Page 22 of Gryphon in Light

“No,” Kel replied.

Darian worked on the other ear now, and Nightwind rubbed at her foot. Firesong picked and scratched reflexively at some of the burn scars on his forehead and scalp, though they had been unchanged for years now. His expectedly dramatic presentation could not overcome the focus of a hungry and perturbed gryphon.

Silverfox lit some incense and waited Kelvren out. Finally sated, for the present, Kel lay down to face Firesong.

“I want to talk to you about power,” Firesong began again.

“I want you to tell me what is happening in k’Valdemar. What madness has overtaken everyone? And what did all of you do to me?” Kelvren growled, despite his packed throat and crop.

“It isn’t madness. It’s all completely logical,” Firesong replied.

“Most madnesses are completely logical, to those who are mad. I am outside this madness.”

“You can judge the amount of madness for yourself, but we’ll explain things as they are,” Silverfox replied, seating himself on some of Firesong’s cushions. Firesong took a deep breath, and started in.

“We need you to look at our history, Kel. Of White Gryphon, of the Far Flights, of k’Vala and k’Valdemar and the Storms. Think of what we have lived through, and what we have seen. Remember how many strange things, and awful things, we have experienced. Think of what you have experienced. You were trapped by a cold-drake once, yes? And you know how dyheli can control minds and bodies, and that some Adepts and Masters can do the same, yes?”

Kel nodded, thinking he knew where this was going. “Of late, I know that very well, and I don’t like it. At all. I don’t like it. But go on.”

“There are creatures from beyond—that is the only way to describe it simply—and demons, and there are even shapechangers that are a part of our world. Now consider what has happened, from where we could understand it. You, k’Valdemar’s Wingleader, vanished in a conflict inside Valdemar, in an area riddled with Change-Circles. Your teleson went silent. We searched for you, using probes of magic above and below our world, and could not find you. We despaired, and took risks of our own, and could not find you. We nearly risked invoking Kal’enal for you.”

This mollified Kelvren just a little. Calling upon Kal’enal always means a heavy price, if the call is answered at all. Velgarthian deities only help those who are out of other options or chances, and the further from hopeless someone is, the more it costs them. That they even seriously considered it for me means a lot.

“Suddenly, there was a faint, faraway detection of a Gate, and not long after, a flare, of a new node. And then, after a pause, we narrowed it down to Deedun, something fast aimed directly for us and closing in,” Silverfox added, while Firesong had a drink.

Firesong resumed the explanation. “In Oversight, you looked like nothing less than a fireball headed our way, or a major demon. Then the—whatever it was—you, it turned out, making a show of it, which I understand—scouted over all of our allies. You actually left a wake behind you that disturbed the lines at the time. You never knew this. Treyvan saved you by creating a node under you, and then before he had any chance to calm you—or the node’s energy—down, you left. You made your now-famous flight and then aimed yourself for home. Only, to everyone at home, you looked like a possible attacker coming from the heart of Valdemar—again, a place full of Change-Circles, and no stranger to demon infiltration.” He paused to let that sink in.

Darian leaned back and hooked his elbows over the chair’s back. “While you were in flight, the Companions relayed a short form of what happened, though they knew very few details. It was only in the last candlemark before you landed that we recognized it was actually, possibly, you.”

“So you asssumed I was a threat, not your Wingleader returning,” Kelvren added up.

Darian just gestured in a way that conveyed “obviously.” “Worse than that, there was a reasonable possibility that you were another creature trying to look like our missing Wingleader. We wanted it to be you, Kel, but wanting something against facts leads to ruin. Remember k’Sheyna. And if it was some creature using you, or the appearance of you, it probably knew all of our secrets and relationships. We had to be sure it was really you.”

That explains why the new “Wingleader,” as she claimed, was so caustic toward me. If I was an impostor, she wanted me to know they were aware of the possibility, and that they’d kill me before I even crossed the red line. She even goaded me to try something.

Kelvren mulled that over for around twenty seconds before deciding he had room for more beer. “Then I want to know this,” he demanded between gulps. “You knew who I was quickly. So. Why have I not been greeted as a hero, and why are so few people coming near me?”

Firesong frowned, and answered, “Two main reasons. They treat you like you’re diseased because you came back changed in a way that threatens all of us, Kel. I had to fight for you to stay in the Vale at all, and you aren’t allowed anywhere closer than this to the Heartstone. Here is the ugly truth, Kel.” Firesong leaned forward, with as deadly serious an expression as Kelvren had ever seen on him. “Every time you move, you draw in more energy. Ambient, anchored, focused, it is all affected, and you draw it toward you. It strains your body intensely, so you have to discard it. You used Lightcasting before, but at the same time, you were flying, which only drew in more energy. If you discard the energy in your sleep, it could be in a wild form, in any amount, in any direction. Gryphons gather the energy needed to live by movement—you learned that as a gryphlet; that’s what gryphon wingbeats are for, as much as maneuvering. If you move, you gain energy. If you fly, you gain even more energy, which in turn keeps you flying. But now, if you move at all, you gain too much energy. And if you stop moving, you starve your new need for energy. If you don’t use that energy, you burn.”

Kelvren was very alarmed. I know from my magecraft training how to ground and center, but that requires, well, ground. Is he saying I could fly and just erupt into flame because I couldn’t ground? Or that I’d only fly if I were continually casting? This is awful . . .

“And, if you move in areas with heavily structured spellwork, like k’Valdemar, you draw their energy toward you and disrupt the structure.”

Skies above, it gets more awful.

“That explains why the mage-lights exploded,” Nightwind offered.

Firesong glanced at the others. “Mage-lights exploded?”

Darian replied, “Ho, yes. From the stone core through the glass. Blazing hot, too. Their stored energy arced into him.”

Firesong went deep into thought. “That bears out what we learned when we tried so much of, one could say, the usual things while Healing. You weren’t there for all of that, Darian. It wasn’t that the spells didn’t work, it was that they lost cohesion before long.” Firesong had done so much teaching over the past several years that he’d developed a habit of explaining things, even if it wasn’t needed. It was a significant difference from the purposely enigmatic, brash flair of twenty years ago. “The manner wasn’t just disruptive, it was disjunctive. Disruption would be like a loud noise drowning out a chant so it couldn’t be heard. Disjunction would be breaking the chant into random, very loud noise.”

Darian finished, “Which is what the Cataclysm was, eleven-hundred-some years ago. Two massive, radiating, cascading disjunctions. I remember my lessons, Firesong. So, again, you are proven right by insisting we keep Kel on isolated, evacuated paths. You can gloat about being right again.”

“I’ve never stopped,” Firesong absently replied, and pointed two fingers at Kelvren. “But it emphasizes that we can’t allow you to fly, and we must keep you away from crafting circles and the like, because you could catastrophically harm even established spellwork just by being too near to it.” Firesong sat back, cracking his spine and shoulders, adjusting to his new position. “Our Heartstone is robust, but we feed it by careful alignment of the lines we draw to it. Imagine what would happen if you got near the Heartstone during its daily tuning. It would be like dropping a boulder into a clear, steady stream.”

“Sketi.”