Owlknight

by Mercedes Lackey

  She and Keisha shared a conspiratorial look. “I think you can depend on Nightwind to see he doesn’t,” was all Keisha said, but they both knew what she meant. “Since Anda wouldn’t hear of not coming, I thought I’d better go along in case your current crop had anything different this time.”

  Kandace brushed her short hair back with one hand. “No, nothing different this time - just the Wasting Sickness that comes with Summer Fever, and thank the gods, the mild form.”

  Now they knew that the Wasting Sickness came in two forms - one that sickened and weakened, and sometimes left a victim with paralysis of a limb, and one that killed or left the victim totally paralyzed. With help, the victims of the weak form could recover much of what they had lost - but unless the disease was caught in its early stages, victims of the strong form could not return to their former healthy selves.

  Keisha relaxed; Shandi was now immune to the Wasting Sickness, and even if Anda caught it - which was less likely, as it tended to attack children rather than adults - she and Nightwind could cure it in a few days.

  “I’ve got one more set of patients to see. Want to help?” Kandace offered, knowing that Keisha would. Without waiting for her answer, Kandace skipped up the stairs and headed along the walkway, looking behind once to see if Keisha was following.

  She didn’t see a case of Wasting Sickness at all anymore, and she was right on Kandace’s heels. They walked in single file with their footsteps sounding hollow as they headed toward the next building. Hung as decorations beneath the shelter of the roof were all manner of little talismans; there was no end to the variety of materials they had been made of - wood, bone, fabric, fur, stone - there were even some made of dried grasses or pine needles and twigs.

  They all portrayed a single creature, the dyheli, and each one had been made as a thanks-token for a successful recovery. Some, made by the children, were crude indeed, but it was the thought that counted, not the skill. All of the walkways were hung with these tokens, which were never taken down or replaced, though wind and weather had rendered some of them pretty battered. The patients worked on their talismans as they recovered, and hung them themselves from the rafters of the bridges around the building they had stayed in.

  “Ready?” Kandace asked, pausing on the threshold, and looking back at Keisha.

  “Always!” Keisha said eagerly, as Kandace reached for the door to open it.

  Now if only I could be so certain about the rest of my life. . . .

  Ten

  Darian was agreeably pleased when Keisha and the Heralds decided to head for Ghost Cat and the Sanctuary right after breakfast; he had a plan of his own, and if Wintersky turned out to be free for a day or two, all the better. He finished his own breakfast in a leisurely fashion, knowing that Wintersky was a late riser, and hoping to see his friend come into the eating hall before he left.

  His patience was rewarded as he lingered over a mug of cooling tea; Wintersky did appear in the door, looking damp and cheerful from his morning swim. Darian waved at him; Wintersky acknowledged the wave with one of his own, then went over to the tables to fix himself a plate.

  Wintersky was only Gifted with a trace of Mage-Talent; no more than half of all Hawkbrothers had enough of the Mage-Gift to perform more than the barest of magical tasks. As a consequence, Wintersky’s black hair had only gone silver in streaks, and his eyes were still the intense blue of a Tayledras who hasn’t meddled much with magic. Lean and wiry, with a generous grin and a long jaw, he was one of Dalian’s oldest friends.

  He joined Darian shortly, his plate heaped with hot flatcakes and fruit. “What stirs you this morning, my friend?” Wintersky asked genially, as he set down his mug and plate and took a seat across from Darian.

  “Actually, I was waiting for you,” Darian replied, as Wintersky applied himself to his food with a good appetite. “Did you have any plans for the next day or two?”

  “Not really.” Wintersky ate a few more bites before continuing. “I take it that you do, and you’d like my company?”

  “Your company and your help. You’re an expert at cold-tracking, and this track is ten years cold.” He waited for Wintersky’s reaction, which was just what he’d expected.

  Wintersky gave him a long look, ate a bit more, and put down his knife and fork. He steepled his fingers over his plate, his eyes fixed on Darian’s. “You want to see if you can figure out what happened to your parents.”

  Wintersky was good at deducing a great deal from a small amount of evidence - that was what made him such a good cold-tracker. “If I can. If there are any traces left at all.” Darian shrugged. “I’m not deluding myself; I don’t expect much, but if there is anything to be found, I’d like to know I looked for it. They wouldn’t let me look while the trail was still hot. Now, though, anything that was left after a few years will still be there.”

  “Perhaps. I can understand that reasoning.” Wintersky picked up his fork again and applied himself to his food. “Yes, I can understand that.” He said nothing more as he finished his plate, returned to the tables for a second helping, and finished that as well. Darian didn’t say anything about the subject either; he knew Wintersky, and knew that his friend was thinking the project over, weighing prospects for success against those of wasting his time for two days and finding nothing.

  “If there’s anything to be found,” Darian added, “I can use magic to find it. After that, it’ll be up to you to make what you can of it.”

  “All right,” he said at last. “I’m your man. Between my tracking and your magic, if there’s anything to be found, we’ll find it in two days and figure out where it leads.”

  “And if we don’t find anything, we’ll know there’s nothing to be found.” Darian hated to say that, but he knew that it was only the truth. I want answers, but sometimes there aren’t any. Much as I hate that. . . . The more he had thought about his general feelings of unease, the more he was convinced that they all had something to do with that sense of not knowing. If he just had some notion what had happened, he might feel better.

  “Let’s find a couple of restless dyheli and our camping gear and see what’s to be found.” Wintersky pushed away from the table and paused again. “Is Kel likely to be useful on this trip?” he asked, narrowing his eyes at the sudden thought.

  Darian shook his head. “Our birds will be good enough scouts to keep an eye out for trouble. Any tracking will be by small signs, on the ground. I doubt that anything will be visible from the air.”

  “Right enough. I’ll meet you at the Vale entrance with my gear and food - you get your gear and the dyheli.” When Wintersky made up his mind to do something, he got to it at once, and went at it with all his focus on the task - another thing that made him such an outstanding tracker. He was already out the door by the time Darian got to his feet.

  He went first to the dyheli meadow, where he paused and sent out a general thought to the herd, which was divided pretty equally between those who were grazing and those who were taking their ease. Does had young at their heels, sometimes twins; young dyheli had all the wide-eyed innocence of any young thing, but were not much more intelligent at this stage than a human baby. Their bodies were capable of a great deal, but not their minds. When danger threatened, a doe would literally take over the mind and body of her baby to get it out of harm’s way, controlling it so that it ran swiftly and surely at her side. And if the entire herd panicked, the king stag assumed control of all of them.

  Darian did not leave the does out of his general message, although he knew that at this time of year, no female would leave the herd, not even a young or old one with no youngster of her own. Females were instinctively attracted to the babies, and willingly served as nannies and surrogate mothers, giving the blood-mothers time to graze in lush pastures on their own. There was no such thing as an orphaned dyheli; a youngster whose mother died was immediately adopted by one or more childless females, and any female with a baby of her own would allow the orphan to nu
rse. The youngsters stayed with their mothers for up to fifteen years, nursing for the first two, then continuing to learn as they grazed for the next ten to fourteen years.

  Darian sent the equivalent of polite throat-clearing to get the herd’s attention, then Mindspoke. :Wintersky and I are going to do some cold-tracking for the next two days. We would like two friends to help us with this; is anyone interested?:

  Young adult dyheli were always restless and ready for an adventure, and at least nine heads popped up at that. He waited; there was some silent conferencing among the would-be volunteers and with Tyrsell, who had the last word, and then two young stags separated from the herd and trotted eagerly toward him. Their large eyes were bright with excitement, and they made no pretense of being anything but enthusiastic.

  :I am Jonti,: said one. :This is my twin, Larak. We have not been far outside the Vale before, and we hope that will not cause a difficulty.:

  “Then you should enjoy this,” Darian said aloud. “We’ll be off in a place where I don’t think any of the herd has been before; you’ll be first to scout it.” The stags switched their stubby tails with excitement, and followed behind Darian as he led them toward his ekele, heads bobbing with every step. On the way, he encountered a hertasi and requested it to bring riding gear for him; it nodded and continued on its way. Darian had long since decided that the hertasi were constantly in mental contact with each other - what other explanation could there be? This hertasi probably would not be the one to bring the tack, but someone would show up with saddles before he’d finished packing.

  His camping gear was ready; it was always ready, since Meeren took it away as soon as he returned from a trip, cleaned, repaired, or replaced whatever needed tending to, and repacked it for him. He got the packs out of the storage chest where they stayed until he needed them, then rummaged through his closet for his oldest scouting clothes. He didn’t think he’d need more than one change of clothing, but he packed three - because accidents happened, and wet clothing was an invitation to serious illness.

  It didn’t take him long to gather his things, but when he walked out of his front door, there was tack waiting beside the young dyheli, and no sign of the hertasi who had brought it.

  Dyheli tack consisted of a saddle with belly, chest, and rump girths, stirrups, and a very thick saddle pad. It didn’t take long to get the two stags harnessed up and his packs fastened to the saddle; he mounted up, and all three of them headed for the Vale entrance.

  As promised, Wintersky was waiting, with his own packs and a waterproof pair of saddlebags containing their provisions. In no time at all, he too was ready and in the saddle, and they were on their way.

  “So, where are we going?” Wintersky asked curiously.

  “North of the village, almost directly north,” Darian replied. “It’s part Pelagiris Forest, part meadowlands, with the river running along one side, a couple of ponds and some streams. That’s where my parents had their traplines. My thought is that we’ll see if we can find anything left of the traps, first. If we can, we’ll know that, whatever happened, nobody worked the lines and collected the traps.”

  This time both Wintersky and his dyheli turned their heads to look at him. “You think perhaps someone took them captive, then harvested their traps and everything in them?”

  “That’s one among many possibilities,” Darian pointed out. “One of the more remote ones, I’ll admit, but if that was what happened, I think it’s important to know that.”

  :Blood Bear might not be the only pack of hunters who know where the village is.: That was Jonti, who sounded curiously unmoved by the observation.

  “That’s entirely true,” said Darian, and left it at that.

  They rode past the village without going into it. Darian didn’t comment on that openly, but he felt that seeing the village and calling up all of its memories would unfocus his concentration on the task at hand. According to Darian’s best recollection, his parents worked an area that was several days’ distance from Errold’s Grove. But they had traveled on foot, in the winter. He and Wintersky were going by dyheli-back, at a lope, in the spring. They should reach the area where his parents had last been well before nightfall.

  They stopped at a stream around noon for a brief rest and lunch, and in late afternoon, when they were close to the area where Darian expected to find things - if there was anything to be found - they stopped to set up for the night. It was time for Darian to try his luck.

  Darian got down off Jonti, and stood quietly, closing his eyes, blocking out the world, bit by bit. Wintersky went straight to work, dismounting and taking care of the dyheli stags and setting up camp. It might seem as if he was the one doing all the work, but that was not the case and he knew it very well. Darian’s search would take as much energy as he was using; perhaps more. That is how the Hawkbrothers were; as long as one did equal work, in one’s own way, there were no complaints from others of the clan.

  Darian did not open his eyes, since he would be exploring the forest for some distance around - perhaps a distance of a league or two - and the night was still young.

  He himself had worked this area as a child; now he had to bring those childhood memories up from the back of his mind, superimpose them onto their current surroundings, and then - then he would invoke Mage-Sight, but he would be looking for two things. First, he would search for objects that did not belong in the forest naturally, such as refined and forged metals. Such things, even in a state of decay, might hold the traces of the humans that had made or owned them. Second, he hoped that his kinship with his parents would draw him to anything that they had once used.

  It was not always easy to keep an objective pursuit as the hours of sifting went by. When he dredged through his memories for physical references to the landscape, he would come across one image after another of his mother’s smile - or of his father trimming away a loose branch - or of him bending a trap-wire carefully while explaining to his young son how the spring worked. Darian would get such memories brought back to him, lit with intensely bright sun, in that way that only fond recollections seem to have.

  It was fortunate for him, he knew, that the visions of Mage-Sight could not be blurred by tears.

  Mage-Sight showed him the world as it was for those who could see the energies of life. On the surface, the living animals and plants were each enveloped in a faint emerald glow, a mist of verdant power, thin but very real. This, rather than the deeper layer where the ley-lines were, was the stratum he wanted to examine.

  His emotions were suppressed through practiced discipline just enough to be able to work safely. He existed in a detached and analytical state for this exercise in receptivity to power - at least, that was the ideal intent. The pace of his search was slowed by periodic pauses, while he collected his thoughts from the effects of one family memory or other. In the intervening times of emotional control, he searched for “holes” in the overlying mist, places where the nonliving intruded through the living at certain relative “depths.”

  He concentrated on each of those places, usually discovering that the “hole” represented a rock, or a place scorched bare by fire or lightning. Meanwhile, Wintersky worked quietly around him as he painstakingly sifted through each area he thought he remembered. With all of his concentration centered on his task, he was not aware of time passing. He was not aware of anything except the next pattern of radiant energy, from the next hand’s breadth of ground. He felt the “glare” of someone approaching, seeming to his magical vision much like someone was walking closer bearing a torch while his eyes were adjusted to night and starlight.

  Wintersky touched his elbow, getting his attention without disturbing his search. Like a sleepwalker, Darian allowed Wintersky to guide him to a place to sit, allotting just enough of his attention to keep from stumbling over his own feet. He continued his search without a moment’s pause.

  He sensed - albeit remotely - the sun setting; he felt it as an overwhelming, nurturing presence
slowly sinking away.

  In addition to searching out gaps in the fabric of life-energy, he used a more subtle “sense” in his examination - the Earth-Sense that made him a Healing-Mage. It was more like a sense than a skill, since it was not always consciously directed. As he examined each bit of ground, he let the earth tell him about itself. Had it been injured, had it been contaminated in the past? Was it under some sort of pressure, other than the normal pressures of life and change? Was there anything different about it? The more he listened to the earth, the farther that sense extended, and the easier it was to read the earth ways.

  He expected to find at least one Change-Circle this way. This area had not been checked for mage-storm damage or interference, except in a very cursory fashion, because the Changecreatures that had come out of it had long since been “dealt with,” and whatever had happened here during the Storms had not been grave enough to disrupt the flow of magic to k’Valdemar. Eventually every finger-length of land would be gone over with the same painful care that he was using now, but such a detailed examination would take decades, even centuries. For now, only specific strategically important areas of the land closest to k’Valdemar had undergone such intense scrutiny.

  He sensed a fire crackling nearby, sensed the cool of evening on his back and the warmth of the fire on his face and chest. Wintersky made the ideal partner in a situation like this one; quiet and unobtrusive, he kept his presence from impinging upon Darian’s concentration, allowing the mage to do what he needed to do.

  It was late, very late, and Darian was just about ready to give up for the night, when a distant hint of “other” distracted him from the area he was in the process of examining. His Earth-Sense, running out ahead of the conscious examination, had found something that didn’t fit. Thirty-some degrees off from his current focus there was another sort of “glare,” more akin to a reversed shadow. And it wasn’t subtle either.