Gift of Griffins

by V. M. Escalada

  “By all means, Speaker, proceed.” Jerek inclined his head.

  Norwil UnGifted cleared his throat and rose to his feet. “Let all the people of the land awake and listen. For the day of joining comes. It comes near.”

  “It comes near.” Ker lifted her brows when Juria Sweetwater, her Laxtor, and Jerek also joined in giving the response.

  Ganni stood as Norwil sat down. “Watch horses of the sea come clothed in thunder. Longships bring nets of blood and fire. Blood of the earth.”

  “The First Sign.” The words reverberated as everyone in the hall repeated them.

  Ganni sat down and Hitterol stood. The Mind-healer looked every bit as tired as Ker felt.

  “Hear the runner in the darkness, eyes of color and light. Speaks to the wings of the sky. Speaks to griffins.”

  “The Second Sign,” everyone chorused. Many of the people in the audience bowed in Ker’s direction.

  Midon Far-seer was next, his deep voice always a surprise. “See the bones of the earth touch blood and fire. Net the souls of the living. Bones of the griffin.”

  “The Third Sign.”

  Dersay Far-thinker stood, clearing her throat. “See the child eyes of color and light. Holds the blood and the wings and the bone. Child of the griffin.”

  “The Fourth Sign.” As she spoke the words, Ker glanced at Jerek. His eyes were blue.

  Finally, Larin slipped down out of her chair, and recited her lines clearly and with great seriousness. “The child rides the horses of the sea. Bears the blood and wields the bones of the earth. Brings freedom and light.”

  “Freedom and light are near; the day of joining comes.”

  Larin climbed back into her carved seat. At Ganni’s signal, Svann stepped forward.

  Ganni cleared his throat. “The Speaker of the Mines and Tunnels yields to the Faro of Bears, for a question of military strategy.”

  “Thank you, Speaker.” Juria Sweetwater was nowhere near as old as Ganni, but she had gray in her fair hair, and the scar around her right eye aged her. She inclined her head to the older man before turning to address Svann. “Kerida Griffin Girl tells me that we cannot defeat the Halians in the Peninsula. As the only Halian present, can you elaborate on this?” The Faro managed to look as though she stood in a formal audience chamber and not in a cavern cut out of rock illuminated by glowing wisps of green vegetation.

  Svann glanced at Ker and waited until she nodded. They’d decided between them that Svann should be the one to speak. “Faro of Bears, how long would it take you to move a full Battle Wing to Farama the Capital?”

  The Faro’s eyes narrowed, the scar pulling her right lid down. “Even using the nearest exit, it would take at least six days to march a Wing to the capital. Though if we cannot use the roads . . .” A raised eyebrow at Surm Barlot yielded a shake of the head. These kinds of logistics were his responsibility as Laxtor.

  “And therein lies the difficulty.” Svann hung his head, studied his clasped hands for a moment before continuing. “As you travel, you will receive no support from your countrymen. You may even find their hands raised against you, yet you cannot treat them or the countryside you pass through as though it were enemy territory.” He paused again, looking around to judge the effect of his words. “Yours is not the first society we have overcome in this manner. If resistance is strong, the Emperor will simply send more troops.”

  “Blades of grass,” Tel said under his breath.

  “By sea? In this season?” Surm cut in.

  “You forget that they will have Shekayrin with them. Rain, wind, or snow will trouble them no more than it would trouble travelers who had a Lifter and a Far-seer with them.”

  “Always we come back to the Shekayrin,” Juria said, nodding. Clearly, she’d thought about this already. “If we can defeat the mages, we will have the greater part of two Battle Wings. We will regain not only the Bears trapped in the Peninsula, but all of the Eagles who survived the initial invasion.”

  Surm Barlot raised his hand and waited to be acknowledged. “I would like clarification of another point. Since there’s no resistance in the Peninsula at present, why would the Emperor send more troops?”

  Svann tilted his head to one side. “Because they have reached only one of the Sky Emperor’s objectives.”

  Juria exchanged a neutral look with Surm, and he nodded as if Svann’s words confirmed something for them. “People do not usually cross an ocean in force because they object to the rule of women in a foreign country, nor even to destroy what you call witches,” she said.

  “Many feel that motivation, of course.” Svann’s casual “of course” sent chills up Ker’s spine as one of the witches in question. “But that is not why the Emperor sent them.”

  “Why, then?”

  “To get them out of his court, to limit unrest and opposition.” Svann looked around at his audience. “We are made of two cultures. For generations the Horsemen of the Western Plains were a nomadic people, horse lords and herders, their armies sweeping across the continent of Gventha, absorbing societies as they rode until three generations ago they reached the eastern sea, the land of the Halians, and their chieftain sat for the first time on the Sky Emperor’s Throne. Since then the culture has become more settled, but—”

  “But what is he to do with his armies, and all those soldiers we’ve been told about?” Juria said. “What did you tell me they were called, Third Officer Cursar?”

  “Blades of grass, my Faro,” Tel said.

  “Exactly. I would wager they did not all retire and become farmers when the wars of conquest were over.”

  “Precisely.” Svann smiled at her as he would at a favorite pupil. “With such a tradition of warfare, with generations of men who boast of having been born in the saddle . . .” Svann spread his hands. “They will fight among themselves; they may even foment rebellion if they are not given someone else to fight. Luckily, the Shekayrin provided the emperor with just such a target.”

  “You did?”

  Svann reached into his tunic pocket and pulled out his jewel. He no longer wore the uniform of the Shekayrin: the black cloak, the blue tunic with its pocket for the jewel formed by the crest on the sleeve. At first glance, he looked like one of the Feelers. As his fingers cleared the pocket, Tel leaned back. Ker wondered if he knew he was doing it.

  “There are more people with the ability to become Shekayrin than there are soul stones to accommodate them,” he said. “Our histories tell us that when we first spurned the magic of the witches and found our new lives, we brought our jewels with us, each Shekayrin with his own, plus many more unformed, ready for the Shekayrin who would be.” He glanced at Kerida and smiled. “These unformed stones were stored in a great supply of dust made from the rock in which they are found, and which kept them alive and full of power.”

  “But not forever,” Ker put in. “The power doesn’t last forever.”

  “No, it does not. Eventually, a stone cannot be recharged, cannot be passed along to an apprentice.” He surveyed the faces surrounding him. “Eventually, we needed a new supply, and our archives spoke of only one place such a supply was to be found.”

  “But this would have been a thing of legends for your people?” Juria said.

  “To begin with, certainly. But in trading with the Fog Islanders, we established the whereabouts of Farama and the mountains known as the Serpents Teeth—and once we understood that no one here knew of the stones—”

  “You couldn’t have traded for them?” Ker felt shocked and angry in a way she hadn’t been for months. Svann hadn’t told her this part.

  “How can you trade for something no one knows exists? And besides, once the crewmen and sailors with us understood that we were dealing with a place where there was rule of women, and carried this knowledge back to Halia, the Sky Emperor saw an opportunity to send away his discontented gene
rals and their bored soldiers.”

  “Distracting them with a war as far from him as possible.” Juria nodded. “As a strategy, it has brilliance. If it succeeds, his Shekayrin have a new supply of jewels. If it fails, he’s siphoned off his malcontents.”

  “Precisely.” Svann inclined his head in acknowledgment. “But you see that it is the Shekayrin and their desperate straits that fueled the invasion in the first instance. The emperor might still have organized an invasion somewhere—perhaps the Fog Islands—in order to occupy his military hotheads with their traditional methods of life, but Farama may not have been the target.”

  “So, we return to our point. We must rid ourselves of the Shekayrin.” Juria’s lips pressed together.

  “I’m sorry, Faro, but we don’t see our way so plain as to be agreeing to that.” At Ganni’s statement, Juria straightened, shooting him a hard glance. A murmur sounded from the Cohort Leaders in the audience, but the Feelers on the dais were all nodding. “If the mages are destroyed, how will the Prophecy be fulfilled? As Luca’s been telling us, it’s all the people who are to be united, not just us Feelers.”

  Larin giggled, swinging her feet, but didn’t speak.

  Juria Sweetwater’s protest died away as Jerek cleared his throat and lifted his hand. His cheeks colored as everyone turned to look at him, but his mouth was firm. “Svann, would there be others like you? Who would come over to our side as you have?”

  Ganni slapped his hands on his thighs and looked around with a wide smile.

  Svann frowned. “Mine was an unprecedented set of circumstances,” he began. “First, to have the opportunity to study Kerida Nast.” Tel’s hands closed into fists, his mouth so thin you could hardly see his lips. “To interact with her on the basic level of magic. Then, to be without my jewel for such a long period, having very little dust to sustain me. Then to meet Weimerk the griffin.” His mouth snapped shut and his head shook. “To experience the Gifts of the Feelers. Without all this, would I have seen the truth of things? I cannot say.”

  “That means we can’t count on others to see the light.” Jerek nodded. “I remember the griffin symbol on the door of the town building in Gaena, all hacked to pieces. The Shekayrin can’t all feel about griffins the way Svann does.”

  “That was done by some superstitious soldier,” Svann said. “And, after all, a carved symbol is not a griffin.”

  “If I may, my lord. Svann has told us why the Halians came to Farama in the first place,” Juria Sweetwater said. “But not why the Emperor would send more people.”

  Svann spread his hands. “He knows that we have not reached our first objective, to obtain more stones.”

  “And how does he know this?” Juria’s voice was as cold as ice.

  Svann bowed in Dersay Far-thinker’s direction. “We have a type of far-thinking among us as well, where we speak stone to stone. The Daisy Shekayrin are particularly skilled at it, and can send messages even to the Court of the Sun itself.”

  The silence was so profound Ker could hear the blood moving in her ears.

  “We need to free the Peninsula. Before more troops or more Shekayrin come.” Something was coming, he’d said to her in his rooms. Something was coming soon. Jerek sat back, propped his elbow on the arm of his chair, and rested his chin on his fist. If it wasn’t for his white knuckles, anyone would think he was relaxed. “You haven’t been there, Faro of Bears. Not to see with your own eyes. It’s not just the Talents they’ve killed, it’s almost every female military officer. And it doesn’t stop there. Women who are in business, or who own property, they’ve been dispossessed and stripped of other rights—or even their lives, if they object too loudly. We have to stop the Halians, we have to.” Jerek took a deep breath. “And to do that, we need to defeat the Shekayrin—without destroying them all, if we can.” He nodded at Ganni before returning to the Faro of Bears. “Is the signal at Oste Camp still functioning? Can we send for more troops?”

  The look on the Faro’s face was so bland that Ker’s nervousness increased. No one took such care over their expressions unless they were hiding something. “I must confess that I have already sent messengers with such a request, my lord Luqs. Thus far, there has been no answer.”

  “I see.” Jerek lowered his head slightly, his mouth twisted to one side. He looked up again and said, “In future, I would prefer to be kept informed, Faro of Bears.”

  Juria Sweetwater’s cheeks reddened slightly as she touched the crest on the left shoulder of her tunic. “It shall be done, my Luqs.”

  “If military help won’t reach us soon,” Jerek continued, as if nothing had happened, “what about the griffins?”

  Ker stood straighter as it seemed everyone in the cavern turned to look at her. “My lord?”

  “Isn’t that part of the Prophecy?” Jerek looked from her to Larin. “Aren’t they supposed to help us?”

  Larin opened her eyes wide, shrugged her little shoulders, and started swinging her feet again. The Time-seer’s chair was far too tall for a six-year-old child, but she always laughed at anyone who offered her a footstool. “Weimerk is helping us,” she said finally.

  “Could he bring us others?” Jerek said. “If one griffin alone had such a big impact on one Shekayrin, wouldn’t many griffins be able to change more?”

  “If Weimerk will go—” Svann began.

  “No.” Ker and Dersay smiled at each other; they’d both spoken at once. The Far-thinker deferred to Ker with a small bow.

  “Does he not know the way?” Juria said.

  “Oh, he knows the way,” Ker said. “He may have hatched in the Mines and Tunnels only a few months ago, but he has all the knowledge of the griffins until the last Gathering, when they decided to withdraw, including where they should go.”

  “What is the problem, then?” That look Ker understood perfectly. That was the look of a senior officer losing her patience.

  “If he’d seen a need to go, he’d have gone already,” Ker said, not sure if she could make them understand. Not sure if she understood herself. Weimerk didn’t think about things the way people did. What seemed obvious to him wasn’t to anyone else.

  “Maybe he hasn’t seen a need because you haven’t asked him,” Tel said.

  Could it be that simple? It was true that Weimerk volunteered nothing. “All right, I’ll ask him,” she said.

  “He won’t go so far without you,” Dersay pointed out. “He’s like a duckling and you’re his mama.”

  “Then I’ll have to go with him.” Ker could feel a headache beginning behind her eyes.

  “We need you here,” Juria reminded her. “There are tasks only you can do.”

  There was no arguing with that tone.

  “If Dersay says the griffin won’t go without his Girl, then he won’t,” Ganni said. “He’s not tame, Faro Sweetwater, not one of your couriers. You can’t just order him to go.”

  “My lord,” Juria said finally. “I recommend that we ask Talent Nast to remain here for five days to do what she can, and then have her take the griffin and go.”

  “A good plan.” Jerek nodded. “Thank you, Faro of Bears.”

  Ker waited for the Faro to acknowledge Jerek’s words before speaking herself. “It’ll take us a while to walk that far”— always supposing we can—“but the griffins coming to help could simply fly back.”

  “We have another, similarly urgent need.” Luca Pa’narion’s dry voice should have been too quiet to hear. “At least one set of Feelers—a Lifter, a Far-seer, and a Far-thinker—go out with every patrol in case they encounter a Shekayrin. The Feelers of the Mines and Tunnels are doing everything they can, but they’re being overused. If you mean to expand our campaign, we’ll need more. Much as I would prefer not to leave you without Talents, I must go to the other Feelers and persuade them to come to our aid.”

  “It doesn’t have to be you, la
d, does it?” Only Ganni was old enough to call the Inquisitor “lad.” “Wouldn’t it be better if it’s one of us that goes?”

  “Nah, they’ll see Luca as more neutral,” Norwil UnGifted pointed out. “Especially the Springs and Pools Clan. He’s helped as many of them as he has of us. They’d trust him sooner.”

  “I wouldn’t be gone for more than ten days,” Luca said. “I’d be back long before Kerida reaches the griffins, if they are where I think they are.”

  “You can always lift Barid’s quarantine.” Ker breathed slowly in an attempt to keep the impatience from showing in her voice. “At the least he can Flash the people trying to use the pass, like Luca and I do now.”

  “It would be useful to everyone if we could continue to get that information.” Surm spoke directly to his Faro.

  Svann leaned forward. “There is other information you might find useful. If I returned to Gaena, and again took up my position there, I could provide you with more recent intelligence of the Shekayrin’s movements.”

  Ker heard Tel suck in his breath, and she tapped him on the ankle with the side of her foot.

  “My lord, it would be good to have a spy in their ranks for once, instead of the other way around,” Juria said to Jerek. “Those who have managed to reach us from the Peninsula are primarily from the ranks, and the information they bring is limited.”

  Jerek nodded, his dark brows drawn down. “I told you, most senior officers are jeweled—or dead. What Svann can find out might be valuable.”

  “Just a minute. You’re not seriously thinking of setting this man free, never mind letting him go back to Gaena?” Tel looked around at everyone, particularly at the Feelers, where only Midon Far-seer looked troubled. Juria Sweetwater stared at him with her left eyebrow raised. Ker watched a slow blush spread up from Tel’s collar. He might be admitted to this meeting as someone experienced in dealing with Halians and Shekayrin both, but he was still only a third officer, and for him to offer his opinion without being asked and in defiance of his own Faro was foolhardiness of the worst kind.