by Steve Vera
“And what’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means—”
A flock of garishly colored geese broke formation in a protest of angry honks as the Pegasi flew through them. The quill of a magenta and marine feather thumped against his breast plate and then whipped past his ear.
“It means, what do you see in her, Stavengre?”
Ah-ha. So there it was. “Didn’t we have this conversation?” he asked.
“We began it, but as I recall, you deftly changed topics.”
“No, we were going to talk about it over a glass of wine and never made it because—you know, I bet it was Donovan I was feeling that night.”
It seemed like a lifetime ago but Gavin could still recall that slight pressure at the edges of his awareness. Now that he thought about it, Donovan’s Black Dodge Challenger had indeed been parked down the street that night. He just hadn’t known it was Donovan’s yet.
“You’re right,” she said, her words filled with sudden understanding. At equal speeds, the two of them turned and saw Donovan staring back at them as if he knew what they were thinking.
“Is it me or is he one creepy bastard?”
“It’s not you,” she said. “I don’t trust him and I don’t like him. If it comes to it, Stavengre, and he threatens our cause...I’ll kill him. Even if you won’t. The stakes are too high.”
It was hard to be certain because of his sunglasses and the constant swells of the Pegasus’s flying body and rushing wind but the slight incline of Donovan’s chin made it seem as if he’d heard her. A challenge. A dare. Donovan leaned over, whispered something into Amanda’s ear and then she too stared at Gavin and Cirena with a smile that was an alien on her face—forced and contrived. As if he’d just ordered her to. Yes. He could see it now. She was afraid of him.
“I’m sure I’ll beat you to it, Cirena.”
Four hours later, and the mountains had grown. The air was heavier here. Colder. Every once in a while he’d pat their steed affectionately, run his hand down the soft coarseness of her mane and try to calm the occasional nervous whinny that would come from her. They didn’t like being this close and for good reason. In the distance, they could see the first of several winged silhouettes against the setting sun reflecting off the mountains. Gryphons.
As fierce and noble as these Pegasi were, they wouldn’t stand a chance against a Gryphon. Pound for pound, there was nothing in the world more deadly than the half lion, half eagle terrors that ruled the skies. As if to make his point, their winged steeds immediately began their descent. Four minutes later they were on the ground on a bare patch of broken stone and brittle straw-colored grass.
“This is as far as our steeds will carry us,” Dwensolt said, dismounting Bronwyn with casual ease. He then surveyed the land around them with squinted eyes and sniffing nostrils. “Beyond this fell and track of forest, the skies belong only to the gryphons and fire-drakes.”
Gavin couldn’t hear a single bird or insect.
“Is it always so quiet here?” Skip asked.
“The land watches,” Dwensolt answered and looked profoundly around them. “We are within a day’s march of the Pass of Almitra. Who knows what sorts of creatures walk these twisted lands?”
I’d really rather not find out, Gavin thought and slid off his mare. Cirena dismounted right behind him, and together they landed in front of Donovan. No words were exchanged.
Once free of their riders, the Pegasai gathered around Dwensolt with pricked ears and nervous whickers.
“Thank you, friend,” Dwensolt said while scratching behind the ear of the enormous ivory stallion.
Amanda fearlessly hugged her mare she’d named Silverfleck and was rewarded with a quiver of the creature’s wings. A single white pinion floated down, and Gavin plucked it gently from the air, handing it to Amanda. She beamed a smile, smelled it like a flower and threw her arms again around their mare, who accepted with a happy nicker.
“I’ll always remember you,” she cooed.
Gavin bowed his head in deep appreciation. The feather from a Pegasus was considered very good luck by the Druids, a coveted spell component by the Wizards, a mark of majesty by the scions and aristocracy of all the marches, but most importantly it was a badge of friendship and would be looked upon kindly by the suspicious races of the woodlands.
Once they got to the other side of the Pass, of course.
Before they left, Bronwyn snorted and clopped his heavy hoof, pointing with his nose at four deep furrows slashed in the bark of a nearby beech tree. A grizzly bear’s marks would have been half as large, and in silence they all took note of the pulpy sap oozing from the wounds. Gavin noted the subtle flares of Donovan’s nose and smelled something as well; there was a distinct, acrid bite to the scent of Gryphon piss, as unmistakable as gasoline.
The five winged horses stood side by side a moment longer before Dwensolt gave Bronwyn one last pet, whispered something only he could hear and then stepped back. With a hearty neigh the ivory stallion launched into the air with a mighty pump of his wings, followed one by one by the others until they were all in the air, flying back in the direction they had come.
Gavin watched them leave, feeling sad as he always did when saying goodbye forever. Even to animals. When the specks disappeared he turned to his band of heroes. “We break camp here. Tomorrow we cross the world.”
Chapter 22
And I thought the Rockies were big.
Each one of them was a sight to behold, their upper peaks stabbing the gray-cloud belly of the sky.
“You passed through those mountains?” Skip asked Dwensolt. The night had passed without incident and once again they were trekking through the wilds of Theia, cresting a foothill the size of any Appalachian mountain. Not even a foothill, a pre-foothill.
“Aye,” Dwensolt replied simply and for once didn’t look crazy. Just old and wizened. They really did look like a ridge, as if the world were the spine of a giant Stegosaurus.
“How?” Amanda asked. There was enough room for them to walk in any order they wanted and while Gavin took point, the three naturally gravitated toward each other. The trees were smaller here, spaced farther apart and crossed with belt tracks and animal trails.
“I would prefer not to speak of it,” Dwensolt said, eyes ahead, leading with his staff. Nobody really said much after that.
In the long silences they could hear what sounded like a distant artillery battle, reminiscent of brooding thunder. By noon the grass had shortened and dulled, while the belts of woodlands that marked their way had been reduced to groves and clusters.
“Check out that pine tree,” Skip said, pointing to the right. The top of it had been blown right off as if it had been hit with an RPG. It stood like a stake in a pool of splinters, carbon stains and drying petals. “And that one.” Ten feet over was a maple-ish tree that had been snapped in two and overturned—its roots were exposed to the sun. There were more just like it around them, broken, burned and shattered.
“Smell that?” Gavin said and unsheathed his blade.
“Death,” Tarsidion said. He too unsheathed his Quaranai. “Efil.” Its blade shot up in a shing and a corona of blue light.
It was here that Skip got his first look at the legendary, mythical gryphon.
They were huge, easily the size of a small elephant, with curved eagle’s beaks big enough to sever a man with one strike. The rear of the creatures were completely different—tawny with burgundy speckles and the unmistakable feline build of a giant lion, complete with long tail and a tuft of red fur at the end. The top of this one’s head had been ripped off and there was a hole in its chest.
“This was the work of no fire-drake.” Tarsidion said. He probed the creature’s wounds with a knife and ignored the flies that buzzed in protest. The gryphon’s eyes squirmed with
maggots but they were small; dead fewer than two days.
“You figure that out all by yourself?” Donovan rasped and went to the other corpse. He almost seemed...curious.
“What is a fire-drake, anyway?” Amanda asked, rubbing her arms. “Or do I even want to know?”
“Descendants of dragons the same way alligators are the descendants of dinosaurs,” Gavin answered. “They can fly and breathe narrow columns of fire—a gryphon’s natural enemy—and are about as big as...alligators, actually.”
“Flying alligators that breathe fire,” Skip said, tasting the concept on his tongue. “No thank you.”
The other carcass was missing a wing as well as being decapitated, though the head was nearby, also without a brain. No heart either. Its chest had been ripped open, unleashing enough blood to paint a mural on the side of a house.
“This must be the work of Asmodeous the Pale,” Dwensolt declared.
Give that man a cigar, Skip thought. The pity he felt was the same he felt for a mountain lion he’d once seen lying dead by the side of a highway. Distant yet poignant. Bad luck, guys. That’s how it goes with the Lord of the Underworld. Hope you got a few licks in.
After a few moments of somber reflection, they continued forward and left the carcasses behind them like twisted wrecks of metal from a battlefield—abandoned and gutted.
Artillery rumbled in the distance.
* * *
When night approached, fog rolled out of the lower valleys of the World Ridge like shredded tatters, covering the smaller summits of the leading foothills with shadowy vapors. Dusk consisted of a quick, bleak gray and then night slammed down on the world like an angry portcullis.
In all of his life, in all the things he’d done, Gavin had never felt so small in the face of the leviathans dominating the sky. From within the clouds that blanketed the peaks, light flashed and thunder grumbled, causing a constant roar of reverberating air. It brought him back to his childhood days when his father had told him that thunder was the footsteps of God. Here, as a fully trained, adult Shardyn Knight, Gavin could believe it.
And then Dwensolt came bearing yet more gifts. Instead of wandering and skulking through what could only be monumentally hostile territory, Dwensolt—endless supplier of pleasant surprises—summoned a blessing.
At a command, a tiny winged man appeared in front of Dwensolt, dragonfly wings whirring like a humming bird.
A Sprite?
“Time to earn your salt, little one,” Dwensolt said. “Venture forth and find a bent white ironwood branded with the mark of the Necromancer—a Black Orchid.”
Gavin had never actually seen a Sprite before, a couple of Fairies back in the first war, but never a Sprite, had just read about them in texts back at the Academy. He remembered reading a story about a child-eating hag driven to madness by the haunting of an avenging Tree Sprite. They were too fast to grab, could blink out of sight in true invisibility and were wildly intelligent. There was something else he was supposed to be remembering about them but the thought eluded him.
As tiny as he was, hardly bigger than a hand, the miniature replica of a young man with wings was eerily devoid of fear. His eyes, even in the dark, seemed disconcertingly inhuman.
“Beyond the white ironwood is a serpentine ravine that winds through the last mountain. Find it. That is the way in to the Pass.”
“As you command, Master Dwensolt,” the Sprite said and with focus-defying speed zipped off.
Skip leaned in close to Dwensolt. “Is that type of thing common around here?” he asked.
Dwensolt fixed Skip with a furrowed eyebrow. “A Druid is always prepared. And keep your voice low, for the love of all things sacred. Be still, be silent and cast no magic.” This last statement he directed at Gavin and his Shardyn. “The dead hear well.”
That was all the warning they needed. Gavin had all sorts of experience fighting Drynn and some of the less appealing races of the Night Breeds, but he’d never crossed swords with the Undead. He had more experience with that sort of thing from movies back on Earth.
The eight of them positioned themselves in a tight circle and waited. There was a sense of emptiness here, a feel to the stale wind that dogged their steps and made his belly shrivel—lonely dread.
Death.
Donovan sat apart from the rest of them, his long rifle across his thighs. In a twisted sort of way, Gavin found Donovan’s unchanging coldness and dispassionate demeanor somehow comforting. It’s a strange world we live in, eh, Gavvy Boy? he heard Jack’s voice ask in his mind.
Sure wish you were in on this one, brother. The world could use you. An image of Jack’s funeral pulsed behind Gavin’s eyes, the misshapen outline of his childhood’s face beneath his cloak. No matter how hard he tried to think of happy times, that image was the one that floated on top. And stayed.
A couple of minutes later, Dwensolt dug through his robes and took out a small green leather book with pages that crinkled like onion skin. He would mumble to himself, pass his gaze over the rest of them and then write away. His quill was a gryphon feather and scratched the air with his rapid, jerky scrawling. He didn’t dip it once in ink.
“Good thing we ran into him, huh?” Skip asked in an appropriately low voice.
“Only thing that has gone right so far,” Gavin answered, shaking out Jack’s face.
“Have you known any other Druids?” Skip asked.
“A few. During the war, though none anything like him.”
“What’s the difference between a Druid and Magi, anyway?” Amanda whispered from the right.
Gavin met her gaze and offered her a little smile. It was too dark for him to be certain she’d returned his smile, but if she was asking questions, that was a good sign. Of course, she might as well have asked him to describe the theory of relativity. “Think of magic as a blend of mathematics and music. Two plus two equals four. Five minus one equals four, a hundred divided by twenty-five equals four—there are many ways that lead to the same answer. Each magical discipline specializes in a certain path. A certain style.”
“How many disciplines?” Skip asked.
“Six big ones—Wizardry, Sorcery, Druidism, Witchcraft, Illusionism, Enchanting plus a boatload of subcategories. Druids focus on nature above all—the ways of the forests, the wild magics contained within, alchemy, healing, weather, herbalism, languages and are very harmony-oriented.”
“Do not forget powerful,” Dwensolt whispered as he continued to scrawl.
Gavin nodded. “Yes, very powerful, sorry.”
“You didn’t mention Magi,” Amanda noted.
Even Dwensolt looked up. Gavin felt his chest tighten. “Magi are a different breed. We don’t need to study for years or collect exotic spell components for our craft. Magic is within us innately. We are magic.”
“And the Knights of the Shard are the most powerful of Magi—they are their guardians,” Dwensolt said quietly, resuming his writing. “That is why the Wizards hate them so.”
“I don’t understand, why should the Wizards hate them at all?” Amanda asked.
It was Noah who answered this time. “Because Magi are more powerful. They are a threat.”
Before Gavin could elaborate, the Sprite materialized from thick air. “I found it,” his little voice chimed.
His abrupt appearance made Amanda yelp and though it was just a peep, it echoed in the silence.
It might as well have been a bullhorn.
Donovan was by her side in less than a blink. “What the fuck is it going to take for you to learn?” he snapped and backhanded her hard on the shoulder. “Missing teeth?”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Skip said.
Gavin’s Quaranai was out and burning at Donovan’s throat in the time it took a person to inhale. Donovan didn’t so much as flinch. Torren
ts of blood rushed through Gavin’s brain.
“Touch her again and die, motherfucker,” Gavin said in a growl.
“Yeah,” Tarsidion rumbled.
“Yes,” Cirena said. Both of their Quaranais were out and ablaze as well, the cold, lonely wind pouring off their blades, known as Death’s Breath, added to the dread of their surroundings. Noah’s blade was the only one that remained in its scabbard, though her hand rested on the hilt—calm but coiled.
“I warned you, Amanda,” Donovan said to her, ignoring the pale blue light wafting from Gavin’s Quaranai in his face. It reflected eerily off his sunglasses.
Amanda’s hand was clapped to her mouth. The Sprite hovered forgotten in front of Dwensolt, his tiny eyes wide, curious and inhumanely shiny.
“I say we settle this now, Stavengre,” Tarsidion said. “I don’t care to cross Theia’s most dangerous landmark with an enemy at my back.” The giant man adjusted his grip ever so tightly, his jaguar eyes glinting in anticipation. Thunder rumbled beyond the peaks.
“That would be unwise,” Dwensolt said carefully. He was no longer writing. “We stand at the border of the dead. The land watches. The dead will take note.”
If they were the last Shardyn Knights left in the world, who would hold him accountable if he killed Donovan right now?
“Lower your blades, Shardyn,” Dwensolt said again. “To war here is to invite the death that already prowls these lands. Amanda, step to my side.”
Gavin was too close to detonation to be affected by the humiliated slump of her shoulders, the way she refused to meet his eyes. Even when she stood by Dwensolt’s side she kept her neck in her shoulders, head down.
“From this moment until we cross to the other side of the Pass, Amanda Kasey shall be under my charge. I will be damned by all the hells if the fate of the world should end by the egos of men. Agreed?” Dwensolt said, looking at Gavin.
Gavin did not lower his blade. Neither did Tarsidion or Cirena.
“Stavengre,” Noah said.
“If you are to receive my aid,” Dwensolt said, “there will be no bloodshed among us. On that you have my word.” He made his point by thunking his staff into the ground.