"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 01 - The Black Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

while smoke from cook-fires scented the air they flew through. Three laughing children ran by, wearing
the green and yellow ribbons of their parents' cadre, chased by a playful kyree with a bright red ball in its
mouth. This was the way life should be. Amberdrake stretched, then ran a hand across his chin and
cheeks as he squinted in the light; time to shave again before serving that client. A thorough general
grooming was in order after he insured that Skandranon was healing properly. Being immaculately
groomed always made him feel better.
He threaded his way through the shacks, forges, and service huts to the great tent where he'd left the
Black Gryphon languishing that morning. In the daytime, the camp was far more inviting, despite the
tension that was apparent everywhere you looked.
Assistant Healers and surgery aides surged past Amberdrake as he stepped inside, all intent on
taking care of small administrative tasks and stocking supply shelves while the luxury of time was theirs.
Casualties could course in like an overwhelming wave at any moment, so any spare minutes had to be
spent in preparation. The war hadn't left the Healers much time to rest; they (and the grave diggers, body
burners, and clergy) had few hours of leisure time. That was the nature of a war, after all. It ate spirits
and bodies. It fed like any other creature.
War forced individuals and species together in ways no peacetime situation would duplicate, and
some of the oddest friendships—even loves—came out of that. Amberdrake's affection for Gesten was
natural, given the long association that hertasi had with the Kaled'a'in. Only the war and the needs of the
fighters for support personnel had prevented Amberdrake from acquiring an entire troop of the little
lizard-folk. As it was, he had to share Gesten's services with Skandranon.
But the bond between himself and the Black Gryphon—that was something that would never have
occurred in peaceful times. The gryphons were literally unnatural—creations of Urtho, the Mage of
Silence—and they would never have been found near the rolling plains that the nomadic Kaled'a'in called
home. At least, not in Amberdrake's lifetime. He had heard Urtho mention some kind of vague plans he'd
had, of planting them in little aeries in some of the wilder parts of the mountains, creating yet another
population of nonhuman intelligences, as Urtho's predecessors had done with the hertasi and kyree. But
that plan, of course, had come to nothing with the onset of war among the Great Mages.
Urtho had tried to stay out of the conflict, with the result that the conflict had come to him.
Amberdrake wondered if he sometimes berated himself for waiting. There had probably been a point
early in Ma'ar's career when Urtho could have defeated him easily, had he not stayed his hand. But who
could have known that war would have come to roost in Ma'ar's willful head? Urtho couldn't be blamed
for not bottling up the Kiyamvir long ago.
There were little joys amid all the pain, and some of those joys could come from the bindings of
affection that just sprang up, like wildflowers in a battlefield.
Amberdrake sighed a little. He loved Skan as much as if he and the gryphon had been raised in the
same nest, in the same home, but he wondered now if Skan felt anything more than simple friendship. It
was hard to read the gryphon; the raptorial features reflected emotion in far more subtle ways than, say, a
kyree's mobile face. And Skan was—well, Skan. He often kept his deepest feelings to himself, covering
them with jokes and pranks—or complaints and feigned irritation. If he felt affection for someone, he was
just as likely to mock him as praise him.
Caring for the gryphon certainly had its drawbacks.
Amberdrake made his way quietly and unobtrusively through the rows of smaller tents housing the
recovering wounded. There was a special section for gryphons; an array of tents with reinforced frames,
built to be used for traction, to keep any of the gryphons' four limbs or two wings immobile.
He spotted Gesten leaving one of the tents just as the hertasi saw him. Gesten looked uncommonly
cheerful, all things considered; his eyes twinkled with good humor and he carried his tail high.
"His Royal Highness has one demon of a headache, and he says he's too nauseous to eat," Gesten
reported. "Cinnabar says that's because he's got a concussion, and His Highness irritated his throat with
the thingummy he stuffed into his crop, and since I couldn't get him to eat anything, she wants you to try."
Amberdrake nodded. "What was that thing he tried to swallow?" he asked. "It kept intruding on my