The Silver Gryphon

snap, and literally saw stars for a moment, it hurt so much.

When she could see again, she was still sitting upright, and he still had his hands on her shoulders, so she must have managed not to move. She sagged gratefully against the rock he was sitting on, and wiped tears from her eyes, weakly.

“Now, stay still a moment more,” he urged. “I haven’t done this for a long time, and I’m rather out of practice.”

She obeyed, and a moment later, felt the area above the break warming. The pain there vanished, all but a faint throbbing in time with her pulse.

I’d forgotten he still has some Healing ability . . . not enough that he ever acts as a Healer anymore, but enough that he could in the war. In fact, he was first sent by his family off to train as a Healer, but his Empathic senses got in the way. In the war he was supposed to have been very good, even on gryphons.

Amberdrake finally lifted his hands from her shoulder and sighed. “I’m sorry, dearheart, I can’t do as much as I’d like.”

It was far more than she’d had any hope of before they arrived!

“You did a great deal, Father, believe me. I hope you saved plenty of yourself for Tad,” she said. “Especially since you did specialize in gryphon-trauma during the war!”

“I did,” he replied as she twisted around to look up at him. He combed his hair out of his eyes with one hand, and grimaced. “I’ll keep working on you two as I recuperate, too. But I never was as competent at Healing as I’d like, and accelerating bone growth—well, it’s hard, and I never did learn to do it well. Maybe if I’d gotten the right training when I was younger. . . .”

“Then you’d have been a Healer, Lady Cinnabar would have been your lady and apprentice instead of Tamsin’s, and I wouldn’t be here,” she interrupted. “I love you just the way you are, Father. I wouldn’t change a thing.”

And suddenly she realized that she meant exactly that, probably for the first time since she had been a small child.

She knew that he had needed to extend his empathic sense in order to Heal, and he still hadn’t barricaded himself; he felt that, and his eyes filled with tears.

He wanted to hear that from me as much as I wanted his approval! she thought with astonishment.

How could I have been so blind all this time? Thinking only the child could want approval from the parent—how stupid of me—the parent wants approval from the child just as much.

“Blade—” he said. She didn’t let him finish. She reached up for him as he reached down for her, and they held each other while his tears fell on her cheeks and mingled with hers.

It was he who pulled away first, not she; rubbing his nose inelegantly on the back of his hand as he sniffed, and managing a weak smile for her. “Well, aren’t we a pair of sentimental idiots,” he began.

“No, you’re a pair of sensible idiots, if that isn’t contradictory,” Skandranon interrupted. “You two were overdue for that, if you ask me. And, if you don’t ask me, I’ll tell you anyway, and I am right, as usual. Drake, what can she do now, if anything?”

“I’ve strengthened and knitted the bone a bit,” Amberdrake replied, looking at her although he answered Skan. “And I’ve done something about the pain. I wouldn’t engage in hand-to-hand, but you can certainly throw a spear, use a sling, or do some very limited swordplay. No shields, sorry; it won’t take that kind of strain.”

“We don’t have any shields with us, so that hardly matters,” she replied dryly. “Nor bows, either; we had to concentrate on bringing things we could use.”

“Well . . . I know how to make a throwing-stick and the spears to go with it, if you know how to use one,” Amberdrake admitted. “That should increase your range. There ought to be some wood in here straight enough for spears.”

He knows how to make a weapon? She throttled down her surprise, and just nodded. “Yes to both—now let me go replace Tad at the front and you can work your will on him.”

She almost said magic, but stopped herself just in time. Since the wyrsa hadn’t come calling when her father began his Healing, evidently they did not eat Healing-energy. Which was just as well, under the circumstances. Perhaps it was too localized, or too finely-tuned to be sucked in from afar.