by K J Taylor
She ate a small lunch, with only Kraal for company. Even chewing felt like hard work.
“I wish Erian was here,” she murmured aloud. “I miss him.”
Kraal shifted. “I am glad that he is not.”
Elkin looked up in her surprise. “Why?”
“Because he must reach the Island of the Sun as quickly as he can and find what he needs to fight Kraeai kran ae,” Kraal rumbled. “And because you cannot afford to have him here to distract you.”
Elkin reddened. “You know I wouldn’t let that happen.”
He pressed his head against hers. “I am glad that you found a mate, Elkin. Every creature needs one. But humans allow mating to override all else and interfere even with matters of life and death.”
Elkin stared at her plate. “Yes . . . I suppose you’re right.”
He was, she thought as she finished eating. Humans were notorious for letting their hearts rule their heads. Once she had laughed at stories of ancient heroes killing themselves over the death of their beloved and wars being fought over the possession of one woman. But now . . . She sighed. Poor Erian. He was just an overgrown boy, really—with that freckled face and snub nose and the awkward way he carried himself, as if he was unaware of his wide shoulders and big hands. Still content to walk around with his head in the clouds, in spite of the heavy responsibility that had been placed on him. But that was just his way, and despite herself she knew she loved him for it.
A servant opened the door at that moment, and she shook herself. No time for dreaming.
The councillors’ chamber wasn’t far away, and she and Kraal reached it in plenty of time for the meeting. The other members of the council were still arriving, and Elkin took her place on the dais with Kraal to wait while they filed in—the Master of Law, the Master of Taxation, the Master of Learning, the Master of Healing, the doddering old Master of Diplomacy and a handful of others picked for their intelligence and experience.
They solemnly took their places in a circle around Elkin’s dais, while in the gallery above, ordinary griffiners came to watch the proceedings.
Once all were settled, Kraal screeched for silence, and Elkin could speak.
“My lords and ladies, griffins and griffiners,” she said, the echo in the chamber helping to carry her voice to every ear. “We are gathered here in council to discuss the need to appoint one of our number as Master of War, to be the general we will need in this time of war and danger.”
As she spoke, she watched the faces of the councillors, reading their expressions with practised ease. She could see their discomfort, mixed in many cases with doubt or suspicion. Few of them had even gone to watch Arenadd’s execution, and Elkin knew perfectly well that many of them had been openly sceptical about the story, and the need to appoint a Master of War and build up an army again. Well, she had no reason to try to persuade them just yet. They trusted her enough to do as she commanded without question.
“I have spoken to the candidates,” she continued, once the formalities were done, “and made a list of three who I believe would be best for the post. However, before I make my final decision I must consult the council.”
“Who are your candidates, my lady?” asked the Master of Law.
Elkin took the list from her sleeve. “The first is Lady Malla, currently your assistant and in command of the city guard. I feel that her experience in the arts of command would be invaluable. What is your opinion?”
Shrae, the Master of Law’s partner, spoke out. “I do not think that Malla would be a good Master of War.”
“Why is this so?” Kraal rumbled.
She lowered her head toward him. “Ratch, her griffin, is too weak.”
There was a stirring among the assembled griffins; calling another griffin weak was a deep insult.
Kraal showed no surprise or anger. “Why do you say this, Shrae?”
Shrae flicked her tail, dismissing the anger around her. “I have seen him. He has hidden it, but he is ill. I believe it is a problem in his lungs. Even if he recovers, he will not be able to use his magic again.”
“Can any other griffin confirm this?” said Kraal.
“My human can,” said Shrae.
Lady Lerran nodded. “Malla is my niece. I visited her recently, and her partner is indeed sick.”
Elkin frowned. She had liked the young Master of Guards. If her griffin was as ill as that—and Lerran would be unlikely to tell a lie that would stop her own relative from being given such an important post—then Malla would probably lose even her current position. A weak griffin was almost as bad as a dead one.
“Then we’ll move on to the next candidate,” she interrupted.
“Yes, my lady.”
Elkin consulted the piece of paper. “The next on the list is Lord Rhyl. He’s young but an accomplished swordsman, and Kael, his griffin, is very powerful in magic. Both of them have studied warfare and are keen to be appointed.”
There was a murmuring among the humans.
“What magic does Kael have?” a griffin asked.
“Her power is ice,” said Kraal. “I have spoken with her and witnessed it myself.”
“And how well does she control it?”
“She is well practised,” Kraal said.
Nobody tried to argue with that.
“I can vouch for Lord Rhyl,” said the Master of Learning. “I myself helped to provide him with books on battle strategy. He has been interested in the subject since he was a boy; he once told me his greatest dream was to lead an army into battle.”
Elkin smiled slightly. “Maybe we can make that dream come true. I’ll speak to him again, and tomorrow he will come before the council.”
“And who is the final candidate?” asked Lady Lerran.
Elkin consulted her notes again. “The final candidate is Lord Dallin . . .”
As she read out the details for the candidate, a sudden flurry of movement from the councillors’ seats made her look up. One of the griffins had made a quick half-turn, nearly upsetting the bench behind her, and an instant later Elkin saw why.
Lord Dahl, Master of Taxation, had collapsed, falling forward off his seat and onto the floor, where he was lying crumpled.
The Master of Healing was quick to react. She ran to her friend and turned him onto his side, shouting as the other councillors darted toward her, “Keep back! Give him room!”
Elkin stepped toward the edge of the dais while the healer checked Lord Dahl’s pulse and breathing. No-one else dared do anything.
Finally, the Master of Healing looked up. “He’s dead,” she said quietly.
In that instant, Dahl’s griffin lifted her head to the ceiling and screamed. Up in the gallery, the spectators began to shout and screech.
Elkin stepped off the dais. “Dead?” she exclaimed. “How?”
“I don’t know, my lady.”
There were shouts from behind, and Elkin turned sharply, in time to see the Master of Learning falter and then fall.
Lady Lerran stepped toward him. “He’s—” She stopped, her face suddenly pale. She gasped and groaned, turning toward Shrae for support before she, too, collapsed.
The Master of Healing ran to her and her colleague, but an instant later the verdict came back. “Dead! Both dead!”
Elkin felt herself go hot, and then cold. She stumbled back onto the dais, instinctively pressing herself against Kraal. “What’s happening?”
Kraal drew back, half-covering her with his wing. “I do not know.”
Screams came from the humans in the gallery, and everything seemed to slow. Elkin stood, paralysed, unable to do anything but watch as three more councillors toppled. Two more quickly followed, one as he was running for the door in a panic. In the space of less than thirty heartbeats, more than half of her council died before her eyes, without a sound or a warning.
Only the Master of Healing, still untouched, managed to keep her head. She checked the bodies, one by one. “Poison,” she said. “It’s got
to be poison. There’s not a mark on any of them.”
The surviving councillors had pulled away, hiding behind their griffins, keeping well back from the mourning griffins, some of whom began to attack each other in their fury and despair.
Kraal, seeing them, pushed Elkin aside and screeched. “Enough!”
When they paid no attention to him, he came down from the platform and ran at them, scattering them like a flock of chickens. Most fled; one or two actually tried to attack him, but all of them quickly gave up and flew away, through the portals in the roof.
In the silence that followed, Elkin stepped toward the cowering Master of Healing. “I don’t understand,” she said, trying to keep her voice calm. “How could it be poison?”
“It must be, my lady,” came the reply. “There’s no other explanation I can think of.”
“Is there a poison that works that quickly?”
The Master of Healing sat silent for a few moments, rubbing nervously at her nose while she thought.
Her griffin interrupted. “Viper’s Tears.”
The healer’s face lit up. “Yes! Yes, it has to be that.”
The name was unfamiliar to Elkin. “Viper’s Tears?”
“The fastest poison we know of, my lady,” said the healer. “It must be taken through the mouth. The victim dies moments after it takes effect, just the way we saw—no noise, no struggle. There’s almost nothing that kills as quietly as it does.”
Elkin blanched. “But who could have done this? And how?”
“I don’t know.”
Kraal returned to the dais, stiff legged and bristling, seeming twice as big as before in his rage. “Come,” he said harshly. “Elkin, come, now.”
She went to him. “Kraal, something terrible has happened. I have to—”
“You are in danger!” he said. “Elkin, do you not see what this means? Half of your council has been poisoned. The Eyrie has been infiltrated, and you will be a target. We must not stay here.”
Elkin nodded. “Yes, you’re right as always. Karmain, I want you to alert the Eyrie. Tell Lady Malla and the guards. Have every tower searched high and low, question everybody who’s come into contact with the food the councillors ate, and if there’s a way of testing for Viper’s Tears in food, use it.”
The healer nodded. “Understood.”
“Good. I am going back to my chamber. Send every piece of information you find to me as soon as you find it.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Elkin climbed onto Kraal’s back as quickly as she could, and held on as he flew up and out of the chamber. He went straight back to their home, but refused to let Elkin enter until he had gone in and smelt every inch of it, searching for any sign of an intruder. Elkin waited outside, on the balcony, shivering slightly in the wind, until he returned.
“It is safe. Come.”
They went to her room and from there into the audience chamber. Elkin, moving stiffly, went to the platform where she and her partner habitually sat. She slumped down on it, staring blankly into space.
Kraal did not sit. He paced back and forth, his claws clicking on the marble floor, his tail lashing violently and his wings twitching.
Elkin finally found her voice. “How?”
Kraal stopped. “I do not know,” he said softly.
“But . . . how?” she repeated, not really hearing him. In her head, she saw the councillors fall, again and again, caught up in an endless loop. Her control—the agents of her power—dying in front of her while she looked on, utterly helpless. “How? Who could have done this? How did they get at them? Was it one of the servants? Was someone working for him? How could it have happened so quickly—he only escaped a few weeks ago, and he couldn’t have even found his friends yet, and . . .”
Kraal resumed his pacing, his big muscles sliding and flexing under his skin, full of nearly tangible power, like a great coiled spring. “This is evil,” he said. “This is magic. Kraeai kran ae has done this; this smells of him.”
“But if he came back into the Eyrie, then someone must have seen him,” said Elkin. “I don’t understand. His face is too familiar. Someone would have recognised him, surely.”
“I do not know the powers of Kraeai kran ae,” said Kraal. “But the shadows are his friends.”
Elkin began to feel afraid—more than she had done in a very long time. “Oh gods. This is too much. It’s too soon. We’re not ready!” She covered her face with her hands. “Half the council is dead—all my best advisors and officials. And they died in public. Everyone saw it happen; they saw us stand there and watch it happen. They saw us fail.”
“Oh, but it gets worse.”
Elkin looked up sharply. “What?”
Kraal stood. “Who is that?” he demanded. “Who spoke? Show yourself!”
They heard a laugh. It came from nowhere, from out of the air. “I see you,” the voice whispered. “Do you see me?”
The giant griffin darted here and there, searching. Elkin, not daring to rise from her seat, turned this way and that, watching for the slightest sign of movement, but there was nothing. Nothing. Just an empty room.
“Where are you?” she called.
“I am the shadow that comes in the night,” the voice replied, from behind Kraal. He swung around sharply, but found himself biting at the empty air.
“I am the fear that lurks in your heart,” it said, this time right beside Elkin’s ear. She cried out and lurched upward and away from it, while Kraal ran to protect her, but there was nothing there.
“I am the man without a heart,” the voice called, this time from over by the door.
“Move this way,” Kraal rasped to Elkin. “Stay back, close to the wall. Do not move.”
There was another laugh, cold and sadistic. “I am the avatar of the Night God. I am the Dark Lord. I am the Master of Death.”
Kraal herded his human into a corner by a drape and stood in front of her, guarding her.
“I killed your council,” the voice taunted. “You couldn’t stop me, could you? And you can’t stop me now. How can you stop . . . what you can’t see?”
Kraal snarled and jerked toward the sound. “Show yourself! Come forth and fight! Coward!”
There was silence. The giant griffin began to tear at the drapes and the tapestries on the wall nearby, caught up in a frenzy. “Show yourself!” he bellowed.
In her corner, Elkin took a step toward him. “Kraal, please—”
He turned. “Elkin, I said—”
It all happened in less than a heartbeat. As Kraal moved toward her, angry and afraid, a pair of hands reached out of the shadow behind Elkin. Pale hands, clad in a pair of fingerless gloves. The fingers of one hand were long and elegant, and on the other they were twisted and maimed. Kraal opened his beak to shout a warning, but he was too late, too late. The hands seized Elkin by the shoulders and dragged her away, pulling her into the shadow.
Kraal charged, screeching, but there was nothing he could do. He tore through the drape and struck the wall on the other side. There was nothing there. Elkin had gone.
18
Evil Tactics
The Eyrie Mistress proved to be much lighter than Arenadd had expected, even in the shadows. He hastily stuffed a gag in her mouth and slung her over his shoulder before making his escape. He couldn’t afford to stay in the shadows for too long; he was already risking taking too much of Skandar’s magic as it was. Once he was well away from the audience chamber and the maddened griffin in it, he slid back into the world of the living, hiding in a storeroom. There he tied the gag more securely in place and put a bag over his prisoner’s head before tying her hands behind her back. She put up a struggle, but only a weak one, and once he had rested and made sure she was restrained he dived back into the shadows with her and ran on, unseen and unheard.
It was more difficult than he had expected, even invisible as he was. He had long since plotted his escape route, but there were people everywhere, and he cursed himself for no
t having waited until nightfall. But he had spent too much time hiding in the Eyrie already, and the more he used his powers to stay hidden, the more he risked hurting Skandar. If the griffin was too weak to fly once they were reunited, his plan would end in disaster for both of them.
Feeling strangely calm even in the face of that knowledge, he dodged his way through a knot of shadowy people, whose voices he could hear as he passed. They were high-pitched and frightened, and he caught the words “all dead!” He grinned wolfishly to himself. Even if he failed now and was caught, he would have plenty of time to escape while they found a new Master of Law to try him. The last one had come to regret sentencing him to death.
He found the window whose latch he had broken the previous night, checked to make sure nobody was watching, and slipped out through it and away into the city.
Once he was well away from the Eyrie, he left the shadows and rested in an alley, laying Elkin down beside him. She was making a muffled whimpering sound, and he felt a brief pang of sympathy for her. She couldn’t have any idea of what was happening to her. Still, she was safe enough for now. At the moment he should be more worried about himself.
Having caught his breath, he slung her over his other shoulder and left, this time darting from shadow to shadow to save magic. It worked fairly well, especially aided by the power of silent movement the Night God had given him. Even though his new boots were heavy things, they made no sound at all on the cobblestones. He walked like a cat.
The journey out of the city was a perilous one, as he’d expected, but easier than the one through the Eyrie. He moved from cover to cover, from alley to alley, avoiding people. However, he was unable to avoid every living creature he came across, and he became painfully aware of the effect his presence was having on them. Everywhere he went, horses reared and screamed, dogs howled and cats streaked away as fast as they could go. Even the pigeons and crows that lived on the city’s rooftops flurried up into the sky as if they had seen a kestrel coming for them. They know what I really am, Arenadd thought grimly. It’s getting stronger. Once it was only intelligent animals. Soon . . .
