Owlknight v(dt-3

by Mercedes Lackey

  “That’s a mage, a gryphon, a Companion, a Herald, three Tayledras and a seasoned Ghost Cat warrior,” Darian retorted. “It’s not as if we were nine plowboys!”

  “It’s not as if we were an army either,” Shandi countered, glaring at him. “And what about our duty to get back home and warn Valdemar about all this? Karles and I can only send so much - Anda needs more than we can tell him - ”

  By the sudden light in Darian’s eyes, Keisha knew that Shandi had given him an opening, and he saw a way to get her to compromise.

  “All right. Then let’s at least get him some real information!” he insisted. “We can do what no one in Raven can. We can get in close to Wolverine and see what their numbers are, and what their equipment is! Why, I’ll bet we could even get in close enough to find out some of their plans, just by listening to the warriors’ boasting!”

  Which would make us close enough to work a little sabotage, no doubt? Keisha thought. She knew how Darian thought; once they had worked themselves in that close, there would be opportunities to disrupt the enemy tribe, and no matter what Steelmind and Wintersky thought now, they would not be able to resist taking advantage of those opportunities.

  Shandi frowned fiercely, and Keisha had a good idea what was in her sister’s mind as well. Shandi wanted, very badly, to object, but there was nothing she could really object to. She and Karles exchanged a long, wordless look, neither of them happy about the position they’d been placed in.

  “I think that’s an . . . acceptable compromise,” Keisha said tentatively, and earned herself a frown from Shandi.

  Of course, I’m not one of the ones who’ll be going on these scouting forays -

  “I think that’s the best answer, personally.” Wintersky sounded a lot more decisive than Keisha, but that was to be expected.

  Kel, however, was clearly not enamored with halfhearted measures. “I ssstilll sssay we ssshould do morrre than that!” he began, but a look from Darian silenced him, and Keisha sensed another mind-to-mind exchange like the one that Shandi had exchanged with Karles. Kel’s beak snapped shut, and he looked a little happier; that was when Keisha knew that she had guessed right about Darian’s intention of adding sabotage to the scouting forays.

  Steelmind looked from Shandi to Darian, and held out his hands, palms up. “I think that will work,” was all he said, with no elaboration on what he considered “that” to be. So he knew, or guessed, too.

  Shandi gritted her teeth and glared, but it was obvious that she was outvoted. She gave in, but not with good grace.

  Keisha, however, had extended a careful tendril of Empathy toward her sister, and there was more going on beneath that hard surface than Shandi was allowing to show. I wonder - will she go off by herself - To Keisha’s satisfaction, that was just what Shandi did; she exchanged another look with Karles, and got up and left the fire. The men interpreted it as going off in a sulk; Wintersky raised his eyebrows at Darian who shrugged, and Hywel snorted derisively. Steelmind looked defensive, but said nothing.

  Keisha waited a few moments, then when the men began to discuss possible “scouting forays,” she excused herself and left. It was not at all difficult to tell where Shandi was; at least, not for her. Shandi might think she was away from all eyes, hidden in the shadows on the outskirts of the village, but Keisha followed a surer summons than vision.

  Her senses led her correctly. Keisha approached her slowly; Karles was a white shape in the darkness and Shandi a dark, upright slash against him. “Shandi?” she said quietly. “Why didn’t you just tell the truth?”

  The dark slash practically vibrated with tension; upon closer approach, Keisha could see that Shandi was trembling, handling an arrow wrapped in red ribbon. “What truth?” Shandi asked, in a tone very like anger - except that it wasn’t.

  But Keisha knew what the emotion gripping her sister really was. “Why didn’t you tell them that you’re afraid?”

  “Me? Afraid? What are you talking about?” That was bluster, and Keisha only needed to hear how Shandi’s voice shook to know it.

  “I’m an Empath, too, Shandi,” Keisha said. The reaction to that could only have been predicted by someone who knew Shandi as well as her older sister did. Instead of blustering further when her bluff was called, Shandi dropped the arrow, and flung herself away from Karles and into her sister’s arms. Keisha held her as she had when she’d been much smaller, and had suffered an emotional, childish tragedy. Only now, she was a young woman, and this crisis was anything but childish.

  Shandi shook in every limb, and sobbed wordlessly into Keisha’s shoulder; there was no point in trying to coax her to talk until she was over the first bout of tears. As Karles stirred restlessly, Keisha led her sister to a fallen log and got her to sit down on it. It took a long time before Shandi cried herself out enough to speak, but Keisha was perfectly willing to wait as long as it took. Poor Shandi! They taught her haw to handle other people’s emotions, but not her own.

  “A chick can’t go back in the shell, and a young hawk can’t unfledge. I’m your sister, Shandi. We’ve grown up together, but we aren’t the same as we were when we were little. We’ve always trusted each other, so trust me now. You have to remember that when you wall things out, you can wall them in with you, too,” Keisha said into Shandi’s hair as she held Shandi’s head against her shoulder. Her own eyes stung a bit as she held back tears of sympathy. “Shields can work both ways - bottle up fear and it will eat you alive, sweetling.”

  “But I’m a Herald - ” Shandi wept. “I’m supposed to be strong and dependable - ”

  “Since when does that mean never showing fear?” Keisha countered. “You saw how we all acted, when the cold-drake caught us. Hawkbrothers, dyheli, and even a gryphon - we were all terrified and showed it. And since when is fear a bad thing? Fear keeps us from doing a lot of really stupid things. Hey, fear kept me from becoming a good little miller’s wife, right?” She smiled, trying to cheer Shandi, and pulled her a little closer, feeling very much the Big Sister once again. “It’s perfectly all right to be afraid about this. I know I am, and you can tell, right? I’m afraid - as far as that goes, really very afraid.”

  “How can you possibly understand?” Shandi retorted. “You’ve faced all kinds of terrible things without being afraid! I can hardly stand the sight of blood! How can you know how I feel - ”

  “How? I’ve lived with you, sweetling, or have you forgotten?” Keisha almost laughed. “I don’t even need to be an Empath to know, sister! You spent most of your life being a good maidenly daughter, then became the belle of the village - everything in your life was sweet, perfect, and predictable. Then suddenly you got Chosen - which is every child’s secret daydream, but there aren’t too many who would know what to do if it happened - whisked out into another world, with no family around, and put through strange schooling so fast it made your head spin. And as if that wasn’t enough on your plate, no sooner did you get someplace where you thought you might be able to catch your breath than you were thrown onto a dangerous mission that goes right off the map without anyone who taught you to help or advise you! You’ve seen some horrible things that you’d never imagined in your worst nightmares. And now this idiot mage wants you to help him fight an army? You’d have to be crazy not to be in a panic, and I know you aren’t crazy!”

  Shandi had been silent through all of this - and now her body began to shake again as she clung to her sister. “How could you know - how did you guess - ” she sobbed weakly.

  “Because I’m your sister and your best friend, and I love you,” was the simplest answer she could give - and must have been the best. Shandi completely dissolved in tears - and now, so did Keisha, tears that flowed down her cheeks silently, without the kind of painful knot she got in her throat when she was fighting to hold them back. But Keisha’s were tears of happiness mixed with relief, for now, at last, she knew that Shandi was never going to wall her out again.

  It was well past midnight when Shandi had
talked herself out; by then, Keisha was cold and stiff, but she wouldn’t have moved to save her soul.

  “ - and the worst was when Kel said that the first Heralds wouldn’t have been so cowardly,” Shandi said, in a voice made hoarse with talking and crying. “He was right, I knew he was right - I wanted to sink into the ground, but I knew if I showed anything, they’d all think that the only reason I was against Darian was because I was afraid! And it’s not, it’s not, I swear it!”

  “If you hadn’t spoken up, I’m not sure any of the rest of us would have said anything,” Keisha told her truthfully. “I mean, after all, we may each have our own private agendas, but at the heart of it, this is Darian’s personal quest we’re helping with. With his parents asking for help - how could his best friends let him down?”

  Only now did Karles take the few steps needed to move to Shandi’s side and gently rub his warm, soft nose against her shoulder - and Keisha’s hands. Shandi reached up and patted his neck. “Karles - tried to help me, but - ”

  :I am not an Empath,: Karles said simply, surprising Keisha once again by speaking to her as well as to Shandi :I cannot shield her from her own fear, when I am just as afraid - I cannot even shield her from mine! This is not Valdemar, and I am ... out of my element.:

  “We all are, to some degree or other,” Keisha told both of them. “Never doubt it.”

  :But Valdemar is home, and I have never been away from it!: The plaintive note in Karles’ mind-voice came as a second shock; all her life she had been raised to think that Companions were near-invulnerable and infallible -

  :We are different, with a few powers, yes, and more experience, but hardly infallible.: Karles sighed heavily, and nuzzled Shandi once more. :Shandi and I are two halves of a whole; we complement and complete one another. That is the way of Herald and Companion. We are still as prone to weakness and mistakes as any other soul. If being Companion and Chosen made us infallible, think how many disasters in Valdemar’s history could have been avoided!:

  “Good point,” Keisha replied, but kept her thought of and how nice of you to have finally admitted that! carefully under shields. “Shandi, do take it from an older and more experienced Empath - and not just your big sister - that you are doing yourself no good by keeping those walls up, inside and out. You need to do a certain amount of shielding, but not to the point that you feel nothing from us, and let nothing of your own emotion show! We need to know how you feel about things as much as you need to know how we feel, otherwise we cannot work with each other. Out here in the wild unknown, that could cost a life, maybe even mine.” Keisha smiled again and kissed her sister’s forehead gently. “Neither of us would want that, yes? Now let’s get some sleep, and see what matters look like in the morning.”

  Is Darian thinking clearly? Is he so caught up in trying to impress his parents, to give them anything they need, that he’s not able to be objective? No doubt, Shandi was already thinking those things, without Keisha’s experience with Darian to bolster her faith in him.

  And Steelmind needs to know more of how you feel than all the rest of us put together, she thought, but also under shield, as Shandi got stiffly to her feet and gave her sister a hand up. It wasn’t her place to give Shandi any advice about romance, and she wasn’t sure that Shandi would take it, even if it was her place. Maybe Shandi and Karles hadn’t seen it as clearly as Keisha had, as a result of how much they had tried to wall themselves off from their own emotions and others’, but day by day there was much more in Steelmind’s attitudes toward Shandi than a passing interest in a fellow traveler.

  I’ve been lucky enough to find Darian. Maybe the best gift I can give to my sister is getting her to open up enough to see that Steelmind is right next to her. And, just maybe, when he sees she will open up to him now, Steelmind will open his arms to her. We are farther away from home than any of us ever imagined we’d be, and all we have is each other.

  Darian woke up all at once, with the disorienting impression that Kuari was trying to dance a jig on the roof of the log house. Then what Kuari was trying to tell him penetrated his muddled mind, and a moment later he leaped from bed and was pulling on his clothes in grim haste, as Keisha stirred grog-gily beside him.

  “What?” she managed, raising a face half-covered with sleep-tousled hair.

  “We’ve got to alert the village,” he told her, for there was no time to tell this gently. “Kuari’s seen something. I think there’s something bad - a tribal army coming straight for us.”

  :Kel!: he blasted into the gryphon’s dreaming mind. :Kel, wake up1.:

  :?: The reply was foggy and inarticulate. :Food sleep preen mate fight what?:

  :Up! Alarm! Enemies!: He kept his reply simple; it took a moment for Kel’s mind to get working. A moment later, Kel’s war cry ripped through the village, shocking everyone within hearing distance awake.

  In another moment, Hashi’s howl started all the dogs in the village up, which ensured that no one slept. Darian left Keisha struggling to organize herself while he headed for the door to get the village mobilized. He was already outside before his parents, reacting to the unholy cacophony, pushed their way out of their sleeping cubicle. Keisha could explain to them; he had to get the rest of the village alert so defenses were in place before the enemy arrived.

  Steelmind and Shandi burst out of the door of the log house they were guesting in shortly after he stumbled into the ghostly mist that swirled around the log houses, a mist that clung damply to him in the half-light of predawn. Steelmind whistled shrilly for his bird, and Karles pounded through the mist to Shandi’s side. She seized her saddle from the bench beside the door and swung it up onto his back as he skidded to a halt beside her. Hywel and Wintersky were next out the door, and the dyheli were all close on the heels of Karles, snorting and stamping with agitation.

  Then the northerners began piling out of their houses, all sleepy, all confused, all babbling. Darian tried shouting his warnings, but his voice was lost in the general confusion and he despaired of making himself heard.

  Then Kel put a stop to the noise by diving down out of the trees and braking with huge sweeps of his wings to land beside Darian, just as Hashi broke off his howl of alert and the dogs followed his lead. The wind of Kel’s wings cleared the mist; his sudden appearance silenced everyone, with shock and alarm, for no one here was used to a gryphon’s dramatic entrances. Darian took full advantage of the sudden silence.

  “Our birds just alerted us, Wolverine is on the way, in force,” he called out. “Whatever defensive plan you’ve got, you’d better put it in motion now. We’ve got until dawn before they get here, and dawn’s not far off.”

  There was no more confusion; the men quickly sorted themselves into defensive groups and headed for the stored weapons; boys and some of the women went for hunting bows and arrows, while the rest began dragging tied bundles of thorny brush into a defensive barricade around the perimeter of the village.

  Shandi pulled herself into the saddle and trotted Karles over to Darian. “What do you want us to do?” she asked; her voice trembled a little, and she was dead-white, but she seemed steady enough. In fact, Darian was just as glad to see her finally showing a little fear; it made him less worried that she would try to do something comprised of equal parts of bravery and foolishness.

  “Stand by,” he told her. “You’re the only cavalry we’ve got; I just hope Wolverine doesn’t have any riders. One person can do a lot if she’s the only one on horseback.”

  Karles stamped a hoof loudly.

  “Or on whatever,” Darian added.

  Hywel had grabbed a boar-spear and picked out a group of Raven warriors to stand with on his own; that was perfect. He knew how to fight alongside these people, in their style; Darian dismissed him from his mind. Steelmind and Winter sky retrieved their bows and every arrow they owned, then sent their birds out after Kuari. Kel lumbered back up into the air to perch on the rooftree of one of the log houses.

  How long do we have
? he wondered, and joined his mind to Kuari’s. Through Kuari’s eyes he looked down on the approaching throngs of warriors and recognized one of the slopes they had passed yesterday.

  His stomach lurched. Not long enough.

  Wolverine’s fighters would be within hearing distance in a few moments; he didn’t bother warning the rest, since they’d be catching the sounds of jingling harness and men trampling through brush in a moment. Wolverine was no longer making even a token attempt at slipping up unnoticed.

  And just how did they know they don’t have surprise on us?

  The answer to that was clear enough as the second rank came into Kuari’s view.

  Striding alongside a guard of muscular fighters dressed identically in leather tunics ornamented with an eclipsed sun instead of a tribal or personal totem was an all-too-familiar-looking figure. Darian’s nightmares were sometimes haunted by a similar, dark figure out of his past.