Текст книги "Magic's Pawn"

Автор книги: Mercedes Lackey

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Текущая страница: 21 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

His head rang again, and he swayed and almost fell, but this time the shock was a clear, urgent, and unmistakable wordless cry for help. It sobered him as quickly as Andrel’s bucket of cold water.

There was no “presence” to the cry, not like any of the Gifted or the Tayledrashad; it was just simple and desperate. This was no trained mage or Herald. It could only be an ordinary person in mortal fear.

Gods! His head swiveled toward the source of the cry as a needle to a lodestone. And without any clear notion of whyhe was doing so, except that it was a cry for help, and he hadto answer it, Vanyel began stumbling toward the source at a clumsy run.

He had been following a game-trail; now he was right off any path. He ran into a tangle of bushes, and could find no way around it. Driven nearly frantic by the call in his head, he finally shoved his way through it. Then he was in a beech grove; there was little or no growth between the straight, white columns of the trunks, and he picked up his pace until he was at an all-out run.

But the clear, growth-free area was too soon passed; his breath was burning in his lungs as the forest floor became rougher, liberally strewn with tangles of briar and rocks, and hillier as well. His cloak kept hanging up on things, no matter how hard he tried to keep it close to his body. He tripped; stumbled wildly into the trunk of a tree, and picked himself up only to trip a second time and fall flat in the snow. The breath was knocked out of him for a moment, but that panicked, pleading voice in his “ear within” would not let him give up. He scrambled to his feet, pulled his cloak loose from a bramble, and started running again.

He must have tripped and fallen a good dozen times over obstacles hidden in the snow, and he surely made enough noise to have warned anything that wasn’t deaf of his coming.

Anything that wasn’t deaf – or very busy.

Winded, floundering blindly, and unable to focus on anything more than a few feet ahead of him, he fell over a root just as he reached the crest of a low hill, and dropped into a thicket of bushes that crowned it.

He saw the danger before he got up and broke through their protective cover. He froze where he was. The “danger” was too intent on its victims to have paid any attention to the racket he’d been making. Likely an entire cavalry troupe could have come on it unawares.

This was the very edge of the cleared lands of some smallholder; a fertile river-valley, well-watered, sheltered from the worst of the winter weather and summer storms. Arable land like this could well tempt an enterprising farmer out into the possible perils of the Pelagirs. There had been a stockade around the house and barns to guard against those hazards that could be foreseen.

But the stockade, of whole tree trunks planted in a ring around the buildings, was flattened and uprooted. It could not have held more than a few moments against what had come at the settlers out of the bright winter morning.

Vanyel had never seen a colddrake, but he knew what it was from descriptions in far too many songs and tales to count.

Less like a lizard, and more like a snake with short, stubby legs, it was the largest living creature Vanyel had ever seen. From nose to tail it was easily as long as six carts placed end-to-end. Its equine head was the size of a wine barrel; it had row upon row of silvery needle-sharp spines along its crest and down its back, and more spines formed a frill around its neck. It snarled silently, baring teeth as long as Vanyel’s hand, and white and sharp as icicles. Its wickedly curved claws had torn the earth around it. Vanyel knew what thoselooked like; Moondance had a dagger made from one. Those claws were longerthan his hand, and as sharp as the teeth. Huge, deep-purple eyes, like perfect cabochon amethysts, were fixed unwaveringly upon its prey, a young woman and her two children. It was a pure silver-white, like the cleanest of snow, and its scales sparkled in the sunlight; it was at least as beautiful as it was deadly.

As one mangled body beneath its forefeet testified, the creature knew very well how to use its wickedly sharp claws and teeth.

But neither tail nor fangs and claws was what held the terrified woman and her two children paralyzed almost within reach. It was the colddrake’s primaryweapon – the hypnotic power of its eyes.

It stared at them in complete silence, a silence so absolute that Vanyel could hear the woman panting in fear where he lay. The drake was not moving; it was going to bring its prey to within easy reaching distance of it.

Vanyel hadn’t reshielded since he’d first been impaled upon that dreadful dagger of the woman’s fear. He could still sense her thoughts – incoherent, hysteric, and hopeless. Her mind wailed and scratched at the walls that the colddrake’s violet gaze had set up around it. She was trapped, theywere trapped, their wills gone, their bodies no longer obeying them.

That was how her husband, the children’s father, had died; walking right into the creature’s grasp, his body obedient to itswill, not his own. The beast was slow, that was the true horror of it – if they could just distract it for a crucial moment, break its gaze, they could escape it.

Vanyel could “hear” other minds, too – out there on the opposite side of the clearing. The restof the extended family – there must have been dozens of them – had made it past the slow-moving drake to the safety and shelter of the woods. Only these four had not; the woman, burdened with her toddlers, and the man, staying to protect them. He could “hear” bits of their anguish, like a chorus wailing beneath the woman’s keening fear.

Vanyel stared at the trapped three, just as paralyzed as they were. His mouth was dry, and his heart hammered with fear. He couldn’t seem to think; it was as if those violet eyes were holding himcaptive, too.

There was movement at the edge of his field of vision.

No – not all had fled to the woods. From around the corner of the barn came a man; limping, painfully, slowly, but moving so quietly that the snow didn’t even creak beneath his boots. He was stalking the drake. A new set of thoughts invaded Vanyel’s mind, fragmentary, but enough to tell him what the man was about.

: – get close enough to stick ‘im– :

It was an oldman, a tired, old man; it was the woman’s grandfather. He’d been caught in the barn when the thing attacked and knocked the stockade flat, and he’d seen his granddaughter’s husband walk into the thing’s jaws. He’d recognized the drake for what it was, and he’d armed himself with the only weapon he could find. A pitchfork. Ridiculous against a colddrake.

: – get them eyes off ‘er an’ she kin run fer it– :

The colddrake was paying no attention to anything except the prey right before it. The old man crept up behind it without it ever noticing he was there.

The old man knew, with calm certainty, that he was going to die. He knew that his attack was never going to do anything more than anger the creature. But it wouldbreak the thing’s concentration; it wouldmake it turn its head away for one crucial moment.

His attack was suicidal, but it would give his granddaughter and her children a chance to live.

He came within an arm’s length of the colddrake – he poised the pitchfork as casually as if he were about to stab a haybale – and he struck, burying the pitchfork tines in the colddrake’s side with a sound like a knife burying itself to the hilt in a block of wood.

The drake screamed; its whistling shriek shattered the dreadful silence, and nearly shattered Vanyel’s eardrums. It whipped its head around on its long, snaky neck, and it seized the old man before he even let go of the pitchfork. With a snap of its jaws that echoed even above its shrill screeching, it bit the old man’s head neatly off his shoulders.

Vanyel screamed as he felt the old man die – and the oldster’s desperate courage proved to be too much of a goad for him to resist.

Anger, fear, other emotions he couldn’t even name, all caught him up, raised him to his feet, drove him out into the open and exploded out of him with a force that dwarfed the explosion he’d caused when Starwind had tried to make him call lightning.

He was thinking just enough to throw up a shield around the woman and her children with one shouted word. Then he hit the drake with everything he had in him. The blast of raw power caught the drake in the side and sent it hurtling up over the roof of the house – high into the sky – and held it suspended there for one agonizing moment while Vanyel’s insides felt as if they were tearing loose.

Then the power ran out, and it fell to the earth, bleeding in a hundred places, every bone in its body shattered.

And Vanyel dropped to his knees, then his hands, then collapsed completely, to lie spent in the open field under the pale winter sun, gasping for breath and wondering what he had done.

Savil surveyed the last of the colddrake carcasses, and turned to Starwind, biting her lip in anxiety. “Where’s the queen-drake?’’

“No sign of her,” he replied, shortly, holding to his feet with pure will. He’d taken the brunt of the attack, and he was dizzy and weak from the effort of holding the center while Savil and Moondance closed the jaws of the trap about the colddrake swarm.

“I have not seen her, either,” Moondance called up the hill. He was checking each carcass in case one should prove to be an immature queen. It was unlikely to see a swarm with a juvenile queen, but it wasn’t unheard of, either.

Yfandes had consented to carry the Tayledrasdouble – the need to get to the place where the drake swarm was before the swarm reached inhabited areas was too great for any other consideration. Starwind had then served as the “bait” afoot, while Moondance on Yfandes and Savil on Kellan had been the arms of the trap.

“No queens,” he said, flatly, having checked the sixth and final body.

The fight had stripped the snow from the hilltop, exposing the blackened slope. The six drakes lay upon the scorched turf in twisted silver heaps, like the baroque silver ornaments of a careless giantess strewn across black velvet.

“Ashke, are you well?” Moondance asked anxiously, leaving the last of the bodies and climbing the hill with a certain amount of haste. Starwind looked as if his legs were going to give out on him at any moment, and Yfandes had moved up to lend him her shoulder as support. He leaned on it with a murmur of gratitude as the Healer-Adept reached his side.

“I will do well enough, once I have a chance to breathe,” the elder Tayledrasreplied, as Moondance added his support to Yfandes’. “I am more worried that we did not find the queen.”

“Do you suppose,” Savil began -

Then all three of them felt an incredible surge of raw, wild power – and it had Vanyel’s “presence” laced through it.

“M’lord?”

Someone was tugging at his shoulder. Vanyel lifted his head from his arms; that was just about the limit of his capabilities right now.

“Gods,” he said, dazedly, as the stocky young cloak-shrouded woman at his side tried to get him to sit up. “Oh, please – just – don’t do that right now.”

“M’lord? Ye be hurt?” she asked, thick brows knitting with concern. “Ye bain’t hurt, best ye get inside fore ‘nother them things comes.”

“Aren’t… anymore,” he replied heavily, giving in to her urging and hauling himself into a sitting position. The sun seemed very bright and and just on the verge of being painful to his watering eyes.

Gods, it’s one of the holders. She’s going to lay into me for not coming sooner, he thought, squinting at her, and already wincing in anticipation of harsh words. She’s going to want to know why I didn’t save the old man, or come in time to save the young one. What can I tell her? How can I tell her it was because I was too scared to move until the old man threw himself at the thing?

“Ye saved us, m’lord,” she said, brown eyes wide, the awe in her voice plain even to Vanyel’s exhausted ears. “Ye came t’ save us, I dunno how ye knew, but, m’lord, I bain’t got no way t’ thank ye.”

He stared at her in amazement. “But – “

“Be ye with the bird-lords, m’lord? Ye bain’t their look, but they be the only mages abaht that give a bent nail fer folks’ good.’’

“Bird-lords?” he repeated stupidly.

“Tchah, Menfree,’tis only a boy an’ he’s flat paid out!” The newcomer was an older woman, a bit wrinkled and weathered, but with a kindly, if careworn, face. She bunched her cloak around her arms and bent over him. “Na, lad, ye come in, ye get warm an’ less a’muddled, an’ then ye tell yer tale, hrom?”

She took Vanyel’s elbow, and he perforce had to get up, or else pull her down beside him. The next thing he knew, he was being guided across the ruts of the plowed field, past the carcass of the colddrake (he shuddered as he saw the sizeof it up close) up to the battered porch of the house and into the shadowed doorway.

He was not only confused with exhaustion, but he was feeling more than a little awkward and out of place. These were the kind of people he had most tried to avoid at home – those mysterious, inscrutable peasant-farmers, whose needs and ways he did not understand.

Surely they would turn on him in a moment for not being there when they needed help.

But they didn’t.

The older woman pushed him down onto a stool beside the enormous fireplace at the heart of the kitchen, the younger took his cloak and pack, and a boy brought him hot, sweetened tea. When one of the bearded, dark-clad men started to question him, the older woman shooed him away, pulling off her own dun cloak and throwing it over a bench.

“Ye leave th’ boy be fer a bit, Magnus; I seen this b’fore with one a’ them bird-laddies. They does the magickin’, then they’s a-maundered a whiles.” She patted Vanyel on the head, in a rather proprietary sort of fashion. “He said there ain’t no more critters, so ye git on with takin’ care a’ poor old Kern an’ Tansy’s man an’ let this lad get hisself sorted.”

Vanyel huddled on the stool and watched them, blinking in the half-dark of the kitchen, as they got their lives put back together with a minimum of fuss. Someone went to deal with the bodies, someone saw to the hysterical young mother, someone else planned of rites. Yes, they were mourning the deaths; simply and sincerely, without any of the kind of hysterics he’d half feared. But they were not allowing their grief to get in the way of getting on with their lives, not were they allowing it to cripple their efforts at getting their protections back in place.

Their simple courage made him, somehow feel very ashamed of himself.

It was in that introspective mood that the others found him.

* * *

“ – I know it was a stupid thing to do, to run off like that, but – “ Vanyel shrugged. “I won’t make any excuses. I’ve been doing a lot of stupid things lately. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Well, don’t be too hard on yourself. Foresight dreams have a way of doing that to people,” Savil said, crossing her legs and settling back on her stool beside the hearth. “They tend to get you on the boil and then lock up your ability to think. You wouldn’t be the first to go charging off in some wild-hare direction after waking up with one, and you probably won’t be the last. No, thank you, Megan,” she said to the wide-eyed child who offered her tea. “We’re fine.”

If the settlers had been awed by Vanyel, they’d been struck near speechless by the sight of the Tayledras. They didn’t know a Herald from a birch tree, but they knew who and what the Hawkbrothers were, and had accorded them the deference due a crowned head.

All three of the adults were weary, and relief at finding both that Vanyel was intact and that the queen-drake was indisputably deceased had them just about ready to collapse. So they’d taken the settlers’ hospitality with gratitude; settling in beside the hearth and accepting tea and shelter without demur.

Vanyel had waited just long enough for them to get settled before launching into a full confession.

“So when I finally managed to acquire some sense,” he continued, “I figured the best way to find my way backwould be to look for where all the mage-energy was. I did everything like you told me, Master Starwind, and I opened up – and the next thing I knew it was nearly noon. Somebody’d opened up a Gate – I think somewhere nearby – and it knocked me put cold.”

“Ha – I toldyou those things were Gated in!” Savil exclaimed. “Sorry, lad, I didn’t mean to interrupt you. Then what?”

“Well, I didn’t think there was anyone around here but Tayledras, so I thought one of them had done it. I started to open up again to find the vale, and I heard a call for help. I got here, and when I saw that colddrake – kill the old man – I just – I just couldn’t stand by and not do anything. I didn’t even think about it. I wish I had, I think I overdid it.”

“With a colddrake, particularly a queen, better overkill,” Savil replied, exchanging a look of veiled satisfaction with Starwind. “You may have acted a fool, but it put you in the right place at the right time, and I am not going to berate you for it.”

“Aunt Savil, I,” he flushed, and hunched himself up a little, “I got here before the old man came out. I didn’t doanything until he – I mean – I was just hiding in the bushes. I guess,” he said, in a very small voice, “I guess Father’s right. I ama coward. I could have saved him, and I didn’t.”

“Did you knowyou could have saved him?” Moondance asked, quietly, his square face still. “Did you knowthat your mage-powers would work against the drake?’’

“Well – no.”

“You ran towardthe danger when you Mindheard the call for help, right?” Savil asked. “Not away?”

“Well – yes.”

“And you simply froze when you saw the strange monster. You did not flee?” Starwind raised one long eyebrow.

“I guess that’s what happened.”

“I think perhaps you have mistaken inexperience for cowardice, young Vanyel,” Starwind said with conviction. “A coward would have run away from a plea for help. A coward would have fled at the first glimpse of the drake. You were indecisive -but you remained. It is experience that makes one decisive, and you have precious little of that.”

“M’lord Starwind?” One of the homespun-clad men of the settlement was standing diffidently at the Tayle-dras’elbow.

“Phellip, I wishyou would not call me ‘lord,’ “ Starwind sighed, shaking his head. “You hold your lands under our protection, yes, but it is a simple matter of barter, foodstuffs for guardianship, and no more than that.”

“Aye, m’ – Master Starwind. Master, this drake – she just be chance-come, or be there anythin’ more to it?”

Starwind turned to look at him more closely, and with some interest. “Why do you ask that?”

Phellip coughed, and flushed. “Well, m’lord, I was born ‘n’ bred west a’ here. M’people held land a’ Mage-lord Grenvis – hewere all right, but – well, when ‘is neighbors had a notion t’ play war, they useta bring in drakes an’ th’ like aforehand.”

“And you think something of the sort might be in the offing? Phellip, I congratulate you on your foresight. The thought had only just occurred to me – “

“Da?” One of the boys couldn’t contain himself any longer, and bounced up beside his father. “Da, there gonna be a war? With fightin’ an’ magic an’ – “

Phellip grabbed the loose cloth of the boy’s tunic and pulled him close. “Jo – I want ye t’ lissent’ what m’lord Starwind is gonna tell ye – m’lord, youtell ‘im; ‘ edon’ believe ‘is of man that fightin’ ain’t good fer nothin’ but fillin’ up graveyards.”

“Young man,” Starwind fixed the boy with an earnest stare. “There is nothing‘fine’ about warfare. There is nothing ‘glorious’ about battle. All that a war means to such as you and I is that people we know and love will die, probably senselessly; others will be crippled for life – and the fools who began it all will sit back in their high castles and plot a way to get back what theylost. If there wereto be a war – which, trust me, Phellip, I shall try most earnestly to prevent – the very bestyou could hope for, young man, would be to see these lovely fields around you put to the torch so that you would face a very hungry winter. Thatis what warfare is all about. The only justifiable fight is a defensive one, and in anyfight it is the innocents who ultimately suffer the most.”

The boy didn’t look convinced.

Vanyel cleared his throat, and the boy shot a look at him. “Pretty exciting, the way that drake just nipped off that fool old man’s head, wasn’t it, Starwind?” he drawled, in exaggerated imitation of some of the young courtiers of his own circle.

The boy paled, then reddened – but before he could burst into either tears or angry words, Vanyel looked him straight in the eyes so fiercely that he could not look away.

“That’swhat you’ll see in a war, Jo,” he said, harshly. “Not people in tales getting killed – yourpeople getting killed. Younglings, oldsters – everybody. And some fool at the rear crowing about how excitingit all is. That’swhat it’s about.”

NowJo looked stricken – and, perhaps, convinced. Out of the corner of his eye Vanyel saw the farmer nodding in approval.

Out of nowhere, Vanyel felt a sudden rush of kindred feeling for these people. Suddenly they weren’t faceless, inscrutable monoliths anymore – suddenly they were people. People who were in some ways a great deal more like him than his own relatives were. They had lives – and loves and cares.

Their outlook on warfare was certainly closer to his than that of any of his blood relations.

They aren’t that much different than me. Except– except that I can do something they can’t. I can– Ican protect them when they can’t protect themselves. And they can do things I can’t. But Icould learn to grow a carrot if I had to. It probably wouldn’t be a very good carrot, but I could grow one. They won’t ever be able to blast a colddrake.

What does thatmean, really? What does that say aboutmy life? Why canI do these things, and not someone else– and what about the people out there who– who send drake-swarms out to eat Helpless farmers? If I can protect people like this from people likethem – doesn’t that mean– that I reallyhave to?

He looked up and saw his aunt’s eyes; she was watching the children at their chores, cleaning and chopping vegetables for a stew. Her expression was at once protective and worried.

It’s the way Savil feels– it’s got to be. That’s why she’s a Herald.

And suddenly Tylenders words came back to him; so clearly that it seemed for a moment as if Tylendel were sitting beside him again, murmuring into his ear.

“… it’s a kind of hunger. I can’t help it. I’ve got these abilities, these Gifts, and I can’tnot use them. I couldn’t sit here, knowing that there were people out there who needexactly the kind of help I can give them and not make the effort to find them and take care of them.’’Now he understood those words. Oh, the irony of it; this part of Tylendel that he had never been able to comprehend – nowit was clear. Now that Tylendel was gone – nowhe understood. Oh, godsHeclosed his eyes against the sting of tears. Oh, yes – nowhe understood. Because now he felt that way, too. Too late to share it.

Fourteen

:Well?: To all appearances, Savil was asleep beside the settlers’ stone hearth as she Mindspoke Starwind in Private-mode. In actuality, despite her weariness she was anything but sleepy, and was watching the fire through half-slitted eyes as she waited for the opportunity to confer with him. Her single word contained a world of overtones that she was fairly certain he’d pick up.

:Interesting, on several levels,: he replied. He was lying on his back, arms beneath his head, his eyes also closed.

The settlers – Savil had learned before the evening was over that they were calling their lands “Garthhold,” and that there were seven loosely-related families in the group – had offered the Tayledrasand their friends unlimited hospitality. All four of them were bone-tired even after rest and tea, and it was agreed among the three adults that it would be no bad thing to take them up on it. They refused, however, to put anyone out of his bed. So after a dinner of bread and stew, they made it plain that they intended to sleep by the fireside. The four of them were currently rolled up in their cloaks, on sacks of straw to keep them off the stone of the floor, beside the glowing coals of the kitchen hearth.

Vanyel was genuinely asleep. Savil wasn’t certain of Moondance; he was curled on his side, his face to the fire, as peaceful and serene as a child’s.

By all rights, he should really be asleep. There’d been several injuries related to the colddrake’s attack and the hasty escapes, and Moondance had had his hands full Healing them. Then he had delegated himself magical assistant to getting the stockade back up. It had saved the Garthholders no end of effort to have the logs spell-raised back into place. He shouldhave been exhausted.

So Savil thought, until he Mindspoke both of them. :May I enter the conversation? I assume there is one.:

So much for Moondance being weary.

:Be welcome, but keep it in private,: she replied, :Among other things, we’re discussing the boy. Starwind, go on please.:

:From the small things to the great– Ithinkperhaps you may cease to fear for the boy. I think he now feels the hunger you spoke of, and understanding has been attained. Herein the question is if the boy can conquer his fears.:

. I wondered about that. He’s been wearing a very odd look on his face this evening, and I’venever known him to be as friendly with common folk as he was tonight.: She opened her eyes wide and stared at the glowing embers of the hearth without really seeing them. -.Poor Van. If that dream of hisis ForeSight– that’s a hell of a burden to carry around.:

:It still may never come to be,: Moondance reminded them, and the straw of his bedding crackled as he shifted. :We still See only the thing most likelyat this moment. And the moment is always changing. I would change the subject. We have a more urgent consideration. Those colddrakes were Gated here. That speaks of-:

: – great trouble to come,: Starwind replied, his mind-voice dark and grim. ‘ .There is no doubt in my mind at this moment that the drakes were sent to harry this area in advance of a fighting force.: The fire popped once. :This has gone beyond tampering. There was a village to the west of here under tacit k ‘Treva protection. I can no longer sense it; it is under a foreign shield.:

:Someone moved in and took it over, hmm?: Savil brooded on that a moment. :What would you say to us organizing a little surprise for whoever sent those drakes? I doubt anyone is expecting k ‘Treva response this soon. By rights, dividing the swarm should have kept us busy for a week.:

Starwind’s mind-voice was troubled. . I would say that you are not k’Treva– :

:And I would reply that I am Wingsister, which makes me just as much k ‘Treva as Moondance. I would say also that two mages tampering in this area is a very unlikely coincidence, ft is far more likely that this is the same mage who was hired by the Leshara of Valdemar. Which makes it the more my fight.:

More straw rustled, and Savil moved her head slightly; just enough to see Starwind’s ironic gaze bent on her for a long moment.

:And I,: Moondance put in, .-would say that myshay’kreth’ashke is unlikely to win a battle of wills with such a stubborn one as I know the Wingsister to be. I would also say that three Adepts are better in this than two.:

Starwind sighed. . I fear I am defeated ere I begin. What do we do with the boy, then? We cannot leave him here, and I mislike taking the time to take him back to the vale. Thatwill lose us the element of surprise.:

:He may prove useful,: Moondance said unexpectedly. :He did defeat the queen-drake.:

:We bring him, I suppose,: Savil agreed, though with some misgiving. : Surely Yfandes can be counted on to keep him out of serious trouble.:

:I cannot like it, but I must agree,: Starwind replied reluctantly. :This is a great deal of danger to be taking one so untested and so newly-healed into.:

. I know,: Savil said, wishing the coals burning in the fireplace didn’t look so much like a burning town. .’Believe me, I know.:

It had been snowing all day, not heavily, but steadily. The air felt almost warm. The Companions moved like white spirits through the drifts of flurries, each carrying double. White horses, white riders – all but one; the one riding pillion behind the second Companion was in smoky black and dark gray, a shadow to a ghost.

“You all look like Heralds,” Vanyel said, from the pillion-pad behind Moondance. “Everyone does except me.”

“How so?” Moondance asked, somewhat surprised.

“It’s your white outfits,” Savil supplied, as Kellan lagged a little so that she could reply without having to turn her head. “Heralds always wear white uniforms when they’re on duty.”

“Ah – youngling, Tayledrasalways wear the colors best suited to blend into the treetops. In winter – white. In summer, obviously, green.” Moondance was carefully plaiting a new bowstring using both hands; he wasn’t even bothering with the reins, he had those looped up on the pommel of the saddle. Vanyel didn’t much care for riding pillion, but it wasn’t bad behind Moondance; the younger Tayledrasdidn’t mind talking to him. As Vanyel had suspected, he had forgiven Vanyel even before he made his apology to the Tayledras. Which he had done as soon as he could get Moondance alone; it only seemed right. Now it was as if the incident had never occurred; Moondance even seemed to welcome his questions and encouraged him to ask them.

They’d talked about Vanyel’s Gifts, mostly. Vanyel hadn’t actually talkedabout them to anyone; Savil hadn’t had much opportunity to do so, and Starwind had just gone directly into his head, showed him what to do, and then expected him to do it.

“So, what were we up to?” Moondance asked.

“ForeSight.” Vanyel shivered. “Moondance, I don’t like it. I don’t wantto know what’s going to happen. Is there any way I can block it?”

“Now that it is active? Not to my knowledge. But you must not let it cripple you, ke’chara. You are not seeing the irrevocablefuture, you see the future as it may be if nothing changes. The most likely at this moment. These things may change; youcan change them.”