The black gryphon

by Mercedes Lackey

  Then everything was normal again. The night sky returned, spangled with stars, but wreathed in the East with ever-expanding multi-colored rings of light, and a cool breeze brought the scents of crushed grass and dust.

  Normal-except all was gone.

  “No!” he cried out, one voice of fruitless denial among a multitude. “Nooooooo-“

  He started to fall to his knees-a terrible moaning burst from his chest, and tears etched their way down his face in long trails of pain. Urtho-Skan-

  Hands caught him and supported him; Winterhart. But another set of hands took his shoulders and shook them.

  “Dammit, man, no one can fall apart yet!” Vikteren snarled at him, tears of his own leaving trails down his dusty face. “We aren’t safe! Didn’t you feel what happened, back there? When the Tower went up, something more happened than even Urtho thought! Gods only know what’s going to happen now, we need to get under shields.”

  “But-“ he protested. “But-“

  “Just don’t fall apart on me. People are watching you! You can collapse after I get the shields organized.” Vikteren punctuated every word with another shake of his shoulders, and Amberdrake finally nodded weakly. Vikteren let him go, and he got a wavering grip on his emotions, turning his face into the serene mask of the kestra’chern, although deep within, pain was eating him alive.

  Vikteren turned away from him, and waved his arms frantically over his head. “Listen!” he shouted, over the keens, the weeping. “Everybody! This-the trap didn’t do what we thought, all right? We don’t know how much is left of Ma’ar’s forces, we don’t know how far away is safe, we don’t know who or how many of the rest survived. All we do know is that what happened was worse than we thought, and we have a couple of hours to get ready for it! It’s going to be a-we’ll have to call it a mage-storm, I guess. I can’t tell you how bad. Just listen, I need all the mages over here with me, no matter how drained you are, and the rest of you, start getting things tied down, like for a really bad storm, the worst you’ve ever seen!”

  Somehow the desperation in his words penetrated; hertasi carried the bad news to the rest of the camp, to those who had been too far away to hear him. Mages pushed their way through the crowd to reach his side; the others stopped milling and started acting in a purposeful manner, glancing at the slowly-expanding rings of light with a new respect and no little fear.

  Winterhart went looking for her gryphons; her first duty was to them. Amberdrake let her go, then stumbled through the darkness to the small floating barge that held his own belongings.

  But once there-it all left him. There was nothing left in him but the dull ache of grief. He couldn’t even bring himself to care what might happen next.

  He sat down on the side of the barge, and his hand fell on the feather he still had tied to his belt. Zhaneel’s feather.

  How would he tell her? She still didn’t know___

  There’s nothing left, nothing left for any of us.

  He didn’t even hear them come up beside him, he was so lost in despair so dark that not even tears served to relieve it. One moment he was alone; the next, Zhaneel sat beside him, and Winterhart took a place next to him on the edge of the barge.

  “When he did not follow, I guessed,” Zhaneel said, her voice no more than a whisper, and although he had not thought that his grief could grow any greater, it threatened to swallow him now.

  The tears choked his breath and stole his sight, and left him nothing.

  :Nothing?: said a voice in his mind, as a hand closed over his.

  “Nothing?” said Zhaneel aloud. “Are we nothing?”

  And Amberdrake sensed the two of them joining, reaching into his heart to Heal it, reaching to bring him out of the darkness. The gryfalcon touched one talon to the feather he still held.

  “Will you not redeem this now, my friend, my brother?” she asked softly. “We need each other so much.”

  “And the rest of them need you,” Winterhart added. “I’ve heard you used to ask, ‘who Heals the Healer’-and we have at least one answer for you.”

  “Those he Healed,” Zhaneel said. “Giving back what he gave.”

  Blindly, he reached for them; they reached back as he held tightly to feathered shoulder and human and shook with sobs that finally brought some release.

  The first flood of tears was over, for the moment at least, when he heard someone snouting his name.

  “Amberdrake!” It sounded like Vikteren. “Amberdrake! The Gate! It’s opening again!”

  The what? He stumbled to his feet, and ran back to the site of the old Gate-terminus, a roughly-made arch of stone. Sure enough, there was a shimmer of energy there, energy that fluxed and crackled and made him a little sick to look at.

  “What is it?” he asked, as Vikteren ran across the clearing to him.

  “I don’t know-can’t be Ma’ar-“ The energy inside the Gate surged again. “Whatever it is, whoever, it’s been affected by the mage-blast.” He turned hopeful eyes on Amberdrake. “You don’t suppose it’s Skan, do you?”

  Amberdrake only shook his head numbly, heart in mouth. The energies built a third time; the mouth of the Gate turned a blinding white-

  And Kechara tumbled through, squalling with fear. Winterhart and Zhaneel both cried out and ran to her to comfort her, but before they could reach her side, the Gate flared whitely a second time, and Aubri leapt across the threshold, smelling of burned fur and feathers, to land in an exhausted heap.

  “Skan!” the broadwing screeched, turning his head blindly back toward the Gate. “Skan! He’s still in there!”

  The Gate fluxed-and collapsed in on itself, slowly, taking the stones of the arch with it. The entire structure began to fall as if in a dream.

  “No!” Vikteren screamed.

  Amberdrake was not certain what the young mage thought he was doing; he was only supposed to be of Master rank, and Amberdrake had always been told that only Adepts could build Gates. But Vikteren reached out his hands, in a clutching, clawlike motion, and Amberdrake felt the energies pouring from him into the collapsing Gate, seizing it-and somehow, holding it steady!

  Amberdrake sensed Vikteren faltering, and added his own heart’s strength to the young mage’s-

  and felt Winterhart join him, and Zhaneel-

  The Gate flared a third and final time, but this time it was so bright that Amberdrake cried out in pain, blinded.

  Vikteren cried out too, but in triumph.

  Amberdrake’s vision cleared after much blinking and eye-rubbing, and lying before them was Skandranon-shocked senseless, and no longer as he-was. The elegant black form they had known was thinner and bleached to snow-white, but it was unmistakably Skandranon.

  The Gate and Vikteren collapsed together.

  Then there was no time to think of anything, as the Eastern horizon erupted with fire-again. And for some reason Amberdrake could not understand, he could feel the death, far away, of the Mage of Silence, content that his people, including those he loved most, were safe at last.

  They had just enough time-barely-to establish their shields before the double mage-storm hit. The worst effects lasted from before dawn to sunset. But their preparations held, and they all emerged from shelter to find a blood-red sun sinking over a deceptively normal landscape.

  Normal-until you noticed the places where trees had been flattened; where strange little energy-fields danced over warped and twisted cairns of half-melted rocks. Normal-until night fell, and did not bring darkness, but an odd half-light, full of wisps of glowing fog and dancing balls of luminescence.

  “We can’t stay here,” Winterhart said wearily as she returned to Amberdrake’s hastily-pitched tent. It was the only one big enough to hold four gryphons-Skan and Aubri, and Zhaneel and Kechara, the former two because of their injuries, and the latter because they would not leave Skan’s moon-white form.

  “I’d assumed that. We’ll have to pack up and move West, I suppose.” He looked up at her and smiled, then tur
ned his watchful gaze back down to the slumbering Skandranon. “I don’t mind, if you don’t.”

  “Well, I wish we knew how many of the others survived,” she sighed. “But the mages can’t get anything through this-whatever it is. Magical noise and smoke. No scrying, no mage-messages, and we don’t want to risk the poor little messenger-birds. The tervardi don’t want to scout, the kyree are as scared as we are, the hertasi are traumatized, and the gryphons don’t trust the winds. We’ll have to go West and assume any others are doing whatever they have to.”

  “So we’re back to ordinary, human senses.” He reached out for her, caught her hand, and drew her down beside him. “Not so bad, when you come to think about it.”

  “I have no complaints.” She leaned her head on his shoulder, and stroked one ice-white wing-feather of the still-shocky Skandranon. “Except one.”

  “Oh?” he replied. She probably wishes we could stay here long enough to rest-but at least we know there won’t be anyone following us-

  “This-“ she pointed to Skandranon, curled around Zhaneel like a carving of the purest alabaster, “-is going to make him twice as vain as he was!”

  “Of course it will,” came a sleepy rumble. A pale, sky-blue eye opened and winked slyly. “And deservedly so.”

  Amberdrake smiled and held his beloved. No matter what tears were shed or what trials were faced, some things would stay the same. There would always be day and night, stars and sky, hope and rest. There would always be love, always compassion, and there would always be Skandranon. And forever, in the hearts of all the Clans, there would be Urtho-and for his memory, a moment of silence.