Now Kethry saw the blade hanging just outside the cage door, just out of reach.
Of arms. That's her first mistake.
“For the warrior, a prison that only
magic
can unlock.”
She giggled girlishly, without the sneer ever changing. Tarma said nothing; Kethry decided to follow her example. Their jailer posed, waiting, doubtless, for one of them to ask why they were being held. Finally, when she got no response, she scowled and flounced off in the direction of the light that flared and subsided, somewhere beyond the bushes surrounding the clearing where their cages sat.
“When her wits aren't out wandering, who
is
this woman?” Tarma asked, in a lazy drawl. “And what in the name of the frozen hells does she want with us?”
The Hawkbrother crossed his arms over his chest, leaned back against the bars of the cage, and grimaced. “Her name is Keyjon, and all her magics are stolen,” he said, an anger as hot as Tarma's roughening his voice. “As for what she wantsânothing from you, except to be used against me. As my friend was, to his death.”
The Firefalcon shaman. He knows the lad died.
She tried to read beyond the Hawkbrother's lack of expression, and couldn't.
“We're to be used to get what?” Tarma asked.
“Something she cannot steal from me, though she has tried, and blunted her stolen tools on
my
protections.” He pointed his chin in the direction of the flaring and dying light. “She has firebirds.”
At Kethry's swift intake of breath, he nodded. “I see you know them.”
“One of the qualifications for entering the higher levels of a White Winds school used to be the Test of the Firebird.” She stared at the light, wishing she could see beyond the bushes. “They're too rare now. I only saw one once, at a distance.”
“They are not rare here, only endangered by such as she.” The Hawkbrother's face darkened. “She wishes me to make them her familiars. She
also
wishes
me,
and she is as like to get that as the other, which is to say, when the rivers of hell boil.”
At that, Kethry laughed in astonishment. “Wind-ladyâgo
ahead!
Give her the birds! The first time she loses her temper with one of them on her shoulderâ”
But the young man was shaking his head. “Nay, lady. She knows that as well as you or I. What she means by âfamiliar' is 'complete slave.â I would not condemn any living thing to such a fate, even if the dangers of her having such control over something so dangerous were not obvious.”
Kethry thought of the things that could be done with a tamed and obedient firebird at one's command, and shuddered again. The dangers
were
obvious. There was a history of the mage-wars purportedly written by the wizard-lizard Gervase that hinted the firebirds had been deliberately bred as weapons.
She couldn't imagine a circumstance terrible enough to make
her
breed something like firebirds as a
weapon.
Frighten one, and send it flaming through a village, touching off the thatched roofs, the hay in the stables ...
“She was born of mage-talented parents, and given all she desired,” the Hawkbrother continued. “But she came to desire more and more, and her own small talent could not encompass her ambition, until she discovered her one true giftâthat she could steal spells from any, and power from any, and use that power to weave those spells at no cost to herself. Thus she enriched herself at the expense of others, and the more power she had, the more she sought.”
To shake the thought from her mind, she stood up, slowly, and walked the few steps to the bars of the cage, mentally measuring the distance between the bars and Need. And as she studied the blade and how it was hung, another thought occurred to her.
I'm Adept-class.
My
power is unlimited, for all practical purposes. Could I become like her?
The Hawkbrother stole silently up beside her, but his eyes were on the light beyond the hedges. “It is not power and wealth that corrupt, my lady, but the lust for power and wealth. When that lust takes precedence over the needs of others, corruption becomes true evil. That you even consider that you could become like Keyjon is a sign that you are not like to do so. She has never once considered anything but what she wanted.”
“Well said,” Tarma replied, her expression wary. “I'm Tarma shena Taleâsedrin; this is my
she'enedra
, Kethry.”
“Stormwing kâSheyna,” he said, and a little rueful humor crept into his expression. “A use-name chosen when I was young and very full of myself, and now so hardened in place that I dare not change it.”
Tarma's expression remained the same. “So how is it that you know this woman?”
“I confess; a dose of the same folly that caused me to name myself for the powerful thunder cloud,” he replied slowly. “I thought I could help her, I thought that if she had a friend, she could learn other ways. In short, I thought I could change her, redeem her, when others had not been able to.” He shrugged. “I thought, at the worst, I was so much stronger than she that there was little she could do to harm me. I thought I could not be tricked; did not even guess that she was planning deeper than I anticipated, that she was using me to come at my charges, the firebirds. Now, not only do I pay for my folly, but others as well.”
“What happened to the Firefalcon shaman?” Tarma asked harshly.
A muscle at the edge of his eyelid twitched; nothing else moved. “She caught him, coming to see me, and flung him into the cage holding the birds, making certain to panic them. She knew that if I once used my powers to control them, she could steal that control.” His eyes were very bright with tears that he was holding back. “He knew it, too, and even as they lashed him with their flame, he told me to hold fast.” He looked from Tarma to Kethry and back. “Will you forgive me when I close my ears to
your
cries?”
“Will you be closing your ears?” Kethry asked quietly, staring into blue eyes that seemed much, much older than the face that held them. “Or will you be heeding instead the cries of those who would suffer if this woman got what she wanted?”
He closed his eyes for a moment, his expression for the first time open and easy to read. Painâand a relief as agonizing as the pain, if such a thing were possible. Then he opened his eyes again, and took her hand and kissed the back of it, like a courtier. It was in that moment that Kethry identified exactly what it was about him that made him so hard to identify. Stormwing was the most uniquely
balanced
human being she'd ever met; so completely accepting of both his own male and female natures that he felt poised, like a bird about to flyâ
“But you may not have to worry about it,” Tarma said, dryly. “Keth, I don't hear her. You want to try the Thahlkarsh gambit?”
“Why not? It worked before.” She kicked off her boots, grabbed the bars and climbed up to the top of the cage; once there (cursing her own laziness, that had let her get so out of shape) she carefully threaded her legs between the bars. As she had thought, her foot just reached the hook Need hung from.
“Get ready,” she called down below, grinning a little to see Stormwing's eyes so wide with surprise. “I'm going to unhook the sword-belt and lower it to you.”
Stormwing shook his head. “What good will having it do us, if this cage negates all magic?” he asked.
“It won't do us any good, but in a warrior's hands she cancels all spells cast against the wearer.” Kethry's arms were screaming with pain, and sweat streamed down her face as she inserted her foot in the loop of belt, worked it around to the top of the hook, and lifted, carefully. “Tarma's cage is mag icked, remember?”
“I hope that I am as good at throwing as you think me to be,” Stormwing replied, straining one long arm through the bars until he caught the tip of the scabbard.
Kethry didn't have the breath to spare to tell him that Need herself would take care of that, once out of the influence of the cage. She simply continued to lower the blade, bit by bit, until Stormwing had it firmly.
Then she dropped to the bottom of the cage, and waited for the pain in her arms to stop.
I hate getting old. Why can't we all stay twenty until the end, then fall over?
When she looked up again, the sword was sailing unerringly across the space between the cages, and Tarma caught it so neatly the movement looked rehearsed.
And no sooner did she have it in her hands, than the entire side of the cage swung open, like a door.
Just as Keyjon appeared in the gap in one of the hedges, accompanied by two enormous creatures, things that looked like nothing so much as walking suits of armor.
“Sheka!”
Tarma cursed, and threw herself out of the cage, did a shoulder roll to cushion her impact, and came up running, heading for Kethry. Keyjon was so astonished that she stood there, mouth hanging wide open, while Tarma grabbed Need and shoved her through the bars at Kethry.
Kethry grabbed it just as Keyjon recovered, pointing at the three of them, and shrieked something foreign even to Kethry's ears. Whatever it was, the two suits of armor at her side straightened, drew their weapons, and headed straight for Tarma.
Kethry had seen spells of animation before; this one was better than she had anticipated. The armor moved easily, smoothlyâand quickly. Tarma escaped being sliced in half by a two-handed broadsword only because she was a hair faster than they were. She wasn't going to be able to escape two of them for very long, not out there alone.
Hopefully she wouldn't be alone much longer.
Kethry pulled out the little lock-pick she kept in the side-seam of the scabbard, and set to work on the lock of the cage. Keyjon seemed to be concentrating on Tarma and ignoring them; she hoped things would stay that way.
Now, just so Stormwing doesn't decide that since he's a man, he can do this better than I canâ
Stormwing pressed in close beside her, and she looked up, ready to brain him if he tried to take the pick, and saw that he was clinging to the bars of the cage with both hands, his body carefully pressed up against the door so that most of what she was doing was hidden from Keyjon.
“Thanks,” she whispered, and then set to work on the lock, shutting everything out, including the fact that her partner and blood-bonded sister might die in the next few moments.
When you work on a lock,
she heard the voice of her thief-instructor say,
Nothing exists for you but that lock. If you let yourself be distracted, that's the end of it.
Except that he had never had the distraction of two magic suits of armor trying to make his partner into thin slices less than an arm's length away.
She felt the lock give just as Keyjon noticed what they were up to. She shoved the door open as the woman shouted another incomprehensible command, and one of the automata stopped chasing after Tarma, and turned, its blade arcing down over its headâ
But not aimed at Kethry.
Aimed at Stormwing.
He couldn't dodge, caught in the doorway as he was. He had no weapon of his own, and no spell Kethry knew could possibly be readied in time to save him.
She watched the blade descend, knowing that
she
would never even be able to get Need up in timeâ
if only he was a wo
â
CLANG!
When her teeth stopped rattling, her brains stopped vibrating, and her watering eyes cleared, she thought for a moment that she had gone quite entirely mad. For there, with the automaton's blade held a hand's breadth away from his head, was Stormwing, crouched down, one hand raised ineffectually to ward off the blow that hadn't arrived.
For what had interposed itself between him and the broadsword was Need.
They all stood like that for a moment, in a bizarrely frozen tableauâ
Then Stormwing dove out from under the arch of sheathed sword and unsheathed, scrambled to his feet as the automaton disengaged and began to turn, and yelled, “Duck!”
Somehow she knew to drop into a ball, and Stormwing dove at the automaton's chest.
The timing couldn't have been any better if they'd practiced it; the animated suit of armor was very heavy and already off-balance, and when Stormwing shoved it, it went further off-balance, staggered backward, and tripped over her, landing with a hollow clangor inside the cageâ
The cage which permitted no magic to function within it.
“Move!” screamed another voice from across the clearing; both Kethry and Stormwing scrambled out of the way as Tarma pelted across the intervening space, the other suit of armor in hot pursuit. She fled right into the cageâit had too much momentum to stop.
Kethry heard a strangled croak, and turned to see Keyjon clutching her throat and turning scarlet with the effort of trying to speak. Stormwing watched her from where he sprawled; his finger traced a little arc, and her arms snapped out in front of her, wrists together, fingers interlaced.
Only then did he rise, with a curious, boneless grace, and pace slowly to where the woman stood, a captive and victim of her own greed.
Kethry got up off the ground, wincing as she felt sore places that would likely turn into a spectacular set of bruises. Tarma climbed down out of the cage, favoring her right leg.
“What happened with the fool sword?” Tarma asked, in a low voice.
Kethry shrugged. “I guess when she couldn't identify him as positively male or female, she decided to act first and figure it out later.”
Stormwing looked up as they reached his side, but said nothing. “What are we going to do with her?” Kethry asked.