The black gryphon

by Mercedes Lackey

  Not in this lifetime, anyway.

  Aubri was a lot clearer on what had happened to him, and kept his explanation down to a terse couple of sentences. He only wanted to know one thing.

  “Urtho?” he asked, with a sideways glance to see if Kechara was listening.

  Skan closed his eyes, letting his grief show for just the briefest of moments, and shook his head.

  Aubri’s beak clamped shut, and when Skan opened his own eyes, the broadwing’s eyes were blazing as red with madness as any goshawk’s.

  “I got Conn Levas,” Skan said, around the lump of rage and grief in his own throat. “This will take care of Ma’ar. If we can get it to him.” He tilted his head to one side. “I have to admit-I was told that I’d have a count of a hundred to get away, and then this thing will make Jerlag look like a campfire.” He shook his head. “If you can think of any way you can get yourself and Kechara out of range. . . .”

  Aubri’s pupils dilated, and he produced a harsh bark of a laugh. “On clipped wings? I don’t think so. Besides, all I ever asked was to go down fighting. I’m sorry about the little one, but this is going to be clean, right?”

  He nodded. “As clean as fire. And I can still send you both into the Light if all seems hopeless.”

  As you’ve done too many times before-Urtho, why must we feel these burdens? Why?

  “Well,” Aubri rumbled. “You need me. Bet we can even find a way Kechara’ll be useful. And if it gets Ma’ar-“ Aubri’s savage grin and the scrape of his talons on the stone told the rest. “And-ah, demonsblood, Skan, you always were the luckiest son of a vulture I ever saw. Your luck, you’ll find a way out for us. I’ll take my chances with you.”

  Skan let out the breath he had been holding in. “Well,” he said lightly. “That was the hard part. Now the easy part.”

  “Which is?” Aubri asked as Kechara gave a breathy squeal of glee and pounced on something. She stuffed it in her mouth and looked up innocently, the tail of a rat hanging out of one corner of her beak for a heartbeat, before she swallowed and it vanished.

  Skan looked cautiously around the corner; the doors to the stable stood open wide, and the apparently-deserted stable-yard stretched between them and the Palace kitchens. “Oh, it’s nothing much,” he replied, offhandedly. “Just getting into the Palace and the throne room.”

  The last Tower door had been opened; there were still books and devices here Urtho wished he could save, but the vital things had been carried off. He had persuaded Vikteren and the rest to leave. Now there was only the small matter of hanging on, living every possible second, for every second meant more time to ensure that all of his people who could, would reach safety.

  The Tower echoed with the whisper of air through doors long locked, and the occasional thud of something falling, echoing through stone corridors suddenly more empty than imagination could bear. In all of his life, Urtho had never felt so alone.

  He had never expected to die alone, much less like this. At least the mages and Healers had taken all the pain, blocked the hallucinations and the convulsions, and left him only with growing weakness.

  He was so tired, so very, very tired. . . .

  No! He had to fight it, to stay conscious, awake! Every heartbeat was vital!

  All we have done, and all I have learned, and I cannot slow the progress of my own death by even a candlemark.

  He had never thought much about revenge, but now he burned with longing for it. Revenge-no, I want to protect my people, my children! And when the Tower goes, I want it to be something more than the end, I want it to mean something, to accomplish some purpose! He had always hoped, if it came to that, he would be able to lure Ma’ar, or at least some chief mages of Ma’ar’s, into the Tower-turned-trap. He’d planned for that, all along; a desperate gambit that, if nothing else, would keep Ma’ar so busy cleaning up the damage that his children and his people would be able to get far beyond Ma’ar’s reach or ability to find.

  Now, when he died, the Tower would die in an expanding ring of sound and light, and it would be no more than the most impressive funeral pyre the world had ever seen-

  wait a moment.

  Something stirred under the morass the poison had made of his mind. An idea, and a hope. Ma’ar cannot know that Conn Levas succeeded. What would happen if I challenged him?

  There was a permanent Gate, a small one, big enough only for one human at a time, not more than a room away. It would take no effort at all to open it. A moment of clear thought, and it could be set for the Palace, the Throne Room. Urtho had used it to step directly from his own audience chamber into the King’s-an impressive bit of nonsense that never failed to leave foreigners gaping and a little frightened. That was how he had gotten to the Palace the night that Cinnabar had summoned him; he had opened a larger Gate elsewhere for Skan. He hadn’t been certain what the effect of trying to squeeze through a too-small Gate might be, and that had not been the moment to find out.

  The odds are good that he’ll be in the Throne Room, waiting to hear from his army. What if I opened that Gate and challenged him to come over? A fierce and feral joy flooded him, and for the first time he understood how his gryphons felt at the kill. I open the Gate; he can’t fight me through the Gate, he has to come over. I close it. He can’t reopen it while I keep him busy, and by the time he gets his own Gate up, I’m dead. And so is he. If I were alive, I would never consider it-but I am dead already.

  That terrible joy gave him the strength to rise to his feet, stagger into the next room, and take his place on his own, modest version of a throne. Hardly a throne at all, really, just a large, comfortable chair, raised off the floor on a platform about half a stair-step high. He had never seen any reason to build a dazzling audience chamber; everything in the small room was made of old, time-mellowed wood. On the few occasions that he had needed to impress someone, he’d transformed the whole place with illusions. Much cheaper, and much easier to clean.

  He gasped with effort as he stumbled up onto the platform and lowered himself down into his throne. The exertion left him dizzy and disoriented for a moment; he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, there was a faint haze of rainbow around everything.

  The hallucinations, or what’s left of them. I don’t have much time. If this doesn’t work-at least I tried. And Skan can make his own try, someday. That in itself comforted him, a little. Skan would get to safety, plot and plan with the sharpest minds of the Kaled’a’in, and make his own attempt. Ma’ar had not, and would not, win. Not while there was a single gryphon or Kaled’a’in left to oppose him.

  He stared fixedly at the ornamental arch across the room from him, an arch built right into the wall, that seemed only to frame a shallow, purposeless nook. He wrapped his mind and his fading powers around the mage-energies woven into wood and stone beneath, and twisted.

  Within the frame of the arch, the blank wall writhed, then turned into a swirling haze of colors, like oil on water, for just the barest instant.

  Then the colors darkened, steadied-and Urtho looked across the leagues into the Throne Room of the Palace of High King Leodhan, a massive room constructed of six different kinds and colors of the rarest marbles, a place that seemed vast even when it was packed full of courtiers. Now it held only one man, but that man had presence enough to fill it.

  Ma’ar stared fixedly at the Gate that had suddenly opened up in his Throne Room, a Gate he clearly had no notion ever existed. He had not been born a handsome man, but over the years he had sculpted his body into the image of a young god. His square-jawed face, with precisely chiseled cheekbones and sensuous mouth, framed with a mane of hair of dark copper, topped a body that would be the envy of any warrior in his ranks. All that remained of the old Ma’ar were the eyes; small, shrewd, and of an odd yellow-green.

  “Kiyamvir Ma’ar,” Urtho said genially. “It has been a very long time.”

  Ma’ar recovered his poise much more quickly than Urtho would have credited him for. “Urtho.�
�� He leaned back in his throne, a real throne, much more impressive than the alabaster bench the King had used. This one might not be solid gold, but it certainly looked as though it was, and the single red-black ruby over Ma’ar’s head, carved in the shape of the head of a snarling cat, was twice the size of the largest such stone Urtho had ever seen. “Have you called on me to offer your surrender?”

  Urtho smiled, gently. “Not at all,” he countered. “I recall that you used to enjoy a gamble. I am offering you just that.”

  Ma’ar barked his laughter. “You? And what have you to offer me that I cannot take?”

  Urtho waved, a gesture that made him dizzy again. “Why, this. I’m sure you realize that I’ve had as much carried away as I could-but I am sure you also realize that there is far more than could ever be carried away. I’m sure you also realize that what I did at Jerlag, I can do here.”

  Ma’ar’s face darkened, and his lips formed a soundless snarl.

  “However-“ Urtho held up a finger to forestall any reply. “I’m proposing a challenge. The prize-the Tower and everything that’s left. If you kill me, I obviously cannot trigger the destructive spells.” And let’s hope he hasn’t figured out, as Conn Levas did, that it isn’t a spell that does the destruction, it’s the lack of one. “You have the Tower and everything you want. If, on the other hand, I kill you-well, I suspect that your underlings will immediately begin fighting among themselves, and leave me and mine alone. The bickering is inevitable, and I will have protected my own.”

  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 ov
er 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.