Winds Of Fate

*Chapter Two DARKWIND

Darkwind k'sheyna balanced his bondbird Vree on his shoulder, and peered out across the sea of grass below him with a touch of-regret?

Envy? A little of both, perhaps. From where he stood, the earth dropped in a steep cliff more than a hundred man-lengths to the floor of the Dhorisha Plains-a formidable barrier to those who meant the Shin'a'in and their land any ill. It took knowledge and skill to find the paths down into the Plains, and from there, intruders were visible above the waisthigh grass for furlongs.

His bondbird lifted narrow, pointed wings a little in the warm, grassscented updraft that followed the cliff. "Prey," Vree's thought answered his own, framed in the simple terms of the bondbird's understanding.

Not so much a thought as a flood of images; tree-hares, mice, quail, rabbits, all of them from the viewpoint of the forestgyre as they would appear just before the talons struck.

Prey, indeed. Any would-be hunter attempting to penetrate the Plains without magic aid would find himself quickly turned hunted. The land itself would fight him; he would be visible to even a child, he would never guess the locations of seeps and springs, and without landmarks that he would understand, that intruder would become disoriented in the expanse of grass and gently rolling hills. The guardians of the Plains, and the scouts that patrolled the border, had half their work done for them by the Plains themselves.

Darkwind sighed and turned away, back to his own cool, silent forest.

No such help for him-other than the fact that the eastern edge of k'sheyna territory bordered the Plains. But to the south and west lay forest, league upon league of it, and all of it dangerous.

"Sick," complained Vree. Darkwind agreed with him. Magic contaminated those lands, a place Outlanders called the "Pelagir Hills" with no notion of just how much territory fell under that description. Magic flowed wild and twisted through the earth, a magic that warped and shaped everything that grew there-sometimes for the better, but more often for the worse.

Darkwind took Vree onto his wrist, the finger-long talons biting into the leather of his gauntlet as Vree steadied himself, and launched him into the trees to scout ahead. The forestgyre took to the air gladly; unlike his bondmate, Vree enjoyed the scouting forays. Hunting was no challenge to a bondbird, and there was only so much for Vree to do within the confines of k'sheyna Vale's safe territory. Scouting and guarding were what Vree had been bred for, and he was never happier than when flying ahead of Darkwind on patrol.

Darkwind didn't mind the scouting so much, even if the k'sheyna scouts were spread frighteningly thin-after all, he was a vayshe'druvon.

Guard, scout, protector, he was all of those.

It's the magic, he told himself-not for the first time. If it wasn't for the magic-Every time he encountered some threat to k'sheyna that used magic or was born of it, and had to find some way other than magic to counter that threat, it scorched him to the soul. And worse was his father's attitude when he returned-scorn for the mage who would abandon his power, and a stubborn refusal to understand why Darkwind had done so ...If I could go back in time and kill those fools that set this loose in the world, I would do so, and murder them all with my bare hands, he thought savagely. His anger at those long-dead ancestors remained, as he chose a tree to climb, looking for one he had not used before.

A massive goldenoak was his choice this time; he slipped hand-spikes out of his belt without conscious thought, and pulled the fingerless, backless leather gloves on over his palms. The tiny spikes set into the leather wouldn't penetrate the bark of the tree enough to leave places for fungus or insects to lodge, but it would give him a little more traction on the trunk. As would the shakras-hide soles of his thin leather boots.

In moments he was up in the branches. The game-trail along the edge of the territory lay below him. When two-legged intruders penetrated k'sheyna, most of the time they sought trails like this one.

When scouts patrolled, it was often up here, where the trails could be seen, but where the scouts themselves were invisible.

He shaded his eyes and chose a route through the next three forest giants by means of intersecting limbs, stowing his climbing-spikes and removing his double-ended climbing tool from the sheath on his back.

Then he picked his way through the foliage, walking as surefootedly on the broad, swaying branch as if he were on the ground, pulling another branch closer with the hook end of his tool and hopping from his goldenoak to the limb of a massive candle-pine just as the branch began to bow beneath his weight. He followed the new branch in to the trunk, then back out again to another conifer, this time stowing the tool long enough to leap for the branch above him and swing himself up onto it.

As he chose his next route, his thoughts turned back to that wild magic, as they always did. "what it has done to the land, to us, is unforgivable.

What it could do is worse.

Never mind that the Tayledras tamed that magic, cleansed the places it had turned awry, made them safe for people and animals alike to live there. Not that there weren't both there now-but they often found their offspring changed into something they did not recognize.

But that isn't our real task. Our real task is more dangerous. And my father has forgotten it ever existed, in his obsessions with power and Power.

Darkwind looked back at the treeless sky where the Plains began. The Shin'a'in had no such problems. But then, the Shin'a'in had little to do restricted parts of the Palace dressed in Grays-and I'm a bit too young kujwith magic. Odd to think we were one, once.

Very odd, for all that there was no mistaking the fact that Tayledras features and Shin'a'in were mirrors of each other. The Kaled'ain' they had been the most trusted allies of a mage whose name had been lost over the ages. The Tayledras remembered him only as

"The Mage of Silence," and if the Shin'a'in had recorded his true name in their knotted tapestries, they had never bothered to tell anyone in the Tayledras Clans.

Fatherforgets that the real duty of the Hawkbrothers is to heal the land of the scars caused by that war of magics, even as the Goddess has healed the Plains.

He often felt more kinship with his Shin'a'in "cousins" these days than he did with his real kin. The Lady gave them the more dangerous task, truth to tell, he admitted grudgingly. He looked back again, but this time he shuddered. The Hawkbrothers cleansed-but the Shin'a'in guarded.

And what they guardedsomewhere out there, buried beneath grass and soil, are the weapons that caused all this. And not all of them require an Adept to use them.

Only the Shin'a'in stood guardian between those hidden weapons and the rest of the world.

I don't envy them that duty.

"Men," Vree sounded the alert, and followed it with a vocal alarm-call.

Darkwind froze against the tree trunk for a moment, and touched Vree's mind long enough to see through the bondbird's eyes.

He clutched the trunk, fingernails digging into the bark. Direct contact with the forestgyre's mind was always disorienting. His perspective was skewed-first at seeing the strangers from above, as they peered up through the branches in automatic response to Vree's scream, the faces curiously flat and alien. Then came the dizzying spiral of Vree's flight that made the faces below seem to spin. As always, the strangeness was what kept him aware that it was the forestgyre's eyes he was using and not his own-the heightened sharpness of everything red, and the colors Vree saw that human eyes could not.

He was a passive traveler in Vree's mind, not an active controller. It was a measure of the bond and Vree's trust that the forestgyre would let him take control on occasion, but Darkwind took care never to abuse that trust. In general it was better just to observe-as he found yet again.

Vree spotted one of the strangers raising what was probably a weapon. and kited up into the thick branches before Darkwind had registered more than the bare movement of an arm.

Darkwind released his link with Vree, and his hold on the trunk at the same time, running along the flat branch and using his tool as a balance-aid, and leaping to the next tree limb a heartbeat later. In his first days with Vree it had taken him a long time to recover from a linkand some never did, especially the first time. Caught up in the intoxication of the flight and the kill, they never detached themselves. And unless someone else discovered them, they could be lost forever that way-their bodies lying in a kind of coma, while their minds slowly merged with that of the bird, diminishing as they merged, until there was nothing left of what they were.

That had never happened in Darkwind's lifetime by accident, although there had been one scout, when he was a child, who had a lightning-struck tree crush him beneath its trunk. He had been far from a Healer, and had deliberately merged himself with his bird, never to return to the crippled and dying wreck of his body. He remained with k'sheyna within his bird's mind, slowly fading, until at last the bird vanished one day, never to return.

Slower death, but death all the same. Darkwind thought pragmatically, climbing a pine trunk by hooking the stub of a broken branch above him to ascend to a crossover branch. He preferred to avoid such a nonchoice altogether.

He slowed as he neared the strangers, and dropped to all fours, stalking like a slim tree-cat along the branch and taking care not to rustle the leaves. Not that it would have mattered to the intruders, who called to each other and laughed as if they had no idea that they were being observed, or that they were in forbidden territory.

His jaw tightened. they are about to find out differently. And they're damned lucky that it's me who found them. there are plenty of others-including Father-who would feather them with arrows or make ashes of them without waiting to find out if they're ignorant, stupid, or true hostiles. Not that they'll ever know enough to appreciate the difference, since I'm going to throw them out.

There were seven of them, however, and only one of him, and he had not survived this long as a scout by being incautious. First he called to Vree, for his Mindspeech was not strong enough to reach to the two nearest scouts.

"Call alert," he said shortly. Vree knew what that meant. He'd contact the birds of the two scouts nearest, and they, in turn, would summon their bondmates. If Darkwind didn't need their help, he would let them know through Vree, and they would turn back. But if he did need them, they were already on the way.

He followed the intruders for several furlongs as they blundered along the game trail, their clumsiness frightening all the creatures within a league of them into frozen silence, leaving behind them a visible trail in the scuffed vegetation, and an invisible one in the resinous tang of crushed pine needles and their own human scent. Two of the men bore no visible weapons; the rest were armed and armored.

Vree's scorn, as sour and acidic as an unripe berry, tempted him to laughter. "Cubs," the bird sent, unprompted, images of bumbling young bears and tanglefooted wolf pups.

Well, this was getting him nowhere. Nothing that the intruders had said or done gave him any idea of their intent. With a sigh, he decided that there was no choice in the matter. He was going to have to confront them.

Decision made, he worked his way up ahead of them, climbed down out of the branches, restored his climbing-tool to his back, limbered his bow, and waited for them to catch up to him.

They practically blundered into him; the one in the lead saw him first; an ordinary enough fellow, his brown leather armor marking him as a fighter rather than a forester. He shouted in surprise and quite literally jumped, even though Darkwind had not moved. Of course, Darkwind's own intricately dyed scouting gear and hair dyed a mottled brown made a near-perfect camouflage, but he wasn't that invisible.

Citymen, Darkwind groaned to himself. I ought to just let the ice-drakes do my job for me...Except that there were no ice-drakes in k'sheyna territory, nor anything else large and deadly enough to eliminate them. Except the gryphons or the firebirds-but that might well be what brought them here in the first place. Darkwind did not intend to have either his friends or his charges wind up as some fool hunter's trophies.

Instinctively, they closed ranks against him. He spoke before the strangers recovered from their startlement; using the trade-tongue that the Shin'a'in favored in their dealings with Outlanders. "You are trespassing on k'sheyna lands," he said, curtly. A bluff, but I doubt they'll know how thin we're spread. And let them wonder if they'd have been taken by Tayledras, or something else. "You must leave the way you came.

Now." They certainly couldn't miss the bow in his hands, his hooked climbing-staff on his back, or the steely menace in his voice. One of them started to object; the man next to him hushed him quickly. The fellow in the lead narrowed his eyes and frowned, looking him up and down as if measuring him.

"There's only one," the objector whispered, obviously unaware of how keen Tayledras hearing was; his silencer cut him off with "Only one we can see, you fool. Let me handle this." The man stepped forward, moving up beside Leather Armor. "Your pardon, my lord," he said, with false geniality. "We didn't know, how could we? There are no signposts, no border guards-"

"Tayledras have no need of signs," Darkwind interrupted coldly.

"And I am a guard. I am telling you to leave. Your lives will be at hazard, else." Did that sound as stupid as I think it did? Or did I convince them they don't dare chance M I may not be as f~bk as I'm pretending to be?

"I shall not permit you to pass," he warned, as they continued to

hesitate.

The Objector plucked at Speaker's sleeve; Leather Armor frowned and turned his head to listen to the others' whispered conference without taking his eyes off Darkwind. This time they spoke too softly even for him to hear, and when they turned back to face him, Speaker wore a broad, bright-and empty-smile.

Damn. they've seen through me. I look like a lad, and I didn't feather one of them before I stopped them. My mistake.

"Of course we'll leave, my lord," he said with hollow good humor.

"And we're very sorry to have trespassed." Darkwind said nothing. Speaker waited for a response, got none, and shrugged.

"Very well, then, gentlemen," he said and gestured back down the path. "Shall we?" They turned, as if to go-I've seen this before. They somehow know-or guess only one of me right now. They think they're going to catch me off-guard. Idiots. He alerted Vree with a touch, dropped, and rolled into the brush at the side of the trail They were making so much noise they didn't even hear him move.

They turned back, weapons in hand, and were very surprised to see that he wasn't where they expected him to be. Before they managed to locate him, he had popped up out of the brush, and the one Darkwind had mentally tagged as "Speaker" was down with an arrow in his throat.

He dropped back into the cover of the bushes as Vree dove at the unprotected head of one of the men in the rear of the party, the one who had been making all the objections. The man shrieked with feminine shrillness and clapped both hands to his scalp as Vree rose into the branches with bloody talons.

That's one down and one hit. I think that takes out anyone who might be a mage.

It didn't look as if the rest of this was going to be that easy, though.

Leather Armor was barking orders in a language Darkwind didn't recognize, but as the rest of the men of the party took to cover and began flanking him, Darkwind had a fairly good idea what those orders were.

Do they want a live Hawkbrother, or a dead border guard? The question had very real significance. If the former, he could probably take them all himself; they would have to be careful, and he wouldn't. But if the latter, he was going to have his hands full.

His answer came a few moments later, as an arrow whistled past his ear, and no rebuke from Leather Armor followed. A dead border guard, then. Damn. My luck is simply not in today...There were at least two men with bows that he recalled, and he was not about to send Vree flying into an arrow. He told the forestgyre to stay up in the branches and worked himself farther back into the bushes.

That proved to be a definite tactical error. Within moments, he discovered that he had been flanked. just my luck to get a party with an experienced commander. Now he had the choice of trying to get to thicker cover, or taking on one of the men nearest him.

Thicker cover won't stop an arrow. That decided him. He put aside his bow, and slid his climbing-staff out of the sheath at his back.

He rose from cover with a bloodcurdling shriek not unlike Vree's, the staff a blur of motion in his hands. The man nearest him fell back with an oath, but it was too late. He had misjudged the length of the staff, and the wicked climbing-hook at the end of it, designed to catch and hold on tree bark, caved in half his face and lodged in his eye socket.

Darkwind jerked the hook free and dropped, as another man belatedly aimed an arrow at him. It went wild, and Darkwind took to cover again.

That leaves four.

"Brothers come," Vree said. And, hopefully, added, "Vree hunt..."No, dammit, featherhead, stay up there!"

"P: Vree replied.

Darkwind swore at himself Got too complicated for him again. He thought emphatically, "Arrows!"

" replied Vree, just as rustling in the dry leaves told Darkwind that he was being stalked.

He Mindtouched cautiously, ready to pull back in an instant if it proved that the stalker had any mind-powers.

Ordinary, ungifted-but this one was Leather Armor. Darkwind knew he wasn't going to take him by surprise with a yell and a hooked stick.

He worked his way backward, wondering where the other two guards that Vree had called for him were. His Mindspeech wasn't strong enough to hear them unless they were very near, but Vree and the other bond birds of the scouts patrolling nearby were in constant contact. Vree was trained to serve as a relay point-if there was anything to relay.

The rustling stopped, and Darkwind froze so that he did not give himself away. They remained where they were, he and Leather Armor, for what seemed like hours. Finally, just when Darkwind's leg had started to cramp, Leather Armor moved again.

Meanwhile, Darkwind had an idea. "Vree, play wounded bird. Find a

man with no arrows, and take him to the brothers." It was an old trick in the wild, but it just might work against citybred folk. After a moment, Darkwind heard Vree's distress call, faint with distance, and growing fainter. The rustling stopped for a moment; someone cursed softly, then the rustling began again. that's four.

Darkwind moved again, but the cramp in his leg made him just a little clumsy, and he overbalanced. He caught himself before he fell, but his outstretched hands brushed by a thick branch and it bent, shaking enough to rustle the leaves, and betraying his location.

Damn!

No hope for it now, he half-rose and sprinted for the shelter of a rock pile, pounding feet and crackling brush not far behind him. The woods were too thick here to afford a good shot; it was going to be hand-to-hand if Leather Armor overtook him.

Ill luck struck again; just as he reached the rocks, something shot at ankle-height out of the shadows. He leapt but couldn't quite avoid the tangle-cord. It caught one foot, and he tumbled forward. He tucked and rolled as he went down, but when he came back up, he found himself staring at the point of a sword.

Behind the sword stood Leather Armor, frowning furiously. A few moments later, panting up behind him, came the man with the bloody, furrowed scalp.

"No spindly runt is going to tell us where we can go," sneered Leather Armor. "One little brat to play guard-man, hmm? So much for your big bad Hawkbrothers, milor-" Two screams from out in the woods interrupted him, and both their heads turned for a fraction of a heartbeat. just long enough for Darkwind to reach the kill-blade he had hidden in his boot-and Vree to begin his stoop.

"What made you think I was alone?" he said, mildly. Leather Armor's head snapped back around, giving Darkwind a clear shot at his eye. A quick flick of the wrist, and the knife left his hand and went straight to the mark, just as Vree struck the second man from behind, his talons aimed for the neck and shoulders, knocking the mage to the ground with the force of the blow. As Darkwind's victim toppled over, Vree's talons pierced the back of his target's neck, and he bit through the spine, the powerful beak able to separate even a deer's backbone at need. It was over in moments.

Vree flapped his wings and screamed in triumph, and Darkwind licked the blood away from his lip; he had bitten it when he fell. The taste was flat and sweet, gritty with forest loam.

He rose slowly and brushed himself off, waiting for Vree to calm down a little before trying to deal with him. Like all raptors, the bondbirds were most dangerous just after a kill, when their blood still coursed hot with excitement, and they had forgotten everything but the chase and strike.

When Darkwind's own heart had settled, he turned, and called Vree back to the glove. The bondbird mantled and screamed objection at him, still hot with his hunting-rage, but when Darkwind Mindtouched himcarefully, for at this stage it was easy to be pulled into the raptor's mind-he calmed. Darkwind held out his arm and slapped the glove again, and this time Vree returned to his bondmate, launching himself from the body with a powerful shove of his legs, and landing heavily on Darkwind's gauntlet. The wicked talons that had so easily pierced a man's neck closed gently on the scout's leather-covered wrist.

Darkwind pointedly ignored the second body, Vree's victim, and stooped over the first corpse to retrieve his knife, Vree flapping his wings a little to keep his balance. Admittedly, it was no uglier a death than the one he had just delivered, but it was easy to forget that the Tayledrasbred forestgyres, largest of all the bondbirds other than the eagles, were easily a match for many wild tiercel eagles in size, and fully capable of killing men. And when Vree did just that-sometimes the realization of just what kind of a born killer he carried around on his wrist and shoulder every day came as a little shock.

At least he doesn't try to eat them, Darkwind thought with a grimace.

In fact, Vree was even now fastidiously cleaning his talons, his thoughts full of distaste for the flavor of the blood on them.

The bird looked up, suddenly. Darkwind tensed for a moment, but "Brothers come," the bird said and went back to cleaning his talons.

Even to Darkwind's experienced eyes it seemed as if a man-shaped piece of the forest had detached itself and was walking toward him when Firestorm first came into view. The sight gave him a renewed appreciation for the effectiveness of the scouts' camouflage.

He'd heard somewhere that one of the Outlanders' superstitions about the Tayledras was that they were really all mirror-copies of the same person.

I suppose it might look that way to strangers...The scouts all dressed so identically in the field that they might well have been wearing uniforms; close-fitting tunic and trews of a supple weave and of a mottled, layer-dyed green, gray, and brown. There were individual differences in the patterns, as distinct as individual fingerprints to the knowledgeable, but to an Outlander the outfits probably looked identical. And their hair was identical, except for length. Hair color among the Hawkbrothers was a uniform white; living in the Vales, surrounded by magic, hair bleached to white and eyes to silver-blue by the time a Tayledras was in his early twenties-sooner, if he was a mage.

The scouts dyed their hair a mottled brown to match their surroundingsthe rest of the Clan left theirs white.

I suppose Outlanders have reason to think us identical.

Firestorm's bondbird was nowhere in sight, but as the younger scout came into the clearing, Kreel dove down out of the treetops to land on Firestorm's casually outstretched arm. Kreel was a different breed from Vree; smaller, and with the broad wings of a hawk, rather than the rakish, pointed wings of the falcon. Neither bird had bleached out yet; since Darkwind no longer used his magic powers, and Firestorm never had been a mage, it would be years before either bird became a ti'aeva'leshy'a, a "forest spirit," one of the snow-white "ghost birds," with markings in faint blue-gray.

Too bad, in a way. the white ones frighten the life out of Outlanders who see them. We could use that edge, Vree and I If this lot had seen him first, they might not have chanced taking me on.

Vree's natural coloration was partially white already. His white breast sported brown barring; the same pattern as the underside of his wings.

His back and the upper face of his wings were still brown, with a faint black barring. Kreel was half Vree's size, with a solid blue-gray back and a reddish-brown, barred breast. Kreel's red eyes had begun to fade to pink; Vree's eyes had already faded to light gray from his adolescent color of ice-blue.

"I got one of the bastards, Skydance got one, and Skydance's Raan got the third," Firestorm said, ruffling the breast-feathers of his cooperihawk.

He shook his head in admiration at the gyre on Darkwind's wrist, as Vree fastidiously preened the blood from his breast-feathers.

"Makes me wish I'd bonded to a gyre, sometimes. This little one is faster than anyone would believe, but she can't take down a man."

"A bird doesn't have to be able to take a man down to take one out," Darkwind reminded him. "Kreel does all right. You're too damned bloodthirsty." Firestorm just chuckled, reached into his game-pouch, and fed Kreel a tidbit. Vree clucked and shifted his weight from one foot to the other, in an anxious reminder that he was owed a reward as well.

Darkwind scratched the top of Vree's head, then reached into his own game-pouch for a rabbit quarter. Vree tore into the offering happily.

"Funny, isn't it," Firestorm observed, "We can shape them all we like, make them as intelligent as we can and still have flight-worthy birds, but we can't change their essential nature. They're still predators to the core. Who were those fools?"

"I don't know." Darkwind frowned. "I listened to them for a while, but I didn't learn anything. I think there were two mages and the rest were fighters to guard them, but that's only a guess. I don't know what they wanted, other than the usual." Flies were beginning to gather around the fallen bodies, and he moved out of the way a little. "Dive in, steal the treasures of the mysterious Hawkbrothers, and try to get out intact. Greedy bastards."

"They never learn, do they?" Firestorm grimaced.

"No," Darkwind agreed soberly. "They never do." Something about the tone of his voice made Firestorm look at him sharply. "Are you all right?" he said. "If you got hurt but you're trying to go all noble on me, forget it. If you're not in shape for it, we can take over your share for the rest of the day, or I can send back for some help. ' Darkwind shook his head, and tossed his hair out of his eyes. "I'm all right; I'm just tired of the whole situation we're in. We shouldn't be out here alone; we should be patrolling in threes, at least, on every section. K'Sheyna is in trouble, and anyone with any sense knows it.

Most of our mages won't leave the Vale, and the best of our fighters are out of reach. I don't know why the Council won't ask the other Clans for help, or even the Shin'ain-" Firestorm shrugged indifferently. "We haven't had anything hit the border that we couldn't handle, even shorthanded," he replied. "After all, we had cleaned this area out, that's why the children and minor mages and half the fighters were gone when-" He broke off, flushing. "I'm sorry-I forgot you were there when-"

"When the Heartstone fractured," Darkwind finished for him, his voice flat and utterly without expression. I'm not surprised he doesn't remember.

Darkwind had been "Songwind" then, a proud young mage with snow-white hair and a peacock wardrobe-Not Darkwind, who refused to use any magic but shielding, who never wore anything but scout gear and wouldn't use the formidable powers of magic he still could control-if he chose-not even to save himself.

He was-had been-Adept-rank, in fact-and strong enough at nineteen to be one of the Heartstone anchors...Not that it mattered. He watched Vree tear off strips of rabbit and gulp them down, fur and all. "I don't know if you ever knew this," he said conversationally, not wanting Firestorm to think he was upset about the reminder of his past. "I watched the building of the Gate to send them all off." Firestorm tilted his head to one side. "Why did they send everyone off? I wasn't paying any attention-it was my first Vale-move."

"We always do that," Darkwind said, as Vree got down to the bones and began cleaning every scrap of flesh from them he could find. "It's part of the safety measures, sending those not directly involved in moving the power or guarding those who are to the new Vale-site, where they'd be safe in case something happened."

"Which it did." Firestorm sighed. "I guess it's a good thing.. The gods only know where they are now. Somewhere west." Somewhere west. Too far to travel, when over half of them were children.

And not an Adept able to build a Gate back to us in the lot of them." Darkwind scowled. "Now that was a mistake. And it was bad tactics.

Half of the Adepts should have been with them, and I don't know why the Council ordered them all to stay until the Heartstone was drained and the power moved." Firestorm relaxed marginally, and scratched Kreel with his free hand.

"Nobody ever tells us about these things. Darkwind, why haven't we built a new Gate and brought them back?" A damned good question. Darkwind's lips compressed. "Father says that what's left of the Heartstone is too unstable to leave, too dangerous to build a Gate near, and much too dangerous to have children exposed to.

Firestorm raised an eloquent eyebrow. "You don't believe him?"

"I don't know what to believe." Darkwind stared off into the distance, over Firestorm's shoulder, into the shadows beneath the trees. "I probably shouldn't be telling you this, even. That kind of information is only supposed to be discussed by the Council or among mages. There's another thing; Father was acting oddly even before the disaster-he hasn't been quite himself since he was caught in that forest fire. Or that's the way it seems to me, but nobody else seems to have noticed anything wrong."

"Well, I haven't, at least not any more than with the rest of the Council." Firestorm laughed. sarcastically. "Old men, too damned proud to ask for help from outside, and too feeble to fix things themselves.

Which is probably why I'm not on the Council; I've said that in public a few too many times." The scout tossed his hawk up into the air and turned to go. Kreel darted up into the trees ahead, and all the birds went silent as he took to the air. Everything that flew knew the shape of a cooperihawk; nothing on wings was safe from a hungry one. And no bird would ever take a chance on a cooperi being sated. "If you're all right to finish, I'll get back to my section. Do we bother to clean up, or leave it for the scavengers?"

Leave it," Darkwind told him. "Maybe a few bones lying around will discourage others."

"Maybe." The younger man laughed. "Or maybe we should start leaving heads on stakes at the borders." With that macabre suggestion, the scout followed his bird into the forest, moving in silence, blending into the foliage within moments. Vree had finished his rabbit, dropping the polished bones, and Darkwind launched him into the air as well, so that they could resume their interrupted patrol.

He'd meant what he told Firestorm, every bitter word of it. I hardly know Father anymore. He used to be creative, flexible; he used to have no trouble admitting when he was wrong. Now he's the worst of the lot. Every time another Clan sends someone to see if we need help, he sends them away.

How can we not need help? We've got an unstable Heartstone, we don't have enough scouts to patrol a border that we had to pull back in the first Place. Our children are gone and we can't get them back-and we don't dare leave. And he's pretending we can handle it.

That was part of the reason he spent so little time in the Vale anymore; the place was too silent, too empty. Tayledras children were seldom as noisy as Outlander children, but they made their presence-and their absence-felt.

The once-lively Vale seemed dead without them.

And another part of the reason he avoided the Vale was his father.

The fewer opportunities there were for confrontations with the old man, the better Darkwind liked it.

He would have to go in at the end of his patrol, though, and he wrinkled his nose in distaste at what he would have to endure. This invasion would have to be reported. And as always, the Council would want to know why he hadn't handled things differently, why he hadn't blasted the intruders or shot them all when he first saw them. And because he was an Elder, the questions would be more pointed.

I didn't kill them because they could have been perfectly innocent, dammit!

And Starblade would want to know why he hadn't used magic.

And as always, Darkwind would be unable to give him an answer that would satisfy him.

"Because I don't want to" isn't good enough. He wants to know why I don't want to.

Darkwind pulled his climbing-staff out of the sheath, and hooked a limb, hauling himself up into the tree and trying not to wince as he discovered new bruises.

He wants to know why. He says. But he won't accept my reasons because Adept Starblade couldn't possibly have a son who gave up magic for the life of a Scout.

Even when the magic killed his mother in front of his eyes. Even when the magic ruined his life. Even when he's seen. over and over, that magic isn't an answer, it's a tool, and any tool can be done without.

He looked out over the forest floor and briefly touched Vree's mind.

All was quiet. Even the birds, frightened into silence by the noise of the fight and the appearance of the cooperihawk, were singing again.

Well. he'd better start learning to change again, Darkwind decided, because I've had enough. I'm taking this incident to the Council as usual, but this time I'm going to make an issue of it. And I don't care if he doesn't like what he's going to hear; we can't keep on like this indefinitely.

And if he wants a fight, he's going to get one.