Odd. Lots of voices, and the sound of something struggling. What did they have penned up in here, some kind of feral stallion?
“Are you sure that’s going to hold the beast?”
The voice was doubtful, and very frightened. “I tell you, orders or no orders, if that thing breaks free, don’t think I’m going to stand here and try to stop it!”
The crack of hand on flesh, and an exclamation of pain.
“You’ll do as you’re told, and like it, coward!” a second voice growled. “If I tell you to stand there and let the thing take your arm off, you’ll damned well do it!”
Not a stallion, then. A bull? Some new monster Ma’ar just dreamed up?
A muttered, sullen curse; the sound of spitting. Heavy boots, walking away. More struggles; chains rattling, muffled thuds, more mutters, a stream of ill-wishes directed against the second voice, his family, and all his progeny to come.
The thin, high wail of a young gryphon.
“Faaaather!”
A voice he knew! Kechara!
He pushed against the stall-door, and it swung wide while he stepped out and mantled. His eyes locked with those of one poor, spotty-faced groom clutching a pitchfork in one hand, a bloody rag held to his mouth with the other. The boy couldn’t have been more than sixteen. He took one look at Skan, went pale as milk, and fainted dead away.
Skan stepped over him, and looked into the stall he’d been guarding.
There were two canvas-covered bundles there; one thrashing, one whimpering. The whimpering bundle was the smaller, and the whimpers were definitely in Kechara’s voice!
How did she-never mind. Conn Levas or Shaiknam, or both. Quickly, he squeezed into the stall, but he did not free the little one. Not yet. The larger bundle of the two also smelled of blood and of gryphon, and it was a scent that he thought he recognized.
“Hold still,” he whispered. “It’s Skan.”
The bundle stilled immediately. He took a moment to examine the situation.
Chains wrapped around the bundle, but they were not fastened to the stall itself. If he could get the gryphon inside to bend a little, he might be able to slip one loop off, and that would give him enough slack to undo the whole thing without having to unlock it.
“Can you bend this way?” he whispered harshly, pushing down on what he thought was the back of the gryphon’s head. It must have been; the place bent over in response to his pressure, and he was able to work the loop of chain off as he had hoped. Once he had the slack he needed, two more loops followed, and he worked the entire chain down, with the squirming assistance of the gryphon inside.
Now he could slit the canvas bag and see if the contents were who he thought it was. He ripped open the canvas with a slash of a talon, and a head popped out-a head covered in an enormous version of a falcon’s hood, with the beak tied firmly shut.
He pulled off the bindings, and the beak opened.
“Damn it, Skan,” Aubri croaked, in a whisper no louder than his had been. “You took your own sweet time getting here!”
It took both of them to convince Kechara that she had to be quiet, but for once Ma’ar’s men had done them all a favor. They had cut off all the primaries on both her wings and Aubri’s, and in Kechara’s case, that meant she wasn’t tripping over her own awkward wings.
Kechara wasn’t at all clear on how she had gotten there, but the picture in her mind, projected strongly, was of a blurred Conn Levas offering something that smelled lovely. Skan assured her that he had “gone away” and that Skan had made certain he wouldn’t come back.
Not in this lifetime, anyway.
Aubri was a lot clearer on what had happened to him, and kept his explanation down to a terse couple of sentences. He only wanted to know one thing.
“Urtho?” he asked, with a sideways glance to see if Kechara was listening.
Skan closed his eyes, letting his grief show for just the briefest of moments, and shook his head.
Aubri’s beak clamped shut, and when Skan opened his own eyes, the broadwing’s eyes were blazing as red with madness as any goshawk’s.
“I got Conn Levas,” Skan said, around the lump of rage and grief in his own throat. “This will take care of Ma’ar. If we can get it to him.” He tilted his head to one side. “I have to admit-I was told that I’d have a count of a hundred to get away, and then this thing will make Jerlag look like a campfire.” He shook his head. “If you can think of any way you can get yourself and Kechara out of range. . . .”
Aubri’s pupils dilated, and he produced a harsh bark of a laugh. “On clipped wings? I don’t think so. Besides, all I ever asked was to go down fighting. I’m sorry about the little one, but this is going to be clean, right?”
He nodded. “As clean as fire. And I can still send you both into the Light if all seems hopeless.”
As you’ve done too many times before-Urtho, why must we feel these burdens? Why?
“Well,” Aubri rumbled. “You need me. Bet we can even find a way Kechara’ll be useful. And if it gets Ma’ar-“ Aubri’s savage grin and the scrape of his talons on the stone told the rest. “And-ah, demonsblood, Skan, you always were the luckiest son of a vulture I ever saw. Your luck, you’ll find a way out for us. I’ll take my chances with you.”
Skan let out the breath he had been holding in. “Well,” he said lightly. “That was the hard part. Now the easy part.”
“Which is?” Aubri asked as Kechara gave a breathy squeal of glee and pounced on something. She stuffed it in her mouth and looked up innocently, the tail of a rat hanging out of one corner of her beak for a heartbeat, before she swallowed and it vanished.
Skan looked cautiously around the corner; the doors to the stable stood open wide, and the apparently-deserted stable-yard stretched between them and the Palace kitchens. “Oh, it’s nothing much,” he replied, offhandedly. “Just getting into the Palace and the throne room.”
The last Tower door had been opened; there were still books and devices here Urtho wished he could save, but the vital things had been carried off. He had persuaded Vikteren and the rest to leave. Now there was only the small matter of hanging on, living every possible second, for every second meant more time to ensure that all of his people who could, would reach safety.
The Tower echoed with the whisper of air through doors long locked, and the occasional thud of something falling, echoing through stone corridors suddenly more empty than imagination could bear. In all of his life, Urtho had never felt so alone.
He had never expected to die alone, much less like this. At least the mages and Healers had taken all the pain, blocked the hallucinations and the convulsions, and left him only with growing weakness.
He was so tired, so very, very tired. . . .
No! He had to fight it, to stay conscious, awake! Every heartbeat was vital!
All we have done, and all I have learned, and I cannot slow the progress of my own death by even a candlemark.
He had never thought much about revenge, but now he burned with longing for it. Revenge-no, I want to protect my people, my children! And when the Tower goes, I want it to be something more than the end, I want it to mean something, to accomplish some purpose! He had always hoped, if it came to that, he would be able to lure Ma’ar, or at least some chief mages of Ma’ar’s, into the Tower-turned-trap. He’d planned for that, all along; a desperate gambit that, if nothing else, would keep Ma’ar so busy cleaning up the damage that his children and his people would be able to get far beyond Ma’ar’s reach or ability to find.
Now, when he died, the Tower would die in an expanding ring of sound and light, and it would be no more than the most impressive funeral pyre the world had ever seen-
wait a moment.
Something stirred under the morass the poison had made of his mind. An idea, and a hope. Ma’ar cannot know that Conn Levas succeeded. What would happen if I challenged him?