Magic's Price

got there. In fact, the worst part was the waiting; he had placed himself right where the old trail made that sharp turn into the new, and they wouldn't be able to see him until they were right on top of him. And he couldn't see them, which made things worse.

He tried not to look around too much; this was the exact setting of his dreams, and he didn't want to be reminded of how they had all ended.

ForeSight is just seeing the possible future, he reminded himself, probing beneath the skin of the land for nodes, and setting up his tap-lines now, filtering them through his mage-focus so that the power would be attuned to him and he wouldn't have to use it raw. Moondance told me that ages ago, and if anyone would know, the Tayledras would. The first dream was almost twenty years ago! Things have to have altered since then. And if I remember what happened in them, I may be able to alter the outcome. Some of those dreams even had 'Lendel in them with me, instead of -

Stef. Twenty years. 'Lendel had died at seventeen. Van had met Stef when the Bard was seventeen. There was time enough, between 'Lendel's death and now - Stef was exactly the right age to have been born about that time.

More things sprang to mind. The Dreamtime encounter with 'Lendel-the things he had said - the way the Tayledras treated Stef and the way Savil had taken the Bard under her wing after that - it was all beginning to make a pattern.

The way he called me ashke without ever knowing the word. No. Yes. What other answer is there? He came back to me, 'Lendel came back as Stef, somehow - and Savil and the Hawkbrothers knew -

But there was no opportunity to think about this revelation, for the first of Master Dark's forces had just begun to round the bend in the trail, and it was time to put his plans into motion.

As little bloodshed as I can manage, particularly with the fighters. They could be spell-bound, ignorant-whatever.

The clouds he had been calling loomed above the mountains, hiding the peaks, and full of lightning-crackles just waiting to be released. Vanyel was happy to oblige them; he called lightnings down out of them to lash the ground just ahead of the first rank, as he simultaneously illuminated himself with a blinding blue glare of mage- light.

The lightning exploded the trail in front of him, the ice-covered rocks screaming as the powerful force lashed them, heating them enough to turn the ice into steam in an eyeblink. Vanyel kept his eyes sheltered by his forearm, so that he alone was not blinded. The first ranks of the forces were, however; black-armored men stumbled blindly forward, pushed by the ranks behind them, shouting in fear and anger.

All right, that's one point of difference from the dreams, already. I fought them magic-against- weaponry, I didn't intimidate them right off.

The chaos calmed, as Vanyel stood, ready, energies making his mage-focus glow the same blue as the light behind him, his hands tingling with power. The ranks of armed men and strange beasts stirred restively, the fighters watching him through the slits in their helms. In this much, too, the dreams had been right. Under the armor, they were a motley lot, and only half of them looked human; but they were armed and armored with weapons and protection made of some dull black stuff, and carried identical round, unornamented black shields. And the stumbling chaos he had caused had been righted in short order; that argued for a great deal of training together. This was the army he had taken it for.

The ranks in front parted, as in the dreams, and a wizard stepped through. There was no doubt of what he was, he was unarmed and unarmored, and the Power sat heavily in him, making him glow sullenly to Mage-Sight. But it was the power of blood-magic -

As was the power of the second, the third, and the fourth.

Four-to-one, then Master Dark to follow. Vanyel flexed his fingers, and hoped Yfandes had gotten Stef to safety by now. Let's see if these lads know how to work together, or if I can divide them -

Stefen hung on and closed his eyes, fighting his own panic. He'd never been on - or even near! - anything going this fast before. The ground rushing by his feet and the violent lurching as Yfandes leapt obstacles were making him sick and frightened, with the kind of fear that no rational thought was going to overcome.

They had already covered the same amount of ground that had taken the three of them a day, and now Stef was quite lost.

:I'm doing a kind of Fetching, Bard, only I'm doing it with us. That's why we seem to be jumping a great deal, and why you're sick. Besides, you two got rather sidetracked. You had to come at the Pass obliquely. I'm going straight back.:

Stef gulped. She's doing Fetching, only with us. No wonder my stomach thinks it got left behind - it may have. . . .

Lights showed up ahead, against the dark of the trees. Torches along the top of a wall-the lights of the Guard post. Stef couldn't believe it. It hadn't been nearly long enough -