“I ‘spose not.” Darian sighed, and didn’t ask any more questions.
Snowfire made a note to tell Adept Starfall what the boy had said about it being difficult to change the natural course of a river, and how that might apply to the ley-lines. It was something he doubted that the Adept had wanted to consider deeply, and it could spell trouble at some point in the future.
:Any problems?: he asked Hweel, who was still wafting along in their wake, branch to branch every thirty or so horse-lengths, keeping a wary eye on things behind them.
:All quiet,: the bird replied. :Hungry.:
He considered how far they were from the clearing, how many times he had undertaken to break the trail, and how long it might take the barbarians to catch their horses. He concluded it was safe enough for Hweel to take the time to go catch something.
:Hunt,: he suggested to the bondbird, who needed no second invitation. Hweel had heard the call of a covey of quail some little distance back, and was eager to see what he could do about helping to control the population.
Owls often seemed more purposeful about their hunting than hawks, or more especially, the falcons. It was no great amount of time later that Snowfire sensed the burst of visceral bloodlust that meant Hweel had gone in for a kill, followed swiftly by triumph and accomplishment. A little longer, and Hweel was back in the air and catching up, now with a full stomach, radiating satisfaction. For a bird Hweel’s size, a single quail was a reasonable meal, but not a full day’s ration; the owl would probably go out again at night to hunt if Snowfire didn’t provide him with something.
The horse was not nearly as swift as a dyheli, especially not with a double burden, and the light coming through the trees had taken on a distinctly red hue when Snowfire reached the outskirts of the encampment. He whistled the recognition call for the outermost sentry, and a moment later, spotted the flash of a suntail hawk-eagle’s creamy breast in the branches above him. Three of the scouts were bonded to suntails, so it could have been any one of the three who were standing watch, but he thought it was Eere, Skyshadow’s second-year bird.
:Go in ahead,: he told Hweel, wearily glad that it was a suntail and not one of the forestgyres, who were fond of teasing the big owl. Not that they would ever harm Hweel, nor would Hweel ever retaliate with anything more than an irritated beak snap, but Hweel was a ponderously serious bird in many ways, and being teased put him in a bad mood. Just at the moment, having his bondbird grumbling and hunched in a tree was a situation Snowfire didn’t want to be forced to endure on top of his other pains.
His arm hurt more and more as they rode, and given a choice, he wanted most to see Nightwind and have it tended to, then drink his weight in pain-killing tea and sleep for about a day. The last of his energy ran out shortly before they reached camp. Fortunately, the boy had been cooperative and quiet during most of that time, and his questions and conversation had been polite and subdued the rest of the time. Perhaps he had sensed that Snowfire was not feeling up to conversation.
The horse took them through some truly spectacular territory, and he wished vaguely that he was feeling good enough to appreciate it. Ancient trees with trunks the size of entire houses stretched toward the sky, their roots firmly embedded in the sides of steep, boulder-strewn hills; rocks thrust themselves out of the soil in fantastic and baroque formations. Tiny, threadlike streams sparkled and danced over rocks in the valleys, or threw themselves headlong down the rocky cliffs and hillsides in exuberant waterfalls that were more spray than stream. Anywhere that the dense foliage overhead allowed a ray of sunlight to penetrate to the ground, other plants flourished - a patch of luxuriant grass studded with flowers, a gnarled bush with glossy leaves, or a graceful young scion of one of the giants that loomed overhead. This was the season of birdsong, and their calls fluted through the shadows from every direction. A fresh, warm breeze carried the faint scent of forest flowers and evergreen on its wings. The only problem, so far as Snowfire was concerned, was that his throbbing arm got in the way of being able to enjoy his surroundings. At the moment, they were something to be endured rather than enjoyed, until landmarks would tell him that he was nearing the camp.
Finally, with grateful relief, he saw just the landmarks he was looking for, and soon he was riding down a long rift that would open up into the valley that his group had turned into as near a Vale as was possible for so temporary an encampment. Nature had provided a fine little valley with tiny springs trickling out of the hillside at the back, which the current dwellers had diverted into a series of three pools; what nature had not provided, the Tayledras had fashioned, constructing temporary, ground-built ekeles with stone, spools of cord, windfallen tree trunks, carefully tended vines, and the canvas of their tents as roofs. When Adept Starfall found this place to be nearly ideal for his purposes, a bit of extra work made the camp into a place of more comfort and more security than mere tents would have permitted. It made more sense that way; with strong, secure walls about them and a few creature comforts, they all rested better, had more privacy, and felt healthier and happier for both, which allowed them to do their work without missing the comforts of the Vale too much. The spring-fed pools gave them one for drinking water, one for washing, and one that could be heated with dozens of fire-warmed stones (or, for those with the Gift, with magic) for soaking weary bodies. They would be here for as long as it took Starfall to impose his will on the newly forming magic-matrices, and for as long as it took to find and deal with any Changebeasts that were still in the area - probably into fall.
Snowfire was very glad for those creature comforts waiting for him, especially the hot pool. He certainly felt that he had earned them.
A fellow called Sunleaf, who was bonded to a forestgyre, had an interesting sort of magic with plants that allowed him to bend them to his purposes and accelerate their growth in a way that was quite remarkable. Outside the encampment, he had coaxed bushes and vines into a thickness and luxuriance that hid the camp from sight, and within it, he had made vines grow in screens that divided the area up and gave a remarkable amount of privacy, and got vines to grow over each ekele, shrouding them in cool green that hid the structures beneath an avalanche of leaves. It looked, in fact, as if they had moved into a place that had been abandoned to the forest for decades, instead of one that they had just built.
Snowfire sensed the boy’s interest as they rode into the valley and toward the little welcoming party of three that awaited them. It was a small welcoming party, and Snowfire blessed the Adept’s good sense, as it was composed of only Tayledras who would not alarm the boy - the Adept himself, the gentle trondi’im Nightwind, and the youngest of the scouts, Wintersky, who was something of a protege of Snowfire’s, and shared his ekele. Of course, Wintersky mostly had the ekele to himself, since Snowfire spent a great deal of time with Nightwind. None of the three could possibly frighten the boy, who’d had enough fright for one day, though Starfall looked very imposing, and probably more like the boy had imagined a Tayledras to look than Snowfire did. Wintersky wore the same scouting-garb that Snowfire did, but Nightwind and Starfall showed the other faces of Tayledras life in their dress. Starfall wore the trailing robes, jewelry, and embroideries of someone who does not expect to be covering a great deal of territory in wild forest, and Nightwind the comfortable, colorful, loose garments of someone who does expect to be doing a great deal of physical and practical labor, but who does not have to worry about fading into the landscape. Starfall’s waist-length hair hung loose, with a minimum of ornaments braided into it, Wintersky’s hair was dyed in leaf patterns and confined in a single tail, and Nightwind’s was still dark, for she practiced little magic and had never lived in a Vale with a Heartstone to bleach her hair. She was, in fact, not k’Vala at all, but k’Leshya, the “Lost Clan” of the ancient days, come up out of the farthest West.
But at the moment, all Snowfire could think of was how glad he was to see them all. He slid down off the horse and found his legs unexpectedly wobbly; he man
aged to save himself from embarrassment by holding for a moment to the pommel of the saddle, and offered the boy his good hand as an aid to get down.
Darian smiled at him wanly. “You don’t look so good,” he said, with that blunt frankness of a child who hasn’t yet figured out that one doesn’t always have to voice what one observes. “I can manage to get down myself.”
And he did, but his legs were just as wobbly as Snowfire’s when he slid off the horse’s ramp and landed on the ground - though in his case, it was probably from a mixture of fatigue and unaccustomed riding than from pain.
“This is Darian k’Valdemar,” Snowfire told the others, in Valdemaran. “He’s never seen Tayledras before, and he knows nothing of us. Darian, this is Adept Starfall, who is our Elder and the leader of this group. This is trondi’im Nightwind, who is going to patch up the tears in your hide as she does for the rest of us who have the misfortune to ran through brambles.”
Darian rubbed some of his scratches with a bit of self-conscious embarrassment, even though some of them were deep and he had many braises as well.
“And this is Wintersky - “ He looked askance at the younger man, who grinned at Darian and finished the sentence.
“Wintersky, who will share his quarters with you and Snowfire, unless you prefer to camp alone in a tent, or have us make some other arrangements.” The young man winked. “I pledge you I do not snore. My Valdemaran is the best of all of us save the mighty hunter Snowfire, so I thought I’d volunteer our ekele. It’s always better to have people about who know your tongue fairly well. Snowfire does snore, though.”
Darian was clearly getting overwhelmed; his eyes looked a trifle glazed, his face was pale, and his expression bewildered. “I don’t mind, I mean, that would be good - whatever you like - “
“Whatever it is that I like is that you are to come and be tended, and be eating and drinking, and be then sleeping,” Nightwind said firmly, taking the boy in charge with maternal authority. The boy yielded to her with relief and gratitude, and she ushered him off.
“I’ll report in brief, and then I need to be tended, eating, drinking, and then sleeping after you’ve gotten the full report,” Snowfire told the Adept, as Wintersky took the horse and led it away to be watched by the dyheli herd. “Hweel saw the boy being chased by northern barbarians. Bearclan would be my guess, but they were all wearing identical armor, and I don’t much care for what that implies.”
“Neither do I,” Starfall said, his brows furrowing.
“Their tattoos would have told me more, but things were rather impolite at the time, and I didn’t stay around to request a viewing from those remaining.” Snowfire noted Starfall’s lips twitch as he tried not to smile at the understated and offhand manner Snowfire was taking with the tale.
“How impolite?” Starfall asked.
“Only two casualties. Not even a minor quarrel by Bearclan standards. Hardly more than an ordinary drunken brawl-though I did make sure to substitute the boy’s arrows for mine; I didn’t want to alert them to our presence. Still - one of them had caught the boy by the time I got there, and he and his colleagues were exchanging pleasantries that implied they had been . . . improving some Valdemaran settlements.” He dropped his tone of levity. “I think that the boy belonged to the latest one, though I have not yet questioned him at all. I wished an Empath to be present when I did.”
Starfall lost all trace of humor at that. “So, you have barbarians in identical armor, what amounts to something more serious than a little banditry, and all this a good bit farther south than we should expect to see mountain tribes. I shall check my maps, but. . . .” Starfall shook his head. “I do not like this, Snowfire.”
“Neither do I, since the barbarians don’t move in groups larger than a dozen without having a shaman-mage along with them.” Snowfire had been letting what he knew about the northern tribes dig itself out of his memories during the last part of the journey; he was better at recollection when he allowed the memories to surface on their own. “And they don’t use horses as a rule, yet all of the barbarians I saw were mounted.”
“This isn’t sounding very promising.” Starfall bit his lip for a moment. “Well, the best thing that I can do is to move the progress I was making on ahead. It won’t take more than a day or so, and I’ll have the matrices set up and completely in my control; I’d like to see the mage that can get it out of my hands then.”
“I wouldn’t,” Snowfire replied. “But if there was someone able to do that, he’d have challenged you already, so the worst we’ll have to deal with is someone your equal. I think we can do that.”
“And I think you’d better have someone look at that arm while you get some hot food inside you,” Starfall pointed out. “Your stoicism is respected, but not required. Go, you can make a more detailed report after you’ve rested and gotten properly patched up - and by then, the boy will be rested, too, and we can find out why barbarians on horses were chasing him.”
Now that his initial report had been made, he had the relief of the discharge of duty, and a great weariness descended on him. He decided that the best place for him was in his shared ekele. Fortunately, it was one of the nearer structures; he rounded two vine screens, and there it was, looking like nothing so much as a leafy hummock. He parted the vines with his good hand, and found that Nightwind had already preceded him there.
He had taken weather-felled limbs and constructed a fine log home, octagonal in shape, with a roof of sod held up by logs and willow withes woven into fine mats. The snug dwelling would probably serve as well in winter as in summer, except that he would have to fill in the bottom rank with sod; he had left off the bottom rank of logs on four of the eight sides so as to allow the movement of air through the place. A cool breeze came in at the level of the floor and went out at the smoke hole in the middle. It had been a great deal of extra work to make this ekele, but he reckoned it had been worth the work. A lantern with a mage-light in it hung from one of the ceiling logs. His sleeping place and Hweel’s perch were on the far right as one came in the door, and Wintersky’s sleeping pad and Tiec’s perch were on the left. That left a cooking place in the middle, and any gear they shared near the door. Now there was a third sleeping place at the rear, with the boy sitting sleepily on it and Nightwind beside him.
Snowfire saw at once that someone had left a young rabbit on Hweel’s perch, which meant Hweel would not have to hunt tonight. Pleased by the courtesy, he slipped back out before Nightwind noticed he was there and called Hweel to the fist.
The owl dropped down on his arm with customary aplomb, and ducked his head as Snowfire brought him in. This time, the boy, who did not seem to be noticing much, reacted very strongly and positively to Hweel.
His mouth formed a silent “Oh!” and his eyes went round, but there was no sign of fear in him. Nightwind noticed the lad’s reaction, and smiled over her shoulder at Snowfire.
Snowfire took that as an invitation to come closer. Darian stared at the huge owl with intense interest. “Is that your bird?” he whispered, as if he was afraid that he might startle the owl. “I heard Hawkbrothers had birds, but I didn’t know they were that big! He’s - he’s amazing!”
Snowfire flushed a little with pleasure; he was not proud of much, but he did take a certain pleasure in having so magnificent a partner as Hweel. “Yes, he is, isn’t he?” he agreed. “His name is Hweel, and he was watching out for us, flying behind us in the trees, all the way back. Would you like to touch him?”
“Can I? He won’t mind?” Darian looked quite as if Snowfire had given him permission to shake the Queen of Valdemar’s hand.
“Hweel is excessively vain, and extremely fond of scratches, and if you are going to offer him plenty of admiration and caressing, he will be your friend for life,” Night-wind said with mock severity.
Hweel clacked his beak at her, then softened the rebuke with the soft “huuur” an adult would give a nestling.
“Go ahead,” Snowfire urged.
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Darian reached hesitantly to touch Hweel’s breast-feathers, but the owl had other ideas. Quick as thought, he leaned down and butted his head against the outstretched hand, and before he knew it, Darian was scratching the top of the owl’s round, densely-feathered head.
“He’s so soft!” the boy exclaimed with delight.
“Don’t be afraid to give him a good scratching,” Snowfire told him, as Hweel stepped down off the gauntlet to the floor, and made his odd little sideways sidle up to the boy. “You’ll have to work to get through all the feathers on his head.”
The owl closed his huge eyes in bliss as Darian scratched with more vigor, and shoved his head practically into Darian’s chest. Snowfire was delighted, both with the boy’s reaction and with Hweel’s, and for the first time he entertained the thought that if the boy had nowhere else to go, he might wish to join k’Vala.
Well, it is enough for now that he is not terrified of the bondbirds, and that the bondbirds take to him. Either would be amazing enough, but having both is wonderful. We can worry abolit what is to become of him when we have a better idea of what he has involved us in.
Nightwind allowed the boy some time to caress Hweel, and before either of them tired of the sport, she Mindspoke to the bird, :Enough. He will still be here in the morning, and so will you. Right now, he needs to sleep.:
As Hweel heaved a great sigh of regret, she said virtually the same thing to the boy. “Sleep, it is time for; you and Hweel will be here both when sun rises.”
Reluctantly, the owl raised his head and the boy took his hand away, but before he could take it entirely out of range, the owl reached out with his powerful beak and gently nibbled Darian’s fingertips.
“That is a high compliment,” Snowfire told him, as the boy glanced at the Tayledras for an explanation. “He doesn’t offer that particular sort of ‘thank you’ to just anyone.”
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