'We don't know anything about the Shin'a'in Goddess,' Gwena said, alarm evident in her mind-voice. 'She's not something Valdemar has ever dealt with. We're not sure we trust Her.'
'You can't manipulate Her, you mean,' she replied angrily.
'No. She could be like Iftel's God; She could care only for the welfare of Her own people. That's all. We know some of what She is and does-but it's not something we want to stake the future of Valdemar on.' Gwena's mind- voice rose with anxiety. Elspeth cut her off.
'What do you have to say about this?' she asked Skif. 'You, I mean.
Not the Companions.'
'I-uh-' he flushed, and looked horribly uncomfortable. 'I-don't know really what the Companions think of it.' He's lying. His Companion is giving him an earful.
'But I-uh, from everything Kero's said, the Shin'a'in probably could give you the teaching, and if they couldn't, they would know someone who could.' He gulped, and wiped sweat from his forehead with his sleeve. 'Kero trusts them-not just her relatives, I mean-and so does her Companion, I know that much.' Gwena snorted. 'Of course Sayvil says she trusts them. Contrary old beast, she'd say that just to be contrary.' Elspeth ignored the waspish comment. 'Fine.' She turned to stare into Gwena's blue eyes. 'I am going to Kata'shin'a'in, and I am going to see if the Shin'a'in know someone to train me.' She turned the stare into a glare. 'That is where I am going, and you are not going to stop me. I'll walk if I have to. I'll buy a plowhorse in the next village. But I am not going to Lythecare. And that is my final word on the subject.' She raised her chin and stared defiantly at all of them. 'Now, are you with me, or do I go on alone?' Less than a candlemark later, they passed the turnoff to Lythecare, heading straight south, to Kata'shin'a'in.
And Gwena was giving her the most uncomfortable ride of her life, in revenge.
But every bruise was a badge of victory-And I hope I'll still believe that in the morning when I can't move.
*Chapter Twelve DARKWIND
This patrol-like all the others lately-had been completely uneventful. this is almost too easy, Darkwind thought, making frequent checks of the underbrush beside the path for signs of disturbance. A week now, that Nyara's been hiding with us, and there's nothing from the other side.
Nothing hunting her, except that couple of wyrsa I caught on her trail, no magic probes, nothing.
The very quietude set all his nerves on edge. Of course, her shielding is really outstanding. Falconsbane might not know she's here, or even that she headed this way when she ran. He could be hunting for her in another direction altogether.
That was what Treyvan said; Hydona was of the opinion that Falconsbane knew very well she'd come this way but assumed she was in the Vale. She pointed out that in all the time Falconsbane had been on their border- and everything Nyara said indicated that he had been there for a very long time-he'd never directly challenged k'sheyna. He was only one Adept, after all, and there were at least five Adepts and ten times that many Masters in k'sheyna. And even though none of them were operating at full strength, the mages of k'sheyna could still be more than he cared to meet in conflict. Especially when the conflict was over the relatively minor matter of the loss of a single Changechild.
'He can alwaysss make anotherrr,' Hydona had said, callously. 'It isss unussual for one like himssself to keep a pet forrr longerrr than a few yearsss.' And oddly enough, Nyara agreed with Hydona's analysis.
If he was angered at all, his anger would have been for a loss; not for the loss of me,' she'd said, more than a little piqued at having to admit that she was worth so little to her former master. 'As an individual, I mean very little to him. He has threatened many times to create another, to then see how I fared among his lesser servants as their playffin. All that would goad him into action was that he had lost a possession. If something distracted him from that anger, he would have made only a token attempt to find me, more to appease his pride than to get me back.' So it seemed, for other than the pair of wyrsa, there had been nothing in the way of activity-not along Darkwind's section, nor Dawnfire's-not, for that matter, anyone else's. Except for Moonmist; she ran into a basilisk who'd decided her little patrol area was a good one to nest in.
Prying that thing out had taken five scouts and three days. They didn't want to kill it if they didn't have to; basilisks were stupid, incredibly dangerous, and ravenous carnivores who would eat anything that couldn't run away from them-but they weren't evil. They had their place in the scheme of things; they dined with equal indifference on their own kills or carrion, and there were few things other than a basilisk that would scavenge the carcasses of cold-drakes or wyrsa.
But no one wanted a basilisk for a near neighbor, not even the most ardent animal lover. Not even Earthsong, who had once unsuccessfully tried to breed a vulture for a bondbird.
But that was the only excitement there had been for days, and there was no way that incident could have been related. No one could herd a basilisk. The best you could do was to make ~ so unpleasant for it that it chose to move elsewhere. No one, in all the history of the Tayledras, had ever been able to even touch what passed for one's mind, much less control it. The histories said they were a failed and abandoned experiment, like so many
