“Thou hast returned!” Shaw crowed, as he caught sight of me. He got up as I approached and wrapped me in his trademark lion’s hug. He smelled of griffin musk, roast meat, and wood smoke. Not for the first time, it hit me how much I missed the smells of Andeluvia compared to Los Angeles.
“Yeah, I’m back,” I said, as I hugged him back, feeling his soft fur against my cheek. Even as he let me go, Shaw ducked down a little so that I could scratch him atop his feathery white head. “Thanks for…well, not killing Nagura, Big Guy.”
“‘Tis not easy to lay aside one’s mistrust and dislike,” Shaw admitted. A strangely gentle look crossed the griffin’s stern face. “Yet, I doth perceive that Nagura is quite different than other wyverns. Her story of loss has touched mine own heart, quite deeply, ‘tis true.”
“But how–” I started to ask, before my voice died in my throat.
Grimshaw’s people naturally saw wyverns as competitors and prey. I’d never have thought he could change his mind to this degree, not for a very long time. And yet, his last statement told me everything I needed to know.
Her story of loss has touched mine own heart.
Galen had referred to the colony of creatures here as a ‘hive’. Nagura was a ‘Queen Mother’ of the wyverns. What’s more, she was much larger than the average member of the hive.
What if Nagura’s ‘queenhood’ wasn’t just a title? What if wyverns were more like bees or wasps, with an actual supersized queen that birthed each and every member? It would mean that every slaughtered wyvern here in Keshali had been one of her offspring. Her children.
Losing one’s children was a tragedy that Shaw knew all too well.
“But how – I mean, how did you manage to feed her?” I asked lamely, as I tried to convert my question to a less awkward one. “Galen said you two worked something out.”
Shaw fluffed his feathers out with pride. “Aye, that we did. The hills to the south of this place draw near to the sea and are rife with fat boar. Lazy, easy prey for one such as I.”
“That’s still a long way to go, not to mention carrying back such heavy prey.”
“Nay, nay. Thy Wizard came up with a solution that ‘twas most ingenious.”
Surprised, I looked over at Galen. “You’ve been knocking them out of the park, my friend.”
The centaur came close to blushing again. “I have been striving to, as you put it, ‘think outside the box’ a bit more. If you recall, on our last few journeys I have worked out a system to transport a group of beings to a distant location by line of sight.”
I nodded. Galen had managed to increase the range of his transport spell by using binoculars or his home-crafted ‘pocket magnifier’. It had saved us a couple day’s journey on the way to the Vale of the Seraphine, and over a week when travelling from Bloodwine to Braceward Holt.
“Given our increased supply needs, I simply worked out a way to assist Grimshaw. Once I located a likely source of supply through my magnifier, I simply held the sight in my mind’s eye and directed the spell towards Shaw alone.”
“‘Tis a strange way to travel,” Shaw put in. “But it allowed me to hunt unfettered. Once I made my kills, I held them in my talons and took off to hover above the tops of the trees.”
“Luckily, a fully laden griffin is easy to spot,” Galen concluded. “It was a simple matter to espy and bring him back by the same means. In this way, our hunter has kept us well supplied with fresh meat.”
“And vegetable matter for our more delicate members,” Shaw pointed out.
“And vegetable matter, yes,” Galen said, with a roll of his eyes. “Liam has had more than his fill of a fayleene delicacy, the outer bark from the amidach tree.”
I gave my two friends a look. “I sense there is more to the story.”
Shaw let out a leonine chuckle. “The Wizard felt that mine own gift ‘twas a little much.”
“Uprooting an entire sapling to bring back a few tidbits of bark is a little excessive,” the centaur pointed out, with a tap of one forehoof in emphasis. “But that is neither here nor there. It seems that Her Majesty has noted our arrival.”
Nagura turned around slowly in the relatively cramped confines of the lean-to. Each of her bronzed scales sparkled in the firelight as she did so. She wore the amulet she’d originally given me on a brand-new chain about her scaly neck. Liam walked at her side, looking surprisingly at ease. He made his adorable cervine bow to me, sweeping his antlers to one side.
“I’m glad you’re back, Dayna,” he said. “It’s been an interesting time on this end.”
“It hasn’t been boring on mine, either,” I replied. “But it seems that everyone is getting along.”
“Once it became clear that no one was going to eat the other, things settled down,” Liam said, as he got back up. “Yet I think someone needs to speak with you most urgently.”
With that, Nagura stretched out her forelimb and wiped clean a patch of smooth stone between us. She grasped an impossibly small piece of chalk between two sharp talons and wrote another Celtic knot of text on the rock.
The text writhed as I gazed at it, as if it were alive. When it snapped back into focus, the letters were perfectly legible. My heart skipped a beat as I read the first human-wyvern piece of written communication in at least a thousand years.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
The complex scrawl of Queen Nagura’s handwriting did a little tap-dance on my eyeballs as they shimmied into a completely different pattern. While I’d seen that same process happen before, it was still fascinating to watch. Being able to see it without squinting through a citrine lens made it even easier.
We are grateful for our salvation at your hands, Dame Dayna Chrissie, the message began. We would have surely perished from starvation, or at the hands of your friends, without your compassion and kindness.
No sooner had I read the words scrawled on the rock than I heard them ring clearly in my ears. The voice was that of a deep-chested woman with more than a hint of gravel thrown in. It was regal, with the same note of stateliness I heard in Fitzwilliam’s words.
I looked over to Galen in surprise.
He grinned. “As I said before, I altered my magic to free us from the constraints of the amulet.”
“Can everyone hear the words?” I asked. “Or is it…I don’t know, direct mind-magic?”
“We can all hear them,” Liam answered. “It’s quite convenient. We don’t need to read what is written down, the spell simply translates the text into sound.”
All right, that’s just plain cool, I thought. It reminded me of the Cambridge physicist who’d been paralyzed by a form of motor-neuron disease. He used a keyboard and speaker attached to his wheelchair to communicate. Galen’s spell was a magical parallel to that same technology, even if it was adapted to a thirty-foot flying reptile.
“Communication must be two-way to be effective,” the Wizard added. “Thus, I cast a translation field and melded it to her amulet. So long as she wears it, she can understand our speech or writing in turn.”
“Then I thank you for your bravery,” I said to Nagura. “For reaching out to us for help, instead of attacking us.”
The wyvern queen shifted the chalk uncomfortably in her talons and scratched out another couple of lines.
“We, Mother Nagura of the Hakseeka, pledge ourselves to you,” she wrote, “until we can return a service as great as the one you have rendered unto us.”
Nagura then spread her wings and lay upon the ground before me. Galen and Shaw looked impressed. I didn’t get it, until I realized with a flash that this was a gesture of supplication. It simultaneously astonished me and made me uncomfortable.
“Please, there’s no need, your Majesty,” I said, bidding her to rise. “You have been through much, that is sure, but I don’t need any ‘pledge’ as a reward for doing the right thing.”
Nagura rose, studying me curiously for a moment.
“Our pledge stands,” she scrawled. Her great
amber eyes looked sad as she wrote another line below it. “We must ask that you not call us Majesty, Dame Chrissie. We are a Queen of Wyverns, but we are rulers of nothing save dust and stone now.”
“All right,” I said, “I won’t use the term Majesty if you don’t call me a Dame all the time. Deal?”
Nagura made a surprisingly human gesture as she nodded in agreement.
“What news doth thou bring from the Land of Angels?” Shaw asked me.
I quickly filled my friends in. I covered the current state of King Fitzwilliam (middling), my recent meeting with McClatchy (awful), and the final opening of the package that had been sent to me (troubling). I couldn’t read Nagura’s expression, and I wasn’t sure how much she understood. Galen stroked his chin in thought. Liam snorted and pawed the ground with his forehoof as Grimshaw emitted a raucous growl.
“Thy foes dare to challenge thee and the Protector!” the griffin fumed. His beak snapped at the air. “‘Tis a piece of knavery! I shall rip and tear any who doth offer threat to mine own friends!”
“Should the Forces of the Dark come after me,” Liam stated quietly, “they shall find a much harder target than they anticipate. They slew my sire Quinval through treachery. I have prepared much, and shall not lie down easy when the fight is joined.”
“I wouldn’t expect any less,” I agreed. “If anything, that package signaled to us – and to the people in the LAPD – that whoever is after me is serious. They can’t portray me as insane if there’s a clear and present threat.”
“That is good news amidst the bad, at the very least,” Galen agreed. He gestured towards the item I still carried under my left armpit. “Forgive my curiosity, but I do want to know what you have brought us.”
“This is a very special artifact from my world,” I said, as I unslung my package and held the glistening rectangle up to the firelight. “It’s called a ‘whiteboard’.”
None of my friends looked particularly impressed.
“Yes,” Liam agreed slowly, “it is a very nice color.”
“Oh, aye,” Shaw added. “‘Tis nicely shaven, too. Very smooth.”
I sighed. Even now, I still got tripped up by assuming that items from my world would be immediately seen as useful. I set my backpack down, rummaged around in one of its compartments, and came up with a pair of dry-erase markers. These were the extra-wide, extra-long kind to be used in auditorium presentations.
“This board is designed specifically for use with these markers,” I explained. I uncapped one of the markers with my teeth, scribbled a black line down the center, and then wiped it away with my palm. “See? You can wipe it clean as much as you want. It’s perfect for teaching or presentations, and I figured that Nagura could use it to communicate more easily. Especially if there are no flat surfaces or rocks readily available.”
Galen trotted forward, picked up the other marker, and uncapped it. I demonstrated how he could stick the cap at the back end so as not to lose it. He easily wrote his name on the board in red and then wiped it clean with his sleeve.
“How wonderful!” he marveled. “I do like the fact that there is no need to clean chalk dust.”
Shaw still seemed unimpressed, but Liam went up and sniffed the uncapped end. His little black deer nose wrinkled in response.
“It smells funny,” he remarked. “But if it works, it works.”
I lifted the board with one hand, while holding the strap aloft as high as I could reach. Nagura got the idea and slipped her head through it. Her skull-spikes barely managed to fit through the gap, but once her head was through, the board slid down to sit neatly at the base of her neck. Galen handed her the red marker, which she grasped much more easily than the little nubs of chalk.
Using her surprising dexterity, the wyvern queen held up the board from its perch around her neck before tracing the marker fluidly against the whiteboard’s smooth surface. The red ink swirled and her voice made its reappearance.
“What a wondrous thing!” she exclaimed. “You have given us our voice back. We thank you once again, for we know how our appearance casts fear amongst others. No one shall think us a fearsome monster again, not with this device.”
“Well, at least it gives you a chance to explain the ‘who’ and ‘what’ you are,” I allowed. Nagura kept surprising me. Obviously, she’d figured out that our reaction to her had been due in part to her appearance. That meant she possessed more than intellect – she also could grasp empathy.
I handed over my dry-erase marker to the wyvern queen. Instead of taking it with her free hand, she brought her long tail around and wrapped it about the marker like an elephant might do with its trunk. She paused for a moment, as if to decide where to put it.
I quickly remedied that situation.
“Oh, these markers should be easy to store with the board,” I informed her. “This particular whiteboard has a steel backing. The markers are magnetic, they’ll stick to the board if you hold them against it.”
Nagura moved her tail all the way around to her neck and pressed the black marker to the board as I described. It snapped into place with faint snick. She let out a sound like a bus’s air brakes, and I realized that it was the closest she’d get to a reptilian chuckle. Then she cleaned the board with a swipe of her scaly hand before writing again.
“A third time we must thank you,” she said. “We can speak so much more easily now. We have been trying to converse with the Fayleene Protector once we said the final rites over the last of my people. It has been frustrating for us.”
“That’s putting it lightly,” Liam agreed. “We keep running out of space. It’s like holding a conversation by speaking only three words at a time.”
“I know that you’ve been through a great deal,” I said to Nagura, thinking of all the wyverns she’d just spoken final rites over. “But if you are able, can you tell us how you and your people came to be here, in the ruins of Keshali?”
She let out a mournful sound.
“That is entwined with the story of our beginnings,” Nagura wrote, as the marker squeaked across the board. “It is the story of the Hakseeka. All the Hakseeka, not just the ones lying in the dirt here. It is the story of the Great War of my youth, fought almost three millennia ago.”
I felt a rush of warmth as I listened to her words. I looked around. Each of us – human, centaur, fayleene, and griffin – had come to rapt attention. Could we finally fill in some of the blanks, light some of the darkness we’d been groping through for the past months?
“I think we want you to tell us…well, everything,” I said breathlessly.
“It is easy to tell, but easier to show,” Nagura wrote. “Come. I shall show you that you wish to know.”
The wyvern queen deftly recapped her writing instrument by plucking the cap off the end of the marker with her teeth and setting it into place atop the head. She set it against the board until the magnet took hold then, moving with a smooth, reptilian slither, she made her way out the far end of the lean-to.
My friends and I watched, spellbound, as she made her way to a different cracked-open doorway in the ruins. The opening loomed, a darker blackness against the last light of the evening. Nagura turned for a moment and raised her wing, beckoning us to follow.
“Let’s go,” I said firmly. “It’s darn well time that we got some of our questions answered about this ‘Old War’ we’ve been dragged into.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Queen Nagura led us along an upward-sloping hallway. It was close to pitch black inside, but she seemed to navigate it without a problem. My guess was that she could see in near-darkness as well as a cat, or even better.
Unfortunately, the rest of us had to make do with Galen’s hastily cast blue globe of weir light, but Nagura’s form was easy to make out. The bioluminescent tips of her head spikes provided a point of reference, as well as a single glowing dot located at the very tip of her prehensile tail.
The hall’s dimensions were relatively narrow,
yet with plenty of head room. With her wings folded tightly against her sides, the serpentine wyvern queen fit naturally into the passage. That observation tickled something in my brain, but I stored it away for later examination. We had more urgent things ahead of us right now.
The passage was dusty, and I had to shield my mouth and nose to avoid breathing the sour-tasting dust. Liam made a cute little deer sneeze as we moved along which echoed as we stepped into a much larger chamber.
In fact, it must have been as large as the entry room where I’d come across the chlorine tanks. It didn’t take a fayleene’s ears to pick up the hollow ‘breathing’ of air moving through many connected passages, or the noticeable echo of our feet, paws, and hooves as we walked along.
There came a faint, squeaky sound of markers against a white board, followed a second or two later by the deep female voice that Galen’s magic had given to the wyvern queen when she wrote. It was an odd pairing, and it took a while to get used to.
“This is the grand chamber where we Hakseeka kept alive our memories in stone and crystal,” Nagura wrote. “Bide a moment while we bring the past back into the light.”
In the gloom, we were just able to watch as the large wyvern used her fore and hind talons to scale a series of carved steps along the wall. She reached the high, vaulted ceiling overhead, opened her toothy mouth, and exhaled.
No fire or venom issued forth, but I clearly heard the whoosh of her expelled breath from down on the ground. Then, as I’d seen in the first chamber Nagura had taken me to, the ceiling began to light up. First with little pinpricks of light that spread out from where she’d breathed out, then with an ever-increasing density of star points like the interior dome of a planetarium.
A Warrant of Wyverns Page 14
