The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  Now that, I can see happening. Judeth doesn’t much like climbing all over the city all day, but they’re both so experienced that it would be stupid to turn over complete control of the Silvers to someone younger—at least, not until they are comfortable with his competence. And Aubri loves bamboozling the trainees. Yes, that would make altogether too much sense, which is probably why that’s what they’ll do. They’re the two creatures in the whole world that I can trust to act sensibly.

  Tad couldn’t imagine the Silvers without Aubri and Judeth in charge. It would have to happen someday, but he couldn’t imagine what that day would be like when it came.

  “Now look, you two,” Aubri was saying. “You are going to be a long, long way from the city; it might be hard to get things to you if something wears out or breaks. Just because something minor like your water pump goes out, that doesn’t mean we’re going to rip open a Gate to send one to you. Gates are expensive, and you have perfectly sound limbs for carrying water in buckets.”

  Tad was taken aback, and so was Blades. That simply hadn’t occurred to him; living among mages had made him think of Gates being put up quite casually. Gryphons flew, mages made Gates, it was that simple.

  But now he realized that although a Gate went up just about every two or three days, they didn’t stay up for very long, and what was more, they didn’t even go up to the same place more often than once every month or two. There were just a lot of outposts and other far-flung ventures to supply, and that was what had made it seem as if Gating was commonplace and simple.

  Aubri’s eyes twinkled. “Your Gates will be opened at the scheduled times, not one moment earlier unless it’s a real emergency of a life-threatening nature. They will remain open for only the scheduled times, so if there’s more stuff you’ve asked for than can be chucked through in a hurry, that’s too bad. You may have to wait through several resupply opportunities for your water pump. So what does that mean, Silvers?”

  “Manuals,” Blade said with resignation, adding them to the list. “We’ll need repair manuals. All the repair tools we’d need will be there already, right?”

  “And the manuals, too, don’t worry; that outpost’s been open a long time, and remember that Judeth and I were there first. We had the rank to order whatever we thought should be in place out there. Try again.”

  Blade chewed a nail and frowned as she thought. Her brows furrowed, and her eyes darkened until they were nearly blue-black. “Um. You said it’s really damp. Humid?”

  He nodded. “There’s fog there, isn’t there? Every morning. And rain every evening.”

  She brightened. “Bladders. Seals. Anything made of leather or wood—or metal that might rust. Repair parts that can get ruined by damp! That would be for—the water pump, the stove, the plumbing—” She began to scribble.

  “Good!” Aubri turned to Tad, who fortunately had an answer waiting, because he already knew Aubri’s prejudices. He’d heard the litany often enough, when he was still living at home.

  “The kind of equipment that might go missing or get spoiled by damp that doesn’t rely on magic to work,” he said promptly. “Things like firestrikers, tinder boxes, trace sextant and compass for surveying… ah…” He pummeled his brain. Aubri nodded.

  “Don’t strain yourself; since you’ve just shown me that you know the principle, I’ll give you a list. It’s basically a few common replacement parts and some old army gear; won’t add that much to your load, but there isn’t much you can’t do with it if you put your mind to the problem.”

  He didn’t even move; he just stretched out a claw and stabbed a piece of paper already waiting on the top of the goldenwood desk that stood just within snatching distance. He must have been ready for them, once again proving that he wasn’t nearly as absentminded as he seemed.

  Blade took it from him, and Tad noticed that she seemed a bit bemused. Probably because she had a tendency to take everything and everyone at face value, and every time Aubri went into his “senile old featherhead” act, she fell for it.

  Well, she can’t help it. This was her big weakness, and Tad had a good idea why she wasn’t likely to cure it any time soon. Part of the problem was that she just didn’t want to look past the surface masks that everyone wore, no matter how honest and genuine they were. Tad’s partner just didn’t want to know what surprises might lie beneath those polite masks; that Empathy thing of hers bothered her, and if she could have had it surgically removed, Tad had it figured that she would have done so no matter what the risk. And there were reasons behind that as well; she had realized a long time ago that she would never, ever be as good as her father at delving into people’s hearts and souls. She was the kind of person who, if she couldn’t excel at something, didn’t want to try.

  Silly. Not every mage can be a Snowstar, but the hedge-wizards can do plenty of things he hasn’t got the time for, or even do subtle things he can’t do at all. Well, it’d be flogging pointlessly to take that up with her, at least now. Maybe after we’ve been out there a while, and we’ve had a lot of peace and privacy. That particular twitch of hers bothered him, though, and he wanted to have it straightened out before too very long. Any amount of mind-magic was useful, the more so in someone who might well be supposed to boast nothing of the sort. Father always says that if you’ve got an ability, it’s stupid not to train and use it, even if it isn’t something that you’d use very often.

  Blade compared the two lists, and added several items to theirs before she handed the one Aubri had given her back to him. Tad was pleased to note that she had not needed to copy the whole thing down. So they hadn’t done so badly on their own.

  I wonder if there was a bonesetting kit on Aubri’s list, though. It certainly fits his criteria of “nonmagical” and “spoiled by damp.” But, oh, the weight! If only someone could come up with better splints and casting material! It seems so stupid to be hauling wood and powdered rock!

  Aubri crossed his forelegs in front of him, and regarded both of them with a benign, almost paternal expression on his face. “Well. Two more of my fledges go out to prove their wings. I think you’ll like the post; neither of you are the kind to pine after a city when you can thrash around in the forest and see things no one else ever has before.” He sighed. “Adventures are for the young, who haven’t got bone aches. Now me—I’m happy to be here in White Gryphon where I can sunbathe every day. But there should be enough new discoveries there to make even two youngsters like you happy.”

  He did not mention that he knew their personal prime reason for being so happy with this assignment; getting away from their beloved families. He had never acted as if he recognized them as Skandranon’s and Amberdrake’s offspring—

  Well, he wouldn’t; not while we were in training. But he’s never even mentioned our parents casually. Maybe he is a little absentminded in that direction; maybe he doesn’t recognize us now that we’re grown.

  “We’re looking forward to it, sir,” he said honestly. “And it’ll be nice to be away from home for the first time.”

  Aubri nodded, then grinned. “Oh, you aren’t the only ones who’ve been interested in long assignments outside the city, believe it or not. I told Judeth that she should never assign anyone to Five who didn’t have a good reason for being there as well as a good reason for getting away from home. I’ve never seen anyone who fit those qualifications better than you two. And to tell you the truth, I had a third reason to want you out there—you’re a two-and-four team. That’s a good combination for an outpost.”

  That was a gryphon paired with a human. That particular team was not all that usual among the Silvers; people tended to team up with members of their own species. Usually the two-and-fours were default teams, made up of those who couldn’t find a compatible partner among their own kind. Quite often they broke up after training, when a senior Silver could take a junior out of training as a partner. Those who were in default two-and-fours generally did just that.

  “I like a two-and-
four for these remote postings,” Aubri continued, then got that twinkle back in his eye. “The teams are more flexible, more versatile. Even if some people think there’s something wrong with a gryphon who doesn’t team up with one of his own.”

  Tad stared back at his superior with his head held high and challenge in his gaze. He’d heard that one before, and it didn’t ruffle his feathers. “Oh? Does that include you, too, sir?”

  Aubri laughed. “Of course it does! Everyone knows I’m a twisted personality! All of us war veterans are warped, it comes with combat! What’s your excuse?”

  Tad grinned back as the perfect answer came to him. “Family tradition, sir,” he responded immediately, prompting Aubri into another bray of laughter.

  “Well said! And I can’t wait to tell the Black Boy what you just told me; if that doesn’t make his nares redden, nothing will.” He shook his head, and the feathers rustled. “Now, you two run along. Give that list to the supply officer; he’ll see to getting your basket packed up. All you need to worry about is your own kit.”

  They both stood and snapped to attention. Aubri chuckled, and rose slowly to his feet to let them out—old, maybe, but not dead yet.

  * * *

  As Tad had expected, his father already knew about the posting, and was outwardly (and loudly) enthusiastic. If he had beaten every contender and been appointed as Judeth’s sub-Commander, Skandranon could not have been more thrilled. It was positively embarrassing. As they gathered for the evening meal in the main room of the family aerie, with the sky a dark velvet studded with jewel-like stars beyond the window, Tad wondered if he shouldn’t have opted for a quiet bite alone—or perhaps have gone hungry.

  “Outpost duty! And you fresh out of training!” he kept saying, all through dinner. “I can’t ever remember any Silver as young as you are being put on remote duty!”

  His tone was forced, though, and he hadn’t eaten more than half his meal. At the least, this sudden change in his son’s status had put him off his feed. Was he worried?

  Why should he be worried! What’s there to be worried about!

  Zhaneel, Skandranon’s mate, cuffed him lightly. “Let the boys eat,” she admonished him. “You won’t be doing Tadrith any favor by giving him no time to have a proper meal.”

  But her look of rebuke followed by a glance at Keeth made Skandranon’s nares flush red with embarrassment. He had been neglecting Keeth the whole time, although Keeth didn’t seem too terribly unhappy about that. “I hear fine reports about you from Winterhart,” he said hastily to his other son. “You’re training in things your mother and I dreamed of doing, but were never able to achieve.”

  Tad winced. Now, if that didn’t sound forced, he’d eat grass instead of good meat!

  “Well, if there hadn’t been that annoying war, Father, you two would probably have invented the gryphon tiondi’irn, the gryphon kestra’chern, and the gryphon secretary,” Keeth said, with a sly grin at his brother. “And probably the gryphon seamstress, mason, and carpenter as well!”

  Trust Keeth to know how to turn it into a joke, bless him.

  Skandranon laughed, and this time it sounded genuine and a bit more relaxed. “And maybe we would have!” he replied, rousing his feathers. “Too bad that war interfered with our budding genius, heh?”

  Tad kept silent and tore neat bites from his dinner, the leg of a huge flightless bird the size of a cow and with the brains of a mud-turtle. One of these creatures fed the whole family; the Haighlei raised them for their feathers, herding them on land that cattle or sheep would damage with overgrazing. The gryphons found these creatures a tasty alternative to beef and venison.

  Tad was perfectly pleased to let clever Keeth banter with their father. He couldn’t think of anything to say, not when beneath the Black Gryphon’s pride lurked a tangle of emotions that he couldn’t even begin to unravel. But he was more and more certain that one of them was a fear that Skandranon would never admit to.

  Of course not. He doesn’t want to cripple me with indecision or even fear of my own before I go out there with Blade. He knows that if he shows he’s unhappy with this, I might be tempted to back out of it. And he knows that there’s nothing to worry about; we’re hardly the first team to ever take this outpost. We’re just the first team that included one of his sons, and he’s been thinking about all the accidents that could happen to us ever since he heard of the posting.

  He was worrying too much; Tad knew that, and he knew that his father knew it as well. This was not wartime, and they were not going to encounter hostile troops.

  But this is the first time I’m “leaving the nest.” I suppose it’s perfectly normal for parents to worry. I worry, too, but I know that it can be done. I wonder why parents can say they trust their young so much, yet still fear for them! He supposed that a parent’s imagination could conjure up a myriad of other dangers, from illness to accident, and play them out in the space of a heartbeat. Parents had to be that way; they had to anticipate all the trouble youngsters could get into and be prepared to pluck them out of danger before they got too deeply into it.

  But I’m an adult, and I can take care of myself! Isn’t he ever going to figure that out! He has been an adult for ages longer than I have, and he has had to be rescued before—so why is it that adults regard trouble as the sole territory of the young! Do we remind them of their vulnerability that much!

  Between bites, he cast a glance at his mother, surprising her in an openly concerned and maternal gaze at him. She started to look away, then evidently thought better of it, and nodded slightly.

  Mother’s worried, but she admits it. Father won’t, which will make it worse on him. And there’s no reason for either of them to worry at all! Maybe the more intelligent a parent is, the more they worry, because then they are able to see more of what could go wrong. The Kaled’a’in Quarters know that they could concentrate just as much on what could go right, but when it comes to children—or young adults—it could be smartest to have only grudging optimism. Still…

  He spared a thought for Blade, who was probably undergoing the same scrutiny at the hands of her parents, and sighed. He didn’t know how Amberdrake and Winterhart would be reacting to this, but Blade had threatened to spend the night with friends rather than go home to face them. Tad had managed to persuade her to change her mind.

  It could be much worse, he told himself. They could be so overprotective that they refuse to let me take the post, Or, worse than that, they could be indifferent.

  A couple of his classmates had parents like that; Tad had heard mages speculating that the raptor instinct ran so strongly in them that it eclipsed what Urtho had intended. Those parents were loving enough as long as their young were “in the nest.” They began to lose interest in them when they fledged, just exactly as raptor parents did. Eventually, when the young gryphons reached late adolescence and independence, their parents did their best to drive them away, if they had not already left. Such pairs were more prolific than those who were more nurturing, raising as many as six or eight young in a reproductive lifetime.

  But those offspring were, as Aubri would say, “glorified gamehawks;” they lived mostly for the hunt and, while extremely athletic, were not very long in the intelligence department. Most of the gryphonic fatalities at White Gryphon had occurred among this group, which for the most part were assigned to hunting to supplement the meat supply of the city. They were very much like goshawks in focus and temper; they would fly into the ground or a cliff during a chase and break their foolish necks, or go out in wretched weather and become a victim of exposure. Some simply vanished without anyone ever knowing what happened to them.

  Aubri had said once in Tad’s hearing that a majority of the fatalities in gryphon-troops of the war—other than those attributable to human commanders who saw all nonhumans as expendable and deployed them that way—were also among this type of gryphon. Needless to say, the type had been in the minority among those that had reached safe haven here, and
were not likely to persist into a third generation. Not at the rate that they were eliminating themselves, at least!

  When they weren’t hunting, they could usually be found lounging about on the sunning platform with others of their kind, either attempting to impress like-minded females or comparing wing-muscles. Granted, there was always a bit of that going on among young gryphons, but this lot acted like that all the time!

  Very attractive, to look at perhaps. But as trysting mates or play-fighters, I don’t think I could stand them.

  So while Skandranon was probably thinking over how many young gryphons of Tadrith’s generation had been lost, it was not occurring to him what those unfortunate fatalities had in common.

  Say—an absolute dearth of brains. A squandering of what they had. And most importantly, a lack of decent parenting. Keeping a young one’s body alive was one thing, but it only created more breeders to do the same with the next generation they bred. Even a charming young idiot can succeed with good parenting. I’m proof of that, aren’t I?

  His father had lost some of his self-consciousness and was now speaking normally to Keeth and Zhaneel about some modification Winterhart had made to the standard obstacle course in order to train trondi’irn. Tad took full advantage of their absorption to get some more of his meal down in peace.

  Skandranon was an odd sight just now; halfway into a molt, he was piebald black and white. The white feathers were his natural color—now—and the black were dyed. He dyed himself whenever he was due to visit Khimbata in his capacity as special representative of White Gryphon. Ever since the Eclipse Ceremony, when he had come diving dramatically down out of the vanishing sun to strike down an assassin who would have murdered Emperor Shalaman, Winterhart, and probably several more people as well, he’d been virtually forced to wear his Black Gryphon “guise” whenever he visited. He had rescued Shalaman, the Black King, as the Black Gryphon—and in a culture that set a high value on things that never changed, he was mentally set in that persona whenever he returned to the site of his triumph.