Owlknight v(dt-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  “I don’t know if you’re right, but it certainly sounds logical,” Darian agreed. “But why not pick a junior who has the Gift?”

  “Two reasons again. One, there aren’t a lot of Heralds with Mage-Gift, and there might not have been anyone to send. It’s entirely possible that I’ll be replaced by someone who has it. Second - our generation is used to magic; we’ve grown up with it. We know what we can reasonably expect a mage to do and how he’ll think. Or - maybe I should say, the Heralds of our generation will; ordinary folk might be just as perceptive or completely oblivious.” She chuckled and winked at Keisha. “The point is, for someone to assist Anda, or even take over the post when he steps down, a Herald of our generation is perceptive enough to handle the job. Plus, they told me that my particular Gifts will be very useful to a diplomat.”

  She didn’t elaborate on what her Gifts were, leaving Darian to wonder just what it was she had. He knew about the limited ForeSight - which could presumably keep a diplomat from making a disastrous decision - but what else would apply?

  Keisha was staring at her sister with a mingling of surprise and chagrin. “Shandi, you have changed out of all recognition!” she managed. “When you left, you were - well, kind of dreamy and careless. Now - ”

  Shandi waved her hand at her sister. “It’s all in having a sense of purpose and a job to do. You were the one who always had that; there didn’t seem to be any place for me that made any sense. I didn’t really see myself as getting married no later than seventeen and raising ten or a dozen littles. The only thing I really liked was sewing, but you can’t make a life around fancy-work. I just drifted, right up until the moment Karles Chose me. Then, for the first time, I had a place that was my own, and an important job no one else could do.” She shrugged. “I haven’t so much changed as woken up, you could say, and as soon as I did, I started making up for lost time.”

  “With a vengeance!” Keisha looked at her sister as if seeing Shandi for the very first time. “No wonder you were able to render Mother speechless!”

  Now I’m happier than ever that Shandi’s here, Darian thought, surveying the two sisters, who were more alike than they would have guessed two years ago. She’s like fuel for Keisha’s fire.

  “Time to go, people,” Darian reminded them. They all shoved away from the table, which was promptly swarmed by hertasi, and by the time they had reached the doorway another group had taken it over.

  The sweat house was very dark inside, with only a little light leaking in around the blanket over the door. Sweat literally ran from every pore of Darian’s body as he sat knee-to-knee in the circle around the hot rocks in a pit in the center of the house. Thick with steam, redolent with the scent of cedar, the air was so hot it would have been torture to anyone who hadn’t been in the circle from the time the first rock was brought in.

  A hand touched Darian’s right elbow, and he accepted the bucket of water passed to him, taking up the dipper made of gourd floating on the top and drinking eagerly of water that tasted strongly of the bundles of herbs that had been soaking in it. Once in a very great while, and only under extreme conditions, there were herbs in there that were supposed to make “seeing the other side” easier, according to Shaman Celin Broadback Caller. That wasn’t the case today; this ceremony was meant to make Darian one of the tribe, not meant to be a vision-seeking. The herbs in the bucket were those that aided endurance and heat tolerance, nothing more esoteric.

  Still, even with that help, the heat in here had climbed considerably past the point that Darian had experienced the last time he was undergoing a ceremony. He was glad that they were on the last round, and from here on, although it wouldn’t get cooler, it wouldn’t get hotter either.

  This round was for silence; the rounds alternated, silence and speech. With each round, more hot rocks came in, fresh from the fire. They had been warming in the heart of the fire stack for half the day and hissed as they were brought in, glowing red from every pit and crevice. Poignant to Darian only perhaps was the fact that they were brought in scooped by a pitchfork. The ceremony began with a round of speech, and ended in a round of silence, or rather, listening. Outside the sweat house, the women surrounded the building, drumming. Six of the Eldest sat in a half-circle around a huge drum made from a section of tree trunk; the rest were placed around the sweat house with hand-drums. All of them beat the same, simple rhythm during the silence rounds, the rhythm of a heartbeat. Darian felt as if he were sitting in the middle of the earth’s own heart as the drumbeat throbbed around him, vibrating deep in his chest. It was a magnificent effect, felt deep in the bones and lungs.

  He passed the bucket on to Anda, who was on his left, and stared at where the rock pit was, just in front of him, no more than a hand’s length away from his feet. He couldn’t see the rocks glowing anymore, but he certainly felt the steam coming off them when the Shaman tossed another ladle of cedar water on them. The rocks hissed as the water splashed on them, and it rose in clouds of heat that felt like a blow to the skin of his face.

  And yet he had to admit that all this felt curiously comforting, if not comfortable. There was no one partaking of this ceremony who did not want Darian to be there, the Shaman and Chief Vordon had seen to that. Unlike the ceremony of knighting, literally everyone here was a friend, and fully pleased to welcome Darian and his friends into their tribal circle. Even Anda must have sensed that, for now there was no hint of the earlier tension that Darian had sensed to his left.

  Outside, had the drumbeats quickened a little? It was the women who determined the length of the rounds of silence, signaling an end by increasing the speed of their rhythm until the drum song ended in three decisive beats.

  He thought there was tension in the air that had not been there a moment before. Perhaps the drums had sped up, and the women were about to set them all free into the cool air of early evening. He knew every nuance of the symbolism here; he and Shaman Celin had discussed the ritual for many long nights once Ghost Cat had decided to bring him into the tribe. This was in every sense a birth - did Anda know or sense that? He wasn’t sure how much the Shaman had told the Herald before the ceremony began.

  Tension increased; the air throbbed around him, pressing in on him. There was the recurring sensation that his skin no longer held him, but rather that his flesh and blood extended out into the sultry air, a vapor. Celin threw another dipperful of water on the stones. A second rhythm joined the first, both sets of drums driving onward, pace increasing slowly, but steadily.

  In the general area of the stone pit, a hazy hint of a glow appeared. At first Darian thought that his eyes were playing tricks on him; then he figured that Celin had opened the blanket over the door a trifle, and there was a ray of light reflecting and diffusing into the steam. But when he glanced to the side, the blanket was still firmly down, yet the glow had strengthened.

  Is anyone else seeing this?

  To his right, there was no sign that Kala saw anything but darkness - but to his left, he felt Anda stir and lean forward, peering at the glow.

  Little whispers of sound between the drumbeats told him that there were others who were seeing something, too. The glow brightened, and began to pulse in time to the drums.

  Celin hadn’t said anything about this!

  Now even phlegmatic Kala tensed; the glow was bright enough at this point to see the faint outlines of rocks piled beneath it.

  As the drums sped up, with each beat the glow pulsed and condensed, assuming a definite shape.

  A large four-legged shape.

  Suddenly, in the rounded area that could have been a head, a pair of fiery eyes appeared, exactly as if the mist-creature had just opened them. And the eyes were fixed on Darian.

  Darian caught his breath and sat very still, although his heart outraced the drums outside.

  A moment more, and the final pulse of light brought form and detail to the shape - but Darian had known from the moment those eyes focused on him what that shape would be. It was t
he Ghost Cat, the totemic spirit of Ghost Cat tribe. It was the size of a pony, with blue eyes exactly the color of a blue-white flame. This wasn’t the first time he’d seen it - though there had only been one other moment he had looked into its eyes while wide awake.

  The drums outside rose to a crescendo of frenzy.

  It paced toward him, putting one enormous, snow-shoe-sized-paw in front of the other, until it literally stood nose-to-nose with him. Then it slowly bent its head - he thought he felt a puff of cold breath on his feet - he couldn’t think through the frantic drumbeats that filled his body -

  Thud! Thud! Thud!

  With the last of the three beats signaling the end of the ceremony, the Ghost Cat vanished. From outside, the Eldest of the women flung the blanket up, and light and cool air poured into the sweat house as the steam rushed out. The steam glowed, but with natural, reflected light; swirls of fresh air entered and began to dissipate it.

  Those to the left and immediately at the door began crawling out, Shaman Celin first; although Darian was still trying to wrap his mind around what he’d just seen, he managed to respond when Kala nudged him and joined the rest to crawl in single-file out the sweat-house entrance.

  The light of the setting sun half-blinded him; as his head emerged, the women set up a mighty chorus of ululation; two of the Elder Women came forward and seized him under each elbow, pulling him to his feet. A third came forward with a bucket of cold water - which, after the heat of the lodge, felt like knives of ice! - and drenched him with it.

  He yelped, then performed as expected, gasping and sputtering; the women howled with laughter, then the two Elders wrapped him in a blanket and rubbed him down briskly, as impersonally as if he’d been a horse. They spun him three times around, then thrust him forward, staggering, to where a fourth woman waited to help him on with his clothing. Shandi and Keisha stood by on the sidelines, bent over with laughter, but he didn’t mind. He’d known exactly what was coming, and he was the one who had asked for Ghost Cat to invite both the girls to participate.

  The Shaman, clothed and dry, but with damp hair slicked back, came forward as soon as Darian was dressed; he grabbed Darian’s right hand and swiftly slashed a flint blade across his palm, in the fleshy padded part between the base of the thumb and the wrist. He did the same with his own, and before Darian’s cut had even begun to sting, Shaman Celin clasped their two bloody hands together, and raised them to the sky.

  “This is our new son, Kurhanna, whose blood is in my veins as mine is in his!” the Shaman shouted. “Welcome him to our circle!”

  A great cheer arose, and although the Shaman gave Darian a considering look that portended a long discussion at a later time, he said nothing. Instead, he stepped back and allowed the members of his tribe to carry their newest member off to their version of a formal feast.

  It had taken Anda a little time to get used to sitting on the ground and eating meat with only a knife, but now he seemed right at home among the tribesmen. With a leaf-wrapped strip of meat in his left hand and his knife in his right, Anda fed himself just as the tribesmen were doing, setting his teeth into the meat and cutting off a bite-sized portion, the blade coming perilously close to his lips. Despite the fact that he needed translations to understand what the men around him were saying, he managed to carry on tolerable conversations.

  In a situation unusual for Ghost Cat, and prompted by the wish to honor both Heralds, women mingled with men around the fire. Normally women had their own meals and fire, but that would have separated Anda from Shandi. The women were enjoying the novel situation, although the oldest of them had formed a little circle of their own off to the side. The unmarried women were taking full advantage of this unique opportunity to flirt, though the Elders among the women tried to quell them with disapproving glances.

  Evidently most of the men had gotten over their initial surprise and had simply accepted the appearance of their tribal totem as a unique demonstration of the spirits’ approval. The Clan would not be where it was now - namely alive and safe - if not for visions of the Ghost Cat in the past, the Tayledras agreed. It was not something simply made up or hallucinated; it had been there those times, as it was in the sweat house today. No one had said anything to Darian about it yet.

  Anda cast Darian a questioning glance now and again, but he had not pursued the subject of what they had seen any more than the other tribesmen had.

  Now it seemed that he had forgotten it entirely - or at least, he intended it to appear that way. Anda, as Darian had observed, was a very deep fellow, and if he didn’t want you to know how he felt about something, he could be as opaque as a sheet of stone.

  Darian was quite sure that every single person in that sweat house had seen the Cat, but had what seemed extraordinary behavior to him been something easily accepted by the rest of the men? Only the Shaman seemed to think it needed more examination.

  They’re used to seeing the Cat; after all, it led them here. Maybe the Cat always comes to greet new members of the tribe, and they were only startled because they hadn’t expected it to greet an obvious outsider like me.

  But that then posed the question, why didn’t Celin simply accept the explanation as well? What did the Shaman know that the rest of his kinsmen didn’t?

  Stupid question; a great deal, obviously, or he wouldn’t be the Shaman.

  This celebration reminded him of the time he’d spent with the k’Vala delegation that had gone into Valdemar to help clean out the problems created by the mage-storms. When they hadn’t been guested in someone’s keep - which was mostly, especially in good weather - they’d camped like this. The Vale was never completely dark, and it never had the feeling of wilderness that the land outside it possessed. Here, beyond the circle of firelight, was the dark. Within the lighted circle was fellowship - but beyond it, there was no telling what could lie in wait.

  But I fly an owl, and the night holds no mystery for me. That’s what my Northern name means, after all - Night-walker.

  Night-walker, Owl Knight, Tayledras - he was taking on a great many identities lately.

  He absently answered a question from the tribesman to his right, and movement to his left caught his gaze. Shaman Celin watched him closely, the old man’s eyes gleaming with reflected flames, and when he saw that he had gotten Darian’s attention, he gave a nod, then jerked his head toward his own lodge. Darian gave an amusing answer to his friend which sent the fellow into gales of laughter. With that for an ending to his conversation, he got up. As soon as he did so, the Shaman did likewise, and as Darian walked away from the fire, the Shaman joined him.

  One benefit of having been formally adopted was that Shaman Celin came right to the point as soon as they were out of easy earshot of the rest. Darian was now a member of the tribe, and no secrets need be kept from him.

  “You saw the Cat,” the Shaman said bluntly.

  “Everyone saw the Cat, Eldest,” Darian replied, just as brusquely. “Even Anda. I hope you have an explanation for him, because he’s bound to ask me, and I don’t know what to tell him.”

  The Shaman grimaced. “I was hoping you would have one for me - why the Cat came to your feet - and why he left this on the ground where you sat.”

  The Shaman held something out to Darian, something small and dark, difficult to identify in the flickering firelight. Darian took it from him gingerly.

  It was a black feather, roughly as long as his hand, probably from a corvid, like a crow, or perhaps a raven.

  Darian shook his head and fingered the feather thoughtfully. “I wish I had an answer for you, Celin,” he said candidly, and rubbed his head. “Perhaps the Cat didn’t leave it. Are you certain the feather wasn’t in there before we started?”

  “Yes,” Celin replied. Darian did not doubt him for a moment; Celin was very thorough in his duties; if he said the feather wasn’t in the sweat house before the ceremony began, then it hadn’t been there.

  “I suppose one of us could have brought it in a
ccidentally,” he said, but he was hesitant, because he hadn’t seen any corvids hanging about the enclave. And he didn’t see how anyone from k’Valdemar could have brought a feather this far - and tracked it into the sweat house after completely disrobing.

  Someone might have brought it in on purpose, but why? And why leave it where Darian had been sitting? Even if one of the men in the ceremony had secretly been resentful, there was no particular “message” that such a feather could have carried. The raven was not a bird of ill omen for the Northerners; in fact, the raven was one of their prominent totems. Yet since the raven was not a Ghost Cat totem, leaving a raven feather would mean exactly nothing, neither approval nor disapproval.

  And Celin would have made careful note of everything the Cat did anyway; if he said that the Cat had left this feather, whether or not Darian noticed it at the time, it was a fairly good bet that the Cat had done just that.

  “If it had been an owl feather, that would have made some sense. An obvious message of approval,” Celin said, thinking out loud. His eyes crinkled around the edges. “Spirits give clear messages when a clear message will accomplish more . . . they give riddles when the act of solving the riddle accomplishes more. Or, when the riddle itself is part of the answer. Are you certain this means nothing to you?”