Nevertheless, he was a warrior, and that ought to give him a certain cachet and respect.
You know, to a certain extent, I’m actually Lord Breon’s equal - or his son Val’s, anyway. Now that was certainly an intoxicating notion, but in the hierarchy of Valdemar, it was true. The new Vale would qualify as a lord’s holding, and he was the heir-apparent to the leadership position.
:I hate to interrupt your introspection,: Tyrsell said dryly in his mind, :But just about everyone has left. I’d wait until you were done with your mental soliloquy, but then I’d have to gallop to catch up, and I don’t believe you ‘d enjoy that.:
He came to himself with a start. Tyrsell was right, the last of the laden dyheli herd had lined up to pass through the entrance of the Vale, and it was time for the rear-guard - himself and Tyrsell - to get on their way.
:Uh - thanks,: he said with embarrassment, as Tyrsell took his place at the end of the line.: I promise, I won’t do any more woolgathering.:
:I should hope not,: the dyheli stag replied with dignity.
As he and Tyrsell passed through the Veil, Kuari dropped off the branch on which he had chosen to perch and winged silently past them, into the uncontrolled, mist-wreathed forest outside. At this time of the year, the first couple of candlemarks before and after dawn brought floating streamers of mist up out of the ground to circle among the trunks until the heat of the day drove them off. There were no such mists inside the Vale of course, except on the rare occasions when the Elders decided that mist would make a pleasant “effect.” It was cooler out here, too, understandably damper, and the first thing he noticed when he came out through the Veil and took his place at the end of the group was the absence of flower scent. Flowers bloomed constantly in the Vale, day and night, regardless of season, but not out here. It was too late for spring flowers, which were all that bloomed in a heavy forest; spring was the only time that enough light reached the ground for blossoms, except in places where there were clearings. So the perfumes he had become accustomed to were replaced with the metallic tang of fog, the earthy taste of decaying leaves and needles, and the faint musk of the dyheli.
Tyrsell led a new herd, much bigger than the previous one, composed of his original core and most of the adolescent and young adult dyheli from the other herds of k’Vala. This gave some much-needed population relief to the k’Vala home-herds, and a much-needed outlet for the youngsters. It also greatly increased Tyrsell’s status - both that his herd was three times the size it had been, and that he was considered capable by the other king-stags of controlling so large a herd. Darian had been suitably impressed when he’d been told; this new herd established Tyrsell at the very top of herd hierarchy, a kind of dyheli Great Lord of State.
Because of the size of this herd, and because gryphons had been ferrying baggage and would continue to do so as long as there was baggage to ferry, there had been no need for anyone to have to leave anything behind. All in all, this would be a relatively easy resettlement, as orderly as any migration from an old Vale to a new one.
Except that we can’t just step across a Gate to get there, more’s the pity. It would take a week, roughly, of dawn-to-dark riding to get there, and he had no doubt that Snowfire meant that quite literally. They would rise before the dawn and not make camp until after dusk.
Still, it wasn’t anything he hadn’t done before, and he fell back into his habits of rear-guard, habits that fit him as comfortably as a well-worn and supple hawking glove.
:We’re about to be relieved of duty,: Tyrsell said suddenly, on the last afternoon of the journey, as they passed beneath trees that had changed very little with the passing of a mere four or five years. The dyheli pricked his ears forward, and Darian turned to see a figure riding back along the line of baggage-laden dyheli, coming toward them. A moment later, he recognized Nightwind, and waved at her. She waved back, and when she got into conversational distance, told him, “Kel and I are going to take rearguard; we’re just about at the new Vale, and Snowfire and Starfall thought you two might like to enter at the head of the line instead of the tail.”
:Well! That’s a courteous thought!: Tyrsell said with approval. :Thank you; I know I would prefer it.:
“Me, too,” Darian agreed self-consciously. He sent a brief thought to Kuari, then relinquished his duty to Nightwind.
By going into a hard canter, he and Tyrsell came up to the front of the line well in time to go through the titular entrance side-by-side with Starfall and Snowfire. He felt a swell of pride so powerful that he flushed as they gravely made space for Tyrsell to fit between them.
There was no entrance as such, no Veil, for there was as yet no real Heartstone, only a kind of superior node anchored in a physical rock formation. But the hertasi and the few Tayledras who had preceded them had set up two rough pillars of stone on either side of the pass that let them into their valley, to mark where the Veil would one day be.
And they had done some subtle defensive improvements as well, although you would have to know what you were looking for to find them. They had made the sides of the hills far steeper, making it very difficult for an armed force to get into the new Vale by climbing the hillsides. There were well-camouflaged guard points on those hillsides, and anyone who tried to invade that way would shortly be full of arrows. But to look at them, there was nothing more unusual here than exceptionally steep rock formations, formations that had probably been this way since the beginning of the world.
No swarm of dyheli and hertasi met them this time; the hertasi were probably working hard on the building. But Ayshen, who had gone on ahead, did meet them, standing in the center of the path, actually bedecked in his formal costume, bowing ceremoniously to all three of them.
“The hertasi of k’Valdemar Vale welcome you to your new home, friends and brothers,” he said ceremoniously. “May there always be as much pleasure here as you bring with you.”
Starfall smiled, and bowed in return. “Your welcome doubles our pleasure, my brother,” he replied. “It is good to be home.”
Starfall dismounted, which seemed to be the signal for everyone else to do the same. “Allow me to guide you to your new ekele,” Ayshen said, and without waiting for a reply, led the way up the path that looked increasingly familiar with every step. It wasn’t one of the paths in k’Vala - but it also wasn’t the path that Darian remembered.
Someone had been hard at work on the plantings, someone like Steelmind, who could coax plants into amazing growth spurts in a very short period of time. Although by no means as lush as k’Vala, there were the vine screens, plantings of exotics, and tree sculptures that Darian had come to think of as “proper.” The path twisted and turned, crossing over the little stream he remembered, with rustic bridges and artistically placed stepping stones providing dry-footed crossings. From time to time, Ayshen stopped, and pointed out a dwelling of one sort or another - most of them proper tree-built ekele, though the trees never supported more than one, and access was by means of a rope ladder more often than a staircase. When he stopped, those who found the place attractive would pause long enough for a discussion of who was the most taken with the situation. The discussions never lasted too long; one person (or two, if it was a couple) would remain, the dyheli with the appropriate baggage would remain, and everyone else would go on. Starfall quickly took possession of an ekele built in the tree where his old camping place had been, and no one disputed him. Then Ayshen stopped in front of what appeared to be a vine-covered mound.
“This was your original camping place, Snowfire,” he said. “And I wondered if either you and Nightwind or Darian would have a preference for it.”
“Have you made an ekele in the cliff where Nightwind and Kel originally camped?” Snowfire asked.
Ayshen nodded. “Actually,” he said with evident pride, “I designed that one, and it’s built both on the cliff and in the cliff - rather like an ekele without a tree, with a balcony outside. But I thought I’d offer you this first.”
Snowfire lau
ghed. “You needn’t have bothered; it sounds like a White Gryphon home, and I already know what Nightwind will want. How about you, Darian? Do you want this site?”
Although he wondered a little just what was underneath that mound of leaves - which certainly seemed bigger than the primitive hut that he remembered - Darian knew one thing for certain. This place was on the ground, and there were going to be storms in this Vale for some years yet. It would take a long time to power up the new Heartstone to the equivalent of the k’Vala Stone. And until k’Valdemar - whose idea had that name been? - was sealed against the weather and the seasons, he did not want to live in a tree that would sway in a storm!
“I’ll take this,” he said instantly. “If no one else likes it better than I do.”
Snowfire laughed again, as did several others. “Little brother, I doubt that anyone here but a kyree or a hertasi would care for a dwelling on the ground the way you do,” Ayshen said genially. The dyheli carrying Darian’s baggage separated from the rest, and the group went on, leaving Darian in solitary possession of his new home.
The first thing he did was to take the baggage off the patient dyheli so that they could go off to graze or rest. As they paced off with the click of carefully-placed hooves, he turned his attention to the ekele.
It took him a moment to find the door, and it was a door, now, a good, solid, wooden door with a handle, not a mere screen of vines. When he opened it, he stared in open-mouthed disbelief at what lay behind it.
This place could not be more unlike the hut that had once stood here. Beneath the vines were solid walls, as thick as his forearm was long, at least. Outside, they were the same color as the vines; inside they had been whitewashed. The floor had been covered in flat paving stones, cunningly fitted together so that a sheet of paper could not fit between them, and sealed with grout. There was a stone fireplace in one wall, real windows with glass in them in the others. The windows were fairly well covered by the leaves and didn’t let in much light, but there were skylights in the remarkably thick roof that took care of that deficiency. Like most Tayledras dwellings, there wasn’t a straight line to be seen, for all the walls and even the doors and window frames curved. Instead of furniture, there were window seats, low tables, thick rugs of fur and fleece, and cushions everywhere.
A door in the same wall that held the fireplace led to a second room, but Darian waited to bring his baggage inside before he explored further. When he did, he discovered that the fireplace was shared with this room, which was a sleeping chamber, quite windowless and without a skylight, with a bed built into the wall and chests woven of willow branches for clothing. There was yet another door leading out of this room, and his curiosity took him onward.
Much to his delight, it was a bathing chamber, as he had found in the guest houses in k’Vala, with a pipe leading into a spacious tub, another into a washbasin, and a water-flushing “necessary” that would be far more comfortable to use than a privy! One of the first things he had learned from Snowfire was how to use magic to heat his bath water, so even the cold water coming from the stream in midwinter would be no problem. Light came from another skylight, and someone in a fit of whimsy had built containers to hold plants all around the edge of the skylight and planted flowering vines in them. Now as long as he could remember to water them, he’d have a touch of k’Vala here all year long!
The thick walls would keep this place warm in the winter and cool in the summer, the vines screening the skylight would keep out direct sun in the summer, but when they lost their leaves, would allow warm sunlight to penetrate in the winter. There was no direct light in the bedroom, exactly as Darian preferred. If he had designed the place himself, it could not have suited him more - and all of this, hidden under an innocuous mound of leaves!
He unpacked his baggage quickly, stowing it away wherever things seemed best to fit. What little furniture there was matched the ekele perfectly, being formed of bent, polished branches with the bark removed, or woven of willow withes. And as he put the last of his belongings away, the thought hit him with the suddenness of a lightning strike that this was his own home! He shared it with no one, it wasn’t a guest house, this was his, entirely his to decorate as he chose, to clutter as he chose (or rather, as much as the hertasi would let him), to change as he chose.
My own place. . . . Bigger than the cottage he had shared with Justyn, and far, far superior to that dark little hovel.
Dear gods, I think I feel grown up!
That was certainly the measure by which people judged in Errold’s Grove. You weren’t an adult until you had a house of your own, however tiny and poorly built. Until then, you were a child, and subject to the orders and whims of the adults in whose house you lived.
He sat down in one of the window seats and took a deep breath, savoring the moment.
Then he went out to find Snowfire and see this peculiar cliff house of his.
He knew where Nightwind and Kel had set up housekeeping, of course, so he headed for the lake at the end of the valley and the cliffs overlooking it. Kel was already in residence, stretched out on a ledge near the top of the cliff in the sun, overseeing a line of hertasi carrying baggage up a stair that had been carved out of the living rock. At the top of the stair was a balcony with a low stone railing. A dark recess behind it probably represented the door into the new dwelling. The ledge Kel had draped himself over had a similar dark recess behind it, and belatedly Darian realized that this must be his home as well.
He followed the last hertasi up the stair, and tried not to think about how far down it was as he climbed, nor how much he wished that there was a railing on the staircase. Though the railing about the balcony ledge was no more than knee-high, he was very grateful for its presence.
There was a door cut into the rock, and windows, too; that was all he had a chance to see for the moment, as Kel greeted his arrival by leaping to his feet and bounding over to the balcony from his own ledge.
“Isss thisss not a marrrvel?” the gryphon chortled. “Ayssshen isss a geniusss! Except that it isss a lake beneath us and not an ocean, and the rrrock isss grrray, thisss could be White Gryphon! I feel entirrrely at home!”
“And so do I,” Nightwind echoed, as she came out onto the balcony. She was smiling broadly and held out her hand to Darian. “Even Snowfire is happy - ”
“Snowfire is more than happy,” the Hawkbrother interrupted her. He stepped right up to the edge of the balcony and peered down. “Not only is this as high up as any good scout-ekele, but I think I can dive into the lake from here.”
“Don’t you dare!” cried Kel, Nightwind, and Darian all together.
“Why not?” he asked, turning away from the ledge, wearing a grin that was the equal in mischief to his cousin Summerdance’s.
“You’ll break your silly neck, that’s why not,” Nightwind said tartly. “It’s not deep enough, and the cliff slants out, not in. There is at least one thing you don’t have to do to keep up with Starfall.”
“Yet,” added Ayshen from the doorway, “there’s plenty of time to dig it deeper at this spot.”
Nightwind threw up her hands in exasperation, as all three males, Darian, Kel, and Snowfire, now went to the edge to look down at the sparkling waters of the spring-fed lake with speculation.
“I don’t think so,” Darian finally said. “You’d have to dive out too far. Nightwind is right, there’s too much stuff you could hit on the way down.”
“That, too, could be changed in time,” Ayshen said agreeably. “But we do have many other tasks that will take precedence.”
“Far too many tasks,” Snowfire confirmed, with a sigh. “And by the time we have the resources, I’ll probably be telling my offspring why they shouldn’t dive off from here. Nightwind will never forgive me if I remove the obstacles in their path.”
“You can count on it,” his mate said darkly, a hint that a laugh would be out of place at this moment, so Darian choked it down.
Instead, when every
one but Kel went back inside, he followed. Kel took up his place on his ledge again, stretching out in the sun with a huge sigh of contentment.
Inside, the walls had been whitewashed just as the walls of Darian’s home had been, and for the same reason, to make the rooms brighter. The windows were larger than Darian had expected, but instead of glass, had that odd transparent substance, tougher by far than glass, that served as windows in tree-ekele. It occurred to Darian that his skylights must be made of the same substance, in case of a hailstorm.
The furnishings were similar to his own, though there were more pieces of furniture and fewer piles of cushions. Someone had managed to carve a fireplace out of the rock, though Snowfire was perfectly capable of warming the whole home with magic if he had to.
“The bedroom is as dark as a pit,” Snowfire said, as Darian glanced at a further doorway. “Not that this is bad, mind you. I’ll just have to get used to it. I do admire the bathing room, though, Ayshen, and I do not want to think of the amount of work it took to get piped water up here.”
“The water comes down, from a cistern of rainwater, until you exhaust it. Then the amount of work will come from your muscles on the pump, my friend,” Ayshen grinned. “No free-flowing water without a full Heart-stone, you know.”
“It’s worth it, and by the time I’m too old to pump water, we’ll either have a full Heartstone or I’ll be able to delegate the task to the children.” He laughed. “I also appreciate the thick walls of solid stone between the master bedroom and the others. That is one advantage one does not have in an ekele, being able to shut out the shrieks of sibling rivalry or playtime!”
Darian grinned. Well, it looked like Snowfire really was settling down, if he was making plans and statements that included future children!
“Why do you think the cliff houses at White Gryphon are such desirable property?” Nightwind responded. “Ayshen, is the rock at the back sound enough to continue to cut new rooms?”
“Quite sound,” Ayshen replied. “You’ll be able to get a nursery and at least three bedrooms back there before you run into flawed material.”
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