Page 50 of Gryphon in Light

“Now is good!” replied Kel, nodding. “In fact, now is excellent!”

Hallock smiled slightly and allowed Pena to usher them to seats at Kel’s right.

“So!” Kel said. “What is the word from Valdemar?”

“In which language?” Hallock laughed, and mimed his head exploding. Everyone present had all likely gone through the linguistic ordeal at some point, and so the chuckles from so many species had a genuine note of sympathy. Everybody braving Lake Evendim—which by now felt like it would be hundreds of creatures, before the first barge embarked—would have the memory of entire ways of thinking and naming punched into their skulls.

May that be the last thing to give us all headaches!

The next morning, Deban turned up to wake Hallock just after dawn. Of course, Hallock was already awake; rising while the sky was still dark was so ingrained in him now that he doubted he could have broken the habit if he’d tried.

So he was not only awake, but washed, brushed, and in his dress uniform when Deban cautiously put his snout around the doorframe.

Genni was still asleep, and Hallock mimed “quiet.” The hertasi nodded and pulled his nose back, with a faint rattling of beads.

Are the Hawkbrothers allergic to doors? But he had to shrug. They were living in a clearly magically manipulated giant tree, surrounded by creatures the average Valdemaran would gawk at open-mouthed, and he was focused on doors?

There were no signs of life from the other two rooms; Hallock saw no reason to disturb Jefti or his mother. This early-morning meeting with the k’Valdemar Vale Council was only for him. And not, he suspected, because the Council didn’t see the other three as important, but because of that not-so-innocent rank he’d been given when he agreed to come here.

Military attaché.

If the Valdemarans were alarmed at the Tayledras and all their spooky magic settling down in the western wilds of their country, the Tayledras surely had reservations that had not been quelled in the years since k’Valdemar Vale had been founded. The Hawkbrothers, he had learned, took a very long view of things. A dozen years would not have been enough time to dampen initial doubts, and that was without Valdemar foisting a Guard officer on their exploratory jaunt even further west. And out to Lake Evendim, too—Valdemar didn’t hold claim to anything much north of the fishing town of Zoe on the shores of the lake. So far as Valdemar was concerned, north of Zoe was one giant, sleeping bear, and everyone knew you didn’t poke the bear.

Especially not now, not when those terrifying Mage Storms had passed over the country. There were probably more concerns about the scary, very foreign Darkwind, who with his even scarier magic had married into the royal family. And their own princess Elspeth a mage too! Things that had been safely left as hearth-tales and campfire yarns suddenly were true, and then a big, impersonal sort of magic had swept over what had been familiar, sometimes literally changing it into something strange. Small wonder people were rattled.

So now, the Hawkbrothers were going to wake the bear. That was what Valdemarans—at least, the ones who knew about this—were probably thinking.

And this’s how I talk my way into the Council’s good will, he reminded himself.

So while he sat and ate the excellent breakfast of fruit and bread that Deban had brought him, he tried to think just what else he needed to emphasize. Make no mistake, Hallock Stavern, this is a fight. As real and as symbolic as the “fight” Kel engaged in when he flew over Deedun all ablaze. But I can’t act on instinct like he did. I have to plan this.

So he thought while he ate, and then, while he followed Deban down paths lit by mage-lights that were so inviting, greeted now and again by scents both sweet and savory, and listening to the murmur of the Vale awakening, he had to stop himself from going off wandering on his own. Later. With Genni.

At length, Deban brought him to an enclosure—you couldn’t call it a building or a room, because it was open to the sky, although he could see clever arrangements of wires and canvas that he suspected would allow the entire space to be covered if it rained. The Veil wasn’t there to keep weather out, it was there to keep weather pleasant.

It was a place never meant for deliberations in secret. The walls were of the same woven reeds as the walls of Firesong’s ekele, and the doorframe didn’t even hold a suggestion of a barrier, like a bead curtain. Once inside, he found himself at the bottom of a sort of “bowl” of tiers of bench seats rising around the room. Only a few of those were occupied right now, all on the bottom row. A dozen Hawkbrothers with snow-white hair, male and female, were conversing quietly while their bondbirds dozed on the benches at the highest level. The floor was a pleasing mosaic of thick carpet squares of woven grass.

There wasn’t a seat in the middle of this tiny “arena,” so Hallock took a standing position in the dead center and waited for the Hawkbrothers to say something.

They all looked up as he took his place, and the oldest-looking one gave him an inscrutable look and said, “You are Hallock Stavern of Valdemar.”

He nodded.

The speaker didn’t trouble to introduce himself or his fellow Tayledras. “You were the one whose injuries were so severe that Silver Gryphon Kelvren risked his own death Healing them . . . which brings us to the uncomfortable position where we are now.”

There didn’t seem to be any question there, nor anything he could respond to, so he just stood there quietly.

“Why do you think he did that?” asked an old woman with her white hair in hundreds of braids strung with crystal glass beads. Old, maybe, but undoubtedly strong, to hold all that weight up gracefully.

“He says it was because of my wife, Genni. He says it was because I somehow deserved not to die. I was just telling him about the most perfect day I ever had with her, and he said it was because ‘no one should have only one perfect day.’ As to what he was thinking, I can’t answer that. I don’t have Mind-magic. And even if I did, I’m given to understand it’s bad manners to snoop on someone else’s thoughts.”

Stony faces, and more silence. And I literally hear crickets.

“Do you think you deserved that sort of sacrifice?” asked another, who was, uncharacteristically, garbed all in black. It made a fine contrast with his floor-length white hair.

“Do any of us deserve the good that comes to us? You’d have to ask the gods about that. I’m not one of those, either.” He reminded himself that this was a test, and it was no time to get irritated with these questions. “I try to be a good man as well as a good soldier. I try to be a good husband and partner. I try to do good things in the world, but I am a soldier and my duties sometimes require me to kill people. I don’t like doing it, but when someone is trying to kill me, I don’t stop to ask them about their motives. Like I said, you’ll have to ask the gods about whether or not I deserve saving.”

He had the distinct impression that they were speaking wordlessly to each other. I guess I prefer that to muttering to one another.