It came out a lot more acidic than he’d intended, and Zhaneel cocked her head to one side. “Headache?” she inquired delicately.
He succeeded in removing Tadrith from his right leg, but Keenath, being the older of the two tiercels, was more stubborn. “No,” he replied, again with more weariness than he had intended. “I am just very, very tired today of being the Great White Gryphon, the Wise Old Gryphon of the Hills, the Solver of Problems, and Soother of Quarrels. No one remembers when I was the Avenger in the Skies or Despoiler of Virgins or Hobby Of Healers. Now they want someone to do the work for them, and I am the fool that fell into it. I am tired of being responsible.”
He slowly peeled Keenath from his foreleg, as the young gryphlet cackled with high-pitched glee and his brother pounced on Skan’s twitching tail.
“You want to be irresponsible?” Zhaneel asked, with a half-smile he didn’t understand, and a rouse of her feathers.
“Well,” he replied, after a moment of thought, “Yes! The more people pile responsibilities on me, the less time I have for anything else! All of my time is taken up with solving other peoples’ problems, until I don’t have any time for my own! And look at me!” He shook himself indignantly. “I’m fat, Zhaneel! I’m overweight and out of condition! I can’t think of the last time I sat around chatting with Amberdrake and Gesten just because I enjoy their company, when I spirited you off for a wild storm ride, or just flew off somewhere to lie senseless in the sun for a while! Or for that matter, to lie on you a while. And the longer this goes on, it seems, the less time I get to even think!”
Zhaneel reached out a foreclaw and corralled her younger son before he reattached himself to his father’s leg, nodding thoughtfully. “But the city is almost finished, except for the things that people must do for their own homes, which you cannot be responsible for,” she pointed out. “So—surely they must not need you as much?”
He sighed and shook his head. “Except that the more things get done, the more they find for me to do. As the months go by, the things are always less vital, but they’re frozen without my word of approval or decree. It’s as if they’ve all decided that I am the only creature capable of making decisions—never mind that I’m only one member of a five-person Council!”
As she fixed her eyes on his, he struggled to articulate feelings that were not at all well defined. “I don’t know if this is some twisted joke that fate has played on me, Zhaneel, but I’m beginning to feel as if I’m not me anymore. It’s as if the old Skandranon is being squeezed out and this—this faded, stodgy, dull old White Gryphon is taking his place! And it is happening in my body, and I can only watch it happen.”
As Tadrith raced around to attack Skan’s other side, Zhaneel cornered him as well, tumbling both gryphlets together into a heap of cushions, where they attacked each other with exuberant energy, their father utterly forgotten. She sat down beside him and nibbled his ear-tuft, with an affectionate caress along his milky-white cheek. “The wars are over, my love,” she pointed out with inar-guable logic. “There are no more secret missions to fly, no more need to dye your feathers black so that you do not show against the night sky—no more real need for the Black Gryphon. We all have changed, not just you.”
“I know that,” he sighed and leaned into her caress. “But—that was more than a part of me, it was who I was and I miss it. Sometimes I feel as if the Black Gryphon died—with—with Urtho—and now all I have left is a shell. I don’t know who or what I am anymore. I only know that I don’t like what’s happened to me.”
Zhaneel clicked her beak in irritation. “Perhaps you do not care for what you are, but there are many of us who were very pleased to see a Skandranon who had learned a bit of responsibility!” she said crisply. “And we would be very annoyed to see that particular lesson forgotten!”
She glared at him just as she would have glared at a foolish young brancher for acting like one of the fledglings.
He shook his head, trying to bite back a hasty retort and instead make her see what he was talking about. “No, it isn’t that,” he replied, groping for words. “I—it’s just that it seems as if I’ve gone to the opposite extreme, as if there just isn’t any time for me to be myself anymore. I’m tired all the time, I never have a moment to think. I feel—I don’t know—thinned out, as if I’ve stretched myself to cover so much that now I have no substance. My duty has consumed me!”
The slightly frantic tone of his voice was enough to make both the youngsters look up in alarm, and Zhaneel patted his shoulder hastily. “You’ll be all right,” she told him, clearly trying to placate him. “Don’t worry so much. You gave a lot of yourself in the journey here. You lost almost all of your strength when you were trapped in the Gates. You just need more rest.”
That’s always the answer, any time I complain that I don’t feel like myself.
“And that’s just what I’m not getting,” he grumbled but gave up trying to explain himself to her. She didn’t understand; how could he expect her to, when he didn’t really understand what was wrong himself?
The gryphlets came galloping over to him again, and he settled down on the floor and let them climb all over him. What was wrong with him, anyway? He had everything he had ever wanted—a lovely mate, a secure home, peace—and he was the leader he had always dreamed of being. Shouldn’t he be content, happy?
Well—except that he wasn’t the leader he had dreamed of being, back when he fought against the sky, makaar, and all the death-bolts an army could hurl at him. The stories he was raised on, of heroes and hopes, said nothing about the consumption of the leader by his duties. He had dreamed of dramatically-lit skies against which his glorious form would glide across the land he protected, and below him the people would cheer to behold him and flock to his presence.
Maybe the problem was simply that he was, at best, a reluctant leader when it came to peacetime solutions, and his discontent with that situation spilled over onto everything else.
Zhaneel nibbled his ear-tuft again, then disappeared into the depths of the lair, presumably with some chore or other to take care of now that he was keeping the youngsters out of her feathers for a while. Skandranon might be caught in chasms of distress, but he would always have affection for his little ones. He loved them day to day as much as he had enjoyed conceiving them. He fisted his claws and bowled the little ones over with careful swats, sending them back into the pile of cushions. They squealed and chirped, rolling around and batting at him in boundless exuberance—for the moment—and he wished that he could be as carefree and happy as they were.
Was everyone as unhappy as he was? He didn’t think so. In fact, he wasn’t quite certain when his current discontent had begun. It was simply that today, he was devoting concentration to realizing it was there, and just how deep it festered.
As arduous as the journey here had been and as fraught with danger and uncertainly, his job had actually been easier then than it was now. He’d only needed to offer encouragement, to keep peoples’ spirits up. He could step up and make a rousing speech, inspire hope, and tell well-timed stories. He was the cloud-white cock of the walk at critical times. Judeth had been in charge of protecting the army of refugees, Gesten and Amberdrake in charge of keeping everyone fed and sheltered. Lady Cinnabar had taken over anything remotely concerned with the health of the group. All he had been asked to do was to provide a figurehead, a reminder of the old days, and what the best of those days had meant.