by K Vale Nagle
Her plan, if she were being honest with herself, had been to rekindle her relationship with Cherine and run away together, possibly among the taiga gryphons. Now that everything was reaching an end, she realized Cherine may not want that and she wasn’t sure she did either.
That’s when her revelation came. She didn’t want a mate, she didn’t want chicks or gryphlets, she didn’t want a place to belong. She wanted to know what had gone wrong. If the world were really on fire as Headmaster Neider had said, she wanted to know why. She wasn’t sure how to fix what went wrong here, but she might be able to figure it out if she had the view from the sky.
The fuse on her musings reached its end as the fuse on the saltpeter explosives did the same. She was far enough away this time that her hearing and sight were unaffected. When she looked up, she saw that a chunk of the dam had been blown upwards along with two bodies, one emerald, one brown. It was a testament to the sturdiness of the dam that it resisted the initial blast as well as it did. Water came flowing over the top, but the bottom half remained whole.
She flew as quickly as she could to try to catch Zeph. She wasn’t sure she could carry him on her own. She crashed into him, ignoring Brevin’s unconscious body as it fell past.
Kia hung on tight, trying to get him beneath her, but his wings hung limp and kept causing him to twirl. She finally pinned his wings against his body and wrapped her foreclaws and back paws around him. Her wings weren’t strong enough to keep them both aloft, but she was trying to slow their descent as safely as she could. She was lucky this was Zeph and not Hatzel or Merin. The pain in her wings was already excruciating even with his slight figure.
With the last spin, she’d had a glimpse of the dam above her. Huge cracks spiderwebbed from the blast site. One crack spread straight beneath the statue of the cobra, causing that section to fall apart under the weight. The cobra toppled down, bringing an entire side of the dam with it.
Kia steered Zeph into the river fed by the Summer Falls. They hit with a splash. She was having trouble keeping them both above water. She saw the drenched figure of an emerald opinicus right at the base of the waterfall. She tried to call out a warning but there was no time.
The cobra statue crashed down, creating a tidal wave that erased the green figure from Kia’s view. The surge of water sent Kia and Zeph into the weald. With some sputtering, Zeph came back to his senses and caught a tree branch. She hurt too much to fly. Instead, they climbed higher into the redwood forest and watched the destruction.
Crater Lake was gone. Only the far side of the dam still stood, a wingless, beakless alabaster peacock on the edge of a mountain. The water had spread across the northern border of the hunting grounds and into the grasslands. How far it reached was difficult to tell this late in the day with the smoky haze over the valley. The fire that had started to slither out across the hunting grounds to the grasslands was gone, and that was enough of a victory for her. Where the invading army of the north had failed to take the Crackling Sea Eyrie, a hundred gryphons attempting to save their kjarr kin had burned the city-state of the Redwood Valley Eyrie to the ground.
There was movement from the rubble of the snake statue, and a glistening emerald opinicus pulled herself out of the water.
Zeph shook as hard as he could, spraying water everywhere. The bottom six feet of the forest were underwater. With the flood washing away the topsoil and filling all the nooks and crannies, the water writhed and hissed. Xavi’s snake-clearing efforts had missed the underground nests.
Having closed the distance from the rubble to the trees, Reeve Brevin came straight at him with her own writhing and hissing.
He fled deeper into the weald, praying she wouldn’t stop to attack Kia, whose wings were at their limit. He needn’t have worried. The reeve had eyes only for him.
They raced past the animals of the forest making their evacuation—gliding snakes, squirrels, songbirds, and even leaping forest spinners filled the air. Beneath them was a soup of snakes, monitors, and ground parrots. The rest of the dam crumbled, and the last of Crater Lake spilled into the valley, raising the water level further.
Brevin was not in good shape. Her beak was scuffed, and many of her tail feathers were missing or broken. She was bleeding from a dozen small cuts caused by rocks. Her wings remained intact, but she was in worse shape than Zeph.
His rescue by Kia put him at an advantage. As Brevin flew faster and harder, he slipped lower into the canopy. Her large, beautiful wings would have dazzled against the smoky sky, but here in the weald, vines clung to her and branches raked against her like claws.
The collapse of the last of the dam caused an avalanche that surged the water ten feet. She was forced to fly up to safety, getting tangled in vines before disappearing from view.
He was caught by the wave but grabbed a branch and pulled himself around to the back of a large tree and clung to it. While the reeve attempted to catch up, he folded his wings, turned around, and climbed backwards into a thick clump of rimu needles.
The reeve flew around, trying to see if he’d escaped further into the forest. When she didn’t see the shape of a gryphon flitting between the trees, she returned to investigate the site of his disappearance. Most of the animals had been washed away at this point, leaving just the two of them.
He watched her search, afraid to attack for fear of her agile strikes at the dam. She’d moved with a second sense for what he planned to do. He calmed himself with the patience of Hatzel, waited, and prayed.
When the reeve was almost directly below him, his chance came. She saw feathers and lashed out with her metal talons. From the foliage, an owl emerged. Whatever she saw in the owl’s features, whatever gryphon face she thought she detected, it was enough to paralyze her in place.
Zeph released his dewclaws and fell straight down, crashing into her with all of his weight, sending them both into the flood.
The water pulled them deeper into the weald. She fought, scratching and biting at him, but his assault had worn her out. Just as he thought they might both drown, the current slammed them into a redwood, her first. As the water knocked her head back into the thick trunk, he caught her neck in his beak and ended it.
He stayed there, frozen—her neck in his mouth, his body pinned against her corpse, her blood drawn downstream into the weald—until the floodwaters subsided, dropping him to the forest floor.
14
Epilogue
When Satra the Kjarr arrived at the ruins of Swan’s Rest with the smoke and fire of the weald at her back, her father’s corpse had already been given a proper burial. Not everyone had agreed with Jun’s decisions years ago, but the dissenters had all died fighting rather than lose their wings. All who remained of the kjarr pride believed he had done what he had to do to save their children. When Satra showed up with two of their fledglings in tow, along with promises that the others were safely with Merin’s pride awaiting their return, there were tears of joy and tears of despair: what had been the meaning of the last few days?
Two of the Redwood Valley opinici were quick to prostate themselves before Satra. The third, their leader, hesitated. Satra killed Larren where he stood.
While the parents of the two fledglings who had flown with her had a tearful reunion, the other wingtorn packed up what supplies they could find. The opinici insisted they take some of the light spears with them in case sea hunting became a necessity. Satra was given several of her father’s feathers. Not his wing feathers, as was traditional, but some from his neck ruff.
Once they were packed, she said they were headed east along the shore first, then north to a plateau. “The weald burns. The Redwood Valley Eyrie burns. We can’t cross the taiga on foot, even if we could get to it. We’ll meet with the rest of Merin’s pride where the weald ends.”
She walked with her people, never disrespectful of the sacrifice they’d made. She allowed the two fledglings to fly up and scout for them as necessary. These gryphons had loved her father, and even the
ones who resented her wings were starting to say that the golden streak of feathers on her head looked like a crown.
Thenca looked out at the ocean. There was some movement at the closest raft, but the fisherfolk didn’t pursue the wingtorn as they left. Not today, at least. The blood of some crimes would follow her wherever she went. She’d learned that when she’d salted the farmlands and watched the Crackling Sea opinici starve. She nuzzled Urious, and they fell in line behind Satra.
After days of burning, the Redwood Valley Eyrie now smoldered under the watchful eyes of the underbough opinici, led by Orlea. Most of the weald south of the river still burned, but the northern weald had been spared. Despite the persistent danger of the fire jumping the river, old and new nesting grounds had been reopened to house opinicus refugees from the north and gryphon refugees from the south. The flooding from the Crater Lake explosion had subsided, and the ground had finally begun to dry.
Hatzel walked between gryphlets and opinicus chicks playing together. The medicine gryphon’s apprentices worked long hours to bind wounds, treat coughs caused by the smoke, and mend broken limbs. Everyone made way for her. Where once her pride’s plumage was composed almost entirely of brown hawk and blue magpie gryphons, now every shape and color of gryphon and opinicus filled her nesting grounds, all wounded, all hungry. Orlea sent forces into the eyrie ruins for supplies, but Hatzel had to send out her healthiest pridemates to try to catch the animals fleeing the weald into the mountains. What she needed now more than ever was an adept hunter to lead them.
A small brown gryphon walked into the clearing side-by-side with a beautiful blue, red, and green opinicus. Her wing was over his back for support, and as they entered, some of the refugees recognized him. Hatzel ran to the missing pair, but a medicine gryphon reached them first and began to work on Kia’s hurt wing.
With all the mud, the medicine gryphon could be forgiven for missing what Hatzel saw now. Zeph was bloodied, bruised, and in poor shape. Kia had been supporting him as much as he’d been supporting her.
Hatzel cocked her head, wondering what had happened to him. Instead of a story, he dropped the cobra necklace from his beak. It landed at her feet where the refugees could see it.
“Zeph…” Hatzel began but was interrupted by a splotchy blue merchant.
“Zeph Reevesbane,” the opinicus said, then motioned for the other refugees to back away and allow the two gryphons as much privacy as a crowd could provide.
Afterword
What’s Next?
Want to know what happens next to Satra and the wingtorn? Wondering how Orlea will handle all the Redwood Valley Eyrie refugees? Worried about Askel? Curious about Younce and the mismatched medicine gryphon who followed him to the taiga? Need more Zeph? Book two of the Gryphon Insurrection series, Ashen Weald, is available for purchase or pre-order on Amazon.
Thank you for reading Eyrie! If you enjoyed it, please consider leaving a review at your favorite online retailer. Reviews help other readers find books they like and let them know that, yes, this really is a book about gryphons.
If you’re interested in me and my other works, check out kvalenagle.com. There’s a list of all my stories, a blog where I get overly excited about learning new animal facts, and a page for contacting me.
If you’d like to be notified when new books come out, sign up at www.kvalenagle.com/mailinglist to receive an e-mail. I won’t give your e-mail address to anyone else. I won’t send you spam. I’ll just notify you when books are released and keep you up to date on the exciting things I’m up to.
About the Author
Who wrote this? And why gryphons?
Hello! My name is Vale, and I wrote this book. I debated for days whether or not I should include a note about myself at the end. I talk about myself too much as is, and I wasn't sure I wanted to commit that bad habit to print. What finally convinced me is that I'm the sort of person who loves to read an author's note when I finish a book. If I finish a movie and love it, I start it over with the audio commentary on. I can't help myself. So, for the readers who made it this far and can't help themselves, either, this is who I am and why I wrote Eyrie.
Eyrie isn't the first book I've written, but it is the first book I've published. My writing shelf, where I hide all of the writing I haven't published, starts with “Attack of the Snowmen,” written as a third grader, and continues to the more recent literary fiction, fantasy, and horror novels.
I’ve told stories for as long as I can remember, but I wasn’t serious about getting them out into the world until I woke up in a hospital for the second time in two years and wondered how long it would take the doctors to get all of my organs working this time. That’s a story for another Author’s Note, but once I was released from the hospital, I knew I wanted to be the person who could introduce themselves as "Hi, I'm the author of a series of books about gryphons." And now I can.
So why gryphons? Well, because they're the best mythological creature. It's okay if you disagree with me. Honestly, I had to be persuaded as a young child, too. Gryphons weren't on my radar until one day it seemed like they were everywhere. Frankie was probably the youngest gryphon story I'd read: a young kid wants a little brother or little sister and instead gets a gryphon. The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon was the sort of book everyone had a copy of and loved when I was in middle school.
I imagine for most gryphon fans, Lackey and Dixon were the start. A common complaint I began to hear from friends was that there weren't enough gryphons in fantasy. Why all the dragons? Do we need another unicorn? Why does Harry Potter have a hippogriff instead a gryphon? I didn't pay them much mind then, not until after I awoke in the hospital after the second embolism.
"Fantasy has a million races to choose from but I'm forced to read about humans over and over again, who are always the most boring part of the world-building," my spouse said one weekend after reading several books in a row.
I'd spent the same time slush reading for a literary magazine, so I was just grateful there hadn't been anymore Bigfoot erotica in this week's submissions. We started looking for fantasy books without people and found that most of it is in Young Adult. (Song of the Summer King by Jess E. Owen is a great YA series with gryphons as the main characters if you’re looking for YA gryphons.) Time went by again while I wrote a horror novel, then a literary fiction book for my honors thesis. I loved fantasy, but I hadn't had a chance to do more than dabble with it yet.
Coming home from the doctor's office with a scan of my lungs, which looked like someone had filled a shotgun with blood clots and fired them into my chest, I sat down at the computer and decided to try to write a book that had everything I wanted to read.
How would I sell myself on a book? It'd need to have gryphons. My spouse had been right, humans could be boring if you had other options. Could I stick to only gryphons?
Most gryphons are magical creatures, sometimes created by mages. Well, no human mages in my world. I made the decision not to include magic in any form. If my gryphons were part of nature, I wanted all of the other parts of my world to be based on real animals and plants. I'd become interested in New Zealand, an ecosystem without any terrestrial mammals until travelers brought rats, cats, and other critters there. Birds had evolved to fill those roles.
What would that look like? I made the decision not to restrict myself to extant species, instead grabbing everything that interested me. New Zealand's kakapo became my ground parrots. The strange basilosaurus became my serpentine whales. I wondered about the spread of mammals, so I included squirrels as an invasive species. I now had the world I wanted to read, I just needed the characters.
I'm always torn between writing a safe book and having shades of morality. For a lot of readers, knowing that they're reading a book where the main character will not die and the female characters are not under constant threat of rape helps them enjoy what they're reading. I can respect that. I've put down several books when terrible, graphic things happened to c
haracters. On the other hand, or paw if you prefer, I didn't want a story where the characters were slotted into black or white categories. I like understanding character motivations. It's okay to like some people more than others, to disagree with motivations, but as I wrote a character I found myself becoming more and more sympathetic with them. I wanted to know more.
As a small child, moral complexity in books and media isn't as common, or wasn't when I was little. Yasumi Matsuno video games filled that role for me, instead. I loved getting near the end of the game to realize that I had become the villain, but not necessarily a bad guy. Finishing one of his games and moving on to the next would have the protagonist become the antagonist, with player sympathies shifting slightly to the new character. I switched my reading habits to adult books to find storytelling that compared, though I did spend one hospital visit replaying his games as an adult a few years back.
The promise I make for Eyrie is this: bad things will happen, people will feel forced to make bad decisions, but you'll come out of this okay. None of the characters you love will die on a whim, though I can't promise they'll all survive. Ground parrots will be eaten. It's okay for you to love the bad guys along with the good. I do, too. We'll skirt the darker edges sometimes, but always fly away.
Now, if you're interested, move on to the next book. I'll be waiting in the next author's note for everyone who can’t resist reading an author ramble awhile.