One thing’s certain, she thought, as she settled next to the fire with the rest of her mending. People are going to suffer less from nervous complaints. Between the gryphon and the mages keeping watch for trouble, the folk of Errold’s Grove would no longer have to be quite so vigilant. I bet I get a lot fewer requests for nerve tonics and sleeping possets.
By her reckoning, they would almost certainly get those Guards back - mind, they might well be men that were one step short of retirement, but they would be Guards all the same. If there was going to be a Hawkbrother embassy, for certainly that was what this “Vale” thing was, the Queen would want an armed presence in the trading-village nearest it.
And a lot more traders will start coming, I bet. If they‘re certain to contact Hawkbrothers every time they come to our market, they‘ll come more often and start requesting specific things of them in the way of trade goods. More traders would mean more prosperity; that, too was a fine thing for the village as a whole.
More prosperity means more people coming here to settle, though, and that means more injury and illness. Surely, surely someone would see that Errold’s Grove needed a fully trained Healer! I’d even share the cottage, if I could just become the Trainee instead of the primary Healer. . . . That could solve all of her problems at once - but only it someone in the Healers Circle decided that Keisha wasn’t capable of handling the increased work.
But what if they think I am? Then things aren’t going to change at all. . . .
She sternly told herself not to panic ahead of time. No getting upset. She wasn’t going to think about it. No use in creating trouble where there wasn’t any. She’d be like the silly girl in the story, crying over lost sheep she didn’t have, bought with the money from hens she hadn’t yet hatched, from eggs her two little half-grown chicks hadn’t yet laid!
When she finished the last of the mending, she went out into her garden and took a seat on the bench there, looking up at the stars. A warm breath of a breeze carried the scent of honeysuckle past her, as crickets sang nearby and a nightingale in the Forest declared his love for his mate. The moon was a slender nail-paring of a crescent, and Keisha shook her hair back, letting the breeze cool the nape of her neck.
Her thoughts circled around to the returning prodigal. I wonder what Darian Firkin is like. “Firkin” isn’t a name from around here. She’d have a general idea of what he looked like if she knew his family, but it seemed to her that she remembered he was an orphan. That’s right, that’s why he was apprenticed to the wizard in the first place. Whenever people talk about him, they talk about a boy, but he’s at least my age by now. Eighteen at the least. That’s a young man, not a boy.
He’d be old enough to do all the things people expected of him, she would think.
So by now he’s a mage, and he’s got a Hawkbrother bird. He‘ll have traveled more than everyone in the village combined! He’ll certainly have seen more of Valdemar than anyone here, except maybe Lord Breon and his family and liegemen. They hardly count, though; we never see them except at Midsummer and Harvest Faire. He should make quite an impression when he gets here, especially when people realize he isn’t a young boy anymore.
She smiled wryly. There was one thing that was as predictable as the sun rising; every unattached young woman in Errold’s Grove would be setting her cap for him. How could they not? He wasn’t so homely as a boy that anyone made note of it, so he could hardly have grown into an ugly young man - and he would not only have the cachet of being a new, unknown male, but an exotic and a traveler!
The older folks might be thinking of him as a boy still, but the girls are going to add up years and figure he’s of courting age. There’s going to be a lot of sewing and embroidery going on for the next few months, she decided. I wish Shandi were here! She’d be right in the middle of it all, and tell me all the tales!
Personally, she was just anticipating finally seeing a gryphon, maybe hearing it speak. It would bring a touch of excitement to the skies over the village if she could look up from time to time to see the enormous wings passing overhead, or see a momentary gryphon-shadow against the moon! That was all the magic that she needed in her world!
The gryphon was a certainty; she considered other possibilities that the Hawkbrothers might bring. So the other thing this means is that if Hawkbrothers are coming to settle, they’ll be bringing more of their medicines and treatments. Would they bring a Healer?
Now that was worth getting excited about. The Hawkbrothers were mages, everyone knew that, so any Healer they brought with them would - must! - have the secret to unlock those puzzling texts of hers!
Steelmind’s from k’Vala; their chief Healer sent seeds through him to help me. So they already know that I’m here. Healers always work with other Healers, that’s part of the Clan. So if they bring a Healer with them, it’s bound to be someone who knows all about using Healer’s Gift and it’s bound to be someone who‘ll at least give me enough help to get me on my feet!
This could be the solution to all of her problems; never mind Darian Firkin, and even the gryphon. Now she could hardly wait to meet the Hawkbrothers and learn if they did have a Healer among them!
Whatever it takes, I’ll find the way to get him to teach me!
She laughed out loud in relief, as a burden she had carried so long she hardly noticed it anymore lifted from her shoulders. No more mysteries, no more making excuses to Gil! It would only be a few short moons, and she would be learning the last skill she needed to consider herself and real Healer!
With the lifting of the burden, after the initial feeling of giddy pleasure, came a sense of relaxation. A few moons? She could wait that long.
And meanwhile, there were babies coming, childish illnesses to dose, broken bones to set, gashes to stitch. She would have her hands full enough to avoid fretting between then and now.
She went to bed and slept the soundest sleep she’d had in years, waking with the birds, feeling as if she had been Healed.
That day, after a round of children who’ d gotten bellyaches from eating too many half-ripe berries, she went out into the garden for some fresh mint. As she stooped to pick the pungent leaves, a strange shadow crossing the ground in front of her made her glance up.
It was a gryphon. It couldn’t be anything else.
It wasn’t alone either; there were more of them, carrying baskets suspended between pairs of them. She couldn’t make out what was in the baskets, they were too high, but there was no doubt of what they were.
Keisha stared at them until they vanished over the trees, tending vaguely upriver, where the Vale was alleged to be. She all but forgot the mint in her hands until they were gone, and she realized she had crushed it.
The news that a new invasion of barbarians had been sighted changed everything, turning what had been leisurely planning into a spate of frenzied activity. Gryphons carried basketloads of hertasi to the new Vale to get it ready in advance, as the rest of those who had volunteered or been specifically requested to populate the place packed up their belongings and prepared to make the move to their new home. By the time everyone arrived, there would be quarters waiting for them; somewhat more primitive quarters than they were used to, to be sure, but living spaces that could be improved upon and enlarged until they met the standards of those accustomed to living in a long-established Vale. After all, it wasn’t even Midsummer yet; there were three more moons of warm and sunny summer weather to go, and another couple of moons before things got uncomfortably cold. A Vale full of hertasi and humans working together would have fine living quarters put together long before then, and the only improvements after that would be cosmetic.