Owlknight

oil, it was lanolin, and his skin would absorb it.

Cleaning tack was most often a job for the hertasi, but they had enough to do just building, and catching up with the chores and projects that had been put back while the celebration and the preparations for it had been going on. When a job needed doing in the Vales, whoever had the skill took care of it. Except, perhaps, for the cooking chores - so far as the hertasi were concerned, there wasn’t a human anywhere who could match hertasi cookery, and the making of a meal would be the very last job that the hertasi would give over to human hands.

I’ve come along a bit from the fellow who resented having to clean and mend. He chuckled at himself, and shook his head. I guess that’s what growing up is supposed to do to you.

The tack shed, one of a group of storage sheds tucked into an out-of-the-way corner screened with trees and ornamental bushes, was not all that far from the lake, and a direct pathway linked the two. The walk was barely long enough to get his muscles warmed up from sitting all afternoon.

Once the path opened up to the clear, quiet waters, he turned to the right to stroll along the edge of the lake on his way to the swimming beach. He wanted to see how the hertasi were coming with the hot spring he’d created. One of the reasons he had chosen that particular spring was its nearness to the lake; but another was that it emerged about a third of the way up to the top of one of the hills cupping that end of the valley. The water started from a point that was about the height above the lake of a five-year-old tree. That would make it perfect for a series of cascading pools, where the water moved downward from pool to pool, cooling as it went. Soakers could pick their preferred temperature by the height of the pool in the cascade.

The hertasi had already dug the series of soaking pools leading down to the lake, from the smallest (which would be the hottest) at the top, to the largest (big enough to hold thirty or forty soakers, and would be just comfortably warm) at the bottom, just like the ones at k’Vala. The first three pools had been sculpted and finished inside with formed rock; these three were in the process of curing. A crew of hertasi was laying the rock of the fourth pool, and the other pools each had one or two hertasi in them, sculpting the earth into seats, couches, and benches, which would be covered with the formed rock. At the moment, the hot water ran down a temporary channel into the lake, where it mixed directly with the lake waters, creating an area of warmth. Even now, that spot was in use, though it wasn’t as hot as the finished pools would be, nor was the edge anything more than raw lake shore. As soon as the last pool was finished, the hertasi would plant the slope with heat-loving vegetation, and a specialist like Steelmind who worked at inducing plants to grow with amazing speed would soon have the place looking as if it had always been there. When the pools had cured, the hertasi would divert the water and they would begin filling. It would take at least a day for them to fill and come up to proper temperature. Then, no doubt, there would be an impromptu opening party.

Right now, though, Darian wasn’t looking for a place to soak; tack cleaning wasn’t hard work, just tedious work. He didn’t need to soothe sore muscles, he just needed to cool off and get cleaner. He was also hoping Kel would be out here, as this was the time of day that the gyrphon usually took his bath and he hadn’t had a chance to talk to Kel in days. They’d both been so busy with the celebrations that there hadn’t been time for anything else.

He was right on time for the gryphon’s bath. Just as he neared the sloping rock-shelf that stretched for several wagon-lengths just under the surface where the gryphons usually bathed in shallow water heated by the sun, Kel flew in, hovered, and landed in the water. He skimmed in at a shallow angle, sending a huge rooster tail of water to the other side of his body before plunging. Gryphons bathed like birds, and Kel was no exception to that rule, slamming his head and shoulders into the water, then hunkering down and splashing vigorously with his wings. Even the smallest bird kicked up quite a bit of water when bathing; when a gryphon (twice the size of a war-horse, with a wingspread wide enough to shelter a small house) decided to take a bath, it tended to drench anyone within five or six furlongs. Darian knew this, of course, and stood well away as the gryphon ducked and splashed, ducked and splashed, until every feather was soaked so that it looked as if he were covered in quills instead of feathers.

Gryphons, like birds, also tended to be single-minded about their bathing, so Kel didn’t look up and notice Darian until he was done and looking for the best spot to clamber out and sun himself.

“Ha! Darrrrian!” Kel exclaimed. “Have you rrrrec-overrred from all the cccelabrrrationsss?” He looked so ridiculous that Darian had to strangle his laughter, for otherwise he’d hurt Kel’s feelings.

“Barely,” Darian acknowledged. “I’m going for a swim. Mind if I join you afterward?”

“Be my guessst,” Kel responded genially. “I will be verrry happy to ssshare a rrrock with you.” The gryphon waded out, generously not shaking himself until Darian was out of range. And when he did go into a blur of motion, he carefully did so where a plot of flowers looked as if they could use the water, then saw to it they were fertilized, too.

Darian meanwhile stripped and waded in along the shallow rock-shelf. The water here was tepid - fine for bathing gryphons, but not particularly refreshing. He wanted his swim in cooler waters, and as soon as he reached a place where the lake was deep enough, he dove in and struck for the opposite shore.

By the time he’d swum to the shore and back again, he felt relaxed and sufficiently cleansed of the oil and dirt of tack cleaning that he was ready to come out.

The ever-watchful hertasi had spirited his dirty, oil stained clothing away and left towels and one of the loose, enveloping robes where his clothing had been. He dried himself off and pulled the robe on over his head, cinched the various ties, then climbed out onto Kel’s chosen rock to join him in the sun.

There were many flat-topped sheets of rock here, conveniently near the underwater rock-shelf, and Kel wasn’t the only gryphon drying his feathers in the sunlight. All of the gryphons in k’Valdemar were young adults, looking to make reputations for themselves; Kel had the most experience and seniority of the lot. That could have