The Black Gryphon

She blinked at him for a moment. Then she asked him something completely unexpected. “You come back?” she asked hopefully. “You come play again?” And she looked up at him with wide and pleading eyes.

Oh, high winds and rock slides! She may not know the emotion for what it is, but she’s lonely. What can I tell her?

He ground his beak for a moment, then told her the truth. “I don’t know, Kechara. I have to talk to Father first. He makes the rules, you know.”

She nodded, as if she could accept that. “I ask Father, too,” she said decisively. “I tell him I need you to play with me.”

Then, as he paused at the door, she reared up on her haunches and spread her forelegs wide. It was such a weird posture that at first Skan could not even begin to imagine what she was up to. But then he understood. She was waiting for a hug, a human hug. The kind she always got from “Father” when he left her.

That simple gesture told Skan all he needed to know; whatever Urtho’s motives were in keeping this little thing here, they were meant to be kindly, and he gave her all the affection he could.

It was awkward, but somehow Skan managed. Then he gave her a real gryphonic gesture of parting, a little preening of her neck hackles.

It would have been much worse if she had put up some kind of a fuss about his leaving, but she didn’t; she simply waved a talon in farewell, and turned and trotted back to her nest room, presumably to play by herself.

She’s learned that fussing doesn’t change anything, he decided, as he walked stu

The lights dimmed behind him as he made his way down the stairs; slowly, for staircases were difficult for gryphons to descend, although climbing them was no real problem. When he got to the bottom, he was very tempted to try one of the other doors in the antechamber.

Stupid gryphon! Don’t tempt your luck. You’ll be in enough trouble with Urtho as soon as you bring up Kechara.

Oh, dear. That made another problem. How do you bring up Kechara without revealing you got into a locked room? And if you got into a locked room, how much else would he guess you got into?

The guard nodded to him and gri

And he hadn’t come in with fresh scratches on him.

But the guard had just offered him a fabulous excuse for his appearance, and he seized it with gratitude. “More than damned hard,” he grumbled. “I must’ve slipped and fallen once for every dozen steps. And would the others wait? Hell, no! They were in such a hurry to scuttle off with their Healer-stuff that they didn’t even notice I was lagging!”

The guard laughed sympathetically and patted Skan on the shoulder. “Know how you feel,” he replied. “With this gimpy leg I can’t even climb one staircase good anymore. Never much thought about how you critters managed until I got that crossbow bolt through the calf.”

Some chat might not be a bad cover at the moment, and I don’t really have anywhere to go . . . Tamsin and Ci

“Kyree and hertasi can manage all right,” he replied. “But us, the dyheli, the tervardi-staircases are hell, and other things are worse! You’d think with all the veterans hurt that can’t walk that they’d put in some ramps. But no-“

The guard sighed. “Well, that’s the way of the world, everybody sees it according to what he needs. If a man don’t need a special way up the stairs, why, he don’t think nobody else needs it, neither.”

Skan snorted. “You figured that right, brother! And my bloody aching head agrees with you, too!”

“Best run along and catch up with those Healer friends of yours, an’ make ‘em patch you up,” the guard advised. “Maybe then they’ll think twice before they rush off an’ leave you alone!”

Skan laughed and promised he would do that; the guard limped on his rounds with a friendly wave as Skan headed back toward camp, and Healer’s Hill.

All right, I’d better get this all in order. We’ll get the fertility spell straight; I’ll pass it on to the rest. Then, once I know everyone has it-I’ll come to Urtho and tell him what I did. That’s when I bring up Kechara. That would take a few days at the best, and his conscience bothered him about leaving her alone in there for so long-

But she’s been alone in there for all of her life. A few days, more or less, will make no difference.

There was an additional complication, however. What if Urtho made a visit to his-well-pet? If Kechara happened to mention Skan-

I’ll have to hope that she doesn’t. Or if she does, Urtho just thinks she’s talking about the models.

Complications, complications.

Stupid gryphon. You’re trying to do too much too fast. But doesn’t it need to be done? If not you, then who?

The walk down to the camp was a long one. There weren’t many people out at this time of night. Most of the ones still awake were entertaining themselves; the rest had duties, or were preparing their gear for combat tomorrow. It was a peculiar thing, this war between wizards; the front lines were immensely far away, and yet the combat troops bivouacked here, below Urtho’s stronghold, in the heart of his lands.

It was the Gates that made such things possible, the Gates and the gryphons.

The first meant that Urtho could move large numbers of troops anywhere at a moment’s notice. There were even permanent Gates with set destinations that did not require anything more than a simple activation spell, something even an apprentice could manage. Because of this, Urtho’s troops were highly mobile, and the problem of supply lines was virtually negated.

Of course, that was true for Ma’ar’s men as well. The defender had the advantage in a situation like this. A mage setting up a Gate had to know the place where he intended it to go, and Urtho or his mages knew every inch of the territory he was defending. Ma’ar’s mage could only set up Gates where they had been, places that they knew, so Ma’ar’s Gates would always be behind his lines.

There had even been one or two successful forays early on in the campaign where Urtho had infiltrated troops behind Ma’ar’s. That, however, would only work once or twice before your enemy started setting watches for Gate-energies, in order to blast the Gate as it was forming. This tended to cost your mage his life as the energies lashed him at a time when he was wide open and vulnerable. That was why Urtho’s forces didn’t do that any more, and there wasn’t a mage in the entire army who would obey an order to do so.

Not that Shaiknam hasn’t tried. But only once.

The gryphons were the other factor that made this war-at-a-distance possible. Aloft, they could cover immense stretches of territory, and their incredibly keen vision allowed them to scout from distances so high that not even the makaar would challenge them unless they were in the very rare situation where they were at a greater altitude than the incoming gryphon. Makaar were not built for the winds and the chill of high altitude; there were gryphons who were, though they were not the best fighters.

And there were gryphons built for long-distance scouting who had ways of overcoming their physical shortcomings that made them poor choices for combat. The one who could do it best was Zhaneel.

One gryphon, anyway. Maybe . . . one day, more.

As Skan took to the air for the brief flight to Healer’s Hill, his sharp eyes picked out the glow of the tent snared by Tamsin and Ci