Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight

by Mercedes Lackey

  Firesong placed them down on the floor and sat cross-legged on a cushion beside them. Then he contemplated them for a moment, while Darian’s heart pounded.

  “First thing, I think—” the Adept broke off what he was saying, and closed his eyes, holding his hands palm down over the bones. “Link with me, Dar’ian,” he ordered, but in a half-absent voice. Darian didn’t question whether he had the strength available; he linked first with a ley-line, and then with his teacher, clutching the stool with both hands.

  There was a moment of double-disorientation, as the raw power from the line rushed into him, then as he melded with Firesong. When he got himself straightened out again, Firesong was setting up a complicated relational field enclosing the bones. :This was once part of a greater whole,: the Adept said to him, quite dispassionately—but it was vitally important to be dispassionate when handling magic. :You see what I am setting up here? I’m reestablishing a connection with the rest of the body this once belonged to—the plane of Power doesn’t care about distance in our world, that’s why we can Gate when things there are stable enough. By reconnecting in that plane what used to be connected there and here, I can learn something about the state of the rest of the body.:

  Darian watched with fascination that was not quite as dispassionate as Firesong’s. The Adept was literally weaving a web of power between the artifacts here, and—and something somewhere else; a web that was possible only because they had once been connected.

  When the last thread was in place, Firesong gathered up a little more power—surprisingly little—and gave it a command, in effect saying to it wordlessly, Show me what you would be like if you were still one object.

  The power settled over the bones in a tenuous, visible mist, while all three of them watched with varying degrees of hope and fear. If Darian’s father was dead, there would be no change—or the change would show conditions even less pleasant than a handful of dry bones.

  The mist took on a pinkish tinge, swirled a little——then took on the ghostly outlines of a healthy, whole foot.

  Darian hadn’t realized that he’d made a sound until he heard it in his own ears—half a strangled sob, half a choked-off gasp. But he certainly felt the tears suddenly fill his eyes and blur the scene in front of him, then pour down his cheeks in an outpouring of the emotions he would not give in to while he was still linked in with the line. Silverfox rested a calming hand on his shoulder, a comfort and warmth that released some of the tension that had been building in him.

  “Right; well, that’s the main thing,” Firesong muttered, and played a bit more with the relational field. He got no changes, however, and finally dismissed it with a sigh of frustration. Darian blinked burning eyes and told himself fiercely not to be disappointed; this was more, much, much more, than he had known yesterday at this time.

  “I tried to get a sense of direction and distance, but I didn’t get much,” Firesong said, as Darian let go his own hold on the ley-line. This time Darian did not try to replenish anything; he needed the energy himself too much. “All I got was that it is north and to the west, and so far away that I couldn’t get any reading on distance.”

  “But he is alive,” Darian said, his own voice sounding forlorn even in his own ears.

  “He is alive,” Firesong replied, and smiled, patting Darian’s knee, adding his comfort to his partner’s. “Very much alive, and I think it far more likely than not that your mother is alive and well and with him. If he survived—with the loss of a foot—then she likely did, still intact.”

  The sudden outburst of tears surprised him, though it didn’t appear to surprise either Firesong or Silverfox. It was over in just a few moments, but he felt as drained as if he’d just done his entire Mastery Trial all over again.

  Silverfox helped him to his feet, as Firesong handed him a square of gauze cloth to wipe his eyes and nose with. “You’ve been through more than enough for one day,” the kestra’chern said. “And since Keisha is off with the Heralds, why don’t you stay with us overnight? I think you need company.”

  “I—think I do, too,” Darian confessed, and followed both of them up the staircase to the ekele-above, his legs leaden weights, his head full of confused bits of thought that refused to come together into anything coherent.

  They sat him down on a low sling-couch; Silverfox went out briefly and came back with food and something hot to drink. Numbly, Darian ate and drank without tasting anything, and listened while the two of them talked lightly of utter commonplaces. The longer he sat, the heavier his head seemed, until at length it felt as if it was easier to lie down than remain seated upright. Silverfox stepped over to him, uncapped a small brown bottle from a nearby shelf, and gently touched two fingertips to Darian’s forehead just between his eyebrows. Darian focused on the unusual touch, and Silverfox waved the open bottle under Darian’s nose while he was distracted.

  Then, in spite of his certainty that he wouldn’t be able to sleep the entire night—he closed his eyes for a moment, and knew nothing more until morning.

  Eleven

  Sleeping in the tiny, austere isolation hut, with the windows wide open to the night air, was very like sleeping in a hard-sided tent. Keisha enjoyed it as a change from Darian’s ekele. Out here where the weather wasn’t controlled, it still got quite cool at night, and she needed to use the blankets left folded up on her pallet. She woke up once or twice during the night at an unexpected sound, and smiled sleepily, as she listened to the life of the Sanctuary go on around her in the darkness, while she snuggled under the weighty warmth of her blankets. Helping out on the rounds had made her pleasantly tired, and she had gone to bed while Shandi and Anda were still deep in conversation with the Healers.

  In the morning, they showed their lack of sleep with yawns and puffy eyes, but neither had lost an iota of enthusiasm. “When we get back to k’Valdemar, you can tell everyone that I’ve got enough to think about for a while,” Anda told Keisha as they mounted into their saddles, with a cheerful wink that told her he knew very well that he had been driving some of the others to distraction with his incessant questions. “I shan’t be pestering anyone for at least a week—and then it will probably be to find out who can help me arrange to build our headquarters.”

  “You won’t have to pester anyone, since I can already tell you—it’s the hertasi chief, Ayshen. He schedules all the work in the Vale,” Keisha told him as she polished off the last drops of her tea: “You are building in the Vale, aren’t you? What are you going to call this establishment of yours? An embassy?”

  “Yes, we’re building in the Vale, and I think I’ll let this Ayshen fellow pick a good spot,” Anda told her. “As for what we’re calling it—well, it’s not a waystation, and it isn’t exactly an embassy—so I thought I’d just call it k’Valdemar Station.”

  “That’ll work,” Keisha acknowledged with hidden amusement. So, Anda didn’t think it was an embassy, did he? Wait until he’s been here a year.

  The dyheli got them back to Ghost Cat in good time; Anda wanted to speak further with Chief Vordon and Shaman Celin, so Keisha decided to have a look at those fascinating goods that the Northern tribes had brought in.

  Since she had spotted her old friend Hywel in the crowd gathering to greet them—now warrior Hywel, a fact he was burstingly proud of—she waved to him and got his attention as Anda and Shandi walked off with the Chief. He waved back, face full of delight, for the fact that he was great friends with Healer Keisha and Owl-warrior Darian gave quite a boost to his status.

  She walked over to him as he waited for her; no man of the Northern tribes would come to a woman for a casual conversation, not even so high-status a woman as a Healer. It was nonsense, of course, and these attitudes were gradually changing even among the most recalcitrant of tribesmen—for this once, Keisha was willing to bow before custom.

  “Greetings to you, Healer Keisha,” Hywel said solemnly. He was trying very, very hard to look mature and warriorlike; he had shot up another
hand’s breadth in the last six months and was wearing a new leather shirt made from the skins of his own kills. The impression he was trying to make was utterly spoiled by the obvious youth of the face behind the new beard and mustache. He still looked to her exactly like the boy who’d been frantic to save the life of his brother, and willing to brave anything to do so.

  “Greetings to you, Warrior Hywel,” she replied, just as soberly, though it was all she could do to keep from chuckling. “Could you tell me who I would speak to if I were to wish to barter for some of the goods held in trust for Ghost Cat, k’Valdemar, and the Sanctuary?”

  “Nothing easier,” he said, brightening at the idea that he would be able to do so high-status an individual a good turn. “My mother, Laine, has the authority to barter for those goods for the tribe. I am sure she will be happy to bargain with you.”

  That was not in the least surprising; Laine was known to cut a shrewd bargain herself, quite as well as glass-maker Harrod’s wife. The only reason that she was not in charge of Ghost Cat’s dealings with the village was that she had not dared try the language exchange with a dyheli. In part, that was because she was strongly averse to any “meddling with magic and holy things” for herself, and in part it was because she didn’t want to court the horrid headache that always followed such an exchange.

  Not that Keisha blamed her.

  Laine was learning Valdemaran the old-fashioned way, bit by bit, from her sons, who had gotten the tongues the “easy” way. This would not matter to Keisha, who spoke Laine’s tongue with the fluency of her own.

  “Come,” Hywel said, gesturing grandly, “I will take you to her.” Keisha repressed another chuckle at that; she didn’t need Hywel to show her to his own house, she knew quite well where it was—but conducting her there raised his status another minute increment. The saying she had heard about the Northerners did seem to be true: “You are known by who you know!”

  Not long after that, the two women were going over the goods in the storehouse, with all the pleasure of any two women anywhere in the lustrous furs, the warmth of the amber. His job done, Hywel had gone off to do “man things”—which basically meant sitting about with his young warrior friends, boasting about the animals they would hunt when fall came.

  The familial resemblance between Laine and her sons was unmistakable; all three shared a distinctively high brow, deep-set eyes, and short nose. For the rest, they shared brown eyes, black hair, sturdy, muscular build, and heavily tanned skin with the rest of their tribe.

  “Ah—these are what I wanted—” Keisha said, when she finally turned over a protective layer of cloth to reveal the skins she was looking for. “How many do you think it would take to line the hood of a winter cloak?”

  “Six,” Laine said instantly, the fringes of her leather dress swaying as she reached for one of the furs. She spread it over her arm, displaying it to Keisha, ruffling up the fur with her breath to show how thick and plush the hair was. “Yes, six. No less. You will not want the fur about the hindquarters, you see, and the belly-fur is thin. And were I you, I should have some wolverine as well, to put about the edge of the hood. The wolverine is so hot-blooded that the virtue goes even into the fur, and your breath will not freeze upon it.”

  Keisha very much doubted that “virtue” had anything to do with it, but she did know that the rest was true. She started to agree, when Laine spoke again.

  “And here—I think that Clanbrother Darian might well like one of these,” Laine continued, taking a cloth off another pile of what had appeared to be pieced and worked goods. She picked one up and shook it out—it was a vest, made of leather, but not tooled, dyed, or decorated in the usual fashions of the Ghost Cat tribe, but actually embroidered with designs. When Keisha examined it further, taking it from Laine’s hands, she saw that it had been embroidered, not with thread or yarn, but very cleverly with tufts of dyed fur of some kind.

  The designs themselves were nothing like those the Northern tribes used, although they seemed faintly familiar. But try as she might, Keisha just couldn’t place them. They were more like some sort of foreign designs that the Northerners had tried to adapt to their own style.

  “I think you’re right, Laine,” she said, as she held the vest in her hands, admiring the workmanship. “Darian will like this quite a lot. He’s not the lover of decoration that Firesong is—”

  “Ai, and who is?” Laine interjected, giggling, hiding her mouth behind her blunt-fingered hand as was the custom among Ghost Cat women.

  “No one!” Keisha laughed. “But Darian does like to dress handsomely now and again, and this is just his sort of clothing.”

  She and Laine bargained spiritedly for some time, and eventually arrived at a price they both liked. Ghost Cat craved Keisha’s dyes and the food-spices she raised—she would never bargain with medicinal herbs, but she had no compunction about using her spices as currency. The tribesmen had learned that spiced food was a fine thing; it was a taste they quickly acquired, for the spices gave their plain meals a savor they had never had before. In the cases of garlic and some peppers, it was quite good for their health, too.

  In exchange for spices and dyes to be delivered by dyheli, Keisha carried off enough furs to line her hood and make mittens, and she also bought the handsome vest. She had stowed them away in her saddlebags by the time Shandi and Anda were ready to leave.

  Darian is usually the one getting things for me, she reflected, very pleased with herself. It’ll be fun to see his face when I surprise him with a gift, for a change.

  It was at that moment that Anda’s Companion picked up his pace, leaving Shandi and Keisha lagging a little behind. Shandi did not trouble to catch up, and the dyheli Keisha rode was in no great hurry either. Anda disappeared around a turn in the road, and only then did Shandi turn to her sister.

  Shandi wore a stubborn expression; her golden-brown eyes narrowed as she regarded Keisha. “All right,” the young Herald demanded. “What exactly is going on—or not going on—between you and Darian.”

  “Nothing!” Keisha responded before she thought.

  “That’s exactly the problem,” Shandi retorted. “And I want to know why. You said you’d talk about it later—well, this is later, and we can’t get any more privacy than we have now.”

  Except for two pairs of four-hooved, pointed ears, Keisha thought, looking resentfully at Karles’ head. His ears were pointed back toward both of them, although the dyheli’s weren’t. She didn’t relish the notion of having any witnesses at all to this.

  “Come on, Keisha, you know I won’t give up. I know you too well,” Shandi persisted, turning in her saddle to face her fully. “You’ve got a situation here that’s hurting both of you, whether you’ll admit it or not.” She sounded very sure of herself; too sure, Keisha thought.

  “I don’t see how you can claim that,” Keisha said sullenly, looking straight ahead and not at her sister. She couldn’t—didn’t want to—meet Shandi’s eyes. “I’m not in the least unhappy. I have a terrific life; it couldn’t possibly be any better.”

  “Huh. You might be able to convince anyone else of that, but not your sister, and not an Empath,” Shandi retorted energetically. “What’s the problem? He’s not discontent, and you aren’t interested in anyone else. Are you afraid he’s inevitably going to lose interest in you and go chase some other girl?”

  Since that was precisely what had been troubling her, Keisha’s head snapped around and she stared at her sister in shock. “How did—”

  “It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Shandi replied, staring into her startled eyes. “You never believed that anyone would ever think you were pretty enough to bother with when we were at home, and you don’t believe it now. In your heart,” she continued ruthlessly, “you’re sure this is all some kind of accident on Darian’s part, and one of these days he’ll wake up and realize it.” Shandi sounded calm, collected, and utterly unruffled; the very opposite of the way Keisha felt. “In fact, you’re actua
lly planning on it happening.”

  Put that way, so baldly and unadorned, it sounded ridiculous, and Keisha felt as if she’d been caught doing something very stupid. Embarrassed, resentful, full of chagrin—but it hadn’t seemed foolish all those times when she’d been feeling alone and so unhappy!

  “You haven’t done anything stupid, sib,” Shandi said gently, her eyes softening. “But you almost did. It’s one short step from being sure that something good can’t last to sabotaging it, and making your fears come true. You can’t let things that you know don’t make sense get in the way of a wonderful relationship!”

  But Empath or not, Keisha was not about to admit anything to her little sister. Shandi was, after all, her little sister; younger, presumably less experienced. How dared she sit in judgment on her older sister? Besides, Shandi had no idea of the stresses on her. “Look, that’s not all it is, it isn’t even most of it. I have my duties, my responsibilities, and Darian has his—they aren’t the same, and we’re apart more than we’re together. I can’t trail around after him the way a wife is suppo—”

  “Oh, please,” Shandi groaned, interrupting her, while Karles snorted in obvious scorn. “What god came down and told you exactly what a wife is supposed to do? Who set up rules like that?”

  Keisha’s temper flared as her resentment mounted. Just because Shandi was a Herald and didn’t have to go along with the kinds of conventions that normal people did, she had no right to make any kind of judgments for her sister! Keisha wasn’t about to flout conventions! “Everyone knows what—”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Shandi interrupted again. “When has Darian ever told you—or even hinted—that he expects you to sit home and bake and spin? You aren’t everybody, you probably have more wits than any two of my old friends put together—and you don’t have to put up with the small-mindedness of village gossips if you don’t want to. They won’t even know what you’re doing if you live here, for one thing! And for another—no one but you should be allowed to make any decisions about how you live and who with.”