'Uh-' the question took him by surprise, so he settled for a gallant answer. 'When I find a mate as magical as you are.'
' Flattererrr,' she replied, dryly. 'Well, when you do, perhapsss we'll all be rrready to ssssettle a new place together, ssso that we can keep eyesss on each other'sss sssmall onesss.' She looked over his head a moment, off into the distance. 'That isss the ultimate goal of ourrr being herrre, you know,' she said thoughtfully. 'We'rrre pioneersss, of a sssort. Our kind came from sssomewhere about herrre, you know, very, very long ago, and Trrreyvan and I are here now to sssee if it isss the time to rrreturn.'
' So you told me,' he said,' A long time ago.
She nodded as Treyvan sighed and lay down in the long grass with a long-suffering look.
Oh, yesss,' she said, ignoring her mate, with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. 'We arrre herrre to sssee if we can raissse little ones, brrring them into the magic of the land, and prosssper. If we do well, more will come. You know, ourrr people and yoursss arrre ancient parrrtnersss, from the daysss of the Kaled'a'in. The hertasi, too, and othersss you may not have everrr ssseen beforrre. It would be good if we could be partnersss again.' Another surprise; this time, a much greater surprise. He'd been astonished to learn that the gryphons were fluent in the ancient tongue of Kaled'a'in, a language so old that very few of either the Tayledras or the Shin'a'in could be considered 'fluent,' despite the fact that both their current languages were derived from that parent. But this revelation was a total surprise, for there was nothing in the Tayledras histories to indicate that the two species had been so close.
While he pondered the implications of that, Hydona reached over and gently bit Treyvan's neck. The male gryphon's eyes glazed and closed, and the cere above his beak flushed a brilliant orange-gold. Obviously, her mind was no longer on the far past, but on the immediate future.
And from the look on Treyvan's face, his mind had been there for some time.
Darkwind coughed. 'Uh-Hydona?
'Hmm?' the gryphon replied dreamily, her own eyes bright, but unfocused, her thoughts obviously joined to Treyvan's.
'Who's watching the little ones?' he asked. 'I can't; I've got to be out on patrol. I don't trust this quiet.'
'They'll be fine,' Hydona replied, releasing her mate long enough to reply. 'They've been told not to leave the nessst, and if they called, nothing could get to them beforrre we'd be on top of it.'
'Are you sure?' he persisted, but Hydona was nuzzling Treyvan's neck again and he knew there was no way he was going to get any sense out of her at the moment.
'They'll be fine,' she mumbled, all her attention centered once more on her mate.
Despite being under shielding, the sexual euphoria began penetrating even his careful defenses. This was obviously the time to leave.
As he picked his way through the ruins, a feeling of light-headedness overcame him for a moment. He looked back over his shoulder to see the two of them surging up into the cloudy sky, Hydona a little ahead of Treyvan. Even as he watched, they began an elaborate aerial display, tumbling and spiraling around each other, in a dance that was halfplanned and half-improvisation. This 'dance' itself was part of the spell; the rest-Treyvan's extravagant maneuvers-were designed to inflame himself and his mate.
And judging by the faint excitement he was feeling, even through his shields, it was having the desired effect.
As he turned his eyes back toward the ground, another moving speck caught his eye. Though it was very high, long experience enabled him to identify it as a red-shouldered hawk, one of the many breeds often used as bondbirds by the Tayledras.
That made him think reflexively of Dawnfire, whose bird was a redshouldered.
And that-given all that he'd been exposed to in the past few moments-made his thoughts turn in an entirely different direction than they had been tending.
Dawnfire rode the thoughts of her bondbird with the same ease that the bird commanded the currents of the sky. Theirs was a long partnership, of seven years' standing, for she had bonded to Kyrr at the tender age of ten. Darkwind's Vree had been with him only four or five years; the bird he had bonded to before that had been a shorter-lived shriekowl, gift of his older brother.
A shriek-owl was not a practical bird for a scout, but the tiny creatures were perfect for a mage, which was what Darkwind had been in that long-ago, peaceful time. Shriek-owls in the wild seldom lived beyond three years- the bondbird breed in general tripled that lifespan. That was nothing near like the expected lifespan of the scouts' birds-twenty-five to fifty years for the falcons, larger owls, and hawks, and up to seventy-five years for the rarer eagles. And shriek-owls were tiny; scarcely bigger than a clenched fist. They ate mostly insects, flew slowly, and generally flitted from tree to tree inside a very small territory. They could hardly be counted on to be an effective aid either on a scouting foray or to aid in an attack. But the owls were charming little birds, by nature friendly and
