Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  "I'm sure you'd tell us even if we didn't care," Gesten sniped. "But since we do care, you might as well give us the benefit of your superior oration."

  Skandranon pretended to be offended for just a moment, then tossed a pillow at him, which Gesten ducked expertly. "You cannot spoil my mood, I am feeling far too pleased. The Sixth has retaken the Pass. The messages are in from the mages, and the town is back in our hands." He continued at length, with as much detail as Amberdrake could have wished for, then concluded, "But I have saved the best for last." His eyes gleamed with malicious enjoyment. "General Shaiknam and Commander Garber have been placed on 'detached duty for medical reasons,' and General Farle has been given the Sixth Wing as a reward for successfully commanding them in this operation—and for, I quote, 'appropriate and strategic use of the air forces' end quote."

  "Meaning the gryphons," Amberdrake said with pleasure. "Including Zhaneel."

  It was not his imagination; Skan's nostrils flared at the sound of her name, and his nares flushed a deep scarlet.

  He was going to probe a little further, but a shadow fell upon the closed flap of the tent. "Ah, here is our fourth guest," he said instead, and rose and went to the door of the tent himself. "Lovely lady," he said, bowing and gesturing for Zhaneel to come in, "you brighten our company with your presence."

  Zhaneel was looking very lovely, if rather tired; Winterhart must have helped her with her grooming. But then, since Zhaneel had been ordered to report directly to Urtho before she came here, the Trondi'irn would have taken pains to make her look especially good, at least to human eyes.

  From the stunned expression on Skan's face, she looked especially good to gryphon eyes as well.

  She stepped inside, and only then did she see who was waiting there. She froze in place, and Amberdrake put one hand on her shoulder to keep her from fleeing.

  "You know Gesten, of course," he said quickly, "and this, as you know, is Skandranon—I do not believe you have actually been introduced, but as I recall, he gave you some good advice on the disposition of a valor-token."

  Amberdrake had no difficulty in reading Skan's eyes. I'll get you for this one, Drake. Well, this was fair return for the false impression that Skan had given poor little Zhaneel—however well the whole affair had turned out, he owed Skan for that one.

  "I took the liberty of adding him to your victory dinner, Zhaneel," he added. "I didn't think you would mind."

  "No," she replied faintly. "Of course not."

  But to her credit, she did not bolt, she did not become tongue-tied—in fact, she recovered her poise in a much shorter time than he would have thought. She blinked once or twice, then moved forward into the room, and took her place on the pile of pillows that Amberdrake pointed out to her.

  Skan recovered some, but by no means all, of his aplomb. As the dinner progressed, he was much quieter than usual, leaving most of the conversation to Amberdrake and Gesten. Zhaneel managed to seem friendly toward Skan, and full of admiration, but not particularly overwhelmed by him, an attitude that clearly took him rather aback.

  As darkness fell, and Gesten got up to light the lamps, she seemed to relax quite a bit. Of course, these were familiar surroundings to her by now, and perhaps that helped put her at ease. Before the dinner was over, Skan did manage to ask if she would accept him into one of her training classes, subject, of course, to Amberdrake's approval—

  "He's my Healer, you know," Skan added hastily. "Best gryphon-Healer there is."

  He fell silent then, as Amberdrake grinned. "Why, thank you, Skan," the kestra'chern replied. "I personally think you're more than overdue for some retraining, if Zhaneel is willing to accept someone who's as likely to give her arguments as not."

  "I should be pleased," she said with dignity, as her eyes caught the light of the lamps. "Skandranon is wise enough to know that one does not argue with the trainer on the field, I think."

  Her nares were flushed, but in the dim light of the tent, only Amberdrake was near enough to notice. "Did you know that General Farle is being given command of the Sixth?" he asked, changing the subject. "Skan brought us the news."

  "No!" she exclaimed, with delight and pleasure. "But that is excellent! Most excellent indeed! He is a good commander; most went according to plan, there were no missed commands, and when things happened outside of the plan, General Farle had an answer for them."

  "That leaves Shaiknam and Garber at loose ends, though," Gesten put in, his voice full of concern. "I don't know, I just don't like thinking of those two with nothing to do but think about how they've been wronged."

  "But they haven't been," Skandranon protested. "They retain their rank, they retain all their privileges; they simply do not have a command anymore."

  "Which means they have no power," Gesten countered. "They have no prestige. They messed up, and everyone knows it. They've been shamed, they've lost face. That's a dangerous mood for a man like Shaiknam to be in."

  Amberdrake only shrugged. "Dangerous if he still had any power, or any kind of following—but he doesn't, and thinking of him is spoiling my appetite. General Shaiknam will descend to his deserved obscurity with or without us, so let's forget him."

  "I second that motion," Skan rumbled, and applied himself to his coveted heart, as Zhaneel ate her eels.

  And yet, somehow, despite his own words, Amberdrake could not forget the General—

  —or his well-deserved reputation for vindictiveness.

  Skandranon ached in every muscle, and he needed more than a bath, he needed a soak to get the mud and muck out of his feathers. But that was not why he came looking for Amberdrake, hoping that his friend was between appointments. Drake wasn't in the "public" portion of his tent, but the disheveled state of the place told Skan that the kestra'chern had been there so short a time ago that Gesten hadn't had time to tidy up.

  As it happened, luck was with him; Drake was lying on a heap of pillows in his own quarters, looking about the same way that Skan felt, when the gryphon poked his nose through the slit in the partition.

  "Thunderheads!" Skan exclaimed. "Who've you been wrestling with? Or should I ask 'what' rather than 'who'? You look like you've been fighting the war by yourself!"

  "Don't ask," Amberdrake sighed, levering himself up off the bed. "It isn't what you think. You don't look much better." The kestra'chern pulled sweaty hair out of his eyes, and regarded Skan with a certain weary amusement. "Zhaneel, I trust?"

  Skan flung himself down on the rug right where he stood. "Yes," he replied, "But it isn't what you think. Unfortunately. It was a lesson." He groaned, as his weary muscles complained about just how weary they were. "I thought I might impress her. It was a bad idea. She decided that if I was that much better than the rest of the class, I could run her course along with her."

  Amberdrake passed a hand over his mouth. Skan glowered. "You'd better not be laughing," he said accusingly.

  Amberdrake gave him a look full of limpid innocence. "Now why would I be laughing?" he asked guilelessly. "You look all in; you've obviously been pushing yourself just as hard as you could. Why would I laugh at that?"

  Skan only glowered more. He couldn't put it into words, but he had the distinct feeling that Drake was behind all of this, somehow. Zhaneel, the lessons, the private lesson—all of it. "I have been pushing, and pushed, and I am exhausted. I need to borrow Gesten, Drake, or I'm never going to get the mud out of my coat and feathers. And I wish you'd let me steal your magic fingers for a bit. And—" he sighed, finally admitting his downfall, "—and I need to talk to you."

  Amberdrake nodded, as if he had expected as much. Which, if he really is behind all this, shouldn't surprise me.

  "In private, I take it?" the kestra'chern asked.

  As if he didn't know.

  "Very private," Skan confirmed, and flattened his ear-tufts to his skull in real misery. "Drake, it's Zhaneel. She's the one—the one. And I'm nothing more to her than one of her students."

  "And just how do you f
igure that?" Amberdrake asked casually.

  "Because she—I just don't impress her, no matter what I do!" Skan exclaimed in desperation. "It's driving me insane! I don't know what to do!"

  "Let me see if I understand what you're saying correctly," Amberdrake replied, leaning back on one elbow. "You have decided that Zhaneel is your ideal mate, and you are upset because she isn't following you and draping herself all over you like every other gryphon you've wanted. Then, when you strut and puff and act in general like a peacock, she still isn't impressed. Is that it?"

  Skan felt his nares flushing hotly. "I wouldn't put it that way!" he protested.

  "I would," Gesten said, from behind him. The hertasi pushed his way in through the curtains past Skan. "Feh," he added, "You look like a used mop. If I were a female, I wouldn't have you either."

  "Drake!" Skan cried.

  "Gesten, that's enough," Amberdrake admonished. "Skan, has it ever once occurred to you to go and talk with the lady? Just talk? Not to try to impress her, but to find out what she's like, what she thinks is important, what kind of a person she is? Find out about her instead of talking about yourself?"

  "Ah—" the gryphon stammered.

  "Try it some time," Amberdrake said, leaning back into his pillows. "You might be surprised by the results. Gesten, this used mop would like to know if you're willing to help him look more like a gryphon. I can go get a bath in the shower tent for once; I look worse than I feel."

  "If you want," Gesten said dubiously. "I think you sprained something."

  "Then I can get Cinnabar to unsprain it for me," Amberdrake said to the roof of the tent. "Go on, Skan needs your help more than I do at the moment, and we are supposed to be sharing your very excellent services."

  "All right," the hertasi said with resignation. "Come on, Black Boy. But you'll have to put up with my massaging; Drake is definitely not going to be up to it."

  Skan climbed to his feet with more groans. "Right now, I'd accept a massage from a makaar," he replied. "And I'd court the damned thing, if it would get the muck off me."

  Gesten looked back over his shoulder and batted his eyes at Skan in a clever imitation of a flirtatious human. "Why, Skan, I never guessed! Harboring an unfulfilled passion for little me?"

  Skan only snorted and followed the hertasi into the sunlight behind the tent. Gesten opened up a box built into the side of the wagon that carried Amberdrake and all his gear when the entire army was on the move, and got out the brushes and special combs needed for grooming gryphons. "You really ought to go find a vacant tub and have a bath," the hertasi said, looking him over. "You're mage enough to heat the water so your muscles don't stiffen up in the cold."

  "Once you brush me out, please," Skan pleaded. "If I go in like this, it'll be a mud bath."

  "You have a point." The hertasi picked up one of the brushes and set to work with a will. Bits of dried, caked mud flew everywhere with the force of Gesten's vigorous strokes. "So besides you being infatuated with Zhaneel, and her having the good sense to see through you, what else is new out there?"

  Skan ignored the first part of the question to answer the second. "What's new is that we may have the Pass, but Ma'ar isn't budging another toe-length." He shook his head, and leaned into Gesten's brush. "I don't know, Gesten. I can't tell if things look good for us, or bad."

  "Neither can anyone else." Gesten put the brush down and picked up one with finer bristles. "Urtho doesn't know what to do, I hear. Ma'ar won't leave us be, and Urtho won't spend troops like Ma'ar does to get rid of him. That's the problem with an ethical commander; the leader who doesn't care how many of his men he kills has an edge."

  Skan shook his head. "Too much for me, at least right now."

  The hertasi snickered. "Yah. I know what's on your mind—what there is of it. Don't know how Drake thinks you're going to impress Zhaneel with it, since I haven't seen much evidence of a mind in you since I met you."

  Skan did not rise to his teasing this time. "Gesten," he said hesitantly, "do you really think she'd ever pay any attention to me if I did what Drake said? Nothing I've done has worked."

  "So try it. Who knows?" Gesten slapped him on the shoulder, raising a cloud of dust. "The man's job is the heart, you know. I figure he probably knows what he's talking about."

  Skan considered that. Gesten was right. And besides, I have to tell her what she is, what I learned in the Tower. Might as well kill two birds with the same stone, as they say.

  "But first, Skan," Gesten cautioned, "there's something that's really important you need to do."

  Skan craned his neck around to look at him, the hertasi sounded so serious. "What is it?" he asked anxiously.

  Gesten fixed him with a sobering gaze for a long moment, then said with deadpan seriousness, "Skan—get a bath."

  The hertasi made it all the way to the tent flap before the flung brush caught up with him.

  Thirteen

  Zhaneel preened a talon thoughtfully, then looked down at her hand. Hand, and not a misshapen collection of foreclaws. She was not some kind of an accident. As Amberdrake had surmised, she was the living result of something that had been planned.

  "So." She looked from the talon to Skandranon, and even though she managed to keep her expression calm and serene, her heart raced to have him here beside her, on her favorite rock overlooking the obstacle course. "I am the first of a breed, you say? And you saw evidence of that in Urtho's Tower?"

  Skan nodded; his great golden eyes fixed upon her as steadily as if he were the needle of a compass, and she were the Northern Cross. The sun shone down on his black feathers, bringing up the patterns in them that were normally concealed by the dye he used. "There seem to be about fifty different types altogether. Mostly broadwings, eagle-types. You are based on the only kind that looks really falcon-based. I don't know what Urtho had in mind to call your type, but I'd call you a gryfalcon."

  "Gryfalcon." She rolled the word around on her tongue. It sounded even better when Skan had said it than when Amberdrake had come up with it. "And none of this," she spread her foreclaws wide, "is accidental. I am simply the only one of my kind."

  "Not that I saw. But, Zhaneel—" He hesitated a long moment, and she looked at him curiously. From the tension in his body, he was trying to make up his mind about saying something more. "—Zhaneel, you aren't precisely the only one of your type. Only the first successful gryfalcon." He ground his beak for a moment, then clearly made up his mind to continue. "There's—well, what we'd call a real misborn in the Tower, too. It looks as if she started out to be a gryfalcon, but something went wrong. She's distorted, like a child in her head, I think she's a neuter, and there are probably other things wrong with her as well."

  Zhaneel's tiny ear-tufts rose. "In the Tower? But why—why would Urtho keep her there? I—" But then all of the slights and insults, the teasing and the bullying of her own childhood returned to her, and she knew why. "—no. I see." Gryphons did not cry, but sadness made their throats tighten, and triggered a need to utter a keening sound. She bowed her head and stifled the urge to keen. The poor, poor thing. Perhaps it is as well that it is like a child, for it cannot understand how cruel the world can be, and it will not mourn what it has never seen. "Does it have a name, this poor little one?"

  Skan nodded. "Urtho calls her 'Kechara,' and she says that he visits and plays with her often. I don't think she is in any kind of pain or want."

  "Kechara—beloved—" She took a deep breath, and her throat opened again. "Yes, that would be like Urtho, to care for the poor thing that was not quite what he wanted, to make it as happy as he could." She had come to understand their leader very well during the past several weeks. She wondered if Skandranon knew how often Urtho had taken the time to talk to her; Amberdrake knew, and several times, things that Amberdrake had told her made her think that Urtho had been talking with him about her. "But what does this mean for us? I think that if we can, we should find a way to free Kechara. With two of us to protect her, she w
ill not suffer taunts as I did, do you not think? With two of us, acting as her family—? We should not have younglings just yet, I think, but Kechara will serve as practice of a kind. Now that you have made it possible for us to do so, whether or not Urtho approves."

  Shyly, she cocked her head to one side. Skan gaped at her, looking extremely silly, as the sense of what she had just suggested penetrated to him.

  He looked even sillier a moment later, but it was because he was giddy with elation. But then, so was she.

  She knew how exhausted he must be after the workout of this afternoon, yet from somewhere he found the strength to follow as she leapt into the air, giving him a playful, come-hither look over her shoulder. And as the moon rose, she led him on a true courtship chase, a chase that ended when they caught each other, landing in the warm grass of a hillside far above Urtho's Tower.

  As was the only way to end a courtship chase, after all.

  This was the face of defeat. Chaos on the landing field; shouting and the screaming of gryphons hurt too badly to keep still. Healers and Trondi'irn from the Hill and every wing swarmed the site, somehow never getting in each others' way. Winterhart ignored it all as she held the bleeding gryphon in life by the barest of margins, holding the mangled body together with Gift and hands both, until a more Gifted Healer could reach her. She swore at and coaxed the poor creature by turns, stopping only to breathe and to scrub tears from her eyes by rubbing her cheek against her blood-stained shoulder.

  "Don't you die on me, Feliss!" she scolded. "Not after all the work Zhaneel's put in on you! If you die, I swear, I'm going to have Urtho catch your spirit and put it in the body of a celibate Priestess of Kylan the Chaste! That'd teach you!"

  Tears rose up again to blind and choke her; she wiped them away again, and ignored the way her own energy was running out of her the way Feliss' blood ran between her fingers. Gods, gods, it had been easier a few short weeks ago—before she had been forced to see these gryphons the way Amberdrake saw them. Before she had found herself caring for them, and about what happened to them. Before she learned to think of them as something more than a simple responsibility....