Besides, I want to see what’s going on there! For that chance, she was willing to make the trip. She hadn’t been to the Sanctuary in person for well over a year.
When they reached the Vale entrance, both Companions were waiting for them, already saddled with their lightest tack. With them was a single dyheli for Keisha. There was no need to pack anything, as they would be spending the night at the Sanctuary, which was more than prepared to host visitors. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had healthy people there before.
They’ll probably be glad to see someone who doesn’t need help. And Healers are even more implacable than Heralds. If Anda’s in the way, they won’t hesitate to push him aside.
Shandi and Anda were in the saddle before Keisha had gotten her foot into the dyheli’s stirrup. She was getting used to the way that Heralds and their Companions worked so incredibly smoothly together, but it took the dyheli’s amused comment of :Show-offs: to make her realize that some of that was a deliberate - if somewhat automatic - attempt to impress.
Oh? she thought at her mount, not wanting to elaborate lest the rest of her thought leak over to the others.
The dyheli flicked her ears back delicately. :Yes. They didn’t have to link so tightly just to get into the saddle. And there’s no real reason to try to impress us, is there? They’re doing it to create an image, but is it an image they have to project all of the time?: The irony in her tone colored every nuance.
Keisha always appreciated the dyheli’s dry sense of humor, and never more so than now, but she was inclined to be charitable. Maybe they’re practicing, she suggested. You know, they haven’t been together for all that long, and it’s not easy to get a coordinated link that’s natural and easy.
The doe flicked her ears forward. :Perhaps,:-was all she would say.
The journey to the Ghost Cat village took place without incident, and in a very short period of time. Sentries hailed them from posts among the trees without asking them to stop; the Heralds and their Companions were instantly recognizable, even at a distance. By the time they reached the village, Vordon and Celin were waiting for them. The Shaman was in his ordinary working clothes, not his talis-manbedecked ritual garb, and bits of bark caught in his beard and hair betrayed the fact that he’d been splitting wood when he was apprised of their imminent arrival.
“Hah! Kei-eh-sha!” Vordon hailed Keisha first, which rather pleased her. “And has our new brother recovered from his birthing? What brings you here, on this bright morning?”
“More or less, Chief,” she laughed. “He is certainly up and at all of his duties again, rather than sleeping like a man-shaped pile of rocks. My friends wish to know of the arrangements that Ghost Cat has with the pilgrims.”
“That is correct, Chief,” Anda said immediately, as the Chief and Shaman turned to the Heralds with faces full of lively interest. “If you will be so kind as to explain it to us, and show what you can.”
The Chief, who himself had only dared to learn Tayledras with the help of Tyrsell, nodded to hear Anda salute him in his own tongue. “So you have braved the pain of teaching, eh? Well, this is good. I have begun to think such a thing is equal to the death of a bear in counting toward manhood!”
Anda rubbed his head ruefully. “I could not find it in me to argue with that,” he agreed, and dismounted. “It’s good to know you consider me a man.”
Shandi and Keisha followed his example, but Shandi had to add to her Senior’s statement. “Herald Anda must surely qualify for more than just manhood,” she told Vordon, “for he has taken five tongues of Tyrsell at once.”
“I am not sure if that was bravery or foolishness,” Anda added hastily. It looked to Keisha as if Vordon agreed with that statement.
They chatted about gardens, roots, new babies, and leaf blight as they followed the Chief and the Shaman farther into the village, which had grown - indeed, doubled - in size, in the past year. There had been more additions than simple births or marriages. Some of the pilgrims had petitioned for adoption into Ghost Cat as their own tribes were so severely decimated by war or disease that they were effectively nonexistent, and Ghost Cat usually agreed to take them in. Darian was not the only outsider to have been formally adopted by a Ghost Cat family as an adult. He was just the only one thus far who was not a Northerner.
Many of those in Errold’s Grove and k’Valdemar had been surprised to learn, once the tribesmen began to build, that they were capable of a great deal of sophistication in their dwellings. In fact, their village was as neatly laid out as any Valdemaran village. The Northerners built large, one-room circular houses, with an enormous common room in the center, and small cubicles built against the outer walls for privacy. Each extended family lived in one house - married children moved in with the bride’s parents until the birth of their third child. It usually took that long for a young man to gather the resources to construct his own dwelling. Those who did not wed remained with their families, as additional hands, and suffered no decrease in status for doing so. The Chief had told Keisha that grandparents often bequeathed their homes to a favored young couple, then moved in with the oldest daughter’s family. There was often much competition among married daughters to lure Grandmother and Grandfather to their home; there was an increase in status for those who sheltered such valuable repositories of wisdom as grandparents.
The Northerners used wood to build their homes, but no stone, with wooden roofs supported by four great pillars rather than slate or thatch. The buildings were made of squared-off logs with the chinks closed with moss and mud mixed, and the roof of rough planks laid over a radial pattern of rafters, which were then topped with rough wooden shakes.
The houses were odd to Valdemaran eyes, but it was the art decorating them that was so startling to those who were not out of the North.
The thick plank door of each house was carved and painted with the totem animal of the particular family in a kind of high-relief style. These were not realistic portrayals, but very stylistic and colorful, featuring patterns in red, white, and black. In good weather, beautiful blankets made of pieced fur were hung on the outer walls - both as a precaution, to chase out any vermin and odors, and to display the handiwork of the women of the house. Now that Ghost Cat had access to woolen fabric, they were making similar blankets of wool in bright, primary colors. Each blanket was a representation of the totem of the person it belonged to. There were always two poles outside each house, carved and painted with all of the totems of the family, and topped with the Ghost Cat.
Totem animals played a huge part in the lives of the Northerners; each tribe had a special totem (usually a very powerful predator). Each family also had a totem related to the totem of the tribe. And when each family member reached adulthood, he or she also got a totem - or as they put it, were embraced by one - in a special dream-ceremony presided over by the Shaman. Darian was an exception - Ghost Cat judged he already had his totem, in the form of Kuari.