“But thou art well protected by magic, correct?”
“Yes, I am. However, if anyone does kill the Protector…witness what happened to my predecessor. Our entire world came to a halt, unable to respond to the oncoming crisis of Sirrahon, until I was selected. That simply won’t work in times like these.”
“So Ardan is your backup?” I ventured. “You’re grooming him to take your place, just in case anything happens to you?”
“Not quite. He’s one of my backups.”
Now that both surprised and impressed me. “Seriously?”
“Serious as Sirrahon was,” Liam said, with a princely laugh. “I’ve selected a group of young stags and does to train in the arts of fey magic. All Fayleene know these ways, of course, but not with all the powers that the Protectorship bestows. Even I am only starting to relearn some of them.”
“Relearn? That implies that those powers have been lost.”
Liam nodded sagely. “Quinval was assassinated before he selected his predecessor. It’s likely that centuries of lore and knowledge perished with him – and all because he never thought to pass on the Fayleene birthright of magic to others before the ‘Old War’ flared up again.”
Shaw made an appreciative growl. “Thou art of greater intellect than I thought at first.”
“There is an added bonus,” Liam continued. “I wish to continue my association with you, Dayna. And Galen. Even with one as primitive as Shaw, believe it or not. This shall free me to do so and not leave my people without protection.”
“Best we keep this private knowledge,” Shaw said quickly. “I hear wing beats. Thy friends from the Noctua approach.”
A griffin’s senses were above reproach, and even with their silent flight, Shaw nodded towards the treetops to the north where a trio of owls winged their way towards us. Two were large and butterscotch in color, while one was smaller and mottled in the more common mixture of brown, white, and black.
Xandra, Nix, and Nox settled on a branch high overhead. The Parliamentarian appeared anxious and put-upon. By contrast, the Gruesome Twosome, as I now thought of the pair of Noctua, looked every bit as haughty and untouchable as before.
“One wishes to convey sympathies most great,” Xandra said politely. “It is this one’s heavy responsibility to recount the events of the Albess’ demise.”
“Time out,” I objected. “I mean, hold on a minute. It may be one’s ‘responsibility’ to recount the events. But I need to hear the story from one who actually witnessed the events.”
Xandra shifted from foot to foot at that. She clacked her beak several times as she looked at her companions helplessly. Finally, the Noctua with the dot of black by his eye spoke.
“This one and his brother were stationed in the trees nearby,” Nox said curtly. “The Albess had stopped by the pool to drink, for one’s beak gets parched on the wing. The scaled one came up from the south without warning, save for a slithering sound on the wind, and pounced upon the Albess. One witnessed a swallow like a fish going down the throat of a griffin, and it was done.”
“That’s it?” I asked. “Didn’t you two…I don’t know, actually do anything? I mean, I have it on good authority that you’re both ‘invincible’.”
Nox actually looked baffled. “One’s anointed leader was dead. Taking another life would be senseless, when there would be nothing to gain but yet more death.”
Shaw, Liam, and I traded looks. This time Shaw spoke up. “Didst thou say how many attackers there were?”
“One did say. A single wyvern is all this one saw.”
I kicked at the hard ground with my boot. The grass was brown and dry as tinder. “Okay. We’re just going to look around a little bit. I can’t keep you from leaving, but if you can stay, I might have more questions.”
All I got was a chilly glare in reply.
I did a quick three-hundred-and-sixty-degree visual sweep to orient myself. The three owls sat atop the tallest tree almost due north of us, at what I’d call twelve o’clock. The forest itself took up space from nine to two. The pond was at seven or eight, while the rest of the clock face was made up of the brown sunflower fields that Sir Talish’s people harvested during the late summer months.
Shaw wandered over to the edge of the pond, dipped his beak, and began to take a drink. Liam nodded to Arden, and the rust-chested stag went off to survey the nine-o’clock spot of the forest, while Liam went the opposite direction. I went off to join Shaw as the griffin continued to drink. I frowned as I looked due south.
“What dost thou see that blocks thy view of the sky that way?” Shaw murmured, as clear, cold water dripped from his black beak.
“I don’t see anything but the remains of more sunflower fields,” I said. The fallen mess of brown stalks was dense, but it only came up to my shoulder.
“‘Tis sadly true. The Albess may have been deep in thought, head down to drink. But her so-called ‘guards’ should have seen a wyvern approach from far off.”
I chewed my lip. “Incompetence? Or something more purposeful?”
“Whichever it is, mine own mind suspects a falsehood lies at the core of it. For wyverns do not hunt alone. Nay, they hunt in packs or great swarms, as thou hast seen.”
Liam had wandered the edge of the field, pausing every now and then to take a grazing bite of the dry grass. Then Arden called to him, and the Fayleene Protector joined his protégé in the shadow of the trees. They conferred for a moment, then Liam slowly trotted over to us, still chewing away like a cow on its cud. One of the brown grass stems hung from the corner of his mouth.
“Must thou have lunch at a time such as this?” Shaw asked his friend. “Art thou making fun of mine own appetite?”
“Neither,” Liam said quietly, out of the side of his mouth. He tilted his head slightly away from me. “Dayna, take this stem I hold and see if you smell what I taste.”
I plucked the dry piece of fibrous grass from Liam’s grip. It felt surprisingly slick. I turned away so that the owls could not see my motion, raised it to my nose, and sniffed.
Again, I came away with a spoor of sulfur. This stem looked like grass, but it smelled like a freshly dipped match. I said as much to Liam, who nodded.
“And the shiny slickness,” I said, rubbing my fingers along the edge. “Could it be…paint? Some kind of vegetable dye?”
“It tastes like the residue of a plant I know which can stain one’s tongue brown,” Liam agreed.
So we had the smell of sulfur. And stain to turn something brown. I looked around and noticed how everything around had turned the exact same color as autumn slouched towards the start of winter.
What if the grass had been singed by fire? What kind of flame left the smell of sulfur in its wake? I’d smelled something sulfurous like this more than once before.
Abruptly, my mind went click.
Dragon breath.
A small or medium-sized dragon had burned the grass here. And then someone had dyed it to hide the evidence of a dragon attack.
“Keep your expressions neutral, or at least bored,” I murmured. “I’m thinking that someone had Thea murdered, and they used a dragon to do the deed. It’s the only scenario that fits.”
“Then why place blame upon the wyverns?” Shaw said after a moment. “T’would be simpler to say that a dragon did it, in any case!”
“Definitely, there is deception afoot,” Liam said. In a tone just above a whisper, he added, “Just as you asked us to appear unconcerned a second ago, I must ask you both to look frightened and concerned in the next minute.”
“Needs I must take acting classes,” Shaw grumbled, but he and I nodded agreement.
Ardan had vanished. The wind picked up a little, jostling the branches of the trees, then a moaning began to emanate from deep inside the wood. Finally, it was followed by a goosepimply slithering sound.
Goosepimply, because that’s exactly what my skin did. It sounded just like a wyvern as it slid along a slot canyon wall. Or between
the trees. And it was coming closer.
The three owls leapt from their perch. Xandra fluttered into the air and dove for cover into yet another stand of trees. The Gruesome Twosome came to hover before us for a second.
“What is that horrible sound?” I asked fearfully. To help sell my fright, I made sure that they saw my hands shaking.
“What is happening?” Shaw demanded, in somewhat less than frightened manner. I guess that was really the best he could do. “Must I fight, or flee?”
“One senses that another foe approaches,” Nix hissed. “This foe is beyond ones who crawl upon the ground like insects. The griffin must either help ones as such flee, or stand guard.”
“Now thou wouldst tell me my business,” Shaw griped.
“One’s business is one’s own. Ours is to track. And to kill.”
With that, the pair rocketed into the sky, their wingbeats carrying them aloft at a speed that a griffin would find dizzying. They banked to one side, pirouetting on bright yellow wing tips, and then dove back towards the forest. They skimmed the treetops and vanished. The slithering and moaning faded into the distance.
“One of the skills I have taught Arden,” Liam said smugly, “Is how to use the woods themselves to create sounds that lure and confuse others. I’m surprised that we had to apply the lesson so soon, but he’s learned it well.”
I frowned. “That’s good, but why go to the trouble of drawing the Noctua away from here?”
“Because the Noctua do not hunt in my people’s woods. The Parliamentarians do. Our species have worked out a series of clacks with beak or hoof to call for help.”
It all became clear to me now. I’d heard Xandra make the clacks. And even as I realized that, she emerged from her stand of trees and came to land before us.
“Dayna, one must make a request,” Xandra breathed, her voice sounding like a nun who’d just run a hard sprint. “One must ask to meet at the sacred Grove of the Willows, as the moon rises this night.”
I hesitated. Dammit, I needed to be back in my world to get news about Shelly’s disappearance, if there was any!
Xandra saw my vacillation. Trembling, she spread her wings and threw her body face down on the hard dirt. “One begs for mercy, she-from-another-world! There is one among my kind who shall perish in darkness without her compassion! One must meet tonight, else there may be no reason to ever meet again!”
One among my kind who shall perish in darkness…
Hope burst to life in my chest like a lit firecracker. Could she mean Albess Thea?
“I’ll be there, I promise,” I said.
Xandra levered herself back up. She shot me a last fearful look and then took off into the rapidly purpling sky.
Chapter Twenty-Three
I’ve eaten plenty of vegan cuisine, but I was more than a little leery of Fayleene food.
Back when I’d first accompanied Liam to the original Sacred Grove in the Fayleene forest, I’d eaten grass, bark, and leaves with him while in Fayleene form. The food was incredibly tasty, but it had turned my poor human stomach definitively urpy. Therefore, I took a long, cautious look at the stuff that the Fayleene does brought me. Shaw was doing even worse. The Fayleene had placed a plate of seeds for me on the lion-sized stone table at the center of the grove. As for the griffin, they’d simply dumped a large chunk of fallen tree in front of him on the ground.
“I know that you are unfamiliar with this fare in your current form,” Liam said quietly, as he bid the Fayleene servers to leave us be. “But I assure you, these are all edible. Dayna, I made sure to have you served ginger grass seeds and the nut of winter holly.”
“And what of I?” Shaw asked, prodding at the hunk of tree with a talon.
“Oh, I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Shaw,” Liam chuckled.
I popped a handful of seeds and winter holly in my mouth and gave it a careful chew. Actually, it wasn’t bad. If anything, it felt and tasted like munching on the half-popped kernels at the bottom of a batch of popcorn – what my mom would have called the ‘Old Maids’.
Shaw continued to sullenly bat the wood between his front paws. As he turned it over for the third or fourth time, a fat gray grub the size of my thumb fell out. The griffin snatched it up and swallowed it like a kid eating a gummy candy. His eyes lit up with delight. Using his talons, he systematically shredded the wood, slurping up the slug-like larvae with relish.
I sighed, faced resolutely away, and finished off my bowl.
The purple of dusk began to fade into the black of night. Though my new clothing kept me warm, I ended up pacing back and forth, breathing into my hands. It was a cloudless night, and yet the atmosphere still had the curiously heavy smell that said the first snow of the season was on the way. The moon began to rise over the treetops when I caught a glimpse of an owl-shaped shadow coming in for a landing.
The shadow resolved itself into Xandra, as she skidded to a halt atop the stone tabletop. She looked around, blinked owlishly, and let out a pleased ‘hoo!’ when she saw I was there.
“Quickly, quickly,” she said, with a bob of her head. “Follow in this one’s wake, fly low where this one does, and land where this one lands.”
“Wait a minute,” I growled. “I want to know what this is all about.”
“Talk is for later! One must make haste!”
With that, she took off again in a flurry of wingbeats. I hurriedly slipped into Shaw’s saddle and the griffin heaved his body into the air. Below, Liam quickly faded into the shadows of the grove.
“Good luck!” I heard him call.
Any qualms I might have had about Shaw flying at night vanished as we cleared the treetops. The moon was only a sliver off full, and it cast milky white moonlight across the clear night sky like a halogen lamp. Shaw circled to find Xandra’s shadow flitting off towards the north, and he sped after her.
The Grove of the Willows wasn’t a large forest, at least in the grand scheme of things, but it did run a fair distance north. We flew on for at least twenty minutes before the trees finally began to fail. Xandra then veered off sharply to the east, then north, then east again.
“Canst she not make up her mind?” Shaw complained under his breath.
“She’s got her reasons,” I disagreed. “Something tells me that we better mimic her moves as much as we can.”
Xandra continued her zig-zagging course north and east. The trees fell away, to be replaced by broad, rolling hills covered in fallow fields and orchards. Eventually the signs of cultivation faded away, to be replaced by open wilderness.
Still later, the hills began to crumple and rear into higher, narrower folds. The air took on a sharper bite and stands of scraggly fir and pine began to appear. Xandra flew lower now, just skimming the treetops. Shaw followed suit, and my senses were filled with the dim, heady scent of evergreen.
Finally, the hills reared themselves into a wall of sheer cliffs. Xandra banked to her left, paralleling the cliff face, drawing us after her only a few feet from a solid wall of blue granite. Shaw slowed, though his wings ceased to beat and he was able to hold himself steady in his descent.
“‘Tis quite an updraft here,” he explained, and I simply nodded.
Xandra sped on ahead, a little black splotch in the glow of the moon’s light. Suddenly she flared her wings and came to a stop. I strained my eyes, finally making out a six-foot wide abutment jutting out from the cliff face. It was plenty of space for a human being to walk on without a problem, but when that human was riding a considerably wider griffin, things were going to get complicated.
“Hang on to my saddle, Dayna,” Shaw warned. “Thou shalt get jostled.”
I did so, not understanding what Shaw was about to do. The griffin drew within a dozen feet above and to the side of the jutting section of cliff face. His right wingtip nearly brushed the rough rock wall. Abruptly, Shaw brought his wings in at the same time.
We plummeted like a stone.
I swallowed my scream as we fell. Shaw
landed with a grunt atop the narrow ledge, his legs spread and joints slightly bent to take the impact. His talons made a skree as they dug in, anchoring the griffin firmly to the rock.
“I would advise thee to get off on the right,” he said. I turned to the left and looked down. A tumble of broken rock and thorny underbrush lay far, far below.
I got off on the right.
“You sure you’ll be okay?” I asked.
“Thy concern is misplaced. I am quite comfortable,” Shaw assured me. “I cannot move much, ‘tis true, but I shall wait for thee as long as needed.”
Xandra stood nearby, her agitation only growing greater by the second.
“One must follow!” she urged me. I still worried about where the heck I was being led, though, not willing to simply blindly trust.
“Where? Where must I follow you?”
“To where one such as yourself is needed. Please, one must hurry before it is too late!”
I followed Xandra along the cliff face, which curved around sharply until it ended in a broad oval-shaped opening the size of the door on my garage back in Los Angeles. The opening had been carved or enlarged from a spot directly below an overhang, protecting it from sun and rain. Dim light emanated from within, and I felt warmer air billowing out soundlessly into the night from it.
Three or four other owls were perched there. All were the Parliamentarian-types of owls, and while they looked at me with obvious interest and curiosity, none were startled by my appearance. Xandra indicated with an outstretched wing where I could throw a leg over the edge of the opening and climb inside.
This really was now or never, so I put my foot down. “I’m not going any further, Xandra. Not until you tell me what is going on, and where you are taking me!”
The owls perched in the opening traded looks with each other, murmuring in alarm.
Xandra spoke, reluctantly. “One of the Hoohan is dying. This one needs you before the night is out, else there is no purpose to the otherworldly coming.”
A Perjury of Owls Page 13
