"That owl-eagle was yours?" she said, trying not to breathe too quickly, since every movement made her chest ache the more.
"Aye," he replied, "I sent her for my own kin, but she saw your magic and came to you instead. Now she is frightened past calling back."
"But I didn't-" Kethry started to say, then saw the wary look in the Hawkbrother's eyes. We're being watched and listened to. For some reason, he doesn't want whoever caught us to know his bird can See passive mage-shields, the way Warrl can. She struggled to sit up, and the Hawkbrother assisted her unobtrusively.
They were in a cage, one with a perfectly ordinary lock. Beside them was another-with no lock at all- holding Tarma. The Shin'a'in sat cross-legged in the middle of the contraption, with a face as expressionless as a stone.
Only her eyes betrayed that she was in a white-hot rage; so intense a blue that her glance crackled across the space between them.
Both cages sat in the middle of what looked like a maze; perfectly trimmed, perfectly trained hedges taller than a man on horseback, forming a square "room" with an opening in each "wall." Beyond the opening, Kethry thought she saw yet more hedges.
"As you see," said a new voice, female, with an undertone of petulance, "I plan my prisons well."
The owner of the voice moved into the pallid light cast by the witch-ball; Kethry was not impressed. Face and body attested to overindulgence; the mouth turned down in a perpetual sneer, and the eyes would not look into hers directly. Even allowing for the witch-light, her complexion was doughy, and her hair was an indeterminate no-color between mouse-brown and blonde. Her clothing, however, was rich in a conspicuous, overblown way, as if her gown shouted "See how expensive I am!" It was also totally inappropriate for the middle of a forest, but that didn't seem to bother the wearer.
"For the mages," their captor said, gesturing grandly, "a cage which nullifies magic, with a lock that can only be opened by an ordinary key." She held up the key hanging at her belt. "And since I am as female as you, the spirit-sword won't work against me. Even if you could reach it."
Now Kethry saw the blade hanging just outside the cage door, just out of reach.
Of arms. That's her first mistake.
"For the warrior, a prison that only magic can unlock."
She giggled girlishly, without the sneer ever changing. Tarma said nothing; Kethry decided to follow her example. Their jailer posed, waiting, doubtless, for one of them to ask why they were being held. Finally, when she got no response, she scowled and flounced off in the direction of the light that flared and subsided, somewhere beyond the bushes surrounding the clearing where their cages sat.
"When her wits aren't out wandering, who is this woman?" Tarma asked, in a lazy drawl. "And what in the name of the frozen hells does she want with us?"
The Hawkbrother crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against the bars of the cage, and grimaced. "Her name is Keyjon, and all her magics are stolen," he said, an anger as hot as Tarma's roughening his voice. "As for what she wants -- nothing from you, except to be used against me. As my friend was, to his death."
The Firefalcon shaman. He knows the lad died. She tried to read beyond the Hawkbrother's lack of expression, and couldn't.
"We're to be used to get what?" Tarma asked.
"Something she cannot steal from me, though she has tried, and blunted her stolen tools on my protections." He pointed his chin in the direction of the flaring and dying light. "She has firebirds."
At Kethry's swift intake of breath, he nodded. "I see you know them."
"One of the qualifications for entering the higher levels of a White Winds school used to be the Test of the Firebird." She stared at the light, wishing she could see beyond the bushes. "They're too rare now. I only saw one once, at a distance."
"They are not rare here, only endangered by such as she." The Hawkbrother's face darkened. "She wishes me to make them her familiars. She also wishes me, and she is as like to get that as the other, which is to say, when the rivers of hell boil."
At that, Kethry laughed in astonishment. "Wind-lady-go ahead! Give her the birds! The first time she loses her temper with one of them on her shoulder-"
But the young man was shaking his head. "Nay, lady. She knows that as well as you or I. What she means by 'familiar' is 'complete slave.' I would not condemn any living thing to such a fate, even if the dangers of her having such control over something so dangerous were not obvious."
Kethry thought of the things that could be done with a tamed and obedient firebird at one's command, and shuddered again. The dangers were obvious. There was a history of the mage-wars purportedly written by the wizard-lizard Gervase that hinted the firebirds had been deliberately bred as weapons.
She couldn't imagine a circumstance terrible enough to make her breed something like firebirds as a weapon. Frighten one, and send it flaming through a village, touching off the thatched roofs, the hay in the stables ...
"She was born of mage-talented parents, and given all she desired," the Hawkbrother continued. "But she came to desire more and more, and her own small talent could not encompass her ambition, until she discovered her one true gift -- that she could steal spells from any, and power from any, and use that power to weave those spells at no cost to herself. Thus she enriched herself at the expense of others, and the more power she had, the more she sought."
To shake the thought from her mind, she stood up, slowly, and walked the few steps to the bars of the cage, mentally measuring the distance between the bars and Need. And as she studied the blade and how it was hung, another thought occurred to her. I'm Adept-class. My power is unlimited, for all practical purposes. Could I become like her?
The Hawkbrother stole silently up beside her, but his eyes were on the light beyond the hedges. "It is not power and wealth that corrupt, my lady, but the lust for power and wealth. When that lust takes precedence over the needs of others, corruption becomes true evil. That you even consider that you could become like Keyjon is a sign that you are not like to do so. She has never once considered anything but what she wanted."
"Well said," Tarma replied, her expression wary. "I'm Tarma shena Tale'sedrin; this is my she'enedra, Kethry."
"Stormwing k'Sheyna," he said, and a little rueful humor crept into his expression. "A use-name chosen when I was young and very full of myself, and now so hardened in place that I dare not change it."
Tarma's expression remained the same. "So how is it that you know this woman?"
"I confess; a dose of the same folly that caused me to name myself for the powerful thunder cloud," he replied slowly. "I thought I could help her, I thought that if she had a friend, she could learn other ways. In short, I thought I could change her, redeem her, when others had not been able to." He shrugged. "I thought, at the worst, I was so much stronger than she that there was little she could do to harm me. I thought I could not be tricked; did not even guess that she was planning deeper than I anticipated, that she was using me to come at my charges, the firebirds. Now, not only do I pay for my folly, but others as well."
"What happened to the Firefalcon shaman?" Tarma asked harshly.