He sped up the time-stream, skipping ahead to the moment when Savil was already dead and he had started to kick in the doorway. He watched dispassionately as the bird-thing, wounded and bleeding, again assumed its guise of a pile of wood, this time beside the door. He watched as he allowed himself to be overcome with grief, and the creature took that moment of distraction to slip out the door.
He tracked it as it fled from the Palace by the first exit. It paused just long enough to attack one lone Companion, down and in shock with the loss of her Chosen - the others came to Kellan's aid, but too late. The thing rose up in triumph and fled, its talons and beak red with the mingled blood of Herald and Companion, while the rest of the herd shrieked their impotent anger after it.
And still he tracked it. North. North for several days' ride, on wings sped by more magic, until it dropped back down to earth, exhausted and weakened by its injury. He sensed from its primitive thoughts that it was going to stay there for at least a week, healing. It knew it was safe enough. No one knew it was there . . . and no one could follow it that quickly.
That was all he could bear to see. He let loose his control of the spell, and it dissolved away, leaving him sitting alone in the middle of the empty, ruined room, with dawn just beginning to color the sky outside the windows, and Stefen huddled in a cloak just inside the door.
“They t-told me not to disturb you,” the Bard stuttered, looking pale and wan in the thin, gray light. “But nobody said I couldn't wait here until you w-were done. Van, I'm sorry, I w-wish I could do something -”
“You can,” Vanyel replied shortly. “You can guard the door and keep everyone else out.” There was hurt in Stef's eyes at his coldness, but he ignored it :'Fandes?: he called.
The rage in her mind-voice colored everything a bloody red. :Gods damn them to the lowest hells! That thing got Kellan on its way out, Van-:
:I know that,: he interrupted. :And I'm about to extract a little revenge right now. Will you link and cover my back while I go hunting?:
:Hunt away,: she snarled, :I'm right behind you.: That was all the assurance he needed. Once again he dove into the node, pulled in all the raw power he could hold through the buffering effect of his amber focus, and launched himself out again with all his channels scorched and tender but still perfectly functional.
He knew the general area where the thing had gone to earth, and he still had that trace of ichor to use to find its exact location. While he had that bit of the beast's life-fluid, it could never escape him, no matter how many disguises it assumed, or how much magic it called up to cloak its presence.
With Yfandes guarding his back, he knew he needn't waste half his energy watching for ambush; he tracked the thing into its hiding place with infinite patience. He still had his tap into the node, he could afford whatever expense of power it took to find the construct.
When he found it, he also found something else; it had shielding far more powerful than he had expected. The creature's master wanted it back, evidently, which made it all the more valuable to Vanyel. His resources were already stretched thin by distance; he couldn't smash through those shields at this range.
But he didn't need to...
It was protected against “real” magic, not Mind-magic. And one of his Gifts was Fetching - with all of the power of the node to back him. Because he had both real and Mind-magic, he could fuel his mind-powers with mage-energies as no other Herald could. Which was where his enemy had made a fundamental misjudgment.
He seized the thing, shields and all; belatedly it tried to escape, but it hadn't a chance at that point and its master hadn't given it the ability to call for help. It had been too late for the creature to escape the moment he knew its physical location. As it struggled, he could Feel its rising panic, and he smiled -
And Pulled.
:Yes -: Yfandes hissed eagerly in his mind - by no means enough to distract him; he was used to her commentaries and encouragements in the back of his thoughts after all these years. :Yes! Bring it here and we'll show them we're not to be slaughtered at anyone's whim-:
The thing grabbed on to where it was and resisted his pull; he simply tapped deeper into the node, ignored the pain, the rivers of fire that ran along his channels, and pulled harder. He ripped it loose as it shrieked in desperation; Yfandes supported him as he hauled it in. She cushioned him from the effects of a reaction-headache, something she'd never done before, enabling him to fling the creature down right on the spot where it had killed Savil, and pin it to the floor with raw node-power.
Stefen gave a strangled croak when it appeared, but wisely remained where he was. Wise - or perhaps frozen with fear; Van Felt the panic coming from him in waves, but had no time to worry about the Bard just now. While the beast squirmed and screamed both mentally and vocally, he stripped the protections from its crude thoughts and ripped away every detail he could concerning its master.
North, the direction it had fled in the first place; the direction no one expected for an enemy. North, and an impression of the vast wilderness that could only be the Forest of Wendwinter and the Ice Wall mountains beyond. But of the master himself, nothing; only darkness. After ruthless probing that left the bird's mind a broken, bleeding rag, Vanyel decided that this was all the construct had ever seen of its master.
He contemplated the writhing creature at his feet with his mouth set in a grim line. He had left it a ruin, with nothing remaining to tell it how to get home, or even how to defend itself. It could no longer work the borrowed magics it had been given, and it might not even remember how to fly. If he let it go, it would slowly starve itself to death, and its master would never know what had become of it, or even whether or not it had been successful in its task.
Even Yfandes' lust for revenge seemed satisfied now; at any rate, she was silent, and her anger no longer seethed at the back of his mind. But his need for vengeance was not filled. He gathered all the node-power he could handle, poured in channels that burned as hotly as his own need for revenge. He made certain that there was still a line open between the bird and its creator. It was too bad that the line was such a thin one - one that he could not follow to its source. He was going to have to find the perpetrator the hard way. But the line was enough to punish the master through. . . .
And he smashed the thing with one hammer-blow of pure, wild power.
The construct screamed its agony, and as it died in the cold flames of magic, the energy backlashed up the line Van had left open to its creator.
The scream ended; the thing glowed with the power Van poured into it - then incandesced until it was too bright to look at. And still he fed the fire, until the last of it was eaten away, and there was nothing left but a few wisps of white, feathery ash.
He turned toward Stefen, knowing that at any moment he would feel the effects of what he had just done. Yfandes couldn't protect him from the reaction-headache of overexertion of Mind-magic much longer; it was incredible enough that she'd done it in the first place. And his channels were pure agony that would take several hours of self-Healing to repair.