Magic's Pawn (49 page)

:He may prove useful
,: Moondance said unexpectedly.
:He did defeat the queen-drake.
:

:We bring him, I suppose
,: Savil agreed, though with some misgiving. :
Surely Yfandes can be counted on to keep him out of serious trouble
.:

:I cannot like it, but I must agree
,: Starwind replied reluctantly.
:This is a great deal of danger to be taking one so untested and so newly-healed into
.:

.
I
know
,: Savil said, wishing the coals burning in the fireplace didn’t look so much like a burning town.
.’Believe me, I know.
:

It had been snowing all day, not heavily, but steadily. The air felt almost warm. The Companions moved like white spirits through the drifts of flurries, each carrying double. White horses, white riders - all but one; the one riding pillion behind the second Companion was in smoky black and dark gray, a shadow to a ghost.

“You all look like Heralds,” Vanyel said, from the pillion-pad behind Moondance. “Everyone does except me.”

“How so?” Moondance asked, somewhat surprised.

“It’s your white outfits,” Savil supplied, as Kellan lagged a little so that she could reply without having to turn her head. “Heralds always wear white uniforms when they’re on duty.”

“Ah - youngling,
Tayledras
always wear the colors best suited to blend into the treetops. In winter - white. In summer, obviously, green.” Moondance was carefully plaiting a new bowstring using both hands; he wasn’t even bothering with the reins, he had those looped up on the pommel of the saddle. Vanyel didn’t much care for riding pillion, but it wasn’t bad behind Moondance; the younger
Tayledras
didn’t mind talking to him. As Vanyel had suspected, he had forgiven Vanyel even before he made his apology to the
Tayledras
. Which he had done as soon as he could get Moondance alone; it only seemed right. Now it was as if the incident had never occurred; Moondance even seemed to welcome his questions and encouraged him to ask them.

They’d talked about Vanyel’s Gifts, mostly. Vanyel hadn’t actually
talked
about them to anyone; Savil hadn’t had much opportunity to do so, and Starwind had just gone directly into his head, showed him what to do, and then expected him to do it.

“So, what were we up to?” Moondance asked.

“ForeSight.” Vanyel shivered. “Moondance, I don’t like it. I don’t
want
to know what’s going to happen. Is there any way I can block it?”

“Now that it is active? Not to my knowledge. But you must not let it cripple you,
ke’chara
. You are not seeing the
irrevocable
future, you see the future as it may be if nothing changes. The most likely at this moment. These things may change;
you
can change them.”

“I can?” Vanyel perked up at this.

“Assuredly. But it may be that the cost of such a change is to dissolve a friendship or a love you would not willingly forgo. You may feel such a bond is worth the price.” He smiled crookedly back over his shoulder. “If I were to have the certain knowledge that my lifebond to Starwind would send me to my death tomorrow, I would go willingly to that fate. But I would not tell Starwind of my foreknowledge. Think on that, if you will.”

Vanyel did brood on that for several furlongs.

It was Moondance in Yfandes’ saddle and not Vanyel, because if they were surprised by an attack, Vanyel had been ordered to drop off the pillion pad and stay out of the fight.

It was humiliating - but sensible. Vanyel was rather more acutely interested in “sensible” than in “humiliating” at the moment. If an attack came, he’d obey those orders. He’d learned his lesson with the colddrake.

“Well, are there no more questions,
ke’chara?”

Vanyel shook his head.

“Then I have one for you. Starwind has said that when you were frightened in practice you pulled power from the valley-node. Is this true?”

“What’s the valley-node?”

“Savil did not tell you?” Moondance made a face. “No patience, that one. You surely have felt that all things have energy about them, yes?”

“Even rocks - “

“Ge’teva
, if you sense that, then your Mage-Gift is a most strong one! Even I have some difficulty with seeing that. So; have you seen that this energy flows along lines, as rainwater to streams?”

Vanyel hadn’t, but when he closed his eyes and
extended
he could see that Moondance was right.

“I do now.”

“Then follow a stream to the place where it meets another.’’

He did. There was a kind of - knot. A concentration of power. He told Moondance so.

“That is a node.” Moondance nodded.
“Tayledras
can direct the course of these streams on occasion, which is how we take the magic from places where the wars left it and move it to a place where it is useful. We build our strongholds over places where two or more powerful streams meet; nodes. The energy of the node is such that all of us can use it, but we have found that a-many out-land mages not only cannot sense the streams, they cannot sense nor use the nodes. This may be something only those outsiders at the level of our Adepts do well; I think it is perhaps unique to the
Tayledras
that all of us, from the time we start to feel our Gifts awaken, manipulate this energy as easily as a child plays with building bricks. There was a time -
very
long ago - when the
Tayledras
adopted outlanders very commonly, and it is said that these outlanders changed even as I have. I think that the key to change is using this magic under the direction of
Tayledras
born. So; of outland Adepts we have known, only Wingsister Savil can link into the nodes as well as
Tayledras;
her Gift is very strong. So, it seems, is yours.

Vanyel was confused as to where all this was leading. “But what does that mean, Moondance?”

“For now - you exhausted yourself when you killed the colddrake. That is something you need not do
quite
so quickly, if you remember that you can pull from the life-energy nodes within your sensing range. When
they
are drained -
then
you use your own strength.”

:That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you
,: Yfandes said unexpectedly in his mind.

That gave him food for thought for several more candlemarks.

They’d journeyed westward from Garthhold with the rising of the sun, stopping three times on the way to question folk Starwind knew. The first had been a fur trapper, who’d told them of rumors of a renegade wizard, who was half-human, half-Pelagir changeling and had sorcerous skills and a taste for worldly power. The second was a
kyree
, a wolflike creature with a mind fully the equal of any human.
He
stopped
them;
Mindspeaking to warn them of of the same wizard, but his stories were more than mere rumors; to his certain knowledge the changeling was planning to carve himself a realm of his own as quickly as he could, and had already begun that task.

The third
had been
one of k’Treva’s border-guards - not
Tayledras
herself, but another of the Pelagir changelings, a
tervardi
, a kind of flightless bird-woman.

She was no longer among the living.

When Starwind had been unable to Mindcall her, they had detoured to the grove of trees that held her
ekele
. There was no sign of a struggle, but they found the fragile, white-plumaged wraith in her
ekele
, dead, without a mark upon her, but with her bow in her hand, bowstring snapped, and her empty, glazed eyes wide with what Vanyel assumed was fear.

Starwind spent some moments beside the body, working some kind of subtle magic. Vanyel could feel things stirring, even if he couldn’t yet read them. What it was Starwind found, he would not tell Vanyel, but the three adults grew very grim - and Moondance took the bow and its arrows when they left.

They had been riding all day, cutting cross-country at the ground-eating pace only a Companion could maintain; it was nearing sunset when they slowed, on coming to what looked to be a fairly well-traveled road.

Savil and Kellan halted while they were still within the cover of the forest, and Yfandes came up beside them as silently as it was possible for something the size and weight of a Companion to do. The snow-laden branches of an enormous evergreen shielded them from the view of anyone on that road, although the road itself looked deserted. There didn’t seem to be any new tracks on it, and all the old ones had been softened with a layer of new, undisturbed snow. The road was lined on both sides by a row of these evergreens, though, and anything could lie in wait undetected behind them.

“The village of Covia lies a few furlongs up that road,” Starwind whispered, as the sun sank in sullen glory ahead of them. “There is still a shield upon it, and I do not like the feel of the power behind that shield. I do not, however, sense that the power is presently in the village.”

“Nor I,” replied Savil, after a moment.

:Nothing
,: Yfandes said to Vanyel.

“ ‘Fandes says she doesn’t feel anything either,” he reported, feeling rather in the way.

“My thought is to enter the village and see how much is amiss - and what the people know. Then - Vanyel, it is in my mind to leave you with the villagers. You have enough mage-training to be some protection to them, and they may be of some physical protection to you.”

“I - yes, Master Starwind,” he replied, not much liking the idea, but not seeing any other choice. “What about ‘Fandes?”

:I
don’t like it, but I’ll go with them
,: Yfandes said reluctantly.
:If you need me, I’ll know, and they need a second mount
.:

Vanyel reported Yfandes’ words with a sinking heart. Starwind nodded. “I think she has the right of it; we can cover more ground mounted. Well.” He peered up the road through the gathering evening gloom. “I think it is time to see the handiwork of our enemy.”

Vanyel was doing his best not to be sick. Again. He’d already lost control over his stomach once, just outside of Covia, when they’d found the wizard’s - warn-off.

It was well after sundown, and pitchy dark outside of the village square. The entire population of the village, upwards of seventy people, was jammed into the tiny square. Many of them had brought lanterns and torches. They were crowding about the four strangers and two Companions, like baby chicks seeking the shelter of the hen’s wings - although they were paying scant attention to Savil and less than that to Vanyel and the Companions. The Herald was a dubious and unknown quantity, and the boy and the “horses” were being dismissed out of hand.

The party had made a kind of impromptu dais out of the low porch of the Temple, which was barely large enough to hold the four humans; the Companions were serving as living barricades on either side, to keep them from being totally overwhelmed. As it was it was getting a little cramped, behind the two
Tayledras
. But Vanyel was beginning to be rather glad he was being ignored. Between the tales the villagers were telling Starwind - and the physical evidences they were displaying in the flickering of the torchlight to substantiate those stories-it wasn’t easy for Vanyel to control his nausea.

This
had
been a pleasant little village, as safe as any place inside the Pelagirs. People could feel comfortable about raising children; had time for celebrations now and again.

It was no longer pleasant, nor safe. It was now a place under siege, with no way out.

Two weeks ago a stranger had come to the village, mounted on something that was
not
a horse, and accompanied by a retinue of some of the Pelagirs’ least attractive denizens. He had announced that the town and its inhabitants were now
his
, and had helped himself to whatever he wanted. After one demonstration of his power had left a heap of ash where the village inn had once stood, these folk had more sense than to resist - but they
had
attempted to send for help. The remains of their messenger were found the next morning, impaled on a stake in the middle of the outbound road. The frozen corpse was still there; the Companions had passed it on the way in. From the look of the man, simple impalement had come as a relief.

He had come back about every other night, each time taking both goods and victims. The villagers told Starwind that they had been praying for help; they assumed he was the answer to those prayers. He seemed, to Vanyel at least, to be agreeing with that assumption.

Vanyel was just grateful that the fitful torchlight wasn’t bright enough for him to see much of the details of what had been done to some of the wizard’s victims. He was equally grateful that he was in the dark at the back of the porch, behind Savil.

“ - this’s the last, Master Starwind,” the swarthy, unshaven headman said, wearily, his red-rimmed eyes those of one who had seen far too much of horror in the past few days. “This girl.”

He pushed a mousy blonde female right up onto the porch, where Vanyel couldn’t avoid looking at her. The young woman would still have been attractive - if she hadn’t been vacant-eyed and drooling. She was filthy, her hair matted and hanging in lank snarls. Starwind flinched at the sight of her, but Moondance fearlessly took her face in both his slender hands and gazed into her blank brown eyes for a long time.