Owlknight v(dt-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  “Ouch! She’s annoyedl This may be the best way to teach him that he doesn’t know evenIthing, though,” Keisha said.

  “Just because he’s a Herald, you mean?” Shandi shrugged, but her eyes twinkled and her mouth twitched into a grin. “That tends to be our major fault, I suppose. It’s difficult to remember that you might be wrong when you’re almost always right.”

  Keisha rolled her eyes ceilingward. “Modest, aren’t you?” Keisha replied dryly.

  “Of course - that, and every other possible virtue,” Shandi countered with a toss of her head, as she feigned a lofty attitude. “Are you trying to tell me you’ve lived all your life in Valdemar and haven’t learned that yet?”

  Keisha made a rude noise by way of an answer, and Shandi laughed heartily, throwing her head back. “Oh, it’s good to be back here with you - I made a lot of friends at the Collegium, but there was never anyone that was a sister.”

  Keisha knew exactly what she meant - more so, perhaps, because until she had begun living in the Vale, she hadn’t had anyone she could really think of as a friend except Shandi. Now she could count Nightwind, Ravenwing, several friends among the liertasi, and was cautiously coming to think of Silverfox as a friend, though she was still rather intimidated by him. Firesong - well, she was completely intimidated by Firesong, though she’d never let him know that. But she knew that if she needed help, Firesong was someone she could count on, and wasn’t that part of the definition of a friend? Friends weren’t supposed to be identical in what they did, or what they meant to someone - otherwise, who would want or need more than one?

  And then there was Darian. Darian was the best friend she’d ever had, except for her sister, and always would be, no matter what happened between them. Now if only she could figure out exactly where she was going with him.

  “So what’s going on with you and Darian?” Shandi asked, as if she had been following Keisha’s thoughts. Keisha looked at her, startled by the question.

  “What do you mean by that?” she demanded, with a touch of sharpness.

  Shandi leaned back into the cushions of the sofa, and fingered the soft silk of a skein of embroidery thread. “Well, since you asked, I couldn’t help but notice that you seem restless, a little nervous, but he seems perfectly happy. So what’s the matter? I should have thought you’d have been posting the banns by now - and I don’t think it’s his fault that you’re not. I also don’t think that you are looking for someone else, so what’s the problem?”

  “I’d . . . rather not talk about it just yet,” Keisha demurred. I’d rather not talk about it at all, actually. Maybe she’ll take the hint and leave me alone.

  Shandi shrugged. “All right for now, but you’re not going to avoid talking about this for too long. Maybe the folks here in k’Valdemar are too polite to get you to ‘fess up, but I’m not. You’re my sister, and I’m going to find out what’s bothering you and fix it if I can.”

  Keisha eyed her sister cautiously; this was an entirely new side to Shandi that she hadn’t suspected existed. What had brought this out in her? Was it being trained as a Herald, and being used to jumping straight in to solve problems whether the people involved wanted them solved or not? “How do you know what I’m thinking, anyway?” she demanded. “I thought you weren’t supposed to go snooping around in people’s heads.” She couldn’t help feeling resentful, even though this was Shandi who was trying to meddle. Hadn’t she already had enough of her mother’s meddling in her life?

  “Not thinking,” Shandi corrected. “Feeling. I know what you’re feeling, which is hardly the same as knowing what you’re thinking, especially when you make it so easy to read. And what do you expect, when my sister is such a strong Healer?”

  That was such a complete non sequitur that Keisha could only look stupidly at her. “What?”

  “Healer. Empath. Not thinking, feeling. That’s what made them decide back at the Collegium that I’ll be a good diplomat. It turned out when they got everything sorted out and started giving me real testing and training that my strongest Gift is Empathy.” She chuckled. “Which is probably why I could never bear to hurt anyone’s feelings.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this before?” Keisha asked.

  “You didn’t ask, and it was never relevant.” Shandi was so matter-of-fact about it, that Keisha could hardly believe it. “You didn’t need to know about it when we all handled the Ghost Cat crisis, and it didn’t come up when I was visiting.”

  “Well, that’s true enough,” Keisha admitted. “I just thought - well, I suppose I wasn’t thinking, actually.”

  Shandi raised an eyebrow at her. “I was trained by Queen’s Own Talia, no less. Then again, Herald Talia is the only Empath currently among the Heralds, so she’d pretty much have to be the one who taught me, wouldn’t she?”

  Keisha was utterly speechless at this - and stared at her sister as if she had turned into a stranger. In a sense, she had - here was the girl that Keisha had taken care of and gotten out of scrapes, talking casually about being taught by the Queen’s Own Herald of Valdemar!

  “It developed fairly late, which they tell me was just as well,” Shandi continued calmly, ignoring her sister’s dropped jaw and goggled eyes. “But they said with a sister who turned out to have a strong Healing Gift the way you have, and as alike as the two of us are, it’s not too surprising that I’d be an Empath. The only thing likelier would have been that I’d be an Animal Mindspeaker - or another Healer, but then I probably wouldn’t have been Chosen. No Companion will Choose a Healer or a potential Healer, unless the Healing Gift is really, really minor, and some other Gift is a lot stronger.”

  “I suppose that Animal Mindspeech would have been useful,” Keisha ventured, slowly gathering her scattered and wandering wits together.

  “Not as useful as this.” Interestingly, Shandi didn’t seem particularly proud of her Gift, any more than a carpenter was proud of having an average, serviceable set of tools. “I can tell when people are lying, or trying to lie, without using the Truth Spell. I can tell when they’re being pushed into saying or doing something against their will. All kinds of things that it’s useful for a diplomat to know.”

  “Or a spy,” Keisha said without thinking, and looked sharply at her sister.

  But Shandi laughed at her. “Or a spy - which is sometimes an impolite name for a diplomat. You see? We even think alike. Now, since you won’t talk about Darian, what was it you were saying about this golden yellow?” She held up the skein she’d been toying with.

  Keisha went back to her yarns and dyes, but beneath the discussion, her mind was busy with all that Shandi had revealed in those few words. There were many things, it seemed, that she needed to learn about her sister, especially now that she would be living right under Shandi’s nose.

  And even the “old” Shandi had not been inclined to let sleeping problems lie undisturbed if she thought she could do something about them.

  After a fruitful afternoon of cleaning and mending every bit of dyheli tack in the shed, Darian was ready to reward himself with a swim. He stowed the last bit of tack awayI then tucked the cleaning supplies in their proper place, and closed the shed up. He was dirty and oily, but he knew the girls were in the ekele and he didn’t want to disturb them. I’ll get clean enough in the lake, he decided. And the hertasi will take care of a change of clothing for me. And as for the tack oil, it was lanolin, and his skin would absorb it.

  Cleaning tack was most often a job for the hertasi, but they had enough to do just building, and catching up with the chores and projects that had been put back while the celebration and the preparations for it had been going on. When a job needed doing in the Vales, whoever had the skill took care of it. Except, perhaps, for the cooking chores - so far as the hertasi were concerned, there wasn’t a human anywhere who could match hertasi cookery, and the making of a meal would be the very last job that the hertasi would give over to human hands.

  I’ve come along a bit from the
fellow who resented having to clean and mend. He chuckled at himself, and shook his head. I guess that’s what growing up is supposed to do to you.

  The tack shed, one of a group of storage sheds tucked into an out-of-the-way corner screened with trees and ornamental bushes, was not all that far from the lake, and a direct pathway linked the two. The walk was barely long enough to get his muscles warmed up from sitting all afternoon.

  Once the path opened up to the clear, quiet waters, he turned to the right to stroll along the edge of the lake on his way to the swimming beach. He wanted to see how the hertasi were coming with the hot spring he’d created. One of the reasons he had chosen that particular spring was its nearness to the lake; but another was that it emerged about a third of the way up to the top of one of the hills cupping that end of the valley. The water started from a point that was about the height above the lake of a five-year-old tree. That would make it perfect for a series of cascading pools, where the water moved downward from pool to pool, cooling as it went. Soakers could pick their preferred temperature by the height of the pool in the cascade.

  The hertasi had already dug the series of soaking pools leading down to the lake, from the smallest (which would be the hottest) at the top, to the largest (big enough to hold thirty or forty soakers, and would be just comfortably warm) at the bottom, just like the ones at k’Vala. The first three pools had been sculpted and finished inside with formed rock; these three were in the process of curing. A crew of hertasi was laying the rock of the fourth pool, and the other pools each had one or two hertasi in them, sculpting the earth into seats, couches, and benches, which would be covered with the formed rock. At the moment, the hot water ran down a temporary channel into the lake, where it mixed directly with the lake waters, creating an area of warmth. Even now, that spot was in use, though it wasn’t as hot as the finished pools would be, nor was the edge anything more than raw lake shore. As soon as the last pool was finished, the hertasi would plant the slope with heat-loving vegetation, and a specialist like Steelmind who worked at inducing plants to grow with amazing speed would soon have the place looking as if it had always been there. When the pools had cured, the hertasi would divert the water and they would begin filling. It would take at least a day for them to fill and come up to proper temperature. Then, no doubt, there would be an impromptu opening party.

  Right now, though, Darian wasn’t looking for a place to soak; tack cleaning wasn’t hard work, just tedious work. He didn’t need to soothe sore muscles, he just needed to cool off and get cleaner. He was also hoping Kel would be out here, as this was the time of day that the gyrphon usually took his bath and he hadn’t had a chance to talk to Kel in days. They’d both been so busy with the celebrations that there hadn’t been time for anything else.

  He was right on time for the gryphon’s bath. Just as he neared the sloping rock-shelf that stretched for several wagon-lengths just under the surface where the gryphons usually bathed in shallow water heated by the sun, Kel flew in, hovered, and landed in the water. He skimmed in at a shallow angle, sending a huge rooster tail of water to the other side of his body before plunging. Gryphons bathed like birds, and Kel was no exception to that rule, slamming his head and shoulders into the water, then hunkering down and splashing vigorously with his wings. Even the smallest bird kicked up quite a bit of water when bathing; when a gryphon (twice the size of a war-horse, with a wingspread wide enough to shelter a small house) decided to take a bath, it tended to drench anyone within five or six furlongs. Darian knew this, of course, and stood well away as the gryphon ducked and splashed, ducked and splashed, until every feather was soaked so that it looked as if he were covered in quills instead of feathers.

  Gryphons, like birds, also tended to be single-minded about their bathing, so Kel didn’t look up and notice Darian until he was done and looking for the best spot to clamber out and sun himself.

  “Ha! Darrrrian!” Kel exclaimed. “Have you rrrrec-overrred from all the cccelabrrrationsss?” He looked so ridiculous that Darian had to strangle his laughter, for otherwise he’d hurt Kel’s feelings.

  “Barely,” Darian acknowledged. “I’m going for a swim. Mind if I join you afterward?”

  “Be my guessst,” Kel responded genially. “I will be verrry happy to ssshare a rrrock with you.” The gryphon waded out, generously not shaking himself until Darian was out of range. And when he did go into a blur of motion, he carefully did so where a plot of flowers looked as if they could use the water, then saw to it they were fertilized, too.

  Darian meanwhile stripped and waded in along the shallow rock-shelf. The water here was tepid - fine for bathing gryphons, but not particularly refreshing. He wanted his swim in cooler waters, and as soon as he reached a place where the lake was deep enough, he dove in and struck for the opposite shore.

  By the time he’d swum to the shore and back again, he felt relaxed and sufficiently cleansed of the oil and dirt of tack cleaning that he was ready to come out.

  The ever-watchful hertasi had spirited his dirty, oil stained clothing away and left towels and one of the loose, enveloping robes where his clothing had been. He dried himself off and pulled the robe on over his head, cinched the various ties, then climbed out onto Kel’s chosen rock to join him in the sun.

  There were many flat-topped sheets of rock here, conveniently near the underwater rock-shelf, and Kel wasn’t the only gryphon drying his feathers in the sunlight. All of the gryphons in k’Valdemar were young adults, looking to make reputations for themselves; Kel had the most experience and seniority of the lot. That could have been a cause for problems, because young and ambitious gryphons were like young and ambitious humans - they tended to forget they weren’t immortal and took risks. Kel was not old enough to remain immune if the rest got excited, but they were all in the Silver Gryphons as well, and their senior officer was a Kaled’a’in of about fifty, imbued with plenty of caution and good common sense. Their trondi’irn, who cared for their injuries and ills, was Nightwind - and there wasn’t a being in all of k’Valdemar who cared to annoy Nightwind by getting hurt by doing something stupid. With Nightwind and Redhawk supervising them, the young gryphons of k’Valdemar would probably not do anything intolerably risky.

  Darian threw a towel down on the rock and stretched out beside Kel. Damp gryphon had an odd scent, not unpleasant, but different from the spicy-musky odor of dry gryphon. Kel smelled a little like spice, but more like a certain dark brown, salty sauce that Ayshen used for vegetables. Strange, really. He looked almost black, his feathers were still so laden with moisture; when he dried, he would be a beautiful golden-brown, with a sheen of bronze.

  “So, have you gotten a chance to ask Herald Anda about studying with Treyvan and Hydona?” he asked lazily.

  There was a long, and unexpected pause. “I darrre not,” Kel confessed sheepishly. “Trrreyvan and Hydona! The Great Ones! Why, they arrre legendsss!”

  “They’re gryphons, like other gryphons, Kel. They’re bone and blood and gristle. And Herald Anda is as fallible as anyone else; you don’t have to be intimidated by him.” He glanced over at the sunning gryphon, who had his head down on his outstretched forelegs, watching Darian with one golden eye. His ear-tufts were flat, a sign that he really was feeling as sheepish as he sounded.

  “That iss not ssso easssy,” Kel sighed. “It isss harrrd to rrregarrrd Herrrald Anda asss orrrdin-arrry.”

  “Listen, you may not believe this, but the awesome Herald Anda just did one of the stupidest things I’ve ever heard of.” Without sparing Anda, he related the Herald’s blunder of the afternoon, and Nightwind’s response to it. He watched for Kel’s reaction, and saw the gryphon slowly lift his head, his ear-tufts picking up as he recounted the story.

  “I sssuppossse - ” he began, “that wasss not the brrrightesst of actionsss.”

  “Kel, it just proves that you don’t have to be intimidated by him,” Darian repeated. “You haven’t done anything quite that stupid.”

 
“It wasss not precisssely ssstupid,” Kel protested, but his eyes sparkled. “Jussst - overrrconfidence.”

  “Call it what you will, I don’t think that you need to feel as if he’s some sort of minor god just because he was trained by your idols,” Darian repeated. “Besides, didn’t he say he was looking forward to getting acquainted with all the gryphons? You’re the chief gryphon of this Vale. You’ve got as much rank as I do, Kel - which means you’re Herald Anda’s equal.”

  Kel perked up more. “I am, arrren’t I?” His beak gaped in pleasure, and he looked around with contentment. “I believe I will find an imprrresssive enough placsse, and welcome Herrrald Anda on behalf of the otherrrsss - when he wakesss, in a few daysss, that isss.”

  Darian laughed. “That’s a good choice, Kel,” he agreed, and turned over onto his back, shading his eyes with a flap of towel. “I doubt very much that he wants to see anyone for quite a while.”