Magic's Pawn

'God of my fathers - ' He reached out with his free hand and barely touched Vanyel's brow. He pulled back his hand as if it had been burned. 'Goddess of my mothers! What have you brought me, sister?'

'I don't know,' she said, slumping wearily against him. 'He's been blasted open, and he can't heal - more than that - I'm too tired to tell you right now. So much has happened, and to both of us - I just can't think what to do anymore. All I know is that he's hurting, and I can't help him, and if I'd left him where he was he'd have destroyed himself at the best, and half the capital at the worst.'

'There is nothing wrong with your judgment, I pledge you that,' Starwind replied, sitting back on his heels and regarding the boy dubiously. 'There is such potential there - he frightens me. And such darkness of the soul-no, Wingsister, not evil; there is nothing evil in him. Just - darkness. Despair is a part of it, but - denial of what he is and must become is another. Self-willed darkness; he wills himself not to see, I think.'

'You see more than I do,' she told him, rubbing her aching forehead. 'I haven't the right to ask it of you, but - will you help me with him? Can you help me?'

The firelight turned the ice of his eyes to blue-gold flame. 'You have the right, sister to brother, to ask what you will of me. Did you not gift me with the greatest of all gifts, in the person of my shay'kreth'ashke? '

She had to smile a little at that. Bringing Starwind another boy long ago had been one of the few unalloyed good things she'd ever done. 'Where is Moondance, anyway?''

:Moondance stands in the snow, defending his head and his lifeblood. Telling the ,stranger- lasha'Kaladra not to eat me,: came the laughter-flavored reply. I frightened her. She does not trust me, I think.:

:Kellan - :Savil Mindspoke tiredly.

:He popped up right under Yfandes' nose and scared the liver out of her, Chosen,: Kellan replied apologetically :She went for him before we knew who it was. It's all right now, he's just making amends.:

:Bright Havens, Kelt, you know him, at least!: she snapped, her tiredness making her impatient.

:Not anymore - :

'I fear I have greatly changed, Wingsister,' Moon-dance said contritely from the entrance. 'And I also fear I had forgotten the fact.'

Savil looked over Starwind's shoulder and felt her mouth gaping. Starwind put one finger beneath her chin, and shut it for her with a chuckle.

'Great good gods!' she said after a moment of stunned silence. 'You have changed!'

The Moondance she had known - he hadn't had the name 'Moondance' for long at that point - had been brown-haired and brown-eyed and as ordinary as a peasant hut. Not surprising for one of peasant stock. But now - now the hair was as long and as silver and the eyes as ice-blue as Starwind's. The lines of his face were still the same; square to Starwind's triangle, but the cheekbones were far more prominent than Savil remembered, and the body had grown out of adolescent gawkiness and into a slender grace so like Starwind's that they could have been brothers by birth instead of by blood.

:He even smells different,: Kellan complained.

'How did you do that?' Savil demanded.

Moondance made a fluid shrug, and tossed the sides of his white cape over his shoulders, showing that he wore only thin gray breeches and a sleeveless gray leather jerkin with matching boots. Savil shivered at this reminder that the Tayledras never seemed to notice the cold. 'It's the magic we use,' he said. 'It makes us into what it wants us to be. I think.'

'As always, an oversimplification,' Starwind correcled him fondly. ' 'Ka'sheeleth. Savil has brought us a problem. Come look at this boy - '

Moondance drifted over to Savil's other side, sat on his heels beside her, and studied Vanyel's face for several breaths.

'Hai'yasha, 'he breathed. 'Shay'a'chern, hmm? And Lovelost? No, it goes deeper than that.' He reached out as Starwind had, and touched Vanyel's forehead, but unlike Starwind, did not pull away. 'Ai'she'va - Holiest Mothers! The pain!' His jaw tightened and the pupils of his eyes contracted to pinpoints. 'Reft and bereft of shay 'kreth 'ashke.'' His face took on the tranquillity of a statue. 'Pawn he is now - pawn he has been - ' he said, his tone flat, his voice dropping half an octave. 'Pawn to what he is and what he wills not to be. But will or no, the pawn is in play - and the play is a trial - '

'And what of the game?' Starwind asked in a whisper.

Moondance hesitated, then life came back to his face as he shrugged again, and his pupils went back to normal. 'No way of knowing,' he replied, slowly taking his hand from Vanyel's forehead. 'That depends entirely upon whether he is willing to become more than a pawn. But yours to be the Teaching, I think,' he said, looking up sharply at the Adept. 'It is like your powers that he holds. As for Healing, I think that half of it will be his doing - if he Heals at all - '

'And the other half yours,' the Adept stated with an ironic smile.

Moondance turned Vanyel's wrist up, showing the scar across it - then turned over his own hand, and the firelight picked out the scar that ran from the gold-skinned hand halfway to the elbow, a scar that followed the course of the blue vein pulsing beneath the skin. 'Who better?' he asked. 'We have something in common, I think.'

Savil swayed again, caught in a sudden dizziness, and Starwind took hold of her shoulders to steady her. 'You need rest,' he said in concern. 'Will you have it here, or can you ride?''

Savil thought longingly of just lying down where she was, and then reflected on being able to do so in a bed.

And also on the Companions, out there in the snow and cold, and still in their harnesses.

'The Companions can and will carry double,' she sighed, feeling just about ready to fade away. 'If you're willing to ride them. Or strap us in, I don't much care which. But I'd like them in the warm.'