The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  That one was not Hadanelith, though Hadanelith had caused a fair share of emotional damage himself. It was generally granted, however, that Hadanelith had not been warped into what he was by the mage-storms. All evidence seemed to indicate he had always been quite mad, and quite dangerous.

  Only the mages of k’Leshya were so affected, at least, as far as anyone knew.

  Then again, perhaps Shalaman’s Nameless Brother was turned into what he became by the storms as well. We’ll probably never know for certain.

  At any rate, since now the rate of birth for boys and girls was about equal again, the next generation would not have the trouble finding mates that this one had until Haighlei women started coming in by curious ones and twos.

  Ikala had intrigued Blade, however, because he was very much different from the other Haighlei that had drifted into the city. He had kept to himself and simply observed for several weeks, after accepting hospitality at the hostel set up for visitors. He had not made any secret of his lineage, but he had not attempted to trade on it either. He had gone about the city quietly watching everything and everyone—while the Silvers were watching him, as they watched all newcomers. Then, one day, he presented himself to Judeth and asked to be taken into the Silvers as a trainee.

  Had he been making up his mind if he wanted to stay? Had he already known he intended to remain and was only looking for a place where he could earn his way? Not even Blade knew—unless he had told Judeth, which was possible—and he had spent more time talking to her than to anyone else.

  This was a fact that she had taken great pains to conceal from her loving family, as was her growing affection for him. She wasn’t certain what she was going to do about that yet. As with many things, it would have to wait until she returned from this assignment.

  But having a Silver well acquainted with another court than Shalaman’s would mean that White Gryphon could open up a second embassy in Nbubi. Ikala could prove invaluable there, as an expert in the background, able to advise the ambassador as Silver Veil had advised Amberdrake in Shalaman’s court. And that would be a fine place for Blade and Tadrith to be posted—and perhaps even Keeth.

  Unless, of course, Amberdrake managed to get himself appointed as Ambassador there—or Winterhart did—

  No. No, that couldn’t possibly happen, she reassured herself hastily. Father’s needed too much here. Mother wouldn’t go without him, not after the mess that almost happened the last time. And he knows that there’s no one here that could replace him.

  Of course he could always train someone as his replacement.

  Oh, why am I making up these stupid scenarios when I don’t even know where I’m going after this, or whether Ikala and I would ever be more than close friends, or even if Judeth would consider Tad and me for posts with the Embassy! She realized that she was making up trouble for herself out of nebulous plans that weren’t even a possibility yet!

  Things must be going too well if I’m planning for opposition that doesn’t exist and problems that would take a thousand variables to come up!

  Just about then, Tad spoke to her. “I can’t think of anything else,” he said. “What about you?”

  “I haven’t had any great inspirations for the supply list, but then I haven’t been really thinking about it,” she confessed, and frowned at the scrawled document in her hands. “I’ll tell you what; let’s go talk to Judeth or Aubri, and see if either of them have any suggestions.”

  Tad clicked his beak thoughtfully. “Is that wise?” he asked. “Will it look as if we aren’t capable of thinking for ourselves?”

  “It will look as if we are not too full of ourselves to accept advice from those older and wiser than us, and if we tell them that, they’ll adore us for it,” she responded, and got to her feet, stamping a little to ease a bit of numbness. “Come on, bird. Let’s go show the old dogs that the puppies aren’t totally idiots.”

  “Not totally,” Tadrith muttered, although he did get to his feet as well. “Only mostly.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Outpost Five, heh?” Aubri stretched both his forelegs one at a time, regarding the blunted, ebony talons on the end of each claw with a jaundiced eye. Wind rattled the wooden wind chimes harmoniously in the open window behind him, and Tad watched golden dust motes dance in the beam of clear sunlight lancing down to puddle on the floor beside the old gryphon. “Let me see if I remember anything about Outpost Five.”

  Tad sighed as Aubri went through the whole of his dry, impish, “absentminded” routine, first scratching his rusty-brown headfeathers meditatively (which made more dust-motes dance into the light), then staring up at the ceiling of the dwelling he shared with Judeth. His head moved again after a long moment, and Tad hoped he was finally going to say something. But no—he looked down at the shining terrazzo floor, inlaid in a geometric pattern of cream and brown that to all outward appearances fascinated him. That is, he seemed to be staring at those places; like any raptor, a gryphon’s peripheral vision was as good as his straight-on sight, and Tad knew very well that Aubri was watching them—well—like a hawk.

  “Outpost Five,” the elder gryphon muttered, shaking his head so that the fragments of feather-sheath dislodged by his earlier scratch flew in all directions. A single headfeather, striped in brown and cream and as large as a human’s palm, drifted down to lie in the pool of sunlight beside him. Its edges were outlined in light, and the white fluff at the base glowed with a nimbus of reflected sunshine. “Outpost Five… now why does that sound familiar?”

  This could go on for some time if Tad didn’t put a stop to it. He fixed Aubri with a look that said wordlessly, I know just what you’re doing and I’m not falling for it. In tones of deepest respect, he told his superior “You and Commander Judeth took Outpost Five three years ago, sir, when we first took responsibility for it from the Haighlei. You said the tour of duty was a vacation from trainees who couldn’t molt without explicit written instructions.”

  Aubri blinked mildly, but his great golden eyes were twinkling with hidden amusement. “Did I say that? I’m cleverer than I thought. Well, yes, I think I remember Outpost Five, now that you mention it. Pretty remote; it’s hard to find volunteers to man it. Good place for a vacation if what you want is thunderstorms every evening, fog every morning, and just enough of the sun to taunt you about its existence. There’s a reason why the Haighlei call that kind of territory a ‘rain forest.’ It is wetter than a swimming kyree.”

  Well, good. That’s one thing that wasn’t in our lessons on manning outposts. And there’s nothing in the briefing Blade read me that says anything about the weather there. “Would you say the weather is difficult enough to become a hindrance to our duties, sir?” he responded politely.

  “Hindrance? I suppose if you’re the kind that thinks he’s going to melt if he has to fly in the rain.” Aubri’s mild manner turned just a trifle sharp, as if giving Tad subtle warning, that he’d better not be thinking any such thing. His pupils dilated and constricted rapidly, another sign of warning. “No one promised sunny beaches and half-day duty when you volunteered for the Silvers.”

  “It is dangerous to fly during thunderstorms, sir,” Blade put in politely, verbally maneuvering Tad from under Aubri’s talons. “And it can be dangerous to take off during heavy fog. We won’t be doing White Gryphon any favors if we get ourselves bunged up doing something stupid and they have to send in replacements and a rescue party. If the weather can become difficult enough to be dangerous, we ought to know about it in advance and know what warning signs to watch for. We can always ground ourselves and wait out a dangerous storm.”

  “Well, now, that’s true enough.” Aubri was back to being the bumbling, genial old “uncle.” “But I don’t think I said anything to give either of you the impression that the weather was going to make it impossible to fly your regular patrols. You’ll just have to be careful, the way you were taught, and be diligent in watching for developing problems, that’s all. The thunderstorms a
ren’t violent, just briefly torrential, and the fog is always gone an hour after dawn.”

  Both of which would have made his bones ache, if he’s having the same problems as my father. Aubri might be the oldest surviving gryphon from Urtho’s forces; he was certainly older than Skandranon. He looked it, too; his feathers were not as sleek or as perfectly preened as Tad’s were; in fact, they were a bit ragged, a trifle faded from what must have been his original colors of dark, warm brown and tan. Now he was rusty-brown and cream, and even feathers just grown in looked a bit shabby. Like Skandranon, he was of the broadwing variety, hawklike rather than falconiform, but he was huskier than Skandranon. His raptoral prototype was probably the umber-tailed hawkeagle, rather than the goshawk. There were signs of age in the delicate skin around his beak and eyes, a webwork of faint wrinkles, though those wrinkles were not as pronounced as the ones that humans got with increasing age. There was no sign of age in the mind, although you could not have told that from the way he was acting now.

  “Acting,” indeed. It’s all an act, first, to last, the old fraud. He never forgets anything; I’ll bet he remembers the order in which every trainee finished the last run on the obstacle course two weeks ago.

  Aubri and Judeth were adept at playing the ally–antagonist game, with Aubri playing the absentminded and easily-fooled ally and Judeth the sharp-edged antagonist. Tad had caught onto the game in his first day of training, but then he had seen both Aubri and Judeth all the time when he was growing up. In particular, he had watched “absentminded” and “bumbling” Aubri best Skandranon time and time again over a game of stones, so it wasn’t likely that he would ever be fooled into thinking that Aubri wasn’t as sharp as his human partner.

  Not that Father would ever admit to losing a game to Aubri except on purpose.

  “Where is Commander Judeth, by the way?” he asked, for the white-haired human co-Commander of the Silver Gryphons had not been in evidence when the two of them arrived a few moments ago. Aubri jerked his beak toward the door, still standing open, as it had been when they arrived. On warm, pleasant days like this, most of the inhabitants, of White Gryphon preferred to keep all doors and windows open to the sea breezes, and Aubri was no exception.

  “Meeting with the Haighlei; they’re picking out the next set of Silvers to be in Shalaman’s personal guard when Sella and Vorn come back.” He preened a talon thoughtfully, chewing on the very end of it, his beak making little clicking sounds as he did so. “They’ll probably take Kally and Reesk,” he added. “They can’t resist matched sets.”

  “You think so?” Blade asked skeptically; like Tad, she was aware that there were several pairs available for the duty whose skills were greater than the partners named.

  Aubri snorted his contempt for anyone who would choose the looks of a set of guards over their ability. Not that Kally and Reesk were bad; no one was offered for Shalaman’s guards who was bad. For that matter, anyone who wasn’t up to Aubri’s standards was generally asked to find some other vocation long before they got out of training—and exceptions had better prove themselves within six months or they would have to return that coveted silver badge. But by the yardstick of those that Judeth and her partner picked to represent White Gryphon in the service of the Haighlei Emperor, these two were just average.

  Nevertheless, they were showy, their plumage of ruddy gold and bronze would complement the gold and lionskins of Shalaman’s Grand Court, and they could stand at perfect attention for hours without moving a feather. Tadrith pointed out all of those attributes.

  “The Emperor’s Chief Advisor has other things to consider, sir,” he finished politely. “It is very important, protocol-wise, for the Emperor’s guards to be as still as carvings all during Court. That stillness implies his power and control.”

  “It’s not as if they’re ever going to have to do anything, sir,” Blade said injudiciously. “Even assuming an assassin or madman got as far as the Emperor’s Guard, he’d take one look at a pair of gryphons in full battle rage and pass out.” Tad winced. That was not a bright thing to say—not to a veteran of the Great Wars and the Migration. There was a slight grating as Aubri’s talons reflexively scratched the terrazzo.

  “Maybe,” Aubri replied with a narrow-eyed glare in her direction that thoroughly cowed her. “Maybe. Never assume anything, young Silver. Assumptions get you killed. Either you know, or you make your plans for the worst-case contingency. Always. Never count on the best happening. I thought we taught you better than that.”

  The ice behind his words would have done his partner Judeth proud, and his tone was so sharp that even an idiot would have known he had made a mistake.

  Blade flushed at the rebuke, and snapped stiffly to attention. Aubri waited a moment, to make certain that his words had taken effect, then waved a talon at her, and she relaxed, but warily.

  That’s one mistake she won’t make again.

  “Now, what was I saying? Outpost Five…” He yawned, all trace of the Commander gone from his demeanor again. He could have been any lazy old gryphon, without a single interest beyond a place in the sun to rest, a bit of good gossip, and the quality (and timely delivery) of his next meal. “Standard outpost, all the comforts of home if you happen to be a hermit, good hunting, always pretty damp, the nights are a bit chilly. Oh, and the area is largely unexplored.” He gryph-grinned at Tad’s ill-suppressed look of eagerness. “Figured that out, did you? If I were to guess, and it’s only a guess, I’d say your best bet might be gold. Quartz pebbles in the river and streambeds that match the kind I’ve seen in the past where gold can be panned and separated out. We didn’t bother looking when Judeth and I were there, we’re too old to go wading around in cold water sloshing pans about. Since you’ve got a two-legger with you, it wouldn’t hurt to do a little panning, just to see if there’s anything there.”

  “No, it wouldn’t,” Tad agreed, as Blade grimaced, but nodded. That would be the easiest way to find gold, if Aubri was right and the area was sitting atop a vein or even a lode. Chances were, if they did find gold, panning would be the only way any of it would be taken out of the place for a long time. The Haighlei would first have to perform a divination to see if the gods approved of mining there, then they would have to wait for approval from Shalaman himself, then the priesthood and the Emperor would make a joint declaration that mining would be permitted. Even then, there would be no rush to sink mines; Shalaman himself would choose one person from among the handful born into the trade of mining expert to determine (with the help of the priesthood) where and when the first shaft should be sunk. That person, with the aid of his hereditary miners, would dig the first shaft while a member of the priesthood watched to be certain it was all done as the gods deemed fit and appropriate. If he struck the vein, the whole process might be gone through again, to see if the gods would allow a second mine in the forest. If not, it would be taken as a sign that the gods did not approve despite the earlier indications, and the whole concern would be packed up and moved home. Protocol.

  And meanwhile, those citizens of White Gryphon willing to endure primitive conditions for the sake of the possibility of a fortune, would be industriously panning gold out of the streams, with Shalaman’s blessing and his tax collectors monitoring. Panning involved nothing that would change the forest, the stream, or the earth beneath both, and so did not require the approval of the gods.

  “What else?” he asked, and got the figure it out for yourself, brat look from Aubri. “I meant, what supplies would you suggest we take,” he amended hastily. Blade took the hint and passed their list over to Aubri, who spread it out on the floor in front of him; “Other than the usual kit, I mean, the one we learned in training. This is what we’d thought of adding so far.”

  He was rather proud of the fact that he’d already put prospecting pans down; after all, if they didn’t find any gold, they could always bake pies in them.

  Aubri perused the list slowly, rumbling a little to himself. Finally, he looked
up.

  “This is all very well thought out,” he said, “but it doesn’t go far enough. That’s not your fault,” he added hastily, as both Tad and Blade’s faces fell: “We train you fledges about regular outpost duty; but Five is almost twice as far away as any of the others. That was why Judeth and I went out there. If we couldn’t handle it, we certainly didn’t want to send any of you.”

  Aubri and Judeth shared the leadership of the Silvers as co-Commanders under Skandranon. Tad’s father had turned over the actual working position to Aubri not long after the affair of the Eclipse Ceremony, more than twelve years ago. Skandranon had decided by then that he didn’t want to be a leader, not unless it was a leader in name only. He much preferred to be the Black Gryphon (or White Gryphon, depending on whether he was at Khimbata and Shalaman’s court or at home) with his talons into everything. The day-to-day trivia of leadership bored him; doing things made him happy.

  Aubri, on the other hand, found himself, much to his surprise, to be quite good at the day-to-day trivia. Furthermore, it amused him. He said once to Skandranon that after all that he had been through during the Wars, dealing with requisitions and stupid recruits was a positive pleasure. The real truth was that he had long ago mastered the art of delegation and knew just who to saddle with the part of the job that he didn’t care for. And now, with the able tutelage of his partner, and co-Commander Judeth, he very, much enjoyed being a leader. For the last three years or so, both of them had been claiming that they were going to retire “soon,” but not one creature in the Silvers believed them. Neither of them was ever likely to enjoy retirement half so much as active duty.

  It was Tad’s opinion that what would probably happen was that a third co-Commander would be appointed, one in charge of the more physical aspect of the daily activities of the Silvers, and the minor decisions that didn’t require an expert of the quality of either Aubri or Judeth. Judeth would remain in place as the overall Commander in charge of major decisions, and Aubri in charge of training, with which Judeth would assist him.