The Dark Griffin

by K J Taylor

  Arren backed away into the hatchery as they came through the doors, but neither of them so much as glanced at him.

  Erian put his hand on Senneck’s shoulder and looked at Arren. “Tell Lord Roland what happened. I am going to find my father. I mean”—he glanced at Senneck—“we are going to find my father.”

  Arren couldn’t bear to look him in the face. “I will.” Erian took his hand away from Senneck and came toward him, moving slowly. There was an odd expression on his face; it made him look slightly mad. “That’s Lord Erian, blackrobe,” he sneered, and shoved him in the chest. Arren fell over backward, hitting the wall of the pen behind him. His collar struck the wood, driving the spikes deep into his neck, and he yelped.

  Erian returned to Senneck’s side and the two of them left without looking back, but as they passed through the doors and into the sunlight a word drifted back toward him: “. . . blackrobe . . .”

  For a long time, Arren did not move. His neck was aching savagely, as if a griffin’s talons were embedded in the flesh. He got up slowly, cringing and clutching at the collar. Once he had got his balance, he glanced upward. The sun was going down, and the light through the windows was tinted with orange. It was time for him to go home.

  Arren looked into the pen behind him. The chick that occupied it stared back. It was a red griffin with orange eyes. “Food?” it said.

  He never quite knew how it happened. Moving slowly and deliberately, his hand rose and took hold of the bolt on the gate. He watched with fascination as his fingers wrapped around it, gripped and pulled. The bolt came out with a soft thunk, and he pushed the gate open and stepped into the pen. The red chick came toward him, cheeping. “Food! Food!”

  Arren knelt in front of it. “Will you help me?” he whispered in griffish.

  The chick stopped and peered at him. “Arren?”

  “Yes,” said Arren. “Yes, that’s me. Will you help me, little one?”

  “Help?”

  Arren reached out toward the chick, and his hands closed around its body, pinning its wings to its sides. Instantly, it stabbed its beak into the back of his hand.

  He didn’t even feel it. He straightened up, holding it tightly, and backed out of the pen. There, he stopped and looked quickly around. There was no-one there. Just the chicks, chirping in their pens.

  The red chick started to struggle, squawking in protest. Arren tucked it under his arm and clamped its beak shut with his hand. He found his cloak hanging by the door where he’d left it and draped it over himself, hiding his wriggling burden from view. Then, watching all the while for the slightest sign of another person, he turned and stole away into the gathering night.

  18

  A Thief in the Night

  Even as he reached the edge of the goat pens and entered the market district, Arren heard the sound that came from the hatchery. A high, piercing shriek rose over the rooftops of the city, followed by another and then others, louder and louder. The adult griffins had noticed the missing hatchling.

  Terror gripped him and he broke and ran, not even noticing the collar dragging at his neck. The chick struggled, its claws digging into him, but he kept hold of it and ducked into an alley. There was a stack of old barrels there; he huddled down behind them and lifted his cloak away from the chick. It immediately tried to pull free, but he took off his cloak and wrapped it up tightly in the coarse fabric, pinning its legs and wings. The chick screeched in protest, and he grabbed it by the beak. “Quiet!”

  The chick looked up at him, and Arren suddenly realised it was trembling with fear. He stroked its head. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. I’m your friend.”

  There was a screech from overhead. Arren looked up sharply, and his face twisted with dread. Griffins. Dozens of them, flying over the market district and screeching. The sky was darkened, but he could see their black shapes moving over it, wings beating, tails held out rigidly behind them as they called. They were hunting for him.

  The chick heard them and started to struggle even harder, letting out muffled cries. Arren stood up and tucked it under his arm, covering its head with his cloak and holding its beak shut with one hand. The screeches were getting louder, and he ran. He left the alley and sprinted down the street, turned left through another alley and ran on. The griffins were circling overhead, flying so low he could hear the sound of their beating wings.

  People were gathering in the streets, staring and pointing at the sky. He did his best to avoid them, but when he turned a corner into a crossroads he found it packed with people. There was no other way through. He ran forward, shoving past them. Some of them shoved him back, but most of them were too distracted to pay much attention to him. He got through the crowd and ran on. As he went, he heard someone shout after him, “Hey, why is he wearing a—”

  Arren did not stop. He left the words behind and fled straight toward his home.

  “We’re going,” he muttered as he ran, diving into a side street to avoid a low-flying griffin. “We’re going to leave the city. We’ll hide until they’re gone, and then we’ll—”

  He stopped dead. Up ahead was the block where he lived. Griffins were circling above it, but they were not the only thing in the sky.

  There was a column of smoke rising from the rooftops.

  People were running ahead of him, shouting in panic, and Arren ran after them, his heart pounding so hard he thought it would burst. His street was clogged with people, but he ploughed his way through until he reached the centre of them all. They were standing well back from the source of the smoke, all talking at once, and some were already turning to run away.

  Arren broke through the crowd, but he already knew what he would see.

  The door and both of the front windows had been broken open, and flames were billowing out. The thatch had already caught and, even as he watched, his house turned into a fiery inferno.

  Arren couldn’t move. He stood rooted to the spot, frozen in horror.

  Behind him, he could hear people yelling. “Get water!” “Wet next door’s roof, for gods’ sakes, before it catches!” “Someone run and warn the—”

  Too late, Arren realised the danger. The burning house was a beacon. The griffins started to gather, and the crowd looked up and began to back away. Several griffins came down to land, scattering them in fright. Arren ran. A griffin swooped down directly in front of him, so he turned and ran back toward the burning house. The heat hit him in the face and he stopped and turned back, looking desperately for somewhere else to flee. He could feel the chick fighting even more fiercely to get away. He glanced down. It had shredded the cloth over its head, and now it freed one front talon and ripped his hand away. The instant it could, it opened its beak and called out to the other griffins.

  The crowd had fled, and now the street was virtually deserted. And the griffins began to land. More and more of them, their talons thudding down onto the wooden street. And Arren had nowhere to run. They were advancing on him, hissing and snarling.

  He held up a hand. “No! You don’t understand—”

  The chick freed its paws and wrenched itself out from beneath his arm. He made a grab for it, and in an instant it twisted around and struck him in the face, just under his right eye. Its beak ripped downward, tearing a deep gash from his eye to his mouth. Arren screamed and dropped the chick, and it ran away from him, toward the nearest of the adult griffins, taking shelter behind its foreleg.

  The griffin lowered her head and stalked toward him. “Thief!” she snarled.

  Blood was running down Arren’s face like tears. “No! I didn’t mean—”

  The griffin leapt. An instant before she struck him, a dark figure darted in and shoved Arren out of the way. He landed in a tangled heap, and as he pulled himself upright he saw his rescuer draw a sword and point it at the enraged griffin. She made a rush at him, but veered away at the last minute, intimidated by the sword. Guards were coming, dodging around the edge of the flock to surround Arren, protecti
ng him with their swords.

  The griffins backed away, hissing, and the man who had led the charge pushed through his colleagues and pulled Arren to his feet.

  “Bran!”

  Bran said nothing. He grabbed Arren by the arm and snapped a pair of manacles on his wrists.

  Arren stared dumbly at them. “Bran, no—”

  Bran turned away and nodded to two of his colleagues. “Get him out of here.”

  They came forward and took Arren by the shoulders. “To the prison district, sir?”

  “No. The Eyrie.”

  Arren did not try to resist. He walked silently between the guards as they led him away. A group of them went ahead, swords drawn, fending off the griffins that were still trying to get at him. Some of them had taken to the air and were trying to swoop down on him, and the guards suddenly broke into a run. They hustled Arren away from the flock and into the nearest building, and there sat him down on a table.

  “We wait here until someone comes and gets them to calm down,” said a voice from the doorway. “Keep an eye out. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started breaking the roof.”

  It was Bran, grim-faced and wearing his uniform. Arren tried to get up and go to him, but the guards pulled him back. “Bran, please!”

  There was no recognition in Bran’s face. He looked at Arren for only a moment, then went to the door and peered out. “They’re here now. They’ll get it under control.”

  “Bran, I didn’t do anything!” Arren shouted. “Someone set my house on fire, don’t you see, they’re trying to—aah!”

  One of the guards had struck the side of the slave collar, making pain explode in his neck.

  Bran turned to look at Arren, and the hard look on his face faded. “Arren, how could yeh?”

  “Bran, it’s them, they’re trying to kill me! You’ve got to—” He broke off, crying out as the guard hit him again, this time striking his torn face.

  “Stop it,” Bran snapped. “Someone get him a cloth.”

  One of the guards by the door fished a bandage out of his pocket and gave it to Arren. “Here. Cover it up with this.”

  It was too short to wrap around his head, so he folded it and held it over the wound, keeping his arm up with difficulty under the weight of the manacles. “Bran, please, you’ve got to help me,” he said.

  This time Bran ignored him. He stood in the doorway, watching the scene outside. Arren could hear screeching mingled with commanding shouts. Griffiners had arrived to break up the flock.

  They waited in tense silence until Bran turned around. “All right, it looks like it’s been sorted out. Let’s get goin’.”

  Arren was pulled to his feet and the guards set out, taking him with them. They left the building and marched through several blocks and onto the main street, heading straight for the Eyrie. As Arren walked, the manacles and the collar weighing him down, blood soaking into the bandage on his face, he could see people crowding around to watch him pass, all staring at him with expressions of horror and amazement.

  Quite suddenly, a wild urge came over him to break free of the guards and run at them. He wanted to hit them, hurt them, scream at them, make them feel some tiny part of the agony inside him. He wanted to burn their houses and take their belongings, clamp slave collars around their necks and twist them until they screamed. He wanted to kill them.

  He made no move, but his wounded face twisted with hate.

  A shadow passed over him. Griffins, these ones with riders, had come and were following from above. Others brought up the rear and more went ahead. They were guarding him, still wary of the unpartnered griffins from the hatchery, some of which had decided to follow the column. But none of them tried to attack, and most were leaving. They were satisfied that he had been caught and would not escape.

  The group reached the Eyrie, and Arren was taken inside and down into an old part of the building, a part dug into the rock of the mountain itself. There were storerooms down here and rooms where slaves had once slept. And there was a dungeon. It wasn’t very large, and the cells were small and dank. The guards took Arren to one of them and threw him inside. He landed hard on the floor, crying out as his collar struck the stone; the door slammed behind him, leaving him in utter darkness.

  His eyes adjusted after a while, and he could see faint light filtering in under the door, but it only just allowed him to see the walls of the cell. The floor was damp and filthy, and there was water dripping from the roof. There was no food or water and no furniture except a jar meant to serve as a toilet.

  Arren groped his way to the corner and sat down, shivering in the cold. He couldn’t see anything or hear anything except the dripping water and the faint sound of the guards moving on the other side of the door. His cheek was throbbing and so was his neck.

  After a while the cold seeped into the collar and the manacles as well, until they felt like ice pressed against his skin. He rubbed his hands together, trying to keep them warm, but it didn’t do much good. Water had soaked into his clothes, which stuck to his skin, cold and clinging.

  As he sat there, blind and trembling, a strange thought occurred to him. Now I know what it was like for them. Now I know.

  It was impossible to track time in the cell. He slept fitfully and woke up hungry and thirsty. When he went to the door and called to the guards, asking for food and drink, no-one answered. In the end he resorted to sucking the water out of his tunic. It tasted of dirt and blood, but he drank it anyway, glad to have something to take away the stickiness in his mouth.

  He was too cold and anxious to sit down again, so he started to pace back and forth in the dark, his chains rattling. All he had to do was wait. They would take him out of here eventually. They had to. They’d take him out of this place, and then—

  The door opened and light flooded in. It was so bright it hurt his eyes, and he backed away, raising his arm to cover his face. He heard footsteps as someone entered the cell, and a voice said, “All right, time to go. Hold out your hands. No funny business.”

  Arren stood with his back to the wall and held his arms out, closing his eyes to blot out the light. The guards took him by the elbows and shoved him toward the door, and he went meekly enough. There was no point in fighting back.

  “Where are we going?” he asked as they took him back out along the corridor.

  One of the guards struck the collar. “To the council chamber.”

  Arren cringed. “Why?”

  “Well, I’d have expected them to just throw you in the Arena and be done with it, but Lord Rannagon insisted you get a fair trial,” said the guard. “Move it.”

  They climbed a flight of stairs that led to the upper levels of the Eyrie and thence to the doors leading into the council chamber. There were guards there, clad in ceremonial armour. They opened the doors immediately and Arren was taken through and into—

  His heart seemed to pause in its beating.

  They were all there.

  The councillors’ seats were all occupied. The gallery was full of people and griffins sitting together, the humans finely clad and the griffins adorned with their own kind of formal outfit: forelegs decorated with bands of gold, silver and copper, some decorated with jewels, and their heads crowned by plumes and tassels. The place was brightly lit by fine glass lanterns, and light also filtered in from the windows in the roof. But the banners had been taken down and there was a formality, even a coldness, to the room.

  In the centre of the floor a kind of wooden pen had been set up, about chest height and open at the back. The guards led Arren toward it.

  The pen was facing Riona’s seat, but Riona was not sitting there. Rannagon was. He stood up as Arren entered the chamber, and watched as the guards made their prisoner stand inside the pen, facing him. His wife, Kaelyn, was by his side, and their griffins flanked the pair, staring balefully at Arren.

  Arren stood in the pen, holding on to the front of it, and stared around at the chamber, scarcely able to believe what he was se
eing. Surely every griffiner in the city was there, and every griffin as well. He recognised dozens of faces. Roland was there, and Flell, watching from a seat in the gallery just behind her father, and Deanne, and Tamran. People he had known. Some he had been trained alongside; some he had just spoken to briefly on official occasions. Even Vander was there, with Ymazu, his dark eyes watchful.

  The moment Arren entered the chamber, the mutterings started. Human and griffish voices filled the air, low and ominous, and there were a few shouts, though he couldn’t catch the words.

  He stood in the dock, his eyes on Rannagon, and terror paralysed him. The guards silently took up station on either side of him, and then Rannagon stepped forward and raised a hand for silence.

  Almost instantly, the chattering stopped.

  Rannagon said nothing. He was wearing a tunic made from yellow velvet trimmed with blue and silver, and there were red lines painted on his forehead, the ancient signs of justice and authority. His sword was strapped to his back, its hilt gleaming.

  For a moment, the Master of Law regarded Arren, his expression not hostile but a little sad. And then, at last, he began to speak.

  “Arenadd Taranisäii,” he said, his voice echoing in the huge space, “also known as Arren Cardockson, of Idun, you have been accused of abducting a griffin chick. You have been brought before me, in the company of your fellow griffiners, for the chance to defend yourself and perhaps win your freedom. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  Arren looked at him and then at the gallery. They were all watching. Waiting. “I . . .”

  “Go ahead,” said Rannagon. “It’s your right.”

  “I didn’t do it,” said Arren. “I didn’t steal the chick. It chose me.”

  There was a muttering from the gallery.

  “Indeed?” said Rannagon. “Then why did you run away? And why did you restrain it? And why did a dozen witnesses see it break free and tear your face?”

  “It was frightened,” Arren replied. “The fire scared it, and it panicked. Hasn’t your griffin ever bitten you, my lord?”