The Angels of Our Better Beasts

by Jerome Stueart

  The monks stopped and turned.

  The boy shouted again. “Do you believe I hold the Wisdom or not?”

  The king looked at them with his nine-year-old eyes. Kargas pulled him to his side. “Your majesty, they defend the city.”

  Kargas yelled at the monks to go. Buseil looked torn, as if he fought to stay, as if maybe he was thinking about their options.

  Kargas said, “I will take him to the catacombs. Go!”

  “The Gryphon has a lot more to offer than his strength,” Buseil said.

  “There’s no time to bribe the Variden. They just want revenge. Once the Gryphon is dead, the Horde will take the gold. We have nothing to offer them, Buseil. Defend the city—while we have it.”

  Kargas stood facing Buseil for a few moments, neither of them speaking. Buseil looked at Lha. “Long life to you, King Lha,” he said, and turned with the monks, running back into the dark passages that led to the wall of the Holy City; until they were absorbed into the dark.

  King Lha remembered his brothers and father running off to war. “You’re too young to come with us,” they had said before they left that night. “We’ll come back and see if you’ve practiced your archery.” But Lha never practiced his archery. He drew pictures, hundreds and hundreds of pictures of birds, of plants, of pets, of people. His bow sat in the corner of his room. Instead, there was a growing collection of drawings and paintings waiting for his father to praise, to admire.

  “Creator. You are a creator,” his father called him, smiling once at his pictures.

  Kargas yanked his arm in the dark passageway and Vanel took his other hand, her face turned away, a flicker of firelight curving around her foreign nose. Together they ran as the bells rang above them, and the walls shook, and dust filtered down like snow on their path.

  >?

  Vanel and Kargas had encouraged him to follow his art. Kargas found ways to bring him rolls of paper, ink, and brushes. Kargas spoke to the king—“He will astound us all”—and so, fewer war studies, strategy, swordsmanship, and more art and music and philosophy for him. For he was a ninth son of the king. Vanel and Kargas were allowed to craft him as they wanted.

  “These stairs!” Lha suggested as they ran past another set of stairs. “We can hide down here. I know this place.”

  “Lha, we’re going to run away from the city tonight,” Kargas said. “We have horses.”

  “But the armies—”

  “Don’t think about them,” Kargas said.

  “We’re going to be a family,” Vanel said. She beamed at him.

  Lha looked at her, his eyes wide.

  Kargas, running beside him, said, “If we escape together, we stay together. We become a family.”

  “But what of the Holy City?” Lha asked.

  “It’s lost for now. We’ll have to come back.”

  “Where will we go?”

  “We have safe passage,” Kargas shot a look at Vanel, “to a neighbouring city.”

  “To Varid,” Vanel said strongly, as if she wanted him to know. “My home city.”

  “The Variden are at war—with us.” Lha stopped running.

  Kargas and Vanel stopped running too. “I’m not at war with you,” Vanel said. “I love you.”

  “We don’t have time to explain,” Kargas said, breathing hard. “The armies of the Horde will be inside the gates any moment. Prince Lha, come here now.”

  The boy stumbled backwards. “I’m—king.”

  Kargas huffed, looking at Vanel. “Lha. Right now you are King of Nothing. The city is falling. You are half asleep, thinking you can make decisions in this sudden moment. You must listen to me. I’ve always taught you how to be a better king than any of your brothers could ever be. But you can’t be a king here—not yet. You will need to grow into the Wisdom you’ve acquired. There will be a new Holy City.” Kargas looked at him as if there was really no other viable option. “And it will be in Varid.”

  Something huge welled up inside of Lha and poured out of his mouth. “But—they killed the king and the princes!” His own voice surprised him. He held his head as if it would explode. “You can’t live with their killers.”

  Vanel pleaded with him, “The Horde killed them. The Horde. Please, Lha. Come quickly or we’ll all die.”

  Kargas ran at Lha, his great bulk suddenly in front of him. “If I have to carry the king like a sack of grain to save his life, I will.”

  Lha ducked away from Kargas’ lunge and ran toward the stairs leading to the catacombs. “Lha!” Kargas called, but Lha dove into the darkness as fast as he could.

  >?

  Lha knew the catacombs and the passageways of the kingdom well. He and his brothers had played in them, hid in them, warred in them. He wiped fresh tears on his sleeve.

  He ran the maze of passages in the dark, panicked, letting his fingers trail along the wall, even as he hurried farther away from everyone, to the forbidden passages, to the one that would lead him to some great door, its golden words across the arch: Let Wisdom Seek Power and Power Seek Wisdom, Else the World is Lost. Kargas had told him about the door, but not where it was.

  He heard distant shouts. He passed by the entrance to Where Kings Sleep, sliding his hands over the dark walls, the grit loosened by his fingers falling like dust behind him. His foot stubbed hard against a rock and he stopped. To his horror, he felt around his feet a mass of rocks. He could tell even in the dark that this passage was closed, that there were rocks from floor to ceiling. No air passed in front of him. The dark gripped him.

  They had sealed up this passage with rocks. He imagined a door beyond it with the words above it, and he climbed the rocks on his hands and feet, trying to reach the top, but they were piled deep and he could not get to any door. And what would he do if he got there? He had no way to wake the Gryphon. Could the Gryphon hear someone pleading even if he were asleep?

  “Lha!” Kargas bellowed. “King Lha, there’s no time!” They came closer and closer.

  He crawled back down the mound of stones, and ran back to the twisted ironwork gate in front of Where the Kings Sleep, and slipped through its gaps. He could hide here for now.

  He’d been here before. King Arund, his father, had brought him here to honour the past kings. They would know. They would know what he should do. They were where the Wisdom came from, after all. The unlit torch from the wall was heavy in his hands, like a club, and in grabbing it he dropped the striking stone to light it. He heard Kargas and Vanel just down the hall. He went down the pathway into the darkened crypt, letting his body slide against the wall. When he was far enough away from the door, he turned against the wall and tried to use his crown to spark the torch. Nothing. Probably scratched the crown. He tried his stone necklace instead, scratching the black stone against the wall until—yes—a spark lit the edge of the torch’s cloth. But the black stone’s edge cracked and crumbled in his hand—pieces falling to the ground. Another kingly thing ruined.

  The torch lit the crypt. He walked past the kings of the Holy City—those who had managed to protect their city with armies, and with the Gryphon. “One with magic, one with gold, one with marriage, one with holiness,” Lha repeated.

  “These are the ways a king protects his people,” his father had said. “You will never have to worry about this. You have eight brothers, after all. But you are a creator, and your methods of being king would be very different.” His father smiled at this. “And you helped me once, when the Gryphon was raging, when the Holy City could not appease him. You helped me put him to sleep.”

  “How did I help you?” Lha had asked.

  “You were innocent. And you still are.”

  In the crypt now, the kings flanked him, their polished crypt doors holding everything and nothing.

  “I want to wake the Gryphon,” he announced to the room. His voice was small as he addressed
the kings. “Is that the right thing to do? Is that your Wisdom speaking to me?” But nothing came to him, and he stifled his tears. “I’m trying. Is that your idea or mine? You were supposed to give something to me.”

  He went into his father’s crypt, the wine-coloured door open. He looked left at where his father would soon lay. A giant marble slab lay there now and he shined the torchlight on it. It reflected like the sun.

  The Gryphon is made of sun. Kargas had taught him that. The Gryphon can sense your heart. He makes his own decisions about who lives and dies. He is unpredictable. He remembered how Kargas used to tell this story: King Arund faced down a gryphon enraged by the sins of Variden—a city nearly destroyed by the Gryphon’s wrath. He took a piece of the Gryphon’s gold, putting him to sleep, and won peace for the land.

  Then Lha heard the Bells of the South Wall. They were everywhere. He looked up at the ceiling, imagining the boys shooting their arrows, the fire, armies waiting outside the door to come in. He saw the boy’s face, that boy, firing his arrows into the sheet of men covering the land. He looked down over the table and saw his own face, the face of the king. The face of the boy.

  The Gryphon could save that boy.

  He whispered to the slab, as if his father already lay there. Where is the gold you took, father? Where is the gold you took? I need to know where it is. I can save everyone if you can just tell me where the gold is. He started to cry. You didn’t leave me with enough to save them. You didn’t leave me with enough.

  >?

  The gate rattled down the corridor. He threw the torch against the wall and quickly stepped on the flames. He crouched in his father’s crypt.

  He heard Buseil’s voice quaver as he spoke to someone. “I need your holy promise. Your holiest promise. All the gold of the Gryphon if you promise no harm to those in the Holy City.”

  “Vedic, you have our word. We have already stopped. You’ve proven your wisdom by telling your men to stand down.”

  “I am not a wise man,” Buseil said. “I am trying to save as much of the Holy City as I can.”

  One of the other men said, “Then you’re a saviour.”

  Buseil sounded flustered. “I—I am just a man.” A key in a lock, a heavy door opening, footsteps retreating, the gasping of a dozen men as they stood in the presence of something amazing.

  “He’s a lot bigger than I remember,” said one finally.

  “He’s a good size.”

  “He’s only good when he’s asleep,” another soldier said.

  “I thought there was a lot more gold than this.”

  Buseil said, “No one can take the gold without waking the Gryphon. That first piece, the one we were able to get, was an accident. An innocent hand took it. We told the Variden and the Horde that we never took from this gold. It was made by the people of all the cities. What purpose would it suit men devoted to faith?”

  “An innocent took it?”

  “The Gryphon can search every heart, but the hearts of innocents read pure. You’re going to have to kill the Gryphon to get the gold. He’s asleep now, so it should be easy.”

  “Why did you never kill him?”

  “What purpose would that serve? We wanted peace, not death.”

  “There’s at least one coin gone,” said a soldier.

  “Oh, yes, one coin—but that is just to keep the beast asleep. We touched nothing else.”

  “Sometimes,” said another man, one with authority in his voice, “I wish I were the Gryphon, and I could tell who was lying and who was telling the truth.” A slippery, whispered scream of metal—a sword unsheathed. “Where’s the last piece? Or would it have been safer to keep more pieces out of the pile? The Variden will want to kill the beast themselves. We just want the gold—every single piece. All the gold for the lives of those in this city. Every piece.”

  Buseil cried out, “The king only kept one piece—we don’t know where it is. It’s—in his room, maybe. Let’s go see.” A sharp cry. Something like a soft bag of grain fell to the stone floor.

  A man said, “We’ll do that. And your room as well. First, though, start bagging up the gold we have.”

  “What do we do with the beast?”

  “The Variden will want him. Even asleep, maybe they can drown him or burn him or crush him. I’m sure they’ll try several things.”

  Was the man right? Lha wondered. Could there be more pieces of gold? Could his brothers have had pieces hidden in their necklaces? If he ran in there now to awaken the Gryphon, he could be killed. The Gryphon may not awaken. Maybe he was wrong—maybe he never received the Wisdom.

  He walked outside his father’s crypt. The door to King Baruch-Azil, the first king, was open, and he could see the empty balcony, the cave awash with firelight, and the golden words above the door: Let Wisdom Seek Power and Power— Of course the door was with the first king. Without Buseil’s key, he never would have found it.

  “Lha!” He turned and saw Kargas standing in the corridor with Vanel. Several Variden soldiers came up behind them.

  Kargas held the soldiers back. “I made them promise that they would protect you, Lha.” He walked towards Lha. “The only son who wasn’t a warrior. We need you. We need a king who is a creator. A peacemaker. Come with us. You could start a generation of kings that care more for the cities around them than appeasing a wrathful, sun-spitting creature that thinks he’s a god. We have a chance to try something different this time.” Kargas smiled. “We will save your life and the culture and Wisdom you carry,” he said. “We can build another Holy City.”

  Cold crept up the back of his neck as Lha realized the truth. “You wanted me to live—only me?”

  “Lha, we couldn’t take a chance that the Wisdom would go to any of your brothers. Look at the mess warriors make of life. You can still be trained and mentored in more creative, peaceful ways.”

  Kargas opened his arms wide; Lha shook.

  “There is no Wisdom,” Lha whispered. “You killed everyone for nothing!” The words poured out of him. He threw down his crown, ripped off his necklace and threw them on the floor of the crypt because it was all dead. All dead.

  The black stone necklace shattered, revealing the edge of the gold coin, and both he and Kargas seemed to realize it at once. The Variden saw it as well.

  “He has the coin!”

  Why would he have the coin in his necklace? He’d worn it many times during many ceremonies. Had he held terrible power all his life—the power to wake the Gryphon? Could he have saved his father?

  The Variden swept around Kargas like a flood. Lha picked up the coin, turned and ran straight for the balcony. Through the door of King Baruch-Azil’s tomb, past the plaques that read of his deeds, past the place where he was buried, sleeping on his side, with his back to the Gryphon he had long ago rescued.

  Lha ran past the brown robes of Buseil on the balcony, draped across three steps. Lha glanced at the monk’s face, bleeding from the mouth, a tiny smear on the steps.

  Lha leapt from the balcony, exhilaration at what he saw. In that moment, it was only the Gryphon, here now, for the first time. Bigger than six or seven horses, it was an eagle sleeping on giant cat’s paws, brown and golden feathers covering its sleeping body. It heaved up and down in perfect peace.

  For an instant, Lha flew, like the Gryphon must have flown in battle, free of anything that might weigh him down. And then, suddenly, his hand drove like a nail into the pile of gold coins, breaking a finger, scratching his arm; his other hand dropped the coin he’d been holding so that he could find his balance. His legs sunk into the pile till he was on his knees.

  The left side of his face slammed into the coins, and yet he looked up and saw, only a few feet away, the Gryphon’s eye open.

  The Gryphon is made of sun.

  “Lha! Don’t move!” It was Kargas’ voice above him on the balcony. />
  “Lha!” Vanel screamed. Lha didn’t turn around; the eye of the Gryphon did not blink, yet.

  “Please help us,” Lha spoke a torrent to the Gryphon’s eye. “The Holy City is under attack. The people attacking us have black hearts. They are deceptive and want to kill everyone. Protect us! Protect yourself! They’re right here!”

  The Gryphon’s great mouth opened. “Whom should I kill?” he asked.

  “Lha! Be silent!” Kargas raged.

  The boy crawled toward the Gryphon. “Everyone who lies. Everyone who deceives. Everyone who hides the truth away!”

  “Oh,” the Gryphon breathed in, “everyone.”

  He lifted his head, stretching his neck as his wings opened, filling the room. The air brushed past Lha’s face. The Gryphon looked at the men with bags of gold and he thrust his face toward them, beak wide, eyes glowing. A blast of desert sun came out of his mouth, like molten vomit, and the men dried like husks and crumbled to the ground. The Gryphon turned his mighty head and opened his eyes and mouth at Kargas and Vanel, and the Variden who stood behind him.

  “No, not them—I didn’t mean—”

  “Lha, no!” Kargas yelled.

  And the boy yelled, “Noooo, not them!”

  Vanel screamed. But the light was blinding, and when it was gone, there wasn’t anyone left standing.

  And the Gryphon looked at the boy, stretching his wings. “And now, finally, for everyone else.”

  The boy put his face in his hands, crying. “No! No I said only those with deceiving hearts! Only those who lie!”

  The Gryphon looked back at him. “Everyone lies, King Lha.”

  “No, no. Some are good, some are good.” The boy struggled to stand.

  “Everyone lies.”

  “I-I-I don’t.”

  The Gryphon held his gaze. “Has the Wisdom come to you?”

  Lha couldn’t answer.

  “Answer me. Your father is dead. Your brothers are dead. I know this. I know it because you know it. Has the Wisdom come to you as it came to your father? Your tricky, deceitful father . . .”