Belatedly Darian realized that he understood the shouting perfectly well, and paused to listen to it.
What he heard made his jaw drop.
“Well?” Kero demanded. “What?”
Darian licked dry lips. “He says we sent child-snatching demons into his camp last night, and he wants us to bring back his sons right now. Or else—”
“Never mind. I can guess the ‘or else.’ ” Kerowyn swore softly. “And it’s just our bad luck that your little friends happened to be the Chief’s offspring—which obviously, the older one didn’t bother to mention.” She chewed on her lower lip, then turned her gaze to her Companion. “Sayvil, go take him back to camp, then get your tail back here; this is no place for him. By now Tyrsell’s given Eldan this language, and we’ll see if his silver tongue can lie us out of this mess when he gets here. And we’ll pray that Keisha can come up with a cure, fast.”
Sayvil didn’t wait for Darian to object; she all but launched herself out from underneath him, and only a quick grab for her mane kept him from tumbling over her rump.
He had the presence of mind to slide over her shoulder as soon as she reached the edge of camp where his first tent still stood and slowed a little; he hit the ground running to absorb his own momentum and it was a good thing that he did. She didn’t stop, not at all; she just pivoted on her hind hooves and galloped away again, leaving him panting in the path behind her, staring after her, absently recognizing that there was another Companion standing behind him.
Gods—now what do I do?
“What in hell is going on?” a voice shrilled behind him.
He whirled, to find Shandi, clad only in a knee-length shift and barefoot, staring at him out of confused and terrified eyes. Her sleep-tangled hair had fallen half over one of her eyes, and she shoved it out of her face with impatient fingers.
“The camp’s gone crazy, Karles is frantic, and Keisha’s gone and there ’s something I—we—have to do with her!” she exclaimed, sounding more than a little frantic herself. “What’s happening? Where’s my sister? What is it we have to do?”
As quickly and succinctly as possible, Darian explained the events of the last twelve candlemarks. He got a little shrill toward the end, himself, and Shandi stared at him with a blank expression, while her Companion fidgeted and pranced with anxiety.
She hit her forehead with the butt of her palm, muttering to herself. “You—me—Keisha. What do we have in common?” Balling both hands into fists and pressing them into her temples, she squeezed her eyes shut and her features contorted with pain. “What in hell do we have in common? Why am I here? Why do I have to be here?”
Gods! he thought bitterly, thinking that she meant that she didn’t want to be there. Why couldn’t she be another Healer? Then at least she’d have been of some use to—
From out of the thin morning air, the answer came to him, in the dryly amused voice of his teacher, Firesong.
He ran to Shandi and shook her shoulders with impatience. “Can you work with Healers?” he demanded. “Have you?”
Her eyes sprang open and she gaped at him. “Yes, of course—”
As they stared into each others’ eyes, they all but shouted in unison. “That’s it! ”
For the second time that morning, Darian found himself clinging to a Companion’s bare back, this time with Shandi behind him. Karles must have taken directions straight from his memory, for the Companion wove his way through the forest unerringly, and at speeds that would have guaranteed an accident had he been anything but a Companion. He had only time to call to Kuari—
:Find dyheli! Find Tyrsell! Bring him where we were last night and quickly!:
Then there was no time for anything but hanging on.
When they burst into the little glade where the tent was pitched and flung themselves from Karles’ back, Hywel jumped to his feet with his dagger drawn, then stopped himself just short of attacking them. Darian paid the boy no attention. His eyes looked only for Keisha, and when he saw her, he exclaimed in shock.
“Damn!” Shandi swore. “She’s lost! Darian, link with her, now!”
He didn’t have to be told. Keisha was a ghostly white, she trembled where she sat, and it looked as if they hadn’t reached her a moment too soon. She was caught, trapped in battling a disease she couldn’t conquer—if she’d had more practice, she would know how to break free, but of course she had never Healed a life-threatening illness before.
Darian flung himself down beside her and grabbed one hand, as Shandi did the same on her opposite side; they threw their spirits into linkage with hers as swiftly as if they had done so every day for their entire lives.
There was a rude shock for a moment as they jockeyed for position, and then they melded into a seamless whole. He poured energies spun out of the life all around them into the fading Healer; Shandi did the same, but her energies came, not from around her, but from her Companion. Neither of them saw what Keisha saw and fought, but they felt the battle going on within the boy, and Keisha’s renewed strength as she threw off the intolerable burden of exhaustion, gathered her resources, and flung herself back into the fight.
And for a moment, Darian felt her soul-tearing fear that even this would not be enough.
He willed more than energy into her; he willed courage, and the memory of that anguished voice crying out, demanding that his sons be returned to him.
Whether that was the reason or not, at that moment, the tide of battle turned. Keisha began to gain ground against the fever. Shandi and Darian held steady, and with a last desperate outpouring of power, Keisha broke the fever’s hold!
Shandi dropped out of the meld; Darian held longer, as she chased down the last traces of the illness and burned them away. Only then did he separate himself from her, and return his focus to the ordinary world.
“We’re still not done,” Shandi said grimly, as he opened his eyes and caught Keisha as she half-collapsed against him. “There’s a war about to start out there!” She turned to Hywel. “Your father thinks we’ve sent demons to kidnap you and your brother, and he’s got every intention of cutting his way through us to get to you.”
Hywel’s mouth and eyes went round—and Darian’s estimation of his intelligence took a giant leap upward. “Take Jendey !” he cried. “Take him up before you on the Spirit Horse! We will follow with the Wise One!”
Hywel placed one hand on Karles’ forehead as Shandi threw herself on the Companion’s back; Karles snorted and nodded vigorously. The young northerner bent and picked up his brother—sleeping deeply, too deeply to stir, but without the hectic flush of fever in his cheeks, and no longer tossing in delirium. Shandi reached down for the child, and cradled him in front of her, seizing a handful of mane to keep herself steady.
Karles shot off; Hywel leaned down to help Keisha to her feet. She was still coming out of Healing Trance, blinking at them with bewildered eyes, her legs as shaky as a newborn fawn’s.
“Hywel’s the Chief’s son?” she murmured, proving that although she looked no more than half-aware, there was little wrong with her mind or her ears. Darian draped her arm over his shoulder, as Hywel did the same on her other side. “Why didn’t you tell us?” she asked, turning her gaze on the young northerner.
“I did not think of it,” was his honest reply. “For us, to be Chief’s son is to be no different from any other man. It does not mean that I will be chosen as Chief. I am just another hunter of Ghost Cat.”
“Obviously your father doesn’t see things that way,” Darian retorted.
The call of an eagle-owl rang out above their heads, startling all of them. :Bondmate, they come!: Kuari called in his mind, as the hoof-beats of several dyheli at the gallop reached their ears.
Tyrsell skidded to a halt on the moss, with Pyreen and Meree right beside him. Darian helped Keisha up onto Meree’s back, then aided the slightly reluctant Hywel onto Pyreen. This was no time to worry about the mere discomfort of naked dyheli spines. “Don’t grab the ho
rns, grab the neck-brush!” Darian ordered, as he clambered onto Tyrsell. “And hang on tight!”
Dyheli weren’t quite as swift as Companions, but they came a close second; they caught up with Karles and Shandi, who had inexplicably stopped at the edge of the cleared area containing the Ghost Cat encampment.
Then they saw why the others had stopped.
There were two heavily armed forces in that clearing, forces who had been about to face off against each other in a battle for blood. Both sides had weapons drawn, and there should have been a fight going on at that very moment.
The two reasons why that wasn’t happening were planted in the clear space, separating the two groups of fighters and holding them apart.
Both reasons were white, one glistening in the sunlight, one ephemeral as fog. Both reasons stood side-by-side in unity, holding off the fighters loyal to them by a force of will so strong that it might just as well have been a solid wall a hundred feet high.
One was Eldan’s Companion.
The other was a huge shape, faintly glowing, that could have been an enormous feline.
Just as Darian, Hywel, and Keisha arrived, lining up beside Karles, the ghostly feline turned to face them all. It regarded them with an unwinking gaze, as the faces of the northerners turned to see what it was looking at.
Stunned silence—then, with a roar of joy, the Chief flung down his ax and shield, and hurtled toward them, arms outstretched, his men a scant pace behind him, cheering themselves hoarse.
Only Darian continued to watch the Ghost Cat, so only he saw it wink at him, slowly and deliberately, before it faded entirely from view.
Three days later, the morning sun overtopped the trees and golden light illuminated a scene that could not possibly have seemed likely the last time Darian had been here.
Where two armies had faced off, an open-sided pavilion stood; within it, a table and two chairs, one holding Chief Vordon of Ghost Cat Clan, the other Herald Eldan of Valdemar. Around the pavilion, an impromptu festival was going on, as northerners and Valdemarans, Hawkbrothers and Lord Breon’s folk cautiously mingled, slowly learning one another’s languages. Those who had already undergone “torture by Tyrsell” acted as willing translators.
Darian finally felt as calm as he looked, and had actually managed to catch up on his lost sleep. It hadn’t been easy, though; he’d been much in demand by Ghost Cat and Kero’s forces both, though not nearly as much as Keisha. She was their heroine, their savior, practically their saint—right up until the point where she got tired of it all and tartly informed them that they were an affront to her nose, and if they really wanted to do something for her, they could all take baths, right now.
The subsequent rush for the stream had been something to behold—as were the newly-scrubbed Northerners, their skin bright red from being scoured so hard.
They still treated her with respect, but after that with less awe, which was something of a relief to everyone.
“—the Wise Ones cannot be disturbed on a whim, or frivolously,” Eldan said as Chief Vordon nodded. “So the Sacred Houses of Healing will be secret.”
“Of course,” Vordon agreed, as if nothing pleased him better.
Well, we’re making reasonable demands here. I bet Vordon would show a different face if we demanded all the first-born sons as hostages, say.
“The Holy dyheli will conduct the Wise Ones from their Sacred Houses to your camp,” Eldan continued, after a glance at Tyrsell. “The Holy dyheli will carry your need to the Wise Ones.”
“Naturally,” Vordon replied, shaggy head bobbing.
“Did he figure this out in advance, or is he making it up as he goes along?” Darian whispered to Keisha as they stood solemnly on the Valdemaran side of the negotiation pavilion.
“Making it up, I think, with some help,” Keisha whispered back. “Heralds are very good at improvising.”
So far, Valdemar and the allies were doing very well out of these negotiations. Things were particularly advantageous for the dyheli, for the “holy” dyheli were getting the protection of Ghost Cat’s warriors, shelter for the winter in barns that Ghost Cat pledged to build, and grain in the winter from Ghost Cat’s stores. Virtually everything Eldan asked for, Vordon was agreeing with: care for the dyheli in exchange for access to the Healers; a set territory in exchange for alliance with Valdemar and the Hawkbrothers, with Ghost Cat guarding the borders against other northern clans. They even agreed to settle and learn to farm in place of their nomadic life of hunting and grazing.
They couldn’t be more unlike the last lot in that. Blood Bear Clan would rather have slit their own throats than take up farming. First, though, they’d have done their best to slit ours.
There had been some disappointment when the other Healers had examined the survivors of the last bouts of Summer Fever, and had been forced to confess that they could not reverse what movement and strength had already been lost. That disappointment had been overpowered by the relief of knowing that Summer Fever would never kill or cripple again.
Darian kept a steadying arm around Keisha’s waist, under the excuse that she was still weak and not entirely easy on her feet. She let him—under the same excuse. He didn’t think he was going to miss Summerdance nearly as much as he had anticipated.
He had every intention of taking things slowly, though. This wasn’t a Vale, and Keisha Alder wasn’t Tayledras. And I’m not stupid. Offend the local Healer? No thank you! What was it Nightwind said once? “The ones who know how to put you together also know how to take you apart!” Besides, he liked Keisha’s friendship; he didn’t have nearly enough friends to risk losing one to bad manners.
The northerners hadn’t even been the least reluctant about improving their bathing habits after Keisha’s initial scolding; as it turned out, they had more wistful tales about a valley full of hot springs that they had been driven out of by a stronger clan, and traditions of steam houses that they hadn’t been able to build in far too long. They knew all about flea-killing herbs, but since such things only came into their hands at the Midsummer Gathering by means of trade, they’d had to do without since the first attack of the Fever. Grenthan and several of the hertasi were already constructing a Valdemaran-style community bath house and steam house for them at the edge of the village, and Keisha’s gifts of fleabane and rosemary had been greeted with cries of joy from the women. In short, these barbarians, at least, were not nearly as barbaric as their appearance had led everyone to believe.
Even Kelvren was happy, for he had an entirely new set of humans to ooh and aah over him.
And we have this all settled before Harvest Faire and Val’s wedding—which makes absolutely everyone happy! Darian felt full of warm contentment and dared to believe that k’ Valdemar Vale was going to be hailed as an immediate success. Which makes me look awfully good. And which should put Kel’s status up a few points as well.
Thinking of Kel, Darian took a look around for him—and soon saw him, the center of a group of awestruck women, who admired his handsome feathers and timidly touched the talons he offered for their inspection. Darian strained his ears—and discovered, with no surprise, that the gryphon had already gotten Tyrsell to bestow the Ghost Cat language on him.
But when he heard what Kel was saying to the women, he nearly choked, and had to work very hard indeed to keep a properly solemn expression, one in accordance with the gravity of the making of such an important treaty.
For Kel had some treaty ideas of his own.
“It isss good luck to ssscrrratch a grrryphon’sss crrressst,” Kel told the enraptured group.
“It is?” said the boldest of the lot—Hywel’s sister, if Darian recalled correctly. She reached out immediately and began gently scratching Kel’s outstretched head.
“Oh, yesss,” Kel sighed happily. “It isss well known; an old and trrreasssurrred trrradition!”
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Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 02] - Owlsight Page 42