He hurried outside, still barefoot, hoping to be able to catch not only Keisha, but her sister, and possibly Herald Anda as well. He wanted to tell all three of them what he had discovered himself. By now the news had certainly spread all over the Vale, and when any story spread, it tended to get changed, sometimes out of all recognition.
He was in luck; all three of them were together, and he managed to wave Anda and Shandi in before they rode off to the guest lodge. Keisha looked faintly puzzled, but she said nothing.
“Listen, I need to tell all three of you what’s just happened,” he said when the other two had dismounted. Then when the Companions shook their heads and snorted at him, he quickly revised, “I mean, all five of you.”
The Companions looked mollified at his acknowledgment and he quickly outlined his search, the results, and the information that had come out of the magical investigation afterward. “And that’s all I know,” he concluded, looking mostly at Keisha for her reaction. “It’s driving me frantic, because there really isn’t enough to make a search on - ”
“But you have to keep working on it!” Keisha exclaimed passionately, interrupting him. “Of course you have to! How can you come so close and just leave it at that? And when you do find out where they are, you’ve got to go looking for them!”
“I wouldn’t advise undertaking a full-scale search on so little information,” Herald Anda cautioned. This was what Darian had expected out of him, but suddenly Anda dropped his dignity and his caution and burst out with, “But - oh, hang it all! We’ll all help you get a better idea of where to look, and the Tayledras and the Northerners, too, no doubt! Surely as many good minds as we have can come up with something!”
Darian stared for a moment, as Shandi nodded energetically. “I absolutely agree,” Shandi seconded firmly. “No doubt at all; Karles feels the same. We’ll all work on this together. It seems to me that with all the best minds of Valdemar and the Vales working on it, we’ll surely come up with a way to figure out exactly where your parents are, and bring them home again!”
Darian did not know whether to laugh or weep with relief. He’d been sure that Keisha would support him, but he’d been half convinced that the two Heralds would oppose any attempt to find and bring back his parents, since it would mean his absence from Valdemar - and all his duties. “I - all I can say is ‘thank you’ and that hardly seems adequate,” he managed, after two tries to make words come out had failed.
“Thank us when we’ve got some results,” Anda said simply. “Just know we’re not going to oppose you, and we’ll help you any way we can, starting by putting our own minds to work on this. Remember, I was trained in a couple of different ‘schools’ of magic; I might be able to think of something new to you.”
He and his Companion exchanged a glance, then he and Shandi traded looks. “We all need some rest, and a chance to think, so we’ll see you later,” Shandi said by way of farewell, then she and Anda mounted again and rode off toward the guest lodge.
While they had been talking, Keisha had taken a bundle down off her dyheli, who then left them to find a hertasi to rid him of his tack. Keisha had held it clutched tensely to her chest all the time she’d been listening to Darian, and only now did she remember it. “Havens!” she said, looking down at the bundle in her hands in surprise. “I’d forgotten all about the present I got you! It doesn’t seem like much after your news - ”
But Darian was deeply touched. “I beg to differ!” he replied. “Thank you for remembering me - I’m hardly as exciting as the potential to see a brand new disease, after all!”
He saw by the gleam in her eye that she understood he was teasing her. “Oh, is that what you think, then? Well you might be right!” she teased back. “Maybe some day I’ll leave you for a nice, exciting plague!”
He caught her up in his arms, and felt a new relaxation about her that delighted him. Whatever had caused this change, he hoped it would persist; she hadn’t been this easy around him for months. “How about if I give you a fever instead?” he murmured into her ear as he nuzzled her neck.
She turned her head - and bit his ear. Not hard, but it startled him and he let her go. “You’ll have to earn it by catching me first,” she taunted, and ran into the ekele.
He ran after her, and for the next fever-warm candlemark or so, they were too busy with each other to think of anything else.
After a much more pleasant shower-bath, this time shared, and yet another change of clothing, Darian stumbled over Keisha’s bundle in the middle of the floor of the outer room. He picked it up, saw to his relief that it was undamaged, and looked for a place to put it down.
“Oh, good, I was afraid we might have trampled that,” she said, emerging from the bedroom and tying her hair back as she walked. “Here, let me.”
She held out her hands for it, and he obediently handed the bundle to her.
She sat down and began to unwrap it in her lap - first the outer square of cloth, which he realized had been her scarf. A scarf was something no modern Healer was ever without, since a scarf could be put to so many useful purposes. Inside the scarf was a bundle of soft, dark-brown furs. They looked rather like weasel or muskrat, but were much softer and the fur was more plush.
Keisha put the furs aside, and brought out something made of leather and lined with a coarser fur - she shook it out and held it up to him, beaming. “Yes, that fits - have a look, do you like it?”
He took it from her and turned it around - and almost dropped it, stepping back involuntarily.
He stared, struck dumb, as familiar patterns of embroidery branded themselves on his mind.
Keisha’s smile faded and she looked at him with uncertainty. “You - you don’t like it - I’ll - ”
“No, no, no, that’s not it - ” It couldn’t be. It couldn’t be - it was only a superficial resemblance, surely!
But he put the vest down, and went straight to the storage chest where he kept the few precious relics of his childhood that had pleasant memories attached. He opened it, reached in, and brought out a small, cloth-wrapped package of his own. This he took over to Keisha and opened, laying out the embroidered leather vest that lay inside next to the one she had brought him.
Though the colors of the second vest were faded and stained, the leather worn - though the motifs had been embroidered using wool and flax threads rather than tufts of dyed hair - and though the older vest was barely half the size of the new one - there was no doubt.
In all other ways, they were identical.
They stared at the vests, then into each other’s eyes. And finally, Keisha managed to speak.
“Havens!” She exclaimed involuntarily. “They’re the same! But how?”
“I don’t know, Keisha,” Darian breathed. “Where did you get this?”
Twelve
“Wait - ” Keisha said, feeling that she had to slow all this down, at least a little. Things were happening too fast for her. “This could just be a flower, and flowers are a universal embroidery motif - ”