The black gryphon

by Mercedes Lackey

  The hertasi made it all the way to the tent flap before the flung brush caught up with him.

  Thirteen

  Zhaneel preened a talon thoughtfully, then looked down at her hand. Hand, and not a misshapen collection of foreclaws. She was not some kind of an accident. As Amberdrake had surmised, she was the living result of something that had been planned.

  “So.” She looked from the talon to Skandranon, and even though she managed to keep her expression calm and serene, her heart raced to have him here beside her, on her favorite rock overlooking the obstacle course. “I am the first of a breed, you say? And you saw evidence of that in Urtho’s Tower?”

  Skan nodded; his great golden eyes fixed upon her as steadily as if he were the needle of a compass, and she were the Northern Cross. The sun shone down on his black feathers, bringing up the patterns in them that were normally concealed by the dye he used. “There seem to be about fifty different types altogether. Mostly broadwings, eagle-types. You are based on the only kind that looks really falcon-based. I don’t know what Urtho had in mind to call your type, but I’d call you a gryfalcon.”

  “Gryfalcon.” She rolled the word around on her tongue. It sounded even better when Skan had said it than when Amberdrake had come up with it. “And none of this,” she spread her foreclaws wide, “is accidental. I am simply the only one of my kind.”

  “Not that I saw. But, Zhaneel-“ He hesitated a long moment, and she looked at him curiously. From the tension in his body, he was trying to make up his mind about saying something more. “-Zhaneel, you aren’t precisely the only one of your type. Only the first successful gryfalcon.” He ground his beak for a moment, then clearly made up his mind to continue. “There’s-well, what we’d call a real misborn in the Tower, too. It looks as if she started out to be a gryfalcon, but something went wrong. She’s distorted, like a child in her head, I think she’s a neuter, and there are probably other things wrong with her as well.”

  Zhaneel’s tiny ear-tufts rose. “In the Tower? But why-why would Urtho keep her there? I-“ But then all of the slights and insults, the teasing and the bullying of her own childhood returned to her, and she knew why. “-no. I see.” Gryphons did not cry, but sadness made their throats tighten, and triggered a need to utter a keening sound. She bowed her head and stifled the urge to keen. The poor, poor thing. Perhaps it is as well that it is like a child, for it cannot understand how cruel the world can be, and it will not mourn what it has never seen. “Does it have a name, this poor little one?”

  Skan nodded. “Urtho calls her ‘Kechara,’ and she says that he visits and plays with her often. I don’t think she is in any kind of pain or want.”

  “Kechara-beloved-“ She took a deep breath, and her throat opened again. “Yes, that would be like Urtho, to care for the poor thing that was not quite what he wanted, to make it as happy as he could.” She had come to understand their leader very well during the past several weeks. She wondered if Skandranon knew how often Urtho had taken the time to talk to her; Amberdrake knew, and several times, things that Amberdrake had told her made her think that Urtho had been talking with him about her. “But what does this mean for us? I think that if we can, we should find a way to free Kechara. With two of us to protect her, she will not suffer taunts as I did, do you not think? With two of us, acting as her family-? We should not have younglings just yet, I think, but Kechara will serve as practice of a kind. Now that you have made it possible for us to do so, whether or not Urtho approves.”

  Shyly, she cocked her head to one side. Skan gaped at her, looking extremely silly, as the sense of what she had just suggested penetrated to him.

  He looked even sillier a moment later, but it was because he was giddy with elation. But then, so was she.

  She knew how exhausted he must be after the workout of this afternoon, yet from somewhere he found the strength to follow as she leapt into the air, giving him a playful, come-hither look over her shoulder. And as the moon rose, she led him on a true courtship chase, a chase that ended when they caught each other, landing in the warm grass of a hillside far above Urtho’s Tower.

  As was the only way to end a courtship chase, after all.

  This was the face of defeat. Chaos on the landing field; shouting and the screaming of gryphons hurt too badly to keep still. Healers and Trondi’irn from the Hill and every wing swarmed the site, somehow never getting in each others’ way. Winterhart ignored it all as she held the bleeding gryphon in life by the barest of margins, holding the mangled body together with Gift and hands both, until a more Gifted Healer could reach her. She swore at and coaxed the poor creature by turns, stopping only to breathe and to scrub tears from her eyes by rubbing her cheek against her blood-stained shoulder.

  “Don’t you die on me, Feliss!” she scolded. “Not after all the work Zhaneel’s put in on you! If you die, I swear, I’m going to have Urtho catch your spirit and put it in the body of a celibate Priestess of Kylan the Chaste! That’d teach you!”

  Tears rose up again to blind and choke her; she wiped them away again, and ignored the way her own energy was running out of her the way Feliss’ blood ran between her fingers. Gods, gods, it had been easier a few short weeks ago-before she had been forced to see these gryphons the way Amber-drake saw them. Before she had found herself caring for them, and about what happened to them. Before she learned to think of them as something more than a simple responsibility. . . .

  Before Amberdrake made her like them, and Zhaneel made her respect them.

  Tears rose again, but there was no time now to wipe them away; she held on, grief-blinded, unable to see-

  Until a Gift so much greater than hers that it dazzled her touched her, and used her as the conduit to bring the Healing to Feliss that she had not been able to give. Emerald-green Healing energy poured through her, and beneath her hands the gaping wounds closed, the flesh knit up, the bleeding stopped.

  Winterhart closed her eyes and concentrated only on being that conduit, on keeping Feliss’ heartbeat strong, until the energy faded, blood no longer flowed through her fingers, and the heartbeat strengthened of itself. Only then did she open her eyes again.

  Lady Cinnabar removed her long, aristocratic hands from where they rested atop Winterhart’s and looked deeply into the Trondi’irn’s eyes. Winterhart was paralyzed, frozen in place like a terrified rabbit. She had been trying for weeks to avoid the Lady’s presence, ever since the moment she’d thought she’d seen a flicker of recognition in Cinnabar’s face.

  Who would ever have thought that a song would give me away? She’d been humming, on her way back from a session with Amberdrake; her back felt normal for the first time in ages, Conn was still in the field and not in her bed, and she’d actually been cheerful enough to hum under her breath.

  But she hadn’t thought about what she was humming, until she passed Lady Cinnabar (hurriedly, and with her face a little averted), and the Lady turned to give her a penetrating stare.

  Only then did she realize that she had been humming a song that had been all the rage at High King Leodhan’s Court-for the single week just before Ma’ar had challenged the King to defend his land. Like the nobles who had fled the challenge in terror, or simply melted away in abject fear, the song had vanished into obscurity. Only someone like Lady Cinnabar, who had been at the High King’s Court at that time, would recognize it.

  Only someone else who had been part of the Court for that brief period of time would have known it well enough to hum it.

  Winterhart had seen Cinnabar’s eyes narrow in speculation, just before she hurried away, hoping against hope that Cinnabar would decide that she was mistaken in what she thought she had heard.

  But the Lady was more persistent than that. More than once, Winterhart had caught Cinnabar studying her at a distance. And she knew, because this was the one thing she had dreaded, that Cinnabar was the kind of person who knew enough about the woman she had once been, that the Lady would uncover her secret simply by catching
her in habitual things no amount of control could change or eliminate.

  And now-here the Lady was, staring into Winterhart’s eyes, with the look on her face of one who has finally solved a perplexing little puzzle.

  “You are a good channel, and you worked today to better effect than I have ever seen you work before,” Cinnabar said mildly. “And your ability and encouragement kept this feathered one clinging to life. You are a better Trondi’irn and Healer than you were a few weeks ago.”

  “Thank you,” Winterhart said faintly, trying to look away from Cinnabar’s strange reddish-brown eyes, and failing.

  “Altogether you are much improved; get rid of that Conn Levas creature, and stand upon your own worth, and you will be outstanding.” Cinnabar’s crisp words came to Winterhart as from a great distance. “He is not worthy of you, and you do not need him, Reanna.”

  And with that, she turned and moved on to the next patient, leaving Winterhart standing there, stunned. Not just by the blunt advice, but by Cinnabar’s last word.

  Reanna.

  Winterhart went on to her next patient in a daze; fortunately her hands knew what to do without needing any direction from her mind. Her mind ran in circles, like a mouse in a barrel.

  Lady Cinnabar knew. Winterhart had been unmasked.

  How long before the Lady told her kinsman Urtho that Reanna Laury-missing and presumed fled-was working in the ranks as a simple Trondi’irn? How long before everyone knew? How long before her shame was revealed to the entire army?

  But before Winterhart could free herself from her paralysis, Cinnabar was back. “You and the rest can handle everything else from here on,” the Healer said quietly. “I’m needed back up on the Hill. The gryphons are not the only injured. And Reanna-“

  Winterhart started at the sound of her old name.

  Cinnabar laid one cool hand on Winterhart’s arm. “No one will know what I have just spoken, if you do not tell,” the Healer said quietly. “If you choose to be only Winterhart, then Winterhart is all anyone will know. But I believe you should tell Amberdrake. He has some information that you should hear.”

  The Lady smiled her famous, dazzling smile.

  “Sometimes being in the middle of a situation gives one a very skewed notion of what is actually going on. If I were a minnow in the middle of a school, I would not know why the school moved this way and that. I would only see that the rest of the school was in flight, and not what they fled. I would never know when they ran from a pike, or a shadow.”

  And with that rather obscure bit of observation, the Lady turned and was gone.

  Winterhart sat in her own austere tent, braiding and rebraiding a bit of leather; her nerves had completely eroded. In another few moments, she was scheduled for a treatment for her back-treatments she had come to look forward to. The kestra’chern Amberdrake was the easiest person to talk to that she had ever known, although the changes he had caused in her were not so easy to deal with.

  But now-Cinnabar knew. And although she had said that she would not reveal Winterhart’s secret, she had also said something else.

  “I believe you should tell Amberdrake.” Cinnabar’s words haunted her. Who and what was this man, that she should tell him what she had not told anyone, the secret of her past that she would rather remained buried? Why would Cinnabar say anything so outrageous?

  And most of all, why did she want to follow the Lady’s advice?

  Oh, gods-what am I going to do? What am I going to say?

  She could say nothing, of course, but Amberdrake was skilled at reading all the nuances of the body, and he would know she was upset about something. He had a way of getting whatever he wanted to know out of a person, as easily as she could extract a thorn from the claw of one of her charges.

  I could stop going to him. I could find someone else to handle the rest of the treatments.

  But she was not just seeing him for her back, and she knew it. Not anymore. Amberdrake was the closest thing she had to a real friend in this place, and what was more, he was the only person she would ever consider telling her secrets to. So why not do it?

  Because she didn’t want to lose that friendship. If he heard what she was, how could he have any respect for her, ever again?

  Then there was the rest of what Lady Cinnabar had said. “Get rid of that Conn Lev as creature and stand on your own.” Oh, Cinnabar was right about that; she and Conn were no more suited for each other than a bird and a fish. And dealing with Conn took more out of her than anyone ever guessed.

  She had always known, whether or not Conn was aware of it, that her liaison with the mage was temporary. She had thought when she first accepted his invitation to “be his woman” that it would only last until Ma’ar overran them all, and killed them. A matter of weeks, months at the most. But Urtho was a better leader than anyone had thought, and she found herself living long past the time when she had thought she would be dead.

  Then she had decided that sooner or later Conn would grow tired of her, and get rid of her. But it seemed that either most women around the Sixth knew the mage for the kind of man he was-an overgrown child in many ways, with a child’s tantrums and possessiveness-or else he perversely prized her. He made no move to be rid of her, for all his complaints of her coldness.

  Then again, he was a master of manipulation, and one of the people he manipulated as easily as breathing was her. She didn’t like unpleasantness; she hated a scene. She was easily embarrassed. He knew how to threaten, what to threaten her with, and when to turn from threats to charming cajolery.

  On her part the relationship originally had been as cool and prearranged as any marriage of state. He supplied her with an identity, and she gave him what he wanted. They maintained their own separate gear and sleeping quarters; they shared nothing except company.

  But you don’t allow someone into your bed without getting some emotional baggage out of it. She was wise enough to admit that. And even though she would have been glad enough to be rid of him, as long as he claimed he had some feelings for her, and he needed her, she knew she would stay. Not until he walked away would she feel free of him.

  Amberdrake had skillfully pried that out of her already-and in so doing, had made her face squarely what she had not been willing to admit until that moment. She didn’t want Conn anymore, she heartily wished him out of her life, and the most he would ever be able to evoke in her was a mild pity. There was no passion there anymore, not even physical passion. Amberdrake gave her more pleasure than he did, without ever once venturing into the amorous or erotic. And now Cinnabar, saying she should be rid of him-

  Cinnabar must think he’s a drain on me, on my resources. I suppose he is. Every time he comes back from the front lines, there’s a scene. I spend half the night trying to make him feel better, and I end up feeling worse. I find myself wishing that he would die out there, and then I’m torn up with guilt for ill-wishing him. . . .

  Oh, it was all too tangled. Amberdrake could help her sort it all out-but if she kept her appointment, Amberdrake would learn her secrets.

  Her stomach hurt. Her stomach always hurt when she was like this. Amberdrake knew everything that there was to know about herbal remedies, maybe he would have something for her stomach as well as her back, and if she just kept the subject on that she could avoid telling him anything important.

  She put the bit of leather aside, and got up off her bedroll, pushing aside the tent flaps to emerge into the blue-gray of twilight.

  Time to go. There was no place to run from it now. And no point in running.

  Amberdrake knew the moment that Winterhart slipped through the tent door that there was something wrong. Even if he hadn’t been an Empath, even if he were still an apprentice in the various arts of the kestra’chern, he’d have known it. She moved stiffly, her muscles taut with tension, and the little frown-line between her brows was much deeper than usual. Her eyes looked red and irritated, and she held her shoulders as if she expected a blow to come down
out of the sky at any moment.

  “Is Conn Levas back yet?” he asked casually, assuming that the mage was the reason for her tension.

  But the startled look of surprise, as if that was the very last thing she had expected him to say, told him that the shot had gone far wide of the mark. Whatever was troubling her, it was not her erstwhile lover.

  “No,” she replied, and turned her back to him, modest as always, to disrobe so that he could work on her back. “No, the foot-troops are still out. They aren’t doing well, though. I suppose you know that Ma’ar is pushing them out of the Pass again. The Sixth got hit badly, and the Fourth and Third sent in gryphons with carry-nets to evacuate the wounded. It was bad on the landing field.”

  “So I’d heard.” Skan was out there now; as the only gryphon who could keep up with Zhaneel, Urtho had assigned him to fly protective cover on her. No standard scouting raids for them; they only flew at Urtho’s express orders, usually bearing one or more of his magic weapons or protections. The Black Gryphon had already given Amberdrake a terse account of the damage, before going out on a second sortie. “After a day like today, I’m not surprised that you’re tense.”

  “And my stomach’s in a knot,” she said, wrapping herself in a loose robe, before she turned back to face him. Her expression mingled wry hope with resignation, as if she hated to admit that her body had failed her. “I don’t suppose you have anything for that, do you?”

  “Assuming you trust my intentions,” he countered, trying to make a joke of it. “I’d prescribe an infusion of vero-grass, alem-lily root, and mallow. All of which I do have on hand. You aren’t the only person who’s come to me today with your muscles and stomach all in knots.”

  Her eyes widened a little, for all three herbs were very powerful, and had a deserved reputation for loosening the tongue and giving it free rein-and for loosening inhibitions as well. “I don’t know,” she replied hesitantly. “Then again, between the state of my back and my stomach, maybe I’d better.”