bothering with the reins, he had those looped up on the pommel of the saddle. Vanyel didn't much care for riding pillion, but it wasn't bad behind Moondance; the younger Tayledras didn't mind talking to him. As Vanyel had suspected, he had forgiven Vanyel even before he made his apology to the Tayledras. Which he had done as soon as he could get Moondance alone; it only seemed right. Now it was as if the incident had never occurred; Moondance even seemed to welcome his questions and encouraged him to ask them.
They'd talked about Vanyel's Gifts, mostly. Vanyel hadn't actually talked about them to anyone; Savil hadn't had much opportunity to do so, and Starwind had just gone directly into his head, showed him what to do, and then expected him to do it.
'So, what were we up to?' Moondance asked.
'ForeSight.' Vanyel shivered. 'Moondance, I don't like it. I don't want to know what's going to happen. Is there any way I can block it?'
'Now that it is active? Not to my knowledge. But you must not let it cripple you, ke'chara. You are not seeing the irrevocable future, you see the future as it may be if nothing changes. The most likely at this moment. These things may change; you can change them.'
'I can?' Vanyel perked up at this.
'Assuredly. But it may be that the cost of such a change is to dissolve a friendship or a love you would not willingly forgo. You may feel such a bond is worth the price.' He smiled crookedly back over his shoulder. 'If I were to have the certain knowledge that my lifebond to Starwind would send me to my death tomorrow, I would go willingly to that fate. But I would not tell Starwind of my foreknowledge. Think on that, if you will.'
Vanyel did brood on that for several furlongs.
It was Moondance in Yfandes' saddle and not Vanyel, because if they were surprised by an attack, Vanyel had been ordered to drop off the pillion pad and stay out of the fight.
It was humiliating - but sensible. Vanyel was rather more acutely interested in 'sensible' than in 'humiliating' at the moment. If an attack came, he'd obey those orders. He'd learned his lesson with the colddrake.
'Well, are there no more questions, ke'chara?'
Vanyel shook his head.
'Then I have one for you. Starwind has said that when you were frightened in practice you pulled power from the valley-node. Is this true?'
'What's the valley-node?'
'Savil did not tell you?' Moondance made a face. 'No patience, that one. You surely have felt that all things have energy about them, yes?'
'Even rocks - '
'Ge'teva, if you sense that, then your Mage-Gift is a most strong one! Even I have some difficulty with seeing that. So; have you seen that this energy flows along lines, as rainwater to streams?'
Vanyel hadn't, but when he closed his eyes and extended he could see that Moondance was right.
'I do now.'
'Then follow a stream to the place where it meets another.''
He did. There was a kind of - knot. A concentration of power. He told Moondance so.
'That is a node.' Moondance nodded. 'Tayledras can direct the course of these streams on occasion, which is how we take the magic from places where the wars left it and move it to a place where it is useful. We build our strongholds over places where two or more powerful streams meet; nodes. The energy of the node is such that all of us can use it, but we have found that a-many out-land mages not only cannot sense the streams, they cannot sense nor use the nodes. This may be something only those outsiders at the level of our Adepts do well; I think it is perhaps unique to the Tayledras that all of us, from the time we start to feel our Gifts awaken, manipulate this energy as easily as a child plays with building bricks. There was a time - very long ago - when the Tayledras adopted outlanders very commonly, and it is said that these outlanders changed even as I have. I think that the key to change is using this magic under the direction of Tayledras born. So; of outland Adepts we have known, only Wingsister Savil can link into the nodes as well as Tayledras; her Gift is very strong. So, it seems, is yours.
Vanyel was confused as to where all this was leading. 'But what does that mean, Moondance?'
'For now - you exhausted yourself when you killed the colddrake. That is something you need not do quite so quickly, if you remember that you can pull from the life-energy nodes within your sensing range. When they are drained - then you use your own strength.'
That gave him food for thought for several more candlemarks.
They'd journeyed westward from Garthhold with the rising of the sun, stopping three times on the way to question folk Starwind knew. The first had been a fur trapper, who'd told them of rumors of a renegade wizard, who was half-human, half-Pelagir changeling and had sorcerous skills and a taste for worldly power. The second was a kyree, a wolflike creature with a mind fully the equal of any human. He stopped them; Mindspeaking to warn them of of the same wizard, but his stories were more than mere rumors; to his certain knowledge the changeling was planning to carve himself a realm of his own as quickly as he could, and had already begun that task.
The third had been one of k'Treva's border-guards - not Tayledras herself, but another of the Pelagir changelings, a tervardi, a kind of flightless bird-woman.
She was no longer among the living.
When Starwind had been unable to Mindcall her, they had detoured to the grove of trees that held her ekele. There was no sign of a struggle, but they found the fragile, white-plumaged wraith in her ekele, dead, without a mark upon her, but with her bow in her hand, bowstring snapped, and her empty, glazed eyes wide with what Vanyel assumed was fear.
Starwind spent some moments beside the body, working some kind of subtle magic. Vanyel could feel things
