And I'm not sure I like feeling like a newborn chick!
"I don't know," Kero admitted. "She hasn't been outside Valdemar for a long time. Whatever happens, you're going to require her, of that much I'm certain."
"But what about you?" Elspeth was forced by her own conscience to ask. "Where does that leave you?" Kero laughed. "The same as before; I haven't ever depended on her to bail me out of a tough spot. And to tell you the truth, I don't think I'm going to be seeing anything worth being protected against."
"And I am." Elspeth made that a statement.
"I'd bet on it." Kero nodded, soberly. "I'll tell you this much; while she's given me trouble in the past, she's always been worth the having.
I may not have depended on her, but she's bailed me out of things I could never have gotten myself out of alone. I feel a lot better knowing you have her." I-" Elspeth stopped at a loss for words." Kero, 'thanks' just doesn't seem adequate... "
"oh, don't thank me, thank her," Kero grinned. "She picked you, after all."
"I'm thanking you anyway." Elspeth hugged her, sword and all, then bade her a reluctant farewell. It was hard saying good-bye; a lot harder than she thought it would be. She stood with the sheathed sword in her hands for a long time after Kero was gone.
Finally Elspeth buckled the swordbelt over her tunic, and wriggled a little to settle Need's weight. Once in place, the sword felt right; most swords took some getting used to, they all weighed differently, their balance on the hip or in the hand was different.
But most swords aren't magic.
The thought was unsettling; this was the stuff of which ballads and stories were made, and although Elspeth had daydreamed herself into a heroine when she was a child, she'd given up those daydreams once she achieved her Whites.
I thought I had, anyway.
That made for another unsettling thought, though; stories all had endingsand she was beginning to feel as if the ending to this one was already written.
As if she had no choice in where she was going, or how she was going to get there; as if everyone knew what her goal was except her.
"Destiny" was one word she had always hated-and now it looked as if it was the one word that applied to her.
And she didn't like the feeling one bit.
*Chapter Eight DARKWIND
"Stupid," said Vree, with profound disapproval.
Darkwind's stomach lurched as Vree made another swooping dive-not quite a stoop-skimming through the pocket valley that held the trapped dyheli bucks.
There were times when the gyre's viewpoint was a little-unsettling.
The gyre wheeled above the dyheli herd, just above the highest level of the mist, giving Darkwind the loan of his keener eyes and the advantage of wings and height. "Stupid, stupid. We should go." Not that Darkwind needed a bird, even a bondbird, to tell him that.
The gentle dyheli huddled together in an exhausted, witless knot, too spent by panic to do anything sensible.
Through the gyre's eyes he looked for anything that might pass as a track out of the valley-and found nothing. The spring dropped from a height five times that of the dyheli to the valley floor, down a sheer rock face. The other two sides of the valley were just as sheer, and sandstone to boot.
Nothing short of a miracle was going to get them out of there.
Vree's right. We should go. I can't risk all of k'sheyna for the sake of a dozen dyheli. I made pledges, I have greater responsibilities.
So why was he here, lying under the cover of a bush, just above the mist-choked passage out of the dead-end valley, searching through his bondbird's eyes for a way out for the tiny herd? Why was he wasting his time, leaving his section of the border unpatrolled, tearing up his insides with his own helplessness?
Because I'm stupid.
One of the bucks raised a sweat-streaked head to utter a heartbreaking cry of despair. His gut twisted a little more.
And because I can't stand to see them suffering like that. they're fellow creatures, as intelligent as we are. they looked to Dawnfire for protection and help, even if they did range outside our boundaries. they acted as her eyes and ears out here. I can't just abandon them now.
Which was, no doubt, exactly the way Dawnfire felt. There was no difference in what he was doing now, and what she wanted to do.
Except that I'm a little older, a little more experienced. But just as headstrong and stupid.
The mist-whatever it was-rose and fell with an uneasy, wave-like motion, and wherever it lapped up on the rock wall, it left brown and withered vegetation when it receded. And it took quite a bit to kill those tough little rock-plants. So the mist was deadly to the touch as well as deadly to breathe. There was no point in trying to calm the dyheli enough to get them to hold their breath and make a dash for freedom... they'd never survive being in the mist for as long as it would take them to blunder through.
As if to underscore that observation, the mist lapped a little higher just below his hiding place. A wisp of it eddied up, and he got a faint whiff of something that burned his mouth and throat and made his eyes water. He coughed it out as the mist ebbed again.
Poisonous and caustic. First, burns to madden them further, then the poison.
They're horribly susceptible to poisons; they'd probably get fatal doses just through skin contact, through the area of the burn.
No, no hope there.
He rubbed his eyes to clear them, and sent Vree to perch in the tree over his head. Another of the dyheli called mournfully, and the cry cut into his heart. He knuckled his eyes again, blinking through burning eyes, but still could see no way out of the trap.
Even the spring-fed waterfall was not big enough to do more than provide a little water spray and a musical trickle down the rocks. There was no shelter for even one of the dyheli behind it.
I can't bear this, he decided, finally. All I could do is shoot them and give them a painless death, or leave them, and hope that whatever this poison is, it disperses on its own-or maybe won't be able to get past the mist that the waterfall is throwing.
Two choices, both bad, the second promising a worse death than the first. His heart smoldered with frustration and anger, and he swore and pounded his fist white on the rock-hard dirt, then wiped the blood off his skinned knuckles. No! Dammit, it's not fair, they depended on Tayledras to protect them! their has to be somethhe looked back into the valley, at the tugging of an invisible current, a stirring in the fabrics of power, the rest of his thought forgotten.
A sudden shrwing along his nerves, an etching of ice down his backbone, that was what warned him of magic-magic that he knew, intimately, though he no longer danced to its piping-the movements of energies nearby, and working swiftly.
His fingers moved, silently, in unconscious response. He swung his head a little, trying to pinpoint the source. there-the mist below him stirred.
The hair on the back of his neck and arms stood on end, and he found himself on his feet on the floor of the valley before the wall of mist, with no memory of standing, much less climbing down. It didn't matter; magic coiled and sprang from a point somewhere before him, purposeful, and guided.