The Ardath Mayhar MEGAPACK®

by John Maclay

  The Manticore paced to the right, and her sinuous neck followed its movements. It moved to the left, and again Griselle kept her clouded gaze fixed upon its blurred shape.

  When it sprang toward her, with the terrible speed and distance of its kind, she was ready.

  Her beak dug into its tender underside, and the thing gave a shrill shriek as she tossed it aside. The beast’s voice fluted a challenge, and she rose to her full height, wings ready to buffet, beak prepared to strike again.

  This time the creature did not dare to spring. Instead it turned and leaped toward the mountains, disappearing in a few bounds beyond the first line of peaks with incredible agility, as that kind was wont to do. They were speedy creatures, and they could jump almost as high as she could fly.

  Her blood racing nicely after the workout, Griselle rearranged the eggs and prepared to sit again. It should be time, and past time, for them to hatch. But eggs were eggs, and they always kept to their own schedule, no matter what their mother might prefer.

  Even as she drew her legs up and sighed, she felt a quiver beneath the fur of her stomach. Was something happening? Was it time at last? She rose again and put her beak close to the nearest egg, trying to see with one dim eye if it was cracking.

  At first she doubted what she saw. Her vision was all but gone, anyway, and surely she couldn’t be seeing the shell of a Gryphon egg rippling as if it were made of skin. Even as she watched, the covering tore, and something poked through the hole.

  This was no child of hers! A Gryphon pecked out respectably with its beak, and its damp, furry body followed it out of the shell. This...creature!...had a pointed head, its shiny eyes visible even to Griselle. As the thing slithered out of the soft egg-leather, a sinuous body followed the head, and the dumbfounded Gryphon realized that she was staring at a young Basilisk.

  The shock was terrible. That night when she last fed—the fog—she must have lost her way and found herself by accident to this Basilisk nest. Where was the parent of this small creature?

  It was too late to ask that question, for the little serpent wriggled to her side and curled about her leg for warmth, its small body quivering with contentment. In time two more joined it. She knew that it was too late. They had seen her and claimed her for their own.

  I am the mother of three Basilisks! Griselle thought, her heart pounding. But what has happened to my own eggs? Is poor Garamond still sitting there, waiting for me to return? And to think that I blamed him for deserting our nest, when it was I—I!—who never came back!

  Now, however, she had other things to think of. If young griffins were difficult and painful to feed, how much more difficult it was going to be to keep three infant Basilisks alive. What did they eat? Serpents did not suckle their young, that was one thing she knew without doubt.

  Eagles, who were in a way her distant half-kin, brought meat to their ravenous young. She had seen that. But when she put her head down near those of her foster children, their mouths were totally unsuitable for chewing. What on earth should she feed the creatures?

  One put its snaky face near her eye and opened its mouth as if hungry. Fangs—yes, there they were, set well back but definitely there. No. she would NOT allow them to suckle, even if they showed signs of wanting to. She had no desire to test the potency of Basilisk poison.

  She spent futile hours catching bugs, which she couldn’t see but had to listen for and squash with her awkward paws. The young cared nothing for squashed bugs.

  She left them squirming in the nest and went toward the stream that ran down from the mountains. There she hunted painfully for fish, for rabbits, for caterpillars, for anything at all that might tempt their unknown appetites.

  The blood of the rabbit proved to be the one thing they relished, and in the next weeks the population of rodents around the nest diminished remarkably. Given suitable nourishment, the young Basilisks grew with terrible speed—almost as quickly as young Griffins, in fact. Before Fall, they were coiling around the rocks, catching curious birds and animals that thought to den against the cliff.

  Although they returned at night to warm their sluggish blood against her furry body, Griselle realized that these were young who took their own way at an early age. She hunted her own food now, leaving theirs to them, and often she thought about her stressful months of suckling her own kind, pulling her weight down to nothing, having to eat every week instead of once in three or four months.

  Given the choice, she realized that she much preferred being foster mother to Basilisks. But she often wondered what had happened to their own parent before she had arrived on the scene. Surely the creature must have died in battle or accident, or she would have come back to tend her eggs.

  When the sun had moved to the south and cold winds swept down from the mountains, the brood grew quiet. Even Griselle knew that they must hibernate during the cold months, and she watched with interest as the three hunted among the boulders for snug dens in which to sleep away the winter.

  Once they were settled, she stretched her wings and sighed. It had been an interesting summer, but she had best seek out her own family before the clouds and storms again dimmed her vision. Garamond would have given her up, she was sure, and her children would not know her at all.

  She sprang into the sky, feeling her old muscles ache with effort as her wings strained for altitude. Surely she must have come too far and crossed a second range of mountains on her way back to the nest, all those months ago.

  She soared, riding a thermal draft up and over the heights. She could smell fresh snow, still distant in the north but on its way to add depth to the white fields below her. Garamond would have withdrawn from the summer nest into the high cave against the cliff where they always wintered with a new brood. The small ones would be flying on their own, by now, though still dependent upon their parents for food until next summer.

  Griselle swooped down the slope of the range now, scanning the dim distances hopelessly. Where was that peak that so resembled the one near her Basilisk nest? It had seemed such a fine landmark, with its broken tip and the hump on one side—and then she saw it, looming against a snow-laden sky.

  She wheeled, seeking the dark spot against the sheer wall that would be the cave. When she found it at last she found her heart beating rapidly. It had been so long—would Garamond be happy to see her? Would the young be afraid of her?

  She cupped her wings and settled onto the ledge outside the cave. From inside came the whistling roar that was the challenge of a Gryphon, but she shrilled her name into the echoing tunnel. There was silence for a moment, and then Garamond came sidling from the darkness to peer at her.

  “Griselle?” he piped. “Alive?”

  “Lost, but alive,” she agreed. “Did the young hatch? I thought I was sitting upon them until the Basilisks hatched and I realized my mistake.”

  Garamond made a strange sound, something between another roar and as near to a chuckle as one can come using a beak. “Basilisks!” He lay on the cold stone and whipped his lion’s tail wildly against the cliff.

  Griselle looked down, alarmed at his behavior. “Of course, Basilisks. What is wrong with you, Garamond?”

  Then there came a hissing voice from the darkness of the tunnel. A long shape slithered into view, its face familiar even to Griselle’s dim eyes.

  “Why are you not asleep, with the rest of your kind?” she asked the intruder.

  “I have found furred and hot-blooded creatures to keep me warm and awake,” said the Basilisk. “You sat, I think, upon my abandoned nest. My thanks to you, but do not think to push me from this place. Your eggs hatched and the young Gryphons accepted me as mother.”

  Garamond looked sheepish, as much as could be done with his birdlike face. He rose to his feet and stiffened his tail. “You were gone. I was alone, sitting on eggs that you left to me. This one assisted me, and she has found a place among us
.”

  For a moment Griselle felt a hot rage building in her bosom. Then she realized that this was just what she would have chosen if asked.

  No more egg-laying! No more suckling young with eagle beaks! No more soothing Garamond, whose temper grew worse every season. She felt a great sense of relief.

  “Allow me to rest for the winter in our warm cavern,” she said to the Basilisk, ignoring her former mate. “I will leave with the spring to find other Basilisks who desire relief from nest-sitting. I shall become a foster-mother to the young of your kind, now that I know how to manage them.”

  The Serpent hissed agreement, withdrawing into the deepest chambers of the cavern. Garamond glanced apologetically at Griselle before stalking away behind her, his tail twitching nervously.

  As well it should! thought Griselle. If he tries to mate with that one, he will end up dead, but I know better than to speak of that.

  She found a convenient chamber, small enough to be kept warm by a single Gryphon, and curled her tail around her paws. Settling her beak on a convenient stone, she closed her eyes and thought of those comfortable leather eggs, the affectionate young Basilisks, their early independence.

  She had found the calling for her old age, she knew, and when she slept, she dreamed of pleasant things. Next summer...ahhh! Next summer!

  THE FORGING OF FEAR

  In the very old days, the skills of a blacksmith were considered magical—if not demonic.

  My father sold me to Gillam for two pennies and a good plow. It was a far better price than he had had for Arn, my older brother, and, as well, I could be in the same village and see my parents at times. Arn had gone to the collieries in Wales, and we knew we’d never see him again.

  I was happy in my new life. Gillam was the gentlest of men, for all his size and strength. And he was rich, compared to those who lived on the scrap of ground allotted by Lord Roderick to his commons. A smith’s skills are so rare and valuable that even nobles give him some leeway in his life and work. And not only for his skills—there is an edge of fear clinging always about his almost magical craft.

  This being a new fiefdom, recently granted by King Ethelred to Roderick’s family, there was much work to be done. Though Gillam was no armorer, he shod the steeds of the nobles, and he forged the tools used in breaking and clearing the land. So strong was his art that he was chosen to forge the iron bands that bound together the oaken door-leaves of the Lord’s new keep. I arrived in time to help with that.

  I was not allowed to touch one scrap of the Lord’s metal. I only cleaned and put away the hammers and tongs and punches and rasps used in the work. But I pumped mightily on the bellows, forcing the charcoal to white-heat at the center of the forge. I watched closely, even while pumping, as the straps took shape. They were formed into graceful curves, with the heavy lily-crest of Roderick centered upon each. I was fascinated by the boring of the bolt-holes, the shaping of the hinges, the finishing of the edges. Though it was obvious how each matter was done, still I felt the magic of the smith’s skill.

  And I vowed to become a smith, too—a frivolous dream for one born to my circumstances, but it kept me pumping enthusiastically.

  Even better than the work was my treatment by Gillam’s family. He and his wife had no child of their own, to their sorrow, and his wife seemed to extend toward me some of the affection that she would otherwise have given to her children. Gillam’s niece also lived with them, having been orphaned very young, and the two of us, both in our early teens, settled amicably together almost as if children of the family.

  There was altogether enough to eat! That always astonished me—my father would never have sold his children if he could have fed them by his efforts in the Lord’s fields. But those efforts always fell far short, once the grain was divided, and starvation stood beside his door every day of his life. He knew that we could only be better elsewhere. I cannot know of Arn, but for myself I was more than happy with the life he contrived for me. Instead of toiling in the fields from dawn to dusk, ill-fed and more inadequately clothed and housed, I was full and warm, and could watch the miracles that took place at forge and anvil.

  Gillam never struck me—few lads might say so much, I know. Yet even when my master was angered (and he had cause to be more than once), he withheld the sweep of his huge hand that might well have taken me out of this world entirely. It was not only his need for my services. He also had affection for me. When I was burned by flying sparks or fiery bits of metal, his broad face would furrow as if my pain were his own.

  But the thing that convinced me of his regard most firmly was the fact that he talked with me as if I were a man, a man with the education and wit to understand his words. This was the bond that kept me by him more solidly than my servitude.

  He was no peasant, was Gillam. He had been trained by the clergy—at Avebury, no less—his father having been bailiff for a powerful Lord. Gillam could read, either in Latin or in our pithy Saxon. He could set quill to parchment with a hand finer than our Lord’s own priest could manage. He understood many things of which others in our village never dreamed.

  He talked of the past to me as we worked together filing punches or adjusting the jaws of tongs. “It was in many ways a good life,” he said, his big hands moving lovingly over the shape of a maul. “And there were writings in the abbey—I would dearly have loved to have had the time to read through the entire lot of those. But it was not to be. I could not accept many matters that were articles of faith—and there was one at which I laughed. When added to the list of my sins of omission and my interest in the Old Religion, that was the last matter needed to expel me. So I became a smith.”

  I was no fool, young as I was. I knew that a good story must lurk behind that statement. I asked, “What was that? The last thing you could not accept?”

  He laughed, pitching a bolt into a bucket and taking up another to check the fit of it into the Lord’s chariot-tongue. “Now that was humorous! Sheer folly, you understand, on all parts, from the abbot down to the lay brothers. You have heard the name Donnestoun?”

  I gaped. “Him that was Abbot of Glastonbury and adviser to kings? Indeed, even here we know his name. They speak of him now as a holy one—”

  “That great ninny! And now they do, indeed, call him Holy One, when he was and remained a self-seeker—or a deluded fool, which is worse. He was a smith when the need arose, the brothers told me. And one day at his forge, he looked up to see the face of the Dark One in the window at his side. Filled with holy wrath that the demon might try tempting him, he heated his pincers to red-heat and caught the fiend by his long nose, pinching and burning him until he shrieked for mercy and swore never to trouble the pious fraud again.”

  Despite myself, I laughed.

  Gillam laughed with me, though a hint of anger curved his grizzled brows down over his eyes. “Laughable enough. Even a child can see that. Either the holy Donnestoun was a liar or a fool, as I said before, but the brothers swallowed that great tale as if it were a custard. Never a one seemed to contract a bellyache trying to digest it. I was not of such tough stuff. I threw it up into the face of the master of novices, and he, in turn, cast me away from my intended goal.”

  I thought long about that conversation. It seemed to me that a man who was less honest than Gillam might have aped his fellows and pretended to believe, in order to save his place. But I learned, as I lived with the smith, that his honesty went, like the roots of an oak, right down to the streams that fed his being. Every soul in our village knew that, as did even the Lord and his sons and those lesser nobles who served the Lord and lived in the keep that was rising, every day, to loftier heights above the village.

  A day came when the Lord’s youngest son, Ranald, brought his favorite mare to be shod. As the red metal clanged beneath the hammer which curved it to fit the anvil, the young man looked about him, his nose in the air. There being none of his own kind
with whom to talk, he deigned to speak to me as I rested from my bellows work.

  “A low place!” he sniffed, drawing away from the pile of fresh dung that his own steed had dropped near his boot. “A veritable Hell, in fact. Stenches and sweating serfs! Not suitable for me to wait in, I swear. Call me when all is done, boy.” And he strolled into the yard separating the shop from Gillam’s house.

  Something made me follow him to peer through the doorway. Lilibet, unfortunately, was just hanging the newly washed under-clothes upon the barberry bushes to dry in the sun. Gillam’s niece had grown, along with me, so gradually that I had not realized how much a woman she could appear. But when she stretched up to spread a length of stuff across the stone wall that faced the road, the sight was not lost upon Ranald, I could see. Something cold thumped, just once, in my chest.

  I returned to Gillam’s side, trying to hurry the task along in any way I could. I mistrusted the arrogant young man as much as I hated his sneering face, and I feared for Lilibet. There had been that in his look—I spat into the dust and crossed myself....

  Gillam shod the horse in jig time and let the beast out into the yard and assisted the youth to mount. Not even a small coin was forthcoming as he wheeled the mount and sped away.

  My master looked about the yard, but Lilibet had gone into the house again, and I hesitated to tell him the thing that I had feared. Yet he knew that something was troubling me, so he led me back into the shop and sat upon a billet of wood.

  “It is hard, young Pell,” he said, “when you are young to swallow the like of that young sprout. Yet he is not what he thinks himself to be, as his father is not the great and earthshaking Lord he pretends that he is.”

  I looked up at him from my seat on a sack of charcoal. My eyes widened. “How not?” I asked. “Both have the power of life and death over such as us.”