Winds of Change (2 page)

So dawns the new day. . . .

Elspeth rubbed her feather-adorned temples, hoping that her fears and tensions would mercifully go, and leave her mind in peace for just once today.

This isn’t what I expected. I wish this were over.

Herald Elspeth, Heir to the Crown of Valdemar, survivor of a thousand and one ceremonies in her twenty-six years, brushed nervously at a nonexistent spot on her tunic and wished she were anywhere but here. “Here” was the southern edge of the lands held by the Tayledras, whom Valdemarans spoke of as the fabled Hawkbrothers. “Here” was a rough-walled cave, presumably hewn by magic, just outside the entrance to k’Sheyna Vale. “Here” was where Elspeth the Heir was stewing in her own juices from anxiety.

Elspeth was still getting used to these people and their magic. As far as she could tell the cave hadn’t been there before yesterday.

Then again - the walls didn’t have that raw, new look of freshly cut stone, and the sandy, uneven floor seemed ordinary. Even the entrance, a jagged break in the hillside, appeared to be perfectly natural, and healthy plants lined the edges. Greenery grew anywhere roots could find a pocket of soil to hold onto. And the smell was as damp and musty as any cave she’d ever seen during her Herald’s training.

Maybe she was wrong. The cave might always have been there, but its entrance may just have been well-hidden.

Now that she thought about it, that would be a lot more like the style of the only Hawkbrother she knew, Darkwind k’Sheyna. He wasn’t inclined to waste time or energy on anything - much less waste magical power. He took a dim view of profligate use of magery, something he’d made very clear to Elspeth in the first days of their acquaintance.
If
something could be done without using magic, that was the way he’d do it - hoarding his powers and doling them out in miserly driblets.

That was something she didn’t understand at all. When you had magic, shouldn’t you use it?

Darkwind didn’t seem to think so.

Neither did the Chronicles she had read, of Herald-Mage Vanyel’s time and before. Incredible things were possible to an Adept - and that, of course, was
why
she was here. If she’d dared, she’d have used her powers now, to shape a more comfortable seat than the rock she perched on, just inside the cave’s entrance.

That at least would have given her something to
do,
instead of working herself up into a fine froth of nerves over the coming ceremony.

She glanced resentfully at Skif;
he
looked perfectly calm, if preoccupied. His dark eyes were focused somewhere inward, and if he was at all nervous, none of it showed on his square-jawed face. In fact, the only sign that he wasn’t a statue was that he would run a hand through his curly brown hair once in a while.

Elspeth sighed. It figured. He was probably so busy thinking about Nyara that none of this mattered to him. The only thing that being made a Tayledras Wingbrother meant to him was that he’d be able to stay in Hawkbrother territory for as long as it took to find her.

Assuming the sword Need
let
him find Nyara. The blade not only used magic well, it - she - was a person, a woman who’d long ago traded her aging fleshly body for the steel form of an ensorceled sword. It wasn’t a trade Elspeth would have made. Need could only hear, see, and feel through the senses of her bearer - and in times when her bearer wasn’t particularly MindGifted or when she had no bearer at all, she had drifted off into “sleep.”

She’d been asleep for a long time before Elspeth’s teacher, Herald Captain Kerowyn, had passed her on to her pupil. But something - very probably something Elspeth herself had done - had finally roused her from that centuries-long sleep. Once she was awake, Need was a hundred times more formidable than she had been asleep.

She had quite a mind of her own, too. She had decided, once Elspeth was safely in the hands of the Hawkbrothers and the immediate troubles were over, that the Changechild Nyara required her far more than Elspeth did. So when Nyara chose to vanish into the wild lands surrounding the Tayledras Vale, Need evidently persuaded the catlike woman to take the sword with her.

That left Elspeth on her own, to follow her original plan; find a teacher for Valdemarans with mage-talent, and get training herself. Among the few hundred-odd things she hadn’t planned on was being made a member of a Tayledras Clan.
How did I get myself into this?
she asked herself.

:Willingly and with open eyes,:
her Companion Gwena replied, the sarcastic acidity of her Mindspeech not at all diluted by the fact that it was a mere whisper.
:You could have gone looking for Kero’s great-uncle, the way you were supposed to. He’s an Adept and a teacher. You could have followed Quenten’s very clear directions, and he would have taken you as a pupil. If necessary,
I
would have made certain he took you as a student. But no, you had to follow your own path, you
- :

Elspeth considered slamming mental barriers closed against her Companion and decided against it. If she did, Gwena would win the argument by default.

:I
told you I wasn’t going to be herded to some predestined fate like a complacent ewe,:
she snapped back, just as acidly, taking Gwena entirely by surprise. The Companion tossed her mane as her head jerked up with the force of the mental reply, her bright blue eyes going blank with surprise.

:I also told you,:
Elspeth continued with a little less force and just a touch of satisfaction,
:that I wasn’t going to play Questing Hero just to suit you and the rest of your horsey friends. I
will
do my best by Valdemar, but I’m doing it my own way. Besides, how do you know Kero’s uncle would have been the right teacher for me? How do you know that I haven’t done something better than what you planned by coming here and making contact with the Shin’a’in and the Hawkbrothers? Vanyel was certainly a well-trained Adept, and the Chronicles say that the Hawkbrothers trained
him.:

Gwena snorted scornfully, and pawed the ground with a silver hoot. :
I
don’t know whether you ve done better or worse,:
she replied,
:but you were asking how you got yourself into this
-
this
-
brotherhood ceremony. And I
told
you.:

Elspeth stiffened. Gwena had been eavesdropping again.
:That was a purely rhetorical question,:
she said coldly.
:Meant for myself. I wasn’t broadcasting it to all and sundry. And I’d appreciate it if you’d let me keep a few thoughts private once in a while.:

Gwena narrowed her eyes and shook her head.
:My,:
was all she said in reply.
:We’re certainly touchy today, aren’t we?:

Elspeth did not dignify the comment with an answer. If anything, Gwena was twice as touchy as
she
was, and both of them knew why. The only way for Elspeth - or Skif - to be able to remain in the lands guarded by the Tayledras was to be made Wingbrothers to the Clan of k’Sheyna. But that required swearing to certain oaths - which none of their informants had yet divulged, saying only that they’d learn what those pledges were when they actually stepped into the circle to
make
them.

Elspeth had been trained in diplomacy and statecraft from childhood, and undisclosed oaths made her very nervous indeed. It wasn’t so bad for Skif -
he
wasn’t the Heir. But for her, well, the things she pledged herself to here could have serious consequences for Valdemar if she wasn’t very careful. She carried with her the Crown’s authority. The fact that a
forgotten
oath had made a crucial difference to Valdemar in the recent past only pointed up the necessity of being careful what she swore to here and now.

“Nervous?” Skif asked in a low voice, startling her out of her brooding thoughts.

She grimaced. “Of course I’m nervous. How could I not be? I’m hundred of leagues away from home, sitting in a cave with you, you thief - ”

“Former
thief,” he grinned.

“Excuse me.
Former
thief and a bloodthirsty barbarian shaman from the Dhorisha Plains - ”

Tre’valen cleared his throat delicately. “Pardon,” he interrupted, in the Tayledras tongue, “But while I am both shaman and bloodthirsty, I am not, I think, a barbarian. We Shin’a’in have
recorded
history that predates the Mage Wars. Can you say as much, newcomer?”

For a moment, Elspeth was afraid she had offended him, then she saw the twinkle in his eye, and the barely perceptible quirk of one corner of his mouth. Tre’valen had proved to have a healthy sense of humor over the past few days, as they waited out the response of the k’Sheyna Council of Elders to their petition to remain. She had heard him refer to himself as bloodthirsty
and
a barbarian more than once. In point of fact, the shaman seemed to enjoy teasing and challenging her. . . .

“I stand rebuked, oh Elder of Elders,” she replied formally, bowing as deeply as she could. She was rewarded with his broad grin, which grew broader as she continued, “Of course, the fact that you don’t
do
anything with all that recorded history has no bearing at
all
on whether or not you’re barbarians.”

“Of course not,” he replied blandly, evidently well-satisfied with her return volley. “Dwelling overmuch upon the past is the mark of the
decadent.
We aren’t that, either.”

“Point taken.” She conceded defeat, and turned back to Skif. “So I’m here in a cave waiting for some authority to come along and demand that I swear something unspecified, which may or may not bind me to something I’d really rather not have anything to do with - why should I be nervous?”

Skif chuckled, and she restrained herself from snarling. “Now think a bit,” he told her, fondly, but as if she were thirteen again. “You’ve read the Chronicles. Both Vanyel and his aunt swore the Wingbrother Oaths. They
had
to, or they couldn’t have gone in and out of the Vales the way they did. If there was nothing in the oaths to bother them, why should you be worried?”

“Do you want that alphabetically or categorically?” She kept herself from reminding him that she
was
the Heir. After all, she had tried long and hard to make him forget that very thing. Instead she continued, “Because that was a long time ago, and a different Clan. We don’t know if things have changed since then, or whether the oaths differ from Clan to Clan.”

“They do not differ,” Tre’valen said serenely, “and they have not changed in all of our
recorded
history. Many shaman of the Shin’a’in swear to Wingsib; and believe me, the oaths our Goddess requires of us bind us to far more than your own oaths to your Crown and country. And
She
can move her hand to chastise us at her will. I think you need not be concerned.”

Well, that was some comfort, anyway. Elspeth had seen for herself how the Shin’a’in Goddess - who was, so Darkwind said, also the Goddess of
his
people - could and did manifest herself in very tangible fashion. And she had a sure and certain taste of how seriously the Shin’a’in took their oaths to protect their land from interlopers. Well, if Tre’valen knew all about the oaths and felt comfortable with them, she probably didn’t have to worry.

Much.

This would be the first time she and Skif had been permitted inside the Vale of k’Sheyna itself. The Hawkbrother Mage - or was it Scout? - Darkwind had dismissed it with a shrug as “not what it once was” with no indication of what it could be like; and Tre’valen, if he knew what the Vale was like in its prime, was not telling. Descriptions in the Chronicles of Vanyel’s time had been sketchy, hinting at wonders without ever revealing what the wonders were.

:Probably because they didn’t know,:
Gwena said, most of the sarcasm gone from her mind-voice.
-Vanyel and Sayv
-
Savil had too much on their minds to give descriptions of where they‘d been. Besides, why describe somewhere no one else would be allowed to visit? It might tempt them to try, and that would be fatal. The Tayledras tend to perforate first and apologize after.:

:Are you snooping in my head again?:
Elspeth replied, with a bit less venom than before.

:No, you’re echoing at me,:
Gwena told her candidly.
:I
can’t help it if your surface thoughts echo down our link unless you block them. And I can’t help it if you forget to block because you‘re nervy.:

:All right, all right. I stand rebuked. I apologize.:
Elspeth carefully put up her lightest shields, and went back to her brooding.

There was a fourth party sharing the title of Wingbrother with them, but shaman Kethra had sworn her vows a long time ago. She was considerably older than Tre’valen, though not as old as his superior, Kra’heera, and she had been a wingsib for at least a dozen years.
She
was a Healer as well as a shaman, and she was tending to Darkwind’s father, Adept Starblade. Darkwind seemed reluctant to discuss what Mornelithe Falconsbane had done to his father, and Elspeth wasn’t about to press him for answers. She did want to know, however, and badly; not because of morbid curiosity, but because one day she might need to know just how one Adept could so completely subvert another. One of Weaponmaster Alberich’s precepts was that ‘anyone can be broken.’” If it was possible she might find herself on the receiving end of an attempt to break her, she’d like to know what she could expect. . . .