In all those years since, the heart-stone's bright scarlet had not faded. She only hoped that the set-spell had not faded either. It did seem to her that the heart-stone began pulsing with a dim, inner light from the moment that her blood touched it. But that could have been the flickering of the fire, or the wavering of her own vision; she was too spent to tell, and too drained to begin to sense power even if it was moving under her own nose.
Vanyel stirred at her side, curling his knees tighter against his chest. She shifted a bit, glad that the floor of the cave was covered in several inches of dry, soft sand.
Poor child, she thought, her mind dark with despair. I'm at a loss for what to do with you. You keep reaching out to me for support, and I want to give it to you, and I can't, I mustn't. If I do, you'II just fall right back into the pattern you danced with poor 'Lendel. She stroked the fine, silky hair beneath her hand, and her heart ached for him. You don't know what to think anymore, do you? You're afraid to touch again, afraid to open yourself, you're full of such fear and such pain - gods, when you told Withen that nothing would ever make you happy again -
She swallowed the lump in her throat that threatened to choke her, and blinked at the dancing flames, then closed her stinging eyes and felt tears bead up on her lashes. Starwind, old friend, she thought desperately, where are you? I'm out of my depth; I don't know what to do. I need your help -
:And you have it, sister-of-my-heart.:
She started. There was a swirl of snow at the cave entrance, white-gold and shadow in the dancing firelight. There had been no alert from either Companion-But when the snow settled and cleared, he was there.
He hadn't changed, not at all.
The sword of ice, she had called him when she'd first seen him. Flowing silver hair still reached past his waist when he put back,the hood of his white cloak and let the silky mass of it tumble free. There still were no wrinkles in his face, not even around the obliquely-slanting, ice-blue eyes; he was still tall and unbent, still slender as a boy. Only the cool deeps of his eyes showed his age, and the aura of power that pulsed about him. No mage would ever have any doubts that this was an Adept, and a powerful one.
He smiled at her, and held out his hands. "Welcome, heart-sister, Wingsister Savil," he said in the liquid Tay-ledras tongue, gliding to her to take the hands she held up to him in his own. "Always welcome, and well come thou art."
"Starwind, shaydra," her sight darkened for a momerit, and when it cleared, the Tayledras Adept was kneeling at her side, holding her upright.
"Savil, you stubborn, headstrong woman," he chided, as she felt an inrushing of energy from his center to hers. She swayed a little, and he held her upright. "What need could possibly have been so great that you drain yourself to a wraith to Gate yourself here?''
"This need - " She pulled back her cloak to show him the boy curled against her side, his face taut with pain.
"God of my fathers - " He reached out with his free hand and barely touched Vanyel's brow. He pulled back his hand as if it had been burned. "Goddess of my mothers! What have you brought me, sister?"
"I don't know," she said, slumping wearily against him. "He's been blasted open, and he can't heal - more than that - I'm too tired to tell you right now. So much has happened, and to both of us - I just can't think what to do anymore. All I know is that he's hurting, and I can't help him, and if I'd left him where he was he'd have destroyed himself at the best, and half the capital at the worst."
"There is nothing wrong with your judgment, I pledge you that," Starwind replied, sitting back on his heels and regarding the boy dubiously. "There is such potential there - he frightens me. And such darkness of the soul-no, Wingsister, not evil; there is nothing evil in him. Just - darkness. Despair is a part of it, but - denial of what he is and must become is another. Self-willed darkness; he wills himself not to see, I think."
"You see more than I do," she told him, rubbing her aching forehead. "I haven't the right to ask it of you, but - will you help me with him? Can you help me?"
The firelight turned the ice of his eyes to blue-gold flame. "You have the right, sister to brother, to ask what you will of me. Did you not gift me with the greatest of all gifts, in the person of my shay'kreth'ashke? "
She had to smile a little at that. Bringing Starwind another boy long ago had been one of the few unalloyed good things she'd ever done. "Where is Moondance, anyway?''
:Moondance stands in the snow, defending his head and his lifeblood. Telling the ,stranger-lasha'Kaladra not to eat me,: came the laughter-flavored reply. I frightened her. She does not trust me, I think.:
:Kellan - :Savil Mindspoke tiredly.
:He popped up right under Yfandes' nose and scared the liver out of her, Chosen,: Kellan replied apologetically :She went for him before we knew who it was. It's all right now, he's just making amends.:
:Bright Havens, Kelt, you know him, at least!: she snapped, her tiredness making her impatient.
:Not anymore - :
"I fear I have greatly changed, Wingsister," Moon-dance said contritely from the entrance. "And I also fear I had forgotten the fact."
Savil looked over Starwind's shoulder and felt her mouth gaping. Starwind put one finger beneath her chin, and shut it for her with a chuckle.
"Great good gods!" she said after a moment of stunned silence. "You have changed!"
The Moondance she had known - he hadn't had the name "Moondance" for long at that point - had been brown-haired and brown-eyed and as ordinary as a peasant hut. Not surprising for one of peasant stock. But now - now the hair was as long and as silver and the eyes as ice-blue as Starwind's. The lines of his face were still the same; square to Starwind's triangle, but the cheekbones were far more prominent than Savil remembered, and the body had grown out of adolescent gawkiness and into a slender grace so like Starwind's that they could have been brothers by birth instead of by blood.
:He even smells different,: Kellan complained.
"How did you do that?" Savil demanded.
Moondance made a fluid shrug, and tossed the sides of his white cape over his shoulders, showing that he wore only thin gray breeches and a sleeveless gray leather jerkin with matching boots. Savil shivered at this reminder that the Tayledras never seemed to notice the cold. "It's the magic we use," he said. "It makes us into what it wants us to be. I think."
"As always, an oversimplification," Starwind correcled him fondly. ' 'Ka'sheeleth. Savil has brought us a problem. Come look at this boy - "
Moondance drifted over to Savil's other side, sat on his heels beside her, and studied Vanyel's face for several breaths.
"Hai'yasha, "he breathed. "Shay'a'chern, hmm? And Lovelost? No, it goes deeper than that." He reached out as Starwind had, and touched Vanyel's forehead, but unlike Starwind, did not pull away. "Ai'she'va - Holiest Mothers! The pain!" His jaw tightened and the pupils of his eyes contracted to pinpoints. "Reft and bereft of shay 'kreth 'ashke.'' His face took on the tranquillity of a statue. "Pawn he is now - pawn he has been - " he said, his tone flat, his voice dropping half an octave. "Pawn to what he is and what he wills not to be. But will or no, the pawn is in play - and the play is a trial - "