stiffen up soon, and in the morning it would be worse.
She cradled her right arm in her left hand, and worked her legs until they
were under her and she was in a kneeling position. She couldn’t see anything
but the basket at the moment, but from the direction that the ropes went, Tad
should be right behind her.
She was almost afraid to look. If he were dead—
She turned, slowly and carefully, and let out a sob of relief as she saw
him—and saw his sides heaving. He wasn’t dead! He wasn’t in good shape,
but he was still breathing!
He lay sprawled atop a tangle of crushed bushes, still unconscious. His left
wing was doubled up underneath him at an angle that was not natural, with
his primary feathers pointing forward instead of back, most of them shredded
and snapped. So he had one broken wing for certain, and that meant that he
would not be flying off anywhere for help.
As she shifted again, trying to get to her feet, his eyes opened, and his
beak parted. A thin moan came from him, and he blinked dazedly.
“Don’t move,” she called sharply. “Let me get over there and help you first.”
“Wing—” That came out in a harsh whisper, and he panted with pain.
“I know, I can see it. Just hold still and let me get to you.” Gritting her teeth,
she worked her right arm inside her tunic and belted the garment tightly, using
only her left hand. That would do for immobilizing the shoulder for now.
She stood up with the aid of the debris around her, and worked her way
over to Tad. Once there, she stared at him for a moment, deciding where to
begin. The rain forest was unnervingly quiet.
“Can you wiggle the toes on your left hind foot?” she asked.
He did so, then repeated the gesture with his right, then his foreclaws. “The
right rear hurts when I move, but not as if something is broken,” he offered,
and she heaved a sigh of relief.
“All right, your back isn’t broken, and neither are your legs; that’s better
than we had any right to expect.” The knife she had been trying to use to get
him free was gone, but now she could reach all the snap-hooks holding the
ropes to his harness. Hissing with pain every time her shoulder was jarred in
the least, she knelt down in the debris of crushed branches and scratchy twigs
and began un-snapping him.
“I think I’m one big bruise,” he said, as she worked her hand under him to
free as many of the ropes as she could without having him move.
“That makes two of us,” she told him, straining to reach one last set of
snap-hooks. He knew better than to stir until she told him to; any movement at
all might tear fragile blood vessels in the wings where the skin was thinnest,
and he would bleed to death before she could do anything to help him.
Finally, she had to give up on that last set. She moved back to his head,
and studied his pupils. Was one a little smaller than the other? Without a light
to make them react, she couldn’t tell. “You might have a concussion,” she said
doubtfully.
“You might, too,” he offered, which she really could have done without
hearing. I can’t wait for the concussion-headache to set in.
“Just lie there,” she advised him. “I’m going after the medical gear.”
If I can find the medical gear. If it’s still worth anything.
It had been packed on top of the supplies, even though that meant it had to
be offloaded and set aside every time they stopped for the night. Now she
was glad that she had retained the packing order that the supply sergeant had
ordained for the basket; they would have been in worse shape if she’d had to
move foodstuffs, camping gear, and the tent to get at it!
The only question is, did everything fall on top of it?
She worked her way over to the basket again, to find to her great relief that
the medical supplies were still “on top”—or rather, since the basket was on its
side, they were still the things easiest to reach.
Although “easiest to reach” was only in a relative sense. . . .
She studied the situation before she did anything. The basket was lying in a
heap of broken branches; the supplies had tumbled out sideways and now
were strewn in an arc through that same tangle of branches. The medical
supplies were apparently caught in a forked sapling at about shoulder height,
but there was a lot of debris around that sapling. It would be very easy to take
a wrong step and wind up twisting or even breaking an ankle—and she only
had one hand to use to catch herself. And then, the fall could knock her out
again, or damage her collarbone even worse—or both.
But they needed those supplies; they needed them before they could do
anything else.
I’ll just have to be very, very careful. She couldn’t see any other way of
reaching the package.
“Tad? Tad, can you concentrate enough to use a moving spell?”
All she got back was a croaked “No . . .” and a moan of pain.
Well. . . it wasn‘t a very good idea anyway. A delirious gryphon casting a
spell nearby is more risky for me than if I tried running up that tree!
It looked like she would have to make it by foot. It was an agonizing
journey; she studied each step before she took it, and she made certain that
her footing was absolutely secure before she made the next move. She was
sweating like a foundered horse before she reached the sapling, both with the
strain and with the pain. It took everything she had to reach up, pull the
package loose, then numbly toss it in the direction of the clear space beside
Tad. It was heavier than it looked—because of the bonesetting kit, of course.
She nearly passed out again from the pain when she did so—but it landed
very nearly where she wanted it to, well out of the way of any more debris.
She clung to the sapling, breathing shallowly, until the pain subsided
enough that she thought she could venture back the way she had come. Her
sweat had turned cold by now, or at least that was how it felt, and some of it
ran underneath the crusting scabs of dried blood and added a stinging
counterpoint to her heartbeat.
When she reached the spot beside her precious package, she simply
collapsed beside it, resting her head on it as she shuddered all over with pain
and exertion. But every time she shook, her shoulder awoke to new pain, so it
was not so much a moment of respite as it was merely a chance to catch her
breath.
With the aid of teeth and her short boot knife she wrestled the package
open, and the first thing she seized was one of the vials of pain-killing yellow-
orchid extract. She swallowed the bitter potion down without a grimace, and
waited for it to take effect.
She’d only had it once before, when she’d broken a toe, and in a much
lighter dose. This time, however, it did not send her into light-headed
giddiness. It numbed the pain to the point where it was bearable, but no more
than that. Another relief; the pain must be bad enough to counteract most of
the euphoric effect of the drug.
There was another drug that did the same service for gryphons; she
dragged t
he pack of supplies nearer to Tad, fumbled out a larger vial, and
handed it to him. He tilted his head back just enough that he would be able to
swallow, and poured the contents into his beak, clamping it shut instantly so
as not to waste a single bitter drop.
She knew the moment it took effect; his limbs all relaxed, and his breathing
eased. “Now what?” he asked. “You can see what’s wrong better than I can.”
“First you are going to have to help me,” she told him. “I can’t try to move
you until this collarbone is set and immobilized. If I try, I think I might pass out
again—”
“A bad idea, you shouldn’t do that,” he agreed, and flexed his forelimbs
experimentally. “I think I can do that. Sit there, and we’ll try.”
He was deft and gentle, and she still blacked out twice before he was
finished amidst his jabbered apologies for each mistake. When he was done,
though, her arm and shoulder were bound up in a tight, ugly but effective
package, and the collarbone had been set. Hopefully, it would remain set;
they had no way to put a rigid cast on a collarbone. Only a mage could do
that; the Healers hadn’t even figured out a way to do so.
Then it was his turn.
It could not have been any easier for him, although he did not lose
consciousness as she rolled him off the broken wing, set it, and bound it in
place. This time she did use the bonesetting kit; the splints and bandages that
hardened into rigid forms when first soaked, then dried. She was no trondi’irn,
but she had learned as much as she could from her mother, once it became
obvious to her that her old playmate Tad was going to be her permanent
partner. Besides that, though, she guessed. She didn’t know enough of the
finer points of gryphon physiology to know if what she did now would cause
lifelong crippling. Thin moans escaped Tad’s clenched beak from time to time,
however, and he did ask her to pause three times during the operation.
Finally they both staggered free of the ruins, collapsed on the thick leaf
mold of the forest floor, and waited for the pain to subside beneath the
ministrations of their potions.
It felt like forever before she was able to think of anything except the fiery
throbbing of her shoulder, but gradually the potion took greater hold, or else
the binding eased some of the strain. The forest canopy was still
preternaturally silent; their plunge through it had frightened away most of the
inhabitants, and the birds and animals had not yet regained their courage.
She was intermittently aware of odd things, as different senses sharpened for
an instant, and her mind overloaded with scent or sound. The sharp, sour
smell of broken wood—the call of one insect stupid enough to be oblivious to
them—the unexpected note of vivid red of a single, wilting flower they had
brought down with them—
“What happened?” she asked quietly, into the strange stillness. It was an
obvious question; one moment, they were flying along and all was well, and
the next moment, they were plummeting like arrowshot ducks.
His eyes clouded, and the nictitating membrane came down over them for
a moment, giving him a wall-eyed look. “I don’t know,” he said, slowly,
haltingly. “Honestly. I can’t tell you anything except what’s obvious, that the
magic keeping the basket at a manageable weight just—dissolved,
disappeared. I don’t know why, or how.”
She felt her stomach turn over. Not the most comforting answer In the
world. Up until now, she had not been afraid, but now. . . .
I can’t let this eat at me. We don’t know what happened, remember? It
could still all be an accident. “Could there have been a mage-storm?” she
persisted. “A small one, or a localized one perhaps?”
He flattened his ear-tufts and shook his head emphatically. “No. No, I’m
sure of it. Gryphons are sensitive to mage-storms, the way that anyone with
joint swellings is sensitive to damp or real, physical storms. No, there was no
mage-storm; I would know if one struck.”
Her heart thudded painfully, and her stomach twisted again. If it wasn’t a
“natural” event. . . . “An attack?” she began—but he shook his head again.
But he looked more puzzled than fearful. “It wasn’t an attack either,” he
insisted. “At least, it wasn’t anything I’d recognize as an attack. It wasn’t
anything offensive that I’d recognize.” He gazed past her shoulder as if he
was searching for words to describe what he had felt. “It was more like—like
suddenly having your bucket spring a leak. The magic just drained out, but
suddenly. And I don’t know how or why. All the magic just—just went away.”
All the magic just went away. . . . Suddenly, the chill hand of panic that she
had been fighting seized the back of her neck, and she lurched to her feet. If
the magic in the basket had drained away, what about all the other magic?
“What’s wrong?” he asked, as she stumbled toward the wreckage of the
basket and the tumbled piles of supplies.
“Nothing—I hope!” she called back, with an edge in her voice. What’s
closest? The firestarter? Yes-there it is! The firestarter was something every
Apprentice mage made by the dozen; they were easy to create, once the
disciplines of creating an object had been mastered. It was good practice,
making them. They were also useful, and since their average life was about
six months, you could always barter them to anyone in the city once you’d
made them. Anyone could use one; you didn’t have to be a mage to activate
it—most were always ready, and to use one you simply used whatever simple
trigger the mage had built in. The one in their supplies was fresh; Tad had just
made it himself before they left.
It didn’t look like much; just a long metal tube with a wick protruding from
one end. You were supposed to squeeze a little polished piece of stone set
into the other end with your thumb, and the wick would light.
You could manipulate it with one hand if you had to, and of course, she had
to. Hoping that her hunch had been wrong, she fumbled the now-dented tube
out of a tangle of ropes and cooking gear, and thumbed the end.
Nothing happened.
She tried it again, several times, then brought it back to Tad. “This isn’t
working,” she said tightly. “What’s wrong with it?”
He took it from her and examined it, his eyes almost crossing as he peered
at it closely. “The—the magic’s gone,” he said hesitantly. “It’s not a firestarter
anymore, just a tube of metal with a wick in it.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” Grimly she returned to the tumbled supplies,
and pawed through them, looking for anything that had once been magical in
nature. Every movement woke the pain in her shoulder, but she forced herself
to ignore it. The way that the supplies had tumbled out aided her; the last
things into the basket had been on top, and that meant they were still
accessible.
The mage-light in the lantern was no longer glowing. The tent—well, she
couldn’t test that herself, she couldn’t even unfold it herself, but the canvas<
br />
felt oddly limp under her hand, without a hint of the resistance it used to
possess. The teleson—
That, she carried back to Tad, and placed it wordlessly before him. It wasn’t
much to look at, but then, it never had been; just a contoured headband of
plain silver metal, with a couple of coils of copper that could be adjusted to fit
over the temples of any of the varied inhabitants of White Gryphon. It was
used to magically amplify the range of those even marginally equipped with
mind-magic. All the gryphons, kyree, and hertasi had that power, and most of
the tervardi as well.
Tad should have been able to use it to call for help. A shiver ran down her
body and she suppressed the urge to babble, cry, or curl up in a ball and give
up. She realized that she had been unconsciously counting on that fact. If
they couldn’t call for help—
He touched one talon to the device, and shook his head. “I don’t even have
to put it on,” he said, his voice shaking. “It’s—empty. It’s useless.” Unspoken
words passed between them as he looked up mutely at her. We’re in trouble.
“It wasn’t just the basket, then,” she said, sitting down hard, her own voice
trembling as well. How could this happen? Why now? Why us? “Everything
that had any spells on it is inert. The mage-lights, the firestarter, the tent,
probably the weather-proof shelter-cloaks—”
“And the teleson.” He looked up at her, his eyes wide and frightened, pupils
contracted to pinpoints. “We can’t call for help.”
We’re out here, on our own. We’re both hurt. No one at White Gryphon
knows where we are; they won’t even know we ‘re missing until we don’t show
up at the rendezvous point where we were supposed to meet the last team
that manned the outpost. That’ll be days from now.
“It’s a long way to walk,” he faltered. “Longer, since we’re hurt.”
And there’s something nearby that eats magic. Is it a natural effect, or a
creature? If it eats magic, would it care to snack on us? It might; it might seek
out Tad, at least. Gryphons were, by their very nature, magical creatures.
Don’t think about it! Over and over, the Silvers had been taught that in an
emergency, the first thing to think about was the problem at hand and not to
get themselves tied into knots of helplessness by trying to think of too many
Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon.txt Page 13