A chorus of joyful cries arose behind them; she and Tarma turned as one to see the firebirds rising into the air above the hedge, alight with their own flame. They circled, and dove, and sang; everlasting fireworks that made their own music to dance by. She felt her eyes brimming with tears, and beside her, Tarma gasped with surprise.
The firebirds circled a moment longer, then rose into the tree canopy, still calling in ecstasy to each other. They penetrated the branches, making them glow emerald for a moment, as if each tree harbored a tiny sun of its own.
Then they were gone. And in the light from the witch-ball, Tarma's face was wet with tears. So was hers. She understood, now, the other reason why two brave men had been willing to die to save them from enslavement.
She caught Tarma's shoulders, and held her for a moment.
And this is what's worth having; freedom, and friends, and the ability to see a thing of beauty and not want it all for myself, or because of the power it represents.
Then Kethry let her sworn sister go, as Stonnwing had set the birds free.
'Come on, partner, let's go home,' she said. 'We have a tale to tell.'
SPRING PLOWING AT FORST REACH
This is a new short story suggested by Ten Lee of Firebird Arts and Music, who pointed out that on a working farm, such as Forst Reach, most horses would be put into harness in times of heavy workload like planting and harvest. And she noted that, given the temperament of the famous Gray Stud of Vanyel's time (an alleged Shin'a'in warsteed) it was quite reasonable to assume that plowing time (with frisky, hormonal horses) would be rather exciting. She also told me the story of an Amish farmer and his two mares, and his very unique technique for bringing misbehaving horses to see sense.
As for the Shin'a'in technique of taming (or rather, gentling) horses, it is based entirely on fact, and the techniques of a remarkable man named Monty Roberts, who without any form of coercion whatsoever, can take a green, untrained, skittish horse, and have it accepting bridle, saddle, and rider in thirty minutes. His technique is based soundly on understanding equine body language and 'speaking' to the horse with his own body language, and results in a cooperative partner. His book, The Man Who Listens to Horses, is one every horse lover and owner should read.
There was no light but that of the hearty fire in the Lord's Study at Ashkevron Manor, but neither of the two inhabitants of the study needed any other illumination. It was clearly a 'man's room,' comfortably crowded with furniture that the Lady of the manor deemed too shabby to be seen elsewhere, but too good to be relegated to the rubbish room. Distantly related if one looked back far enough, Lord Kemoc Ashkevron and Bard Lauren would seem unlikely companions to an outsider, and sometimes even seemed so to those who knew them both, but the improbable friendship had prospered for many years and showed no sign of changing. The bard played a soft melody on his gittern as Lord Kemoc seemed to doze, the golden firelight flickering over both of them.
Kemoc opened his eyes and roused, cocked his shaggy-haired head to one side and frowned at something he'd heard that wasn't music. Bard Lauren stopped playing immediately; he'd been trying to soothe Kemoc's aching joints with his Healing-music, and had thought he'd been succeeding. With every passing year, Lord Kemoc's joints hurt more when the cold wind out of the north swept down over Forst Reach at winter's beginning. Even here, in this comfortable wood-paneled room, deep within the belly of the manor, Lord Kemoc could not escape the aching of his bones.
'Is there something wrong, old friend?' Lauren asked anxiously. Kemoc shook his grizzled head ponderously, looking more bearlike than usual, and motioned him to silence.
Lauren held his peace, flattening his palm over the strings of his gittern so that not even a breath of draft would set them murmuring.
'Do you hear that?' Kemoc asked abruptly.
Lauren listened, as only a Bard could, taking note of anything that could be termed sound. Past the crackling and hissing of the fire, past the sound of Kemoc's breathing and his own, there was a different note in the sound of the wind about the walls of Forst Reach. 'The wind's changed direction?' he replied tentatively.
Kemoc nodded and sighed, both with relief and regret. 'It has. It's out of the south, old boy. In a few days, we'll have our thaw, and it'll be time for plowing. And happy as I'll be to see the spring, it's just that much that I dread the plowing. I'm getting too old to cope with it; it's worse than a battle campaign.'
Lauren blinked at him in surprise. 'Dare I ask, why?'
Kemoc bared his teeth in a grim smile. 'Stick around here instead of flitting off as you usually do come spring, and you'll see for yourself.'
Now Lauren's curiosity was aroused. 'I've nowhere in particular to go,' he began, 'And if you'll have me-'
