“Five?” Darian raised an eyebrow. “I thought you were only going to give him three - hertasi, Ghost Cat, and Tayledras.”
:He wanted Kaled’a’in and tervardi as well. He also wanted Shin’a’in, but I have no command of that tongue.: A deer-fly chose that moment to buzz around the dyheli’s eyes. Tyrsell shook his head so that his ears flapped, and snapped at the fly in irritation. It took the hint and flew off, and Tyrsell resumed his contemplation of the Herald and Darian.
“He’s a glutton for punishment, isn’t he?” Darian asked rhetorically. “Typical Herald. They think they’re invulnerable.” He checked the prone Herald over with Mage-Senses and with the Healer tricks he’d picked up from Keisha. “Well, his pulse is good, he’s breathing regularly, he didn’t hit his head on a rock when he went down, and he seems all right otherwise. Where’s his Companion? I’m sure Eran can give us some help here.”
Tyrsell flattened his ears in chagrin. :I beg your pardon. I didn’t think to call him. A moment - : He raised his head and looked off in the general direction of the Vale. :He’s coming.:
Eran didn’t look concerned when he trotted into the meadow; his behavior as he bent his head down and stared for a moment at Herald Anda’s face confirmed Darian’s “diagnosis.” A moment later, Eran looked up again, into Tyrsell’s eyes.
:Eran says that there is nothing wrong with Anda other than that he has overstrained his Mind-Gifts,: Tyrsell reported. :He says that he will pull Anda into waking, so that he can begin to recover properly.:
“Did you order the tea for his headache?” Darian asked. Tyrsell nodded.
:The same hertasi I sent for you should be arriving with it in a moment.: Tyrsell and Eran looked into one another’s eyes again, exchanging another set of thoughts, and Tyrsell snorted in dyheli laughter. :Eran thinks we should withhold the tea so that Anda gets a lesson in humility.:
“Eran, that’s not very nice of you!” Darian said in mock surprise. The Companion snickered - that was the only possible description of the sound that came from him. “No, really, I know you’re annoyed with Anda, but his only real mistake was in thinking that his training in Mind-Gifts would prepare him to meld with Tyrsell. And I don’t think he realized that taking in five languages instead of the three we recommended would hit him so hard.”
The young hertasi came out of the trees carefully carrying a stoppered jug. “Nightwind gave specific instructions. She says that if this does not do the trick, you are to hit him in the head with it, for being too stupid to live,” the hertasi told Darian solemnly.
“I heard that,” Anda said from the grass.
:You were meant to,: Tyrsell observed dryly. :Or so I surmise.: He gave Eran a penetrating look, and the Companion tossed his head and snickered again.
Darian took the jug, unstoppered it, and discovered that it was not the tea that was commonly used for the treatment of mental strain, but the stronger and more concentrated decoction. Normally one only took two or three mouthfuls - Nightwind had sent an entire jug! A small jug, no bigger than a closed fist, but a jug nevertheless.
“Hit me in the head with it,” Anda continued with a groan, after briefly opening his eyes and closing them immediately. “I would prefer to die.”
Darian laughed at the Herald’s woebegone expression “What, and prove Eran and Nightwind right?”
“I will not be here to suffer their scorn,” Anda pointed out logically, but squinted his eyes open and made an effort to sit up. When he finally got upright, he propped both elbows on his knees, and dropped his head into his hands with a moan. Two drips of blood from his nose spattered on his uniform.
It was quite clear that Anda had never suffered a reaction like this one to any of his attempts at mind-magic.
“Did Nightwind say how much of this he was to take?” he asked the hertasi, who stared at Anda in fascination.
“All of it,” the adolescent said succinctly. He then looked upon Anda with sudden clear disdain and just muttered, “Blood on white,” then disapprovingly shook his head.
She said he should drink all of it? Darian shook the jug to try to judge how full it was, then gingerly tilted it. It was quite full.
Well, Nightwind knows what she’s doing.
“Here, you heard him,” Darian said, pulling one of Anda’s hands away from his face and pushing the jug into it. “Drink it. All of it.”
“Only if you’ll swear it’s poison.” But Anda clasped his hand around the jug and raised it to his mouth. He was obviously expecting it to taste foul (which, as Darian knew from experience, it did) so although he reacted to the flavor with a hideous expression, he drank it all down, as ordered, before dropping the jug into the grass and gasping, “Blessed godsl What does she make that out of, hoof scrapings? No, don’t tell me, I don’t want to know.”
When Nightwind had given Darian this particular potion, she’d followed it with a drink that took the wretched taste out of his mouth. She’d sent no such drink with the hertasi - which meant she really was annoyed with Anda.
But the Herald was a resourceful fellow; he began pulling up pieces of grass and chewing them, then discreetly spitting them out. His attempt at cleansing his mouth evidently worked, as his mouth stopped puckering and his eyes gradually stopped watering.
“All right,” he sighed. “I admit it. I was an idiot. I made assumptions and acted on them without bothering to ask anyone first. Now is this vile medicine really going to work, or was this all a cruel hoax?”
“It works,” Darian promised. “In fact, given how much of it you just drank, we’d better get you back to the guest lodge before it hits you.”
Anda looked up at Eran, who relented, and knelt down beside the Herald. Anda used the Companion’s back and Darian’s arm to steady himself, and staggered to his feet. Eran rose as well, and Anda draped one arm over Eran’s back, resting most of his weight on his Companion. With that support, and Darian on his other side, they walked slowly back to the Lodge. Tyrsell remained in the meadow, having a silent discussion with the young hertasi.
“By the way, had you noticed that you’ve been speaking and understanding Tayledras?” Darian asked casually.
“I have?” Anda replied, his astonishment momentarily superseding his pain. “Great good gods, I have!”
“Not only that, but you really understand the tongue,” Darian pointed out. “You understand it the way you would if you’d grown up speaking it. You aren’t mentally translating it. That’s why you have the headache, because you just got the language dumped into your head whole and entire, the way Tyrsell first got it from a human. That’s the way the dyheli remember things, but not the way a human does. You have to remember that when you do anything that requires closer contact than simple Mindspeech, Anda - dyheli, tervardi, hertasi, and kyree are not human, and if you aren’t careful, you can get into trouble. Well, Havens, check your new memories about dyheli and how the king stag is chosen.”