“It’s almost sunset. Are you really going to travel in the dark?” she asked, not quite certain of the journey ahead of her.
“Darkness doesn’t make much difference to the dyheli,” Nightwind replied, as Keisha took up her bundled belongings and hurried outside.
“Are we going to follow dyheli?” Keisha asked, right on Nightwind’s heels.
“No, dear, we’re going to ride them,” the woman said, managing somehow not to sound patronizing. Keisha halted abruptly when she realized that the entire group was right at her doorstep, patiently waiting for her. Her usual hesitation around strangers came back redoubled. She felt too frozen to move with all those eyes on her, but Darian came to her rescue, taking the bundles from her hands before she could drop them, smiling encouragingly at her. “Come on, I’ll introduce you to your dyheli,” he said, taking her hand and giving it a little tug to get her moving. As soon as she took the first step, he dropped her hand again, as casually as he had taken it. She followed him to one of the horned animals, who looked at her with interest from intelligent brown eyes. “Keisha, this is Meree,” he said, exactly as if he was introducing two people. “She’ll be taking you to k’Valdemar Vale.”
:You have a quiet mind,: said a clear voice in her head. :I shall enjoy bearing you.:
Keisha felt her eyes widening. “She talks!” Keisha blurted without meaning to.
Darian, bless him, did not laugh at her. “Just like a Companion,” he said cheerfully, “though dyheli talk to anyone that they choose to, and Companions normally only talk to their Heralds. You’ll like Meree, she’s very interested in herb-Healing. You might know some things growing around here that she doesn’t, and vice versa. You’ll have plenty to talk about as you travel, at least.”
The notion of trading herb-knowledge with a deer almost made her laugh nervously, yet she kept it back. But after all, why not discuss herb-knowledge with someone who happened to have four feet instead of two? Certainly she ought to warn Meree about the sheep-sorrel fungus.
Darian made a cup of his hands, and boosted Keisha up into the saddle; there were stirrups, though they were loops of leather rather than metal, and she had a little trouble getting her feet into them. He fastened her belongings behind the odd saddle; the dyheli did not have a bridle or reins, only a kind of handle at the front of the saddle for her to slip her hand into. She hadn’t ridden enough to feel comfortable even on so familiar a creature as a pony, so she did just that, immediately.
Darian swung into a saddle on a handsome stag with such effortless grace that she felt embarrassed that she had been so clumsy. But after all, she consoled herself, he’s been riding around Valdemar for four years; he ought to be good at this.
:Don’t worry, child,: Meree said sympathetically into her mind. :Tayledras are masters at making people feel selfconscious. They don’t mean to, it just happens.:
Oddly enough, the remark made her feel a bit better, and she settled herself, trying to get the feel of the saddle.
That seemed to be the signal to move out; Darian hadn’t even settled into his saddle, and the entire group launched off with a great leap, at a pace that left her hanging on for dear life. She’d expected an easy amble. Instead, it was a bounding lope that bounced her backward and forward, throwing her alternately toward the dyheli’s rump, then toward the wickedly dangerous horns. This - can’t be comfortable for either of us -
:Move with me,: came the patient voice in her head. :Here. Like this.:
This was unlike the way that Nightwind had simply touched her mind; the dyheli seized her mind in a gentle but implacable mental grip, and she found her body moving under someone else’s control for a few moments. It happened too quickly for her to panic; she took note of the way her body now felt, how it moved - for she could feel, even if she didn’t have control - and just as abruptly, Meree released her.
It took a few moments for her to get herself properly coordinated, but once she got the knack of it, everything fell into place and she began to enjoy herself. She was going far faster than she herself could run, with the wind of their passing in her face and hair, the forest all around her. She felt the dyheli’s powerful muscles moving under her legs and hands, and the thought came to her that Meree was far stronger than she looked.
By the time she was comfortable with riding, they were well into the forest, far enough that she didn’t immediately recognize exactly where they were. They might even be past the areas she was familiar with by now. It was already dusk beneath the trees, a thick, blue dusk with a flavor of its own, of old leaves, crushed evergreen needles, a touch of damp and the scent of sap. Overhead was the sound of wings; as she looked around, she saw that many of the riders had a perch built onto the fronts or backs of their saddles, and their birds perched there, taking the movement of the dyheli as easily as the movement of a branch in the wind. If they weren’t asleep, they were comfortable and relaxed.
So if the bondbirds were down here, with their riders - what was flying above?
:Kel. The gryphon,: Meree answered. :He’s the one you hear. There are three owls as well, but you won’t hear them; owls fly silently.:
“Can you hear everything I think?” Keisha asked, feeling a little nettled at this intrusion on her thoughts.
:You aren’t shielded, so of course I can. I’ll stop if you want me to.: Meree sounded perfectly indifferent, as if such a thing wouldn’t matter to the dyheli, but maybe that was just Keisha’s own shading on the answer.
Good question. Would it matter? Meree was unlikely to gossip about Keisha’s innermost thoughts, after all.
:Your innermost thoughts are of very little interest to me. Now, if you were a member of k’Valdemar herd, it would be different, but gossip about humans is, at the most, not even entertaining for one of us.:
Keisha had a vision of a pair of dyheli with their heads together over a back fence, kerchiefs tied over their horns, gossiping like a pair of Errold’s Grove matrons, and giggled. That destroyed any annoyance she’d been feeling, and she attempted to frame her answer in thought, rather than speech.
:What about “gossip “ about plants ? Do you know about the fungus that grows on sheep-sorrel?: Speaking this way was easier than she had thought. Instead of having to say “sheep-sorrel,” and then attempt to describe it and the fungus, she found she could just picture them clearly.
:Sheep-sorrel, yes, but what of this fungus?: Meree replied, and they were off, with both Keisha and Meree becoming more and more animated as the ride progressed. Keisha learned about half a dozen plants that she recognized, but hadn’t known uses for; Meree learned even more from Keisha. Meree referred to things not only by how they looked but how they tasted. Keisha wished she had her Herbal handy. She wanted badly to make some notes in the blank pages.
:We can go over this later, when you can write and draw,: Meree promised.: You will have the time, I will see to it, and I will not forget what you want to record.:
Keisha realized she had learned more about the Gift of Mindspeech in a few hours conversing with Meree than she had gleaned in all the books sent her by the Collegium. For instance, along with that simple statement came attached information, that the dyheli, as a species that had no way of recording information, relied entirely on trained memory, so much so that Meree literally could not forget unless she chose to, or a stronger mind took the memory from her. That another race, the kyree, also trained their memories in the same way. This extra information just tagged along with the rest, like lambs behind their ewe, but just popped up in Keisha’s memory as she examined the statement.
The idea made Keisha dizzy; imagine having entire libraries of knowledge right in your mind, instead of having to look things up! How could anyone manage all that? How did Meree keep it all straight?
:Look and see,: was Meree’s reply, and she obligingly opened her mind to Keisha without a second thought. Keisha could only bear a few moments, but it was fascinating, with all the information neatly arranged in a flexible
web, so that many trains of thought would lead to a particular bit of knowledge, each bit led to others that were related, and new bits could be fitted in without stress.
Like game trails in the forest, she thought, dizzied, as Meree closed off her mind again.
:Very like,: Meree agreed, :Now, have you come across anything as a cure for wet-tail?:
By that time it was so dark that Keisha couldn’t see anything, and she allowed herself to trust to the Hawkbrothers around her and not worry about what might lie out there under the cover of shadows. The conversation with Meree was fascinating enough to keep her attention, so much so that the time passed without her noticing how long the ride had been, until Meree said, :If you look ahead, you will see the beacons atop the two rock spires that mark the entrance to k’Valdemar Vale.:
She rose a little in her stirrups to look past the rider ahead of her - and sure enough, there were two blue-white lights in the distance, shining beneath the branches of the trees, with huge clouds of bugs swarming around them, winking in and out of sight as the light reflected from their wings. Now and again, something larger flashed through - a bat, taking advantage of this insect feast. As they neared, she saw that the lights were not as bright as she had thought; they only seemed that way in contrast to the darkness. Nearer still, and she realized that they weren’t lanterns or any other sort of light that she knew; they were round balls, about the size of her fist, perched somehow on the tops of two rough-hewn pillars of rock about three times the height of a man.
This was certainly nothing like Errold’s Grove!
The dyheli slowed as they neared the pillars, until they were moving no faster than a walk. :You will soon see hertasi, so do not be alarmed,: Meree warned, and the image of the hertasi came to Keisha along with the name. She was glad for that warning, for she would certainly have been alarmed otherwise! A manlike lizard with rows of sharp, pointed teeth that walked on its hind legs would qualify as a monster by Errold’s Grove standards, and probably a dangerous one at that. But when the little lizard-people crowded around the arriving riders at the entrance to the Vale, she managed to smile at them, albeit a little nervously.
Darian joined her as soon as Meree stopped moving, and helped her to dismount. She completely lost her nervousness in the unexpected pain of her legs as she swung her off-side leg over the saddle and tried to slide down to the ground. Her legs absolutely refused to bear her weight, and they hurt. Only hanging onto the saddle and Darian’s support kept her from ending in a heap on the ground.
“Ooooh!” she groaned indignantly. “What happened? I thought I was in good shape!”
“You are,” Darian said with sympathy. “You just aren’t a dyheli-rider yet.” He held her steady as her legs wobbled under her, and she took a couple of tentative steps away from Meree.
“I guess I’m not any kind of rider,” she replied, as one of the lizards took her bundles and the dyheli’s tack, and Meree moved off. Finally her legs stopped rebelling - though they were still horribly sore - and she was able to hobble without assistance.
The lizard whispered something musically to Darian; he replied in the same language, and it scampered off with her things before she could stop it.
“I’ll take you to the guest lodge,” Darian offered. “That’s where the hertasi is taking your bundles.”
“It has a bed, I hope,” she groaned. There must be wonders all around her, but at the moment she was in no condition to enjoy them.
He laughed. “I think you need a soak in hot water more than a bed.”
The idea of a hot bath was heavenly - but - she thought she remembered something about the Hawkbrothers and communal bathing, which did not appeal to her at all.
“I have an offer for you,” he said, interrupting the thought. “My home is nearer than the guest lodge - and you aren’t used to the customs of our hot pools. I’ll set you up with a private bath and go on to the lodge and see everything is ready there for you. Then I’ll come back and get you.”
Disrobing in a stranger’s house and taking a bath there? And not just a stranger, but a strange male? Her mother would be scandalized, but again, this wasn’t Errold’s Grove. The promise of a hot bath - and the state of her sore muscles - decided her.
Besides, even if I were as pretty as Shandi - which I’m not - at the moment I’m sweaty, dirty, and staggering. That’s hardly enticing.
“Thank you! You are the most considerate person I have ever met!” she said fervently.
“Oh, you should meet some of the others before you say that,” he replied lightly. “Here, come this way.”
Other than the two pillars, so far she hadn’t seen any signs that this place was inhabited. As she followed him up a twisting path, she still didn’t see any kind of housing, though the path itself was man-made and very ornamental, with a sparkling little stream crossing it several times, all manner of fragrant flora, and baroque lanterns hanging from carved posts.
“I thought you were settling here,” she said. “Where is everyone?”
“Up there,” he pointed, and she looked upward toward the trunk of the tree he indicated.
“There’s a house up there!” she exclaimed involuntarily, stopping and staring in fascination. Warm rounds and rectangles of light betrayed windows, and through the branches she glimpsed bits of walls and floor, and a stair spiraling around the trunk.
“An ekele,” he corrected. “Almost everyone has an ekele; Hawkbrothers prefer to roost.” He grinned. “The exceptions are the hertasi, who’d rather burrow, the kyree, who like caves, the k’Leshya Kaled’a’in like Nightwind, who like homes built into the sides of cliffs, and me.”
She was relieved to discover she wasn’t going to have to climb one of those twisting staircases. With the way her legs felt, she wasn’t certain she’d be able to make the trip!
“And here we are,” he announced just then, gesturing grandly at a tall mound of leaves - a mound with windows glowing warmly beneath the leaves, that is. He opened an otherwise invisible door, and they stepped into one of the oddest, and yet most inviting houses Keisha had ever seen.
There wasn’t a single straight line in it, though, and that was a bit disconcerting. “One of the hertasi designed this place,” he said, as he led her through the first room (which was so neat and clean she could hardly believe it belonged to a male), a second (obviously a bedroom, and a bit more cluttered), and into the third. There was a single oil lamp turned low, hanging from a wall-sconce; he turned it up, and busied himself with a metal spout in the wall.
The whole room was tiled in white, pale blue, and pale green ceramic; even the ceiling (what there was of it) was tiled. Most of the ceiling was actually a window! And around the four sides of this window were boxes with vines growing in them.
Sunken into the floor was a tile-lined bath tub; Darian had just turned a spigot and put a plug in a hole in the bottom of it, and water poured in. Clear, clean, and very chilly-looking, the spray made her shiver.
Darian watched as the water filled the tub, and turned the spigot again when it was within a thumb-length of the rim. But then, before Keisha could ask him how the water was supposed to be heated, he held his hand out over it.
Something was happening, something she felt, rather than saw, until she closed her eyes and did that little trick with vision. Then she saw light-energy moving from Darian to the water, but what did that mean?
Wait, it was getting warmer in this little room, and more humid! A moment later, she knew where the heat was coming from, for the water in the tub had started to steam.
“Try that with your hand and tell me if it’s hot enough,” Darian said, just as she blinked, and lost the Oversight. She knelt at the side of the tub and gingerly put her hand in.
A little more and it would have been too hot. “Definitely,” she told him. He grinned.
“I like it a lot hotter, but I’m used to the Hawkbrother pools. Now just wait a moment, and I’ll bring you something to wear when you get out.
”
He ducked into the bedroom, and came back with a loose, gauzy shirt and breeches of the same materials. “You can keep these, they’re too small for me now.” He opened a wicker-work chest next to the tub. “Clean, dry towels are in here.” He turned and pointed to a series of stone boxes at the side of the tub. “Gourd sponges are in there, a scrub brush, and soap; there’s a couple of different scents, so you’ve got a choice. I’ll be back in a while.”
He didn’t wait for her reply; he just left, and she heard the outer door close after him. She peeked out, just to make sure that he’d really gone, but the little house was absolutely empty except for herself.
Well, there was no point in letting the water cool! She stripped to the skin and eased gingerly down into the hot tub, which was long enough for her to stretch completely out and deep enough that the water came up to her chin. Immediately, the heat eased the sore muscles of her legs, and she sighed and relaxed against the sloped, tiled back of the tub.
If anyone had told me about what this place was like, I would never have believed them. Would she be too spoiled by this Vale to want to go home again?
I could put some comforts together with help. A bathing room of her own, for instance, wouldn’t be too difficult to add to the cottage. The potter could make the tiles. If I built an oven underneath the tub, instead of sinking the tub into the floor, I could heat my own water. A rainwater cistern on the roof would give me water for the tub, or I could tap into the irrigation system. Or I could pump it from the well at the sink and carry it. The cistern would be the least work. That would be a good way to warm someone up who was badly chilled, too. A reasonable excuse for me to ask for help building it. She grinned to herself. No, she probably wouldn’t be so spoiled she wouldn’t want to go back, not as long as she could figure out ways to reproduce the aspects of this place that she liked!
When she’d soaked long enough that she thought she’d be able to move again without moaning, she finished her bath with rosemary soap, and allowed the water to drain. Darian’s old clothing, lightly scented with juniper, was a bit big on her, but it was so good to put on clean clothes that it didn’t matter. She rolled up the waistband and arms, so she didn’t look too much like a child playing dress-up.
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