The Silver Gryphon

been at a premium, and there were long stretches of time when magic could not be used to help work the stone at all, so that it all had to be done by hand. Workers tended to carve to a standard that happened to be preferred by most humans and all gryphons and tervardi. The dyheli, of course, needed the barest of shelters to be contented and all lived above, among the farms, but the hertasi and kyree who really were not comfortable with views of endless sky and long drops were forced to make do until there was time and the resources to create dwellings more to their liking. That meant there were always those who would happily trade an older, “precarious perch” for a newly-chiseled burrow. There were wider terraces, of course, that permitted real buildings and even small gardens, but those were all in the “body” of White Gryphon and most building space was reserved for public use. It was probably fair to say that three-quarters of the population of White Gryphon lived in glorified cave dwellings.

That was how Tadrith and his twin, Keenath, had gotten their own aerie, which allowed them to move out of their parents’ home; they’d found a narrow stretch of unexcavated terrace down at the bottom of White Gryphon’s “tail” and had claimed it for themselves, then hired a team of masons to carve out a long set of six rooms, one after the other, deep into the living rock. This sort of residence was precisely the kind preferred by den-loving kyree and burrowing hertasi. Once the dwelling had been roughed in and the twins made it known that they were willing to trade, there was a bidding war going on even before it was completed.

The result was that Tadrith and Keenath had their own bachelor suite of one main room, a food storage chamber, and two light and airy bedrooms on either side of the main room. Both bedchambers had windows overlooking the cliff, as had the main room. The kyree family that had gratefully traded this aerie for the dark tunnellike series of rooms pronounced themselves overjoyed to be leaving such a drafty, windswept perch, and had wondered why their parents had ever chosen it!

Which only proves that one creature’s cozy nest is another creature’s draft-ridden mess of sticks.

As Tadrith neared his home, which was out on what would be the first primary of the White Gryphon’s right wing, the “avenue” narrowed to a simple pathway, and the balustrade to a knee-high, narrow ledge of stone. Perhaps that had something to do with the kyree’s reluctance to live there—certainly such an arrangement would be dangerous for young, clumsy cubs. Tadrith and Keenath had been raised in an aerie virtually identical to this one, but on the first primary of the White Gryphon’s left wing; that distance between them and their beloved parents had played no small part in their final decision as to which family would win the bidding war.

Tadrith could, if he had chosen to do so, actually have landed on the balustrade right outside his own door— but landing anywhere other than the public landing platforms was considered a breech of safety, for it encouraged the just-fledged youngsters, who were by no means as coordinated as they thought they were, to reckless behavior. No lives had been lost, but several limbs had been broken, when younglings had missed their landings and slipped off the edge or tumbled into a group of passersby. After a number of hysterical mothers demanded that the Council do something about the problem, the landing platforms were installed and gryphons and tervardi were “strongly encouraged” to use them. Tadrith and Keenath, with every eye in White Gryphon always on them, had been scrupulous in their use of the public landing platforms.

By daylight, anyway. And no fledge is allowed to fly after dark, so they’ll never see us when we cheat.

In glorious weather like this, the doors and windows always stood wide open, so Tadrith simply strolled inside his shared dwelling, his claws clicking on the bare stone of the floor. The room they used for company was airy and full of light, with the rock of the outer wall carved into several tall panels with thin shafts of wood between them. Translucent panes of the tough material the Kaled’a’in used for windows were set into wooden frames on hinges, which in turn were set into the stone. The room itself was furnished only with cushions of various sizes, all covered in fabric in the colors of sandstone and granite, slate and shale. In the winter, thick sheepskins and wool rugs would cover that cold white floor, and the doors and windows would be shut tight against the gales, but in the summer all those coverings were whisked away into storage so that an overheated gryphon could lie belly-down on the cool rock floor and dump some of that body heat quickly. And, in fact, Keenath was doing just that, spread out on the floor, with wings fanned, panting slightly.

“I was just thinking about dinner,” his twin greeted him. “I might have known that thoughts of food would bring you home.”

Tadrith snorted. “Just because you’re obsessed with eating it doesn’t follow that I am! I’ll have you know that I only just now escaped from yet another yawnsome Section meeting. Food was the very last thing on my mind, and escaping Aubri was the first!”

Keenath laughed silently, beak parted, as his tongue flicked in and out while his sides heaved. “That must have been a first, then,” he bantered. “So who was she? The pretty young thing that your mind was really on, I mean. Kylleen, perhaps?”

Tadrith was not going to get caught in that trap. “I haven’t made up my mind,” he said loftily. “I have so many to choose from, after all, it hardly seems reasonable to narrow the field this early in the race. It wouldn’t be fair to the ladies, either, to deny my company to any of them. It is only polite to distribute my attentions over as wide a selection as possible.”

Keenath reached out a claw and snagged a pillow, spun it twice as he raised up, and expertly hurled it at his brother’s head. Tadrith ducked, and it shot across the room to thud against the wall on the other side.

“You should be careful doing that,” he warned, flopping down on the cool stone himself. “We’ve lost too many pillows over the cliff that way. So what were you studying that has you panting so hard?”

“Field treatment and rescues under combat conditions, and specifically, blood stanching and wound binding,” Keenath replied. “Why? Don’t ask me; we haven’t seen a state of combat since before you and I were born. Winterhart’s idea. Probably because I take after Mother.”