Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 02] - Owlsight Page 11

  Instead of a long, floor-length robe with hanging sleeves, he had on a blue silk shirt with a silver-embroidered placket, long sleeves gathered into silver-embroidered cuffs, and a band of silver embroidery at the hem of the shirt. Like Snowfire’s robes, the embroidery on his shirt was of owls. The long shirt was held in at the waist, like a gathered tunic, with a silver belt worked with more owls. Beneath the shirt he wore absolutely plain blue silk breeches and boots similar to Snowfire’s, and over the entire outfit, he wore a blue, floor-length silk-velvet vest.

  It was the vest that had touched and pleased him and brought a lump to his throat when he first saw it, for the hertasi had duplicated in silver the embroidery that his mother had done on that cherished but long-outgrown leather vest she had made for him.

  Darian carried Snowfire’s weapons, his bow and quiver, climbing stick, and short sword and daggers. Nightbird carried Nightwind’s. This was supposed to show that both were warriors in their own right, and expected to defend each other on an equal basis. A rather nice touch, Darian thought, especially since there were no other weapons anywhere in sight—other than the occasional belt-dagger. Warrior to warrior, man to woman, mage to Healer, it was a good pairing.

  The six witnesses were arranged behind all of them in a half-circle; consciously or unconsciously, they had each dressed in a different rainbow color and had arranged themselves in rainbow order—purple, red, orange, yellow, green, blue. The three Elders, one woman and two men, all with silver-white hair, all wore green with gold embroidery—one with a motif of suntail hawks, one with cooperihawks, and the third with peregrine falcons. None of the Elders or witnesses was closely related to either Snowfire or Nightwind; this was according to custom of long standing.

  The audience—as much as Darian had been able to see of it—had turned out as splendidly arrayed as the witnesses and the Elders. It wasn’t all humans either, for there were plenty of hertasi in embroidered vests and sashes or curiously cut robes, dyheli bedecked with flower wreaths and ribbons, and gryphons in jeweled harnesses. There were kyree in attendance as well, but they flatly refused to bedeck themselves in anything, and amid the riot of color their gray fur left them blending with the shadows.

  The ceremony began with the leftmost of the three Elders speaking first.

  “Here stands before us this day, Nightwind k‘Leshya, warrior, trondi’irn of the Silver Gryphons, Healer among the Kaled’a’in,” Elder Leafspear declaimed. “Here stands before us Snowfire k’ Vala, warrior and mage, coleader of the first expedition into Valdemar, well known to all of us. These two wish to join together in sight of our clans, to be as a living bridge between k‘Leshya and k’Vala. If there be any here who object to this joining, give tongue that we may hear and consider what you have to say.”

  He waited a moment, but of course there was no objection—though Kel looked around so fiercely that anyone who might have considered doing so would instantly have reconsidered the idea as a very bad one. Perhaps that was the idea behind having such firm friends stand on the platform with you....

  “For this joining, Nightwind k‘Leshya pledges to remain here, far from her birth-home, to bring her skills to k’Vala. For this joining, Snowfire k’Vala pledges to give her home, hearth, and hand, that she never feel the loss of her birth-home and all she has left behind. For this joining, the Elders of k’Vala and k’Leshya have sworn to honor these pledges in their stead, should ill luck befall either.”

  He paused again for effect, then continued when virtually everyone nodded in agreement.

  “The Vale is more than this place and its Heartstone; if the Heartstone were no more, if we sought another home, where we were would still be k‘Vala. There is no k’Vala without the people; there is no Clan without all of us. Our strength is in our bonds to one another, and to make another bond strengthens us all. To make a bond between two so near in heart, yet so different in origin, makes both our clans stronger.”

  When he was done, the rightmost Elder, Rainlance, picked up as smoothly as if they were one person and not three.

  “This bond, this joining, is not meant to be a fetter. A joining is a partnership, not two people becoming one,” the second Elder said, though not as sternly as Starfall had said it the first time they took their vows. “Two minds cannot fuse, two souls cannot merge, two hearts cannot keep to the same time. If two are foolish enough to try this, one must overwhelm the other, and that is not love, nor is it compassion, nor responsibility. You are two who choose to walk the same path, to bridge the differences between you with love. You must remember and respect those differences and learn to understand them, for they are part of what made you come to love in the first place. Love is patient, love is willing to compromise—love is willing to admit it is wrong. There will be hard times; you must face them as bound warriors do, side by side, not using the weapon of your knowledge to tear at each other. There will be sadness as well as joy, and you must support one another through the grief and sorrow. There will be pain—but pain shared is pain halved, as joy shared is joy doubled, and you each must sacrifice your own comfort to share the pain of the other. And yet, you must do all this and manage to keep each other from wrong actions, for a joining means that you also pledge to help one another at all times. You must lead each other by example. Guide and be willing to be guided. Being joined does not mean that you accept what is truly wrong; being joined means that you must strive that you both remain in the light and the right. You must not pledge yourselves thinking that you can change each other. That is rankest folly, and disrespectful, for no one has the right to change another. You must not pledge yourselves thinking that there will be no strife between you. That is fantasy, for you are two and not one, and there will inevitably come conflict that it will be up to you to resolve. You must not pledge yourselves thinking that all will be well from this moment on. That is a dream, and dreamers must eventually wake. You must come to this joining fully ready, fully committed, and fully respectful of each other.”

  Now the third Elder, Silverswan, took up the thread of ceremony—and a silken cord of silver and blue. Nightwind extended her right hand, and Snowfire his left, and the Elder bound them together with the cord.

  “Now you will no longer fear the storm,” the Elder said, in ringing tones, “for you find shelter in each other. Now the winter cannot harm you, for you warm each other with love. Now when strength fails, you will be the wind to each other’s wings. Now the darkness holds no danger, for you will be the light to each other’s path. Now you will defy despair, for you will bring hope to each other’s heart. Now there will be no more loneliness, for there will always be a hand reaching out to aid you when all seems darkest. Where there were two paths, there is now one. May your days together be long upon the earth, and each day blessed with joy in each other.”

  With their hands still bound together, Snowfire carefully took a silver hair clasp he had been holding in his right hand, one with two feathers hanging from it—one of Hweel’s and one of Huur’s—and clasped it onto the elaborate construction that was Nightwind’s hair. At the same time, she fastened a similar clasp with one of Kel’s smaller feathers into his hair with her left hand. That had been a rather clever touch; Nightwind had no bondbird, of course, but everyone agreed that her bond with Kel certainly was of the same order.

  Then, the ceremony finally over, they turned to face the crowd and as the witnesses parted so that the audience could see them clearly, raised their bound hands above their heads.

  The cheer that erupted literally shook leaves and blossoms out of the trees, showering them both with fragrant petals. More flowers flew at them from the audience and dropped onto their heads from the talons of bondbirds, who seemed to take a great deal of pleasure out of picking a target and hitting it. Flowers were everywhere, the air so thick with them that it looked like a blizzard. Nightwind and Snowfire were exempt from the pelting, but Darian had to put up a hand to fend off all the blossoms intended for his head. Beneath the storm
of flowers, the pair paused long enough for a rather heated kiss—a sure sign that though they’d been bonded for two years, they hadn’t become bored with each other!

  No one could have possibly enjoyed a party in those cumbersome ceremonial outfits; however, the Tayledras had long since solved that problem. The six witnesses stepped forward and removed the cord holding the pair’s hands together, cutting it into six pieces and each taking one as a physical token that the marriage had been made. Should they ever decide to dissolve the joining, the six pieces would have to be retrieved and burned in another ceremony. Once the ceremonial cord was taken off their hands, Nightwind and Snowfire simply touched hidden clasps and stepped out of their outer ceremonial robes, leaving them in the hands of the witnesses, who had been waiting to take them. They didn’t have to hold the garments for long; in a moment, previously invisible hertasi whisked them away—to be shortly displayed on stands during the celebration for the admiration of anyone who wanted to examine them. From this moment on, the robes became the heirloom works of art they truly were, and would be displayed on the walls of Snowfire’s ekele. Now looking far more comfortable wearing shirts and breeches just like Darian‘s, they joined the throng of wellwishers. Meanwhile, more hertasi materialized among the crowd with trays of every kind of finger food and drink imaginable. Ayshen appeared at Darian’s elbow to take Snowfire’s weapons, the three owls flew up into the boughs so that the perch could be removed, and a group of musicians took over the ceremonial platform. Darian was amazed to see that one of the musicians was a creature that could only be a member of the tervardi, the bird-people. He’d never seen one until now, for although the tervardi were traditional allies of the Tayledras, there was no colony of them near k’Vala Vale.

  Darian tried to stare without staring; he could not tell if the tervardi was male or female, but if coloration followed the same pattern as in birds, and if the feathers weren’t painted as some of the gryphons’ were, then it was probably male. Its head, covered with scarlet-and-black feathers with a hint of a crest, had a definite beak rather than lips. The arms were feathered as well—wings, but nonfunctional ones, too abbreviated to be of any use even in gliding. There was a broad, feathered tail, and it wore a type of wrapped garment that left the tail free.

  The musical group consisted of the tervardi, two hertasi playing drums, and four Tayledras who played harp, gittern, flute, and some sort of horn, respectively. It was soon evident, once they struck up a melody, that the tervardi was their vocalist.

  It was also evident why; no human voice could duplicate the haunting sounds that emerged from the tervardi’s fluttering throat as it broke into song.

  Havens! Darian thought, listening with his mouth agape. No wonder they never sing for anyone but Hawkbrothers! They’d be carried off before you could say “soprano”!

  “There was a thriving trade in tervardi entertainment-slaves in the distant past, until the survivors managed to gather under the protection of the Vales,” a voice said softly behind him. He turned, to find himself gazing into the eyes of a second tervardi, this one drably plumaged in black and red-brown. Well, “drab” compared with the first one’s black and scarlet; her markings were quite lovely, and if he hadn’t already seen the male, he’d have thought her quite striking.

  The enormous eyes, so dark a brown as to seem black, gazed back at him with no expression that he could read. “It was easy for the slavers to get what they wished from us,” the female (the singer’s mate?) continued, her voice a softer version of the singer’s though no less melodious. “After all, what male would not sing, when his captors threatened to torture his mate and female chicks if he refused?”

  She saw that I’m not born Tayledras, and she’s testing me—but what should I say? “What song could sound sweet under those conditions?” he countered, after a moment of blankness. “Whoever would order such an atrocity had no heart. The only songs worth hearing are those sung in happiness and freedom.”

  He had only thought that he could not read the tervardi; now he realized that she had the same feather-language as the bondbirds. When she first spoke, her feathers had been slicked down with tension; now she relaxed, the feathers around her beak puffed up, and her face looked rounder and softer than it had a moment ago.

  “You speak wisely for one so young,” she replied, with trilling chuckle—or a chuckling trill. “What bird fly you?”

  “Kuari, fledged of Huur and Hweel,” he replied promptly, and held out his arm, with a quick Mindtouch to Kuari himself. He braced himself for the weight as Kuari came in, and ducked his head a little to avoid the impact of those huge, silently powerful wings. The only warning that Kuari was near came when the wind his wingstrokes created made a second storm of all the flower petals scattered about.

  His arm strained as Kuari settled gently on the guard, and the great talons closed carefully about the leather. The tervardi trilled something at Kuari, who cocked his head to listen, then replied in a series of soft hoots like those made to nestlings. Then he closed his eyes and reached out with his beak to preen a strand of Darian’s hair.

  The tervardi chuckled again and relaxed further, her facial feathers puffed up so that her beak nearly disappeared. She held out a four-taloned hand—three long claws and one short and opposed, exactly like a thumb. Darian took it without fear.

  “Rrrillia k’Treva,” she said.

  “Darian Firkin k’Valdemar k’ Vala,” he replied.

  “A long name,” she observed. “You have not changed it in Tayledras fashion?”

  He shrugged. “I thought about it, but—Tayledras take new use-names when they change, and I haven’t changed, not really. I’m still Darian, with more knowledge and more memories, and a bit more common sense, I hope. I have more skills now, and I’ve got more friends. But when you come down to it, I’m still myself. I’ve grown, but I haven’t changed.”

  “Then wear the name you are, Darian Firkin k‘Valdemar k’Vala,” she told him firmly. Suddenly, with the lightning change of topic he was to come to associate with tervardi, asked, “And what think you of Sarrrsee’s singing?”

  He waved his hands helplessly at that. “Unbelievable!” he finally managed, “Indescribable! I could listen to him all night!”

  “Well, with pauses for refreshment, that opportunity you will have, passager,” she said, clearly very pleased with his reaction. “Indeed, on so romantic an occasion, we are to sing courting ballads, we two. And that, for outsiders to hear, is rare.”

  He bowed, hoping that also would please her. “Then I hope you will allow me to thank you in place of my brother Snowfire and his mate, who will be enchanted—and overwhelmed—by the honor you do them.”

  Now she laughed aloud, a silvery gurgle of sound, and spread her arm pinions. “Oh, you are wasted among the mages, passager,” she crowed. “Such delicate speeches mark you as an Elder afore the time!”

  She didn’t give him a chance to reply to that, turning away instead and taking the platform with the other musicians.

  Somehow, the group of musicians managed to go from the first song straight into the next without pause to consult one another—although it was entirely possible they were using Mindtouch instead. The second melody must have been one of the “courting songs,” for first the male sang, then the female, trading melodies and replies until the two strains joined in unexpected harmonies. Darian gathered Kuari to his chest and absently scratched the owl’s back and neck—much to Kuari’s pleasure—while he listened with his eyes closed to be able to better concentrate on the music.

  This song came to a definite end with a moment of silence followed by applause and cheers. Darian opened his eyes again to see the two tervardi bowing slightly in acknowledgment—and the female looked directly at him and deliberately winked before turning her attention back to the rest.

  The musicians launched into a piece that was purely instrumental, and Darian gave Kuari a boost back into the air so that he could rejoin the other bondbirds in th
e canopy. Then he wandered off, intending to find something a little more substantial than the tiny savories being handed around by the hertasi. He hadn’t eaten since he woke up; Ayshen had kicked him out of bed far too early, and he’d been running errands since. He’d really felt too keyed up to eat anyway, but now that everything was safely over, and nothing disastrous had occurred, he was starving.

  And a couple of tiny bites of sausage-stuffed pastry weren’t going to take the edge off his hunger either.

  The most logical place to look first was the guest lodge—and going there had the added advantage that he could take off his wedding finery and put on something he wouldn’t have to worry about ruining. Once he made his way to the point where the crowd thinned out a little, he made decent progress to the far side of the Vale—although the temptations to stop were many. Besides the group of musicians from k‘Treva Vale that included the two tervardi, there were other musicians from k’Vala scattered here and there, carefully positioned so that no group’s music interfered with the music from another individual or group. Darian passed three individual musicians and two groups on his way to the guest lodges; the groups had set up in spaces big enough to allow for dancing. One group was playing a slow-paced, couples dance, and the second a faster, heavily syncopated group dance.

  As he had suspected, the hot pools were in use, though as it was early in the day, they were not heavily crowded. It was a bit of a surprise to see the number of people swimming, though.

  That isn’t my idea of what you do at a wedding—well, maybe I’m just being provincial.

  Wonderful aromas met his nose before he even reached the door of the guest lodges, and the tempting array of food spread out there made him waver in his resolution to change before he ate. Only the fact that his favorite foods were always the messiest to eat made him stick to it, even though the scents seemed to follow him down the corridors and into his room to taunt him.