by Lee Dunning
You live, the shadow sent to her mind.
Maybe, Raven thought.
You move. Dead not move. The gryphon sounded amused.
The gryphon moved and the bright light returned. Raven’s eyes adjusted enough for her to realize she was staring straight up a fissure within a cave. Daylight spilled in through the natural chimney. She sat up and took in her surroundings. The gryphon had dumped her in a soft but fetid pile of feathers, fur and plants. Her sword rested next her. She reached for it, grateful the gryphon thought to bring it when it carted her to its lair.
The gryphon paced nearby, its powerful muscles flowing with feline grace. Further back in the cave Raven caught sight of the younger gryphon. It cocked its head and its eagle eye scrutinized her intently. It screeched and the elder gryphon barked a harsh cry in reply. The fledgling shifted deeper into the shadows but Raven could still see it watching her.
Why you climb? The adult’s thoughts included images and concepts Raven struggled to grasp. Even so, she sensed its confusion. Gryphons lived on the mountain. Elves lived on the ground. Elves didn’t leave the ground. That she had left the ground and climbed the mountain disrupted the gryphon’s sense of the natural order of things.
Raven tried to think of words that would make sense to the creature before her. While it was sentient, it lacked a sophisticated vocabulary. It relied more on its senses to develop concepts, which it then sent as images in place of words. Well, she’d just have to try to do the same.
Raven wove a series of images together made up of her hopes and vivid imagination. She used the gryphon before her as the basis for her mind story. She placed herself on its back and sent the phantom image soaring through an imaginary sky.
A rasping cough came from the gryphon. Raven opened her eyes and felt her stomach sink. The gryphon was laughing. Elf want fly? More pictures followed its words. From what Raven could gather, the creature couldn’t comprehend a useful reason for her desire.
Raven gritted her teeth and tried again. This time she added a wyvern to her little mind story. Instead of a deadly battle of clutching claws and snapping jaws, she had the gryphon twist and turn in the air while she struck at the wyvern with her sword. Then she filled her imaginary sky with dozens more gryphons, all with riders. She placed mages and archers on their backs. The aerial cavalry rained hellish death upon the wyverns.
The gryphon clacked its beak. Raven didn’t know what that meant but at least the creature wasn’t laughing anymore.
Fight! The word had so many emotions tied to it, Raven hissed in frustration. She had to pick at the barrage of ideas the gryphon sent her way. Slowly she grasped its meaning. The gryphons were a warrior race. They battled the wyverns, not just for territory and food, but so they could preserve their way of life. The gryphons lived in prides and socialized as large family units. The wyverns skulked amid the cliff faces, waiting for opportunities to ambush female gryphons as they hunted for the pride. Then during the fall, when the young gryphons took their first flights, the wyverns took the greatest toll on the prides.
Raven could still feel the fledgling studying her from the shadows. It probably had taken to the air for the first time only to fall prey to the lurking wyvern. Either Raven’s presence on the mountain or the circling adult gryphon had sent the wyvern into flight before it could finish off its still living meal.
“Where is the rest of your pride?” Raven said, forgetting to form thoughts for the creature.
To the Shadow Elf’s surprise, the gryphon understood. Hunt snake necks. Mourn First Queen.
Snake necks must refer to the wyverns but Raven had to work at understanding what the gryphon meant by First Queen. She considered the words along with what she had learned from the texts W’rath had translated for her. Lady Stormchaser’s journal included several detailed sketches showing the differences between the ages and genders of the creatures. The large crest on the adult before her marked it as male. A pride usually included one such individual with a few younger males, while the bulk of the pride’s numbers consisted of females.
Among the females, a hierarchy existed, with the best hunter holding a position of authority over the rest. Raven smiled. Of course, all of the female gryphons stood as queens in her host’s eyes. The greatest among them would hold the position of First Queen. The others mourned her, though. That meant she’d perished, probably at the claws and fangs of the wyvern. “The snake neck you fought killed her?” Raven asked.
No. It’s mate. A full scene played in Raven’s mind. The female taking the young gryphon out for its first flight. A sudden strike as a wyvern streaked out from a dark crevasse. The female engaged it, protecting the fledgling. From out of the blinding sun, a second bat-winged reptile swooped and chased after the fleeing youngster. The female became distracted at her child’s plight and her opponent sunk its poisoned fangs into her neck.
“She took him with her, though, didn’t she?” Raven said.
She did. I too late. Failed her. The gryphon dipped his head in either shame or grief. Perhaps both.
The rustle of wings and scrape of claws drew Raven’s gaze. The cave went some distance in that direction, curving to the right. Faint illumination indicated an exit lay somewhere beyond. “Your pride, I hope,” Raven said.
Yes. The male turned to greet the arriving females. He sunk to the floor in what Raven could only interpret as a submissive pose. It was hard for Raven to imagine how any creature of his size and strength could bend knee to any other. Then the first of the females rounded the corner and Raven’s jaw dropped.
Raven put the male at about seven hundred pounds. The female gryphon couldn’t weigh in at anything less than a ton. She filled the entire cave, folded wings brushing the ceiling. The she-gryphon lacked the regal crest of the male but she made up for the lack in predatory bearing. Raven had no doubt this magnificent creature would take on the role of First Queen.
Raven considered how she should behave. The male, called a tiercel, she reminded herself, rose to his full stature and faced the arriving females with the same fierceness they displayed. While he may have prostrated himself initially, once he’d shown respect, the male carried himself as a warrior. Raven decided to do the same. She stood and squared her shoulders. She dipped her head as she would to a fellow elf, and then waited, hoping she judged the situation right.
The lead female let out a piercing cry and the fledgling responded in kind from the back of the cave. The male rattled off a series of guttural rasps. The female regarded him for a long moment and then cocked her head so she could take in Raven with a bright garnet red eye. Just like mine.
Then for what Raven thought must be for the hundredth time that day, she found herself flummoxed as the female’s thoughts pushed into Raven’s mind. You saved our fledgling.
The female’s clear thoughts held none of the male’s stilted, primitive, image-heavy awkwardness. She tells us you healed her and then protected her by fighting the snake neck.
Raven wondered how to respond. She needed the respect of these creatures and deeply desired their help, but she didn’t think they’d appreciate an appeal to anything maternal. “I came seeking you, as one warrior to another. The wyvern merely provided me with an opportunity to show my sincerity and resolve.”
The female gryphon let loose with the same sort of harsh laugh the tiercel had earlier. You did indeed show us your worth, your mettle. Tell me what this bargain of yours will cost us.
This was it. Raven had her chance to state her proposal. She swallowed and forced steel into her voice. “Like you, my people are warriors,” she said. “However we lack your maneuverability. Our enemies have enslaved lesser creatures to allow them more flexibility. We wish to surpass this advantage but we wish to team up with equals. We have no desire to sink to our enemies’ practices.”
The female gryphon’s head swung back to the male and she croaked out a string of sounds in their own language. The male said little but the female nodded, much as an elf might, at whatever imag
es the tiercel sent her way. At last, the female regarded Raven again. We know of the humans’ horses and the goblinoids’ boars and wolves. Do you think saving one fledgling entitles you to demand we serve your people as mounts?
For a moment panic sputtered in Raven’s stomach. Then she calmed. This was a test. The female had heard Raven’s words about equality but she didn’t fully trust the Shadow Elf yet. “I make no demands,” Raven said, her voice even. She wouldn’t allow the gryphon to bait her into a show of anger or fear. “I come with a proposal that elf and gryphon join forces for mutual gain. We’ll help you fight the wyverns and in turn you’ll aid us when we face enemy cavalry.”
Or demons? The female gryphon shifted her wings in amusement.We hate demons as much as we do the snake necks.
What? Demons? Raven didn’t know where the gryphon had latched onto that idea unless she had somehow heard about Second Home. “I hadn’t really considered demons,” Raven said.
A new voice pushed its way into her head. Perhaps you should.
W’rath! Raven spun, half expecting to find the him behind her but she found no sign of his swaggering form. Where are you?
Castle Teres, he sent. I hope you’re ready to unveil your surprise.
Raven’s right eye pinched shut as the facts of the matter fell into place. You asshole! You knew all along what I was up to.
Let’s just say I harbored strong suspicions, he admitted.
But how? I didn’t tell anyone, not even Lady Culna’mo. Did you read my mind?
Uncontrolled mirth erupted in Raven’s skull. Have I not mentioned you completely lack in subtlety and guile? With Lady Stormchaser’s journal, the history she wrote, and Umbral’s journal available to you, what did you ask me to translate for you? Deep, dark secrets about our forefathers? No. Instead, you insisted I hunt through the pages of those priceless tomes for every nugget of information concerning gryphons. Given such clues, I think even K’hul could guess at your intent.
All of this came in a flash of thought, far faster than a spoken conversation. Raven’s face burned and the she-gryphon clacked her beak, leaving the warrior to wonder if the creature listened in on the psychic conversation. If you wanted to keep me safe, why did you let me go?
One, I liked your idea of garnering us new allies. Two, it didn’t occur to me you’d dash off to climb a mountain when we have portal mages available. Three, I want you to take your new friends and introduce them to Kela. She and her scouts await orders to go to the aid of our people in the field. You’ll deliver those orders and provide our woodland friends with the ingredient they need to bring victory to our army.
Raven frowned at his phrasing. You don’t expect me to stay home still, do you?
I wouldn’t dare ask it of you. By the gods you invoke, I cannot imagine what trouble you’d throw yourself into if I denied you the opportunity to die horribly in battle.
For the first time in what felt like months, a grin spread across Raven’s face.
One second Caeldan grappled with his Wood Elf opponent and the next he found himself on the ground clutching his head. It felt like an explosion went off in his brain, and only his hands kept his skull from flying apart in a shower of bone splinters. When the blinding agony finally dropped down a notch, he recognized words and images, the product of someone mind speaking to him. He gasped and tried to claw his way to his feet but his vision spun and he flopped back on to the grassy earth.
He turned his head and caught a glimpse of Ryld in much the same condition, writhing on the ground nearby. A pair of moccasin-shod feet stepped up and blocked the view of his brother.
“What did you do to them?” Kela sounded more curious than concerned.
“Didn’t get a chance to do anything,” the voice of Caeldan’s sparring partner said. From somewhere behind Kela, Ryld’s trainer grunted in agreement.
Caeldan couldn’t hear anyone around him practicing any longer. He imagined they all gawked at him and Ryld sprawled on the ground like a couple of beached fish. Traitor’s balls but Lord W’rath’s sending hurt.
Lady Kela’s bent legs replaced Caeldan’s view of her feet. “Are you dead?” she asked, poking him in the forehead.
“Don’t shoot the gryphons …” he managed. “They’re friends.”
“Did you hit your head?” she said.
“He’s not joking,” Ryld said, dusting himself off and clambering to his feet. Apparently, he’d recovered faster from the boss’ sending. Jerk probably had a mind shield up to soften any psychic assaults that came his way. Caeldan liked to tell his brother he wasted energy worrying about such things. Ryld would never let him hear the end of it now.
Caeldan finally managed to get his brain and mouth to work together. “He says we should make room for about twenty gryphons so they can land.”
Every head in the glade swiveled up. Caeldan could make out the distant shapes of roughly two dozen creatures. An eye blink later the smudge of figures resolved into feathered wings, and taloned feet red as fresh blood. The whistle of their plummeting bodies sent birds and squirrels into panicked flight. A mad scramble took place as the elves followed suit. Caeldan thought he heard Seismis squealing until he realized the sound issued from his own throat as Lady Kela hauled his prone carcass to safety.
Dozens of glossy black beasts landed in the glade, a rustle of midnight wings and a clacking of scarlet beaks leaving even the jaded Kela speechless with awe. The largest of the gryphons padded toward where Kela and Caeldan sprawled against a pine. The young elf tried to push himself through the trunk of the tree as his neck craned up and up and his jaw dropped lower and lower.
A radiant goddess, eyes crinkled with laughter, gazed down from where she straddled the enormous beast. “Sorry about the dramatic entrance,” Lady Raven said. “Hop up and make friends. We have an army to save.”
Chapter 24
The screams from the throne room battered at Renoir. Though he and the others hadn’t yet made the last corner, the dreadful cries made plain they would arrive too late to stop the massacre. The elves ahead of Renoir increased their speed but anything less than a sprint the priest judged as too slow. He chafed at his position at the back of the group. His imagination tore at him, filling him with an urgency he’d never felt on a battlefield. “Too slow,” he hissed.
“We grow careless, we die,” Tyan said. “We die, we don’t save anyone.”
Harry spat a glob of something onto the wall. “You point-ears take your time with everything. Old age will drop the priest and me before any demon sinks its claws in us.”
At the head of the party shouts and bright lights filled the hall. Lord Icewind and Lady Swiftbrook engaged the enemy. A wave of chill air mixed with hair-raising electricity blew over Renoir. Then flames lit up the way ahead and a blowback of heat burned the human’s cheeks. The pace increased.
I’m coming, Tarako. Protect our girls.
W’rath laughed and snarled and taunted. He wheeled in a spiral of death, splattering demon entrails, burst eyes and glittering fangs across the hallway, painting the castle’s gray walls in hues of carnage. A bubble of pulsating magic encapsulated him and he teleported free, appearing behind the demon responsible for the spell. Shadow’s Edge separated its spine from its legs, and then its head from its neck. Its head tumbled away, rolling over and over, surprise flashing by with each rotation, the last emotion to mold its features before it died.
A few lesser creatures skittered by the psion. He didn’t pursue. Seconds later blue and white light flared and the stench of things burning tickled at W’rath’s nostrils. He nodded in satisfaction. Lady Swiftbrook did indeed know her way around a proper lightning spell.
He ducked to the side as a sword sliced through the space he’d just occupied. The gray devil snarled in frustration as the psion slipped out of its reach. Two more joined it and W’rath raised his arm. Their blades bounced off the invisible shield he’d conjured the instant he jumped ahead of the other elves. He gritted his teeth as the
power of their blows vibrated up his arm. Time to even the odds.
Kill your companions, W’rath ordered the first devil. Most psions couldn’t compel a creature to go against their allies, but the Shadow Elf possessed a crushing will few could resist. Without so much as a shake of its head, the devil disemboweled the fiend next to it. The third devil hissed and worked its blade to defend against the first devil. W’rath slipped to its side and hamstrung it. His new pet finished it off. Come along and defend me.
It stepped ahead of W’rath, its tail swishing as if it had a mind of its own. Hmmm. “On second thought,” W’rath said, “I mistrust that tail of yours.” He struck, and flicked blood off Shadow’s Edge as he skirted around the devil’s corpse.
He rode the shadows and stepped from a niche before what had once been the double doors leading to the throne room. Corpses clogged the hall. A half-dozen elven soldiers lay in heaps, most dismembered in some manner, one completely turned inside out. The air reeked. Empty pieces of armor suggested others, now eaten, or dissolved, or reanimated, had met their ends here. Something had shattered the doors leading into the throne room. Shards of wood littered the floor and the dead. More debris probably spread in the room beyond but W’rath couldn’t tell. A translucent membrane draped over the gaping wound left in the wall when the doors blew apart. It pulsated with malignant life.
“What sort of foul beastie are you?” W’rath muttered.
As if in answer, it flowed from the opening to the floor and leaked into the shadows of the fallen warriors. Too late W’rath understood what he faced. A Fade! W’rath could walk the shadows, but this creature was the shadows. Faster than thought, the blackness at his feet came alive, oozing up from the floor to wrap itself around him. It didn’t matter how powerful his psionics, W’rath couldn’t teleport free of his own shadow.
With a malevolent chuckle it cut off all light, all warmth, all hope.