That meant cooperation, which meant more intelligence. Wolves might sniff around a trapped fellow, might even try to help him gnaw himself loose, but they would not have been able to remove parts of a deadfall trap except by purest accident, and then only after a great deal of trial and error effort. He had heard them last night. It had not taken them long at all to free the trapped one. And they had done so without too many missteps, if there were any at all. The snare-they didn't just chew the leg or head off the rabbit it caught and then eat the rest. The noose of the snare was opened. They killed the rabbit, pulled the snare open and removed it, then pulled up the snare and looked it over. That was evidence of more intelligence, and certainly the ability to manipulate objects. What that evidence meant to their survival, he couldn't yet tell. But he had his fears, and plenty of them. He could only wonder right now if Blade shared those fears. Maybe it was time to stop trying to shelter her and start discussing things. Maybe it had been time to do that a couple of days ago. Blade stopped in the shelter of a vine-covered bush. Is that what I think it is? She frowned with concentration, and motioned to Tad to remain where he was so she could hear without distraction. There was something in the distance, underneath the chatter of the four-legged canopy creatures, and the steady patter of debris from a tree where some of the birds were eating green fruit-a sound- Tad shifted his weight impatiently. "Shouldn't we-" he began. "Hush a moment," she interrupted, and closed her eyes to concentrate better. Was that really what she thought it was? She began to isolate it mentally from the rain of bits of leaf, twig, and half-eaten fruit. "I think I hear running water," she said at last. "Come on!" She abandoned all attempts at secrecy, trotting as quickly as she could through the tangle of underbrush, with Tad hot on her heels. If that was the long-sought river she heard, then their safety lay more surely in reaching it than in trying to hide themselves or their trail. Above them, a few canopy creatures barked or chattered a warning, but most of them seemed to regard her and Tad as harmless. Well, they would. Now we're running openly, not stalking. We can't be hunting, so we're not a danger to them directly. The sounds above kept on, and the fruit eaters didn't even pause in their gluttony. That was comforting; it meant there was nothing else around that aroused the tree dwellers' alarm. If there had been something trailing them closely, when they broke cover, it would have had to do the same to a certain extent, just to keep up with them. And if that had happened, the treetops should have erupted with alarm or once again gone silent, or both. There was sunlight pouring down through a huge gap in the trees, off in the distance; it shone green-gold through the leaves, white between the trunks of the trees. The closer they got, the clearer the sound of water running rapidly over rocks became. They literally burst through the luxuriant curtain of brush at the river's edge, teetering on the rocks lining the banks. She wanted to cheer, but confined herself to pounding on Tad's shoulder enthusiastically. The river at their feet was wide, but so far as she could tell, it was deep only in the middle. More to the point, across the river lay the cliff they had been looking for, with a wide beach made of rocks and mud lying between the rock cliff face and the river. Caves, waterfalls-even a crevice that we can fortify. Any of those will do very nicely just now! "Let's get across," Tad urged. "If they're following us, we'll be able to see them, and there's going to be water between them and us." Water between them and us. Right now, that was the best protection she could imagine. Tad was right; with an open space of water between their enemy and themselves, they would certainly be able to see the mysterious hunters coming. We can look for a cave as soon as we're across. For the first time in four days,, they should be able to find a safe and secure place to wait for rescue, a place too difficult to dig them out of, with walls of rock instead of flimsy canvas. And they might be able to actually see the creatures that were following them-assuming that the shadow-hunters were bold enough to go this far. They might give up. She wasn't going to count on it, but they might. This was certainly more trouble than most predators wanted to go through for a meal. Now she grinned, and it was heartfelt. "Let's go get wet," she said. "We both need a bath anyway!" Seven Blade peered through the curtain of rain, looking a few lengths ahead to see if there was anything like a cave in sight, then looking back down at her feet to pick out her footing among the slippery mud and river rocks. Here, out in the open, the rain came down in sheets, making footing doubly treacherous. More rain sluiced down the cliff face, washing across the rocks at her feet. This time, they hadn't gone to ground when the rains came; they didn't even look for a shelter. Instead, they continued to make their way along the cliff-side bank of the river. For one thing, the only shelter from the rain lay back on the other side of the river, and she didn't really want to take her chances back there. For another, every moment they spent in huddling away from the rain was a moment that they could not spend in looking for real cover, the protection of a place from which they could not be extracted by force. By now poor Tad was a wet, sodden mess, and after this, she was certainly going to have to figure out what they could spare to make him a new bandage for his wing. The bandages he wore were soaked and coming loose, and wouldn't be any good until after they had been rinsed clean and dried. Sacrifice some clothing, maybe, if we don't have enough bandages. I could shorten the legs of my trews for cloth, since they don't seem to be much protection against the bugs. That and some rope might make a decent sling. She was going to have to get him dried out before they slept; allowing a gryphon to go to sleep wet was a sure prescription for illness. We need a cave, or at worst, a cleft. This rain is going to go on until nightfall, and we won't be able to see anything then. The water level in the river didn't seem to be rising much, if any, which suggested that it was probably as high now as it ever got, except in the occasional flood. And I hope we don't happen to be in the midst of flood season! There was evidence aplenty for a flood, in the form of flotsam, mostly wood, washed up and wedged among the rocks. It would make admirable firewood, if they could ever find a place where they could build a fire! It would be just our luck to have pinned our hopes on finding this cliff only to discover that there is less shelter here than there was in the forest. If they didn't find a place to hole up before dark, they might have to spend the night exposed on this rocky shore, where they would have the grim choice of lighting a fire and attracting attention or shivering, cold and damp, wrapped up in wet blankets all night. The gods, or fate, were not to be so unkind, however. After a few more furlongs of picking their way across the rocks and sliding through the mud, the cliff receded somewhat to her left and the river opened up before her. A white, roaring wall loomed up out of the rain, as if someone had torn a hole in the clouds and let all the water out at once. After a moment of blinking and trying to get her dripping hair out of her eyes, she realized that she was not staring at a torrent in the midst of the downpour, she was looking at a waterfall, and just on their side of the waterfall, there was a series of darker holes in the cliff wall that must be caves. Tad spotted them at the same time, and shouted into her ear. "If any of these are deep enough, this is where we should stop! We may not be able to hear anything coming, but whatever tries to come at us from ahead won't be able to get past the falls! We'll only have to guard in one direction!" She winced at the bellowing, since she was right beside the excited gryphon, but saw at once that he was right. That overcame her misgiving at camping in a place where the sound of an enemy approaching would be covered by the roar of the water. And as if to emphasize just what a good spot this was, a stunned fish came floating to their very feet to lodge among the rocks, flapping feebly. It had obviously been knocked silly by going over the falls, and Tad, who was probably starving, was on it in a heartbeat. Two gulps, and it was gone, and Tad had a very satisfied look on his face. "See what else you can forage!" she shouted at him. "I'll check out these caves!" "Wait a moment!" he shouted back. Picking up a milky-white, smooth pebble from the rocks at his feet, Tad stared at it in concentration that she found very familiar. Then he handed it to her, gryph-grinning with open beak. The pebble glowed with mage-light. She accepted it with relief; at least he had enough magic back now that he could make a mage-light again! She didn't have to go far to find their new shelter; the very first cave she entered proved to be perfect. It went back a long way, slanting upward all the time. For a few lengths, the floor was covered with soft, dry sand. Then there was a pile of driftwood marking the high-water line that past floods had also left behind; that was where the sand ended and dirt and rock began. A thin stream of water ran down the center of the cave, coming from somewhere near the back, cutting a channel through the sand and rock alike. She made her way past it, holding the blue-glowing rock over her head to cast the best possible light ahead of her without dazzling her eyes. The cave narrowed, the farther she went back, then abruptly made a ninety-degree turn upward. This was where the stream of water originated. She put her head inside the hole and looked up. Besides getting a faceful of rain, she clearly saw the cloud-filled sky a great distance above. At one time, a real stream of water, perhaps a branchlet of the river that tumbled down the cliff further on, had cut a channel through here, forming the cave. Now, except perhaps during rain, that channel was dry. But it formed precisely what they needed; a natural chimney to carry the smoke away from their fire. Provided that nothing acted to funnel more water down that ancient outlet, this would be a perfect shelter. She could not have asked for anything better. Even the chimney was too small for anything threatening to climb down it, except perhaps snakes and the like. There were signs that other creatures had found this place just as congenial, a collection of small bones from fish and other creatures, and a cluster of bats toward the rear of the cave. She did not mind sharing this cave with bats; after her constant battles with insects, she was altogether happy to see them. They didn't seem disturbed to see her. "Blade?" Tad called from behind her, and she realized that although the sound of the waterfall did penetrate in here, it was much muted by the rock walls. "Coming!" she responded, turning her back on the chimney and climbing back down to the driftwood pile. She smelled smoke, and indeed, a plume of it, ghostlike in the blue light of the bespelled pebble, drifted toward her and the chimney outlet. A warmer light up ahead greeted her; Tad had already started a fire with the driftwood, and she joined him there. "The fish around here must not be terribly bright," he said cheerfully. "Quite a lot of them ended up on the rocks a few moments ago. I got you some." He pointed with his beak at a pair of sleek shapes at his feet. "After you ate your fill, I hope?" she admonished. "You need the food more than I do; I manage quite well on that travel-bread." His nares flushed, and she judged by that and the bulging state of his crop that he had been perfectly greedy. Not that she blamed him, especially not after going on short rations for so many days. "You might as well put this under something, so we can sleep," she said, handing him the pebble and shrugging painfully out of her pack. "If I'd ordered up a cave, I couldn't have gotten a better one than this. We can even make a really smoky fire back there-" she pointed to the rear of the cave, "-there's a natural chimney that'll send it up without smoking us out. The only thing we don't have is a nighttime signal. We need to talk about that." He ground his beak as he thought, his good wing half-spread in the firelight to dry. "I can't imagine them flying at night-" he began, then laughed. "Well, on the other hand, since it's me and you who are lost-" "Skandranon will have night flights out if he has to fly them himself," she finished for him, with a wry chuckle. Then her humor faded. She could not forget, even for a moment, that they were still being hunted. Until they knew by what, and for what reason, they should not assume they would be here to rescue when rescue came. Yes, they had good shelter now, and it would be very difficult to dig them out of it. But not impossible; not for-say-a renegade mage and his followers, human or created. Tad, however, was going to take the moment as it came; he shrugged out of his pack and nudged a fish over to her with one talon. "You eat," he said. "There's enough wood in here already to easily last the night. While you cook and eat that, I'll go back out and see what I can see." She hesitated a moment, then gave a mental shrug and bent to pick up the fish. I might as well eat and make myself comfortable. He's right about that. While the rain fell, it was unlikely that anything would try to find them. If the creatures trailing them were semi-intelligent, they would assume that the two castaways had followed their usual pattern, and had taken shelter before the rain started. The hunters would probably be looking for them on the other side of the river first, especially if the hunters had not traced them as far as the river when the rain began. Any trail would end short of the river itself, and the mud and rock of the riverbank would not hold any scent or footprint through the rain. The trail on the other side of the river would be completely obliterated, and if they could keep their fire out of sight, it was possible that they could keep their presence in this cave a secret for a day or more. By the time smoke got up the rock chimney and exited above them, it would be very difficult for anything scenting it to tell where it originated. After that, of course, it would become increasingly harder to stay hidden. Every time they left the cave, which they would have to do to catch fish, wash, and get firewood, they stood a chance of being seen. Watchers on the other side of the river could spot them without being seen themselves. But I'll worry about that after I eat, when I can think better, she decided. It was wonderful to be able to have enough space to properly open the packs and spread everything out. Once again though, she found herself attempting a task one-handed that was difficult enough using two; scaling and gutting a fish. She wound up slipping off her boot and using a foot as a clumsy "hand" on the tail to hold it down. She saved the head and the guts for later use as bait; they could not count on having the kind of luck that sent a harvest of fish down over the cliff to their feet every day. That was all right; they had fishing line and hooks with them, and if the fish guts didn't work, she could try a bug, a bread-ball, or a bit of dried meat. Once again, her shovel came into play as an impromptu grill; it probably would have been better if she'd had something to grease it with, but at the moment, she was too hungry for trifles like that. The fish burned a little and stuck to the shovel, but that didn't matter in the least-she could scrape the fish meat off and eat, and some blackened fish meat stuck to it wouldn't adversely affect the use of the shovel as a shovel. She was hungry enough, in fact, that she very nearly burned her fingers, picking flaky bits of meat off the hot carcass before it had properly cooled. She alternately swore softly and ate, making a happy pig of herself. Tad reappeared, dripping wet again, and regarded her thoughtfully. "Clay," he said. "Next time, wrap it up in clay and bake the whole thing. When you break the clay open, the skin comes off with it, but the rest of the fish is fine." "Where did you learn that one?" she asked, looking up at him in surprise. "Mother. She loves fish, and even though she likes it best fresh, she's been known to accept baked fish if it wasn't straight out of the sea." He gryph-grinned at her again, and cocked his head to one side. "You know how she is-unlike father, she'll wish for the ideal, but not complain when it isn't given! What do you want to do about the firelight? Move the fire back farther into the cave? The cave bends enough that I think that will make it harder to see from across the river. Or does it matter?" So, he had been thinking about their stalkers. "I'm not sure it matters; sooner or later they're going to see us, or see signs of where we are. I'd rather put some thought into defenses." "I've set up some simple line snares on the path, so watch out for them," he said. "Not much, there's not much I can do in the rain, but some. It should help, I would think. I can do better tomorrow." "So that's why you're wet!" She signed to him to sit beside the fire, as she devoured the cooked fish. It didn't taste like much, a bit bland, which in itself made it an improvement over the dried meat, which tasted like old boots. It was hot and satisfying and cooked, which made all the difference, and she ate every scrap, using her knife to scrape the burned bits off the shovel and eat them too. Then she settled back on her heels, sucking her slightly-burnt fingers to get the last of the juices, and gave him all of her attention. "Right, then. Let's settle the short-term first, then the long-term. First watch?" she asked. "Yours," he said promptly. "As full as I am, I'm going to doze off no matter what. I can't help it; it's the way I'm built. And I have marginally better night-vision than you do. I also have better hearing," he added, "but with that waterfall out there, that isn't going to matter. I can run our fishing line from one of the snares into here, and stack some stones over the light pebble to make a sort of alarm." Well, that seems pretty reasonable to me. "Good enough. If I see anything tonight, should I take a shot at it? Across the river is in the range of my sling, and with all these rocks around I can afford to miss now, and we won't have to go after my ammunition to get it back." That was another source of easing tensions. Now she was no longer limited to the pouches of lead shot for ammunition. The rocks might not fly as true, but she could lob as many of them around as she needed to. "My vote is that we not provoke anything tonight," he said instantly. "Let's not give them the answer to the question of where we went. If they can't find us tonight, we might get lucky and they'll go away." "Probably not, but it's worth giving ourselves the chance. Agreed. Do we trap the other side of the river?" That was another good question. It might well be worth it to try-or it might make them targets when they crossed the river to check the traps. The river wasn't all that deep even at its deepest; barely chin-high on Blade. Anything energetic enough could cross it easily. After all, they had, and neither of them was in the best of shape. A stealthy swimmer could cross it and never betray himself by sound, what with the waterfall out there pounding away. He shook his head. "No; we trap this side of the river, but not the other. We'd be too vulnerable on that side, and why bother? We really don't want to catch these things, do we?" He didn't look as if he did, and she agreed with him. After all, what could they do with one if they did catch it, alive or dead? All that would do would be to tell them what the hunters looked like, and there were easier ways to do that. "Not unless we have to start whittling down their numbers," she murmured, thinking that this cave was both a good and a bad place to be. They could defend it-but it would be hard for rescuers to spot, and it would be very easy to place them in a state of siege from which there was no escape. The narrowness of the chimney that made it impossible for anything to climb down also rendered it impossible for them to climb up. "Right. Then tomorrow, if it looks clear, we go get some green wood and leaves from across the way to make a smoke signal with. We get all the dry driftwood we can and stock it in here." He cocked his head to one side, and waited for her contribution. "Water we have, finally; I might just as well start fishing and as long as we're running a smoke-signal fire, it can do double duty and I can smoke what we don't eat." That way if we're trapped in here we'll have something to eat. "We ought to go back down the way we came in and decide what kind of traps we can lay." "At least one rockfall, right at the entrance, with a release one of us can trigger from in here," he said promptly, and yawned. "With a lot of work and cleverness we can even barricade the opening of the cave with wood and rocks; we're certainly clever enough, so all we need is the work. And that is about all of the thinking that I'm good for. I have got to get some sleep. I don't need a blanket; it's plenty warm enough in here next to the fire." He winked at her. "I can even lie down on this nice, soft sand so that I'm between the fire and the entrance, and screen it with my body. I shall sacrifice staying near the cold and water to do this duty." "Big of you. Help me spread out the bedding so it can dry," she responded dryly. "Then you can sleep all you like-at least until it's your turn on watch!" And may there be nothing to watch for-except a search party, and that soon, she thought, as he chuckled and moved to help her with the damp blankets. By now they'll have missed us back home. We didn't make the rendezvous, and the other patrol should have sent word back with their teleson. How long until we're missing instead of overdue? And will they look for us when they think we're only late? I wish I knew. I only know one thing. Father's going to go out of his mind when he hears of this. I'm glad I'm not the one to tell him! Amberdrake stared at Commander Judeth; for a moment her words made no sense. Then suddenly, they made all too much sense. "They're what?" All of Amberdrake's hard-won equanimity deserted him. He rose out of the chair in his office as if he'd sat on a hot coal. Indeed, that was very much the way he felt. "Calm down, Drake, the youngsters are only overdue by a day," Judeth told him. She looked outwardly calm, but he knew more than enough about her and the tiny telltale signals her body showed to know that she was seriously worried. And yet, that was simply not good enough. "The patrol they were relieving got to the rendezvous point expecting them to be there yesterday, and they weren't there." She's worried. She's only worried. And she still hasn't done anything. "And they haven't shown up yet." He held both the arms of his chair in a strangle grip, and stared at her with unveiled accusation in his eyes. "So why aren't you doing anything? You know those two are as by-the-book as any trainees you've ever had! They have never, ever violated orders. If they had a reason to be late, if they knew they were going to be delayed, they'd have sent a teleson message! If they haven't, it's because they can't, because something happened to them!" His voice was rising, and he knew it, and what was more, he didn't care that he was making a blatant display of his emotions. For once in his life he wanted someone to know how upset he was. Judeth made soothing motions, as if she thought he could somehow be propitiated by a few words. As if she thought he could be "reasoned out of his hysteria." She was certainly going to try. "We are doing something, Drake; the patrol has left the rendezvous and they are going on out to see if they can't find some sign of Blade and Tad. It's too early to get in a panic about this-" Too early to get in a panic? Who does she think she's talking to? He held himself back from exploding at her only by great effort of will. "You tell me that when it's your child that's missing!" he snapped at her. "Or have you gotten so wrapped up in being a commander that you've forgotten this isn't wartime? Instead of telling me not to panic, I suggest you tell me what else you're doing right now. And if you aren't doing anything right now, I am not interested in hearing why you can't! I'll pull in every resource I have to see that something does get done, and without any nonsense about not getting into a panic because one person thinks it's too early!" That was the closest he had ever come in his life to saying that he was actually going to use all the power and influence he held and had never used before, for any reason. And I will, I'll do it, if I have to blackmail everyone in this city. Even her. It was a threat, a real one, and he was not bluffing. But he felt he owed it to Judeth to warn her that lightning was going to fall on her before it came. If he used all his influence, it would be worse than lightning, and Judeth's position as commander might not survive the storm. Her eyes darkened dangerously at his words, but her voice remained calm and even, which was something of a testament to her own control. Judeth did not like threats, but she was a realist, and she must know that he was not bluffing. "Right at this moment, the original patrol is flying out about a day in the right direction to see if they can find anything. If they don't, they'll go north of the track, then south, to see if they somehow went off course. Meanwhile, we're working on it. We're not just sitting around, waiting to see what happens. We're trying to find some way of locating them from here, and-and-" she finally raised her own voice as he got ready to explode again. "-and we are putting together search parties. Those will leave in the morning, since we can't possibly get one together before then. There is no point in grabbing unprepared people and sending them out at random. Now, if you can think of anything I might have missed, I'd like to hear it." The truth was, he couldn't, but that didn't stop him from wanting some action right that very moment, something besides merely "readying a search party." "I can't think of anything, but I'm-this is difficult. It's hard to think," he admitted grudgingly. "Does Skan know yet?" "Aubri's telling him." Poor Aubri, her tone said, but Poor Skan, was what he was thinking. He was afraid of this. He didn't want Tad to go off on this assignment any more than I wanted Blade to. I know he thought about going to Judeth and asking them to be reassigned to something else, and didn't do it. And now he must be wondering if he is to blame for them being missing. "I'll tell Winterhart-" he began, his throat tightening at the thought. Gods, how do I tell her? This was my fault, if it all comes down to it; something I said or did made Blade want to be in the Silvers in the first place, all my interference made her want to be assigned somewhere far away from here-if I hadn't tried to meddle in her life so much, she would still be here-maybe even doing something else with her life. And Tad would have a different partner, one that wouldn't have urged him to ask for assignment out of the city. He desperately wanted someone else to take on the burden of telling her, so that he did not have to face her accusing eyes. Cowardly, yes, but - "No, I'll tell her," Judeth said firmly. "I already know where she is, and I'm Silverblade's commander; that's part of my job. You go to Skan; I'll send her to you there." There, as everyone in White Gryphon knew, was "Kechara's nursery" this time of the day. Skandranon spent at least an hour with her and the other children, human and otherwise, every afternoon. He loved to spend time with them, telling stories, playing games. Once again, Amberdrake got to his feet and headed for the door; this time Judeth didn't stop him. As soon as the White Gryphon Council Hall was finished, the spouses of every city official had demanded the addition of real offices to it-Winterhart included. "We're tired of you people bringing work home, and we're tired of having work follow you home," she had said, both in her capacity as "spokes-spouse" and in her capacity as a city official herself. "Home is where you go to get away from idiots who couldn't find the public latrine without a map and a guide! And every official gets an office, even if it's no bigger than a closet!" she had added. "I don't care if the post of k'Leshya Clan chief has never had a physical office before, the k'Leshya Clan chief has also never lived in anything other than a tent before, and if he can break tradition by living in a cave, he can break it a little more by having an office and regular hours, and he can bar the door when his office hours are over!" She had glared at Amberdrake, and her eyes had said, And that goes twice as much for you, my dear and over-obliging spouse! Since Lionwind's wife had been standing behind Winterhart, nodding her head at every word and with one hand on her knife, he and every other city official had readily agreed. The offices were all built into the cliff behind the Council Hall, small and private, and close to the other public buildings. The administrative building for the Silvers was not that far away from Amberdrake's office, and in that building was the nursery they had made for Kechara when she was still acting as the communication center for the Silvers. She shared it with the youngsters of anyone else in the Silvers or in city administration who needed to have someone tend their little ones while they worked. It was a good arrangement for everyone, and it gave Kechara a never-ending stream of playmates who were all her mental age, even if she was chronologically six or more times older. Even though Kechara's powers were severely limited, she could still "talk" to any gryphon within the city territory. That alone was useful to the Silvers, and a very good reason to keep her right where she always had been. As Amberdrake hurried toward the building, every muscle and nerve writhing with anxiety, he couldn't even begin to imagine how Judeth had thought that Aubri could break something like this gently to Skan. She must have been so upset by the news that her ability to reason had flown right out the door! Aubri hasn't the tact of a brick. When Skan- "DRAKE!" The bellow of a gryphon enraged could probably be heard all the way up to the farms, and the gryphon that burst out of the door of the Silvers' headquarters looked perfectly ready to chew up iron and spit out nails. Burst was indeed the correct term; the white-and-black gryphon erupted from the door flying, his head swiveling in all directions, presumably looking for his friend as he gained altitude. "Drake!" Skan bellowed again, from a height of about three lengths above him. "These idiots! They've lost-" "I know, I know," Amberdrake shouted back, waving his hands frantically. "That's why I'm-" Skan folded his wings and landed heavily, as if he were pouncing on something, every feather on end. "I want every mage in this city working on a way to find them!" he said wrathfully. "I don't care what they're doing! This is an emergency! I want everybody pulled in off of whatever they're doing, and I want search parties out there now! I want messengers sent to Shalaman! I want every man the Haighlei can spare out there looking, too! I want-" We have to work this together, or they're not going to listen to us. Amberdrake seized his friend's head in both hands, hooking his fingertips into the gryphon's nares. He pulled Skan's beak down so that the gryphon was looking directly into his eyes. "I know," he said forcefully. "Believe me, I feel the same! We have to call the Council to authorize this, Skan, but I don't think anybody on it is going to disagree with us, and if they do-" Skan growled wordlessly at the very idea. "If they do, we-we both know things they wish we didn't," he pointed out. "We do. And I'll use that." There it was; Skan agreed with him. It wasn't right, but it was better than arguing with shard-counters until it was too late to do anything. "But there's no point in scattering everybody like a covey of frightened quail," Drake persisted, trying to convince himself as much as Skandranon. "All right? Let's get things coordinated. Judeth told the original patrol to look for them; right now that's all that anyone can do out there. We have to organize, and get people out there, talk people into using Gates again if we have to. We have to get Council backing for all that before anything else can be done, and that isn't going to happen if we're both standing here and wasting precious time screaming like outraged parents!" "We are outraged parents!" The gryphon kicked clods of dirt in flurries of rage. "I don't want to have to follow procedure!" Amberdrake put his fists on his hips and leaned toward Skandranon. "We will get Council approval, by whatever means necessary." I hate it, but that's the case. If we want to have more than just "the usual effort" from the Silvers, we have to get Council authorization. And that's where the threats of blackmail come in. Skan growled again, but without as much force behind it. "Damn it, Drake, why do you have to be so right?" he snarled. "All right then, I'll go back in there and have Kechara call in the Council members so we can authorize all of this." Amberdrake wanted to add don't frighten her, but he held his tongue. Of all of them, Skan knew best how not to do anything that would make Kechara unhappy. He was her "Papa Skan," and she loved him with all of her heart-which was as large as her poor brain was small. He would no more do anything to frighten her than he would allow Blade and Tad to languish in the wilderness, unsought-for and unrescued. He headed back toward the Council Hall, certain that if Winterhart and Zhaneel were not already on the way there, after Kechara's call, they would be. Skan came stalking in shortly after Drake, and within moments after that, the rest of the Council members came hurrying in. Judeth was one of the first, looking very surprised and taken aback, and just a little annoyed; and although Skan leveled an icy glare at her, his tone was civil enough. "I've called this meeting," he said. "Since this is an emergency situation." He waited only until there were enough Council members present to constitute a quorum, and until everyone was seated before nodding to Judeth. "You're the commander of the Silvers, so I think it best that you explain the emergency to the rest of the Council," he said crisply. Judeth looked as if she wanted to say something scathing to him, but held her tongue, which was probably wise. Amberdrake had a good idea of what she was thinking, however. She was, first and foremost, a military commander, and under any other circumstances, the fact that two of the most junior members of the Silvers were missing-or overdue-should not have been considered an emergency the Council should be concerned with. Only an hysterical-but powerful-parent could have thought that it was. And Amberdrake would have cheerfully throttled her for suggesting any such thing, if she dared. Throttled her, then revived her so I could throttle her again. Part of him was appalled at this capacity for violence within himself; the rest of him nodded in gleeful agreement at the idea. Then I'd revive her so that Skan could have a turn. But she evidently knew better-or the threat of his influence made her think twice about suggesting any such thing. Judeth explained the situation, coolly and calmly, while the other members of the Council listened without making any comments. Skan kept glaring around the table as if daring any of them to say that this was not the sort of emergency for which the Council should be called. No one did, but Snowstar did have something to say that put the entire situation into a perspective that Amberdrake greatly appreciated. "Has anyone ever gone missing this way before?" he asked, without looking either at Skan or at Amberdrake. "I know that there have been a handful of accidents among the Silvers, but I don't ever recall any of our Silvers on Outpost Duty ever disappearing before. Judeth, you haven't even had any fatalities in the Silvers since we encountered the Haighlei, and all of those were on the trek to find the coast. If this is a new development, I think it is a very serious one." Aubri opened his beak, then looked at Judeth, startled. She was the one who replied. "Actually-you're right," she said, sounding just as surprised as Aubri looked. "The fatalities among young gryphons since we founded the city have all been among the hunters, not the Silvers, and the accidents causing injuries among the Silvers have all been just that-accidents, usually caused by weather, and not a single death from something like a drunkard or fight. To date we haven't had a single case of Outpost Patrols going missing. They've broken limbs, they've gotten sick, we've had to send help out to them, and one set of humans even got lost once-but they had a teleson and we knew they were all right, we just couldn't find them for a while. We've never had anyone just vanish before" Her eyes were the only part of her that showed how alarmed this new observation made her, but Amberdrake was savagely pleased at the way that her eyes went blank and steely. He knew that look. That was General Judeth, suddenly encountering a deadly enemy where she had been told there was open ground with no threats. "I kept thinking this was-sort of one of the hazards of duty-but that was under war conditions or while we were making our way here," Aubri muttered, so shamefaced that his nares flushed a brilliant red. "Snowstar, you're right! We've never lost a Silver since-since we allied with the Haighlei!" You two have been making the mistake of thinking that the Silvers were the extension of the old army-but they aren't and our situation is completely different than it was before the wars. And how could I have been so blind not to have seen your blindness? "Then I believe this does qualify as a full-scale emergency," Snowstar said firmly. "When two highly-trained individuals drop completely out of sight, for no reason and with no warning, it seems to me that the danger is not only to them alone, but possibly to the entire city. What if they were removed so that they could not alert us to some enemy who is moving against us? How can we know that if we don't mount a rescue, in strength and numbers?" Heads nodded all around the table, and Amberdrake exchanged stricken glances with Winterhart, who had come in just in time to hear that. He felt cold all over, and she had paled. He could have done without hearing that. He was perversely glad that Snowstar had thought of it, for it certainly swayed even the veterans on the Council to their cause, but he could have done without hearing it. Either Snowstar really believes that, or the self-proclaimed nondiplomat Snowstar just made a shrewd play in our support. Or both. A heavy and ominous silence filled the Council Hall, and no one seemed prepared to break it. Skan was as frozen as a statue, and beside him, Zhaneel simply looked to be in too much shock to be able to think. Winterhart stood beside her Council seat, unable to sit, clutching the back of it; her knuckles were as white as her namesake. Amberdrake himself felt unable to move, every limb leaden and inert. Judeth cleared her throat, making all of them jump. "Right," she said briskly, silence broken. "We have the original pair flying a search pattern; we're putting together more search teams. Does anyone have any further suggestions?" Skan opened his beak, but Snowstar beat him to it. "I'll organize the mages and start distance-scrying," he said immediately. "We're probably too far away, but those who can scry for them should at least try. We'll look for the traces of the magic on all the items they had with them; even if something made them crash, those traces will still be there. I'll also pick out mages for the search parties." Once again, Skan opened his beak-then glared around the table, to make certain that he wasn't interrupted this time. "We should send a message to Shalaman," he said belligerently. "His people know that forest better than we do. We should make him-I mean, ask him-to send out parties of his hunters." "That's good," Judeth approved, making a note of it. "I can put anyone who's been posted to that area on search parties, but if we can field Haighlei who are trained to hunt the forest in addition to our own people, that will be even better. Anything else?" Search parties, magic, the Haighlei Thoughts flitted through Drake's head, but he couldn't make any of them hold still long enough to be examined. Judeth looked around the table to meet shaking heads, and nodded. "Good. We've got a plan," she said firmly. "We should assume that whatever has happened to these Silvers could endanger the city, and make finding them a top priority. Let's get to it." She stood up and was halfway to the door before anyone else was even out of his chair. He didn't blame her. If the situation was reversed, he wouldn't want to be in the same room with four frantic parents either. And he wouldn't want to face two people who had just threatened to blackmail him for not taking the loss of their children seriously enough. Everyone else deserted the hall as quickly. Only Aubri paused at the door, looking back with uncertainty in his gaze. He opened his beak, then swallowed hard, shook his head, and followed the others. Skandranon wanted nothing more than to rush off to the rescue of his son. Failing that, he wanted to tear the gizzard out of those who were responsible for his disappearance. Right now, so far as his heart was concerned, the ones responsible were right here in White Gryphon. Judeth and Aubri. It was all their fault. If they hadn't assigned the children to this far-flung outpost, both his beloved son and his dear friend Amberdrake's daughter would still be here. "I knew that this was a mistake all along!" he seethed at Zhaneel as he paced the length and breadth of the Council Hall. "I knew they were too young to be sent off on Outpost Duty! No one that young has ever been sent off alone like that before! They should have been posted here, like everyone else was! Judeth's getting senile, and Aubri was already there to show her the way-and-" "Please!" Zhaneel suddenly exploded. "Stop!" He stared at her, his mouth still open, one foot raised. "Stop it, Skan," she said, in a more normal tone. "It is not their fault. It is not the fault of anyone. And if you would stop trying to find someone to blame, we would get something done." She looked up at him, with fear and anxiety in her eyes. "You are a mage; I am not. You go to work with Snowstar and the others, and I shall go to the messenger-mage and send a message in your name to Shalaman, asking for his help. At least I can do that much. And Skandranon-he is my son as well as yours, and I am able to act without rages and threats." With that, she turned away from him and left him still standing with his foot upraised and his beak open, staring after her in shock. Alone, for Amberdrake and Winterhart had already left. Stupid, stupid gryphon. She's right, you know. Blaming Aubri and Judeth won't get you anywhere, and if you take things out on them, you're only going to make them mad at you. The Black Gryphon would be remembered as an angry, overprotective, vengeful parent. And what good would that do? None, of course. What good would it do? All at once, his energy ran out of him. He sat down on the floor of the Council Hall, feeling-old. Old, tired, defeated, and utterly helpless, shaking with fear and in the grip of his own weakness. He squinted his eyes tightly closed, ground his beak, and shivered from anything but cold. Somewhere out there, his son was lost, possibly hurt, certainly in trouble. And there was nothing, nothing that he could do about it. This was one predicament that the Black Gryphon wasn't going to be able to swoop in and salvage. I couldn't swoop in on anything these days even if I could salvage it. I'm an anachronism; I've outlived my usefulness. It is happening all over again, except this time there can't be a rebirth of the Black Gryphon from the White Gryphon. The body wears out, the hips grow stiff and the muscles strain. I'm the one that's useless and senile, not Judeth and Aubri. They were doing the best they could; I was the one flapping my beak and making stupid threats. That is all that is left for a failed warrior to do. For a moment, he shook with the need to throw back his head and keen his grief and helplessness to the sky, in the faint hope that perhaps some god somewhere might hear him. His throat constricted terribly. With the weight of intolerable grief and pain on his shoulders, he slowly raised his head. As his eyes fell on the door through which Zhaneel had departed, his mind unfroze, gradually coming out of its shock. What am I? What am I thinking? I may be old now, but I am still a legend to these people. Heroes don't ever live as long as they want to, and most die young. I've lasted. That's all experience. I'm a mage, and more skilled than when I was younger-and if I'm not the fighter I used to be, I'm also a lot smarter than I used to be! And what I'm feeling - I know what it is. I know. It was what Urtho felt every time I left, every time one of his gryphons wound up missing. I loved him so dearly, and I breathe each breath honoring his memory - but he was a great man because he accepted his entire being, and dealt with it. I am not Urtho - but I am his son in spirit, and what I honor I can also emulate. There's plenty I can do, starting with seeing to it that Snowstar hasn't overlooked anything! He shook himself all over, as if he was shaking off some dark, cold shadow that was unpleasantly clinging to his back, and strode out of the Council Hall as fast as his legs would carry him. What I honor in Urtho's deeds, others have also honored in me. Urtho could embrace every facet of a situation and handle all of them with all of his intellect, whether it angered him personally or not. That was why he was a leader and not a panicked target. He could act when others would be overwhelmed by emotion. If I think of this disappearance in terms only of how I feel about it, then I will miss details that could be critical while I fill my vision with myself, and that could cost lives. Let the historians argue over whether I was enraged or determined or panicked on this day! I can still be effective to my last breath! It was not clear at first where the Adept had run off to, and by the time Skan tracked him down, Snowstar had managed to gather all of the most powerful mages together in his own dwelling and workshop. Skan was impressed in spite of himself at how quickly the Kaled'a'in mage had moved. It was notoriously difficult to organize mages, but Snowstar seemed to have accomplished the task in a very limited amount of time. There were seven mages at work including Snowstar. They had been divided into pairs, seated at individual tables so that they didn't interfere with each other, each pair of them scrying for something in particular. One pair looked for the teleson, one for the tent, one for the basket. Snowstar was working by himself, but the moment that Skan came near him, he looked up and beckoned. "I'm looking for Tadrith myself," he said without preamble, "I was waiting for you to help me; the blood-tie he has with you is going to make it possible to find him, if it's at all possible. You will both feel similar magically, as you know." "If?" Skan said, growing cold all over. Is he saying that he thinks Tad is-dead? "You mean you feel he is already dead-" Snowstar made a soothing gesture. "No, actually, I don't. Even if Tadrith was unconscious or worse, we'd still find him under normal circumstances. The problem is that I'm fairly certain that they're quite out of our range." The white-haired Kaled'a'in Adept shook his head. "But 'fairly' isn't 'completely,' and under the impetus of powerful emotions, people have been known to do extraordinary things before this. As you should know, better than any of us! I'm more than willing to try, if you are." Skan grunted in extreme irritation, but reined it in. "Stupid question, Snowstar. I'd try until I fell over." Snowstar grimaced. "I know it was a stupid question; forgive me. Fortunately, that won't matter to the spell or the stone." He gestured at a small table, and the half-dome of volcanic glass atop it. "Would you?" Skan took his place opposite the chair behind the table; he'd done scrying himself before, once or twice, but always with another mage and never with Snowstar. Each mage had his own chosen vehicle for scrying, but most used either a clear or black stone or a mirror. He put his foreclaws up on the table, surrounding his half of the stone with them. Snowstar placed his own hands on the table, touching fingertip to talon-tip with Skan. After that, it was a matter of Skan concentrating on his son and supplying mage-energy to Snowstar while Snowstar created and loosed the actual spell. Some mages had a visual component to this work, but Snowstar didn't. It took someone who was not only able to see mage-energy but one who was sensitive to its movement-like a gryphon-to sense what he was doing. Skan felt the energy gathering all around them and condensing into the form of the spell, like a warm wind encircling them and then cooling. He felt it strain and tug at the restraints Snowstar held on it. And he felt Snowstar finally let it go. Then-nothing. It leaped out-and dissipated. It wasn't gone, as if it had gone off to look for something. It was gone as if it had stretched itself out so thin that a mere breeze had made it fragment into a million uncoordinated bits. Snowstar jerked as if a string holding him upright had snapped, then sagged down, his hands clutching the stone. "Damn," he swore softly, as harsh an oath as Skan had ever heard him give voice to. "It's no good. It's just too far." Skan sagged himself, his throat locked up in grief, his chest so tight it was hard to take a breath. Tad A few moments later the others had all uttered the same words, in the same tones of anger and defeat- all except the pair trying to reach the teleson. They simply looked baffled and defeated, and they hadn't said anything. Finally Snowstar stopped waiting for them to speak up for themselves and went over to them. "Well?" he said, as Skan followed on his heels. Skan knew both of them; one was a young Kaled'a'in called Redoak, the other a mercenary mage from Urtho's following named Gielle. The latter was an uncannily lucky fellow; he had been a mere Journeyman at the beginning of the mage-storms following the Cataclysm, but when they were over, he was an Adept. He was more than a bit bewildered by the transition, but had handled it gracefully-far more gracefully than some would have. "I can't explain it, sir," he said, obviously working to suppress an automatic reaction to authority of snapping to attention and saluting. "When I couldn't reach Tadrith's device, I tried others, just to make certain that there wasn't something wrong with me. I've been able to call up every teleson we've ever created, including the one out there with the patrol looking for the missing Silvers. I got the one we left with the garrison at Khimbata, which is farther away than Tadrith is. I got all of them-except the one we sent out with Tadrith and Silverblade. It's-" he shook his head. "It's just gone, it's as if it was never there! It hasn't even been retuned or broken, that would leave a telltale. I've been working with tele-sons most of my life as a mage, and I've only seen something like this happen once before." "Was that during the Wars?" Snowstar asked instantly. Gielle nodded. "Yes, sir. And it was just a freak accident, something you'd have to have been an Adept to pull off, though. Some senile old fart who should never have been put in charge of anything was given an unfamiliar teleson to recharge and reversed the whole spell. Basically, he sucked all the magic out of it, made it just so much unmagical junk." Gielle shrugged. "The only reason he could do that was because he was an Adept. Senile, but still an Adept. We make those telesons foolproof for a good reason. Tadrith couldn't have done that, even by accident and a thousand tries a day, and even if someone actually smashed the teleson, I'd still be able to activate it and get a damaged echo-back. If it had been shattered by spell, the telltale would still mark the area magically. I don't know what to think about this." Snowstar pursed his lips, his forehead creasing as he frowned. "Neither do I. This is very peculiar" Skan looked from one mage to the other, and back again. He caught Redoak's eye; the Kaled'a'in just held up his hands in a gesture of puzzlement. "The signature of an Adept is fairly obvious," Redoak said slowly. "All Adepts have a distinctive style to even a moderately-trained eye. Urtho's was his ability to make enchantments undetectable-his mark was that there was no mark, but as far as I know, he could only veil spells he himself had crafted. The Haighlei would have seen something like this situation, I wager, by now. An Adept usually doesn't refrain from doing magic any time he can, especially not one of the old Neutrals. They were positively flamboyant about it. That was one of the quarrels that Urtho had with them." "I have an idea," Snowstar finally said. "Listen, all of you, I'll need all your help on this. We're going to do something very primitive, much more primitive than scrying." He looked around the room. "Redoak, you and Gielle and Joffer put all the small worktables together. Rides-alone, you know where my shaman implements are; go get them. Lora, Greenwing, come with me." He looked at Skan. "You go to the Silvers' headquarters and get me the biggest map of the area the children were headed into that you can find or bully out of them. They might give me an argument; you, they won't dare." "They'd lose a limb," Skan growled, and he went straight for the door. He did his best not to stagger; he hadn't used that much mage-energy in a long time, and it took more out of him than he had expected. All right, gryphon. Remember what you told yourself earlier. You have experience. You may fall on your beak from fatigue and tear something trying to fly in and save the day, but you have experience. Rely on experience when your resources are low, and rely on others when you can-not when you want to, vain gryphon. Work smarter. Think. Use what you have. And don't break yourself, stupid gryphon, because you are running out of spare parts! He saw to his surprise that it was already dark outside; he hadn't realized that he had spent so long with the mages, trying to find the children. No wonder he was tired and a bit weak! The Silvers' headquarters was lit up as if they were holding high festival inside, which made him feel a bit more placated. At least they were doing something, taking this seriously now. Too bad Snowstar had to convince them there was a threat to their own hides before they were willing to move. They should have just moved on it. Wasn't that the way we operated in the old days? He barged in the front door, readied a foreclaw and grabbed the first person wearing a Silver Gryphon badge that he saw, explaining what he wanted in a tone that implied he would macerate anyone who denied it to him. The young human did not even make a token protest as the talons caught in his tunic and the huge beak came dangerously near his face. "S-stay here, s-sir," he stammered, backing up as soon as Skan let go of him. "I'll f-find what you w-want and b-bring it right here!" Somehow, tonight Skan had the feeling that he was not "beloved where e're he went." That was fine. In his current black mood, he would much rather be feared than beloved. People have been thinking of me as the jolly old fraud, the uncle who gives all the children pony rides, he thought, grating his beak, his talons scoring the floor as he seethed. They forgot what I was, forgot the warrior who used to tear makaar apart with his bare talons. Well, tonight they were getting a reminder. The boy came back very quickly with the rolled-up map. Skan unrolled it just long enough to make certain that they weren't trying to fob something useless off on him to make him go away, then gruffly thanked the boy and launched himself out the door. Despite the darkness, he flew back with his prize. When he marched through Snowstar's door, he saw at once that the workroom had already been transformed. Everything not needed for the task at hand had been cleared away against the wall. Other projects had been piled atop one another with no thought for coherence. It was going to take days to put the workroom back into some semblance of order, but Skan doubted that Snowstar was going to be thinking about anything but Blade and Tad until they were found. At least we have one friend who took all this seriously without having to be persuaded. The several small tables were now one large one, waiting for the map he held in his beak. The moment he showed his face at the door, eager hands took-snatched!-the map away from him and spread it out on the table. Redoak lit a pungent incense, filling the room with smoke that just stopped short of being eye-watering. The mage that Snowstar had called Rides-alone, who came from one of the many odd tribes that Urtho had won to his cause, had a drum in his hands. Evidently he was going to be playing it during-whatever it was they were going to do. "Right." Snowstar stood over the table, the only one who was standing, and held a long chain terminating in a teardrop-shaped, rough-polished piece of some dark stone. "Redoak, you watch what the pendulum does, and mark what I told you out on the map. Rides-alone, give me a heartbeat rhythm. The rest of you, concentrate; I'll need your combined energies along with anything else I can pull up out of the local node. Skan, that goes for you, too. Come sit opposite me, but don't think of Tad or Blade, think of me. Got that?" He was not about to argue; this looked rather like one of those bizarre shamanistic rituals that Urtho used to try, now and again, when classical spell-casting failed. He simply did as he was told, watching as Snowstar carefully suspended the pendulum over the map at the location where the youngsters had last been heard from. Rides-alone began a steady drum pattern, hypnotic without inducing slumber; somehow it enhanced concentration. How that was managed, Skan could not begin to imagine. For a long time, nothing happened. The stone remained quite steady, and Skan was afraid that whatever Snowstar had planned wasn't working after all. But Snowstar remained impassive, and little by little, he began to move the pendulum along a route going north and east of the point of the youngsters' last camp. And abruptly, without any warning at all, the pendulum did move. It swung, violently and abruptly away from the spot Snowstar had been trying to move it toward. And in total defiance of gravity, it hung at an angle, as if it were being repelled by something there. Snowstar gave a grunt, although Skan could not tell if it was satisfaction or not, and Redoak made a mark on the map with a stick of charcoal. Snowstar moved his hand a trifle. The pendulum came back down, as if it had never exhibited its bizarre behavior. Snowstar moved it again, a little at a time, and once again came to a point where the pendulum repeated its action. The strange scene was repeated over and over, as Redoak kept marking places on the map and Snowstar moved the pendulum back. It took uncounted drumbeats, and sweat was pouring down the faces of every mage around the table, when Snowstar finally dropped the pendulum and signaled to Rides-alone to stop drumming. There was an irregular area marked out in charcoal dots on the map, an area that the pendulum avoided, and which the youngsters' flight would have bisected. Redoak connected the dots, outlining a weirdly-shaped blotch. "I would lay odds that they are in there, somewhere," Snowstar said wearily. "It's an area in which there is no magic; no magic and no magical energy. Whatever is given off in the normal course of things by animals and plants is immediately lost, somehow, and I suspect magic brought into that area is drained away as well. I can only guess that is what happened to their basket when they flew over it." "So the basket became heavier, and they couldn't fly with it?" Redoak hazarded, and whistled when Snowstar nodded. "That's not good. But how did you know what to use to find all this?" Snowstar shrugged modestly. "It was Gielle that gave me the idea to look for a negative, and I remembered shamanic dowsing; you can look for something that is there, like metal, or something that is not there, like water. Urtho taught it to me; we used to use it to make certain that we weren't planting our outposts atop unstable ground." He looked across the table at Skan, who was trying very hard to tell himself that it wasn't likely for all the magic infused into the basket to drain off at once. He did not want to think about what that would have meant for poor Tadrith if the basket regained its normal weight in a single moment while aflight. "Take that map with you, and tell Judeth what we've found," the Adept told Skan. "I'll work with the mages I'm sending out with the search teams. There's probably something about the area itself that we can shield against. I doubt that a mage caused this. It might just be a freak of nature, and the Haighlei would never have seen it, because they were looking for magic, not for its absence." Skan nodded, and Redoak brushed a quick-drying varnish on the map to set the charcoal. The fumes warred unpleasantly with the lingering scent of the incense, but the moment the map was dry, the younger mage rolled it up and handed it to the Black Gryphon. Skan did not wait around to see what the rest of the mages were going to do; he took the map and fled out the door for the second time that evening. This time he went straight to the planning room-which Judeth still referred to as the "War Room" out of habit. And it looked very much as if they were planning for a wartime situation. Judeth had a map spread out over the table, there were aides darting everywhere, Aubri was up on his hindquarters tracing out a line with one talon when Skan came in through the door. "Snowstar thinks he has a general area," Skan said, as silence descended and all heads but Judeth's swiveled around at his entrance. "That's what he wanted the map for. Here." He handed the map to the nearest aide, who spread it out on the table over the existing one at Judeth's nod. "What's that?" she asked, pointing at-the blobby outline on the map. "It's an area where there isn't magic," Skan replied. He repeated what Snowstar had told him, without the details about shamanic dowsing. "That would be why we can't raise the teleson. Snowstar thinks that anything that's magical gets all the mage-energy sucked out of it when it enters that area." "And if the spell making the basket into something Tad could tow lost its power-" Judeth sucked in her lower lip, as one of the aides coughed. "Well, no matter how they landed, they're stuck now. No teleson, no magic-they'd have to hole up and hope for rescue." Aubri studied the map for a moment. "The only teams we've sent out there were gryphon pairs, with one exception," he pointed out. "You and me, Judeth. We used a basket, and our flight path took us over that area. Nothing happened to us, so where did this come from?" "Maybe it's been growing," offered one of the aides. "Maybe the more it eats, the bigger it grows." "Well, that's certainly cheerful," Judeth said dryly, and patted the girl on the shoulder when she flushed a painful red. "No, you have a point, and we're going to have to find out what's causing this if you're right. If it's growing, sooner or later it's going to reach us. I did without working magic long enough and I'm not in the mood to do it again." "That's a lot of area to cover," Aubri pointed out. "They could be anywhere in there, depending on how far they got before they had to land." Land. Or crash. Skan's imagination was all too clever at providing him with an image of the basket plummeting down out of the sky "We can probably cover it with four teams including a base camp," Judeth said, at last. "But I think we're going to have to do a ground search, in a sweep pattern. Those trees are bigger than anything most of us here have ever seen before, and you could drop Urtho's Tower in there and not see most of it. Gryphons may not do us a lot of good." "They can look for signal smoke," Aubri objected. Judeth did not say anything, but Skan knew what she was thinking, since it was something that he was already trying not to think about. The youngsters might be too badly hurt to put up a signal fire. "Right, then the two already in the area can look for signal smoke," she said. "I'll fly in a mage here, to set up a match-Gate terminus, and I'll call for volunteers for four teams who are willing to trust their hides to a Gate-" "I shall go," said a deep voice from the doorway. Skan swiveled his head, as Ikala moved silently into the room. "With all respect, Commander, I must go. I know this forest; your people do not. Forget my rank and my breeding; my father would say that you should, in a case like this. These two are my friends and my sworn comrades, and it is my honor and duty to help them." "You are more than welcome, then. I'm going, you can count on it," Skan said instantly. "Drake will probably want to go, too. Judeth, that'll give you one mage and a field-Healer, along with a fighter." Judeth sighed, but made no objections, probably because she knew they would be futile. "All right, but these are going to be big teams. I don't want tiny little patrols running around in unknown territory. I want two mages, so you have one for each night watch on each team, and I want at least as many fighters. Ikala, you go call for volunteers among the hunters and the Silvers. Skan, go back to Snowstar and explain the situation and what we need." She glared at both of them. "Don't just stand there, go!" Skan went, but he was a fraction slower than Ikala and reached the door in second place. By the time he was outside, Ikala was nowhere in sight. But he was overjoyed that Ikala was still willing to volunteer, even with the need to trust to a Gate for transport. The young Haighlei was precisely what they needed; someone who knew the ordinary hazards of such a forest, and how to meet them. Snowstar had already anticipated Judeth's decision about a Gate. "As if any of us would be afraid to trust our own Gates!" he replied scornfully. "We've been perfectly willing to use them for the last five years, it's been the rest of you who were so overly cautious about them!" "Not me!" Skan protested, but Snowstar was already on to other things. "Gielle will fly out with a gryphon as soon as it's light; I'll have Redoak head one of the other three teams after you all get through the Gate," the Adept was saying. "I have more mages willing to volunteer than Judeth needs, but not all of them are suited to this kind of mission. Tell her I'll be choosing combat experience over sheer power; we can't take the chance that this dead zone is a freak of nature. No matter what she thinks, it might have a traceable cause, and that cause might be one of the mages who escaped the Wars." Skan nodded; he was certain that Judeth had already thought of that. "I'll go find Drake," he said. It was going to be a long night, and one he was certain none of them would be able to sleep through. They might as well start getting ready for deployment. At least that was something useful. Aging and hedonistic you may be, stupid gryphon, but you're also effective. Eight Amberdrake did not sleep that night. Despite the feeling that he was working at a fever pitch, he got precious little accomplished. Most of what he did was to go over the same scenarios, in his mind, on paper, in fevered conversation with whoever would listen-usually the long-suffering Gesten. But no matter how tired he became, the weariness was never enough to overcome him, not even for a moment. Insomnia was only one of the physical effects he suffered. He simply could not be still; he would sit or lie down, only to leap to his feet again as another urgent thought struck him. The muscles of his neck and back were so tense that no amount of soaking would relax him-not that he stayed long enough in a hot pool to do any good. He had not eaten since the news. His throat was too tight to swallow, his stomach a tight, cold knot, and as for his nerves-if he'd had a client as wrought up as he was, he would have recommended immediate tranquilization by a Healer. But if he had submitted himself to a Healer, he would be in no condition to accomplish anything thereafter. He could not do that. Amberdrake recalled Zhaneel's words of so long ago, as if they were an annoyance. Who heals the healer? Skan and Snowstar had not commandeered all of the mages in the city-there was always one whose sole duty was to oversee magical communications. Those communications were between both White Gryphon and the Silvers posted outside the city-in Shalaman's bodyguard, for instance-and with Sha-laman himself, via his priests. There could be no speaking with Shalaman directly, of course. There was no such thing in Haighlei society as a dirept link to anyone important. The messages would have to go through the priests, who were the only people permitted the use of magic, then to Shalaman's Chief Priest Leyuet, and only then to Shalaman. Amberdrake tracked down the mage in question and had him send his own personal plea for help to the Haighlei in addition to Skan's-but after that, he was at loose ends. There was only so much he could do. He was no mage, he could not possibly help Skan in trying to locate the children. He could pack, and did, for a trek across rough, primitive country, but that did not exactly take much time, even with Gesten coming along behind him and repacking it more efficiently. He certainly couldn't do anything to help the rescue parties of Silvers that Judeth and Aubri were organizing. Even if he could have, it might only have made things worse. He suspected that after his threats, overt and covert, Judeth would not appreciate seeing his face just now. Aubri would be more forgiving, but Judeth had lived long under the comfortable delusion that she no longer had to cope with the vagaries of "politics." As with most true military leaders, she had always hated politics, even while she used political games to further her own causes. She had thought that without a King, a court, or a single titular leader among them, she was at last free to do what she wanted with a policing branch.