Wintermoon followed the thought with quicksilver logic. 'He perches above my head. I simply have to adjust my aim to match. Practice enough against trees, and it's not so bad. So, little brother, do you want any of this?' Darkwind shook his head. 'No, I'm fine for the next few days. Dawnfire could use some, though. She was telling me her larder was a little bare.' lhw should make up for my k~ her like that.
'I'll see she gets it. All's clear the way back to your place. Fair skies-'
That was a clear dismissal-and really, about as social as Wintermoon ever got outside of the walls of his ekele. 'Wind to thy wings,' Darkwind responded, and continued up the trail. He didn't entirely release his hold on caution, but he did relax it a little. Wintermoon was completely reliable; if he said it was clear, he didn't mean just the trail, he meant for furlongs on either side.
Once at his ekele, he woke Vree up to let down the ladder-strap for him. There was still enough moon for the gyre to see, though he complained every heartbeat, and went back to sleep immediately, without waiting for Darkwind to climb up.
Even though he was relaxed and utterly weary, he couldn't help thinking about Nyara, as he drifted off to sleep. He found himself thinking of her suspiciously, the way his father would.
Or Wintermoon, for that matter. He's more like Father than he knows. Or will admit.
He wished he'd been able to persuade the Elders to allow her closer.
And not just for her protection. No, it would have been much easier to keep a watchful eye on her, if she'd been, say, in one of the dead scouts' abandoned ekeles.
Of course, Starblade would have opposed that out of its sheer symbolism.
Still, she was within reach. The hertasi were clever and conscientious.
There were the gryphons, three or four tervardi, several dyheli herds, and Dawnfire between here and the Vale, and her only other escape routes lay across the border, into the Outlands.
I can't see her going back that way, he yawned, finally giving in to sleep.
She was running away. Why in the name of the gods would she ever run back?
*Chapter Thirteen INTERLUDE
Nyara huddled before her father, abject terror warring with another emotion entirely.
Pure, wanton desire.
She hated it, that need, that fire that drove her to want him-and even as she hated him, she hated herself for feeling it.
Even though she could not control that need, even though she knew it was built into her; as he had sculpted her flesh to suit him, he had also sculpted her mind and her deepest instincts.
It didn't matter; none of it mattered. Half the time she suspected he had inserted that same self-hatred into her, purely for amusement.
And when he had called her this night, she had obeyed the call. that was built into her, too, for all that she had run away from him, for all that she had deluded herself, telling herself that she could, would resist him. She could not, and had not, and now she groveled here at his feet, longing for his touch, hating and fearing it. Despising herself for thinking that she could escape him so easily.
It had been no trouble to deceive the little hertasi who guarded her; they were not creatures of the night, and a simple illusion of her slumbering form in the darkness of the little cave they had given her was enough to satisfy them.
She had not lied. Until tonight, she had thought she could escape his reach. She had not purposefully misled the hertasi Healer, either-her weakness and pain were not feigned, nor were her injuries. But what the Healer did not know, was the extent to which she could ignore pain and fight past weakness when she had to.
That was how she had found the strength to counter her father's magic and free the dyheli herd. That was how he had forced her to come to him when he called, overriding the pain with his own commands.
And, as usual, he said nothing at first; merely smiled and waited until she had abased herself sufficiently to drive home how helpless she was, how much of her life lay within his power.
If she resembled a cat, Mornelithe Falconsbane was a feline; one that stood upon two legs, and walked, and
