‘I realise this is a stupid question, but do you have a plan?’ Schmidt asked after about ten minutes. They were clinging to rope ladders by this time. ‘Or are we just going to keep climbing down these ladders in the hopes that we’ll eventually stumble upon the griffin?’
‘I think she’s over there,’ Lex took one hand away from the ladder to point but hastily put it back when the ladder began to turn beneath his weight.
There was an area to the right of them that seemed to jut out beyond the main mass of ladders so that it had been far more ravaged by the elements and was coated in the chalky, glittering space frost.
‘What makes you think that?’ Schmidt asked.
Lex pointed down. ‘The suns,’ he said.
Griffins were attracted to brightness, although they were more comfortable in colder temperatures. Holli’s sun had been rising when they went down into the Space Ladders. But Mahara’s, Heetha’s and Saydi’s suns were all still down below the Lands Beneath, waiting for their turn to come up.
‘That outcrop of ladders should give quite a good view of the other suns,’ Lex said. ‘Plus, it will let the griffin watch them rising and setting.’
‘You don’t seem very worried about the prophet getting there first,’ Schmidt said. ‘He did get a head start after all.’
‘Yeah, but he won’t be able to get the feather from the griffin very fast,’ Lex said, grinning. ‘There’s only one way a griffin will willingly let you take one of its feathers and that’s if you ask it very politely by name. I very much doubt that the prophet knows this griffin’s name but, luckily for us, I do.’
‘How do you know?’ the lawyer asked suspiciously.
‘Because my grandfather was the one who named her. She’s called Zoey.’
‘That’s a ridiculous name for a griffin,’ Schmidt said bluntly.
‘I know,’ Lex shrugged. ‘It was my grandmother’s name. He named her after her.’
‘Oh,’ Schmidt immediately looked uncomfortable. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean-’
‘No need to be sorry, sir,’ Lex said, smiling at the lawyer’s embarrassment. ‘Zoey is — as you say — a ridiculous name for a griffin. I suppose my grandfather thought it was romantic to name a huge, hulking wild beast after the woman he loved.’
The climb down the ladders was… not a pleasant one. In fact it was a harrowing, terrifying, terrible journey, and Lex couldn’t help but have the teensiest, grudging glimmer of respect for the old lawyer that he managed it at all. They both kept their eyes fixed very firmly on the ladder in front of them, taking it one rung at a time in an effort to fool their brains into believing that they weren’t really dangling from a ladder between two halves of the same planet with cold black space pressing in against them. If this technique had been working in any small way, it ceased to do so rather spectacularly when Lex and Schmidt reached the bunch of ladders that jutted out in a cluster on their own. For then there were quite clearly three huge, brilliant suns glaring up at them from below.
They were standing on a wooden platform now, their feet leaving footprints in the deep, chalky frost. The Lands Beneath was a vague blur below them, although most of it was blocked from view by the mass of ladders. But they could now quite clearly see the three suns belonging to the two Goddesses and the one God. The sheer enormity of their size made them look closer than they really were. Lex had never seen more than one deity’s sun in the sky at any one time and so had never noticed that they all looked slightly different. The first huge, fiery ball of heat was clearly Heetha, the God of War’s sun. The second sun was so pure that it was almost white, sparkling like a perfect, heat-emitting diamond. There was no mistaking that this was Saydi’s beautiful sun. Mahara’s abandoned sun was not as bright as the others. Indeed its outer rim seemed to have cooled enough for space frost to settle on the surface, although there was enough heat left in the core for it to give out a feeble glow.
The sight of those gigantic, majestic suns burning away below them made both Lex and Schmidt feel tiny and unbalanced. The lawyer decided it would be prudent to sit down before he tipped over the edge and Lex followed his lead, sinking slowly to his knees, enthralled laughter bubbling up incredulously in his chest.
‘Why would anyone choose to miss this?’ he asked, gazing down at the spectacular sight below. ‘How could Lucius actually prefer hiding in a cupboard to this? You must be glad you came now, Schmidt? What life would be complete without that sight in it? Come on, you must agree that this has made the whole thing worthwhile? I would have eaten muggets for a year to get to see this.’
‘It is… humbling,’ Schmidt agreed, gazing down at the suns.
Although Lex himself did not feel particularly humbled by the suns, he did feel an immense swell of pride that he had managed to get there. He was probably one of the only humans ever to have set foot on the Space Ladders. Even his grandfather had never been on the ladders themselves — he’d simply assisted Carey East in sending Zoey down to guard them after the previous griffin died of old age.
‘Well, I think she’s over there,’ Lex said at last, pointing over to their left, where there were two wooden platforms, one on top of the other, connected by ladders on either side so that it looked like a square, wooden cave.
‘You’d better stay back for this bit,’ Lex said. ‘I’ll have to say her name quickly or she’ll attack me. She’ll think I’m a threat when she first sees me and it would only be worse if there were two of us.’
So the lawyer remained where he was whilst Lex scrambled up and over ladders to get as near to the makeshift ladder-cave as he could. When he was on a smaller platform only about twenty feet away, the griffin heard him and came to the entrance. She was a huge creature and looked just like the murals Alistair Trent had once taken Lex and Lucius to see in the underground church-cave where people from around the Globe still went to pay tribute to the magnificent beast.
The griffins came in several different colours and this one was white, with just a single black feather on her left shoulder. Her head and the front of her body were those of an eagle, with sharp golden eyes, curved clawed feet and white feathers covering her chest and wings. In contrast, her hindquarters were clearly those of a lion, with snow-white fur covering her from midway down her back to the end of her long tail.
The griffin had been worshipped on the Globe for a long time because of its role in the aftermath of the Great Divide. They kept the Space Ladders sacred by chasing away any people who might stray onto them. Climbing the ladders was dangerous enough but to have a griffin coming after you at the same time meant certain death since it would be only too easy to lose your grip and fall off altogether. Of course, in recent years, the presence of the griffin had become little more than symbolic, for everyone knew the Gods had forbidden humans to ever go onto the Space Ladders — they did not want people down in the Lands Beneath.
The griffin was clearly surprised to see Lex on the ladders but after a brief hesitation she stepped out into the open and stretched her wings threateningly. It was an impressive sight. The three suns below painted golden light across her pale wings as her beak snapped sharply at him in an aggressive warning. Before she could start chasing him away, Lex raised his voice and said clearly and calmly, ‘Hello, Zoey.’
The griffin slowly folded her wings back at the mention of her name and didn’t move as Lex slowly climbed the last two ladders to reach her. Carefully, he stepped onto her platform, very aware that she could knock him off it just by rearing up onto her legs. But his grandfather had said that the use of their real name and a proper show of deference would make the griffins docile and Lex trusted his advice. As a Chronicler, it had been very important for Alistair to be accurate in every detail because future generations were likely to rely on what he’d written.