This one was a bit different, though.
He recognized it, though she would not have. This was a lover's supper, a trysting meal. Sensual delights. Things to tease the palate and the four senses. Light foods, the kind found at festivals, arranged in single bite-sized pieces. Food made to be eaten with the fingersor fed to another.
Oddly modest, she caught up the robe and carried it into the next room to change into it, although she had not seemed so shy at the pool.
He would have enjoyed seeing the soft silk slip over her young, supple body. Well, that would come in time as she lost her shyness with him.
If they had the time...He pushed the thought from his mind. He would enjoy what they had, and not seek to shape their future. He slipped into his own robe as she returned, the amber silk caressing her and enveloping her like a cloud of golden smoke. She made a circuit of the room, lighting scented candles to perfume the air; he watched her with pleasure, and wondered a little at her grace. Had she always moved like that? Or had he only now begun to notice?
He waited until she had made herself comfortable before moving toward her. She patted a place beside her and he settled next to her. His most urgent appetite was not for food, but he contented himself with nibbling on a slice of quince as she hesitantly took a piece of cheese.
'What do you think he'll be like?' she asked abruptly, proving that whatever his thoughts were, hers were elsewhere.
The question took him by surprise, and he had to drag his thoughts away from contemplating her, and apply them to something a bit more abstract.
'The Healing Adept, you mean?' he hazarded. That was the only 'he' the question seemed apt for. 'The one from k'treva?' She nodded, and he made a half shrug. He hadn't thought about it; he was far more interested in the Adept's skills than in anything else.
'It usually takes a Healing Adept years to come into his full power, so I suppose that he is probably about the age of my father,' he said, after a moment. 'Probably very serious, very deliberate. Although-' he frowned, trying to recall the message's exact words.
'-they did say that he was a kind of experimenter. That is an interesting point. He might be more like Kra'heera than my father.'
'What, that funny kind of trickster?' She nibbled at a piece of fruit.
'But powerful.'
'oh, that, at the least,' he agreed. 'He would have to be, to be willing to ride alone across uncertain land. I think that he will definitely have that kind of air about him that Iceshadow has when he is truly certain of himself. Except that he will have it all the time.'
'You have that air sometimes,' she said suddenly.
'No-' Now that startled him. 'I do?'
'Yes.' She licked juice from her fingers and gave him a sidelong glance. 'You did last night. Sometimes I think you don't give yourself enough credit.' He shook his head. 'I think you are being flattering, but-'
' I'm not really hungry,' she interrupted him.' Are you?' He laughed, now knowing where the pathway was leading. 'Not for this sort of food,' he said.
Bondbirds carried the message in midmorning that the k'treva Adept was less than a league away. Those of the Clan that were not otherwise engaged in Clan duties gathered at the entrance of the Vale to await his arrival. Although the snow was knee-deep beyond the Veil, it would not have been a proper welcome to greet him within.
Elspeth and Darkwind were among them. and she thought privately that this mysterious mage could not have contrived a more perfect backdrop for his first appearance. The clouds of the past few days had cleared away by dawn, and the sun shone down out of a flawless blue sky, filling the snow-bedecked woods outside the entrance of the Vale with pure white light. There wasn't even a breath of wind, and the woods were completely silent except for a few calls of birds off in the distance. AS they waited in the snow, straining their ears for the sound of hoofbeats, Elspeth fretted a little beneath the suspense of the moment. Even Gwena seemed tense with anticipation.
Finally, the sound they had been waiting for echoed beneath the trees; the muffled thud of hooves pounding through snow. From the cadence, Elspeth knew that he had urged his mount into a gallop. Not that dyheli had any objection to galloping, but he could not possibly have kept up that pace all the way here. Only a Companion had the stamina to gallop for hours at a time.
Either he's impatient for the end of the trip, or he wants to make an impressive entrance, she thought with amusement.
And then the object of their anticipation came pounding in, sprays of snow flying all about him, and a magnificent, snow-white firebird skimmed just beneath the branches precisely over his head, its tail streaming behind it as the Adept's long hair streamed behind him.
The firebird was the biggest one she had ever seen-and never had she ever heard of anyone using one for a bondbird. It threw off the little false-sparks of golden light as it flew, glittering, a creature of myth or tales.
From the murmurs of surprise, she surmised that no one among the Hawkbrothers had ever seen a firebird bondbird before, either.
It was at least as large as Darkwind's forest-gyre. It seemed to be larger, because of the length of its magnificent tail. The head, with its huge, ice-blue eyes, was just as large as any bondbird's head, which meant it could be as intelligent as the rest.
But the firebirds were seed and fruit eaters. Not carnivores or hunters ...'Well, why not? He's a mage. He doesn't need a combative bird to help him, the way the scouts do.
The Adept pulled up before the entrance to the Vale in a shower of snow and a flurry of hooves, like some kind of young god of winter, or an ice-storm personified. Even his mount gave Elspeth pause for a moment, until she saw the curving horns over the two ice-blue eyes, for he rode a dyheli bleached to snowy white just as the
