A Time of Exile - Katharine Kerr [72]
Dallandra’s bird-form was an odd one. Normally, when masters of the craft finally achieved their goal and shape-changed, they found themselves in a bird-form modeled on some real species, though they couldn’t truly choose which one. The process of finding one’s form was basically an elaboration on constructing a body of light, in which the magician makes a thought-form as a vehicle for his or her consciousness out on the etheric plane. Although at first he has to imagine this form minutely every time he wishes to use it, eventually a fully realized body, identical to the last one, will appear whenever the magician summons it, out of no greater dweomer than “practice makes perfect,” in exactly the way a normal memory image, such as the memory house a merchant uses to store information about his customers, becomes standardized after a long working with it. The elven shape-changer would start by imagining a simple bird shape, all one color and with generalized features. Once that image was clear and steady in her mind, she would transfer her consciousness over to it in exactly the same way she’d transfer to the body of light, then practice scrying on the etheric in this birdlike form.
Eventually, of course, came the true test, using this etheric form as a mold in which to pour the actual substance of her physical body until no trace of an elf remained on the physical plane, and an actual enormous bird flew free in the solid air. Some died while working this stage for the first time; a few even died thereafter, out of carelessness more than any other cause. Most students, however, neither died nor succeeded. Those few who did achieve the transfer over to the physical received a further surprise. When they opened their eyes and looked down at feather, not smooth flesh, they found themselves a very specific bird indeed rather than the generalized image of their mental efforts, a species that was somehow chosen for them by the deepest set of their unconscious mind and thus appropriate to their nature.
All except Dallandra. Learning the procedure had taken her a long, frustrating year; if it hadn’t been for Nananna’s faith in her abilities, she would have given up after six months. Finally, however, after a long, hard night’s work, just when she was about to quit with a howl of frustration, she’d slipped over and felt her arms lengthen and lighten, her body turn full and strangely smooth, then opened new eyes to find herself perching on clawed feet. She’d become a—just what had she become? A bird, certainly, but an amorphous sort of species, a solid dove gray, even to her feet and eyes, with the powerful wings and smooth head of a raptor but a straight beak more like a linnet’s. Nananna had never seen any bird quite like it; later, when they consulted with other dweomerwomen, none of whom had ever seen such a bird either, they realized that Dallandra had manifested her idealized form, a thing that had never happened before. Since she could fly with the best of them, however, no one but Dallandra had worried about it or even given it much weight. What counted was that she could make the transformation. Dallandra herself felt that she’d been given a troubling and deeply unusual omen, and not even Nananna could talk her out of her dread.
Dread or not, she loved flying, and in those long weeks when her grief for Nananna turned the whole world bleak, she took refuge in the wind as often as she could. It was on one of these solitary flights that she met the Guardians again. For weeks now, all during the hideous aftermath of the battle, they had haunted her dreams, coming to her in a swirl of bright colors and lights and music to utter strange warnings or make even stranger jests, none of which she could ever remember