Tarma held out her arm, still gripping her blade in her right hand; the hawk lifted itself to the proffered perch, allowing Kethry to lower her wounded arm and clutch it to her chest in a futile effort to ease the pain. Need would not heal wounds like these; they were painful, but hardly lifethreatening. She would have to heal them herself when this confrontation was over; for now, she would have to endure the agony in silence, lest showing weakness spoil Tarma's bid for the attention of the Council.
"Is this omen enough for you?" Tarma asked, in mingled triumph and anger. "The emblem of Tale'sedrin has come, the spirit of Tale'sedrin shows itself -- and it comes to Kethry, whom you call outClan and deceiver! To me, she'enedra!"
Again, without pausing for second or third thoughts, Kethry reached out her wounded right hand and caught Tarma's blade-hand; the hawk screamed once more, and mantled violently. It hopped along Tarma's arm until it came to their joined hands, hands that together held Tarma's blade outstretched, pointing at the members of the Council. There it settled for one moment, one foot on each wrist.
Then it screamed a final time, the sound of its voice not of battle, but of triumph, and it launched itself upward to be lost in the sun.
Kethry scarcely had time to notice that the pain of her arm was gone, before the young Healer of Liha'irden was at her side with a cry of triumph of his own.
"You doubt -- you dare to doubt still?" he cried, pulling back a sleeve that was so soaked with blood that beneath it the flesh was surely pierced to the bone. "Look here, all of you -- look!"
For beneath Kethry's sleeve her arm was smooth and unwounded, without so much as a scar.
Five
The gathering-tent was completely full; crowded with gaudily garbed Shin'a'in as it was, it would have been difficult to find space for even a small child. Tarma and Kethry had places of honor near the center and the firepit. Since the confrontation with the Council and their subsequent vindication, their credit had been very high with the Liha'irden.
"Keth -- " Tarma's elbow connected gently with Kethry's ribs.
"Huh?" Kethry started; she'd been staring at the fire, more than half mesmerized by the hypnotic music three of her Liha'irden "cousins" had been playing. Except for her hair and eyes she looked as Shin'a'in as Tarma; weeks in the sun this summer had turned her skin almost the same golden color as her partner's, and she was dressed in the same costume of soft boots, breeches, vest and shirt, all brightly colored and heavily embroidered, that the Shin'a'in themselves wore. If anything, it was Tarma who stood out in her sober brown.
It had been a good time, this past spring and summer; a peaceful time. And yet, Kethry was feeling a restlessness. Part of it had to be Need's fault; the sword wanted her about and doing. But part of it -- part of it came from within her. And Tarma was often unhappy, too. She hadn't said anything, but Kethry could feel it.
"It's your turn. What's it going to be; magic, or tale?"
The children, who had been lulled by the music, woke completely at that. Their young voices rose above the murmuring of their elders, all of them trying to have some say in the choice of entertainment. Half of them were clamoring for magic, half for a story.
These autumn gatherings were anticipated all year; in spring there were the young of the herds to guard at night, in summer night was the time of moving the herds, and in winter it was too cold and windy to put up the huge gathering-tent. Children were greatly prized among the Clans, but normally were not petted or indulged -- except here. During the gatherings, they were allowed to be a little noisy; to beg shamelessly for a particular treat.
This was the first time Tarma had included her she'enedra in the circle of entertainment, and the Liha'irden were as curious about her as young cats.
"Does it have to be one or the other?" Kethry asked.
"Well, no..."
"All right then," Kethry said, raising her voice to include all of them. "In that case, I'll tell you and show you a tale I learned when I was an apprentice with Melania of the White Winds Adepts." She settled herself carefully and spun out some of her own internal energy into an illusion-form. She held out her hands, which began to glow, then the thin thread of the illusion-form spun up away from them like a wisp of rising smoke. The tendril rose until it was just above the heads of the watching Shin'a'in, then the end thickened and began to rotate, drawing the rest of the glow up into itself until it was a fat globe dancing weightlessly up near the centerpole.
"This is the tale as it was told me," Kethry began, just as the Shin'a'in storytellers had begun, while the children oohed and whispered and the adults tried to pretend they weren't just as fascinated as the children. "Once in a hollow tree on the top of a hill, there lived a lizard."
Within the globe the light faded and then brightened, and a scene came into focus; a stony, vetchcovered hill surmounted by a lightning-blasted tree of great girth, a tree that glowed ever so faintly. As the Clansfolk watched, a green and brown scaled lizard poked his head cautiously out of a crevice at the base of it; the lizard looked around, and apparently saw nothing, for the rest of him followed. Now even the adults gasped, for this lizard walked erect, like a man, and had a head more manlike than lizardlike.
"The lizard's name was Gervase, and he was one of the hertasi folk that live still in the Pelagir Hills. Hertasi once were tree-lizards long, long ago, until magic changed them. Like humans, they can be of any nature; good or bad, kind or cruel, giving or selfish. But they all have one thing in common. All are just as intelligent as we are, and all were made that way long ago by magic wars. Now this Gervase knew a great deal about magic; it was the cause of him being the way he was, after all, and there was so much of it in the place where he lived that his very tree-home glowed at night with it. So it isn't too surprising that he should daydream about it, now, is it?"
The scene changed; the children giggled, for the lizard Gervase was playing at being a wizard, just as they had often done, with a hat of rolled-up birch bark and a "wand" of a twisted branch.
"He wanted very badly to be a wizard; he used to dream about how he would help those in trouble, how he would heal the sick and the wounded, how he would be so powerful he could stop wars with a single wave of his wand. You see, he had a very kind heart, and all he ever really wanted to do was to make the world a little better. But of course, he knew he couldn't; after all, he was nothing but a lizard."
The lizard grew sad-looking (odd how bodylanguage could convey dejection when the creature's facial expressions were nil), put aside his hat and wand, and crawled up onto a branch to sit in the sun and sigh.
"Then one day while he was sunning himself, he heard a noise of hound and horse in the distance."
Now the lizard jumped to his feet, balancing himself on the branch with his tail while he craned his neck to see as far as he could.
"While he was trying to see what all the fuss was about, a man stumbled into his clearing."
A tattered and bloody human of early middle age fell through the bushes, catching himself barely in time to keep from cracking his head open on the rocks. There was a gasp from the assembled Clansfolk, for the man had plainly been tortured. Kethry had not toned the illusion-narrative down much from the one she'd been shown; firstly, the children of the Clans were used to bloodshed, secondly, it brought the fact home to all of them that this was a true tale.