That, and Darzie is young enough to think he’s immortal, and good enough to fly as if he were. Like another stupid, stupid gryphon I used to know. In spite of the fact that the rainy season was normal back at the base-camp, “normal” still meant a raging thunderstorm every afternoon. Darzie had flown and landed in one of those thunderstorms, blithely asserting that it was all a matter of timing and watching where the bolts hit. His passenger had been white-lipped, but remarkably reticent about discussing the flight.
Drake had found out what had tempted Darzie into making the trip; a challenge. Judeth had asked the young gryphon if he knew of anyone who might be persuaded, and had hinted broadly that she didn’t think he could do it. That had been enough for Darzie, who had insisted that he and only he could manage the trip. And he had, in record-breaking time, and without damaging himself or his passenger. For sheer speed, audacity, and insane courage, that flight had surpassed even some of the Black Gryphon’s legendary accomplishments.
Some, but not all. Darzie will just have to take his own time to become a legend, and if he is wise, he will do it in his own way, and not try to emulate me. I think that my life must have used up the luck of twenty gryphons.
Skan, the base-camp crew, and the other twenty-three rescuers had piled through the Gate in a record-setting time of their own. Although no people had been “pitched” through, all the supplies had been; hurled in a mass by a small army of Judeth’s support crew. Not even during a resupply had Skan ever seen a Gate go up and down again so quickly.
Darzie flew home to receive his justly-earned accolades and the admiration of every unattached female in the city; the results of that would likely be more exhausting for him than the great deed itself. The Gate-mage and his helpers and guards remained to set up a base camp; the rest of them had shouldered packs and moved out under the beginnings of a rainstorm. No one had told them, however, that they were going to have to climb down a cliff to get into the forest where the children were lost. The three gryphons had shaken themselves dry and flown themselves down, but the humans had been forced to get to the bottom the hard way. That experience, in a worsening thunderstorm, had been exciting enough to age even the most hardened veteran in the lot. Absolutely everything they touched was slippery, either with mud, water, or substances they were probably better off not knowing about.
Once at the bottom, the three parties had formed up and gone their separate ways—and Skan had been amazed at how quickly the forest had swallowed the other two search parties. In an amazingly short period of time, he couldn’t even hear the faintest sound of the others; only the steady drumming of the rain, and the whistles, chirps, and calls of creatures up in the tops of the trees.
Each day had been much like the one before it; only the navigator knew for certain that they were going in the right direction and not in circles. The only time that Skan was ever dry was just before he slept; the moment he poked his beak out of the tent he shared with Drake and the other mage, he was wet. Either fog condensed on his feathers and soaked into them, or he got soaked directly by the usual downpour.
Just at the moment, the downpour had him wet to the skin.
And he was depressed, though he would have been depressed without the rain.
How can we ever hope to find any sign of them? he asked himself, staring up at the endless sea of dripping leaves, and around at the dizzying procession of tree trunks on all sides, tangled with vines or shrouded with brush. There wasn’t a sign of a game trail, and as for game itself—well, he’d had to feed himself by surprising some of the climbing creatures in the mornings, while he could still fly. They could be within shouting distance of us, and we would never know it! This forest was not only claustrophobic, it was uncannily enveloping. One of the fighters swore that he could actually see the plants growing, and Skan could find it in his heart to believe him.
How long would it take until vines and bushes covered anything left after a crash? A few days? A week? It had been a week since the children went missing, maybe more than a week; he lost track of time in here.
And they could have been down for three or four days before that. Gloomy thoughts; as gloomy as their surroundings. And yet he could not give up; as long as there was any chance, however minuscule, that they would find the children, he would search on. No matter what, he had to know what had happened to them. The uncertainty of not knowing was the worst part.
Drake looked like Skan felt; the kestra‘chern was a grim-faced, taciturn, sodden, muddy mess most of the time. He spoke only when spoken to; tended to the minor injuries of the party without being asked, but offered nothing other than physical aid, which was utterly unlike him. He hiked with the rest of them, or dealt with camp chores, but it was obvious that his mind was not on what he was doing. It was out there, somewhere, and Skan wondered if Drake was trying to use his limited empathic ability as a different kind of north-needle, searching for the pole star of pain and distress hidden among the trunks and vines. With the blood tie between himself and his daughter, he should be especially sensitive to her. If she were alive, he might be able to find her where conventional methods were failing.
More power to him; he’s never tried using it that way, but that doesn‘t mean it won’t work. Skan only wished he had a similar ability he could exercise. As it was, he was mostly a beast of burden, and otherwise not much help. He couldn’t track, he couldn’t use much magic without depleting himself, and as for anything else—well, his other talents all involved flying. And he could only fly for a short time in the mornings.
Regin, the leader in their party, held up a hand, halting them, as he had done several times already that day. There didn’t seem to be any reason for this behavior, and Skan was getting tired of it. Why stop and stand in the rain for no cause? The more ground they covered, the better chance they had of finding something. He nudged past Filix, and splashed his way up to the weather-beaten Silver Judeth had placed in charge.
“Regin, just what, exactly, are we waiting for?” he asked, none too politely.
Fortunately, the man ignored the sarcastic tone of his voice, and answered the question by pointing upward. Skan looked, just in time to see their scout Bern sliding down the trunk of a tree ahead of them with a speed that made Skan wince. “Bern’s been looking for breaks in the trees ahead,” Regin said, as Bern made a hand signal and strode off into the trees. “We figure, if the basket came down it had to make a hole; that hole’ll still be there. He gets up into a tall tree and looks for holes all around, especially if he can see they’re fresh. You might not believe it with all these clouds around, but if there’s a break in the trees more light gets in, and you can see it from high enough in the canopy. That’s what we’re waiting on.”
Bern reappeared a moment later, and rejoined the party, shaking his head. Skan didn’t have to know the Silver’s signals to read that one; no holes. He and Regin had a quick conference with the navigator, and the scout headed back off into the forest on a new bearing. The rest of the party followed in Bern’s wake.
So far, there had been no sign of anything following or watching them, much less any attacks. Skan was beginning to think that Judeth’s insistence on assuming there was a hostile entity in here was overreaction on her part. There hadn’t been any signs that anything lived in here but wild animals; surely whatever had drained off all the mage-energy here must be a freak phenomenon. Maybe that was what had caught the two children. . . .
Skan dropped back to his former place beside Amberdrake, but with a feeling of a little more hope, brought on by the knowledge that at least they weren’t totally without a guide or a plan.
Drake still seemed sunk into himself, but he revived a bit when Skan returned and explained what the lead members were up to. “I’ve heard worse ideas,” he said thoughtfully, wiping strands of sodden hair out of his eyes, and blinking away the rain. “It’s not a gryphon eye view, but it’s better than nothing.”
Once again, the leader signaled a stop. Skan peered ou
t and up through the curtains of rain, but he couldn’t see anything. Wherever the scout was this time, not even Skan’s excellent eyes could pick him out. “I have no idea how Bern is managing to climb in this weather, much less how he’s doing it so quickly.” Skan moved up a few feet and ducked around a tangle of vines, but the view was no better from the new vantage. “He must be as limber as one of those little furry climbers that Shalaman keeps at his Palace as pets. For all we know, this sort of place is where those come from.”
Drake shrugged dismissively, as if the subject held no interest for him. “I—” “Hoy!”
Skan looked up again, startled, and just caught sight of the tiny figure above, waving frantically. He seemed to be balanced on a thick tree limb, and clung to the trunk with only one hand. The other hand waved wildly, and then pointed.
“Hoy!” the call came again. “Fresh break, that way!”
Fresh break? The same thought occurred to all of them, but the Silvers were quicker to react than Skan or Drake. They broke into a trot, shoving their way through the vegetation, leaving the other two to belatedly stumble along in their wake.
Skan’s heart raced, and not from the exertion. He longed to gallop on ahead, and probably would have, except that it was all he could do to keep up with the Silvers. And much to his embarrassment, just as he developed a sudden stitch in his side, Bern, the scout who had been up in the tree, burst through the underbrush behind them, overtook them, and plunged on to the head of the column. Show-off. . . .
Another shout echoed back through the trees, muffled by the falling rain. The words weren’t distinguishable, but the tone said all Skan needed to know. There was excitement, but no grief, no shock. They’ve found something. Something and not someone—or worse, bodies. . . .
From some reserve he didn’t know he had, he dredged up more strength and speed, and turned his trot into a series of leaps that carried him through the underbrush until he broke through into the clearing beneath the break in the trees. He stumbled across the remains of a crude palisade of brush and onto clear ground.
A camp! That was his first elated thought; if the children had been able to build a camp, they could not have been too badly hurt. Then he looked at the kind of camp it was, and felt suddenly faint. This was no orderly camp; this was something patched together from the remains of wreckage and whatever could be scavenged. Regin looked up from his examination of the soggy remains of the basket as Skan halted inside the periphery of the clearing.
“They crashed here, all right.” He pointed upward at the ragged gap in the canopy. “They’re gone now, but they did hit here, hard enough to smash two sides of the basket. They both survived it, though I can’t guess how. Maybe there was enough in the way of branches on the way down to slow their fall. The medical kit’s gone, there’s signs they both used it.”
They were here. They were hurt. Now they’re gone. But why? “Why aren’t they still here?” he asked, speaking his bewilderment aloud.
“Now that is a good question.” Regin poked through a confusion of articles that looked as if they had just been tossed there and left. “Standard advice is to stay with your wrecked craft if you have an accident. I’d guess they started to do that, were here for maybe two days, then something made them leave. It looks to me as if they left in a hurry, and yet I don’t see any signs of a fight.”
“They could have been frightened away,”
Amberdrake ventured. “Or—well, this isn’t a very good camp—”
“It’s a disaster of a camp, that’s what it is,” Regin corrected bluntly. “But if all I had was wreckage, and I was badly hurt, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do much better. It’s shelter, though, and that isn’t quite enough. I wish I knew how much of their supplies got ruined, and how much they took with them.” He straightened,, and looked around, frowning. “There’s no sign of a struggle, but no sign of game around here either. They might have run out of food, and it would be hard to hunt if they were hurt. There’s no steady water source—”
Amberdrake coughed politely. “We’re under a steady water-source,” he pointed out.
Regin just shrugged. “We’re taught not to count on rain. So—no game, no water, and an indefensible camp. Gryphons eat a lot; if their supplies were all trashed, they’d be good for about two days before they were garbage, unfit to eat. After that, they’ve got to find game, for Tadrith alone. My guess is, they stayed here just long enough to get back some strength, and headed back in the direction of home. They’re probably putting up signals now.” He grimaced. “I just hope their trail isn’t too cold to follow—but on the other hand, if they headed directly west, we should stay pretty much on their trail. That’s where I’d go, back to the river. It’s a lot easier to fish if you’re hurt than to hunt.”
Skan groaned. “You mean we could have just followed the river and we probably would have found them?”
Regin grinned sourly. “That’s exactly what I mean. But look on the bright side; now we know they’re alive and they’re probably all right.”
Skan nodded, as Regin signaled to Bern to start hunting for a trail. But as Bern searched for signs, Skan couldn’t help noticing a few things.
For one thing, the piles of discarded material had a curiously ordered-disordered look about them, as if they had been tossed everywhere, then gathered up and crudely examined, then sorted.
For another, there were no messages, notes, or anything of the sort to give a direction to any rescuers. Granted, the children might not have known whether anyone would find the camp, but shouldn’t they have left something?
And last of all, there was no magic, none at all, left in any of the discarded equipment. So the surmise had been correct, something had drained all of the magic out of their gear, and from the signs of the crash, it had happened all at once. And yet none of the search-party gear had been affected—yet.
So what had done this in the first place? What had sorted through the remains of the camp?
And what had made the children flee into the unknown and trackless forest without even leaving a sign for searchers to follow?
Was the answer to the third question the same as the answer to the other two?
Tad entered the cave, sloshing through ankle-deep water at the entrance, carefully avoiding Blade’s three fishing lines. Blade held up some of her catch, neatly strung, and he nodded appreciatively.
“Water’s higher,” he told her. “In places it covers the trail here.”
That was to be expected, considering how much is falling out of the sky. “Well,” Blade said with resignation. “At least we have a steady water supply— and we don’t have to leave the cave to fish anymore.” It had not stopped raining for more than a few marks in the middle of the night ever since they had arrived here. She’d wondered what the rainy season would be like; well, now she knew. The stream of water running down the middle of the cave had remained at about the same size, only its pace had quickened. The river had risen, and now it was perfectly possible for them to throw lines into the river itself without going past the mouth of the cave, with a reasonable expectation of catching something.
That was just as well, since they were now under siege, although they still had not seen their hunters clearly. The flitting shadows espied in the undergrowth had made it very clear that there was no getting back across the river without confronting them.
Tad nodded, spreading his good wing to dry it in front of the fire. He had gone out long enough to drag in every bit of driftwood he could find, and there was now a sizable store of it in the cave. He’d also hauled in things that would make a thick, black smoke, and they had a second, extremely nasty fire going now. It stood just to one side of the stream at the rear of the cave, putting a heavy smoke up the natural “chimney.” Whether or not there was anyone likely to see it was a good question; this was not the kind of weather anything but a desperate or suicidal gryphon would fly in.
On the other hand—how desperate would Skandranon
or Tad’s twin be by now? Desperate enough to try?
Blade both hoped so and hoped that they would have more sense; their pursuers were getting bolder, and she hadn’t particularly wanted Tad to go out this afternoon. The stalkers were still nothing more than menacing shadows, but she had seen them skulking through the underbrush on the other side of the river even by day, yesterday and this morning.
“I think they might try something tonight,” Tad said, far too casually. “I know I was being watched all the time, and I just had that feeling, as if there was something out there that was frustrated and losing patience.”
“I got the same feeling,” Blade confessed. She hadn’t enjoyed taking her shields down and making a tentative try at assessing what lay beyond the river, but it had felt necessary. In part, she had been hoping to sense a rescue party, but the cold and very alien wave of frustrated anger that met her tentative probe had made her shut herself up behind her shields and sit there shivering for a moment. “I—tried using that Empathic sense, and I got the same impression you did. They would like very much to get a chance at us.”
She hoped that Tad wouldn’t make too big a fuss about that confession; he’d been at her often enough to use everything she had. Now she’d finally given in to his urgings, she was not in the mood for an “I told you that was a good idea.” She wasn’t certain that it was a good idea; what if those things out there had been able to sense her just as she sensed them?
Then again, what would they learn? That she was hurt, and scared spitless of them? They already knew that.
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