Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar (11 page)

Kelvren watched Treyvan—and then looked at every one of the gathered crowd. A sharp eye could see that tears ran from his eyes and dripped from the hook of his beak.

He laid his head down flat on the ground and his wings slumped.

The sixty control points around the perimeter blazed fully now, all of them matched columns of light tapering to a foot high. Treyvan went back to all fours and walked a horselength farther from the crowd, and stopped again at the edge of the Changecircle. He sat up, raised his forearms higher than before, and swept his wings back then forward again, harder. All the perimeter lights swayed inward and another ring of them blazed up from the ground in unison. Another massive flap of his wings, and a third ring shot up and steadied, encompassing Kelvren. Arcs of energy extended from one light to another, seemingly randomly, and then all at once they made a stable, steady pattern which looked like a stained glass rosette.

Treyvan held his own breath for a moment, and said in Kaled’a’in, “Wind to thy wings, sheyna.”

Treyvan snapped his wings open.

A boom of thunder struck the crowd.

Inside the circle, a rising ring of light closed in on Kelvren in the center.

And consumed him.

Daylight surged upward from the circle’s center, and the briefest shadow of wings flickered in it before everyone watching was blinded by it. Treyvan’s irises pinned to width of a finger. He peered resolutely into the light.

There was movement.

There was the shape of a gryphon—getting to its feet. Standing. Its wings were unfolding, and raising up.

Except it was not a shadow against light.

It
was
light, and everything else was shadow compared to it.

Treyvan stepped back, one step. Two. The figure in the center rose up onto its hindfeet. It was Kelvren, but he was radiating light like nothing Treyvan had ever seen before. His body color wisped away, replaced by a glow from inside the feather shafts themselves. The edges of every feather gleamed and rippled in a yellow-white radiance, like the edge of burning paper. His eyes more than glowed—they shone outward in tapered rays of light, wherever he looked.

Kelvren raised a hindfoot, then the other, and stepped up into the air. Calmly, he shone there, suspended off the ground, watching everyone.

And with a single wingbeat, the gryphon of light shot up into the air as a streak, and was gone. He went up higher, until he was a bright speck in the sky amidst the stars.

No one could say a word.

The mote of light descended a minute later.

It shone even brighter than before, and swept over the encampment, making shadows shift as if a new sun was lighting the night up. Kelvren’s flight was effortless.

He backwinged once, and with the lightest of touches, settled atop the mill with his wings spread wide, and regarded everyone below.

Hallock, Pena, Ammari, Whitebird, Rivenstone and Jeft staggered, stunned, to Treyvan’s side. “What—just happened?” Ammari asked.

“I have no idea,” Treyvan admitted.

“Just look at him,” Whitebird gasped. “He’s beautiful.”

“That’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen,” Hallock said.

“He looks just like that tapestry back at White Gryphon,” Rivenstone gasped.

“That’s my gryphon,” Jeft said.

The gryphon of light stayed atop the mill for ten minutes, then he sprang up from the mill’s roof and dove to alight in front of the crowd, banking in to brake and hang in midair without a single wingbeat. His eyes swept them, one by one, and murmurs of astonishment came from nearly everyone.

Kelvren spoke.

“I have become—sssomething morrre than I wasss beforrre—but my hearrrt and allegiancssesss arrre unchanged. Ssso hearrr me,” his voice boomed. “I know what I mussst do. The forcssesss at Deedun know little of magic. Theirrr sssoldierrrsss arrre mossst likely bewilderrred by magic; and by now, they know what a sssingle grrryphon can do. I believe they will rrressspond to what they can sssee, and by that, even the sssimplessst of magic is made magnitudesss ssstrrrongerrr. He who isss afrrraid isss half beaten.” He lifted his from the ground and fanned his wings as he rose, suspended in midair. “I will ssstrrrike, and I will ssshed no blood. And I do it in the name of the Guarrrd, the Herrraldsss, and the Crrrown. Forrr all of you. Forrr all of usss. Forrr Valdemarrr!”

The crowd erupted into cheers and shouts.

The light from Kelvren’s eyes flared brighter, and swept over to Treyvan. “You underrrssstand,” he said, his voice seeming distant. Kelvren gazed upon the rest, where they’d gathered with the convalescents. The illumination surrounded them all, sharpening the shadows. “My frrriends—I will neverrr forrrget you.”

And with those last words, Kelvren rose, did a wing-over, dove down from four winglengths up and slammed his claws down to the ground. The earth trembled, and loose earth momentarily heaved up to knee height. The resulting crater ignited into a white, scintillating brightness. When Kelvren leaped into the sky, the sunlike glow stayed. Then with several massive wingbeats, the gryphon powered away from the crowd, driving up debris and dust, and with each downstroke his brilliant wings surged brighter. Below him, a jagged incandescent line two wings’-width wide crackled up from the shimmering focal point, and split away from its origin. The shimmering swath on the ground directly followed his flightpath. He swept through his skies, leading the line of sunfire from the Changecircle, through the camp, to the great Trade Road. He followed the Trade Road precisely, and the brilliance followed him on the ground. With each wingbeat Kelvren absorbed more magical power from the air, and the swath trailed him as light, following every twist. He coursed faster with each wingbeat than any gryphon he had ever known of. He flew for hours, tracing the Trade Road below, leaving a trail of light all the way to Deedun.

And it did not fade.

Mercenaries and militia alike looked up in astonishment, uncertainty, or stark terror at the figure that shot past them by the time an arrow could be nocked.

Candlemarks passed, and the path of coruscating light etched into the road still did not fade.

Only when he reached Deedun did Kelvren backwing and hover in midair in front of the tallest of the High Keep’s towers. He stared at it, and concentrated.

The citizens of Deedun saw, line by line, the crest of Valdemar, three stories high, burn itself into the wall of the keep’s tower, and blaze like daylight across the city.

And like the wide line of light the length of the Trade Road, it too, did not fade.

Kelvren turned his gaze across the city. Citizens, guards, militia, and mercenary alike were coming out of buildings, all lit by the bright path that came from the far distance through the center of the city. Kelvren knew that with the sheer power he’d put into his mage-light spell, the crest of Valdemar would not fade away for a month or more.

He smiled.

Then the gryphon of light soared into the sky, becoming a bright star, and went home.

Captain Hallock Stavern and the Sixteenth Cavalry, three companies of Guard Regulars, and Kerowyn’s Firebolts advanced steadily along the Trade Road. The militia they met offered no noteworthy resistance, and laid down arms almost apologetically. The Herald with the Crown’s forces adjudicated the conditions of surrender, town by town, and left the locals with their pride. The mercenary company hired by Farragur Elm and his cohorts all but disbanded, demoralized by the showy display of magic they could not possibly match.

Kerowyn held her Firebolts back from taking the city. She was of the opinion that it would be damned unseemly for a merc company to take over the city rather than the Crown’s Guard regiments—especially since so much of the troubles had been caused by
other
mercs.

When the Guards rode in and liberated Deedun, “Chancellor of Prosperity” Farragur Elm and his several of his insurrectionists barricaded themselves in the High Keep. Others guilty of the thefts that financed the power grab were, over time, discovered, arrested, and jailed. In time, Elm himself was dragged, screaming obscenities, from the very tower that Kelvren had marked.

Treyvan conferred with Whitebird and all the mages he knew, still amazed by what had happened. They finally deduced what Kelvren had done. When the power of the Heartstone dissolution surged upward into him, Kelvren Healed himself, but there was too much chaotic raw power, flooding in too quickly. Kelvren used the simplest, but most stable, spell that any mage knew—mage-light—and quelled the chaos of raw power into a tuned current. Instead of ending the spell, as mages normally did when they had enough light, he let it flow through him. The ordeal of having no magic in his body had left his channels and conversion organs needy, and they filled to capacity, then into his bones, then into the feathers themselves. Then with so much free-floating energy in the air, his every movement brought in more.

The road of light was far more than a psychological ploy. The rate he cast it matched the rate the power was absorbed as he flew, and it burned off enough energy for his system to stabilize.

Firesong reported by teleson that Kelvren returned to k’Valdemar the night after his rejuvenation, still as bright as a sunrise. He flew over the Clan fires, Kelmskeep, Errold’s Grove, and the Vale purely for effect.

And so the mill was gradually emptied of officers, and the village was freed from the Guard camp, and trade was reestablished along the great glowing Road. The light faded slowly over the fortnight since Kelvren’s flight, but it wouldn’t leave anyone’s memory anytime soon.

Before long, it was time for Treyvan, Whitebird, Rivenstone and Pena to go back to Haven. They said their good-byes, and with a small bow, Pena gave an oilskinwrapped package to Jeft.

Jeft opened it up, and inside were three gryphon feathers, bound with strips of leather, a folded scrap of paper, and a small leather pouch attached to them. Inside the pouch were six gold coins. His mother read the message.

“Jeft Roald Dunwythie. My friend. If you grow tired of being ‘Boy,’ with this, you will be welcomed into Hawkbrother lands and accepted as our own. Your mother will be welcome also. So speaks Wingleader Kelvren Skothkar of k’Valdemar Vale, Ally of the Crown of Valdemar.”

Ammari felt tears in her eyes, and she hugged her son as strongly as she ever had. They gazed up at the encompassing sky, and listened to the birds together.

And by the end of that month, Captain Hallock Stavern returned triumphantly to Haven, and to the arms of his beloved Genni.

Darkwind handed over a paper slip to Elspeth. “Mmm. Oh this is good. Repercussions from the Kelvren affair. Says here, some mayor demands reparations for the gryphon’s presence in his village. Cites him as a hazard, detrimental to the town’s morale, and an insult to the dignity of his office.”

Elspeth browsed the slip, shrugged, and handed it off to a passing clerk to be handled. “Sounds like a healthy gryphon to me. What’s next?”

T
HE evening service had ended and the night candle burned brightly on the altar. From the steps leading to the Temple, Pytor watched his fellow villagers as they went off to what would normally have been a well-earned meal after a long day in the fields. As priest of this small Temple for fifteen years now, he knew each of them as well as he knew his own kin. Unlike so many other priests, he had come home after being elevated from an acolyte to a fully practicing member of the Sunlord’s representatives on earth. Born in the village of Two Trees, he had returned, drawn by the quiet of the place and a family history that spanned generations. He had offered to come after the old priest who had served Two Trees since before he had been born had died. Not for him was the life some priests craved—cities and towns were too crowded, too noisy, too full of people who sought status and power. He was more than satisfied to minister to his villagers, people he had known since birth.