little later, lingering in the hot spring, or sitting and watching a waterfall and thinking about nothing at all.
Her footsteps made no sound on the soft sand of the pathway, sand that cradled her feet luxuriously. Everything about this Vale hinted at luxury-a luxury that few outside the Vales enjoyed. In fact, not even the Tayledras 'cousins,' the Shin'a'in, got to enjoy this sort of life. For that matter, could the Heralds really justify making themselves a private paradise when there were so many other things that needed doing?
A pair of long-tailed birds sang sweetly nearby, scarcely an arm's length from Gwena, reminding her by their presence that outside the Vale the songbirds had long since gone south. Even if Heralds could justify building a place like this, there was no way that they could justify lounging about in it the way the Tayledras did. Frolicking in flower-bedecked bowers and lounging in hot pools didn't get circuits ridden.
Too much living like this, and she'd find herself wasting time designing feather-masks and festival-garb instead of getting her work done.
A feeling of moral superiority crept into her thoughts, and she let it.
She led Gwena up the path to her loaned ekele and the tiny, sculpted hot Pool beneath it, and felt a bit smug.
The stone path wound across another just ahead of her, and the murmur of voices to her right warned her that several folk were going to cross ahead of her. She paused-And her sense of moral superiority vanished as soon as the Hawkbrothers came in view.
'Els-peth,' called the first of the group as he caught sight of her,
'We should like the use of your pool. The hertasi are cleaning several of the others, and yours is the nearest that is prepared. May we?' The mage-light that danced over his head revealed the little group of five pitilessly. The one in the lead, a mage named Autumnwing, was the best off, physically-and he was worn right down to the bone. Overextended, to say the least; his eyes were sunken, his skin pale, and he trembled with weariness. Behind him were two of Darkwind's scouts, both bruised and bloody, and supporting them were two more mages who looked in no better shape than Autumnwing. Even as she watched, one was redressing a wound that gleamed dark and wet, while her partner held the arm steady.
'What in Havens happened to you?' she exclaimed, before she could stop herself.
Autumnwing shrugged. 'I have been with the rest on the Heartstone; it fluxed again today. Be glad you were not within the Vale, or we would have conscripted you with or without training. But I am not so badthese four met with a pack of Changewolves that had cornered one of k'sheyna's dyheli herds, and if it had not been for them, there might have been a score of Changewolves hounding the Vale itself tonight.' As Elspeth's eyes widened, he added, 'They are very valiant. Had I been in their place, I fear I would have fled.' The arm-wounded woman grunted and said, 'Forty-arrow fight.' Then she shrugged.
'P-please,' Elspeth stammered, 'Feel free to use the spring. I was going to find some food; shall I bring you back some, or send a hertasi with it?'
'Either,' replied one of the scouts wearily. 'I could happily eat one of our fallen enemies at this moment, raw, and without salt.'
'I'll take care of it, if you'll pull off the tack,' Gwena told her. 'I can probably find a hertasi before you can.' In answer, Elspeth bent to loose the saddle-girth, and saddle and blanket slid to the ground as she unbuckled the hackamore and hauled it over Gwena's ears. The Companion vanished into the undergrowth.
'She's gone to recruit you some food,' Elspeth told the others, as she bent to retrieve the fallen saddle.
'Our thanks,' Autumnwing told her gravely; she waited for them to make their way past her, then gave them a head start, before following in their wake.
Hot pools and life in an eternal summer don't compensate for that, she thought, balancing the saddle on her shoulder. And given the Goddess' edicts, I suppose that even in Vales where the Heartstone is whole the mages aren't sitting around discussing water-sculpture.
So much for moral superiority.
The Vales must seem like paradise itself when they're out in the Pelagir wilds-but one that wouldn't be there to return to if they weren't out in those wilds to defend it. Is Valdemar any different to a Herald?
Willfully faulty memory caught up with reality. This wasn't the first time she'd seen Hawkbrothers in such poor condition. The mages, halfhealed Starblade among them, worked themselves to a thread every day, shielding the Vale from attack, and trying to do something about their Heartstone. She had her own experience today to show her the hazards of being a scout on the border of the k'sheyna territory, where every league held new and deadly horrors.
For that matter, she'd been an inadvertent witness to the worst-save only death-that could befall a Hawkbrother. She'd seen what had happened to Dawnfire, and she'd been asked to feed power to Kethra one day, when the mage that usually augmented the Healer-shaman was too exhausted to continue. Kethra put Starblade through purest agony that day, explaining only that this was a necessary part of Healing what had been done to him. Elspeth still felt uncomfortable with the memory.
Although she repeated to herself again and again that it -Was for the better, she still felt like a torturer's apprentice for it.
We're pampered, we Heralds, she realized, stopping long enough to shift the weight of the saddle to her other shoulder, and shake some of the aches out of the arm that had balanced it. We have everything we need taken care of for us. We live in prepared quarters, we have servants picking up after us. The Hawkbrothers have Vales; we have our rooms at the Collegium. they have hertasi, we have human servants. they have their food and clothing made for them; so do we. Neither of us have physical pleasures that are adequate compensation for what we do.
She reached the foot of the tree that held her ekele; muted voices and faint splashing told her that the pool was occupied. She hung her saddle and hackamore over the railing at the bottom of the stair, and took herself up the staircase.
Darkwind had pointed out something about the Vales; that anyone with sufficient magic power could create one. They were really just very large hothouses, with a mage-barrier serving in place of glass. Nothing terribly exotic about a hothouse She pulled aside the door to her ekele, and looked down over the edge of the staircase for a moment. Kerowyn's grueling lessons in strategy and tactics caused her to realize something else as well.
The ekeles were not simply exotic love nests. They were based directly on the quite defensible treetop
