Page 70 of Into the West

Kordas nodded. “We don’t know much about them, except that the last two mages effectively annihilated each other, and the resulting Mage Storms did damage for—well, we don’t actually know how much distance. A long way, because there are remnants of what happened even in our former lands. We know about Change-Circles too.”

“This close to the original site of conflict, there was far more damage than simple Change-beasts and the wreckage of Change-Circles,” Silvermoon said gravely.

Kordas felt someone join them, and recognized the person as Delia. She fastened her eyes on Silvermoon’s face with every sign of being utterly fascinated by the man.

Well, he’s worth looking at. Kordas judged him to be a little older than himself, with sculpted features that were not handsome so much as striking, and a nose that would not have been out of place in his eagle’s face. He was one of the ones with pure white hair and pale silver-blue eyes. And he had a low, deep voice that inspired confidence.

“In fact,” Silvermoon continued, “the damage done, and the terrible things unleashed, scarcely bear thinking about for long, lest they open the way to despair. Now, what do you think about the gods?”

It seemed an odd segue, but Kordas assumed the Hawkbrother had a reason. “Not much. The Emperor—the all-powerful ruler where we came from—didn’t discourage worship of things other than himself, but he didn’t encourage it either. I’ve never seen any signs of the hand of any god in anything in my life, so I suppose I don’t really think about them at all,” he said, hoping Silvermoon would take that for the honest statement that it was, and not an insult.

Silvermoon was not offended. In fact, he laughed. “Well, our Goddess, whom we call the Star-Eyed, is . . . interventionist. It is not uncommon for someone’s god to be described as ‘loving,’ but in our case, it’s very true. She actively loves us, if you take my meaning. And after we escaped our land just before that final catastrophe, and found a place of sanctuary, she offered our people a bargain: the secrets to using power nearly the equal of those two great Adepts, to protect us from the chaos to come, in return for cleansing the lands of the evils that had befallen when the Storms were unleashed. It was a bargain we were happy to make. And that is what we do. We create a protected home-place that we call a Vale, although it is not always in a valley. We consolidate the power of the ley-lines into a source we call a Heartstone, we protect the place behind shields the like of which you have never seen, and we change, weaken, or eradicate all the twisted things within reach of that Vale. When enough has been cleansed, we move on, and generally entrust the remains of the Vale to beings we trust to use it wisely.” He quirked his head to the side like a bird. “And in this case, that would be you and your people. Why we chose you, and I swear to you on my Star-Eyed’s oath, is because your Gate opened almost five hundred years to the day from when we accepted that burden and responsibility from the Star-Eyed, and that—because we do have interaction with gods, and they do like portents—struck us as significant. But obviously, just because we saw something we considered auspicious, we were scarcely going to gather in people we knew nothing about. So we watched you, spied on you, listened to your conversations when we could. A great point in your favor was your treatment of the Truthseekers, and the fact that you personally were not only not responsible for their plight, but intend to remedy it as soon as you are able.” He spread his hands. “There, in short, is your why. Your practice, not pretense, of virtue was enough to tell us that you could be good neighbors, and mindful inheritors of our work’s bounty.”

“Oh.” Kordas was at a loss for words.

But Delia wasn’t. “Are the lands we were going through supposed to have been cleansed?” she demanded. “Because you left a few things.”

To Kordas’s great relief, the Hawkbrother just laughed at her words. “No, they were not. Those were mild things, which fled the dangers of what you would face downriver. The creatures you encountered are not sufficient for us to set up a new Vale there. The wyrsa and maka’ar are dying out, between inbreeding and a lack of a mage to control them and their well-being. The Red Forest—” He hesitated. “If it happened to be part of a greater swath of hazard, we would have dealt with it already. But it is isolated, it sleeps most of the year, and even when awake, it does not seem aware of anything outside its borders. Fire can kill it, and it is still a kind of plant. Disease or fungus could also kill it. So we have left it alone. Sooner or later it will die. We do not lightly cut short the life of any living thing, even a monster, so long as we believe no harm will come of leaving it alone. You never know what will turn sentient out here.”

“What is it?” Kordas blurted.

“You know about creatures caught in Change-Circles.” Silvermoon made that a statement, so Kordas just nodded. “This was, we think, the case of a small aspen grove and a small Earth Elemental caught together in one. Probably at the height of the Mage Storms. Aspens grow from offshoots of their own roots, so every grove, every aspen forest, is actually a single tree.”

Kordas shuddered. The Great Earth Elemental that had rescued its child had been a terrible thing—but at least it had been natural. The Red Forest—wasn’t. And every bit of his Landwise sense revolted against it.

“If we stay in your Vale and prosper,” he said slowly, “I would like to gather a force and put that thing to the torch one day.”

Silvermoon slowly smiled. “And because you actually intend to do these things, you have earned our collective respect. What your people will become, we shall feel honored to have helped. I know it, I can feel it.” He had another, deeper slug of mead. “We have a joke, seeit mut, kes’sia’kut. ‘No gods have yet disagreed.’ We are a passionate people. We live our lives with urgency, by a philosophy of kes’ten’tayul’mae, which means ‘accomplishments in action.’ One translation is, ‘meant to be in motion.’ We don’t like to linger, in general, out here. We’d rather not live the same ways all the time, and being idle, even for the best of reasons, feels like a loss.” Silvermoon held up his cup for a refill, which was obliged.

Is he—is he getting smashed? This is so very not the Empire.

Silvermoon nearly glowed in his near-inebriation. “Here’s why I am not a tradesman. We could have held onto the Vale and squeezed anything we wanted from you before giving in. But—we’re done Cleansing here for now. We were leaving anyway, whether the Vale was resettled or not. So we figured, you may as well have it, and the fact that you’re pleasant people we look at as divine providence.”

Silvermoon had another swig, then toasted his cup high, looking upward.

“All of this, this unprecedented event? Is it meant to be? Seeit mut, kes’sia’kut!” he howled, and then fell backward, still laughing.

Delia hadn’t been invited to the gathering of the strangers—but she hadn’t not been invited either, and no one had asked her to watch the boys. So at her first chance, once her share of the work in the common kitchen was done, she slipped away before anyone could ask her to do anything else.

When she first entered the makeshift building, what struck her before anything else was the birds. They were enormous, fierce, and absolutely beautiful; they sat quietly on their perches now, though she knew that they had been off hunting earlier, and the roof of the building was littered with tufts of fur and bunches of plucked feathers—and, quite possibly, some body bits. She hoped that something would come along and clean those off. She wanted badly to touch the birds, to stroke their heads and their soft breasts. But she knew enough about birds of prey to know that was a very bad idea, and when the biggest owl swiveled its head to look fixedly at her, as if daring her to come too close to it, she decided it was probably a good notion to move away from them before they decided they didn’t like her. Every other bird of prey she had ever seen had short leashes that falconers called jesses on their legs. In the field, any time a bird was not in the air, the falconer had those jesses firmly in his hand. In the mews, they were attached to a leash that was attached to its perch, to prevent them from striking at their feeders and handlers.

There were no jesses on these birds. There was nothing stopping them from lunging at her or anyone else. And the talons on the big ones were bigger than a man’s hand.

Fortunately she spotted Kordas and her sister and joined them, just in time to hear that strange and wonderful story of what, exactly, these people were. As outlandish as Silvermoon’s story was, she was inclined to believe it. And the Dolls did vouch for what these people were saying as truth.

Silvermoon in particular was an enchanting man. Not in an “I’m attracted to him” sort of way, the way she felt about Kordas, but in an “I can’t take my eyes off him or stop listening to him” sort of way. Like a great work of art and a great bard combined into one, she finally decided. His voice in particular was utterly lovely, and she could listen to him talk about nothing for hours and never tire of it.

“. . . Seeit mut, kes’sia’kut!” Silvermoon declared and fell harmlessly backward, laughing. Everyone around found it comical too, and conversation picked right back up when Silvermoon was upright again. Suddenly it struck Delia—as if a beam of light had lit up an unseen path in front of her and—just like that, their trip was complete! She took a moment of simply feeling. I was there when Tayledras and Valdemarans first met!

She told herself not to get her hopes up too much. These people might live in caves or trees or something. But at the least there should be a sheltered place to move all the barges, and it sounded like there would be arable land to support them all. And we can finally stop moving.

“I hope I don’t sound ungrateful,” Kordas was saying, “But are you sure where you want us to go is going to be able to support all of us? Most of us are farmers, and—”

“You need arable land for farming, and a great deal of meadowland for your herds,” Silvermoon said with a chuckle. “Yes, we understand that. We’re quite good at counting,” he added, wryly. “And at estimating what resources are required for a given population. You will be on this very river, which we call the Ter’i’le’e—which means ‘Singing Water’—and very much reminds me of you, Baroness. Strong, melodious, and capable.”

Isla laughed. “You should be called Silvertongue, my friend.”

He smiled, and continued. “There are no other humans here but us, and we trust you will keep a balance between your tame things and the wild things.”