by K J Taylor
Arren bowed his head. “I know. I know. I told you I was stupid. I can’t forgive myself for it, but—I’m sorry, Flell. What I did was selfish, and I’ll never stop paying the price. I know that now.”
Her expression softened. “It was brave of you, though. But you didn’t need to prove that to anyone. You’ve always been brave.”
Arren looked up. “I have?” he said, genuinely surprised.
“Yes,” said Flell. “You went into a griffin’s territory when you were just a child, didn’t you? You impressed one before you could read. And you became a griffiner when everyone said it should be impossible. And you lived in the South when you’re not a Southerner, when you knew people would never stop treating you differently, but you never let it change you, did you? I know your father. He looks like you, but he’s not you. He’s bitter. Your mother is, too. But you’re not.”
“Oh, I am bitter,” said Arren. “I’ve always been bitter.”
She smiled at him. “You don’t show it.”
Later on, once they had finished eating, they sat together by the fire in Flell’s study and shared some mulled wine. Thrain dozed at her partner’s feet, her stomach bulging with goat meat.
“I don’t care that you don’t have a griffin any more,” Flell declared. “You’ll always be a griffiner to me.”
That made Arren smile. “Well, if I’m a griffiner to you, that’s enough for me.” It wasn’t, and both of them knew it, but for now it didn’t matter.
“It really is stupid, you know,” Flell said suddenly. “What people say about Northerners.”
Arren took another mouthful of wine. “I know.”
“I mean, look at you,” said Flell. “It’s really quite—it’s very strange, in a way. I’ve seen pictures of Northerners in books, and you look exactly like them. But you’re not them. You’re nothing like the ones in the books, or the stories people tell. You’re not wild or savage, you don’t worship the moon, you can read and write, and you’re a griffiner. D’you know, someone said to me once that Northerners can use magic?” She laughed. “Even some of the books say that. It’s the silliest thing I ever heard. Humans, using magic? Next thing they’ll be saying you can fly.”
Arren smiled. “It’s true, though, you know,” he said.
Flell looked up. “What?”
“We can—oh, nothing. It’s nonsense.”
“No, go on,” said Flell. “What is it? You’re not saying you really can use magic, are you?”
“No,” said Arren. “But my mother did teach me a spell.”
Flell stared at him. “What? A spell? What does it do?”
“Well, she said that, supposedly, every Northerner can call on the power of the moon. Every phase has a power. The crescent moon means protection. The half-moon means destiny. And the full moon means a time for magic. Anyway, my mother said that every Northerner can use the full moon to divine their future. It only works once, but what it shows you is always true.”
Flell gave an incredulous laugh. “Have you ever tried it?”
Arren paused. “Yes. That’s why there was that bowl of water on the table when you came to see me. I’d had some stupid idea about trying it, to see what I should do next. You know how you get these ideas when you’re—well, when you’ve drunk a bit too much.”
Flell nodded. “Yes, of course. So what happened?”
Arren tried to remember. “Not much, really. I think I fell asleep while I was waiting for the vision to appear. I woke up a while later on the floor.”
“So, you didn’t see anything?”
“Well . . . maybe.”
“Tell me, then,” said Flell. “What was it?”
Arren laughed. “It’s stupid. It’s just nonsense. Humans can’t use magic, and the moon can’t do anything except shine. Nothing happened. I fell asleep and had a dream.”
“Yes, but what did you see?”
Arren’s smile faded. “I shouldn’t tell you. It’ll just make you nervous for no reason.”
It was the wrong thing to say. “Just tell me, silly,” said Flell. “If it’s stupid, it won’t mean anything.”
“Well . . .” Arren looked into the depths of his drink. It was dark and the light gleamed off it, just like the water in the bowl. He looked up. “I saw myself dying,” he said at last.
Flell stifled an uncomfortable half-laughing sound. “What?”
“I saw the black griffin fly at me,” Arren recalled. “And then I was falling, and then I saw myself lying on the ground somewhere. It was night-time.”
Flell paused and took a drink. “That’s—I don’t like that.”
“It was just a nightmare,” said Arren. “I told you it didn’t mean anything. I always have dreams about falling. And the black griffin—” He sighed. “I haven’t stopped having nightmares about it. Not since Eluna died. I keep waking up and thinking it’s there, waiting to kill me.”
Flell scowled. “I’ve seen that griffin,” she said. “Gern talked me into going to the Arena this morning. It killed seven men and then started eating them. None of the other griffins would go near it; someone told me the first time it went into the pit it killed one of them. And then it tried to eat it.”
“I should have killed it,” said Arren. He stared into the fire, black eyes gleaming in the light. “I nearly did. I had it right there in front of me, tied up in a cage. I wanted to kill it; I was about to kill it. I had an arrow pointed right at the thing’s eye. But I just—maybe he was right,” he added, half to himself. “I should buy it back and kill it.”
“Orome would never sell it to you,” said Flell. “Never. Haven’t you heard? That griffin is famous. It’s only been in the Arena twice and everyone’s talking about it. Darkheart, the mad black griffin. People are writing songs about it. In fact—oh, never mind, it’s not important.”
“What is it?”
Flell shook her head. “No, no, forget about it.”
Arren smiled. “I told you something I didn’t want to, so now it’s your turn.”
“Well, there’s a song about you,” said Flell. “About how you caught the black griffin.”
“There is?” said Arren, surprised. “Really? How does it go?”
“Uh . . . I don’t really know it very well. It just says something about how the black-eyed boy fought the black-furred griffin until the griffin gave in and said you were its master, or something.”
“Oh.” Arren was a little pleased by this.
Flell finished off her wine and stared at the empty cup. She wished she hadn’t said anything about the song, and she hoped Arren wouldn’t get to hear it in its entirety. The song was far less complimentary than she had implied, and when she had first heard it she had come close to shouting at the person who’d sung it. People were cruel and ignorant sometimes.
Arren finished his wine and put his cup aside. He yawned. “Oooh, I’m tired.”
Flell glanced out the window. It was quite late, and she put her own cup down. “I think it’s bedtime for me,” she said.
Arren looked at her. “I’d better get going, then,” he said, standing up.
“Leaving so soon?” Flell asked, smiling.
“Well, if you’d prefer—”
She stood, moved closer and kissed him lightly. He paused, and then kissed her back. Flell took his hand. “Come on, you,” she said, and the two of them dashed up the stairs, giggling like children. They reached Flell’s room, where one of her servants had already lit the lamp.
Flell closed the door and kissed Arren again. “You’re so rough with that beard,” she giggled.
“Sorry.”
“Don’t be.”
They embraced tightly, their hands in each other’s hair, suddenly breathing hard. Flell said nothing. She undid the fastenings on Arren’s tunic, and he shrugged it off, letting it slide onto the floor. His hands slid down the neck of her gown and onto her shoulders, massaging the soft skin and muscle, and she undid the fastenings on the back and let it fall down over
her hips and to the floor. They pressed themselves together, whispering each other’s names, until there was no more need to speak. They knew all they needed to know, and always would.
Flell slept deeply that night, her head resting on Arren’s chest, undisturbed by dreams.
When she woke the next morning she moved carefully away from him, not wanting to disturb him, and stretched. Sunlight was coming in through the window, and she could hear birds chirping. She could also hear Thrain. The griffin had climbed onto the roof and was calling, albeit not very loudly or impressively. Flell smiled to herself and looked down at Arren.
It was strange how different people looked when they were asleep. Flell had seen dead people, but they weren’t the same. Someone dead always looked empty somehow, as if they weren’t really a person any more but just a thing. Which they were. A dead person’s soul fled their body the moment their heart stopped beating, and took their memory and personality with it. Someone asleep, though they were often just as still as a dead person, didn’t look like that. In sleep, Arren still looked like Arren. His personality was still there. But his troubles weren’t. He looked utterly peaceful and content, as if nothing had ever hurt him or ever would. Once again she noticed how much older he looked with a beard. She made a mental note to ask him to get rid of it. Kissing him was much less pleasant now that he had hair all around his mouth.
As she watched, Arren’s face twitched. His eyebrows lowered slightly and his lips moved, as if he was trying to speak. Then he started to mumble, making vague half-speaking sounds that were almost words but not quite.
Flell watched him. She wondered if she should wake him up, but curiosity got the better of her and she listened, trying to understand what he was saying, if anything. His mumbling became a little clearer, and she lay down with her head next to his, listening.
“. . . falling . . .”
It was only just discernable, but even as she registered this he suddenly started to speak coherently.
“Help me, I’m falling. Help me . . . falling . . . help me . . . I’m falling . . . falling . . .”
The words were spoken in an emotionless monotone, but for some reason they scared her more than yelling or screaming would have.
Flell nudged him awake. He stopped talking and opened his eyes.
“What?” The irritability in his voice was so normal it made her feel almost ridiculously relieved.
“Good morning,” said Flell. “Did you sleep well?”
Arren blinked a few times and yawned. “Ooh, sorry. Quite well, thanks. I can’t normally get to sleep in a real bed, you know. But yours is”—he grinned—“pretty comfortable.”
Flell grinned back. “Remember when we tried to share your hammock?”
“It was fun,” said Arren. “Not for very long, but it was fun.” He looked over at the window and sat up. “Godsdamnit, I have to get going. Roland will be expecting me.”
They got up and dressed and shared a quick breakfast before Arren left for the hatchery. Another day of work began.
15
Entrapment
Darkheart lay on his belly in the cage he had now occupied for nearly a month and knocked his beak on the wall beside him, over and over again. He’d been doing it for weeks now. Not for any particular reason. He was hardly aware that he was doing it any more. It had become a mindless reflex.
Things had changed since his first visit to the Arena. Since then he had been in the pit several more times and had killed two more griffins. Aeya, though, was not one of them. They hadn’t been in the pit together since Kraee’s death, as she had taken a wound that day and was still recovering from it. The other griffins in the cages had come to fear the black griffin, and with good reason. He had a habit of attacking his fellow griffins as much as he attacked the humans in the Arena. Humans were easy to kill, but other griffins—he hated them. They mocked him for his dark coat and slow speech, and enjoyed his helpless anger and threats. It was the only sport they had when they weren’t in the pit. But it was in the pit that Darkheart would take his revenge on them. He attacked the other griffins indiscriminately, even the ones that hadn’t joined in the taunting, and besides the two he had killed outright he had wounded many others, one of whom died a few days later from an infection. Some of the more cowardly griffins had started to leave him alone, but others didn’t. They were too proud to succumb to their fear of him, and when he attacked in the pit, none ran away. They always stood and fought. It was the griffish way.
Darkheart had noticed that the humans who came to the cages paid extra attention to him. They gave him more and better food than the others, and after his second visit to the Arena they tied some strips of brightly coloured cloth to his wings and daubed a strange-smelling substance on his throat which turned the feathers deep red. He had no idea why. The colour wore off after a few days, but they renewed it every time they took him out of his cage.
When they were removed from their cages and taken to the pit, most of the other griffins went passively enough, now accustomed to the knowledge that they had no hope of escape. Darkheart did not. He continued to try to break free at every opportunity, and would lunge at every human he saw, even if he was still chained.
It took a toll on him. The collar wore away all the feathers from around his neck, and the flesh underneath became permanently raw and bleeding. The manacles on his forelegs rubbed away the scales and bit into the skin beneath, which swelled and hurt. In the end his lunges tore one of the rings out of the wall, and the humans had to drug him so they could reattach it. He tried to chew away the chains, until his beak became chipped and cracked. He dug his talons into the dirt, until he had made a deep ditch just in front of the spot where he lay, exposing the metal plates underneath, which he scratched at pointlessly.
Eventually, though, his strength failed him and he took to lying still with his talons outstretched, only rising when he needed to drink, or striking the wall with his beak until the noise ground itself into his head and put him into a kind of trance.
His eyes became dull and lifeless, his fur rough and his feathers bedraggled. He lost interest in talking to Aeya, or in eating, and became steadily thinner. It was only in the Arena that he came to life. There he was more than alive; he was wild, savage, magnificent, caught up in a killing frenzy that took away his pain and his despair. That was where he lived now, in the Arena. There he was more than a mindless nothing that lived in a cage. There he was Darkheart, the mad griffin, the one the crowds screamed for. There he was alive.
He stopped hitting the bars and laid his head on his talons, feeling the warmth of the evening sun on his face. He tried to remember his valley. Had there been sunsets there? Had he basked in the sun there? He couldn’t remember. The images kept slipping away from him like fish wriggling between his talons.
“Darkheart?”
It was Aeya’s voice. Darkheart raised his head slightly. “Aeya?”
“How did you come here?” said Aeya.
She had asked him this question before, but he hadn’t answered it. Not properly. He had learnt more speech from her since then, though. “I live . . . on mountains,” he mumbled. “Tall. Cold. Three. Three mountains.”
“Was it in the South?” said Aeya. “I came from the South.”
She had taught him about the four directions. He looked up at the sky and tried to remember. Which way had he come? The journey had passed in a haze. Now, looking back on it, it felt like a dream or like something that had happened to some other griffin in another place and another time. “South,” he said eventually, hoping this would be enough.
“I lived in the Coppertops,” said Aeya. “On the edge. I had a nest. But I built it too close, too close, too . . .” She trailed off. “I built it too close,” she said again. “Humans saw it. When my chicks went to the ground, they took them away. I could not stop them. I chased them; they were fast. I looked for them for days, but I never saw my chicks again. So I killed the human chicks. And the adults. Killed and
ate them. They were good. Good food.”
She had told him this before. It was a kind of litany she recited when the mood took her, and she said it as if she had said it so many times that she didn’t even remember what the words meant any more. Darkheart half-listened.
“Why did you do it?” Aeya asked suddenly. “Why did you kill humans?”
Darkheart tried to think. “Was looking,” he said slowly. “For human.”
“For human? What human?”
“I wanted—a griffin told me she had human. One who spoke. I looked for one. I speak. They not speak. So I killed them. Then saw a griffin. White griffin. Calling me. Griffin with . . . with human. Dark human. I chase human. The griffin . . . want . . . stop. Kill her. And then . . . could not fly. Went to sleep. Dark human there. Speak. Dark human speak. He speak, I speak. He wanted . . . dark human want kill. Smell it. Watch me. Always watching. Come here, with him. Dark human. Arren.”
“Arren Cardockson?” said Aeya.
Darkheart almost didn’t hear her. He had been concentrating so hard on his speech that it had exhausted him, but the sound of the name caught his attention. “Arren . . . Card . . . k . . . son?” he ventured. “What that?”
“The human’s name,” said Aeya. “I have listened to Sefer and Orome talking. Arren Cardockson. The human who caught you and brought you to this place.”
“Dark human?” said Darkheart.
“He is a blackrobe,” said Aeya.
“What . . . blackrobe?”
“I do not know. Something bad. But you must surely hate this man. He put you in that cage. It is his fault you are here and not free.”
“Arren Cardockson,” Darkheart repeated. “Arren . . . Cardockson. Blackrobe. Cardockson. Dark human.” He remembered the eyes. Black and cold, and full of hatred. Not like other humans’ eyes. The memory made him shiver slightly.
Arren sat at his usual table in the Red Rat and waited. He’d arranged to meet Flell, Bran and Gern, but they were late.