Winds of Fury (28 page)

“Elspeth!” the Lady cried, clasping Elspeth's hand and kissing it fervently. “Thank the gods! We heard you were dead!”

Darkwind choked, smothering a laugh, and Elspeth only sighed.

But later that night, after all the fuss was over and everyone had been settled into their rooms, Elspeth sagged into a chair beside the fire and stared into the flames. Perhaps this business of staying with the high-born was a mistake. . . .

On the other hand, no inn would ever accept the gryphons. And at least in this way, word was being spread quickly that she
was
alive and she had returned with some real help against Ancar.

But another little conversation with Shion and with a cousin of Shion's who lived here had just proved to her that Darkwind was right. Shion and the others weren't at all concerned with the welfare of Valdemar—or at least that wasn't their motivation in cross-examining her. They were just plain nosy. They wanted gossip-fodder, and what was more, if she didn't give it to them, they were perfectly capable of making things up out of whole cloth!

Shion's cousin had brought Elspeth her supper, using that as an excuse to ask any number of increasingly impertinent questions. Finally she had concluded, shamelessly, with the question of whether it was true that Hawkbrothers only mated in groups, saying as an excuse that she had read about it in “an old story.” And it was pretty obvious that the cousin also wanted to know if Elspeth had been a member of one of those groups.

When Elspeth asked her where she had heard such nonsense, the girl had demurred and avoided giving an answer, but Elspeth already had a good idea who had prompted it. After all, until she had gone delving into the old Archives, there hadn't been more than a handful of folk in Valdemar who even knew that the Hawkbrothers existed. So where else would the girl have heard an “old story” about the Tayledras except from Shion?

Elspeth's jaw tightened. The trouble was, no matter what she said or did, it was likely to make the situation worse. If she dressed Shion down for this, Shion would only be more certain that Elspeth was hiding some kind of dreadful secret. If she forbade any more loose talk, that would only make Shion more circumspect in spreading silly gossip. If she ignored it all, Shion would go right on spreading gossip, and making up whatever she didn't know for certain. There was no way Elspeth could win at this.

Heralds were human beings, with all the failings and foibles of any other set of humans. Shion's failing was gossip—harmless enough under most circumstances. Except for this one, where her fantasies could and would cause Elspeth some problems. . . .

A gentle tap at the door made her look up in time to see Darkwind slipping inside. He glanced around the darkened room for a moment, then spotted her at the hearth and came to join her.

“I do not know whether to laugh or snarl, bright feather,” he said without preamble. “And if we had not as many notorious gossips in k'Sheyna as anywhere else, I would probably be very annoyed at this moment.”

“I take it you met Kalinda,” Elspeth said dryly as he took a seat beside the fire.

“Indeed.” His mouth twitched. “I was discussing some trifle with Firesong when she brought us our dinners, then, bold as you please, offered to—ah—‘join our mating circle.' I confess that I did not know what to say or do.”

Elspeth took one look at his face and broke up in a fit of giggling. That set him off, too, and for the next few moments, they leaned against each other, laughing and gasping for breath. Any glance at the other's face only served to set them off again.

“I—dear gods!—you must have done something. How did you get her out of there?” she choked, finally.

He shook his head, and held his side. “I did nothing!” he confessed. “It was Firesong. He just looked at the girl and said, ‘the offer is appreciated, but unless you turn male, impossible.' She turned quite scarlet, and stammered something neither of us understood, then left.”

That sent Elspeth into convulsions again because she could very easily see Firesong doing exactly that. The wicked creature!

Her gales of laughter started Darkwind giggling again, and the two of them laughed until they simply had no more breath to laugh with anymore. She lay with her head against Darkwind's shoulder while the fire burned a little lower, and only spoke when he moved to throw another branch into the flames.

“I suppose that will take care of Shion for a while,” she said, wiping moisture from the corner of one eye. “I wish I'd thought of that as a solution. But you know, now Shion will probably begin telling everyone that you and Firesong are both
shay'a'chern.
The gods only know what
that
will bring out of the corners!”

“I do not care, dearheart,” he replied, stroking her hair. “So long as it saves you grief. And I am certain that Firesong will be positively delighted! I tell you, he is as shameless as a cooperihawk!”

She laughed again, for she had seen the cooperihawks in their rounds of spring matings, which were frequent and undiscriminating.

He chuckled with her and caressed her shoulders, then continued. “I have other confessions to make to you, and none so amusing. I had no idea of the size of your land, of the numbers of your people. I had naively supposed your Valdemar must be like a very large Vale. And I had no idea what your status truly was among your people. And—I now realize that all of my assumptions were based on those ideas.”

“My status is subject to change, my love,” she replied quickly. “As I told you, I am not indispensable.”

“But others believe you are.” He held her for a long moment in silence, his warm hands clasped across her waist. “You have duties and obligations, and they do not include a—long term relationship with some foreign mage.”

She forced herself to remain calm; after all, wasn't this precisely what she had thought, herself, any number of times? She had known since before she left Valdemar that her freedom was severely restricted. Hadn't she rebuffed Skif with that very same argument?

But she no longer accepted that argument, as she had not accepted the “fated” path that the Companions had tried to force her to take.

And even though his tongue was saying that he must let her go, his body was saying quite a different thing. He held her tightly, fiercely, as if to challenge anyone who might try to part them.

She must choose her words very carefully. He had opened his heart to her; she must answer the pain she heard under his words. But he would not respect someone who violated all the vows she had made to her own land and people by willfully deserting them, either. The next few words might be the most important she would ever speak in her life.

“I have duties, true enough,” she replied, slowly, turning to stare into his eyes. “I never pretended otherwise. I have to find a way to reconcile those duties with what I want and what you want. I think I can, if you will trust me.”

“You know I do. With my very life,
ashke.”

His face looked like a beautiful sculpture by the firelight. Time seemed to slow down. Even Vree was stock-still, watching them both unblinkingly. Darkwind held his breath.

“I think I can be true to Valdemar, Darkwind—and to you. I
know
there has to be a way. I refuse to lose either of you—you or my native land and my duty to it. I refuse to let you go.”

The last was said so fiercely that his eyes widened for a moment in surprise. “But how can you possibly reconcile them?” he asked at last. “You are your mother's chosen successor. There is very little freedom for you in that role.”

“I have some ideas,” she replied. “But they hinge on your not knowing what I'm going to do so you can be just as surprised as everyone else. Otherwise people will think that I'm simply acting like a love-struck wench rather than in the best interests of Valdemar.”

He held very still for a moment. “And are you a love-struck wench?”

She reached up, grabbed two handfuls of his hair, and pulled his mouth to hers for a long and passionate kiss. The touch of his lips made a fire build in the core of her. It made it very difficult to hold to coherent thought. “Of course I am,” she replied calmly.

Darkwind smiled and stroked her hair. He closed his eyes and pulled her closer, strong and comforting, protecting her as a great hawk would mantle over its young in a storm. His touch against her cheek was as gentle as a feather's, and his sigh of contentment matched her own.

The scent of his body and the smoky warmth of the room blended. She knew she had said the right thing. She had spoken her heart. She had spoken the truth.

The kiss had made her heart race and drove her thoughts into paths entirely foreign to simple discussion. “But I don't want them to know that. Being love-struck doesn't mean my brains have poured out my ears!”

“I hope not,” he murmured, “because I am as much in love with your mind as—”

She did not give him the chance to finish the sentence.

 

Vree watched the two kiss, then tucked his head to sleep. As far as Vree was concerned, whatever came, whatever they faced, wherever they went, all would now be right with the world.

It was a good bonding. Display done. Mate won. Nesting soon. They would fly high together.

 

At last, they cleared the area covered by the storm, and the final few days were spent riding under sunnier skies. Sunnier—not sunny; there were no cloudless skies, but at least the roads remained less than mud-pits despite the occasional brief cloudburst. The weather was still odd, though; there were always spectacular sunsets and wild lightning storms at night, although these storms did not necessarily produce rain, and the skies never entirely cleared even when they neared Haven.

The city itself sat under a circle of
blue
sky, rather than clouds; a nearly-perfect circle, in fact, and very odd to Elspeth's eyes. When Firesong saw that, he nodded to himself, as if this was something he had anticipated but had not necessarily expected.

At least, when they reached Haven, they were no longer mud spattered and soggy; they even took a moment to change, when they were within a candlemark or two of the capital. Elspeth had the feeling they were not going to have much of a chance to clean up when they reached the Palace, given the excitement her arrival was generating.

A scant network of signal-towers like the ones in Hardorn had been set up to relay news, although in the foul weather they had been riding through such towers could only be used at night, and often not even then. There were not enough of them to warn their noble hosts that they were coming, but there
were
enough that by now all of Haven knew the approximate candlemark of when they would appear. Once the weather cleared, they had borrowed a cart from one of their hosts, in which the gryphlets and Rris now rode in excited splendor. In every village along the road, even when it was raining, the entire population turned out to see them pass.

Elspeth felt entirely as if she was riding in a circus procession, but she waved and smiled anyway, noting with a great deal of amusement that no one really paid much attention to
her
once they caught sight of the gryphons.

By the time they reached Haven, word had traveled ahead of them by those mirror- and lantern-relays, and as she had expected, the road on both sides was lined with people, four and five deep. It was quite obvious at that point that Elspeth was not the attraction; she was not even a close second. After all, she did not look all that much different than any Herald, and the populace around Haven was quite used to seeing Heralds. The gryphons, gryphlets, and Tayledras were the real attention getters, in that order.

Firesong and Treyvan were in their element, waving genially to the crowd, and occasionally throwing up magical “fireworks” that were insignificant in terms of power, but incredibly showy. They were definitely crowd pleasers. Treyvan would take to the air every few leagues to hover above the procession, while the onlookers ooh-end and ahh-ed. Hydona simply sighed with patience, and trotted quietly behind the wagon. The gryphlets bounced in the bed of the wagon like a pair of excited kittens, bringing more “ohs” and exclamations of “aren't they
adorable.”
As had happened at the Ashkevron manor, the gryphlets convinced the crowd that these mighty creatures were not monsters at all.

Elspeth might just as well not have been along. People cheered her in a perfunctory sort of way, then riveted their attention on the Hawkbrothers and gryphons. When either Treyvan or Firesong performed, she could have stripped naked and done riding tricks on Gwena's back and no one would have noticed.

She had known this would happen. She had rather expected that she might find herself a little jealous. After all, she was used to being the center of attention—the beloved Heir to the Throne, and all of that. She had never been forced to share the focus of all eyes, much less been excluded from that focus.

She was rather surprised when all she felt was relief. And in a way, that simply confirmed what she had been thinking since they had arrived back in Valdemar. She was not really happy being the Heir; she was not truly suited to the job. She had been a lot more comfortable back in the Vale, when no one had treated her any differently than anyone else in the Clan. In fact, with the Hawkbrothers, she was judged only by her merits. She had changed a great deal since she had last seen Haven, and nothing showed that change quite so profoundly as this.

When they reached the outskirts of Haven, the crowd had thickened, to the point where there wasn't room for a child between the fronts of the buildings and the street. The noise was deafening; the mass of folk dressed in their best dazzling to the eye. And for someone who had spent so many months out in the wilderness, the crowds were enough to give one a feeling of being crushed.