Ayshen shook his head. “No, I promise you, we build that way in White Gryphon and learned it from the Haighlei, and it is much wetter in their kingdoms than here. We weave the walls, inner and outer, and support them with timber, then pack the space between with earth rammed hard. Then we make a mix of powdered lime and sand and other things into a thick paste, and apply it upon inner and outer walls to make them waterproof. The roof is similar; the drawback is that we cannot alter a dwelling so made, we can only add to it. Windows, doors, and recesses must be built in from the beginning.”
Darian knew better than to doubt the hertasi, but the idea of a house as sturdily made as his being constructed of such flimsy materials as willow withes and plain earth seemed fantastical to him.
And yet, what could be more practical?
“You will get a chance to watch and help in such a construction,” Ayshen promised. “There are many things that we must still build here, and most buildings on the ground will be made this way.”
“I’m looking forward to it,” he replied.
Ayshen laughed again. “You may regret saying that when you are in charge of a ram!” he cautioned. “But now I must go see to food preparation.”
“And I mussst go to hunt my food,” Kel chimed in.
“Then I guess I’ll go see if I can be useful to Starfall,” Darian said, and he followed Ayshen down the narrow stair, while Kel took the more direct route out by leaping from his sunning ledge into the wind.
Darian did find himself on the business end of an earth ram the very next day, for the first of the large buildings that everyone wanted put up was the one that would contain the “seed” of a new Vale. The walls had to be reinforced with rock as well as timber, for such a large building, and even with every free hand in k’Valdemar working, the walls rose with painful slowness. It was literally painful, in fact; most everyone went to bed each night with an aching back, neck, and arms, for the earth between the inner and outer walls had to be pounded until it was nearly as hard as rock, itself. Now Darian could readily believe that his house would last far past his own lifetime.
But with so many people at work, the walls were actually finished in a mere week, enclosing quite a large space of land near the lake. Water was brought up from the lake and fed into a channel at the top of the building, to flow into a series of pools and waterfalls exactly like the hot pools at k’Vala. It flowed out again through a channel at the base of the building, and from there to a purifying sand-and-charcoal pit.
Once the water began flowing, the Hawkbrothers scoured the forest for fallen trees, seasoned, but not rotten, and brought back huge beams and support pillars for the roof. Once these were in place, large squares of the skylight material were seated between the beams, and sealed against leaks. Now the communal pools were ready for their living occupants.
Tayledras with the gift of accelerating the growth of plants, including Steelmind, went to work with the seeds and seedlings the gryphons ferried over from k’Vala. When they were done, although the growth was a bit sparse, the building contained a miniature Vale, quite large enough to hold all of k’Valdemar’s current inhabitants at once. The colorful little chattering messenger-birds of the Kaled’a’in flew freely in here, as did the hummingbirds that the Tayledras used for the same purpose. A little magic would be used to heat the waters; a luxury, but one that everyone agreed was the sort of thing that made life much easier than it would have been otherwise.
The waiting Heartstone, now fully awakened, had been fed passively by the newly formed ley-lines for the past four years, and Starfall was pleased with the amount of power that had managed to accumulate in that time. There was certainly enough to set up the soaking pools, magical sentries and protections, and basic shields. Darian helped with that as well, feeling rather proud of his ability to contribute to the magical well-being of his new Vale.
Next up were communal kitchens, buildings for the sick, for mass laundry, and facilities for those whose ekele - most of them, as it turned out - did not have bathing rooms like Darian’s. Putting such facilities in treehouses was a great deal more difficult without magic - so until there was magic, those who preferred tree dwellings would have to do without. If they had not had Ayshen’s expertise, Darian suspected that neither he nor Snowfire and Nightwind would have had their own private bathing rooms either, but he kept his suspicions to himself.
The hertasi and kyree already had their dens and lairs dug into the hillsides, and lined with ceramic tiles for cleanliness and comfort so nothing more needed to be done for them, but the dyheli needed a winter shelter, so that was the next building to go up, also made of rammed earth. They didn’t mind an earthen floor, however, so their building was finished quickly.
Then, with all of the immediate needs taken care of, it was time to make a call on the neighbors.
The initial greeting committee wasn’t to be a large one. It consisted of the three Elders: Starfall, Snowfire, and Nightwind, of course. To that group were added Ayshen, for the hertasi, a handsome neuter called Hashi (his real name sounded like a sneeze) for the kyree, Tyrsell for the dyheli, and, last of all, Darian. It was Darian who had pointed out that they would make a much more favorable impression on Lord Breon if they came to him, rather than the other way around, so instead of waiting for Breon to come calling, the first thing they did, once the initial settling in was over, was to put that in motion.
A messenger went to Kelmskeep to ask if they might come to present their respects; he returned the same day with a message of welcome, and an invitation to visit in three days. The reply was phrased formally enough to show that Breon took them seriously, but informally enough to show that he was ready to be friends. So their first impression was a favorable one.
“It’s good that he said three days,” Darian told the others, with confidence. “More than a week would mean that he didn’t think we were important enough to postpone other business, and two days or less would mean he didn’t think we were important enough to have business that we have to clear away.” Then he laughed. “Looks as if all that business about manners that got hammered into my head is going to turn out useful! I certainly never thought it would!”
“Why not?” Snowfire asked. “Courtesy is always appreciated.”
“Because it was all taught out of this musty old book meant for people like Lord Breon’s heir, Val. Highborn people who have to know all the etiquette of official visits and all that. Why would a wizard’s apprentice from a backward town like Errold’s Grove need that stuff?” He shook his head.
So now, after rising before dawn and riding at a swift pace, possible only because they didn’t need scouts to secure the way, they were at the gates of Kelmskeep before noon. This was Darian’s first actual sight of Lord Breon’s manor, and in spite of seeing plenty of wonders in the Vales, he was impressed.
It was a fortified manor only in the sense that Lord Breon’s ancestors had put up some high and formidable stone walls around the manor and its grounds, walls three stories tall with room for men to walk around on top of them, and observation towers at each corner. Inside the walls, the crenelated walls of the manor sat within manicured gardens. They were rather too confined and geometric for Darian’s taste, but as well-tended as any he’d seen in Valdemar, though no match for the gardens of k’Vala.