Page 43 of Gryphon in Light

“Why have you waited to tell anyone about this for so long?” he asked, finally. “Surely you could have confided in the Tayledras.”

The female shrugged, and the male mirrored her. “Long ago, we did, and left it to your people to pass the knowledge along if you deemed it right. Over generations, it was seldom brought up again, and we did not make mention of it. We believe that your people think of the actions taken in our heroic tales as solely metaphorical,” she summed up with a kind tone. The male picked up the story then. “Rising up singing, and destroying our captors with songs of freedom, was not thought of as literal, it seems, and as a whole we were content with you as our defenders. There was no reason to do more than hold our abilities in reserve. What your magic could not slay, your arrows could. What your weapons could not touch, your magic dispatched. Only those flocks who nest outside of Vales need to use this power, and it felt best that it not be well known that we host it. And this power is not an easy thing for us to use. It is perilous for the singers who must stand in the open, and it is somewhat perilous for everyone around them except the two singers.”

“Wait—two singers?” he asked.

The male nodded, and the female did the same. “Those of us with the high notes can sing a tone that can cause great pain and distress, and sometimes rupture eardrums,” the male said. “We can focus this song on a single target or spread it across a handful. But when two of us separate a distance of about two or three cart-lengths and focus on that single target . . . the head, specifically . . . our song can turn a brain to liquid. It is best no one is near but that target.”

Silverfox bit his lip and contemplated that for a long, long moment. “And you think that since we are venturing into Pelagir lands, there may be something that neither sword nor arrow nor magic can harm.”

“We have never yet found anything that can withstand the Death Song,” the female said, with the artless simplicity that told him this was an equally simple fact to her.

“I am interested in the fact that you can rupture eardrums,” he said, finally. “That might be more useful in both the short and long run. Non-lethal.”

“Survivable. Everyone should be equipped with wax and silk-cotton earplugs.” The male’s tone was dry, but their posture told him that they understood he had tacitly accepted their offer, and they were relieved. “Otherwise many nearby will be temporarily deaf.”

Silverfox reached for the list of “unusual things we need to make sure we take” and added the earplugs to that. At least they won’t take up much space.

He had the sense that there was a lot more going on than the tervardi were willing to tell him about, at least right now. And normally, that would have caused him to reject their offer. But . . . their song-weapon was something he could not turn down. It was something apparently nobody but the tervardi knew about, and for that reason, it was unlikely that any potential foe, human or otherwise, would know about it either.

But the existence of such a weapon certainly explained how flocks of tervardi managed to live in the Pelagirs without a Vale to protect them. On a hunch, Silverfox bluntly asked, “Am I right that you have other—tones—for other things?”

The two of them touched beak to beak for a moment and the female replied, “So many things. We do not hunt so much as entice, and we can set up lasting resonance in bells that will ward off insects. Or draw them in, should you enjoy gnat sprinkles on your food.” The male smiled wider. “As she does.”

Silverfox was no stranger to insects as food, and of course hertasi farmed all sorts of juicy bugs. “That’s good to know. Will you need any special sleeping arrangements?” he asked.

They both shook their heads. “On the top of a barge in good weather, inside in bad,” said the female. “We have seen the bunks, and they will do. We will only need one.”

That much, he had reckoned on. Mated pairs of tervardi slept entwined closely together in a way that humans would probably have considered uncomfortable, but their pair-bond, which surely had some components of Mind-magic to it, ensured that if one moved, even in the deepest sleep, the other would move seamlessly with them and neither would wake up.

He asked a few more questions and was about to stand up and see them out when the male dipped his head and spoke up. “The Bright Gryphon,” he said. “We think he is a portent for us.”

“Would you care to explain?” Silverfox asked curiously.

“We could share stories best kept private. We had rather not,” the female said. “The Tayledras have their secrets, we have ours. He is not a bad portent,” she added. “The opposite, rather. And that is all we wish to say.”

He wished then that he knew what the tervardi meant by “portent.” The word had shades of meaning from one culture to the next, and there was no way of telling at this point if they saw Kel himself as a being with mystical power, as the sign that something important was on the way, or—well, there were too many ways to interpret what they had said to make a meaningful conclusion. But as he saw them out and stood on the doorstep of the ekele watching them stride with their peculiar bobbing gait down the path to where their flock had made homes, he belatedly realized two things.

One—unique among the dwellers of the Vale, the tervardi and the gryphons had been created by Urtho out of whole cloth, so to speak. Neither species had any doubt about that, and so, since they actually knew exactly who their Creator was, it gave them a rather—unique—view of gods and portents and prophecies. A fairly skeptical one. Tell a tervardi that you had come on an errand from a god, and the tervardi was very likely to look at you sideways and demand proof. But, once proven, it would be taken as fact.

And two—a portent for a tervardi might be just as likely to be something a Farseer had glimpsed or written as to be supernatural in nature.

Well, this is going to make for a very interesting conversation with Ayshen, he had decided, heading back to his office. And without a doubt, Ayshen will already know about at least some of it.

When Ayshen turned up at Silverfox’s office to get the updated list of “unusual things we are going to need,” Silverfox told him everything. The hertasi was a very good listener, and as Silverfox voiced his concerns that the tervardi were going to need special care on account of their fragility, Ayshen only laughed.

“They are not as frail as they appear and not as fragile as you think,” he assured Silverfox, leaning back on his stool so that his tail took some of the weight. “They bend. When they need to, they can grow a down layer that is just as good as a goose’s, so you needn’t worry about cold. Their outer feathers are virtually waterproof. They may not be fliers, but they can run faster than a human. They swim, dive, and float. And . . .” Here he shook his head. “It amazes me that you humans have had tervardi in your midst for centuries now, and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to you to look at their feet.”

“Urhm?” Silverfox said. But when Ayshen said nothing, he cast his mind back to all the times he’d seen tervardi.

“Oh. Oh!” he said finally. “The middle claw behind—”

Ayshen nodded. “That’s a fighting claw. Meant to eviscerate with a kick.”

“Like the maka’ar had!”

“Exactly. Urtho may have created the maka’ar to combat gryphons, but he probably used captured tervardi as his base.” Ayshen nodded wisely. “Don’t underestimate them. Their wings might have been changed into arms, but they have not forgotten how to use that claw. I’ve seen them spar at dummies with a padded leather sheath over the claw. They’re not helpless.” Then he grinned, showing all his teeth. And there were a very great many of them.

“No more helpless,” Ayshen continued, “than hertasi.”