now.' Already he wanted to be back on the hunt...'Darkwind and Gwena are probably waiting for me. I'd better go get my scout gear on.' She bounced to her feet and planted a kiss on his cheek. 'See you in about two weeks?'
'Right. ~ ' He patted her on the head as if she were a very small child; she mock-snarled at him. 'Don't get into too much trouble, all right?'
'Hah, Me?' With a wave, she was gone.
The first snow of the season was going to be a substantial one. 'Does winter always start so- enthusiastically?' Skif asked his guide, as they arranged things in the shelter they had rigged beneath the overhanging limbs of a huge pine. It was a very small shelter, compared to the waystations the Heralds used, but it was big enough for two if no one moved much. Skif couldn't begin to guess what it was made of; some kind of waterproof silk, perhaps. Wintermoon had taken it from a pouch scarcely bigger than a rolled-up shirt. Light for now came from a tiny lantern holding a single candle suspended from the roof; not much, and not very bright.
Wintermoon shrugged. 'Sometimes yes, sometimes no,' he replied.
Often it depends upon what the magyes have done. Great fluxes in the energy-flow of magic can change the weather significantly', usually to make it worse.'
'Now he tells me,' Skif said to the roof of the tent. 'Havens, if I'd known that, I'd have kept everyone out of that to-do with Falconsbane.'
'oh, that was not significant,' the Hawkbrother replied carelessly.
'Not enough to make any real difference. Building a Gate, now-one has to make certain that the weather is going to hold clear for several
days, if one has a choice, or any storm will worsen. If they manage to drain the Heartstone-that would be significant, very much so. That is why we try always to work the greater magics in stable times of the year.
'For a nonmage you certainly know a lot,' Skif observed. Wintermoon only laughed.
'One must, if one is Tayledras. As one must know horses, even if one is a musician or weaver, if one is also Shin'a'in. Magic is so much a part of what we do that we all of us are affected by it, if only in the bleaching of hair and eyes.' He completed rigging his own sleeping place, and eyed Skif's pad of pine boughs dubiously. 'Are you certain that you wish to sleep upon that? It looks very cold and stiff, and I brought a second hammock.'
'I'm used to it,' Skif replied. 'I'm not used to being suspended like a bat.'
'Well, it is warmer so.' Wintermoon looked out of the flap of the tent, and resecured it. 'This will be a heavy storm. I think we will be here until well past midmorning at the least. Nothing is like to be moving this night, not even a cold-drake.'
'Comforting. At least nothing can wrap us up in our tent and carry us away.' The two owls, Corwith and K'Tathi, had perches in one corner of the shelter; packs took up the remaining space, including beneath Wintermoon's hammock, making the area very crowded. Cymry and the dyheli had a lean-to rigged against the side of the shelter, and were huddled together under blankets.
'Are you all right?' he asked his Companion. 'If you're too cold, we'll find some other way-: 'No worse than if I'd been up north,' she told him. 'Better, in fact. the snow may be heavy, but it isn't that cold, really. And the dyheli are warm, and good company.' Well, if she wasn't going to complain, he wasn't going to worry.
Hawkbrother winter gear was a lot better than his own; lighter, for one thing. Instead of relying on layers of wool, fur and leather for their bedrolls and heavy-weather coats, they had something light and fluffy sandwiched between layers of what he knew to be waterproof spider silk, because the hertasi had told him so. No cloaks for them, either. Cloaks Were all very well if you were spending most of your time on horseback, but not if You were trying to make your way through a pathless forest.
Cloaks caught on every outstretched twig; the slick-finished coats did not.
'Would we were mages,' Wintermoon observed wistfully. 'We could make lights, heat-I have a brazier, but it needs a smoke hole, and that lets in as much cold as the brazier supplies heat in any kind of wind.' Skif shook his head. 'I don't know about that.' According to elspeth, an Adept doesn't need to make heat; he can ignore the cold.'
'Oh, that is possible, but there is a price in weariness,' Wintermoon told him. 'Keeping warm requires some kind of power, whether it be the power of the fire, or the power of magic. If she has not learned that yet, she will.
Ah. He felt a bit better. I thought that sounded a bit too much like-well-magic.
'Tayledras magic is no more than work with tools other than hands,' Wintermoon laughed. 'Or so I keep telling my mage-friends. My brother said that. I think of all the mages I know, he is the most sensible, for he never relies on his power when his hands will do.' It occurred to Skif that, given that philosophy, Darkwind was probably the best teacher Elspeth could have. She tended to fall prey to enthusiasm about anything new, and look to it as the solution for every problem.
Darkwind should keep her from falling prey to that fault. 'Are you changing our tactics now that we've had heavy snow?' he asked.
Actually, it will be easier.' Wintermoon slid into his hammock with a sigh; bundled up to the neck as he was, he looked like a human-headed cocoon. 'The trees are leafless, snow covers the ground. Nyara will be hard put to hide the signs of her passing, of her living. The owls will most probably find her. We, though-we will be facing more of the hunters, and performing our secondary task for the Clan. The season of stupid young is over, the season of dying old not yet on us. This is the season of hunger for the hunters. This is when we truly prove our worth to k'sheyna.' Skif climbed into his own bedroll, and shivered as he waited for it to warm around his body. The hot springs and summerlike atmosphere of the Vale seemed a world away. 'The Clan means a lot to you, doesn't it? Even though-'
'Though my father rejected me, the Clan saw to it I was not left parentless,' Wintermoon said firmly. 'It is more than simple loyalty.
K'Sheyna is my family in every way that matters. Can you understand that, who had no real family? I sometimes wonder.'
'Maybe if I hadn't been Chosen...' Skif listened to the soft ticking of snow falling on the fabric of the shelter, listened to the creaking Of boughs in the forest beyond. 'I do have a family, You know. More fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters than I can count. The Heralds gave me that, and they are my family in every way that counts.'
