Winds of Fury (50 page)

“If it were my judgment, I would agree with you.” He shook his head and sighed. If this were home, he could do as she preferred without a second thought. But it was not; they were not alone, they could not fade into the scenery and vanish. More importantly, however, neither could the people of the carnival and town.

If these men were maimed or killed, retribution would fall, and swiftly, on both the wagon-folk and the village. The only people who had even a chance to escape that punishment would be the Valdemarans, who had magic that would help them get away. Assuming that Ancar's mages did not try to track them. To put the villagers and Faire-folk into such danger would be an act of unforgivable arrogance.

No, there was no real choice in the matter; he and Elspeth would simply follow the plan they always used. These men would sleep walk themselves back to their barracks. They would wake up tomorrow with no memory of the molestation, and no memory of being struck down as they either participated, watched and cheered, or waited their turn. They would only remember that they had a good time at the carnival, that they drank more than they should of that drink of dubious origin, and that they had crawled back to their quarters and passed out.

“At least let me give them the worst hangovers they've ever had in their lives,” Elspeth begged fiercely. “And make them impotent while the hangovers last!”

He sighed, not because he didn't agree with her but because it seemed far too petty a punishment, but it was all they dared mete out.

“I wish we could do worse to them,” he said. “I wish we could fix everything. Our best chance at that is to do what we came here to do. Get rid of Ancar, Falconsbane, and Hulda.”

She nodded grimly but softened as she meshed her mind and talents with his. In a few moments, it was done, and the men began to rise woodenly, stumbling to their feet and bumbling in the direction of their barracks. Their faces were blank, their eyes glazed, and they looked altogether like walking corpses.

“I'd like to give them plague,” Elspeth muttered, staring after them. “I would, if I didn't think the townsfolk would catch it. Maybe some lice or social disease. Genital leprosy?”

As the last of them rose and bumbled off, Firesong stood up, slowly, looking a little better, but still drained and sickly. The last of the wagon-folk were gone, too, and from the sounds all over the encampment, they were getting ready to leave. There were two torches stuck into the ground that gave fitful, sputtering light. “It is hard on a mage to cast magics when there has been no time to prepare for them,” he murmured, his expression open and vulnerable and showing much of the pain he must be feeling. And also some guilt. “Had to push it through with personal power, and damp it all down, so we wouldn't be discovered.” Firesong rubbed his eyes. “Still. I feel I could have prevented this if I had only acted sooner.”

“You need not feel guilty,” Darkwind said quietly as Elspeth nodded, trying to put some force into his words so that Firesong would believe him. “You were faster than we were. And you did the best you could.”

Firesong looked down at his hands. “But it was not enough,” he said unhappily, the strain in his voice betraying how deeply he ached over this. “Where is the poor lad? Liam was his name? I do not like to think of him being alone—”

“Gerdo has him,” Elspeth said. “He carried him off to their wagon.”

Firesong looked astonished at that; Darkwind was a little surprised himself. Gerdo was one of the contortionists, and if he'd spoken a dozen words to Liam in all the time they'd been in Hardorn, Darkwind, at least, didn't know about it. They were, at best, casual acquaintances.

“He said Sara would understand,” Elspeth continued, “since she was attacked herself. And he said something else, that he knew how Liam felt, sort of, because the same thing happened to him when he was a boy. He said they could at least tell Liam that it wasn't his fault. Maybe if they tell him often enough, he'll start to believe it.”

“I feel I must go apologize,” Firesong said after a moment.

Darkwind nodded, and sensed Elspeth's agreement and Gwena's gentle urging. “Do you mind if we join you?” he said simply.

 

There was no rest for them that night; the entire carnival packed up and moved in the dark. They did not stop until the next village that did
not
have a garrison of Ancar's men. Darkwind, Elspeth, Nyara, and Skif took turns driving the wagon and sleeping in it. The poor Companions and the
dyheli
had no such luxury; they had to make their way on their own four hooves. Firesong spent most of that day and night with Gerdo, helping with Liam. Darkwind was not surprised at that; Firesong was a Healing Adept, after all, even though he was not a body-Healer
per se
. He had the ability to do Liam a great deal of good—and Liam's plight could do Firesong an equal amount of good.

Firesong was talented, Gifted, beautiful, and arrogant. In many ways, he had seen himself as above everyone else in this mission, even his fellow Tayledras. Nothing had really touched him except the damage done to the land; he had, for the most part, ignored the damage done to the people. Up until this moment, the pain of these people had been mostly an abstraction to the Adept—something to be deplored and kept at a distance, but nothing that really affected him.
Now
it had hit home. He had seen willful, cruel violence close at hand. Firesong had opened himself to pain and could not avoid it any more.

Firesong returned to his fellows late in the afternoon, uncharacteristically sober and silent, but with a certain amount of weary satisfaction on his face. When Liam finally appeared as the wagons were setting up for the shows, Darkwind understood the expression.

Liam appeared to have found a kind of peace and support. He was ready to get to work, and could look his fellows in the face. The young man had come through the immediate crisis well; while he would bear scars, they would not be as devastating as they might have been.

And Firesong seemed to have learned a great deal, too. When he looked about him, his beautiful face radiated empathy and compassion for those people who felt pain. He no longer wore a mask of any kind, frivolous or haughty. “Saving the defenseless” appeared no longer to be a meaningless phrase spoken as any other platitude, but rather a goal to be understood as a way of life. Real pain had been touched and understood; Healing was no longer simply a mental exercise for Firesong.

 

That night, Need finally conveyed to them what she had learned from her “contact.”

Darkwind wished devoutly that he could go to bed early, but he had done with less sleep in his life, and this was more important. They wanted things to look as normal as possible, though, and “normal” meant that the wagon should at least
look
as if they were all asleep. So the five of them sat on two of the beds, heads together, whispering into the darkness of the wagon.

.Firstly—we've all had some ideas about who was the real power in Hardorn, the one who's responsible for the way things have gone to pot around here,: Need said. : We all thought it was Ancar, but it wasn't. He isn't more than a Master, if that. It was Hulda.:
Elspeth choked. “Hulda?” she whispered urgently.

:That's right.
She
is an Adept.:

“But—the protections that were on Valdemar when she was there—how could she have been an Adept?” Elspeth sputtered.

Darkwind shook his head, feeling nauseous. That had to be one of the strangest and most perverted things he'd ever heard. “So Hulda has been deliberately wrecking this land?”

“That makes a great deal of sense,” Firesong agreed, his voice flat with exhaustion. “More sense than that she would be making courting-gifts of mage-power. So Ancar has been the puppet, and she the manipulator?”

Firesong bit off an exclamation. Darkwind could only sit and shake his head with weary astonishment. “Either he is the stupidest lucky man in the world, or the luckiest stupid one,” Darkwind said at last. “I would not have given him the chance of a dewdrop in an inferno of surviving such a blunder.”

“And Mornelithe has the luck of a god, I swear it.” Firesong snorted with a little more energy.

“So, what we have is the three powers at the top, who should be working together, who we've assumed have been working together, are actually fighting each other?” That was Skif, and he sounded incredulous despite his own weariness. “We might yet be able to pull this off!”

:Before you get too confident, let me give you the details,:
Need said dryly.

The details were many, and often baffling. Only by assuming that Need's assessment of Falconsbane was accurate could Darkwind even begin to understand how the Beast had made so many fundamental blunders. It was incredible, impossible, insane. But, he realized, that described Falconsbane perfectly.

Still, it was terrifying to think what would happen if Falconsbane should happen to change his mind about cooperating with Ancar. The damage that had been wrought without that cooperation was terrible. And the number of successes the army of Hardorn had against Valdemar without Falconsbane's real help was even worse. But
with
it—

And Falconsbane was capricious. He could change his mind at any time.
Their
only chance was to strike for him while he was still Ancar's captive, for if he became Ancar's comrade before they reached the capital—the odds in their favor were not good.

The odds for Valdemar would be even worse.

A
n'desha waited on the Moonpaths; alone this time, for Dawnfire had appeared only long enough to summon him and then had left him. That might mean the old woman wished to speak with him, then. That was good, for An'desha had been keeping Falconsbane annoyed with Ancar, as she had asked him to do, and at the moment it would be more likely for a pig to stoop on a hawk than that Falconsbane should become Ancar's willing helper.

Still, the Adept was a slippery and unpredictable creature. An'desha had been forced to play fast and loose with Mornelithe's mind to stave off the thought that it
might
not be such a bad thing to cooperate with the King. He'd had to remind Falconsbane of the coercions, and the King's own word that he had no intention of taking them off.

The trouble was that Hulda was still incarcerated. The protections she herself had put on the cell were better than Falconsbane had given her credit for. There was no sign that she was going to come bursting out of there and finish Ancar off any time soon, and the Adept was growing impatient.