Year of the Griffin

by Diana Wynne Jones

  It ought to have been a pretty sight. Filbert’s wings shone red in the red light, with fringes of golden light caught in their edges, but Querida took one look and straightened up crossly. “Here comes trouble!” she said. She did not like Derk any more than he liked her. Her cats, as one cat, stood up and mewed. “Yes, yes, I’ll feed you when he’s gone,” Querida told them, and watched Filbert slant down to land beyond her. Deep hoofprints all over my lawn! she thought. “Well?” she said to Derk.

  “I can’t stay long,” Derk said. This was important to both of them. Derk felt happier, saying it. Querida relaxed a little, hearing it. Derk explained about Lydda’s sudden marriage and Mara’s deep, worried need to take ship at once to find out if the marriage would work.

  “The young are always thoughtless,” Querida said. “How is my friend Callette?”

  “Grumpy,” said Derk. “She got stalked by some sort of well-born griffin hoodlums, and she says she’s glad to be back. But I really came here about the University.” He told her about the wounded pigeons and what they had said. “So I was hoping you could find time to translocate over there and see what’s going on,” he concluded.

  Querida was exasperated. She had known Derk would do something like this to her. He always did. It was this way he had of jogging her almost nonexistent conscience that made her dislike him so. “I can’t possibly go until tomorrow,” she snapped.

  “Can’t you manage just one quick trip now?” Derk pleaded.

  Querida was forced to find reasons for delaying, and once she had uttered them, she found they were very good reasons, anyway. “No,” she said. “This needs careful thinking about. All the years I was at the University, when you were a student there yourself, even at the height of Mr. Chesney’s activities, something like this simply could not have happened there. The ambient magics that act as wards for the University would have prevented it. When I left these younger wizards in charge, I assumed they would maintain the wards in the usual way. But they obviously haven’t. I need to think how to handle that before I go rushing over there.”

  “Then you’ll translocate there first thing tomorrow?” Derk asked her anxiously.

  “No again,” Querida snapped. “I shall travel there by pony trap, as I came.” Seeing Derk’s expression and realizing he was probably worrying about Elda, she explained, “The obvious answer to these ferocious mice is a set of competent cats. My three cats are excellent mousers, but they hate translocating. Either they escape on the way, or they arrive so put out that they’re useless for days. They have to travel with dignity or not at all.”

  “But you will go tomorrow,” Derk said.

  “I will go tomorrow,” Querida promised. With irritated relief she watched Filbert take off again.

  She spent the rest of the evening considering what to do about the University. A place like the University was essential to the world, or the whole globe would be full of untrained wizards heaving mountains about like Elda, or worse, raising demons and getting those demons to teach them further shocking things to do. And such a place, full of strong but untaught magics, needed to have strong wizards at the head of it. “I think I made a mistake when I organized that Governing Board,” Querida admitted; she could admit to a mistake privately, at least. “The place really needs a powerful Chancellor.” But she could think of no one suitable to be Chancellor except herself. And she had had her fill of running the University. She wanted to get on with her work in the Waste. “Perhaps I’d better bring some of those older wizards out of retirement,” she mused. “They won’t be happy about it, but they can do the job.”

  Very early next morning she prudently harnessed Hobnob, the pony, to the trap first, before the unavoidable and spirited hour necessary to get her cats into baskets. Like all cats, Querida’s three were largely immune to magic. They took one look at the baskets and dived under furniture, and the only way to fetch them out was to haul them out by hand. Then they fought like fiends when they were anywhere near the baskets.

  But it was done at last. Querida shook the reins and clucked to Hobnob, and the trap set off bumping down the grassy track southward, with the three cats fulminating in baskets behind Querida. At the rate the pony traveled, it would have taken nearly three weeks to get within sight of the University. Querida intended to cheat a bit, naturally. She meant to phase in a small translocation every few miles and cut the journey down by half. As long as the cats, and the pony, too, thought they were traveling in the normal way, she could get away with quite a bit of cheating. The question was, How much?

  She began testing the air as she drove for the rumors it brought. Rumors came to her in the form of long, silky bands that wrapped themselves around her, whispering. For all her power and all her learning, Querida did not recognize them as air elementals. She simply thought of them as rumors. They whispered to her of griffins, pirates, assassins, worry, sabotage, bloodshed, more bloodshed, armed men from the north, more armed men to the east and the south, and of magic misused.

  “Good gracious!” said Querida. “This sounds like the bad old days again!”

  She encouraged Hobnob to trot and took them all forward several times further than she had intended—so far forward, in fact, that they were already on the edge of the peaceful farming lands. The track was almost a road here, wide and dry and rutted, running between meadows that swelled up on either side.

  Almost instantly the pony tossed his head and tried to stop. The cats threw themselves around in their baskets, growling. Querida assumed that in her sudden alarm at the rumors, she had not phased in their translocation smoothly enough and pushed Hobnob onward with a sharp little spell. They swept around a curve in the track, and here the pony did stop, shivering. Another meadow swelled above them, and this one was littered with dead cows. And not just littered, Querida thought, shivering, too. Strewn with bleeding pieces of cow was a better description. Someone or something had pulled heads off cows, torn cows open and spread them about, and, in one or two places, apparently dropped cows on rocks and smashed them to pulpy meat. The smell of fresh blood filled the air, and the meadow was loud with buzzing flies, hordes of crows and ravens, and the screams of a few vulturelike scavengers that had clearly been fetched from the Waste by the scent.

  “Is this a rogue dragon, I wonder?” Querida murmured. As she had no doubts about her ability to handle a dragon, or even several dragons, she began sending forth a peremptory summoning spell for the one who had done this to come and explain itself at once.

  She had not completed the spell when the cow killers arrived. Shrieking to one another that here was more fun now, they soared from the opposite hillside and planed in over Querida’s head, pinions whistling, to land with aggressive thumps in the road all around the pony trap. They towered over it, squawking with laughter when the pony squealed and tried to rear and the cats went mad in their baskets.

  Querida quieted Hobnob and did her best to calm the cats, while she looked around at four unpleasant stranger griffins. They smelled disgusting. She hardly needed to see the blood on their beaks and the shreds of meat caught on their talons to know what had killed those cows.

  “Why have you slaughtered a herd of cows?” she demanded, hissing with anger.

  The largest and most raffish griffin bent his ungroomed chestnut head to look at her. “A little green human!” he said. “Funny the way humans here seem to turn green when they see us. They must do it when they’re frightened or something.”

  No one had dared comment on Querida’s skin color for half a century now. She became angrier than ever. “I asked you a question!” she hissed. “Who are you? Why did you slaughter these cattle? You couldn’t possibly eat this number. It was just wanton killing.”

  “Wanton killing is what we do, little green lady,” said the chestnut griffin. “We can’t help ourselves. We’re throwbacks. We’re like primitive griffins were. Sad, isn’t it?”

  “Nonsense!” said Querida. “Of course you can help yourselves. Every creat
ure with a brain can decide not to do something if it tries.”

  The chestnut griffin jerked his head up and stared down his beak at her, venomously.

  “You mustn’t speak to Jessak like that,” said the off-white griffin, “or he’ll take you apart.”

  “And your pony,” added the dove-colored one.

  Querida wrinkled her nose at both of them. Their coloring made it so obvious how dirty they were. “I spoke exactly as he deserved,” she said, “though rather too politely. He’s simply a spoiled bully. Where are you all from? I don’t recall seeing you before.”

  “From? We flew here from the University,” the ragged brown-and-white griffin replied. “Jessak was angry because he couldn’t find Callette.”

  “Jessak’s from a very good family across the ocean,” the off-white one explained. “Callette shouldn’t have thwarted him. You shouldn’t thwart him. He gets angry when that happens.”

  “Which explains why he took it out on innocent cows, does it?” Querida said. “What an extremely stupid and craven thing to do!”

  At this Jessak dropped to all fours and went prowling around the pony trap, taking care that one of his ill-smelling wings slapped across Querida’s face on the way. “I’ve had enough of this little green human,” he said. “Time to start disassembling her. I think I’ll begin with this.” He plunged a large feathered forearm into the cart and seized the nearest cat basket.

  If Jessak had not done that, he might have survived. Up till then Querida had simply been angry and disgusted. She had been considering transforming these four unpleasant creatures into rabbits and had only hesitated because she realized that this might not improve the local breed of rabbit. But her cats were the three things she loved most in the world. The sight of her Sabrina all blown out and growling, with her eyes glaring through the side of the basket, black and wide with terror, dangling aloft on the end of unkempt bloody talons, was too much for Querida. She saw red. She surprised herself—as much as the griffins—by yelling out four words that shook the universe.

  Everything became a little dizzy and blurred for a moment. When the universe righted itself, Querida found herself, to her great relief, still sitting in the pony trap with Hobnob still between the shafts, surrounded by four enormous statues of griffins. The nearest statue still held a cat basket dangling from its talons with—again to Querida’s relief—a live and furious cat in it. Rather shakily Querida climbed back along the pony trap and carefully unhooked Sabrina. Sabrina spit at her.

  “I don’t blame you,” Querida said. “I didn’t intend to let you in for anything like this.” She put the basket back in the cart and turned to take up the reins again. This was where she realized that the whitish griffin statue and the grayish one were blocking the road. “Bother!” she said. “Move!” But they just stood there, with expression of surprise and puzzlement all over their stone faces.

  It took Querida half an hour to discover spells that would topple them out of the way, but topple they did in the end, one in each direction, to leave just enough room in between for the cart to edge through. In the process the whitish statue broke in two and the gray statue’s beak came off, but Querida did not find it in her heart to feel at all sorry. She shook the reins. The pony was sweating and moved only slowly.

  “I know, Hobnob, I know!” Querida told him. “I feel just the same. But we have to find the folk who own these cows and explain what happened. If I manage that properly, they might let us rest in their farm for a while.”

  Around the time that Hobnob trudged off again, the two pigeons that had headed south reached Condita, capital city of the Empire. The uninjured pigeon planed demurely down to the marble pigeon walk along the front of the Senatorial Office Building, where a hand came out of a window and grabbed it at once. The wounded bird fluttered away to a complex of marble roofs and colonnades nearby. It landed rather heavily on the hidden lead top of the largest structure, where it limped cautiously along, peering through gutter holes, until it found the inner courtyard it was looking for. Then it took off again, went into a dive, and thumped to the top of the arbor of yellowing vines, where Emperor Titus was sitting over a last cup of coffee. The table in front of him was covered with pieces of broken bread, as if the Emperor had crumbled his breakfast without much appetite. The pigeon eyed the crumbs wistfully while it compared the person below with the magical memories Corkoran had planted in its brain.

  Emperor Titus, tallish, thinnish, age twenty-five, darkish hair, jagged profile, mild expression, correctly clothed in Imperial wrap of white with a purple border with a raised golden design of griffins. Yes. This was the correct recipient. The pigeon refreshed itself with an overripe grape from the arbor while it made sure the Emperor was alone.

  The Emperor was alone because he was lingering over his breakfast. As soon as his coffee cup was empty, someone would know and people would descend upon him with a mass of things he was supposed to do, most of which he was fairly sure were pointless. These days the Senate did all the governing. Titus simply signed laws. He had once told Claudia that the Empire nowadays thought of the Emperor as a sort of rubber stamp on legs.

  “Behave differently then!” Claudia had told him. “Show them who’s Emperor.”

  But Titus had shaken his head and explained that he could not offend the senators, most of whom were old enough to be his father and closely related to him into the bargain. The people would be shocked if he tried.

  “I don’t think so,” Claudia said. “I think they’d cheer you in the streets.”

  Titus could not believe this. The people believed in the Senate. He sighed over his coffee now. This was the kind of talk that got Claudia so hated by the Senate. He was glad he had managed to get her away to the University, where she would be safe, but he did miss her very badly.

  The pigeon flopped out of the vine leaves and staggered among the breadcrumbs.

  Titus nearly jumped out of his skin. “Gods! You gave me a shock!” he said.

  “Apologize,” croaked the pigeon. “Message. Your eyes only.”

  Titus picked it up to get to the message tube on its leg and exclaimed again. The bird was covered all over with tiny stab wounds and bleeding from a bigger cut under one wing that must have hurt like mad when it flew. Hoping it had not had to come far, he pulled Corkoran’s message out and unrolled it.

  Afterward, he said he felt as if the top of his head had come off. For a moment or so he was in such a fury that he all but leaped up yelling for vengeance, guards, executioners, his army, lawyers, judges, people with knobkerries, and anyone else who could do something to Antoninus and Empedocles, even if they only beat them over the head with plowshares and saucepans. But he had been brought up to control himself. So he simply sat with his hands clenched so hard on his knees that he found big bruises there later, watching the pigeon hobble about, wolfing breadcrumbs. After a minute he thoughtfully pushed his goblet of water over so that the pigeon could sip from it. Antoninus and Empedocles belonged to opposing parties in the Senate. It followed that the entire Senate was behind this visit of theirs to the University. Very well.

  “How did you get those wounds?” he asked the pigeon when he could speak without screaming.

  “Small men with swords. Angry mice,” it replied. “Stopping us from going with messages.”

  “At the University?” Titus asked.

  “Yes,” said the pigeon, and gobbled another piece of bread.

  Dwarfs attacking pigeons? Titus wondered. If things like that were going on at the University, the wizards there were not keeping Claudia safe as they should. This put the final touch to Titus’s fury, which, because he had sat there containing it, was by now a smooth, calm, planning rage. He looked up to see the daily bevy of people approaching him. For a moment his eyes were so blurred with anger that he could hardly see them. He blinked firmly and focused his rage.

  Most of those approaching were elderly scribes clutching armloads of scrolls. With them were the Steward of the Imp
erial Household and the Captain of the Emperor’s Personal Guard, and behind them came the Imperial Cook, to ask the Emperor what it was his pleasure to eat today, the Master of the Imperial Stables, the Imperial Tailor, the Master of the Imperial Wardrobe, the Imperial Lawgiver, and finally the Imperial Historian, who was supposed to record the day’s events. They were followed by six servants to clear away the Imperial breakfast.

  Emperor Titus stood up to meet them, smiling his usual mild smile. The captain first, he thought, because the Personal Guards were all nephews and grandsons of senators. They usually had a lovely life getting drunk and idling about. Not today, though, Titus hoped. “Captain Postumus,” he said, “it’s just dawned on me that I haven’t inspected the Guard for over a month. Perhaps you’d better have them parade in the exercise court in—shall we say?—half an hour. I may be a little late getting to you there, but I’ll be along as soon as I’ve finished with these other gentlemen.”

  A hastily muted expression of dismay crossed the aristocratic face of Captain Postumus, but he dropped elegantly to one knee, murmuring, “As my Emperor pleases,” and rose to leave.

  “Oh, and Postumus,” said Titus, after the Captain had taken two steps, “while you’re on your way, could you ask General Agricola to step by here for a word with me? Tell him I’ve had an idea about the southern legions.”

  “My pleasure, Imperial Majesty.” Postumus ducked a knee again and strode elegantly away.

  Titus turned to the Imperial Stablemaster. “Eponus, I shall need my horse when I review the Guard, won’t I? Can you have Griffin and Tiberius saddled for me? I’ll choose which of them I’ll ride when I come to the stables.”