'Let me tend to him,' Iceshadow said, when Darkwind had finished.
The scout moved over enough for the older Adept to take a place cradling Starblade's head in both his hands. Iceshadow stared intently into Starblade's eyes, but spoke to the son, not the father. 'Tell me in detail everything you know.' Darkwind obeyed, detailing Nyara's explanations of how Falconsbane had caught Starblade, and how he had broken the Adept and set the compulsions. Iceshadow nodded through all of it.
'I think I have enough,' he said, then looked down into Starblade's eyes. 'But first, old friend, I must bring down your shields. He has trained you to respond only to pleasure, or pain. And since I do not have time for pleasure-forgive me, but it must be pain.' As Starblade nodded understanding, Iceshadow caught Darkwind's attention. 'Take his left hand,' the Adept said. 'Spread it flat upon the ground.' As Darkwind obeyed, mystified, Starblade closed his eyes and visibly braced himself.
'Take your dagger and pierce his hand,' Iceshadow ordered. And when Darkwind stared at him, aghast, the older Tayledras frowned fiercely. 'Do it now, young one,' he snarled. 'That evil beast has tied his obedience to pain, and I cannot break his shields to free his mind without driving him insane. Now do what I tell you if you wish to help him!' Darkwind did not even allow himself to think; he simply obeyed.
Starblade's scream of agony sent him lurching to his feet and away, tears of his own burning his eyes and blurring his sight.
When he could see again, he found Vree standing an angry and silent guardian over his victim, the crow that Mornelithe Falconsbane had used to control Starblade and shatter the lives of everyone in k'sheyna. Showing a sophistication that Darkwind had not ex pected of him, Vree had neither eaten his victim, nor abandoned it.
The first might have left him open to Falconsbane's contamination-the second might have given Falconsbane a chance to recover his servant, perhaps even to revive it. Almost anything was possible to an Adept of Falconsbane's power. It only depended on whether or not he was willing to expend that power.
Even if they buried the crow, it was possible that Falconsbane could work through it, to a limited extent. There was only one way to end such a linkage.
Destroy it completely.
There was always a fire burning beside the Heartstone; that memorial flame to the lives of those who had died in its explosion. Darkwind picked up the bird carefully by one wing, and took it to the stone basin containing the fire of cedar and other fragrant woods long considered sacred by both the Shin'a'in and the Tayledras.
He raised his eyes to the shattered Heartstone, truly facing it for the first time since the disaster.
The surface of the great pillar of stone was cracked and crazed, reflecting the damage beneath. The invisible damage was much, much worse.
And none of it-none-was his fault. The personal burden he had carried for so long, the ghost of guilt that had haunted his days, was gone.
Darkwind bent over the basin's edge and closed his eyes in a prayer to the spirits of the woods and an apology to the spirits of the Tayledras that had died when the Heartstone sundered.
Mornelithe Falconsbane, you have a great deal to answer for.
He drew back and hurled the body of the crow into the fire pit-so hard that something shattered with a splintering crunch as it hit-perhaps the bird's bones, perhaps the branches of the fire...The Adepts were so intent on Starblade that they didn't even look up, but a sudden heavy weight on his shoulder, and the soft trill in his ear, told him that Vree approved.
The feathers caught fire quickly; the rest took longer to burn-but the flames from the resin-laden branches were hot, and eventually the flesh crisped and blackened, then burst into flame. He watched until the last vestige of the bird was ash and glowing coals, and only then turned back to the rest.
Iceshadow still cradled Starblade's head in both his hands. A pool of blood had seeped out around Starblade's hand, with Darkwind's knife laid to the side. The expression on Iceshadow's face was just as intent, but Starblade's expression had changed entirely.
Darkwind wondered now how he could ever have mistaken the changes in his father for anything other than a terrible alteration in his personality.
Here was the father he had loved as a child-despite the pain, the grief, and the suffering etched into his face.
Starblade opened his eyes for a moment and saw him; he smiled, and tried to speak.
And couldn't. Once again, he came up against a terrible compulsion.
His face twisted as he strove to shape words that would not come.
