Page 24 of Gryphon in Light

“Oh,” Kelvren grumbled, “now you ask before taking something from me.”

“Food and courtesy,” Firesong chided, quoting the gryphon.

“I hate you so much right now,” Kelvren growled back.

“Neither for the first nor the last time will you hate me,” Firesong said while the room dimmed in response to his gestures. “You could only survive this in two ways that we know of. Three, really, but you wouldn’t like the third.”

“Oh? What is the third?”

“Leave forever so you aren’t a problem to us.”

“Like Skandranon’s last flight.”

“So some stories say.”

Kelvren shook his head. “I do not want to be like him that way. And his acts of heroism brought him nothing like these lies and intrigues and hate from others.”

Silverfox’s composure vanished. He covered his face with both hands, in a bout of laughter. “Sorry, it’s just—sorry. Please. Go ahead.”

“What?” Kelvren demanded.

“Just that kestra’chern have stories from Amberdrake’s side of history.”

“To continue,” Firesong picked up smoothly, “the other two ways I have considered work together. One, we can train you to be a mage much, much better at handling magic power, and more sensitive to feeling it around you. Two would be—” he hesitated.

Firesong opened his mouth to speak a couple of times, but it was half a minute before he finally continued. “Two would be to create a Heartstone for you. A very, very small one. Heavy, but not too heavy. Portable. This has been tried in the past and the concept is sound, but there were no—long-lasting successes. I am curious; in your flight, did it ever occur to you to tap a line or a node to Lightcast? Or did you only use your own power?”

“I did as felt right. I used what I had inside me, I used what I collected as I flew.”

“Ah. Interesting. That deserves some further thought. You’ve partly answered an old theory about whether a living thing can be a node, with that. And a node can feed a Heartstone.”

“Sketi!” Kelvren exclaimed, sitting down abruptly.

“Yes. Very big sketi if we can make it work. It is your life, Kelvren. I mean that sincerely. It is your life—you live or die by this. Right now, nobody wants to come near you because they think you’re as likely to explode as talk to them, and you’re politically toxic. That can change over time, but meanwhile, we just have to keep you alive.”

“I hate this. This is not right,” Kelvren repeated.

“It isn’t right, but it is the way it is,” Firesong answered.

Darian rested his hands on Kelvren’s right alula. “I know this is a terrible situation, Kel, and I know you want someone to slash and bite. I say, don’t even bother to blame anyone, because you have more important things to work on. Your survival must be ensured. It is like k’Sheyna. It is true that their Adepts did not think of what happened as being an attack from Falconsbane, or anyone. They just dealt with the situations, and yes, that caused them much sorrow. But had they gone looking for enemies to blame at the time, instead of calming the disruptions, their situation would have been far worse. I say, don’t fall prey to cursing others, and complaining about what you deserve and don’t deserve. These people in Valdemar are much different from everyone you knew far west, and you are going to have to adapt yourself to them, because they are more numerous than our kind.”

Darian smoothed Kelvren’s feathers along the leading edge of his wing, and it did soothe him. Firesong and the others exchanged a pointed look, and they began to slip away, Firesong leaving first. Kel didn’t really care—he was well-fed now, they weren’t contributing anything to the conversation anyway, and more importantly, they certainly weren’t giving him cozy feather-scratches. Besides, he was still especially irritated with Firesong, so, begone with them.

“Hurrrrr,” he grumbled, lying down again. “I do not like it, and it is not fair, but the world does not move by what I like, and the world has never been fair. But listen to yourself, Dar’ian of Errold’s Grove, referring to yourself as Tayledras, not Valdemaran!”

Darian sat down on the floor in front of him, cross-legged, and worked a hand into Kel’s neck-feathers, scratching soothingly. “I’ve had to learn all this myself. You were there for it. And technically, yes, I was born in Valdemar.”

“Dar’ian, my parents taught me, wherever you land is your home. But I feel that k’Valdemar is most truly my home. It is what I think of as your home. Your parents raised you to be a child, Errold’s Grove raised you to be a boy, we raised you to be a man, and then you made yourself an adult. And alongside you, I went from someone to be cared for to someone who is cared about. I do not want to leave our home, Dar’ian. Or be chased away because of what happened. I was good, Dar’ian.”

“Yes. Yes, you were,” Darian murmured into Kelvren’s brow-feathers. “You did the right things. You were there for me, you fought for me, and then you went out and did it again for people you didn’t even know. You don’t deserve all of this, but there’s that world-isn’t-fair thing, again, isn’t it? But you know that I will always be thankful for you, and you’ll always be with me somehow.”

“For you I would be shot and slashed a hundred times,” Kelvren rumbled, then added after a few moments, “But not all at once.”

Darian chuckled and twisted around to rest his back against Kelvren’s side, as they’d done dozens of times, basking in the sunlight. This time, though, the gryphon was the sun. “I don’t know if it helps, but not everybody in Valdemar is afraid of us, or of you.”

“They should be afraid of me. Everything should be afraid of me.”

“We all are, we just hide it well. What I mean is, the Crown and most of Haven think of us as strong allies, and think of gryphons as wonders. I know right now you must think of all Valdemarans as a bunch of idiots, but try and walk on their paths for a moment. For most people in Valdemar, until the Storms, they tended crops, built roads, milled grain, and were ordinary soldiers at most. The ongoing border wars were distant. Magic was just something in old legends, not something that was in their lives every day, affecting them personally. And then came the Storms. Instead of being something good, something that made roads that never needed re-paving, or built walls so strong nothing could knock them down—something that helped and protected them—magic became something horrible that brought strange beasts and diseases, ripped their ordered lives up, and scattered the pieces. And then, the news—mostly rumors—came that the Crown’s sudden allies were the Ghosts of the Deadly Forests. It would be like you flying a patrol, being blasted into the ground by twenty whirlwinds, then being helped up by people who only spoke by clapping hands, wore giant hats, and ate poisonous tree bark.”