The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

She sat, deep in thought, while Amberdrake got himself a second cup of tea. Finally she spoke.

  “Urrrtho asked me what training I had, and he was disappointed that no one had given me any special attentions.” She looked up at him intently, and he gave her an encouraging nod. “Skandranon also seemed surprised that I had no special training. And if I cannot fly and fight as the others do—perhaps—perhaps I should train myself?” Again she looked to him, and he nodded enthusiastically. “Perhaps I should ask for—for courses, such as they put the young humans across, only for flying…”

  “That is a good plan, sky-lady,” he told her firmly. “It is one that will benefit not only you, but others who are also small and light. And as you become skilled, you will definitely attract Skan’s attention.”

  But now she had turned her attention to his hands, and then to her own foreclaws.

  “Amberdrrrake, I have hands, like humans—I can do human things, can I not?” She flexed her hands, first one, then the other, as if testing their mobility. “Perhaps I can use a weapon—or—perhaps I can fly to help wounded!” Her beak parted in excitement, and Amberdrake had to work to suppress his own excitement. The idea of a gryphon-Healer, even the kind of field-Healer who could only splint bones and bandage wounds—that was enough to make him want to jump up and put the plan into motion immediately. How many fighters had bled their lives out simply because no one could reach them? The mobility of a gryphon would save so many of those otherwise lost lives…

  “This is going to take time, Zhaneel,” he cautioned, repeating the words to himself as well as her. “All of it is going to take time to learn, more time to practice. But it is a wonderful idea. I will help you all I can, I swear it!”

  Zhaneel listened to his cautions, then bobbed her head gravely. “One weapon,” she declared. “I shall learn one weapon. Crossbow; it ssseems easy enough to massster. And I shall learn the simple healing that the green-bands know.”

  By “green-bands,” she meant the squires and serjeants who wore a green arm-band and acted as rough field-Healers, who knew the basics. Enough to patch someone up long enough for them to get to a real Healer.

  Enough to save lives.

  “And I would be honored to teach you that Healing, my sky-lady,” Amberdrake said softly.

  “And…” She dropped her voice to a shy whisper. “And Skandranon will notice me?”

  Amberdrake chuckled. “Oh, yes, my lady. He won’t be able to help himself. You will be one of the few things that he does notice, I think.”

  She cocked her head to one side. “Few things?” she asked curiously.

  He shook his head, and shrugged. “Oh, sometimes I think he is so obsessed with topping his last escapade that he does not notice much of anything, including his friends.”

  She continued to stare at him quizzically, and finally said, “He notices. He loves you. The whole camp knows this.”

  That was not what he had expected to hear, and for once, he was taken by surprise. “He—what?” Amberdrake replied. He thought for a moment that he had misheard her, but she repeated her statement.

  “He loves you, as if you were a nest-mate,” she insisted. “Perhaps he does not say so, but all the camp knows that Amberdrake and Skandranon might as well have come from a single mother.”

  As his mouth dropped open a little, she gurgled—a gryphon-giggle, and the first sound of happiness he had heard from her yet. “I heard this—I heard him tell some of the captains that you were a being of great integrrrity!”

  “You what?” he said, trying to picture Skan doing anything of the sort.

  “I heard him,” she said firmly; and with coaxing, the story emerged. She had—once again—been eavesdropping when she shouldn’t have. Some of the mercenary captains had been bandying about the names and reputations of several of the perchi and kestra’chern, and Amberdrake’s name had come up just as Skan passed by. That would have been enough to attract his attention, but one of the captains had called out to him, tauntingly, asking him to verify what they had heard “since you know him so well.”

  And Skan had, indeed, defended Amberdrake’s problematical honor, at the cost of some ridicule, which Skan hated worse than cold water.

  “So,” Zhaneel concluded. “You see.”

  Amberdrake did see—and he was rather overwhelmed at this evidence of affection, affection that he had hoped for, but had not really believed in. A kestra’chern had so few friends—so few of those more than the merest of superficial acquaintances…

  He blinked; finding his eyes stinging a little.

  “Amberdrake,” she said into the silence. “You are a Healer.”

  He blinked his eyes clear and returned her grave stare, expecting a return to the earlier topic of discussion. “Of course, sky-lady.”

  But she turned the tables on him. “And when you are hurt, who heals the Healer?”

  Has she suddenly turned into Gesten, or Tamsin, to sense my feelings before I know them? he thought, startled again. But he chuckled, to cover his confusion, and replied, “My lady, I am not likely to be needing the services of a Healer, after all. I do not ply my various trades on the battlefield.”

  She snorted, in a way that sounded very like Skan, but she said nothing more. And just at that moment, the sentries called midnight, and they both blinked in surprise.

  Half the night has gone—but why am I surprised? It almost feels like half a year.

  “You should take some rest, lady,” he said, taking the half-forgotten token and putting it back in her pouch. She started to protest; he placed a hand on her beak to stop her. “It is in my discretion what my fee is. You keep this. If you have some difficulty convincing your wing-leader that you need special training and equipment, you could use that to deal with him. And when you find someone worthy of you, then come to me with it, and I shall turn you from simply lovely into the most breathtaking creature ever to fly.”

  Her nares flushed again, but this time with pleasure. She started to leave, then paused on the threshold.

  Tugging a hand-sized covert-feather loose, she gravely handed it to him. “And when you need—anything—you bring me this. Healer.”

  Then she was gone, leaving him with a slate-gray feather in his hand, and a great deal to think about. He let down the entrance-flap, closing his tent against the night and any observers, and ran the feather between the fingers of his right hand.

  Who heals the Healer…?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Well, great hero,” Tamsin said dryly, pushing his way through the tent-flap, “I see you have a tent-mate now. Did they discover you weren’t a General, and you weren’t supposed to have private quarters?”

  Skan chuckled; it was amazing how much better a tiny improvement in his condition made him feel. Not great, but less like snapping someone’s head off, anyway. “No, they decided that I must be lonely, but instead of giving me a lithe young female, they sent this disgusting heap of tattered feathers. Meet Aubri. Be careful not to step in him.”

  The other gryphon in the tent, swathed in bandages covering burns, raised one lazy eyebrow and snorted. “I thought I was being punished. I was put in here with you, featherhead.” He raised his head from his foreclaws and regarded Tamsin and Cinnabar with a long-suffering gaze. “I’ll have you know,” he continued, in mock-aggravation, “he whistles in his sleep.”

  “So do you,” Skan countered. “I dreamed I was being attacked by a giant tone-deaf songbird, and woke up to discover it was you. Maybe it was yourself you heard, loud enough to wake yourself up!”

  “I don’t think so,” Aubri countered, then put his head back down on his foreclaws and pretended to sleep.

  Skan chuckled again. “I like him,” he confided to Tamsin in an easily overheard feigned whisper, “but don’t let him know. He’ll get arrogant enough to be mistaken for me.”

  A single snort of derision was all that came from the “sleeping” Aubri.

  “Well, you know why we are here,” Cinnabar told h
im, coming up behind her lover and giving him a greeting that was more than half a caress.

  “Yesss,” Skan said. “You are here to pretend to tend to my hurts, while you put your hands all over each other. Tchah! You lifebonded types! Always all over each other! Bad enough that as humans you are always in season…”

  “And you are not?” Aubri rumbled from the background.

  “What?” Skan asked. “Did I hear something?”

  “No,” Aubri replied. “I am asleep. You heard nothing.”

  “Ah, good.” Skan returned his attention to the two humans who were doing their best not to break into laughter. “As I said, bad enough that you are always in season—but you lifebonded types are always preening each other. It’s enough to give an honest gryphon sugar-sickness.”

  “Then Skandranon is in no danger, for he is hardly honest,” came the rumble.

  Skan shook his head sadly. “What did I tell you? The lout not only whistles in his sleep, he mumbles nonsense as well. Perhaps most of his injuries were to his rump, since that is surely where his brain resides.”

  “He’s upset I’m not succumbing to his imagined ‘charisma’,” Aubri grumbled, raising his head. “And upset I beat him in his fledgling-baiting ‘logic puzzles’.”

  “You have no logic to use. Lucky guesses, all of them. I beat Urtho with them.” Skandranon looked back to the Healers, chagrined.

  Cinnabar moved to the gryphon’s left, hands moving expertly over his wing and flank. “Gesten did a fine job with you, I see—you look very fit. You’ll soon be in good enough shape to dazzle all the potential mates you like, Skan. Are you finally going to take a mate?”

  Skandranon flicked his wings suddenly and stabbed a glare at her, which was much harsher than he’d really intended. He felt his nares darkening—how maddening to be constantly asked that! As if they had placed bets on who and when and how!

  Cinnabar bit her lip and backed off, pretending—pretense that was just a little too obvious—to search for something in her belt packs. Tamsin broke the tension by clearing his throat and pulling Skan’s head towards him.

  “Here now, Skan, let me look at your eyes.”

  “He’ll just think you’re in love with him,” Aubri snickered.

  Before Skan could make any retort, Tamsin clamped Skandranon’s beak closed with one hand and stabbed a Look at him. This was serious business. Gryphons could judge relative distance and speed from each eye independently, and could clearly compare minute details of objects directly ahead. The paper texture of the book Skandranon had been studying, for instance, had been in sharp relief to him, even the furrows left by the pen. Like many other parts of a gryphon’s body, though, the eyes were used to judge the health of the rest of the body. Tamsin leaned in until his face was barely inches away from the lens of Skandranon’s right eye, becoming an encompassing blur which filled most of his wide field of vision. “You’re dilating well. Not as scratchy as I’d expect. No problems with focus? Good depth perception from each eye?”

  “With Aubri, therrre’s little depth to ssstudy,” Skandranon said dryly. “But yes, all seems to be well enough. I want to be back in action immediately.”

  “There’ll be plenty of action for you, warrior, and that surely means we’ll see you back in surgery soon enough,” Cinnabar joked. “By now, Ma’ar’s troops have stopped wagering on you. They know that sooner or later, every one of them will get a chance to shoot at you.”

  Skandranon stood, feeling more lively than before, and mantled in indignation. In walked an opportunity for mischief. “They haven’t killed me yet! Have they, Jewel?”

  A laden and bewildered hertasi looked at Skan wide-eyed, having just come in bearing rolls of blankets for Aubri. “N… no?” she said, with a nervous glance at the Healers.

  This, of course, was a favorite trick of the Black Gryphon’s—getting people involved in his arguments, whether they liked it or not, or whether they had any knowledge of the subject at hand. Always fun! Especially when the topic of discussion was him, and it had turned unflattering. “There, you see? Jewel knows. This was just a temporary setback, and I’ll be back to save Urtho’s army in no time at all.” He puffed up his chest feathers and struck an heroic pose.

  “Oh, save me from him!” came Aubri’s plaintive cry. Tamsin and Cinnabar broke up in laughter, while Jewel scurried about positioning the rolls of blankets for Aubri’s comfort, still bewildered by the whole scene. Skan, of course, continued to play to his audience.

  “He’s unaccustomed to being near greatness.” Skan gave Aubri a lofty, and condescending, sidelong glance.

  “I’m unaccustomed to drowning in such sketi. I can’t stand him asleep or awake!” Aubri moaned. “Healers, could you please either still his tongue or eliminate my hearing? Something? Anything?”

  “Tchah! Blind fledgling,” Skandranon retorted. “I am forced to take up company with the unappreciative. It’s worse than physical wounds, I tell you honestly.”

  Jewel paused for a heartbeat, took in the tableau of laughing and posturing, and evidently decided that folding fresh bandages for Aubri was the right thing to do. She fell into doing so with religious fervor on the far side of the tent. Lady Cinnabar recovered from her laughter and flashed her wide grin at Skandranon, as Tamsin tweaked Skan’s tail. Tamsin then wiped his hands as if he’d just finished a day’s work, and shot a satisfied look at his lover.

  “I’d say our labor is done here, Lady. He’s as good as he’ll ever be.”

  “What a sad thought,” Aubri muttered.

  “Oh, please,” Skan countered. “I have capacities I’ve—”

  “Boasted about for years,” Aubri inserted quickly. “And never fulfilled.”

  Skan decided that a quick change of subject was in order. “Are you two keeping an eye on our Lord and Master?” he asked. “When Urtho visited me, I thought he looked underfed.”

  “It hasn’t been easy, but I’ve been making certain he gets at least a bite or two out of every meal brought him,” Cinnabar replied with a sigh. “And his hertasi have been bringing him meals every two candlemarks or so. Still, no sooner does he settle down to eat than more bad news comes from the front lines, and off he goes again, food forgotten.”

  “He’s giving more than he can afford to,” Skan told her, sitting down and becoming serious for a moment. “He never wanted to be a warlord. He isn’t suited to it.”

  “He’s doing well enough—we’re all still alive,” Cinnabar offered. “The only reason he’s in charge is because the King folded up. And all the King’s men, the gutless lot.”

  Aubri’s eyes twinkled. “She only says that because it’s true.”

  But Skan stuck his tongue out in distaste. “She’s being charitable, Aubri. When Ma’ar first swept down, the border lands burned up like kindling. All the Barons were terrified, and the King’s best efforts couldn’t hold them together. It all fell apart, and we had only Urtho to turn to. No one else had any knowledge of what we faced. Cinnabar’s family and a few others stood against the Kingdom’s dissolution; the rest fled like frightened hens, and just about as witless.”

  “We remembered that we serve our subjects, the ones who ran served themselves, and left their people crying in their wake,” Cinnabar added. “We don’t know what happened to most of them. Some had their faces changed. Some went mad or died. Most are still in hiding. Urtho doesn’t blame them even now—he told the King that Ma’ar sent a spell of fear into them. However,” she said while rebraiding a lock of hair, “it seems not all of us were affected.”

  A shadow fell across the tent-flap threshold, and was followed a second later by a severe-looking, impeccably uniformed woman stepping through. Her brown hair was short-cut but for three thin braids trailing down her back, each as long as a human’s forearm, all of which laid in mathematical precision along her smooth neck. As she stepped in, her hazel eyes flicked from human to gryphon to hertasi in that order; she then flowed like icy water towards Aubri. Or rather,
she would have flowed, had she not been trying to cover a limp. Skan stared at her; to intrude uninvited into a tent was not only rude, it was dangerous when the tent contained injured gryphons. Yet Aubri did not look surprised or even affronted, only resigned.

  “May we help you?” Tamsin asked, openly astonished that the woman had not offered so much as a common greeting.

  The woman did not even look at him. “No, thank you, Healer. I am here to tend to this gryphon.”

  “And you arrre…?” Skandranon rumbled, his tone dangerous. She either did not catch the nuance, or ignored it.

  “His Trondi’irn, Winterhart, of Sixth Wing East,” she replied crisply—not to Skan, but towards Tamsin, as if Skan did not matter. “His name is Aubri, and he has suffered burns from an enemy attack,” she supplied.

  Oh, how nice of her. She’s provided us with details of the obvious, as if we had no minds of our own or eyes to see with. How she honors us! Except that she was paying no attention to the nonhumans, only the humans, Tamsin and Cinnabar. What does this arrogant wench think she is? Urtho’s chosen bride?

  But the woman was not finished. “I’ve also come to reassign you, hertasi Jewel. Your services are required in food preparation with Sixth Wing East. Report there immediately.”

  Jewel gulped and blinked, then nodded.

  Winterhart drew a short but obviously sharp silver blade from her glossy belt and cut one of Aubri’s bandages free, looking over the blistered skin underneath.

  “I don’t think—” Tamsin began. The woman cut him off, as Jewel scurried out of the tent.

  “Aubri doesn’t require her any longer,” she said curtly, “and the Sixth is shorthanded.”

  Skan ignored the rudeness this time, for Winterhart had caught his attention. “Sssixth Wing—that of Zhaneel?” he asked.

  The woman looked at him as if affronted that he had spoken to her, but she answered anyway. “Yes. That is an extraordinary case, though. She surprised us all by somehow distinguishing herself.” Winterhart’s shrug dismissed Zhaneel and her accomplishments as trivial. “Rather odd. We’ve never had a cull in our ranks before.”