Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight Read online

  Shandi seemed completely satisfied with that; Karles tossed his head and gave a nod of agreement. “All right, then,” she replied, and swung up into her own saddle, the last to do so. “Let’s get moving.”

  Once again, Darian’s heart was in his mouth, and his blood singing in his ears; the emotion filling him was a very close relative to the fear he’d felt against the cold-drake. As they walked their mounts toward the distant village, situated above an expanse of water so large he couldn’t see an opposite shore, he tried, and failed, to keep from hoping to see a familiar face among the people coming slowly to meet him.

  And as they neared, and he could make out the features of the wary men approaching, he tried, and failed, to keep his heart from sinking with disappointment.

  These were tribesmen just like any others; brown, lean, dressed in the felt and tanned deerskin garments of others they had met with. He saw vests on some, but they were all decorated with tribal totemic animals, chiefest among them being the beaky head of Raven. He stifled his own feelings, put on a smile, and walked forward with Hywel to introduce his group.

  Of all the folk they had met so far, these were the friendliest, and the least suspicious—but that might have been because they wore tokens from Red Fox, Snow Fox, and Ghost Cat; tokens that were not given out lightly, from three relatively peaceful tribes. Learning they were ostensibly traders brought looser grips on weapons, and a few faint smiles.

  “And what have you brought to trade?” the Chief of Raven asked, tilting his head to one side inquisitively. “I see no pack-animals....”

  “Dyes, oh, Chief,” Darian replied, slipping into his role of trader as easily as slipping on a well-worn slipper. “Colors such as you have not seen the like of. We bring another thing, also, and that is the learning of our Wisewoman—” He gestured, and Keisha came forward, “—who has the means to defeat the Summer Fever and the Hammer Lung, if you should be cursed with either, and will teach these things to you, in gratitude to the spirits who permit us to bring these trade goods to you.”

  “Indeed!” The Chief looked impressed. “We have neither sickness among us, but we know of them. Can she teach such to our Wisewoman even if there are none so touched?”

  Keisha bowed her head slightly. “I can, Chief, and gladly will. But since you have no sick in urgent need, would you look to our dyes?”

  “We will; come, be welcome in the house of the Raven.” He waved them on, but Darian raised his hand. “We have representatives of our totems, Chief, and an ally you might find monstrous. We wish you to see them before you welcome us, for you must welcome all of us or none at all.”

  The Chief nodded; as one, Darian, Steelmind, and Wintersky raised their arms, and their birds came in to the glove. Gasps of surprise, followed by admiration followed the appearance of the hawk and buzzard, but when Kuari came in, everyone stepped back a pace. Kuari looked about—as fast as his head could turn, for he knew how funny humans found the way he could swivel his head in nearly a full circle—and chuckles followed.

  Then came Kel.

  He did not drop in suddenly, he approached gradually, so that the tribesmen could see him approaching in the distance, with huge, graceful wingbeats, and become accustomed to him. It was still a dramatic entrance, though, and Kel was still an imposing figure that took even the Chief aback.

  Kel folded his wings with immense dignity. “I grrrreet the Chief of Rrrraven from the Chief of Ssssilverrr Grrryphon,” he said, enunciating slowly and clearly. The Chief gathered his wits and his courage to approach.

  “You are called a gryphon, then?” the Chief asked, looking up at Kel’s golden eyes and immense beak.

  “I am; my name issss Kelvrrren,” Kel replied. “And in rrreturrrn forrr yourrr hossspitality, I beg you to accept my aid in hunting deerrrr and otherrr larrrge crrreaturesss while we arrre herrre.”

  “Gladly!” the Northerner said with alacrity; it didn’t take a genius to figure out that so large a predator as Kel could be an enormous asset in hunting. “I thank you, and bid you welcome as well.”

  They followed him into the circle of log houses, escorted by the warriors, who were relaxing more by the moment. Darian saw at once that there were scores of drying racks covered with a red-fleshed filleted fish, with smoldering fires beneath them. That made sense—in this damp, fish would cure better smoked than simply dried. But the sheer quantity made him pause and wonder if those stories about fish being so thick in the river that you could walk dry-shod on their backs might have a solid kernel of truth to them.

  Keisha and Shandi spread out the contents of the trade-pack, together with the samples of dyed wool—drawn by the colors and encouraged by the actions of the Raven Chief, the women of Raven gathered closer to look. In moments they were passing around the bits of wool, exclaiming over the colors, asking if they could be painted on leather or used to dye quills or fur, while the men feigned indifference, coming up cautiously to Kel to discuss a future hunt.

  As they clustered around Keisha and Kel, Darian looked in vain for one of the special vests, or any other sign of Valdemaran handiwork. He ached with impatience, he longed to take someone aside and ask about the vests, but he knew that now wasn’t the time. They had to establish a relationship with these people before he could go about asking questions of them.

  Keisha got free for a moment, turning the questions over to Shandi and Hywel, since Hywel’s heart was truly into getting the best possible bargains he could, and Shandi loved bargaining. “Any sign of your family?” she asked Darian in Valdemaran, all the while smiling pleasantly, as if she was simply commenting on how eager these people were for their dye.

  He kept his facade up as well. “No,” he replied, a bit louder, so that the tribesmen wouldn’t think they were making some sort of secret comments. “No, I haven’t seen anything, not a vest, not even a bit of embroidery that looks familiar.”

  But just as he said that, something odd happened. A young girl at the edge of the gaggle of chattering women jerked her head up as if it was on a string and stared at him.

  Then she was off like a shot arrow speeding to a target—the target being one of the log houses.

  “What was that all about?” Keisha asked, having noticed it too. “That girl acted as if something frightened her.”

  “I have no idea,” he replied, his attention more on his own concerns than those of a strange Raven girl. “Maybe she was just shy of being around strange strangers. Kel probably made her really nervous, then it scared her over the edge to hear a different tongue. It doesn’t seem to have bothered anyone else.”

  Almost before he finished his sentence, the girl reappeared, pulling a seemingly reluctant woman along by one hand. The woman was protesting, and it was clear why. In her other hand she held a headless, gutted fish, and she had obviously been interrupted in the middle of preparing a meal. She was looking down at her daughter—for surely that was who the girl was—and laughing along with her protests. Then she looked up.

  Darian felt his head start to spin. His jaw dropped; he grabbed Keisha’s arm, and stared. Older—yes— gray in the brown hair, a face weathered and lined with the cares of ten years, but—

  “Mother!” he shouted, and ran toward her.

  As if the world had slowed, he watched her reactions. She stared, first without any recognition in her eyes, then with puzzlement, then the look he longed for dawned, and grew, and burst forth like the sun coming from behind a cloud.

  “Darian!” she shrieked—the fish went one way, the little girl the other, and she ran for him with outstretched arms.

  He caught her up in his embrace, a tiny part of him bewildered by how small she’d become, and held her as he’d hoped to for too many lonely years. She hugged him, laughing and crying at the same time; she put both her hands about his face, looked into his eyes, kissed him, looked again, kissed him again. His throat swelled, and tears of his own streamed from his eyes, though his mouth was stretched in a smile so large the corners of h
is mouth ached; the smell of fish suddenly became the most wonderful perfume in the whole world.

  By this time, of course, they had gathered a substantial audience, and not only the little girl was dancing around them, but a second, slightly younger one, and a littler boy, all chanting his name and tugging on their mother’s deerskin shirt.

  As for Darian—he didn’t care. His mother was in his arms, babbling endearments—he held her tightly, babbling nonsense of his own. No matter what happened in the next moment, or day, or week—he savored where he was, right now, and no one could ever take it from him.

  Darian looked dazed as well as blissfully happy, and Keisha held one of his hands as he and his mother slowly caught up on the last ten years. They all sat on benches or flat grass-stuffed leather cushions on the ground in front of the log house. She had insisted that he go first, plying him with honey-sweetened berry juice whenever his voice grew hoarse.

  “So strange,” she marveled at last, shaking her head as a cool breeze toyed with strands of her hair that had escaped from her single braid. “Of all the things I had imagined you would become, a mage was not one. And a Hawkbrother! Your father will be speechless.”

  “Where is Father?” Darian asked eagerly.

  His mother laughed. “Where would you think? Out on the river, trapping fish this time, rather than four-leggers. You wouldn’t expect the loss of a mere foot to slow him down, now would you? Kelsie’s twin Kavin is with him.” She ruffled the hair of the oldest girl, who watched her brother Darian with undisguised adoration. The younger two, solemn six-year-old Ranie, and two-year-old Tel, snuggled against their mother’s legs. “I suspect that these littles came as a great surprise to you—”

  “I’d be lying if I said they didn’t, but they’re a wonderful surprise,” he replied, smiling down at the little girl Kelsie, then at her sister and brother. “I never thought of myself as a big brother before. But tell me what happened, from the beginning.”

  Darian’s mother—Daralie Firkin, Keisha reminded herself, Her name is Daralie, Dar for short—sighed, caressed the hair of the smaller girl, and began. “We had just finished setting up camp, when—something happened. I don’t remember what being caught in the magic felt like, and I suspect that’s just as well. The next thing I knew, we were halfway up that mountain there—” she nodded at the mountain to the north of the village. Even at this distance, there was a spot of terrain that was visibly different—no doubt the sphere of Valdemaran land that had switched places with the piece of terrain originally there. “Kullen was screaming, and no wonder, since his foot had been cut off clean. The fire had come with us, and—I don’t know where he got the presence of mind to do this—and he shoved the stump into the coals. That seared the severed veins off; if he hadn’t, I think he would have bled to death.”

  Keisha didn’t need to be an Empath to know that those simple words concealed fear and horror that Dar still felt, even now. Keisha could not imagine being in her shoes at that moment—utterly alone, thrown onto the side of an unknown mountain by an unknown power, her husband wounded, perhaps mortally—

  She shuddered, then smiled wanly, and shook off the emotions her recollection called up.

  “Thanks be to the gods, all our camping gear came with us as well—well, except for the corner of the tent that had gone along with his foot; I bound up the stump and dosed him with poppy. We had food enough for a while, so I nursed him while I studied where we were.” Daralie smiled thinly. “The most I could say was that I didn’t know. I put out trap-lines for small animals, and caught things that are like short-eared rabbits that live among the rocks, and built up our campsite into a small stone hut walled over with snow blocks—I had no idea how long we would be there, and I wanted to be ready for the worst blizzards. As it happens, we weren’t there for very long, and the blizzards aren’t bad as far down on the mountain as we were.” More of that years-old fear drained from her, and she smiled. “You might not believe it, but down here in the valleys the winter isn’t harsh at all; it seldom snows. And when snow does come, it doesn’t linger.”

  “I have trouble believing that, indeed, given how chilly it is at the moment,” Darian replied, “But if you say it is so, I will try to believe anything you tell me.”

  That brought a smile to his mother’s face, and she continued. “I don’t know what we would have done if we had been left on our own, but some of the hunters from Raven found us. They brought us here, and although we didn’t know it, we were intended to become someone’s slaves—but one of the Changed creatures attacked the camp first. By then, thanks to the Wisewoman, Kullen was up and about, and when the hunters couldn’t get near enough to the creature to kill it, we showed them how to build a pit-trap to take it. Would you believe it? They didn’t know anything but the simplest of snares!” She shook her head at the idea. “Well, that ended any talk of making us slaves, or so I’m told. We helped them trap any number of wretched Change-Creatures, clearing out the valley, and they adopted us into the tribe and made us their Chief Hunters. There isn’t much more to tell,” she concluded. “We taught them how to trap, and they taught us their ways. When we realized that we were right off the map, we gave up the notion of getting home. I knew that the people of Errold’s Grove would see you were taken care of.”

  Keisha was glad that Darian had not mentioned the way he’d been treated by the Errold’s Grove villagers now, and she suspected he felt the same. Why cause Daralie any more distress? What was in the past could not be changed, and if things had not happened the way they had, he might not be talking to her now.

  “I never gave up hoping that one day we’d get some word back to you, though,” she finished, looking up into his face with eyes that were the aged mirror-image of his. “That was why I kept sending the vests out. There was always that possibility that one day, someone in Valdemar would see one, would recognize the pattern, and ask about where it came from.”

  “And that was brilliant, Mother,” he replied, kissing the hand that he held. “Of all the things in the world that are likely to travel, it is trade goods that travel the farthest.”

  She blushed with pleasure at his praise, and spread her hands wide. “Well, we learned to live here, we came to love it, we prospered, the children came along—that is the sum of it. Here we do not count the passing of time by the day, but by the season, for the days are very like one another.”

  Darian was saved from having to reply to that by the appearance of a fast-moving party of happily shouting tribesmen, with a limping man—Kullen, no doubt—and a boy in the middle. Darian shot to his feet, shouting “Father!” and reprised the running greeting he had given his mother, while Keisha stayed prudently behind.

  Rather than joining her sons and husband, Daralie cast a speculative glance at Keisha. “Keisha Alder— your people are the Alders that lived south and east of the village?” she asked. “The ones with all the boys?”

  Keisha nodded, and Daralie looked her over carefully. “A Healer and a Herald out of the same family—your mother must be very pleased and proud.”

  “My mother is appalled and shocked,” Keisha retorted wryly. “Having her precious girl-babies turn out to be independent women with minds and vocations of their own was not what she had in mind. Husbands, spotless cottages, and grandbabies would have been more to her liking.”

  To her pleasure, Daralie laughed out loud. “Good for you, Keisha Alder!” she applauded warmly. “Be sure you keep that mind of your own! Any man worth spending time with will value intelligence over a spotless cottage and a milk-meek maiden, however pretty she is.”

  By the warm glance she aimed at her own husband, there was no doubt in Keisha’s mind what Kullen’s preferences were. Daralie was by no means a milk-meek maiden.

  This is the woman that raised Darian—came an unbidden voice in the back of her mind. So, what was all that nonsense you were worrying about? Something about Darian really wanting a honey-sweet maiden in his heart of hearts, and not being s
atisfied with you?

  But now the man and boy were approaching, with Darian between them, an arm around each shoulder. When Keisha got a good look at the boy, she was struck by how very like Darian he was.

  Daralie followed her look, and smiled fondly. “He could be Darian at the same age,” she said softly.

  “Kavin could not be more like his brother if they were twins separated in time.”

  But this little boy will never have his mother and father wrenched away from him, if fortune smiles, Keisha thought, watching how the child looked up at his father with undisguised adoration that spoke well for the man’s parental skills.

  Kullen Firkin limped heavily, and Keisha’s eyes went to the place at the end of his leg where a wooden form poked out of the bottom of his trews where his foot should have been. It wasn’t foot-shaped, but it wasn’t the peg she’d expected; it seemed to be the narrow end of a fat cone, which was interesting. I should try that shape with a patient some time....

  Where Daralie Firkin was small and slim (despite bearing five children), with soft, dark eyes and dark hair going to silver, Kullen Firkin was fair going to gray, with hazel eyes and a tough, wiry frame. The children, except for Darian, took after their mother rather than their father—but neither parent looked at all like the Errold’s Grove “norm,” which was to be brown-eyed, brown-haired, and stocky—muscular in the males, plump in the females. Small wonder that Darian had stuck out as the odd one.

  Kullen was in tears, making no effort to hide them, and Darian’s eyes were wet again. Keisha almost decided to absent herself from the reunion, but the glance that Darian cast at her said so clearly, “please stay,” that she changed her mind.