bonding to a huge crow who brought him fruit to feed him and supply his fevered body with liquids, and his final desperate attempt to get back to the Vale.
And the false memories passed muster. The crow was unremarked upon.
He had only an unusually touchy temper that caused his friends and son to give him some distance until he should regain his normal calm. Any changes in him, they-and he-ascribed to the trauma he had endured, and they all felt that those changes would pass in time.
All else seemed well, until the ritual to move the Heartstone.
Only then, after the disaster, did his true memories return. And it was then that the rest of his hidden memories emerged-Memories of going to the Heartstone every night, and creating a flaw in it, leeching the power away from a place deep inside, and creating an instability that would not be revealed until the entire power of the Vale had been loaded into it, preparatory to bridging the distance between the old Heartstone and the new.
That was the first night he had tried to fling himself from the top of his ekele.
Once again, Mornelithe exerted his power over him, through the compulsions planted as deeply within him as he had planted the flaw in the stone. The crow was the intermediary of those compulsions, and since it never left his side, Mornelithe's hand was always upon him.
And when he tried to confess his pollution, he found his tongue uttering simple pleasantries. When he tried to open his mind to let others see the traitor within their ranks, he found himself completely unable to lower his own shields. As he had been in Mornelithe's stronghold, he was bound, gagged, and paralyzed, a prisoner within his own mind, still toyed with and controlled for Falconsbane's pleasures and purposes. At least half of the time, that tiny portion of himself that was still free was buried so deeply that it was not even aware of what passed, what Mornelithe made him do, and say.
All he could do, in the moments he was free to speak and act, however circumspectly, was to alienate his son, in the barren hope that, once made into an enemy, anything Starblade supported, Darkwind would work against. It looked as if the ploy was working.
At least, it had until the death-no, murder-of Dawnfire. Once again the hand of Mornelithe Falconsbane had reached out to take what he wanted, and again Starblade had been helpless to prevent it.
There was only one further hope. Darkwind had withdrawn from the company of mages after the disaster. Darkwind lived outside the influence of the flawed and shattered Heartstone. So Darkwind's powers should be uncontaminated by Mornelithe's covert influence. If he could just get Darkwind to take up his powers again- Darkwind would call for help from the nearest Clan. The deceptions that had held for so long would shatter under close examination, and Mornelithe would find himself locked out, once again.
But how to get Darkwind to resume his powers, after all that Starblade had done to keep him from doing just that?
Starblade groaned, and threw his arm over his eyes. There seemed no way out; not for him, nor for anyone else. k'sheyna was doomed, and his was the hand that had doomed it. The only way out was death, and even that had been denied him.
Damn you, Falconsbane! he shrieked inside his own mind. And it seemed to him that he caught a far-off echo of derisive laughter.
Darkwind felt torn in a hundred pieces, divided within himself by conflicting emotions, responsibilities, and loyalties. Treyvan had kindled a mage-light; a dim orange glow in the center of the ceiling of the lair.
Yet another surprise to Darkwind; he hadn't known the gryphon could do that, either.
He slumped in one corner of the gryphons' lair with his head buried in his hands and his mind going in circles. Hydona curled protectively around her youngsters, trying to minimize whatever harm Falconsbane had already done them. Her shields were up at full strength, with Treyvan's augmenting them. Darkwind's shields augmented both of theirs; he had never renounced that part of his mage-craft, and he squandered his own energies recklessly to stave off any more disaster that might befall his friends.
Nyara sat curled into a ball in the opposite corner of the lair, with as much distance between herself and the rest of them as she could manage.
After his initial outburst of rage-during which he had come very close to breaking her neck with his bare hands-Darkwind's anger toward the Changechild faded. After all, none of this was of Nyara's plotting. He should have known better than to leave her with the hertasi, who were mostly creatures of daylight, to keep her watched at a distance by tervardi and dyheli who also moved mostly by day.
I should have found a night-scout willing to watch her, he thought distractedly.
Hindsight is always perfect.
'All right,' he said, breaking the silence, and making everyone jump.
