But besides being weary, she was very confused; a poor combination, all things considered. She was dissatisfied with her first foray on k'sheyna's border. Certainly there were questions that had not been answered adequately.
And as she followed in Darkwind's wake, watching him stride tirelessly along with one hand on Treyvan's shoulder and folded wing, and Vree perched on a padded perch on his shoulder, she tried to reconcile her mixed emotions. It didn't help matters any that from this angle she had such a good view of his tight, muscular...Hydona trilled to herself, apparently amused by a private joke. The female gryphon walked beside her as her mate strode beside Darkwind, all of them following a dry streambed back to the Vale. Hydona's head was easily level with Elspeth's, which was a little unsettling, since it underscored how very large the gryphon was. It was easy to forget that, when one often saw them lounging about like overgrown house cats.
"And what arrre you thinking?" Hydona asked, as if she were following Elspeth's thoughts.
"I'm not sure," she said, frowning, trying to put her emotional reactions into words. "This isn't the first time I've been in combat-it isn't even the first time I've been in magical combat. I think we did all right-"
"You did," Hydona confirmed. "Verrry well, essspecially forr a beginerrr.
But asss you pointed out, you have had combat experrrience, and I expected nothing lesss than competence." She cocked her head at Elspeth. "How do you feel you will manage againssst that enemy of yourrrsss.
She thought for a moment, weighing what she could do now with what she knew Ancar could produce. "Well, providing Ancar hasn't acquired an army of mages, I should be able to do something about him, if I can keep progressing at this rate. I mean, it isn't easy, but so far I haven't lost any body parts. Provided I don't reach an upper limit to my powers in the near future, and Ancar hasn't learned to tap nodes. I know he should be a Master-class mage by now at the very least."
"One should neverrr trrusst an enemy to be placssid. What about yourrr perrrforrrmance?" Hydona asked shrewdly. "How would you rrrate yourssself ?"
"Darkwind and I worked together as a team quite well, I think. At least we did once he got around to doing something." There it was; that was what she had been trying to pinpoint as the root of her discontent.
"But that was the problem; he gave that damned thing a warning even after we knew it had worked blood-magic!" She couldn't keep indignation from creeping into her voice, and didn't try. Kero would have cut the interloper down where he stood; filled him full of so many arrows that he would have looked like a hedgehog.
"The oddssss werrre two to one," Hydona responded. "Thrree to one, if we count Gwena. Don't you think that the crrreaturrre dessserrved a fairr warrrning with oddsss like that?" Elspeth shook her head, stubbornly. "No," she said flatly, and her voice shook a little with intensity. "I don't. We knew he was a bloodmage; there's no point in giving something like that a chance to get away or hurt you. I sure as Havens don't intend to give Ancar a shred of warning. In fact, if I get the chance, I'll ambush him!" As always, the mere thought of Ancar and what he had done made her blood boil. The tortures he had inflicted on Talia-the rape of his own country-the hundreds, thousands of lives he had thrown away-but most of all, the careless glee he had taken in it all-No, when she thought of Ancar, all she could think of was the chance of getting him in her power and shredding him. She hated him, she hated everything he'd ever done, and she wanted him dead, safely dead, so that he couldn't hurt anyone any more.
Ever.
In fact, if there was a way to destroy his very soul, she'd do it, so that there wouldn't even be a chance he'd be reborn and start over again, as some mages could.
"You arrre angrrry," Hydona observed. "This enemy of yourrrsss angersss you."
"I'm always angry when I think about Ancar," she replied fiercely.
"I can't help it; the man's another Falconsbane, just as evil and as corrupt, and I want him dead as much as any Tayledras could ever have wanted Falconsbane dead." She raised her chin defiantly. "More than that, I want Ancar's liver on a plate, so I can feed it to something vile.
I not only want to kill him, I want to hurt him so that he knows some Of what his victims felt. I hate him, I'm afraid of him, and if there were any way to put him through what he has put others through, I'd take it.~ Hydona shook her head with open admonition. "You arrre too angrrry." she said. "It isss not underrr contrrol, thisss angerrr. Hate will not serrve you herrrre. And ssssuch hate, sssuch angerrr will weaken you. You musst learrrn to contrrrol them, orr they will contrrol you.
Thisss I know." Elspeth grimaced, but kept her lips clamped tight on what she wanted to say. This wasn't the first time she'd heard this particular lecture; the first time, it had come from Darkwind. And it just made her angrier.
How could she not hate the bastard, after everything he'd done to her friends and her land? How could she not hate him after seeing what he had done to his own people? How could she not feel enraged at everything he had done?
And how in Havens could an emotion that strong possibly be a weakness?
It was a contradiction in terms.
But there was absolutely no point in getting into an argument over it, so she elected to keep her thoughts to herself, and her tongue on a very short leash, until they reached the sanctuary of the Vale.
Hydona said nothing more.
The gryphons left them once they were well within the "safe" area that was kept under close watch by the mages, and full of alarms that would be tripped by strangers. By the time they arrived at the shielded entrance to the Vale it was already dark, and her temper had cooled considerably. Not that she had changed her mind about anything she'd said, but she wasn't quite so ready to bite off someone's head over it.
One thing had calmed her down a bit; she discovered that Gwena felt the same as she did-at least about Ancar. The Companion was of two minds about Darkwind warning the Changechild, admitting that there were good reasons for either decision, whether to warn or not-but on the subject of Ancar of Hardorn, Gwena was in full accord with her Chosen. the man is a mad dog," she told Elspeth flatly. "You don't give a mad dog a chance to bite you, and you don't try and cure it. You get rid of it, before it destroys something you love." That backing of her own thoughts on the matter made her feel a bit more secure about her own judgment, and that Gwena shared her anger eased her own somewhat. That helped her temper to cool a lot faster.
She was quite ready to see the Vale long before they actually reached it. She discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that it was no real effort to keep her Mage-Sight invoked-and since Mage-Sight gave her an enhanced, owl-like view of her surroundings, she left it in force. It occurred to her, as she noted how every living creature and some things that were not alive each bore a faint outline of energy, that this must be what Companions used for night-sight. After all, in order to tap into and manipulate mage-power, you had to be able to See it, and since this kind of Sight worked equally well by day or night, why not use it to give you a nighttime advantage? Yet another Companion power she could explain away, which gave her a perverse feeling of satisfaction.