Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  “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 jewellike 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 trondi’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 b
rains. 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.

  The Gryphon King, beloved where e’er he goes. That was what Aubri had said to his face, mockingly.

  But the real irony of the statement was that it was true. He never left Khimbata without being loaded down with gifts of all sorts. His jewelry collection was astonishing; if he and Zhaneel wore all of it at one time, they’d never get off the ground.

  Between us, if we’re lucky, Keeth and I might manage to be a quarter as famous as he is—and then most of it will be due to the fact that we‘re his sons.

  That could have been a depressing thought, if Tad had any real ambition. But to be frank, he didn’t.

  He’d seen the negative effects of all that adulation— how it was always necessary for Skandranon to be charming, witty, and unfailingly polite no matter what he personally felt like. How when the family visited Khimbata, Skandranon had barely a moment to himself and none to spare for them. And how even at home, there was always someone who wanted something from him. He was always getting gifts, and a great many of those gifts came with requests attached. Even when they didn’t, there was always the chance that a demand, phrased as a request, would come later, perhaps when he wasn’t expecting it and was off his guard.

  There was no way for Skandranon to know whether someone wanted his friendship because of what he was or because of who he was—and the difference was critical.

  No, thank you. I am very fond of obscurity, all things considered.

  It would be no bad thing to be an obscure Silver, always assigned to the Outposts, hopefully collecting enough extra from his discoveries to finance a comfortable style of living. Let Keeth collect all the notoriety of being the first gryphon trondi’irn; Tad would be happy to donate whatever measure of “fame” fate had in store for him to his brother! Just as he had finished that thought, he noticed that the others were looking at him. Evidently Keeth had run out of things to say, and it was his turn again.

  Oh, bother.

  Skandranon cleared his throat. As always, the sound, an affectation acquired from living so much with humans, sounded very odd coming from a gryphon.

  It sounds as if he’s trying to cough up a hairball, actually.

  “Well!” Skandranon said heartily. “Your mother and I are very interested in hearing about this outpost you’re being sent to. What do you know about it?”

  Tad sighed with resignation, and submitted himself to the unrelenting pressure of parental love.

  Blade couldn’t bring herself to sit, although she managed to keep from pacing along the edge of the cliff. The stone here was a bit precarious for pacing—how ignoble if she should slip and fall, breaking something, and force Judeth and Aubri to send someone else to the outpost after all! Tad would never, ever forgive me. Or else—he’d take a new partner and go, and I would be left behind to endure parental commiserations.

  Ikala sat on a rock and watched the sunset rather than her. He’d asked her to meet him here for a private farewell; her emotions were so mixed now that she honestly didn’t know what to say to him. So far, he hadn’t said anything to her, and she waited for him to begin.

  He cleared his throat, still without looking at her. “So, you leave tomorrow. For several months, I’m told?” Of course, he knew her assignment, everyone in the Silvers did; he was just using the question as a way to start the conversation.

  The sun ventured near to the ocean; soon it would plunge down below the line of the horizon. Her throat and tongue felt as if they belonged to someone else. “Yes,” she finally replied. Now she knew why , people spoke of being “tongue-tied.” It had been incredibly difficult just to get that single word out.

  She wanted to say more; to ask if he would miss her, if he was angry that she was leaving just as their friendship looked to become something more. She wanted to know if he was hurt that she hadn’t consulted him, or chosen him as her partner instead of Tad. Above all, she wanted to know what he was thinking.

  Instead, she couldn’t say anything.

  “Come and sit,” he said, gesturing at the rocks beside him. “You do not look comfortable.”

  I’m not, she said silently. I’m as twitchy as a nervous cat.

  But she sat down anyway, warily, gingerly. The sun-warmed rock felt smooth beneath her hand, worn to satin-softness by hundreds of years of wind and water. She concentrated on the rock, mentally holding to its solidity and letting it anchor her heart.

  “I am both happy for you and sad, Blade,” Ikala said, as if he was carefully weighing and choosing each word. “I am happy for you, because you are finally being granted—what you have earned. It is a good thing. But I am sad because you will be gone for months.”

  He sighed, although he did not stir. Blade held herself tensely, waiting for him to continue, but he said nothing more. She finally turned toward him. “I wanted an assignment like this one very much,” she agreed. “I’m not certain I can explain why, though—”

  But unexpectedly, as he half-turned to meet her eyes, he smiled. “Let me try,” he suggested, and there was even a suggestion of self-deprecating humor. “You feel smothered by your honored parents and, perversely, wish for their approval of a life so different from theirs. Additionally, you fear that their influence will either purchase you an easier assignment than you warrant, or will insure that you are never placed in any sort of danger. You wish to see what you can do with only the powers of your own mind and your own skills, and if you are not far away from them, you are certain you will never learn the answer to that question.”

  “Yes!” she exclaimed, startled by his insight. “But how did you—•” Then she read the message behind that rueful smile, the shrug of the dark-skinned shoulders. “You came here for the same reason, didn’t you?”

  He nodded once, and his deep brown eyes showed that same self-deprecating humor that had first attracted her. “The same. And that is why, although I wish that you were not going so far or for so long— or that we were going to the same place—I wanted you to know that I am content to wait upon your return. We will see what you have learned, and what that learning has made of you.”

  “And you think I will be different?” She licked her lips with a dry tongue.

  “At least in part,” he offered. “You may return a much different person than the one you are now; not that I believe that I will no longer care much for that different person! But that person and I may prove to be no more than the best of friends and comrades-in-arms. And that will not be a bad thing, though it is not the outcome I would prefer.”

  She let out her breath and relaxed. He was being so reasonable about this that she could hardly believe her ears! “I don’t know,” she admitted. “I think I’ve spent so much time proving who I’m
not that I don’t know who I am.”

  “So go and find out,” he told her, and laughed, now reaching out to touch her hand briefly. The touch sent a shivery chill up her arm. “You see, I had to come here to do the same thing. So I have some understanding of the process.”

  “Are you glad that you came here?” she asked, wondering if the question was too personal, and wishing he would do more than just touch her hand.

  Now it was his turn to look away, into the sunset, for a moment. “On the whole—yes,” he told her. “Although in doing so, it became impossible to follow the alternate path I might have taken. There was a maiden, back in my father’s court—but she was impatient, and did not like it that I chose to go somewhere other than to the court of another emperor. She saw my choice as a lessening of my status, and my leaving as a desertion of her. I have heard that she wedded elsewhere, one of my more traditional half-brothers.”

  “Oh—I’m sorry—” she said quickly, awkwardly.

  But he turned back to her, and did not seem particularly unhappy as he ran his hand across his stiff black curls. “There is not a great deal to be sorry about,” he pointed out. “If she saw it as desertion, she did not know me; if I could not predict that she would, I did not know her. So. . . .” He shrugged. “Since it was not long before my sorrow was gone, I suspect my own feelings were not as deep as she would have liked, nor as I had assumed.”

  “It’s not as if you were lacking in people willing to console you here!” she pointed out recklessly, with a feeling of breathlessness that she couldn’t explain. She laughed to cover it.

  “And that is also true.” His smile broadened. “And it was not long before I felt no real need of such consolation, as I had another interest to concentrate on.”

  Her feeling of breathlessness intensified; this was the nearest he had come to flirting with her, and yet behind the playfulness, there was more than a hint of seriousness. Did she want that? She didn’t know. And now—she was very glad that she was going to have three months to think about it.