Sleeping in the tiny, austere isolation hut, with the windows wide open to the night air, was very like sleeping in a hard-sided tent. Keisha enjoyed it as a change from Darian’s ekele. Out here where the weather wasn’t controlled, it still got quite cool at night, and she needed to use the blankets left folded up on her pallet. She woke up once or twice during the night at an unexpected sound, and smiled sleepily, as she listened to the life of the Sanctuary go on around her in the darkness, while she snuggled under the weighty warmth of her blankets. Helping out on the rounds had made her pleasantly tired, and she had gone to bed while Shandi and Anda were still deep in conversation with the Healers.
In the morning, they showed their lack of sleep with yawns and puffy eyes, but neither had lost an iota of enthusiasm. “When we get back to k’Valdemar, you can tell everyone that I’ve got enough to think about for a while,” Anda told Keisha as they mounted into their saddles, with a cheerful wink that told her he knew very well that he had been driving some of the others to distraction with his incessant questions. “I shan’t be pestering anyone for at least a week - and then it will probably be to find out who can help me arrange to build our headquarters.”
“You won’t have to pester anyone, since I can already tell you - it’s the hertasi chief, Ayshen. He schedules all the work in the Vale,” Keisha told him as she polished off the last drops of her tea: “You are building in the Vale, aren’t you? What are you going to call this establishment of yours? An embassy?”
“Yes, we’re building in the Vale, and I think I’ll let this Ayshen fellow pick a good spot,” Anda told her. “As for what we’re calling it - well, it’s not a waystation, and it isn’t exactly an embassy - so I thought I’d just call it k’Valdemar Station.”
“That’ll work,” Keisha acknowledged with hidden amusement. So, Anda didn’t think it was an embassy, did he? Wait until he’s been here a year.
The dyheli got them back to Ghost Cat in good time; Anda wanted to speak further with Chief Vordon and Shaman Celin, so Keisha decided to have a look at those fascinating goods that the Northern tribes had brought in.
Since she had spotted her old friend Hywel in the crowd gathering to greet them - now warrior Hywel, a fact he was burstingly proud of - she waved to him and got his attention as Anda and Shandi walked off with the Chief. He waved back, face full of delight, for the fact that he was great friends with Healer
Keisha and Owl-warrior Darian gave quite a boost to his status.
She walked over to him as he waited for her; no man of the Northern tribes would come to a woman for a casual conversation, not even so high-status a woman as a Healer. It was nonsense, of course, and these attitudes were gradually changing even among the most recalcitrant of tribesmen - for this once, Keisha was willing to bow before custom.
“Greetings to you, Healer Keisha,” Hywel said solemnly. He was trying very, very hard to look mature and warriorlike; he had shot up another hand’s breadth in the last six months and was wearing a new leather shirt made from the skins of his own kills. The impression he was trying to make was utterly spoiled by the obvious youth of the face behind the new beard and mustache. He still looked to her exactly like the boy who’d been frantic to save the life of his brother, and willing to brave anything to do so.
“Greetings to you, Warrior Hywel,” she replied, just as soberly, though it was all she could do to keep from chuckling. “Could you tell me who I would speak to if I were to wish to barter for some of the goods held in trust for Ghost Cat, k’Valdemar, and the Sanctuary?”
“Nothing easier,” he said, brightening at the idea that he would be able to do so high-status an individual a good turn. “My mother, Laine, has the authority to barter for those goods for the tribe. I am sure she will be happy to bargain with you.”
That was not in the least surprising; Laine was known to cut a shrewd bargain herself, quite as well as glass-maker Harrod’s wife. The only reason that she was not in charge of Ghost Cat’s dealings with the village was that she had not dared try the language exchange with a dyheli. In part, that was because she was strongly averse to any “meddling with magic and holy things” for herself, and in part it was because she didn’t want to court the horrid headache that always followed such an. exchange.
Not that Keisha blamed her.
Laine was learning Valdemaran the old-fashioned way, bit by bit, from her sons, who had gotten the tongues the “easy” way. This would not matter to Keisha, who spoke Laine’s tongue with the fluency of her own.
“Come,” Hywel said, gesturing grandly, “I will take you to her.” Keisha repressed another chuckle at that; she didn’t need Hywel to show her to his own house, she knew quite well where it was - but conducting her there raised his status another minute increment. The saying she had heard about the Northerners did seem to be true: “You are known by who you know!”
Not long after that, the two women were going over the goods in the storehouse, with all the pleasure of any two women anywhere in the lustrous furs, the warmth of the amber. His job done, Hywel had gone off to do “man things” - which basically meant sitting about with his young warrior friends, boasting about the animals they would hunt when fall came.
The familial resemblance between Laine and her sons was unmistakable; all three shared a distinctively high brow, deep-set eyes, and short nose. For the rest, they shared brown eyes, black hair, sturdy, muscular build, and heavily tanned skin with the rest of their tribe.
“Ah - these are what I wanted - ” Keisha said, when she finally turned over a protective layer of cloth to reveal the skins she was looking for. “How many do you think it would take to line the hood of a winter cloak?”
“Six,” Laine said instantly, the fringes of her leather dress swaying as she reached for one of the furs. She spread it over her arm, displaying it to Keisha, ruffling up the fur with her breath to show how thick and plush the hair was. “Yes, six. No less. You will not want the fur about the hindquarters, you see, and the belly-fur is thin. And were I you, I should have some wolverine as well, to put about the edge of the hood. The wolverine is so hot-blooded that the virtue goes even into the fur, and your breath will not freeze upon it.”
Keisha very much doubted that “virtue” had anything to do with it, but she did know that the rest was true. She started to agree, when Laine spoke again.
“And here - I think that Clanbrother Darian might well like one of these,” Laine continued, taking a cloth off another pile of what had appeared to be pieced and worked goods. She picked one up and shook it out - it was a vest, made of leather, but not tooled, dyed, or decorated in the usual fashions of the Ghost Cat tribe, but actually embroidered with designs. When Keisha examined it further, taking it from Laine’s hands, she saw that it had been embroidered, not with thread or yarn, but very cleverly with tufts of dyed fur of some kind.
The designs themselves were nothing like those the Northern tribes used, although they seemed faintly familiar. But try as she might, Keisha just couldn’t place them. They were more like some sort of foreign designs that the Northerners had tried to adapt to their own style.
“I think you’re right, Laine,” she said, as she held the vest in her hands, admiring the workmanship. “Darian will like this quite a lot. He’s not the lover of decoration that Firesong is - ”
“Ai, and who is?” Laine interjected, giggling, hiding her mouth behind her blunt-fingered hand as was the custom among Ghost Cat women.
“No one!” Keisha laughed. “But Darian does like to dress handsomely now and again, and this is just his sort of clothing.”
She and Laine bargained spiritedly for some time, and eventually arrived at a price they both liked. Ghost Cat craved Keisha’s dyes and the food-spices she raised - she would never bargain with medicinal herbs, but she had no compunction about using her spices as currency. The tribesmen had learned that spiced food was a fine thing; it was a taste they quickly acquired, for the spices gave their plain meals a savor they had never had before. In the cases of garlic and some peppers, it was quite good for their health, too.
In exchange for spices and dyes to be delivered by dyheli, Keisha carried off enough furs to line her hood and make mittens, and she also bought the handsome vest. She had stowed them away in her saddlebags by the time Shandi and Anda were ready to leave.
Darian is usually the one getting things for me, she reflected, very pleased with herself. It’ll be fun to see his face when I surprise him with a gift, for a change.
It was at that moment that Anda’s Companion picked up his pace, leaving Shandi and Keisha lagging a little behind. Shandi did not trouble to catch up, and the dyheli Keisha rode was in no great hurry either. Anda disappeared around a turn in the road, and only then did Shandi turn to her sister.
Shandi wore a stubborn expression; her golden-brown eyes narrowed as she regarded Keisha. “All right,” the young Herald demanded. “What exactly is going on - or not going on - between you and Darian.”
“Nothing!” Keisha responded before she thought.
“That’s exactly the problem,” Shandi retorted. “And I want to know why. You said you’d talk about it later - well, this is later, and we can’t get any more privacy than we have now.”
Except for two pairs of four-hooved, pointed ears, Keisha thought, looking resentfully at Karles’ head. His ears were pointed back toward both of them, although the dyheli’s weren’t. She didn’t relish the notion of having any witnesses at all to this.
“Come on, Keisha, you know I won’t give up. I know you too well,” Shandi persisted, turning in her saddle to face her fully. “You’ve got a situation here that’s hurting both of you, whether you’ll admit it or not.” She sounded very sure of herself; too sure, Keisha thought.
“I don’t see how you can claim that,” Keisha said sullenly, looking straight ahead and not at her sister. She couldn’t - didn’t want to - meet Shandi’s eyes. “I’m not in the least unhappy. I have a terrific life; it couldn’t possibly be any better.”
“Huh. You might be able to convince anyone else of that, but not your sister, and not an Empath,” Shandi retorted energetically. “What’s the problem? He’s not discontent, and you aren’t interested in anyone else. Are you afraid he’s inevitably going to lose interest in you and go chase some other girl?”
Since that was precisely what had been troubling her, Keisha’s head snapped around and she stared at her sister in shock. “How did - ”
“It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?” Shandi replied, staring into her startled eyes. “You never believed that anyone would ever think you were pretty enough to bother with when we were at home, and you don’t believe it now. In your heart,” she continued ruthlessly, “you’re sure this is all some kind of accident on Darian’s part, and one of these days he’ll wake up and realize it.” Shandi sounded calm, collected, and utterly unruffled; the very opposite of the way Keisha felt. “In fact, you’re actually planning on it happening.”
Put that way, so baldly and unadorned, it sounded ridiculous, and Keisha felt as if she’d been caught doing something very stupid. Embarrassed, resentful, full of chagrin - but it hadn’t seemed foolish all those times when she’d been feeling alone and so unhappy!
“You haven’t done anything stupid, sib,” Shandi said gently, her eyes softening. “But you almost did. It’s one short step from being sure that something good can’t last to sabotaging it, and making your fears come true. You can’t let things that you know don’t make sense get in the way of a wonderful relationship!”
But Empath or not, Keisha was not about to admit anything to her little sister. Shandi was, after all, her little sister; younger, presumably less experienced. How dared she sit in judgment on her older sister? Besides, Shandi had no idea of the stresses on her. “Look, that’s not all it is, it isn’t even most of it. I have my duties, my responsibilities, and Darian has his - they aren’t the same, and we’re apart more than we’re together. I can’t trail around after him the way a wife is suppo - ”
“Oh, please,” Shandi groaned, interrupting her, while Karles snorted in obvious scorn. “What god came down and told you exactly what a wife is supposed to do? Who set up rules like that?”
Keisha’s temper flared as her resentment mounted. Just because Shandi was a Herald and didn’t have to go along with the kinds of conventions that normal people did, she had no right to make any kind of judgments for her sister! Keisha wasn’t about to flout conventions! “Everyone knows what - ”
“That’s ridiculous,” Shandi interrupted again. “When has Darian ever told you - or even hinted - that he expects you to sit home and bake and spin? You aren’t everybody, you probably have more wits than any two of my old friends put together - and you don’t have to put up with the small-mindedness of village gossips if you don’t want to. They won’t even know what you’re doing if you live here, for one thing! And for another - no one but you should be allowed to make any decisions about how you live and who with.”
Keisha opened her mouth - and closed it again. She had no answer whatsoever for that, because Shandi was right - once again.
“So when did Darian demand or even hint that if you two got married, you had to become a so-called ‘proper’ wife?” Shandi demanded.
“You can’t answer me, because he hasn’t, right?” Shandi shook her head. “Listen to me, and think. What kind of couples has he had for comparison of what a good pairing is like? I’m not talking about the villagers, either, because he doesn’t really think of himself as one of the villagers, he thinks of himself as a Hawkbrother. He had his own parents - who worked together as a team; his mother certainly didn’t sit at home and wash floors. He has the Hawkbrothers - who are very careful about getting into a marriage, or whatever they call it, but who don’t make any demands that one partner be subservient to the other! So why should he suddenly demand that of you?”
Shandi was too logical, and fired off her arguments too quickly for Keisha to respond. She felt a headache coming on, a shaft of pain coming from her temple, even as she felt flushed and very uncomfortable. Why wouldn’t Shandi just drop the whole subject and leave her alone?
Now Shandi changed her tone to one of coaxing; she lowered her voice and cocked her head to one side. “Keisha, just because you get involved with someone, even marry him, that doesn’t mean one of you has to get swallowed up by the other. Darian doesn’t want that - if he did, trust me, you’d know it, and you have a good sense of self-preservation; you’d be running away as fast as a dyheli could carry you!” She laughed.
Shandi certainly did that, when Mother tried to swallow her up. . . .
But Shandi didn’t make that comparison, which was probably just as well. “You say that you and Darian are apart more than together now that you’re both taking on your full responsibilities - well, things change, and you have to change with them, you ought to know that by now! You’ll probably have to work some things out, maybe make some alterations in how you work, but - ”
Me? Why should I be the one to have to change? “I don’t think it’s fair for me to have to make all the compromises!” Keisha said - and cringed when she heard the whining tone in her own voice.
“So don’t! When I said ‘you’ I meant both of you!” Exasperation crept into Shandi’s voice. “Listen to what I’m saying, and don’t keep jumping to the worst possible conclusion! You make some compromises, he’ll make some, you’ll work out what’s acceptable to both of you. But don’t undermine your own happiness because you think you haven’t got anything to offer him, and don’t drive him away just because you’re afraid of a commitment!”
I’m not afraid! Keisha wanted to snap - but she knew, instantly, that it would be a lie. So she didn’t say anything at all.
Fortunately, that seemed to be the end of Shandi’s lecture. Shandi left her alone then; she didn’t ride ahead or lag behind, but she didn’t say anything more. Finally Keisha thought of something to say.
She couldn’t help it; she sounded sarcastic. “How did you become such an expert on - on - ”
“On romance?” Shandi looked over at her, and winked, taking her question at face value and ignoring the sarcasm. “Forced into it. Between all the boys that chased after me in Errold’s Grove, and all the Trainees who came to me with boy- and girl-problems, I got to be an expert fairly quickly.” She sighed heavily. “Everybody goes to an Empath for a shoulder to cry on.”
“Don’t I know it!” Keisha said involuntarily, thinking of the number of times that Shandi’s disappointed suitors had done just that to her - and that broke the uncomfortable stalemate. They both laughed, Shandi heartily, Keisha weakly.
By unspoken consent they did not discuss anything remotely uncomfortable after that. Shandi changed the subject to something completely innocuous. They spent the rest of the ride talking about trivialities, nothing that used up an awful lot of brain power, which was just as well.
Shandi had given her a great deal to occupy her thoughts.
Darian woke in the late morning feeling just as much turmoil and confusion in his mind as he’d had when he went to bed. In fact, he hadn’t really expected to sleep, but his exhausted body had decided otherwise. He turned himself out of the hammock he’d awakened in, in one of Silverfox’s workrooms, and found (as he’d expected) a fresh set of his own clothing waiting for him beside the window. And cleaned boots.
The hertasi were busy this morning.
Getting dressed, he hurried up the staircase to Firesong’s ekele above, certain that he would find his mentor there, probably engrossed in a magical text.
He was not wrong; Firesong looked up as soon as he poked his nose in the door. “Get over here,” Firesong ordered, pointing to a low chair. In a moment, his teacher had Darian sitting down with food in front of him. Firesong turned his apparent attention back to the heavy book from which he was making notes.
“Don’t say anything just yet,” Firesong cautioned, without looking up. “Eat first.” And he sat there with his arms folded across the pages, drawing delicate diagrams, while Darian did just that. Darian obeyed him, even though the food had no more taste than old leaves, and kept catching in his throat.
When he’d finished enough to satisfy the Adept, Firesong allowed him to set the tray aside and get down to a serious discussion.
“I’ve been doing some research, but I haven’t found anything that was of much use. Charting the Change-Circle against our maps put it on a proper arc, in line with others we knew of already, but since no one has yet been able to find a provable correlation between source and destination Circles when they change places, I have no prediction of where what was initially in that Circle went. I also did a little more work this morning, when I was fresher, with Starfall’s help,” Firesong told him. “Unfortunately, we got pretty much the same result. Your father is somewhere north and west of us; how far, and in exactly what direction he is, we simply can’t tell - except that it’s a long way. Farther than a hawk would fly in a week.” He sighed. “There still isn’t enough clean, clear power about for us to be able to point to him with any more accuracy than that. Best scrying we can do at present gives us a general “feel” within a quarter compass, at this distance. It is like target shooting in a dense fog, when you haven’t even seen where the target is placed first. We’d either have to have more power, or be a great deal closer to him to find him.”
“And there’s an awful lot of ‘north and west’ to be searching in,” Darian sighed. “Firesong - ”
“Don’t make any decisions yet,” Firesong cautioned. “We haven’t begun to exhaust all of our resources. There may be someone among the tribesmen coming here for Healing who can give us clues, or even a real direction.”
Darian grimaced. “And this is where you counsel me about patience. My head knows you’re right, but - I don’t want to sit around and wait, I want to be up and doing something!” He unclenched a fist he wasn’t even aware he’d made. “I have been patient. I’ve undergone trials, travels, and ceremonies until my ears could bleed. I’ve been in fights that scared me to death and done responsible things for others enough to be Knighted, and even that was to better do the duties demanded of me.”
Firesong nodded, and a lock of his snowy white hair fell over one eye. He said nothing in agreement, but also said nothing disapproving.
“I’ve given and given to this Vale. And to the village, and to Valdemar, and even the Northerners. I have had some wonderful times and great benefits, and I don’t have too many regrets. I have not done these things so I could stack up favors to call in.” Darian paused for a long deep breath then continued. “It is just that - the things I have done over the past few years have been almost all for others, but this is for me.”
Firesong brushed the stray hair away from his face, still seemingly impassive as he listened, then said levelly, “Go on.”
Darian set his jaw and then concluded. “Firesong, I want this one. I want this one for me and for my family. I’m horribly afraid that if we wait too long, something will happen to them. . . .” His voice faded as he contemplated that terrible notion, that he would learn his parents were alive only to discover they’d perished just days before he could reach them.
Firesong shook his head slightly while he steepled his fingers. “I understand. But Darian, they’ve survived this long, surely they can survive the summer!”
“If I knew where they were, and what the situation was, I’d be more inclined to agree with you. But what if they’re alive now only because they’re being kept as a death-sacrifice by Blood Bear or some other tribe like them?” Darian protested.
“That is as may be, but it could as well have happened two years ago as not, or never,” Firesong replied blithely. “What needs to be done is for you to balance and measure the likelihood of results with the risks to be taken, with what powers can be brought to bear with the time you have.”
Darian looked unhappy with such an objective assessment, but he knew that Firesong was right. What they did know was that his father was in passable, maybe excellent health; the first spell had told him that much, and he had to presume that Starfall and Firesong working together had confirmed that. If a man lacking a foot and marooned in the far north was in any health after all these years, that argued for his continued survival.
But it was hard, so hard, to simply sit there and discuss logistical possibilities with Firesong, when what he wanted to do was to get a score of dyheli volunteers and go north as fast as they could carry him, carrying whatever food and equipment he could gather in a dash through his quarters, trusting that luck and his own magic would give him a direction.
But even at his most optimistic and foolhardy, he knew that such a plan would be ridiculous. Luck only favored those who didn’t need it, an old saying went. . . .
Besides, Keisha deserves to hear about this.
That was another consideration altogether. He couldn’t just go haring off without telling her.
“Of all the things in the world, I think being patient is the hardest,” he moaned, and Firesong nodded.
“I know quite a few people who would agree wholeheartedly with that sentiment,” his teacher replied, with true sympathy. “That includes the man I was for the first half of my life. As the Shin’a’in shaman say, though, ‘Every scar is a lesson remembered.’ “ His face wrinkled in pits and creases as he smiled sideways. “I think that while we plan and prepare for what you will do about your parents, you ought to go find something useful that will occupy your mind.” He closed the book firmly, caressing its spine before looking to Darian.
“I think you’re right,” Darian said after a pause, and got to his feet. “Have you any suggestions?”
But when Firesong also rose, a wicked gleam in his eye, Darian knew he had asked the wrong question.
“Of course, my dear student,” Firesong said in tones of silk. “After all, just because you’ve become a Master, that doesn’t mean you’ve stopped needing to learn, does it?”
The next several hours of magical work left him exhausted in mind and body; Firesong’s idea of something that would “occupy his mind” was a set of exercises that took every iota of his thoughts and left him nothing to devote to his own problems.
He found himself juggling multiple ley-lines, plus Heartstone power, while fending off little stinging “annoyance” attacks from Firesong - and meanwhile he had to accomplish his started task, which was to create a second outlet for his hot spring, since there was more than enough water flowing from it to supply two sets of hot pools. Ayshen had already voiced a wish for a supply of hot water for the kitchens so that they didn’t nave to use the smoke-belching wood-fired boiler that everyone considered a dubious compromise; adding blocks of native hickory sweetened the smell but still was not ideal. So, Darian just had to make a channel for the water from his spring. “Just.” Hah!
What he’d actually had to do was find a series of cracks and weak spots through the bedrock leading to the kitchen, seal them from side pathways, then coax a tendril of the hot spring to take those cracks as he slowly forced open the weak spots, melted and sculpted the stone into a sealed channel, and finally bring the spring out near the boiler itself, so that Ayshen could use the existing boiler as a hot-water storage tank instead.
And meanwhile, hundreds of little wasplike attack “stingers” came at him from every possible direction - any he didn’t deflect gave him a sharp reminder of his inadequacy. Twice Firesong even lobbed physical rocks at him, as he had during his Master Trial. He deflected both away - the second one directly back at his mentor, earning a chuckle from him.
When he was through, Firesong laughed, congratulated him, and sent him back to his own ekele to bathe and change again. For a few hours, at least, he had been far too preoccupied to think of his father, but as soon as he set one foot on the path outside the workroom, it began again.
And Mother - how is she? I don’t know anything about her - but if Father survived having his foot taken off, she had to have been with him. He could easily imagine her standing by and guarding him, hunting for both of them until he recovered, taking care of him. They worked together as seamlessly as a hand inside a glove; they’d both been hunters, but had switched to trapping so that they could include Darian in their treks. Trapping was no less work than hunting, but the danger was a bit less, and it had been something that they could all work at together, even when Darian was an infant. A crying baby wasn’t much use on a stalk, but didn’t make much difference in working a trap-line.
He opted for a quick shower, using a spigot high up on the wall, perforated with many tiny holes. It was his own idea, to have a way to get clean quickly in his own quarters rather than having to head for a hot pool or falls; Keisha liked it for washing her hair. He was just pulling his clean shirt on over his head when he heard hoofbeats coming toward the open front door.
He hurried outside, still barefoot, hoping to be able to catch not only Keisha, but her sister, and possibly Herald Anda as well. He wanted to tell all three of them what he had discovered himself. By now the news had certainly spread all over the Vale, and when any story spread, it tended to get changed, sometimes out of all recognition.
He was in luck; all three of them were together, and he managed to wave Anda and Shandi in before they rode off to the guest lodge. Keisha looked faintly puzzled, but she said nothing.
“Listen, I need to tell all three of you what’s just happened,” he said when the other two had dismounted. Then when the Companions shook their heads and snorted at him, he quickly revised, “I mean, all five of you.”
The Companions looked mollified at his acknowledgment and he quickly outlined his search, the results, and the information that had come out of the magical investigation afterward. “And that’s all I know,” he concluded, looking mostly at Keisha for her reaction. “It’s driving me frantic, because there really isn’t enough to make a search on - ”
“But you have to keep working on it!” Keisha exclaimed passionately, interrupting him. “Of course you have to! How can you come so close and just leave it at that? And when you do find out where they are, you’ve got to go looking for them!”
“I wouldn’t advise undertaking a full-scale search on so little information,” Herald Anda cautioned. This was what Darian had expected out of him, but suddenly Anda dropped his dignity and his caution and burst out with, “But - oh, hang it all! We’ll all help you get a better idea of where to look, and the Tayledras and the Northerners, too, no doubt! Surely as many good minds as we have can come up with something!”
Darian stared for a moment, as Shandi nodded energetically. “I absolutely agree,” Shandi seconded firmly. “No doubt at all; Karles feels the same. We’ll all work on this together. It seems to me that with all the best minds of Valdemar and the Vales working on it, we’ll surely come up with a way to figure out exactly where your parents are, and bring them home again!”
Darian did not know whether to laugh or weep with relief. He’d been sure that Keisha would support him, but he’d been half convinced that the two Heralds would oppose any attempt to find and bring back his parents, since it would mean his absence from Valdemar - and all his duties. “I - all I can say is ‘thank you’ and that hardly seems adequate,” he managed, after two tries to make words come out had failed.
“Thank us when we’ve got some results,” Anda said simply. “Just know we’re not going to oppose you, and we’ll help you any way we can, starting by putting our own minds to work on this. Remember, I was trained in a couple of different ‘schools’ of magic; I might be able to think of something new to you.”
He and his Companion exchanged a glance, then he and Shandi traded looks. “We all need some rest, and a chance to think, so we’ll see you later,” Shandi said by way of farewell, then she and Anda mounted again and rode off toward the guest lodge.
While they had been talking, Keisha had taken a bundle down off her dyheli, who then left them to find a hertasi to rid him of his tack. Keisha had held it clutched tensely to her chest all the time she’d been listening to Darian, and only now did she remember it. “Havens!” she said, looking down at the bundle in her hands in surprise. “I’d forgotten all about the present I got you! It doesn’t seem like much after your news - ”
But Darian was deeply touched. “I beg to differ!” he replied. “Thank you for remembering me - I’m hardly as exciting as the potential to see a brand new disease, after all!”
He saw by the gleam in her eye that she understood he was teasing her. “Oh, is that what you think, then? Well you might be right!” she teased back. “Maybe some day I’ll leave you for a nice, exciting plague!”
He caught her up in his arms, and felt a new relaxation about her that delighted him. Whatever had caused this change, he hoped it would persist; she hadn’t been this easy around him for months. “How about if I give you a fever instead?” he murmured into her ear as he nuzzled her neck.
She turned her head - and bit his ear. Not hard, but it startled him and he let her go. “You’ll have to earn it by catching me first,” she taunted, and ran into the ekele.
He ran after her, and for the next fever-warm candlemark or so, they were too busy with each other to think of anything else.
After a much more pleasant shower-bath, this time shared, and yet another change of clothing, Darian stumbled over Keisha’s bundle in the middle of the floor of the outer room. He picked it up, saw to his relief that it was undamaged, and looked for a place to put it down.
“Oh, good, I was afraid we might have trampled that,” she said, emerging from the bedroom and tying her hair back as she walked. “Here, let me.”
She held out her hands for it, and he obediently handed the bundle to her.
She sat down and began to unwrap it in her lap - first the outer square of cloth, which he realized had been her scarf. A scarf was something no modern Healer was ever without, since a scarf could be put to so many useful purposes. Inside the scarf was a bundle of soft, dark-brown furs. They looked rather like weasel or muskrat, but were much softer and the fur was more plush.
Keisha put the furs aside, and brought out something made of leather and lined with a coarser fur - she shook it out and held it up to him, beaming. “Yes, that fits - have a look, do you like it?”
He took it from her and turned it around - and almost dropped it, stepping back involuntarily.
He stared, struck dumb, as familiar patterns of embroidery branded themselves on his mind.
Keisha’s smile faded and she looked at him with uncertainty. “You - you don’t like it - I’ll - ”
“No, no, no, that’s not it - ” It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be - it was only a superficial resemblance, surely!
But he put the vest down, and went straight to the storage chest where he kept the few precious relics of his childhood that had pleasant memories attached. He opened it, reached in, and brought out a small, cloth-wrapped package of his own. This he took over to Keisha and opened, laying out the embroidered leather vest that lay inside next to the one she had brought him.
Though the colors of the second vest were faded and stained, the leather worn - though the motifs had been embroidered using wool and flax threads rather than tufts of dyed hair - and though the older vest was barely half the size of the new one - there was no doubt.
In all other ways, they were identical.
They stared at the vests, then into each other’s eyes. And finally, Keisha managed to speak.
“Havens!” She exclaimed involuntarily. “They’re the same! But how?”
“I don’t know, Keisha,” Darian breathed. “Where did you get this?”
“Wait - ” Keisha said, feeling that she had to slow all this down, at least a little. Things were happening too fast for her. “This could just be a flower, and flowers are a universal embroidery motif - ”
“But it’s not a flower,” Darian interrupted. “It’s a radial repeat of the Trappers’ Guild symbol, see?” He blocked off all but one quarter of the spiky circle, and sure enough, Keisha had no trouble in recognizing the stylized trap. “It’s Mother’s own design, making it repeat like that; I’ve never seen anyone else use it.”
So much for it being an accident or a coincidence, Keisha thought. “Well, I got it from Ghost Cat - they got it in trade-goods from one of the tribes that came here looking for Healing.”
Darian started to move, and she put out her hand and pushed him back down into his chair. “It will keep for half a day,” she told him. “If you wait until tomorrow morning, you’ll be able to actually talk with someone; if you go now, you’ll only have to wait until morning when everyone wakes up.”
“But - ” Darian was looking a bit wild-eyed, and she was in complete sympathy.
“I know, you need to do something, and the smartest thing to do is take these vests to Firesong. Maybe he can make some sense out of them. Then - well, I think we should talk to the Vale Council and see what everyone else says.” She was actually grasping at straws, but he nodded, agreeing with her, and she sighed with relief. The last thing she wanted was for him to go running off into the darkness to find a dyheli and ride off to the Ghost Cat village. Kuari or no Kuari, the mental state he was in was conducive to mistakes. Suddenly, she had a nightmare vision of Darian, his dyheli, or both falling on the night-shrouded trail and breaking a leg. Or both legs. Or worse.
But at least she had managed to come up with an idea that made him feel that he was accomplishing something. She followed him out the door and down the trail as he set off at a lope for Firesong’s ekele, knowing that it was going to be a very long night.
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 seemed 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.”
“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?”
:I believe I should accompany him,: Hashi offered diffidently. :You know that what Kel cannot see or scent on the ground, I can. I can work well with Kuari after dark. I am eager to have this saga at first hand. I am not vital to this Vale; there are others who can serve as the kyree representative as well as I. The fact that I have remained so is mostly habit on our part.:
“Any objections?” Starfall looked around the table, and saw none. “So far we have Darian, Kel, Keisha, Hashi, and Hywel. Tyrsell, I take it that you can supply as many restless young stags as need be?”
:Hah. I would have difficulty holding them back. This will be a high-status expedition for our eager young stags. The young does will be greatly impressed.: Tyrsell’s dry amusement at the expense of his younger counterparts had them all chuckling.
But Tyrsell hasn’t had to exert himself to impress does in a very long time, Darian reminded himself, with rising sympathy for those “eager young stags.” The only way a young stag became a father and potential harem leader was to do something impressive.
“Do you have to ask?” Wintersky said. “I’m going, of course. It’s too dull around here. If I spend another summer shooing those Northern pilgrims onto the right trail, I’ll go mad. I swear I will.”
Starfall laughed at him. “All right, all right. I think you can be spared! That’s Darian, Keisha, Kel, Hashi, Wintersky, and a herd. Who else should we ask to volunteer?”
“No hertasi,” Ayshen said reluctantly. “It is very cold in the north, even in the summer.”
“Not that cold!” the Shaman protested. “You speak as if there is snow upon the ground everywhere at midsummer!”
But Starfall shook his head. “No, I agree. This is not like our foray into Valdemar, where the hertasi were protected and we were in no great hurry to cover ground. This expedition will move too quickly, and have too many risks for any hertasi to go along safely. Ayshen, your people are fine fighters, but only in large numbers, and what’s the point of asking for fifty hertasi to go and be chilled solid up North, when they’re needed more in the warm Vale?”
“No argument here,” Darian agreed, nodding. “Ayshen, I agree with you completely, even if it does mean I have to eat my own cooking.”
That brought a laugh as he had hoped, and the talk turned to provisioning for a little while, until Shandi cleared her throat. That brought silence, and all eyes turned toward her.
She flushed a little but said into the quiet, “Karles and I want to go along. Actually, Karles and I think we need to go along.”
Now that was a surprise! Of all of them, only Steelmind nodded, as if he had guessed as much.
“Anda and I talked this over very seriously before Darian went to the village, and spoke to the Snow Fox people,” she continued. “Anda would like us to see what conditions are like up there. It is not intended as a slight to any of you, of any species, but depending upon what was encountered it could be very advantageous to have an official Valdemaran presence there. No offense meant, Shaman Celin, but we need to know if there are any more - ” She paused to pick out the least offensive words. “Any more aggressive peoples, like the Blood Bear tribe.”
“You need to know? You are not the only ones!” the Shaman replied. “We stand between you and any armies, recollect! And we have pledged to guard this place, have we not?”
“Well, there you have it.” Shandi shrugged. “Karles and I put our necks into this, too, then.”
Anda traded a look with her, then spoke to the rest. “This is something that is very important to us. I would have hesitated to send her and Karles alone, but this is going to be a group that is large enough - not to protect her, but that she can work with.”
This was not the first time that Darian had gotten the feeling there was a great deal going on between the two Heralds that was not spoken aloud. There was an entire conversation taking place - probably in personal Mindspeech - that no one else was privy to.
“My Gift of Empathy can be pretty useful in figuring out if someone is telling the truth without having to use a vrondi-based Truth Spell, you know,” Shandi pointed out. “And I probably know as much about rough camping as any of you. And I can do one thing that none of you can. Through Karles, I can keep in touch with Anda and the Vale.”
Darian raised an eyebrow at that, but said nothing; he could read between the lines easily enough. Valdemar and the Hawkbrothers were friends and allies, but . . . it was always better to have a pair of your own eyes along.
He couldn’t find it in his heart to feel resentful either; he’d have felt the same if the shoe had been on the other foot.
In fact, I don’t think any of us here at the Vale would want a set of Heraldic spies going up there without one of us along. After all, we’re the ones who’d be getting the arrows and spears in our teeth first.
But the greatest surprise of all was that Steelmind then said, “And I would go, too, if you will have me.”
From the startled look that Shandi threw at him, this was a complete surprise to her as well as everybody else - except possibly Silverfox. “Why?” was the question on the tip of everyone’s tongue, Darian suspected, but no one asked it, in part because it was, frankly, no one’s business but Steelmind’s. “We can certainly use you,” Darian said gratefully, and left it at that.
We-ell! There must be a great deal more going on there than I had thought! And Steelmind’s decision to come took Shandi by surprise, too! I wonder why - unless it’s that she’s closing off that Empathy of hers when it comes to Steelmind . . . maybe because she didn’t want to know what he was feeling?
Hywel and Celin had gotten their heads together and now Celin said, “We two believe that it would be well if you went as traders. Traders have some protection among our people, more than any other outsiders; they tend to be left alone by all except wolf-heads and outlaws, for if the traders were molested, who would bring new goods in the coming year, or pretty things for our women?” He chuckled. “I tell you, our women would take our scalps for that, if the traders were frightened off!”
Darian didn’t much like the idea of posing as traders. He didn’t want to end up weighed down by a lot of clattering goods, and he certainly didn’t want to be a target for outlaws because of those same clattering goods!
“Could we trade in dyes?” Keisha asked instantly. “I know your women really like the ones I have.”
Oh, good thought, ke’chara! Dyes are light, and a little goes a long way! We’d have a reason for not carrying much baggage! He had not liked the idea of being loaded down with pure mass to maintain the ruse, or perhaps even being forced to bring a wagon for trade goods.
“Dyes would be good,” the Shaman ruminated. “I tell you what you may ask for. Earth-amber, gold, and carved ivory. Dyes are valuable; we weigh them out, weight for weight, with such treasure. Those things will not weigh you down; you will look like proper traders, but wise ones, who are willing to move quickly and venture much for much gain.”
Darian privately had decided that if anything threatened to weigh them down, he would discard it without a moment of hesitation. This was not a real trading expedition, and he had no intention of looking for a profit.
With that decided, the planning began in earnest.
When they finally returned to the ekele, very late that night, Keisha looked around with a sigh. “If I’d had any idea what this expedition was going to be like - ” she began.
“You’d have volunteered to come along anyway,” Darian replied confidently. He was already selecting clothing for the journey - and curiously, the first thing he picked was his Ghost Cat outfit.
Perhaps I’d better take mine, too.
“I don’t know about that,” Keisha muttered, but mostly to herself. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was going to be camping rough when she volunteered. She’d scarcely been camping at all, and when she did go, it was with full amenities; tents, cook-stoves, plenty of food, and lots of hertasi to help out.
But there weren’t going to be any comforts on this trip; no tents, no cook-stoves, and they’d eat mostly what they killed or found for themselves.
Thank goodness for Steelmind. He’ll be able to tell what’s good and what’s not without our having to experiment with it. An all-meat diet would be very bad - though I doubt Kelvren would agree.
They’d be cooking over the fire, without pots for the most part. They’d be sleeping in hammocks, sometimes strung high in the trees for safety. If it rained, they’d each have a rain cape to drape over themselves and their hammock - or they might put up a lean-to, if they had time.
It could be worse. We could be sleeping on the ground, I suppose.
True, there wasn’t much danger of anyone becoming sick, not with her along, and one thing was certain, she wasn’t going to scrimp on her medicines. Darian could always use magic to keep them warm, if he had to, and maybe even sheltered from the weather. Still “Heyla, you’ll enjoy it,” Darian said, putting his arms around her, as if he had been reading her thoughts. He probably didn’t have to; her thoughts were written clearly enough on her face. “I know it’s not what you’re used to, but camping this way can be a lot of fun. You miss sleeping out under the stars when you’re in a tent, and you miss waking up to the dawn.”
“Insect repellent,” she muttered absently, thinking about the black flies and nocturnal mosquitoes that Hywel had described. “I’d better come up with an insect repellent we can wear. There’s a camphor balm I can mix up.”
“Exactly. It’s not as if we aren’t clever enough to improvise, or as if we haven’t done this before. You’re the only one of us who’s never camped this way.” He turned her around and gave her a winning smile; a little reluctantly, she responded.
“I’ll try not to be a burden on the rest of you,” she told him, looking up into his eyes. “That’s the part I’m really afraid of - that after a week you’l wish I’d never come along, and after two, you’d wish you’d never met me.”
There it was, out in the open. The confession hac slipped out before she could stop herself. She pushec away from him, as he considered her words.
“You might say the same thing about me,” he finally answered. “When it’s cold and raining, and we haven’t had any luck hunting, or when we’re trying to sleep knowing that there’s something prowling around at the foot of our tree, just waiting for a ropt to snap or a limb to break. Or when I order you around - you might wish me on the other side of the world.”
“I might,” she agreed. She’d meant it to sound teasing; it came out as a bit waspish.
“So we’re even.” He didn’t pay any attention to her sharp tone; he just grinned and shrugged. “We’ll deal with it when it happens. In the meantime, we’ve other things to think about. What is going on witli Steelmind?”
That’s certainly changing the subject! “Why are you asking me? I don’t have any more clues than you do,” she replied, making no effort to conceal her own confusion. “I suppose it might have something to do with Shandi, but you know that he’s far too steady to be doing this on a whim, or halfheartedly. Does it matter why he’s coming?”
“Actually - no.” He looked down into her eyes. “As long as I know why you are.”
Once again, words came from her mouth that she hadn’t intended to say. “For you,” she whispered. “Just - for you.”
It seemed to be the right thing to say.
Keisha fingered the talisman at her throat and stared at the mountains before her in disbelief, drawing comfort from the little clay owl figure on her necklace. Since Owl Knight Darian’s induction into the clan, the Elder Women had been making the talismans along with their dyheli figurines. Each of them in the traveling group had one of the clan’s talismans - given to them by Shaman Celin before they left, strung on sliding thongs in the Northern fashion. Hywel’s featured cat claws, understandably enough; both Keisha and Darian had little handmade owl figurines and semiprecious stone beads on theirs. Hers featured the color green in its beads as a reminder of her status as a Healer. Shandi’s had an odd sort of charm - a Tayledras-made chiming ball, enameled with a white horse. Steelmind’s was a silver hawk on a crystal arrowhead shape. Wintersky’s was a pair of hawk talons in stone, with a stone knot between them.
These talisman necklaces were meant to identify them to other northerners as friends to at least one of the tribes. Celin and Vordon had advised them not to wear their Ghost Cat costumes, at least not at first; the relationships among the tribes were complicated, and it was better to be thought of as traders and healers first, and allies of a particular clan second.
They were now altogether out of familiar territory; for the past several days they had been taking a barely discernible track through hills that had been plenty tall enough for Keisha, but today they had come up over a particularly lofty range to see the real mountains.
Keisha could only sit slackly in her saddle and stare. Between the top of the hill where they were and the beginning of the mountain range was a wide river valley, a meandering river running through it that they would have to ford.
“Is there snow on the tops of those?” she asked Hywel incredulously, pointing to the white-dusted peaks looming against the blue sky.
“Probably,” he replied, shrugging his indifference. “It doesn’t matter; we won’t be going up that high.” The young tribesman was in his element now. So far as he was concerned, this trip was the height of pure pleasure. Not that he disliked living on the border of Valdemar, but here he was, ranging and hunting rather than staying in one place and herding, and doing it all by dyheli instead of his own two feet. This was a much superior form of travel, and Hywel very much enjoyed the experience.
Keisha had mixed feelings; she was finding more pleasure in this form of travel than she had expected, but that was leavened by the fact that she seemed so much clumsier at rough-camping than anyone else. Steelmind, Darian, and Wintersky were already part of a functioning “team.” They had worked and traveled together for four years before Keisha had ever met them. That left Keisha, Shandi, and Hywel to fit themselves into the pattern somehow.
Hywel had insinuated himself into the working trio within a day; his role was clear cut, after all. He was the guide. Between everything that he had absorbed from his elders and the Snow Fox folk, and his own memories, he had a fair idea of where he was going. Between Hywel and the sole dyheli doe that had come as Tyrsell’s representative - who served as their scout - they had clear courses marked out for them every day.
Shandi had learned the essentials of camping all through her two years at the Collegium, by going out with Anda on a regular basis with little more than a bow and arrows, a fire-starter, and a few essentials in a saddlebag. Within three days, Shandi also had fit herself into the regular rhythm of things.
It was Keisha who had remained out of step for the longest, much to her chagrin. It took her a couple of days to get the hang of putting up her hammock so that it didn’t fold her in half, nor slip down on one side or the other. She’d never cooked over an open fire before, so she watched, feeling useless, as Shandi and Steelmind made meals. About the only things she could do competently were to fetch wood and water.
At least I’m good at fetching wood and water - and Steelmind can cook.
The others were already starting down into the river valley below; Keisha’s dyheli took it upon himself to follow. She stared at the mountains with the same fascination that she usually reserved for poisonous snakes. Beautiful, yes, but -
How far are we going to have to climb into those peaks? She’d heard all sorts of horrible stories about mountains - trails that ran out, leaving you on a tiny ledge too small to stand on properly, avalanches that swept down in white roaring walls of death, storms that came up out of nowhere, air too thin to breathe, and the dreaded “mountain sickness.” The latter wasn’t an illness as such; it was caused by the thin air; the symptoms ranged from simple shortness of breath to vomiting and delirium. . . .
And the only way to cure it is to get off the mountain, which could be a bit hard to do if you’re vomiting and delirious.
Nevertheless, that was where they were going, and she had volunteered to go.
The river valley was pleasant enough at least, and they couldn’t get farther than the very foot of the first mountain before nightfall. “Hywel, aren’t there any northern tribes around here?” she called to the front of the group. “This place looks deserted.”
“Oh, yes. This is part of Gray Wolf territory,” he said cheerfully. “They are usually farther upriver this time of year; I do not know if we will see them. They do not herd at all; they hunt and plant some.”
They had encountered two tribes thus far; Black Bear (not to be confused with Blood Bear) and Magpie. The latter, allied with Ghost Cat in the past, had welcomed them with great enthusiasm for the dyes that Keisha had brought with them. The northerners, like the southern Shin’a’in, had apparently never seen a color they didn’t love, and combined colors in ways that made Keisha’s eyes water.
Black Bear, however, had been wary and careful; the travelers saw only their warriors, and never had been invited to the camp. Keisha had asked about their Shaman and Healing Woman, and had been greeted with blank stares and no information. Still, Black Bear had not been actively hostile - or else they hadn’t wanted to take on a formidable enigma like Kel - and had let them pass.
Kel was up above now. Hashi and the dyheli doe Neta were somewhere ahead, acting as advance scouts. Neta was years past the age of breeding, but was just as agile as a doe half her age. More to the point, she was wary, clever, and experienced. The young stags were half afraid of her, since she had acted as a disciplinarian to each of them at some point in his life. Keisha was very glad to have her with them.
As her mount Malcam began picking his way down the hillside, Keisha scanned the valley below. There were no thin streams of smoke from possible campfires, nothing moving through the small clearings among the trees, nor along the banks of the river.
The air was so clear that everything stood out in sharp detail, and the scents were more like those of early spring than of early summer.
“We’ll camp early, on this side of the river,” Hywel called back over his shoulder, then urged his mount on ahead to pick out a good campsite.
Good! Steelmind and I can look for edible plants while a couple of the others hunt. Now that she’d gotten the hang of things, she’d be able to help with setting up camp, too.
In next to no time, they were under the trees again, and the branches cut off all sight of those intimidating mountains looming over them. The dyheli continued to pick their way down the slope in single file, with Steelmind taking rearguard just behind Keisha. There was no discernible track, but the rocky slope didn’t support much underbrush, so the way was clear between the trees.
It was a lot farther to the river than it had looked from the top of the hill; they were still making their way toward the river long past the time Keisha would have figured that they would have already been in camp.
They heard the water long before they saw it; a deep rumble that alarmed Keisha, though she saw no signs of worry in any of the others. When they finally came out into the sunlight, just on the riverbank, she saw why.
To her right, on the downstream side, a smooth and silky expanse of broad water passed into a much narrower and rockier channel. Instead of rolling placidly along, the river leaped over boulders the size of a house and roared along a series of descending cascades.
Yet to her left, there could have been nothing more peaceful. The channel was three times the size of the one to the right; the water was placid and relatively slow-moving. It should be no great problem to ford or even swim it.
Darian and his mount had already turned to the left; Shandi and Karles followed. There was no sign of Hywel, who must have gone ahead to a campsite upriver.
He had, and it took several more furlongs of moving westward before they caught up with him. Hashi, Kel, and Neta were with him, acting as perimeter guards while he made some of the initial preparations for the camp. The rapids were no more than a far-off rumble, not disturbing, but the noise might cloak the sounds of anyone or anything approaching.
Keisha dismounted, pulled off her dyheli’s saddle, and set to work. Her job was to make a fire pit while Darian and Hywel went in one direction to hunt, Kel took to the air to find prey for himself, Steelmind to the woods to find edible plants, and Wintersky took fishing tackle to the river. That left Keisha to take care of fire and water duties, and Shandi to get out all their camping gear and decide how she was going to prepare camp for this night’s terrain.
By the time the hunters, fisher, and gatherer had returned with their bounty (or lack of it), Shandi and Keisha had the camp set up and the fire ready.
By sundown, everyone had been fed except for the dyheli, who would graze on-and-off all night. Tonight they had eaten better than usual, since Wintersky had successfully hooked and netted a nice lot of fish. The ones that hadn’t been eaten yet were smoking over the fire, along with strips of meat from the small rabbitlike animals that Hywel and Darian had killed. That would give them tomorrow’s breakfast and lunch - that, and whatever else Steelmind gathered in the morning.
Tonight, with one side guarded for them by the river, Shandi had strung the hammocks at ground level and downwind of the fire where the smoke would drive away blackflies and other biting insects. Keisha brought in a last armload of wood before darkness closed in completely, and she and Darian set themselves up for the first watch of the night.
Hywel and Wintersky took the second, and Shandi and Steelmind the third. The arrangement suited everyone well except Wintersky’s bird, and that hardly mattered, since the handsome falcon was ideally suited for daylight scouting.
While everyone else went straight to their hammocks, Keisha carefully turned the strips of meat and fish fillets to make sure they cured evenly, and Darian made the first of his many rounds of the periphery with Kuari. When he returned, Keisha made a space for him on the pile of leaves she was sitting on - leaves that would eventually end up on the fire to make more smoke.
“Is there a ford, or are we going to have to swim tomorrow?” she asked, as he put his arm around her and held her close. It might not have been a very romantic question, but he didn’t seem to mind that.
“There’s a ford - Ghost Cat used it coming here,” he told her. “Hywel doesn’t think the water is much higher than it was then. It is bound to be some higher, since they came through in summer, not spring, and there’s still snowmelt coming down off the mountains.”
“I know about the snowmelt,” she replied, with a wry smile. “I gave up on the idea of a bath the moment I dipped out the first bucket of water. It feels cold enough to have been solid ice a candlemark before I dipped it out!”
“That’s why we’re crossing in the morning - it’ll give us the full sun to dry out in once we’re across.” Darian looked toward the water, and Keisha knew he had planned every moment of the crossing and just beyond. “Then we spend a full day hunting and fishing.”
“Oh?” She craned her neck around to look him in the face. “Why?”
“Because when we reach the mountains, there won’t be much worth hunting,” he said. “At least, that’s what Hywel says. There’s supposed to be a big pass going right through the range, but Hywel never went through there; Ghost Cat’s traditional territory is in the mountains, but east of here on the other side of the river. We need to go west, though. Once we get across and into that pass we’ll be following Snow Fox directions.”
“Hmm.” She put her head on his shoulder and tried to listen for noises beyond the distant thunder of water. “Well, we knew that was going to happen at some point.”
He didn’t seem at all tense or worried, so she made up her mind not to worry either. How much farther do we have to go? she wondered. All that she knew for certain was that the Raven tribe was said to be living near or on a large body of water, but also in the mountains. I suppose it could be both, she decided, and got up to put more green wood and leaves on the fire.
They spent the rest of their watch making rounds and tending to the smoked meat, then took to their hammocks when Wintersky and Hywel awoke to take over. And yet, in spite of that (or was it because of that?) she felt more relaxed and at ease with Darian than she ever had before.
Their hammocks were strung within easy touching distance, though not so closely that they would bump into each other, and they twined the fingers of one hand together every night before they dozed off. That little ritual had come about entirely by accident, but they’d fallen asleep that way every night since.
And she fell asleep tonight the same way, taking and giving comfort with that simple, wholly natural connection.
“Well, this is deeper today,” Hywel said dubiously, eying the fording place. “We should have crossed yesterday; something must have happened up in the mountains. A storm, maybe, or massive snowmelt.”
Hywel was right; the water was higher by a significant amount, and faster, too. It licked at the rocks just beneath his feet now; if he stepped down to the point where yesterday’s waterline had been, he’d be knee-deep in the torrent. “Too late now; let’s just swim and have done with it,” Darian replied with a shrug. “It’s not that wide; we’re in good shape. We can get across.”
“No, but the current is swifter than yesterday,” Hywel pointed out. He peered upstream. “Look there. If we’re going to swim anyway, let’s pick where we want to come ashore, then go upstream from there and cross diagonally. That way we won’t have to fight the current as much.”
Darian nodded, and sent Kuari up into the air ahead of them. The owl often got a better vantage from above than they had. Looking through Kuari’s eyes, he examined the riverbank on the other side. Kuari perched in a tree just above the ford, and looked down at the riverbank. Water swirled treacherously among rocks, creating turbulent eddies and vortices.
“I don’t much like the look of the ford,” he said.
“Now that the water’s high, there’s a nasty current right there at the bank, and a lot of rocks for hooves to get caught between. But - ” This time he asked Kuari to land right on the bank, as he spotted a much better candidate for a landing point. “Look where Kuari is - we’ve got a nice, shallow slope going up to the shore and no loose rocks - yesterday that was a stone shelf leading down to the water.”
“There’s quite a drop-off at the end of that shelf, but that won’t matter since we’re swimming anyway.” Hywel considered what he could see of the bank from here. “All right; that’s probably the best we’re going to get. Let’s go upstream and see what we can find for a starting point.”
They checked spot after spot; they had Kuari drop chips of wood into the river at various points to gauge the current. It took the better part of a candlemark to find what they were looking for, which was another shelf to allow them to walk into the river, but by midmorning everyone was ready to make the crossing.
Half the dyheli would carry baggage only. The other half, and Karles, had handhold-straps fastened to either side of their saddles. Like it or not, the larger creatures were better equipped to make the crossing, and the humans would have to take advantage of that.
Those carrying the baggage went over first, and Darian ran downstream as they were carried by the current, anxious to see them safely on the other side. He was just as anxious to see how their initial guesses panned out.
Not well. He knew that as soon the dyheli were halfway across. They fought the current every bit of the way, necks stretched out, eyes fixed on the farther shore, legs pumping, nostrils flaring as they panted - and they were the strongest of the mounts. One by one, they clambered ashore, where they stood with heads hanging and sides heaving. They had barely made it to the assigned landing spot; if any of them had been any weaker, he could have gotten swept along to a point where there were no more places to climb out. And after that came the rapids, which were certainly much worse by now.
Darian came back to the group on the shore, and looked from Steelmind to Hywel and back. “What do you think?” he asked them; Shandi had already disavowed any experience in these matters, as had Wintersky.
“We can’t rely on the dyheli to help us; they’re going to have enough to do to get themselves across.” Steelmind spoke first, and Hywel nodded.
“I think we can get across all right anyway. We’re all strong swimmers.” Hywel didn’t sound as certain as Darian would have liked, though.
:I can help.:
It was a mind-voice, but it wasn’t any of the dyheli, nor was it Hashi.
As one, they all turned incredulously toward Karles, who bowed his head and pawed the ground. :I can stay downstream; if anyone begins losing ground to the river, I can come to help him.:
Darian and Keisha, alone of all of them, knew how astonishing it was that Karles should begin talking to everyone. Darian decided not to make an issue of it; if Karles continued to speak to the rest of the group, all well and good. Maybe he had decided to take his cue from Neta and Hashi.
“I can tow frrrom the airrr,” Kel pointed out. “I can have a rrrope rrready to drrrop to anyone who needsss help.”
But that gave Darian an idea. “We can put up a catch-rope across the river at the crossing point; if the water carries any of us off, we can save ourselves with that. Karles and Kel can stand by in case that’s not enough. That’s three kinds of rescue, and that ought to be safeguards enough.”
It would have to be enough; there was no one to help them here except the members of their own party. Three tries or a freezing, sure death in fast water that would batter them against the rocks, and still they were willing to see Darian through on his quest.
That seemed the best plan; with Kel’s help, they strung a rope across the river from bank to bank. The unladen dyheli went over first, with Hashi paddling madly beside them. Then Karles, who had no difficulty getting across, unlike the dyheli. It occurred to Darian at that point that the Companion’s strength must be enormous; he already knew that Karles’ stamina was incredible, but his strength must have been incredibly greater than a horse for him to get across with such ease. Then, one by one, the humans crossed.
Steelmind - oldest, tallest, and strongest - went first, and instead of using the rock shelf, he dove directly into the water a little farther upstream beyond the shelf. If he had trouble, they were going to have to rethink their plan.
Like the dyheli, Steelmind labored every bit of the way, but did make landfall at the proper place. Without a pause, once he waved from the bank, Wintersky followed him from the same point that he had used. Meanwhile Steelmind gathered tinder, partly for a quick warming-fire on the other side, and partly so the activity would generate more body heat.
The two girls went next, one at a time; Keisha, who had been swimming every day in the Vale lake, just barely made the landing spot. Shandi overshot and had to catch herself on the rope lest she go farther downstream. Steelmind and Karles both waded in to help her over the last bit.
Hywel and Darian went in together; Hywel was not the swimmer that Darian was, and Darian wanted to pace him, just in case. Due to the life-debt, or perhaps friendship alone, Hywel did not want to be away from Darian.
The river was unbelievably cold.
Darian gasped as he hit the water, shocked by the temperature. He rose spluttering to the surface, and struck out for the shore, but the shock had driven most of the air from his lungs, and he had to fight to get another full breath. Darian realized that it was the life-sapping cold that they had not figured into their calculations. In no time he was numb and shivering uncontrollably; it was hard to get air as the muscles of his chest clenched from the cold.
He was too busy watching out for Hywel, swimming and fighting for air to think; the swim was a nightmarish experience that required every fragment of his attention. His focus was split between Hywel thrashing along beside him and his own next breath, the next stroke of his arms, and kick of his legs.
Then he was on the other side; Steelmind and Keisha hauled him out onto the sloping shelf of stone. Beside him, Shandi and Wintersky pulled out Hywel. They both staggered to the land, and dropped to the ground, shivering and coughing.
But as soon as Darian could manage to think, despite gasping like a stunned fish, he seized the nearest ley-line and used the magic - unshielded - to create heat. Without the shielding, the spell created more heat. The dyheli crowded close, steam rising from their coats, and the humans relaxed and stopped shivering. Hashi moved out of the way and shook himself vigorously, then trotted back into the zone of warmth. The heat made an enormous difference; as it soaked into them, and they stopped shivering, it was easier to catch their breaths, easier to regain lost strength. Steelmind returned with an armful of driftwood and twigs, quirked a smile as he realized what they were doing, then dropped the bundle in place to join the group.
It was while they were still drying off that Kuari hooted a warning from somewhere out of sight. Darian’s head snapped up, and the dyheli snorted in alarm.
:Men coming!: he told Darian. :With bows!:
They all scrambled to their feet; Darian dismissed the spell and readied a trip-up, a variation on the first bit of magic he’d ever used in combat, to make people’s feet stick to the ground just long enough to trip them. With their backs to the river, they waited for the strangers to approach - weapons to hand, but not at the ready. Would they approach, or would they slip up to the newcomers to their land? And if they did, would it be with intent to examine, or to ambush?
The warriors must have realized immediately that the strangers had been alerted to their presence, for they did not even try to approach unnoticed. They came openly, but very, very silently - by Northern standards.
Not by Tayledras standards. Darian, Steelmind, and Wintersky heard them long before they appeared among the trees; the crinkle of dead leaves, and the sharp snap of a twig betrayed them. The dyheli snapped their ears forward at each sound until the Northerners emerged from the forest, then they parted to show Kelvren lying at his ease in their midst.
The Northerners froze in mid-step, one by one, as soon as they saw the gryphon. They were clearly taken aback to see what to them must seem a monster lying like a pet dog beside the strangers.
Before anyone could move or speak, Hywel suddenly brightened and stepped forward. “Hiyo! Warriors of Gray Wolf, I greet you!” he said cheerfully. “I am Hywel, a warrior of Ghost Cat, and these are my friends, come to trade!”
That made all the difference. Some of the tension ebbed out of the group, and one of the warriors stepped forward.
“What, then, is - that?” asked the warrior, who boasted a headpiece made of a wolf’s mask, with the rest of the fur serving as a cloak. He pointed to Kel, who stood up - slowly.
“I am Kelvrrren, a warrriorrr of the tribe of Sssil-verrr Grrryphon; we arrre allied with Ghost Cat,” Kel said genially, and cupped his wings. The warrior of Gray Wolf looked dubious, but wasn’t inclined to dispute the word of anything as large and dangerous-looking as the gryphon.
Finally, though, the Gray Wolf fighters came forward. Although the Gray Wolf tribesmen still walked carefully around Kel, giving him wary glances, it appeared that they were ready to give conditional welcome to everyone.
“What have you to trade?” asked one, looking at their saddlebags curiously.
“Dye,” said Hywel, and grinned. “Your women will bedeck you in colors of scarlet and blue, if you have amber or gold to trade for it.”
That got their interest; Northern men were even more color-mad than the women, if that was possible. Hywel extracted samples of thread dyed with Keisha’s colors and passed them around, causing the stalwart warriors to croon like happy girls over the brilliant shades. That loosened the mood considerably, and when Hywel remarked casually that they were trying to find the Great Pass to get to the north and Raven tribe, one of them commented that it would be no great matter to show them the way. In fact, once roughly a candlemark had passed, they were ready to do what no other tribe thus far had been willing to do - they offered to guide the group to their own encampment.
“From thence, we will take you through the mountains to the Great Pass,” one of them said to Hywel. “If that will serve.”
“Good; Snow Fox told us that the Great Pass will lead us to Raven,” Hywel replied, as the others gathered up their baggage and the saddles that had been removed for drying and began tacking up the dyheli and Karles. Darian was very pleased with the way that Hywel was handling the contact, and had decided to leave him nominally “in charge” at least for now.
If Hywel hadn’t been there, he might have hesitated in accepting the offer of Gray Wolf hospitality, but Hywel was perfectly confident with these folk. He even asked about specific individuals, and got answers - something that increased Darian’s comfort level.
“And Shaman Rogare? Wisewoman Awhani?” Hywel continued with his interrogation as they took to their saddles and the whole cavalcade started out. “Have you had more trouble with the Summer Fever and Wasting Sickness, and have they learned of a cure?”
That certainly captured the Gray Wolf folks’ attention; the fellow who appeared to be the leader (with a headdress made of an entire wolf-head, skull and all, and a cloak of several wolf-skins), and who hitherto had held himself somewhat aloof, suddenly addressed Hywel directly.
“Is it true, then, that Ghost Cat has found the cure for the Wasting Sickness?” he asked sharply - and anxiously.
Hywel started to answer, thought better of it, and looked to Darian. Darian motioned to Keisha to come up to the front of the group, and replaced Hywel himself.
“Warrior of Gray Wolf, I am Dar’ian k’Valdemar adopted of Ghost Cat, and it is among my people that Ghost Cat found their answer to the Wasting Sickness,” he said. “What is it that you would know?”
The eyes of the Northerners widened to hear him claim kinship with Ghost Cat, and to see Hywel nod to confirm his claim.
“You have a cure?” the warrior asked sharply, showing no sign of surprise that Darian knew his tongue.
Darian nodded to Keisha, who answered the warrior with no sign of fear.
Star-Eyed, I’m proud of her! She acts as if she did this all the time!
“We have a cure only for the early stage of the sickness,” she said gravely. “Once the fever has fled the body, little more can be done - but we have the means of that cure with us, and will share it gladly.”
The warrior sighed; a mixture of relief and disappointment. “And are you, then, a Wisewoman?” he asked Keisha, with the aloof interest most Northerners gave to the female Healers - it was beneath their dignity to give females any notice outside of the home, but at the same time, the status of Wisewoman was nearly equivalent to that of Shaman.
“I am,” she acknowledged. “And the holy dyheli have decreed that I am to impart what cures we have to your Shaman and Wisewoman, if they are able to master those cures.”
The warrior nodded, then turned back to Darian, relieved that he no longer had to pay direct attention to Keisha. “I am Chulka, the chief hunter of Gray Wolf,” he told Darian. “You will be very welcome among our people, with such gifts to impart.”
The rest of the journey was made in silence, as the warriors of Gray Wolf spread out into the forest around them, leaving only one walking beside Hywel as his guide. The two young men - for the one that had been left was, if not Hywel’s age, certainly very near to it - spoke with animation to each other. Darian didn’t bother to try and listen, since it seemed to be mostly a mixture of boasts and hunting stories.
Darian knew that they were near the Gray Wolf camp when the warriors began appearing again, most carrying game, to close in around the strangers as a precaution against overreaction by their own folk. By the time they reached the encampment, there were curious children running alongside them, and women peering at them from the shelter of their bark-covered houses.
This was a temporary camp, not the kind of permanent village that Ghost Cat had established in Valdemar. Gray Wolf did very little in the way of husbandry, and as a consequence moved as they depleted the resources around their camp. In winter, they moved to a place where there were many caves that they used for storage and for living space during the cold months.
What they had here were movable shelters, made of flexible willow branches and covered with slabs of bark and pine boughs, intended to keep out rain, give a certain amount of privacy, and not much more than that. There were cook fires in front of each of these homes, with pots half-buried in the ashes, much like at Ghost Cat. The one striking difference between Gray Wolf and Ghost Cat was the presence of enormous dogs everywhere - huge, easy-tempered dogs who paid no attention whatsoever to the newcomers, even Hashi, who was about their size. Darian made a mental note to ask about the dogs later.
As was the case at Ghost Cat, the homes of the most important people in the encampment were nearest the center, so the Chief, the Shaman, and the Wisewoman had plenty of time to assemble to greet the visitors.
Their guide stepped back so that the chief hunter could make his introduction; Hywel introduced everyone, including the dyheli and kyree.
And Kel, of course.
Kel came to the fore of the group and bowed to the three leaders of the tribe. “Have no fearrr of me,” he said, with a serious and sober inflection in his voice. “And do not fearrr forrr the game herrre-aboutsss. I ssshall hunt upon the oppossssite sssside of the rrrriverrrr.”
“That is good to hear,” the Chief replied, just as seriously. “But it is best of all to hear that our allies of Ghost Cat have prospered in their new home. So, friends of our friends, before there is any talk of trade - will you share salt with us?”
A bowl of salt was duly brought forward, and everyone tasted it ceremoniously, even Hashi and the dyheli. That ceremony was all it took to break down the last barriers; the Wisewoman and the Shaman immediately took Keisha aside to interrogate her; Shandi went with them, and Darian, Hywel, Steelmind, and Wintersky found themselves seated at the Men’s Fire, taking turns describing the journey they had taken and the condition of the land they had traveled through.
“Truly - the rumors we have heard are not rumors at all, then, but truth,” the Chief said with unvarnished satisfaction. “Blood Bear is no more - having brought the Wasting Sickness upon us, they have finally sickened of it themselves. Had there been even a single war party, you would not have traveled past Magpie unmolested.”
The warrior with the wolf-mask headpiece spat. “All the better, say I,” he growled.
The others nodded.
“What rumors did you hear?” Darian asked, grimly curious to hear the details of the downfall of his oldest enemies, the people who had nearly destroyed Errold’s Grove and who had succeeded in killing his first teacher.
“After their war band failed to return, they set to breeding sons on the orders of their new Shaman,” said the Chief, his expression grim. “Girl-babies they exposed, that their women waste no time upon them. They sent out parties to capture more women to breed more sons. Then the Wasting Sickness at last struck them, and their new Shaman had not the cure for it.”
“I heard that at the last, they had taken to sacrificing any who were stricken,” offered the chief hunter. “The warriors took to eating the flesh of those warriors who had fallen, to take on their extra strength after their death. And that the women began to run back to their own people.”
“And so - they are no more.” There was no doubt as to the satisfaction in the Chief’s voice, a satisfaction that Darian shared completely.
But he did not permit himself to indulge in it; an old Shin’a’in saying was that it was one thing to take pleasure in the defeat of an enemy, but gloating over it for very long made you no better than he.
“So,” he said, allowing himself a single smile. “Let us talk of more pleasant things. Permit me, Chief, to show you the colors that we have brought. . . .”
And let me never have to think of Blood Bear again.