A Feather on the Breath of Ellulianaen

by Robert Denethon

  ~

  Not long afterwards Hwedolyn ventured out of the cave-mouth, for the sky was cloudy and the moon was a thin crescent at the edge of a dark absence rising into the starry night.

  As he flew, he began watching the ground, looking for signs of wyrding on the earth below – dead, shrivelled animals and plants – for a gryphon’s sight by night is just as sharp as it is by day. There was a dead deer several hours into his journey, but it had not been wyrded. He did not know what manner of beast had eaten it, but the bones had gnaw-marks upon them, which he nonetheless accounted an ominous sign.

  Then, some hours later he found a bear’s corpse that actually had been wyrded. He judged that it had happened many days ago, for the un-wyrded parts of it had been eaten by ants and worms, and he wondered how long ago the elf-mage had passed this way, and why he had wyrded only half of the animal.

  As he flew he recalled a comment his father had made about a snowdragon to his mother. They had forbidden Hwedolyn and his cousin from travelling near Alcanhilith Mountain until after the confrontation with the elf-mage at the tavern. Perhaps the elf-mage had wyrded a snowdragon as well.

  Perhaps that was a clue to where the elf-mage had fled.

  There was a desert that lay to the west, where dragons were said to live, mighty dragons that preyed on El-forsaken men and animals that wandered into the wilderness alone. Could the elf-mage have gone towards that desert?

  So Hwedolyn went west and began to skirt the edges of the desert, staring deep into the wilderness with his sharp eyes, for even in the darkest hours of night when the stars were hidden by high clouds, even from a great height, he could see every detail on the ground as he searched for the wyrded corpses of dragons or other animals.

  As dawn began to break, he flew down to a river that flowed to the west of the desert, drank a great draught of water, then flew up, high into the stratosphere, so that he saw far over the horizon to the where the risen sun was already in the sky, above the globe of the earth. He flew far above the desert as the day rolled on, staring at the distant ground for any sign of the elf-mage, ever wary lest a dragon sneak up on him unawares.

  As he flew in the heavens, he began to think of the sagas and tales he had been told as a young gryphon, stories of Ellulianaen. And he thought of the bright gryphon that his uncle had seen, who had led him to the copse of trees where the taverner awaited them, and wondered if it was one of the Mihalaetat, the servants of Ellulianaen, or even the Gryphon-King himself? Yet Atdaholyn had died – surely if Ellulianaen cared about them that would not have happened! Or was it just a trick of the light, the moon shining on a flock of geese, as his father thought?

  But then what if Atdaholyn was flying with Ellulianaen now? As Hwedolyn flew in the vast heavens that night, alone among the stars, he felt as tiny as a gnat. He began to feel that there could be a greater purpose to the universe than he could ever imagine. But then he remembered with a jolt that he had said he hated Ellulianaen! Surely the Gryphon-King would have nothing to do with Hwedolyn now, even if he knew or cared about his troubles.

  As day passed, the night sky wheeled around, and a single crescent moon rose in the sky, and another dawn lit the sky. But he saw no dragon corpses, wyrded animals, nor any other sign of the elf-mage.

  In great weariness he rode a cold, descending air pocket into a shallow hollow in a grey granite cliff above a raging river, a cleft space in the rocks inaccessible to all but birds and wingèd beasts, and he slept in the dark shadow of the crevasse through the day as eagles wheeled about him, feeling an affinity for their mighty cousin.

  But as he slept, two pairs of double-lidded eyes watched from the forest shadows below.

  When the sun had set once again, Hwedolyn went out to find some food. While he was flying under the moonless night, for the moon had not yet risen, Hwedolyn began to ponder on the the futility and foolishness of his quest. He wanted to return home to his parents’ eyrie.

  If only there was someone who could tell him how to fight the elf-mage. If only there was someone who could guide him and help him.

  Moments later, he saw a goat, sleeping near a patch of firestone on the edge of the river, and he felt a little better, for he knew he had his dinner, and fuel for his fire besides. After landing and stunning the goat he bent down to the riverbed and chewed some of the firestone, then gathered together a pile of white sycamore branches from a dead tree on the riverbank, took them up to the hollow and made them into a campfire. He blew a small flame upon them and started the fire. He grasped the goat in his right foretalon and placed it carefully upon the fire, where it began to crackle and sizzle.

  As he cooked the goat, two pairs of eyes watched him from the shadows beneath the trees.

  After his meal, Hwedolyn slept a little more. When he awakened it was early morning, still very dark, for the moon had even now not yet arisen. He flew aloft again, looking for more signs of the elf-mage. He flew for several hours, but saw no signs of wyrding on the ground.

  Eyes still watched him from the shadows as he flew into the low-lying clouds, though he didn’t know it.

  Close to dawn that morning, after the moon had finally arisen, Hwedolyn thought he saw something move in the forest below him. It moved like a snake or a fish and, for just a moment, stirred the trees, like a breeze.

  “It must be just that, just a breeze. Nothing could escape the gaze of a gryphon. A gryphon’s eyes are sharper than an eagle’s,” Hwedolyn said to nobody in particular.

  Then Hwedolyn heard a scraping sound, like the sound of a ship’s anchor being pulled up. He looked down to the dense forest at the rivers’ edge to see if there was a boat. Then he saw two flashes in the smoke ascending from the campfire he had left behind him on the hollow. It could have been two birds, but he thought he glimpsed scales, not feathers. It reminded him of a salmon swimming upstream.

  For a moment he wondered if two dragons were flying up into the sky, hiding in the smoke of his quenched fire. “Impossible,” he said to himself. “I would have seen them. Nothing could possibly move faster than the gaze of a gryphon. And if they’re dragons, why would they make that sound, like a ship’s anchor being pulled up?”

  Then Hwedolyn saw an eddy stir the clouds. “Impossible,” he said to himself. “Nothing could sneak up on a gryphon in flight.”

  But even as he thought that thought, two small, white dragons came out of the mist beside him, one on each side of him! They were young, swift dragons, small and light, their wings newly grown, with curling white horns upon their foreheads and sleek silver and pink scales all over their sinuous bodies, and long snouts with sharp teeth in them. They had but two claws, which looked to Hwedolyn like the talons of gryphons, though the corner of their wings also had a bony finger-claw upon them, and their tails bore a serpent’s barb at the end.

  Hwedolyn turned about in midair, clenching his talons. One of the dragons was pulling a long chain, and it was waving in the air behind him as he flew along. It was this chain Hwedolyn had heard, that he had thought was the sound of an anchor being drawn in.

  Faster than an arrow shot by an elf-archer, Hwedolyn flew at the dragon holding the chain, and attacked him with his talons outstretched. They wrestled in the air; with four talons Hwedolyn had the advantage – he slashed at the dragon making silver scales go flashing through the air; acidic dragon blood began to spout forth from the wound in a thin, poisonous stream. But then the second dragon swooped at them both, baring its fangs and hissing. Hwedolyn tried to disengage from the first, but it was holding onto Hwedolyn’s left rear talon with great tenacity, and Hwedolyn’s attack went awry. He went spinning through the air in a tight circle, constrained by the dragon’s grip, but in the process Hwedolyn breathed a great flood of flame at it, so that the dragon let go and fell into an uncontrolled dive, its wing-leather aflame. The other dragon attacked, and Hwedolyn slashed at its wing, but it was too fast, and avoided the deadly gryphon’s talon. It was almost as if the dragon knew what Hwedolyn was
about to do, for when Hwedolyn swooped again it flitted out of the way, like a bird on the wing.

  Hwedolyn grabbed the tail of the dragon with his rear talons, though it was whipping to and fro like a headless snake, then flung it down towards the ground. But the dragon with the chain was right at that moment flying up at him. Then the two dragons flew at him, one from each side, in a creepily co-ordinated attack. There was a strange snake-like poetry about their movements as they swooped in at him. Hwedolyn twisted agilely through the air, trying to avoid them so that they would crash into one another.

  But the dragons were quicker, and had anticipated his trick. In a fantastic single movement that Hwedolyn could not help but admire, for it appeared choreographed, as though they had preplanned it, each dragon making the mirror image of the other, the two dragons swooped around him and encircled him, staring into his eye, even as he himself twisted and turned. The chain encircled the air behind the one holding it, then Hwedolyn heard a ‘clink’ and something enclosed the wrist of his foretalon. The dragon had put an iron manacle around Hwedolyn’s foreleg, attached to the long chain, and it was holding onto the other end.

  Hwedolyn, panicking, gave a mighty flap of his wings and shot forward like an arrow out of a crossbow! But it was too late – he jerked to a stop in mid-air, for both the dragons were pulling on the chain in their talons and flying away from him. The gryphon controlled his sudden descent, and was forced to fly where the dragons wanted, somewhat jerkily, for every now and then the dragons would pull sharply on the chain and yank his foretalon forwards, unsettling the balance of his flight, in order to keep him from being able to do anything in order to escape.

  They led him down to a dark hollow in the ground, about a league further from the river. The entrance was almost too small for a gryphon, but the cave itself was large and very beautiful, with black pools of water in the ground and stalagmites and stalactites that glinted and sparkled in brilliant crystalline colours.

  At the rear of the cave Hwedolyn saw the skeleton of a dragon lying upon a high mound of jewels. The skeleton was like the two that had captured him, only larger. Next to it were the calcified remains of two large eggs, broken at the top where he presumed the two dragons had hatched out. On the bones of the dragon skeleton Hwedolyn saw gnawings that appeared to be the tooth-marks, and Hwedolyn silently surmised that the two dragons had eaten their own mother.

  “Father, actually, and we’re not dragons, we’re wyverns,” said one of the wyverns. “It is the male wyvern that sits on the egg and nurses the young of our species, that is, the father, and we ate ours. You can tell that we’re wyverns, because we have two talons rather than four claws, and our tails end in a barb,” he said, proudly waving the barb of his tail rudely in front of Hwedolyn’s beak.

  “Treasure,” said the other wyvern, “Father had lots of it. And we wanted it.”

  Hwedolyn said, “How do you know what I’m thinking?”

  “Thoughts,” the first wyvern said.

  “We can read them,” said the second, “so don’t try anything stupid.”

  And they put the other end of the chain holding Hwedolyn around a mighty stone pillar, a stalactite from the ceiling that had combined with a stalagmite on the floor many aeons ago, and secured it with a hefty iron padlock. Then they went off to the back of their cave to count their treasure, licking their lips and saying to one another loudly enough that Hwedolyn could hear, “Well, this gryphon should be our dinner for weeks. But let us fatten it up first.”

  And Hwedolyn sat staring at the wall, and a terrible weight of darkness and despondency descended again. He could not stop staring at the dragon skeleton, lying on top of the treasure pile. What hope had he of mercy from creatures who ate their own father?

  Hwedolyn said bitterly in his heart, “Well, Ellulianaen, I suppose that puts an end to any hopes I had of finding that elf-mage. Why have you abandoned me, Gryphon-King? But I know the reason.” Because he had told his parents that he hated Ellulianaen.

  And suddenly, the head of one of the wyverns appeared above the treasure-pile, and it said, “What were you thinking just now? Tell us.” And the other wyvern’s head popped up and said, “To be precise, how did you make your thoughts go misty and indistinct like that? We couldn’t hear what you were thinking about.”

  Hwedolyn said, “Nothing. I don’t know.” And he thought, “I wasn’t thinking of anything much. Just finding that elf-mage.”

  The first wyvern said, “What elf-mage?”

  Hwedolyn thought to himself, “Oh, yes, and Ellulianaen; I was talking to you, Oh King of the Gryphons, about how you have abandoned me!”

  And the first wyvern said, “There it goes again. Doing it again. Stop it.”

  And the second wyvern snapped, “Don’t do that. We don’t like it.”

  “To be precise, we don’t like being unable to hear what you’re thinking. It unsettles us,” said the first wyvern.

  And Hwedolyn wondered if it was because he had been talking to the King of the Gryphons that the wyverns were unable to hear his thoughts, for he suddenly remembered what his father had told him about Mages who could read minds; perhaps the name of Ellulianaen had the same effect upon wyverns? So in his heart he said again, “Ellulianaen, what do I do now?”

  “All misty,” said the second wyvern, prowling around the gryphon. “None of the knights’ thoughts ever went misty like that,” said the first, growling and snarling.

  And at that moment a plan came into Hwedolyn’s mind.

  There was a pile of Imperial armour in the corner of the cave, with the skeletons of men and Elves.

  “Yes, those knights. See, now we can hear its thoughts again!” said the first wyvern, “I wonder why?”

  But Hwedolyn wondered how the Elves had been eaten, because he always thought Elves were immortal.

  The second wyvern said, “Elves, not tasty! The life of their bodies flees away and leaves behind the husk.”

  Its forked tongue flicking out and licking its reptilian lips, the first said, “Not much meat on them. Not tasty like men. And gryphons!”

  Hwedolyn thought how alike the wyverns looked, and wondered if they were twins. He could not tell them apart.

  “Twins. Look, we can see the gryphon’s thoughts again!” said one of the wyverns. “How curious. How did it do it, before? How did it hide its thoughts from us?” asked the other.

  Hwedolyn’s mouth opened and words came out of it without him willing them, “Well, if you will just loosen this manacle a little, I may tell you how it is that I keep my thoughts from you. This manacle is terribly tight, and very painful, and I am in discomfort.” It was true that the manacle was uncomfortable, but Hwedolyn started silently pleading with Ellulianaen, “Ellulianaen, Please don’t let them realise that I could get my talon through if it was just a little bit looser.”

  The first wyvern said, “Oh, no, I don’t think we’ll loosen its manacle, will we? Not when we can’t read its thoughts.”

  But the second wyvern said, “Why not? I’d like to know how it keeps its thoughts secret from us.”

  But the first said, “We don’t know why it wants us to loosen its manacle. Perhaps it’s lying. We can’t hear all its thoughts. What is it thinking now?” For, silently, Hwedolyn had begun repeating, “Ellulianaen, Ellulianaen, help me, help me,” for he was very afraid of the wyverns and he knew that they would have no qualms in eating him alive.

  But the wyverns both looked at him in fear.

  “It is like a cloud of light,” the first wyvern said. “It dazzles us so that we cannot see into its mind,” said the second wyvern, “It is most disconcerting and I would dearly love to know how it does it.”

  “I need a little fresh air,” said the first wyvern, “I cannot breathe properly.”

  “I agree. It is getting stuffy in here,” said the second.

  And the two wyverns left the cave, snapping at one another and arguing about whether to loosen Hwedolyn’s manacle or not.


  After the two wyverns had gone, the magnitude of his desperate situation descended upon Hwedolyn again like a heavy stone, as though the roof of the cave was resting on him. He began to chew frantically at the manacle, and even bashed it against the stone floor of the cave, but it was made of solid iron and the lock was very good, and he could barely even dent it, much less remove it from his wrist. He sat staring at the stone wall of the cave in despair for several minutes until he said to himself, “I just have to find a way to get the wyverns to loosen it. I cannot do it myself. It’s my only hope of escape. Ah, Ellulianaen, help me.”

  Then he looked at his feet. There was firestone lying around on the cave floor, and he could hardly believe that he had not noticed it before! He chewed so much of it that his stomach began to bulge.

  Hours later, the wyverns returned. As they came into the cave they were arguing about what to do with Hwedolyn again. It was a sign of hope, for surely it was a fact that he could exploit. Then he breathed Ellulianaen’s name again.

  “See!” said one of them, “Like a mist of light.”

  “It hurts our minds,” said the other. “Nasty ‘Hhwellwellyn’ elvish magic. Magic of the Other Elves.”

  “Just loosen my manacle – it is so very sore, please, wyverns, loosen it, and then I will definitely tell you everything,” said Hwedolyn, still silently saying, “Ellulianaen help me.”

  “Alright. I’ll loosen it,” said one of the wyverns. “No, don’t,” hissed the other, spitting poison.

  But the first wyvern ignored the other, and, bringing the key and a delicate tiny metal screwdriver over to the gryphon, he used the thin crooked fingers of his wings to manipulate a screw in the hinge that determined the manacle’s diameter. Hwedolyn was ready! The moment the manacle was loose enough, the gryphon pulled his talon through, leapt up and sprinted across the stone floor of the cavern, glided over several large stalagmites, flapped his wings, and had slipped out through the mouth of the cave before the wyverns had even thought to chase him.

  “Usually we hear their thoughts before they flee!” said the wyvern still holding the keys.

  “It has passed beyond the cave mouth,” said the other, spitting acid, “And it’s all your fault!”

  And they leapt into the air and chased Hwedolyn, shooting out the mouth of the cave like twisted arrows, writhing through the air like a lizard’s chopped tail, flapping frantically like demented hummingbirds, and spitting like angry cobras. But Hwedolyn was already far above the cave-mouth, and straight up he flew, for mighty are the wings of gryphons and fleet are they of flight!

  He flew very high, to the place where the air becomes thin, and his wings begin to fail. At the apex of his flight Hwedolyn was still for a moment, like the moment at the centre of a spinning wheel, and he revelled in his freedom, completely weightless! Then he began to hurtle downwards, making himself as lean and compact as a dart, his wings flat against his back, his ears against his mane, his tail behind him straight as a plumb line. But as he descended, he realised that the wyverns had anticipated him completely. They were doing a spiral dance at the very target of his plummeting flight.

  Hwedolyn cried out, “Ellulianaen!” and as he passed between them the wyverns attacked him, but the gryphon twisted out of the way at the last moment, breathing a flame that missed them completely. Hwedolyn whispered the name of Ellulianaen as he curved upwards gracefully, twisting past them into the sky. How swiftly the wyverns followed him, in complete unity, a terribly dreadful and beautiful sight! Silver streaks in the sky, they followed his tail and breathed flame at him, but suddenly Hwedolyn turned around and flew directly over them, and their flames roared into empty air.

  Now the gryphon was directly behind them. It was his turn to breathe floods of flame at their tails. The wyverns avoided this blast by twisting apart, making a great arc in the sky in unison, with Hwedolyn at the centre of the arc. He hovered there, waiting. They plummeted towards him and wheeled inwards to where the gryphon hovered – and at the very last moment Hwedolyn rolled out of the way. He flipped over, and grasped one of the wyverns by the claws, still breathing the name of Ellulianaen under his breath. They grappled together clumsily, falling slowly, even as the other wyvern attacked Hwedolyn from behind, scratching at his back and his wings.

  Hwedolyn twisted his head around and breathed fire at the wyvern behind him, but the other wyvern, the one he was holding, gyrated out of his grasp. The two wyverns flew like elf-arrowheads, aiming straight for Hwedolyn’s heart, but he twisted and dropped out of the sky like a stone, then swooped upwards again and attacked.

  The gryphon breathed a deluge of flame at the first wyvern, whose wings began to burn, even as he attacked the second, gripping its wing in his beak. He grasped the wyvern’s wing-claw with his talon, and pulled with all his might as he swooped down and around. The wyvern’s wing ripped apart in his talons and Hwedolyn let it fall.

  But both wyverns, though badly injured, could still glide.

  Hwedolyn turned to flee. “Give up!” he said to them, “You are injured! Give up!”

  “No!” said the wyverns in unison, and awkwardly, slowly, painfully they glided towards him, opening their moths to vomit flames and acid at him, but Hwedolyn twisted agilely out of their way to plummet downwards. The two wyverns found themselves facing one another, spewing out a flood of flame, a torrent, a voluminous inferno of flame and acid that ignited each other’s wings.

  They screeched and flapped, and Hwedolyn looked back to see them flapping in mid-air, going nowhere, then falling slowly, still attempting to fly.

  They fell beside one another, making an insane screeching sound; they fell almost a whole furlong into the river below, their flame-shredded wings wrapped like shrouds around their snaking bodies. They plummeted like pieces of fiery brimstone, twisting and turning chaotically into the mist that hovered above the river.

  Hwedolyn continued on his flight path without checking to see if they had survived, for he was almost certain that they had not, but when he looked behind him a moment later he noticed that one of the wyverns had pulled out of his death-dive, and was desperately fluttering along on a halting flight behind him like a poor bird with a broken wing.

  Hwedolyn realised that the wyvern would not catch up with him, for, with every flap of Hwedolyn’s wings the wyvern was falling farther and farther behind. Then Hwedolyn wondered idly if he could still hide his thoughts from the wyvern, so he turned back and taunted the wyvern.

  “Can’t read my thoughts, can you?” he said, and under his breath, “Ellulianaen, hide my thoughts from him.”

  But to Hwedolyn’s surprise and horror, the wyvern said, “What are you praying to Ellulianaen for, gryphon? Think he’ll hear you? It thinks Ellulianaen will hear it!” And the wyvern started to laugh hysterically, almost insanely, but was so exhausted by the effort that it had to glide slowly down and land on the riverbank.

  Hwedolyn saw it far below him, still laughing. It looked up and spat with great malice at the gryphon, but its acid spittle merely dribbled back onto its own face, making a hiss as it scarred its own scales. Its mocking words drifted up to him, “Gryphon praying to Ellulianaen, thinks he can hear it!” and so far away was it now that Hwedolyn did not know if he had truly heard the words or merely imagined them.

  At that moment a sudden cold twist of fear gripped Hwedolyn’s heart, and he flew away with renewed intensity. He glided along, far above the forest, and his mind drifted into thoughts of how close he had come to dying.

  Had Ellulianaen really protected his thoughts from the wyverns to help him escape? Or had he imagined it all? But it had to be Ellulianaen, he thought to himself, it had to. But doubts started to torment him, for Ellulianaen had not hidden his thoughts at the last moment. Why would Ellulianaen help a gryphon-cub who had so blatantly disregarded the advice of his father, and who had spurned him so terribly? And what he was doing out here anyway?

  The sparse pine trees below him gradually gave way to a thick, dark for
est of beech and oak trees with intertwining branches that mirrored the perplexing puzzles he mulled over as the afternoon deepened into early evening, and strangely, despite his freedom, his heart was heavy, for he knew how what a fool he was. He had no idea what to do or where to go, or even why he was on this quest. All the anger he had cherished against the elf-mage had evaporated.

  He flew all night.

  In the morning, the tint of the brightening dawn sky touched the tops of the trees with gold and began to chase away Hwedolyn’s dark musings. The birds of the forest sang for joy, and the gryphon began to think that, after all, Ellulianaen had saved him from the wyverns, and that his life surely must have a purpose though he knew it not, even though he had disobeyed his parents in order to keep his vow and avenge his cousin’s death.

  Even as he ruminated over these thoughts, Hwedolyn looked to the horizon and beheld a gryphon in the distance, flying towards him.