Owlflight

enemy of unknown ability appearing to threaten us, without prior warning of any sort. It is quite enough to make anyone feel tempted to indulge in a fit of strong hysterics. I know I am tempted.”

Starfall stood up, shook out his robes, and tossed back his hair. “I hope you will not think badly of me if I leave the boy in the hands of you and Nightwind - “ he ventured. “I feel as if I am playing the coward myself by doing so, but - “

“But you have other things to do that involve the welfare of more than one boy,” Snowfire reminded him. “And you may think me ruthless in some ways, but if it meant preventing the rise of another Ma’ar, or even another Falconsbane, I would not hesitate to sacrifice myself, the boy, and anyone else I could get to volunteer.”

“I think you would have a surprising number of volunteers,” Starfall replied. “And you are right; I do have a task to complete that cannot wait, regardless of my personal feelings. I am going to leave things in your hands, as usual. Now, more than ever, I need to get those matrices established.”

“You might consider locking the power to yourself,” Snowfire suggested, and as Starfall looked surprised, even shocked, he added, “There are no other Alliance mages living here to require access to it, you can key the rest of us into it if you really think it is necessary. This may prevent trouble. What can be locked securely can always be unlocked - but it cannot be stolen. That is one way to make sure this new mage cannot get at it, and one way to make sure that, if worst comes to worst, he must keep you alive. That would give time for help to come, should disaster befall and you come into captivity.”

“You have a point,” Starfall acknowledged, looking troubled and just a little queasy. Starfall had never had to face a situation like this before, and Snowfire felt very sorry for him. For all that Tayledras were sturdy folk, not all had grown up prepared to face an enemy in life-or-death struggle, and Adepts especially tended to stay toward the power management side of magic. “I’ll consider it. I would not have thought it possible for a mage to work Changes on humans under our current conditions; if he can do that, he may be able to do other unpleasant and unexpected things. That being so - he may be able to bypass anything but a true personal lock.”

As Starfall walked off in the direction of his “workplace,” Snowfire was left to contemplate the smaller problem of Darian.

He’s going to have to cry himself out again, and he hasn’t yet gotten to the point where he’s going to consider my failure to appear at his side as an act of desertion. In fact, he may just be grateful to be left alone. Better to consult with Nightwind first - and possibly with Kelvren. The gryphon had managed to get himself wrought up to a high pitch of excitement at the notion that he might be the one to confront a second Ma’ar - as unlikely as that was - and it might do Kel some good to have something else to think about. Something like one small boy, parentless and friendless, with an apparent affinity for winged things.

So, the next obvious place to go was the rock at the rear of the valley where the gryphon liked to sun himself between scouting forays. And since he’d already been out once this morning, making certain that the barbarians had not gotten too close to the Tayledras’ perimeter, he would definitely be there.

The spring that watered this valley had been made to serve many creative purposes; its water had been divided into several channels that gave everyone access to a thread of stream at the very least. Tayledras liked the sound of running or falling water, and preferred to live in the midst of it. Lacking the lovely, secluded spaces of a Vale, everyone in the team had made up for - or hertasi had made up for - that lack by creating a scrap of water garden for him- or herself. Some had constructed tiny pools with a single water lily or a stand of reeds and a tiny singing-frog, some preferred miniature waterfalls and gurgling brooks filled with stones, and Nightwind had made a clever little aqueduct and water wheel that powered an ever-changing series of frivolous and colorful whirligigs. But the greater part of the water could be diverted to fill two pools, one to be used only for washing, the other for swimming. The former was emptied when the water was dirty into a sand-filter so that the water that sank into the earth was cleansed. Since there was no natural hot spring here, the Tayledras were making do with a steambath. Kelvren, being a fastidious, gryphon, made use of the swimming or washing pool on a daily basis, but could not be persuaded into the steam-hut.

Kelvren’s daily bath was an occasion of much splashing and generally emptied the pool. When every feather on his body was soaked, he would shake himself out, thus ensuring that anyone and anything near by that was not already drenched would receive a fair share of the spray. Then he would flap laboriously to a smooth rock high above the pool, one of the few places in the valley that received sun for most of the day. There he would sit and preen until he considered every feather to be perfectly groomed, at least in a serviceable manner; after that his trondl’irn could do decorative and restorative tendings in the evening.

By checking the angle of the sun, Snowfire reckoned that Kelvren would be about halfway through the grooming process and damp, but not wet. Gryphons, being more complicated and imperfect creatures than the bondbirds, occasionally suffered some deficiencies, and one of the more common was a tail gland that produced an insufficient quantity of oil to keep the feathers healthy and weatherproof. That was Kelvren’s problem, and it was one of Nightwind’s duties as his trondl’irn to make up for that lack. So she would be with him, adding touches of very light, fragrant oil to the shafts of his larger feathers with a small artist’s paintbrush. After that, it was his job to preen it into the barbs. An odd task, but then, caring for gryphons evidently involved a great many odd tasks.

Snowfire walked down the winding paths that threaded the encampment with a lengthened stride that allowed him to move quickly without appearing to hurry. He soon reached the end of the valley and as he came around the last vine curtain and out into the full sunlight beyond the trees, he saw Nightwind sitting beside Kelvren on the gryphon’s favored perch. She was the only person in the entire group who had the same raven-wing-black hair as their Shin’a’in cousins, along with the golden complexion and intense blue eyes. She was not tall, but she held herself so well that she gave the impression of being taller than she was. Her finely-sculptured face reminded him a little of a vixen. She did indeed have a tiny paintbrush in one hand, and a pot in the other, all her attention concentrated on the primaries and secondaries of the wings he had stretched out over her lap like a great, feathered blanket. It looked for all the world as if she were gilding or painting the great bird.

In fact, she could have been painting him; for special occasions, besides wearing body- and leg-jewelry, the gryphons often had their feathers bleached, then dyed or painted, and sometimes strings