Below the Wizards' Tower (The Royal Wizard of Yurt Book 8)

by C. Dale Brittain

  It gave a rather imperious squawk—clearly I was supposed to do something. Probably feed it. What was I supposed to feed a griffin? Some mother birds, I knew, would eat something and then regurgitate it for their young. I had no intention of doing anything similar. Or was the griffin’s mother in the process of teaching it to hunt, in which case I was neglecting my responsibilities?

  There was a rustle in the grass, and with a single beat of its wings the griffin pounced. The tail lashed, lion’s paws dug into the rabbit, and an eagle’s beak struck true, killing it probably even before it realized what was happening.

  All right. I wouldn’t have to teach the griffin to hunt, at least. I looked the other way while it devoured the rabbit, accompanying itself with satisfied squawks.

  Having polished off its dinner, it shot out a tongue and licked its paws clean. Then, wings folded, it turned around three times and settled itself comfortably into the grass. Its head drooped, yellow eyes closed, and it slept.

  Did I dare leave it here? There had to be a telephone somewhere I could use. But if I left, suppose it woke up and returned to the city? Or suppose its real mother appeared? And the wizard who had brought it here was most likely nearby, just waiting for his chance.

  Reluctantly I settled myself next to the griffin, keeping my illusory appearance in place, to be ready whenever it woke up. I had seen young puppies and foxes playfully biting each other and their mothers, and I just had to hope the griffin did not wake up feeling frisky.

  Since it seemed happy to follow what looked (at least in dim light) like its mother, maybe I could keep it from doing to anyone what it had just done to the rabbit. I briefly considered and rejected making it follow me all the way back to the northern land of wild magic. There was no way I could fly that far. Maybe in the morning someone would come out to investigate, and I could send a message to the school. Maybe I would spend the rest of my doubtless short life leading a young griffin around nearer but less inhabited parts of the Western Kingdoms.

  Something caught my eye. A flicker of motion in the moonlight meant that someone was approaching. I rose carefully to my feet, not wanting to disturb the griffin. A quick probe showed that it was Marcus.

  He was carrying a club, a tree branch he must have found. From the determined hunch of his shoulders, he was planning to beat the griffin senseless.

  I broke the illusion covering me with a snap of my fingers and was beside him in an instant. A tiny paralysis spells on his hands stopped him before, startled, he could swing the club at me. “No,” I whispered. “You’ll just get yourself killed.”

  He caught his breath, recognizing me as myself. I freed him from my spell, and he picked up the club he’d dropped. “But I’m responsible for its being here,” he whispered back. “Was that illusion you put on? It seemed to fool the monster, at least for the moment.” He looked over at the sleeping griffin. “You know, Daimbert, I think it’s just a baby. It’s going to be hard to kill a baby.”

  Our whispers may have disturbed it, for it stirred and shifted position, but in a moment its head drooped again. This was not what I needed, sentimentality over a griffin.

  “Well, you’re not going to be able to kill it with a tree branch,” I told him quietly, when the creature seemed settled down again. “Look at it, it’s part lion. You couldn’t kill even a young lion like that.”

  “I’ve never tried,” he replied thoughtfully.

  “Take it from me, creatures of wild magic are hard to kill.”

  We sat down because there didn’t seem anything else to do. Now that, at least momentarily, nothing was happening, exhaustion and the wine caught up with me. It was going to be impossible to keep an illusion going, and I was hard put to keep from snuggling down in the grass next to the griffin. Its furry body looked as though it would be soft and warm.

  But there was nothing soft about his eagle beak, I reminded myself firmly. Or his claws.

  “So where do you live?” I asked Marcus quietly, hoping that I could keep myself awake with conversation.

  “Not really anywhere, not since I left home a dozen years ago,” he said with a shrug. “I work with the wholesalers in ports up and down the coast, arranging for shipments, determining prices, making sure contracts are fulfilled. I always like it when business brings me back to the great City. There are pretty girls everywhere, but the City has the most! But I wouldn’t be able to stay even there for very long. Growing up on a farm destroyed whatever roots I might have had—nothing left to put down!”

  “You and I have traveled even more divergent paths than I realized,” I said slowly. “My own family wholesaled wool from the Far Islands, and I could hardly wait to leave the business. In the past decade I’ve put down deep roots in the kingdom of Yurt. And I don’t rate cities based on their pretty girls.”

  “More interested in pretty boys?”

  I shook my head, though I wasn’t sure how well he could see me. After a moment I said, “There’s a woman with whom I’m in love, the most beautiful woman in my kingdom or any kingdom. It’s hopeless, she has no idea of my feelings, but she’s spoiled me for anyone else.”

  “That’s too bad,” he said sympathetically. “You ought to try at least talking to more girls, even if you don’t want to kiss them. I’ve always found that the most beautiful one is the one I’m with right now!”

  This did not seem quite right to me, but before I could answer my attention was distracted by something large flying against the moon.

  Something winged, with a long head….

  The words “dragon” and “mother griffin” flashed through my mind. But with a quick far-seeing spell I was able to realize that it was neither—it was the school’s air cart.

  Finding energy I thought long gone, I flew up to meet it, not wanting it to alight and waken the young griffin. I had to stifle a cry of delight when I recognized Zahlfast and Joachim.

  No telling why such an unlikely pair had flown to Caelrhon together, but a lot hadn’t made sense lately. Joachim, his eyes tight shut, looked determined, whereas the head of the school’s transformations faculty just looked irritated. I dropped into the air cart beside them, doubtless distracting Joachim from his prayers.

  “A young griffin showed up in the streets of Caelrhon,” I told Zahlfast, pointing as the air cart hovered. Marcus waved up at us. “I was able to lure it out here, but we’ve got to bind it somehow and get it home. I’m worried the mother may show up any time.”

  Joachim, opening his eyes, appeared enormously relieved to see me. “So you knew all along that there was a magical danger here, Daimbert,” he said, with a completely misplaced faith in my abilities. “No wonder you left the City in such a hurry!”

  “Normal binding won’t work,” said Zahlfast. “But we can make sure it stays well asleep for a while longer….” He murmured a spell, and Marcus slowly toppled over to lie beside the griffin in the grass.

  “Before you ask,” said Zahlfast crisply, “I did not ‘miss’ the griffin with my spell. It should now sleep soundly all night. The man down there just got caught in it too.”

  “I appreciate that you did not want to endanger anyone else,” Joachim continued to me, paying little if any attention to spells and their effect, “but I could not let you go alone to defend the city that is now mine. It can only have been the novelty of a priest asking for assistance from your school that made this agreeable wizard consent to fly out here at once, once I explained the situation to him, and once the air cart reappeared in the school courtyard. He told me the most remarkable story, Daimbert, about you and some frogs while you were still a student. I wonder that you never told me about it.”

  “I’d have brought Titus along if I’d realized there was a griffin here,” said Zahlfast thoughtfully, ignoring Joachim in turn. “But the Royal Wizard here in Caelrhon prides himself on his knowledge of magical creatures. What’s his name? I’ve almost got it— I remember, Sengrim.”

  “Is that the wizard who brought the creature
here?” Joachim asked, looking down at Marcus’s sleeping form.

  It was going to take too long to explain. “No, that’s Marcus, the man who looks like me,” I said shortly. “If we’re going to go get Sengrim, let’s at least take Marcus along.”

  In a few minutes we had Marcus bundled into the air cart and headed off toward the royal castle of Caelrhon. None of us liked leaving the young griffin asleep in the grass, but we were not going to try to take it with us in the cart, and it did seem thoroughly asleep.

  As we flew the few miles, I quickly filled Joachim in on what had transpired with the cathedral chapter. “I will explain to the dean that it was not you but as impostor trying to sow ill-will,” he said confidently. “I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  At first the night watchman at the royal castle insisted we wait quietly outside the walls until morning. Not until Zahlfast threatened to turn him into a cockroach—doing a brief demonstration with the dog who had been growling at us from behind the watchman’s legs, who appeared very surprised to find himself momentarily an insect—did the watchman reluctantly rouse someone to get Sengrim.

  He sailed out into the courtyard dressed in an enormous, flapping dressing gown. “Two supposedly competent wizards, one no less than a master at the school, but you’ve got a problem you can’t solve,” he said, with a sneer. “How much did it hurt to admit that? Or to admit that the wizard you usually ignore, me, is the only one who can solve your problem for you?”

  Zahlfast kept his temper better than I would have. “We don’t usually get creatures of wild magic in the Western Kingdoms,” he said, “but now that we have one, of course we determined at once that we needed your knowledge and experience.”

  “And when did you determine that it was worth getting me out of bed in the middle of the night? An old man needs his sleep, you know!”

  “As soon as we determined,” said Zahlfast dryly, “that a lot of people would be killed if a griffin decided that humans might be tasty, or if the people of Caelrhon tried unwisely to attack it first.”

  That was hard for Sengrim to answer; the chief responsibility of Royal Wizards, of course, is to protect the people of their kingdoms. After only a little more grumbling and complaining, he went off, to return in a few minutes dressed and with a very large box.

  “Binding box,” he told me patronizingly. “I’m sure you’ve never seen one before. You may be Royal Wizard of a kingdom senior to Caelrhon, but I am your senior in magic. The creature is not directly bound, of course, but it cannot get out of the box if the spells are done correctly. I would not recommend that you try the spells yourself.”

  “Is there any way to tell how a griffin can have gotten to Caelrhon?” I tried asking him as we flew back toward the city. Sengrim and his box took up most of the cart, squeezing the rest of us together at one end, where we tried not to step on the sleeping Marcus. Personally, I would not have put it past Sengrim to summon a griffin himself, but I knew better than to say so. “Or to find out if its mother is nearby?”

  “If you’re asking if you missed a lecture on how to track a griffin’s previous movements,” he told me dismissively, “no, there was no such lecture. There are supposed to be wizardly watchers to keep creatures of wild magic from coming south into the lands of men, but I doubt those supposed watchers know half as much about magical creatures as I do. And yet the school—” with a glower for Zahlfast rather than me for a change “—has never recognized my abilities properly. You I could see spending his career at a tiny kingdom like Yurt, but even after all the years I have been in exile here in Caelrhon, it never has felt like the right place for me.”

  I decided silence was the only possible response. The air cart, obeying Zahlfast’s commands, swooped down over the meadow where we had left the griffin.

  And the griffin was gone.

  Zahlfast and I looked at each other in dismay. Could it be a trick of the moonlight? But the large area of flattened grass, not to mention a few bits of rabbit fur, showed where it had lain.

  Zahlfast and I immediately started on spells to try to find it. Could its mother have come for it and awakened it?

  But we could not immediately locate it. “How far can it have gone?” I demanded, hoping Zahlfast’s spells were more effective than mine. Eagle wings, I thought. Eagles can fly very far and very fast.

  “Are you sure you saw a griffin?” Sengrim asked with deliberate sarcasm. “And not just a sheep or goat?”

  Joachim, who had been silent for the last half hour, turned to him. “My son, I recognize that wizards usually try to avoid men of the church. But one of my colleagues in the cathedral might be helpful to you, if you could discuss with him what has given you such bitterness of spirit. We priests are called by God to offer comfort as well as guidance.”

  “It’s headed that way!” said Zahlfast, pointing and interrupting whatever Sengrim had been about to reply.

  That way. That was the way toward Yurt.

  X

  Zahlfast gave the air cart a quick command, and it started flying, faster than I had ever seen it go. Trees, fields, and a meandering river flashed by below us.

  I leaned against the edge of the cart, straining as if through will alone I could drive it even faster. Images of the griffin descending on the little whitewashed castle of Yurt appeared horribly before me: the beautiful queen and the sweet-tempered king coming out to see what had just arrived in their courtyard, the young prince rushing up armed with bravado and a toy sword, all of them being bloodily torn to pieces.

  “It’s still just one creature,” said Zahlfast, holding onto his hat as the wind whipped past. The moonlight cast deep shadows on all of us. “Its mother hasn’t come for it yet. And I think it’s stopped moving….”

  We came over a rise, and there, curled up under a tree, was the young griffin. It was asleep.

  Zahlfast brought the air cart down fast and hard, but the griffin never stirred. “How did it break my spell? And why is it sleeping again?” He sprang out, then stopped. “It’s not asleep again. It’s just asleep. My spell is still intact.”

  “Well,” said Sengrim in patronizing tones, “now that you’ve finally remembered where you left the creature, let’s see if you can get it into the binding box without any more mixups. Spill a spell, spoil a spell! as the student wizards used to say.”

  Zahlfast glared at him but did not respond. He and I, with no help from Sengrim, lifted the young griffin carefully with magic and lowered it into the binding box. It just fit.

  “Well,” said Zahlfast when we had closed the lid and added the spells to keep it closed, “I had better get this back to the City right away. Titus can deal with it—or get it back to where it came from, his choice. You’d better come with me, Daimbert. If someone is bringing dangerous creatures here,” with a glower at Sengrim from under his eyebrows, not quite an accusation, “then you are still not safe.”

  “I shall stay in Caelrhon,” Joachim said quietly. He took a deep breath and let it out. “You should be fine with Zahlfast, Daimbert. From our ride up here together, I know that he has your best interests at heart. It has been very, well, interesting, associating with wizards and magical creatures today. But I need to explain to the cathedral that the ‘wizard’ they thought had insulted them was just someone’s idea of a joke, and in remarkably poor taste.”

  He gave me what was probably supposed to be an encouraging smile. “I am sure they will understand when I explain it. If anyone was hoping to create enmity between organized magic and the church, he will be very disappointed.”

  Sengrim stirred uneasily, which I thought was a sign of a guilty conscience, but then it became clear that he was just worried about his binding box. “Send it back to me right away,” he grumbled. “Don’t just ‘forget’ to return it. I use it all the time.”

  “I’m sure Titus has binding boxes of his own,” said Zahlfast coldly.

  “How long will the sleeping spell hold Marcus?” I asked, looking down at his softly-s
noring form in the back corner of the cart.

  “Until morning.” Zahlfast shrugged, then added, “I guess we should take him back to the great City with us. If he’s been stirring up the cathedral of Caelrhon against wizardry, it’s best to get him out of here.”

  The air cart proceeded at its normal speed back toward the little city. In the dim light I looked at Marcus’s face, that almost could have been my face, and considered lying down next to him. I was so tired, now that all the excitement seemed over, that it was hard to remain upright.

  “You will drop me off at the royal castle, not at the cathedral with the priest,” said Sengrim, although no one had suggested doing otherwise. “I hope that I will be able to sleep for at least a few more hours before duty claims me, to make up for the rude midnight awakening.”

  Zahlfast did not bother answering. I knew him well enough however to know that he was simmering with irritation. The night was now well advanced, and the stars were beginning to fade.

  The air cart stopped abruptly. I had been dozing sitting up and was thrown hard against the edge of the cart. “What—?” I managed to get out.

  “This is what I was afraid of,” said Zahlfast, low and harsh. “It’s the mother griffin. She has come for her child.”

  We all stared in horror, abruptly fully awake. A quarter mile ahead of us, and approaching rapidly, was a huge winged form with the head of an eagle but the body and legs of a lion. She was coming straight for the air cart.

  We were the only other winged creature flying over Caelrhon, I thought. We must seem like a potential enemy, even before she discovered that we had the young griffin imprisoned.

  With a quick word, Zahlfast spun the air cart around and set it flapping madly away. He tried shooting a sleeping spell over his shoulder, but it had no effect.

  I glanced toward Sengrim, the wizard who prided himself on understanding magical creatures, but he was no longer there. With a mental probe I discovered him, invisible and flying toward the ground below, where he would be out of harm’s way.