Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon.txt

by The Silver Gryphon [lit]

  She laughed, and patted him on the shoulder. “Parents always know how

  to pull your strings,” she advised him. “After all, they attached those strings in

  the first place.”

  “Do I hear someone borrowing my words?” The newcomer to the

  conversation was as elegant as Amberdrake in dress and demeanor, though

  far less flamboyant. Blade knew him too well to blush.

  “Of course, Uncle Snowstar,” she retorted. “You weren’t using them, so

  why shouldn’t I?”

  He chuckled at her impertinence; next to Skandranon, she was the only

  person likely to take that tone with him. It was not wise to risk the anger of an

  Adept-level mage as powerful as Snowstar, as others, even his own

  underlings, had found out to their sorrow.

  “I don’t think you’ll have any trouble with the basket-spells, Tadrith,” he

  said, turning to the young gryphon. “They are as tight as any I’ve ever set.”

  Blade had assumed her “adoptive uncle” had come to see them off, along

  with her parents; she was astonished to hear him say that he himself had

  placed the magics on their carry-basket that would make it possible to fly with

  it. “You set them, uncle?” she said, making no secret of her surprise. “Isn’t

  that—well—?”

  “Rather beneath me?” He laughed. “First of all, it is always a good idea for

  a mage to keep in practice on anything he might be asked to do, and

  secondly, if something were to fail, magically, on your basket—” He shrugged

  suggestively. “Suffice it to say, it was easier and safer to do the work myself,

  than have to explain to your parents why I let some ‘inferior mage’ do it.”

  Blade nodded ruefully. “Only too true,” she told him. She would have said

  more, but at that moment she caught the sound of familiar voices from below

  the edge of the cliff.

  At nearly the same moment, Tad pointed warningly with his beak at a trio of

  rapidly approaching gryphons, who could only be his parents and sibling.

  “All we need now are Judeth and Aubri to make this show complete,” Blade

  groaned, resigning herself to a long and complicated farewell that would

  shave precious time off the amount of daylight they could have used for

  traveling.

  “Is that a complaint or a request?”

  Commander Judeth stalked out of the door to the Silvers’ clifftop

  headquarters, but she was smiling rather than frowning. She was not

  Kaled’a’in; her hair, before it turned to snowy white, had been a dark blonde,

  and her eyes a clear gray-green. Nevertheless she had been one of Urtho’s

  generals who understood the value of her nonhuman troops and deployed

  them with care and consideration, and no one had been unhappy to find her

  among the k’Leshya when the last Gate came down. She had proved her

  worth over and over, both during their retreat from lands racked by mage-

  storms and at White Gryphon. With her partner Aubri, she had organized the

  first beginnings of the Silvers, and the Silvers in their turn bore the stamp of

  her personality. She alone of all of them wore anything like a uniform; a black

  tunic and trews modeled from the tattered originals of her old dress uniforms.

  The gryphon-badge stood out proudly against such an elegant background.

  She stopped just short of the platform and looked sardonically from Tad to

  Blade and back again. “Can I take it from that remark that you think I might be

  a hindrance to a timely departure?” she continued.

  Blade flushed, and the old woman allowed a hint of a smile to steal across

  her lips.

  “I assure you, Aubri and I came here solely to make certain that your loving

  relatives did not do any such thing,” she said crisply, and cleared her throat.

  “All right, troops!” she called out in a voice that had once commanded

  thousands, just as Amberdrake and Winterhart appeared at the end of the

  trail. “Let’s get up here and get your good-byes said and over with! This isn’t a

  holiday trip, this is a military departure! Move your rumps!”

  “Thank the gods,” Blade breathed, as her parents and Tad’s scrambled to

  obey. “We just might actually get out of here before noon!”

  “In a quarter-mark,” Judeth replied sternly. “Or every one of you will be on

  obstacle-course runs before midmorning.”

  Blade chuckled; not because Judeth wouldn’t make good on that promise—

  but because she would.

  What had promised to be a difficult departure was already looking better,

  even with emotionally-charged families approaching. After this, things could

  only start looking up.

  Three

  Skandranon continued to peer off into the blue, cloudless sky for a long

  time after Tadrith and Silverblade were out of even his extraordinary range of

  vision. Even after fooling himself several times that some speck or other was

  them, he gazed on, feeling his eyes gradually go out of focus as his thoughts

  wandered.

  He was torn now between pride and anxiety. Their takeoff had been a very

  good one by anyone’s standards; stylish, crisp, and professional. There had

  been no exhibitions of fancy flying, but not a single mistake in maneuvering

  either. With so many people watching, he would have been tempted to

  indulge in some theatrics, when he was Tad’s age.

  And the odds were fairly good that I could have pulled them off, too. But on

  the other hand, I did have my share of foul ups. With the rising sun in his

  eyes, though, it didn’t make any sense to keep staring off after them. He

  suppressed a sigh, and told his knotting stomach to behave itself; a gryphon’s

  bowels were irritable enough without encouraging cramps through worry.

  Well, they’re gone. My nestling really has fledged, gone past the brancher

  stage, and now—well, now he’s on his way to have his own adventures. Real

  adventures, not just high scores on the obstacle course. He’ll be making a

  name for himself now, just like I did.

  He dropped his eyes to meet Zhaneel’s, and saw the same pride and worry

  in her gaze that he felt. She wouldn’t show it in front of the boy and, in fact,

  had kept up a brave and cheerful front, but he knew this sudden departure

  had her upset.

  He tried to look completely confident for her, but it was a struggle that he

  wasn’t certain he had won. Adventures. Huh. Now that he wasn’t the one

  having the “adventures,” he wasn’t so sure whether or not looking for

  adventures was such a good idea. Was Tad ready? With the war, there had

  been no choice but to go and face the dangers—whether one was ready or

  not—but this wasn’t war, and it seemed to him that they could all afford to be

  more careful of their young.

  His wings twitched a little as the temptation to follow them rose before him.

  I could use some exercise. Lady Cinnabar is always telling me to get more

  flying time in. And if I happened to parallel their course—

  “You promised not to fly as the children’s wingman all the way to the

  outpost,” Zhaneel whispered, quietly enough that no one else could have

  overheard her. “Remember. You did promise.”

  Drat. He had. And she could read him like a c
hild’s primer. He twitched his

  wings again, ostentatiously settling them. “I’m glad I’m not making that trip,”

  he said, not precisely as a reply, but to reassure her and to show her that he

  had heard her and he remembered his promise. Granted, she had caught him

  in a moment of extreme weakness and vulnerability last night when she

  extracted that promise, but that did not negate the fact that he had made the

  promise in the first place. If the Black Gryphon’s word to his mate wasn’t

  good, how could anyone trust him?

  Aubri sniffed derisively. “You couldn’t make that trip, old bird,” he retorted.

  “They’re a lot younger than you, and in better shape on top of that.”

  Skan bristled and started to retort, but paused for a moment to rethink his

  position. Aubri was not going to get him going this time. “Oh, in theory I

  could,” he replied, as mild as a well-bred matron. “You did, and I’m in better

  shape than you—what’s more, Tad’s towing that carry-basket, and that will

  slow him down to a pace even you could hold. But what would the point be?

  What would I have to prove? That I’m stupid enough to make a pointless

  journey to show I’m still the equal of a youngster? It would be a complete

  waste of time, and I don’t have enough time to waste.”

  Aubri looked surprised and chagrined that he hadn’t managed to egg Skan

  on to rash words or a rasher boast.

  Zhaneel cast him a look of gratitude which promised another interesting

  evening, and more than made up for the faint blow to his pride administered

  by Aubri’s taunts.

  Judeth had listened to the conversation with a wry half-smile, and now put

  her own opinion. “So, now the next generation goes off hunting adventures,”

  she said, combing her fingers through her hair, “while we stay home and see

  to it that when they come back, they won’t find anything much changed.

  Personally, I don’t envy them in the least.”

  “Nor I,” Skan said firmly. “Adventures always seemed to involve impact with

  the ground at a high rate of speed, and ended in a lot of pain. Maybe my

  memory is faulty sometimes, but I haven’t forgotten that part.”

  Amberdrake finally came out of his own reverie and sighed. “Your memory

  isn’t faulty, old bird. I remember picking quite a few pieces of broken foliage

  and not a few rocks out of your hide, and more than once.” He patted Skan’s

  shoulder. “I don’t know why you couldn’t have picked a gentler way of

  collecting souvenirs.”

  Skan winced, and Aubri grinned at his discomfiture. From the look in his

  eyes, Aubri was about to make another stab at puncturing Skan’s pride.

  But Aubri had reckoned without Winterhart, who had been listening just as

  intently to the conversation as Judeth had.

  “And I recall that rather than collecting souvenirs of enemy territory, Aubri

  specialized in attracting enemy fire,” she said, with a little smirk and a wink at

  Judeth that was so fast Aubri didn’t catch it. “In fact, he did it so often that his

  wing used to refer to getting hit by flamestrike as ‘being Aubri’ed.’ As in, ‘Well,

  I’ve been Aubri’ed out until my primaries grow back.’ Or, ‘Well, you certainly

  got Aubri’ed back there!’”

  Aubri met this piece of intelligence with his beak open in a gape. “They did

  not!” he gasped indignantly.

  Of course they didn’t. Skan, who had known every piece of gossip there

  was to know back then, would have heard of this long before Winterhart ever

  had. In fact, Winterhart would probably not have heard any such thing, since

  before she was Amberdrake’s lover, she had tended to treat the gryphons of

  her wing as little more than intelligent animals. Such an attitude was not likely

  to make anyone tell her anything.

  But Aubri’s reaction was so delightful that everyone fell in with the joke. For

  once, someone besides Skan was going to come in for a share of abuse.

  Is it my birthday? Or has the Kaled’a’in Lady decided to bless me, however

  momentarily?

  Judeth rubbed the side of her nose with her finger. “I’m afraid they did,” she

  confirmed impishly, and then elaborated on it. “When I deployed your wing,

  they always liked to fly formation with you on the end since it just about

  guaranteed that no one else would get hit with lightning or mage-fire. Once or

  twice I heard them talking about ‘Old Charcoal,’ and I think they meant you.”

  Aubri’s beak worked, but nothing came out; the muscles of his throat were

  moving, too, but he didn’t even utter as much as a squeak.

  “It could have been worse,” Winterhart continued, delivering the final blow.

  “I did succeed in discouraging the nickname of ‘Fried Chicken.’”

  Aubri’s eyes widened; his head came up and his beak continued to move,

  but all he could manage to say was, “Well!” over and over. Since he sounded

  exactly like a highly-offended old matron, he only managed to cause the entire

  gathering to break up into laughter. And if the laughter was somewhat

  nervous, well, there were four nervous parents there who drastically needed

  the release of laughter.

  They laughed long enough to bring tears to the eyes of the humans and

  make Aubri’s nares flush bright red. Before Aubri managed to have an

  apoplectic fit, though, Winterhart confessed that she had made it all up. “Not

  that you didn’t deserve the nickname, after all the times you came back

  singed,” she added. “But no one ever suggested pinning it on you.”

  Aubri growled, his hackles still up. “They wouldn’t have dared,” was all he

  said, and Judeth led him off to ease his ruffled feelings and ruffled feathers.

  “I don’t think he liked being on the receiving end of the teasing,”

  Amberdrake remarked mildly.

  “Then perhaps he will stop treating Skandranon to so much of it after this,”

  Zhaneel responded, her voice quite tart. “A little is amusing, but he makes a

  habit of sharpening his tongue on Skandranon, and I am weary of hearing it!

  Skandranon does not deserve it; and if Aubri continues in this way, there may

  be trouble with younger gryphons believing in his so-called teasing. They will

  think that anything Skan says he has done is only wind and empty boast!”

  Skan turned to her in surprise; she didn’t often spring to his defense this

  way. “Aubri doesn’t mean anything by it,” he said on his old friend’s behalf.

  “He’s getting old and cranky, and he just likes to tease. And I don’t think I’m

  going to lose any respect from the youngsters just because he tries to raise

  my ire now and again.”

  Zhaneel sniffed and twitched her tail with annoyance. “That might be, and I

  will not be rude by chiding him in public, but I have had enough of it, and he

  can expect to get as good as he has given from now on.”

  “I agree,” Winterhart put in firmly, crossing her arms over her chest. “Skan

  deserves a great deal of respect, after all. Maybe not as much as you’d like,

  you vain creature, but more than Aubri gives you.”

  Skan cast a look at Amberdrake, who only shrugged. “Don’t get me

  involved in this,” he said. “I don’t think Aubri m
eans anything of what he says,

  and I don’t think anyone else takes him seriously either—but I think I’m

  outnumbered here.”

  Winterhart made a little face, and put her arm over Zhaneel’s gray-

  feathered shoulders. “Come along, my dear,” she said to the female gryphon.

  “I think we should discuss this at length, just the two of us, since the men

  don’t seem to take this situation with the gravity we think it merits.”

  “I concur,” Zhaneel said agreeably, and the two of them sauntered off

  toward the cliff rim and several pleasant lookouts that had been constructed

  there.

  Skandranon turned a face full of astonishment on Amberdrake—who was

  gazing after the two females with equal puzzlement.

  “What prompted all that?” he asked, trying very hard to get his thoughts

  back on track. Amberdrake shook his head.

  “I haven’t any more idea than you do,” he confessed. “Maybe with their

  chicks gone from the nest, they both feel they have to defend something. I

  might be considered something of an authority on human emotions, but I have

  to admit to you that sometimes my lady Winterhart baffles me.” He nodded

  with his chin toward the head of the trail. “Care to walk down with me so we

  can both worry about the youngsters together?”

  Skan let out a deep breath; so Drake was just as troubled about Tad and

  Blade as he was! “Yes, I would,” he admitted mournfully. “Zhaneel made me

  promise not to go with them, not to follow them, and not to talk about them

  with her unless she brings the subject up. I wish I had her confidence that

  everything is going to be all right, but I keep thinking of all the things that can

  go wrong.”

  Amberdrake followed his mate’s example by draping an arm over Skan’s

  shoulders. It felt very good there; the support of an old and trusted friend,

  even if the friend was just as much in need of support himself. Tradition spoke

  of an elegant half-arch being only a fallen pile of stones without its counterpart

  to make it whole.

  “So much can go wrong, even in the most peaceful of times. I fear the

  worst, too,” Amberdrake told him. “But as Blade very rightfully reminded me,

  their job is not to confront danger directly. They’re only scouts, of a sort. If

  something dangerous appears, they are supposed to send a warning by way