The Eagle And The Nightingales

She had thought this out as best she could, given that her stomach was in knots, her throat sore from the sobs she would not give way to, and her heart ready to burst with grief and fear. 'I don't know yet,' she said honestly. 'I'm not certain how you can combat magic. I have to do something myself_I was promised help from the Elves, and I'm going to get that help when I am through talking to you. I think that I can find T'fyrr myself, or at least find the general area where he's being held. After that_I may need some of your devices, if there are any that could find exactly where he is in a limited area.' She had some vague notion there were devices that could probably do that, some Deliambren equivalent of a bloodhound, but that those devices probably had a limited range. They couldn't scour the whole city for her, but if she could give them a small area, they might be able to narrow down the search to a specific building. 'I do need someone to watch the High King and the Advisors around him. Father Ruthvere will provide sanctuary if we are being hunted from the Palace, or by someone connected with the Palace, but I need to be warned if someone comes up with a charge against us. If you can think of anything_'

'I will take care of it,' Harperus promised. 'Now_you go do what you can.'

'I will_' Then her voice did break on a sob as she told him the one thing she did know. 'Old Owl, wherever he is, he's hurt. He's hurt badly. I don't know how badly, but all I can feel from him is pain_'

Harperus swore in his own language, a snarl of pure rage. She had never heard him so angry in her life.

'Go_' he urged. 'This youngster and I will work together.'

She rubbed at her burning eyes with the back of her hand, got up from her seat, pushed open the office door half-blinded with tears, and fled up the stairs to her room. She had not yet called in her promise from the Elves, and she needed to prepare the room before she could do that.

The Elves did not care for the human cities and did not like to walk among the artificial buildings, but it seemed that for her sake, they would put their dislikes aside. She put the bed up into the wall, and pushed all the furniture out of the way. She put her harps in the bathroom. She swept every vestige of dust and dirt from the floor so that it was as white and shiny as the day the surface was laid. Only then did she lay ready the circle with a thin trickle of blue sand on the white floor, inscribing a pattern that the Elven mage she had been pledged service from would be able to use as a target.

Then she stood outside the circle, clasped her hand around her bracelet, and let her heart cry out a wordless wail of anguish and a plea for help.

The air in her room vibrated with a single, deep tone, like the groaning of the earth in an earthquake; the floor sang a harmonic note to the air, the walls a second, the ceiling a third, the whole room humming with a four- part chord of dreadful power.

Then the blue sand exploded upward in a puff of displaced air.

She did not recognize the Elven mage who stood where the circle had been, blinking slowly at her with his amber eyes slitted against the light. His hair was as amber as his eyes; his clothing of deep black silk, a simple tunic and trews without ornamentation or embroidery of any kind. By that, she knew he was more powerful than any Elven mage she had ever yet met; only a mage of great power would be confident enough to do without the trappings of power.

'Tell me, Bird of Night,' he said as calmly as if he had not appeared out of thin air in her room, so alien to his kind; as serenely as if he had not heard the tears of her heart calling. 'Tell me what you need of me.'

She told him in the same words that she had told Tyladen and Harperus, and it did not get any easier to bear for the retelling. He nodded and waited for her to answer his second question.

'From you, my lord, I need protection,' she said. 'Protection from the spells of human mages, for myself, and for the one who once wore this_'

She handed the Elf a feather, shed only yesterday from T'fyrr's wing. He took it and smoothed it between his fingers.

'A mage-musician, with wings in truth,' he said, as his eyes took on the appearance of one who is gazing into the far distance. 'But he is in a place that is dark to me; I cannot find him.'

'I can find him,' she said promptly. 'But I cannot protect myself from the magics that stole him, nor can I protect him from the spells of our enemy, once I find him.'

'I can,' the Elven mage replied, with a lifted brow. 'There is no mortal born who can set a spell that can break my protections, if those protections are set with consent.'

She nodded, understanding his meaning. With consent, the mage was not limited to his own power in setting a protection; he could draw upon the strength of the spirit of the one he protected as well.

'You have mine,' she promised him instantly, 'and you will have his, once I reach him.'

'Then I will be away,' the mage replied, and as she widened her eyes in alarm, he smiled thinly. 'Fear not, I do not desert you, nor shall I travel far, but I must go to a place more congenial to my kind. Your walls and metals interfere with my working. I have his feather, you have your Silver. That will be enough. When you need the