Overview
The Wind-Rider Vantari is the Vantari that goes. Where its kin hold the cliff, the Wind-Rider leaves it — the bird of the open, the one that reads the thermal the way the Sky-Keeper reads the ledge, and that carries the roost out into the whole of the sky. It is the Vantari as reach: the messenger, the scout, the hunter of the far ground, and the one who comes back with the word and the kill and the news of the weather. To the Wind-Rider the cliff is a floor to leave from, and the wind is not a voice to be answered but a road to be ridden, and the road is the whole of the home.
Habitat
The Wind-Rider keeps the air above the cliff and the open ground beyond it, working the thermal that rises off the warm rock and the long, cold wind that runs down from the high country. It does not sit; it rides, from the ledge to the high air and out over the country, and it comes back to the same ledge it left from, the way a tide comes back to the shore. The rider's country is wide — the cliff, the open, the far ground where the small beast and the young of the bird make their day — and the wide is the rider's, because the rider is the one that will go. It roosts on the ledge at night, but the ledge is the rider's home in the way the shore is the tide's, a place to leave from and a place to come back to.
Appearance
The Wind-Rider reads as the long, light Vantari — narrow in the body, long in the wing, built to climb and to hold the air rather than to hold the ledge. It stands 1.25 m at the shoulder but it carries less weight than the keeper for the same height, and the lightness is the mark of the rider. The plume is ash over the back, russet through the breast, and pale cream along the throat, and the ash is the colour of the high cloud, and the rider reads as a piece of the sky against the sky. The wing is the sign — long and narrow, built for the climb and the long, level ride, and the tail is long and fanned for the turn. The feet are lighter than the keeper's, thinner-nailed, built for the perch and the grip on the wing, not for the wet ledge in the gale. The eye is the second sign — set forward, bright, built for the far ground, and a rider with its eye on the country is a rider that already knows what the country has done.
Behaviour
The Wind-Rider is the moving one, and it shows it in the small things. It does not sit through the storm; it rides it, high over the crest where the wind is the road and not the wall, and it will be gone for the whole of the day and come back in the last of the light. It is the first out of the roost at the first of the day and the last to settle, and it carries the word the way it carries the kill — lightly, and without being asked to. It does not keep the young, but it feeds them from the far ground, and it is the rider that brings the new — the new weather, the new ground, the new danger. When the rider comes in empty the roost knows it, and it does not ask, because the rider's face has already said what the far ground did.
Natural Weapons & Defenses
The Wind-Rider's defence is the air and the turn, and it fights off the ledge rather than from it. The wing is the first weapon — long and narrow, swung in the high turn to bring the rival down out of the air, and a rider that has the height has the fight. The speed is the second, the long, level ride that closes the distance before the rival has the turn. And the last defence is the distance itself — the rider will not be where the threat expects it, because the rider is never where it was a breath ago, and the not-being-there is the whole of the defence. It is the quicker of the Vantari, but it is not the harder to hit, and it knows it, and it fights the way it knows it — off, and out, and never still.
Magic Alignment
The Wind-Rider leans to the moving air and to the open, and its magic is the magic of the road. It is the one who reads the thermal before it is, who knows the coming wind in the colour of the far ground, and who keeps the long ride true through the weather by the light, sure working of the air under the wing. Its power is not the hold of the keeper's but the reach of the rider's — the breath that carries the word far, the lift that keeps the wing true through the long, cold night. It is a moving magic, and it is the magic the far ground is made of, and the rider moves it the way the wind moves the open.
Society
The Wind-Rider rides in flocks and in pairs, the pair the common bond, and the pair is bound the way the road is bound to the rider — for the ride, not for the season. The riders do not keep and do not count; they go, and the going is the bond. The young learn the sky from the riders before they learn the ledge, and it is the rider's wing that sets a fledgling on its first thermal. When a rider dies the pair is not refilled in a day, and the empty road is the roost's open wound, and the roost will not sit well until it is closed.
Culture & Lore
The riders carry the old roads. They know which thermals rise true in the last turning and which fall, and they carry the names of the riders that made the long ride through the cold, and they say the names to the young the way the wind says the road — as a thing to be ridden, not a thing to be feared. They make their tools for the ride — the light line, the far call, the feather that the storm takes from a dead keeper — and they keep them on the wing, where the wind reaches and the road is short. To the keeper the cliff is a thing to answer; to the rider the road is a thing to ride, and the riding is the whole of the lore.
Home
Windcliff Roost is the Wind-Rider's shore. The roost is the ledge the rider leaves from and the ledge it comes back to, and the rider lives off that ledge and to that ledge, and the ledge is the home in the way the shore is the home of the tide. The rider knows the roost ledge by ledge, but it knows the country beyond it wind by wind, and it is the rider that knows when the far ground is safe and when it is not. Where the keepers keep the roost where it is, the riders carry the roost out into the sky, and the carrying is the rider's part of the home.
Relations
The Wind-Rider and the Sky-Keeper are the two hands of the Vantari, and the two do not do the same work. The keeper stays in and the rider goes out, and the roost is the meeting point where the two meet — the rider coming in with the kill or the word, the keeper meeting it on the ledge. They are not rivals, but they are not the same, and the young must choose the open or the ledge, and the choosing is the first real choice the Vantari makes. The riders carry the Vantari far in the way the keeper keeps it whole, and the two together are the whole of the race.
In the Story
When the six came down into the unknown, it was the rider that went out first, and it is the rider that has carried the word of the roost into the new country since — the thermal by thermal, the road by road. The rider rides with the six, and it does not need to, but it does, because the carrying is the rider's part of the story, and the story is the whole of the road.