"Part of the way he reacts in a typical fashion when he feels himself under pressure?" Darkwind asked.
She nodded. "Especially if he were distracted or busy," she told him.
"The more distractions he has, the more likely he is to revert to what has worked in the past."
"Absolutely," Need agreed. "Half the reason I was able to help her so much was because I was watching Kethra Heal your father. His problems are a superior copy of hers. We've thrown Falconsbane off-balance by destroying the Heartstone, and he's reacting predictably, by trying to steal the power it harbored. there are a dozen other things he could do with it, or about it, but instead, he's doing exactly what I would have predicted for him."
"I could prolong the moment that he thinks he still has me controlled by feigning it," Nyara offered, trembling a little inside from fear. "Need might be able to help with that."
Nyara watched Darkwind turn all that over in his mind-and she wondered.
One plan, with a fair likelihood of success, had already occurred to her. She wondered if he was thinking the same thing that she was.
She had been thinking about something like this for some time-fearing the idea, yet knowing it had logic to it. And knowing that if she were asked, she would follow through with it.
Skif was most definitely not going to like it.
*Chapter Twenty-two
Falconsbane stepped back and surveyed his work, nodding with satisfaction.
He had done very well, given the short notice he'd had. And it had been at minimal cost to himself. There were, after all, two ways to create power-poles. The first way was to produce the power from yourself; much in the same way that a Gate was created. That was not the ideal way to proceed, so far as he was concerned.
The other way was to induce it from the body of another-as skilled and powerful a mage as one could subdue. The drawing out of the power would kill the mage in question, of course; there was no way to avoid that. A pity, but there it was.
Then, given the plan he had created, one needed to fix the pole in place-that required another mage. Fixing the pole absolutely required the life of that mage, this time by sacrifice, although Falconsbane had managed to crush the man's heart with no outward signs and no blood spilt. It would have been a pity to stain the new carpets.
And lastly, in accordance with the plan, he had needed the full power of a human life and the full power of a mage to establish a web of energy linking the power-pole he had created with every possible point in his territory. Naturally that had required a third mage.
It was possible to do all of that from his own resources, but that would have required exhausting himself completely. That wasn't acceptable at this point. Doing it through others was far less efficient; it took three mages to create what he could have accomplished alone.
The problem with the second method was, of course, that the mages in question would not survive the operation. Which was why the bodies of three of Falconsbane's former servants were littering the floor of his study. If he had more time, he probably would have done it the hard way, through himself. It was difficult finding even ordinary servants; mages were doubly hard to acquire.
He had thought long and hard on the best way to go about claiming the power-locus. He had not been aided by all the distractions taking place in and around his lands. The black riders were everywhere, and although they seldom did anything, they rattled his guards and made even his fortress servants nervous. Strange birds had been seen in the forest around his stronghold; and now the woods were reputedly haunted as well, by amorphous, ghostlike shapes and faint, dancing lights.
He had decided at last to set up a power-pole as exactly like the waiting Stone as possible, and anchor that within an enormous crystal-cluster he had brought from one of his storage rooms and set up in his study.
When he drew the power-locus in near enough, it would snap into the power-pole as it had been intended to do at the Bird-Fools' new Heartstone.
Devising the plan had taken much delving into his oldest memories, and he had been a little disturbed at how much he had forgotten.
Too many times for comfort, he'd been forced to return to his library and search through his oldest books. In the end, he'd taken scraps of memory, scraps of old knowledge, and a great deal of guessing.
The difference between what he intended to do and what the Tayledras would have done was that when it snapped into the waiting vessel here, he would be standing between and would be linked to the crystal.
When the power-locus and the power-pole merged into one, he would be part of them as well.
It was as inventive in its way as anything that Tayledras Adept had tried; he was quite certain of that. He was thoroughly pleased with his own cleverness. Oh, it was dangerous, surely; the mages who had been sacrificed to give the plan life had advised against it even before they knew they were going to be sucked dry of life and power to fuel it.
"You'll be incinerated by that much power," Atus had protested.
"If you aren't incinerated, You'll go mad. No one can be part of a Heartstone!" Renthan had told him.
Preadeth had only shaken his head wordlessly, and cast significant looks at the others.
They thought he was insane even to try it-and at that moment, when he caught them exchanging glances and possibly thoughts, he had known who his sacrificial calves were going to be.
They had doubtless been considering revolt-or at least, escape. Escape would mean they might even consider going to the Tayledras with what they knew.
It was just as well he had another use for them. It would have been a pity to kill them outright and waste all that potential.
Using his subordinates to supply the power instead of himself was the last element he had needed to make the plan reasonable as well as possible.
It meant that at the end of the Working, he was still standing and still capable of acting, instead of unconscious and needing days of rest.
Even at that, he was exhausted when he was done.
He sank down on his couch and considered calling in a fourth man and draining him as well, but discarded the idea. It would cause enough trouble that he had killed three of his underlings. There were those who might read it as a desperation measure. It was, on the whole, a bad idea to kill anyone other than a slave or one of the lower servants. It made everyone else unhappy-and inclined to think about defection. Unhappy servants were inefficient servants. They should know the taste of the whip-but also know that it was only there in extreme circumstances, and that they could bring that whip onto their own backs by their own actions.