Dead. Part of her soul, her heart, her life-gone without a trace. She was completely alone, in a way she had not been since she was ten.
The grief that descended over her was so total that she forgot everything, including her hunger.
Oh, Kyrr-Her beak gaped, but nothing happened. Not even a single sob.
She couldn't cry, she wasn't even human anymore. How could she mourn as a hawk? She didn't know, and the inability to cry out her pain and loss redoubled it. They were both lost, she and Kyrr-and they would never come home again.
She closed her eyes and rocked from foot to foot, trapped in a sea of black grief, drowning in it.
A satisfied chuckle made her snap her head up and open her eyes wide.
Mornelithe was watching her with amusement.
Her grief turned to rage in the blink of an eye; she mantled and screamed at him, her cry piercing the silence and shattering it-though she was careful to keep a tight grip on the rough wood of her perch as she shrieked her defiance at him.
He found that even more amusing; his smile broadened, and his chuckle turned into a hearty laugh.
'Perhaps you won't be a disappointment after all, clever bird-child.
He caressed her with his eyes, and her rage spilled away, leaving her weak and frightened again.
He returned his gaze to something in his lap, and as he shifted a little, she could see that it was a dark crystal scrying-stone. He stared at it, his gaze suddenly going from casual to penetrating-and what he saw in it made him frown.
Chappter Twenty DARKWIND
Starblade turned away from the little knot of Tayledras Adepts and Healers surrounding Dawnfire's ekele in despair, and sought the sanctuary of his own ekele. The fools were trying to thrash out what could have killed Dawnfire, and why-when it was obvious, as obvious a taint on the girl's body as the taint on his own soul, and the contamination that had cracked the Heartstone.
He knew it the moment he saw it. And he could not say a single word.
He felt old, old-burdened with secrets too terrible to hide that he could not confess to anyone, weary with the weight of them, sick to his bones of what he had done. As he had so many times, he climbed the stairs to his ekele, then sought the chamber at the top, and stood looking down on the Vale) wondering if this time he could find the strength to open the window and hurl himself to the ground.
But the crow on his shoulder flapped to its perch as soon as he entered the room, and sat there watching him with cold, derisive eyes. And he knew, even as he fought the compulsion to turn away from the window and suicide, that Mornelithe Falconsbane still had his soul in a fist of steel, and there was nothing he had that he could call his own. Not his thoughts, not his will, not his mind.
He flung himself down on the sleeping pad, hoping to lose himself in that dark oblivion-but sleep eluded him, and Falconsbane evidently decided to remind him of what he was.
The memory-spell seized him Smoke wreathed through the trees as he paused in an area he had thought safe, and the acrid fumes made him cough. The fire was spreading, far faster than it should have. For a moment, Starblade wondered if perhaps he should go back for help. But other emergencies had emptied the Vale of all but apprentices and children, and he had a reputation to maintain. He was an Adept, after all, and a simple thing like a forest fire shouldn't prove too hard to handle. He sought shelter from the smoke down in a little hollow, a cup among some hills, and closed his eyes to concentrate on his first task.
No, you fool, Starblade cried at his younger self. Go back! Get help!
Nothing trivial would frighten that many firebirds!
But this was a vision of the past, and his younger self did not heed the silent screaming in his own mind.
He reached out with his mind, seeking the panic-stricken firebirds first of all.
Until he could get them calmed and sent away, he would never be able to put the flames out. One by one he touched their minds; turned their helpless panic into need for escape instead of defense, and sent them winging back to the Vale. One of the beast-tenders, the Tayledras who spoke easily to the minds of animals, would take care of them. He had a fire to quench. there were more firebirds than he had expected, and they were in a complete state of mindlessness. It took time to calm them.
But while he had stood there like a fool, the fire had jumped the tiny pocket of greenery where he worked,
