Winds of Change (13 page)

“Not long enough,” the scout replied, looking soberly out at the innocent-looking land beyond the stream. “There was a time when magic in all its ‘colors’ and ‘sounds’ worked together. The time we call the Mage Wars shattered that order. The structure of magic - and its energies - were stressed to their limits. In the great disaster that ended the Final War, those bonds were broken. Their crystalline patterns, like branches of light to a mage, became as distorted as pine needles dropped to the ground. And every place they touched, on a scale vaster than we can see, they made the land dangerous, and caused creatures that should never have lived to appear.”

Skif shook his head, unable or unwilling to comprehend it. Wintermoon continued.

“When we first came here and established this Vale, the land hereabouts was as fearful as anything you saw before the Lady appeared. We have tamed it somewhat, and it is a fortunate thing that few of the magic-twisted creatures breed true. That also is due in part to Tayledras magery.”

“But some do?” Skif asked.

Wintermoon nodded. “Those, we call ‘Changebeasts.’ They plainly have parentage of normal creatures, but they have new attributes, generally dangerous. Changelions, for instance - oft they have huge canine teeth, extending far beyond their jaws, and have a way of being able to work a kind of primitive magic that can keep them invisible even when one looks directly at them, so long as the Changelion does not move. That is ... a common Change. Some are unpredictable or unrecognizable.” He hesitated, gathering his thoughts. “When the parentage was human, we call the result a ‘Changechild.’ And - in general - true humans do not - mate with them.”

He glanced sideways at Skif, gauging the effect of his words. Skif didn’t take offense, but he wasn’t going to accept that particular judgment without a fight, either. “Why not?” he asked, bringing his chin up, aggressively. “I mean, what’s the difference? Who would care?”

Wintermoon sighed. “Because it is said that to mate with a Changechild is the same as mating with a beast, because the Changechildren are one with the beasts.” He held up a hand to stop the angry words Skif started to speak. “I only say what is commonly thought, not what I think. But you must know that it
is
the common thought, and there is no escaping it.”

Skif frowned. “So most Tayledras would think - if Nyara and I made a pair of it - that I was some kind of deviant?”

The Hawkbrother sighed. “Perhaps fewer in this Clan than in others, but some would. And outside the Clans altogether, among Outlanders who live in Tayledras lands and hold loyalty to us, or among those who trade with us - there would be no escaping it. They would all feel that way to some degree.”

So I’ll deal with it when
-
if - it happens.
He nodded his understanding, but not his agreement.

Wintermoon continued. “There is another problem as well; there are either no offspring of such a mating, or as often as not, they truly
are
monsters that are less able to reason than beasts. This, I know, for I have seen it. The few children of such a union that
are
relatively whole are like unto the Changechild parent. And that is only one in four.”

Not good odds. . . .

Wintermoon flexed his hands. “The likeliest to happen is that there are no children of the union. I would say that is just as well.”

“So Nyara is a Changechild,” Skif said, thinking out loud. “Just what makes her that, and not some - oh - victim of an experiment by her father on a real human child?”

“That there are things the human form cannot be made to mimic,” Wintermoon replied too promptly. “Her eyes, slitted like a cat. Fur-tufts on her ears.”

“Oh?” This time Skif expressed real skepticism. “That’s not what Darkwind told me. He said that it
was
possible that she’d been modified from a full human. He said that it would take a lot of magic to do it, but that if Falconsbane was using her as a kind of model for what he wanted to do to himself, he might be willing to burn the magic.”

“He did?” Skif’s assertion caught Wintermoon by surprise. “That - would make things easier.” The Hawkbrother chewed his lip for a moment. “That would make her entirely a victim, among other things. That would bring her sympathy.”

“I’ve got another question.” Cymry returned from the stream and came to stand beside him; he patted her neck absently. “What if she wasn’t a Changechild - but she wasn’t a human either?”

Wintermoon shook his head in perplexity. “How could she not be either?”

“If she was someone from a real race of her own - ” He chewed his lip, and tried to come up with an example. “Look, you don’t call the
tervardi
Changechildren, or the
hertasi.
What makes them different from Nyara?”

“There are many of them,” Wintermoon replied promptly. “They breed true; they have colonies of their own kind, settlements.”

“So how do you know that there
aren’t
settlements of Nyara’s kind somewhere?” he interrupted. “You didn’t know there were gryphons before Treyvan and Hydona arrived!” He smiled triumphantly.

“Gryphons were upon a list handed down from the time of the Mage Wars,” Wintermoon said immediately, dashing his hopes. “As were the others. Every Tayledras memorizes it, lest he not recognize a friend - or foe. There is nothing on that list that matches Nyara.”

Well, so much for that idea. At least she isn ‘t on the “foe” list; I suppose I’d better consider us fortunate.

Nevertheless, he couldn’t help wondering if there
could
be creatures that were like the
hertasi
that simply hadn’t made the all-important list. Or if there were creatures that had developed since the Mage Wars that couldn’t have made the list because they hadn’t been in existence then. . . .

Oh, this is ridiculous. It doesn‘t matter what she is. What matters is what she does.
Every Herald he’d met had told him that as he grew up in the Collegium. They had been right then; that should hold true now.

“It will be dark, soon,” Wintermoon said, glancing at the sky. While they had been talking, the quality of the light had changed, to the thick gold of the moments before actual sunset. Filtered through the golden-brown leaves, the effect was even more pronounced, as if the very air had turned golden and sweet as honey.

“Are we going to
camp
here, or go on?”
Skit
asked. The question was pertinent; if this had been an expedition with two Heralds, they would camp now, while there was still light. But it wasn’t; Wintermoon had abilities and a resource in his bondbirds that no Herald had.

“We go on,” Wintermoon replied promptly. “Although we will feign to make camp. If there is anyone watching us, they will be deceived. Then once true night falls, we shall move on.”

It didn’t take them long to unload the packs and Cymry’s saddle and make a sketchy sort of camp; Wintermoon unstrung and tied out a hammock, and padded it with a bedroll, then produced a second one and guided Skif in setting it up. That done, they cleared a patch of forest floor and built a tiny fire.

As they sat beside the fire, one of the owls lumbered into their clearing, laden with a young rabbit. It dropped its burden at Wintermoon’s feet, and before it had taken its perch on his shoulder, the second followed with a squirrel in its talons.

“Well,” Wintermoon chuckled, as the second owl dropped its burden beside the first and flew to a perch in the tree above Wintermoon’s head, “It seems that my friends have determined that we shall have a meal, at least.”

“That’s fine by me,” Skif said, and grinned. “I was about to dig out those trail rations.”

“I thought I heard something growling - I thought it might be a beast in the bushes. ‘Twas only your stomach,” Wintermoon teased as he began gutting and skinning the rabbit. Both owls hopped down from their perches to stand on the ground beside him, waiting for tidbits.

They took the proffered entrails quite daintily; seeing that, Skif had no hesitation about picking up the squirrel and following the scout’s example. When the darker of the two owls saw what he was doing, it joined him, abandoning Wintermoon.

Skif got two surprises; the first, that this little “squirrel” was built more like a rabbit than the scrawny creatures he was used to - and the second, that the owl took so much care in taking its treats from him that its beak never touched his fingers. “Which one have I got?” he asked Winter-moon. “How hungry is he likely to be?”

“K’Tathi,” the scout replied without looking up. “The scraps will suffice for now; they will hunt again after we make our second camp, this time for themselves. Give him what you wish to spare from your meal.”

Head, entrails, and the limbs from the first joint out seemed appropriate. K’Tathi took everything that was offered with grace, never getting so much as a spot of blood on his gray-white feathers. Skif offered the skin as well, but the owl ignored it, so Skif quickly tossed it into the bushes as he saw Wintermoon do. That would have been foolhardy if they had been planning to stay, for the bloody skins might well attract something quite large and dangerous. But since they weren’t - well, there was sure to be something that would find the skin worth eating, and if there
was
someone watching them, possibly following them -

Well, if they try to go for the camp and there‘s something big, with teeth, still here, they‘re going to get a rude surprise.

When he finished his task, he once again followed Wintermoon’s example and spitted it on a sturdy branch to hold over the fire. Meanwhile, the sun continued to set, the sky above the trees turning first orange, then scarlet, then deepening to vermilion-streaked blue. By the time the meat was done, the sky was thick with stars.

He was halfway through his dinner when Wintermoon said abruptly, “I envy you, did you know that?”

He looked up, a little startled, into the ice-blue eyes of the man across the fire. There was no sign of Wintermoon’s dinner, other than the pile of small, neatly-stacked bones at his feet, each of them gnawed clean.

What did he do, inhale the thing?

On the other hand - it was in the interest of the scout’s survival to learn to eat quickly. No telling when a meal might be interrupted by an uninvited, unwelcome dinner-guest.

“Why?” he asked, puzzled by the question. “What is there about me to envy? I’m nothing special, especially around Heralds.”

“My - liaisons - tend to be brief, and informal,” the scout replied. “One reason I wished to guide you was because Starspring returned my feathers, and I am at loose ends.”

Skif wondered if he should tender sympathy, surmising from the content that “returned his feathers” meant his lover had dissolved the relationship. But Wintermoon evidently saw something of his uncertainty in his expression and shook his head, smiling.

“No, this was not painful. I have no wish to
avoid
the Vale, or her. But I simply have no partner now, and there is no one else I care to partner with at the moment. So I am at loose ends, and would just as soon have other things to think on.” He wiped his fingers clean on a swatch of dry grass, and tossed it into the fire. “That is what I envy you, do you see,” he said, watching the grass writhe and catch. “Strong feelings. I have never experienced them.”

Skif coughed, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know that this is anything other than infatuation or attraction to the exotic.”

“Still, it is strong,” Wintermoon persisted. “I have never felt anything strongly. Sometimes I doubt I have the ability for it.”

The statement was offered like a gift; Skif was wise enough to know that when he saw it. He searched his mind for an appropriate response.

:The birds,:
Cymry prompted.

“You feel strongly about Corwith and K’Tathi, don’t you?” he countered.

Wintermoon nodded slowly as if that simply hadn’t occurred to him in such a context.

“Well then,” Skif said and gestured, palm upward. “Then I wouldn’t worry. You’re capable. The way I see it, we all feel strongly about things, we just might not know we do. Valdemar is like that for Heralds; we lay our lives down willingly for our country and Monarch when we must, but most of the time, we just don’t think about it. If you encounter someone you
can
feel strongly about, you will. You haven’t exactly been given much of a choice of potential mates what with three-fourths of the Clan gone, and your tendency to, well, stay to yourself.”

“True.” The scout sat back a little, and only then did Skif realize, as he relaxed, that he had been tensed. “My father thinks that being born without the Gift for magery shows a serious lack in me. Sometimes I wonder if I have other, less visible lacks.”

Before Skif could change the subject, Wintermoon changed it for him - to one just as uncomfortable. “What do you intend when we find Nyara?” the scout asked, bluntly. “We shall, I promise you. I am not indulging in vanity to say that I am one of the finest trackers of k’Sheyna.”

“I - uh - I don’t know,” Skif replied. “Right now, to tell you the truth, all I’m thinking about is finding her. Once we do that - “ He shook his head. “It just gets too complicated. I’m going to worry about it when it happens. What she says and does when we find her will give me my direction.”

“Ah,” the scout replied, and fell silent.

After all, I spent less than a week in her company,
he thought.
I
could have been misreading everything about her.