Crossroads and Other Tales of Valdemar

sssee to yourrr ssstudentsss and herrrd thossse two without you forrr a while.”

“Hurrrh. Arrre you sssurrre you want me away?” Treyvan prompted.

“You can go away asss long asss you need to, loverrr,” Hydona purred. “becaussse I know who you’rrre coming back to.”

The rain had finally let up to just a haze and the boy had gotten the tent back up while Kelvren wobbled away through the field to relieve himself. He limped back, wings dragging in the tallgrass, and crawled into the tent. The gryphon bumped a wing and dislodged one of the four poles doing so, but the boy quickly sloshed around to prop it back up. Kelvren was almost turned completely over onto his stronger side, trying to get to some of his worst itches with his beak or talons when the boy said, “I’ll get your food, sir. Just wait right there.”

Kelvren openly growled.

“I’ll be herrre. Why would I want to leave thisss palace?” the gryphon snorted. “All the sssilk tapessstrrriesss and dancssing girrrlsss arrre rrreason enough to ssstay.”

“It’s not so bad, sir, just depends what you compare it to. That’s what I always tell myself.” He returned with the sack and plopped it on the slightly less muddy tent floor.

“Not ssso bad? I am sssoaked to the bone. I can barrrely walk, I look terrrible, and I have beetlesss and twigsss underrr my wingsss. Do you underrrssstand? Beetlesss and twigsss.”

“Ticks, too, probably,” the boy shrugged. He undid the knots on the sack and left it open like a feedbag in front of the gryphon. “We get a lot of ticks around here. When it rains, they climb as high as they can up on the grass.” The boy took his hat off and shook it toward the outside—an exercise in futility if there ever was one, since the hat had so many open patches in the weave, he may as well have been wearing an angler’s net on his head.

Kelvren itched all over again, thinking about that. “Thanksss,” he growled, but the boy must have thought he was referring to the food.

“Y’welcome sir. I have to wait for the sack when you’re done, so please don’t tear it up much. I don’t have too many.”

Kelvren nosed into the bag and tasted at it with an extended tongue. He hadn’t expected prime cuts, but it looked and tasted as if he was getting the least wanted body parts from whatever animals they had at the time. There were a couple of knuckle joints, and what looked like some backstrap from a—well, he wasn’t sure. Could be pork. Could be horse. Could be deer. Could be tax collector. He hoped for horse. A short leg here, a few feet of entrails, six chicken feet and a hoof. Well, that part was identifiable at least.

It might be best just to eat it all, without looking too closely.

The boy was as far back against the side of the tent as he could manage, knees folded up to his chest and hands holding the hat in front of him. He stared at the gryphon.

Kelvren pulled his face out of the sack and regarded the boy. “Don’t be afrrraid,” he said, blood dripping continuously off his beak.

“Yes, sir. No, sir. Not afraid, sir.”

“Hurrrh,” Kelvren growled, and got another few pounds of the stuff down his gullet. “Ssso. Why sssend you up herrre? What did you do wrrrong?” the gryphon asked. He was only half joking.

“Lot of the town figures you’re really dangerous, sir. And they need all able bodies down there, but I don’t really count so much, and some of the folk, they want to stay with what stock they’ve got left to ’em in case you went down there, you know, on a rampage or somethin’. Monsters always rampage, they said.”

Kelvren narrowed his eyes and peered out of the tent, letting his mood smolder for a long while. “Alwaysss,” he growled.

“That’s what I’m told, sir.”

“Ssso. I am a rrrampage-to-be, and they sssend a boy to brrring me food? You mussst be verrry brrrave.”

“Not so brave, sir. I get the work no one else wants, and I go with it. Gets my mum and me a little coin. Privy needs cleared out, fence strung through swamp, cleanup after calving, I’m who they get. Like I say, isn’t so bad depending what you compare it to. There’s folk out there losin’ limbs and eyes and all. I figure I’m doin’ all right. An’ if somethin’ happened to me, they said they’d just get someone else, so it’s all proper.”

“You’rrre herrre becaussse they can do without you if I ate you, and you’rrre—content with that?”

The boy shrugged and smiled. “Not like I want to get eaten, sir, but if I did get all killed, I’d still have had a life. Been told I shouldn’t have, enough times, I figure I’m lucky havin’ even a short one.” He pinched the edges of his hat, staring at the water drips that fell from it while Kelvren finished the remains in the bag. “It might not be such a bad thing, anyway. They say you go to a really nice place when you die, where everything’s warm and pretty. It’s supposed to be a place where folk really like you no matter what. You probably know how it is, bein’ a monster and all. No one can really be welcome everywhere.”

Kelvren nudged the bag a few inches sideways toward the boy. “Ssso I am learrrning.”

The boy picked up the bag and knotted the cords. “An’ anyhow, I have my mum, an’ she’s good to me no matter what, even now that all’s this happened. She said we were just about to get rich, too, which woulda been nice. Still, all the army trouble can’t go on forever.” He wiped his bloodied hands on his trousers. “Uh—thanks for not tearing up the bag or eating me,” he said cheerfully, and put his soggy hat back on.

“Anytime,” Kelvren replied, still mystified by the boy’s logic.

The boy smiled, and waved back as he tromped out through the muddy field toward his town.

“This haze is . . . intolerable,” Treyvan growled in Kaled’a’in, lashing his tail in anger. “I can’t do any better with my distance viewing, and that Herald with that FarSeeing Gift just left for the Deedun front. The Storms haven’t so much made things unreliable as they’ve made them . . . hurrh . . . unfamiliar. This all would have worked five years ago and now it is giving us nothing. All we know is where the target is. And just a glimpse.”

“Did the glimpse show you anything useful?” a small voice crooned from below Treyvan. The gryphon turned his hawklike gaze down past his magic instruments to the hertasi in the vast room with him. The little lizard creature looked up at the gryphon with a wide-eyed but unafraid expression.

“Rrrhhh. A Changecircle near by a Valdemaran Guard camp. A gryphon body in a tent. Head down, wings flat.” Treyvan pondered. “Signs of heavy injuries but tended to. Looked like Far Westerner, but he was no gryphon I know. I couldn’t read an identifying radiant—” Treyvan snapped his head up suddenly. “No radiant aura, Pena. No distinctive life glow to Mage-Sight. No wonder it was so hard to find him. He wasn’t shielded, there was just nothing there to shield. I was looking for gryphon aura traits, but I must have passed him by a dozen times since he seemed to only come across as a common animal from such a search.”

The hertasi looked alarmed. She obviously knew what that meant. “Hirs’ka’ursk you think? He’ll be dead soon,” is all she could think of to say.

“We’ll see about that,” Treyvan growled, with an undertone of determination, and stalked to a massive cabinet. He reared up onto his haunches, laid both claws flat on the upper corners, and dug his thumbtalons into the sockets in the trimwork. He twisted them and spoke “hiskusk,” and the sound of long metals rods shifting and clanging into place sounded from inside. The cabinet unfolded. Mage-lights inside gleamed off of teleson sets, a massive leather and brass harness, steel fighting claws, a narrow breastplate and more. Treyvan pulled out and shouldered on one side of the harness, while the hertasi rushed in to clip and buckle the other side of it. More hertasi rushed in after three sharp whistles from the gryphon, and preparations for a flight gained momentum quickly. Three telesons were wrapped and packed into a flat case, and at a nod from the gryphon, the fighting claws were packed as well. Treyvan called out instructions of what must be brought, and side pouches were stuffed with arcane materials and clipped to the harness. Before long, a swarm of the little lizards were readying him for flight and unlacing his talonsheaths. When Treyvan reached the outdoors, he shook his wings and tested the harness for fit. Another pair of hertasi affixed his ornamental breastplate and cinched it tight, while another one added several more pouches to his flight harness. “Pena. That downed gryphon is going to need a trondi’irn. Get Whitebird ready for travel right now. Tell Hydona I am going north.”

Pena, the senior hertasi, turned to her charges still inside. “Get Whitebird ready for travel right now. Tell Hydona that Treyvan and I are going north.”

Treyvan gave Pena a look of disbelief, even as she turned to clamber into heavy insulated clothing. He opened his beak but was stopped short by the senior hertasi poking a stubby finger up at him.