Ma'ar frowned, but he was obviously intrigued. "You underestimate what I have done here, Urtho. I took a weak land, torn apart by internal quarreling and wrecked by the greed of shortsighted idiots who thought no further than their own fat profits. I forged it into an Empire that will live long beyond me, and I intend to live a very long time! What makes you think I would risk all that for your stupid wager?"
Urtho leaned forward in his chair, ignoring another wave of dizziness, and spoke two words. "Knowledge. Power."
Then he settled back, and closed his eyes. "Think about it, Kiyamvir Ma'ar. You win, or I do. All the knowledge, and all the power. I can afford to wait, but feel as though I should retire. Your army is on the way, and I prefer to reset this Gate to—somewhere else, somewhere very warm, and leave your army with an unpleasant surprise."
He slitted open his lids just a little, and saw to his satisfaction that Ma'ar was staring at the Gate, chewing his lip in vexation.
He's going to do it!
"I always said you were the luckiest—" Aubri muttered, before Skan hushed him.
"It's not luck," he muttered back. "It's memory. Cinnabar used to play with the Princes, and she showed me all the secret passages. I took a chance that Ma'ar wouldn't have found them all, and that I could take care of the traps he put in the ones he did find."
He didn't like to think of how Cinnabar had shown him all the secret passages; she'd impressed them directly into his mind, and it hadn't been a pleasant experience. Nor had the circumstances been pleasant. She'd put him in charge of searching the passages for that damned dyrstaf, because he was the only mage there she could do that to.
She took the human-sized passages, and I took the ones big enough for a gryphon....
He shook off the memory; it didn't matter, anyway. What mattered was how many guards Kiyamvir Ma'ar had with him in that Throne Room.
Please, please, please, O Lady of the Kaled'a'in, make him so arrogant that he does without guards entirely! Please.... The gryphons didn't have a deity as such, and this was the first time he'd ever felt the urgent need to call on one. The gryphons had only had Urtho and themselves.
And when this is over—take Kechara somewhere safe and warm, and bring Urtho to her—and keep Amberdrake and Zhaneel happy.
There were no peepholes in this passage, and no human would have been able to hear what was going on in the Throne Room. Anyone using the entrance here would have to do so blindly, trusting that there was no one there.
Unless that someone was a gryphon.
He closed his eyes, and concentrated, becoming nothing in his mind but a pair of broad, tufted ears, listening....
He's talking to someone? Demonsblood! It's now or never!
"Go!" he hissed at Aubri. The broadwing hit the release on the doorway, and rammed it with his shoulder, tumbling through as the panel gave way. Skan leapt his prone body and skidded to a halt on the slick marble, Kechara romping puppylike behind him.
Ma'ar swung around to stare at the open panel, and now faced away from—
Urtho? Oh, Star-Eyed Lady, is that a Gate?
What else could it be, when Urtho lay back in a chair framed by an archway, with a faint shimmering of energy across the portal?
Skan did not even stop to think about his incredible, unbelievable good fortune; did not stop to think about the poleaxed expression on Urtho's weary face. "Aubri!" he screeched, "Get Kechara across now."
But Aubri didn't have to do anything. Kechara spotted Urtho on her own, screamed, "Father!" in a joyful, shrill voice, and shot across the intervening space like an arrow, squeezing through the Gate as if she'd been greased.
Aubri followed—and stuck.
Skan reached for the box, while Ma'ar stared at all of them as if he thought they were some kind of hallucination. Finally he spoke.
"All of this was to save two gryphons?"
The Black Gryphon held the weapon before him and slid his foreclaws home, and triggered the box.
"No. To save all of us."
He ducked out of the carry-strap, and slung the whole thing across the floor at Ma'ar, who dodged in purest reflex. But dodging didn't help; the box's strap caught his feet and tripped him. The fall knocked the breath out of him, and delayed any reaction he might have for a crucial moment.
Ma'ar clutched at the box, which glowed and sparked when his hands touched it. His expression changed from one of indignation to one of surprise and then—fear. Then insane anger. He stood, trembling with rage, and kicked the box aside. It clattered on the marble floor to rest by the throne.
"You think this is it?" he screamed. "This toy of Urtho's is supposed to kill me, gryphon? Watch."
The Emperor drew a glittering silver knife—and with both hands, drove it into his own chest.
His face wrenched into a maniacal grin and he locked his eyes on Skandranon's. As blood streamed down his sumptuous clothing, the grin grew wider.
"You see, I know some things you don't. I have won! I will live forever! And I will hate you forever—all of Urtho's people, all your children, and their children, and I will hunt you all down. Do you hear?"
Skandranon Rashkae! Will you wake up? Ma'ar is playing for time! He'll keep you occupied with his little spectacle until the box goes and takes you with it!
The gryphon snapped himself awake from Ma'ar's mesmerizing speech. Ma'ar withdrew the dagger from his chest; blood blossomed anew and dripped to the floor. Without saying anything else, the Emperor's face went ashen, and he fixed his gaze of madness on Skandranon. With both hands, he held the dagger's point to his throat, behind the chin—and in one swift movement, thrust the long dagger upward.
Skandranon was running toward the Gate before Ma'ar fell. Behind him, over the clatter of his own talons, he could hear the dagger's pommel strike chips from the stone floor, muffled only by the sound of the body. The Black Gryphon hurtled to the Gate at full speed; Aubri was still wedged there, and if this didn't work, they were both doomed.
He hit Aubri from behind with all of his weight.
With a scream of pain from two throats, they ripped through, leaving behind feathers and a little skin, and the Gate came down so quickly that it took off the end of Skan's tail.
Kechara was already cuddling in Urtho's lap, unable to understand why her Father looked so sick. Skan picked himself up off the floor and limped over to the mage, who looked up with his eyes full of tears.
"I never thought I'd see you again," he whispered hoarsely. "What did you think you were doing? I meant you to save that weapon—"
But before Skan could reply, he shook his head, carefully, as if any movement pained him. "Never mind. You are the salvation of everyone, you brave, vain gryphon. Everyone we saved will be safe for the rest of their lives. I have never been so proud of any creature in my life, and never felt so unworthy of you."
Skan opened his beak, trying to say something wonderful, but all he could manage was a broken, "Father—I love you."
Urtho raised one trembling hand, and Skan moved his head so that the mage could place it there.
"Son," he said, very softly. "Son of all of the best things in me. I love you."
Skan's throat closed, as Urtho took his hand away, and he was unable to say anything more.
Kechara looked at them both with bewildered eyes. "Father?" she said timidly to Urtho.
"Father has to go away, Kechara," Urtho said, gently. "Skan will be your Father for a while, do you understand? It may be for a long time, but Skan will be your Father, and when the bad men who hurt you are all gone, you can come join me."
She nodded, clearly unhappy, but her one taste of the "bad men" had been enough. She gazed up at Urtho in supreme confidence that he could and would deal with the "bad men," and nibbled his fingers in a caress.
Aubri limped over to both of them. "'Scuse me, Urtho?" he asked humbly. "Can that Gate go somewhere else?"
Urtho closed his eyes, then opened them with visible effort.
"I can try," he
said.
Amberdrake thought that he was prepared for the inevitable, but when the great flash of light in the East turned night into full day for one long, horrible moment, he realized that he was not ready. He had accepted the loss of Skan, of Urtho, of everything he had known with his mind, but not his heart. The entire world turned inside out for a fraction of a heartbeat; as if he had crossed a Gate, the universe shook and trembled, his vision blurred—but there was no Gate, it was all in himself.
Then everything was normal again. The night sky returned, spangled with stars, but wreathed in the East with ever-expanding multi-colored rings of light, and a cool breeze brought the scents of crushed grass and dust.
Normal—except all was gone.
"No!" he cried out, one voice of fruitless denial among a multitude. "Nooooooo—"
He started to fall to his knees—a terrible moaning burst from his chest, and tears etched their way down his face in long trails of pain. Urtho—Skan—
Hands caught him and supported him; Winterhart. But another set of hands took his shoulders and shook them.
"Dammit, man, no one can fall apart yet!" Vikteren snarled at him, tears of his own leaving trails down his dusty face. "We aren't safe! Didn't you feel what happened, back there? When the Tower went up, something more happened than even Urtho thought! Gods only know what's going to happen now, we need to get under shields."
"But—" he protested. "But—"
"Just don't fall apart on me. People are watching you! You can collapse after I get the shields organized." Vikteren punctuated every word with another shake of his shoulders, and Amberdrake finally nodded weakly. Vikteren let him go, and he got a wavering grip on his emotions, turning his face into the serene mask of the kestra'chern, although deep within, pain was eating him alive.
Vikteren turned away from him, and waved his arms frantically over his head. "Listen!" he shouted, over the keens, the weeping. "Everybody! This—the trap didn't do what we thought, all right? We don't know how much is left of Ma'ar's forces, we don't know how far away is safe, we don't know who or how many of the rest survived. All we do know is that what happened was worse than we thought, and we have a couple of hours to get ready for it! It's going to be a—we'll have to call it a mage-storm, I guess. I can't tell you how bad. Just listen, I need all the mages over here with me, no matter how drained you are, and the rest of you, start getting things tied down, like for a really bad storm, the worst you've ever seen!"
Somehow the desperation in his words penetrated; hertasi carried the bad news to the rest of the camp, to those who had been too far away to hear him. Mages pushed their way through the crowd to reach his side; the others stopped milling and started acting in a purposeful manner, glancing at the slowly-expanding rings of light with a new respect and no little fear.
Winterhart went looking for her gryphons; her first duty was to them. Amberdrake let her go, then stumbled through the darkness to the small floating barge that held his own belongings.
But once there—it all left him. There was nothing left in him but the dull ache of grief. He couldn't even bring himself to care what might happen next.
He sat down on the side of the barge, and his hand fell on the feather he still had tied to his belt. Zhaneel's feather.
How would he tell her? She still didn't know—
There's nothing left, nothing left for any of us.
He didn't even hear them come up beside him, he was so lost in despair so dark that not even tears served to relieve it. One moment he was alone; the next, Zhaneel sat beside him, and Winterhart took a place next to him on the edge of the barge.
"When he did not follow, I guessed," Zhaneel said, her voice no more than a whisper, and although he had not thought that his grief could grow any greater, it threatened to swallow him now.
The tears choked his breath and stole his sight, and left him nothing.
:Nothing?: said a voice in his mind, as a hand closed over his.
"Nothing?" said Zhaneel aloud. "Are we nothing?"
And Amberdrake sensed the two of them joining, reaching into his heart to Heal it, reaching to bring him out of the darkness. The gryfalcon touched one talon to the feather he still held.
"Will you not redeem this now, my friend, my brother?" she asked softly. "We need each other so much."
"And the rest of them need you," Winterhart added. "I've heard you used to ask, 'who Heals the Healer'—and we have at least one answer for you."
"Those he Healed," Zhaneel said. "Giving back what he gave."
Blindly, he reached for them; they reached back as he held tightly to feathered shoulder and human and shook with sobs that finally brought some release.
The first flood of tears was over, for the moment at least, when he heard someone snouting his name.
"Amberdrake!" It sounded like Vikteren. "Amberdrake! The Gate! It's opening again!"
The what? He stumbled to his feet, and ran back to the site of the old Gate-terminus, a roughly-made arch of stone. Sure enough, there was a shimmer of energy there, energy that fluxed and crackled and made him a little sick to look at.
"What is it?" he asked, as Vikteren ran across the clearing to him.
"I don't know—can't be Ma'ar—" The energy inside the Gate surged again. "Whatever it is, whoever, it's been affected by the mage-blast." He turned hopeful eyes on Amberdrake. "You don't suppose it's Skan, do you?"
Amberdrake only shook his head numbly, heart in mouth. The energies built a third time; the mouth of the Gate turned a blinding white—
And Kechara tumbled through, squalling with fear. Winterhart and Zhaneel both cried out and ran to her to comfort her, but before they could reach her side, the Gate flared whitely a second time, and Aubri leapt across the threshold, smelling of burned fur and feathers, to land in an exhausted heap.
"Skan!" the broadwing screeched, turning his head blindly back toward the Gate. "Skan! He's still in there!"
The Gate fluxed—and collapsed in on itself, slowly, taking the stones of the arch with it. The entire structure began to fall as if in a dream.
"No!" Vikteren screamed.
Amberdrake was not certain what the young mage thought he was doing; he was only supposed to be of Master rank, and Amberdrake had always been told that only Adepts could build Gates. But Vikteren reached out his hands, in a clutching, clawlike motion, and Amberdrake felt the energies pouring from him into the collapsing Gate, seizing it—and somehow, holding it steady!
Amberdrake sensed Vikteren faltering, and added his own heart's strength to the young mage's—
—and felt Winterhart join him, and Zhaneel—
The Gate flared a third and final time, but this time it was so bright that Amberdrake cried out in pain, blinded.
Vikteren cried out too, but in triumph.
Amberdrake's vision cleared after much blinking and eye-rubbing, and lying before them was Skandranon—shocked senseless, and no longer as he—was. The elegant black form they had known was thinner and bleached to snow-white, but it was unmistakably Skandranon.
The Gate and Vikteren collapsed together.
Then there was no time to think of anything, as the Eastern horizon erupted with fire—again. And for some reason Amberdrake could not understand, he could feel the death, far away, of the Mage of Silence, content that his people, including those he loved most, were safe at last.
They had just enough time—barely—to establish their shields before the double mage-storm hit. The worst effects lasted from before dawn to sunset. But their preparations held, and they all emerged from shelter to find a blood-red sun sinking over a deceptively normal landscape.
Normal—until you noticed the places where trees had been flattened; where strange little energy-fields danced over warped and twisted cairns of half-melted rocks. Normal—until night fell, and did not bring darkness, but an odd half-light, full of wisps of glowing fog and dancing balls of luminescence.
"We can't stay here," Winterhart said wearily as
she returned to Amberdrake's hastily-pitched tent. It was the only one big enough to hold four gryphons—Skan and Aubri, and Zhaneel and Kechara, the former two because of their injuries, and the latter because they would not leave Skan's moon-white form.
"I'd assumed that. We'll have to pack up and move West, I suppose." He looked up at her and smiled, then turned his watchful gaze back down to the slumbering Skandranon. "I don't mind, if you don't."
"Well, I wish we knew how many of the others survived," she sighed. "But the mages can't get anything through this—whatever it is. Magical noise and smoke. No scrying, no mage-messages, and we don't want to risk the poor little messenger-birds. The tervardi don't want to scout, the kyree are as scared as we are, the hertasi are traumatized, and the gryphons don't trust the winds. We'll have to go West and assume any others are doing whatever they have to."
"So we're back to ordinary, human senses." He reached out for her, caught her hand, and drew her down beside him. "Not so bad, when you come to think about it."
"I have no complaints." She leaned her head on his shoulder, and stroked one ice-white wing-feather of the still-shocky Skandranon. "Except one."
"Oh?" he replied. She probably wishes we could stay here long enough to rest—but at least we know there won't be anyone following us—
"This—" she pointed to Skandranon, curled around Zhaneel like a carving of the purest alabaster, "—is going to make him twice as vain as he was!"
"Of course it will," came a sleepy rumble. A pale, sky-blue eye opened and winked slyly. "And deservedly so."
Amberdrake smiled and held his beloved. No matter what tears were shed or what trials were faced, some things would stay the same. There would always be day and night, stars and sky, hope and rest. There would always be love, always compassion, and there would always be Skandranon. And forever, in the hearts of all the Clans, there would be Urtho—and for his memory, a moment of silence.
The End
--2 The White Gryphon (1995)--
Valdemar Books Page 38
