Mercedes Lackey - Owlsight

Up and down the line of riders, birds were shaking out their feathers, stretching their wings, preening and yawning. Then, one by one, they hopped onto their bondmates’ gauntleted arms to be tossed into the air.

The crows were the first, and taunted the others as lazy loafers with their derisive claws as they rowed up into the canopy. Stung by the good-natured insult, the younger birds followed immediately. The older birds were too seasoned to be tempted into flight by a pack of delinquents before they’d warmed up their muscles; there was plenty of stretching and flapping before the rest took to the air.

Two enormous shapes lofted silently toward the line beneath the lowest branches, one from ahead and to the right, one from the left. These were Hweel and Huur, Snowfire’s bondbirds; that meant that Snowfire had dropped back and someone else with a fresher bird had taken over the forward position. There were three dyheli in the herd with peculiar saddles - more of a perch, than a saddle - and no reins. These were for Hweel and Huur, and sometimes Kuari, who were all far too large to sit a perch in front of anyone. It was all Darian could do to carry Kuari on his shoulder or give him a short and temporary ride on his gauntleted arm; the eagle-owls were big, and awfully heavy. On Snowfire’s advice, Darian had built up his arms and shoulders with a great deal of lifting and carrying and wood-chopping in order to be able to support the weight of his friend.

It’s just a good thing that nobody with us has real eagles as a bondbird, Darian thought, as he watched the eagle-owls disappear somewhere up ahead, presumably making a landing on their mounts. Snowfire had once told him that the only person in k’Vala to have a true eagle and not a hawk-eagle as a bondbird was the black-smith! All bondbirds were easily twice, even three times, the mass of their wild counterparts. Darian could hardly imagine how large a true bondbird eagle must be. . . .

The morning passed uneventfully, and so did the afternoon, except that the break for lunch was hardly more than a pause while more pastry-rolls were passed out to the riders and nosebags of grain to the dyheli. They all ate on the move, something that until now had been done only during wretchedly cold weather, to enable the team to get to shelter faster.

It was late in the afternoon that the biggest bird Darian had ever seen in his life swooped down out of the trees and screamed a greeting as it passed over the heads of everyone in the team. The wingspan alone was so wide not even Huur could match it; more than the height of a mounted man, easily.

All the bondbirds set up a deafening chorus of replies, converging on the riders from every direction, and taking to their perches to go into full, wing-spread display. The huge raptor that had triggered the cacophony made another pass over the heads of the team, this time flying from the rear to the frontmost rider, then disappearing into the branches again.

:Darian, you can stand down.: The mind-voice was Snowfire’s; no point in trying to shout, he wouldn’t be heard. :Remember the eagle I told you about, that’s bonded to a blacksmith? That’s her; we’re under k’Vala guard now. You can relax.:

Darian took a deep breath and let it out in a low whistle; the birds were finally quieting down and settling. So that’s a bondbird eagle? If I were dyheli, I think I’d make her walk!:

As dusk fell, there was a distant glow through the trees ahead of them, and just as the last light of day faded from beneath the trees, the next lot of escorts met them.

This was a veritable stampede of dyheli, first an avalanche of young stags and does, then followed by the older does and their fawns, with five king-stags bringing up the rear. They poured around the line of riders, the youngsters frolicking, the older dyheli trotting up to rub noses with friends, and the king-stags making straight for Tyrsell. Judging by all the vigorous head-nodding going on, the king-stags went into an immediate six-way conference, one which would probably last for several days. After all, Tyrsell was an ajnbassasor to Valdemar in his own right, one looking for riew grazing lands for dyheli, and he had negotiated his own set of treaties with various Valdemaran populations through the medium of different Heralds.

Unburdened dyheli separated from the group and joined the massed herds, who all cleared off, heading back to the Vale. That left room for the next lot of greeters, a flood of hertasi. They seemed to appear out of nowhere - as hertasi were wont to do. There were probably a few hundred of them, but it seemed as if there were a couple of thousand at the least. When they had finished swarming the team and disappeared back into the darkness, there was not a single scrap of baggage left anywhere in the line, for they had stripped it from every burdened dyheli, leaving them free to run ahead as well.

Then came the first of the wonders that would leave Darian breathless for most of the evening.

Lights approached the line of riders, lights bounding along just below the level of the first branches. As the manycolored lights neared, Darian identified them as mage-lights, but they were carried - or rather, pulled along - by bondbirds. Mage-lights weighed nothing, of course, but how wonderful to see the bondbirds, each trailing a different colored sphere in its wake!

The birds with the team again set up their greeting display, and the birds from the Vale remained with the team, lighting their way home, perched overhead in the lowest branches. As Darian passed the birds at the rear, they flew ahead to the front of the team and took up new perches.

Then, as the light ahead grew stronger and stronger, they came to the entrance to the Vale itself, and the crowd of friends and relations waiting there for them. A cheer went up as the long-absent team broke through the cover of the forest.

Now, for the first time, Darian saw Hawkbrothers in all their festal glory, and he was, to put it mildly, dazzled. No one on the team had brought any sort of “fancy” garments with them - though Hawkbrother clothing had been exotic enough to Darian’s eyes - so he’d had no idea what he was going to see. No wonder Ayshen had warned him that he’d be surprised!

Men and women alike dressed in spectacular costumes - what one wore seemed to be more a reflection of his or her personality than gender. Long pale hair was beaded, braided, feathered, dyed, and cut in the most amazing styles. They didn’t look real, somehow, yet they surged forward like any group of folk meeting with people they’d been parted from for too long.

But, of course, no one came forward to greet him. . . .

Now, for the first time in years, Darian felt very much the outsider, and painfully alone. A young hertasi skittered up and took his bridle, looking up at him expectantly. Tyrsell lifted his head up, and the small hertasi was lifted off the ground for a moment, squawking at first, then emitting a long burble of laughter as he was lowered back down. Older hertasi appeared on each side, sharing the laughter. He dismounted from Tyrsell’s saddle and let the hertasi strip his friend of tack and carry it off. Then Tyrsell himself stepped away, leaving him even more alone with all of the meetings and greetings swirling around him.

“Dar’ian!” Snowfire pushed his way through the crowd, with an older man and woman in tow, his face alight. “Here - Mother, Father, this is Dar’ian Firkin, k’Valdemar; Dar ‘ian, this lady is my mother, Dawnmist, and this is my father, Heartwood.” He grinned. “Yours, also.”

The two Tayledras smiled warmly and each held out a hand. Darian took them, tentatively at first, then with the dizzying sensation that he was settling into something real and solid and welcoming. His loneliness evaporated, and with a wonder-filled grin he entered k’Vala Vale with the rest of the Tayledras.