Treyvan turned his attention back to the trio he had been working with before Gisell interrupted. “Yourrr parrrdon,” he said, thinking as he did so that at any other time and place, these three would have been at such odds that there would probably have been bloodshed. Not that they weren’t getting along; they were cooperating surprisingly well. But a south-border Herald, a red-robed Priest of Vkandis, and a mage who had once fought Karse under Kerowyn . . . it could have been trouble.
The priest shrugged, the Herald chuckled, and the mere mage shook his head. “Gisell always difficult has been,” the priest said, in his stilted Valdemaran. “Young, she is.”
“Just wait until she gets out on the lines, she’ll settle down,” the Herald advised. The mage, an older man, bent and wizened, nodded.
“They gen’rally do,” he said comfortably. “Either that, or they don’ last past their first fight.” He glanced at the other two. “You, now—I kin work with the both of ye.”
“Query, one only, had I,” the priest said, looking at Treyvan, but with a half-smile for the old man. Treyvan waited, but the priest, oddly, hesitated. Treyvan wished he could read human faces better; this man’s expression was an odd one. It looked like his face-skin was imploding.
“Red-robe, I am not, truly,” he said after a moment. “Black-robe am I. Or was I.”
He looked from the Herald to the other mage, who shrugged without comprehension, and sighed.
“Black-robe, the Son has said, no more to be. Blackrobes, demon-runners are.” And he watched, warily, for a reaction.
He got one. The old mage hissed and stepped back a pace; the Herald’s eyes widened. It was the Herald who spoke first, not to Treyvan, but to the priest.
“I’d heard rumors some of you could control demons,” he said, his eyes betraying his unease, “but I never believed it—I never saw anything to make me believe it.”
“Control?” The priest shrugged. “Little control. As—control great rockfall. Take demon—send demon—capture demon. The Son likes demons not; the Son has said: ‘Demons be of the dark, Vkandis is all of the light.’ Therefore, no more demon-runners.”
“So she demoted you?” the mage demanded. “Uh—took your rank.”
But the priest shook his head. “No. Rank stays, robe goes, and no more demon-runners.” He turned back to Treyvan. “Question: demons terrible be and all of the dark. Yet them do we use now, here?”
Treyvan lidded his eyes, thinking quickly. How he wished this man’s superior was here! “Jussst what doesss he mean by ‘demonsss’?” he asked the Herald, who seemed to have some inkling of what the priest was talking about.
“There’ve always been stories that some of the Vkandis priests could control supernatural night-creatures,” the Herald replied. The priest followed the words closely, nodding vigorously from time to time when the Herald hit precisely on the facts. “They’re supposed to be unstoppable—they keep whole villages indoors at night for fear of them, and they are said to be able to take individuals right out of their beds in locked homes, with no one the wiser. What these things are, I don’t know—though from what you and Jonaton there have taught me so far, my guess is they’re from the Abyssal Plane, which would mean they aren’t real bright. Basically, you haul them out, give them a target or an area to patrol, turn them loose—and try to stay out of their way.”
The priest was nodding so hard now that Treyvan was afraid his head would come off. “Yes, yes,” he said. “Yes, and terrible, terrible.”
Treyvan’s own magic was of the direct sort; he had little experience in using or summoning creatures of any of the Planes. The closest he had ever come was in calling an elemental or two, like a vrondi. This sort of thing was usually undertaken by a mage with little mind-magic and a fairly weak Mage-Gift, but with a great deal of trained will. A focused and trained will could accomplish a great deal, even when the sorcerer’s own powers were slight, provided the sorcerer had a known source of energy. Unfortunately, when a mage’s own abilities were poor, the most certain source of energy was that of pain and death. Which was why most of the mages summoning other-Planar creatures were blood-path mages.
This priest seemed to be the exception to that rule; he was somewhere on the border between Journeyman and Master, and he certainly didn’t need demons to help him. He seemed very sincere, and very anxious that they know both that he could call demons, and that they were pretty dreadful creatures.
“Terrible, terrible,” the priest repeated. “But Ancar terrible is. Yes?”
Ah, so what he was saying was that the demons were a dreadful weapon, but they were a weapon Ancar might deserve to get in his teeth.
Now here was a dilemma, if ever there was one. A terrifying weapon, an evil enemy. Did the one deserve the other?
Treyvan ground his beak, frustrated. He had flown out to the front lines once, and it was a damned mess. It had Falconsbane written all over it; there was that kind of callous disregard for life. The carnage could not have been described. Ancar was driving his troops over ground so thick with the bodies of the dead that there wasn’t a hand-span of dirt or grass visible anywhere. If a soldier lost a limb, he could bend over and pick up a new one.
To use the weapon, or not?
“Could Ancarrr take yourrr demonsss, once you loosssed them?” he asked the priest urgently. “Could he ussse them?”
The man looked very startled, as if he had not considered that question. Then, after a moment of thought, he nodded slowly.
Treyvan let out a growling breath he did not realize he had been holding in. So much for the moral question. You do not fling a weapon at your enemy that he may then pick up and use.
Or, as the Shin’a’in said, “Never throw your best knife at your foe.”
“No demonsss,” he said firmly. “We do not give Ancarrr demonsss he can ssssend back.” The priest looked relieved. The Herald and old Jonaton definitely looked relieved.
“Now,” he continued, “Let usss once again trrry thisss messshing of sssshieldsss. . . .”
The gryphlets and the two royal twins were playing a game of tag. Of all of them, Hydona reflected, it was the children who were affected the least. For as long as Lyra and Kris had been alive, there had been war with Ancar and danger in Valdemar. For as long as Lytha and Jerven had been alive, they had nested in a perilous world. For both sets of twins, the danger was only a matter of degree. And the tension their parents were under was offset by the joy of having a new set of playmates.
For the two human children, having the fascinating Rris as a new teacher and nurse only made things better. And as for the gryphlets, they now had a brand new playground, and an entire new set of toys and lessons. For the four of them, life was very good.
The youngsters all lived together during the day in the salle. Lessons at the Collegium had been canceled for the duration, and the trainees set to running errands—or, if they were about to graduate, were thrown into Whites and put under the direct tutelage of an experienced Herald. The salle had only one entrance, and that could be easily guarded—and was, not only by armed Guardsmen but by every unpartnered Companion at the Collegium, in teams of four pairs. Inside, ropes could be strung from the ceiling for young gryphlets to climb, practice dummies set up for them to wrestle, and a marvelous maze of things to climb on, slide down, and crawl about in could be constructed for both species. All of these things were done. They caused twice the noise of a war themselves when they were in full swing.
When the children tired, there was always Rris or the two human nurses—a pair of retired Heralds—who were ready to tell stories or teach reading and writing—well, reading, anyway. The gryphlets’ talons were not made for holding human-sized pens. The nurses also instructed the youngsters in the rudiments of any of the four languages now being spoken on the Palace grounds.
Already it was a race to see if the human children picked up more Kaled’a’in, or the gryphlets more Valdemaran, just from playing with each other.
&nbs
p; Hydona sighed, thinking wistfully how much she wished she could join the little ones, if only for an hour. But at least she had them when the day was done . . . and Rris was the best teacher anyone could ever have asked for. It was a truism that those who provided support were greater heroes than the ones who fought the wars, so Rris was as much a hero as his “Famous Cousin Warrl.”
She knew that Selenay felt the same, but Selenay spent far more time away from her little ones than Hydona did, for Selenay’s day did not end when she and a set of pupils were exhausted. The Queen and Kerowyn coordinated everything from the War Room in the Palace.
And it could not be done, save for the Mindspeakers among the Heralds.
Valdemar’s greatest advantage remained its communications. Tactics could be put hand in hand with strategy from the Palace, thanks to Mindspoken dispatches, read in condensed battle-code, from field scoutings. Valdemar’s second advantage was knowledge of the land; Heralds on circuit for so many generations had kept precise maps. Whether the land was high or low, wet or dry, resources could be moved rapidly with a minimum of waste.
Ancar had taken a bite from the side of Valdemar; Selenay and Kerowyn were ensuring that he did not find it an easy bite to digest. Treyvan’s mages harried his mages, concentrating all their power on simply disrupting whatever spells had been set, by targeting the mages for specific, personalized nuisance attacks as well as attempting to break the spells themselves. This, evidently, was a strategy no one had used here. Ancar had not anticipated that FarSeers could identify his mages at a distance, and pass that information to mages who could then tailor their spells to suit. It did seem to be helping. And the Guard and Skybolts ran constant hit-then-run-away attacks against his lines, never letting Ancar’s troops rest quietly, and doing their best to disrupt the supply lines.
The good news was that the civilian evacuation was working. There were a minimum of civilian casualties, those mostly too stupid or stubborn to leave when they were told to. This was something Hydona could not understand. How could humans be so attached to things and property that they would lose their lives simply to stay with those things? Nesting for the deranged.
She watched the youngsters a moment more, her heart aching with the need to cuddle them, human and gryphlet alike. But they had not noticed her, and she would not disturb their moment of joy for the world. Too often, the appearance of a parent meant the bad news that the parent would be away for a while. And while the younglings were amazingly resilient and seemed able to play no matter what, there were dark fears lurking beneath their carefree exteriors. When Mummy or Daddy came to say they would be “away,” there was always that fear that “away” would mean far away, like Teren and Jeri, and Darkwind and Elspeth—and they might not come back again. . . .
Hydona slipped out again, with a nod of thanks to the Guard and a feather touch for three of the Companions. Her pupils were ready for the front lines; soon all of the mages would be with the troops, and it would be time for that dreaded “going away.” Treyvan and Hydona would have to leave the little ones, to take personal command of the mage-troops.
But as she neared the Palace, she saw a horse being led to the stables, and took a second, sharper look at it.
Rough gray coat; dense muscles; huge, ugly head—
It was! It was a Shin’a’in battle mare!
She spread her wings and bounded a few steps, taking to the air to fly the rest of the distance to the Palace. As she neared, she saw someone—one of the gray-clad trainees—waving frantically to her.
She backwinged to a landing, trying not to knock the poor child off her feet, as the girl braced herself against the wash from her wings.
“There’s some ‘un t’ see ye, Lady,” the girl said. “What I mean is, she’s seen th’ Queen, now she wants t’ see one o’ ye gryphons.”
“Do I go to herrr, orrr doesss ssshe come to me?” Hydona asked logically.
“I come to you, Lady,” replied the black-clad Shin’a’in Swordsworn, who emerged from the door behind the trainee. To Hydona’s amazement she used Kaled’a’in, not Shin’a’in or Valdemaran.
This plethora of tongues could get to be very confusing, she thought fleetingly as the Shin’a’in sketched a salute.
“It would, of course, be far too difficult for you to enter this door,” the woman continued. “I bring greetings, Lady, from your kin—”
Then before Hydona could say or do anything, the woman closed her eyes in concentration and began to rattle off a long series of personal messages, messages that were, unmistakably, from Hydona’s kin and friends still in the Kaled’a’in Vale. There were something like twenty of them, and the poor trainee simply stood there in bafflement while the Swordsworn recited.
Hydona simply absorbed it all, lost in admiration. “Rrremarkable. How did you do that?” she asked when the Shin’a’in was done.
The woman smiled. “I was shaman-trained before the Star-Eyed called me to this,” she said simply. Hydona nodded. Since half of the shamanic training required memorization of verbal histories, twenty messages would be no great burden.
Then Hydona noticed something else. The woman was not black-clad, as she had thought, but was garbed in very deep blue.
Well, at least she is not here on blood-feud! That would have been a complication no one needed right now.
“I am here,” the woman said, answering Hydona’s unspoken question, “for the same reason that you are here. I am the emissary from my people to k‘Valdemar, and in token of that, I brought the Queen a true alliance gift. And I see no reason why you should not know it, since shortly all will.” She smiled widely. “It is good news, I think, in a time of bad. Tayledras, Kaled’a’in, and Shin’a’in have united, and are holding open safe exit routes upon the Valdemar border to the west and south. Those places will stay in safe hands. Should all fail, the people of k’Valdemar can do as they did in their past—retreat, and find safe-havens. We, our warriors and yours, shall stay and survive, and work to set all aright.”
Hydona felt limp with relief. That had been her unvoiced, worst fear—that somehow Falconsbane would raise the western border against Valdemar, and trap everyone between an army of his creatures and Ancar’s forces.
And—k’Valdemar? So, the Kingdom of Valdemar was being counted as one great Clan. And by all the Clans. . . ?
Shin’a’in, Tayledras, and Kaled’a’in . . . Hydona could guess at only one thing that could have pried the Shin’a’in out of their Plains, or the Tayledras from their forests—
She sent a glance of inquiry at the woman, who nodded significantly and cast her eyes briefly upward.
So. She had sent forth an edict, had She? Interesting. Very interesting. It made sense, as much as anything did these days—and after all, Treyvan and Hydona had been part of bringing it all about. Of course, it was also entirely possible that the Star-Eyed was being opportunistic. She could be claiming responsibility for events that simply happened, as if it were part of a great Cosmic Plan. Most of this uniting of the Clans and People could have been dumb luck. Still, for whatever reason it happened, there it was, and it was a relief indeed.
This Shin’a’in must have ridden day and night to get here as fast as she did, even with Tayledras Gating to get her to the Vale nearest the Valdemar border!
“Yourrr parrrdon,” Hydona said, as she read the signs of bone-deep, profound fatigue that the woman’s control had hidden with fair success. “I am keeping you frrrom a rrressst that isss sssurely well-earrrned.”
“And I will accept your pardon and take that rest,” the woman said, with a quick smile of gratitude. “And when you meet me later—I am called Querna, of Tale’sedrin.” Then she turned to the poor, baffled trainee, who could not have been much older than twelve or thirteen, and spoke in careful Valdemaran. “My thanks, child. I have discharged the last of my immediate duties, and I will now gladly take your guidance to the room you spoke of.”
“Thank you, warrriorrr! Rrressst well!” Hydona ca
lled after her. How many languages did these people know? Hydona felt a moment of embarrassment at her growling accent. Ah, but accents were unimportant as long as words were understood. And those words! Treyvan would be so pleased!
She hurried to find her mate, to give him the good news, with a lightness of step she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Now, if their tactics of mistake and harassment would hold, if the innocents could escape, if they could only hold Hardorn’s forces long enough for their real weapon to find its mark, then they could celebrate. All the People and their friends together, and the children. . . .
Chapter Fifteen
Firesong rode in front of Skif and Elspeth, telling himself that there was no reason to give in to depression. Things were no different now than they had been when this journey began, but giving himself encouraging lectures did not really help. For the past several days he had hidden his growing and profound unhappiness, feigning a careless enjoyment of his role. There was no point in inflicting any further strain on the others, who had their own worries and stresses.
But this land was appalling. The farther into it they came, the worse it got, as if the closer they went to Ancar’s “lair,” the worse his depredations on his land and people.
Firesong had grown up around the gray and brown of lightbark and willow, sighing-leaf, loversroot and sweetbriar, but the overcast and mud of Hardorn were different, even if the colors were the same as those Vale plants and trees. The grays and browns of Hardorn were those of life departed, not the colors of the life itself. The colors of his robes that had seemed so outrageously bright in Valdemar were sullen and sad. It felt like life had seeped away into the ever-present mud, and he had faded like the colors.
Intellectually, he knew that he had not been prepared for the experience of so many people living together in their cities and towns, and for the problems that caused. Tayledras simply did not live like that giving each person in a Vale a reasonable amount of space and privacy—and outside their Vales, the land was always wild and untamed in every sense. However, he fancied he had come to grips with the way folk lived here, and certainly he had even come to appreciate some of the advantages.
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