Page 54 of Gryphon in Light

To be sure, I don’t know how dangerous this is going to be—but danger has a habit of finding Kel. This would be Silverfox’s first extended journey outside a Vale, and the first time he had gone where normally only scouts went. Firesong was a seasoned traveler, and more than that, had risked his life on several occasions. Silverfox hadn’t. And I’ve had second and third thoughts. But I still need to go, and for Firesong’s sake as well as Kel’s.

The boy’s heavy brows drew together. “I was working in a Guard camp, next to a battlefield. Dunno as there’s anything much more dangerous than that.”

“Well,” Silverfox said after a pause. “There most definitely is. We have no idea what’s out there, and the Pelagirs have a habit of creating nasty surprises.”

“Still going,” Jefti replied fiercely. “Kel needs me. And you promise to take care of Ma, right? No matter what happens? Promise?”

“Absolutely. She’s one of us now, and we take care of our own.” Silverfox looked up to gauge Nightwind’s reaction to these statements and found her smiling, as if to say, See? He’s a born trondi’irn, blood and bone.

“Then Ma’ll be all right without me,” Jefti added, although the slight lift at the end of the sentence suggested he was looking for reassurance.

“She will,” Silverfox said. “She’ll absolutely miss you, and she’ll worry about you, but she’ll have plenty to keep her busy and contributing here, and she won’t have to worry about where the next meal is coming from. And she’ll find friends, both here and in Errold’s Grove. In fact, I will have a word with the hertasi to make sure they look after her.”

Jefti beamed at him, and Nightwind put her hand on the boy’s shoulder again. “I’m taking him off to meet the other trondi’irn,” she said, cementing their bond as master and apprentice. “I’ll send him back before supper.”

With that, she took the lad out with her, leaving Silverfox to contemplate the rapidly diminishing list of things to do in front of him. There was really only one major thing left holding them all here.

Firesong had created his “portable Heartstone,” but it and Kel had not been linked. And that was—

His thoughts were broken into by the exceedingly rare sound of hertasi claws scrambling up the steps at top speed. Ayshen burst into the room—breathless.

“News! I ran to tell you first!” the little lizard gasped. “Gryphons! Gryphons from Iftel! They’re on the way here to join the expedition!”

“What? Oh, come on, are you serious?” he asked, his mind reeling as he stood.

“The message only just came by teleson. Poli ran to warn our wing of gryphons, and I ran to tell you!”

He was about to ask if Ayshen knew when they were expected to arrive, when the full-throated challenge of not one but several gryphons rang through the Vale, and was answered by another shriek from above.

Firesong had been measuring Kel’s neck and chest more thoroughly than anyone ever had except when he’d been measured for armor back in Silver Gryphon. Normally this would have irritated him worse than mud on his feathers, but Jefti and Nightwind had done an excellent job of grooming him, and he hadn’t felt this good since—

Well, since he’d been measured for that armor.

On Firesong’s advice, he’d been invoking the healing spell whenever he got the chance, and it had an effect. Getting a proper, full grooming from a real trondi’irn had helped more.

If only there was something I was getting groomed for. He sighed. I haven’t exactly met anyone lately that I could—

At just that moment, gryphon screams at full shrill filled the air from several directions, and shadows outside his shelter made Kel lurch to his feet and bolt to the entrance, Firesong beside him, to see what had caused them. Just as he reached the door and looked up, the full wing of k’Valdemar Vale screamed a challenge at the interlopers above.

And a shriek from the air, a shriek that would have translated in human speech as, We declare ourselves, now we are here! answered them.

Kel’s mouth dropped open as he counted one . . . five . . . oh, more than five, many more than five! sizable gryphon shadows slowing overhead.

But what . . . but where . . . but how?

They banked out of sight, then before he could react to that, just above the track to his left, a gryphon broke through the canopy with a clattering of branches and a shower of twigs and leaves and landed on the track, backwinging frantically to stop and slow himself, and scattering hertasi in the process. When all four feet were on the ground, he charged up the track to Kel’s aerie to get out of the way of the next . . . and the next . . . and the next. Leaves and the odd feather flew everywhere, and thundering wings made hearing Firesong yelling in his ear a bit hard to hear.

“What the Hell, Kel? Why are there gryphons from Iftel here?”

Gryphons from Iftel? “I don’t know!” he bellowed back. But he was given no time to think. Within moments he was surrounded by gryphons, male and female by the sizes and markings. All of them were huge, and made Kel look like a dainty gyrfalcon. All of them were dark, with darker, black markings. They didn’t mill about; they waited, eyes fixed on him, until he felt uncomfortably like a nice haunch of venison. But within a breath, one of them shouldered her way through the flock and stood before Kelvren, as a befuddled Firesong looked on.

And she was . . . beautiful.

Kelvren, wings up and blazing, lit the whole array of them.

She bowed her head briefly to him. “Do I speak to Kelvren Skothkar, Wingleader of k’Valdemar Vale?” she asked.

Her accent was strange. Perfectly understandable, but strange. It suggested that someone had given her Kaled’a’in magically, but the language had been filtered by something she already knew, like Kaled’a’in, but different.