Owlflight

by Mercedes Lackey

  And Darian would never conform. He hated the village, he hated the people who saw no farther than the edges of their fields and wanted nothing more. He wanted more; he was stifling for want of freedom, and felt as if he were starving on a diet of confinement and mediocrity. He’d been out there where these villagers feared, and he remembered it far more vividly than anything that had happened to him in this dull little huddle of huts. Once he’d traveled the deep Forest he was never the same again, and he didn’t want to be part of this insular flock of humanity.

  He ran like a hare through the field of corn behind the cottage, bare callused feet making little noise on the soft, cultivated earth. Nobody stopped him; the tall green corn hid him from view, and if they heard his running feet, they probably thought it was one of their own children coming back from an errand. A moment later, Darian burst into the shadows of the Forest at the edge of the fields and slowed once he was in the shelter of the undergrowth. He took a moment to orient himself, then twisted his way through the brush and sought refuge in his favorite tree, one of the enormous Forest giants that ringed the village and kept it in shade for most of the day. He climbed as swiftly as a squirrel or a tree-hare and as surely; even blinded by tears he had no trouble finding his hiding place where the great trunk split in two, forming a cup that a boy could easily curl up in and still have room for a few possessions. Beneath him lay the village, a cluster of about fifty buildings on the forested side of a bridged ford on the River Londell right on the edge of the Pelagiris Forest.

  It went on forever in three directions, climbing hills, plunging into valleys, and crowning the huge bluff that rose above the river downstream of the village, with only the Londell halting its march toward the heart of Valdemar. The hard-won fields carved out of the forest were tended and fertilized with the greatest and tenderest of care, for it took terrible effort to gain a foot of clear ground from the trees, and there was always the chance (so it was said) that the Forest would decide to take revenge for trees that were cut down rather than falling down naturally. The Forest had always been a fairly uncanny place according to the old granthers and grammers of the village, but since the start of the mage-storms it had gotten very much stranger and far more dangerous.

  A Herald had come—the first he had seen—three months after his unwanted apprenticeship to Justyn had been decided for him. The Herald had been light-skinned, with a long blond braid of hair, and looked all the paler because of the white outfit and matching riding coat. With him, of course, had been his Companion, a white horse that was more than a horse—it was more like a dreamer’s ideal of everything a horse could be, with lambent blue eyes, a long mane and hide that stayed impossibly clean, and silvery hooves. The Herald had explained that the strange things that were happening were called “mage-storms,” and they were caused by the magic of the world being disturbed a very long time ago. They had been told that the greatest mages of the world had united under Valdemaran leadership, and were working to prevent any major catastrophes. The Herald had answered the few questions posed by the villagers, looking to the white horse and then back. Darian had wondered at the time if he was the only one of the group, Justyn included, who felt like the white horse and the Herald were communicating with each other through their looks and subtle gestures. The Herald would have gone on, but several of the older folk of the village hauled him away to explain more, out of Darian’s earshot. Since that took Justyn away as well, he was perfectly happy with that, and went off then to spend time alone in this very place of refuge. By the time he’d emerged, the Herald and his Companion had gone, and there hadn’t been one through here since.

  According to Justyn, the fact that Errold’s Grove was relatively near Lake Evendim meant that they got the worst of the mage-storms. Huge circles of land and the creatures in them either changed completely or warped and twisted out of all recognition. Monsters appeared, things worse than the worst nightmare or legend, and unfortunately there were no friendly Hawkbrothers nearby to chase away or kill them—not that the people of Errold’s Grove particularly trusted the Hawkbrothers. At one time these people had made a good living out of going into the Pelagiris Forest and collecting some of the strange plants and fungi that grew there for use as dye-stuffs, and that business had occasionally brought them into conflict with the Hawkbrothers. Traders had come far out of their way for those dyes, and that had encouraged some people to go in deeper, in search of any other things that traders might find valuable. Of course, the deeper in they went, and the more they looked for ancient treasures instead of mosses and fungi, the more likely it was that they would wander into Hawkbrother lands and be warned off, often at the point of a drawn weapon. Once or twice, outsiders had come hunting treasure as well—and their bound bodies would later be found neatly arranged on the Forest edge, without a single copper piece or trinket missing, awaiting discovery and burial. Each such discovery would discourage deeper incursions for a few months, but there were always greedy outsiders ready to dare the Hawkbrothers for the sake of treasures, and their fates were a warning to the dye-traders to stick to their business and leave whatever “treasure” was out there alone.

  Nevertheless, there was enough and more than enough of legitimate “quarry” to tempt the people of Errold’s Grove out into the Pelagiris until things started getting out of hand. The village had been quite prosperous, with visits from Heralds twice and three times a year, a fine wooden bridge over the Londell built by the order of the Crown, and even a pair of Valdemaran Guards stationed to watch the bridge and keep the peace on the road. There were still two sturdily built guardposts here, one on either side of the bridge, to prove that Errold’s Grove had once been considered an important border town.

  But war had come, war with Hardorn, and the Guards had been taken away to serve elsewhere, never to return. Now the only way that the people of Errold’s Grove could keep the road open was to run their own volunteer patrols over it. Then things had somehow gotten mixed up with magic as well, and so far as the people of Errold’s Grove were concerned, order and their old way of life had all but disappeared.

  First had come the physical storms, worse than anyone had ever seen before, that washed out the road in places, flooded the village twice, and buried it in yards of snow for most of the last several winters. Then had come the mage-storms to batter them all along with the physical storms, and all anyone from Valdemar could do after the Herald’s initial warning was to send a messenger with a map that showed what places were going to change, and when. That was no great help, when all the places were out in the wild Forest and no one could get out there to chase large animals away from the danger zone. So the animals became monsters, or maybe the monsters were brought in by the magic; no one was really certain. The only thing that everyone in Errold’s Grove could agree on was that now it was far too dangerous to leave the village and its fields. You never knew if or when you might disturb something that was canny enough to follow you back home. People stopped going into the Forest, and the dye-traders stopped coming, since there was no longer anything here to trade for, or even worth the peril to investigate.

  Cowards! Darian thought, angrily scrubbing the tears from his eyes with his knuckles. Other people kept going in! Other people weren’t so scared of their shadows that they gave up!

  People like his parents, for instance… .

  Darian’s parents had been trappers, as had many generations of his ancestors on either side. But when it became too dangerous to actually live in the Forest, they had made Errold’s Grove the base of their operation, carefully working a territory with cautious respect for the Hawkbrothers’ claims and the new strangeness that the mage-storms brought with them. Some of the creatures that arrived on the wings of the mage-storms had handsome pelts of unusual colors, and traders would pay a lot for them. Other changes had occurred in the normal species of the Pelagiris that had made improvements in color or texture of the furs of animals native to the Forest, and for these, too, traders would c
ome. Then, although they were not as expert as the villagers had been, they would look for the dye-fungi when time permitted, thus bringing back a bit of the prosperity that had left on the storm-winds.

  They were careful! Darian silently told the village. They knew how to be careful! They would never, ever have let anything follow them here, no matter what you think! They always made certain to use traps that any truly intelligent species would spot, just to keep their consciences clean, but even with that caution they had brought in some incredible prizes. Darian had often gone with them, for during the winter they would both be out together for weeks at a time. He loved the Forest, and even at its most dangerous, he had never been as terrified of it as the villagers were now. It was right to be cautious around the Forest, but it was stupid to be afraid of it—after all, it wasn’t the Forest that was so dangerous, it was the things living in it, and as long as you were careful, there was nothing to worry about! Any fool could see that!

  And how could anyone let fear blind him to so much of wonder and beauty?

  “Dari, listen,” his mother would whisper, and he would cock his head to listen for the new sound that had caught her attention—perhaps the liquid trill of a new bird (or was it a tervardi?)—or the bell-like tone of a hammer-jay. Whatever it was, once he caught it, he would look to her, and see the pleasure shining in her eyes as she listened, too. Then she would tell him what it was they had just heard, and spin him tales of the little lives of the creatures of the forest, tales far more wonderful than anything in those dusty books the villagers thought so important.

  “Dari, look,” his father would say, pointing to something wonderful—a soaring hawk, the sunset light glowing red and orange on a towering cloud, a doe with a fawn only minutes old. And then his father would show him how to follow the hawk and watch it stooping to a kill, what the fiery sunset portended in the way of weather, and how to find the fawn when she hid in the grasses to doze while her mother went off to drink or graze. He would stand an excited witness to the hawk’s victory, sit in quiet contentment until the last red rays of the sunset faded into blue dusk, or creep up to whisper to the fearless fawn, being careful not to touch it lest its mother scent him and reject it, even though his hands itched to stroke its soft pelt.

  He still loved the Forest, loved the green silences, the huge trees, the sounds of it. He couldn’t get anyone else in the village to see what drew him there; when he tried, they looked at him with suspicion and even a little fear, just as they had looked at his parents.

  But he could have borne even that, if he still had them.

  Dad—Mum—why didn’t you come back? Why did you leave me alone? Why did you let the Forest take you away from me?

  The pain returned, greater for having been bottled away beneath his anger and rebellion. His eyes flooded with tears, his throat knotted, and he pounded his hand against the bark of the tree until his knuckles were raw and scraped. Loneliness filled him until there was no room for anything else, except for anger at the insular villagers who hadn’t even bothered to mount a search party when his parents didn’t return. It didn’t matter to these fools that the exotic furs his Mum and Dad brought back had been the only thing that kept traders coming to the village! Oh, no—because they went out into the Forest, everyone was just certain that something would follow them back into the village, something too big and monstrous to get rid of! There hadn’t been a particle of evidence that something like that had any chance of happening, but it didn’t matter; his Mum and Dad had been watched like criminals every time they came back from a trapping run. And they’d felt it; how could they not have? So they would go back out more and more often, spending less and less time in the village. And maybe that was taking on too much risk in the middle of the mage-storms. Maybe that was why, after an agony of waiting, he knew that they wouldn’t come home this time.

  They’d left him behind because there was going to be another mage-storm coming, and Justyn and some of the others had persuaded them not to risk his safety along with their own. He’d protested, but they’d slipped off during the night, leaving him with the innkeeper as they usually did. By the time he woke up the next morning, they were gone, and the wind and snow had obliterated their trail. He’d tried to follow, but had been forced to turn back.

  He waited and waited, going out every day to watch for them, sure each dawn that he would see them coming in laden with their prizes.

  But this time he had watched in vain, for they didn’t return.

  Darian was left to the village to care for, and it hadn’t taken them long to figure out how to dispose of him. Within a day or two of being certain that Darian’s parents were never returning, the village elders had quickly apprenticed him to Justyn. Justyn had long been after his parents to bind Darian over to him as an apprentice; Justyn had told them that he had the Mage-Gift, and that it had to be trained or it would be dangerous. Mum and Dad only laughed at him and told him he was a silly old fool if he thought a boy could be dangerous to anything or anybody. But the villagers had been only too ready to believe in the danger, and only too happy to get him disposed of—and more than once there’d been intimations that “disposed of” is exactly what he’d be if they detected any connection between him and these weird times. They told him then, and they continued to tell him frequently, that he should be grateful to them for seeing to his care, and for persuading his parents to leave him behind on that last trapping run. They never stopped telling him how grateful he should be, in fact. There was even a hint behind it all that it was a good thing that his parents had been lost—because now he, Darian, would no longer find his own life at risk in the Forest.

  The tears welled up again.

  Needless to say, he wasn’t grateful.

  I helped them! They said I did! When they set the traps, I was the one up in a tree, watching and listening for danger—when they needed an extra set of hands, I was right there, and when they were tired, I was the one who was still fresh enough to tend to dinner or build the fire up. Maybe that hadn’t been true back when he was just a little boy, but it had been the past couple of years, and there was no denying it. They’d been able to concentrate on the work at hand instead of having to keep one eye on the work and one watching for peril or approaching weather.

  And—maybe—that was why they hadn’t come back.

  That was the stuff his nightmares had been made of for the last year. He kept thinking of times when he’d been there when they’d needed him—when they needed a third set of hands on the rope in a blizzard, when he’d spotted large carnivores stalking the camp—even when he’d been up a tree and had seen the signs of a bad storm coming up without warning. Had a pack of some magic-twisted horrors ambushed them, attacking them until finally their defenses were all gone? Had a terrible storm overwhelmed them? Had it been simply accident, the falling branch, the hidden crevice, the slip in the dark that left one or both of them crippled and helpless? Was that why they didn’t return? Because they’d counted on his eyes and ears to warn them, his extra hands on a knife or a bow to help fight off danger, and he hadn’t been there? He’d never been bad with a knife, and he was even good with a short bow … could it have made the crucial difference?

  Or was it something else? Had they been caught by bandits, eager to steal their precious furs? Had there been an avalanche, or had one or both of them fallen through the ice while crossing a river? Horror of horrors—had they been caught in a Change-Circle and Changed themselves? Were they out there even now, rooted to the spot as half-human trees, or wandering in some shape not even he would recognize?

  He couldn’t shake the conviction that if he had been along, they would have all come back to the village as usual. Somehow, some way, his mere presence would have made the difference. He knew better than to try and tell this to anyone in the village; he’d tried once to tell Justyn, and the old wizard had told him that he was overreacting, that whatever had happened to his parents had nothing to do with him. After that, he had
kept his guilt and fears to himself.

  But he couldn’t help but think that if he had been along, his parents would have had that extra set of hands and eyes that would have kept them safe, and brought them through whatever it was that took them away.

  And that was what made it all the more horrible.

  Here, in this refuge, away from the fools who didn’t understand, he could let his real feelings out.

  Why? he cried in silent anguish, face turned up to the canopy of leaves, both fists grinding against the back of the tree, Why did you leave me? Why didn’t you take me with you? Why did you leave me all alone?

  His body shook with silent sobs, and tears coursed down his cheeks, soaking his patched and much-mended shirt. It was too small in the arms for him by far, but he wouldn’t let anyone take it from him, nor would he give up the leather vest that went with it. She had made him the shirt, and he had cut and stitched the vest, and those two articles of clothing were all he had left of them.

  Why? he asked them again and again, until there was nothing left in the world but sorrow and guilt. Why did you leave me alone?

  Finally, his body trembling in every fiber, he collapsed in on himself, curled into a ball, and sobbed, muffling the sound of his weeping in his arms and the bark of the tree. He wept himself dry and exhausted, until there was no more strength left, even for a single tear.

  Before Justyn was satisfied that Kyle’s injury was no longer life-threatening and was as clean as one herbalist could make it, there was a great deal of blood spilled on the stone floor of his cottage. It wasn’t the worst wound he’d ever tended, but it was definitely one of the messiest. Justyn had finally stopped the bleeding with a compression bandage, and after liberally dosing the woodcutter with brandy and poppy-powder, began stitching the wound closed with a curved needle and fine silk thread. Kyle was a stolid enough fellow, and in a way it was a blessing for both of them that he was so very insensitive (and, one might as well say it, stupid), for he didn’t seem to mind the ugly wound and the stitching half so much as the two farmers who’d brought him in. Vere and Harris grimaced every time Justyn put a stitch in, and Harris, who had no livestock at all but a few chickens, relying on the loan of his brother’s oxen to plow his own land, was looking a bit green about the face. Kyle had just sat quietly, as if he were a good plowhorse waiting for a new shoe to be fitted. The brandy and poppy concoction made the muscles of his face go slack and relaxed, and he leaned back in his chair, propped up by Harris and Vere, blinking sleepily whenever the needle went in.