The Black Gryphon

whole world’s in love, too!”

Amberdrake finally looked into his eyes, and patted his shoulder. “Sorry, old bird,” he said apologetically. “There’ve been too many people who want to make up some kind of romantic nonsense about the two of us being lifebonded, and just as many who want to turn me into the evil perchi who seduced the virtuous Winterhart away from the equally virtuous Conn Levas. I’m a little tired of both stories.”

Skan nodded, but for all of Amberdrake’s denials, there was very little doubt in his mind that Amberdrake and Winterhart were a lifebonded pair. Tamsin and Cinnabar said so, and they also said that those who were lifebonded tended to be able to recognize the state in others.

“It won’t be easy for either of them,” Tamsin had added pensively. “Lifebonding is hardly as romantic as the ballads make it out to be. Both of you have got to be strong in order to keep one from devouring the other alive. And you’d better hope that both of you are ready for the kind of closeness that lifebonding brings, especially between two people who are Empaths. You can’t fight or argue—you feel your partner’s pain as much as your own. You become, not two people precisely, but a kind of two-headed, two-personalitied entity, Tamsin-and-Cinnabar, and you’d better hope that one of you doesn’t suddenly come to like something that the other detests because you wind up sharing just about everything!”

“But when it finally works,” Cinnabar had added, with an affectionate caress for Tamsin, “it is a good thing, a partnership where strengths are shared and weaknesses minimized. I think that the good points all outweigh the bad, but I have reason to.”

Neither of them had bothered to point out the obvious—that Tamsin was as low-born as Cinnabar was high, and if there had not been a war on, there would have been considerable opposition to their pairing even from Cinnabar’s conspicuously liberal and broad-minded family. In fact, there had been terrible tragedies over such pairings in the past, which was why there were as many tragic ballads about lifebondings as there were romantic ones. Even Skan knew that much.

Well, if Amberdrake chose not to admit to such a tie with Winterhart, that was his business and not Skan’s. And if he preferred to make the relationship seem as casual as possible, well, that was only good sense.

“Can’t help what people say, and you know that Conn is the origin of most of the spiteful talk,” Skan observed. “And as for the people who are spreading it, well, you know who they are, too. If it wasn’t Winterhart, they’d make something up about you, and that’s a fact. I just want to know one thing. Are you happy! Both of you?”

Amberdrake nodded, soberly. “I think that we are as happy as any two people can be, in this whole situation. We aren’t unhappy, if that makes any difference.” He sighed and smoothed down the vanes of the feather, blending the old one into the new. “This is a war; she deals with the physical hurts, I try to deal with the emotional ones. Every day brings more grief; I help her through hers, and she helps me through mine. Maybe—”

He didn’t finish the sentence, but Skan knew the rest of it. It was the litany of everyone in Urtho’s forces, from the lowest to the highest. “Maybe someday, when the war is over—”

The war had gone on so long that there was an entire generation of gryphons now fighting who had never known anything but the war. That probably went for humans, too. The war had turned the society that older folks sometimes talked about completely upside down, and even Skan could not remember most of what his elders talked about with such longing. The repercussions of that were still going on.

“Is it set?” Skan asked finally, when the silence between them had lingered for some time. Amberdrake seemed to jar himself awake from some pensive dream, and checked the joint with a careful finger.

“I think so,” he replied. “Give yourself a good shake. If it holds through that, it’s set.”

Skan did so, gratefully. There was nothing like being told to hold still that made a gryphon wild for a good shake! Amberdrake laughed and backed out of the way as the gryphon roused all of his feathers and then shook himself so vigorously that bits of down and dust went everywhere.

The newly-imped feather held, feeling and acting entirely as strong as any of the undamaged ones. He grinned in satisfaction and saluted Amberdrake with a jaunty wave.

“Excellent as always, my friend,” he said cheerfully. “You should give up your wicked ways and become a full-time feather-artist.”

“Very few gryphons are as enthusiastic in the performance of their duties as you are,” Amber-drake countered. “I don’t think I’ve had to imp in more than a dozen feathers in the last two years, and most of those were yours. I’d starve for lack of work.”

“You could always tend hawks as well as gryphons,” Skan suggested.

“You could always pull a travel-wagon,” Amber-drake replied. “Thank you, no. I enjoy my duties. I would not enjoy tending psychotic goshawks, neurotic peregrines, murderous hawkeagles, and demented gyrfalcons. Have you ever heard the story about how you tell what a falconer flies?”

“No,” Skan replied, with ear-tufts up. Hawks and falcons fascinated him, because they were so outwardly like