Owlknight v(dt-3 Page 8

  Meeren, her own hertasi, stood beside the path, holding aside a curtain of vines for someone who had come from the opposite direction. He saw them, and beckoned them on; they hurried their steps and he grinned, showing all his teeth, as they reached him.

  “Ah, the final pair!” Meeren exclaimed. “With you, we are ready to begin the celebration at last!”

  Keisha ducked under the slant of vines, and was seized from behind by a pair of strong arms. “Keisha!” Darian crowed, spinning her around and around until she was dizzy. “You found my presents!”

  “What? The dress? The feather?” she asked, trying to catch her breath, her head swimming as he finally stopped whirling her around. “Never mind, thank you for both - oh, Darian, congratulations! This is - wonderful!”

  She cupped both her hands around his chin and pulled his head down for a long, heartfelt kiss. She heard the others whooping behind her, and for once, was not embarrassed by their rowdy attentions. She was wholeheartedly proud of him, and happy for his achievement, and she wanted him to know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. His arms closed around her as he drew her close, and for a time the cheers and hoots faded into a faint murmur as her ears filled with the pounding of both their hearts.

  Then he let her go, and she took a step backward, smiling breathlessly up into his wide grin. She hadn’t even gotten her scattered wits together when he seized her hand and led her ceremoniously to a seat on the far side of a little clearing, where two enormous cushions had been braced against backrests placed on the ground. “My lady,” he said, gesturing broadly as he bowed to her, his grin as wide as ever, “if you will choose your seat, we can begin.”

  She took the seat to the right; he dropped onto the cushion at the left, and a steady stream of hertasi moved into the clearing, each carrying a platter. As was usual at these casual celebrations, the hertasi carried each platter around the circle of diners, and they helped themselves. If the platters still had anything left on them, they made the rounds a second time. Hertasi then returned bearing drink, pouring each cup full of a light spiced wine. There was very little alcohol in this wine; Tayledras drank it for the taste, not with the purpose of intoxication. That was one of the things that Keisha liked so much about living among the Tayledras. Celebrations in the village inevitably ended in drunks staggering about and making themselves nuisances, and the morning after inevitably brought a parade of hung-over sufferers to her door. But the rare intoxicated Hawkbrother took himself away to sleep it off as soon as he or his friends realized the extent of his intoxication, and he either found his own hangover remedy or quietly suffered the punishment for his overindulgence.

  Every morsel was delicious - even though most of it wasn’t special “feast” food. She quickly gathered that this was not a formal celebration, probably to spare the hertasi from any more extra work. The few special dishes could very well have been culled from the ones already in progress for the Heralds’ welcome. That made her feel easier; like Darian, she knew how hard the hertasi worked, and like him, she had not grown up accustomed to having them around. Putting any extra burden on them made her feel guilty.

  As the dinner proceeded, each of Darian’s friends in turn voiced a wish for the new Master, and when it came time for Keisha to give hers, she knew precisely what she wanted to say.

  “I salute our own Darian,” she said. “May he always be properly recognized for his accomplishments, and may he never regret a moment spent in achieving them.”

  She raised her glass, and the others joined her. Now, if this had been the kind of celebration one would find in Errold’s Grove, now would be the time that Darian made a speech. But the Hawkbrothers didn’t have that particular tradition, and Keisha was just as glad; Darian didn’t much care for making speeches, and he already had plenty he was going to have to produce when the Heralds arrived.

  Instead, those of the participants who cared to took turns entertaining the rest. About half of the population of this Vale were amateur musicians, and three of Darian’s guests had brought their chosen instruments with them - Silverfox being one, blindingly quick-fingered with a hand drum. One scout got up to teach a sculptor a step, and in no time at all, impromptu dancing had started. Keisha began to tap her fingers in time to the infectious beat, and Darian’s left foot did the same, until Darian could bear inactivity no longer.

  “Come on!” Darian urged her, jumping to his feet and holding out his hand to her. She loved dancing, and did not hesitate a moment in allowing him to help her to her feet, and joining him in the circle.

  They danced until the musicians were tired of playing, pausing only for cold drinks and a moment to catch their breath. She had danced with every male at the celebration, including Firesong (in a striking mask made of Aya’s feathers and polished quartz beads), and was just about out of energy. By that time, it was late enough that everyone agreed it was time to bring the party to an end. A final round of iced teas and juices - the ice cut during the winter and stored deep in hertasi-dug caves during the warmer months - allowed the heated dancers to cool down.

  Keisha leaned against Darian’s shoulder, tired, permitting herself the luxury of forgetting all about the duties of a Healer, and giving herself up completely to the pleasure of the moment. And the moment was glorious; glimpses of a sky full of stars appeared as the great tree above them moved its branches in a light wind. The air, perfumed faintly with night-blooming flowers, had cooled just a trifle since sundown but was still perfectly comfortable. Now that the musicians were done in, the murmur of conversation and the song of insect and bird provided another sort of melody.

  “So, Keisha, how was your visit?” Darian asked, shifting just a little so that she could settle more comfortably against his shoulder, and putting one arm around her to hold her steady.

  She groaned. “Mother managed to get me into a corner again. Other than that, it was the usual, nothing of any great urgency. I think they don’t need me so much as the potions I bring with me.”

  “We could always send your medicines over with the Council members,” he suggested. “You could cut your visits to every other week or so, instead of going once a week.”

  The idea was tempting. “Perhaps after Rana Trilvy’s baby comes. I wouldn’t care to upset a first-time mother.” Darian’s shoulder was warm, and his arm around her comforting. She shoved all of her doubts and misgivings into a corner of her mind and shut a door on them. “This was lovely; thank you for waiting for me.”

  His arm tightened slightly around her; she squeezed his hand in reply. “I knew you’d be disappointed if I didn’t. Besides, you don’t get nearly enough of a chance to simply enjoy yourself. When the village has a celebration, you spend most of the time dealing with accidents and drunks, and the next day with hangovers and belly-aches.”

  “Well, thanks to you, I’m going to get quite a few chances to do so in the near future,” she said, and laughed when he sighed. “Come on, it won’t be that bad, will it?”

  “I’m not so sure. The easiest is likely to be the Ghost Cat ceremony - and for that, all of the men will be stripping down and cramming into the sweat house until we’re equally parboiled. Then I exchange blood with the Shaman - I gather we each cut our palms and clasp hands - he declares that I’m his true son, with his blood in my veins and mine in his.”

  “That doesn’t sound too difficult,” Keisha observed. “Other than the parboiling part. By all the men, are you just talking about the Ghost Cat folk?”

  She heard the grin in his voice. “Oh, no, this includes Lord Breon and Val - Snowfire and Wintersky have to get in on this too, and maybe Starfall - and certainly Herald Anda. Should be very interesting to see how he reacts.”

  She giggled. “It should be very interesting to see how Lord Breon takes it!”

  The rest of the guests had started to slip away, by twos and fours, while they talked. She took a quick glance around, and realized that they were completely alone; not even a single hertasi had remained behind.
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br />   He was still caught up in thinking about the ordeals he was about to undergo. “Before that, there’s the knighting thing. I’ve got to do a night-long vigil, then Breon gets to put on his show, which is supposed to take the rest of the day. Oathtaking, knighting, ceremony following the knighting, speeches, tournament, feast, more speeches. The Ghost Cat people are probably going to be bored silly - and I know I will be, at least during the speeches.”

  “You will not - you’ll be making mental notes like you always do,” she retorted. “You’ll be figuring what people are thinking by what they say and don’t say, and who they look at while they’re talking. You’ll tuck all that away in your mind, and when we most need it and least expect it, you’ll pull something out in a Council session that will solve everything.”

  “Oh, come now!” he protested, laughing, “I’m not anywhere near that good!”

  “You only think you aren’t. The rest of us know better.” He didn’t say anything, but she could tell he was embarrassed. “You’d better get used to it; people rely on you, Darian, and you’re good enough to be depended upon,” she added. “I know, and Starfall, Firesong, and Snowfire know, that you’ve got the instinct. You read people beautifully.”

  “I don’t like to think that I’m manipulating them, though,” he replied, his voice uncertain. “That seems so unethical.”

  She chose her words carefully. “It isn’t that you’re manipulating them, it’s that you’re getting them to see things they wouldn’t think of for themselves. Eventually, when the problem is over, they do see, and the next time you won’t have to prompt them or coax them into it. I don’t think that’s manipulation, that’s education. Besides, in a sense, we all manipulate each other; that’s what happens when you are friends, when you trust and love someone. I manipulate people as a Healer, but it’s with skill and good intent. Sometimes I have to trick them in order to make their medicine work.”

  “I don’t know. . . .” He still sounded reluctant. “It just seems that I’m getting people to do things they’d rather not do at the time, and I wonder if that’s right.”

  “But aren’t they more inclined to do the same thing on their own, later, once you’ve persuaded them into it the first time?” she countered. “Think of Val! If you hadn’t shown him how awful fighting and warfare really is, he’d have been inclined to throw himself into the thick of battle the first chance he had! Now he takes the time to think things through, and see if there isn’t a way to solve a situation without killing anyone. I don’t doubt for a moment that if fighting turns out to be the only answer, he’ll still be right up in the front of it - you didn’t turn him into a coward, because that’s not in his nature. All you did was bring out a part of his nature he hadn’t bothered to develop before you talked to him.”

  “But what if he had been fearful, and I had turned him into a coward?” Darian replied.

  “What’s better? That he discover that he was really timid about fighting when he was in the middle of a fight, or when he was sitting safe at home?” she said instantly. “Which does the most harm - or the least? It seems to me that if he’d discovered he couldn’t bear the battlefield, he’d have had plenty of opportunity to cultivate courage or find an alternative place to be useful where he didn’t have to actually fight. But you know what kind of havoc a single fighter can wreak just by turning and running.”

  Darian sighed. “I guess you’re right.”

  She clasped both her hands over his and squeezed them. “You know I am, you mean. You never use your abilities with people to make them do something that’s alien to their nature - you just make them see alternatives and then try those alternatives. Some day it might happen that you run up against someone who doesn’t like the alternative you offer, and goes into it reluctantly, but you don’t nock an arrow to your bow and force him into it. He can always say no.”

  “But people don’t want to say no when I ask them to do something,” he protested. “It makes them feel guilty to turn me down, so they go ahead and do what I ask even though they don’t want to - ”

  “Then it’s their job to grow a stronger spine.” As far as she was concerned, that was the end of that argument. “And here we are, wasting a perfectly lovely evening by agonizing over things that haven’t ever happened! I can think of much better things to do with our time.”

  She hadn’t expected an immediate response, but she was very pleased when she got one. “So can I,” he replied, and turned so that she was no longer resting on his shoulder so that he could kiss her.

  Her body began to tingle pleasantly as he prolonged the kiss, nibbling delicately on her lip as she responded. She shifted a little so that she could put both her arms around him, losing herself in sensation. Meeren will see that the “privacy” sign is set up by the time we need it, she thought - and gave herself up to loving.

  Five

  Darian stepped back from the golden-oak wall panel he’d been holding up, and admired all of the new hertasi-work ornamenting the Companion stables. The structure was finished just in time. Thank goodness for gryphons. If we hadn’t had warning, we could have been caught in mid-addition.

  For the past several days, especially swift gryphons had been patrolling the main road to Errold’s Grove, on the watch for the approaching Heralds; even at the speed a Companion moved, a gryphon in the air traveled faster. A rough calculation gave them about a day’s warning before the visitors arrived. Last night the two had finally been spotted just before sunset, and the gryphon in question, a gyrfalcon-type with amazing speed, had come rushing back to the Vale as fast as she could with the news. She was exhausted when she arrived, but two more gryphons had been eager to take the news to Errold’s Grove and Lord Breon’s Keep, giving everyone advance notice that their very special guests were soon to appear.

  The basic structure of the attachment to the guest lodge meant to house the Companions had been finished quite quickly, but Ayshen (no mean architect) had planned for the ornamentation and elaboration to be completed in stages. No matter when the new residents arrived, the stables would appear finished. The first change had been to the fountain that supplied fresh running water; the initial installation had been a simple trough with water constantly flowing through it running along the rear of all three stalls. Utilitarian, but not very impressive; certainly not Tayledras. “There is power in style,” was all Ayshen would say concerning the redesign. Now each of the three stalls held a separate handsome terracotta basin, with a constant flow of fresh, clean water bubbling up from the bottom and drained by a pipe just beneath the rim at the rear. Outside, the pipes joined into one, which drained into an ornamental pond. Ayshen figured the fish wouldn’t mind secondhand water.

  The second change had been to add separate mangers for different sorts of foodstuffs; a hay rack just for hay, and smaller mangers and basins for oats, sweet-feed, and hot mashes. The hay rack had been fastened at the front of the stable for all three to share, but each stall had its own “special treat” containers; the latter were actually more terracotta basins which fitted into twisted-wire racks. The basins were removable, so that they could be taken away to be cleaned after use. The old wooden mangers that served for all food and were not removable for cleaning had been left in place, but trimmed with braided rope.

  Then the dirt floor was replaced with brick, laid over a layer of gravel, over which in turn first sawdust, then clean straw was spread. Since Companions weren’t horses, a “latrine stall” with a slanted brick floor was added, with a sluice to wash the waste away, and a drain to carry the waste to the waste tanks to be purified and turned into fertilizer. The Companions themselves could operate the sluice with a pull-rope, as they would be able to open all doors with a pull-latch and could come and go as they liked.

  The last set of improvements was to give the place ornamentation; paneled woodwork, carvings along the beams, shelves and a proper tack room. Whenever Darian found himself with a moment to spare, he’d gone to help the building crew, a
nd he’d been holding a wall panel in place when the news had come that the Heralds were within a few hours of arrival.

  I’d be perfectly happy to live here, he thought, looking around at the fine carvings, the solid appointments, the beautifully made door into the guest lodge itself, which was actually a double door. It was a regular door divided in half, so that the upper half could be left open for the Companions to stick their heads into the room.

  “You’ve done a terrific job, friends,” he said aloud to the crew of hertasi picking up their tools. “I can’t see anything that could be improved upon.”

  One of the nearest looked up at him. “I can,” the hertasi responded. “And if I can, you know that Ayshen will, too.”

  “This is better and far more gracious than anything outside of Haven,” he told the hertasi firmly. “I’ll tell Ayshen that myself. Besides, I think any further changes ought to be made after you consult with the Companions themselves, not before.”