U * A tn overwhelm her SS jiva For a moment, a feeling oi neipiessne ith panic again. quelled it. No point in getting upset-I have Need. She can always any problems that come up. If we have to, she can deal with et aga hours; hours when she had as a good Sht and howling. It w month~ her then; she would have been CW to move t Hawkbroti~ qi tely, she fell asleep, doing so de:~ j7 oiie had drained herself that badly. venture outsit, were greatly cv d afternoon, the sheer, unthinking
'--r sword panic was gone, although the fear remained. Somehow she managed; that day, and the next, and the next.
She found game, building a blind beside the pond where the ducks and geese came to feed, and covering it with snow. She caught a goose that very night, and not content with that, hung it in her improvised larder to freeze and scoured the forest for rabbits. She didn't catch any of those, but she discovered a way to fish in the ice-covered ponds, using a bit of metal found in the tower, scuffed until shiny, as bait.
She hauled wood up to her shelter, and kept it reasonably warm and dry; made plans for a blind up in one of the trees above a deer-trail, so that she could lie in ambush for one.
Somehow she kept panic from overwhelming her at the thought that the sword was no longer protecting her from detection.
For if something had happened to Need, she would have to protect herself. She had no choice, not if she wanted to live. Sooner or later, something would come seeking her.
She spent hours crouched beside the fire, bringing up everything Need had ever told her about shielding, about her own magic. Then she spent more hours constructing layer after layer of shields, tapping into the sluggish power of the sleeping forest and into her own energies. But to tap into her own power, she needed a great deal of rest and food-which brought her right back to the problem of provisions. She decided that she must start hunting deer; that there was no choice, that it was the only way to buy her the necessary days of rest and recovery when she built up her shielding.
The rest of the time-the hours of darkness before sleep finally came-she spent bent over the sword, begging, pleading with it to come back to life. Prodding and prying at it, to try and discover what had gone wrong. Something must have; there was no reason for the blade to simply fall silent like that, not without warning.
And all with no result. The blade was a sword now; no more, no less.
A weapon that she could not even use properly, for without Need's skill guiding her, she was as clumsy as a child in wielding it.
Finally, after trying so hard on the evening of the third day that she worked herself into a reaction-headache, she gave up, falling into an exhausted sleep, a sleep so deep that not even her despair penetrated it. dreamless sleep, so far as she knew.
When she woke again, quite late on the morning of the fourth day, the clouds had vanished overnight, and sun blazed down through the windows of her tower with cold, clear beams. When she looked out of her window, she had to pull back with her eyes watering. It was too bright out there; too bright to see. The sun reflected from every surface, and although there were shadows under the trees, they were not dark enough to give her eyes any rest.
Now she knew what her father's men had meant when they spoke of snow blindness.' There was no way she was going to be able to see out there without getting a headache, unless she found some way to shade her eyes.
Shading her eyes probably wouldn't do that much good; there would still be all the light reflecting up from the snow.
Wait, though, she could change her eyes. After all of Need's lessons, she had a little control over her body; she might be able to make her eyes a little less sensitive, temporarily... perhaps darken them to let less light through...'It's about time you started looking inside yourself for answers,' came the raspy, familiar mind-voice.
She whirled, turning away from the light, peering through shadows that were near-black in contrast with the intense sunlight. 'You're back!' she cried, staring at the vague shape of the sword leaning against the firepit where she had left it the night before.
'I never left,' Need said smugly. 'I just decided to let you see you could manage completely on your own for a while.' Anger flared; she took a deep breath and fought it down. Anger served no purpose unless it was channeled. Anger only weakened her and could be used as a weapon against her. She reminded herself that Need never did anything without a good reason.
Anger faded enough so that she was in control, not the emotion. She tried not to think of the fear, the first hours of desperation-of all the endless hours when she had been certain that she would not live through this season. That would only make her angry again.
'Why?' she asked bluntly. 'Why did you do that to me? I didn't do anything to warrant being punished, did I?' The sword didn't answer directly. 'Look around you. What do you see?' The game stocked away, the firewood, all the defenses you constructed ' She didn't have to look, she knew what was there. 'Get to the point, she snapped. 'Why did you leave me alone like that? Why did you leave me defenseless?'
'Did I do any of that, any of the things you've accomplished in the last few days? Did I hunt the game, catch the fish, rig that hidden ladder to the top?' There was a certain quality in Need's words that overrode Nyara's anger completely.
'No,' Nyara admitted slowly. She had done quite a bit, now that she thought about it. Without any help at all.
'Did I rig all these shields?' the sword persisted. 'Did I figure out the way to make them cascade, so that the only one under power is the first one unless something contacts it?'
'No,' Nyara replied, this time with a bit of pride. 'I did that.' Given that her magic was pathetically weak compared to Need's, or even the least of the mages that her father controlled, she really hadn't done too badly.
'If I really was destroyed tomorrow, would you be able to get away, to hide, to keep yourself alive?' The sword waited patiently for an answer, and the answer Nyara had for her was a very different one than the one she would have had a few days ago.
'I think so,' she said, nodding to herself. 'Yes, I think so. Was that the point?'
