Valdemar Books

by Lackey, Mercedes

  He clung there for just a heartbeat, long enough to see that the window was open and that it was big enough for him to enter. Then he plunged forward with a powerful thrust of his hindlegs, wings folded tightly against his body, head down and foreclaws out.

  Where— was his last thought.

  He woke all at once, which argued that a spell had knocked him unconscious rather than a blow to the head or an inhaled drug. He was, however, still quite unable to move; he was bound in a dozen ways. No matter how he strained against the bindings, he could not move even a talon-length.

  He lay on his side staring at a wall, with a rigid bar or board stretched all along his spine. His neck was bound to this bar, and his tail; his head was tethered to the end of it as well, and he thought he had been bound to it in several places along his chest and stomach. His wings were certainly bound. He counted three straps at least, and there might be more.

  He was muzzled, but not blindfolded or hooded. There were more bars, this time of metal, fastened to his ankles, holding all of his legs apart in a rigid pose, and rendering his talons useless. He could flex them, and his legs a little, but it wasn't going to do him any good; the ends of the metal bars were against the wall and floor and weren't going anywhere. A collar around his neck was tied to the muzzle and to the bar between his foreclaws. A soft footfall behind his back warned him that he was not alone. "Quite an artistic arrangement, don't you think?" said a voice that sounded vaguely familiar. "I thought it up myself."

  Skan discovered the muzzle was just large enough to permit him to speak. "Fascinating," he said flatly. "And now that you know you've got a successful arrangement for gryphon trussing, would you like to let me go?"

  "No," said the speaker. "I like you this way. It reminds me of home."

  Why does he sound familiar? Who is this idiot? He's speaking our language, not Haighlei—could he be one of Judeth's people? No, or how would he have killed all those Haighlei women before Judeth got here?

  Something about that combination was teasing at the back of his mind, but he couldn't seem to put the clues together into a whole.

  "Haven't you recognized me yet?" The voice sounded disappointed. "Oh, this is really too bad! Either you are becoming a senile old fool, Black Gryphon, or I am simply not notorious enough. I am inclined to believe the former."

  "Which means you have outwitted a senile old fool," Skan replied instantly, with a growl. "Hardly impressive."

  He hoped to annoy this person enough to get some useful reaction out of him, but he was again disappointed when the man giggled.

  "But you aren't the important one, gryphon," the man said smugly. "You're only an annoyance that we had to get out of the way so you couldn't interfere in our real work. We have bigger prey in mind than you."

  "We?" Skan asked.

  The man giggled again. "Oh, no. You won't catch me in that little trap. You have the most remarkable knack for escaping at the last minute—unlike those old bitches I practiced on." The voice took on a sullen quality, rather like an aural pout. "They were hardly good material. All flaws, and nothing really to work on. Very disappointing. Unartistic. Not worth my time, when it came down to that. You have some potential, at least, and I am truly going to enjoy showing him—ah—what you're made of." Another giggle, and this one was definitely not sane. "Now mind you," the man went on, in a belligerent tone, "I don't usually practice my arts on males, but I'm going to make an exception in your case, just to impress Amberdrake."

  Skandranon lunged without thinking, succeeding only in throttling himself against the collar. As he choked, he realized how diabolically efficient his captor's bindings truly were, although they gave a little bit more than their creator had intended. Amberdrake? What's he got to do with this?

  The man wasn't done yet. "I do owe him more than a few favors for what he did to me."

  And with that, the last piece clicked into place in Skandranon's mind. Amberdrake—punishment?—women—tying up—cutting up—

  Hadanelith!

  "Hadanelith, you're out of your mind," he said flatly. "Whatever sanity you had when you lived in White Gryphon coughed once and died when they threw you out on your nose."

  "Oh, good—you guessed!" The mocking tone sounded more pleased than anything else. "How nice to be given the recognition one deserves at last! How nice to know one's hard work hasn't been in vain!"

  "And just what did you intend to accomplish with all of this nonsense?" Skan asked, making his own voice sound as bored as possible. Eventually Kechara is going to test my thoughts—she'll find out I'm in trouble and tell the others.

  The only problem is, I haven't the foggiest notion where I am. Hard to rescue me when they have an entire city or more to cover.

  "Well, disposing of those old bats was meant to make you lot look like bad little boys and girls," Hadanelith said. "It worked, too—no one likes you anymore. Even the charming and lovely Winterhart deserted you."

  There was no doubt about the tone of his voice now; gloating. And he lingered over Winterhart's name in a way that was just enough to make every feather on Skan's body stand straight on end. He practically breathed the name. Winterhart.

  Oh, Kechara, I hope you're listening for me now! On the other hand, Winterhart's apparent defection from the Kaled'a'in had fooled even Hadanelith. Would that be enough to keep her safe?

  "My colleagues have continuing plans, however, which I do not particularly feel like discussing with you," Hadanelith continued lightly. "I trust you'll forgive me. And I hope you won't mind waiting until I acquire Amberdrake before I introduce you to the delights of my skill. I want him to watch. He might learn something. I might even let him live afterward; being left alive would be a better revenge than disposing of him."

  Hadanelith's voice took on a grating tone. "Before we all went on this mad flight to 'safety' and you morons built White Gryphon, I practiced my hobbies in Urtho's camp, on all the little human hens huddled around his Tower. I used to watch you and all your oh-so-glorious feathered brethren go off to fight Ma'ar, and inside I cheered when fewer of you came back. Urtho the 'artist' created the gryphons, but he quit too early. He made you to be pretty but shallow. The Black Gryphon will die the shallowest of them all."

  With another half-hearted struggle and a gasp, Skan replied softly, almost pleadingly, "Don't mock Urtho."

  "Mock Urtho?" Hadanelith laughed very near Skan's head, probably hoping for Skan to lash out fruitlessly again. "Uttering Urtho's name is mockery enough. Still, it would be below my honor to mock a lesser artist. If I had any."

  Another of his maniacal giggles, this time farther away.

  "Ma'ar, at least, came closer to worthy creation than that so-sweet 'Mage of Boredom.' Ma'ar took what Urtho limply tried with the gryphons and created the makaar. Now there was something closer to art. Makaar weren't flatulent, preening extravagances made by a pretend leader, they were hunters. They hunted and enslaved with style. And while on the subject of style, let me tell you of how my next carving will go. I believe an amusing end for the failed legend, the 'Black Gryphon,' would be to carve and rebuild him, into a female makaar."

  Oh. My. Word. I can't say I like the way this is headed at all.

  "Think of it as being remade into a tribute to the departed lesser artist Ma'ar, Skandranon! Like Ma'ar himself, though, the lifespan of the work will be only temporary. A pity, but then again, transforming the 'Black Gryphon' into the 'Bleeding Makaar' is art enough. The knifestrokes begin here...."

  He went on at some length and in great detail, describing all of the things he had in mind to do to Skandranon, starting with that most private of parts. He tried to push the mental images of what was going to be done to him away from the fore of his thoughts, although it was difficult. The descriptions of the mutilations were bad enough, but Hadanelith gloated over how the agony could be made to linger. Skandranon had never liked pain at all.

  Skan could only stare at the wall, listen, and hope that there were no mind-shield
s around this place, that none of Hadanelith's "colleagues" were aware of the gryphonic ability to Mindspeak, and that Kechara would find him quickly enough for the others to search for him.

  Because, in three days' time, it was all going to be too late for Skandranon's life to make a difference in the relationship between White Gryphon and the Haighlei. Hadanelith, without a shadow of a doubt, had timed his plans to come to fruition before then.

  Zhaneel was doing an admirable job of not panicking, but she wasn't far from it. Her ear-tufts were flat to her head, and her entire posture suggested she was restraining herself by pure will alone.

  "Where was he supposed to be flying last night?" Amberdrake asked her. It was hard to think; he was very tired, and last night had been a late one for him. He rubbed his temple, trying to will his fatigue headache away.

  She shook her head. "Mostly over the Palace, but he also intended to fly some patterns over the city nearest the Palace walls," she told him. Her feathers already showed signs of overgrooming, ragged around the edges and a bit frayed. "Leyuet says that he last heard from Skan at three on the waterclock, when he brought in another trespasser. This one was let go—he was only trying to sneak in to see his lover among the servants."

  "Did Leyuet check that out this morning?" Amberdrake asked sharply.

  "I don't know—" She shook her head, sadly. "They did not let the boy go until dawn, to frighten him."

  "He couldn't have anything to do with it, then." Amberdrake bit his thumbnail and tried to think. "Skan must have discovered the murderers, maybe even stopped them before they could strike again—but then what? Why would he disappear?"

  "What could they want with him? Where could they have taken him?" Zhaneel echoed, her voice shrill with worry. "Kechara has not yet found him!" She dropped her head with distress.

  "Remember, she has to know where to look, what minds to find him among," Amberdrake told her, patting her shoulder to comfort her. "Right now, she's going to have to search through the whole city to find him."

  And we have to hope they don't have shields up to cover him. Kechara is good, but I don't know that she's ever broken a shield. Would she know what to look for? "Does Kechara know anything about mind-shields?" he asked, wanting to give her something she could act on. "All I know is that they exist, and that some kinds of magic shielding acts like a mind-shield. Could she break one if she found it to see if Skan's under it?"

  Zhaneel brought her head up, quickly. "I do not know, but I think I can explain it to her!" the gryfalcon exclaimed. "It would be much faster to search for a shield than to search for Skan! As for breaking one—Amberdrake, there is nothing she has tried with Mindspeech that she cannot do, and she might well be able to break one."

  "Talk to her, then, the next time she calls you, and ask her." This was the maddening part; the only time the people here, where Skan was presumably captive, could speak to Kechara was when the little gryphon stopped searching long enough to talk to one of the strong Mindspeakers here. There were only two, with Skan gone—Zhaneel and a Kaled'a'in trondi'irn named Summerhawk. Aubri was a Mindspeaker, but not very strong; Winterhart was on a par with Aubri, and Amberdrake's Gifts were in the sensing of emotions and the healing of the spirit, not in Mindspeaking. It was incredibly frustrating—

  But at least Snowstar was in charge of Kechara and her search, and he was interrupting her at regular intervals to get her to talk to one or more of them and to rest and eat. Otherwise, the poor little thing was so frantic to find her "Papa Skan" that she was likely to drive herself until she dropped.

  If ever we find her limits, it will probably be now.

  He racked his brain, trying to think of any other way they could look for the gryphon. No new murders this morning, and all courtiers accounted for at Morning Court, so if Skan had intercepted the killers, he'd done so before they even got at their potential victim.

  And at least he won't be blamed for another killing.

  So what else could they do? Ask for a room-by-room search of the Palace? What would that accomplish, besides getting people more annoyed with the Kaled'a'in than they already were?

  And besides, if they know there is a search going on, they could and would move him.

  "You stay here, just in case he comes flying in with his tail singed," he ordered Zhaneel. "I'm going to go talk to Silver Veil. Maybe she can help."

  He left Zhaneel consoling herself with her twins, who played on, oblivious to their mother's worries, and left the suite in his "guard" guise. Like most kestra'chern, by the very nature of her work, Silver Veil was usually alone in the morning and early afternoon, and he found her enjoying a solitary lunch beside the pool in her own garden. She knew immediately that something was very wrong, of course, even though she did not have the level of Empathy he did.

  "What is it?" she asked, leaving her lunch forgotten and hurrying across the garden as soon as she spotted him. "What has happened? I heard nothing of another death!"

  "No death that we know of, but Skan is missing," he told her, taking the hands she held out to him with gratitude. "We have a Mindspeaker searching for him, but that takes time."

  Her eyes went wide when he said that Skandranon was missing, and her hands tightened on his. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked quickly.

  "I was going to ask you that; can you think of anything?" He tried not to show his disappointment when she shook her head, but his heart fell a little anyway. He hadn't exactly counted on her coming up with a brilliant plan on the spur of the moment, but he'd hoped, just a bit. She was so resourceful, it was hard to realize that she couldn't do everything, solve every problem.

  "I cannot solve every problem," she said softly, as if she had read his thoughts. "I cannot even solve my own."

  Only then did he see that her eyes were red, as if she had been weeping, and that there were shadows beneath them that told him she had been spending some sleepless nights.

  "I can't do anything more to look for Skan," he told her quietly, drawing her back over to her seat under the trees. "Why don't you tell me about your troubles? I may not be able to help, but at least I can provide a sympathetic ear."

  She let him lead her there passively, and sat down again with a sigh. "It is nothing I had not known about when I came here," she said wearily. "It is just that I had not known how it would affect me until I saw Winterhart with the Necklace."

  "Winterhart?" he said, puzzled. "What—" But the question was answered by her woeful expression before she could even say a word. "Oh, my very dear! You have gone and fallen in love with Shalaman, haven't you!"

  She nodded, a tinge of color creeping over her cheeks. "A dreadful confession for a kestra'chern, to say she has fallen in love with her chief client."

  "I did with mine—" he objected, but she waved the objection away.

  "Winterhart was not the King," she pointed out. "And you were not in Haighlei lands. It is assumed here, among the Haighlei, that a true kestra'chern is a precious thing, too precious for any one person to have to himself. Yet the King's Consort obviously could not—well. I am caught in a double bind, you see."

  "And it would be bad enough that you love him, but he is also in love with you, I suspect," Amberdrake hazarded. "Ah, now a great deal makes sense. That was why he thought he was in love with Winterhart! It was really a reflection of his true feelings for you!"

  She nodded. "Your lady is very like me in many ways, and he had every reason to believe that she was accessible to him. I have not let him know of my feelings, and I suspect that custom has made him deny his. As flexible as my King is, he is surprisingly custom-bound."

  He let go of her hands and reached out to hold her instead. She did not resist at all but rested her head on his chest with a sigh that conveyed more heartbreak than all the tears in the world.

  "I was able to manage when there was no serious contender for his affection," she said softly into his collar. "But when he offered Winterhart the Necklace—oh, it hurt, it hurt! It s
tabbed me to the heart, and I could scarcely bear to stand there and smile, and pretend to be glad! And even now, although I know it is all a sham, I cannot bear to stay in the Court for very long and watch her in the place of Consort-To-Be at his side!"

  "One way or another, in two days it will all be over," he reminded her, with a stab of pain and fear in his own heart, as he wondered just how it would all end. With laughter and triumph—or in bloody war?

  "But the situation will still remain," she replied, every word an unshed tear, a whispered fragment of pain. "One day soon, he must take a real Consort, and I know this now, as does he. I will bear it because I must—but, oh, my friend, I shall walk from that moment on upon knifeblades, with spears in my heart until the day I die!" He stroked her hair, unable to arrive at a satisfactory answer for her.

  "I wish that I had a magic means of helping you," he said at last. "If there were a kestra'chern of your skill available to take your place, do you think—"

  "I do not know," she said, but sadly. "It has never happened before that an Emperor took as his Consort a kestra'chern. I suspect he could order it to be so only at the Eclipse Ceremony."

  So much hinges on that damned Ceremony! he thought bitterly. Even the barest hope of happiness for Silver Veil! "I cannot promise anything," he said at last, "but I will do what I can to help you, as you have so often helped me. Perhaps—perhaps, if everything works out properly at the Ceremony, there may be a solution for you as well."

  "But you must not tell him of my feelings for him!" she insisted. "You must not! It is bad enough now, but it would be worse for both of us if you do! Loving in silence is misery, but loving, knowing the other loves, and remaining parted is twice the misery! I have seen it happen all too often that way."

  Sadly, so had he. "I swear it," he pledged her. "Yet I also swear that I will do what I can to remedy the situation, if a remedy can be found." He cupped her face in his hands, kissed her forehead, and smiled into her eyes. "I might even offer my own services to the Emperor," he said, only half in jest. "Then, at least, there would be a substitute for you. You often said that I am the one pupil who is your equal."