by Kris Schnee
Zara said, "I not care whether cave kept secret. No love for Baccata. But I not want you dead."
"I guess you're eager to be off," he said.
"Hungry."
He tried to bury his face in his hands, fell forward onto his beak, and laughed in frustration. "So, I don't need to eat?"
Zara shook his head. "No. One good thing. The other good thing, wings." He approached and took hold of Darius' scaly wrists. "Flap. Practice."
Darius looked back at the unfamiliar spans of feathers that covered most of his sides and back like a coat, and he felt the feathers fluff outward. He didn't know what muscles to move.
"Like this," he said, and gently pulled one of Darius' wings outward and made it circle.
He gradually learned to copy the motion with both wings, stirring the air, learning how much force would lift him off the ground. Zara spoke quietly about wind and landings, how to roll with an impact and plunge talons-first at prey. "Now, fly low."
Darius beat the air until it fell beneath him, leaving his hindpaws dangling. He squawked in fright. There was only fog around him. Then a tree loomed ahead and forced him to dodge, hit the ground, and tuck his wings in to crash to a painful stop upside-down.
Zara came running. "Pull back to slow."
After a few more weak attempts he was able to make a low, slow flight without terror and disaster. Zara tilted his head back and screeched. "Good!"
"I don't think I can hunt anything for you yet," he said. He was bruised all over.
The former griffin sat down and shook his head. "Why not angry, Darius?"
Darius' talons clenched. "I am angry. But I can't do anything about it except to help you more. I want you to find help for me when you can."
"I will."
He looked back at his wings. "You stole from me, but you gave me something in return. That's not all bad. A good human doesn't just take, he trades. In fact..." They'd made a pile of his belongings near the mule, who at least tolerated him now. The two books lay next to his small carving-knife. He picked up the Travelers' Tales in one forefoot and awkwardly carried it back to Zara. "Can you read?"
"No."
"You can find someone to read this to you. Take it."
"What does it say?" asked Zara.
He opened to the first chapter. "Once there was a woman of common birth and uncommon sense, who left home to seek her fortune, not knowing the wisdom she would find and give to all who wander..."
# 2. #
Zara stayed for the night, eating some of the stale food Darius had brought for himself, and left in the morning. Darius watched the man fade into the mist, then slumped to the grass. The world was quiet and empty.
He trotted away from the mountains in a new direction. After a mile's walk, he felt as though the air had grown thicker until he couldn't push any farther ahead. He instinctively mapped out part of the circle where he was now caged. He hung his head, then returned to the cave. He might as well see his new home.
He hesitated in the cave tunnel. The guardian's mark still stood along the floor. He crept closer but it didn't glow in warning this time, even when he stepped over it. He ruefully congratulated himself on being judged welcome by the ancient wizard's spells, and kept walking.
A beam of emerald light streamed up from a crack in the earth and into the cavern roof. The air thrummed with raw natural power that prickled at the roots of his fur and feathers. The magic node was like a brimming well or fountain. When he let his thoughts slip into the frame of mind that let people see the Weave, the source stood out even more brightly and the world was full of green threads like a harp ready to be played. Just enough of the mountains' mist filtered through here to create eddies of green like sunlight seen through leaves.
He blinked and looked around the cave. It was only around forty feet across and twenty high. Zara had built a pile of dry grass, leaves and branches along the curving wall for a bed. In another area were a few shiny stones, a sword in a rusty scabbard, and some bits of armor and clothing. A third place held gnawed bones. Darius raked through this last pile and thought he recognized a human thigh-bone. He glanced back at the little supply of treasure. Zara had talked about being forced to kill three people before. Had he unleashed a man-eater with his face?
Darius shuddered. Zara was more than an innocent wild animal; he was capable of fair dealing. All Darius could do now was to control himself and avoid killing if he could, and trust that he'd rightly judged Zara as a decent person who'd do the same.
He found a piece of charcoal from his last fire and used it to mark warnings in the tunnel in Mithraic and Waldic and pictograms for the illiterate, saying "Danger! Talk with the griffin! Do not cross here!"
Second, he checked on his journal and the little bottle of ink Zara had left him. He pulled out one of his own feathers and yelped at the unexpected pain, then dabbed the blunt quill against the next page and left a line of blood. Griffin blood. He was a walking pile of ingredients for any quack of a mage who believed in sympathetic magic. Darius found this so hilarious he flopped over onto his back and laughed hysterically until he wept.
Then there was the old book, hidden under Zara's trinket pile. He opened it gingerly as though exploring a dangerous new land. The pages were sturdy and the ink mostly readable, written in outmoded Waldic. Here were the notes of a powerful mage obsessed with control, who'd hidden his discoveries in a cave and forced a "beast" to guard them.
Darius found that the light coming from outside had changed. He'd been reading for hours, though he'd understood few of the details. His ears flicked backward, which startled him. A book was a poor trade for the freedom to travel.
He walked outside and practiced his flying in the small ground allowed to him. Long, low swoops and then a little higher, with plenty of practice at how to crash and survive. As night fell and only the fountain's light lit his lair, he settled down on the pile of leaves and branches and slept with fitful dreams.
Over the next few weeks he tried to craft the home he wanted. His hands weren't quite as good as his human ones, suited more for walking than for tools, but he still had thumbs of a sort. He sharpened his quill and wrote. His talons and knife helped him make a crude stone axe, which earned him a more comfortable bed with a raised frame and then a workbench and an array of little gadgets. He kept busy. It wasn't like there was much else to do. How had Zara tolerated spending so long here living like an animal?
He was a flier in an elaborate cage, a keen-eyed creature in a land of endless fog. Worse yet, he was a thoughtful traveler with no one to talk to and nowhere to go. It took him over a year before he even had a visitor.
* * *
On a spring morning, a shout echoed down the tunnel. Darius twitched his ears, still asleep, but the second call woke him. He sat up groggily, imagining an innkeeper telling him he'd overslept, but then he remembered the danger. He bounded up the tunnel on all fours, shouting, "Wait!"
"Is someone there?" said the visitor. There were footsteps... and a sudden surge of magic all along the passage. The might of the place's enchantment crackled like green lightning and stabbed through Darius. It locked all his muscles and then began moving them forward, unbidden.
Darius swore. "You idiot! You crossed the line, didn't you!" He strained to hold himself back, but his body was moving like a puppet and it was hard to speak. He was making insane screeches and roars that echoed everywhere.
Then he was face to face with a young man in peasant clothes, brandishing an axe and looking down at him with fright. "A griffin?"
Darius growled but managed to force out the words, "Run! I'm not in control!"
The man stepped backward, afraid to look away, and started to backpedal more. He was out past the mark, but Darius still felt the compulsion that now drove him to leap and pounce and tear. He resisted it as well as he could, but he jumped all the same and snagged the intruder's ankle, snapped down at it with his beak, raked the human's leg with his talons. Darius had knocked him down
. "I can't stop. Get away! Run!"
The peasant's axe lay nearby. He grabbed it and swung but only struck the floor. Darius clawed at him, straddled him, and as both of them screamed, slashed the man's throat. The man lay there twitching and gurgling as blood sprayed along the floor. The spell's power drained from Darius and he staggered, falling over sideways to land in a sobbing bloodstained heap. He'd done his duty as a guardian. "I didn't even know your name."
Darius buried the man and prayed he wouldn't be the first of many.
* * *
He sorted through his victim's belongings. A bag of bread and cheese and nuts, some copper coins, leather boots Darius could no longer wear, the axe and a knife. Also, a battered pamphlet. The griffin's eyes went wide as he unfolded the thing. Invitation To Arcana: Spellcraft For the Beginner. Printed by House Blackthorn, Ironleaf. The lettering was blocky and regular but for some scribbled notes in the margins, and the paper was cheap. Darius set the thing aside, saying, "A young adventurer who had the talent for magic and decided to go exploring. Janya guide your spirit."
The world had gone quiet and peaceful again. Darius cleaned off the blood, then sat in the sunlight like a cat until his thoughts settled. He was glad not to be hungry for fresh meat.
He returned to the pamphlet. The witch-rats of Ironleaf had designed an ink-pressing machine (mentioned in an offhand boast) and were cranking out these papers as a suggestion that talented mages should come and work for them. The text explained the basic principles of the Weave and a few simple spells. There was even a page with a spiral printed in special ink that glowed to the magic-sense, with each curve being fainter and more diluted. "Can you see the glow?" the text asked, after explaining how to perceive magic in general. "The Forest Lord Himself can see all five turns, and the master of House Blackthorn, four." If he squinted, Darius could see the glimmer of the third spiral arc. He doubted he'd have seen even two as a human.
He mumbled and traced shapes on the ground and in the air, imitating the instructions. The threads of the Weave weren't just visible; he could touch them now! Maybe it was this new body or his connection to the magic node or just the clear tutorial, but after many attempts he was able to make a stick twitch along the floor as though in a river's current. His wings fluttered in excitement, brushing the cave wall. Maybe if he learned enough, he could find a way out of this cage and become a free wanderer again.
Darius took to the lessons quickly. He wrung every secret he could from the pamphlet, managing to carve a simple runic wand that could fly at his command. He dug through the trinkets from Zara's collection and found an old amber amulet marked with the holy sun of the southern lands. He learned to touch it and make it glow, and how the spell worked.
In between lessons he charted what little part of the world was allowed him. He found a pass through the mountains after all! A low pathway stood near the cave, choked with trees and vines that hid it and would take work to clear. He said a prayer of thanks, but his heart wasn't in it. The knowledge was of no use to him here.
After weeks of magic practice, he turned his attention back to Baccata's journal. There were hints of brilliance in the scrawled, archaic text. Now that Darius had learned to cast spells for himself he could appreciate it better. There had to be some way to shake off the guardian spell and maybe the transformation; Zara had figured it out. The gadget he'd called a spell egg was gone, now, but... he would find a way.
He spent the next year trying.
* * *
Darius stomped back and forth in his lair, lashing the floor with his tail. Maybe there was some way to push the boundaries of his cage a little wider. He rooted through his many talon-crafted possessions for inspiration. Something clattered to the floor, making his ears flick to catch the sound. It was a nut, left over from his victim's food and now long dried. He could sense the Weave through it as through other objects made of wood. He stared at it and wordlessly caused it to rise into the air. There was a natural current leading away from the mana node, so that the nut drifted while left in a loose magical grasp. Darius set it aside and thought.
After some experiments, he ran his tongue along his beak in concentration. The nut had given him an idea. Just as he had that damned pull forcing him back to the cave if he went too far, the seedpod had a natural direction it "wanted" to go, even aside from the node's current. With some work he could encourage it and make the thing fly somewhere far away, where he couldn't follow, even after he stopped concentrating on the spell. Darius sat up straighter, staring at the nut that bobbed like a cork in midair. He could use it to send a message!
He spent weeks trying to make more wooden messengers, but only this particular nut would drift after he stopped casting. He was careful with this one chance at escape. He wrote out a message on a slip of paper, phrasing it to draw curiosity rather than greed, and rolled it into a crack in the seed. He watched the nut float away until he could no longer follow, then sent a prayer after it.
* * *
Two months later, someone crossed the crude magic ward he'd erected in an arc around his lair. A warning spark lit up the cave, startling him to attention. He bounded past the tripwire he'd installed and out past the brambles that helped disguise the cave entrance. Visitors at last!
There was a woman in a green cloak guarded by two red-haired men, brothers by their look, all carrying staves and frozen at the sight of him. Darius called out from the cave entrance, "Halt! I don't want to hurt you. How did you find this place?"
"It talks!" said one of the men.
The woman said, "There was a nut floating through the air, with a note inside. Was that from you?"
"It was!" He'd hardly spoken for the last month. "I'm Darius. Make yourselves at home. You'll find some firewood stashed behind that tree."
"This is where you live?" said one of the brothers, who carried a bow as well.
"Yes. You must not enter the cave, though. A spell compels me to kill anyone who walks too far into it." An uncomfortable silence descended, and Darius' outstretched wings drooped. "I have food for you. Wait here."
Darius bounded into his cave and emerged with a crude wooden tray, floating in front of him in a haze of green spell-light. On it were strips of smoked venison and some wild berries. He set the meal down carefully and settled onto the grass, twitching his tail. "It's good to have visitors. Here, eat."
The guests were still standing. The elder brother hung back, saying, "I thought griffins weren't real."
He'd rehearsed how this conversation might go with a passing wizard, a thief, a princess in disguise, or (best of all) some wanderer with no great power and a sympathetic ear. "I'd never seen one myself until recently. I was human. The same spell that changed me, and forces me to fight intruders, traps me here."
The younger brother asked, "What are you guarding?"
He'd been meaning to get to that after learning more about his guests. "Are you all related?"
The woman said, "They are, but I'm just from the same village. They wouldn't let me leave by myself. My name's Radia. Nice trick with the tray, by the way. You're a wizard?"
"A little, but I need more training. I have so few books. Do you know anything about magic? Can you get me more to read?"
She giggled. "More talkative than a wild animal, at least. I have the talent, but I only know what I learned from a certain questionable old man."
They sat down to eat, though Darius only had a few bites to be polite. He paused in the middle of beak-nibbling a bit of shared bread when he saw that the travelers had brought nuts. "Where did you get those?"
"They're a local specialty," the woman said.
One of the brothers stretched. "Excuse me a minute." He walked off into the woods.
Darius put two and two together just in time to notice that the man had taken his bow along. He spoke loudly. "I really don't mean to harm you."
A wooden arrow whizzed predictably from the trees. Darius raised his wings and warped the magic around him to deflect it,
raising a whorl of emerald light. The missile scraped along his fur and wobbled into the dirt.
The woman yelped and stood. "Arcite, stop!"
The shooter revealed himself, already readying another arrow. "This beast killed Brum!"
"Listen!" Darius pleaded. "If this Brum person was a man with curly hair and a scar on his right arm, then yes, I killed him. But the damn spell forced me to, when he ignored my warnings and entered the cave! I can't control myself when that happens."
Radia held up a hand, making Darius fear she was casting a spell. "If that's true... Arcite, put that down. It's not vengeance to kill him." She paced, glared at the griffin, and sighed. "Darius, I don't blame you, but he was our friend. How many other people have you killed?"
"Only him," Darius said, flustered and drooping. "But my precursor did worse."
"Then you can't just sit here waiting for more unsuspecting travelers. Why don't you have so much as a locked door?"
Darius flapped once. "Because I don't have a damn blacksmith here to build me one! Nor a tailor, or a carpenter or a candle-maker. I live alone in a cave! I can't even pray properly. 'Be at least a mile from where you were last week." I've given up trying, since I can't honor the spirit of Janya's advice."
Arcite said, "What're you guarding that's so important, killer?"
Darius screeched. "It's not safe to say."
The girl said, "Then it's not safe for us to help."
He could be stuck here forever, hidden from the only people who might get him out. "Radia, I'm willing to tell you. Just you." He glared sidelong at the man who'd shot at him. "Come with me, and stop when I tell you!"
The brothers grumbled, but she shushed them. She followed him along the tunnel to where she could see the glow just out of sight from the magic node itself. When Darius explained, she said, "People would kill for this."
"Exactly. I'd happily give it up if I could, but I can't. I'm practically chained to a treasure chest. Only a wizard who's both clever and merciful can help."
Radia leaned back against the wall and whistled. "I'm not her, at least yet. Someday, maybe."
