It took them a while to reach the spot, even with the assistance of two more dyheli from a breeding herd inside k'sheyna borders. By the time they reached the valley, the situation had worsened. The fog had crowded all the young dyheli bucks into the back of the valley, and they milled around the tiny space in a state of complete, unthinking panic. Trampling everything beneath their churning hooves, with horns tossing, their squeals of desperation reached to Darkwind's perch on the hill above them.
He studied the situation, his heart sinking. The sides of the valleyit was really a steep cup among the hills, with a spring at the bottom-were rocky, and far too steep to bring the dyheli up, even if they'd been calm. In their current state of panic, it was impossible.
The fog was mage-born, that much he could tell, easily. But the mage himself was not here. There was no one to attack, and no way to counter such a nebulous menace. Even calling up a wind-if he could have done so-would not have dispersed the evil cloud.
It roiled beneath him, a leprous blue-white, thick and oily, too murky to see into. Twice now, he'd seen young bucks overcome with fear and madness, try to break through into the clear air beyond. They had never come out on the other side.
"We have to do something!" Dawnfire pleaded. He hesitated a moment, then gave her the bad news.
"There isn't anything we can do," he said, closing his mental shields against the tide of fear and despair from below. The dyheli were so panicked now that they weren't even capable of thinking. "Maybe the rain tonight will disperse it in time to save them." '*No!" she shouted, careless of what might overhear her. "No, we can't leave them! I'm a guardian, they're my responsibility, I won't leave them!"
"Dawnfire-" he took her shoulders and shook them. "There isn't anything we can do, don't you understand that? They're too panicked to get harnesses on and haul them up-even if we had enough people here to try!
And I won't call in all the scouts from their patrols. It's bad enough that I left mine! don't you see, this could still be a diversion, to clear the way for something else to come in over the border while it's unguarded!" She stared at him, aghast, for a long moment. Then, "You coward!" she spat. "You won't even try! You don't care if they die, you don't care what happens to anyone or anything, all you care about is yourself,.
You won't even use your magic to save them!" As the envenomed words flew, Darkwind kept a tenuous grip on his temper by reminding himself of how young Dawnfire was. She's only seventeen, he told himself. She lives and breathes being a guardian, and she doesn't understand how to lose. She was barely assigned her duties when the Heartstone blew. She doesn't mean what she's saying...But as her words grew more and more hurtful and heated in response to his cool silence, he finally had enough. His temper snapped like a dry twig, and he stopped the torrent of abuse with a mental "slap." And as she stood, silent and stunned, he folded his arms across his chest and stared at her until she dropped her eyes.
"You say you are a guardian. Well, you pledged an oath to obey me, your commander, and abide by my decisions. Have you suddenly turned into a little child, regressed to the age of ten, when sworn oaths mean only 'until I'm tired of playing'? No?" He studied her a moment more, as she went from red to white and back again. "In that case, I suggest you calm yourself and return to your assigned patrol. If you comport yourself well and if you can keep yourself under control, I will consider leaving you there, rather than nm~ you elsewhere. Is that understood?"
"Yes, Elder," she replied, in a voice that sounded stifled.
"Very well," he said. "Go, then."
*Chapter Seven ELSPETH
" Elspeth?" Despite the anxious tone of Skif's voice, Elspeth didn't look up from her book. "What?" she said, absently, more to respond and let Skif know she'd heard him than a real reply. She was deep in what was apparently a firsthand description of the moments before Vanyel's final battle.
It was then that we saw how the valley walls had been cut away, to widen the passage, and the floor of the vale had been smoothed into a roadway broad enough for a column of four. And all this, said Vanyel, was done by magic. I knew not what to think at that moment.
"Elspeth, don't you think we should be getting out of here?" Skif persisted. "On the road, I mean." She looked up from her page, and into Skif's anxious brown eyes. There was no one else to overhear them; they were the only ones in the library archives, where the oldest Chronicles were stored.
Sunlight damaged books, so the archive chamber was a windowless room in the center of the library. Smoke and soot damaged them as well, so all lighting was provided by smokeless lanterns burning the finest of lamp oil, constructed to extinguish immediately if they tipped over. No other form of lighting was permitted-certainly not candles. Elspeth realized, as she looked into Skif's anxiety-shadowed face, that she didn't know what time it was. If any of the Collegium bells had rung, she hadn't noticed them.
Her stomach growled in answer to the half-formed question, telling her that it was past lunchtime, if nothing else.
She rubbed her eyes; she'd been so absorbed in her reading that she hadn't noticed the passage of time. "Why?" she asked, simply. "What's your hurry?" He grimaced, then shrugged. "I don't like the idea of riding off south with just the two of us, but since you seem so set on it-I keep thinking your getting the Council to agree was too easy. They didn't argue enough."
"Not argue enough?" she replied, making a sour face. "I beg to differ. You weren't there. They argued plenty, believe me. I thought they'd never stop till they all fell over from old age."
"But not enough," he persisted. "It should have taken weeks to get them to agree to your plan. Instead-it took less than a day. That doesn't make any sense, at least, not to me. I keep thinking they're going to change their minds at any minute. So I want to know why we aren't getting out of here before they get a chance to."
"They won't change their minds," she said, briefly, wishing he'd let her get back to her researches. "Gwena says so."
"What does a Companion have to do with the Council changing its mind?" he demanded.
That's what I would like to know, she thought. Gwena's playing coy every time I ask. I don't know, but ask yours. I bet she says the same thing."
"Huh." His eyes unfocused for a moment as he Mindspoke his little mare; then, "I'll be damned," he replied. "You're right. But I still don't see why we aren't getting on the road; everything we need is packed except for your personal gear. I should think you'd be so impatient to get out of here that I would be the one holding us back." She shrugged. "Let's just say that I'm getting ready. What I'm doing in here is as important as the packing you've been doing."
"oh?" He shaded the word in a way that kept it from sounding insulting, which it could easily have done.
"It's no secret," she said, gesturing at the piles of books around her.
"I'm researching magic in the old Chronicles; magic, and Herald-Mages, what they could do, and so forth. So I know what to look for and what we need." if he noticed that some of those Chronicles were of a later day than Vanyel's time, he didn't mention it. "I suppose that makes sense," he acknowledged. "Just remember, the Council could change their decision any time, no matter what Gwena says."