“Which means,” Darian gasped as he rubbed at his temple, “diplomatically . . . it is a difficult dance, Kel, and we’re doing the best we can with a new dance floor and new steps. What we came up with is, your actions have been claimed by Lord Breon and disavowed as an action of the Tayledras. He has claimed officially that you were under his orders to act on your own best judgment.”
“But—I wasn’t! I scouted for all of us, and we shared the information with Kelmskeep as a favor—”
“—but in the mess Valdemar is in, Breon’s story is better,” Darian countered.
“For who? For Breon, for Valdemar, for the Vale, for the Tayledras? No, I hate it! As Wingleader, I hate it! It makes us gryphons sound—uncontrollable! It makes me sound impulsive and undisciplined!”
Firesong and Silverfox instantly met eyes with each other and held their breaths. Both shook their heads and exhaled a moment later.
“Silver Gryphon Chief Redhawk put forth the suggestion that until you are reliable, physically and mentally, you should not be Wingleader. Your responsibilities are, as the final say put it, suspended,” Darian explained. “And that allows us to honestly say that your rank was taken from you if Valdemaran leaders take issue against Breon.”
Kelvren slit his eyes, and his crest and hackles went up.
“Kel,” Nightwind pleaded, “we don’t know whether your condition will make you insane, or simply fall out of the sky suddenly. We don’t know if you’ll unknowingly walk past a Working in progress and suddenly incinerate yourself and half of the Vale. A Silver Gryphon has to be relied upon to execute justice, and a Wingleader must be sound enough to take gryphons into danger without question. As an absolute. Right now, Kel, you are one big, glowing question. You are still beloved, and still respected, but you can’t actually be trusted to be Wingleader because of what you underwent in that Change Circle. Hate it if you must, but you know it is reasonable.”
“I do hate it! Diplomatsss, lordsss, and power-grabbersss turned my virtue, then my pain, into a reassson for my punisssshment?” Kelvren clawed at the tile, vaguely aware that he was drawing his talons side to side, sharpening them.
Darian drew his hands to his sides for fear that Kel would snap at them. “It was my solution. Valdemaran culture is different from ours, Kel, they—they prefer to have someone to blame. They don’t just act upon a circumstance like we do. They prefer to fill a target with arrows first and then check if it was the cause of the problem. Breon’s taking the arrows for you, so we have the time to fix your body if we can. We can fix your reputation later.”
“I hate it,” Kelvren growled, but he gave the situation its due thought. I sacrificed myself to save a Valdemaran, and so Breon is making a sacrifice to save me. I can’t disrespect that, but I don’t have to like something to respect it. A gryphon’s life is worth the story the gryphon leaves behind, and this is not where I wanted my story to go. I haven’t even had gryphlets yet! Wait—how am I ever going to have any young? I could burst into flames on someone’s back! I do not want to be remembered that way either!
Darian said softly, “Rukayas is new to k’Valdemar, from k’Leshya by way of k’Vala, but she is the oldest gryphon here now, and Redhawk appointed her as the new Wingleader.”
“Rukayasss. Her name is Rrrukayasss. Hurrrh.”
“And you’re glowing brighter,” Firesong added. “I’ll draw you down. Just open up a bit, Kel, let me take some of that energy from you.”
“Oh,” Kelvren grumbled, “now you ask before taking something from me.”
“Food and courtesy,” Firesong chided, quoting the gryphon.
“I hate you so much right now,” Kelvren growled back.
“Neither for the first nor last time will you hate me,” Firesong said while the room dimmed in response to his gestures. “You could only survive this in two ways that we know of. Three, really, but you wouldn’t like that one.”
“Oh? What is that one?”
“Leave forever so you aren’t a problem to us.”
“Like Skandranon’s last flight.”
“So some stories say.”
Kelvren shook his head. “I do not want to be like him that way. And his acts of heroism brought him nothing like these lies and intrigues and hate from others.”
Silverfox’s composure vanished. He covered his face with both hands, laughing. “Sorry, it’s just—sorry. Please. Go ahead.”
“What?” Kelvren demanded.
“Just that kestra’chern have stories from Amberdrake’s side of history.”
“To continue,” Firesong picked up smoothly, “the other two ways I have considered work together. One, we can train you to be a Mage much, much better at handling magic power and more sensitive to feeling it around you. Two would be—” he hesitated.
Firesong opened his mouth to speak a couple of times, but it was half a minute before he finally continued. “Two would be to create a Heartstone for you. A very, very small one. Heavy, but not too heavy. Portable. This has been tried in the past and the concept is sound, but there were no—long-lasting successes. I am curious; in your Flight, did it ever occur to you to tap a Line or a node to Lightcast? Or did you only use your own power?”
“I did as felt right. I used what I had inside me, what I collected as I flew.”
“Ah. Interesting. That deserves some further thought. You’ve partly answered an old theory about whether a living thing can be a node, with that. And a node can feed a Heartstone.”
“Sketi!” Kelvren exclaimed, sitting down abruptly.
“Yes. Very big sketi if we can make it work. It is your life, Kelvren. I mean that sincerely, it is your life—you live or die by this. Right now, nobody wants to come near you because they think you’re as likely to explode as talk to them, and you’re politically toxic. That can change over time, but meanwhile, we just have to keep you alive.”
“I hate this. This is not right,” Kelvren repeated.
“It isn’t right, but it is the way it is,” Firesong answered.
Darian rested his hands on Kelvren’s right alula. “I know this is a terrible situation, Kel, and I know you want someone to slash and bite. I say, don’t even bother to blame anyone, because you have more important things to work on. Your survival must be ensured. It is like k’Sheyna. It is true that their Adepts did not think of what happened as being an attack from Falconsbane, or anyone. They just dealt with the situation, and yes, that caused them much sorrow. But had they gone looking for enemies to blame at the time, instead of calming the disruptions, their situation would have been far worse. I say, don’t fall prey to cursing others and complaining about what you deserve and don’t deserve. These people in Valdemar are much different from everyone you knew far West, and you are going to have to adapt yourself to them, because they are more numerous than our kind.”
Darian smoothed Kelvren’s feathers along the leading edge of his wing, and it did soothe him. Firesong and the others exchanged a pointed look, and they began slipping away, Firesong leaving first. Kel didn’t really care—he was well fed now, they weren’t contributing anything to the conversation anyway, and, more importantly, they certainly weren’t giving him cozy feather-scratches. Besides, he was still especially irritated with Firesong, so, begone with them.
“Hurrrrr,” he grumbled, lying down again. “I do not like it, and it is not fair, but the world does not move by what I like, and it has never been fair. But listen to yourself, Dar’ian of Errold’s Grove, referring to yourself as Tayledras, not Valdemaran!”
Darian sat down on the floor in front of him, cross-legged, and worked a hand into Kel’s neck feathers, scratching soothingly. “I’ve had to learn all this myself. You were there for it. And technically, yes, I was born in Valdemar.”
“Dar’ian, my parents taught me, wherever you land is your home. But I feel that k’Valdemar is most truly my home. It is
what I think of as your home. Your parents raised to you to be a child, Errold’s Grove raised you to be a boy, we raised you to be a man, and then you made yourself an adult. And alongside you, I went from someone to be cared for to someone who is cared about. I do not want to leave our home, Dar’ian. Or be chased away because of what happened. I was good, Dar’ian.”
“Yes. Yes you were,” Darian murmured into Kelvren’s brow feathers. “You did the right things. You were there for me, you fought for me, and then you went out and did it again for people you didn’t even know. You don’t deserve all of this, but there’s that world-isn’t-fair thing, again, isn’t it? But you know that I will always be thankful for you, and you’ll always be with me somehow.”
“For you I would be shot and slashed a hundred times,” Kelvren rumbled, then added after a few moments, “But not all at once.”
Darian chuckled and twisted around to rest his back against Kelvren’s side, as they’d done dozens of times, basking in the sunlight. This time, though, the gryphon was the sun. “I don’t know if it helps, but not everybody in Valdemar is afraid of us, or of you.”
“They should be afraid of me. Everything should be afraid of me.”
“We all are, we just hide it well. What I mean is, the Crown and most of Haven think of us as strong allies, and they think of gryphons as wonders. I know right now you must think of all Valdemarans as a bunch of idiots, but try to walk in their paths for a moment. For most people in Valdemar, until the Storms, they tended crops, built roads, milled grain, and were ordinary soldiers at most. The ongoing border wars were distant. Magic was just something in old legends, not something that was in their lives every day, affecting them personally. And then came the Storms. Instead of being something good, something that made roads that never needed repaving or built walls so strong that nothing could knock them down—something that helped and protected them—it was something horrible that brought strange beasts and diseases, ripped their ordered lives up, and scattered the pieces. And then, the news—mostly rumors—came that the Crown’s sudden allies were the Ghosts of the Deadly Forests. It would be like you flying a patrol, being blasted into the ground by twenty whirlwinds, then being helped up by people who only spoke by clapping hands, wore giant hats, and ate poisonous tree bark.”
Kel thought about that for a moment. “It would be hard to relate to,” he agreed. “I would not think much about why those people were that way, I would only think of my own pain and well-being and that I was knocked out of the sky.”
“Yes, and now every demonstration of magic is looked at as something to be feared until it can be proved it isn’t going to hurt them. And there are a thousand minds like that, versus every one Valdemaran who understands,” Darian sighed. “That is part of what I am doing as a Knight of Valdemar. It’s a rank and title they all know and understand. I don’t have to be highborn to hold it. In fact, at least half of the Knights are as much mongrels as I am. So ordinary people consider me one of them. But it is a title and a rank, and high enough that the highborn grudgingly allow that I belong with them, too.”
“And so you cut your hair back, and wear your armor. You have to appear more Valdemaran to them,” Kelvren replied as he twisted his head nearly upside down so his friend could reach deep inside the feather layers.
Darian sighed, “I even keep Kuari far away when I go into Valdemar now. And I ride a horse. Being a Knight is not the same as being a diplomat or envoy. I can deliver messages of peace, sure, but they’re delivered in an armored fist. It’s understood in Valdemaran culture that Heralds and Knights have our diplomacy backed up by pikemen and archers. So here I am Dar’ian k’Valdemar, and there I am Knight Darian Firkin.”
“You are a gryphon now,” Kel pointed out, feeling very proud he had thought of the analogy. “Not a bird and not a beast! Something better!”
Darian laughed ruefully. “Yes, I guess I am. But if I’m a gryphon, Kel, I am going to ask you to trust me with something more important to you than your life. I am going to ask you to trust me with your reputation.”
“Mrrrph,” Kel replied dubiously, and beak-nudged at Darian’s shoulder and chest harder than was necessary.
“Kel, we have been friends for a very, very long time now,” Darian pointed out earnestly, pushing back. “It’s not going to be quick—and it probably won’t be everything you want or deserve. But I’m going to stake my reputation as the Owl Knight alongside yours, because you are that important to me. You must leave your story to me for a while.”
Kelvren huffed, “Becaussse if I went to them, I would just be a magical war beassst raging about injustice while brandissshing my claws, yes? So you must speak about me and for me. Hurrrh. As much as it amuses me to frighten others, maybe it is best that I don’t display myself for a time. It is the way of a Wingleader. We train in formations and combined attacks to multiply our force and to defend each other should one of us become defenseless. We have to trust in our flight companions. There are some battles I cannot fight myself . . . so I suppose you will fight them for me.”
Kelvren laid his head down flat on the floor, his beak-hook tucked between the edges of two tiles. He heaved a loud sigh, and the lighting shimmered around them.
Darian blinked rapidly, as if his eyes were stinging him, but he smiled. “And in the years to come, if I find myself in a battle in which claws and beaks are all that can save me, I shall depend upon you.”
At that, Kel raised his head high. “My talons are at your service, now and evermore, Dar’ian Owlknight.”
“Well, right now, I’d like you to trust us, and sleep,” Darian told him. “Or your trondi’irn will probably skin me.”
“I would not like you to be skinned, friend Dar’ian,” Kel replied gravely. “You would be most uncomfortable without your skin. Perhaps she could settle for stripping your clothes off instead?”
Darian choked on a laugh and stood up. “I’ll see you again, Kel,” he replied, but then he sighed while dusting himself off. “I have to ride overnight and leave from Kelmskeep at dawn. Val and I are taking thirty of Breon’s loyal soldiers to garrison Millbridge, and then we’re off with an envoy and a strongbox to make sure the Weavers stay allied. I wish I could stay here, but I know you would want me to go. Our friendships must often fall second to our duties, but a true friend knows that duty is part of what makes someone their friend.” He stopped at the doorway and added, “I’m going to make what you did in Valdemar—for Valdemar—mean even more.”
They both said nothing for a minute, as if trying to memorize each others’ appearance and expressions.
“You are my hero, Kel,” Darian finally said.
“You are my hero, Dar’ian,” Kelvren replied.
Then the Owl Knight turned away, and departed into the dusk.
• • •
Kelvren had stuffed himself at breakfast, and sleep and food had gone a long way toward soothing his temper. So he was also ready to listen as Firesong spoke or, more properly, lectured.
“An Adept is well-learned, but primarily an Adept is a durable, fast-thinking problem solver. This is one of the great truths of being a Tayledras Adept. It is not the high magic that makes an Adept, it is the clarity of mind to solve the problem of the moment. That moment could be all the time there is to act in, and the Adept must let in other concerns only when things are safe. Time taken to think about hate, love, blame, or justice could be an Adept’s last thoughts. Adepts find dangers and traps all the time, but they are taken as the way of all life, and the world, not as something done to them.”
“We discussed this already,” Kel growled. “None of you want me to think about blame and the wrong I am being done.”
Firesong instantly replied, “It is so important, we repeat it. You are an emotional soul, Kelvren Skothkar, and while passion has served you well in life, it can be your death now. We are going to try to teach you Adept ways so you
can control the ruin inside you. Let that sink into your feathered skull a while.”
Kelvren did. I doubt they expect me to become an actual Adept, but he did talk about a small Heartstone. A Heartstone is like a rain-barrel that draws in and stores power to be drawn out as needed. But . . .
“We should not do any of that here,” he declared. “Not in the Vale. Not even near the Vale. I won’t allow it. If my training strayed, I could tap the Heartstone of the Vale or affect the flow into it. We need to be far away if we’re going to attempt this. And not in Valdemar, nor near the Clans. If I fail, I don’t want anyone to see it . . . and I know that you can shield anybody nearby if I did.”
Despite today’s mask, Firesong looked both impressed and smug. “So you want to travel again, so soon?”
“I want to keep k’Valdemar and our allies safe. Here is not the place.”
Firesong nodded. “An expedition it will be, then. Because you’re right. I was going to lead up to it, but you suggested it yourself.” He did a little bow, and Aya sparked in a shower of light-dust on the stone perch. “Smart gryphon. A Healing Adept’s way involves not only fast thinking but also how to prevent harm in every direction and every level of repercussion while you’re doing it.”
Firesong interlaced his fingers and leaned forward. “Magic at Adept-level is something you can barely ever escape. It hums in your head, it constantly brushes at you like a breeze or a scent. Magic can have surges, and crackle, and go awry. It can have flavors, and it can drop away when you need it, only to reappear stronger an instant later. The larger swells appear in your mind like waves of life and lightning, as tall and wide as you can comprehend, but it may have a single flaw among its millions of threads that you must smooth away, or it will twist something leagues from you into something hideous and deadly. Some power drops from the Over, right through ours, and into the Under. Out there, in the Pelagirs, an Adept with their senses wide open could feel changes like that with every step.”
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