Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

"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 at my discretion to determine my fee. You keep this. If you have some difficulty convincing your wingleader 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, 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...?

  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 him, 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 toward 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, therre'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 sketil. 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 were 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 re-braiding a lock of hair, "it seems not all of us were affected."

  A shadow fell across the threshold and was followed a second later by a severe-looking, impeccably uniformed woman. Her brown hair was shortcut but for three thin braids trailing down her back, each as long as a human's forearm, all placed 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 toward 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. Either she did not catch the nuance, or she ignored it.

  "His Trondi'irn, Winterhart, of Sixth Wing East," she replied crisply—not to Skan, but to 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."

  Skandranon's eyes blazed and he found himself lunging toward the woman. "Cull?"

  Tamsin and Cinnabar held onto both of Skandranon's wings. He repeated his incredulous question. "Cull?"

  Winterhart ignored both his obvious anger and his question. Instead, she rebandaged Aubri and held her hands over his burns.

  Even Skan knew better than to interrupt a Healing trance, but it took him several long moments to get his anger back under control. "Cull, indeed!" he snorted to Tamsin, indignantly. "Young Zhaneel is no more a cull than I am! These idiots in Sixth Wing don't know how to train anyone who isn't a musclebound broadwing, that's their problem! Cull!"

  Tamsin made soothing noises, which Skan ignored. Instead, he watched Winterhart closely. The fact that this cold-hearted thing was Zhaneel's Trondi'irn explained a great deal about why no one had tended to the youngster's obvious emotional trauma and low level of self-esteem. Winterhart simply did not care about emotional trauma or self-esteem. She treated her gryphon-charges like so many catapults; seeing that they were war-ready and properly repaired, and ignoring anything that was not purely physical. Zhaneel needed someone like Cinnabar, or like Amberdrake, not like this—walking icicle.

  But she was giving Aubri the full measure of her Healing powers; at least she was not stingy in that respect. And she was good, very good, provided that the patient didn't give a hung-claw about bedside manner or empathy. Aubri was clearly used to treatment like this; he simply absorbed the Healing quietly and made neither comment nor complaint when she had finished.

  But for the rest of her duties—those, she scanted on. She did not see that Aubri was comfortable. She did not inquire as to any other injuries he might have, other than the obvious. She did not ask him if there was anything he needed. She simply gave Tamsin and Cinnabar another curt nod, ignored Skan altogether, and left.

  No one said a word.

  "Well!" Cinnabar said into the silence. "If that is the quality of Healers these days, I should have Urtho look into where that—woman—got her training!" Tamsin nodded gravely, but Cinnabar's expression suddenly turned thoughtful.

  "Odd," she muttered. "I could have sworn I'd seen her before, but where?"

  But a moment later, she shook her head, and turned to Aubri and said, "I'll have one of my personal hertasi come see to your needs until we can get Jewel back for you. Is there anything I can do for you now?"

  Aubri's ear-tufts pricked up in surprise. "Ah—no, thank you, my lady," he replied, struggling to hide his amazement. "I'm really quite comfortable, actually."

  "Well
, if there is, make sure someone sends me word." Having disposed of the problem, Cinnabar turned back to Skan. "Do you think you can keep your temper in check when that one comes back?" she asked. "If you can't, I'll have Aubri moved so you won't have to encounter her again."

  "I won't promissssse," Skan rumbled, "but I will trrrry." It was a measure of his anger that he was hissing his sibilants and rolling his r's again.

  "I won't ask more of you than that," Cinnabar replied, her eyes bright with anger as she glanced at the still-waving tent flap. "It is all I could expect from myself."

  Tamsin mumbled something; perhaps he had forgotten that a gryphon's hearing was as acute as his eyesight. It would have been inaudible to a human, but Skan heard him quite distinctly.

  "I must speak with Amberdrake about that one...."

  Tamsin chewed his lower lip for a moment, his brow wrinkled a little with worry, and then sighed. "Well, greatest of the sky-warriors," he said lightly, with a teasing glance to the side, "I think you won't have any real need for us in the next few hours, so we'll go tend to those with greater hurts and smaller egos."

  Skan pretended to be offended, and Aubri snorted his amusement; Cinnabar lost some of her anger as her lover took her hand and led her out.

  Aubri settled back down, wincing a little as burns rubbed against bandages. Skan arranged himself in his own nest of cushions with a care to his healing bones and watched his tent-mate with anticipation, hoping for another battle of wits. But the Healing had tired Aubri considerably, and the easing of some of his pain had only left an opening for his exhaustion to move in, assassinlike, to strike him down. Before either of them had a chance to think of anything to say, Aubri's eyes had closed, and he was whistling.

  Skan snorted. "Told you," he whispered to the sleeping gryphon.

  At least the poor thing was finally getting some sleep. Skan was only too well aware that Aubri's sleep had been scant last night and punctuated by long intervals of wakeful, pain-filled restlessness. Skan had wondered then why his tent-mate's Trondi'irn hadn't come to ensure that the gryphon at least got some sleep. Well, now he knew why.