Author's Note: Okay, people, here it is! Thank you all so much for your
encouragement. So kind....
Take note - I'm getting a little better at the art of fluff! ;) Whew, this
dialogue business is harder than I thought - I've lent out my Immortals
books, so I've no reference. Plus, my beta reader's internet connection was
down - eek! I just did my best. Listen, don't hesitate to critique, because
I will make significant revisions based on readers' responses, as I see
fit. And for future reference, don't expect chapters every day. Unlike some
authors, it takes me at least a day to write, and a day for betaing.
Now, enjoy! I await your reviews. *waits nervously*
Chapter 2
The ride south was brisk and windy at first, then warmed as they rode south. Corus's familiar rolling hills and dense oak forest gave way to rockier ground, more mountainous landscape, less verdant vegetation, and fewer trees. The sky was clear and the sun shone in earnest, but it was cut by a chill. In the south, the road cutting through plains and farmland between mountain ranges was of dry, beaten earth. They went on Cloud and Spots, as usual, and traveled light: besides typical traveling supplies, Daine took the bow her father had given her, and Numair various magical instruments and devices. For such a magical investigation, they would need little else besides their own magical abilities and their minds.
They had been working together like this, traversing the realm at King Jonathan's orders, since Daine's student years. Since then, they had effectively become Tortall's resident magical authorities. Numair had been regarded as such for years before he met Daine. But for her, this was a position that, despite the years, had never quite suited her. To declare herself a great mage to the world was hardly her nature. Yet her accomplishments in the Immortals Wars had earned Daine honors from the Crown and recognition throughout the country. Since then, she'd somehow picked up such skills as "being a presence" in Court, relating diplomatically to the highborn, and accepting favor from royalty, and - of course - the speech of the cultured. The Daine who had come to Tortall eleven years ago had wanted only to keep to herself and help her animal friends, and her speech was laced with the loose grammar of tiny and remote Snowsdale. So this, she decided, was what they called maturity - but surely she'd always be the same Daine, underneath.
At the same time, one of the first things she'd learned upon arrival was that here, one's past was irrelevant to his or her future. The Queen and Buri had been forced to flee their war-torn homeland. Onua, the Rider horsemistress and Daine's first Tortallan friend, had been beaten and abandoned by her husband. Sarge, the Rider's training instructor, had once been a slave. The Lioness's husband, Baron George of Pirate's Swoop, was the former Rogue, or king of thieves, in Tortall. Numair himself had been driven from his home in Carthak after being accused of treason by the Emperor Mage, his former best friend. Now he was renowned as one of the world's great mages, and close to the Crown in Tortall - as was Daine herself.
The other main thing that had changed since Daine and Numair's early years was their relationship. Since their first kiss in the Divine Realms when she was sixteen, she'd understood his hesitation - given their age difference and his history with women, he couldn't help but feel he was taking advantage of her in some way. Still, they'd resolved the issue best they could after the end of the Immortals War, and any reluctance from either of them hadn't gotten in their way since. Their love felt perpetually fresh and sweet, as though newly discovered - but at the same time so replete, so saturated, that it filled her whole being. Their tacit vow was to stay together all their days, married or no. And, happily, no one had commented on the fact that they lived together at Court. Despite the teasing, their friends approved thoroughly of the match. She suspected that those who didn't dared not speak out. That was another advantage, she decided with some amusement, of being such esteemed mages. "Gods help you if you get on his bad side," Onua had once said of Numair. Daine had seen this illustrated more than once - and, she had to admit, she herself did not respond favorably to being wronged. She felt a prick of guilt at the mess on Emperor Kaddar's hands since her rampage at the imperial palace at fifteen.
"Daine?" Numair, riding Spots on her left, interrupted her thoughts. "Can you sense anything yet?"
She listened with her magic - and sensed nothing but the People of the surrounding plains. She shook her head. "Not the hurroks, anyway. And I'll let you know when I do, so don't fret."
He smiled briefly. "What do *you* think? About what his lordship's runner said?"
"I've no idea," she said flatly. "Hurroks, griffins, coldfangs, winged horses, - they're just like animals, the way they think. They can't have ideas like we see them." She shook her head grimly. "I can't imagine how they could back Ravenpeak's men into a trap like they did."
"Maybe someone was directing them," Numair said thoughtfully, "and Lord Gregory's mages couldn't see them - I'll certainly want to talk to them when we arrive. Perhaps they were using slave collars, at least to control them, though I've never heard of such a device that could directly control the subject's movement. Particularly so, I would think, with such an - obstinate species as hurroks. And I doubt the hurroks have been *changed*, but it could be these ones are a kind we've never seen before.." He frowned, staring off into the distance. "But I don't see how any new immortals could have crossed between the realms since the end of the war. "
After the Immortals War, the gods had ruled that inhabitants of the Divine Realms would once more be kept out of the human's world. No more immortals since had come into the Human Realms.
"I'll surely take a look at them, when we reach Ravenpeak," Daine promised. "I'll feel much better once I get a feel for their mind -"
A smear of pain entered her magical field of vision. She turned sharply, searching for the source - one of the People was injured.
"Daine? What's wrong?"
"Someone's hurt." She pulled Cloud to a stop and dismounted, having pinpointed the disturbance. In the gray-green brush off the road, a falcon lay bleeding. She picked him up gently, settling him on her lap with a care to the wound. His feathers were the soft gray of an overcast sky, flecked with a darker gray. Wing-brother, how'd you get this?
His fierce raptor's eyes were unfocused. One of those monsters - he showed her an unmistakable image of a hurrok - got me in the air, he explained.
She clenched her jaw. It wasn't the first time such monsters had hurt her friends, but she never stopped hating them for it. As always, the People's pain was her own. After reassuring the falcon, she set to work healing the wound. This, too, came more easily with years and practice, and she was able to treat her patient in a matter of minutes. The hurrok's claw had slashed his back, cutting through muscle and grazing his internal organs. She called new flesh to the wound, smoothing over the rupture, and burned off the infection. The bird had also sprained a wing in his fall - though luckily, it had been softened by the brush - which she soothed as well.
Finished, she withdrew her magic. The falcon - he introduced himself as Windracer - hopped a few steps away, easing out stiffness. Thank you so much, he said, marveling at the change. But someone has to deal with those monsters before they hurt anyone else.
That's just what my friend and I are here to do, she told him. Come with me. She patted her shoulder, and he flapped up to it, settling his claws into the leather of her tunic. She returned to Numair and the horses.
"This fellow had an accident with the hurroks," she explained. "Maybe he can help us out."
Numair nodded eagerly, eyes on the falcon, whom Daine addressed. "Did they talk to you?"
Yes. They told me to get out, that I was on their grounds. Windracer looked even fiercer than his kind did naturally, and his grip on Daine's shoulder tightened.
"That's hurroks for you." Daine was quick to agree. "But - did they sound different at all?"
What do you mean?
"What they said - the way they spoke - was it different from how the People usually speak?" The idea was hard to express to a falcon.
Well, yes - but they're not People. They're different.
"Besides that they're immortals." She tried again. "Did they sound at all. wiser than the People? More like two-leggers?"
Not at all, said the falcon. They don't sound like *you* - you have more complicated ideas. Daine's friends had always been wiser for knowing her than normal animals. Many came to understand human speech.
"I'm asking," she explained, "because they outsmarted a group of two- leggers and killed them. We're trying to figure out if they've gotten smarter, or if they had help from humans."
I doubt they could have outsmarted a mouse, Windracer said scornfully. (Daine smiled: predators all seemed to disdain their prey.) They were all fighting with each other, anyway.
Daine turned back to Numair. "He says they're not at all smarter than regular animals - and they were quarrelling among themselves -"
"So it's doubtful that they could have arranged a trap like the messenger described," he mused. "So it would seem they were indeed under human command." He shook his head. "I'll scry for mages, then. "
"I still want to look into the things' heads," Daine added. "And maybe they'll tell me if they're being ordered around by mages." She could impose her will on mortal People; with precautions, hopefully it would work with the hurroks as well. She turned to the falcon on her shoulder. "Thank you, Windracer."
Thank *you*, he replied. Good luck. We'll see each other again. He leapt from her shoulder and flapped away into the mild fall air, soaring above towering sandstone peaks.
Daine remounted Cloud and they resumed riding. A gossamer veil of clouds had swept in from the north to veil the sun; the light dimmed and shadows softened. A brisk wind pushed over the plain, making her curls swirl over her face and vegetation thrash about. The change was to her a grave reminder of their friends and comrades at the Scanran border, and the grim struggle there. Though no soldier herself, Daine had seen enough of war that she could distinguish between the glories of battle many envisioned and the bloody, desolate reality of pointless killing.
"I wonder how they're doing in the North, without us," she remarked.
"His Majesty *did* grant us a month's leave," Numair reasoned. "With any luck, the forces allowed for it."
"As they had to. Now they'll have not nearly as much spy reports - they'll be slowed down, not knowing what the Scanrans are up to." Her blue-gray eyes were troubled.
"The king *wanted* us to rest," he reminded her.
"Can't blame him. I don't think one man or beast in the camp will forget your... accidents." She started to grin. "Like knocking over the blacksmith's tent, ripping a ten-foot trench in the ground just before troops marched over the spot -"
"Anomalies," he said defensively, chin lifted slightly. "I - I merely lost control of the spells for a brief time. It happens to every -"
"Don't even try." She cut him off mid-argument. "You were being sloppy -"
"Daine!" he protested.
"- because you're *tired*," she finished matter-of-factly. "Anyone can tell you've been overworking yourself. What the Own does *not* need is a black-robe mage who can't keep the power he uses from making all sorts of messes in the camp."
"As if everyone can't tell *you're* tired."
She didn't deny it. "I can manage," she said grudgingly.
He snorted. "You're in a constant state of semiconsciousness. How long before you fall asleep on your feet?" He fixed her with a stern look. "I would feel greatly relieved - as, I'm sure, would Their Majesties and the Own - if *you*, at least, were resting at the palace instead of running right into another battle. One, you're exhausting yourself further. Two, you're putting yourself in danger." His expression softened. "Daine... I worry about you. You always go a step further than the army needs - and asks - you to. Each time, I can only wait until you come back, because there's nothing I can do to stop you. But someday, you just might go too far. I don't know if you realize the risks you take."
"I do realize them," she said tightly. "Numair, I'm not sixteen anymore. By now I've seen enough that I can make my own choices and take my own risks as *I* see fit, though I'm sorry it makes you worry. But Tortall is *my* home, too, and I've just as much right - and duty - to protect it as you."
He fell silent, staring down at Spots's mane. Sometimes she wondered if an effect of their age difference was this - his protectiveness, as though she couldn't take care of herself. Logically, this was absurd. She'd *had* to take care of herself at age twelve when bandits had destroyed her home and the people of her home village had hunted her like an animal. In her time with the Riders and as a wildmage, she'd fought countless battles with both her bow and her magic. More than once she had pulled *him* out of trouble; great mage or no, he could act rash sometimes. And yet, often he acted like he couldn't bear to see her in danger - and given her duty to the realm in such times of war, it was suffocating.
"You're right," he said at last. Daine looked over at him; he looked grave. "You *do* have a duty to the realm - and I know you, magelet, and I know you'd never let anything get in the way. It's just - Mithros. Daine, I love you. I just don't want you to get hurt." He relented. "I'm sorry. I'm... being selfish."
She smiled graciously and extended an arm to him, drawing Cloud closer to his side. He drew her close, on horseback, chin resting on top of her head. "An endearing quality," she murmured. Though unspoken, he was forgiven. She pulled back slightly to smile up at him. She loved him with every ounce of her being; she could hardly protest a sign of how much he cared about her. He bent to brush her lips with his. "Magelet, you're too kind," he whispered. They returned for a deeper kiss.
Their romantic diversion was interrupted when Cloud pulled aside. Save it for later, she told Daine tartly. You were making Spots and me bump together.
Daine laughed and translated for Numair.
Chapter 2
The ride south was brisk and windy at first, then warmed as they rode south. Corus's familiar rolling hills and dense oak forest gave way to rockier ground, more mountainous landscape, less verdant vegetation, and fewer trees. The sky was clear and the sun shone in earnest, but it was cut by a chill. In the south, the road cutting through plains and farmland between mountain ranges was of dry, beaten earth. They went on Cloud and Spots, as usual, and traveled light: besides typical traveling supplies, Daine took the bow her father had given her, and Numair various magical instruments and devices. For such a magical investigation, they would need little else besides their own magical abilities and their minds.
They had been working together like this, traversing the realm at King Jonathan's orders, since Daine's student years. Since then, they had effectively become Tortall's resident magical authorities. Numair had been regarded as such for years before he met Daine. But for her, this was a position that, despite the years, had never quite suited her. To declare herself a great mage to the world was hardly her nature. Yet her accomplishments in the Immortals Wars had earned Daine honors from the Crown and recognition throughout the country. Since then, she'd somehow picked up such skills as "being a presence" in Court, relating diplomatically to the highborn, and accepting favor from royalty, and - of course - the speech of the cultured. The Daine who had come to Tortall eleven years ago had wanted only to keep to herself and help her animal friends, and her speech was laced with the loose grammar of tiny and remote Snowsdale. So this, she decided, was what they called maturity - but surely she'd always be the same Daine, underneath.
At the same time, one of the first things she'd learned upon arrival was that here, one's past was irrelevant to his or her future. The Queen and Buri had been forced to flee their war-torn homeland. Onua, the Rider horsemistress and Daine's first Tortallan friend, had been beaten and abandoned by her husband. Sarge, the Rider's training instructor, had once been a slave. The Lioness's husband, Baron George of Pirate's Swoop, was the former Rogue, or king of thieves, in Tortall. Numair himself had been driven from his home in Carthak after being accused of treason by the Emperor Mage, his former best friend. Now he was renowned as one of the world's great mages, and close to the Crown in Tortall - as was Daine herself.
The other main thing that had changed since Daine and Numair's early years was their relationship. Since their first kiss in the Divine Realms when she was sixteen, she'd understood his hesitation - given their age difference and his history with women, he couldn't help but feel he was taking advantage of her in some way. Still, they'd resolved the issue best they could after the end of the Immortals War, and any reluctance from either of them hadn't gotten in their way since. Their love felt perpetually fresh and sweet, as though newly discovered - but at the same time so replete, so saturated, that it filled her whole being. Their tacit vow was to stay together all their days, married or no. And, happily, no one had commented on the fact that they lived together at Court. Despite the teasing, their friends approved thoroughly of the match. She suspected that those who didn't dared not speak out. That was another advantage, she decided with some amusement, of being such esteemed mages. "Gods help you if you get on his bad side," Onua had once said of Numair. Daine had seen this illustrated more than once - and, she had to admit, she herself did not respond favorably to being wronged. She felt a prick of guilt at the mess on Emperor Kaddar's hands since her rampage at the imperial palace at fifteen.
"Daine?" Numair, riding Spots on her left, interrupted her thoughts. "Can you sense anything yet?"
She listened with her magic - and sensed nothing but the People of the surrounding plains. She shook her head. "Not the hurroks, anyway. And I'll let you know when I do, so don't fret."
He smiled briefly. "What do *you* think? About what his lordship's runner said?"
"I've no idea," she said flatly. "Hurroks, griffins, coldfangs, winged horses, - they're just like animals, the way they think. They can't have ideas like we see them." She shook her head grimly. "I can't imagine how they could back Ravenpeak's men into a trap like they did."
"Maybe someone was directing them," Numair said thoughtfully, "and Lord Gregory's mages couldn't see them - I'll certainly want to talk to them when we arrive. Perhaps they were using slave collars, at least to control them, though I've never heard of such a device that could directly control the subject's movement. Particularly so, I would think, with such an - obstinate species as hurroks. And I doubt the hurroks have been *changed*, but it could be these ones are a kind we've never seen before.." He frowned, staring off into the distance. "But I don't see how any new immortals could have crossed between the realms since the end of the war. "
After the Immortals War, the gods had ruled that inhabitants of the Divine Realms would once more be kept out of the human's world. No more immortals since had come into the Human Realms.
"I'll surely take a look at them, when we reach Ravenpeak," Daine promised. "I'll feel much better once I get a feel for their mind -"
A smear of pain entered her magical field of vision. She turned sharply, searching for the source - one of the People was injured.
"Daine? What's wrong?"
"Someone's hurt." She pulled Cloud to a stop and dismounted, having pinpointed the disturbance. In the gray-green brush off the road, a falcon lay bleeding. She picked him up gently, settling him on her lap with a care to the wound. His feathers were the soft gray of an overcast sky, flecked with a darker gray. Wing-brother, how'd you get this?
His fierce raptor's eyes were unfocused. One of those monsters - he showed her an unmistakable image of a hurrok - got me in the air, he explained.
She clenched her jaw. It wasn't the first time such monsters had hurt her friends, but she never stopped hating them for it. As always, the People's pain was her own. After reassuring the falcon, she set to work healing the wound. This, too, came more easily with years and practice, and she was able to treat her patient in a matter of minutes. The hurrok's claw had slashed his back, cutting through muscle and grazing his internal organs. She called new flesh to the wound, smoothing over the rupture, and burned off the infection. The bird had also sprained a wing in his fall - though luckily, it had been softened by the brush - which she soothed as well.
Finished, she withdrew her magic. The falcon - he introduced himself as Windracer - hopped a few steps away, easing out stiffness. Thank you so much, he said, marveling at the change. But someone has to deal with those monsters before they hurt anyone else.
That's just what my friend and I are here to do, she told him. Come with me. She patted her shoulder, and he flapped up to it, settling his claws into the leather of her tunic. She returned to Numair and the horses.
"This fellow had an accident with the hurroks," she explained. "Maybe he can help us out."
Numair nodded eagerly, eyes on the falcon, whom Daine addressed. "Did they talk to you?"
Yes. They told me to get out, that I was on their grounds. Windracer looked even fiercer than his kind did naturally, and his grip on Daine's shoulder tightened.
"That's hurroks for you." Daine was quick to agree. "But - did they sound different at all?"
What do you mean?
"What they said - the way they spoke - was it different from how the People usually speak?" The idea was hard to express to a falcon.
Well, yes - but they're not People. They're different.
"Besides that they're immortals." She tried again. "Did they sound at all. wiser than the People? More like two-leggers?"
Not at all, said the falcon. They don't sound like *you* - you have more complicated ideas. Daine's friends had always been wiser for knowing her than normal animals. Many came to understand human speech.
"I'm asking," she explained, "because they outsmarted a group of two- leggers and killed them. We're trying to figure out if they've gotten smarter, or if they had help from humans."
I doubt they could have outsmarted a mouse, Windracer said scornfully. (Daine smiled: predators all seemed to disdain their prey.) They were all fighting with each other, anyway.
Daine turned back to Numair. "He says they're not at all smarter than regular animals - and they were quarrelling among themselves -"
"So it's doubtful that they could have arranged a trap like the messenger described," he mused. "So it would seem they were indeed under human command." He shook his head. "I'll scry for mages, then. "
"I still want to look into the things' heads," Daine added. "And maybe they'll tell me if they're being ordered around by mages." She could impose her will on mortal People; with precautions, hopefully it would work with the hurroks as well. She turned to the falcon on her shoulder. "Thank you, Windracer."
Thank *you*, he replied. Good luck. We'll see each other again. He leapt from her shoulder and flapped away into the mild fall air, soaring above towering sandstone peaks.
Daine remounted Cloud and they resumed riding. A gossamer veil of clouds had swept in from the north to veil the sun; the light dimmed and shadows softened. A brisk wind pushed over the plain, making her curls swirl over her face and vegetation thrash about. The change was to her a grave reminder of their friends and comrades at the Scanran border, and the grim struggle there. Though no soldier herself, Daine had seen enough of war that she could distinguish between the glories of battle many envisioned and the bloody, desolate reality of pointless killing.
"I wonder how they're doing in the North, without us," she remarked.
"His Majesty *did* grant us a month's leave," Numair reasoned. "With any luck, the forces allowed for it."
"As they had to. Now they'll have not nearly as much spy reports - they'll be slowed down, not knowing what the Scanrans are up to." Her blue-gray eyes were troubled.
"The king *wanted* us to rest," he reminded her.
"Can't blame him. I don't think one man or beast in the camp will forget your... accidents." She started to grin. "Like knocking over the blacksmith's tent, ripping a ten-foot trench in the ground just before troops marched over the spot -"
"Anomalies," he said defensively, chin lifted slightly. "I - I merely lost control of the spells for a brief time. It happens to every -"
"Don't even try." She cut him off mid-argument. "You were being sloppy -"
"Daine!" he protested.
"- because you're *tired*," she finished matter-of-factly. "Anyone can tell you've been overworking yourself. What the Own does *not* need is a black-robe mage who can't keep the power he uses from making all sorts of messes in the camp."
"As if everyone can't tell *you're* tired."
She didn't deny it. "I can manage," she said grudgingly.
He snorted. "You're in a constant state of semiconsciousness. How long before you fall asleep on your feet?" He fixed her with a stern look. "I would feel greatly relieved - as, I'm sure, would Their Majesties and the Own - if *you*, at least, were resting at the palace instead of running right into another battle. One, you're exhausting yourself further. Two, you're putting yourself in danger." His expression softened. "Daine... I worry about you. You always go a step further than the army needs - and asks - you to. Each time, I can only wait until you come back, because there's nothing I can do to stop you. But someday, you just might go too far. I don't know if you realize the risks you take."
"I do realize them," she said tightly. "Numair, I'm not sixteen anymore. By now I've seen enough that I can make my own choices and take my own risks as *I* see fit, though I'm sorry it makes you worry. But Tortall is *my* home, too, and I've just as much right - and duty - to protect it as you."
He fell silent, staring down at Spots's mane. Sometimes she wondered if an effect of their age difference was this - his protectiveness, as though she couldn't take care of herself. Logically, this was absurd. She'd *had* to take care of herself at age twelve when bandits had destroyed her home and the people of her home village had hunted her like an animal. In her time with the Riders and as a wildmage, she'd fought countless battles with both her bow and her magic. More than once she had pulled *him* out of trouble; great mage or no, he could act rash sometimes. And yet, often he acted like he couldn't bear to see her in danger - and given her duty to the realm in such times of war, it was suffocating.
"You're right," he said at last. Daine looked over at him; he looked grave. "You *do* have a duty to the realm - and I know you, magelet, and I know you'd never let anything get in the way. It's just - Mithros. Daine, I love you. I just don't want you to get hurt." He relented. "I'm sorry. I'm... being selfish."
She smiled graciously and extended an arm to him, drawing Cloud closer to his side. He drew her close, on horseback, chin resting on top of her head. "An endearing quality," she murmured. Though unspoken, he was forgiven. She pulled back slightly to smile up at him. She loved him with every ounce of her being; she could hardly protest a sign of how much he cared about her. He bent to brush her lips with his. "Magelet, you're too kind," he whispered. They returned for a deeper kiss.
Their romantic diversion was interrupted when Cloud pulled aside. Save it for later, she told Daine tartly. You were making Spots and me bump together.
Daine laughed and translated for Numair.
