“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? Canyou 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 - :
“Ifear 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 havechanged!”
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 evensmells different,: Kellan complained.
“How did you dothat?” 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 Tayledrasnever 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 - “
“And what of the game?” Starwind asked in a whisper.
Moondance hesitated, then life came back to his face as he shrugged again, and his pupils went back to normal. “No way of knowing,” he replied, slowly taking his hand from Vanyel’s forehead. “That depends entirely upon whether he is willing to become more than a pawn. But yours to be the Teaching, I think,” he said, looking up sharply at the Adept. “It is like your powers that he holds. As for Healing, I think that half of it will be his doing - if he Heals at all - “
“And the other half yours,” the Adept stated with an ironic smile.
Moondance turned Vanyel’s wrist up, showing the scar across it - then turned over his own hand, and the firelight picked out the scar that ran from the gold-skinned hand halfway to the elbow, a scar that followed the course of the blue vein pulsing beneath the skin. “Who better?” he asked. “We have something in common, I think.”
Savil swayed again, caught in a sudden dizziness, and Starwind took hold of her shoulders to steady her. “You need rest,” he said in concern. “Will you have it here, or can you ride?’’
Savil thought longingly of just lying down where she was, and then reflected on being able to do so in a bed.
And also on the Companions, out there in the snow and cold, and still in their harnesses.
“The Companions can and will carry double,” she sighed, feeling just about ready to fade away. “If you’re willing to ride them. Or strap us in, I don’t much care which. But I’d like themin the warm.”
“Then we ride,” Starwind said, as Moondance scooped Vanyel up in his arms as if he weighed next to nothing. The older Adept rose to his feet and offered her his hand, and it took every scrap of will she had left to her to stumble erect. “It is not far, Wingsister.”
“I hope not,” she told him earnestly, staggering out into the snow, while Moondance put the fire out with a single backward glance. “Because if it isn’t, you’re going to be carrying me as well as the boy.’’
First there was darkness, and the peace that came with being so drugged that there was no thought at all. It was the only time he felt anything like peace, these days, and he welcomed the drugs and the red-haired Healer who brought them. There were times without counting when he hoped that thistime the Healer had miscalculated - that thistime he wouldn’t wake.
Then there was pain; unfocused, but somewhere near at hand. Like the touch of sun on skin already reddened and burned. It got past the drugs, somehow; he tried to push it away, but it continued to throb in those half-healed places in his mind, promising him more pain to come.
Then - nothing butpain; fire in his veins and under his skin, flames dancing along his nerves and scorching his mind. Gate-fire, Gate-energy - it was unmistakable, and unbearable, and yet it continued long past the moment he thought his sanity would shatter or his heart stop. He screamed, or thought he did. He was lost in it, and there was no way out - not even death, for the pain would not let him die.
Then it was gone. But it left him aching, all the channels burned raw again, and worse, all the memories replaying themselves over and over - Gala dying, Tylendel throwing himself from the Tower, Tylendel lying in state in the Temple -
Then, without warning, the Dream.
He stood blocking the way, a one-mage barricade across Crook-Back Pass. Mage-light from his upraised hand reflected from the impassive faces and hollow, empty eyes of the three wizards who opposed him.
This was notlike the old dream - the dream of being alone in the ice. This was - something else. He could sense things, shards of meaning, just under the surface of it, but couldn’t seem to bring them out to where he could read them.