There would have been those who would have said he should take vows of celibacy, that this gift not be passed to others of the Clan. there would not have been a single one of his Kin willing to let him pass out of their hands without long argument and contention.
And he-he would have folded beneath the weight of their words. He would have taken up a place at the shaman's side. And there he would have been utterly miserable. He trembled at the thought of all the years of sacrifice the place as shaman's apprentice would cost him. He was revolted at the idea Of being forced to serve at Vorkela's side and bear the brunt of the shaman's humor.
Better that he had done what he had done; to creep away in the dead of night, and seek out a new life among the Kin-Cousins. He had taken only what was his by right. He had violated no laws.
Because of this, he had no guide. He had never been outside the Plains.
As he stood at the top of the path that led from the bottom of the great bowl of the Plains to the top of the rim, he wondered at the forest before him. Huge trees, more trees than he had ever seen in his life, towered before him, and marched endlessly to the horizon. Only there was no horizon, only trees, trees, endlessly trees.
Trees were a rarity on the Plains, and never grew to the height of these.
He could not see their tops, only their interweaving branches.
Trees that bent over him, as if watching. Trees that murmured on all sides of him, as if whispering. Trees that had a secret life of their own.
With a bravery born of desperation, he shouldered his pack-for he had left his horse at the base of the path, to find her way back to the Clan-and marched into the cool shadow of the endless trees. Always he had heard how jealously the Hawkbrothers guarded their lands. Surely he would be found and challenged before long.
Before midday, he was lost. By nightfall, he was lost, cold, and terribly afraid. He had heard all too many tales of the strange beasts that lived beneath these trees-the beasts that the Tale'edras fought and penned. Strange mage-created creatures that no arrow could harm. Beasts with the cunning minds of men. He knew none of the sounds of the forest around him; he could not tell if they were the voices of harmless things, or terrible predators, or even demon-spawn.
If only he had a fire-but he had left his fire-making tools behind, for they did not belong to him only, but to all of his family. He was so cold-and all men knew that true beasts feared fire. If he had a fire, it would shine through the darkness of this forest like a beacon, drawing the Tale'edras to him. If only he had a fire...But wait-had he not heard that a mage could call fire? Even so untutored a one such as himself? He knew where the currents of power ran; he felt them beneath his very feet. He had felt them, even stronger and wilder, on the Plains. Why could he not use them to bring a spark to waiting tinder?
No sooner thought, than he hurried about in the gathering gloom, scraping a dirt hollow in the moss, gathering twigs, dried pine-needles, bits of dry bark; laying larger branches close to hand. When he had his tinder going, he would soon have his fire built as high as he needed.
He closed his eyes, reached for the power, and thought of the springing flames-And got what he had not expected.
YES!
He came with a roar, filling the boy's body, thundering out of his hiding place, into the body of the blood of his blood, his coming triggered by the moment of Fire-Calling. As it had always been. Once again he took and lived. From the time when Maar, Mage of Dark Flames, had fought and conquered Urtho and had learned of a way to preserve himself down through the ages...Using the power of the death of his body to hide himself in a tiny pocket of the nothingness between the Gates, he preserved his own person, sealed himself there with spell upon carefully-wrought spell. And when one with a trace of the blood of great Maar in his veins learned to make Fire, he came, and overwhelmed the boy's fledgling personality with his own. So he lived again. And when the time came for the death of that body, he moved again into hiding... Hiding to live again. so it had gone, down through the centuries, taking new bodies and taking on other names. Krawiven. Renthom. Geslaken. Leareth. Zendak.
And now, a new rebirth, a new body, a new name. As the young spirit struggled beneath his talons with fear and hopelessness, as the spirit grew quiet, then disappeared altogether, he baptized himself in the blood and flesh of a new incarnation.
Mornelithe. I am Mornelithe! And I live again! the sound of his laughter rang beneath the branches of the pines, and shocked the forest into sudden stillness.
Then he gathered his powers about himself and vanished into the night, to build his empire anew.
Mornelithe woke with a sudden start. He had not thought of that moment in... decades. Why now?
And why had he first felt the long-vanished spirit of the Horse-Loving halfbreed whose body he had taken?
Never mind, he told himself impatiently. It matters not at all. Or if it matters, it was to remind myself that I have lived more lives than this, and I am surely wiser for all of that living. And stronger. Wiser by far than the Bird- Fools. It is the gryphons that should concern me. The gryphons.
K'Sheyna. Nyara.
He stretched and sat up on his couch. Discontent weighted his shoulders like a too-heavy garment. In the days that he was Ma'ar, he would merely have had to stretch out his hand to have them allbut the power that was so rich and free in his day as Ma'ar was a poor thing now. Shattered and scattered, dust in the storm. Like his power, his empire was a small thing. He was constrained to harbor allies he would never have suffered in the old days.
For a moment, he felt a kind of shame, that he should be reduced to this meager existence. Yet what had worked in the long-ago days could work now, if only on a smaller scale.
The gryphons. The gryphons. Why is it that they do not fade, but prosper?
In his mind's eye the male gryphon took on the black-dyed elegance of Skandranon, and his lip lifted in a snarl. There was no mistaking the beast's lineage. And that should not have been. The gryphons of Urtho's pride should not have survived him.
Nor should those too-faithful servants, the beast-breeding Kaled'a'in.
They should have perished, they should all have perished in the cataclysm that destroyed his kingdom and
