“Do you think, perhaps, that it was intended to raise an alarm against people screening themselves magically, or using magic to disable sentries? Or was it set to catch mages trying to use magic to get past magical alarms?” he asked curiously.
“I can’t think of a better reason to have them,” she told him, as she bore down hard on the small of his back. “After all, they don’t know that the mage-storms are over, and a mage-storm could disable a magical protection. Animals, on the other hand, sleep more lightly than humans, and they aren’t disabled when mage-energy is disrupted. Fortunately, Kel followed his initial impulse, which was to go away from the place the Yip Dog was guarding. Otherwise, I think the whining might have escalated to something a lot louder. That’s what the real Yip Dogs do; if you stay near what they consider to be their territory, or worse, try to approach it, they get positively hysterical.”
“And the other - obviously the term Attack Dog suits it.” Snowfire rested his chin on his folded hands to keep it off the hard rock beneath him. “In fact, that’s probably why they were paired. If whatever the Yip Dog was warning about kept coming, the Attack Dog was to hold it where it was until the masters came.” He grinned a little. “It must have been awfully puzzled about how to get at Kel!”
“Fortunately for us, the masters didn’t consider a sortie by air.” She kneaded his shoulders vigorously and he grunted. “Does that hurt?”
“Yes, but don’t stop. No, you’re right about that. They must not know there are Tayledras anywhere about, and they’ve never encountered Kaled’a’in before. All I can say is, it’s a good thing we didn’t have any human scouts on this one.” The more he thought about it, the more grateful he was. Tayledras scouts would have sent birds in, seen nothing to worry about, and might perhaps have been tempted to come down out of the trees and go in afoot to recconoiter. They would never have been able to escape the fast-moving monsters - and only an eye-shot would have killed the beasts, given the way that Hweel’s talons just skidded off the scales.
“The Yip Dog was probably alerted by physical attributes such as scent and sound as well as by magic,” she agreed. “It wouldn’t be very bright to have them sound alarms only for the presence of magic.”
I’m just glad there were only two of them. “I saw them through Hweel’s eyes, and the things did look like wyrsa,” he told her, wondering if she had any more insights gleaned out of Kaled’a’in history for him. “Or rather, it looked as if their ancestors could have been wyrsa. Now, that triggered a dream last night of all kinds of creatures that looked as if. they also could have been bred from wyrsa, and that made me wonder when I woke up this morning if the being that Darian described as a ‘demon’ and the creature it was riding could have had wyrsa ancestors.” He cocked an eye back at her.
“That must have been one hell of a dream,” she observed. “I’m glad I didn’t share it. Still.” She paused to work on a particularly bad knot in his neck, and he clenched his teeth to keep from yelping. “The story says that the wyrsa Tadrith fought were definitely intelligent. And there is no reason whatsoever that there couldn’t have been more of them created somewhere else. Or at least, more wyrsa Changed in different ways. The beasts aren’t exactly stupid, so it’s not that great a jump to significant intelligence.”
“Intelligence enough to realize that it would be to the monster’s advantage to cooperate with a human?” he hazarded. “And given that we have a mage with these barbarians who, we assume, already knows how to make Changechildren - “ He took a deep breath as she let up on his shoulders a bit. “You see where this is going.”
“Yes, and I don’t like it. But it does make it all the more imperative that we concentrate on keeping Starfall safe rather than messing about with these people and alerting them to the fact that we’re here.” He felt her hands starting to tremble. Was the imperturbable Nightwind actually afraid?
She should be. Intelligent, humanlike versions of wyrsa! That is a truly frightening thought.
“How did Darian sleep last night?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject herself.
“Wintersky says he had a couple of nightmares, but nothing that even woke him. That’s enough, thanks.” He rolled back over and let the sun work on his chest muscles. “I don’t know what tonight will bring, but so far - I’m going to assume that minor nightmares are good, but the ones that send him out of sleep screaming in hysterics are bad?”
“As a general rule; we don’t want him assimilating too much, too fast.” She stretched herself out on the rock beside him “Ah, that feels good. He’ll probably have a hysterical one in a few nights, though. That is, if what Tyrsell did fades out at the rate I think it will. It might go more quickly; he’s a boy with a strong will, and that’s likely to make him fight what we put in place.”
Snowfire sighed. “Wonderful. Well, if he gets too hysterical for me to handle, remember your promise.”
She laughed. “Big, brave Tayledras warrior worried about a little boy’s nightmares?”
“Big, brave Tayledras warrior needs his sleep, or. he isn’t going to be much good at protecting annoying little Kaled’a’in trondi’irn,” he growled, cracking open an eye to see which side of her was uppermost, and smacking her on the rump when he had a target.
That, of course, led to her rolling him into the water, and him pulling her in, and a conversation that had nothing whatsoever to do with Darian, Kelvren, or wyrsa.
Darian woke screaming from a nightmare of fire, to find a sleepy, yawning Snowfire kneeling at his pallet, shaking him gently. “Easy, Dar’ian,” the Hawkbrother was saying, as if he had been saying the words over and over for some time. “It’s all right; you’re just dreaming. Wake up, little brother - “
There was a lot of light around; where was it coming from? “I’m - awake,” Darian said, feeling dazed and confused, and still full of a sourceless grief and fear. “I’m awake - “
“Good.” Snowfire smiled, but he had to put up a hand to cover his mouth as it turned-into a yawn. That was when Darian saw the source of the illumination, after Snowfire moved. There was a very dim globe of light hovering just at Snowfire’s shoulder, and Darian stared at it, distracted for a moment. It startled him, but Snowfire didn’t act as if it was something strange.
“What’s that?” he asked, pointing to it.
“My mage-light,” the Hawkbrother replied casually, as if he conjured such things all the time. Perhaps he did - and Darian just hadn’t been awake at the right time to see them. He had been so exhausted these last couple of days that he went to sleep almost as soon as the sun went down. “Would you like it a little brighter?” A heartbeat later, the glow intensified a measurable degree.
“You can make those?” he said, staring at it. “Really? Justyn couldn’t - “
Then all at once, as the sound of his own voice screaming Justyn’s name echoed in his memory, his fear and grief had a source; his throat closed up, and he fought back tears. A man shouldn’t cry; tears were useless. They hadn’t brought back his parents, had they? “Justyn’s dead, isn’t he?” he whispered, closing his eyes to hide the pain. “He’s really dead.”