The Mage Wars

by Mercedes Lackey

  “How many of you know the spell?” he asked, as reluctant admiration set in.

  “All,” Skan said, without so much as blinking an eye. “And it’s not exactly a flashy spell, Urtho. It was simply good design. There was no point in holding the information back. Every gryphon outside this Tower knows the secret.”

  He couldn’t help it; he had to shake his head with pure admiration. “And you’ve kept this whole thing from me all this time! Unbelievable.”

  “We had reason to keep it among ourselves,” Skan replied. “Good reason. We didn’t know how you would feel or act, and we didn’t want you finding out before the time was right for me to tell you.”

  “So you were the sacrificial goat, hmm?” Urtho eyed Skan dubiously. “I don’t know; a sacrifice is supposed to be savory, not scrawny.”

  Skan drew himself up in an exaggerated pose. “A sacrifice is supposed to be the best of the best. I believe I fill that description.”

  His eyes twinkled as he watched Urtho from beneath his heavy lids, and his beak gaped in a broad grin when Urtho laughed aloud.

  “I submit to the inevitable, my friend,” Urtho said, still laughing, as he slapped Skan on the shoulder. “I suppose I must consider this as your test of adulthood, as the Kaled’a’in give their youngsters. You gryphons are certainly not my children any longer—nor anyone’s children.”

  Then he sobered. “I am glad that this has happened now, Skan. And I am glad that you are here. I need to pass along some grave news of my own, and this will probably be the best opportunity to do so.”

  He called in the hertasi who waited discreetly just on the other side of the door, and gave him swift instructions. “I wish you to summon General Shaiknam and take him to the Marble Office; once you have left him there, summon the commanders of the other forces to the Strategy Room.”

  He turned back to Skan. “I am splitting the non-human manpower of the Sixth among all the other commanders—I have reason enough, since all of them have been complaining that they are shorthanded. That will leave Shaiknam in command of nothing but humans. Is there any commander that you think the gryphons of the Sixth would prefer to serve?”

  For once, he had caught the Black Gryphon by surprise; Skan’s grin-gape turned into a jaw-dropped gape of surprise, and his eyes went blank for a moment. “Ah—ah—Judeth of the Fifth, I think.”

  Urtho nodded, pleased with his choice. “Excellent. And she has had no real gryphon wings assigned to her forces until now, only those on loan from the Sixth or the Fourth. Consider it done.” Urtho regarded Skan measuringly. “Still, the gryphons should have their own collective voice, even as the mages do. There are things that you know about yourselves that no human could. There should be one gryphon assigned to speak for all gryphons, so that things will not come to the pass they have with Shaiknam before I come to hear about it.” He stabbed out a finger. “You. You, Skan. I hereby assign you to be the overall commander of all the gryphon wings and to speak for them directly to me.”

  * * *

  Skan’s surprise turned to stupefaction. His head came up as if someone had poked him in the rear. “Me?” he squeaked—yes, squeaked; he sounded like a mouse. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Me? Why me? I am honored, Urtho, but—”

  Urtho waved his objections aside. “You’ve obviously thought about becoming the leader of the gryphons, or why else would you have read all my history books about the great leaders of the past? The others clearly think that you should have that position, or why else would they have sent you here to confront me over Shaiknam?”

  Is it unusually warm in here? Skan felt his nares flushing, and he hung his head. “They didn’t exactly pick me,” he admitted. “They couldn’t seem to do much besides panic and complain, so I… I took over. Nobody seemed to mind.”

  “All the more reason to place you in charge, if you were the only one to take charge,” Urtho said, implacably. “How do you think I wound up in charge of this so-called army?”

  Skan ducked his head between his shoulder-blades, his nares positively burning. “I’m not sure that’s a fit comparison…”

  “Now, I have a few things to tell you,” Urtho continued. “I don’t know if you’ve been aware of it, but I’ve been sending groups of families and non-combatants into the west ever since we first thought we’d have to abandon the Tower.” He turned back to the map, and stood over it, brooding. “I didn’t like having such a great concentration of folk here in the first place, and when I realized what chaos an evacuation would be, I liked it even less.”

  Skan nodded, with admiration. He hadn’t realized that Urtho was moving people out in a systematic way. That in itself spoke for how cleverly the mage had arranged it all.

  “I’ve been posting the groups at the farthest edges of the territory we still hold, near enough to the permanent Gates there that they can still keep in touch with everyone here as if nothing had changed, but far enough so that if anything happens…” Urtho did not complete the sentence.

  “If anything happens, we have advance groups already in place,” Skan said quickly. “An evacuation will be much easier that way. Faster, too. And if the fighters know their families are already safe, their minds will be on defense and retreat, rather than on worrying.”

  “I don’t want another Laisfaar,” Urtho said, his head bent over the table so that his face was hidden. “I don’t want another Stelvi Pass.”

  Skan had his own reasons to second that. The lost gryphons there sometimes visited him in dreams, haunting him…

  …fly again, as Urtho wills…

  “Who will you pick for your second, Skan?” Urtho asked after a long silence, briskly changing the subject. “I assume it’s going to be one of the experienced fighters. And—” he cast a quick glance out of the corner of his eye at Skan, who caught a sly twinkle there “—I class Zhaneel as an experienced fighter.”

  Skan coughed. “Well, it will be Zhaneel, of course, but because she has the respect of the others. Even gryphons who haven’t trained on her course know how hard it is, and admire her for all she’s accomplished. But there’s something else I’d like to ask you for as well.”

  Urtho turned away from the table. “Oh?” he said, imbuing the single syllable with a multitude of flavorings.

  Once again, Skan’s stomach and crop churned with anxiety, and his nares flushed. “I—ah—did a little exploring on that level of your Tower.”

  “And?” Urtho’s face and voice were carefully neutral.

  “I found the—the models.”

  “How did you…?” Urtho exclaimed, flushing for a moment with anger—but he quickly calmed. “Never mind. What—”

  Skan interrupted. “I met Kechara.”

  Urtho stared at him blankly for a moment, then grew just a little pale. “I believe,” he said carefully, “that I had better sit down. You must hate me.”

  Skan shook his head, as Urtho lowered himself into a chair, and if he was any judge of human reactions, the mage had been profoundly shaken. “How could I hate you? The more time I spent with her, the more I realized that you had done the best you could for her. And once I had a few days to think about it, I believe I managed to puzzle out why you had her up there, instead of down with the rest of the gryphons. It wasn’t just to protect her from being teased and getting her feelings hurt.” He took a deep breath, and ventured everything on his guess. “It was because she’s a very powerful Mindspeaker. Probably the most powerful you’ve ever seen.”

  Urtho’s eyes widened, and he caught his breath. “Did she Mindspeak at you?” he asked.

  Skan nodded, pleased that he had been clever enough to figure out the puzzle. “I realized that I had been getting a great deal more information from her than she had the words to tell me. That was when I remembered that she had hit me with a mind-blast just before she attacked me, and I figured out that she wasn’t just telling me things with her voice, but with her mind as well.”

  He told Urtho the tale from b
eginning to end, saving only that he had gotten into the chamber in the first place with Vikteren’s mage-keys. “That’s why she’s in the Tower, in a room with such heavy shields, and why she creates the presence of a dozen gryphons when there’s only her. And that’s why Zhaneel and I would like to have her. We’ll protect her from teasing and ridicule, and she can act as—oh—a kind of relay for groups of gryphons that may need to speak with each other. We have Mindspeakers, of course, but nothing as powerful as she is.”

  “I see that you put a great deal of thought into this.” Urtho mopped his forehead with a sleeve, as small beads of perspiration sprang up. “I must confess—that use for her had occurred to me. I was too softhearted to… well… misborn usually die young anyway, and I assumed that her nature would take care of the problems she represented for me. When she didn’t die, though, I had to do something about her. She’s as old as you are, Skan. She only seems younger because she’s so childlike, and because her memory for things longer ago than a year is very poor. I knew that if anyone ever discovered her and her power, she’d be a target for our enemies. In the wrong hands, she could be a terrible weapon. I was afraid that I would have to go to war just to protect her, and I couldn’t reconcile the safety and freedom of one misborn with compromising the safety of all those who depend on me. You see? That was why I hid her in the Tower and kept her existence secret. I simply could not protect her otherwise, and I would not risk a war over her.”

  “Urtho, I hate to point this out, but we are in a war, and it isn’t over Kechara,” Skan retorted, with a little more sarcasm than he intended. “No one is going to get into this camp to steal her, and there isn’t much point in keeping her mewed up anymore.”

  Skandranon sat down across from Urtho. He was rather surprised to learn that Kechara was as old as he was; as Urtho said, misborn generally did not live past their teens, much less grow to be as old as he. It was something of a tribute to Urtho’s care that she had lived as long as she had.

  Urtho sighed. “You’re right,” he said, reluctantly. “She deserves a little freedom, anyway. But keep her here—if not in the Tower, then near it.”

  “Of course.” Skan nodded. “I should like to start moving the gryphon families out to where the other non-combatants are going, if you don’t mind. All pairs with nestlings and fledglings, and all fledged still in training. I don’t see any reason why they can’t complete their training elsewhere.” He thought for a moment. “I’ll tell them that you are concerned that with all of us consolidated here, we make a very tempting target for some terrible weapon. You want to get us spread out, so we aren’t quite so easy to get all at once.”

  Urtho considered that, and studied the map. “What about here and here—” He pointed to two valleys, easily defended, at the furthest range for a permanent Gate. “I can set two of the Gates for those places, and move not only gryphons, but Kaled’a’in and all the non-humans who are not combatants there. Anyone who wants to visit them, can.”

  “I have an even better idea,” Skan suggested. “Set up a secondary Gate and put the gryphons out further—use the excuse that we are big eaters, and need the territory. Send the Kaled’a’in to this valley in the south, and convalescents and volunteers there to the north. That gets them out from underfoot, and they can train your human youngsters while they’re recovering.”

  Urtho snapped his fingers. “Of course—and what’s more, I’ll have the ambulatory and the youngsters run foraging parties! Make them as self-sufficient as possible!”

  “Have them send the surplus here,” Skan added, with growing enthusiasm. “It won’t be much, but it will make them feel as if we need to have them out there. And a little fresh game now and then…”

  His mouth tingled at the very thought. Herd-beasts have no real flavor. A good roebuck, though…

  “With hertasi in charge, Skan, I am not certain I would be too ready to say that they ‘won’t send back much.’ Hertasi are remarkable scavengers.” Urtho’s eyebrows quirked a little. “That’s largely why I have them in charge of supply here. They find ways to make ten loaves feed a hundred fighters,”

  But Skan noticed that Urtho was much more subdued than usual. Perhaps there is something he hadn’t told me? Are things even worse than I thought?

  A light tap at the door prevented him from asking any further questions. Urtho’s chief hertasi stuck his snout inside, cautiously.

  “The commanders are here, Urtho,” the lizard said quietly. Urtho glanced over at Skan and shrugged.

  “Let them in, Seri,” he said. “They might as well hear it all at once.”

  The commanders filed in, General Judeth last of all, impeccable and austere in her chosen colors of black and silver. They gathered around the table, and Skan saw one or two turn a little pale when they looked over the latest conquests of Ma’ar’s forces.

  Didn’t they know? Or does this mean something I can’t guess at?

  “Gentlemen, ladies.” Urtho nodded to the group. “I brought you here for several reasons. The first—General Farle is dead. Assassinated, so far as we can tell.”

  A sharp intake of breath around the table told Skan that none of the commanders had heard the bad news yet.

  “I am afraid that under the circumstances, I must dismantle the Sixth as it has been known, and spread its non-human and magical resources among all of you. General Judeth—” as Urtho spoke her name, the lady sat up straighter, and lost her look of shocked dismay “—at the specific request of the new commander of all the gryphon wings, I am assigning the wings that formerly belonged to the Sixth to you. I know that you will command them well.”

  The General did not salute nor snap to attention, but she gave the impression that she had. “I will do my best, sir,” she replied simply.

  “The rest of you may decide among yourselves how to apportion up the rest of the Sixth’s available manpower. General Shaiknam will command the human foot-soldiers, but all else will be available to you.” Urtho nodded, and Skan saw with satisfaction that the commanders were already getting over their shock and thinking about the situation. “I am certain that you will not allow any kind of rivalry to interfere with the best possible deployment of that manpower. Now—I am certain you all know Skandranon, the Black Gryphon, either on sight or by reputation.”

  Nods, and some slight smiles met that, as Skan bowed his head in a brief salute to all of them, but especially to General Judeth.

  “I have appointed him to be the overall commander of the gryphon wings, in the same arrangement that I made with the mages.” Urtho paused, and waited for their reaction.

  Skan saw only slight frowns, and one or two nods. General Judeth was the first to speak.

  She cleared her throat delicately, then spoke to both Urtho and to Skan. “The arrangement is working better with the mages than we had thought it would,” she admitted. “We thought it might make for problems, if not outright mutiny among the mages, but it didn’t work out that way.” Her mouth twitched a little, although she did not actually smile. “There are even some mages who have shown a remarkable increase in their abilities. Apparently having someone to evaluate their performance who knows what they can do has made them a little more—eager—to do their best. I trust, both because Urtho has chosen you, Skandranon, and from some of your reputation, that you will act in a similar manner.”

  Skan’s nares flushed, for there was no doubt just what the General meant by “some of your reputation,” but he answered her steadily enough.

  “I can promise you that no gryphon will balk at anything he is asked to do without a reason for objecting,” Skan replied gravely. “We all understand there is a war, and in war, there is the risk of death. We only ask that we not be sent into a certainty of death. I can also promise you that if there are objections to what we are asked to do, it will be because the loss will outweigh the gain for all concerned. The gryphons will defend all the races.”

  The General nodded at that, and turned her attention back to t
he table.

  “I see that you are all concerned by the amount of territory that Ma’ar has taken,” Urtho continued. “You should be; I have only just updated the map, and a great deal of that gain has been within the last month. You all knew you’d lost ground, but none of you has seen the real scope of the loss until now. We are in trouble, and I will not hide that fact from you. In fact, we have lost so much, that Ma’ar himself has moved into the Palace and made it his headquarters.”

  They took all that without a flinch, although Skan was incensed at the idea that Ma’ar would have taken the Palace for his own. The idea of that—that beast, that tyrant, soiling the halls that great leaders had called home, soiling them with his bloody boots…

  “It would be rather difficult to hide that we are in trouble, with this spread out before us,” General Movat said dryly. “The question is, what are your plans to deal with it?”

  Urtho considered the map, as heavy silence reigned. “The first thing I intend to do is to begin a quiet evacuation of the non-combatants from around the Tower,” he replied. “Some preliminary work has been done in that direction, but now I want it to become a priority. I want to move them into the west. I’m going to take six of the permanent Gates here on the Tower grounds and activate them, targeting them to six points on the western border. That’s mostly wilderness area, mountains and forested valleys, too steep to farm and not really suited for grazing. My very first Tower was there—” he added wistfully “—and I rather liked keeping it wilderness.’

  “Yes, well, now it’s a good thing it is wilderness,” General Korad said briskly. “Ma’ar won’t consider that you might have sent people into it.”

  “My idea precisely.” Urtho tapped the map, pointing to the six places where the Gates would have their other ends. “If we have to abandon the Tower, we’ll have most of the people who would be trouble already out of the way. They, in turn, will have advance camps ready for us. If we inform our people that we are doing this only to spread out our resources and make one spot less of a target, I believe we can keep them from panicking.”