Winds of Fury (19 page)

Falconsbane hid his amusement carefully. There was no point in letting the boy know just how ridiculous a notion that really was. It would gain him nothing, and might lose him yet more freedom if Ancar tightened his coercions in pique. One
might
choose a handful of wild berries and nuts in preference to a feast of good, red meat, but it would be a stupid choice. So, too, would choosing to subvert Ancar in preference to the young woman.

But apparently she had no options. So, after being routed from Valdemar, Hulda had turned her eyes toward Hardom and had found fertile ground for her teachings and manipulations in the heir to
that
throne. She had promised, cajoled, and eventually seduced her way into Ancar's life, and had orchestrated everything he did from the moment she climbed into his bed until very recently.

But she had been incredibly stupid, for she had forgotten that all things are subject to change, and had grown complacent of late. She neglected her student for other interests. She promised, but failed to deliver upon those promises. Meanwhile Ancar tasted the exercise of power, and he found it a heady and eye-opening draught. He began to crave more of it, and that was when he realized that Hulda held more of it than he did—or ever would, while she lived.

So, although they had once been allies and even partners, they were now locked in a silent struggle for supremacy that Hulda had only now begun to recognize.

Falconsbane toyed with his goblet, listened, and nodded, saying nothing. Certainly he did not give voice to the contempt that he felt for this petty kinglet and mageling. Under any other circumstances he would have been able to crush Ancar like an overripe grape. He still
could
, if the coercions were eased sufficiently.

He learned also how little Ancar truly knew; how effective Hulda had been in denying him any training that might make him a threat to her power. His obsession with Gates now—if Falconsbane were not certain that the coercions binding him would probably cause the destruction of his mind if Ancar came to harm, he would have encouraged the fool's obsessions and illusions. The boy did not realize that he had no
chance
of ever controlling a real Gate. He simply did not have the strength. He had not figured out that a Gate could only go to places he himself had been, and not, as he fondly imagined, to any place he chose. He didn't really believe, despite the way he had been drained and the warnings in his fragment of manuscript, that Gate-energy came from
him
and not any outside sources of power like a node or energy-reserves.

Continued experiments would be certain to get him killed, and in a particularly nasty and messy fashion. Despite how much fun it would be to watch as his body was drained to a husk, there was the possibility that the royal whelp could tap Falconsbane's energy to save himself. That would be difficult to survive in his present state. So Falconsbane dissuaded Ancar from the idea, gently but firmly, pointing out that Hulda had known that he had been tinkering with the spell, and that she would certainly be on the watch for anything else of the sort. “Patience,” he advised, as Ancar frowned. “First, we must rid ourselves of this aged female.
Then
I shall teach you the secrets of Greater Magics.”

The power struggle between these two held far more promise of turning the tables on Ancar than anything else Falconsbane had yet observed. He noted how Ancar brightened at his last words, and smiled lazily.

“You can rid me of her?” the boy asked eagerly.

Falconsbane waved his hand languidly. “In time,” he said. “I am not yet recovered; I must study the situation—and her. It would assist me greatly if you could manufacture a way to bring me into court, where I could observe her with my own eyes, and see what she is and is not capable of. I may note weaknesses in her armor, and I may know of ways to exploit those weaknesses that you do not.”

Ancar nodded, his face now betraying both avidity and anticipation. “I had planned to introduce you as a kind of envoy, an ambassador from a potential Western ally. You must mask your powers from her, of course—”

“Of course,” Falconsbane interrupted, with a yawn. “But this must wait until I have recovered all of my strength.” He allowed his eyelids to droop. “I am—most fatigued,” he murmured. “I become weary so easily. . . .”

He watched from beneath his lids and Ancar was taken in by his appearance of cooperation. Good. Perhaps the boy would become convinced that the coercions were no longer needed. Perhaps he could be persuaded to remove them, on the grounds that they depleted him unnecessarily. Perhaps he would even remove them without any persuasion, secure in his own power and the thought that Falconsbane was his willing ally.

And perhaps Falconsbane would even
be
his willing ally.

For now.

A
n'desha felt sick, smudged with something so foul that he could hardly bear himself. It was a very physical feeling, although, strictly speaking, he no longer had a body to feel any of those things with. The spirits had warned him that he would encounter uncomfortable and unpleasant things in Falconsbane's memories. But neither they nor his own brief glimpses during his years of desperate hiding of what Falconsbane had done with his borrowed body had prepared him for the terrible things he confronted during that first look into Falconsbane's past.

For most of the day after his first foray into the Adept's memory, he had withdrawn quickly into his safe haven and had figuratively curled up there, shaken and nauseated, and unable to think. But his “haven” was really not “safe,” and nothing would make the images acid-etched into his own memory go away. Still, he remained knotted about himself, tangled in a benumbed and sickened mental fog, right up until the arrival of some of King Ancar's servants. It seemed that the King had new plans for his captive; they had come to move the Adept to different quarters.

That move shook him out of his shock, although he had not paid a great deal of attention to Ancar before this. It occurred to him that he did not really know much about the Adept's captor. Ancar wanted something of Falconsbane—knowledge, power—but he might simply be ambitious and not evil. That made him think that he might be able to find some kind of ally among these people, someone who could help him to overcome Falconsbane and restore him to control of his much-abused body again.

After all, the spirits had not said he would be unable to find help here, they had simply offered him one possible option. And it was a Shin'a'in belief that the Goddess was most inclined to aid those who first put every effort into helping themselves.

So when Falconsbane was settled into his new, and to Shin'a'in eyes, bewilderingly luxurious suite of rooms, An'desha kept his own “ears” open to the gossip of the servants, hoping to learn something about the young King who had them in his possession. After all, if the King was a strong enough mage to put coercions on Falconsbane and keep them in force, he might be strong enough to overcome the Adept. Mornelithe Falconsbane's contempt of Ancar of Hardorn notwithstanding, the young King might very well have knowledge that would give him an edge even over someone like Mornelithe.

But watching and listening, both to the servants' gossip and to the questions that Ancar put to Falconsbane, dashed An'desha's hopes before they had a chance to grow too far. Ancar was just another sort as Falconsbane—younger, less steeped in depravity, with fewer horrific crimes to his account. But that was all too clearly not for lack of trying.

Ancar cared nothing for others, except to determine if and how they might be used to further his own ends. His only concern was for himself, his powers, and his pleasures. If he learned of An'desha's existence, he would only use that knowledge to get more of an edge over his captive. He might even betray An'desha's presence to the unwitting Adept in the very moment that he learned of it, if he thought it would gain him something. And he would do so without a second thought, destroying a soul as casually as any other man might eat a radish.

He had brief hopes again, when he learned of the existence of the mysterious woman rival in Ancar's life—how could a woman who was Ancar's rival be anything but Ancar's very opposite? But then Ancar's own descriptions destroyed the vision of a woman of integrity opposing the King and his henchmen. Even taking Ancar's words with a great deal of leaven, this
Hulda
was no more to be trusted than Ancar himself.

He learned far more than he cared to about her, nevertheless. Once he had admitted Hulda's existence and their former relationship, Ancar answered all of Falconsbane's questions with casual callousness, describing their relationship in appalling detail, and the things she had taught him, often by example, with a kind of nostalgia. And the woman was just as much a monster as her pupil—perhaps more, for Ancar had no knowledge of anything she might have done before she came into his father's employ. Seducing the young child she had been hired to teach and protect was the least of her excesses. . . .

It was a horrible education for An'desha. His uncle had claimed that the so-called “civilized” people of the other lands were the real barbarians, and at the moment An'desha would vouch for that wholeheartedly. No Shin'a'in would ever sink to the depths that Ancar described, and as for Falconsbane—

No Shin'a'in would ever
believe
anyone would do what the Beast had done.

These people were
all
scum!

He longed, with an intensity that made him sick, for the clean sweep of the Dhorisha Plains and the simpler life of a herd guard. What matter if his kin were sometimes cruel, sometimes taunted him for being a halfbreed? What matter if he had been forced into the life of a shaman? He would
never
have had to experience any of this, never
know
that his body had done
these things
, had performed
those acts.
He would never have been forced to look into the depths of Falconsbane's soul and realize that no matter what he saw now, there was probably something much worse in the Adept's memory that he simply hadn't uncovered yet.

The most evil men in recent Shin'a'm history were those men who had slaughtered Clan Tale'sedrin, down to the last and littlest child—except for the famed Tarma shena Tale'sedrin who had declared blood-feud, been taken as Swordsworn, then tracked them down and eliminated them all. But compared to Mornelithe Falconsbane, all of the crimes of all of those men combined were a single poisonous weed in the poisoned lands of the Pelagir Hills, or a grain of sand in the glass-slagged crater that had in the long-distant past, become the Plains at the Hand of the Star-Eyed.

The young Shin'a'in huddled inside Falconsbane's mind—
no
,
it is
my
mind
—as the conversation with Ancar went on and on, trying to hold in his revulsion and mask his presence, and expecting at any moment to be discovered. And An'desha had never in his entire life felt quite so young, petrified with fear, and quite so helpless. Despite the protections the Avatars had taught him, if Falconsbane found him, he would have no way to prevent the Adept from crushing him out of all existence.

But somehow, those protections held. Either Falconsbane was not as all-powerful as he
thought,
or else the Avatars were more powerful than they claimed.

Ancar left at last, as Falconsbane's feigned weariness became real weariness. And when he dozed off in the chair, An'desha crept out of hiding, to stare at a candle flame and try to think out his meager options.

Ancar was repulsive, but an old Shin'a'in proverb held that anything could be used as a weapon in a case of desperation.
You can kill a man who wishes to destroy you with a handful of maggots if you must
. Could An'desha possibly deceive the King long enough to win himself free?
I could reveal myself to Ancar as an ally, and think up some story that makes it look as if I have more power than I really do.
Well, yes. That was a possibility. And if everything worked properly, he
might
get his body back
if
Ancar could overwhelm Falconsbane. But Ancar had no reason to trust An'desha, and every reason to want one more hold over the Adept. What did An'desha have to offer? The knowledge contained in Falconsbane's memory, assuming it was still
there
after Falconsbane was gone—yes, he did have that. But he had no practical experience as a mage; no idea how to handle all these energies. And truth to tell, he was terrified of them. If Ancar asked for proof of his power, what could An'desha offer? Not much. Nothing that would convince Ancar, who was a suspicious man and saw deception everywhere.