power-but for the one who had created and conceived this plan. What would it be like to have such a one under his control, subject to his whims and fancies, placing his abilities at Mornelithe's call?
What would it be like to be under the control of such a one... ?
He shook the thoughts away angrily. Ridiculous! These Bird Lovers were winning! He could not permit that! Surely there was something he could do to wrench control of the thing out of their hands.
Wait; go at it backward. What would he do if he had it? What would it mean?
It would attract lines to itself; set in a neutral place, it would soon be the center of a web of lines as complete and complex as the old Stone had owned.
If I had this power-locus, I would have control of the entire energy-web of this area. I could pull all the lines to myself without effort, like a spider whose net spins itself. It would be like my present network of traps and wards, but with such power to tap...His thumb caressed the tiny horse as he chewed his lip, his mind running in furious thought. Then the image of the spider in the web came to him again. And with it, an idea.
So, little mage, we are going to try new magics, are we? He smiled, and his smile turned vicious. Two can play that game. there was a time when I anchored a permanent Gate upon myself, after all.
That had been far, far back in the past, before the so-clever Hawkbrothers had ever stretched their wings over this area. When it had been his, and he had fought to possess it against what seemed to be an endless supply of upstarts. He had been younger then, and willing to try things no one thought possible, for he had already sired a dozen children on as many mothers, human and Changechild, and he was secure in the continuance of his bloodline. And so long as there was someone with direct descent and Mage-Gifts alive, he was immortal. Wild chances had been worth the risk.
No one had ever tried to shift the focus of a permanent Gate from a place to a person. His advisors said it could not be done, that the power would destroy the person.
And yet, in the end, the temporary Gates were all partially anchored in a person, for the energy to create them came from that person. He had thought it worth trying. Permanent Gates had their own little webs of ley- lines, and acted much like small nodes-that was before he had learned of the Hawkbrains and their Heartstones, and had learned to lust after real power. It had seemed a reasonable thing, to try to make himself the center of a web of that kind of power.
So he had researched the magics, then added himself and his own energy-stores to the permanent Gate in his stronghold. He had truly been like a spider in a web then, for whatever he wished eventually came to him, falling into his threads of power. There had been a price to pay-a small one, he thought. After that, he had been unable to travel more than a league from his home, for his fragile body was not able to bear the stress of physical separation for long. On the other hand, he had only to will himself home, and the Gate pulled him through itself, without needing another terminus to step through. His innovation had worked, and then, as now, being home-bound had been a small price to pay for control of all the mage-energy as far as he could See.
He studied the situation, carefully, alert for any pitfalls. The most obvious was that the moment he touched the power-locus, his enemies would know what he was doing. The Adept was guiding it himself, with help from some other mages. How maddening to be able to See all of this and yet be unable to act on it!
So he would have to be subtle. Well, there were more ways of controlling the direction of the power-locus than by steering the thing itself.
There were two lines on it still, and they could be used to bring it closer to him.
Carefully, he touched the line nearer himself, and pulled; slowly, gradually, changing the direction the power-locus was taking. No one seemed to notice.
Falconsbane's smile turned to a feral grin. The hunt was up, but the quarry did not yet know that the beast was on its trail.
Like all good hunters, he needed to rest from time to time. Falconsbane had pulled the power-locus as far out of line as he cared to for the moment. He had left his servants to themselves for a long while, perhaps too long; they needed to be reminded of his power over them. There were preparations he needed to make here, before he would be ready to make the Gate a part of himself and his stronghold. And before he undertook any of those preparations, or even interfered any more with the power-locus, he needed to rest, eat, refresh himself.
He left his study, and only then noticed that the air in his manor was thick with the heavy smell of incense and lamp oil, of rooms closed up too long and people sweating with fear. He shook his head at the dank taint of it in the back of his throat.
Before he got anything to eat or drink, he needed a breath of fresher air.
He turned around, and was on his way to the top of his tower when every blocked-up and shuttered door and window in his stronghold suddenly flew open with an ear-shattering crash.
Glass splintered and tinkled to the floor. Sunlight streamed in the windows, and a sudden shocked silence descended for a single heartbeat.
Then, with a wild howl, a violent wind tore through his fortress. It came from everywhere and nowhere, tearing curtains from their poles, sending papers flying, knocking over furniture, putting out fires in all the fireplaces, scattering ashes to the farthest corners of the rooms. It raced down the hallway toward him, whipping his hair and clothing into tangles, driving dust into his eyes so that he yelped with the unexpected pain.
Then, before he could react any further than that, it was gone, leaving only silence, chill, and the taste of snow behind.
That wild wind signaled the beginning of a series of inexplicable incidents.
They invariably occurred at the least opportune moment. And they made no sense, followed no pattern.
They sometimes looked like attacks-yet did nothing substantial in the way of harm. They sometimes looked as if someone very powerful was courting him-yet no one appeared to follow through on the invitation.
Every time he set himself to work on pulling the power-locus nearer, one of those incidents would distract him.
The single window in his study was open to the sky since that wind had shattered both shutter and glass. A blood-red firebird-or something that looked like one-flew into his study window and dropped a black rose at his feet. It left the same way it had come and vanished into the sky before he could do anything about it.
