Mercedes Lackey: The Silver Gryphon

“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.”

Tadrith nodded; Keenath was very similar in size and build to their mother, Zhaneel. Like her, he was technically a gryfalcon rather than a gryphon. He was small and light, most of his musculature in his chest and shoulders. His coloring and body type were that of a peregrine, his wings long and narrow, but most importantly, he had inherited Zhaneel’s stub-taloned, dexterous claw-hands.

This was important, for Keenath was learning the craft of the trondi’irn from Winterhart herself, and he needed “hands” as clever as a human’s. Before his apprenticeship was complete, he would be able to do anything a Healer with no Gift could do. The difference between him and an herb-, fire-, or knife-Healer was that, like all trondi’irn, his training was tailored to the needs and physiology of gryphons and other nonhumans.

Zhaneel had been trained as a fighter—and others had come to the realization that her small size and lack of fighting talons could be put to other uses too late for her to learn a new trade. At that point, she had opted to adapt her style of fighting to her body type rather than try to fit the accepted mold, and with Skandranon’s help she had made the best of her situation with brilliant results. But when Keenath had shown early signs that he would resemble her physically, he was encouraged to think of a career in something other than the Silvers.

Nevertheless, it had surprised everyone when he had declared he wanted to train as a trondi’irn. Up until now, that had been an occupation reserved for humans and hertasi.

Tadrith stretched and yawned, turning his head so that the breeze coming in from the open door could ruffle his crest-feathers. “At least you were doing something!” he complained. “I sat there until I thought my hindquarters were going to turn to stone, and if any part of me is going to grow stiff on a day like this, that is not my primary choice. I couldn’t even take a nap; as usual, old Aubri had me conspicuously up front. Have to maintain the tradition of the Black Gryphon, of course; have to pretend every Section meeting is as important as a wartime conference. Have to act as if every detail could mean life or death.” He stretched again, enjoying the fact that he could always vent his frustration to his twin. “You should be glad you look the way you do, Keeth. It’s bad enough being Skandranon’s son, but the fact that I look like him doesn’t even remotely help! You try living up to the legend, sometime! It’s enough to make anyone want to bite something!”

And to display the strength of his own frustration, he snagged the poor, mistreated pillow Keenath had lately lobbed at him, and bit at it savagely. It was a good thing they had the cushions covered in tough linen-canvas, for the pillows had to take a great deal of punishment.

“Well, if you think it’s hard living up to the legend, just try breaking away from it!” Keenath retorted, as he always did. Tadrith’s twin groaned as he followed Tadrith’s example, stretching. “Half the time I’m left wondering if Winterhart isn’t pushing me so hard expecting me to fail, and half the time I think she’s doing it because everyone knows Skandranon never failed at anything he tried.”

Tadrith snorted and mock-scraped his hindfeet, as if burying something particularly noxious from a previous meal. “He never let it be known how often he failed, which is the same thing to legend-builders.”

His brother snorted right back and continued. “And if it isn’t Winterhart, it’s everyone else, watching, waiting to see if the old Black Gryphon magic is strong enough in Keenath to enable the youngling to pull off another miracle.” He parted his beak in a sardonic grin. “At least you have a path to follow—I’m going through new skies in the fog, and I have no idea if I’m going to run up against a cliff-face.”

Naturally, Tadrith had his own set of retorts, already primed, proving how much more difficult it was to have to follow in the wake of the Black Gryphon. It was an old set of complaints, worn familiar by much handling, and much enjoyed by both of them.

Who can I complain to, if not to my twin? For all that they were unalike in form and temper, they were bound by the twin-bond, and knew each other with the twin’s intimacy. There were other twins among the gryphons, and one or two sets among the humans, and all the twin-sets agreed; there was a bond between them that was unlike any other sibling tie. Tadrith often thought that he’d never have been able to cope with the pressure if Keenath hadn’t been around, and Keenath had said the same thing about his sibling.

Finally the litany of complaints wound to its inevitable conclusion—which was, of course, that there was no conclusion possible. They ran through the sequence at least once every day, having long ago decided that if they could not change their circumstances, at least they could enjoy complaining about them.

“So what has your tail in a knot this time?” Keenath asked. “It wasn’t just the meeting.”

Tadrith rolled over on his back to let the breeze cool his belly. “Sometimes I think I’m going to do something drastic if Blade and I don’t get assigned soon!” he replied, discontentedly. “What are they waiting for? We’ve earned our freedom by now!”

“They could be waiting for you to finally demonstrate a little patience, featherhead,” Keenath said, and had to duck as the pillow made a return trip in his direction.

There might have been more pillows than just the one flying, if Silverblade herself, Tadrith’s partner, hadn’t chosen that moment to walk in their open door.

She stood in the doorway, posing unconsciously, with the sun making a dark silhouette of her against the brilliant sky. Tadrith knew it was not a conscious pose; it was totally out of her nature to do anything to draw attention to herself unless it was necessary. Blade was the name the gryphons knew her by, though her childhood name hadn’t been the use-name she wore now; it had been “Windsong,” so dubbed by her fond parents in the hopes, no doubt, that she would grow up to resemble one or the other of them. “Windsong” was a perfectly good name for a trondi’irn or even a kestra’chern or a Kaled’a’in Healer or mage. But “Windsong” hadn’t had the inclination for any of those things.