Owlsight

“Only that you should get to know the folk about you - and if you see a way to make yourself useful - ” Starfall stopped, and smiled. “Well, I know you, and I know that I needn’t tell you that. Enjoy a bit of a holiday; I think we will resume your studies after the celebration, for if you are going to take a break before you begin, there is going to be no point in starting anything before then.”

Since those words were clearly a dismissal, Darian thanked him, and left him alone again.

But from the twinkle in Starfall’s eyes when he mentioned the “celebration,” it was obvious that Darian’s guess was right.

And just wait until Nightwind and Snowfirefind out!

Four

How can a ceremony be so solemn and so unrestrained at the same time? Darian wondered, though he made very certain that his thought was tightly under shield. It wouldn’t do for anyone to “hear” him; especially not now.

He’d been standing here for what seemed like half the day, though it couldn’t have been even half a candlemark. As Snowfire’s nearest junior male relative, he had found himself drafted for what he could only think of as a High Temple Ceremony, with every bit of ornamentation and trimming a notoriously ornamental people could fabricate for the occasion. He was right up in the center of the circular raised platform that had been erected yesterday in the dyheli meadow, that being the only cleared place big enough to hold everyone. He wasn’t alone, of course; he was one of the “wedding party” along with Snowfire and Nightwind, three k’Vala Elders, Nightbird, and six independent witnesses unrelated to either of the two being joined.

Now, given the length and seriousness of the ceremony, and the importance everyone attached to it, the logical assumption would be that both the participants and the assembled Clans watching it would be as sober as presiding judges and solemn as a Herald in full formal array.

Wrong.

Even though the audience was quiet, so quiet Darian heard the occasional cough or shuffling of feet, they were all grinning from ear to ear, and it was obvious that they were barely repressing their exuberance long enough for the ceremony to conclude. Everyone seemed to consider the whole thing to be a grand joke at the expense of the long-suffering mated pair, and the best reason ever created for a no-effort-spared, Vale-wide festival.

The long-suffering aforementioned pair were not told what was in the offing until well after the preparations were complete, and it was obvious that the thing would take place even if the two main participants had to be carried to the Pledging Circle, bound hand and foot and gagged. There had, in fact, been a suggestion that holding the ceremony under such conditions would be rather amusing, though Snowfire leveled a glare at the person who’d made that suggestion that was so intense he was probably still putting balm on his burns.

One way or another, it was clear that Snowfire and Nightwind were not going to escape k’Vala’s plans for them. So they agreed to go through with it all, with acute embarrassment, but what Darian considered to be astounding good grace.

The wedding garments alone must have taken months to complete; if the hertasi enjoyed dressing up their human charges as if they were big dolls, this time they had dressed their subjects up as if they were a pair of sacred images!

Take Nightwind: part of her hair had been piled up on the top of her head and secured with beaded and bejeweled combs and skewers, while the rest was in braids entwined with more beads, tiny crystals, silver charms and silver chains. At the moment there was only a single feather in her hair - one of Kel’s, set in a silver-and-crystal clasp. Her robes, sky-blue and embroidered with silver gryphons (both realistic and representations of her badge), had a train so long it needed its own attendant to manage it, and sleeves that trailed along the ground nearly as far as the train. She probably wouldn’t have been able to move if Nightbird hadn’t been there to help carry and arrange the train. Around her neck were two necklaces. The first, a slender silver chain that encircled her neck so that its pendant lay in the hollow of her throat, was a simple one and the twin to one that Darian wore. The pendant was a hawk-talon, mounted in silver and accented with a blue moonstone. The second was a huge silver pectoral collar of thin flat strands twisted and twined about each other in a way that had made Darian dizzy when he’d tried to trace their routes earlier; her badge as a Silver Gryphon nestled into the front as if the collar had been made to accept it - which, obviously, it had. Her final ornament was a belt that fitted about her hips and hung to the ground in front, made of more flat silver strands which matched the pectoral collar.

Nor did she outshine Snowfire. His robes, though lacking the overlong train, were otherwise similar. Also in sky-blue and silver, his featured owls embroidered on them, and a silver-ornamented sleeve-glove that extended to his shoulder. He wore a pectoral and belt no less magnificent than Nightwind’s, but differing from hers in that his featured enormous blue moonstones cut to resemble the moon in her several phases instead of Silver Gryphon badges. Both of them wore blue-dyed deerskin boots with silver trimmings - not that anyone could actually see them under all that finery.

To Nightwind’s left stood her sister Nightbird and Kelvren; to Snowfire’s right stood Darian and, on a single enormous stand, Hweel, Huur, and Kuari, side by side. Had their bondbirds been smaller, both Darian and Snowfire would have been carrying them, but the weight of the eagle-owls rendered that impractical.

Nightbird wore a scaled-down version of her sister’s robes; with no train, sleeves that reached only down to