Owlflight

Magic flowed, like water, and like water it would not remain spread out over the land for long. If left to itself, it would form its own rivers and pools - or ley-lines and nodes - or it could be guided into paths that could be carved for it. The sooner those paths were established, the sooner it could be persuaded to follow those paths, and would flow as it had before - and the less likely it would be that stagnant pools would form, warping creatures and plants as had happened before, in the Pelagirs, after the Mage Wars were ended. There were many more Tayledras now than there had been then, with a great deal more experience, and now that there was no geas laid upon them by the Star-Eyed to cleanse the land, they were free to go out into it and rectify the situation before it became necessary to do those cleansings.

More to the point, since no creature ever acts against its own best interest (even though they may act in enlightened self-interest) if it was the Tayledras mages who reestablished the ley-lines and nodes in a matrix, they would be able to arrange and key them so that it did themselves and their allies the most good. But, conversely, if they left an area unmanaged, it would be altogether likely for other mages to come in and arrange things to their liking.

This was the reason for the groups of Tayledras traveling about now, dealing with Changebeasts, working to link the local magics up with the greater systems already established. The Crown of Valdemar had not only given its blessing to the massive venture, but had funded their needs and ordered support to be given by Guard, Herald, and citizen, with free passage papers and more. That the now-legendary Tayledras Adept Darkwind had the ear of the Queen in the matter had not hurt a bit. Altruistically, the Hawkbrothers and their chosen allies were able to rid the land of some very unpleasant creatures. Realistically, they were creating a matrix that better supported their own Heartstones than even the original had. In the future, it would assure them of more than adequate power for virtually anything they wished to do.

Could it be that some other, rival mages had decided on the same plan?

Of course it could, he told himself. In this case, it wouldn’t take an Adept to see what the advantage in it would be. It would only take a perceptive Master, in fact, or someone very educated in the nature of types of magical energy and its tendencies, to plan out a local scale version of - gahhh. Snowfire, you need help, your mind is wandering. Deal with the situation in the here and now, and discuss the implications of your speculations over a good meal by the fire later on.

Well, the best thing he could do now would be to get the boy to a place where he could feel safe. Perhaps after some food and calming, this young Darian could bring himself to reveal what had happened. Surely in Nightwind’s hands that would not be long in coming.

Whatever it was, Snowfire was certain, there was going to be a great deal more to it than appeared on the surface.

Snowfire was so deep in his own thoughts that it startled him when the boy spoke. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” came the muffled voice from behind his back.

He considered the language carefully before he replied. He did not want to answer the wrong question and give the boy the impression that he was being uncooperative. “Myself, specifically?” he asked. “Or my people? There are more of us here, not far from here, as I told you.”

“Your people,” Darian answered, and Snowfire felt him take one hand off of Snowfire’s waist; he sniffed, and Snowfire fished in a pouch at his belt to give the lad a bit of unused bandage to wipe his nose with. “Th-thank you,” the boy said carefully.

Interesting that his own thoughts had just been on that very subject, of why the Tayledras were here.

“We are a very special group of Tayledras - your people call us Hawkbrothers, usually - and we are here for a number of reasons which all mesh together. What know you of the mage-storms?” he asked. “I ask this, because it is relevant to why we are here.”

He felt the boy shrug. “Not much,” Darian admitted. “They upset the weather a bunch, made things bad around here, turned monsters loose. I guess they made it hard for mages to work.”

Snowfire thought for a moment, and decided that the most complete, if abbreviated, explanation would certainly not be amiss, and would fill up the time until the moment they arrived at the camp. And besides, it might help keep his mind off how his arm hurt. “I will go back to the very beginning, then - to the cause of it all. Once, so many hundreds of years ago that most of that time is lost even as a legend, there were many of what we know as the Great Mages. These were Adepts so powerful that they had the ability to actually create new creatures that had never existed before, to change the weather, or to make the rocks run like water.”

“Was that where the monsters came from?” Darian asked, as Snowfire paused.

“Some of them created creatures that you would take to be monsters, I am sure,” Snowfire told him, craning his head around to smile at the boy with encouragement. “But I think that the monsters you speak of were all created later - and I am coming to that. One of these Great Mages was very evil, and he made war on the rest. In the end, there was only one left to oppose him. That one invented a kind of weapon that was so terrible that he swore he would only use it if he himself were dying. He made two of these - and when the time came that he was, indeed, dying, killed by a slow poison delivered by an assassin loyal to the evil mage, he sent one into the hands of the evil mage himself, and triggered the other in his own place.”

“Why?” Darian asked. Snowfire suppressed a smile at that oldest of childrens’ questions.

“Because,” he said patiently, “the way that this weapon worked was to release all