Owlflight

by Mercedes Lackey

  “And the other—obviously the term Attack Dog suits it.” Snowfire rested his chin on his folded hands to keep it off the hard rock beneath him. “In fact, that’s probably why they were paired. If whatever the Yip Dog was warning about kept coming, the Attack Dog was to hold it where it was until the masters came.” He grinned a little. “It must have been awfully puzzled about how to get at Kel!”

  “Fortunately for us, the masters didn’t consider a sortie by air.” She kneaded his shoulders vigorously and he grunted. “Does that hurt?”

  “Yes, but don’t stop. No, you’re right about that. They must not know there are Tayledras anywhere about, and they’ve never encountered Kaled’a’in before. All I can say is, it’s a good thing we didn’t have any human scouts on this one.” The more he thought about it, the more grateful he was. Tayledras scouts would have sent birds in, seen nothing to worry about, and might perhaps have been tempted to come down out of the trees and go in afoot to recconoiter. They would never have been able to escape the fast-moving monsters—and only an eye-shot would have killed the beasts, given the way that Hweel’s talons just skidded off the scales.

  “The Yip Dog was probably alerted by physical attributes such as scent and sound as well as by magic,” she agreed. “It wouldn’t be very bright to have them sound alarms only for the presence of magic.”

  I’m just glad there were only two of them. “I saw them through Hweel’s eyes, and the things did look like wyrsa,” he told her, wondering if she had any more insights gleaned out of Kaled’a’in history for him. “Or rather, it looked as if their ancestors could have been wyrsa. Now, that triggered a dream last night of all kinds of creatures that looked as if they also could have been bred from wyrsa, and that made me wonder when I woke up this morning if the being that Darian described as a ‘demon’ and the creature it was riding could have had wyrsa ancestors.” He cocked an eye back at her.

  “That must have been one hell of a dream,” she observed. “I’m glad I didn’t share it. Still.” She paused to work on a particularly bad knot in his neck, and he clenched his teeth to keep from yelping. “The story says that the wyrsa Tadrith fought were definitely intelligent. And there is no reason whatsoever that there couldn’t have been more of them created somewhere else. Or at least, more wyrsa Changed in different ways. The beasts aren’t exactly stupid, so it’s not that great a jump to significant intelligence.”

  “Intelligence enough to realize that it would be to the monster’s advantage to cooperate with a human?” he hazarded. “And given that we have a mage with these barbarians who, we assume, already knows how to make Changechildren—” He took a deep breath as she let up on his shoulders a bit. “You see where this is going.”

  “Yes, and I don’t like it. But it does make it all the more imperative that we concentrate on keeping Starfall safe rather than messing about with these people and alerting them to the fact that we’re here.” He felt her hands starting to tremble. Was the imperturbable Nightwind actually afraid?

  She should be. Intelligent, humanlike versions of wyrsa! That is a truly frightening thought.

  “How did Darian sleep last night?” she asked, abruptly changing the subject herself.

  “Wintersky says he had a couple of nightmares, but nothing that even woke him. That’s enough, thanks.” He rolled back over and let the sun work on his chest muscles. “I don’t know what tonight will bring, but so far—I’m going to assume that minor nightmares are good, but the ones that send him out of sleep screaming in hysterics are bad?”

  “As a general rule; we don’t want him assimilating too much, too fast.” She stretched herself out on the rock beside him “Ah, that feels good. He’ll probably have a hysterical one in a few nights, though. That is, if what Tyrsell did fades out at the rate I think it will. It might go more quickly; he’s a boy with a strong will, and that’s likely to make him fight what we put in place.”

  Snowfire sighed. “Wonderful. Well, if he gets too hysterical for me to handle, remember your promise.”

  She laughed. “Big, brave Tayledras warrior worried about a little boy’s nightmares?”

  “Big, brave Tayledras warrior needs his sleep, or he isn’t going to be much good at protecting annoying little Kaled’a’in trondi’irn,” he growled, cracking open an eye to see which side of her was uppermost, and smacking her on the rump when he had a target.

  That, of course, led to her rolling him into the water, and him pulling her in, and a conversation that had nothing whatsoever to do with Darian, Kelvren, or wyrsa.

  Darian woke screaming from a nightmare of fire, to find a sleepy, yawning Snowfire kneeling at his pallet, shaking him gently. “Easy, Dar’ian,” the Hawkbrother was saying, as if he had been saying the words over and over for some time. “It’s all right; you’re just dreaming. Wake up, little brother—”

  There was a lot of light around; where was it coming from? “I’m—awake,” Darian said, feeling dazed and confused, and still full of a sourceless grief and fear. “I’m awake—”

  “Good.” Snowfire smiled, but he had to put up a hand to cover his mouth as it turned into a yawn. That was when Darian saw the source of the illumination, after Snowfire moved. There was a very dim globe of light hovering just at Snowfire’s shoulder, and Darian stared at it, distracted for a moment. It startled him, but Snowfire didn’t act as if it was something strange.

  “What’s that?” he asked, pointing to it.

  “My mage-light,” the Hawkbrother replied casually, as if he conjured such things all the time. Perhaps he did—and Darian just hadn’t been awake at the right time to see them. He had been so exhausted these last couple of days that he went to sleep almost as soon as the sun went down. “Would you like it a little brighter?” A heartbeat later, the glow intensified a measurable degree.

  “You can make those?” he said, staring at it. “Really? Justyn couldn’t—”

  Then all at once, as the sound of his own voice screaming Justyn’s name echoed in his memory, his fear and grief had a source; his throat closed up, and he fought back tears. A man shouldn’t cry; tears were useless. They hadn’t brought back his parents, had they? “Justyn’s dead, isn’t he?” he whispered, closing his eyes to hide the pain. “He’s really dead.”

  “Yes, little brother, he is,” Snowfire replied quietly, with an odd inflection in his voice. Darian opened his eyes, to see the Hawkbrother looking down at him with—what? Pity? Understanding? He couldn’t tell; he hadn’t seen anyone in Errold’s Grove wearing either expression around him.

  Just then, over on the other side of the hut, Wintersky snorted in his sleep, turned over, and mumbled. That seemed to make up Snowfire’s mind about something.

  “Here,” he said, getting to his feet, and holding out his hand. “We shouldn’t wake Wintersky, and I don’t think you’ll be getting back to sleep soon, so let’s go for a walk.”

  Darian hesitantly accepted the outstretched hand; Snowfire pulled him to his feet, then turned toward Hweel’s perch and held out his arm to the huge owl. He wasn’t wearing his arm-guard, and Darian gasped and winced as Hweel stepped onto the bare flesh—but the owl barely closed his feet around the arm and half-spread his wings to keep his balance instead of maintaining it by gripping the arm.

  Snowfire turned to give him a reassuring smile. “Remember, Hweel isn’t an ordinary owl; I’m only going to take him outside to let him step up onto the roof. He can be very soft-footed when he needs to be for me.”

  Yes, but if he gets unbalanced and can’t save himself, he may forget what’s under those talons— Mindful of that possibility, Darian stepped in front of Snowfire and held the curtain of vines aside so that the Hawkbrother wouldn’t have to juggle vines and owl at the same time. With a nod of thanks, Snowfire stepped out into the night, with the mage-light trailing at his shoulder. Darian followed him.

  Once outside, Snowfire raised his arm just enough that Hweel could move onto the end of an exposed roof-beam. Hweel stepped off
his arm carefully, settled his feathers, looked all around, in that bizarre way only owls could. His head went nearly all the way around, then he settled on a direction, crouched down, and pushed off, flapping hard, vanishing silently into the darkness. Snowfire turned, just as silently, and after a backward glance at Darian, walked slowly along the path.

  After a breath of hesitation, Darian caught up with him. Wintersky had given him what he called “sleeping clothes”—that was a new idea to Darian, who generally slept in that day’s shirt and put on a clean one in the morning, but he’d obediently changed into the odd garments every night. He saw now that Snowfire wore very similar clothing; a draped, pullover shirt of some light, loosely-woven, cool material, and drawstring trousers gathered at the ankle made of the same stuff. Darian felt a little like a ghost, walking barefoot through the sleeping camp in the pale garments.

  Ghosts … how many ghosts haunted Errold’s Grove now? One, at least. Or would Justyn have stayed to haunt the place?

  “What are you thinking?” Snowfire asked quietly, hardly above a whisper.

  “I was thinking—about Justyn,” he replied, feeling sorrow again rise to close his throat.

  “I think that he must have been a very good and brave man,” came the quiet reply. “People of his sort do not need to linger, haunting their old homes; ghosts are those who left things undone, and I cannot think he left anything undone that truly needed doing.”

  “Where—” He couldn’t manage anything more.

  But Snowfire must have guessed his question. “Having had no personal experience of one who has gone, I cannot give you firsthand evidence,” he replied, as one hand somehow came to rest on Darian’s shoulder as a comforting weight. “But—well, I know enough folk who have, whose word I trust, to make me certain that we do not simply cease to be. But as for the nature of the path he took, the faith we Tayledras profess tells us that each path is different, according to the belief and the nature of the one who takes it.” He paused. “I am not certain what your people believe, but would you care to hear what one who had been a Herald supposedly told one of my people?”

  “I—yes,” Darian said, after a moment. One who had been a Herald? But Heralds don’t quit being Heralds, so—

  “He said, or so I was told,” Snowfire replied, interrupting Darian’s thoughts, “that when a Herald dies, he is given three choices. One is that he may return again as a Herald-to-be, the second that he return as a Companion, and the third is that he have some time in a place where all his desires are granted. I suspect that your teacher has been given the same choices.”

  Darian blinked as his eyes blurred, and felt tears coursing down his cheeks. “I hope—I hope whatever he picked, he got a lot of magic!” he choked.

  Snowfire’s hand closed briefly on his shoulder. “I think that he must,” the Hawkbrother replied. “In fact, I cannot imagine anything else.”

  That was too much for Darian, and he lost his last shreds of control. He stumbled, and started to sob, and found Snowfire holding him just the same way as his father used to when some childish grief overcame him. Darian forgot that he was supposed to be a man, forgot that men didn’t cry—forgot everything except that he had failed to help Justyn, he had failed to help his father and mother, and now they were all dead and he was utterly alone.

  He cried silently as he had learned to do since his parents’ death, sobs shaking his frame, leaning on Snowfire, who simply held him and rocked a little from side to side, saying nothing. And only when the worst of his terrible grief had passed, did it dawn dimly on him that he really wasn’t alone after all… .

  Finally, there were no more tears left, and Snowfire let him go at the exact instant when he thought of pulling away, more than a little embarrassed.

  “Don’t be ashamed for allowing yourself to feel, little brother,” came the quiet words. “You should rather feel sorry for those who do not. They are either cripples—or very sick in soul.”

  As he stared at the Hawkbrother in astonishment, Snowfire patted his shoulder. “I think that a midnight swim might be a good thing for both of us,” he said, and gave Darian a gentle push to start him moving again.

  Darian was in a bit of a daze, and it seemed as if they only took a few steps farther before they came to the two ponds, their water reflecting the stars and a sliver of moon above them. Snowfire simply stripped off his garments and plunged in; after a moment of hesitation, Darian copied his example.

  He had expected the water to feel cold, but he had been standing in the night air long enough that it was only pleasantly cool. He swam back and forth on his back, staring up at the stars, letting his mind empty of everything. He didn’t stop until his arms and legs were tired and he was beginning to feel a little waterlogged. Only then did he stop to tread water, and saw Snowfire was back on the bank, putting on his clothing, the mage-light still hovering near him, but much brighter now.

  He paddled back to the same place, and looked up at a towel being held out for him to take. He dried himself off, and started to look around for his discarded clothing, but it wasn’t where he’d left it. Quickly, he wrapped the towel around his waist, wondering what had happened to it, when Snowfire noticed his confusion and pointed. There, neatly folded on a rock, was a fresh set of garments.

  “Hertasi,” was all Snowfire said, as he turned his attention to carefully braiding his long hair. Quickly, Darian slipped into the clean clothes, and used the towel on his own hair to cover his uncertainty about what to do or say next.

  “The sense of loss never leaves, little brother,” Snowfire said in a perfectly normal tone of voice. “But it does grow less over time, as long as you permit yourself to feel. If you bottle it inside, it only eats at you, until you are hollow and full of nothing but grief.”

  “How do you know?” Darian blurted, feeling unaccountably angry—then he could have beaten his head against a tree for snapping at Snowfire so.

  But Snowfire didn’t snap back; he just finished braiding his hair and looked at Darian quizzically. “Who told you that Tayledras are immortal?” he asked. “Whoever he was, he was misinformed.”

  Darian hung his head, his cheeks burning. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled. “I didn’t mean… .”

  “You didn’t think,” Snowfire corrected, with a kindly tone in his voice. “And given the hour and the circumstances, I can hardly fault you. You are tired, in every way. Much longer, and I will be snapping in an ill-tempered snarl myself.”

  Darian flushed even hotter, if that was possible. “I can’t imagine you ever doing anything wrong!” he stammered.

  To his surprise, Snowfire chuckled. “Oh, Dar’ian, do not ever allow Nightwind to hear you, or she will fill your ears with the myriad ways and times in which I have transgressed!” He rolled his eyes skyward. “I cannot even tell you which is worse—that she never forgets, or that she is right far too often—or at least, thinks that she is!”

  To his surprise, Darian found himself smiling a little, for he had certainly heard the men of Errold’s Grove making the same complaints in the “tavern.” “I guess all ladies are like that. The ones at home—”

  He stopped in midsentence. There wasn’t any “home” anymore. And as for the men who frequented the tavern, he had no idea where they were or what had happened to them. Were they even still alive? Shouldn’t he be getting help for them? What was he thinking of, lolling about in ponds like this, when he should be helping the people of Errold’s Grove? How had he managed to forget the rest of his people?

  “What’s the matter?” Snowfire asked, breaking into his silence.

  “I should—what am I still doing here?” he asked, feeling a frantic urge to do something, and not knowing what he could do. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other in a nervous dance. “I’ve got to go somewhere, got to get help. Why am I still here? I should be out there, trying to get somebody to help us, not here, enjoying myself!”

  Before he could yield to that urge and just run off into th
e darkness, Snowfire seized his elbow, and somehow the mere touch calmed him. “Dar’ian, listen to me, and please believe me,” the Hawkbrother said urgently. “Hweel and Kel and I have been to your village, the second night after you came to us—we saw no signs that your people had been killed, and none that they had been captured either. We are fairly sure they must have escaped completely. You can be at ease, for it seems likely that they have already found help!”

  “But you’re not completely sure?” Darian asked, wanting to believe, and not sure that he dared to. “You think they’re all right, but you—”

  “I could not be completely sure without going into the village and looking into all the houses,” Snowfire interrupted, and added, “I think you will agree that this would not be a very wise course of action.”

  “Uh—probably not,” Darian replied, trying to think where people could have escaped to.

  “We think that they probably went down the river,” Snowfire continued. “There is a place there with fortifications—some great lord’s holding, we think?”

  “Kelmskeep,” Darian replied automatically, “Lord Breon’s manor.” And somehow, just being able to identify the place made him lose some of that feeling of frantic urgency. “What did you see when you went back? I have to know! What if they didn’t get away, how would you know?”

  “Then sit here, and I will tell you.” Snowfire gestured at a rock that seemed perfectly sculpted to act as a chair, and took another like it. “I do not know if you have been told this, but a Tayledras can see through the eyes of his bondbird. I remained near where we found you, in the boughs, on the same line as the sentries. Hweel and Kelvren went on, since it would be far less likely they would be detected than a human, and it would be far easier for them to escape if they were sighted.”