Winds of Change (30 page)

Vree’s intelligence was limited; he had to get messages in pieces.
:Who is the message from Horse about?:

:Female and Big Ones.:
Vree leaned into the scratch, his eyes half-closed in pleasure.

:What is the message?:
He had long ago given up being impatient with this slow method of rinding things out. It was simply the way Vree and every other bondbird worked.

:At magic-place,:
Vree replied.

Well, he
wouldn’t
have to ask Vree to track them down. Good thing, too, since Vree was still drowsy from a long night of digestion. He’d be so fat Darkwind wouldn’t be able to find his keelbone if he was fed that way all the time. Interesting, though, that the Companion could talk to Darkwind’s bird. He wasn’t surprised, but it wasn’t something that Gwena had shown she could do - or wanted to do-before this.

And he wasn’t going to have to leave the Vale, which was a bit of a relief. His backside was still a little sore and stiff from the ride yesterday.

:Do you need to leave the Vale?:
he asked Vree. After all, the poor bird had been in here for more than a day. The gyre turned his head upside down as he considered the question and his bondmate.

:No,:
Vree decided.
:Head not itch.:
That was how he had described the way that rogue powers of the Heartstone had affected him; that his head had itched. It had taken Darkwind a while before he had figured out that the bird meant
inside
his head, not outside.

:Go back to Starblade’s, then,:
Darkwind told him.
:Or hunt, if you want - just don’t go too far from the Vale. I’m going to the magic-place and I don’t want you in there. Your head would
really
itch.:

:Yes,:
Vree agreed, and half-spread his wings, waiting for Darkwind to launch him. The scout gave him a toss, and the gyre gained height rapidly, disappearing into the branches above.

No need to guess what the “magic-place” was: the Practice Ground. It was entirely possible to direct the border defenses from in there, although it would require great patience and careful shielding to keep the Heartstone from affecting whatever the three of them did in there.

Maybe that was the idea.

It‘II certainly test the integrity of my shielding. And if I can shield against the Stone and work at the same time
-
I
just might be ready to help handle the Stone myself. The gods only know that there II be no peace for k ‘Sheyna until I do.

Well, if they were waiting for him, they were probably wondering if he’d fallen down a well or something. He’d better go prove he was still alive.

He had heard a mutter of conversation before he crossed the pass-through in the barrier that divided the rest of the Vale from the Practice Ground. The sudden silence that descended as he appeared told him that
he
had been the topic of discussion between Elspeth and the gryphons. He suppressed a surge of irritation at being talked
about.

“Sorry I slept so late,” he said, trying not to let his irritation show. “What are we doing?”

“Conssstructing ward-off ssspellsss,” Hydona said mildly, as if she hadn’t snapped her beak shut in mid-syllable the moment he came into view. “Elssspeth had one of the
hertasssi
look in on you, but you were sssleeping ssso deeply we decsssided you mussst need the ressst.”

His irritation faded a little. At least they had checked on him before doing anything on their own. This particular task was not something he would have expected for the four of them. Ward-offs were simple things, but they had to be constructed and set carefully, another task of patience. Intended to discourage rather than hurt, ward-offs were the first line of defense on the border; the more intelligent the creature that encountered one, the more likely it was to be affected by it. A basilisk, for instance, would not be deterred by one, but a Changewolf probably would, unless it happened to be very hungry. Humans certainly would be; especially wanderers, peddlers, and the like - people who had crossed into Tayledras lands by accident.

Treyvan roused his golden-edged crest and refolded his wings with the characteristic rasp of feathers sliding across feathers. “You and I arrre not to make ward-offsss. Ssstar-blade hasss a tasssk forrr usss; to move ley-linessss,” he said. “We work while Elsspeth watchesss. We are to di-verrrt them to the node beneath the lairrr, sssevering them from the Heartssstone.”

Darkwind frowned. That came under the heading of “tedious and necessary,” as well. But anything to do with the Heartstone had its own share of danger involved. Certainly this was
not
beneath his abilities. It was along the lines of doing his share to work with the imbalanced Stone.

“Do you have any idea why we’re doing this?” he asked.

“Thessse are minorrr linesss,” Treyvan told him. “Ssstarrblade wantsss all the minorrr linesss rrremoved, to sssee if they can be, and to sssee if thisss weakensss the Ssstone.”

“Hmm. It could well be that once the minors are removed, the majors could be split into minors, and diverted in the same manner to other nodes, perhaps other Heartstones if there were any near.”

Treyvan gave him one of those enigmatic, purely-gryphonish expressions of his, the one that always looked to Darkwind like ‘ ‘I know something you would dearly like to know.” He spoke slowly. “It isss not imposssible.”

Darkwind nodded, watching Elspeth with his Othersight; taking note of how she built the ward-off layer by layer, with the deft and delicate touch of a jeweler.

Showing no signs of impatience. And no signs of Attitude, either.

And that irritated him all over again. Why couldn’t she just have been reasonable in the first place?

Because no one put things to her in a way she understood,
he reminded himself.
She’s as much an alien here as the gryphons, no matter how comfortable she looks or how well she seems to jit in.

And she did look as if she fit in, wearing the clothing he’d had made for her instead of those glaring white uniforms or the barbarian getup she’d had in her packs. She didn’t quite look Tayledras, not with that hair - but until she spoke, no one would know she was not one of the Tayledras allies.

Get your mind on the task, Darkwind, and off the female.

“Hasn’t anyone tried this line-diverting with the Stone before?” He couldn’t believe that they hadn’t. It seemed like the logical sort of,thing to do.

“Yesss,” the gryphon said, switching his tail restlessly. “But it did not worrk. And not asss we will be worrrking. Parrrtially the Sstone ressissted having the linesss taken; and parrrtially it rrreclaimed them within a day. We will give the linesss a new anchorrr, fixing them in place, rrrather than letting them find theirrr own anchorrr. Beforrre, they werrre allowed to drrrift, and the Sstone rrreclaimed them.”

Elspeth put the final lock on the ward-off, and sent it away to settle into its place on the border. In his mind’s eye it drifted away like a gossamer scarf blown by a purposeful wind - or a drift of fog with a mind of its own.

“I’m done,” she announced, dusting off her hands. “Your turn.” She took a seat nearby, her face alight with interest. “I thought these lines were like rivers or something. I didn’t know you could change where they went.”

“Generally only the little ones,” Darkwind told her as he stretched. “At least, the major lines take all the mages of a Clan to reroute. That’s something we do when we start a Vale; we find a node or make one, then relocate all the nearest big lines to it, so that we can drain the wild magic of an area into the Heartstone.”

“It isss much like crrreating a riverrrrbed before therrre isss a rrriver,” Hydona said. “When the waterrr comess, itj will follow the courssse laid fonr it. Ssso isss the wild magic to the grreaterrr linesss. The grrreaterrr linesss have theirrr bankssss widened. The unsssettled magicsss join theirrr flow.”

“I can see how that would make sense. And when you leave, you drain the magic from the Stone - along a new-made set of ‘riverbeds,’ I assume,” Elspeth said, with a measure of surety in her voice.

“That, or a series of reservoirs are made temporarily.”

“Then what?” she asked Darkwind.

“Then we sever the lines and let them drift back into natural patterns, and physically remove the Stone,” he told her as he concentrated more of his attention on the complex of shields and probes he would need to handle his task. Shields against the Heartstone, some set to deflect energy away, some to resist, sensory probes to know what it was doing. Heartstones were not precisely
aware,
they certainly weren’t thinking creatures, yet they were alive in a sense and normally tractable. But this one was no longer normal.

“But didn’t you redirect the greater ley-lines in the first place to get rid of wild magic?” she asked, puzzled. “Or am I missing something?”

At least this time she didn‘t phrase it in a way that made me sound like I didn’t know what I was talking about.

“We did - ” This juggling of preparations and explanations was going to get him into trouble if he wasn’t very careful, which, again, was probably Treyvan’s intention. In a job like this, “trouble” had the potential of being very serious indeed. The gryphons were merciless in their testing. “We do. And by the time we leave, it’s gone, changed into a stable form. The magic we’re draining . . . isn’t in its natural state.”
Set the shield just - so - got to be able to sense through it without getting blinded if the Stone surges -
“It doesn’t belong here, and certainly not in a random state. Once we finish, the only thing left is the natural magic flow.”

“Ah, so you take down the Stone and leave, and everything goes back to the way it was before the Mage Wars.” Both he and Hydona had already explained the natural flow of magic energy to her; how it was created by living things, how it collected in ley-lines and reservoirs in the same way that water collected in streams and lakes.

“Probably not exactly, but at least a human can live here without fear that his children will have claws or two heads. And there won’t be any other Changecreatures there either, unless they manage to get past our lands somehow.”
I
’
II
need a secondary shield to slap between the end of the severed line and the Stone. . . .
“And when we leave, we take the innocent or harmless mage-created creatures with us, so
they
don’t have to fear the full-humans who inevitably arrive.”

Her face changed subtly at that, as if it was something that hadn’t occurred to her until that moment. He would have liked to know what she was thinking.

Well, time enough for that later.

“I would like you behind as many shields as you can put up,” he told her. “I do not know what is likely to happen; there has been so much work with the Stone that it may have changed the way it is likely to react. Can you watch through my ‘eyes,’ or Treyvan’s?”

She nodded and extended a tentative “hand” to him, waiting for him to take it.

Well, that’s promising. She didn’t just fling a link at me without asking.
He took her up; making certain that everything including surface thoughts was well-shielded against casual probes. He didn’t
think
she would intrude, but there were always accidents. Some of his personal thoughts were less than flattering to her; most he would rather not share with anyone.

Treyvan indicated his readiness to act with a nod and a “hand” of his own. He settled into partnership with the gryphon with the same ease that one half of an acrobatic team has with the other.

But Treyvan waited for
him
to initiate the action. The gryphon’s intention was clear; he meant to observe the act as a backup in case of trouble but to otherwise let Darkwind take the lead. The Heartstone glowered before them, sullen red, pulsing irregularly, with odd cracklings of random energy discharge flowing over and through it. The lines were anchored firmly in its base, concentrated amidst the major lines like roots from a crystalline tree of lightning, their rainbow-patterned raw power transformed by the stone itself.

Was he ready?

He would have to find out sooner or later. Might as well get it over with.

:All right, old friend,:
he Mindsent.
:Let’s make this one clean and quick.:

Clean it was; quick, it was not.

The Stone resisted their attempts to sever the lines, as Treyvan predicted; he was not prepared for the uncanny way in which it reacted when he severed the first of them, though.

He formed his own power into a thin, sharp-edged “blade,” sliding it into the join of Stone and line, intending to excise the line as if cleaning a rabbit hide. To his surprise, though, it Felt precisely like trying to cut the leg from an old, tough, and overcooked gamebird; he encountered a flexible resistance that was at once yielding and entangling.

He changed his tactic; changed from trying to cut his way through the join, to burning his way through. It resisted that as well, so he changed to a mental image of wielding bitter cold at the join, to make it brittle, then breaking it away. That worked, but it was a good thing he had secondary shields ready to protect the raw “ends,” because the moment he got the line loose and held in one of his “hands,” he Sensed movement from the Stone.