He was no Falconsbane, but he was no Apprentice, either. He chose his target cleverly, launching his initial onslaught against Elspeth rather than Darkwind. Perhaps he was deceived by the rudimentary outer shield, or perhaps he was under the impression that a female would be less prepared and less aggressive than a male.
If that was the case, he judged wrongly.
She Saw his attack as he launched it; a flight of white-hot energy-daggers that he flung at her with both hands. She anticipated the direction of his attack by his eyes-and was ready in time to reflect them straight back at him, holding up mirror-shielded hands that doubled the flame-bright weapons back on themselves and sent them back on their original path. that must have been something of a shock to him, for he did not even deflect them properly, much less reabsorb them. They impacted on his shields, splintering silently into a thousand shard-sparks, and he flinched away.
Before he had a chance to recover from that shock, Darkwind had launched an attack of his own, but not one he likely would have expected.
He attacked the mage's shields with a needle-lance of force, not the mage himself, boring through the protections at their weakest point, where some of the energy daggers had impacted. The blue-white lance split the air between them, and Darkwind held it straight on target, despite the Changechild's best efforts to shake it off. Elspeth readied a second attack, arrows of lightning, but did not launch it, holding it in reserve.
The Changechild sent his unliving creature to attack them; the shambling, bloody thing charged with a speed quite out of keeping with the condition it was in. It was halfway to them before Elspeth realized that it was an attack, but Gwena intercepted it, like a trained war-horse, as if she had dealt with such things all her life. She sidestepped the wicked horns neatly, and twisted sideways to launch a cruel double-hooved kick with her hind legs as the thing passed, that sundered its hips with a meaty thunk and a wet crack.
The dead thing staggered and went down again, and tried to heave itself erect. But it could not struggle upright again, for its hip and one of its hind legs were broken and would no longer bear its weight.
At that same instant, Darkwind penetrated the Changechild's shields, and Elspeth launched the lightning- arrows she had been readying, targeting them at the hole Darkwind had bored and was even now spreading open. The first one missed slightly, impacting just to one side of the hole, splintering as had the mage's own energy- daggers.
The second did not miss, nor did Darkwind's fireball that followed in the arrow's wake.
Within the enemy's shields and contained by them, a storm of utterly silent fireworks erupted. The Changechild stood frozen for a moment, a dark silhouette against a background of coruscating energies-Then he collapsed to the ground as his shields collapsed around him, and, like the dyheli that had been his victim, did not move again.
They patrolled the border until nightfall and the arrival of Summersky, the scout that was to relieve them, but there wasn't so much as a leaf out of place. As they headed homeward toward the Vale, Elspeth found herself very glad that she was riding. Although Hydona had warned her that a mage-duel would take far more out of her than she would ever believe, she hadn't really understood what the gryphon meant. Now though-now she knew Hydona was not only right, she had understated the case. Mostly all that she wanted right now was a soak in one of the hot springs, a meal, and her bed.
But besides being weary, she was very confused; a poor combination, all things considered. She was dissatisfied with her first foray on k'sheyna's border. Certainly there were questions that had not been answered adequately.
And as she followed in Darkwind's wake, watching him stride tirelessly along with one hand on Treyvan's shoulder and folded wing, and Vree perched on a padded perch on his shoulder, she tried to reconcile her mixed emotions. It didn't help matters any that from this angle she had such a good view of his tight, muscular...Hydona trilled to herself, apparently amused by a private joke. The female gryphon walked beside her as her mate strode beside Darkwind, all of them following a dry streambed back to the Vale. Hydona's head was easily level with Elspeth's, which was a little unsettling, since it underscored how very large the gryphon was. It was easy to forget that, when one often saw them lounging about like overgrown house cats.
'And what arrre you thinking?' Hydona asked, as if she were following Elspeth's thoughts.
'I'm not sure,' she said, frowning, trying to put her emotional reactions into words. 'This isn't the first time I've been in combat-it isn't even the first time I've been in magical combat. I think we did all right-'
'You did,' Hydona confirmed. 'Verrry well, essspecially forr a beginerrr.
But asss you pointed out, you have had combat experrrience, and I expected nothing lesss than competence.' She cocked her head at Elspeth. 'How do you feel you will manage againssst that enemy of yourrrsss.
She thought for a moment, weighing what she could do now with what she knew Ancar could produce. 'Well, providing Ancar hasn't acquired an army of mages, I should be able to do something about him, if I can keep progressing at this rate. I mean, it isn't easy, but so far I haven't lost any body parts. Provided I don't reach an upper limit to my powers in the near future, and Ancar hasn't learned to tap nodes. I know he should be a Master- class mage by now at the very least.'
'One should neverrr trrusst an enemy to be placssid. What about yourrr perrrforrrmance?' Hydona asked shrewdly. 'How would you rrrate yourssself ?'
'Darkwind and I worked together as a team quite well, I think. At least we did once he got around to doing something.' There it was; that was what she had been trying to pinpoint as the root of her discontent.
'But that was the problem; he gave that damned thing a warning even after we knew it had worked blood- magic!' She couldn't keep indignation from creeping into her voice, and didn't try. Kero would have cut the interloper down where he stood; filled him full of so many arrows that he would have looked like a hedgehog.
'The oddssss werrre two to one,' Hydona responded. 'Thrree to one, if we count Gwena. Don't you think that the crrreaturrre dessserrved a fairr warrrning with oddsss like that?' Elspeth shook her head, stubbornly. 'No,' she said flatly, and her voice shook a little with intensity. 'I don't. We knew he was a bloodmage; there's no point in giving something like that a chance to get away or hurt you. I sure as Havens don't intend to give Ancar a shred of warning. In fact, if I get the chance, I'll ambush him!' As always, the mere thought of Ancar and what he had done made her blood boil. The tortures he had inflicted on Talia-the rape of his own country-the hundreds, thousands of lives he had thrown away-but most of all, the careless glee he had taken in it all-No, when she thought of Ancar, all she could think of was the chance of getting him in her power and shredding him. She hated him, she hated everything he'd ever done, and she wanted him dead, safely dead, so that he couldn't hurt anyone any more.
