Skytoucher looked ready to burst, but whether from surprise, rage, or grief (Pirvan doubted it could be fear), was hard to tell.
Tarothin turned to the seer. “Gracious Lady Skytoucher,” he said, in tones that would have been no more reverent had he been addressing a goddess. “I beg your pardon for this intrusion. The secrets of your cave and the spells guarding it are safe with me. Or rather, they are safe with me-as long as the secrets of the knights-”
Skytoucher screamed. She raised a hand and flung magical energy in a searing green bolt, straight at Tarothin.
Without his moving a muscle, the mage’s staff rose before him, then began to whirl, until it blurred into a disk, from which golden sparks rained.
Green magic struck golden magic, and again thunder raged about the cave.
How long it lasted this time, Pirvan did not know. He became senseless again, and for longer than before.
When he regained his senses, he saw Tarothin squatting on the floor, and Redthorn sitting on Skytoucher. The chief had a bloody lip, and other signs that the scuffle had not been entirely one-sided.
Pirvan carefully looked elsewhere, and found the two brothers contemplating their father rather as if he had turned into a dragon.
The first person to actually speak was Gerik.
“Free Riders. My father can’t break his oath to either the knights or Hawkbrother. He just cannot let Skytoucher into his mind.
“I said I would, and I say it again. I know enough to satisfy anyone, except maybe Skytoucher, that we come in friendship. Now we also have a witness, who can keep Skytoucher from doing me any harm-”
“And keep me from reading the truth in this lad’s mind and heart,” the seer said. She rose, shaking off Redthorn’s hand as she did. Yet she smiled at him when she thought no one was looking; Pirvan suspected he was seeing the latest chapter in an old tale of lovers.
“Skytoucher,” Tarothin said. “Will you bind yourself to do Gerik no harm, if I swear a similar oath to leave the mind touching between you and him?”
“Perhaps.”
“Yes or no,” Tarothin said sharply, and Pirvan knew the anger was not feigned. “If no, then you have seen what rubble I can make of your binding spells. Would you care to chance others against me?
A duel of magic would certainly kill Tarothin outright, and the Red Robe had to know it. He also had to know that this was no secret to Skytoucher.
How does one reward that kind of loyalty?
“There will be no further magic worked here today,” Redthorn said firmly. “I have seen a father who would die rather than break either of two oaths that war in him. I have seen a son who would risk his life to save his father. I have seen my son fight his own brother to defend strangers. And I have seen a high wizard of Istar shield his friends with both his magic and his body, at grave risk to both.
“Skytoucher, you said that we might not know the changebringers when we met them. I say you were wrong. We have met them, and we know them.
“Either these people can mean us no harm, or the gods themselves have deserted us. If they have, then I am still chief and first judge of honor among the Gryphons.”
Skytoucher sat down, a weary smile on her face. “I deny nothing of what you say. Tarothin, may we talk wizard to wizard at some future time, if I yield this day?”
“Anytime, at any length,” Tarothin said. “After I regain my strength, however.”
Then he fainted, and when they knew he was only exhausted, not ill, Redthorn and Skytoucher together proclaimed peace and swore to feast the new friends of the Gryphons.
It was a solemn occasion, marred only by the fact that both Pirvan and Haimya tried to embrace their son at the same time and ended up embracing each other. Then Threehands laughed at the spectacle and Hawkbrother bit his thumb at his elder before himself embracing Gerik.
Sitting on a fallen piece of battlement, Krythis saw Tulia step through the curtain wall of the northern outwork of the citadel-or that was what his eyes told him happened. He blinked and tried to count the Tulias. The count started off with three, shrank to two, and finally reduced to one.
While doing this, he also understood why he had seen his wife walk through solid stone. She had actually stepped through a gap in the half-ruined wall, but the moons had tinted the ground outside the same color as the stone.
This was a pleasing discovery. Krythis was reasonably sure he had not drunk that much, or at least had tried not to. He should be seeing only a few unreal things, not many.
Tulia swayed up to him and sat down in his lap. This was not an illusion. Neither was both of them sliding down to the ground, their backs resting comfortably against the stone and their arms around each other.
Furthermore, it was not an illusion that Krythis’s left hand was resting on a part of Tulia he did not usually touch where others might see. Was there anyone to see?
Desire warred with returning memory. Krythis realized he had not seen or heard the centaurs since Rynthala’s brawl. Indeed, he had not heard of them. What had happened with them?
He was able to mumble the question so that Tulia understood his third attempt. She smiled sleepily.
“I gave them the staffs. But by then they felt at peace with the whole world, even without Sirbones’s brandy. They did an exhibition bout with the staffs, then challenged all comers, then danced. People began throwing money. The dance went on.
“I think it ended with each centaur having a dwarf on his back, the dwarf with a kender on his shoulders, and something atop the kender, but I don’t remember what.”
“Not a gully dwarf,” Krythis said. “I don’t think they can balance well enough.”
“You’re a fine one to talk about balancing,” Tulia said, nuzzling his neck.
“Speak for yourself,” Krythis said, tightening his grip.
Tulia sighed happily, then whispered, “I asked Sirbones if he could give a truth potion to the guests.”
“To find out if there was anyone-anyone playing games-behind that drunken fletcher?”
“Exactly so. He said he couldn’t make enough for everybody, and it was unlawful to give it without their consent anyway. But he did sober up eight more guards, and the night band hadn’t drunk, and there were dwarves and kender who’d sobered up by nightfall. Rynthala was going to keep watch too.”
“On this, of all days?”
“Never heard the old tale, about how a girl who keeps watch on her coming-of-age night may have a vision of her future husband?”
“Never.”
“Well, let me tell it you.”
Except that Tulia became so occupied with nuzzling her husband’s neck, and then returning his intimate touches, that the story never got told, or even decently begun, before they were both asleep in each other’s embrace.
Haimya and Pirvan were making the evening rounds of their sentry posts when they encountered Eskaia and Hawkbrother.
It had been too far toward darkness by the time they stepped out of the cave, so the two bands (the united Free Riders and Pirvan’s party) had made camp, close beside each other, but separate. This far within Gryphon lands and this close to their sacred cave, the sentries were meant less to guard against enemies than to keep loose-tongued fighters of either side from wandering about and breaking either their bones or the new peace.
Pirvan wondered how strong the peace was. If it had any strength at all, that, too, he owed to Tarothin. He had not yet thought of any reward sufficient for the Red Robe and doubted he would be able to, but knew honor demanded he at least try.
Knight’s daughter and chief’s son were standing on either side of a horse, she grooming the mane while he examined its hooves for lodged stones. They were a wholly decent distance apart, but Pirvan noticed that Hawkbrother now wore his hair in a single braid much like Eskaia’s, and she wore a necklace of pale blue stones.