Owlflight

have extra medicine on hand, and I never have enough time to make all that I want. Now, I want you to sit down for a moment until that medicine takes effect. I don’t think you’ll have an unusual reaction, but it’s better to wait a moment and see.”

Darian obeyed, although he didn’t expect to feel anything more than he did with Justyn’s medicines. He just hoped this potion would make some of the pain go away quickly, without slowing him down too much. Justyn’s potions generally didn’t do too much unless he drank so much he went from “sick” to “asleep” without much warning. At the moment, it felt as if someone inside his skull was trying to pound his way out.

“Look - “ Snowfire said, pointing up at the sky. “There’s a gyre; it must be one of ours, it’s too big to be one of the wild ones around here.”

Darian followed his pointing finger, squinting, until he made out the gray-and-white bird against the gray- and-white clouds, a dot moving so fast that Darian wondered how Snowfire could tell it was a forestgyre, much less that it was bigger than the wild ones. “Are the wild ones around your Vale as big as the bondbirds?” he asked with surprise.

“Most of them are bondbirds - or of bondbird stock, anyway,” Snowfire replied, still watching the bird, shading his eyes with his hand. “There are usually far more birds around the Vales than there are people to bond with, because we need a large breeding pool of each species to keep the stock healthy. The adult birds are polite to us, though rather standoffish, unless as adults they decide that they want to bond rather than continuing to be wild. Sometimes that happens, especially in the larger species, like eagle-owls and hawk-eagles - “ He winced. “And, Goddess help us, bondbird eagles themselves. We have two species of eagles that are bondbirds, the Black and the Golden, and a color-morph of the Golden that looks red - they almost never bleach out white, since I’ve never known an Adept-class mage to fly one. Not too many people of any sort fly eagles for that matter; not too many can carry one. They aren’t as greatly oversized, proportionately, as the smaller species - bondbird merlins are about the size of wild tiercel peregrines, just as an example - but they are very, very big and heavy. There is one, and I mean one k’Vala Tayledras who flies a Black eagle, and he’s the blacksmith. That should tell you something.”

Darian thought about the shoulders on the smith at Errold’s Grove, and how much he could carry and lift, and nodded solemnly. He tried to picture carrying a bird bigger than Hweel, and couldn’t. It must be like carrying a barrel of flour on your shoulder, he thought. “How does someone get a bondbird, then?” he asked curiously. Not that he thought he’d ever get one, but it was more likely than being Chosen by a Companion.

“Either an adult picks you out, or, more often, the adult parents pick you as the bondmate for one of their offspring. If the adults are bonded to someone, they let that person know who the eyas is going to, and if that person has experience with downy baby birds, very often they co-parent with the eyas’s new bondmate. If not, they wait until the little one is fledged, and lead him to you.” Snowfire turned his attention from the sky to smile at Darian. “That’s how I got Hweel; he blundered down out of a tree behind his parents, landed tail over head, fluffed all his feathers, and told me with the solemnity of a Kal’enedral that he was ready for me.”

“Does anybody have more than one bondbird?” Darian asked, wishing he could have seen that moment.

“Sometimes. One of us has an owl and a merlin for day and night scouting, I know of someone with a whole flock of ravens, and there are others. And sometimes your bond-bird’s mate may decide she wants to bond with you, too.” Snowfire raised an eyebrow. “Hweel says his mate is considering it, bonding with me, that is.”

“Hweel has a mate?” Darian replied, feeling oddly excited at the idea, though he didn’t know why. “Where is she?”

“Back at the Vale, teaching the youngster to hunt. I wouldn’t have left if there were still young in the nest, but by the time we were ready to go, the young one was fledged. Eagle-owls lay their eggs in deep winter; they’re hatched and fledged by the time most birds are going to nest, and once they’re no longer in the nest, they don’t need their father unless there’s more than one to teach to hunt.” Snowfire crossed his arms over his chest, and gave Darian a measuring look. “Now, you’ve spent plenty of time in the forest, can you guess why they’d do things that way?”

“Uh - “ Darian thought hard. “They build up for egg-laying in fall, when there’s a lot of dumb young animals on their own for the first time. Then they sit the eggs in winter, when there isn’t quite as much to eat but they also aren’t going to have to eat as much, then they have babies to feed in deep winter when there starts to be winter- kills and cold-kills lying around?”

“Good!” Snowfire applauded. “Then, obviously, it’s a good time to teach the youngsters to hunt when there are litters of very young and extremely stupid young rats, rabbits and squirrels about - not to mention the odd snake or duckling.”

“Do you have a bondbird?” Darian asked Nightwind, curiously.

She broke into peals of laughter. “Mercy, no!” she managed after a moment. “Trust me, the gryphons are more than enough for any poor trondi’irn to keep up with! Besides, with my temperament, I’d likely end up with something like a raven or a crow, and a bird with that much mischief in him would never be able to resist snatching at gryphon ear-tufts and jewelry, and there would never be any peace! How is your head?”

“It’s - fine!” he said in surprise, realizing that his headache had vanished without his noticing.

“That’s good, because you promised to help Ayshen with washing-up, and he’ll be expecting you about now,” Snowfire reminded him. “Now you’ll be able to talk to him - you might just go up and remind him of your promise and surprise him. There isn’t anything about the Tayledras that Ayshen doesn’t know - “