'Crap, I'll take care of the little male, too,' the blade said gruffly. 'what do you think I am, some kind of bab ard w ld v-killer? Besides, the bast ou twtst him up as badly as he has Nyara, if he got his claws on the lad.'
'You are not such poor bait yourself, blade-lady,' Darkwind replied.
'He wants you as well, as I recall.' just make sure he doesn't get me.'
'No help coming frrrom the Vale?' asked Hydona, leaning over Skifs shoulder to look at the setup.
Darkwind shook his head. 'Not since the message I sent them by bondbird-relay. They are rightly fearful that this may be a double ruse-a feint at the little ones, a pretense that draws us into ambush, and a real strike at the Vale. They have been badly shaken by what they have seen done to my father and do not share my confidence in their own shields. They have called in all the scouts but myself, and are bracing for attack.'
'Firrrssst ssssmarrrt thing they've decided in agesss,' Treyvan growled, 'Even if it doesss leave usss to bearrr the burrrden of ourrrr own defenssssessss. I take it we are herrre, and herrrre?' The gryphon pointed a talon at two feathers stuck in the sand on the opposite side of the lair from Skif's initial position, behind a line of rocks representing the wall the lair had been built into.
'Precisely,' Darkwind agreed, 'And here are Elspeth and myself ' He dropped two rough quartz-crystals opposite the gryphons and nearer to the lair than Skif. 'Then the Companions, watching for his creatures coming at us from behind.' Two large white flowers, one beside Skif's pinecone, one beside Elspeth's crystal. 'Treyvan, we will try to bracket him with magic; once that occurs I do not think he will be looking for a physical attack. That is where you come in-' he nodded at Skif.
'And you, because of that, are the pivotal point of the defense. You look for your opening and take it. The man is as mortal as any to a wellplaced knife or arrow. You are our hidden token, our wild piece.'
'What about me?' Nyara asked, in a small voice. 'Is there nothing I can do?' Elspeth bit her lip to keep from saying what she was thinking; that there was no way they could trust the Changechild enough to give her a part to play. They certainly couldn't make her part of the bait; neither the gryphons nor Darkwind wanted her near enough to be in range for an attack on them if her father regained control of her.
'Falconsbane does not know you are still with us,' Darkwind said, after an uncomfortable silence. 'The longer this remains so, the better.'
'Stick with me,' Skif suggested. 'I'm staying out of sight.'
'Is this wise?' Darkwind asked Elspeth worriedly. She shook her head just enough to make her hair stir imperceptibly.
'He's assassin-trained,' she replied wishing there were somewhere safe they could leave Nyara until this was all over. 'And Cymry will be with him, watching his back, the way Gwena will be watching ours. She won't be able to catch him with an unexpected attack. I just hope he doesn't find himself in the position of being forced to let Cymry kill her.'
'Or killing her himself,' Darkwind added.
Anything more he might have intended to say was lost, for at that moment, Vree sounded the alert from overhead.
'He comes!' the bird shrieked, with mind and voice. 'He comes now!..
They scattered for their posts.
Falconsbane prowled the woods that the Birdmen thought were theirs with an ease they would have found appalling, noting the increased levels of shielding about the Vale with a mixture of contempt and anger. There was no doubt of it; they had poured more power into their old shields, added new, and every Adept within the Vale was undoubtedly on alert. The tentative plan he'd formed to extract Starblade from his protectors and retrain him for further use was obviously out of the question now.
He paused in the shelter of a wild tangle of briars and searched for a weak point. There was nothing of the sort. Since there was no one to see him, he permitted himself a savage snarl. All that work, all the patience, the careful planning, the investment of power in Starblade's transformation to puppet, and in the construct that controlled him-all wasted!
He wished he had been able to see through the simulacrum's eyes, but the protections about the Vale had made that impossible. He Still ut the prote' n e a d ad no real idea what had happened when he'd lost his contact with the
Uul laaccrum. Starblade had been near the Heartstone; he knew that i Incee it had been near dawn, Falconsbane assumed that he must ducting his usual nonproductive assessment of the state of hen, out of nowhere, a flash of panic from the crow '- of power as the bird was destroyed. Why, or
4.
