Skif tied the final knots on his packs, expecting at any moment to have a hertasi pop its head over the edge of the treehouse with a summons from Wintermoon. It was difficult to tell time here, where the position of the sun was obscured by the towering trees and where the temperature seldom varied by much, but he thought he’d awakened about noon. There had been cheese, fruit, and fresh bread waiting in the outer room of his little treehouse along with all of his belongings and Cymry’s tack, brought from the gryphon’s lair. By hertasi or one of the scouts, he presumed; they were the only ones who knew where his possessions were, besides, of course, the gryphons. He and Elspeth had stayed with the gryphons since they had first arrived here in k’Sheyna territory; they were kindhearted creatures, but certainly not pack animals; he’d assumed he would have to go fetch all of the gear himself. This was yet another instance of Tayledras thoughtfulness; or at least, of hertasi thoughtfulness. He was even more surprised and delighted to discover that every bit of his clothing had been cleaned and neatly folded before being put in the pack, and all but one of his hidden knives and garrottes from said clothing laid out neatly by the pack.
Old habits die hard.
He descended long enough to clean himself up at a hot spring set up as a kind of bathhouse - and to thank the first hertasi he saw for having his things brought. He found the lizard first. He was a little ashamed that he couldn’t tell the diiference between individual lizard-creatures; surely there was a way, and it seemed doltish not to know it. He covered it as best he could by asking the diminutive creature to pass on his thanks to the others. The hertasi didn’t seem to mind. In fact, it thanked him, and showed him where to go to bathe and find provisions for his journey.
Back in the treehouse, he launched into packing feverishly. The strange provisions he’d gotten from a hidden kitchen area - learning only then where all the food for the celebration had come from - weighed much less than the dried fruit and beef and travelers’ bread that the Valdemaran forces, Heralds and Guards alike, carried into the field.
Just so that they were marginally edible. Marginal was all he asked for. They can’t taste any worse than the clay tablets they expect Karsite troops to eat. Starch for shirts or old glue would taste better. That much he was certain of; some folks would rather eat their saddles than the Karsite field rations.
“I trust you are ready?” Wintermoon called up from below, startling him. He went to the balcony, and looked over the edge.
Beneath him were the scout - now with his hair bound up in a tail and wearing clothing identical to the kind Darkwind had worn - and a pair of handsome dyheli stags. One carried a light pack, the other did not even have a cloth on its back. Beside them was Cymry, looking up at him with merry blue eyes, as if she was amused by his startlement.
“I’m ready,” he replied to all of them. “I’m pretty much packed. Look out, I’m going to toss the stuff down.”
Wintermoon and the rest backed up a little, giving him room for the drop. He dropped the saddle and the pack containing his clothing and nonbreakables over the edge of the balcony; he brought the rest down the staircase, slung over his back.
By the time he reached the ground, Wintermoon had already saddled Cymry for him, and was waiting for the rest of the gear. “You should try the Shin’a’in saddles,” the Tayledras scout observed, as Skif pushed aside an enormous leaf that overhung the trail to join them. “I think you both would find them more comfortable.”
“Maybe,” Skif replied, dropping his pack on the ground, and holding up the hackamore for Cymry so that she could slip her nose into it. “But the Shin’a’in don’t have to contend with anything other than the plains. We’ve got a lot of different terrain to cross, a lot of jobs to do, and sometimes we have to be able to sleep in the saddle or strap ourselves on because of wounds.” He faltered for a moment, as an ugly memory intruded; he resolutely ignored it, and continued. “I’ll try their saddles some time, but we’ve put a lot of time and work into that design, and I’m not sure there’s any way to improve it.”
Cymry nodded, which apparently surprised Wintermoon. Skif was going to ask where his birds were, when one of them dropped down out of the tree to land on the laden dyheli’s pack, and the other followed to land on the unladen one’s horns. The stags were both evidently used to this; the second dyheli held his head steady until the owl hopped from the horns to Wintermoon’s shoulder. “Mobile tree branches,” the Tayledras grinned.
“So I see. I told Elspeth that I was going out to hunt for Need,” Skif told the scout, “I told her that I didn’t think we could afford to have a major power like that out loose and not know where it was or what it was doing. She agreed, but I don’t think she believed that was the only reason.”
“I doubt you could fool your friend on matters of the heart,” Wintermoon replied. “At least, not for long. Except, perhaps, for her own; I have noted that few people are good judges of their own hearts.”
Skif flushed, and decided not to answer that statement. “Have you got any ideas about where we should start looking?” he asked instead. “I mean, I know you haven’t had much chance to think about this since last night, but - ”
“Actually, I have,” Wintermoon interrupted, surprisingly. “I spent some time last night reviewing what I would do if I were in her place. So I know where she might be, I think - or rather, I know where we need not look. Here - ”
He pulled out a map from a pouch at his belt and spread it on the ground. Skif pulled the last buckle on Cymry’s packs tight and crouched down on his heels beside the scout. Cymry craned her neck around to look over his shoulder.
“ - here, is the Vale.” Wintermoon pointed at an oval valley on the rim of the crater-wall that marked the rim of the Dhorisha Plains. “Nyara will not have run to the west, neither south nor north; to the west and south were her father’s lands. To the west and north, that is untamed, un-healed, tainted land, full of creatures that are as bad or worse than anything that her father commanded.”
“And she knows this?” Skif asked.
Wintermoon snorted. “She cannot have avoided knowing. No matter how closely he kept her mewed, if she had any contact with the world outside his walls, she would have known. We had intended to bracket the area between this Vale and the new one - well, that is of no matter now. She will not have gone west unless she is an utter fool. Nor will she have gone south.”
“Because that’s the Dhorisha Plains,” Skif said, absently, studying the map.
“Yes. So, that leaves east and north. She may have gone east - she can go east - but here - ” he indicated a shaded area on the map. “This pattern means that the lands here are healed. If she goes there, she will encounter farms and settlements. If she goes further, she must meet towns, villages, and people who are unused to seeing creatures that are not wholly human. She will surely encounter trade-roads, traders, caravans. No, I do not think she would go very far to the east.”
“And if she went due north?” Skif asked.
“Ah - again, she will encounter a border, this time the territory guarded by another Clan. They may not be as kindly disposed toward her as we. Certainly, since they will not know her, they will regard her with suspicion and even hostility.” Wintermoon sat back on his heels. “So you see, she must be within this area.” His forefinger described a rough oblong on the map. “Those are the lands we once claimed, but we have let run wild, as we pulled back our borders. That is where I think we shall find her.”
Skif nodded, and considered the map. “None of it is very far from where the scouts patrol,” he observed. “In fact, we could go out there and start our search, and come back to the Vale every few days to see how matters are progressing here - and whether or not we’re going to be needed after all.”
“My thought exactly,” the scout said, picking up the map and folding it. He stood up, stowing the folded parchment in his pouch again. “In this way we fulfill our own wishes and our duty to the Clan as well.” He gave Skif an odd sideways grin that Skif returned.
“Why do I have the feeling that you’re as good at that as I am?” he asked slyly. “Getting your own way by threading through rules and obligations, I mean.”
“What, I?” Wintermoon replied, widening his eyes innocently. Then he laughed. “Come, we are birds of the same flock, you and I. We know each other. Yes?” He turned and mounted the second stag bareback, saving Skiff from having to answer that question.
Skif took his time mounting, settling himself into the saddle with a sigh. Not that he didn’t enjoy partnering with Cymry, but it had been a long journey and he’d been glad it looked as if they were staying in one place for a while. Well, it had looked that way, until he’d realized that Nyara was gone and wasn’t coming back. Now they were on the trail again. . . .
:Oh, you won’t be in the saddle as much as you think,: Cymry told him affectionately. :Don‘t forget, Wintermoon is going to have to look over the ground out there very closely for clues. Actually, if I were you, I’d let him teach me about tracking in the wild; I think you could learn a lot from him. I know I’ll be paying attention.:
Skif was a little surprised at her matter-of-fact acceptance of this excursion. He had more than half expected her to object to leaving Elspeth on her own - after all, he was supposed to be looking after her, wasn’t he? He was supposed to be her bodyguard, and he was supposed to keep her from getting into too much trouble.
:Elspeth’s quite capable of taking care of herself, Chosen, as she has reminded you more than once.: This time the tone was teasing, lighthearted. But she quickly sobered. :There is no way that Ancar can get to her here - even if he could learn where she was. She’s got to go her own way now, you know that. You know she’s going to have to deal with things you can’t even guess at. Whatever trouble she’s likely to get into, I don’t think it’s going to be anything a couple of arrows or knives would fix.:
Skif ducked out of the way of a branch stretching over the path, and sighed. That, no matter how his pride felt about it, was only the truth. She was a mage now, under the protection and tutelage of mages. He would be as out of his element as if he tried to teach a candlemaking class.
:And I don’t have any of this Mage-Gift, whatever it is,: he added. :Probably I’d only be in the way. Probably I’d get myself in trouble without ever helping Elspeth,:
:Probably,: Cymry agreed. :Nyara, now - that’s something you can do something about. I think you should. If nothing else, when you find her, you‘II discover for yourself if there can be - or ever was - anything between you two. And you’ll finally stop worrying about her.:
While her words were practical, the tone of her mind-voice was unexpectedly sympathetic.
She was his best friend, barring no one else. She knew all of his secrets, even the ugly ones. He stared at the trail ahead and at Wintermoon’s back for a while, thinking about that, thinking about how close they were. :Cymry, were you ever in love?: he asked abruptly.
:Bright Havens, what a question!: she exclaimed. :Me? In love? Why do you want to know?:
After all these years, he’d managed to surprise her. :Because - I don’t know if I’m in love or not - or if I was ever in love with anyone.: Silence fell between them for a heartbeat. :I thought if you were ever in love, you‘d be able to tell if I was. Am. Whatever.:
They reached the barrier-shield at the end of the Vale at that moment; the tingling of energies as they crossed it distracted Skif from his question.
When they emerged into slightly cooler air on the other side, Cymry shook her head, and shivered her skin as if she was shaking off flies. :Skif, yes, I do know something of emotional involvement. That doesn‘t simplify matters any. You weren‘t in love with Elspeth, I can tell you that much,: she said, slowly. :That was a combination of a lot of things, including, my dear Chosen, the fact that you finally saw her as a very attractive woman for the first time and had a predictable reaction.:
He choked; turned it into a cough when Wintermoon looked back at him in inquiry. Cymry wasn’t usually so frank with him.
Or blunt. :You made matters worse, I’m afraid, by acting far too strongly upon those feelings.:
:I’d kind of figured that part out,: he replied wryly. :But now, this time?:
She shook her head. :I honestly don’t know. You have some very strong feelings, but I can’t sort them out any better than you can.:
Well, at least the Companions didn’t know everything. Sometimes he wondered about that. They certainly didn’t go out of their way to dispel the idea that they did.
Skif turned his attention to the woods surrounding the trail; trying to get used to these new forests, so that he could learn to identify what was a sign of danger and what wasn’t. He did the only thing he could do; he assumed that this area was safe, and studied it. Anything that differed from this might be dangerous.
Most of his experience outside of towns consisted of the single circuit he’d made with Dirk when he first got his Whites, and his occasional duty as courier and messenger. At neither time had he really had to deal with wilderness; with places where people simply did not live. He had traveled roads, not game-trails; spent nights in way-stations, not in a tent, or a blanket roll under the open sky. Even on the journey here, the first time he had encountered true wilderness was when they descended into the Dhorisha Plains.
There, on that trackless expanse of grassland, there had been no real sign of the hand of man. Perhaps that was why the Plains intimidated him so much. Never had he felt so completely out of his element.
Maybe that had been why he had persisted in clinging to Elspeth. ...
Well, here was wilderness again; once outside the Vale, there were no tracks of any kind, for the Tayledras went to great lengths to avoid making them. The only creatures making trails of any sort were wild ones: deer, bear, boar. Even the dyheli did their best to avoid making trails, for trails meant places they could be ambushed. Skif couldn’t help wondering if the only reason Wintermoon rode the dyheli stag now was to keep from leaving human footprints.
The signs of fall were everywhere; in the dying, drying grasses, in the leaves of the bushes which were just starting to turn, in the peculiar scent to the air that only frost-touched leaves made. This wasn’t a comfortable time of the year to be traipsing about in wild country.
On the other hand, it would be harder for anything hostile to hide, once the leaves started falling in earnest. If there was anything noisier for a skulker than a carpet of crisp, freshly-fallen dry leaves, Skif had yet to run into it; even in his days as a thief and a street brat, he’d known that, and stayed clear of rich folks’ gardens in the fall. And he was not looking forward to camping out in the cold, riding through chill autumn rains. . . .
On the other hand, it probably wouldn’t get horribly cold this far south, at least, not for a while yet. Game would be plentiful at this time of year, a lot of it birds and animals in their first year - inexperienced, or just plain stupid, which to a hunter translated as “easy to catch.” Darkwind had quoted a Shin’a’in saying about that, one day when Vree brought back a rabbit that couldn’t have been more than two months old: “If it gets caught, it deserves to be eaten.” On the whole, Skif agreed. With fresh meals volunteering their lives to their owls, arrows, and snares, they might not even need to resort to their traveling rations much. Maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
Cymry’s ears flicked, the way they did when she was Mindspeaking, and he caught the barest edges of something in the back of his mind. But he couldn’t make anything out; just a mental “sound.” It was as if he was several rooms away from two people having a conversation; no matter how hard he strained, all he could hear was a kind of murmur in the distance.
:Who are you talking to?: he asked her, puzzled. He hadn’t thought Cymry could Mindspeak with anyone except himself and another Companion.
:Elivan,: she replied, shortly.
Elivan? Who -
Then the dyheli that Wintermoon was riding turned its head on its long, graceful neck and gave him a look and a nod.
The dyheli? She was Mindspeaking the dyheli? Frustrated, he tried to make sense out of the far-off murmuring, unable to make out a single “word.” Even more frustrating, he caught Wintermoon in a kind of “listening” attitude, and heard a third “voice” join the other two in what sounded like a brief remark.
Whatever they were saying, Wintermoon seemed vastly amused; Skif got a look at his expression as he ducked to avoid a low-hanging vine, and he looked like someone who has just been let in on a private joke.
Skif felt a surge of resentment at being left out. Just how much mind-magic did the Hawkbrother have? Why couldn’t he hear the dyheli, if Wintermoon and Cymry could? And was it only Wintermoon who had that particular Gift, or did all the Tayledras share it?
They’d been free enough with information about real magic; why keep this a secret?
Except that they weren’t exactly keeping it a secret - not from Skif, anyway.
Unless they couldn’t block what they were doing. But in that case, why did Cymry tell him matter-of-factly that she was talking to the stag?
The murmur of far-off voices stopped; finally Winter-moon signaled a halt at the edge of a tiny, crystalline stream. The Tayledras dismounted, and the two dyheli moved up side-by-side to dip their slender muzzles into the water. Another sign of the stags’ intelligence - the pack-laden stag was not being led, and Wintermoon made no move to limit their drinking.
:I could use a drink too, dear,: Cymry prompted him. Skif slid out of his saddle to let Cymry join them. Wintermoon strolled over, stretching to relieve the inevitable stiffness of riding any distance at all.
“We are at the edge of the territory k’Sheyna still patrols,” he said. “After this point, the hazards begin. It may be dangerous to break silence; if I note anything, I shall warn your lady mind-to-mind.”
“Why not warn me?” Skif asked, doing his best not to sound sullen, but afraid that some of his resentment showed through anyway.
Wintermoon only looked mildly surprised. “Because I cannot,” he replied. “The mind-to-mind speech of the scouts is only between scouts and those who are not human.” His brow furrowed as he thought for a moment. “Perhaps you caught the edge of my conversation with Elivan. I apologize if this seemed rude to you, but your Cymry told me that you did not share the Gift of Mindspeech with one other than her - or perhaps another Herald. I thought, then, that you did not hear us.” He shrugged, apologetically. “I am sorry if you thought we had left you out a-purpose. Many Tayledras have this Gift, but I am one of the strongest speakers, as was Dawnfire. Sometimes it only extends to bondbirds. I am fortunate that I share my brother’s ability to speak with other creatures as well, although I do not share his gift of speaking with other humans.”
Skif flushed. That was one possibility that simply hadn’t occurred to him - that Wintermoon might not know that he was aware of the conversation without knowing what was being said. Well, now I feel like a real idiot. . . .
“Is that what makes the nonmages scouts, and not something else?” he asked, trying to cover his misstep.
Wintermoon shook his head, and smiled. “All Tayledras have mind-to-mind speech, usually only with their bondbirds,” he replied. “It is a part of us; one of the many things that the Goddess granted to us to help us survive here, but although those who can speak with other creatures make the best scouts, if they are also mage-born, then mage-craft is oft the course of their life.”
Skif looked beyond him for a moment, across the stream. It didn’t seem any wilder or more threatening there than it did on this side. Frost had laced the trees on both sides of the stream, perhaps because they were more sensitive to it; the leaves were a yellow-brown, and some had already fallen, carpeting the ground and occasionally drifting oif on the current of the brook. Jays called somewhere out there - or at least, something with the same raucous scream as a scarlet jay. A hint of movement on the other side of the water caught his eye, and he turned his head slightly just in time to catch the tail of a squirrel whisking over to the opposite side of the trunk - presumably, with a squirrel attached to it, although if what he’d been told was true, that didn’t necessarily follow.
“Just what’s so bad out there?” he asked, curiosity overcoming pride. “It doesn’t look any different to me, but I wouldn’t know what to look for.”
“There - not much,” Wintermoon replied, scanning the trees and the ground beneath them with eyes that missed nothing. “Farther out - I’ve heard there are wyrsa, though at this season they do not run in packs. Bears, of course, and Changebears. Treelions and Changelions, wild boars and Changeboars. Perhaps bukto, and - ”
“Wait a moment,” Skif interrupted. Those names - that was something he’d been wanting to ask about, and hadn’t had an opening. “Changebears, Changelions, Changeboars - what are you talking about? Darkwind called Nyara a ‘Changechild,’ does this have anything to do with her?”
“Yes and no,” Wintermoon replied maddeningly. Skif stifled his impatience as Wintermoon paused, as if searching for the proper words. “Do you not recall what you were shown by Iceshadow? How magic, uncontrolled and twisted, warped all that it touched here?”
“Yes, but wasn’t that a long time ago?” he said, thinking back to those images, strange and only half understood. The part where that bright light had appeared to the Hawkbrothers - he’d understood what the Goddess had asked of them, but he hadn’t seen more than that light. Elspeth and the Shin’a’in had plainly experienced more than that.
“Not long enough,” the scout replied, looking soberly out at the innocent-looking land beyond the stream. “There was a time when magic in all its ‘colors’ and ‘sounds’ worked together. The time we call the Mage Wars shattered that order. The structure of magic - and its energies - were stressed to their limits. In the great disaster that ended the Final War, those bonds were broken. Their crystalline patterns, like branches of light to a mage, became as distorted as pine needles dropped to the ground. And every place they touched, on a scale vaster than we can see, they made the land dangerous, and caused creatures that should never have lived to appear.”
Skif shook his head, unable or unwilling to comprehend it. Wintermoon continued.
“When we first came here and established this Vale, the land hereabouts was as fearful as anything you saw before the Lady appeared. We have tamed it somewhat, and it is a fortunate thing that few of the magic-twisted creatures breed true. That also is due in part to Tayledras magery.”
“But some do?” Skif asked.
Wintermoon nodded. “Those, we call ‘Changebeasts.’ They plainly have parentage of normal creatures, but they have new attributes, generally dangerous. Changelions, for instance - oft they have huge canine teeth, extending far beyond their jaws, and have a way of being able to work a kind of primitive magic that can keep them invisible even when one looks directly at them, so long as the Changelion does not move. That is ... a common Change. Some are unpredictable or unrecognizable.” He hesitated, gathering his thoughts. “When the parentage was human, we call the result a ‘Changechild.’ And - in general - true humans do not - mate with them.”
He glanced sideways at Skif, gauging the effect of his words. Skif didn’t take offense, but he wasn’t going to accept that particular judgment without a fight, either. “Why not?” he asked, bringing his chin up, aggressively. “I mean, what’s the difference? Who would care?”
Wintermoon sighed. “Because it is said that to mate with a Changechild is the same as mating with a beast, because the Changechildren are one with the beasts.” He held up a hand to stop the angry words Skif started to speak. “I only say what is commonly thought, not what I think. But you must know that it is the common thought, and there is no escaping it.”
Skif frowned. “So most Tayledras would think - if Nyara and I made a pair of it - that I was some kind of deviant?”
The Hawkbrother sighed. “Perhaps fewer in this Clan than in others, but some would. And outside the Clans altogether, among Outlanders who live in Tayledras lands and hold loyalty to us, or among those who trade with us - there would be no escaping it. They would all feel that way to some degree.”
So I’ll deal with it when - if - it happens. He nodded his understanding, but not his agreement.
Wintermoon continued. “There is another problem as well; there are either no offspring of such a mating, or as often as not, they truly are monsters that are less able to reason than beasts. This, I know, for I have seen it. The few children of such a union that are relatively whole are like unto the Changechild parent. And that is only one in four.”
Not good odds. . . .
Wintermoon flexed his hands. “The likeliest to happen is that there are no children of the union. I would say that is just as well.”
“So Nyara is a Changechild,” Skif said, thinking out loud. “Just what makes her that, and not some - oh - victim of an experiment by her father on a real human child?”
“That there are things the human form cannot be made to mimic,” Wintermoon replied too promptly. “Her eyes, slitted like a cat. Fur-tufts on her ears.”
“Oh?” This time Skif expressed real skepticism. “That’s not what Darkwind told me. He said that it was possible that she’d been modified from a full human. He said that it would take a lot of magic to do it, but that if Falconsbane was using her as a kind of model for what he wanted to do to himself, he might be willing to burn the magic.”
“He did?” Skif’s assertion caught Wintermoon by surprise. “That - would make things easier.” The Hawkbrother chewed his lip for a moment. “That would make her entirely a victim, among other things. That would bring her sympathy.”
“I’ve got another question.” Cymry returned from the stream and came to stand beside him; he patted her neck absently. “What if she wasn’t a Changechild - but she wasn’t a human either?”
Wintermoon shook his head in perplexity. “How could she not be either?”
“If she was someone from a real race of her own - ” He chewed his lip, and tried to come up with an example. “Look, you don’t call the tervardi Changechildren, or the hertasi. What makes them different from Nyara?”
“There are many of them,” Wintermoon replied promptly. “They breed true; they have colonies of their own kind, settlements.”
“So how do you know that there aren’t settlements of Nyara’s kind somewhere?” he interrupted. “You didn’t know there were gryphons before Treyvan and Hydona arrived!” He smiled triumphantly.
“Gryphons were upon a list handed down from the time of the Mage Wars,” Wintermoon said immediately, dashing his hopes. “As were the others. Every Tayledras memorizes it, lest he not recognize a friend - or foe. There is nothing on that list that matches Nyara.”
Well, so much for that idea. At least she isn ‘t on the “foe” list; I suppose I’d better consider us fortunate.
Nevertheless, he couldn’t help wondering if there could be creatures that were like the hertasi that simply hadn’t made the all-important list. Or if there were creatures that had developed since the Mage Wars that couldn’t have made the list because they hadn’t been in existence then. . . .
Oh, this is ridiculous. It doesn‘t matter what she is. What matters is what she does. Every Herald he’d met had told him that as he grew up in the Collegium. They had been right then; that should hold true now.
“It will be dark, soon,” Wintermoon said, glancing at the sky. While they had been talking, the quality of the light had changed, to the thick gold of the moments before actual sunset. Filtered through the golden-brown leaves, the effect was even more pronounced, as if the very air had turned golden and sweet as honey.
“Are we going to camp here, or go on?” Skit asked. The question was pertinent; if this had been an expedition with two Heralds, they would camp now, while there was still light. But it wasn’t; Wintermoon had abilities and a resource in his bondbirds that no Herald had.
“We go on,” Wintermoon replied promptly. “Although we will feign to make camp. If there is anyone watching us, they will be deceived. Then once true night falls, we shall move on.”
It didn’t take them long to unload the packs and Cymry’s saddle and make a sketchy sort of camp; Wintermoon unstrung and tied out a hammock, and padded it with a bedroll, then produced a second one and guided Skif in setting it up. That done, they cleared a patch of forest floor and built a tiny fire.
As they sat beside the fire, one of the owls lumbered into their clearing, laden with a young rabbit. It dropped its burden at Wintermoon’s feet, and before it had taken its perch on his shoulder, the second followed with a squirrel in its talons.
“Well,” Wintermoon chuckled, as the second owl dropped its burden beside the first and flew to a perch in the tree above Wintermoon’s head, “It seems that my friends have determined that we shall have a meal, at least.”
“That’s fine by me,” Skif said, and grinned. “I was about to dig out those trail rations.”
“I thought I heard something growling - I thought it might be a beast in the bushes. ‘Twas only your stomach,” Wintermoon teased as he began gutting and skinning the rabbit. Both owls hopped down from their perches to stand on the ground beside him, waiting for tidbits.
They took the proffered entrails quite daintily; seeing that, Skif had no hesitation about picking up the squirrel and following the scout’s example. When the darker of the two owls saw what he was doing, it joined him, abandoning Wintermoon.
Skif got two surprises; the first, that this little “squirrel” was built more like a rabbit than the scrawny creatures he was used to - and the second, that the owl took so much care in taking its treats from him that its beak never touched his fingers. “Which one have I got?” he asked Winter-moon. “How hungry is he likely to be?”
“K’Tathi,” the scout replied without looking up. “The scraps will suffice for now; they will hunt again after we make our second camp, this time for themselves. Give him what you wish to spare from your meal.”
Head, entrails, and the limbs from the first joint out seemed appropriate. K’Tathi took everything that was offered with grace, never getting so much as a spot of blood on his gray-white feathers. Skif offered the skin as well, but the owl ignored it, so Skif quickly tossed it into the bushes as he saw Wintermoon do. That would have been foolhardy if they had been planning to stay, for the bloody skins might well attract something quite large and dangerous. But since they weren’t - well, there was sure to be something that would find the skin worth eating, and if there was someone watching them, possibly following them -
Well, if they try to go for the camp and there‘s something big, with teeth, still here, they‘re going to get a rude surprise.
When he finished his task, he once again followed Wintermoon’s example and spitted it on a sturdy branch to hold over the fire. Meanwhile, the sun continued to set, the sky above the trees turning first orange, then scarlet, then deepening to vermilion-streaked blue. By the time the meat was done, the sky was thick with stars.
He was halfway through his dinner when Wintermoon said abruptly, “I envy you, did you know that?”
He looked up, a little startled, into the ice-blue eyes of the man across the fire. There was no sign of Wintermoon’s dinner, other than the pile of small, neatly-stacked bones at his feet, each of them gnawed clean.
What did he do, inhale the thing?
On the other hand - it was in the interest of the scout’s survival to learn to eat quickly. No telling when a meal might be interrupted by an uninvited, unwelcome dinner-guest.
“Why?” he asked, puzzled by the question. “What is there about me to envy? I’m nothing special, especially around Heralds.”
“My - liaisons - tend to be brief, and informal,” the scout replied. “One reason I wished to guide you was because Starspring returned my feathers, and I am at loose ends.”
Skif wondered if he should tender sympathy, surmising from the content that “returned his feathers” meant his lover had dissolved the relationship. But Wintermoon evidently saw something of his uncertainty in his expression and shook his head, smiling.
“No, this was not painful. I have no wish to avoid the Vale, or her. But I simply have no partner now, and there is no one else I care to partner with at the moment. So I am at loose ends, and would just as soon have other things to think on.” He wiped his fingers clean on a swatch of dry grass, and tossed it into the fire. “That is what I envy you, do you see,” he said, watching the grass writhe and catch. “Strong feelings. I have never experienced them.”
Skif coughed, a little embarrassed. “I don’t know that this is anything other than infatuation or attraction to the exotic.”
“Still, it is strong,” Wintermoon persisted. “I have never felt anything strongly. Sometimes I doubt I have the ability for it.”
The statement was offered like a gift; Skif was wise enough to know that when he saw it. He searched his mind for an appropriate response.
:The birds,: Cymry prompted.
“You feel strongly about Corwith and K’Tathi, don’t you?” he countered.
Wintermoon nodded slowly as if that simply hadn’t occurred to him in such a context.
“Well then,” Skif said and gestured, palm upward. “Then I wouldn’t worry. You’re capable. The way I see it, we all feel strongly about things, we just might not know we do. Valdemar is like that for Heralds; we lay our lives down willingly for our country and Monarch when we must, but most of the time, we just don’t think about it. If you encounter someone you can feel strongly about, you will. You haven’t exactly been given much of a choice of potential mates what with three-fourths of the Clan gone, and your tendency to, well, stay to yourself.”
“True.” The scout sat back a little, and only then did Skif realize, as he relaxed, that he had been tensed. “My father thinks that being born without the Gift for magery shows a serious lack in me. Sometimes I wonder if I have other, less visible lacks.”
Before Skif could change the subject, Wintermoon changed it for him - to one just as uncomfortable. “What do you intend when we find Nyara?” the scout asked, bluntly. “We shall, I promise you. I am not indulging in vanity to say that I am one of the finest trackers of k’Sheyna.”
“I - uh - I don’t know,” Skif replied. “Right now, to tell you the truth, all I’m thinking about is finding her. Once we do that - “ He shook his head. “It just gets too complicated. I’m going to worry about it when it happens. What she says and does when we find her will give me my direction.”
“Ah,” the scout replied, and fell silent.
After all, I spent less than a week in her company, he thought. I could have been misreading everything about her.
Except that she had saved his life at the risk of her own. She’d attacked her own father, a creature that had held absolute control over her all of her life, and for Skif’s sake.
She’d gone after Falconsbane with nothing; nothing but her bare hands -
- or rather, claws -
And thoughts like that made him realize all over again just how alien she was, yet that realization didn’t change how he felt in the least. Whatever it was, it was very strong and very real.
What’s going to make a difference is what’s happened to her - and what happens to us. If she‘s handling the things her father did to her. And if we can find someplace where people will accept her - and maybe even us.
That place might not be Valdemar; that was something he was going to have to admit. They might not be able to deal with someone who had tufted, pointed ears, catlike eyes, and a satiny-smooth pelt of very, very short fur. It wasn’t obvious, but a close examination would show it. The Heralds were open-minded, but were they open-minded enough for that? To accept someone who looked half animal?
And he was going to have to go home eventually. . . .
That question kept him thinking until Wintermoon shook his shoulder. After that, he was too busy breaking camp and following the scout through the darkness to worry about anything else. And when they finally made camp again, he was too tired to think at all.