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

Gryphon."
Zhaneel turned her head aside, and her nares flushed in embarrassment. Ah, so she's as impressed
with Skandranon as he is by himself. I'm still going to skin him later, but I'll certainly use his
image to Zhaneel's advantage.
"Let me tell you of Skandranon, Zhaneel," he began. "They make fun of Skandranon, too. He is
called a glory-hound, reckless, arrogant, petulant, and some say he has the manners of a hungry fledgling.
Still, he is there, doing what he is best at. They are jealous of him, too—mainly because he actually does
what they only talk about doing. Actions define strength. And you, sky-lady, fly faster and farther than
they do, and can strike down three makaar alone."
She blushed again, and once more he wondered what went wrong in her childhood. Where were
her teachers, her parents? The simple things he told her should have been the most basic concepts that a
young gryphlet was raised on. Normally, though, was the key word. Amberdrake had seen a thousand
souls laid bare, and knew well that what most called "normal" was anything but reality. He also felt the
warmth in his chest and belly, and the simmering heat in his mind, that told him that the hunt was good this
time—that this young Zhaneel was going to survive.
"Always, I hear how they have said this or that, and yet, I have never come face-to-face with one
of them. Who are they anyway?" he asked—rhetorically, since he did not truly expect her to answer.
"What gives them a monopoly on truth? Why are they any more expert than you or I?"
Another few steps, and he presented her with the larger cup. He marveled at the deftness with which
she grasped the cup, with a single foreclaw—no—with a single hand. And she followed his gaze.
"No claws to speak of. Have to wear war-claws like silly kyree," she murmured, and looked down
again.
"Tchah, no. That's no defect, sky-lady. See my arms and legs, my muscles? They match my body
well, as the parts of your body match well. Now see my hands, and their proportion to my arms." Her
sight fixed on his hands.
And her eyes widened as she realized what she was seeing. "Your hands—are like mine."
"Yes! Very similar. All the Powers made me this way." He nodded his approval. "And Urtho
created you, with exactly this shape to your foreclaws, your body, your wings. Do you believe that
Urtho would be so incompetent as to create an ugly, mismatched creature?"
That went against the most basic of gryphonic tenets; even Zhaneel would not believe that. "No!"
He smiled; now he had her. "Of course, we all know that Urtho would not. He has always been
thorough and detailed, with a vision unmatched by any Adept in history. No, I believe, Zhaneel, that you
are something new. Sleek and small, fast—like a falcon. The others, they all have the shapes of
broad-winged birds, of hawks and eagles—but you are something very different. Not a gryphon at all,
but something new—gryphon and falcon. Gryfalcon."
Her eyes sparkled with wonder, and she caught her breath, still holding the cup of steaming tea. She
spoke the word that Amberdrake had just made up, testing it on her tongue as she would try a sweet
apple or cold winter wine. "Gryfalcon."

This was going so much better than a candlemark ago. Amberdrake took a sip of his cup of tea and
luxuriated in the play of flavors—rich and bitter, sweet and acidic, each in turn. Complex blends that
suited the mood of a complex problem.
Outside the tent, dusk had darkened to night as they talked further, and Zhaneel had told him, in
words that faltered, of her parents' fate. They had both been killed on what should have been a low-risk
mission; once again, the war had hungered, and had fed as all things must feed. Zhaneel had been left
alone, a fledgling cared for thereafter by a succession of foster parents and Trondi'irn who felt no
particular affection for her. One by one, they changed or disappeared, and the memories of her parents
became a soft-edged memory of nurturing acceptance, a memory so distant it came to seem like a dream
or a tale, having nothing to do with her reality.
It was the contrast between the fledgling's memories of loving care and the subadult's reality of