Shandi had been silent through all of this - and now her body began to shake again as she clung to her sister. “How could you know - how did you guess - ” she sobbed weakly.
“Because I’m your sister and your best friend, and I love you,” was the simplest answer she could give - and must have been the best. Shandi completely dissolved in tears - and now, so did Keisha, tears that flowed down her cheeks silently, without the kind of painful knot she got in her throat when she was fighting to hold them back. But Keisha’s were tears of happiness mixed with relief, for now, at last, she knew that Shandi was never going to wall her out again.
It was well past midnight when Shandi had talked herself out; by then, Keisha was cold and stiff, but she wouldn’t have moved to save her soul.
“ - and the worst was when Kel said that the first Heralds wouldn’t have been so cowardly,” Shandi said, in a voice made hoarse with talking and crying. “He was right, I knew he was right - I wanted to sink into the ground, but I knew if I showed anything, they’d all think that the only reason I was against Darian was because I was afraid! And it’s not, it’s not, I swear it!”
“If you hadn’t spoken up, I’m not sure any of the rest of us would have said anything,” Keisha told her truthfully. “I mean, after all, we may each have our own private agendas, but at the heart of it, this is Darian’s personal quest we’re helping with. With his parents asking for help - how could his best friends let him down?”
Only now did Karles take the few steps needed to move to Shandi’s side and gently rub his warm, soft nose against her shoulder - and Keisha’s hands. Shandi reached up and patted his neck. “Karles - tried to help me, but - ”
:I am not an Empath,: Karles said simply, surprising Keisha once again by speaking to her as well as to Shandi :I cannot shield her from her own fear, when I am just as afraid - I cannot even shield her from mine! This is not Valdemar, and I am ... out of my element.:
“We all are, to some degree or other,” Keisha told both of them. “Never doubt it.”
:But Valdemar is home, and I have never been away from it!: The plaintive note in Karles’ mind-voice came as a second shock; all her life she had been raised to think that Companions were near-invulnerable and infallible -
:We are different, with a few powers, yes, and more experience, but hardly infallible.: Karles sighed heavily, and nuzzled Shandi once more. :Shandi and I are two halves of a whole; we complement and complete one another. That is the way of Herald and Companion. We are still as prone to weakness and mistakes as any other soul. If being Companion and Chosen made us infallible, think how many disasters in Valdemar’s history could have been avoided!:
“Good point,” Keisha replied, but kept her thought of and how nice of you to have finally admitted that! carefully under shields. “Shandi, do take it from an older and more experienced Empath - and not just your big sister - that you are doing yourself no good by keeping those walls up, inside and out. You need to do a certain amount of shielding, but not to the point that you feel nothing from us, and let nothing of your own emotion show! We need to know how you feel about things as much as you need to know how we feel, otherwise we cannot work with each other. Out here in the wild unknown, that could cost a life, maybe even mine.” Keisha smiled again and kissed her sister’s forehead gently. “Neither of us would want that, yes? Now let’s get some sleep, and see what matters look like in the morning.”
Is Darian thinking clearly? Is he so caught up in trying to impress his parents, to give them anything they need, that he’s not able to be objective? No doubt, Shandi was already thinking those things, without Keisha’s experience with Darian to bolster her faith in him.
And Steelmind needs to know more of how you feel than all the rest of us put together, she thought, but also under shield, as Shandi got stiffly to her feet and gave her sister a hand up. It wasn’t her place to give Shandi any advice about romance, and she wasn’t sure that Shandi would take it, even if it was her place. Maybe Shandi and Karles hadn’t seen it as clearly as Keisha had, as a result of how much they had tried to wall themselves off from their own emotions and others’, but day by day there was much more in Steelmind’s attitudes toward Shandi than a passing interest in a fellow traveler.
I’ve been lucky enough to find Darian. Maybe the best gift I can give to my sister is getting her to open up enough to see that Steelmind is right next to her. And, just maybe, when he sees she will open up to him now, Steelmind will open his arms to her. We are farther away from home than any of us ever imagined we’d be, and all we have is each other.
Darian woke up all at once, with the disorienting impression that Kuari was trying to dance a jig on the roof of the log house. Then what Kuari was trying to tell him penetrated his muddled mind, and a moment later he leaped from bed and was pulling on his clothes in grim haste, as Keisha stirred grog-gily beside him.
“What?” she managed, raising a face half-covered with sleep-tousled hair.
“We’ve got to alert the village,” he told her, for there was no time to tell this gently. “Kuari’s seen something. I think there’s something bad - a tribal army coming straight for us.”
:Kel!: he blasted into the gryphon’s dreaming mind. :Kel, wake up1.:
:?: The reply was foggy and inarticulate. :Food sleep preen mate fight what?:
:Up! Alarm! Enemies!: He kept his reply simple; it took a moment for Kel’s mind to get working. A moment later, Kel’s war cry ripped through the village, shocking everyone within hearing distance awake.
In another moment, Hashi’s howl started all the dogs in the village up, which ensured that no one slept. Darian left Keisha struggling to organize herself while he headed for the door to get the village mobilized. He was already outside before his parents, reacting to the unholy cacophony, pushed their way out of their sleeping cubicle. Keisha could explain to them; he had to get the rest of the village alert so defenses were in place before the enemy arrived.
Steelmind and Shandi burst out of the door of the log house they were guesting in shortly after he stumbled into the ghostly mist that swirled around the log houses, a mist that clung damply to him in the half-light of predawn. Steelmind whistled shrilly for his bird, and Karles pounded through the mist to Shandi’s side. She seized her saddle from the bench beside the door and swung it up onto his back as he skidded to a halt beside her. Hywel and Wintersky were next out the door, and the dyheli were all close on the heels of Karles, snorting and stamping with agitation.
Then the northerners began piling out of their houses, all sleepy, all confused, all babbling. Darian tried shouting his warnings, but his voice was lost in the general confusion and he despaired of making himself heard.
Then Kel put a stop to the noise by diving down out of the trees and braking with huge sweeps of his wings to land beside Darian, just as Hashi broke off his howl of alert and the dogs followed his lead. The wind of Kel’s wings cleared the mist; his sudden appearance silenced everyone, with shock and alarm, for no one here was used to a gryphon’s dramatic entrances. Darian took full advantage of the sudden silence.