in all the colors that Kyrr could see and she couldn't. For a moment, their striking beauty drove all other thoughts from her mind.
Then she wrenched her attention away, to look for anything that might be the Changechild. But there were only the gryphons and Darkwind, with no sign of anyone else, nor any of the signs that several days of occupancy would put around a hiding place in the ruins. Unless they were trying to conceal it-and they had no reason to-there would be distinctive signs of habitation.
Her anger faded and died, giving way to embarrassment.
Was I wrong? she wondered, as the gryphons fanned their wings in the sun, and she and Kyrr circled nearer. She had never felt so stupid in her life. She was just glad that she hadn't made this blunder in public.
Was I just a suspicious, jealous bitch? Was I overreacting to something that hadn't even happened?
It certainly looked like it. As Darkwind bade farewell to his two friends and slipped into the shadows of the forest, she very nearly sent Kyrr home. But sheer curiosity kept her aloft, circling above the two gryphons, and something about their colors nagged at the back of her mind, reminding her of a memory she couldn't quite put her finger on.
Then it came to her, as the larger of the two gryphons bit the neck of the smaller one in an unmistakable act of sexual aggression.
Gods and ancestors-they're going to mate. that's why he didn't want me around them.
For a moment, that was even more embarrassing. She felt as if she'd been caught watching the dyheli stallions and their mares for the sheer, erotic amusement of it...
But they'd had mating-flights before, lots of them, and Darkwind had never forbidden her to go near. What was it that was so different this time?
Curiosity overcame embarrassment. Whatever it was, she was going to find out.
As first one, then the other of the gryphons launched themselves into the air, she circled the sky around them, keeping them in sight at all times.
The male-Treyvan-wheeled and stooped and circled his mate, who hovered as he circled, followed him in his dives, and climbed beside him as he dove upward again. This was not simply 'flight'-this was an aerobatic dance, breathtaking and beautiful, and as impressive as anything she had ever witnessed.
The gryphons moved higher with every turn of the dance, gaining altitude as the dives grew shallower, the climbs steeper, and the circles more fluid and sensuous. They came even with Kyrr, then climbed above her, continuing to climb higher as she tried to follow. Finally they climbed into regions where she couldn't follow, leaving her gazing in wonder from below...Then there was just one single dot in the blue. And it was growing larger.
Dear gods-they mate on the wing, like eagles-For two minutes they fell together, claws locked in ecstasy- plummeting toward the earth so fast that the wind whistled in their feathers, eyes closedthey aren't going toat the last possible moment they broke apart, spreading their wings with a crack as they caught the air and shot upward again, side by side, beauty so incredible that she couldn't breathe-When the beauty of the moment was shattered by the thunk of a heavy crossbow firing, and a bolt streaking toward Hydona.
Dawnfire was watching the female at the moment that the broad-bladed bolt ripped through the air, changing its arc to meet the wing and shred it..
The female screamed as the wing collapsed; the uninjured wing flailed wildly as she fell in a barely-controlled spiral towards the ground.
The male's scream of rage echoed his mate's scream of pain; he did a wing-over and turned his climb into a killing dive, claws extended, as he followed his mate down.
The female crashed into the trees at the edge of the forest and was lost to sight; the male followed an eyeblink behind her.
Then a sudden flare of light from beneath the trees enveloped him in a tongue of white flame; he screamed again, but this time in pain, not in rage. The light held him suspended for a moment, as he went limp.
Then he simply dropped, unconscious, through the leafy roof of the forest.
All that saved him from a broken neck was the fact that it was a relatively short drop. anger filled her, white-hot anger, and the urge to kill.
Without stopping to think, Dawnfire sent Kyrr in a near-vertical stoop down after them; Kyrr's instinct was to shriek with rage, but Dawnfire clenched the hawk's beak shut. No point in warning whoever it was that had perpetrated this-outrage.
As she dove through the branches, snaking through the obstacle course with desperate adjustments of her
