Valdemar 11 - [Owl Mage 03] - Owlknight (16 page)

He didn't have any feelings of guilt over the fact that Val wasn't going to get a nap, not when he knew from Val's relative freshness that his friend had probably had a good long doze in the darkness. Anda had big, dark rings under his eyes, but Anda was going to be able to get some sleep as well; he wasn't needed at the tournament at all.

“In that case, let's get this tourney open, so the hotbloods can start beating on each other,” Val replied heartily. Anda took his leave of them, and they headed for the front of the Keep, where a well-worn stand and a tourney-field had been set up outside the walls. Tournaments were a good place for fighters to demonstrate their skills to a potential employer, and to have a chance to earn some prize money into the bargain. Since this tournament was sponsored by k'Valdemar, the prizes weren't money, but were Tayledras-produced items that could readily be converted into money—or into dowries—bolts of silk, glassware, and jewelry. The prizes had been on display at last night's feast, and Darian didn't doubt that most examples, if not all of them, already had several potential buyers from among Breon's guests.

Darian climbed up into the grandstand, and looked down at the sea of helmets below him. With the early-morning sun to his right, he couldn't see faces inside those helmets, only dark eye-slits. It was a little unnerving, but only a little.

It was a good thing he'd memorized a speech for this, too, since fatigue was starting to catch up with him. He smiled, waved, made his speech, and exhorted the fighters to display not only strength and courage, but honor and brotherhood. In fact, there was an award for the fighter who behaved the best on the field and off it. Despite some mental disgruntlement from his owl, who had been awakened for the flight, Kuari's appearance and wide-winged, silent landing as Darian declared himself by the title Owl Knight raised a cheer from everyone. Kuari then left Darian in a ground-skimming flight down the length of the tourney grounds past every competitor, and disappeared into the shadows of the forests. Exclamations of amazement and murmurs of approval resounded. It seemed Ayshen was proven right yet again. Darian turned the proceedings over to Val, who took over with relish. As Darian's Champion, Val was going to get to do some fighting against the few knights among the fighters, and he had his eye on the prize to give to his wife. He could have gotten the same sort of prize by just asking Darian for it, but it wouldn't have been as satisfying to Val to just ask for it, as it would be fun to win it by pounding everyone else into the ground. Darian happily left him to it.

Darian dismounted the grandstand and managed not to stagger as he made his way to the little room he'd been given. It was deep within the Keep, not even a clothes closet by Tayledras standards, with a bare arrow-slit for a window. It was only large enough for a narrow cot, at the foot of which waited a tray with his breakfast on it—but right now, it suited his purposes perfectly. It had a bed, and nothing at the moment was needed more. Now he had no more duties until this evening, when he would be presented to all the guests, preside over the distribution of the prizes, and take the seat of honor at Breon's right hand at the High Table.

 

Darian struggled against a heavy weight on his chest; for some reason, he couldn't open his eyes or even move—

Finally he wrenched his head around, and his eyes flew open.

A huge, translucent cat lay laconically on him, covering him from his neck to his toes, hindquarters spilling over the cot and onto the floor. It looked into his eyes and breathed softly on his face; its breath held the same scent as the winter wind just before a storm.

It looked up suddenly, its shimmery golden eyes wary and alert. Darian found his gaze pulled to the tiny slit of a window.

A raven the size of the huge cat—and just as eerily translucent—peered in through the slit, first one eye, then the other, then tried to force its way into the room.

Impossibly, first the beak, then the head, then the body and wings flattened themselves and oozed into the room with him.

Both cat and raven stared at him, as if expecting him to answer a question of life-or-death importance—

But he had not the faintest notion what the question was.

He fought to cry out, but his throat was frozen—

And he sat bolt upright on the floor, with a shout.

He was alone. No bird, no cat; the heavy weight on his chest had been the cot; he had overset it on top of himself.

Hot with embarrassment, he was just grateful that no one had come in answer to his shouting , or the ruckus he must have made as he fought with his bedding. Still clumsy with fatigue, he managed to fumble the cot upright again, and lay back down, this time to sleep dreamlessly.

 

The next day he was safely back in k'Valdemar, and although he'd had some doubts about his performance at the feast, Anda assured him that he had done splendidly. “I caught the sarcasm,” Anda said, when he'd expressed his guilt over some of his remarks to one of Breon's grouchy guests, “But trust me, Lord Talesar wouldn't recognize irony if you loaded it into a catapult and flung it at him. You did well; people I talked with said they couldn't believe how patient you were with the old goat.”

Today was a rest day for him; Anda and Shandi were getting their formal reception at Errold's Grove. Keisha had gone along as moral support for Shandi, figuring that with both of them there, her mother wouldn't be able to single either of them out for attention.

The first place he went when he arrived was the hot pools; the one thing he truly needed at this point was a long soak. As always, Meeren knew the moment he'd passed the Veil, and he had no sooner gotten settled into the water than the
hertasi
appeared with cold drinks and finger food.

“Well?” Meeren asked, perching on the rocks beside Darian. “How did it go?”

Darian gave the
hertasi
a complete description of the events of the past two days, knowing that Meeren would be providing all the details to the other, insatiably curious
hertasi
of the Vale, and to the
kyree
who served as their historian. Meeren sat rock-still, interrupting Darian only for questions about details, and at the end let out an enormous sigh of satisfaction.

“Excellent job,” he said, bestowing the hertasi vote of approval on him. “You gave them a good show, and you've made a fine impression on Lord Breon's neighbors. I anticipate more trade agreements from this, especially now that they've seen the quality of our goods. We could use more trades for meat; those gryphons are eating the larder bare, and red meat fills them up better than herd birds.” Meeren rubbed his hands at the prospect; when trade agreements were conducted in the Vale, he usually served as Ayshen's assistant—of late he had even conducted them himself under Ayshen's supervision. Darian often wondered when he found the time to take care of the
ekele
and his other responsibilities.

Then again—if he couldn't take care of twenty major things at once, Ayshen would never have picked him as an assistant.

“So tomorrow is the Ghost Cat ceremony,” Meeren went on. “I don't foresee any problems there.”

“I wouldn't think so,” Darian agreed. “No speeches, for one thing. I've been to their sweathouse gatherings before. Anything you say is supposed to be right out of your head, and spontaneous. Nobody minds if you aren't very articulate.”

Meeren chuckled. “That should certainly suit you,” he teased. “You're at your best when you're inarticulate.”

“Oh,
thank
you,” Darian replied sarcastically. “Have you been taking lessons in sarcasm from Firesong? By the way, you might want to consider adding needlework to your list of potential trade items; most of Breon's lady-guests were positively drooling over our surcoats.”

“I doubt any of them could afford what we would charge for work like that,” Meeren said dryly. “But I'll keep it in mind. Who knows? There might be potential in selling small motifs for ladies to add their own work around.”

Having satisfied himself that he had pried everything worth hearing out of Darian for now, Meeren left him to his soak and dinner, pausing only to add, over his shoulder, “Oh, and by the way—good work on the hot spring.”

Once he was ready to come out, the building had started to fill up with folk coming in from hunting and labor. He left the pools to them, and sought his bed, hoping Keisha was having a good time at the village. He was still so tired from the vigil, his nightmare, and the feast that followed that he'd almost fallen asleep on his
dyheli's
back, and that was no mean feat.

Breon's guests, no longer hindered by the need to be alert and fresh the following day now that the tournament was over, had kept him awake far longer than he'd wanted to be. It was just a good thing he'd been able to opt out of the Errold's Grove welcome; he really pitied poor Anda.

When he got back to his
ekele
and into the bedroom, he found that Meeren had left a mug of something on the bedside table with a note attached. In the spiky
hertasi
script, it read, “Drink this, and nothing will wake you up until I do.” He contemplated the mug for a moment. He wanted to be awake when Keisha came back from the village—but he really didn't want any of those uneasy dreams he'd been having off and on. So
I suppose the question is, how much do I want to greet Keisha, versus how much I want to avoid having a nightmare.

He yawned, closed his eyes for a moment, and caught himself starting to drop off. That decided him.

There was danger in that possibility as well; if he passed out, it was possible that no one would notice in the darkness until he was in serious trouble.

He picked up the mug and drank the contents off as quickly as he could, resolutely ignoring the bitter taste that no amount of honey could conceal.

Before the potion could go to work on him, however, he wrote a note for Keisha on the other side of Meeren's. The hertasi want me to sleep,
so I'm going to be obedient. Otherwise I might wake up to find all my clothing tied in knots. Sorry I couldn't wait up for you,
ashke.

Only after he had propped the note up on the empty mug did he lie down, and it was a good thing he did, because when the potion hit, it hit without warning, and not even an earthquake would have awakened him.

T
he Ghost Cat enclave was near enough to k'Valdemar that the inhabitants could send runners to the Vale for protection in case of disaster or attack. In the first few weeks, that had given Darian an odd feeling—that Northerners would be running to the Tayledras, and for protection! By now, though, he was so used to it that it only occurred to him on the occasions when Ghost Cat tribesmen dressed up in their ceremonial regalia, and once again, his sense of
difference
woke up. What the tribesmen wore for everyday use was similar to Tayledras scout gear but for the looser seams, and grew more so all the time as Ghost Cat adopted Hawkbrother materials and styles. The people he had first thought of as barbarians turned out to be very appreciative people, even going so far as to honor their benefactors by becoming like them whenever they could.

When Darian woke up with Meeren shaking him, Keisha was already up and dressed, looking down at him with laughter in her eyes. She, too, had donned a special costume for the occasion, the female version of Shaman Celin's garb. On her head, because she was a Healer and allied with the Tayledras, she wore a hood made to resemble an enormous hawk head. Darian thought he detected the delicate touch of Firesong in the placing of the feathers, and Ayshen's talons in the carving of the beak, which had clearly been modeled after Kel's. The headdress was attached to a feathered cloak, complete with pseudo-wings, and while the feathers of the head had been made from the molted feathers of k‘Valdemar raptors, the cloak had been built out of the body-feathers of the gryphons. Keisha's deerskin dress, fringed and beaded, had the badge of the Healers worked in beadwork on the breast just under her throat. Little bone carvings dangled amid the fringes, but unlike Darian's, which were of predators and prey, Keisha's were of flowers and leaves, with the occasional hawk. Her dress ended at the floor, but the deerskin had been slit into fringe from the floor to the knee, giving her great freedom of movement. She wore boots with leaves appliqued along the outer calves and lacings up the inner side. Once again, the hertasi had outdone themselves ... but then again, Meeren and Loshi found Keisha and Darian very undemanding when it came to clothing.