Valdemar 09 - [Mage Winds 01] - Winds of Fate Page 16

  With that tacit approval, Darkwind again shifted his burden to the ground, this time laying her on a stuffed grass-mat just inside Nera’s doorway. When he turned, the hertasi Elder had already rejoined his fellows, and was knee-deep in muddy water, weeding the rice. He might be old, but he had not lost any of his speed. That was how the hertasi, normally shy, managed to stay out of sight so much of the time in the Vale; they still retained the darting speed of that long-ago reptilian ancestor.

  Darkwind pushed aside the bead curtain that served as a door during the day, shaded his eyes, and looked beyond the paddies for the first of the blue-flag flowers. The hertasi periodically changed the safe ways through the swamp, marking them with whatever flowering plants were blooming at the time, or with evergreen plants in the winter. After a moment he spotted what he was looking for, and made his way, dry-shod, along the raised paths separating the rice paddies.

  Dry-shod only for the moment. When he reached the end of the cultivated fields, he pulled off his boots, meant mostly for protection against the stones and brambles of the dryland, fastened them to his belt, and substituted a pair of woven rush sandals he kept with Nera.

  Rolling up the cuffs of his breeches well above his knees, he waded into the muddy water, trying not to think of what might be lurking under it. The hertasi assured him that the plants they rooted along the paths kept away leeches, special fish they released along the safe paths would eat any that weren’t repelled by the plants, and that he himself would frighten away any poisonous water snakes, if he splashed loudly enough, but he could never quite bring himself to believe that. It was very hard to read hertasi even when someone knew them well, and it was all too like their sense of humor to have told him these things to try and lull him into complacency.

  He could have gone around, of course, but this was the shortest way to get to the other side of the swamp, where the marsh drained off down the side of the crater-wall into the Dhorisha Plains. The swamp, barely within k‘Sheyna lands, ended at the ruins he sought—and when he had apportioned out the borders, he had made sure that both were within his patrolling area.

  One advantage of being in charge; I could assign myself whatever piece I wanted. Dawnfire gets the part facing on the hills that hold her friends, and I get the area that holds mine. Seems fair enough to me.

  Normally he didn’t have to get there by wading through the swamp. This was not the route he chose if he had a choice.

  The water was warm, unpleasantly so, for so was the heavy, humid air. A thousand scents came to his nostrils, most of them foul; rotting plants, stale water, the odor of fish. He looked back after a while, but the hertasi settlement had completely vanished in waving swamp-plants that stood higher than his head. He thought he felt something slither past his leg, and shuddered, pausing a moment for whatever it was to go by.

  Or bite me. Whichever comes first.

  But it didn’t bite him, and if there had been something there, it didn’t touch him again. He waded on, watching for the telltale, pale blue of the tiny, odorless flowers on their long stems, poking up among the reeds. As long as he kept them in sight, he would be on the path the hertasi had built of stone and sand amid the mud of the swamp. There were always two plants, one marking each side of the path. The idea was to stop between each pair and look for the next; while the path itself twisted among the reeds and muck, it was a straight line from one pair of plants to the next. And there were false trails laid; it wasn’t a good idea to break away from the set path and take what looked like a more direct route, or a drier one; the direct route generally ended in a bog, and the “dry” one always ended in a patch of quicksand or a sinkhole.

  Once again he was sweating like a panicked dyheli, and that attracted other denizens of the swamp. Below the water all might be peaceful, but the hertasi could do nothing about the insects above. Darkwind had rubbed himself with pungent weeds to enhance his race’s natural resistance to insects, but blackflies still buzzed about his eyes, and several nameless, nearly invisible fliers had already feasted on his arms by the time he reached dry land again.

  There was no warning; the ruins simply began, and the marsh ended. Darkwind suspected that the marsh had once been a large lake, possibly artificial, and the ruins marked a small settlement or trading village, or even a guard post, built on its shore. If whatever cataclysm had created the Plains had not altered the flow of watercourses hereabouts, he would have been very surprised—and after that, it would have been logical for the lake to silt up and become a swamp. He climbed up on the stones at the edge of the swamp, slapping at persistent insects, vowing silently to take the long way around on his return.

  He looked up to make sure of Vree, and found the bondbird soaring overhead, effortlessly, in the cloud-dotted sky.

  Not for the first time, he wished for wings of his own.

  :And what would you do with them, little one?: asked a humor-filled mind-voice. :How would you hide and creep, and come unseen upon your enemies, hmm?:

  :The same way you do, you old myth,: he replied. :From above.:

  :Good answer,: replied Treyvan, and the gryphon dove down out of the sun, to land gracefully on a toppled menhir in a thunderous flurry of backwinging, driving up the dust around him and forcing Darkwind to protect his eyes with his hand until the gryphon had alighted.

  “Sssso, what brings you to our humble abode?” Treyvan asked genially, somehow managing to do what the tervardi could not, and force human speech from his massive beak.

  “I need advice, and maybe help,” Darkwind told him, feeling as small as the hertasi as he looked up at the perching gryphon. Those hand-claws, for instance, were half again as wide and long as his own strong hands, and their tips were sheathed in talons as sharp and black as obsidian. Treyvan jumped down from the stone, and his claws clenched and released reflexively as the gryphon changed its position before him, absentmindedly digging inch-deep furrows into the packed earth.

  “Advissse we will alwayss have forrr you, feather-lessss sson. Advissse you will take? That iss up to you,” Treyvan smiled, gold-tinged crest raising a little in mirth. “Help we will alwaysss give if we can, wanted orrr not.”

  Darkwind smiled, and stepped forward to grasp the leading edge of the great gryphon’s folded wing, and leaned in to run a hand through the spicy-scented neck feathers, seemingly unending in their depth. “Thank you. Where is Hydona?”

  “Sssearrrching for nessst-lining, I would guess.” Treyvan let a trace of his pride show through, fluffing his chest feathers and raising his tailtip.

  “So soon? When ... when will you make the flight?”

  “Sssoon, sssoon. You will be able to telllll....” Treyvan chuckled at Darkwind’s blush, then half-closed his eyes, and Darkwind felt the wing-muscles under his hand relax.

  It was easy—very easy—to fall under the hypnotic aura of the gryphon, a state of dreamy relaxation brought on by the feel of the soft, silky feathers, the faintly sweet scent, the deep-rumble of Treyvan’s faint purr. It was the gryphon himself who broke the spell.

  “You have need of usss, Darrrkwind,” he reminded the scout. The muscles in the wing retensed, and he stood, wings tucked to his side under panels of feathers. “Let usss go to Hydonaaa.”

  He turned and paced regally on a path winding deeper into the ruins. Darkwind had to hurry to keep up with his companion’s ground-eating strides.

  The gryphons had arrived here, in these ruins, literally out of the sky one day, when Darkwind was seven or eight. He’d claimed these ruins—then, well within the safe boundaries of k‘Sheyna territory—as his own solitary playground. There was magic here, a half-dozen ley-lines and a node, but the mages had decreed it safe; tame and unlikely to cause any problems. It was a good place to play, and imagine mysteries to be solved, monsters to conquer, magics to learn.

  Watching Treyvan’s switching tail, he recalled that day vividly.

  He had rounded a corner, the Great Mage investigating possibly dangerous territory and a
bout to encounter a Fearsome Monster, when he encountered a real one.

  He had literally walked into Treyvan, who had been watching his antics with some amusement, he later learned. All he knew at the time was that he had turned a corner to find himself face-to-face with—

  Legs. Very large legs, ending in very, very large claws. His stunned gaze had traveled upward; up the furry legs, to the transition between fur and feathers, to the feather-covered neck, to the beak.

  The very, very, very large, sharp, and wickedly hooked beak.

  The beak had opened; it seemed as large as a cave.

  “Grrr,” Treyvan had said.

  Darkwind had turned into a small whirlwind of rapidly pumping arms and legs, heading for the safe-haven of the Vale, and certain, with the surety of a terrified eight-year-old, that he was not going to make it.

  Somehow he had; somehow he escaped being pounced on and eaten whole. He had burst into the ekele, babbling of monsters, hundreds, thousands of them, in the ruins. Since he had never been known to lie, his mother and father had set up the alarm, and a small army of fighters and mages had descended on a very surprised—and slightly contrite—pair of gryphons.

  Fortunately for all concerned, gryphons were on the list of “friendly, though we have never seen one” creatures all Tayledras learned of some time in their teens. Treyvan apologized, and explained that he and Hydona were an advance party, intending to discover if these lands were safe to live and breed in. They offered their help in guarding k‘Sheyna in return for the use of the ruins as a nesting ground. The Elders had readily agreed; help as large and formidable as the gryphons was never to be disdained. A bargain was struck, and the party returned home.

  But all Darkwind knew was that he was huddling in his parent’s ekele, his knife clutched in his hand, waiting to find out if the monsters were descending on his home.

  Until his parents returned: unbattered, unbloody, perfectly calm.

  And when he’d demanded to know what had happened, his father had ruffled his hair, chuckled, and said, “I think you have a new friend—and he wants to apologize for frightening you.”

  Treyvan had apologized, and that had begun the happiest period of his life; when everything was magical and wondrous, and he had a pair of gryphons to play with.

  He hadn’t realized it at the time, but it hadn’t entirely been play. Treyvan and Hydona had taught him a great deal of what he knew about scouting and fighting, playing “monster” for him as they later would for their fledglings, teaching him all about dangers he had not yet seen and how to meet them.

  Now he knew, though he had not then, that they had chosen the ruins deliberately, for the magic-sources that lay below them. Magic energies were beneficial for gryphon nestlings, giving them an early source of power, for gryphons were mages, too. A different kind of mage than the Tayledras, or other humans; they were instinctive mages, “earth-mages,” Hydona said, using the powers about them deftly and subtly for defense and in their mating flights, for without a specific spell, a mating would not be fertile.

  That was what Treyvan had meant by “you will know;” when he and Hydona flew to mate for their second clutch, any mage nearby would know very well that a spell with sexual potency was being woven.

  The last time they’d risen, he’d been fourteen, and just discovering the wonders of Girls. Fortunately he had been alone, and there had been no Girls within reach....

  The offspring of that mating were six or seven years old now, fledged, but not flying yet, and still sub-adult.

  Pretty little things, he thought to himself, with a chuckle, though the term “little” was relative. They were bigger and stronger than he was. At fourteen he’d already acquired Vree, and the appearance of the gryphlets hadn’t appalled him the way it might have. Vree had looked much scrawnier and—well—awful, right out of the egg. Lytha and Jerven were born alive, and with a reasonable set of fluff-feathers and fur—and Treyvan hadn’t let him see them until their second or third day, when their eyes were open and they didn’t look quite so unfinished.

  The gryphons’ nest was very like an ekele, but on the ground, presumably to keep the flightless gryphlets from breaking their necks. The pair had created quite an impressive shelter from stone blocks, cleverly woven vegetation, and carefully fitted logs.

  As Darkwind neared it, he realized that it was bigger than it had been; it wasn’t until he got close enough to measure it by eye that the difference was apparent. From without it looked almost like a tent made of stone and thatch, with a roof quite thick enough to keep out any kind of weather; it looked very much as if the gryphons had dismantled and rebuilt it, keeping the same shape with an increase in size.

  He glanced in the door as Treyvan turned, a look of proprietary pride on his expressive face. Obviously he was waiting for a compliment. Inside, there were three chambers now, instead of the two Darkwind remembered; the fledglings‘, the adults’, and a barren one, which would probably be the new nursery. The other two were basically large nests, piled deep with fragrant grasses that the pair had gathered down on the Plain, and changed periodically.

  Treyvan’s neck curved gracefully, and he faced his human friend eye to golden eye. “Well?” he demanded. “Whaaat do you think?”

  “I think it’s magnificent,” Darkwind replied warmly—which was all he had time for, as the gryphlets heard and recognized his voice, and came tumbling out of their chamber in a ball of squealing fur-and-feathers. Darkwind was their favorite playmate—or plaything, sometimes he wasn’t entirely certain which. But he’d used Treyvan and his mate the same way as a child, so turnabout only seemed fair.

  Mostly ... they tried to be careful, but they didn’t always know their own strength—and they were very young. Sometimes they forgot just how long and sharp their claws and beaks were.

  They hit him together, Lytha high, Jerven low, and brought him down, both shrieking in the high-pitched whistles that served the gryphons for howls of laughter.

  Darkwind tried not to wince, but those whistles were enough to pierce his eardrums. I’ll be glad when their voices deepen. Human children are shrill enough as it is....

  Lytha grabbed the front of his tunic in her beak and “worried” it; Jerven “gnawed” his ankle. He struggled; at least they were big enough now that he didn’t have to watch what he did; he could fight against them in earnest and not hurt them, provided he didn’t indulge in any real, killing blows. They seemed to have improved in their “playing” since the last time; he’d needed a new tunic when Jerven got through with him. Treyvan watched them maul him indulgently for a moment, then waded in, gently separating his offspring from his friend, batting at them so that they rolled into the far corners of the chamber, shrieking happily.

  Darkwind did wince.

  Treyvan whistled something at them; they bounced to their feet and bounded out the door. Darkwind still wasn’t fluent in Gryphon, it was a very tonal language, and hard to master; but he thought it was probably the equivalent of “Go play, Darkwind needs to talk to Mother and Father about things that will bore you to sleep.”

  Treyvan shook his head, then turned, and settled himself into a graceful reclining curve, with his serrated, meat-rending bill even with Darkwind’s chin, bare inches away, gazing into the human’s face. “Your indulgenssss, old friend. They aaare veeeery young.”

  “I know,” he replied, picking himself up off the floor, and dusting himself off. “I distinctly remember doing the same thing to you.”

  Treyvan’s beak opened in a silent laugh. “Aaaah, but I wassss ssstill thissss ssssize, and you were much ssssmaller, yesss? The damagesss were much lessss.”

  “I think I’ll survive them,” Darkwind responded. “And I owe you both for more than just being gracious about playing ‘monster’ for me.”

  Treyvan shook his head. “Weee do not think of sssssuch,” he said immediately. “Thissss issss what friendssss do.”

  Darkwind remained stubbornly silent for a moment. “Wheth
er or not you think of it, I do,” he said. “You two helped me cope with Mother’s death; you’ve been mother and father to me since. It’s not something I can forget.”

  The memory was still painful, but he thought it was healing. It certainly wouldn’t have without their help.

  “Sssstill,” Treyvan objected. “You are uncle to the little onesss. At consssiderable perssonal damage.”

  He shrugged. “To quote your own words,” he replied wryly, “ ‘that’s what friends do.’ I think they’re well worth indulging. So, you’ve obviously enlarged the nest—and it’s wonderful, the new chamber doesn’t look tacked-on, it looks like it was built with the original. What else are you planning to do?”

  “We thought, perhapsssss, a chamber for the young lingssss to play in foul weather—”

  They discussed further improvements for a moment until a shadow passed over Darkwind, and he looked up at the sound of his name whistled in Gryphon-Then once again, he had to protect his eyes, as Hydona, Treyvan’s mate, landed in the clearing before the nest, driving up a stronger wind with her wings than Treyvan had.

  Darkwind rose to his feet to greet her. She was larger than Treyvan, and her dusty-brown coloration was a muted copy of his golden-brown feathers. There was more gray in her markings, and less black. Her eyes were the same warm, lovely gold as Treyvan‘s, though, and she was just as pleased to see him as her mate had been.

  She nuzzled him and gripped a shoulder gently, purring loud enough to vibrate his very bones. He buried his hands in her neck-feathers and scratched the place at the back of her neck she could never reach herself; the most intimate caress possible to a gryphon, short of mating behavior. She and Treyvan had been extraordinarily open with him, especially after the death of his mother, allowing him glimpses of their personal life that most humans were never allowed to see. They were, all in all, quite private creatures; of all the Tayledras, only Darkwind was considered an intimate friend. They had not even allowed Dawnfire, who was possibly the best of all the k‘Sheyna at dealing with nonhumans, to come that close to them.