The Black Gryphon

Amberdrake dropped herb-packed cloth pouches into the kettle, and spoke gently. “Faster than any other gryphon; that is wonderful in itself. How much faster, Zhaneel?”

“A third faster. I fly the circuit alone.” Amber-drake raised an eyebrow in surprise and appreciation. “I was at fifth-cloud height,” she continued. Half again higher than other gryphons fly on patrol-even more interesting. “And I found makaar. There were three, leaving our territory. They had to be stopped somehow, they must have been spying. But I can’t Mindspeak well-I couldn’t call for help. So I dove on them and fought them. It didn’t matter if I died stopping them.”

Amberdrake’s thoughts ran quickly, despite the practiced, impassive expression on his face. She means that. She means that if she died trying, that was better than living. It’s plain why she said she wasn’t brave. She was suicidal. And she wanted her death to mean something. He took a deep breath and smoothed back his hair.

“Zhaneel, I’ve known many warriors, many shaman and priests and High Mages. So many of them have felt inadequate, and I’ve spoken to them as I am doing to you, dear sky-lady. When warriors feel afraid they lack something, it is only because they are forgetful. They have forgotten how capable they truly are.” He settled down on the bed beside her and caressed her brow as she listened. “If you were anyone besides Zhaneel-lovely, powerful, sleek Zhaneel-you would have gone for help, or flown away frightened, or attacked the makaar and failed. You succeeded wholly because of who and what you are, and by the power of your mind as well as your body. That is no small thing, given that some gryphons I know have no more brains than an ox.”

Again, he held up the token and gently touched it to her beak. “And now you have this, given by Urtho’s own hand. Do you know how rare that is?” She shook her head, humanlike, indicating she didn’t. “It’s very rare, Zhaneel, very unusual. It shows that you are exceptionally good, dear one, and not a freak. Not misborn. And far from worthless.”

“Doesn’t matter,” she croaked. “Everyone thinks I am.”

“Everyone didn’t stop three makaar, and everyone didn’t get this token.” He shook his head, certain that he had her attention now. “Sometimes ‘everyone’ can be wrong, too. Didn’t ‘everyone’ say that Stelvi Pass was impregnable?”

Her ear-tufts rose just a little, and she bobbed her beak once in cautious agreement.

He considered her; her build, her very look. “You are different, Zhaneel, just as I am different from my own people. And when I came here, I felt a little like you do-no, a lot like you do. I was scorned simply because of who I was, and what I do. The Healers wouldn’t accept me because I was kestra’chern. The kestra’chern were wary of me because I could Heal. Yet as I saw them dance away from me, I studied the moves of their dance.” Amberdrake smiled again as Zhaneel relaxed some more and gazed at him, an enraptured raptor listening to a storyteller. “They would look at me and I was a mirror. They could see parts of themselves in me, layers and shards of their own lives they’d tucked away in their sleeves. When I spoke, the Healers knew I had that kestra’chern insight and they felt threatened. And the other kestra’chern distrusted my station and Healing abilities. Yet through it all, there I was. Still myself, Zhaneel, just as you are still you. Those who push you down fear you. They are jealous of you. And you are stronger than you know.”

Zhaneel fidgeted, uneasy under his care-filled eyes. “Not strong, sir.”

He shook his head, and chuckled again. “Nah, sky-lady. Please don’t call me ‘sir,’ I am only Amberdrake-a friend. Ah.” He moved gracefully to the tea kettle and poured two cups, one large, one small, as he spoke. “If you were not strong, I would never have met you, Zhaneel. You would have been dead and forgotten, not honored by the Mage of Silence himself. And not noticed by the Black Gryphon.”

Zhaneel turned her head aside, and her nares flushed in embarrassment. Ah, so she’s as impressed with Skandranon as he is by himself. I’m still going to skin him later, but I’ll certainly use his image to Zhaneel’s advantage.

“Let me tell you of Skandranon, Zhaneel,” he began. “They make fun of Skandranon, too. He is called a glory-hound, reckless, arrogant, petulant, and some say he has the ma

She blushed again, and once more he wondered what went wrong in her childhood. Where were her teachers, her parents? The simple things he told her should have been the most basic concepts that a young gryphlet was raised on. Normally, though, was the key word. Amberdrake had seen a thousand souls laid bare, and knew well that what most called “normal” was anything but reality. He also felt the warmth in his chest and belly, and the simmering heat in his mind, that told him that the hunt was good this time-that this young Zhaneel was going to survive.

“Always, I hear how they have said this or that, and yet, I have never come face-to-face with one of them. Who are they anyway?” he asked-rhetorically, since he did not truly expect her to answer. “What gives them a monopoly on truth? Why are they any more expert than you or I?”

Another few steps, and he presented her with the larger cup. He marveled at the deftness with which she grasped the cup, with a single foreclaw-no-with a single hand. And she followed his gaze.

“No claws to speak of. Have to wear war-claws like silly kyree,” she murmured, and looked down again.

“Tchah, no. That’s no defect, sky-lady. See my arms and legs, my muscles? They match my body well, as the parts of your body match well. Now see my hands, and their proportion to my arms.” Her sight fixed on his hands.

And her eyes widened as she realized what she was seeing. “Your hands-are like mine.”

“Yes! Very similar. All the Powers made me this way.” He nodded his approval. “And Urtho created you, with exactly this shape to your foreclaws, your body, your wings. Do you believe that Urtho would be so incompetent as to create an ugly, mismatched creature?”

That went against the most basic of gryphonic tenets; even Zhaneel would not believe that. “No!”

He smiled; now he had her. “Of course, we all know that Urtho would not. He has always been thorough and detailed, with a vision unmatched by any Adept in history. No, I believe, Zhaneel, that you are something new. Sleek and small, fast-like a falcon. The others, they all have the shapes of broad-winged birds, of hawks and eagles-but you are something very different. Not a gryphon at all, but something new-gryphon and falcon. Gryfalcon.”

Her eyes sparkled with wonder, and she caught her breath, still holding the cup of steaming tea. She spoke the word that Amberdrake had just made up, testing it on her tongue as she would try a sweet apple or cold winter wine. “Gryfalcon.”

This was going so much better than a candlemark ago. Amberdrake took a sip of his cup of tea and luxuriated in the play of flavors-rich and bitter, sweet and acidic, each in turn. Complex blends that suited the mood of a complex problem.

Outside the tent, dusk had darkened to night as they talked further, and Zhaneel had told him, in words that faltered, of her parents’ fate. They had both been killed on what should have been a low-risk mission; once again, the war had hungered, and had fed as all things must feed. Zhaneel had been left alone, a fledgling cared for thereafter by a succession of foster parents and Trondi’irn who felt no particular affection for her. One by one, they changed or disappeared, and the memories of her parents became a soft-edged memory of nurturing acceptance, a memory so distant it came to seem like a dream or a tale, having nothing to do with her reality.