The boulder was glowing a dull red.
"Hot enough to make an updraft," the dracogriff grumbled. "Next time warn a guy, okay?"
"Sorry. I didn't realize—I've never done this spell before."
"Look, could you stop making it up as you go along?"
"Not for a while yet." Matt sighed. "I haven't worked out a spell for every occasion."
"Lord High Amateur," the dracogriff grunted. "Hey, can I get down now? Heights make me nervous."
"Oh, yeah, sure! But not right here, okay? It'd be a rough haul back up."
"Funny man," the dracogriff snorted as it banked and started climbing. "Just for the record, I need at least a hundred feet to take off or land—unless I wanna come straight down, and that's not too healthy."
"I believe you." Matt frowned, trying to decide whether or not to be indelicate, but curiosity won out, as it usually did. "Say, uh—doesn't flying come naturally to you?"
"A lot more naturally than magic comes to you." But the dracogriff's voice had an edge to it. "I mean, climbing trees comes easy to you overgrown monkeys—but does that mean you like it?"
"Yes, most of us..."
"Spare me the news about the ones who don't," the beast answered. "At least you're part of a "kind'!"
Matt sensed sensitive territory and tried to be careful. "Oh, come on! There have to be others of your species!"
"It ain't a species, whatever that is!" The dracogriff could vent a little anger over Matt's attitude, which helped. "We're crossbreeds!"
And getting crosser, Matt noticed. "There've got to be some others of your kind."
"If there are, I haven't met 'em!"
Well, that explained a lot.
"Dracogriffs don't come from mommy dracogriffs and daddy dracogriffs," the beast explained with sullen resentment. "Little dracogriffs happen when some tin-horned, back-stabbing, motherless, son-of-a-worm of a dragon, with more lust than conscience, finds a female griffin alone during her season—and it does happen, 'cause there're a lot more female griffins than males."
"Female griffins find dragons attractive?"
"Bucko, during her season, a lady griffin would find a stone slab attractive, if it were male—the poor little things are so frantic they'll go after anything. It's enough to make you wonder if Mother Nature knows what it's like to be female!"
"There're some females of my species who wonder about that, too. But doesn't the lady griffin try to fight off the dragon?"
"Maybe. What good can it do? A griffin has about as much chance against a dragon as a minnow has against a shark Result? Me—whether she liked it or not."
"So that's where you get the lion body and the eagle wings?"
The dracogriff nodded "The head and tail I get from my sire, may he shed his skin every hour. And if I ever meet him, I just might do it for him!"
"Meet him?" Matt frowned. "He didn't stick around?"
"Why should he? He'd gotten what he wanted No, up and away he went—you don't think he'd bring a griffin girl home to Mama, do you? Oh, no, good enough for fun, that's how dragons see 'em—but forever? No way! Those arrogant, high-and-mighty, holier-than-thou hypocrites!"
Matt found himself trying to remember that his dragon friend Stegoman was really a very nice guy—had saved his life a few times, in fact—but he didn't think it would be politic to mention that just now. "But your mother stood by you?"
"A saint! She was a saint! Yeah, she stood by me, even though she had to spend her life in exile from her own kind—they thought I was an abomination. Said she didn't mind, though—I made it all worthwhile for her. No, she raised me out in the wild wood. Couldn't live on a mountaintop—the griffins have staked out all the ones the dragons didn't."
"Sounds kind of lonely..."
"You bet it was! Soon as I was grown, I dreamed up an excuse to go wandering, so she could go back to live with the other griffins. I'll look for her when I get back that way though."
"No, no! I meant lonely for you!"
The dracogriff shrugged, almost unseating Matt. "You don't miss what you never had. I got to hang out around your kind, a little—woodcutters and foresters and such. Their hatchlings had fun playing with me, till they got big enough so they thought it was kid stuff."
"That's where you learned to speak our language?"
"From the forest kids? Yeah, that's where." The dracogriff sounded surprised. "How'd you guess?"
"Oh, just something about your accent." Matt didn't want to be more specific while he was still riding, and fifty feet up—getting thrown from the saddle could be pretty serious, especially since he didn't have a saddle.
The thought reminded him that he could be considerably more comfortable someplace else—almost anyplace else, in fact. "Uh, I see we're back to the top of the pass now."
"Yeah. Where'd you say you wanted to go?"
"Down! Look, it's been very good of you to give me a lift, but I really don't want to put you out any further."
"Look, bucko, I told you—I won't be owing to anybody."
"You don't owe me! You just paid me back!"
"For my life? Don't be a donkey! It's gonna take a lot more than one ride to make up for it. Now where'd you say you wanted to go?"
"Hey, look, really..."
"Much as I hate it, I could stay up here all day," the dracogriff said, with a note of menace. "You got a love affair with hiking?"
"No, riding is faster," Matt said with a sigh. "All right, and thanks—I'd be delighted to travel with you."
"That's better." The dracogriff angled downward.
"Uh—where'd you say you were going?"
"I didn't. Where're you going?"
"Into Ibile."
The dive leveled off into a glide very abruptly. Then, after a few seconds, the dragon head said, "You were serious about that quest stuff, huh?"
"Unfortunately—" Matt sighed. "—I was. Still want to go through with it?"
"Yeah." The dracogriff nodded. "If you're game, I'm game."
"Only if that sorcerer catches you."
"Won't do him much good, now," the dracogriff said, grinning. "I'm traveling with the Lord Wizard!"
Why, Matt wondered, did he have the feeling he had just been conned?
CHAPTER 6
On Being a Dracogriff
Even walking, the dracogriff made good time—-those lion legs were long, and resilient. Matt wondered what it would be like when the beast decided to run, but he wasn't about to ask while they were on a mountainside.
He also wasn't about to ask without some kind of cushioning. Finally, he couldn't take it anymore. "Uh, could we try for a rest break now?"
The dracogriff pulled to a stop, turning its head back to frown. "After only half an hour? We're never gonna get anywhere if you can't last any longer than that!"
"I'm just out of shape."
"Awright, awright," the dracogriff groused, and crouched so Matt could climb down.
The wizard dismounted, feeling the ache in every limb. He set his palms against his buttocks and leaned back. "Nnngah! Uh, hope you don't mind my saying it..."
"Of course not," the dracogriff answered with an ominous glare. "What?"
"Well, you have, shall we say, a very strong backbone."
The dracogriff stared at him while it figured out what Matt was talking about. Then its mouth lolled open, and it made the coughing, cawing sound again.
"Please." Matt squeezed his eyes shut. "Please don't laugh. You don't know what it feels like."
"And can't, either, I'll be bound. You mean my lumps are hitting you right where you live."
"I wouldn't put it that way..."
"Of course you wouldn't—that's why it takes me so long to figure out what you mean. So whatcha gonna do about it?"
Matt eyed him warily. "Would you object to a saddle?"