Mercedes Lackey and Larry Dixon - Mage Wars 03 - The Silver Gryphon.txt

by The Silver Gryphon [lit]

  Her grin widened. “Makes me wonder if the reason she’s keeping the pack

  here has less to do with the fact that we killed one of her pups, than it does

  with her infatuation with you. Or rather, with your magnificent . . . physique.”

  Her eyes twinkled wickedly.

  Whether or not she realizes it, she’s definitely recovering. But I wonder if I

  ought to break something else, just for the sake of a little peace?

  He coughed. “I think not,” he replied, flushing further with embarrassment.

  “Oh, no?” But Blade let it drop; this was hardly the time and place to skewer

  him with further wit, although when they got out of this, he had the feeling that

  she would not have forgotten this incident or her own implications. “You

  know,” she continued, “if we had even a chance of picking her off, the pack

  might lose its cohesiveness. At the very least, they’d be spending as much

  time squabbling over the leadership position as stalking us.”

  He scratched the side of his head thoughtfully. She had a good point. “We

  have to be able to see them to pick one particular wyrsa,” he pointed out.

  “And traps and rockfalls are likely to get the least experienced, not the most.

  But it does account for why they’re being so persistent and tenacious.”

  “Uh-huh. We got one of her babies, probably.” Blade sank down on the

  stone floor of the cave, and watched the underbrush across the river. He

  turned his attention in that direction himself, and was rewarded by the slight

  movement of a bit of brush. Since there wasn’t a breeze at the moment, he

  concentrated on that spot, and was able to make out a flash of dark, shiny

  hide before the creature moved again.

  “Interesting.” Blade chewed on a nail, and regarded the brush with

  narrowed eyes. “I don’t think we’re going to see them out in the open again.

  They learn quickly.”

  That quickly? That was impressive; but he called to mind what Aubri had

  told him about the pack’s collective intelligence. If there were many more than

  just the knot that he’d seen, it would mean that as a group, the pack might be

  as smart as a makaar, and that was pretty smart.

  Regardless of what Father claims.

  The bushes moved again, and he caught another glimpse of slick black

  hide. A cross of greyhound and snake . . . I can’t imagine anything more

  bizarre. But then, Blade would tell me that my imagination isn’t very good. 1

  wonder what kind of vision they get out of those strange eyes? Can they see

  in the dark? Could that white film be a screen they pull across their eyes to

  protect them from daylight? Can they actually “see” magic? Or scent it?

  “I wonder what we look like to them,” he said, musing aloud. Blade shot him

  a sharp glance.

  “I suppose I looked fairly harmless until I whipped out my sling,” she

  replied. “But I suspect that you look like a movable feast. After all, you are

  burdened with a magical nature, and it might be rather obvious to them.”

  “You mean—they might be more interested in me than you as prey?” he

  choked. She nodded.

  “Probably as someone they’d want to keep alive a while, so they could

  continue to feed on your magic as it rebuilt. They’re probably bright enough

  for that.”

  He hadn’t thought about that.

  It did not make him feel any better.

  Amberdrake stood beside the leader of their party and wrung more water

  out of a braid of hair. He waited for the fellow to say something enlightening.

  Fog wreathed around them both, and shrouded everything more than a few

  paces away in impenetrable whiteness.

  “I wish I knew what was going on here,” Regin muttered, staring at the pair

  of soggy decoys wedged up in the fork of a tree. “There’s no trail from the

  camp, which looks as if the Silvers were trying to conceal their backtrail. But

  there isn’t a sign of anything hunting them, either. And now—we find this.”

  The ground beneath the tree was torn up, as was the bark of the lower

  trunk; but there was no blood. There was a deadfall rigged of wood that had

  been tripped, but there was no sign that anything had been caught in it. They

  might have passed the site by, thinking that it was just a place where some

  large forest creature had been marking his territory.

  Except that there was a human-shaped decoy and a gryphon-shaped

  decoy wedged high in a tree.

  That isn‘t very enlightening.

  “They might have run into some sort of large predator,” Drake pointed out.

  “Just because we didn’t see any sign of a hunter, that doesn’t mean they

  weren’t being trailed. That would account for why they tried not to leave a trail.

  Maybe that’s even the reason why they left their camp in the first place.”

  This was the first sign of the children that any of them had come across in

  their trek toward the river. Amberdrake took it as a good omen; it certainly

  showed that the duo had gotten this far, so their own party was certainly on

  the right track. And it showed that they were in good enough health to rig

  something like” this.

  “Maybe. But why decoys?” Regin paced carefully around the trunk of the

  tree, examining it on all sides. “Most forest predators hunt with their noses,

  and even in this rain, the trail from here to wherever they did spend the night

  would be fresh enough to follow. I wonder what we can learn from this.”

  “I don’t know; I’m not a hunter,” Amberdrake admitted, and let it go at that.

  Skan didn’t, however. “Whatever tore this place up is an animal—or at

  least, it doesn’t use weapons or tools,” he pointed out. “It might just be that

  the—that Blade and Tad wandered into its territory, and they built the decoys

  to keep it occupied while they went on their way.”

  “Maybe.” Regin shook his head. “Whatever it was, I don’t recognize the

  marks, but that doesn’t surprise me. I haven’t recognized much in this

  benighted forest since we got into it. And I’m beginning to wonder how

  anything survives here without gills.”

  With that, he shrugged, heading off into the forest in the direction of the

  river. Amberdrake followed him, but Skan lingered a moment before hurrying

  to catch up lest he get left behind and lost in the fog.

  “I don’t like it,” he muttered fretfully as he reached Drake’s side. “I just don’t

  like it. It didn’t look right back there, but I can’t put my finger on why.”

  “I don’t know enough about hunting animals to be of any help,” Drake

  replied bluntly. He kept telling himself that the children were—must be—still

  fine. That no matter how impressive the signs these unknown creatures had

  left were, the children had obviously escaped their jaws. “All I know is that

  whatever made those marks must be the size of a horse, and if I were being

  chased by something that size, I probably wouldn’t be on the ground at night.

  Maybe they put the decoys up one tree and then climbed over to another to

  spend the night.”

  Unless, of course, they’re too hurt to climb trees. But in that case, how did

  the decoys get up in one?

  “Illusion!” Skan said suddenly
, his head coming up with a jerk. “That’s it!

  There’s no illusion and no traces of one on those decoys. Tad’s not a powerful

  mage, but he’s good enough to cast an illusion, and if I were building a decoy

  I’d want to make it look as much like me as possible! So why didn’t he put an

  illusion on it?”

  “Because he couldn’t,” Drake said flatly. “If mage-energy got sucked out of

  the basket and everything else, it could have gotten sucked out of him, and it

  might not have built up enough yet for him to do anything.”

  “Oh.” Skan was taken a bit aback, but finally nodded his acceptance of

  Drake’s explanation. Amberdrake was just as glad, because he could think of

  another.

  Tad can’t work a simple magic like an illusion because he’s hurt too badly.

  On the other hand, those decoys were soggy enough to have been here for

  a couple of days, so that meant that the children made fairly good progress for

  two people trying to hide their backtrail, So that in turn meant that they

  couldn’t have been hurt too badly. Didn’t it?

  He also didn’t want to think about how having mage-energy drained from

  him might affect Tad in other, more subtle ways. Would it be like a slowly-

  draining wound? Would it affect his ability to work magic at all? What if he

  simply was no longer a mage anymore? Gryphons were inherently magical for

  good reasons, and Urtho would not have designed them so otherwise.

  Although the Mage of Silence had made many mistakes, the gryphons were

  considered his masterpieces. Magic collected in their bodies with every breath

  and with every stroke of the wings. It stabilized their life systems, cleaned

  their organs, helped them fly. Amberdrake had never heard of what would

  happen if a gryphon were deprived of mage-energy completely for an

  extended amount of time; would it be like fatigue poisoning, or gout, or

  something even more insidious, like a mental imbalance?

  The rescue party was moving along in a tightly-bunched group to keep from

  getting separated in the mist. We’re on the right track at least; the children

  certainly came this way, Amberdrake reminded himself. They’re moving right

  along, thinking, planning. If they’re in trouble, the best place for them is the

  river. There’s food there that’s easy to catch, and maybe caves in the cliffs.

  They’re doing all the right things, especially if they’re having to deal with large

  predators.

  Maybe this was why the rescuers hadn’t found much in the way of large

  game. They’d tried to send on their findings by teleson, so that the other two

  parties out searching knew to turn back to the river. The mage Filix thought

  he’d gotten everything through clearly, but without local mage-energy to draw

  on, he couldn’t be certain that all the details had made it over. Still, whether

  the children went north or south when they encountered the river, someone

  should run into them now. Their own party was going to try to the north,

  mostly because they did know for certain that Ikala’s would be coming up from

  below them, also heading north.

  This damned fog. It makes me more nervous than the rain! If—when—we

  all get out of this, I am never leaving the city again, I swear it. Not unless it’s

  to visit another city. So far as I’m concerned, you can take the “wilderness

  experience” and bury it in a hole. He’d never forgotten the hardships of the

  trek to White Gryphon, and he had been all too well aware of what this

  mission would involve. He thought he’d been prepared for it. Except for one

  thing; I’d forgotten that now I’m not as limber as I used to be for this sort of

  thing. Judeth and Aubri certainly didn‘t volunteer to traipse through the woods,

  and now I see why. They probably think I’m a fool, forcing myself to go along

  on this rescue, trying to do a young man’s job. Maybe letting me go was

  Judeth’s way of getting revenge upon me for threatening her!

  But Blade wasn’t Judeth’s daughter, nor was Tad Aubri’s son.

  No, I’d rather be out here. At least I know that I’m doing something this

  way. Zhaneel and Winterhart must feel the same, or they wouldn ‘t have

  insisted on coming either.

  But the fog was doing more than just getting on his nerves; he kept thinking

  that he was seeing shadows flitting alongside them, out there. He kept feeling

  eyes on him, and getting glimpses of skulking shapes out of the corner of his

  eye. It was all nonsense, of course, and just his nerves getting the better of

  him, but—

  “Drake,” Skan whispered carefully, “we’re being paced. I don’t know by

  what, but there’s something out there. I can taste it in the fog, and I’ve seen a

  couple of shadows moving.”

  “You’re sure?” That was Regin, who had signaled for a halt and dropped

  back when he heard Skan whispering. “Bern thought he might be seeing

  something, too—”

  “Then count me as three, because I saw large shadows moving out there

  and behind us,” Drake said firmly. “Could it be whatever tore up the ground

  back there?”

  “If it is, I don’t want to goad it into attacking us in this fog,” Regin replied.

  “Though I doubt it will as long as we look confident.”

  “Most big hunters won’t mess with a group,” Bern confirmed, nodding.

  “They like single prey, not a pack.”

  Drake must have looked skeptical, because Regin thumped him on the

  back in what was probably supposed to be an expression of hearty

  reassurance. It drove the breath out of him and staggered him a pace.

  “There’s too many of us for it to want to contend with—” Regin pointed out

  with confidence, “And we aren’t hurt. I don’t care if it paces us, as long as it

  doesn’t come after us, and it won’t. I’m sure of it.”

  Amberdrake got his breath again, and shrugged. “You’re the leader,” he

  said, keeping his uncertainty to himself.

  Regin grinned, as if to say, “That’s right, I am,” but wisely kept his response

  to a grin and waved them on again.

  Drake continued to feel the eyes on his back, and kept thinking about

  beings the size of a horse with talons to match—the kinds of claws that had

  torn up the earth to the depth of his hand. Would a party of seven humans

  and one gryphon look all that formidable to something like that? And what if

  there was more than one of those things out there? The way the ground had

  been dug up certainly suggested that there were several.

  “You won’t like this,” Skan gryphon-whispered, which was as subtle and

  quiet as a human’s normal speaking voice. The gryphon glanced from side to

  side apprehensively. “Drake, I think we’ve been surrounded.”

  All the muscles in Amberdrake’s neck went tight, and he shivered

  reflexively. He no longer trusted Regin’s self-confidence in the least.

  At just that moment, Regin signaled another halt, and Bern took him aside

  to whisper something into his ear.

  The leader looked straight at Skan. “Bern says we’re surrounded. Are we?”

  “I think so,” Skan said flatly. “And I don’t think whatever it is out there is just

  curious. I also don’t t
hink it’s going to let us get much farther without a fight.”

  Regin’s face darkened, as if Skan had challenged him, but he turned his

  eyes to the shrouding fog before replying. “The General always says the best

  defense is a good offense,” he replied in a growl. “But there’s no point in

  lobbing arrows against things we can’t see. We’ll lose ammunition without

  impressing them.”

  “The rains are going to begin as soon as the fog lifts, sir,” Bern pointed out.

  “We still won’t be able to see what’s out there, and you can’t shoot with a wet

  bowstring.”

  Regin leveled his gaze on Filix next. “Is there something you can do to find

  out what’s following us? Maybe scare it away? I don’t want to waste time

  better spent looking for Silverblade and Tadrith.”

  The mage shrugged. “Maybe. I can try. The best thing would be to try to

  stun one so that we can see what it looks like. I don’t have to see something

  to stun it, I just have to know in general where it is.”

  The leader spread his hands, indicating his full permission. “You’re the

  mage. Try it, see what happens.”

  Amberdrake opened his mouth to object, but closed it again; after all, what

  did he know? Nothing about hunting, predators, or being stalked. If their

  stalkers were only curious after all, stunning one wouldn’t hurt them; if they

  were thinking about making a meal of the rescuers, well, having one of their

  lot fall over without a mark on him should make them back off for a while. At

  least, it certainly seemed to him that it should work out that way. And by the

  time the hunters regained their courage, the rescue party would probably be

  long gone.

  Skan opened his beak, and Amberdrake thought he was going to object as

  well, but it was too late. Filix had already spotted something, or thought he

  had, and had unleashed the spell.

  The result was not what any of them had expected.

  A dark shadow in the fog glowed suddenly— Amberdrake got an odd,

  unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach—and Filix and Skan cursed

  together with heartfelt fluency.

  “What?” Regin snapped, looking from one to the other. “What?”

  “It ate my spell—” Filix began, but Skan interrupted him, waving the teleson

  he’d been carrying around his neck.

  “It ate the teleson!” the gryphon roared. “Damn! Whatever’s out there is