Mercedes Lackey - Winds Of Fury

When they reached the outskirts of Haven, the crowd had thickened, to the point where there wasn't room for a child between the fronts of the buildings and the street. The noise was deafening; the mass of folk dressed in their best dazzling to the eye. And for someone who had spent so many months out in the wilderness, the crowds were enough to give one a feeling of being crushed.

She spared a thought and a glance for Nyara, who had probably never seen this many people in all of her life put together. The Changechild was clinging to Skif's hand, but seemed to be holding up fairly well.

:She's all right,: Need said shortly, in answer to Elspeth's tentative thought :I managed to get her used to something like this by feeding her some of my old memories. She doesn't like it much, but then, neither do you.: A good point. Elspeth tendered her thanks, and turned her attention back toward the crowd, watching for ambushes and traps. This would be a good place to hide an assassin, if Ancar had the time to put one in place. People leaned precariously out of windows to watch them pass, cheering wildly, and still paying very little attention to her. It felt like a kind of victory procession. She only hoped the feeling would prove prophetic.

In a way, it was kind of amusing, for the merchants and street vendors had taken advantage of the situation and the advance warning they had of it, to do as much impulse business as they might during a real festival. She noted, chuckling under the roar of the crowd, the number of vendors with merchandise they must have made up specifically for this "processional." There were people hawking gryphon and Companion-shaped pastries and candies, cheap flags emblazoned with crude gryphons, hawks, and the arms of Valdemar, toy sellers with carved hawks, Companions, and fat little winged cats with beaks that were undoubtably supposed to be gryphons, and one enterprising fellow with stick-horses with white Companion heads and feathered gryphon heads. He was doing an especially brisk business.

She was relieved and pleased to see a number of people in Guard blue mingled in with the crowd. Kero's work, no doubt. In fact, she might very well have called in all of the Skybolts to be on assassin-watch. Trust Kero to think of that.

:I'm watching, too, youngling,: Need said unexpectedly :Keep your eyes sharp, but with all of us working, I think we'll get any assassin before he gets one of us.:

The crowd continued to be that thick right up to the gates of the Palace/Collegium complex. They passed between the walls and onto the road leading up to the Palace, and there the motley crowd gave way to a crowd of people in discrete knots of Guard Blue, trainee Gray, Healer Green, Bard Red, and Herald White. And it appeared that at least a few of the vendors had penetrated even here - or some enterprising young student had turned vendor himself - for here were the flags they had seen out in the city, being waved just as enthusiastically by usually sober Heralds and Guards. There were, perhaps, a few less gryphons and hawks and a few more of the white horses of Valdemar, but otherwise it looked very much the same. The trainees in particular were loud and enthusiastic, their young voices rising shrilly above those of their elders. It was all but impossible to see much of anything past the crowd. Even the Companions were crowded up behind the humans, tossing their manes, their eyes sparkling with enjoyment.

She caught sight of friends at last among the crowd - some of her year-mates, Keren and Teren, retired Elcarth. The noise was such that she saw their mouths moving, and could only shrug and grin, miming that she would talk to them later.

The procession came to an end at the main entrance to the Palace. It ended there by default, that entrance being the only set of doors large enough to admit the gryphons. There those who were riding dismounted, and an escort of Palace Guards in their dark blue lined up on either side of the group to usher them inside.

Interestingly, Shion, Cavil, and Lisha were neatly cut off from the group and taken aside with the Companions and Firesong's dyheli. Elspeth was not particularly sorry to see them leave, she only dreaded the gossip that was sure to follow.

The doors opened - and there was Talia, who ignored gryphons, Hawkbrothers, and protocol, and ran with her arms outstretched to catch Elspeth up in a breathless embrace.

They hugged each other tightly, separating only long enough for searching looks, then embracing again. To Elspeth's surprise, she found herself crying with happiness.

"Oh, stop it, you'll make me cry, too," Talia scolded in Elspeth's ear. "Dear gods, you look wonderful!"

"You look just as wonderful," Elspeth countered over the cheering.

Talia laughed throatily. "More gray hair, dearheart, I promise you. The children are at the age where someone is always plucking them right out of the arms of trouble, usually by the scruff of the neck. I have to warn you. Your mother has called a full Court, Council and all - "

"So she can prove to everyone at once that I'm still alive. I'd already figured she would." Good. That meant that she would not have to wait to put her plan into motion. "Right now?"

"Right now - " Talia sounded a bit uncertain, and it was Elspeth's turn to laugh and put the Queen's Own at arm's length.

"Look at me," she demanded. Talia cocked her head to one side and did. "I'm a little dusty, but I did take the time to change, so we're all presentable. I've survived fire, flood, and mage-storm, almost daily encounters with the nastiest creatures a perverted Adept could create, and daily border patrols. I'm hardly going to be tired out by a mere ride! Bring on your Council - I'll eat them alive!" And she bared her teeth and growled.

Talia threw her head back and laughed, her chestnut curls trembling, and if there was more gray in her hair, Elspeth couldn't see it. "All right, you've convinced me. Now go convince them!"

She stepped back and bowed slightly, gesturing for all of them to precede her into the Palace. Gryphons included. Lytha and Jerven trotted in the shadow of their mother's wings, looking curiously all around with huge, alert eyes.

With Talia and the contingent of the Guard bringing up the rear, Elspeth led the procession through the great double doors - for the first time in her memory, both of them thrown open wide - and down the hall that led to the audience chamber. The gryphons' claws clicked metallically on the marble floor, and the bulk of the Palace muffled the sounds of the crowd outside. Most of the cheering had stopped once they all vanished inside, but there was still some crowd noise. And it was more than likely that Shion, Cavil, and Lisha were being interrogated by all their friends about the ride home and the strange people and creatures that the Heir had brought with her.

The double doors at the end of the hall were thrown open just as they reached them, and a fanfare of trumpets announced them to the expectantly-hushed Court.

And it was an announcement of the full complement, as Elspeth had hoped. It included Firesong and Darkwind, as "Ambassadors of the Tayledras;" Nyara as "Lady Nyara k'Sheyna," leaving the assembled courtiers and power brokers to wonder, no doubt, just what a "k'Sheyna" was; and the gryphons as "Lord Treyvan Gryphon and Lady Hydona and children, ambassadors of Kaled'a'in," leaving the courtiers of Valdemar even more baffled. Poor Rris; he was not announced, although he trotted at the heels of the gryphlets. But he did not seem disappointed as Elspeth glanced back. He was simply watching everything with that alert expression that told her he was storing it all up, to become yet another tale in the kyrees' oral history. The dyheli had been taken off with Gwena and Cymry, but he had never shown much interest in being an envoy anyway; he had made it rather clear to Elspeth that he was there mostly to show to Valdemar that there were other intelligent races allied with the Tayledras than just humans and gryphons.