Owlflight

suntail hawk-eagle’s creamy breast in the branches above him. Three of the scouts were bonded to suntails, so it could have been any one of the three who were standing watch, but he thought it was Eere, Skyshadow’s second- year bird.

:Go in ahead,: he told Hweel, wearily glad that it was a suntail and not one of the forestgyres, who were fond of teasing the big owl. Not that they would ever harm Hweel, nor would Hweel ever retaliate with anything more than an irritated beak snap, but Hweel was a ponderously serious bird in many ways, and being teased put him in a bad mood. Just at the moment, having his bondbird grumbling and hunched in a tree was a situation Snowfire didn’t want to be forced to endure on top of his other pains.

His arm hurt more and more as they rode, and given a choice, he wanted most to see Nightwind and have it tended to, then drink his weight in pain-killing tea and sleep for about a day. The last of his energy ran out shortly before they reached camp. Fortunately, the boy had been cooperative and quiet during most of that time, and his questions and conversation had been polite and subdued the rest of the time. Perhaps he had sensed that Snowfire was not feeling up to conversation.

The horse took them through some truly spectacular territory, and he wished vaguely that he was feeling good enough to appreciate it. Ancient trees with trunks the size of entire houses stretched toward the sky, their roots firmly embedded in the sides of steep, boulder-strewn hills; rocks thrust themselves out of the soil in fantastic and baroque formations. Tiny, threadlike streams sparkled and danced over rocks in the valleys, or threw themselves headlong down the rocky cliffs and hillsides in exuberant waterfalls that were more spray than stream. Anywhere that the dense foliage overhead allowed a ray of sunlight to penetrate to the ground, other plants flourished - a patch of luxuriant grass studded with flowers, a gnarled bush with glossy leaves, or a graceful young scion of one of the giants that loomed overhead. This was the season of birdsong, and their calls fluted through the shadows from every direction. A fresh, warm breeze carried the faint scent of forest flowers and evergreen on its wings. The only problem, so far as Snowfire was concerned, was that his throbbing arm got in the way of being able to enjoy his surroundings. At the moment, they were something to be endured rather than enjoyed, until landmarks would tell him that he was nearing the camp.

Finally, with grateful relief, he saw just the landmarks he was looking for, and soon he was riding down a long rift that would open up into the valley that his group had turned into as near a Vale as was possible for so temporary an encampment. Nature had provided a fine little valley with tiny springs trickling out of the hillside at the back, which the current dwellers had diverted into a series of three pools; what nature had not provided, the Tayledras had fashioned, constructing temporary, ground-built ekeles with stone, spools of cord, windfallen tree trunks, carefully tended vines, and the canvas of their tents as roofs. When Adept Starfall found this place to be nearly ideal for his purposes, a bit of extra work made the camp into a place of more comfort and more security than mere tents would have permitted. It made more sense that way; with strong, secure walls about them and a few creature comforts, they all rested better, had more privacy, and felt healthier and happier for both, which allowed them to do their work without missing the comforts of the Vale too much. The spring-fed pools gave them one for drinking water, one for washing, and one that could be heated with dozens of fire-warmed stones (or, for those with the Gift, with magic) for soaking weary bodies. They would be here for as long as it took Starfall to impose his will on the newly forming magic-matrices, and for as long as it took to find and deal with any Changebeasts that were still in the area - probably into fall.

Snowfire was very glad for those creature comforts waiting for him, especially the hot pool. He certainly felt that he had earned them.

A fellow called Sunleaf, who was bonded to a forestgyre, had an interesting sort of magic with plants that allowed him to bend them to his purposes and accelerate their growth in a way that was quite remarkable. Outside the encampment, he had coaxed bushes and vines into a thickness and luxuriance that hid the camp from sight, and within it, he had made vines grow in screens that divided the area up and gave a remarkable amount of privacy, and got vines to grow over each ekele, shrouding them in cool green that hid the structures beneath an avalanche of leaves. It looked, in fact, as if they had moved into a place that had been abandoned to the forest for decades, instead of one that they had just built.

Snowfire sensed the boy’s interest as they rode into the valley and toward the little welcoming party of three that awaited them. It was a small welcoming party, and Snowfire blessed the Adept’s good sense, as it was composed of only Tayledras who would not alarm the boy - the Adept himself, the gentle trondi’im Nightwind, and the youngest of the scouts, Wintersky, who was something of a protege of Snowfire’s, and shared his ekele. Of course, Wintersky mostly had the ekele to himself, since Snowfire spent a great deal of time with Nightwind. None of the three could possibly frighten the boy, who’d had enough fright for one day, though Starfall looked very imposing, and probably more like the boy had imagined a Tayledras to look than Snowfire did. Wintersky wore the same scouting- garb that Snowfire did, but Nightwind and Starfall showed the other faces of Tayledras life in their dress. Starfall wore the trailing robes, jewelry, and embroideries of someone who does not expect to be covering a great deal of territory in wild forest, and Nightwind the comfortable, colorful, loose garments of someone who does expect to be doing a great deal of physical and practical labor, but who does not have to worry about fading into the landscape. Starfall’s waist-length hair hung loose, with a minimum of ornaments braided into it, Wintersky’s hair was dyed in leaf patterns and confined in a single tail, and Nightwind’s was still dark, for she practiced little magic and had never lived in a Vale with a Heartstone to bleach her hair. She was, in fact, not k’Vala at all, but k’Leshya, the “Lost Clan” of the ancient days, come up out of the farthest West.

But at the moment, all Snowfire could think of was how glad he was to see them all. He slid down off the horse and found his legs unexpectedly wobbly; he managed to save himself from embarrassment by holding for a moment to the pommel of the saddle, and offered the boy his good hand as an aid to get down.

Darian smiled at him wanly. “You don’t look so good,” he said, with that blunt frankness of a child who hasn’t yet figured out that one doesn’t always have to voice what one observes. “I can manage to get down myself.”

And he did, but his legs were just as wobbly as Snowfire’s when he slid off the horse’s ramp and landed on the ground - though in his case, it was probably from a mixture of fatigue and unaccustomed riding than from pain.

“This is Darian k’Valdemar,” Snowfire told the others, in Valdemaran. “He’s never seen Tayledras before, and he knows nothing of us. Darian, this is Adept Starfall, who is our Elder and the leader of this group. This is trondi’im Nightwind, who is going to patch up the tears in your hide as she does for the rest of us who have the misfortune to ran through brambles.”