Mercedes Lackey - Winds Of Fury

If he ever comes back again, it will be as a cloud of gnats!

Firesong burned away the last little bit of the shelter within the Void, released the magical "ash" of it into the flow of the Void, and then sank back into his own body.

He opened his eyes to find himself on the ground, with Nyara propping him up, and Skif and Fal - no, An'desha - staring at him intently. It was An'desha; Falconsbane would never, ever have had traces of tears on his cheeks. Falconsbane would never have Nyara's hand resting on his shoulder in a gesture of protective comfort.

It was An'desha who broke the waiting silence, as outside, people still exclaimed over the fading fireworks.

"Is he gone?" An'desha asked tremulously.

Firesong nodded wearily but with immense satisfaction.

An'desha stared at him for a moment, and then, unexpectedly, began weeping again; hoarse, racking sobs of long-pent and terrible grief.

Sobs that sounded uncannily like the ones Liam had made..

Firesong hesitated for a moment. Was there anything he could offer this poor boy? Would he believe comfort coming from another Adept such as his tormenter had been? Yet - oh, how he wanted to offer comfort and have it taken!

:You're a Healing Adept, boy,: Need reminded him, gruffly :But you don't need magic to Heal. Just words. And kindness, and care.:

Firesong shakily levered himself up off the ground, knelt beside An'desha, and offered his arms tentatively.

An'desha folded into them as into a haven of safety. Firesong cradled the boy carefully, murmuring into his ear.

"It's all right, An'desha. It's all right now. He can never hurt anyone again. You beat him. You are safe now, and we will always be here to help you. I will always be here to help you...."

The sky overhead erupted into a garden of fiery flowers. Darkwind jerked up his head like a startled horse, and he stared at the odd-colored flashes, showers of sparks, and soundless lightning playing across the sky and lighting up the clouds.

"Damned showman," he muttered under his breath. "That 'Pandemonium' persona is rubbing off on him!"

:Time to move, ashke,: he sent to Elspeth, who nodded.

Darkwind was on a horse he'd stolen from the stable of an inn; the horse, if not the current rider, belonged to Ancar's Elite. Elspeth was on Gwena, still cloaked in her illusion. Both of them were in stolen uniforms, with Elspeth's hair tucked up under her uniform hat, and her breasts bound flat, so that she looked like a very slender man. The uniforms hadn't been very difficult to get; there were plenty of troopers getting drunk in the city taverns, and if two of them woke up in the morning to find themselves stark naked, bound and gagged - well, it probably wasn't the first time something like that had happened. And by then, he and Elspeth would either be long gone, or no longer in a position to worry about the consequences of being identified.

He had cobbled together something that looked enough like a messenger pouch to pass at a distance, supposedly containing dispatches from the front lines. That had gotten them as far as the courtyard; they were about to dismount, when the fires in the sky began, and the currents of power around them bucked and heaved like a herd of startled dyheli.

To anyone with a scrap of mage-sense, it was distressing. He had never felt quite so violent a disturbance in the energy-currents before.

:Ancar can't possibly miss this!: Elspeth "cried," as they both tried to look as if everything was normal - except for the fireworks, of course - she shouted and pointed upward as all the ordinary people on the walls and in the courtyard were doing :And I can feel a mage-storm building very fast. People are probably getting nosebleeds all over the city - : Even now, a huge anvil-shaped cloud was boiling up over the city seemingly from nowhere.

And now every man guarding the walls and the gates, every servant that heard the cries of surprise, and every stableboy came running out to gape at the skies like a parcel of fools. Their cries brought others.

And, unbelievably, Ancar!

He could hardly have missed the upheavals in the magic-currents, and given how many spells he had tied into Falconsbane, he must have been knocked metaphorically head-over-arse when they snapped back on him at the Beast's death. But they had never, in all their wildest hopes, imagined he would come running out onto the landing in front of the main doors of his palace like any other fool, just to look up at the sky!

And no one, no one, was paying any attention to Elspeth and Darkwind in the middle of the courtyard.

They didn't even pause to think; as one, they drew strung bows and a pair of arrows from the cases on their saddles. As one, they nocked and fired and followed the first arrows with a second, then snatched for a third while the first two were still in the air.

Ancar was a mage; he was likely to be shielded against a magical attack, but not necessarily a physical one....

So they hoped, anyway. It was the best chance for a physical attack that they were likely to get. Darkwind watched the arrows arc toward the oblivious King and held his breath, not even daring to mutter a prayer for success, his whole being straining after the streaking shafts.

All four arrows hit the edge of a mage-shield set against physical attacks, and disintegrated in a shower of sparks.

Well, that certainly got his attention, he thought fleetingly as Ancar spotted them.

Ancar's eyes slid right over Darkwind and fixed on Elspeth. And even from halfway across the courtyard, there was no doubt in Darkwind's mind that he recognized Elspeth. There was an instant of frozen shock, and his lips moved as his eyes widened. He knew. Somehow, through disguise and illusion, he knew who it was who came to kill him wearing the cold mask of diamond-pure Vengeance. Elspeth was an arrow of justice sped from the hand of the Queen and the bow of Valdemar.

Ancar seemed to go mad then, his eyes blazing with anger. His hands flared up in an instant with blood-red mage-energy. Rather than stunning him, the shock of recognition seemed to galvanize him into sudden action. Darkwind and Elspeth both dropped their useless bows; Darkwind ducked over his horse's neck and kicked free of his stirrups, just as Ancar let fly a mage-bolt that passed through the space where he had been and shattered the pavestones, making Darkwind's stolen horse buck and jump sideways. The Hawkbrother rolled out of the way, shoulder against the hard stone.

Elspeth tumbled in a more controlled manner off Gwena's back. Darkwind reached out an ephemeral "hand" to her; the two of them meshed powers with the ease of long practice, joining shields, just as a second mage-bolt crashed into their united defenses.

They were not given a chance to breathe - bolt after bolt of raw power crashed into them, burning away outer shields and forcing them to devote all of their attention to defenses....

Nor was that all; the death of Falconsbane, the battle, all these had tipped the precarious balance over Hardorn's capital. For too long Ancar and his mages had worked their magics without regard for the world around them, throwing it further and further out of balance.

Now something had thrown it too far, as Firesong had warned might happen. Nature went as berserk as the King.

As Ancar cast his deadly bolts of power, another equally deadly bolt lanced down out of the clouds overhead and struck somewhere in the back of the palace. It hung, shattering the night as it lanced from the skies and lingered, momentarily deafening and blinding them, signaling the worst lightning-storm Darkwind had ever seen. It easily surpassed the storm they had triggered over Ashkevron Manor with their Gate for sheer fury.

Twice, as they bowed beneath the battering of Ancar's mage-bolts, lightning hit the palace itself, setting fires on the roof. Ancar seemed oblivious to it all, intent only on pounding the two of them into red dust on the cobbles of the courtyard.