David Weber - War Maid's choice

Borandas looked back at him for a moment, then blinked suspiciously shining eyes and nodded choppily.

“Thank you.” His voice was a bit hoarse, and he cleared his throat hard. “Thank you,” he repeated, and managed a smile. “And on that note, I know you must be going. May the gods go with you.”

Fifteen minutes later, Brayahs stood atop the Star Tower, looking down on the courtyard so far below and remembering that final afternoon on Sothokarnas’ battlements.

He believed every word he said to his cousin, yet he also knew that, like Borandas, he desperately wanted Thorandas to be innocent of treason. And if he wasn’t, if he paid a traitor’s price, then Brayahs would never be able to forget he was the one who’d uncovered that treason and led to his cousin’s death.

No, if he is a traitor, that was his decision, not yours, the mage told himself. And whatever comes of this, none of it can change your duty. So it’s time you stopped worrying about things you can’t change and got on with doing what you know you have to.

He shook himself and inhaled deeply.

Fortunately, he knew exactly where Baron Tellian’s hunting lodge at Chergor was, and he’d been there several times before. It was always easier to wind-walk to a known place than to an individual who might be almost anywhere, and it was easier still if the wind-walker had been to that place before, for that gave him an anchor that let him make the journey in a single stride rather than a lengthy series of shorter stages.

Tellian’s lodge had been built in the Forest of Chergor, backed up on the hills in the angle where the upper Ice Sister Lakes drained into the Spear, by his grandfather, who’d wanted a place to hide from what he’d considered the oppressive crowding of Balthar…which had been little more than two-thirds the size of the present city. As part of his escape from civilization (or what had passed for it atop the Wind Plain sixty years ago), he’d opted for a consciously rustic building plan that was deliberately designed to accommodate a minimum of servants during his visits there. Of course, “minimum” was an elastic term, and no Sothoii noble would expect it to apply to stable space, so the lodge consisted of a large, ornamental brick wall around an open courtyard, spacious stables with space enough for at least fifty horses, a large chalet-style main building for himself and his guests, and a second, much simpler chalet with room enough for forty or fifty armsmen and retainers. The buldings inside the courtyard were all built of wood which had been cut right on the site, but he’d employed a small army of carvers and woodworkers to sculpt the eaves and overhangs into fantastic, whimsical shapes. An only slightly smaller army of glaziers had been brought in to provide his lady baronness with stained glass windows for her attic solarium in the main lodge, and the veranda along its front wall was large enough to provide picnic space for half a troop of cavalry.

The protected reserve of forest land around the lodge held game in plenty, and it was about as quiet an isolated a spot as a monarch seeking a patch of calm after a tempestuous Council session could have asked for. That was good; it would give the King and his closest advisors time to think carefully about Brayahs’ news without the inevitable rumors and panicky speculation which would have flown about Sothofalas within hours of his arrival. And it was also the sort of place which left an impression on those who visited it. That was always a good thing for a wind-walker, and he settled into the proper trance, reaching out to that anchor while the winds of his talent rose about him.

There. Talent, memory, and focus snapped into place, becoming one, and he stepped into the winds no one else could even perceive. They whirled him away like a spray of autumn leaves, sweeping him into the space between worlds. He’d never been able to explain that space to anyone other than another wind-walker. It was shot with the roar of his personal wind, sharp tasting like the aftermath of a lightning bolt, crackling and alive with energy that seemed to seethe and dance on his skin in cascades of sparks. It was Something was wrong!

The winds faltered, then shifted, their steady roar turning suddenly into an insane howl. The energy dancing on his skin changed in a heartbeat from a crackling, comforting cocoon into a furnace, fanned by those berserk winds, hissing and popping as it consumed him. Agony crashed through him-agony such as he’d never felt, the like of which no wind-walker had ever described-and he thought he screamed, although no mage had ever been able to decide if a merely human voice could even function in a place like this, and that hideous shriek of the winds would have drowned it anyway.

A trap.

Somehow, the thought fought its way through the red tides of anguish, forcing itself upon him. He had no idea how it could have been done. Indeed, everything he’d ever learned about his own talent told him it couldn’t be done. Yet even in his torment, he knew, but what could he-?

He reached out. Somehow, without even knowing what he was doing, Brayahs Daggeraxe drew upon what had made him a mage so many years before. He felt himself fraying, dissolving, coming apart in the maw of that furnace fury, and somehow he held on. He clung to what he was, to the duty which made him who he was, and fastened his invisible hands desperately upon the winds. They ripped at his palms- his winds no longer, but demons, lashing him with even more terrible torrents of pain-yet he clenched his teeth, refusing to let go, and then, in a way he would never be able to describe even to himself, he wrenched sideways.

He lost his focus. That had never happened. He’d never imagined it could happen, and panic choked him, more terrible even than the pain, as he felt himself spinning sideways, lurching into a darkness he’d never seen before. It was lashed with lightning-a bottomless night filled with the crash of thunder, his winds a tempest, howling like some ravening beast-and he screamed again as he felt that searing lightning ripping away everything he’d ever known or been.

Blackness claimed him.

Boots moved steadily and sweetly, cantering across the parched, golden grass of late summer while Gayrfressa paced him with the peculiar, ground-eating gait of her kind. The gelding was well aware of the courser’s presence. In fact, he had a distinct tendency to act more like a friendly kitten than a warhorse of mature years in her presence, frisking around her as if he were a child’s pony, and she regarded his antics with a fond, sometimes exasperated patience.

‹ Of course I do,› Gayrfressa said now, turning her head slightly to better regard Leeana as she caught her rider’s amused thoughts. ‹ The lesser cousins have great hearts. It’s not their fault no wizards fooled about with their ancestors, now is it?›

“No, it’s not,” Leeana agreed. The coursers were remarkably comfortable with the notion that they-like the halflings-were the product of arcane meddling. Of course, in their case it had been a deliberate manipulation all of whose consequences, including the unintended ones, had been highly beneficial-one wrought by the White Council to make those ancestors stronger, more powerful, and far more intelligent. The halflings hadn’t enjoyed that deliberate design process. They represented an accident, a completely unintended consequence and byproduct of the most destructive war in Orfressa’s history, and neither they nor any of the other Races of Man were quite able to forget that.

‹ I don’t really know why they should, › Gayrfressa said reasonably. ‹ What is, is; trying to “forget it” can’t change it. And it’s not as if the halflings are the only “accident!” What about the magi? Or, for that matter, what about the hradani and the Rage? And if what Wencit once told him and Brandark is true, even the elves a re the result of “arcane meddling.” Although it was deliberate in their case, as well, I suppose.› The courser tossed her head in amusement. ‹ I don’t understand why you two-foots worry about it so much!›