than a fairly reasonable level of anxiety in them at this point.:
In the gryphon's reply, Elspeth caught the word, 'Hardorn,' and Darkwind's face cleared. 'It would be a great deal easier if you could speak in the language of Hardorn, sir,' he replied in that tongue. 'I fear that time has changed the language you speak from the one taught to me.'
'A grrreat deal of time, young Brrrother-To-Hawksss,' the gryphon rumbled, with evident amusement. 'A verrry grrreat deal of time by anyone's measurrre. I am Tashiketh pral Skylshaen, envoy from the land you know as Iftel to the court of King Tremane, who we have been told has been chosen for his office by the land, as it was in the old days.' He waved a huge taloned hand in an expansive gesture at the twenty gryphons poised behind him. 'This is my wing. These are the representatives of the twenty hrradurr of Iftel, courageous and worthy of their offices, who each won the right to fly in my wing in the bahathyrrr.'
The hrradurr were evidently subdivisions of Iftel—though what the bahathyrrr could be, Elspeth could not even begin to guess. She made a quick hand- gesture behind her back, hoping Tremane would take the hint and come up to be presented, but he was already moving before she gestured. With quick wits, he had already anticipated what was needed the moment that the gryphon began to speak in Hardornen.
He walked forward with grace that could only be trained into someone who began learning the peculiar 'dance' of court movement at a very early age. When he reached Darkwind's side, he bowed his head in a slight acknowledgment to Tashiketh. The gryphon in his turn made a deep obeisance to the King, then carefully extracted a packet of folded papers from a pouch at the side of his harness and handed them to Darkwind who in turn gave them to Tremane.
'The land of Iftel sends greetings to Hardorn's new ruler, oh, Tremane, once of the House Imperial,' the gryphon said, in his strangely accented Hardornen. 'We have been sent by the Assembly of Peoples and He Who Made The Barrier to bear the greetings of our Assembly and our Peoples, and to offer you our personal assistance in current and future difficulties. We are,' he added, with a lift of his head, 'authorized to assist you in any way.'
Elspeth could guess at the thoughts running through Tremane's head at the moment, though he gave no sign of them as he gravely thanked Ambassador for his greetings and his offer.
He can't take this offer seriously. Likeliest is either that Tashiketh is not aware of what he is actually promising, or that this is a polite custom of Iftel, a standard speech, and the offer is not meant to be anything more than an expression of polite esteem.
That, of course, was only logical. As welcome as the aid of a full wing of gryphons would be, how could an ambassadorial delegation be expected to perform any services that did not directly benefit their own land? And certainly there was no reason to believe that such a blank card had been given to King Tremane to fill in as he cared to. He could, conceivably, ask them to do something too dangerous for his own men to try. If they were harmed, he would have to face the consequences, but it made no sense to think that Iftel would be willing to put its citizens in danger.
Of course, Darkwind and I and our entourage are perfectly willing to put ourselves in danger— and do—but that's because we aren't really just envoys, we're representatives of the Alliance and we're performing as Hardorn's military allies as well as our other duties. In a sense, we're a very small military unit as well as ambassadors.
The next thing that must be running through Tremane's head as he surveyed the half-circle of twenty-one very large gryphons, was where on earth was he going to put them?
He couldn't put them in the stable nor in one of the barracks, surely he must see that. The stable simply wasn't suitable, even if her Companion and Darkwind's dyheli Brytha were willing to put up with it, and the earth-sheltered barracks buildings would probably give creatures of the air great screaming fits of claustrophobia. She considered the gryphons, their size, and their probable needs. They would all fit in the Great Hall; could that drafty barn of a room be made habitable as well as elegant? Each of the several towers of the manor would probably hold four or five gryphons in each of the topmost rooms, which were mostly used as armories and weapon storage for the sentries that were posted there; would the gryphons consent to being split up? If they would, there was at least access to the air from the trapdoors in each of the tower roofs. Fortunately, thanks to the spacious barracks now available, and the fact that a large number of staff persons (mages, Healers, and other auxiliaries) now were housed in the city rather than in the manor itself, the overcrowding that had been making life so difficult in the early days here had been overcome. There was room in the manor for the gryphons, at least on a temporary basis. But from Tashiketh's speech, this was intended to be a permanent delegation, and they would need permanent housing.
Tremane made a graceful, rambling speech of welcome, probably while he was trying to think of housing options.
There are still some unused buildings in Shonar. Would the gryphons be willing to be housed in an 'Embassy' in the city?
But if they did, what would they use for servants? Gryphons required a lot of tending; there were any number of things that they couldn't do for themselves. Lighting fires, for instance; talons were not good at manipulating firestrikers, and feathers were dismayingly flammable. The gryphons of k'Leshya had specially trained trondi'irn to see to their health and well-being; Treyvan and Hydona had done without such help, officially at least, for several years—but the k'Sheyna hertasi had helped them unofficially. What would these gryphons do? Did they even guess that the people of Hardorn and the Empire were unready to host them?
Tremane finally ran out of things to say, and so did Tashiketh. They stood on the cobblestones and looked politely at one another for a moment, and it was Tremane who finally broke the silence.
