Owlflight

of beads or bells were attached to the base of the tail-covert feathers or along the shafts of the crest-feathers or primaries. She had told Snowfire that this, too, was one of her skills - an uncommon one among trondl’irn. Kelvren was excessively proud of the fact that his attendant was so skillful a feather-painter. Snowfire himself had never seen a gryphon so decorated, and frankly, could not imagine it. The whole idea seemed very bizarre to him, as if Hweel should suddenly express a desire to be transformed with colors, like a firebird or a scarlet jay. But gryphons, being highly intelligent, had an appreciation for artistry and a particular eye for ornament. Since they were in a very real sense living sculptures by a long-lost master artist, Urtho, they felt rightly that they were canvasses for beauty to be worked upon. Snowfire wondered wryly if Urtho had bred them for vanity, or if this trait had been an “accidental” feature of these created creatures.

He hailed them both; Nightwind responded with a wave of her brush, and Kel with fanning the opposite wing from the one being tended to. He rounded the pool - as he had expected, Kel had pretty much emptied it, and it was now refilling from the spring - and climbed up the path to their rock.

“I take it from your expression that the situation is not exactly a good one?” Nightwind asked, as he sat down beside her with his back to the sun.

“In a word, correct,” he said, as Kel cocked an ear-tuft at him. He quickly summed up the most salient points of the questioning, and Kel snapped his beak and flattened his head-feathers.

“Not good,” the gryphon surmised. “It appearrsss that this trrruly isss an arrrmy, and not jussst a child’sss exagerrration. An arrrmy of rrreasssonable quality, asss well. Well arrnned, well trrrained.”

“And there is a high probability of a mage among them or leading them,” he reminded the gryphon. “My guess would be that he is leading them. And to be honest, we don’t have the strength to risk a direct or even indirect confrontation.”

Kelvren growled, but nodded reluctantly. “I do not like it, but you arrre, unforrrtunately, corrrect. But I sssshould like to venturrre a sorrrtie orrr two, ssstrrrictly ssspy missss-sionsss. At night, perrrrhapsss? With Hweel to guide, I am a good night-flyerrr.”

Snowfire gazed at the gryphon with surprise and admiration. “Now that is one of the better ideas I have heard today,” he replied, very pleased with the idea. “Hweel needs a certain amount of mental guidance, and you should have a backup, so that could be my role. I think I could manage that without needing to use a weapon.”

“That’s good, because until that wound is healed, you won’t be doing anything like shooting a bow,” Nightwind said, rather pointedly.

“I think,” Snowfire replied, with a bit of impatience, “that I am perfectly capable of figuring that out for myself.”

“And what about the time you went climbing right after a concussion, last year?” she asked.

He ignored her, which appeared to cause her a great deal of amusement. “Hweel and I could go in together as far as that clearing where I rescued the boy,” he said to Kelvren. “Then you and Hweel could go on alone. We can get some idea from the boy how near the trees grow to the village, but my impression was that you could easily use them as cover quite close in.”

Kel nodded, clearly satisfied by having something constructive to do.

“Now that you mention the boy,” Nightwind put in, “how badly did he take to being questioned?”

Snowfire winced. “Well, he left the meeting in tears, if that tells you anything.”

“No more than I expected,” she replied with a shrug. “Did he happen to let anything out that would give you a hint to those other emotional burdens he’s carrying?”

“Some of his background. His parents were trappers, and apparently disappeared a year or so ago. The people of his village were afraid of the Forest and have been since the mage-storms brewed up some nasty creatures out there. Evidently the encounters they had with the monsters gave them some severe shocks. So the villagers disapproved of anyone who would go into the Forest on a regular basis, claiming that the Storm-Changed monsters would track such people back to the village to attack them.”

“So what happened when the parents didn’t come back?” Nightwind asked. “What made the villagers take him in?”

“Guilt, maybe,” Snowfire hazarded. “He was apprenticed to the village mage, who evidently was not very good, and didn’t get much respect. Dar’ian did not really want to be a mage himself. And the villagers did their best to persuade him that his parents brought their fate on themselves.” He assumed that Nightwind could make her own assessment from those rather bald facts, probably much more accurately than he could.

“Oh, no - “ she said, looking at him with all traces of amusement gone. “No wonder he’s a tangle of unhappiness inside! I hardly dare think of what he must be going through.”

“I do need your insight,” he reminded her. “You are the only Empath among us, you know.”