Owlknight v(dt-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  It turned out to be not quite as long for her; she kept dozing off, first while Darian and Firesong worked over the vests, then later, while Darian and most of the Vale Council of Elders discussed possibilities in endless detail. In fact, the last thing she remembered was half-waking as someone picked her up and laid her on a pile of pillows, covering her with a soft lap-rug.

  She woke a second time when Darian shook her; when she raised her head, she saw from the thin light outside that it was dawn. Darian looked tired, but by no means discouraged; in fact, he appeared to be ready to set out for the north on a moment’s notice. “Ready to go to Ghost Cat?” he asked, taking it for granted that she would want to be with him.

  She caught herself just as she started to feel resentment; there was nothing to feel resentment about! She didn’t have patients, except the ones at Errold’s Grove, and they weren’t due to see her for a few days. And he knew that; he kept as close an eye on her schedule as he did his own.

  “As soon as I change,” she agreed, rubbing her eyes and yawning. Then she looked critically at Darian’s clothing. “You ought to also,” she chided gently. “It won’t take more than a moment.”

  He looked down at his rumpled, stained clothing, and blushed with embarrassment. He might not be a peacock like Firesong, but at least he isn’t as slovenly as a great many men I’ve known.

  “You’re right, and I will. Firesong once said to me, ‘Dress your best. Heroes in paintings always look terrific, and you never know when it might be your turn to become a legend.’ Perfect Tayledras reasoning, isn’t it? Come on, then,” he said, and offered her his hand.

  Before the sun actually crested the horizon, they were in the saddle and on their way past the Vale entrance - but Darian looked odd to her when Keisha glanced over at him. He was preoccupied with something, his forehead creased, his eyes narrowed as he concentrated. The tension suddenly around him made her muscles clench.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked sharply, wondering what had him so nervey all of a sudden. Both the dyheli flicked their ears back at him; they sensed something strange as well.

  “I’m trying to remember something,” he murmured, rubbing his temple. “Something about dreams. ...” His voice had a distracted tone; whatever the “dream” was, his mood was odd - as if the dream had overwhelming significance, and he had to recall it at all costs.

  It can’t be that - it’s just that he’s not thinking clearly.

  “What, have you been dreaming that the Northern Spirit Cat has been trying to send you messages?” she asked, trying to put a chuckle in her voice. She meant it teasingly, to try and get him out of this mood, but he responded as if he had just sat down on a tack.

  Even his dyheli stopped dead, ears flattened, as he jerked around to stare at her, eyes wide, pupils dilated.

  What did I say?

  “That’s it!” he shouted. “That’s it!”

  But without bothering to tell her what “it” was, he bent over the dyheli’s neck. In response to an unvoiced command, the young stag launched into a full gallop, and Keisha’s followed, leaving her no choice but to stifle her curiosity and hang on for dear life.

  They reached the Ghost Cat village in half the time it would normally have taken; the dyheli staggered into the village on their last bit of energy, and stopped, sides heaving. Unlike horses, they were in no danger of foundering, or Keisha would have been more worried about them than she was about Darian. Darian jumped down out of the saddle. As he sprinted for the Shaman’s log house, with the bundle containing the new vest clutched in one hand, his dyheli began its own slow, careful cool-down. Keisha took her time dismounting, and followed, noting the curious looks that Darian attracted as he ran, a small part of her hoping that he hadn’t lost his wits, the rest of her full of a faltering anxiety.

  The second surprise of the day came. The Shaman must have been expecting Darian, for he flung his door open before Darian even reached it and beckoned him to come inside. And when he looked up and saw Keisha standing beside her dyheli, he waved to her as well.

  The two men disappeared inside. She entered the door in time to hear Darian say, “... so is there a Raven clan?”

  “I don’t know out of my own knowledge, but the meaning of your dream and mine is now clear,” Shaman Celin said somberly, and looked down at the vest spread out on the bench between them. “This, however - this comes from Snow Fox tribe. There are still folk from Snow Fox among us, cured, but not strong enough yet to travel, for the cure itself exhausted them. Let us speak with them, and perhaps they can give us the last piece of what we need to know.”

  Darian was on his feet immediately, so completely focused on the Shaman that Keisha might not even have been there.

  And strangely, this didn’t trouble her; she was too relieved to discover that, whatever all this was about, Shaman Celin obviously knew all about it as well.

  As she trailed along in Darian’s wake, she felt a real sense of relief and even anticipation, which completely replaced the anxiety she’d felt on the way here. This was real, something she could deal with, and a perfectly reasonable and understandable obsession; if it had been her parents rather than his, she would have been just as focused as he was.

  Absolutely. They may drive me crazy, but they’re my parents. I know how he must feel.

  There was a log house in the farthest circle that had no tribal totems ornamenting it; instead, the house was decorated in stylized carvings of dyheli. Once again, the “holy dyheli” identified those who had come to seek a cure from Ghost Cat and the Sanctuary.

  Here they encountered a slight difficulty, for the Snow Fox tribe spoke a different variant of the northern tongue. It took Darian and the Shaman several tries before the most senior of the men left in charge of the invalids understood what they were asking. Keisha couldn’t follow him at all; he spoke so much faster than the Ghost Cat folk that he almost seemed to be speaking a different language altogether.

  He wasn’t all that old either; just out of adolescence, and probably newly come to full Warrior status. He was in charge of a band of young men his own age who had remained behind to guard and protect the three women and gaggle of youngsters who had not been strong enough to travel back to the tribal lands with the rest. The Shaman stood beside Darian as he and the young warrior sat facing each other on a bench just outside the door, with the morning sun full on them.

  Keisha stood by and watched, rather than listened, as Darian grew more proficient in the Snow Fox dialect with each passing moment. She suspected from the faint tingling she felt along the surface of her skin that he was using magic to help speed his acquisition of the tongue. The young warrior, biting his lip earnestly, was a bit alarmed.

  He must know it’s magic - but it isn’t dyheli magic. And Darian must look completely alien to the young man, with his Tayledras clothing and lighter hair and eyes than the Northerners had.

  The Shaman saw this as well, and stopped the conversation to reassure him; after a few words, the youngster became quite charmingly cooperative.

  Darian stooped and took a bit of charred stick from the ground to draw a crude map on the bench where they both sat, but the young man shook his head and put his hand over Darian’s. Clearly he didn’t understand maps; or at least, he wasn’t able to translate what he knew to map form.

  They do so much by rote - Keisha bit her lip, hoping Darian’s memory was up to this.

  Darian listened to him with fierce concentration as he described what must have been the journey here, committing every landmark to memory; frowning so, his eyebrows almost meeting in the center of his forehead, that Keisha knew he’d have a headache before this was over.

  At last, Darian sat back, his frown fading and being replaced with a smile. He thanked the youngster - that much, at least, Keisha understood! - made some polite comments, then he and Celin took their leave.

  Darian reached out and took her hand as he passed her, giving it a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry if I seeme
d to be ignoring you, ke’chara,” Darian said apologetically as soon as they were out in the open again. “I - ”

  “You were trying to get as much information as you could in the shortest possible time,” Keisha interrupted, and smiled at his relief. “Havens, did you think I couldn’t see that? But you had better give me a full explanation later on, and not leave anything out!” She squeezed his hand back, and his smile turned so warm she almost blushed.

  “I will, on the way back, I promise.” Darian turned then to the Shaman, squinting against the sunlight. “Celin, I can’t begin to thank you - ”

  “Nay, do not thank me. It is the Ghost Cat’s doing, and nothing of mine. If he wills you to this task, then I do no more than my duty to aid you,” the Shaman said solemnly. “And you will be wanting a guide.”

  Darian was now the one looking surprised at Celin’s words.

  Celin laughed. “What, did I not tell you this was the Ghost Cat’s will? You shall go northward into the white; this, he has told me. You will need one of us to guide you. I have thought upon it, and I believe your guide should be Hywel. In doing this, you will permit him to discharge his life-debt to you.”

  Darian and Keisha both knew better than to argue with the Shaman when he used that phrase. A life-debt was a serious thing among the northerners, and it was not something that any northerner wanted hanging over his head. By Keisha and Darian being instrumental in saving Hywel’s brother, Hywel had incurred a life-debt to them both that would hold him back, socially and personally, in many ways until he repaid it. He could not marry, could not even court a young woman, and could not incur any other major responsibilities until this one was discharged.

  Besides, Hywel would have been her first choice as a guide. He might be young, but he was sharp, intelligent, and observant.

  “What you have done for us would oblige us even to your whims. This is more than a whim you have conjured as a game. It is a personal imperative. You go now to the Vale, and make your plans,” Celin continued. “I will see to Hywel and Hywel’s mother, making her easy with the journey her son must take with you.”

  Darian sighed, and accepted the Shaman’s words without any argument, since it was obvious that Celin had made up his mind about all this. Or the Ghost Cat made it up for him. “We’ll head back, then - we’ve borrowed two more dyheli. I don’t want to impose on the two we rode on before; they practically broke their necks to get us here quickly.” He must have already asked the dyheli, for two volunteers had joined up with the two cooling down, waiting for someone to come take the tack off the first two and put it on them.

  “Go, go, go!” the Shaman said, making shooing motions at them. “Send one of the holy ones to come for Hywel when you are ready.”

  There didn’t seem to be anything else for them at that point but to take the saddles from the backs of their weary original mounts and transfer them to their new volunteers.

  They were out of sight of the Ghost Cat village before Darian took a deep breath, shook himself out of his reverie, and turned to find her staring at him expectantly. “I definitely owe you an explanation,” he began sheepishly.

  “Definitely,” she replied, with just a touch of acid - enough to let him know that she was more than tired of waiting. “I have been incredibly patient, understanding, noble, forbearing - ”

  “Enough, I get the idea!” he cried, holding up his hands as if to fend her off. “I guess the place to start is - I’ve been having these dreams, except I couldn’t remember them afterward.”

  “I know.” When he looked at her oddly, she added, “It was like sleeping with a kicking dyheli fawn. Or rather, trying to sleep.”

  He blushed. “Anyway,” he continued valiantly, “When you said something about the ‘Spirit Cat’ talking to me, I remembered suddenly what those dreams were about.” He shook his head ruefully. “I don’t know why I couldn’t remember before.”

  “Maybe you were afraid,” she said slowly, remembering the aura of fear that had hung over him during those dreams. It had been the fear, and not the restlessness, that had awakened her.

  He looked very thoughtful. “Maybe. Especially since I didn’t have any notion that they were supposed to help me. They were weird through and through.” He shrugged. “The point is, they all involved the Ghost Cat and a different totem, an enormous Raven. Not only that, but the day I was made a Clanbrother, the Ghost Cat appeared at the ceremony and left a raven feather at my place. Nobody seemed to have an explanation, and no one thought it was a bad omen, so I just dismissed it in favor of everything else that had to be done.”

  “Until I triggered your memory.” Now she understood why he’d acted as if she had jabbed him.

  “I just had this inspiration - no, that’s too mild. I suddenly knew that the Ghost Cat was trying to tell me something - that I needed to find the Raven tribe, so that was why I wanted to see Celin - ”

  “Because you wanted to find out if there is a Raven tribe.” She nodded slowly, as all of the pieces began to fit together for her. “And he didn’t know for sure, but the vests came from Snow Fox, so he figured the Snow Fox people would know. I take it that there is?”

  “Yes, and here’s the best part. They make the vests as trade goods, usually to order, with someone’s own totems on them. But sometimes they make the ones like I got - and what’s more, they only started making them a few years ago.” He looked at her in triumph, and she felt her eyes widen.

  “So we’re going?” she asked, feeling breathless all at once. If he goes, I go. I have to. Is this one of those compromises? Maybe - if so, it’s one I know I have to make.

  “We? You want to go?” He looked at her with doubt and hope mingled in his glance. “I thought - ”

  “I can turn Errold’s Grove over to the oldest of the Sanctuary Trainees; they’re about to make him a full Healer anyway,” she said resolutely, a thrill of pleasure running through her at his reaction. Yes. This is a compromise I have to make. “You don’t think I’d let you go traipsing off into the howling wilderness on your own, do you? You might get hurt, and then how would we both feel?”

  Armed with this new information, Darian asked for an informal meeting of all of those who might be at all concerned with his proposed expedition. Shandi and Anda invited themselves to the meeting; he was pleased, but not surprised, given their earlier positive reactions.

  He asked Tyrsell, because he would have to have dyheli if he expected to get from here to who-knew-how-far north in any reasonable length of time. The Elders of the Council were obviously concerned, given that he was supposed to become an Elder himself eventually. Shaman Celin and Hywel both arrived when he sent a polite invitation by dyheli. Hashi came because he wanted to, and Kel came because Kel wanted to know everything that was going on. Ayshen was there because he would have to see that the expedition was properly provisioned. Wintersky because his friend already knew what was planned, and had no intention of being left out.

  There was an addition who was entirely unexpected: Steelmind. Why the plant expert would care where he went and what he did, he wasn’t certain, but Steelmind and his buzzard were both in attendance.

  He finished his summation of everything he had learned, and looked around the table. “I want to go north to find them,” he said. “I know that’s obvious; it should also be obvious that I can’t do this alone. Shaman Celin and Hywel both think that Hywel should go as my guide, and I agree. Also, Keisha wants to go. I want to leave now; I want to get there and back before winter, and winter probably comes earlier there than here. So - ” He spread his hands. “Are you going to let me go - and have you any ideas of your own?”

  Firesong burst into laughter, as Snowfire grinned and Nightwind cast her eyes upward. “Do you really think we could stop you?” Nightwind demanded. “Whether we like it or not, this is something that’s too important to you. You’d claw your way through a mountain if it stood between you and your parents, now that you know at least one may be alive.”

&nb
sp; “You might have some really pressing reason why I shouldn’t go, and I am supposed to be the Valdemaran representative here,” Darian pointed out mildly. “I wouldn’t like it - ”

  “Be truthful, you’d be miserable and angry,” Nightwind interrupted. “So the best thing we can do is not only agree, but give you everything you need to get you there and back safely. Which is - what?”

  “Me,” Kel interjected eagerly. “I am a forrrmidable foe. I am an outssstanding ssscout. You need me. I am fierrrce. I will frrrighten enemiesss jussst by being therrre!”

  Kel seemed to take a great delight in being fierce. He was doing his best to look the part, too; head up, eyes bright with a predatory gleam, beak slightly agape, talons slightly flexed.

  “Agreed,” Starfall said immediately, to the delight of both Darian and Kel. “Since Keisha is going along, she can serve as Kel’s trondi’irn. Keisha, Nightwind can show you how, enough anyway to handle most problems. You’ll all be immensely safer with Kel along. What next?”