"She is lovely child," Jheredd said politely, but without much conviction. He surreptitiously twitched the end of his sash behind him, out of reach of grubby fingers. "And so well-behaved." Taywar, beaming down at his daughter, didn't notice the irony in his tone.
"Isn't she?" he said proudly, ruffling Rahirah's hair. "Tascha asked if we wanted to try for anything special, a particular eye color, or anything, but we said no, just let—"
"You mean I said," Reevirah reminded her lifemate with a smile. "You wanted another glider in the family."
"Oh, welllll..." Taywar threw up his hands and chuckled. "It's still not too late for that. We're late bloomers—your Talent didn't manifest until you were what, over a cube of years?"
"And may as well have stayed that way," she said firmly. Reevirah seldom used her magic for anything more strenuous than reaching jars on the top shelf.
"Of course... but the point is, Vaynyar may—"
Reevirah's lips tightened fractionally. Their son was one of the few sources of friction between her and her lifemate. She looked down at their daughter—Rahirah wasn't listening to the adults. She was staring around the eyrie in fascination. The vast stone arches leading off to each side, the shadowy corridors of the mews beyond, pierced by irregular shafts of sunlight, the busy humans going by with rakes or barrows of meat, the smell of straw and hawk droppings, the tall figures of the hawkriders in their splendid flight leathers... it was all wonderful in her sight. Sometimes Reevirah wished she could see it through other eyes; for her it was only messy, smelly, and dangerous.
"Well, it's time we were off," Jheredd said loudly, interrupting Taywar's enthusiastic recounting of all the elves whose magic came to them in later life. Taywar was the only person in the Tower who believed Vaynyar had a dry leaf's chance in a hurricane of making hawkrider someday. Taywar grinned at his impatient patrol partner, gave his lifemate a hug and glided up to the shoulders of Terrible, his hawk.
**This evening, beloved,** he sent. **Be good, Rahirah!**
"I will, Father!" Rahirah shouted as Terrible hopped up to the railing of the main eyrie landing and spread his wings. As the hawk dropped out of sight over the edge she broke away from Reevirah's hold and ran to the railing, leaning through the stone-shaped bars out over the dizzying drop below to wave wildly after the departing riders. "Goodbye!"
Reevirah, her face blanching, dashed forward and pulled her daughter back from the railing. Rahirah, oblivious to her mother's fear, watched raptly as the hawks rose against the hazy backdrop of the Redrock Valley and gained the blue sky, then rounded eagerly upon her mother. "Mother, can we go see the hawks? Please?
"May we go see the hawks," Reevirah corrected automatically. Rahirah lit up like the Feast Hall candelabra. "And no, you may not. You know you aren't to go into the mews unless your father or one of the other hawkriders is with you."
The child's face fell, and she scuffed her feet mutinously on the straw-flecked stone as Reevirah led her towards the stairs, but she didn't argue. Reevirah looked down at the drooping head and sighed. Watching Vayree and Vallaree, Xylene and Kaethe, she had allowed herself to dream of a sweet, compliant child with whom she could share confidences as much as Taywar had longed for a budding warrior. They had got... both, and neither.
Rahirah could, with very little effort, look the part of a spun sugar doll, all great green eyes and blonde curls in silk and ruffles, but Reevirah had long since given up exerting that effort except for the most important occasions, since it took approximately five deep breaths to transform the enchanting vision into what-have-you-got-into- THIS-time,- Rahirah? Rahirah was certainly sweet and loving, and for the most part very obedient—she never meant for the disasters she skipped blithely into to happen. The salt in the main baths, or the lamentable incident with the turtle, or...
"Can we go up to see Father fly in, then?" Rahirah asked hopefully.
"May we. Golden child, one trip up to the eyrie is enough for one day, don't you think?" The Grand Stair coiled down and outward from the landing. As one of the hawkriding Declared, Taywar was entitled to quarters high in the Tower, only one coil of the stairs below the eyrie. Reevirah was not always completely overcome with this honor, for her own work was down quite a number of stairs, in the gardens far below.
"No it's not, no it's not, no it's not," Rahirah chanted, hopping down the stairs. She turned around and peered over her shoulder, about to essay the feat backwards.
"Rahirah, you'll fall," Reevirah warned.
"No I won't, no I won't, no I... Mother, when can I be a hawkrider?"
"Not until you're older, little one," Reevirah replied with a slight shiver. It was bad enough that her lifemate risked the dangers of the Outside daily. She loved in him that which made him a hawkrider, and would not have changed him, but in these days when wandering human tribes grew yearly more frequent and more fierce, the waiting for him to return from patrol was hard, and the days of absence when he was assigned to Long Patrol were even harder. She looked over the railing, down through the heart of the Tower. Mountain-high spiral, pierced with columns wrought in every shape fancy could bring forth, girt with lacy crenellations, backed with secret grottoes, endless fractal involutions of room and hall and looping shafts leading off from the heart to the outer skin of the mountain—the Great Stair was sign and symbol of all the beauty and mystery and loveliness the Tower had to offer. Why could not those she loved find enough happiness here to content them, and thus content her?
Above the outer archway of the family's rooms their own symbols—the hawk of Taywar's Declared badge, a mortar and pestle twined with flowers for her—were shaped into the warm red granite. Reevirah touched the silken stone briefly with one hand, feeling the reassuring tingle of magic for an instant. The arch was the product of magic and skill, made, as the rest of the Tower was made, to fit its inhabitants perfectly. "Wipe your feet, love," she reminded her daughter as Rahirah made to dash full speed into the main room.
Vaynyar was slung over one of the low-backed chairs in the central room, turning a small ceramic dish over and over in his hands with an abstracted, rather bitter expression. He hadn't been there when she'd left for the eyrie, but she made no comment. She had come to dread the times when father and son were in the same room; arguments were sure to follow.
They were greeted by servants who took her cloak and her soiled slippers and whisked them away, who offered her fragrant tea and a tray of spiced breads and artistically sliced vegetables. Dignified old Horon, who supervised the household cleaning, had recently acquired an assistant in the person of Edraya, a fresh-faced young girl just out of the Mraal village, who was as wide-eyed with wonder at the sights the spirit mountain held as Rahirah was at the wonders of the eyrie. The girl was probably no more than four or five turns Rahirah's senior, come to that... but humans grew up quickly, as such short-lived beings must. "My thanks, Edraya. Put them in the music room, if you will? Rahirah, take off your tunic and give it to Horon—Horon, when you take the washing, use the violet soap this time, if you would."
"Vaynyar!" Rahirah shouted, spying her older brother and launching herself at him like a small missile. Vaynyar's big hands (so very like his father's, as so much about him was) intercepted her in mid-air and tossed her up to land shrieking in his lap. Reevirah's heart lightened a trifle; sometimes Taywar's obvious partiality towards their younger child made Vaynyar resentful and cold towards his sister. It was good to see them together and happy.
"The mighty warrior attacks," he drawled with a tolerant grin. "I give up." He sat up and dumped his sister to the floor. "Give Horon your tunic, Wild Thing."
Reevirah picked up the dish, which her son had tossed aside. It had landed, intact, on one of the rugs. It was well-shaped, the glaze was appropriately chosen; in all a competent piece of work. "It displeases you, love?" she asked quietly. Vaynyar's expressive mouth twisted in bitter lines.
"No. But neither does it please me. It's..." he unconsciously echoed her own thoughts. "Competent. No more."
"You've hardly been working long enough to achieve Havrin's level of mastery—"
"I know that!" Vaynyar snapped. "But there's a difference between skill and talent, and if I work the wheel for another cube of years I may acquire the one, but it's useless without the other. Were I one of Havrin's servants, turning out cups and bowls for a living, competence might suffice me—"
"Or if you truly loved the work," Reevirah said gently. "Do you imagine I play the kitar because I fancy myself a master musician? I am good. I shall never be great. And your father, love him, is not even good, but he plays nonetheless. Is there nothing you love for its own sake?"
"Genius," Vaynyar replied with a laugh. He got to his feet abruptly. "I shan't be eating at home tonight. Azheri and I have... plans." He strode off towards his own rooms and Reevirah sighed. She took the dish into her own room and set it carefully on a shelf whereon were displayed other of her son's artistic efforts. Paintings, sculptures, tiny cabinets, a woven scarf... they were all well done, all... competent, and dearer to her than the most exquisite product of the Declared.
Vaynyar was gone when she returned to the common room, and her daughter was tramping gleefully and blindly through the house with her tunic pulled half up over her head, waving her arms and making obscure animal noises. "Rahirah, take it off all the way, now. Go with Edraya and have your bath."
"I don't need a bath! Look!" Rahirah held out both hands earnestly.
Reevirah raised her eyebrows and gave her youngest a reproving look. "Love, if I put the seeds on your palms you could grow redglobes in that dirt." She sent an image of Rahirah covered in small green leaves, and the child giggled. "I must get some work done, but we'll play jumpstones later, until your father gets back. Shoo."
Edraya returned to collect Rahirah and escorted her charge off to the baths. Reevirah smiled to herself and paused for a moment in front of the window before going into the music room. Taywar's hawk was no longer in sight. She stifled a wistful sigh. The view was lovely, there was no denying it. They faced out over the valley, and could see the Mraal village in the distance, set amidst fields and orchards. A peaceful, settled land, a garden such as she loved best, where she could take her child and walk in flower strewn meadows with no fear of marauding bear or longtooth. There was a price for such safety, she knew, but why must Taywar be the one to pay it?
Irrational thought—someone had to.
Reevirah turned away from the window and went into the music room, where the tray of dainties and the teapot had been arranged upon a small table. She picked up a slice of sweetroot and nibbled on it for a moment, picking up the threads of the composition she'd been working on. She surveyed the instruments—her three kitars, Taywar's recorders, Vaynyar's bass and tenor rebecs—the last carefully unstrung and covered with a cloth against dust; he had given up playing them some eights ago, when it became obvious that his talent was not that of a virtuoso. Reevirah took her second-best kitar down from the wall pegs and sat down to work.
Time always passed swiftly for her when she played, moreso when she composed, which was why she always left this indulgence for the end of the day. Still, it surprised her when a looming shape intruded into the corner of her vision. She looked up; Alsetha, her body servant, was lighting the lamps; the sun was no longer high enough to send light through any of the many mirrored shafts which provided light during the day. The pale green hangings on the walls took on a golden luster in the lamplight. "Ah! I've lost track of time, Alsetha." She rose and set the kitar carefully back in its place.
Returning to the main room, she noted out of the corner of her eye that a pair of kitchen servants had already arrived with a cart, bearing the evening meal upon great silver-domed platters. One of them came up to her deferentially and handed her a shallow wooden tray divided by thin strips into eight compartments, and a cloth bag containing many small squares of wood, each with a symbol painted on each side. She murmured her thanks and set the tray aside; tomorrow she would have to decide upon the family's meals for the next eightday or so, placing the appropriate symbol-squares in the tray for the appropriate day, so that Dantum, the chef, could make plans. It was supposed to be Vaynyar's job, but he had been so unreliable lately... perhaps she should speak to him seriously...
"Alsetha, has Edraya returned from the baths yet?"
Alsetha frowned. "No, Honored One."
Reevirah mirrored the frown. Taywar would be arriving from the eyries soon. News that Vaynyar was off preparing for another unsavory party was not likely to make him an agreeable dinner companion. At that moment there came the sound of a human's heavy footsteps in the hall and Reevirah hurried to the archway, to see Edraya entering alone. Reevirah waited for an instant to see if Rahirah were simply lagging behind, then asked "Where is my daughter, Edraya?"
The woman's eyes widened and she wrung her hands in her skirt. "She—she is not here, Honored One?"
Reevirah suppressed the anger and worry surging up within her and addressed the servant calmly. "No, she is not. Did you give her over to another's care?"
Edraya, she reminded herself, was fairly newly come to Tower service. The human woman looked truly wretched. "I—in the baths—the... the little spirit told me that she would come home by herself..."
Reevirah threw up her hands. "Edraya, a spirit child is still a child, and you simply cannot—ah, let it go now. I shall take you to Shadaln for a... clarification of your duties in the morning. Come with me now and help me look for her."
There was no doubt in Reevirah's mind as to where to start looking. She led Alsetha and the weeping, overwrought Edraya up the Grand Stair to the eyries. The evening patrol was getting ready to leave; Jheredd had already returned and was directing a couple of eyrie workers in caring for his hawk.
"Jheredd, may I interrupt you for a moment?" Reevirah asked. "I think my daughter's in the mews, and I don't want to warn her I'm here with a sending. Could you take us to look for her, please?"
The hawkrider's fair, cold face twitched for a moment with a slightly malicious, amused smile. "Very well, I suppose I can spare a few moments. Come with me, and keep well in the center of the mews."
He led the way into the long curving corridor to the west. The eyrie was laid out in the shape of a hawk with wings outstretched; the central landing formed the body, and the mews stretched out to either side as the wings. On either side of the corridor were the huge stalls, the outer row open to the sky and allowing shafts of pale evening light to enter at intervals. The rustle of feathers surrounded them, and the faint, ominous skreeking and chirring noises the great raptors made among themselves. Reevirah did not dare to show her uneasiness in front of the servants, but the thought of the cruel beaks and curving claws as long as her arm were not conducive to a peaceful journey. Could hawks smell fear as wolves could? She peered into the darkening stalls apprehensively as they passed each one.
At the apex of the corridor's curve, the "joint" of the eyrie's "wing," there were larger stalls, where instead of a log or rock outcropping for the hawk to perch on, a huge tangle of logs and sticks had been piled, spilling out into the corridor. Upon this gargantuan nest a female hawk was sitting, glaring yellow eyes half-lidded, beak half open. Reevirah wondered nervously if this were a sign of torpor or incipient rage. As Jheredd led them onwards she caught a pale flash out of the corner of her eye and turned back to the nest.
**Rahirah!**
Her heart practically leaped out of her chest as her daughter's tousled head peeked over the mass of filthy sticks. The eyrie workers cleaned up as they could, but the smell of hawk droppings was overwhelming nonetheless. "Dung," Jheredd hissed. "Don't move, child!" He sent **Tanyel! Come quickly! Emergency!**
"Mother!" Rahirah whispered with indescribable joy. "Look!"
Reevirah, caught between terror for Rahirah's safety and the necessity of following Jheredd's advice to preserve it, stood on tiptoe, then nerved herself and glided a few handsbreaths into the air to see what was the matter. Rahirah was sitting in the bottom of the nest, her arms around the neck of a stunningly ugly, half-fledged hawk chick. Reevirah glanced fearfully up at the adult hawk, which was following her every move with those half-closed, alien eyes.
"He's mine, Mother! My bondmate! She said it was all right!"
"What's going on here?" Tanyel's brisk voice interrupted. The hawkmaster strolled up, took in the situation with a glance, glided up into the nest and gave the female hawk an apparently casual shove. She allowed the familiarity with only a token hiss of annoyance, and Tanyel disentangled Rahirah from her companion and handed her over to Reevirah, who collapsed to the straw-and- dung-flecked stone with a half-sob of relief.
**You are NEVER to do this again! Never!** she sent furiously, giving Rahirah a shake, then clasping the child desperately to her heart.
**I—I'm sorry,** Rahirah sent contritely. **I know I wasn't supposed to... but he was calling me.** She looked anxiously back at the adult hawk. **And I asked her before I did it, and she said it was all right. Really.**
Tanyel and Jheredd exchanged skeptical glances. "I think," Tanyel said, trying to suppress a grin, "That Lord Tyaar needs to impress the seriousness of her crime on this young miscreant."

Tyaar was seated in the elaborate stone seat which Khepri had shaped ages gone, his cool, beautiful features composed and only the smallest of quirks at the corner of his mouth. Reevirah stood demurely in the throne room before the dais. Taywar, looking both proud and grim, stood beside her, and Tanyel, as hawkmaster, and Twillor, as Flight Leader of the hawkriders, stood opposite them. Right in the middle, surrounded by adults on all sides, stood Rahirah, obviously terrified but standing as tall as she could, which was not very.
"So," Tyaar said, steepling his fingers in front of him thoughtfully. "Young Rahirah here has disobeyed her parents. Normally I would consider that her discipline fell entirely into their hands, but it seems that in the course of your... little escapade, you have seriously disrupted the workings of the hawkriders." His ice-blue eyes fixed Rahirah's green ones. "According to Tanyel's testimony, you have bonded with a hawk which is far too young. Is this correct, Hawkmaster?"
"Indeed, my lord," Tanyel said gravely, though his eyes were glittering with amusement. "It's not customary for riders to bond with hawks until the hawk is five or six years old, and large enough and strong enough to ride. It is, of course, not customary for non-hawkriders to bond at all."
"In essence, then, by bonding with this fledgling, Rahirah, you have deprived the working hawkriders who keep the Tower safe, provide us with game, protection, and news, of a potential mount. Is this correct, Twillor?"
"It is, my lord," Twillor replied.
"Well." Tyaar gazed down at Rahirah contemplatively and the child gradually began to shrink into herself under the force of that look. Reevirah moved restively; surely this was taking the farce a little too far? Taywar squeezed her hand reassuringly.
**Twillor and Tanyel and I worked it all out with Lord Tyaar ahead of time,** he locksent. **Don't worry. We're just going to teach our scatterheaded daughter a little lesson about consequences.**
"It seems to me," Tyaar said at last, "that as your actions have deprived the hawkriders of valuable labor, you should repay them in kind. Therefore, you will report to the eyrie tomorrow at sunrise, and for as many days thereafter as you remain bonded to this hawk. You will sweep floors, shovel dung, and perform whatever other tasks Tanyel assigns you to do. You will do these things without complaint and to the best of your ability, and perhaps in this way you can repay to the hawkriders some part of what you have taken from them. Since you so ardently desire a hawk, you will learn exactly what it takes to take care of one." He turned to Taywar. "Is this satisfactory, hawkrider?"
"It is, my lord," Taywar. "Have we leave to go?"
Tyaar nodded, and Taywar stepped forward to collect his daughter. Rahirah was staring at Tyaar with a wholly unexpected expression of rapture. She turned to her parents and gasped "I'm to work in the eyrie! I'M GOING TO WORK IN THE EYRIE!" and flung herself joyfully at her father.

"So Wild Thing is going to sweep dung for a living," Vaynyar said later. Reevirah had stayed up to meet him as he came home from Azheri's party, his clothing mussed and his eyes glittering with more than wine. He shook his head. "And happy about it."
Reevirah sighed. "Twillor and your father believe that a taste of the rough side of eyrie work will dim her enthusiasm for it quickly. She'll probably be begging Twillor to show her how to dissolve the bond within an eightday." Rahirah was, after all, such a tiny thing, small and slight even for her age. And not likely to ever be a glider, either, all things considered, and so with little prospect of every becoming a hawkrider in truth. The work would be hard on her, Reevirah was sure; perhaps her lifemate and the flight leader were right. But still...
"Happiness comes of doing what you love," she said softly.

the end