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

enthusiastic. If he had beaten every contender and been appointed as Judeth's sub-Commander,
Skandranon could not have been more thrilled. It was positively embarrassing. As they gathered for the
evening meal in the main room of the family aerie, with the sky a dark velvet studded with jewellike stars
beyond the window, Tad wondered if he shouldn't have opted for a quiet bite aloneтАФor perhaps have
gone hungry.
"Outpost duty! And you fresh out of training!" he kept saying, all through dinner. "I can't ever
remember any Silver as young as you are being put on remote duty!"
His tone was forced, though, and he hadn't eaten more than half his meal. At the least, this sudden
change in his son's status had put him off his feed. Was he worried?
Why should he be worried? What's there to be worried about?
Zhaneel, Skandranon's mate, cuffed him lightly. "Let the boys eat," she admonished him. "You won't
be doing Tadrith any favor by giving him no time to have a proper meal."
But her look of rebuke followed by a glance at Keeth made Skandranon's nares flush red with
embarrassment. He had been neglecting Keeth the whole time, although Keeth didn't seem too terribly
unhappy about that. "I hear fine reports about you from Winterhart," he said hastily to his other son.
"You're training in things your mother and I dreamed of doing, but were never able to achieve."
Tad winced. Now, if that didn't sound forced, he'd eat grass instead of good meat!
"Well, if there hadn't been that annoying war, Father, you two would probably have invented the
gryphon trondi'irn, the gryphon kestra'chern, and the gryphon secretary," Keeth said, with a sly grin at
his brother. "And probably the gryphon seamstress, mason, and carpenter as well!"
Trust Keeth to know how to turn it into a joke, bless him.
Skandranon laughed, and this time it sounded genuine and a bit more relaxed. "And maybe we
would have!" he replied, rousing his feathers. "Too bad that war interfered with our budding genius, heh?"
Tad kept silent and tore neat bites from his dinner, the leg of a huge flightless bird the size of a cow
and with the brains of a mud-turtle. One of these creatures fed the whole family; the Haighlei raised them
for their feathers, herding them on land that cattle or sheep would damage with overgrazing. The
gryphons found these creatures a tasty alternative to beef and venison.
Tad was perfectly pleased to let clever Keeth banter with their father. He couldn't think of anything
to say, not when beneath the Black Gryphon's pride lurked a tangle of emotions that he couldn't even
begin to unravel. But he was more and more certain that one of them was a fear that Skandranon would
never admit to.
Of course not. He doesn't want to cripple me with indecision or even fear of my own before I
go out there with Blade. He knows that if he shows he's unhappy with this, I might be tempted to
back out of it. And he knows that there's nothing to worry about; we're hardly the first team to
ever take this outpost. We're just the first team that included one of his sons, and he's been
thinking about all the accidents that could happen to us ever since he heard of the posting.
He was worrying too much; Tad knew that, and he knew that his father knew it as well. This was
not wartime, and they were not going to encounter hostile troops.
But this is the first time I'm "leaving the nest." I suppose it's perfectly normal for parents to
worry. I worry, too, but I know that it can be done. I wonder why parents can say they trust their
young so much, yet still fear for them? He supposed that a parent's imagination could conjure up a
myriad of other dangers, from illness to accident, and play them out in the space of a heartbeat. Parents
had to be that way; they had to anticipate all the trouble youngsters could get into and be prepared to
pluck them out of danger before they got too deeply into it.
But I'm an adult, and I can take care of myself! Isn't he ever going to figure that out? He has
been an adult for ages longer than I have, and he has had to be rescued beforeтАФso why is it that
adults regard trouble as the sole territory of the young? Do we remind them of their vulnerability
that much?
Between bites, he cast a glance at his mother, surprising her in an openly concerned and maternal
gaze at him. She started to look away, then evidently thought better of it, and nodded slightly.