"Mercedes Lackey & Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lackey Mercedes)

during the course of the meal, and the little girl had unexpectedly stood up and announced to the room in
a firm and penetrating voice that she was not to be called by that name anymore.
"I am going to be a Silver," she had said, loudly and with total conviction. "I want to be called
Silverblade from now on."
Silverblade had then sat down, flushed but proud, amidst gasps and murmurs. It was a rather
dramatic move even for someone with an outgoing personality like Tadrith; for one as self-effacing as
Blade, it must have taken an enormous effort of will—or assertion of the truth, as the k'Leshya believed.
The willpower to do anything would come, the songs and writings said, if the motive was pure.
Nothing her parents could say or do would persuade her otherwise—not that Amberdrake and
Winterhart had been so selfish as to attempt to thwart her in what she so clearly wanted. From that day
on, she would respond to no other name than Silverblade, or "Blade" for short, and now even both her
parents referred to her by that name.
It certainly fits her better than "Windsong." She can't carry a tune any better than I could
carry a boulder!
"Keeth! I hear you didn't kill too many patients today, congratulations!" she said as she invited
herself into the room and sat down on one of the remaining cushions.
"Thank you," Keenath said dryly. "And do come in, won't you?"
She ignored his attempt at sarcasm. "I've got some good news, bird," she said, turning to Tadrith
and grinning broadly as he rolled over. "I didn't think it could wait, and besides, I wanted to be the one to
break it to you."
"News?" Tadrith sat up. "What kind of news?" There was only one piece of news that he really
cared about—and only one he thought Blade would want to deliver to him herself.
Her grin broadened. "You should have stayed after the meeting; there was a reason why Aubri
wanted you up front. If you were half as diligent as you pretend to be, you'd know for yourself by now."
She eyed him teasingly. "I'm tempted to string this out, just to make you squirm."
"What?" he burst out, leaping to his feet. "Tell me! Tell me this instant! Or—I'll—" He gave up,
unable to think of a threat she couldn't counter, and just ground his beak loudly.
Now she laughed, seeing that she had gotten him aroused. "Well, since it looks as if you might burst
if I don't—it's what we've been hoping for. We've gotten our first unsupervised assignment, and it's a
good one."
Only the low ceiling prevented him from leaping into the air in excitement, although he did spring up
high enough to brush his crest-feathers and wingtips against the ceiling. "When? Where? How long till we
can get in action?" He shuffled his taloned feet, his tail lashing with exuberance, all but dancing in place.
She laughed at his reaction, and gestured to him to sit down. "Just as quickly as you and I would
like, bird. We leave in six days, and we'll be gone for six moons. We're going to take charge of Outpost
Five."
Now his joy knew no bounds. "Five? Truly?" he squealed, sounding like a fledgling and not caring. "
Five?"
Outpost Five was the most remote outpost in all of the territory jointly claimed by White Gryphon
and their Haighlei allies. When this particular band of refugees had fled here, as they escaped the final
Cataclysm of the Mage of Silence's war with Ma'ar the would-be conqueror of the continent, they had
been unaware that the land they took for a new home was already claimed. They'd had no idea that it
was part of the land ruled by one of the Haighlei Emperors (whom the Kaled'a'in knew as the Black
Kings), King Shalaman. A clash with them had been narrowly averted, thanks to the work of
Amberdrake and Skandranon, Blade's father and Tadrith's. Now White Gryphon jointly held these lands
in trust with the Emperor, and its citizens were charged with the responsibility of guarding the border in
return for King Shalaman's grant of the White Gryphon lands.
It was a border of hundreds of leagues of wilderness, and the Emperor himself had not been able to
"guard" it; he had relied on the wilderness itself to do the guarding. This was not as insurmountable a task
as it might have seemed; with gryphons to fly patrol, it was possible to cover vast stretches of countryside