social-in the wild they nested several to a tree-and the perfect bird for a mage who only needed a bird to be occasional eyes and ears and to pass messages. A mage did not necessarily need to bond to his bird with the kind of emotional closeness that a scout did, nor did he need a bird with that kind of long expected lifespan. All of the mages that Dawnfire knew that she aed, personally, did bond closely with intelligent birds, but it was not as necessary for them as it was for scouts.
Scouts had to develop a good working, partner-like relationship with their birds, and that required something with a long anticipated lifespan.
Scouts spent as much as a year simply training their birds, then it took as much as four or five more years to get the partnership to a smooth working relationship. Like the scouts, the lives of the bondbirds were fraught with danger. There had already been casualties among the birds, and Darkwind had warned his corps to expect more. Their enemies knew the importance of the birds, as well as the impact a bird's violent death had on his bondmate, and often made the birds their primary targets.
Dawnfire tried not to think about losing Kyrr, but the fact was that it could happen.
Darkwind's father Starblade had lost his bird in circumstances so traumatic that the mage had returned to the Vale in a state of shock, and actually could not recall what had occurred. Since he had been investigating a forest fire ignited by firebirds, and since the birds themselves seldom reacted so violently that they set their homes aflame, the other Tayledras assumed that whatever had frightened the firebirds had probably caught and killed Starblade's perlin falcon. That had been a set of very strange circumstances, actually; Dawnfire remembered it quite vividly because her mother had been one of the scouts who had found the mage and had talked it over one long night with friends in her daughter's presence.
There had been a sortie that had drawn most of the fighters off when word of the fire had reached the Vale. Starblade had gone out to take care of it.
He had then vanished for many days. He was found wandering, dazed, within the burned area, near nightfall on the third day. His bondbird was gone, and he himself could not remember anything after leaving the Vale. Injured, burned, dehydrated, no one was surprised at that-but when days and weeks went by and he still could not remember, and when he chose to bond again with a crow, from a nest outside of the Vale-some people, like Dawnfire's mother, wondered...Darkwind had once said something after another of his angry confrontations with his father-something about his feeling that Starblade had changed, and was no longer the father he had known. He blamed the change on the disaster, Dawnfire wasn't so sure.
Starblade had not been that close, emotionally, to Darkwind's mother, though Darkwind had never accepted that. Dawnfire was not at all certain that Starblade would have been so badly affected by her death that his personality had changed. She blamed the change on the death of Starblade's bird. It seemed to her and her own mother that Starblade had become silent and very odd afterward. And that crow he'd bonded to was just as odd...She pulled her thoughts away from the past and returned them to the present. She was off-duty today and had decided to indulge her curiosity in something.
Darkwind's gryphons.
She had been terribly curious about them for a very long time, and had even gone to visit them a time or two. But the gryphons, while still being cordial and polite, had made one thing very clear to her: the only visitor they truly welcomed was Darkwind.
That-had hurt. It had hurt a very great deal, and not even Darkwind knew how much it hurt. She brooded on that, as Kyrr neared the the ruins, coming in high over the forest.
I've never had anyone rebuff me like that, she thought resentfully. Every other nonhuman I've ever met seems to think I'm a good person to deal with and to have as a friend. Tervardi, kyree, dyheli, hertasi-even firebirds, teyll-deer, wolves, the nonsentients... why don't the gryphons want me around?
She'd asked that question any number of times. Darkwind wouldn't tell her a great deal, citing the gryphons' desire for privacy. That had only inflamed her curiosity-at the same time, she felt she had to respect that need. But why wouldn't they be willing to meet with her, once in a while, away from their nest? Why was it that only Darkwind was worthy of their attention?
Over the months and years, the unfulfilled questions ate at her, and she had slipped over to the ruins more than once to watch the gryphons and their offspring from a distance. Darkwind had never forbid her that; in fact, he said once that she had eased one of his worries, helping to keep an eye on the young ones while the adults were off hunting.
They had to spend a great deal of time in hunting; they were very large, flighted carnivores, like the birds- of-prey they resembled, and they needed a lot of meat. They ranged very far in order to keep from overhunting any area, and they often spent an entire morning or afternoon away from the nest. Dawnfire had taken this tacit approval as permission to watch them whenever she wasn't otherwise occupied, so long as she did it from afar, feeling that she might be able to earn the acceptance of the adults with her unofficial guardianship of their offspring.
But then, a week or so ago, Darkwind had specifically forbidden her to go anywhere near the ruins today, without giving any explanation.
And that had driven her curious nature wild, as well as rousing resentment in her that he had simply ordered her as if it was his right.
He probably shouldn't have told me, she admitted to herself, as her bird soared just at the border of the gryphons' territory. If he hadn't told me, I probably wouldn't be doing this-But then anger at him and his authoritative attitude burned away that thought-an anger nearly a week old, born of resentment, and nurtured on
