"That's where you're going?" Jaysen said doubtfully, looking at the weird shapes of rock, snow and sand that lay beyond the portal. It was snowing there, from black, lowering clouds; fat flakes drifting down through still, dark air. Savil nodded.
"That's it; that's the edge of the Pelagirs near Star-wind's territory. The other end is a cave entrance, so we'll have some shelter on the other side until Starwind and Moondance get there."
"And if they don't?" Jaysen asked. "Savil, I don't like to think of you two alone out in a place like that. The boy is next to useless, and you're exhausted."
"Jays, it's quite possible that they'd take one look at you and kill you if they didn't see me right there with you," she said, clinging to the saddle and trying to muster enough strength to climb into it. "They're unbelievably territorial and secretive, and for good reasons - think for a minute, will you? They have to have known someone was tampering, stealing creatures they thought safely locked up. If they see a stranger and Sense he's Mage-Gifted, they're likely to strike first and ask questions of the corpse. And I mean that literally. I'm taking enough risk bringing the boy in, and he's plainly in need of help, and branded as mine. "
She gave up trying to be self-sufficient. "Boost me up, will you?" she asked humbly.
Jaysen went her one better; with the help of Andrel he lifted her into place. "Have you got everything you need?"
"I think so." In actual fact, she was too tired to think; it was all she could do to keep her mind on the next step of the journey. "Toss the firewood through."
Four heavy bundles of dry, seasoned wood went through the Gate to land in the snow on the other side.
Vanyel whimpered beside her; she could see his face was creased with lines of pain. He's feeling it, like Andy thought he might. Better hurry.
"Mardic - " she said quietly. "Donni - "
Savil's proteges came solemnly to her stirrup; she held out her hands to them, and shared a moment of mind-melded intimacy with them that was more than "farewell"; it was a sharing of gifts. Her pride in them and love and blessing - and their love and well-wishing for her.
"Lissa - "
The girl came to stand beside her students.
"I can't begin to thank you," Savil began, awkward, as ever, with words.
"Thank me by bringing Van home well," Lissa replied earnestly. "That's all I want." She reached up and squeezed Savil's hand once, then backed away.
The youngsters moved out of the way, and Jaysen and Andrel came to take their place without any prompting. She gave a hand to each, closing her eyes again, and opening herself to them in a melding even more intimate than she had shared with her students, for there were no secrets among the three of them, and nothing held back. What she had not told Mardic and Donni was that there might be no returning from this journey. If she failed with Vanyel, he might well destroy both of them, his Gifts were that powerful. Even now he moaned again in his drug-induced slumber, feeling the Gate energies despite a dose of narcotic that would have rendered a less sensitive Gifted unconscious for a week.
For a moment, she was angry. He could kill us, and do it without knowing what he was doing. Oh, gods. Gods, you owe him, dammit! You've taken his love - at the least give him something in return.
But she was too tired, too depleted to sustain even her anger at Fate or the gods or - whatever. Especially when this might really be farewell.
So this was a moment when she asked forgiveness of her friends for anything she might have done in the past - and they asked for and received the same from her.
When she raised her heavy, weary head, the two pairs of eyes, green and gray, that met hers were bright with tears that would not be shed - at least not now. She squeezed their hands, and let go; they stepped away from her as she straightened in her saddle, took a deep breath, and faced the Gate and the gray landscape beyond it. It looked no more welcoming now than it had before, and dallying wasn't going to make the leaving easier.
:All right, Kellan,: she Mindspoke :Let's go.:
And they rode into the stomach-churning vertigo she had come to hate.
Savil huddled beside the fire with her legs curled under her, forcing herself to stay awake. There was, thank the gods, no wind; the cave was warming fairly quickly. It smelled of damp, though, and of the musty taint of the half-rotten leaves that had blown in here with the autumn winds. That damp meant that if she let the fire die, it would chill down very quickly, a chill that would penetrate even their thick wool cloaks.
Once she'd taken the Gate down, she'd had just enough strength to lay the fire, and start it with the coal she'd brought in a fire-safe. After that she'd sunk to the sand next to it, pulling Vanyel close in beside her. He was curled up against her now, bundled with her inside her cloak, his head in her lap; he shook like a reed in the wind. From time to time he moaned and his hand groped for something that seemed to elude him; she soothed him back into sleep, stroking his hair until he finally recognized that she was still with him and calmed a little.
The Gate-crossing had been hard on him, as hard as she'd feared. When she'd gone to take him from Yfandes' back, he'd been half-roused out of his drugged daze; his eyes had been wide open, his jaws clenched. He had been held paralyzed, not by the drugs, but by unfocused and overwhelming terror and pain. It had taken a candlemark to get him soothed down again.
Somewhere just outside were Kellan and Yfandes, standing a watchful guard in the falling snow. Still in their tack, poor things - she'd barely been able to get Vanyel unstrapped from the saddle before collapsing beside him. She had nearly forgotten to activate the Wing-sister Talisman. It had taken Kellan's sharp reminder to shake her out of her fog of exhaustion long enough to stab her finger and let the prescribed three drops of her blood fall on it.
Memory came, then, as sharply defined as if she had bid farewell to the Hawkbrothers scant days ago instead of years.
* * *
"Blood calls to blood, and heart to heart," Starwind told her gravely, his ice-blue eyes focused inward. He held his slashed palm above the Wingsister Talisman of silver wire and crystals, and his blood dripped onto the heart-stone of the piece, dyeing the clear crystal a vivid ruby.
Savil watched, silently, feeling the power flowing and weaving itself into the intricate design of rainbow crystal and silver wire.
This was nothing like the kind of magic she was used to using; it really wasn't much like that the Hawkbrothers had taught her, either. This was older magic, much older, dating, perhaps, from the times of the Mage Wars, the wars that had wrecked the world and left the Pelagirs a twisted, magic-riddled ruin. She shivered a little, and Starwind looked up, one of his brief and infrequent smiles lighting his face for a moment.
He closed his hand; Moondance touched the back of it, and he opened it again. The slash in his palm had been Healed with the speed of a thought. At eighteen the young outlander now calling himself "Moondance" was well on his way to becoming that rarest of mages, a Healer-Adept.
Starwind fixed the Talisman in its place on the mask of feathers and crystal beads; it resembled a palm-sized diadem perched on the brow of the mask above the eye-slits. He handed the whole mask to her, and nodded at the Talisman. "When you need us again, come to us, and let three drops of your own blood fall upon the heart-stone. I shall know, and come to you."