energies around her.
Her little line still glowed to her Mage Sight, tracing down the slope to pool in the large rock. Was the line a little broader, a little stronger than she had left it? Stardance couldn’t be sure, but she thought that maybe it was. The stone itself had retained the magic that trickled through the runnel. She paused, considering. Would it accumulate enough power that it would need an outlet? Reaching out with a gentle touch beyond her shields, she tested the energy in the stone, then released it. Unless a great deal more magic suddenly flooded down the tiny line, the quartz in the stone could hold the gathering power for days, at least. She turned and moved deeper into the forest, heading for the outer limit of the new area she would be searching.
Silverheart unlinked herself from Windwhisperer’s mind, rubbing her eyes to clear the afterimages of Mage Sight layered on Far Sight.
“So, what do you think?” the Elder asked her, his eyes closed as he continued to “watch” Stardance move through the forest.
“She is very young,” the Healing Mage answered slowly, “but her instinct seems good.”
“Is she truly working with the earth magics on that level?”
“It seems so. As Dayspring suggested, that is a tiny runnel and rudimentary node—well, more of a locus than a node. Since she knew exactly where they were and only touched them to verify their presence, it appears that she did create them.” Silverheart paused for a moment, considering. “There had been a fairly strong ley-line and node in that clearing. If the girl remembered that, and tried her experiment there because of it, I don’t think we need to monitor her closely until she gets to where there used to be stronger nodes. From the old maps, I think there are two in her area today. One just beside the little waterfall and one closer in, near a stand of pines.”
There was a brief silence, and Windwhisperer stood, shaking his shoulders to loosen himself as he released his Far Sight half-trance. “I’ve set Tria to watch her and alert me when she nears either of those areas or if she does anything unusual. No sense in using Far Sight for that long if I don’t need to.”
Silverheart nodded. “It may not take much energy, but there is little from which to replenish yourself. Now, we wait.”
Stardance looked up, checking her position. Yes, she had completed the first arc of her wedge and was almost at the waterfall that dropped the stream down below the cliffs that had marked the edge of her area the previous day. Hadn’t there been a node, here, too? The ley-lines often followed the patterns of the streams, for there was so much life in the water to supply them.
This time, she sat comfortably beneath a tree before she twisted her Mage Sight to the broad and shallow focus that allowed her to See the nebulous fog of power. The haze seemed stronger here near the water than it had been in the other clearing. Would it be easier to work with? Opening her shields, she once again cascaded a subtle ripple of magic over her surface, imagining the enticing fragments drawing the diffuse energy toward her.
Back in his ekele, Windwhisperer sat up and hissed an alert to Silverheart. “Tria says she’s sitting down near the head of the waterfall.” He linked to the kestrel’s eyes, then shifted to his own Far Sight once he had Stardance’s position fixed in his mind. With a soft touch, he felt Silverheart connect to him, and suddenly her Healing Mage Sight layered over his, so that he saw the faint life force limning the area the girl sat in, the haze of fragmented power that was slowly floating toward her.
“That’s what you See and work with?” he murmured in amazement, and Silverheart chuckled.
“Very small, as you see. It takes patience. A lot of patience.”
“But how is she working with it?”
Silverheart didn’t answer for a long time as she studied the young girl, watching the fog gradually coalesce into tendrils that reached out toward the girl’s glowing form. “She’s making herself into something like a living lodestone, using some of her own energy to draw the bits of power to herself. Once it connects to her . . .” Her voice trailed off as Stardance raised her hands, her fingers gathering the first of those tentative strands and doing . . . something . . . to blend them.
Windwhisperer put voice to Silverheart’s question. “What in the Star-Eyed’s Name is she doing?”
Silverheart had no reply, for she had never seen anyone work with magic this way. Instead of guiding the tiny bits of power with her mind, nudging them together as Silverheart had been taught to do, Stardance used her hands, fingers twisting nimbly but carefully, to blend the fragments together, folding them over each other and weaving—Silverheart was so shocked when the word came to her that she broke her link with Windwhisperer.
“The hertasi,” she said at last, “Stardance’s caretaker. She worked with cloth?”
“Ye-es,” Windwhisperer replied, his brow furrowed with confusion.
Silverheart slowly connected back with him, this time not using her Mage Sight, looking only at the deft movements of the girl’s fingers.
“She’s spinning the power like thread, weaving it together,” she murmured at last, a hint of awe tinging her voice. “That’s how she could attempt it, without any training in guiding the subtle magics. She’s using her own power to connect with it and then treating the tiny bits of energy like the bits of fiber to be spun into thread.” With a twist of her mind, she shifted into her Healing Mage Sight, again sharing what she saw with Windwhisperer, and they watched as Stardance blended the last of the tendrils that she had drawn to her with the ones that already wound together around her coruscating fingertips. Then the girl slowly shifted, drawing her hands and the fragile strand of magic to the rock that had once anchored the waterfall’s node.
“How is she going to connect—oh, she’s using her own power again.” Silverheart answered her own question as Stardance held her hands over the stone, then rippled some of her personal energy down to it, to guide the tiny runnel down from her hands.
“This one is larger than the one she created yesterday,” Silverheart murmured. “I hope she doesn’t . . .” Even as the words left her, they both saw the little line “snap” into the earth, and the girl pitched forward, unconscious. Her bondbird was instantly beside her, her beak wide with distress cries, and Windwhisperer’s Tria soon joined the falcon, her presence calming the larger but younger bird. In another moment, they saw Nightblade drop from one of the nearby trees, carefully turning the girl over and checking for injuries before scooping her up and heading back toward the Vale.
Windwhisperer released his Far Sight, and Silverheart broke her link with him, the two of them staring at each other in disbelief.
“Should we question her when she is restored? Will she be more open to talking? Does she even realize how very important it is, what she has done with no instruction, nothing beyond that of the other trainees?”
Windwhisperer shook his head. “I think she is still too fragile, too hurt for questions. She has lost much, this one, and the Storms especially have taken much from her. It would be good for her if something could be gained from them, as well. If she is not a danger, if she is not creating anything that she cannot handle, can she be left to make that discovery on her own?”
Silverheart frowned, thought a moment, then determination set in her eyes. “K’Veyas needs her to be trained in her new-found Gift before it becomes too strong. To do something once is accident, twice is coincidence, but a third time . . . if she goes out tomorrow, I want to follow her. If she attempts this again, I will have to interrupt, to confront her in some way. It may not be dangerous now, but if left too long, it could become so.”
The last traces of exhaustion-headache were stronger this time, more difficult to shake free. Stardance frowned. She had no memory of coming back to her ekele, although she vaguely recalled being on her bedroll already when one of the hertasi had brought her the cool, refreshing drink commonly used by those who overextended their Gifts. Other than that brief exchange, her last clear recollection was of creating the second little ley-line. The thought of it made her smile—they were things of beauty in their own way, the tiny runnels of power that she had spun together. Hadn’t there been another node, too, in the area she had been in, near the stand of pines? Maybe she could go back out to that one today. If she could not weave works of beauty with Triska, perhaps—she paused, then probed the thought of Triska. For the first time, the ache didn’t threaten to swallow her, and she didn’t feel cut open on the sharp and jagged edges of grief.
Before she could ponder further, Kir chirped from her perch, Sending a feeling of combined hunger and eagerness to stretch her wings. Stardance rose and freed her bondbird from her hood, a faint thread of anticipation to match the falcon’s dawning within her.
Rax wept in what was left of his ale as the Bard finished the ballad of love lost and betrayal. It wasn’t like him to lose his composure outside the house, but things had been so difficult this season, and he didn’t see it getting any easier with the baby on the way. As the Bard struck up the next tune, a war chant with a heavy
