Winterhart joined him long after the moon had come out. He turned at her familiar footstep, to see her approaching from the direction of the Council Hall, the moonlight silvering her hair. In the soft light there was no sign of her true age; she could have been the trondi’irn of Urtho’s forces, or the first ambassador to the Haighlei so many years ago. Only when she drew close were the signs of anxiety and tension apparent in her face, her eyes, the set of her mouth.
“They’re putting together the last of the supplies,” she said, before he could ask. “Skan and the mages haven’t come out of Snowstar’s work area yet, and Shalaman hasn’t replied. Don’t worry, he will before the night is over; remember how long his court runs at night.”
He did remember; in the tropical heat of the climate around Khimbata, Shalaman’s people all took long naps in the afternoon, and then continued their court ceremonies, entertainments, and duties until well after midnight. And he had no fear that Shalaman would refuse help; the Emperor could send off a hundred hunters or more from his forces, and they would never be missed. No, the only question was how soon the hunters could be somewhere that they could do some good. First the priests would have to approve the departure, then they would have to travel across many leagues of forest before they were anywhere near the place where the children had vanished. All that would take time, precious time. . . .
Blindly, he held out his arms and Winterhart came into them. They held each other, seeking comfort in one another’s warmth and presence. There was no point in talking; they would only echo one another, each saying what the other was thinking. They both knew that, and knew that talking would ease nothing, soothe nothing.
So they simply sat down on the smooth, cool stone bench outside their home, and held each other, and waited beneath the stars. Neither of them were strangers to waiting.
That did not make waiting any, easier—except that it removed the additional pain of loneliness.
Judeth must have gotten over her own anger by dawn, for she showed no signs of it when a messenger summoned both Amberdrake and Winterhart to what the young Silver called a “planning session.” The two of them had bathed and changed clothing, hoping that clean bodies would restore their minds a little. Amberdrake had shunned his usual finery in favor of something very like Winterhart’s practical working garb, hoping that there might possibly be something he could do once the sun rose. When the summons came, both of them had been sitting over a breakfast neither of them had been able to touch, and it was a relief to rise and follow the youngster back to the Council hall.
Skan and Zhaneel and, their other son Keenath were already there, showing just as much strain as Amberdrake felt, although only someone who knew gryphons well would have recognized the signs of strain in overpreened feathers, plumage lying flat against the body, posture that showed their muscles were as tense and knotted as Amberdrake’s. He doubted that they had slept, but the sight of Keenath made a moment of intense anger flash through Amberdrake’s heart.
He still has a child. And if his other had not been so intent on leaving the city, mine might not have gone either!
But that was irrational and entirely incorrect, and he knew it. He suppressed it immediately, and he and Winterhart maneuvered through the group crowded in here so that they could form a united block with the other set of parents.
Judeth did not look as if she had slept either. Deep shadows touched the swollen pouches under her eyes, and she looked twice her real age. Aubri didn’t even pretend to be calm; he chewed incessantly on one of his old, shed feathers, presumably to keep from shredding his current plumage.
There were thirty or forty people in the group; Amberdrake noticed that at least six of them were mages and he, Winterhart, Skan, Keenath and Zhaneel were the only non-Silvers. Ikala was among the Silvers gathered here, and Amberdrake was irrationally pleased to see him, as if the tall young man represented more than just a local expert on the rain forest.
The Council Hall was the only room large enough to hold all of them, and Judeth had completely taken it over, strewing maps and other documents all over the table. It looked as if she had been here for some time. “Snowstar and the mages have uncovered something damned peculiar,” she said, when they had all gathered around the map-covered table. She tapped a darkened, irregularly shaped blob on the map in front of her. “This area here has no signs of magic. None, and they tell me that’s practically impossible. The missing patrol was due to pass along this line—“ She drew a swift mark with a piece of charcoal which crossed the southern end of the irregular-shaped area. “—and if there’s something in there that’s negating mage-energy, you can imagine for yourself what that would mean for both their carry-basket and their teleson.”
Amberdrake was all too able to imagine what that would do to a carry-basket; and from the way Winterhart suddenly clutched his arm, her fingers digging into the muscle, so was she. In his mind, he saw the two figures he had watched fly off into the distance suddenly stricken for a moment, then plummeting to their deaths on the unforgiving ground below.
“That means we’re going to have to come in somewhere near the edge and walk in,” Judeth continued, without any hint that she had envisioned the same disaster that had played itself out behind Amberdrake’ s eyes. “Our Gate probably won’t work inside this area, and we’ll have to suppose for now that nothing else magical in nature will work either. We’ll have to operate by the old rules of working without magic, although yes, we will be taking mages, just in case magic does work after all. Though—if there’s no local mage-power available, Snowstar tells me that the mages will be just like Journeymen and Apprentices, and limited to their own personal power. That’s going to put a serious crimp in their activities, and any mages that go along had better start thinking in terms of budgeting themselves before they act.”
She leveled a sharp glance across the table, to the point where the mages of the Silvers had bunched together.
“What about the gryphons?” someone wanted to know. “Can’t they just fly overhead and scout the way they always do?”
She closed her eyes for a moment, and sighed. “If I wanted a sign that our luck has turned truly wretched, I could not have conjured up one more certain. This is the rainy season for that part of the world—and the weather-mages tell me that storms will be unceasing over this particular area for the next several days to a week. Thunderstorms have already grounded the original pair that was out looking for our missing Silvers; they are on the ground and we know where they are. It might well be a side effect of the loss of magic over the area; we just don’t know for certain. But what that means is that there won’t be any flying going on. I’m not going to ban any gryphons from the search-parties, but they’ll be strictly on foot unless the weather improves drastically.”
“I’m still going, and so are Zhaneel and Keeth,” Skan spoke up firmly. Judeth nodded, as if she had expected as much. “In that case, since I’m going to divide the searchers into three parties, each gryphon can go with one. I’ve already sent out a gryphon with a Gate-mage; but he’ll be coming straight back, and so will the two still out there while weather cooperates.” Judeth cocked an eyebrow at Skan as if she expected him to object to this, but he didn’t. Amberdrake could certainly understand why. A gryphon on the ground was severely handicapped; Skan, Zhaneel, and Keenath would be as much a hindrance as they were a help. The two who had been on patrol would be exhausted, and the one who had ferried the Gate-mage even more so.
Judeth continued. “Now, here’s the current plan. We’ll Gate in here—that’s the closest I want to get to this area with anything that depends upon magic.”
She stabbed down with her index finger. Here, the point where her finger indicated, was on the line that Blade and Tad had been expected to fly.
“The Gate-mage and a small party will stay here, at a base camp, holding the area for the rest of you. We’ll divide up; the party with Skan and Drake in it will go north, up to the top of the area, and then in. The one with Ik
ala leading it, including Keenath, will go straight in. The one with Winterhart and Zhaneel will go south, then in. That way we’ll cover the maximum area in the shortest possible time.” Judeth straightened, and looked straight at Skan again: “And in case you’re wondering why I haven’t put you two in on the expected line, it’s because the two gryphons out there already flew that line and didn’t see anything before weather forced them down. So either the missing patrol didn’t fly that line, or it’s going to take an expert in that kind of territory to find signs of them. That’s Ikala, not you; he’ll be leading a party of people all used to moving quickly, and after he scouts the line on the ground, he’ll be covering the areas north and south of that line. I’m putting you two on the likeliest alternate track; Tad always had a tendency in training to stay on the northern side of a given flight line. My guess is, if they’re anywhere off the line, it’s in the north.”
“But that’s just a guess,” Skan stated. “They could be south.”
She nodded. “And the gods know I’ve guessed wrong before; that’s why the third party. The parties are going to number eight; one gryphon, one Healer or trondi’irn, or whatever comes close—that’s you, Drake—two mages, and five fighters, all experienced Silvers. Any smaller is dangerous, any larger is unwieldy. Don’t bother to pack at all; you’ll be taking standard Silver kits including medical supplies, and you aren’t going to have time to change clothing. Besides, by the time you make a camp at night, you and your clothing should be sluiced clean.”
Her stare at Amberdrake said, as clearly as words, And if you don’t like that, you don’t have to go.
He stared right back at her. Try and keep me from going and you’II have a fight.
She waited for him to say something, staring into his gaze with challenge in her stance, but it was she who finally dropped her eyes. “This is an in-and-out mission, the faster the better. As of this moment, consider yourself facing a real enemy, a powerful one, if he can drain all the mage-energy out of a place. I don’t know what’s caused magic to leach out of that area, but I have to assume it’s a hostile, and it isn’t going to like having twenty-four people traipsing all over its territory. As soon as the mage gets to the Gate-point, we’ll be bringing it up, and I don’t want it up for longer than it takes to pitch all of you through it. Is that understood?”
Once again, she stared at him as if her words were meant for him alone. Her tone of voice implied that, given the opportunity, she would “pitch” Amberdrake through the Gate. He simply nodded, as did everyone else.
“Good. From now until you leave, you are all sleeping, eating, and everything else right here.” She smiled thinly at their surprise. “That’ll be quicker than trying to gather all of you up once the mage gets into place. I don’t intend to waste a single minute on any dallying. I’ll have sleeping arrangements brought in; the mage I sent out is being carried by Darzie, so I expect to hear that they’ve made their landing within the next full day.”
Amberdrake was impressed, as much by the identity of the gryphon as by the speed with which the duo expected to reach their destination. He wondered what Judeth had promised to get Darzie to fly a carry-basket at all, much less try to do so breaking a record and in bad weather. Darzie was not a Silver; he was one of a new class of gryphons who were primarily athletes. Whether as acrobats, fast couriers, or actual racers, these gryphons earned a very fine, even luxurious, living by serving the Haighlei appetite for speed and spectacle. Darzie was the best of the fast couriers and one of the fastest racers—he was a more consistent flyer than gryphons who actually clocked the occasional faster time. It was hard to imagine what hold Judeth could have over him to induce him to risk injury and strain in this way.
But maybe he was being uncharitable; maybe Darzie had actually volunteered. . . .
Not without blackmail.
It didn’t matter, so long as Judeth had gotten him, whether it was through bribery or blackmail, or a combination of both.
Maybe she’s following my example. The gods know she has enough power of her own to leverage just about anyone in this city into doing her bidding at least once.
“Any questions?” Judeth asked, and looked around the room. “No? Right. Fall out, and for those of you who haven’t slept, I’m calling Tamsin in to make you sleep.” There was no doubt who she was targeting with the daggers of her gaze, and both Amberdrake and Skan flinched; but she wasn’t finished. “That includes me; we won’t be any good to anyone if we aren’t rested when the call comes. Right, Drake?”
Her question came as a surprise, and he was doubly surprised to sense the compassion and sympathy—and worry of her own—behind the words. It penetrated even his defensiveness.
“Ah, right,” he admitted sheepishly, relaxing just a trifle. So she does understand, and she’s forgiven us. . . . He had not hoped for it so soon, but he welcomed it as a tiny bright spot of hope in the midst of too much grief.
“Good. Glad you agree, because you’re going to be one of the first to go to sleep.” A commotion at the door proved to be bedding, food, and Tamsin all arriving simultaneously. “Now, stand down, all of you, and get yourselves taken care of. I’ll be watching to see that you do.”
And she did; standing over them all like a slave-master, to see that every member of the three search parties ate, drank, and submitted to Tamsin’s touch. As Judeth had warned, Amberdrake was one of the first, and after one look at Judeth’s expression, he knew better than to protest.
So he crammed down a few mouthfuls of food as dry and tasteless as paper, drank what was given him, and laid himself down on a standard, military-style sleeping roll. He closed his eyes as Tamsin leaned over him, and that was the last thing he knew until the rally-call awakened him.
Rain. Why did it have to be rain? Even snakes would be better. Skandranon tried to keep his thoughts on his purely physical discomfort, but try as he might, he couldn’t. His skin crawled, and the rain had nothing to do with it. If Skan’s feathers hadn’t been plastered flat to his body, they’d have been standing up in instinctive alarm.
He did not like this place, and his dislike was not connected in any way whatsoever with the miserable weather.
It could have been that this bizarre, claustrophobic forest had swallowed Blade and Tad without a trace, but that wasn’t the reason his soggy hackles were trying to rise either. The other mage of the party felt the same, and if there had been any choice in the matter, he’d have gone back to the base camp because it just plain felt wrong here.
The two of them, after some discussion last night before the human took the first sleep shift, had decided that the problem was that lack of mage-energy in this place. Presumably an Apprentice-level mage or Journeyman would not be affected in this way; they were not used to sensing and using energies outside themselves, unless those energies were fed to them by a mage of greater ability. But a Master (as Skan and the human Silver, Filix, were) was as accustomed to the all-pervasive currents of mage-energy as a gryphon was to the currents of the air. Skan could not remember a time in his adult life that he had not been aware of those currents. Even when the mage-storms had caused such disruptions in magic, the energy had never vanished, it just hadn’t worked or felt quite the same. But having no mage-energy about—it felt wrong, very wrong. It had him disoriented and off-balance, constantly looking for something that simply wasn’t there.
It feels as if I’ve suddenly lost a sense; something subtle, like smell.
Nevertheless, a quick trial had proved to his satisfaction that magic still worked here, and furthermore, those magical items that they had brought in with them were still empowered. Further checks proved that, at the moment at least, there was no ongoing drain of mage-energy. The power that built up in any area naturally was slowly rising back up. So whatever was wrong in this forest, whatever had caused this anomaly, it had not completely negated magic, just removed it. Whether that drainage had been gradual or all at once was anyone’s guess. And there must be somethi
ng coming along to drain mage-energy again as it built up, or there would be some areas that had at least a little power available.
As for what that could be, he had no idea. He did not care to think about what must have happened if the basket had also had all of its empowering mage-energy drained—all at once.
Skandranon mentally worked on a few new phrases to use when he finally complained about it all to someone whom he could corral into listening sympathetically. He had a reputation for—colorful—language to maintain after all. He would much rather concentrate on that, than how miserable his soggy feathers felt, how cold he was, how sore his muscles were after two days of walking. That was something he simply hadn’t considered, and it was galling to realize that Drake was in better physical shape than he was! Drake had been climbing the stairs and ladders of White Gryphon for almost twenty years; he had only been flying. He could not think of more than a handful of times that he had actually climbed up rather than down, and none of those times had been in the last three years. At least Keeth had been working out on the obstacle course lately, and Winterhart had made certain that all muscles were exercised. Poor Zhaneel must be as miserable as he.
But she has the best trondi’irn in the city to tend her. Keeth is a trondi’irn. I only have Drake, who does his best, but still. . . he’s preoccupied.
Rain dripped into his nares and he sneezed to clear them, shaking his head fiercely. He and Drake were at the rear of the party; with his keener sense of hearing than the humans possessed, it seemed a good idea to have him at the back where he might be able to detect something following them. Now he wished he had thought to ask Judeth for a couple of kyree scouts for each party; they would have been much more effective than any of the humans.
Rain poured down out of the sky, as it had since the fog lifted that morning. This was a truly lovely climate; fog from before dawn to just after, followed by rain until well past darkness, followed by damp chill until the fog came again in the morning. Judeth had been absolutely right in grounding them, and he would have grounded himself once he saw the weather; there was no way for a gryphon to fly safely in this muck, even if he could get his wings dry long enough to take off. Darzie had managed to bring his mage in safely only because he was insanely self-confident and lucky enough for four gryphons, and because the weather changed abruptly to something more like a “normal” rainy season outside of the “no-magic” area.
Valdemar Books Page 94
