Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  Dazed with the revelation, he wandered past another three of the transparent models, to find himself beak-to-beak with—

  Zhaneel!

  Only it wasn't Zhaneel at all, it was a creature with no personality. But there was her general build, her coloration and configuration.

  He looked back along the line of gryphons, following them up to where he stood, and the Zhaneel-type. Back and forth he looked, a thought slowly forming in his mind. There was something about this line of gryphons, something that had struck an unconscious chord. What was it? Of course. The types that were closest to the door represented more numerous populations than the ones nearest him, and as far as he knew of the Zhaneel-type there was only Zhaneel—

  Because she is the first?

  That was it! This was a visual record of Urtho's entire breeding program! Zhaneel wasn't a freak, she wasn't malformed, she was the very first of an entirely new gryphon type!

  Now—all those questions Urtho asked her, about her parents, her siblings, her training, they begin to make sense! Surely her parents knew that she was a new type—and if they had lived, they would have seen to it that she got special training for her special skills! But with them gone, she was left to flounder, and Urtho cannot remember everything—

  As Urtho himself had reminded Skan. He could not remember everything, and evidently he had forgotten that one, solitary gryphon of a new falcon type—

  Amberdrake called her a gryfalcon!

  —who survived, was alone, and needed an eye kept on her. Skan had been angry with Urtho, and now he was furious. How could he have done that to her? Surely he knew what lay ahead of her when she didn't look anything like the others! Surely he knew how the gryphons felt about runts, sports, the "misborn."

  But there was the war. How could he remember? He could only trust to his trainers to be clever and see that she was not some misborn freak, but something entirely new. It is as much their fault as his, if not more. His anger faded, he sighed and rounded the image of the gryfalcon.

  And he looked upon his own feet, his own chest, his face. His own beak, eyes, and crest, lifeless, mutely staring through the living Skandranon.

  The shock was a little less, this time. He was quicker to see that it was no more him than the other was Zhaneel. Still, the shock was of an entirely different sort; he was perfectly well able to think of the other gryphons as the end result of a breeding program, and even think of Zhaneel that way—but it was profoundly harder to think of himself in those terms.

  It was, in fact, uncomfortable enough that he had to remind himself to resume breathing.

  But as he studied the model, he took some comfort in noting that his proportions were rather better than its were. Especially in some specific areas.

  And I'm definitely handsomer. Better-feathered. Smoother-muscled. Longer—

  :FEAR-ALARM-ANGER!:

  The emotion hit him like a boulder shot from a catapult, and before he could even get his mental "feet" underneath him, something physical hit him from behind. It hurtled from a place he had subconsciously noted was a doorframe, but had dismissed because there were no lights on the other side.

  The strike sent his feet slipping out from under him, causing him to fall sideways through the image of himself. He tumbled into a wall, and his dancer's grace was not helping him in the least at the moment. Whatever wanted his hide was only about half his size, and it smelled like gryphon—only not quite like gryphon. It was muskier, earthier—

  But this was no time to start contemplating scents! Whatever this was, it jumped him again and kicked his beak sideways into the wall. Only reflexes kept him from being blinded by the next slash—and then the assault began again.

  This thing is like a wildcat! Too small to take me, and too crazy to know better. It just might hurt me bad. I don't like being hurt bad!

  And if this is something of Urtho's—oh, damn and blast, I have to stop it without hurting it!

  A scratch across his cere carried up over his eyes and sent blood down into them. He was momentarily blinded, but he blinked the haze away and rolled. He gathered his hindlegs under him, ignored the pain of the bites and claw-marks for a moment, then tucked both of his feet under its belly and heaved.

  It tumbled into the other wall, without any sign of control, as if parts of it got tangled up with the rest of it. But it was game, that much was for certain; as soon as it stopped rolling, it sprang to its feet again and faced him, claws up and hissing.

  It was a gryphon.

  It was what Zhaneel had misnamed herself, something that the gryphons referred to as a "misborn." It was actually about a quarter of Skan's size, not half. Its head was small in proportion to its size, and very narrow, more like a true raptor's head than a gryphon or gryfalcon's broader cranium. The wings were far too long for its body, and they dragged the floor so badly that the ends of the primaries had been rubbed off by the constant friction.

  In coloration, it was a dusty gray and buff. It was that which made Skan realize why it looked slightly familiar.

  It was a misborn—of Zhaneel's type.

  It was at that moment that it finally penetrated that the creature wasn't hissing. It was trying, and failing, to produce a true gryphonic scream of challenge.

  He blinked again, clearing the blood from his eyes with the flight membranes. The powerful telepathic "presence" of gryphon, a presence so strong he had thought that it must come from several of his kind, was all emanating from this single small creature that valiantly tried to howl defiance at him.

  The mental hammering of alarm-fear-rage had come and was still coming from it.

  Skan had reared instinctively into a fighting stance while his mind was putting all this together.

  The misborn looked up at him—four times larger than it was—

  Its eyes widened for a moment, and it cringed.

  But in the next second, it had gone back into a defensive posture. The intensity of its mental radiations increased, and Skan dropped back a little. It wasn't consciously attacking him with those thoughts, but they were strong. Very strong.

  The moment he dropped back, it glanced to the side and scrambled away, into the next room. Lights came on in there as it entered, leaping up onto a table with incredible speed considering how clumsy it was. It scattered books and instruments in all directions with its too-long wings, and reared up again from the advantage of this greater height.

  "Bad! Bad!" the thing hissed. "Go away!"

  Skan forced himself to relax, and got down out of his fighting posture. The bites and claw-marks stung, but his injuries weren't that bad, no worse than he got when playing with a rowdy bunch of fledglings. This poor little thing was obviously scared witless.

  "What—ah—who are you?" he asked carefully. It did have enough language to tell him to go away; surely it would understand him.

  "Go away!" it hissed again, feinting with a claw. "Go away! Where is he? Did you hurt him?"

  It reared up again into a ridiculous parody of full battle display, and it was clear that its anger was overwhelming its fear. But why was it so frightened and angry? And who was "he?" "I hurt you!" it tried to shriek. "I hurt you! I will!"

  Skan was completely bewildered, and he could only hope that there was some kind of sense behind all this. If the creature was completely mad, he would have to render it unconscious or trap it before he could make his own escape, and he really didn't want to hurt it.

  Urtho be damned; it would be like hurting a cat defending its litter. This creature doesn't know what I am and that I don't intend any harm—and unless I can get that through to it, I don't think it's going to stop attacking me.

  "Hurt who?" he asked. "I haven't hurt anyone; I haven't even seen anyone here! Hurt who? Urtho? Who are you?"

  He put his ear-tufts and hackles flat, and gryph-grinned, trying to look as friendly as possible. Evidently it worked, for the little creature stared at him for a moment, then suddenly sat down on the shredded desk blotter. It came o
ut of its battle posture, instantly deflating, and wiped its foreclaws free of Skandranon's blood. "Not bad?" it asked plaintively, its anger gone completely. "Not hurt Father? Where is Father?"

  Father? What on earth can this creature mean? Surely no other gryphons have ever been up here; no one could keep a secret like this for long! No, of course there haven't been any gryphons here, otherwise this little thing would recognize me for one.

  He looked around at the room for clues who "Father" was, but there weren't any; just the table with odd bits of equipment and a few books and papers, an old cabinet that looked mostly empty, and a sink. In fact, it looked more like a Healer's examination room than anything.

  "No," he said persuasively. "I'm not bad. I haven't hurt anyone. I just opened up a door and came inside." He edged a little closer to the creature as it relaxed. "Who is Father? Who are you?"

  "Father is Father," the creature replied, as if stating the obvious for a very slow child. "Father calls me Kechara."

  Skan moved right over to the table and sat beside it, which put him just about beak-to-beak with the little one. "Tell me about Father, Kechara," he said softly. "Everything you can. All right? There are a lot of people where I come from, and I need you to tell me what Father looks like so I know which person he is."

  Kechara (which meant "beloved" or "darling" in Kaled'a'in) was a female, as near as he could tell. It might have been more appropriate to say that Kechara was a neuter, for she had none of the outward sexual characteristics of a female gryphon. That peculiar muskiness of hers was not a sexual musk, just an odd and very primitive scent.

  "Father comes here, Father goes," Kechara told him. "Father bring me treats. Father brings toys, plays with me. He not here for a while, and I play."

  "What does Father look like, Kechara?" Skan asked. The little creature wrinkled up its brow with intense thought. "Two legs, not four," it said hesitantly. "No wings, no feathers. No beak. Has—long stuff, not grown, not feathers, over legs and body. Skin, smooth skin, here—" it pawed its face. "—long crest-hair here—" it ran its paws down where the scalp would be on a human. "And Father makes pretty cries when he comes, so I know he here. Cries like songbirds, and he dances with me."

  That clinched it; the only person that would come into this area that whistled was Urtho. Oddly enough, Skan had noticed that most mages couldn't whistle. Vikteren and Urtho were the only exceptions in this camp.

  "How long have you been here?" he asked, trying to get some sense of how long Urtho had concealed the creature here.

  But it just stared at him blankly, and when he rephrased the question several times, Kechara could only say that there was nothing else but here, for her. Only Father went somewhere else.

  Which meant that Urtho had confined this poor thing to this section of his Tower for her entire life.

  There were places Urtho had taken her where she could look out through windows, which was how she had seen and heard songbirds, but that was the closest she had come to the outdoors.

  For a scant heartbeat, Skan was outraged. But after attempting a few more questions with Kechara, he understood why Urtho had thought it better to keep her here.

  She couldn't possibly function in normal gryphon society without protectors. She couldn't do anything productive. Zhaneel had been made fun of as she grew up, and she was marvelous. This poor thing would be tormented if there wasn't always someone watching out for her. Zhaneel was highly intelligent, resilient, and capable of remarkable things; this little one wouldn't even know how to defend herself without risking injuring herself.

  She seemed to be very much on the same level of intelligence as some of Urtho's enhanced animals, and the biggest difference between her and one of those animals was that she had a rudimentary ability to speak. She didn't seem to have much of a concept of time, either. She never actually lost track of the conversation, but sometimes there was a long wait between when he asked a question and she answered it, a wait usually punctuated by a short game of chase-her-shadow.

  Then again, that might not be a lack of intelligence, that might be because she hasn't had anyone to model her behavior on but Urtho. The winds only know he's done the same thing.

  He coaxed her down off the table and into taking a short walk with him since she seemed restless and kept fidgeting when he talked with her. After that, the conversation seemed to flow a little better; she bounded ahead or lagged back with him as he strolled through the gallery of "models." She paid them no attention whatsoever, which didn't much surprise him. She must be as used to them by now as he was to the messenger-birds or Amberdrake's eye-blinding clothing.

  But suddenly, as they drew opposite the "Skandranon" type of model, she looked from it to him and back again, as if she could not believe her eyes. She blinked, shook her head, and looked again.

  "That you!" she said, as if she'd had a major revelation.

  "Oh, it does look something like me," he replied casually. "Just a bit." He left it at that, and she promptly seemed to forget about it.

  A moment later, she made a dash into another room, and once again, the lights came up as she entered. She headed straight for a bowl sitting beside what must have been her bed, a nicely made nest of bound straw lined with soft, silky material. There was a box with a pile of brightly-colored objects in it; toys, probably. The top ones looked like the normal sorts of balls and blocks that young gryphlets were given to play with as nestlings, before they fledged. She grabbed for a clawful of something brown and moist—then, like a child suddenly remembering its manners, she shyly offered him some of it—her food, presumably. It did not look like much, and Skan declined, although Kechara wolfed it down with every evidence of enjoyment.

  I can't tell how old she is, he thought, watching her eat. She did manage that fairly well; gryphons were not the daintiest of eaters at the best of times. She has no idea of the passage of time, she can't see the rising and setting of the sun from in here. She eats when she's hungry, sleeps when she's tired, and Urtho comes and goes at unpredictable intervals. But if I were to guess—misborns don't tend to live very long, and I'd guess she's near the end of her "normal" lifespan.

  The notion revolted him as much as the food had. All her life had been spent in close confinement, never feeling the free wind, only seldom seeing the sky, the sun, the moon and the stars.

  When she was bred for the skies, and only accident and bad fortune made her the way she is, and not like Zhaneel—

  —or like—me—

  He ground his beak a little in frustration. Then there was the other side of the rock. How could she live outside? Maybe that was precisely why she was in here, because she couldn't live outside the Tower. Misborn were also notoriously delicate, prone to disease, weaknesses of the lungs and other organs.

  Maybe only living here in complete shelter made it possible for her to live at all.

  This may be kindness, but it has a bitter taste.

  He noticed that all of his earlier bleeding had stopped, and that reminded him of his own internal time sense. He was surprised at how long he had been in here with her. "I must go, Kechara," he said at the first break in conversation. Such as it was.

  She blinked at him for a moment. Then she asked him something completely unexpected. "You come back?" she asked hopefully. "You come play again?" And she looked up at him with wide and pleading eyes.

  Oh, high winds and rock slides! She may not know the emotion for what it is, but she's lonely. What can I tell her?

  He ground his beak for a moment, then told her the truth. "I don't know, Kechara. I have to talk to Father first. He makes the rules, you know."

  She nodded, as if she could accept that. "I ask Father, too," she said decisively. "I tell him I need you to play with me."

  Then, as he paused at the door, she reared up on her haunches and spread her forelegs wide. It was such a weird posture that at first Skan could not even begin to imagine what she was up to. But then he understood. She was waiting for a hug, a human hu
g. The kind she always got from "Father" when he left her.

  That simple gesture told Skan all he needed to know; whatever Urtho's motives were in keeping this little thing here, they were meant to be kindly, and he gave her all the affection he could.

  It was awkward, but somehow Skan managed. Then he gave her a real gryphonic gesture of parting, a little preening of her neck hackles.

  It would have been much worse if she had put up some kind of a fuss about his leaving, but she didn't; she simply waved a talon in farewell, and turned and trotted back to her nest room, presumably to play by herself.

  She's learned that fussing doesn't change anything, he decided, as he walked stunned through the book rooms and touched the door to the staircase to open it. She's learned that people come and go in her life without her having any control over where and when they do it. Poor thing. Poor little thing.

  The lights dimmed behind him as he made his way down the stairs; slowly, for staircases were difficult for gryphons to descend, although climbing them was no real problem. When he got to the bottom, he was very tempted to try one of the other doors in the antechamber.

  Stupid gryphon! Don't tempt your luck. You'll be in enough trouble with Urtho as soon as you bring up Kechara.

  Oh, dear. That made another problem. How do you bring up Kechara without revealing you got into a locked room? And if you got into a locked room, how much else would he guess you got into?

  The guard nodded to him and grinned as he left. "Damned hard for you critters to manage staircases, eh?" he said, as Skan realized that some of his injuries from the spat with Kechara must surely be visible.

  And he hadn't come in with fresh scratches on him.

  But the guard had just offered him a fabulous excuse for his appearance, and he seized it with gratitude. "More than damned hard," he grumbled. "I must've slipped and fallen once for every dozen steps. And would the others wait? Hell, no! They were in such a hurry to scuttle off with their Healer-stuff that they didn't even notice I was lagging!"