The black gryphon

by Mercedes Lackey

  At last, his mage-energies exhausted, he dropped his outstretched claw and opened the eyes he did not realize he had closed.

  Vikteren supported Urtho in his chair, and the face that looked up at Skan was sane again. “The evacuation-“ Urtho whispered harshly. “Get me-Healers. I have to hold on-“

  Vikteren looked up into Skan’s puzzled face. “I think he’s keyed some kind of destructive spells into himself-if he leaves the Tower, the place is going to go unstable. And if you thought what happened with that Gate at Jerlag Pass was impressive-“

  The young mage left the rest unsaid. Leaves the Tower, or dies, he means. And there must be two dozen permanent Gates here, not to mention the Tower itself and everything still in it. The destructive potential staggered him. Anyone still here would be obliterated by the result, pulverized to dust-----

  The noise of running feet from the hallway made him turn sharply, ready to attack again, but these were friends. The hertasi had returned with Tamsin and three more senior Healers, who squeezed through the door as one. Not Cinnabar. He must have sent her through the Gate while he could.

  “We know,” Tamsin said shortly, taking Vikter-en’s place at Urtho’s side. “We’ll buy him all the time we can.”

  Skan did not move out of the way. The Healers shoved past him, ignoring him as if he had been an inconveniently placed piece of furniture.

  He started to say something, but Vikteren motioned to him to remain silent. Tears trickled down the mage’s face, and his shoulders shook, but he didn’t produce so much as a stifled sob to distract the Healers from their work.

  Skan himself shook from beak to talons with the effort of repressing a keen of grief. He closed his eyes and clamped his beak shut, flexing his talons into the wood of the floor, feeling it splinter beneath them, and wishing he could kill Conn Levas a hundred more times.

  Someone tapped him on the shoulder, startling him, making him jump. His eyes snapped open and focused on Tamsin’s face, not more than a finger away from his beak.

  “We’ve done all anyone can,” the Healer said, in a voice gone flat and dull with sorrow and exhaustion. “He needs to tell you something.”

  The four Healers staggered out the door, holding each other in pairs and not once looking back. Vikteren still stood beside Urtho’s chair, tears falling steadily down his cheeks and dropping onto the breast of his tunic.

  “Get all the gryphons you can find,” one of the Healers told the hertasi who waited, trembling, beside the door. “He’s going to try to get everything open that he can before the end, and he wants them to take all they can carry.”

  The hertasi looked up at the Healer for a moment, too grief-stricken to reply. The man spoke again. “Knowledge will always be the best weapon against tyrants,” he choked out. “Urtho said that.” And at that the hertasi ran to carry out the orders.

  “Skan-there’s a weapon.” Urtho’s voice was the merest whisper, but his words were clear enough. “Never meant to use it, but-now, Ma’ar is coming. Help me-weapons room.”

  Vikteren helped him to his feet and got under one shoulder, while Skan supported him on the other side. They both knew where the weapons room was, and that it was locked, to be unsealed by Urtho’s presence alone. They carried him across the Strategy Room and to the door across the hallway; Urtho had no more strength than a newborn kitten. He fell against the door to the weapons room to open it, and directed them both to a box on a stand in the far corner of the room.

  “It’s-like the box I gave Zhaneel. But bigger. Got one on the Tower roof. Dissolves the bonds-of spells. Take it to Ma’ar when you can, trigger it. Same thing that happened at Jerlag.” Urtho did not look at Skan; the gryphon had the feeling that perhaps he couldn’t bear to. “Made it for gryphons. Stick your talons-in the holes. All at once.”

  Skan saw then that what he had taken for decorative perforations in the side were actually holes made to fit a gryphon’s talons, in a pattern of two on each side to fit the two-forward, two back-curved talons of the foreclaws.

  “You have-a count of a hundred-to get away,” Urtho finished. “Better have-a Gate handy. And closed fast.”

  The Mage of Silence tried to smile, and coughed instead. “Go!” he whispered fiercely, when the coughing fit was over. “Go. Get Ma’ar later. Survive now.”

  Skan lifted the box from its stand, and saw that it had a carry-strap meant to go around the neck. He pulled the strap over his head, awkwardly, and turned back to the Mage.

  Urtho’s eyes were clouded with pain, and his lips formed the word, “Go.”

  Beak clamped down on the death-keen, Skan backed out of the room. But before he left, he saw Vikteren helping Urtho to the next door to be unlocked.

  And the first of the combat-gryphons arrived, to carry away what he could.

  Knowledge will always be the best weapon against tyrants. Unable to hold it back any longer, Skan fled down the hallway and into the sunset, his death-keen echoing through the Tower as he ran.

  Winterhart flung books and packages through the Gate whenever there wasn’t someone actually traversing it, from the pile that formed as the gryphons brought them to her, her arms and back one long pulled muscle. There would be some time after Urtho succumbed before everything went dangerously unstable. They should all have time to get out.

  All but Urtho. . . .

  Her eyes stung with tears, but she would mourn him later, when they were all, temporarily at least, safe.

  Somewhere on the other side of this Gate was another Trondi’irn, pitching packages through the Gate to k’Leshya. The farther away this dangerous knowledge went, the better off they would all be. She did not bother to think about how they would continue this war, or even if they would be able to regroup. The important thing now was simply to escape, to live, and to worry about the rest later.

  Other gryphons, too exhausted to be of any use, staggered up to and through the Gate while she paused in her labor. Humans and hertasi, tervardi and kyree and dyheli also presented themselves for passage, burdened with everything they could carry. There were fewer of them now than there had been; as combatants staggered in from the field, they grabbed what they could and headed for their evacuation-Gates, and by now virtually everyone who could make it back, had.

  That left only the few faithful, like her and Amberdrake, who would stay until the bitter end to help save as much as they could from the wreckage.

  She still did not know why Urtho was reportedly dying, although she trusted the news. It could not have been something simple like heart failure, or the Healers would be able to save him. Had Ma’ar somehow penetrated their defenses with a mage-attack?

  Another pair of exhausted gryphons and a pack of mud-stained kyree staggered up to the Gate, and she stopped long enough to let them pass. But before she could pick up another package from the pile, someone else appeared, a human this time. But he headed for her, and not the Gate, and it took her a moment to recognize Amberdrake.

  His face was absolutely blank with shock, and he was as pale as snow. She leapt for him as he stumbled and started to fall, catching him and holding him upright.

  “What-“ she began.

  “I just saw Skan,” he replied dully. “I just said good-bye to him.”

  Something in the way he phrased that made her freeze. Good-bye? As in-permanently?

  “We have to get Zhaneel out of here, now, to k’Leshya,” he continued numbly. “We can’t let her find out Skan is gone, or she’ll try to follow him. Urtho gave him a weapon, and told him to use it to stop Ma’ar. Skan is determined that Urtho meant him to do it now.”

  Winterhart realized that she was clutching her hand in her hair at the side of her head only when it began to hurt. She let go slowly. “Couldn’t you stop him?” she cried involuntarily.

  “I tried. He wouldn’t listen.” Amberdrake stared at her, eyes blank and blind. “He told me that Shaiknam, Garber, and Conn Levas went over to the enemy.”

  A cold ring of terror const
ricted her throat, cutting off her gasp. “But-“

  “He said he caught Conn Levas right after he’d poisoned Urtho with miranda thorns, and he tore the traitor’s throat out. By then it was too late; there was nothing they could do for Urtho but buy him time.” She sensed his pain as if it were her own-if she wanted to mourn for Urtho, he would have ten times the grief to deal with-and ten times that for Skan.

  “I’ll-wait, there she is.” Zhaneel came hurrying up with a bundle of books in her beak and another clutched to her chest, running on three legs with her wings spread to help her balance.

  Winterhart grabbed the edge of her wing before she could put her burden down. “Zhaneel!” she cried, “I need someone on the k’Leshya side to make certain all this is carried as far away from the Gate as possible. We don’t know how unstable these things are-“

  Zhaneel nodded and darted through the Gate without waiting for further explanation. “You go after her,” Winterhart ordered. “I’ll follow you as soon as I get the last of this stuff across.”

  At least she had something to do. Something to keep her from thinking.

  “Are you all right?” Amberdrake asked suddenly, a little life coming into his eyes. She knew what he meant.

  Conn is dead. Conn is a traitor, and he’s dead. She paused and collected herself, examined her heart.

  “It’s best that Skan took care of the problem,” she said firmly, looking deeply into Amberdrake’s eyes, so that he would know she meant what she said. “If he hadn’t-I’d have done so, but with less elegance. Myself.”

  Beneath all the pain, all the grief, she saw a moment of relief. It was enough for now. She shoved him gently toward the Gate.

  “I’ll see you on the other side,” she said. “Take care of her.” He took a last, long look at the Tower, then turned and stumbled blindly across the threshold.

  She picked up another package as soon as he was clear, and pitched it across.

  Skan knew exactly who he was looking for-the Kaled’a’in Adept, Snowstar, the person Urtho himself had appointed as the chief of all the mages. He knew Snowstar, knew that the man was truly second only to Urtho in knowledge and ability, and knew one other, crucial fact.

  Snowstar had been working with Urtho long before the King collapsed. Snowstar was one of the mages that Urtho had with him when Cinnabar called them all to the Palace that terrible morning.

  Snowstar knew the Palace as well as Skan did. Which meant that Snowstar, unlike many of the other mages, could build a Gate there.

  And Ma’ar was at the Palace.

  After three false tries, he located Snowstar at the Tower stables, turning away from the last empty stall. An odd place for a mage perhaps, unless the mage was Kaled’a’in, and the horses here were the precious warsteeds. Skan grinned savagely to himself; Snowstar had not expected an ambush-and doubtless intended to head straight for the Kaled’a’in Gate from here, hot on the heels of his beloved equines.

  There would be a brief delay.

  As he turned, Skan stood in the aisle between the stalls and spread his wings to block his way. The mage looked up at him blankly. “Skandranon? What-“

  “I need a favor,” Skan said quietly, but with an edge to his voice. “And you don’t have a choice. I need a Gate to the old Palace, and I need it now.”

  Snowstar’s eyes went wide and he shook his head with disbelief. “Are you out of your mind?” he cried, putting out his hands to shove Skan out of the way. “There’s no time for this kind of nonsense! We have to get out of here!”

  “There is time and you will do this,” Skan hissed. “I have a prrresssent to deliver to Ma’ar. From Urtho.”

  Snowstar blanched, and his eyes dropped to the box around Skan’s neck as if he had only just this moment noticed that it was there. Skan was gambling on a number of things. The Black Gryphon was known as Urtho’s confidant; Snowstar should assume that Urtho’s request was an order, and that it was not meant to be implemented at some far future date, but now. Snowstar knew very well what kind of shape Urtho was in; he would not risk a single precious moment by going to Urtho or sending a messenger to confirm what Skan had just told him. He might even assume that Urtho had ordered Skan to find Snowstar, knowing that the Adept would be one of the few at full strength and capable of building a Gate that far away.

  Snowstar’s pupils widened and contracted, as all those thoughts-and likely, a few more-raced through his mind.

  “Right,” he said then, still pale, but grimly determined. “I won’t Gate you into the Palace itself, if that is agreeable to you. I have no idea who or what Ma’ar has stationed where. I could Gate you into the servants’ quarters only to find out that he’s got it full of soldiers or traps. But there’s one place I know very well where you won’t find much opposition, and the little you find, I suspect you can silence.”

  “The stables,” Skan breathed, amazed at Snowstar’s quick thinking.

  “Exactly.” Snowstar shoved at Skan again, but this time to make some room to work, and Skan gladly moved over. “I’ll position the Gate to come out of the last stall in the back; it’s a big loose-box, partitioned off from the rest with floor-to-ceiling walls, and with no outside windows. We never put a horse in it unless it was one that was so sick it needed dark and quiet. No grooms are likely to change that.”

  It sounded perfect, and Skan nodded. “Put it up, and bring it down once I’m through,” he said decisively. “Then get yourself out of here.”

  “What about-“ Snowstar began, then saw the look in Skan’s eyes. The rage Skan held bottled up inside must have been blazing. Snowstar grew just a bit paler, then turned away, raised his hands, and began.

  The Adept had had decades of practice to refine and hone his craft; the Gate went up with scarcely a ripple in mage-energies. Skan did not even wait to thank him; clutching his precious burden with one foreclaw, he dove through to the other side.

  This is poorly planned, stupid gryphon, but there isn’t time. Urtho can’t die without knowing Ma’ar’s dead and gone. You don’t do helplessness well at all. And if you can’t save Urtho, you can still do something.

  He landed, feet skidding a little in the straw, in the dark and empty loose-box. As Snowstar had guessed, it had not been used in so long that the straw covering the stone floor smelled musty and was full of dust. He suppressed a sneeze and moved cautiously to the door.

  He listened carefully, all senses straining against the darkness.

  Odd. Lots of voices, and the sound of something struggling. What did they have penned up in here, some kind of feral stallion?

  “Are you sure that’s going to hold the beast?”

  The voice was doubtful, and very frightened. “I tell you, orders or no orders, if that thing breaks free, don’t think I’m going to stand here and try to stop it!”

  The crack of hand on flesh, and an exclamation of pain.

  “You’ll do as you’re told, and like it, coward!” a second voice growled. “If I tell you to stand there and let the thing take your arm off, you’ll damned well do it!”

  Not a stallion, then. A bull? Some new monster Ma’ar just dreamed up?

  A muttered, sullen curse; the sound of spitting. Heavy boots, walking away. More struggles; chains rattling, muffled thuds, more mutters, a stream of ill-wishes directed against the second voice, his family, and all his progeny to come.

  The thin, high wail of a young gryphon.

  “Faaaather!”

  A voice he knew! Kechara!

  He pushed against the stall-door, and it swung wide while he stepped out and mantled. His eyes locked with those of one poor, spotty-faced groom clutching a pitchfork in one hand, a bloody rag held to his mouth with the other. The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He took one look at Skan, went pale as milk, and fainted dead away.

  Skan stepped over him, and looked into the stall he’d been guarding.

  There were two canvas-covered bundles there; one thrashing, one whimpering. The whimpering
bundle was the smaller, and the whimpers were definitely in Kechara’s voice!

  How did she-never mind. Conn Levas or Shaiknam, or both. Quickly, he squeezed into the stall, but he did not free the little one. Not yet. The larger bundle of the two also smelled of blood and of gryphon, and it was a scent that he thought he recognized.

  “Hold still,” he whispered. “It’s Skan.”

  The bundle stilled immediately. He took a moment to examine the situation.

  Chains wrapped around the bundle, but they were not fastened to the stall itself. If he could get the gryphon inside to bend a little, he might be able to slip one loop off, and that would give him enough slack to undo the whole thing without having to unlock it.

  “Can you bend this way?” he whispered harshly, pushing down on what he thought was the back of the gryphon’s head. It must have been; the place bent over in response to his pressure, and he was able to work the loop of chain off as he had hoped. Once he had the slack he needed, two more loops followed, and he worked the entire chain down, with the squirming assistance of the gryphon inside.

  Now he could slit the canvas bag and see if the contents were who he thought it was. He ripped open the canvas with a slash of a talon, and a head popped out-a head covered in an enormous version of a falcon’s hood, with the beak tied firmly shut.

  He pulled off the bindings, and the beak opened.

  “Damn it, Skan,” Aubri croaked, in a whisper no louder than his had been. “You took your own sweet time getting here!”

  It took both of them to convince Kechara that she had to be quiet, but for once Ma’ar’s men had done them all a favor. They had cut off all the primaries on both her wings and Aubri’s, and in Kechara’s case, that meant she wasn’t tripping over her own awkward wings.

  Kechara wasn’t at all clear on how she had gotten there, but the picture in her mind, projected strongly, was of a blurred Conn Levas offering something that smelled lovely. Skan assured her that he had “gone away” and that Skan had made certain he wouldn’t come back.