Winds of Change (9 page)

He settled for a moment to let his muscles recover; he felt them quivering with fatigue as he sat down. He had pushed himself in this Wind Dance, to far closer to his limits than he usually tried to reach. The steps which appeared deceptively easy, required perfect balance and control and required fully as much effort to sustain as Tre’valen’s more energetic Hawk Dance.

He listened to some of the others discussing dances and dancers past, nodding when someone said something he particularly agreed with. No one else wanted to follow his performance, and some of the players took that as a signal to put their instruments away and rest their weary fingers. As Darkwind settled his back against the tree and slowly sipped his water, he considered the Outlanders - Elspeth in particular. They were less of an enigma than he had feared they would be, although he still wished he knew a great deal more about their culture.

Elspeth was more of a problem than her friend Skif, simply because of her position as his student. She was sometimes fascinating, sometimes infuriating, often both.

She compounded his own problems as he resumed his position as an Adept. As his father had pointed out, he had a great deal to re-learn; how much, Darkwind was only now figuring out. What Starblade didn’t know was that his son was already giving Elspeth lessons, even while he was retraining his own powers.

Elspeth posed a peculiar hazard, that of half-knowledge. She had full training in the Gifts of mind-magic, though no true training in her mage-powers - but some of the Mind-Magic disciplines were similar enough to give her a grasp on magery, but without controls. Her sword had at one time provided some guidance and tutelage, but Elspeth had a great deal to learn about even rudimentary magics. Without the blade Need about to keep her in hand, he had not felt safe about having Elspeth walking around loose without beginning those early lessons in basic control.

What he had not reckoned on - although, given her quick temper, he should have anticipated the difficulty - was her impatience with him.

She wanted answers, and she wanted them immediately. And when he was already impatient with himself, he didn’t feel like explaining himself to an Outlander who had barely even seen magic in action before she came south.

Her insistence on forcing years’ worth of learning into a few weeks was enough to drive the most patient of savants to distraction, much less her current teacher.
She can be so irritating. . . .

He leaned his head back and stared up into the pattern of faint light and deep darkness created by moonlight, mage-lights, and tree branches. There was randomness, no discernible pattern, just as there was no discernible pattern to his life. A season ago, he would never have been able to imagine the events of the past several weeks. A year ago, he never would have believed his life would change in any meaningful way, except for the worse.

He sighed, and ran his hand through his hair, fluffing it to cool and dry it. Elspeth was a disruption to an already confusing situation. The problem was, she had the infuriating habit of being
right
now and again in matters of magic - matters in which she had no experience and little knowledge.

He’d dismissed all of her suggestions initially. Then, when she’d been proven right a time or two, he’d thought at first that it was pure luck. No one could
always
be right or wrong after all, but a day or so ago, he’d finally seen the logic to her ideas’ successes. In general, when she saw something that she thought could be done magically, but that
he
had never learned, her theories turned out to be, in principle, correct.

One case in point that still annoyed Darkwind was treating the lesser lines of power as if they were a web, and the mage was a spider in the midst of that web. She’d reasoned that anyone working magic within the area a mage defined as his “web” would create a disturbance in the lines of power, which the mage at the center would feel, in the same way a spider felt an insect in its web. The advantage of this was that it was a passive detection system; there was nothing to alert the intruding mage that he’d been detected.

It was nothing he’d been taught. He’d been certain it wouldn’t work - until she sketched a diagram, extended a few tendrils of energy, and proved to him that it would. It had been something of a shock to his already-bruised pride, and he followed along numbly as she refined the idea.

As if it weren’t enough that she was attractive, in her unadorned way. She had to be innovative, too.

The mage-lights dimmed, sending the boughs above vanishing into shadows; and he looked back down from his perusal of the branches to find that everyone had left the clearing but him. The celebration was winding down, as couples and groups sought
ekeles
or hot springs, and the rest, not ready to seek beds, gathered in the meeting-circle or beside the waterfall.

He stretched his legs, carefully, to make certain they hadn’t stiffened up on him. They weren’t cramping as he’d feared; he was in better shape than he’d thought, apparently. But he didn’t feel much like rejoining the rest who were still celebrating; he rose slowly, and began pacing, making a point of walking as silently as he could. It was a lot easier to do that here, on the clear paths, than out in the forest. There was no point in losing his hard-won scouting skills just because he was resuming his position as an Adept. There was a Tayledras saying: “No arrow shot at a target is ever wasted, no matter how many break.” It meant that no practice or lesson, however trivial it might seem, was a loss.

Now, reclaiming his magery, he was discovering the downside of that saying.

I
didn ‘t realize how much I’d forgotten until I started trying to teach her,
he admitted to himself.
If she’d just be a little more patient with me. . . .

When something went wrong, Elspeth wasn’t particularly inclined to sit and wait quietly until he got it right again. Magic wasn’t simple; spells had to be laid out methodically, and when something got muddled, a responsible mage couldn’t just erase things and start over. Spells gone awry had to be unmade. Generally Darkwind had to retrace his steps carefully, in order to find out exactly where he’d made those mistakes. Only then could he undo what he’d done, go back to the beginning, and start again, constructing correct paths.

Whenever he was forced to do that, Elspeth would invariably ask questions at the worst possible time, when interruptions would be the most irritating. She never seemed to know when to keep quiet and let him work. Why was she in such a hurry to master every aspect of magic? Mastery took time and practice; surely she was bright enough to realize that.

Even now, he realized, she was irritating him.
How can she do that?
he asked himself, pausing in his pacing for a moment to examine his reaction.
How can she annoy me when she isn‘t even here? It has to be me, not her
-

As he folded his arms and pondered the question, he recalled something that seemed to have nothing to do with Elspeth. It was the reason why he had given in so quickly to the demand that he perform the Wind Dance. And it had nothing to do with Tre’valen’s request, either; he’d have found some excuse to perform that dance before the evening was over, no matter what.

The reason? Stormcloud’s boast of fifteen consecutive split-jumps.

Challenge. He couldn’t resist it. And Elspeth annoyed him because she challenged him in a way no one else ever had - or at least, no female ever had. He wasn’t facing the challenge of a teacher toward a student’s potential, nor, precisely, was he facing the risks of an explorer. There was, though, that annoying realization that he didn’t have the safety of being able to lord skill over her; he was as uneducated in
his
way as she. It didn’t sit well with him, but that was the truth of the matter. Therein lay the challenge: she was a virtual equal.

Now that he had identified the source of his irritation, he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to do anything about it. Perversely, he enjoyed the frustration, just as he enjoyed Elspeth’s company though she grated on his nerves.

She was too impatient, but that was not damning. There was no reason why she shouldn’t intrigue him, just as what he was teaching should be a challenge to her. She was, after all, a bright student. Alert and eager.

Hmm. That’s not the only challenge she represents.
He enjoyed her company quite a bit more than he was fully willing to admit. Of all the possible partnerings he could have made tonight, he had only considered one. She attracted him quite as much as she irritated him, although he was certain that he was not ready emotionally for anything as deep as he had shared with Dawnfire. And there had only been one consideration that held him back from offering Elspeth a feather tonight.

Sadly, that consideration was a major one; one that was going to require any association with her - other than pure friendship - to be choreographed as carefully as any major spell. She was an Outlander; he had no idea of the ways of her people. It might be that the folk of Valdemar took sexual liaisons very seriously; they might even reserve sexual activity for formal bondmates only. Until he knew more about her and her people, he was not going to take the risk of offending her or her country by propositioning her. Even if she would accept an apology, the offense would continue to taint everything he did or said to her.

Lust is easy to come by, after all. I couldn ‘t enjoy it with too much worry, anyway. There is simply too much at stake to permit a night of pleasure to complicate matters.

Not to mention the possible repercussions of bedding the designated heir to a foreign monarchy. Who knew where that would lead? He doubted anyone would declare war over it, but what if a liaison with Elspeth would make her subject to problems when she returned home? She was too important a personage.

Ah, now there’s another thing that irritates me!

He began walking again, turning his steps out of the clearing and down the path that led to the waterfall at the end of the Vale. Now that he’d figured out what it was that was bothering him, it might help to have a talk with someone about it. He could do his best to try to watch his own reactions, but there wasn’t a great deal that he could do about Elspeth’s attitude.

It’s this Heir To The Throne business. She never actually says anything about it, but she radiates it. As if - she doesn’t wear a crown, but she carries herself as if she did. As if she is
always
thinking that she’s being watched and admired, that she is an important person, and expects everyone else to be aware of that.

Never mind that the only Tayledras around who knew of her land were Starblade and Iceshadow, who had studied the old histories. Never mind that even those two had no interest whatsoever in her country and the Heralds who populated it, except as a curiosity and as it had impact in the past on Tayledras concerns.

Treyvan and Hydona might have some ideas about his concerns; they were ambassadors, of sorts - Hydona was female. That could help. In either case they might have some idea how to deal with another Outlander. Particularly an impatient, high-ranking, annoyingly impressive female Outlander.

At the waterfall, all the mage-lights had been extinguished. The moon was still high overhead, though, providing plenty of illumination, pouring down over this end of the Vale and touching the mist rising from the falls with silver. The two he sought were still there, lazing beside the pool like a pair of creatures from legend; both gryphons looked up at his footfall, but to his disappointment he saw that they were not alone. The shaman Tre’valen was with them, and he felt a certain reluctance to discuss one Outlander in front of another. For that matter, he wasn’t certain he wanted to discuss Elspeth with anyone except the gryphons. He trusted them unfailingly.

Nevertheless, since they had seen him and nodded greetings, it would have been impolite to ignore them and walk on. It would be even worse to return the way he came.
It isn‘t going to do any harm to make some idle chat. And Her Highness Elspeth isn’t a problem I can’t cope with on my own, if I just think carefully before I say or do anything.

So he approached the little group - which, he saw as he grew nearer, included the gryphlets. The little ones were tucked under their mother’s wing, quietly sleeping, curled together into softly huffing balls of wings and limbs.

“Tre’valen brought the younglingsss when they began to fret and did not want to sssleep without usss near. And have you had enough of cccelebration?” Treyvan said softly as he neared. The shaman lounged beside Hydona, along the edge of the pool, his hair wet and rebraided.

Looks as if Tre‘valen has been swimming. I didn‘t know that the Shin‘a‘in knew how to swim. I didn’t think there were any bodies of water on the Plains deep enough for them to learn.

“Quite enough, I think,” he replied, and nodded to the shaman. “Your Hawk Dance is very good, Wingbrother. In fact, I don’t know that I’ve ever seen better. I should like to see you dance one day in full home regalia, with a proper set of Shin’a’in musicians and singers.”

“If you enjoyed my dance, you should see my brother; I learned it from him.” Tre’valen stretched, and turned to look him straight in the eyes. “I have been greatly curious, Wingbrother, and I think you will be willing to answer an impertinent question. Was it my imagination, or was there an air of desperation about all of this? As if folk were doggedly determined to enjoy themselves?”

Darkwind had been wondering if he was the only one to notice that. “It was not your imagination,” he replied quietly.