

  The single window in his study was open to the sky since that wind had shattered both shutter and glass. A blood-red firebird - or something that looked like one - flew into his study window and dropped a black rose at his feet. It left the same way it had come and vanished into the sky before he could do anything about it.

  A troop of black riders kept one of his messengers from reaching him, herding the man with no weapon but fear, running him until his horse foundered, then chasing him afoot until he was exhausted. Then they left him lying in the snow for Falconsbane’s patrols to find. By then, it was too late; the man barely had a chance to gasp out what had happened to him before he died of heart failure, his message unspoken.

  All of the broken glass in the windows of his stronghold was replaced somehow in a single hour - but not by clear glass, by blood-red glass, shading the entire fortress in sanguine gloom. He liked the effect, but his servants kept lighting lanterns to try and dispel it a little.

  Every root vegetable in the storage cellar sprouted overnight, growing long, pallid roots and stems. The onions even blossomed. His cook had hysterics and collapsed, thinking Mornelithe would blame him.

  Two hundred lengths of black velvet appeared in the forecourt, cut to cape-length.

  All of the wine turned to vinegar, and all of the beer burst its kegs, leaving the liquor cellar a stinking, sodden mess. Another black rider waylaid the cook’s helper sent to requisition new stores and forced him to follow. There were wagonloads of wine- and beer-barrels, of sacks of roots, all in the middle of a pristine, untouched, snow-covered clearing. With no footprints or hoofjprints anywhere about, and no sign of how all those provisions had gotten there.

  All of the weather vanes were replaced overnight with new ones. The old weather vanes had featured the former owner’s arms; these featured black iron horses.

  A huge flock of blackbirds and starlings descended on the castle for half a day, leaving everything covered with whitewash.

  Something invisible got into the stable in broad daylight, opened all the stalls and paddock gates, and spooked the horses. It took three days to find them all.

  When the last horse - Falconsbane’s own mount, on the few occasions he chose to ride - was found, it was wearing a magnificent new hand-tooled black saddle, black barding, black tack. And in the saddlebag was a scrying crystal double the size and clarity of the one he had shattered in a fit of pique.

  He paced the length of his red-lit study, trying to make some sense of the senseless. It was driving him to distraction, for even those acts that could be interpreted as “attacks” could have been part of a courting pattern. He had done similar things in the past - sent a gift, then done something that said, “see how powerful I am, I can best you in your own home.” The courting of mage-to-mage was sometimes an odd thing, as full of anger as desire ... as full of hate as lust.

  But if it was courting, who was doing it? It couldn’t be Shin’a’in, for they avoided all forms of magic. It couldn’t be Tayledras; they hated him as much as he hated them.

  Who was it, then? He thought he had eliminated any possible rivals - and only rivals would think to court him.

  He stopped stark still, as a thought occurred to him. There had been a time when he had fostered the illusion that the mage the Outlanders were so afraid of had been seeking to ally with him. What if he was the one behind all this? It would make sense - black riders to send against white o
nes - black horses instead of the Guardian Spirits.

  Now that he thought about it, the idea made more and more sense. . . .

  He called a servant, who appeared promptly, but showing less fear than usual. He had not blamed any of his servants for the bizarre events that had been occurring lately, and that had given them some relief. Besides, he had been getting tired of the smell of fear in his halls. Why, he hadn’t even killed a slave in days. . . .

  “I want you to find Dhashel, Toron, Flecker, and Quorn,” he told the servant. “These are their orders, simple ones. There is a land to the north and east: Hardorn. Its king is one Ancar; he is a mage. He is also the sworn enemy of the two Outlanders with the k’Sheyna, and at war with their land of Valdemar. This much I know. I desire to know more. Much more.” He blinked, slowly, and fixed the servant with his gaze. “Do you understand all of that?”

  The servant nodded, and repeated the orders word-for-word. Falconsbane was pleased; he would remember never to kill or maim this one.

  Good service deserved reward, after all.

  “Now go, and tell them to hurry,” he said, turning back to the couch and his new scrying crystal. “I am eager to hear what they can learn.”

  Darkwind rose unsteadily to his feet as Iceshadow tapped his shoulder in the signal that meant Iceshadow was there to relieve him. He staggered out of the former Stone clearing and up the path toward the ekele shared by Nyara and Skif. He was tired, but this couldn’t wait.

  Something or someone was diverting the path of the proto-Gate. Every moment spent in rapport with Firesong moving the proto-Gate toward the new Vale was a moment spent in constant battle to keep the Power-point on the right course.

  They couldn’t be sure who was doing it, of course, but for Darkwind, Falconsbane was high on the list. It was possible to anchor the proto-Gate temporarily, thank the gods, or they would all have been worn away to nothing, for what they had hoped would take only hours was taking days.