Owlknight

by Mercedes Lackey

  I think he’s going to fit in just fine. He certainly has the right sense of humor, Darian mused.

  “Now, did I understand your young spokesperson to say that our quarters are temporary?” Anda continued. Starfall nodded, and gestured to Darian to join them.

  “We didn’t want to assume your requirements, so we’re putting you in the guest lodge until you have decided what you want,” Darian said diffidently. “You’ll want to see the Vale, of course, and we took into consideration that there is always the possibility that you might decide you would rather have your permanent headquarters outside it.”

  “Possible, but unlikely; why put the embassy in the countryside rather than the diplomatic capital?” Anda smiled slightly. “By the way, I’m given to understand that you have some method of imparting language in a candlemark or so. I would be very grateful if you could arrange for me to undergo the ‘lesson’ as soon as possible.”

  Starfall coughed slightly. “It leaves one with a dreadful headache,” he warned.

  Herald Anda shrugged. “Extended use of any mind-magic leaves one with a dreadful headache,” he replied, as Darian stifled a grin of triumph. “The cost, however, is well worth the benefit. If you can arrange for this, I should like very much to have all of the languages in use here. I understand that Shandi has already acquired the necessary tongues.”

  “I will arrange for it with pleasure,” Starfall told the Herald. “And you will curse me for it afterward. Meanwhile, we do have a great deal scheduled for you over the next few days.”

  Darian watched Herald Anda very closely, and thought he detected a faint hint of dismay as Starfall outlined all of the ceremonies ahead. Surely he must have expected something of the kind. Or maybe not. Although Heralds were important people, he hadn’t seen a lot of ceremony involving them or honoring them - maybe because they tended to swoop in, take care of their business, and ride out again.

  Poor Anda! He has no idea of what he’s in for now! For the first time since all this had been planned, Darian felt a little better about his role as “entertainment.” If his guess was right, Anda was just as dismayed at the prospect of a week of “performing” as Darian was. There was some small comfort in shared misery after all.

  Six

  According to Val, those about to be knighted generally spent their vigil in a chapel, on their knees. Darian had no intention of following that particular tradition; if Lord Breon wasn’t satisfied with his way of keeping vigil, the man shouldn’t have offered to knight him.

  He wasn’t going to spend the night indoors, and he absolutely wasn’t going to spend it on his knees. The point of the vigil was to contemplate, to meditate on the things that had brought him here and what would follow. The point was definitely not to dislocate kneecaps, and besides that, he did his thinking better outside.

  So after the requisite instructions from a Senior Knight (Val, coached by his father), Darian retired to the rear of the Keep and the gardens. He carried Kuari, and was accompanied by Val and Herald Anda. Women about to be knighted, it seemed, were always accompanied by females, and men by males, which let Shandi off easily. Or maybe not; now she would have to endure the feast, as the representative Herald.

  Together, they watched the sun set behind the trees and the stars appear in the darkening sky. Darian had picked a spot with a garden bench to sit on, surrounded by bushes; as Val and Anda withdrew a little to hunch over a strategy game, he settled himself for the night. He gingerly helped Kuari down onto the trimmed grass; Kuari looked up at him hopefully.

  :Hunt now?: the owl begged. Kuari loved hunting Lord Breon’s lands; there were pastures and grain fields that attracted rabbits, with no cover for them to hide in. Kuari raised his wings a little, looking up into Darian’s face with his enormous golden eyes.

  :Of course you can hunt now,: he told the owl affectionately. Kuari didn’t hesitate; with a soft croon, he spread his wings wide and shoved off from the ground with his powerful legs. Darian’s dark-adapted eyes had no trouble following him; for the first several wagon-lengths, Kuari flew at knee height, pumping his wings to gain speed. Then, just at the edge of the garden, he surged upward and flew off into the trees. From there, he would scout for a good place to wait at the edge of the fields.

  He would be back as soon as he had made his kills and fed; for now, Darian was content to sit on the stone bench and take in the night alone.

  This was the dark of the moon, so nothing was going to obscure the stars. It wasn’t as quiet as he would prefer; Lord Breon had several important guests, nobles from “nearby” holdings, who had come especially for the week-long festivities. The pre-knighting feast was still going on inside, and there was a fair amount of loud conversation coming from the Great Hall. More noise came from the kitchens; the rattling of pots and pans, the clatter of dishes, the shouts of the servants. There was a group of minstrels in there somewhere, trying manfully to produce music for the occasion, but they were losing the battle against the noise.

  It was quite a contrast with last night’s celebration at the Vale; it was always possible to talk to someone without raising the voice, for instance. Right now Darian heard a dozen different conversations going on, all shouted - someone was holding forth on sheep, someone else lamented the fact that he had three daughters, all within a year of each other in age and all betrothed, who were determined to have separate weddings rather than the money-saving triple wedding their father wanted. A round of laughter erupted when someone bawdily suggested a connection between the two subjects. Another old grouch bellowed out that things were different when he was knighted, no foreigners in fancy outfits and no disobedient daughters, either -

  Darian stifled a laugh at that last; even in the Vales there were old grouches who growled that way. The same old tune would be sung in the future, and probably back in the time of Urtho there had been someone complaining how things had been different. . . .

  At a Vale feast, though, the grouches kept their grumbles at a lower volume, so no one had to listen to them except other grouches who agreed with them. Obvious pockets of malcontent were easily avoided.

  There wasn’t anyone like that at k’Valdemar yet; no one moved here who wasn’t prepared, indeed eager, for change. There was a surprising number of truly elderly Tayledras who had indicated that they would like to come, now that there was a Veil in place. He couldn’t blame them for not wanting to share in the relative hardship of the first two years, and he had told the others that he thought encouraging the older folk to try k’Valdemar for size was a good idea. A Vale composed of folks mostly between the ages of sixteen and forty seemed very unbalanced to him; he wanted to see more children, and more people over the age of fifty.

  No grouches, though.

  He heard Keisha’s sudden laugh ring out above the background noise, and Shandi’s a moment later. He smiled at that; he was glad they were enjoying themselves. Shandi had walked Herald Anda through all the intricacies of last night’s festivities, with Keisha helping. Shandi had looked very handsome in her Vale-made Whites, and so had Anda, though there had been some last-minute adjustments of hems and waistbands, or so Meeren had said. Virtually identical to the celebration of Nightwind and Snowfire’s wedding, with the exceptions being that there were no displays of magic, and that there were a great many folk from outside the Vale taking part, the official celebration took place in and around the Council House. Anda stayed there; Shandi didn’t, once she knew that Anda had things well in hand and was comfortable. She knew very well that the little clearings and the hot pools were the best places for fun, and as soon as she could reasonably assume that Anda would be all right on his own, she and Keisha slipped out. Darian joined them very shortly thereafter, leaving Anda to a discussion of mutual acquaintances with Firesong and Silverfox.

  And right now, I expect they wish they could slip out again, he thought. It was much better out here, in the clear, cool air, watching the stars. He had the feeling that even Val felt the same way, although
it was too bad that Val would have to keep himself awake, and could not retire to the bed he shared with his pretty young wife.

  It certainly wasn’t going to be the first time Darian had stayed awake until dawn. Some of Firesong’s lessons had involved fasts, vigils, enduring extremes of heat and cold, and other discomforts. He’d had to learn how to shut out what he had to, in order to keep his concentration on the task at hand, and how to force himself to the limits of his endurance and even a bit beyond.

  Sitting and thinking until dawn is a walk down a Vale path by comparison.

  He supposed that most of those who came to their knighthood vigils had plenty to think about. They would ponder the circumstances that had brought them here, and wonder if they could live up to the expectations of those who had chosen to honor them. For Darian, this wasn’t so much an honor as a tool; a tool to help him handle his responsibilities more effectively. Still, there were those oaths - once a knight, courage was not applauded, it was assumed. Honesty was required. All the virtues he displayed would simply be expected of him - the only things that would be noticed would be his lapses.

  So that’s probably why most people aren’t knighted until they’ve proved themselves, he reflected. At that point, I suppose that virtue becomes a habit.

  The level of noise from the Keep behind him was tapering off as the candlemarks passed. The feast was probably over; the ladies had retired, leaving the men to serious drinking and progressively more incoherent conversation. What a stupid custom! he thought, amused. Then again, there came one of his old, departed Master Justyn’s lessons: “Young Darian, your great speech is always mindless prattle to someone else, just as they are certain their prattle is a great speech.” The old man had been right about so many things that only with experience made sense now.

  At around midnight last night, the festivities had also slowed down. That was because most of the outsiders had left the Vale for their camps outside; only a few had been invited to stay within the Veil, and not only the guest lodge, but several ekele were hosting overnight visitors. Lord Breon’s party cut their celebrating short as well, knowing they would have to ride back to the Keep in the morning. They wanted to have clear heads and steady stomachs for the journey. The villagers were still wary of staying too long in the strange Vale, especially after dark, and most of them had cleared out long before midnight. Only Ghost Cat tribesmen had stayed to “help” the Hawkbrothers see in the dawn.

  Darian had stayed up past midnight, but not far past. Unlike Lord Breon’s people, he knew he would be able to sleep late; the dyheli that took him to the Keep was much swifter than a horse, and even if he left just before noon, he would catch up with Lord Breon before his group arrived at the Keep. Nevertheless, he was not interested in seeing two dawns in two days, not with so much yet to do.

  Herald Anda had retired at midnight; Shandi had not. There was some very interesting interplay going on between Shandi and Steelmind, a Tayledras herb-and plantmaster; what it meant, he didn’t know, but it was certain that Shandi had made a deep impression on the other.

  Shandi had a confidence about her that he dearly wished Keisha could acquire. What was it that had made Keisha so uncertain of herself? She was completely self-assured when it came to Healing, so why was she so unsure about everything else, especially her standing with him?

  I’ve got to have a word with Silverfox, he decided. If there was such a thing as an expert in emotions, it would be a kestra’chern. Maybe Silverfox could give him the clue he needed to help Keisha.

  But that brought something else to mind. I’d better explain what a kestra’chern is to Anda as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Silverfox can do a great deal that Anda wouldn’t even guess on his own. It had taken Darian the better part of a year to really understand just what it was that Silverfox did.

  A kestra’chern, a good one like Silverfox, anyway, was the oil that kept friction within a group to a minimum. But the tools he used to deal with incipient trouble were just about unlimited, up to and including taking someone into his bed, if that was what was needed. He was very like a Herald with a limited “community” to serve, but without careful explanation, Darian was afraid that Herald Anda would not necessarily see things that way.

  Another difference between a Herald and Silverfox was that a kestra’chern tended to wait until people with problems came to him, rather than reaching out to deal with the problems. There were exceptions, but as Silverfox had once said, succinctly, “I am no one’s nursery maid. Sometimes the children have to fight their quarrels without intervention.” A Herald, of course, would plunge right in, but because Heralds rode a circuit rather than living in a particular community, real problems were usually at the point where they required intervention by the time a Herald got to them.

  And the things that people can and should handle by themselves are usually kept quiet when the Herald is around. Reluctance to show the dirty linen in public saves Heralds front having to deal with it.

  Darian decided that he’d had enough of sitting thanks to the numbness that usually came from sitting on stone, and got up to take a slow walk around the garden. He looked back at his two watchers, dark shapes against the backdrop of the light stone of the Keep, and the golden gleam of the lighted windows. Anda waved at him to show that he’d seen Darian stand.

  In the dark, senses besides sight were heightened, and perceptions shifted in wondrous ways if one made himself open to them. Night birds called, at distances farther than he could have seen through the forests in daylight. Insects and what must have been thousands of tiny peeping frogs filled the air with their songs. It wasn’t too difficult to keep to the garden paths, even in the darkness. The paths were graveled, and the moment he stepped off them, the sound alone told him. It was still a bit early for the garden to be fully in flower, but there were hints of scent as he passed certain beds - the sweetness of honey-climber, the intoxicant edge of the tiny flowers of the lily-bell, the subtle scent of violet. He knew which beds had recently been turned by the tang of fresh earth, and where the lawn had just been clipped by the sharpness of the newly cut grass. The sound behind him was definitely dying, and a quick glance back at the Keep showed more than half the windows had gone dark. Perhaps it was just as well that the guests had all faced that long ride this morning; the wine had gotten to them all the easier. With luck, less than half of them would be nursing hangovers in the morning when he was knighted.

  When the dawn first painted the eastern sky with thin, gray light, Darian was still wide awake, but poor Val had fallen asleep where he sat! Darian pretended not to notice, turning his back so mat Herald Anda could wake the young man discreetly. Kuari had returned with a sated appetite after Darian had finished his walk; now he, too, dozed, perched on the bench beside Darian with one foot tucked up. From time to time Darian worked his fingers in through the soft feathers to scratch Kuari’s round head; when he did that, the owl crooned in his sleep and clicked his beak.

  Footfalls behind him woke Kuari, who swiveled his head halfway around to glare at the interlopers. Darian stood up and turned to grin at Anda and a sleepy-eyed Val.

  “Ready?” Anda asked casually. Darian nodded, then coaxed Kuari up onto his arm.

  :Time to go find a tree to sleep in,: he told the owl, who looked a little ruffled at having his nap disturbed. :I have to go inside now, and if you don’t find a secure place, you know that the crows will harass you.:

  Kuari sighed, but agreed. Darian gave him a boost, and he labored off to a thick evergreen close to the Keep, where he could find a roost near the trunk, and the songbirds wouldn’t see him. At the moment, the songbirds were too busy heralding the day and warming up their muscles to pay any attention to Kuari.

  Darian followed Anda and Val back inside, to the Great Hall, where a group awaited them. Again, knighting was usually done in the chapel, but Darian had voiced a mild objection to that. Breon had readily agreed, since the chapel at the Keep wouldn’t have held the full group th
at wanted to witness the knighting anyway.

  Breon’s Keep was not very old; it dated back no more than a century or so. As a consequence, it didn’t have the same air of gloom that many of the older buildings of Valdemar did. In the Great Hall, the stone walls had been plastered over and whitewashed, then hung with tapestries. Above the tapestries, clerestory windows let in the early-morning daylight. Wooden beams supported the roof, and the battle banners of Breon’s family hung from them. Because of the windows and plastering, although the Hall was cool, there was none of that feeling of dank-ness and damp that made older versions of this room that Darian had seen in Valdemar so uncomfortable.

  Breon waited on the stone dais that held the High Table; behind him the table had been set for breakfast, which would follow the ceremony.

  That certainly shows where my importance is, Darian thought with great amusement. First, we get the ceremony over with, and then we can eat!

  The rest of his witnesses were gathered below Breon. The sturdy Breon was wearing a surcoat that reached down past his knees, embroidered with the arms of his family and his own personal device. This was a relatively new item of his wardrobe, replacing the one he had worn for his investiture as a knight. The hertasi had made it for him as a birthday gift in time for Val’s knighting, and it was just as splendid as the one Darian would wear to tonight’s feast. Anda and Val led the way to the foot of the dais, with Darian following about four paces behind. From here on, the knighting would follow strictly traditional lines.

  “Who comes before me in the light of the new sun, and why are you here?” Breon rumbled, in a voice that sounded a little hoarse - no doubt from all the shouted conversation last night. The wording had a weighty air of the ancient about it, a nearly palpable reinforcement that a knighting was anything but a casual lark.