The Silver Gryphon

to his right, and a glass one sang softly to his left. How often had he sat here on a summer evening, listening to those chimes? Caught between glass and wood, that which breaks and that which bends, that which sings and that which survives. So our lives go. Winterhart joined him long after the moon had come out. He turned at her familiar footstep, to see her approaching from the direction of the Council Hall, the moonlight silvering her hair. In the soft light there was no sign of her true age; she could have been the trondi'irn of Urtho's forces, or the first ambassador to the Haighlei so many years ago. Only when she drew close were the signs of anxiety and tension apparent in her face, her eyes, the set of her mouth. "They're putting together the last of the supplies," she said, before he could ask. "Skan and the mages haven't come out of Snowstar's work area yet, and Shalaman hasn't replied. Don't worry, he will before the night is over; remember how long his court runs at night." He did remember; in the tropical heat of the climate around Khimbata, Shalaman's people all took long naps in the afternoon, and then continued their court ceremonies, entertainments, and duties until well after midnight. And he had no fear that Shalaman would refuse help; the Emperor could send off a hundred hunters or more from his forces, and they would never be missed. No, the only question was how soon the hunters could be somewhere that they could do some good. First the priests would have to approve the departure, then they would have to travel across many leagues of forest before they were anywhere near the place where the children had vanished. All that would take time, precious time Blindly, he held out his arms and Winterhart came into them. They held each other, seeking comfort in one another's warmth and presence. There was no point in talking; they would only echo one another, each saying what the other was thinking. They both knew that, and knew that talking would ease nothing, soothe nothing. So they simply sat down on the smooth, cool stone bench outside their home, and held each other, and waited beneath the stars. Neither of them were strangers to waiting. That did not make waiting any, easier-except that it removed the additional pain of loneliness. Judeth must have gotten over her own anger by dawn, for she showed no signs of it when a messenger summoned both Amberdrake and Winterhart to what the young Silver called a "planning session." The two of them had bathed and changed clothing, hoping that clean bodies would restore their minds a little. Amberdrake had shunned his usual finery in favor of something very like Winterhart's practical working garb, hoping that there might possibly be something he could do once the sun rose. When the summons came, both of them had been sitting over a breakfast neither of them had been able to touch, and it was a relief to rise and follow the youngster back to the Council hall. Skan and Zhaneel and, their other son Keenath were already there, showing just as much strain as Amberdrake felt, although only someone who knew gryphons well would have recognized the signs of strain in overpreened feathers, plumage lying flat against the body, posture that showed their muscles were as tense and knotted as Amberdrake's. He doubted that they had slept, but the sight of Keenath made a moment of intense anger flash through Amberdrake's heart. He still has a child. And if his other had not been so intent on leaving the city, mine might not have gone either! But that was irrational and entirely incorrect, and he knew it. He suppressed it immediately, and he and Winterhart maneuvered through the group crowded in here so that they could form a united block with the other set of parents. Judeth did not look as if she had slept either. Deep shadows touched the swollen pouches under her eyes, and she looked twice her real age. Aubri didn't even pretend to be calm; he chewed incessantly on one of his old, shed feathers, presumably to keep from shredding his current plumage. There were thirty or forty people in the group; Amberdrake noticed that at least six of them were mages and he, Winterhart, Skan, Keenath and Zhaneel were the only non-Silvers. Ikala was among the Silvers gathered here, and Amberdrake was irrationally pleased to see him, as if the tall young man represented more than just a local expert on the rain forest. The Council Hall was the only room large enough to hold all of them, and Judeth had completely taken it over, strewing maps and other documents all over the table. It looked as if she had been here for some time. "Snowstar and the mages have uncovered something damned peculiar," she said, when they had all gathered around the map-covered table. She tapped a darkened, irregularly shaped blob on the map in front of her. "This area here has no signs of magic. None, and they tell me that's practically impossible. The missing patrol was due to pass along this line-" She drew a swift mark with a piece of charcoal which crossed the southern end of the irregular-shaped area. "-and if there's something in there that's negating mage-energy, you can imagine for yourself what that would mean for both their carry-basket and their teleson." Amberdrake was all too able to imagine what that would do to a carry-basket; and from the way Winterhart suddenly clutched his arm, her fingers digging into the muscle, so was she. In his mind, he saw the two figures he had watched fly off into the distance suddenly stricken for a moment, then plummeting to their deaths on the unforgiving ground below. "That means we're going to have to come in somewhere near the edge and walk in," Judeth continued, without any hint that she had envisioned the same disaster that had played itself out behind Amberdrake' s eyes. "Our Gate probably won't work inside this area, and we'll have to suppose for now that nothing else magical in nature will work either. We'll have to operate by the old rules of working without magic, although yes, we will be taking mages, just in case magic does work after all. Though-if there's no local mage-power available, Snowstar tells me that the mages will be just like Journeymen and Apprentices, and limited to their own personal power. That's going to put a serious crimp in their activities, and any mages that go along had better start thinking in terms of budgeting themselves before they act." She leveled a sharp glance across the table, to the point where the mages of the Silvers had bunched together. "What about the gryphons?" someone wanted to know. "Can't they just fly overhead and scout the way they always do?" She closed her eyes for a moment, and sighed. "If I wanted a sign that our luck has turned truly wretched, I could not have conjured up one more certain. This is the rainy season for that part of the world-and the weather-mages tell me that storms will be unceasing over this particular area for the next several days to a week. Thunderstorms have already grounded the original pair that was out looking for our missing Silvers; they are on the ground and we know where they are. It might well be a side effect of the loss of magic over the area; we just don't know for certain. But what that means is that there won't be any flying going on. I'm not going to ban any gryphons from the search-parties, but they'll be strictly on foot unless the weather improves drastically." "I'm still going, and so are Zhaneel and Keeth," Skan spoke up firmly. Judeth nodded, as if she had expected as much. "In that case, since I'm going to divide the searchers into three parties, each gryphon can go with one. I've already sent out a gryphon with a Gate-mage; but he'll be coming straight back, and so will the two still out there while weather cooperates." Judeth cocked an eyebrow at Skan as if she expected him to object to this, but he didn't. Amberdrake could certainly understand why. A gryphon on the ground was severely handicapped; Skan, Zhaneel, and Keenath would be as much a hindrance as they were a help. The two who had been on patrol would be exhausted, and the one who had ferried the Gate-mage even more so. Judeth continued. "Now, here's the current plan. We'll Gate in here-that's the closest I want to get to this area with anything that depends upon magic." She stabbed down with her index finger. Here, the point where her finger indicated, was on the line that Blade and Tad had been expected to fly. "The Gate-mage and a small party will stay here, at a base camp, holding the area for the rest of you. We'll divide up; the party with Skan and Drake in it will go north, up to the top of the area, and then in. The one with Ikala leading it, including Keenath, will go straight in. The one with Winterhart and Zhaneel will go south, then in. That way we'll cover the maximum area in the shortest possible time." Judeth straightened, and looked straight at Skan again: "And in case you're wondering why I haven't put you two in on the expected line, it's because the two gryphons out there already flew that line and didn't see anything before weather forced them down. So either the missing patrol didn't fly that line, or it's going to take an expert in that kind of territory to find signs of them. That's Ikala, not you; he'll be leading a party of people all used to moving quickly, and after he scouts the line on the ground, he'll be covering the areas north and south of that line. I'm putting you two on the likeliest alternate track; Tad always had a tendency in training to stay on the northern side of a given flight line. My guess is, if they're anywhere off the line, it's in the north." "But that's just a guess," Skan stated. "They could be south." She nodded. "And the gods know I've guessed wrong before; that's why the third party. The parties are going to number eight; one gryphon, one Healer or trondi'irn, or whatever comes close-that's you, Drake-two mages, and five fighters, all experienced Silvers. Any smaller is dangerous, any larger is unwieldy. Don't bother to pack at all; you'll be taking standard Silver kits including medical supplies, and you aren't going to have time to change clothing. Besides, by the time you make a camp at night, you and your clothing should be sluiced clean." Her stare at Amberdrake said, as clearly as words, And if you don't like that, you don't have to go. He stared right back at her. Try and keep me from going and you'II have a fight. She waited for him to say something, staring into his gaze with challenge in her stance, but it was she who finally dropped her eyes. "This is an in-and-out mission, the faster the better. As of this moment, consider yourself facing a real enemy, a powerful one, if he can drain all the mage-energy out of a place. I don't know what's caused magic to leach out of that area, but I have to assume it's a hostile, and it isn't going to like having twenty-four people traipsing all over its territory. As soon as the mage gets to the Gate-point, we'll be bringing it up, and I don't want it up for longer than it takes to pitch all of you through it. Is that understood?" Once again, she stared at him as if her words were meant for him alone. Her tone of voice implied that, given the opportunity, she would "pitch" Amberdrake through the Gate. He simply nodded, as did everyone else. "Good. From now until you leave, you are all sleeping, eating, and everything else right here." She smiled thinly at their surprise. "That'll be quicker than trying to gather all of you up once the mage gets into place. I don't intend to waste a single minute on any dallying. I'll have sleeping arrangements brought in; the mage I sent out is being carried by Darzie, so I expect to hear that they've made their landing within the next full day." Amberdrake was impressed, as much by the identity of the gryphon as by the speed with which the duo expected to reach their destination. He wondered what Judeth had promised to get Darzie to fly a carry-basket at all, much less try to do so breaking a record and in bad weather. Darzie was not a Silver; he was one of a new class of gryphons who were primarily athletes. Whether as acrobats, fast couriers, or actual racers, these gryphons earned a very fine, even luxurious, living by serving the Haighlei appetite for speed and spectacle. Darzie was the best of the fast couriers and one of the fastest racers-he was a more consistent flyer than gryphons who actually clocked the occasional faster time. It was hard to imagine what hold Judeth could have over him to induce him to risk injury and strain in this way. But maybe he was being uncharitable; maybe Darzie had actually volunteered Not without blackmail. It didn't matter, so long as Judeth had gotten him, whether it was through bribery or blackmail, or a combination of both. Maybe she's following my example. The gods know she has enough power of her own to leverage just about anyone in this city into doing her bidding at least once. "Any questions?" Judeth asked, and looked around the room. "No? Right. Fall out, and for those of you who haven't slept, I'm calling Tamsin in to make you sleep." There was no doubt who she was targeting with the daggers of her gaze, and both Amberdrake and Skan flinched; but she wasn't finished. "That includes me; we won't be any good to anyone if we aren't rested when the call comes. Right, Drake?" Her question came as a surprise, and he was doubly surprised to sense the compassion and sympathy-and worry of her own-behind the words. It penetrated even his defensiveness. "Ah, right," he admitted sheepishly, relaxing just a trifle. So she does understand, and she's forgiven us He had not hoped for it so soon, but he welcomed it as a tiny bright spot of hope in the midst of too much grief. "Good. Glad you agree, because you're going to be one of the first to go to sleep." A commotion at the door proved to be bedding, food, and Tamsin all arriving simultaneously. "Now, stand down, all of you, and get yourselves taken care of. I'll be watching to see that you do." And she did; standing over them all like a slave-master, to see that every member of the three search parties ate, drank, and submitted to Tamsin's touch. As Judeth had warned, Amberdrake was one of the first, and after one look at Judeth's expression, he knew better than to protest. So he crammed down a few mouthfuls of food as dry and tasteless as paper, drank what was given him, and laid himself down on a standard, military-style sleeping roll. He closed his eyes as Tamsin leaned over him, and that was the last thing he knew until the rally-call awakened him. Rain. Why did it have to be rain? Even snakes would be better. Skandranon tried to keep his thoughts on his purely physical discomfort, but try as he might, he couldn't. His skin crawled, and the rain had nothing to do with it. If Skan's feathers hadn't been plastered flat to his body, they'd have been standing up in instinctive alarm. He did not like this place, and his dislike was not connected in any way whatsoever with the miserable weather. It could have been that this bizarre, claustrophobic forest had swallowed Blade and Tad without a trace, but that wasn't the reason his soggy hackles were trying to rise either. The other mage of the party felt the same, and if there had been any choice in the matter, he'd have gone back to the base camp because it just plain felt wrong here. The two of them, after some discussion last night before the human took the first sleep shift, had decided that the problem was that lack of mage-energy in this place. Presumably an Apprentice-level mage or Journeyman would not be affected in this way; they were not used to sensing and using energies outside themselves, unless those energies were fed to them by a mage of greater ability. But a Master (as Skan and the human Silver, Filix, were) was as accustomed to the all-pervasive currents of mage-energy as a gryphon was to the currents of the air. Skan could not remember a time in his adult life that he had not been aware of those currents. Even when the mage-storms had caused such disruptions in magic, the energy had never vanished, it just hadn't worked or felt quite the same. But having no mage-energy about-it felt wrong, very wrong. It had him disoriented and off-balance, constantly looking for something that simply wasn't there. It feels as if I've suddenly lost a sense; something subtle, like smell. Nevertheless, a quick trial had proved to his satisfaction that magic still worked here, and furthermore, those magical items that they had brought in with them were still empowered. Further checks proved that, at the moment at least, there was no ongoing drain of mage-energy. The power that built up in any area naturally was slowly rising back up. So whatever was wrong in this forest, whatever had caused this anomaly, it had not completely negated magic, just removed it. Whether that drainage had been gradual or all at once was anyone's guess. And there must be something coming along to drain mage-energy again as it built up, or there would be some areas that had at least a little power available. As for what that could be, he had no idea. He did not care to think about what must have happened if the basket had also had all of its empowering mage-energy drained-all at once. Skandranon mentally worked on a few new phrases to use when he finally complained about it all to someone whom he could corral into listening sympathetically. He had a reputation for-colorful-language to maintain after all. He would much rather concentrate on that, than how miserable his soggy feathers felt, how cold he was, how sore his muscles were after two days of walking. That was something he simply hadn't considered, and it was galling to realize that Drake was in better physical shape than he was! Drake had been climbing the stairs and ladders of White Gryphon for almost twenty years; he had only been flying. He could not think of more than a handful of times that he had actually climbed up rather than down, and none of those times had been in the last three years. At least Keeth had been working out on the obstacle course lately, and Winterhart had made certain that all muscles were exercised. Poor Zhaneel must be as miserable as he. But she has the best trondi'irn in the city to tend her. Keeth is a trondi'irn. I only have Drake, who does his best, but still he's preoccupied. Rain dripped into his nares and he sneezed to clear them, shaking his head fiercely. He and Drake were at the rear of the party; with his keener sense of hearing than the humans possessed, it seemed a good idea to have him at the back where he might be able to detect something following them. Now he wished he had thought to ask Judeth for a couple of kyree scouts for each party; they would have been much more effective than any of the humans. Rain poured down out of the sky, as it had since the fog lifted that morning. This was a truly lovely climate; fog from before dawn to just after, followed by rain until well past darkness, followed by damp chill until the fog came again in the morning. Judeth had been absolutely right in grounding them, and he would have grounded himself once he saw the weather; there was no way for a gryphon to fly safely in this muck, even if he could get his wings dry long enough to take off. Darzie had managed to bring his mage in safely only because he was insanely self-confident and lucky enough for four gryphons, and because the weather changed abruptly to something more like a "normal" rainy season outside of the "no-magic" area. That, and Darzie is young enough to think he's immortal, and good enough to fly as if he were. Like another stupid, stupid gryphon I used to know. In spite of the fact that the rainy season was normal back at the base-camp, "normal" still meant a raging thunderstorm every afternoon. Darzie had flown and landed in one of those thunderstorms, blithely asserting that it was all a matter of timing and watching where the bolts hit. His passenger had been white-lipped, but remarkably reticent about discussing the flight. Drake had found out what had tempted Darzie into making the trip; a challenge. Judeth had asked the young gryphon if he knew of anyone who might be persuaded, and had hinted broadly that she didn't think he could do it. That had been enough for Darzie, who had insisted that he and only he could manage the trip. And he had, in record-breaking time, and without damaging himself or his passenger. For sheer speed, audacity, and insane courage, that flight had surpassed even some of the Black Gryphon's legendary accomplishments. Some, but not all. Darzie will just have to take his own time to become a legend, and if he is wise, he will do it in his own way, and not try to emulate me. I think that my life must have used up the luck of twenty gryphons. Skan, the base-camp crew, and the other twenty-three rescuers had piled through the Gate in a record-setting time of their own. Although no people had been "pitched" through, all the supplies had been; hurled in a mass by a small army of Judeth's support crew. Not even during a resupply had Skan ever seen a Gate go up and down again so quickly. Darzie flew home to receive his justly-earned accolades and the admiration of every unattached female in the city; the results of that would likely be more exhausting for him than the great deed itself. The Gate-mage and his helpers and guards remained to set up a base camp; the rest of them had shouldered packs and moved out under the beginnings of a rainstorm. No one had told them, however, that they were going to have to climb down a cliff to get into the forest where the children were lost. The three gryphons had shaken themselves dry and flown themselves down, but the humans had been forced to get to the bottom the hard way. That experience, in a worsening thunderstorm, had been exciting enough to age even the most hardened veteran in the lot. Absolutely everything they touched was slippery, either with mud, water, or substances they were probably better off not knowing about. Once at the bottom, the three parties had formed up and gone their separate ways-and Skan had been amazed at how quickly the forest had swallowed the other two search parties. In an amazingly short period of time, he couldn't even hear the faintest sound of the others; only the steady drumming of the rain, and the whistles, chirps, and calls of creatures up in the tops of the trees. Each day had been much like the one before it; only the navigator knew for certain that they were going in the right direction and not in circles. The only time that Skan was ever dry was just before he slept; the moment he poked his beak out of the tent he shared with Drake and the other mage, he was wet. Either fog condensed on his feathers and soaked into them, or he got soaked directly by the usual downpour. Just at the moment, the downpour had him wet to the skin. And he was depressed, though he would have been depressed without the rain. How can we ever hope to find any sign of them? he asked himself, staring up at the endless sea of dripping leaves, and around at the dizzying procession of tree trunks on all sides, tangled with vines or shrouded with brush. There wasn't a sign of a game trail, and as for game itself-well, he'd had to feed himself by surprising some of the climbing creatures in the mornings, while he could still fly. They could be within shouting distance of us, and we would never know it! This forest was not only claustrophobic, it was uncannily enveloping. One of the fighters swore that he could actually see the plants growing, and Skan could find it in his heart to believe him. How long would it take until vines and bushes covered anything left after a crash? A few days? A week? It had been a week since the children went missing, maybe more than a week; he lost track of time in here. And they could have been down for three or four days before that. Gloomy thoughts; as gloomy as their surroundings. And yet he could not give up; as long as there was any chance, however minuscule, that they would find the children, he would search on. No matter what, he had to know what had happened to them. The uncertainty of not knowing was the worst part. Drake looked like Skan felt; the kestra'chern was a grim-faced, taciturn, sodden, muddy mess most of the time. He spoke only when spoken to; tended to the minor injuries of the party without being asked, but offered nothing other than physical aid, which was utterly unlike him. He hiked with the rest of them, or dealt with camp chores, but it was obvious that his mind was not on what he was doing. It was out there, somewhere, and Skan wondered if Drake was trying to use his limited empathic ability as a different kind of north-needle, searching for the pole star of pain and distress hidden among the trunks and vines. With the blood tie between himself and his daughter, he should be especially sensitive to her. If she were alive, he might be able to find her where conventional methods were failing. More power to him; he's never tried using it that way, but that doesn't mean it won't work. Skan only wished he had a similar ability he could exercise. As it was, he was mostly a beast of burden, and otherwise not much help. He couldn't track, he couldn't use much magic without depleting himself, and as for anything else-well, his other talents all involved flying. And he could only fly for a short time in the mornings. Regin, the leader in their party, held up a hand, halting them, as he had done several times already that day. There didn't seem to be any reason for this behavior, and Skan was getting tired of it. Why stop and stand in the rain for no cause? The more ground they covered, the better chance they had of finding something. He nudged past Filix, and splashed his way up to the weather-beaten Silver Judeth had placed in charge. "Regin, just what, exactly, are we waiting for?" he asked, none too politely. Fortunately, the man ignored the sarcastic tone of his voice, and answered the question by pointing upward. Skan looked, just in time to see their scout Bern sliding down the trunk of a tree ahead of them with a speed that made Skan wince. "Bern's been looking for breaks in the trees ahead," Regin said, as Bern made a hand signal and strode off into the trees. "We figure, if the basket came down it had to make a hole; that hole'll still be there. He gets up into a tall tree and looks for holes all around, especially if he can see they're fresh. You might not believe it with all these clouds around, but if there's a break in the trees more light gets in, and you can see it from high enough in the canopy. That's what we're waiting on." Bern reappeared a moment later, and rejoined the party, shaking his head. Skan didn't have to know the Silver's signals to read that one; no holes. He and Regin had a quick conference with the navigator, and the scout headed back off into the forest on a new bearing. The rest of the party followed in Bern's wake. So far, there had been no sign of anything following or watching them, much less any attacks. Skan was beginning to think that Judeth's insistence on assuming there was a hostile entity in here was overreaction on her part. There hadn't been any signs that anything lived in here but wild animals; surely whatever had drained off all the mage-energy here must be a freak phenomenon. Maybe that was what had caught the two children Skan dropped back to his former place beside Amberdrake, but with a feeling of a little more hope, brought on by the knowledge that at least they weren't totally without a guide or a plan. Drake still seemed sunk into himself, but he revived a bit when Skan returned and explained what the lead members were up to. "I've heard worse ideas," he said thoughtfully, wiping strands of sodden hair out of his eyes, and blinking away the rain. "It's not a gryphon eye view, but it's better than nothing." Once again, the leader signaled a stop. Skan peered out and up through the curtains of rain, but he couldn't see anything. Wherever the scout was this time, not even Skan's excellent eyes could pick him out. "I have no idea how Bern is managing to climb in this weather, much less how he's doing it so quickly." Skan moved up a few feet and ducked around a tangle of vines, but the view was no better from the new vantage. "He must be as limber as one of those little furry climbers that Shalaman keeps at his Palace as pets. For all we know, this sort of place is where those come from." Drake shrugged dismissively, as if the subject held no interest for him. "I-" "Hoy!" Skan looked up again, startled, and just caught sight of the tiny figure above, waving frantically. He seemed to be balanced on a thick tree limb, and clung to the trunk with only one hand. The other hand waved wildly, and then pointed. "Hoy!" the call came again. "Fresh break, that way!" Fresh break? The same thought occurred to all of them, but the Silvers were quicker to react than Skan or Drake. They broke into a trot, shoving their way through the vegetation, leaving the other two to belatedly stumble along in their wake. Skan's heart raced, and not from the exertion. He longed to gallop on ahead, and probably would have, except that it was all he could do to keep up with the Silvers. And much to his embarrassment, just as he developed a sudden stitch in his side, Bern, the scout who had been up in the tree, burst through the underbrush behind them, overtook them, and plunged on to the head of the column. Show-off Another shout echoed back through the trees, muffled by the falling rain. The words weren't distinguishable, but the tone said all Skan needed to know. There was excitement, but no grief, no shock. They've found something. Something and not someone-or worse, bodies From some reserve he didn't know he had, he dredged up more strength and speed, and turned his trot into a series of leaps that carried him through the underbrush until he broke through into the clearing beneath the break in the trees. He stumbled across the remains of a crude palisade of brush and onto clear ground. A camp! That was his first elated thought; if the children had been able to build a camp, they could not have been too badly hurt. Then he looked at the kind of camp it was, and felt suddenly faint. This was no orderly camp; this was something patched together from the remains of wreckage and whatever could be scavenged. Regin looked up from his examination of the soggy remains of the basket as Skan halted inside the periphery of the clearing. "They crashed here, all right." He pointed upward at the ragged gap in the canopy. "They're gone now, but they did hit here, hard enough to smash two sides of the basket. They both survived it, though I can't guess how. Maybe there was enough in the way of branches on the way down to slow their fall. The medical kit's gone, there's signs they both used it." They were here. They were hurt. Now they're gone. But why? "Why aren't they still here?" he asked, speaking his bewilderment aloud. "Now that is a good question." Regin poked through a confusion of articles that looked as if they had just been tossed there and left. "Standard advice is to stay with your wrecked craft if you have an accident. I'd guess they started to do that, were here for maybe two days, then something made them leave. It looks to me as if they left in a hurry, and yet I don't see any signs of a fight." "They could have been frightened away," Amberdrake ventured. "Or-well, this isn't a very good camp-" "It's a disaster of a camp, that's what it is," Regin corrected bluntly. "But if all I had was wreckage, and I was badly hurt, I probably wouldn't have been able to do much better. It's shelter, though, and that isn't quite enough. I wish I knew how much of their supplies got ruined, and how much they took with them." He straightened,, and looked around, frowning. "There's no sign of a struggle, but no sign of game around here either. They might have run out of food, and it would be hard to hunt if they were hurt. There's no steady water source-" Amberdrake coughed politely. "We're under a steady water-source," he pointed out. Regin just shrugged. "We're taught not to count on rain. So-no game, no water, and an indefensible camp. Gryphons eat a lot; if their supplies were all trashed, they'd be good for about two days before they were garbage, unfit to eat. After that, they've got to find game, for Tadrith alone. My guess is, they stayed here just long enough to get back some strength, and headed back in the direction of home. They're probably putting up signals now." He grimaced. "I just hope their trail isn't too cold to follow-but on the other hand, if they headed directly west, we should stay pretty much on their trail. That's where I'd go, back to the river. It's a lot easier to fish if you're hurt than to hunt." Skan groaned. "You mean we could have just followed the river and we probably would have found them?" Regin grinned sourly. "That's exactly what I mean. But look on the bright side; now we know they're alive and they're probably all right." Skan nodded, as Regin signaled to Bern to start hunting for a trail. But as Bern searched for signs, Skan couldn't help noticing a few things. For one thing, the piles of discarded material had a curiously ordered-disordered look about them, as if they had been tossed everywhere, then gathered up and crudely examined, then sorted. For another, there were no messages, notes, or anything of the sort to give a direction to any rescuers. Granted, the children might not have known whether anyone would find the camp, but shouldn't they have left something? And last of all, there was no magic, none at all, left in any of the discarded equipment. So the surmise had been correct, something had drained all of the magic out of their gear, and from the signs of the crash, it had happened all at once. And yet none of the search-party gear had been affected-yet. So what had done this in the first place? What had sorted through the remains of the camp? And what had made the children flee into the unknown and trackless forest without even leaving a sign for searchers to follow? Was the answer to the third question the same as the answer to the other two? Tad entered the cave, sloshing through ankle-deep water at the entrance, carefully avoiding Blade's three fishing lines. Blade held up some of her catch, neatly strung, and he nodded appreciatively. "Water's higher," he told her. "In places it covers the trail here." That was to be expected, considering how much is falling out of the sky. "Well," Blade said with resignation. "At least we have a steady water supply- and we don't have to leave the cave to fish anymore." It had not stopped raining for more than a few marks in the middle of the night ever since they had arrived here. She'd wondered what the rainy season would be like; well, now she knew. The stream of water running down the middle of the cave had remained at about the same size, only its pace had quickened. The river had risen, and now it was perfectly possible for them to throw lines into the river itself without going past the mouth of the cave, with a reasonable expectation of catching something. That was just as well, since they were now under siege, although they still had not seen their hunters clearly. The flitting shadows espied in the undergrowth had made it very clear that there was no getting back across the river without confronting them. Tad nodded, spreading his good wing to dry it in front of the fire. He had gone out long enough to drag in every bit of driftwood he could find, and there was now a sizable store of it in the cave. He'd also hauled in things that would make a thick, black smoke, and they had a second, extremely nasty fire going now. It stood just to one side of the stream at the rear of the cave, putting a heavy smoke up the natural "chimney." Whether or not there was anyone likely to see it was a good question; this was not the kind of weather anything but a desperate or suicidal gryphon would fly in. On the other hand-how desperate would Skandranon or Tad's twin be by now? Desperate enough to try? Blade both hoped so and hoped that they would have more sense; their pursuers were getting bolder, and she hadn't particularly wanted Tad to go out this afternoon. The stalkers were still nothing more than menacing shadows, but she had seen them skulking through the underbrush on the other side of the river even by day, yesterday and this morning. "I think they might try something tonight," Tad said, far too casually. "I know I was being watched all the time, and I just had that feeling, as if there was something out there that was frustrated and losing patience." "I got the same feeling," Blade confessed. She hadn't enjoyed taking her shields down and making a tentative try at assessing what lay beyond the river, but it had felt necessary. In part, she had been hoping to sense a rescue party, but the cold and very alien wave of frustrated anger that met her tentative probe had made her shut herself up behind her shields and sit there shivering for a moment. "I-tried using that Empathic sense, and I got the same impression you did. They would like very much to get a chance at us." She hoped that Tad wouldn't make too big a fuss about that confession; he'd been at her often enough to use everything she had. Now she'd finally given in to his urgings, she was not in the mood for an "I told you that was a good idea." She wasn't certain that it was a good idea; what if those things out there had been able to sense her just as she sensed them? Then again, what would they learn? That she was hurt, and scared spitless of them? They already knew that. Fortunately for him, Tad just nodded. "It's good to know that it's not just my own worry talking to me," he said, and sighed. "Now I don't feel so badly about setting all those traps." "What-" she began. At that moment, one of her fishing lines went tight, and she turned her attention to it long enough to haul in her catch. But after rebaiting the hook and setting the line again, she returned to the subject. "What other traps do you think would work?" she asked. "On our side of the river, that is. Where could we set more?" Thus far, they hadn't had any luck with deadfalls like the one that had marked one of the shadows before. It was as if, having seen that particular sort of trap, the hunters now knew how to avoid it. Large snares hadn't worked either, but she hadn't really expected them to, since there was no way to conceal them. But perhaps now, with water over the trail, trip-wires could be hidden under the water. "I tended to that during my 'walk' earlier. There's only one good place, really," he told her. "The river's gotten so deep and fast that there's only one place where I think they might try to cross-that's downstream, past where we crossed it when we first got here. I didn't set a trap right there, though-what I did was rig something that's harmless but looks just like the rockfall I rigged later on." He gryph-grinned at his own cleverness, and she could hardly blame him. "So they'll see the harmless decoy, and then walk right into the rockfall?" He nodded, looking very proud of himself. "It's a good big one, too. If they actually try coming after us, at least one of them is going to be seriously hurt or killed, unless they've got lightning reflexes and more luck than any one creature deserves to have." "Just as long as you don't hurt someone coming to rescue us!" she warned. Yesterday she might have argued with him about the merits of setting something meant to kill rather than discourage-but that was before she had opened herself to the creatures across the river. She still might not know what they looked like, but now she knew what they were. Killers, plainly and simply, with a kind of cold intelligence about them that made her wish for one good bow, two good arms, and three dozen arrows. She would debate the merits of permitting such creatures the free run of their own territory some other time; and if they gave up and left her alone, she would be perfectly happy to leave them alone. But if they came after her or Tad, she would strike as efficiently and with the same deadly force as they would. There was still the question of whether or not these creatures were the "hunting pack" of someone or something else; she did not have the ability to read thoughts, even if these creatures had anything like a thought. But she hadn't sensed anything else out there with them; all of the creatures had been of the same type, with a definite feeling of pack about them. Which could simply mean that their master was off, lounging about at his ease somewhere, watching all of this in a scrying-mirror. That would certainly fit the profile of a sadistic Adept; she couldn't picture Ma'ar, for instance, subjecting himself to mud and pouring rain. If that was so, if there was an Adept behind all this, and she ever got her hands on him "That wasn't the only trap I built," Tad continued proudly, oblivious to her dark thoughts. "I have trip-tangles under the water that will throw them into the stream, I balanced boulders to roll at a touch and trap feet and legs, and I put up some more snares. Between all that and the rock barricade we have across the front of the cave, I think we can feel a little safer." "Just as long as we can continue fishing from in here," she corrected. "And as long as you can stand to live on fish." "All I have to do is think about eating any more of that dried meat, and fish takes on a whole new spectrum of delight," he countered. "I'm learning to tell the difference between one fish and another, raw. Some are sweeter, one has more fat-" And they all taste the same to me. "Fine, I believe you!" she interrupted hastily. "Listen, I wonder if we could rig some kind of a net or something to haul in driftwood as it comes down over the falls. There's a lot of stuff getting by us that we could really use." There was nothing that Tad liked better than trying to invent a new way to do something, and the idea of a driftwood-net kept him happily occupied for some time. And more importantly, it kept him restfully occupied; no matter how cheerful and energetic he seemed-or tried to appear-he was tired, and so was she. The ever-present roar of the falls would cover the sounds of anything approaching them, and most especially would cover the sounds of anything bold enough to try swimming across the river at this point. They both knew that, and she suspected that he was staying half-awake even through her watch, as she was staying through his. Not especially bright of either of them, but neither of them were able to help themselves. Their imaginations supplied the creatures out there with every kind of supernatural attribute, especially in the dark of the night. It was easier to dismiss such fears by daylight, except that she kept reminding herself that just because their hunters hadn't done something yet, that didn't mean they weren't capable of a particular action. It was hard to strike a balance between seeing threats that didn't exist and not being wary enough, especially when you didn't know everything the enemy could do. "Not long until dark," Tad observed, after a long discussion of nets and draglines and other ways of catching runaway driftwood. He pointed his beak toward the river. She nodded; although it was difficult to keep track of time without the sun being visible, the light did seem to be fading. Another one of her lines went taut; this fish was a fighter, which probably meant that it was one of the kinds Tad liked best. Any fish seemed pretty tasteless to her, wrapped in wet clay to bake and without any herbs to season it with. She'd thought about using some of the peppery leaves just to give her food some spice, then thought better of the idea. Although they had not had any deleterious effect rubbed on the skin, there was no telling if they were poisonous if eaten. You could rub your skin all day with shadow-berries and not get anything worse than a purple stain, but eat a few and you would find yourself retching up your toenails She fought the fish to exhaustion and reeled it in, hand over hand, taking care not to tangle the line. That was enough for tonight; she pulled in the other lines, and by the time she was done, there was no doubt; it was darker out on the river. She took the fish back behind the rock barrier to the fire, where Tad still basked. Each day they added a few more rocks, but they were rapidly approaching the point where they wouldn't be able to use river clay as mortar anymore. It just wasn't strong enough. There was another advantage to this cave; no bugs. Enough smoke hung in the air from their signal-fire to discourage insects of all sorts. Her bites had finally begun to heal and didn't bother her too much anymore. In fact, if it hadn't been for those watchers out there, she would be feeling pretty pleased with the state of things. They had fire, excellent shelter, and plenty to eat, and sooner or later someone from White Gryphon or even Khimbata would see or smell the signal-fire, and they could go home. And in the meantime, while they were not comfortable, they were secure. She took one of the big, sluggish bottom feeders from her string, gutted it, wrapped it in wet clay, put it in the firepit and raked coals and ashes over it. The rest she handed to Tad as they were. No longer as famished as he was when they first got here, he ate them with gusto. And if he lacked fine table manners, she was not going to complain about the company. I can think of worse people to be stranded with. "How's the wing?" she asked, as she did at least once a day. "It doesn't hurt as much as it did yesterday, but I still don't want to unwrap it," he replied. "Whenever I move in an unusual way, it hurts." In Tad-language, that meant "it hurts enough that my knees buckle and I almost pass out." She knew; she'd seen it happen. Tad was so stoic. He tried very hard to be cheerful, and it was likely for her benefit alone. By moving very carefully, she had managed to keep the same thing from happening to her, but that meant a lot of restriction on her movement. If only she had two good hands-or he had two good wings! If either of them could manage to get to the top of the cliff, she was sure they could think of a way to bring the other up afterward. Up there, they wouldn't have to worry about pursuit anymore; if the hunters couldn't climb a tree, they sure as stars couldn't climb a cliff! Might as well wish for three or four experienced Silvers with long-range bows, she thought grimly. I have the feeling that there is something about all of this that I'm missing completely, something that should be obvious, but isn't. I just wish I had a clue to what it is. "Do you really think they're going to try something tonight?" she asked, more to fill the silence than because she thought he'd changed his mind. For an answer, he nodded toward the cave entrance. "Rain's slackening early. The current isn't bad in that one wide, shallow spot. Not that hard to wade across, if you've got claws to hang onto the rock with. And we already know they do have claws." She wondered if she ought to try opening herself up to them a second time, then decided against it. They could be waiting for her to do exactly that. Silence fell between them again, and she just didn't feel right about breaking it with small talk. She checked her fish instead, and found the clay rock hard; that was a good indication that the fish inside was done, so she went ahead, raked it out of the coals, and broke it open. The skin and scales came away with the clay, leaving the steaming white flesh ready to eat without all the labor of skinning or scaling. She made fairly short work of it. As usual, it tasted like-not much of anything. Visceral memories of hot, fresh bread smothered in sweet butter, spicy meat and bean soup, and that incredible garlic and onion-laced fish stew that Jewel made taunted her until she drove them from her mind. After that, they let the fire die down to coals and banked them with ashes to reduce the amount of light in the cave. If the hunters were going to try something tonight, there was no point in giving them the advantage of being able to see their targets clearly silhouetted. She moved toward the barricade by edging along the side of the cave to keep herself in the shadows as much as possible. Tad did the same on the other side. The rain had indeed slackened off early for once; instead of illuminating a solid sheet of water in front of her nose, the intermittent flashes of lightning showed the other side of the river, with the churning, rolling water between. There was no sign of anything on the other side of the river, and that wasn't good. Up until now, there had always been at least one lurking shadow in the bushes over there; now there was nothing. That was just one more indication that Tad's instincts and her reading of the hunters' impatience were both correct. They were going to try something tonight. She glanced over at Tad; when lightning flickered, she could see his head and neck clearly, although he was so still he could have passed for a carving. He kept his eyelids lowered, so that not even a flicker of reflection would betray his presence to anything watching. His natural coloration blended beautifully with the stone behind him, and the lines of his feathers passed for rock-striations. It was amazing just how well camouflaged he was. His ear-tufts lay flat along his head, but she knew better than to assume that meant he wasn't listening; the ear-tufts were largely decorative tufts of feathers that had nothing to do with his hearing. No, he was listening, all right. She wondered how much he could hear over the roar of the waterfall beside them. But when the noise of his trap coming down thundered across the river, it was not at all subtle; in fact, it was loud enough that even the rock of the cave mouth vibrated for a moment. She jumped, her nerves stretched so tight that she went off-balance for a moment, and had to twist to catch herself with her good hand. She regained her balance quickly and moved to go outside. He shot out a claw, catching her good wrist and holding her where she was. "Wait until morning," he advised, in a voice just loud enough for her to hear it over the roaring water. "That killed something. And they aren't going to be able to move the body." "How much rock did you pile up?" she asked incredulously. How had he been able to pile up anything with only a pair of talons instead of hands, and with one bad wing? "Enough," he replied, then chuckled with pardonable pride. "I didn't want to boast until I knew it had worked-but I used a little magic to undermine part of the cliff-face that was ready to go. I honestly didn't know how much was going to come down, I only knew it would be more than I could manage by stacking rocks." "From the sound of it, a lot came down," she answered in awe. What a brilliant application of a very tiny amount of magic! "Did you feel it through the rock?" He nodded. "There could be a problem, though," he added. "I might have given them a bridge, or half a bridge, across the river. There was that chance that the rock would fall that way." But she shrugged philosophically. If he had, he had; it might well be worth it to find out just what, precisely, had been stalking them all this time. "And the cliff could have come down by itself, doing the same thing," she answered. "There's no point in getting upset until we know. I doubt that we're going to see any further trouble out of them for tonight, anyway." She was quite right; the rest of the night was as quiet as anyone could have wished, and with the first light, they both went out to see what, if anything, Tad's trap had caught. When they got to the rock-fall, they both saw that it had indeed come sliding down into the river, providing a bridge about halfway across, though some of it had already washed farther downstream. But as they neared it, and saw that the trap had caught a victim, Blade was just as puzzled by what was trapped there as she had been by the shadows. There had been some effort made to free the creature; that much showed in the signs of digging and the obvious places where rubble and even large stones had been moved off the carcass. But it was not a carcass of any animal she recognized. If a mage had taken a greyhound, crossed it with a serpent, and magnified it up to the size of a horse, he would have had something like this creature. A deep black in color, with shiny scaled skin just like a snake or a lizard, and a long neck, it had teeth sharper and more daggerlike than a dog's. Its head and those of its limbs not crushed by the fallen rock were also doglike. They couldn't tell what color its eyes were; the exposed slit only showed an opaque white. She stared at it, trying to think if there was anything in all of the stories she'd heard that matched it. But Tad had no such trouble putting a name to it. "Wyrsa," Tad muttered. "But the color's all wrong" She turned her head to see that he was staring down at the thing, and he seemed certain of his identification. "What's a wyrsa?" she asked sharply. He nudged the head with one cautious talon. "One of the old Adepts, before Ma'ar, made things like this to mimic kyree and called them wyrsa. He meant them for a more formidable guard dog or hunting pack. But they couldn't be controlled, and got loose from him - oh, a long time ago. Long before Ma'ar and the War. Aubri told me about hunting them; said that they ran wild in packs in some places." His eyes narrowed as he concentrated. "But the ones he talked about were smaller than this. They were white, and they had poison fangs and poison talons." She bent down, carefully, and examined the mouth and the one exposed foot for poison sacs, checking to see if either talons or teeth were hollow. She finally got a couple of rocks and carefully broke off a long canine tooth and a talon, to examine them more closely. Finally she stood up with a grunt. "I don't know what else is different on these beasts, but they aren't carrying anything poisonous," she told him, as he watched her actions dubiously. "Neither the teeth nor the claws are hollow, they have no channel to carry venom, and no venom sacs at the root to produce poison in the first place. Venom has to come from somewhere, Tad, and it has to get into the victim somehow, so unless this creature has poisonous saliva" "Aubri distinctly said that they were just like a poisonous snake," Tad insisted. "But the color is different on these things, and the size. Something must have changed them." They exchanged a look. "A mage?" she asked. "Or the storms?" She might know venom, but he knew magic. "The mage-storms, if anything at all," Tad said flatly. "If a mage had changed wyrsa deliberately, he wouldn't have taken out the venom, he'd have made it worse. I'll bet it was the mage-storms." "I wouldn't bet against it." Blade knelt again to examine the head in detail; it was as long as her forearm, and most of it was jaw. "Tad, these things don't need venom to hurt you," she pointed out. "Look at those canines! They're as long as my finger, and the rest of the teeth are in proportion. What else do you know about wyrsa?" He swallowed audibly. "Aubri said that the bigger the pack was, the smarter they acted, as if part of their intelligence was shared with every other one in the pack. He also said that they were unbelievably tenacious; if they got your scent, they'd track you for days-and if you killed or hurt one, they would track you forever. You'd never get rid of them until they killed you, or you killed them all." "How comforting," she said dryly, standing up again. "And we've hurt one and killed one. I wish we'd known this before." Tad just shuffled his feet, looking sheepish. "They might not connect us with the rockfall," he offered tentatively. "Well, it's done and can't be undone." She caught something, a hint of movement out of the corner of her eye, and turned her head. And froze. As if, now that she and Tad knew what the things were and the wyrsa saw no reason to hide, a group of six stood on the bank across from them. Snarling silently. Tad let out his breath in a hiss of surprise and dismay. Then, before she could even blink or draw a breath, they were gone. She hadn't even seen them move, but the only thing across from them now was a stand of bushes, the branches still quivering as the only sign that something had passed through them. "I think we can safely assume that they do connect us with the rockfall," she replied, a chill climbing up her spine. "And I think we had better get back to the cave before they decide to try to cross the river again." "Don't run," Tad cautioned, turning slowly and deliberately, and watching where he placed his feet. "Aubri said that would make them chase you, even if they hadn't been chasing you before." She tried to hide how frightened she was, but the idea of six or more of those creatures coming at her in the dark was terrifying. "What charming and delightful creations," she replied sarcastically. "Anything else you'd like to tell me?" He shook his head, spraying her with rain. "That's all I remember right now." She concentrated on being very careful where she walked, for the rain was getting heavier and the rocks slicker. It would do no one any good if she slipped on these rocks and broke something else. Well, no one but the wyrsa. "Has anyone ever been able to control these things?" she asked. "Just out of curiosity." The navigable part of the track narrowed. He gestured to her to precede him, which she did. If the wyrsa decided to cross the river, he did make a better rear guard than she did as soon as he got turned around. "Not that I've ever heard," he said from behind her. "I suppose that a really good mage could hold a coercion-spell on a few and make them attack a target he chose, but that would be about the limit of 'controlling' them. He wouldn't be able to stop them once they started, and he wouldn't be able to make them turn aside if they went after something he didn't choose. I certainly wouldn't count on controlling them." "So at least we probably don't have to worry about some mage setting this pack on our trail after bringing us down?" she persisted, and stole a glance over her shoulder at him. His feathers were plastered flat to his head, making his eyes look enormous. "Well not that I know of," he said hesitantly. "But these aren't the same wyrsa I know. They've been changed-maybe they are more tractable than the old kind. Maybe the poison was removed as a trade-off for some other powers, or it contributed to their uncontrollability. And a mage could have brought us down in their territory for amusement without needing to control them, just letting them do what they do." "You're just full of good news today, aren't you?" she growled, then repented. I shouldn't be taking our bad luck out on him. "Never mind. I'm sorry. I'm just not exactly in a good frame of mind right now." "Neither am I," he said softly, in a voice in which she could clearly hear his fear. "Neither am I." Tad kept a watch all day as Blade concentrated on fishing. Once or twice a single wyrsa showed itself, but the creatures made no move to cross the river to get at them. Of course not. Night has always been their chosen hunting-time, and that should be especially true of wyrsa with this new coloration. Swift, silent, and incredibly fierce, he would not have wanted to face one of this new type, much less an entire pack. I wonder how big the pack is, anyway? Six? Ten? More? Were they the sport-offspring of a single female? Wyrsa were'only supposed to litter once every two years, and they didn't whelp more than a couple at a time. If these are all from twin offspring of a single litter, back when the storms changed them-how many could the pair have produced? Four years to maturity, then two pups every two years There could be as few as the seven that they had seen, and as many as thirty or forty. The true answer was probably somewhere in between. He and Blade ate in silence, then she banked the fire down to almost nothing while he took the first watch. As soon as it was fully dark, he eased several rocks into place to disguise his outline, then pressed himself up against the stone of the floor as flat as he could. He hoped he could convince them that he wasn't there, that nothing was watching them from the mouth of the cave. If he could lure one out into the open, out on the slippery rocks of the riverbank, he might be able to get off a very simple bit of magic. If he could stun one long enough to knock it into the river-well, here below the falls it would get sucked under to drown. Nothing but a fish could survive the swirling currents right at the foot of the falls. That would be one less wyrsa to contend with. He didn't hear Blade so much as sense her; after a moment's hesitation, she touched his foot, then eased on up beside him. "Couldn't sleep," she mouthed into his ear. He nodded. Stupid, maybe, but she had good cause for insomnia. She pressed herself even farther down against the stone than he had; anything that spotted her from across the river would have to have better eyesight than an owl. The rain is slacking off. That was both good and bad news; he had an idea that the wyrsa didn't much care for rain, and that they were averse to climbing around on rain-slick rocks. Like him, they had talons, but he didn't think that their feet were as flexible as his. Those talons could make walking on rock difficult. On the other hand, as the rain thinned, that made visibility across the river better, especially if the lightning kept up without any rain falling. Something moved on the bank across from his position. He froze, and he felt Blade hold her breath. Lightning flickered, and the light fell on a sleek, black form, poised at the very edge of the bank, peering intently in their direction. And now he saw that the white glazing of the dead one's eyes had been the real color; the wyrsa's eyes were a dead, opaque corpse-white. The very look of them, as the creature peered across the river in their direction, made his skin crawl. He readied his spell, hoarding his energies. No point in striking unless everything was perfect He willed the creature to remain, to lean forward more. Lightning flickered again; it was still there, still craning its neck, peering. Stay stay Now! He unleashed the energy; saw the wyrsa start, its eyes widening- But instead of dropping over, stunned, it glowed for a moment. Blade gasped, so Tad knew that she had seen it, too, as a feeling of faintness and dis-orientation that he had experienced once before came over him. He wheezed and blinked a few times, dazzled, refocusing on the wyrsa. The wyrsa gaped its mouth, then, as if recharged, the creature made a tremendous leap into the underbrush that nothing wholly natural could have duplicated, and was gone. And with it went the energy of the spell. If the wyrsa had deflected it, the energy would still be there, dissipating. It hadn't. The spell hadn't hit shields, and it hadn't been reflected. It had been inhaled, absorbed completely. And what was more-an additional fraction of Tad's personal mage-energy had gotten pulled along behind it as if swept in a current. "Oh. My. Gods," he breathed, feeling utterly stunned. Now he knew what had hit them, out there over the forest. And now he knew why the wyrsa had begun following them in the first place. The wyrsa were the magic-thieves, not some renegade mage, not some natural phenomena. They ate magic, or absorbed it, and it made them stronger. Blade shook him urgently. "What happened?" she hissed in his ear. "What's the matter? What's going on?" He shook off his paralysis to explain it to her; she knew enough about magic and how it worked that he didn't have to explain things twice. "Goddess." She lay there, just as stunned for a moment as he was. And then, in typical fashion, she summed up their entire position in a two sentences. "They have our scent, they want our blood, and now they know that you produce magic on top of all that." She stared at him, aghast, her eyes wide. "We're going to have to kill them all, or we'll never get away from here!" Nine Tad hissed at the cluster of wyrsa across the river. The wyrsa all bared their formidable teeth and snarled back. They made no move to vanish this time, and Tad got the distinct impression that they were taunting him, daring him to throw something magical at them. Well, of course they were. They had no reason to believe he had anything that could reach across the river except magic, and they wanted him to throw that. Throw us more food, stupid gryphon! Throw us the very thing that makes us stronger, and make it tasty! He'd already checked a couple of things in their supplies. The stone he had made into a mage-light and the firestarter he had reenergized were both inert again; if he'd needed any confirmation of the fact that these were the creatures that had sucked all of the mage-energy out of the carry-basket and everything in it-well, he had it. I wonder what Father would do in a situation like this? But Skan would not likely have ever found himself in a situation like this one. Nor would his solution necessarily have been a good one since it likely would have involved a great deal of semi-suicidal straight-on combat and high-energy physical action, which he was not in the least in any shape to perform. Skandranon was more known for his physicality than his raw inventiveness, when it came right down to facts. Oh, Tad, not you, too-now you are even comparing yourself to your father. The real question is not what my father would do, the real question is, what am I going to do in this situation! He raised himself up as high on his hindquarters as he could get, and gave a battle-scream, presenting the wyrsa with an open beak and a good view of his foreclaws. They stopped snarling and eyed him warily; with a little more respect, he thought. He hoped. "I wish you wouldn't do that." Blade emerged from the back of the cave where she'd been napping, hair tousled and expression sour. "It's a bad way to wake up, thinking that your partner is about to engage in mortal combat." "They don't seem to like the look of my claws," he replied, trying to sound apologetic without actually apologizing. "I was hoping I could intimidate them a little more." He studied the knot of wyrsa, which never seemed to be still for more than an eyeblink. They were constantly moving, leaping, bending, twining in, around, over and under each other. He'd never seen creatures with so much energy and so much determination to use it. It was almost as if they physically couldn't stay still for more than a heartbeat. They had come out of the underbrush about the time that the fog lifted and the rains began; if the rain bothered them now, it certainly wasn't possible to tell. Then again, why should it bother them? That it did had been an assumption on his part, not a reflection of what was really going on in those narrow snake-like heads. They had neither fur nor feathers to get wet and matted down. The only effect that rain had on their scales was to make them shiny. "On first blush, I'd say they don't look very intimidated," Blade pointed out. But her brows knitted as she watched the wyrsa move, and her eyes narrowed in concentration. "On the other hand-that's a very effective defensive strategy, isn't it?" Tad gazed at the stalkers' glistening hides, the way it moved and flashed. The patterns they moved in knotted and reknotted, like a decorative interlace. "Is it? But it bunches them up all in one place; shouldn't that make it easier to hit one?" He watched them carefully, then suddenly shook himself as he realized that the creatures' constant movement was making him go into a trance! He glanced over at Blade. She lifted an eyebrow and nodded. "Not bad if you can put your attacker to sleep, hmm?" she asked, then smiled slyly, which put Tad instantly on the alert. He'd seen that smile before, and he knew what it meant. Trouble, usually for someone else. "Well, let's see if we can take advantage of their bit of cleverness, shall we? Stay there and look impressive, why don't you? I need something to keep them distracted." She retreated into the cave. The wyrsa continued their hypnotic weaving as Tad watched them, this time prepared to keep from falling under their spell, glancing away at every mental count of ten. "Duck," came the calm order from behind him. He dropped to the floor, and a heavy lead shot zinged over him, through the space where his head had been. Across the stream, one of the wyrsa squalled and bit the one nearest it. The second retaliated, and Tad had the impression that it looked both surprised and offended at the "unprovoked" attack. The weaving knot was becoming unraveled as the two offended parties snapped and hissed at one another. Another lead shot followed quickly, and a third wyrsa hissed and joined what was becoming a melee. That seemed to be more provocation than the others could resist, and the knot became a tumbling tangle of quarreling wyrsa, with nothing graceful, coordinated, or hypnotic about it. Now most of the knot was involved in the fight, except for a loner who extricated itself from the snarling, hissing pack. This creature backed up slowly, eying the others with what was clearly surprise, and Blade's third shot thudded right into its head. It dropped in its tracks, stunned, while the rest of the group continued to squabble, squall, and bite. Blade stepped back into the front of the cave and watched the wyrsa with satisfaction. "I wondered just how cohesive that pack was. I also wonder how long it's going to take them to associate a distance-weapon with us; I doubt that they've ever seen or experienced one before." At just that moment, another one of the creatures emerged from the bushes, and uttered a cry that was part hiss, part deep-throated growl. The reaction to this was remarkable and immediate; the others stopped fighting, instantly, and dropped to the ground, groveling in submission. The new wyrsa ignored them, going instead to the one that Blade had brought down, sniffing at it, then nipping its hindquarters to bring it groggily to its feet. "I'd say the pack-leader just arrived," Tad said. The new wyrsa swung its head around as he spoke, and glared at him from across the river. The dead-white eyes skewered him, holding him in place entirely against his will, while the wyrsa's lip lifted in a silent snarl. The eyes glowed faintly, and his thoughts slowed to a sluggish crawl. Tad felt exactly like a bird caught within striking distance of a snake; unable to move even to save his own life. It was a horrible feeling of cold dread, one that made his extremities feel icy. At just that moment, Blade stepped between them, and leveled a malevolent glare of her own at the pack-leader. In a calm, clear voice, she suggested that the wyrsa in question could do several highly improbable, athletically difficult, and possibly biologically impractical things involving its own mother, a few household implements, and a dead fish. Tad blinked as his mind came back to life again when the wyrsa took its eyes off him. He'd had no idea Blade's education had been that liberal! The wyrsa might not have understood the words, but the tone was unmistakable. It reared back as if it were going to accept the implied challenge by leaping across the river-or leaping into it and swimming across-and Blade let another stone fly from her sling. This one cracked the pack-leader across the muzzle, breaking a tooth with a wet snap. The creature made that strange noise of hiss and yelp that Tad had heard the night one got caught in his deadfall. It whirled and turned on the others, driving them away in front of it with a ragged squeal, and a heartbeat later, the river-bank was empty. Blade tucked her sling back into her pocket, and rubbed her bad shoulder thoughtfully. "I don't know if that was a good idea, or a bad one. We aren't going to be able to turn them against each other again. But at least they know now that we have something that can hit them from a distance besides magic." "And you certainly made an impression on the leader," Tad observed, cocking his head to one side. She smiled faintly. "Just making it clear which of us is the meanest bitch in the valley," she replied lightly. "Or hadn't you noticed the leader was female?" "Uh, actually, no. I hadn't." He felt his nares flush with chagrin at being so caught in the creature's spell that he had completely missed something so obvious. "She's really not my type." Her grin widened. "Makes me wonder if the reason she's keeping the pack here has less to do with the fact that we killed one of her pups, than it does with her infatuation with you. Or rather, with your magnificent physique." Her eyes twinkled wickedly. Whether or not she realizes it, she's definitely recovering. But I wonder if I ought to break something else, just for the sake of a little peace? He coughed. "I think not," he replied, flushing further with embarrassment. "Oh, no?" But Blade let it drop; this was hardly the time and place to skewer him with further wit, although when they got out of this, he had the feeling that she would not have forgotten this incident or her own implications. "You know," she continued, "if we had even a chance of picking her off, the pack might lose its cohesiveness. At the very least, they'd be spending as much time squabbling over the leadership position as stalking us." He scratched the side of his head thoughtfully. She had a good point. "We have to be able to see them to pick one particular wyrsa," he pointed out. "And traps and rockfalls are likely to get the least experienced, not the most. But it does account for why they're being so persistent and tenacious." "Uh-huh. We got one of her babies, probably." Blade sank down on the stone floor of the cave, and watched the underbrush across the river. He turned his attention in that direction himself, and was rewarded by the slight movement of a bit of brush. Since there wasn't a breeze at the moment, he concentrated on that spot, and was able to make out a flash of dark, shiny hide before the creature moved again. "Interesting." Blade chewed on a nail, and regarded the brush with narrowed eyes. "I don't think we're going to see them out in the open again. They learn quickly." That quickly? That was impressive; but he called to mind what Aubri had told him about the pack's collective intelligence. If there were many more than just the knot that he'd seen, it would mean that as a group, the pack might be as smart as a makaar, and that was pretty smart. Regardless of what Father claims. The bushes moved again, and he caught another glimpse of slick black hide. A cross of greyhound and snake I can't imagine anything more bizarre. But then, Blade would tell me that my imagination isn't very good. 1 wonder what kind of vision they get out of those strange eyes? Can they see in the dark? Could that white film be a screen they pull across their eyes to protect them from daylight? Can they actually "see" magic? Or scent it? "I wonder what we look like to them," he said, musing aloud. Blade shot him a sharp glance. "I suppose I looked fairly harmless until I whipped out my sling," she replied. "But I suspect that you look like a movable feast. After all, you are burdened with a magical nature, and it might be rather obvious to them." "You mean-they might be more interested in me than you as prey?" he choked. She nodded. "Probably as someone they'd want to keep alive a while, so they could continue to feed on your magic as it rebuilt. They're probably bright enough for that." He hadn't thought about that. It did not make him feel any better. Amberdrake stood beside the leader of their party and wrung more water out of a braid of hair. He waited for the fellow to say something enlightening. Fog wreathed around them both, and shrouded everything more than a few paces away in impenetrable whiteness. "I wish I knew what was going on here," Regin muttered, staring at the pair of soggy decoys wedged up in the fork of a tree. "There's no trail from the camp, which looks as if the Silvers were trying to conceal their backtrail. But there isn't a sign of anything hunting them, either. And now-we find this." The ground beneath the tree was torn up, as was the bark of the lower trunk; but there was no blood. There was a deadfall rigged of wood that had been tripped, but there was no sign that anything had been caught in it. They might have passed the site by, thinking that it was just a place where some large forest creature had been marking his territory. Except that there was a human-shaped decoy and a gryphon-shaped decoy wedged high in a tree. That isn't very enlightening. "They might have run into some sort of large predator," Drake pointed out. "Just because we didn't see any sign of a hunter, that doesn't mean they weren't being trailed. That would account for why they tried not to leave a trail. Maybe that's even the reason why they left their camp in the first place." This was the first sign of the children that any of them had come across in their trek toward the river. Amberdrake took it as a good omen; it certainly showed that the duo had gotten this far, so their own party was certainly on the right track. And it showed that they were in good enough health to rig something like" this. "Maybe. But why decoys?" Regin paced carefully around the trunk of the tree, examining it on all sides. "Most forest predators hunt with their noses, and even in this rain, the trail from here to wherever they did spend the night would be fresh enough to follow. I wonder what we can learn from this." "I don't know; I'm not a hunter," Amberdrake admitted, and let it go at that. Skan didn't, however. "Whatever tore this place up is an animal-or at least, it doesn't use weapons or tools," he pointed out. "It might just be that the-that Blade and Tad wandered into its territory, and they built the decoys to keep it occupied while they went on their way." "Maybe." Regin shook his head. "Whatever it was, I don't recognize the marks, but that doesn't surprise me. I haven't recognized much in this benighted forest since we got into it. And I'm beginning to wonder how anything survives here without gills." With that, he shrugged, heading off into the forest in the direction of the river. Amberdrake followed him, but Skan lingered a moment before hurrying to catch up lest he get left behind and lost in the fog. "I don't like it," he muttered fretfully as he reached Drake's side. "I just don't like it. It didn't look right back there, but I can't put my finger on why." "I don't know enough about hunting animals to be of any help," Drake replied bluntly. He kept telling himself that the children were-must be-still fine. That no matter how impressive the signs these unknown creatures had left were, the children had obviously escaped their jaws. "All I know is that whatever made those marks must be the size of a horse, and if I were being chased by something that size, I probably wouldn't be on the ground at night. Maybe they put the decoys up one tree and then climbed over to another to spend the night." Unless, of course, they're too hurt to climb trees. But in that case, how did the decoys get up in one? "Illusion!" Skan said suddenly, his head coming up with a jerk. "That's it! There's no illusion and no traces of one on those decoys. Tad's not a powerful mage, but he's good enough to cast an illusion, and if I were building a decoy I'd want to make it look as much like me as possible! So why didn't he put an illusion on it?" "Because he couldn't," Drake said flatly. "If mage-energy got sucked out of the basket and everything else, it could have gotten sucked out of him, and it might not have built up enough yet for him to do anything." "Oh." Skan was taken a bit aback, but finally nodded his acceptance of Drake's explanation. Amberdrake was just as glad, because he could think of another. Tad can't work a simple magic like an illusion because he's hurt too badly. On the other hand, those decoys were soggy enough to have been here for a couple of days, so that meant that the children made fairly good progress for two people trying to hide their backtrail, So that in turn meant that they couldn't have been hurt too badly. Didn't it? He also didn't want to think about how having mage-energy drained from him might affect Tad in other, more subtle ways. Would it be like a slowly-draining wound? Would it affect his ability to work magic at all? What if he simply was no longer a mage anymore? Gryphons were inherently magical for good reasons, and Urtho would not have designed them so otherwise. Although the Mage of Silence had made many mistakes, the gryphons were considered his masterpieces. Magic collected in their bodies with every breath and with every stroke of the wings. It stabilized their life systems, cleaned their organs, helped them fly. Amberdrake had never heard of what would happen if a gryphon were deprived of mage-energy completely for an extended amount of time; would it be like fatigue poisoning, or gout, or something even more insidious, like a mental imbalance? The rescue party was moving along in a tightly-bunched group to keep from getting separated in the mist. We're on the right track at least; the children certainly came this way, Amberdrake reminded himself. They're moving right along, thinking, planning. If they're in trouble, the best place for them is the river. There's food there that's easy to catch, and maybe caves in the cliffs. They're doing all the right things, especially if they're having to deal with large predators. Maybe this was why the rescuers hadn't found much in the way of large game. They'd tried to send on their findings by teleson, so that the other two parties out searching knew to turn back to the river. The mage Filix thought he'd gotten everything through clearly, but without local mage-energy to draw on, he couldn't be certain that all the details had made it over. Still, whether the children went north or south when they encountered the river, someone should run into them now. Their own party was going to try to the north, mostly because they did know for certain that Ikala's would be coming up from below them, also heading north. This damned fog. It makes me more nervous than the rain! If-when-we all get out of this, I am never leaving the city again, I swear it. Not unless it's to visit another city. So far as I'm concerned, you can take the "wilderness experience" and bury it in a hole. He'd never forgotten the hardships of the trek to White Gryphon, and he had been all too well aware of what this mission would involve. He thought he'd been prepared for it. Except for one thing; I'd forgotten that now I'm not as limber as I used to be for this sort of thing. Judeth and Aubri certainly didn't volunteer to traipse through the woods, and now I see why. They probably think I'm a fool, forcing myself to go along on this rescue, trying to do a young man's job. Maybe letting me go was Judeth's way of getting revenge upon me for threatening her! But Blade wasn't Judeth's daughter, nor was Tad Aubri's son. No, I'd rather be out here. At least I know that I'm doing something this way. Zhaneel and Winterhart must feel the same, or they wouldn 't have insisted on coming either. But the fog was doing more than just getting on his nerves; he kept thinking that he was seeing shadows flitting alongside them, out there. He kept feeling eyes on him, and getting glimpses of skulking shapes out of the corner of his eye. It was all nonsense, of course, and just his nerves getting the better of him, but- "Drake," Skan whispered carefully, "we're being paced. I don't know by what, but there's something out there. I can taste it in the fog, and I've seen a couple of shadows moving." "You're sure?" That was Regin, who had signaled for a halt and dropped back when he heard Skan whispering. "Bern thought he might be seeing something, too-" "Then count me as three, because I saw large shadows moving out there and behind us," Drake said firmly. "Could it be whatever tore up the ground back there?" "If it is, I don't want to goad it into attacking us in this fog," Regin replied. "Though I doubt it will as long as we look confident." "Most big hunters won't mess with a group," Bern confirmed, nodding. "They like single prey, not a pack." Drake must have looked skeptical, because Regin thumped him on the back in what was probably supposed to be an expression of hearty reassurance. It drove the breath out of him and staggered him a pace. "There's too many of us for it to want to contend with-" Regin pointed out with confidence, "And we aren't hurt. I don't care if it paces us, as long as it doesn't come after us, and it won't. I'm sure of it." Amberdrake got his breath again, and shrugged. "You're the leader," he said, keeping his uncertainty to himself. Regin grinned, as if to say, "That's right, I am," but wisely kept his response to a grin and waved them on again. Drake continued to feel the eyes on his back, and kept thinking about beings the size of a horse with talons to match-the kinds of claws that had torn up the earth to the depth of his hand. Would a party of seven humans and one gryphon look all that formidable to something like that? And what if there was more than one of those things out there? The way the ground had been dug up certainly suggested that there were several. "You won't like this," Skan gryphon-whispered, which was as subtle and quiet as a human's normal speaking voice. The gryphon glanced from side to side apprehensively. "Drake, I think we've been surrounded." All the muscles in Amberdrake's neck went tight, and he shivered reflexively. He no longer trusted Regin's self-confidence in the least. At just that moment, Regin signaled another halt, and Bern took him aside to whisper something into his ear. The leader looked straight at Skan. "Bern says we're surrounded. Are we?" "I think so," Skan said flatly. "And I don't think whatever it is out there is just curious. I also don't think it's going to let us get much farther without a fight." Regin's face darkened, as if Skan had challenged him, but he turned his eyes to the shrouding fog before replying. "The General always says the best defense is a good offense," he replied in a growl. "But there's no point in lobbing arrows against things we can't see. We'll lose ammunition without impressing them." "The rains are going to begin as soon as the fog lifts, sir," Bern pointed out. "We still won't be able to see what's out there, and you can't shoot with a wet bowstring." Regin leveled his gaze on Filix next. "Is there something you can do to find out what's following us? Maybe scare it away? I don't want to waste time better spent looking for Silverblade and Tadrith." The mage shrugged. "Maybe. I can try. The best thing would be to try to stun one so that we can see what it looks like. I don't have to see something to stun it, I just have to know in general where it is." The leader spread his hands, indicating his full permission. "You're the mage. Try it, see what happens." Amberdrake opened his mouth to object, but closed it again; after all, what did he know? Nothing about hunting, predators, or being stalked. If their stalkers were only curious after all, stunning one wouldn't hurt them; if they were thinking about making a meal of the rescuers, well, having one of their lot fall over without a mark on him should make them back off for a while. At least, it certainly seemed to him that it should work out that way. And by the time the hunters regained their courage, the rescue party would probably be long gone. Skan opened his beak, and Amberdrake thought he was going to object as well, but it was too late. Filix had already spotted something, or thought he had, and had unleashed the spell. The result was not what any of them had expected. A dark shadow in the fog glowed suddenly- Amberdrake got an odd, unsettling feeling in the pit of his stomach-and Filix and Skan cursed together with heartfelt fluency. "What?" Regin snapped, looking from one to the other. "What?" "It ate my spell-" Filix began, but Skan interrupted him, waving the teleson he'd been carrying around his neck. "It ate the teleson!" the gryphon roared. "Damn! Whatever's out there is what pulled Blade and Tad down, and you just fed it everything it wanted!" Skan was just glad that they had alerted the other parties that they had finally found signs of the missing children before the teleson became a pretty piece of junk. By the time they camped that night, it was evident that, not only had the creatures out there "eaten" the teleson-or rather, drained away all of its mage-energy-but they'd "eaten" the energy from every other magical device the party had. Why they'd waited so long to do so was a matter of conjecture at this point. Maybe they'd been screwing up their courage to do so; maybe they had just been biding their time until they had a certain number of their lot in place. Maybe the things were staying in hiding until something was thrown at them, as a form of cover. "It wasn't my fault!" Filix kept protesting. "How was I going to know?" He couldn't have known that some bizarre animals were the cause of the trouble, of course, but since they had known there was something out here that ate magic, it seemed to Skan that lobbing spells around indiscriminately was obviously a bad idea. He had been about to say just that when Filix had lobbed the first one. Well, what the search party had to deal with now were the results. In the short term, that meant the tents had to be put up by hand, and using freshly-cut poles and ropes; fires had to be started with the old-fashioned firestriker, and any number of other problems, both inconvenient and possibly hazardous, suddenly arose to confront them. In the long term-having gotten a taste, the strange and possibly hostile creatures that had stalked them through the fog and rain might now be looking for a meal. The tents were keeping the rain out, but were not precisely dry anymore. They weren't keeping bugs out, either. Skan wondered how long it would take until it occurred to Regin that the waterproofing and bug-protections on their rations might also have been magical. Serve him right if he had to eat soggy, weevil-ridden ration-bread! The two tents shared a canvas "porch;" it lacked a canvas floor and one wall, but gave protection to their fire. They gathered in the two tents on either side of the fire, with the flaps tied back. Regin called them for a conference as the light began to dim in the forest outside. Rain drummed down on the canvas, but Regin had pitched his voice to carry over it. "We're doing fine," Regin decreed, as they sat, crowded into the two tents meant for a total of four, not eight; at least this way they all had space to get in out of the wet, even if it was not completely dry beneath the canvas. "We have nothing to worry about. Canvas still keeps out rain, wood still burns, and we still have the north-needle, which is, thank the gods, not magical. We've found the river, and it's only a matter of time before we either run into the missing Silvers or one of the other parties does. If they do, they'll try and notify us, realize what happened when they don't get our teleson, and come fetch us. If we find them first, we'll just backtrack along the river until we meet one of the other parties, then get back to the base camp. Not a problem." Skan was hardly in agreement with that sentiment, but Regin was the leader, and it was poor form to undermine confidence in your leader when it was most needed by others. This is not a wartime situation. And now we know that the magic stealers are just some kind of strange wild animal, not an enemy force. If we're just careful, we should get out of this intact and with the children. At least, that was what he was trying to tell himself. "For tonight, I want a double watch set; four and four, split the night, a mage in each of the two watches." Regin looked around for volunteers for the first watch, and got his four without Skan or Drake needing to put up a hand. Skan did not intend to volunteer, but Filix seemed so eager to make up for the mistake that cost them all their magic, that it looked as if the younger mage had beaten the gryphon to volunteering. Skan wondered what the young man thought he was volunteering for; he was hardly a fighter, and the idea of throwing magic at something that ate magic did not appeal to the gryphon. I am not lobbing a single spell around until we lose these menaces, "he resolved. If these things eat magic, it stands to reason that magic makes them stronger. And the stronger they are, the more likely they are to attack us physically. Well, Filix could use a bow, at least, even if he didn't possess a gryphon's natural weaponry. He might do all right at that-provided he thinks before he acts. He wanted to take Filix aside and caution him, but an earlier attempt had not been very successful. Filix clearly thought that Skan was overreacting to the situation. One of the biggest problems with the younger mages-youngsters who had come along after the Cataclysm-was that they thought magic could fix everything. They had yet to learn that magic was nothing more than another tool, and one that you could do without if you had to. Maybe things wouldn't be as convenient without it, but so what? Snowstar ought to force them to spend a year not using magic. Regin nodded with satisfaction at his volunteers. "Right. Close up the watch right around the camp; there's no point in guarding a big perimeter tonight. If you get a clear shot, take it; maybe if we make things unpleasant enough for whatever is out there, it'll get discouraged and leave us alone." And maybe you'll provoke them into an attack! Skan reminded himself that he was not the leader and kept his beak clamped tightly shut on his own objections. But he resolved to sleep with himself between Drake and the tent wall, and to do so lightly. Somehow he managed to invoke most of the old battle reflexes, get himself charged up to the point where nerves would do instead of sleep, and laid himself warily down to rest with one eye and ear open. In his opinion, Regin was taking this all far too casually, and was far too certain that they were "only" dealing with a peculiar form of wild animal. And he was so smug about the fact that he had brought nonmagical backups to virtually every magical piece of equipment except the teleson that Skan wanted to smack him into good sense again. Bringing backups isn't the point! he seethed, as he positioned himself to best protect Drake in an attack. The fact that there is something out here that can eat magic and is clearly hostile-that's the point! What good are our backups going to do if these things decide that they want more than just a taste of us from a distance? The rains slowed, then stopped. The fire died, leaving them with nothing but glowing coals for a source of light. Just as the camp quieted down for the night, the "wild animals" proved that they were not intimidated by a party of eight. Skan came awake all at once with the sound of someone falling to the ground, followed by cursing and a bowstring snapping practically in his ear. But it wasn't Filix taking the shot-the mage was lying on the ground, just outside the canvas wall nearest Skan, gasping for breath. The other three humans not on watch scrambled up, but Skan was already on his feet, ready for trouble. A moment later, Regin hauled the half-conscious mage into the tent. "What happened?" Skan asked harshly, as the other two fighters scrambled outside, leaving -himself, Regin, and Drake alone with the disabled mage. Amberdrake went to the young mage's side immediately and began examining him. The leader shook his head. "I don't know," the young man admitted, looking pale and confused in the light from the single lamp that Drake had lit. "He saw something out there, and I think he was going to work some magic on it-he muttered something about his shields-and then he just fell over. I took a shot at something moving, but I don't think I hit it." "He's been drained," Amberdrake said flatly, looking up, with his hand still on Filix's forehead. "I saw this once or twice in the war, when mages overextended themselves." I remember that; it was on the orders of an incompetent commander. "The only difference is that this time, Filix didn't overextend himself, he was drained to nothing by means of the spell he cast," Drake continued. "My guess is that those creatures out there were able to use his previous magic to get into his shield-castings, and then just pulled everything he had out of him, the way they pulled the mage-energy out of the teleson. And probably Tadrith and Silverblade's basket as well." "Stupid son of-" Regin bit off what he was going to say. "Is he going to be all right?" "Maybe. Probably. As long as he doesn't give whatever is out there another chance to drain him." Drake looked angry and a little disgusted, and Skan didn't blame him. "I'll do what I can for him, but you should be aware that it isn't much. Lady Cinnabar herself couldn't do much for something like this. What he needs is rest, rest, and more rest. We're going to have to carry him for the next few days. He probably won't even regain consciousness until tomorrow, and his head will hurt worse than it ever has in his life for several days." "Well, we'll go short one this shift." Regin shook his head again. "Stupid-" He glanced at Skan, who drew himself up with dignity. "I know better than to try anything magical," he retorted to the unspoken rebuke. "I'll use a more direct method of defending this camp, if I have to use anything." Stupid fool thought that if he cast shields, he'd be safe against this, Skan fumed. Never bothered to remember that magical shields are themselves magical, did he? And since shields are spun out from your own power, they are traceable directly back into your own mage-energies. He probably didn't think it was necessary to cast anything more complicated, and figured his shields would block anything coming in The result had clearly been immediate, and had certainly been predictable. He pulled Drake back into the tent they had been trying to sleep in. "We'll stay here," he told Amberdrake. "Leave him in the other tent with Regin." "With just one man to watch him?" Amberdrake asked. Skan shook his head. "Does it matter?" he replied. "There's nothing you can do for him, and if something comes charging in here, we're going to have more important things to think about than defending an unconscious mage." There it was; hard, cruel, war-truths. This was a war, whether or not Regin realized it yet. Evidently Drake did; he grimaced, but didn't protest any further. He remembered. He knew that the two of them must make their priority that of finding the children. And he knew all about cutting losses. Which was just as well, because a few moments later, the second attack came. There was no warning. They hadn't even blown out the lantern or tried to lie down again. The rain must have covered any sounds of approach, for there certainly was nothing outside the tent walls to indicate anything was wrong. All that Skan knew was that Bern shouted, then screamed, and something dark came ripping through the canvas of the tent, knocking over the lantern in the process, plunging them into darkness until the spilled oil flared up. He knocked Drake to the ground and stood over him, slashing at whatever came near in the darkness. He ignored anything outside the tent to the point where it simply didn't exist for him, concentrating fiercely on tiny currents of air, sounds, movement, and what little he could see reflecting from the burning spilled oil. His talons connected several times with something that felt like snakeskin, tearing through it to the flesh beneath, and he clenched any time he was able to, so that he might rend away a chunk of meat. But his opponents uttered nothing more than a hiss, and they dashed away through the double rents in the tent canvas as if his fierce opposition surprised them. The fight couldn't have lasted for very long, for not only was he not tired, he hadn't even warmed up to full fighting speed when the attacks ceased, and the attackers vanished, silent shadows sliding between the raindrops. He stood over Drake a while longer; the kes'tra'chern had the good sense to stay put and not move the entire time. When Amberdrake finally moved, it was to pat the flame out with the edge of a bedroll and then right the lantern. "Are they gone?" came the voice from between his feet. "I think so," Skan replied, shaking his head to refocus himself. Only then did he hear the moans of wounded, and the sound of Bern calling his name. "We're here!" Drake answered for him as he relit the lantern with a smoldering corner of the bedroll. "We're all right, I think." "That's more than the rest of us can say," the scout replied grimly, wheezing and coughing. "Can you get out here and help me? If I let go of this rag around my leg, I'm going to bleed myself out." Drake swore, scrambled for the medical kit in the darkness, and pushed through the ruined tent wall. Skan followed slowly. When the lantern had been relit so that Drake could see to treat wounds, and everyone had been accounted for, they discovered that Regin and Filix had been killed by more of the things. They had probably died instantly, or nearly so. Amberdrake reached for the bodies, and could only locate so many pieces. At the very least, they got the mercy of a quick death. There wasn't much left of them. Blood was spattered everywhere, and it was difficult to tell what part belonged to whom. He left the tent quickly, reminded all too forcefully of some of Hadanelith's victims. And of Ma'ar's. I'm supposed to be hardened to this sort of thing, but maybe I've just seen too much death, too much suffering. Maybe I am not as tough as I thought I was, or wish I could be, even after all this time. It was one thing to think about cutting losses - another thing to lose people like this. We were caught unprepared, despite my hoped-for lessons of experience. Amberdrake remained for a few moments longer, and when he came out, he surprised Skan by the thoughtful look of concentration he wore. Finally, as the other men bundled the two bodies hastily in the remains of the tent, he drew Skan aside. "Are these things animals, or not?" he asked. Skan blinked. "They certainly fought like it," he replied cautiously. "Extremely efficient predators. They didn't have weapons, just talons and teeth, and and speed. I don't think I've ever seen anything that fast since the last makaar died. Fierce predators; no wonder we haven't seen much game, and all of it small. They must have emptied out the forest around here, of ground-based game at least." He shook his head. "We should have figured that out, and assumed they'd attack us for food. They must be half-mad with hunger by now; they can't live long on rabbits, snakes and bugs, not as big as they are." Drake nodded, as if he had expected Skan to say that. "In that case, tell me this; why didn't they drag their prey off with them to eat? Why didn't they try and kill more of us?" Skan opened his beak to reply, and shut it with a click. Why didn't they, if they're just big hunters with an incidental ability to eat mage-energy? "Maybe we don't taste good?" he suggested lamely. "Maybe. But that hasn't stopped lions from becoming maneaters when they're famished. Shalaman showed us that, remember." Amberdrake chewed on his lower lip a moment. "I have a feeling that these things are planning something. And that they don't intend to let us get away. Skan, they're a lot worse than they seem." "They seem bad enough already to me," Skan grumbled, "But I see your point." He didn't have time to think much more about it, however, for Bern, as acting leader, decreed that there would be no more rest that night. They spent the rest of the dark hours in the open, sitting in a circle with their backs together, facing the forest with weapons in hand. It was a long, cold, and terrifying night. Every time a drop of water fell from a leaf, someone started. Every time a shadow seemed to move, they all got ready to defend their lives. Skan had never spent a night as frightening as this one, not even during the war, and he prayed no one else would ever have to, either. Stelvi Pass had been a summer day compared to this unending, wet, cold waiting. He didn't know how Amberdrake was managing to bear up; it was bad enough to endure this knowing that he could, if there was no other choice, escape by flying into the treetops. Even in a fight, he could defend himself against fairly stiff odds. But Drake couldn't escape and he wasn't a fighter, and in his place, Skan knew he'd have been babbling with fear. As soon as there was any light at all beneath the trees, Bern ordered them to move out, down to the river that they had heard all night long. The flood-swollen river, which roared at their feet, with nothing on the other side but a rocky cliff-face and a scrap of path. "You two aren't fighters, so you get across the river and hold it for us so we can cross," he ordered Drake and Skan. Skan took one look at the swollen, raging waters, and seriously considered mutiny. But Amberdrake just picked up a coil of rope from the wreckage of the camp, and gestured to him to follow down to the rocks at the edge. There he rigged a harness of rope for himself, while Bern and the rest stood nervously with their backs to the water, facing the forest, bows and swords ready. Soon enough, the fog would rise, and when the shadow-creatures came back, the besieged rescuers wouldn't be able to see them until it was far too late. Drake, the expert in ropes and knots, moved far more quickly than Skan would have thought possible under the circumstances. His fingers fairly flew as he put together a harness it would be impossible to get out of without undoing at least half of the knots. It must have seemed to the four injured fighters that he was taking a ridiculous amount of time, however. He was even making sure that it would fit over his pack-the precious pack that had what was left of their medical kit, and the oil and oil lamp. "Hurry up!" Bern shouted, his voice pitched higher with strain and nerves. Drake ignored them, and turned to Skan. "You can't carry me over, but you can tow me through the water," he pointed out. "There's no way I'm going to slip out of this." He fastened the loose end of the rope to a tree at the water's edge, without elaborating anything, but his plan was obvious to Skan. The harness was rigged so that Drake could swim freely, but could also be towed along easily, which is what he meant Skan to do, flying above the river. Once he got Drake to the other side, the kestra'chern could fasten his rope to a boulder or spike of rock, and the others could plunge in and drag themselves across. Providing, of course, there weren't more of those things on the other side, waiting somewhere. If that last thought occurred to Amberdrake, he didn't hesitate for a second; once he had the end of the rope tied off, he plunged immediately into the river, almost before Skan had hold of the end fastened to his harness. Caught off-balance for a moment, Skan held on against the tug of the current, then launched himself into the air. Amberdrake sputtered and submerged once, then steadied. He called out, "It's drier in here than in the forest!" Once there, he was utterly grateful that Drake was a good swimmer, and he allowed himself a brief, tension-relieving smile at Amberdrake's quip. His friend was able to keep his own head above water, so that Skan's only task was to pull him onward. Only! This is like playing tug-of-war against five teams of draft horses! It was obvious within a few moments that this was going to be a great deal more difficult than it looked. They weren't even a single length from the shore, and Skan wanted to quit. The gryphon's wings beat laboriously, the muscles in his back and chest burning with pain, as he pulled against the current and the weight of Drake's body. Below him, Amberdrake labored against the current trying to pull him under, and occasionally lost the battle. But he had honed his swimming ability in the powerful surf below White Gryphon; between his own strength and Skan's, his head always popped back above the surface again, long enough for him to get another lungful of air. Ten heartbeats later, they were out of time. "Hurry!" Bern shouted again, his voice spiraling upward in fear. "They're coming!" Skan ignored him as best he could, concentrating every fiber on getting a little more strength out of his wings. Drake was not doing well down there; the treacherous currents kept pulling him under, and each time he rose to the surface it took a little longer. They were about halfway across when the sounds of battle erupted behind him; short screams and cries that echoed above the roaring river. He ignored those, too, as best he could. His world narrowed to the face of his friend in the water below, the rope in his front talons, the pain of his laboring body, and the farther shore. His lungs were on fire; his forelimbs ached with all the tortures of the damned from the strain of holding Drake and pulling him onward. His vision fogged with red, as it had only a few times in the past, when he had driven himself past his limits. The bank was only a few lengths away-but he was out of energy, running out of strength, and just about out of endurance. He wasn't going to make it. He could drop the rope and save himself, or they would both be dragged under. No! He was not going to surrender with the goal so close! Come on, gryphon. If he can do this, so can you. You're a team, remember? He's counting on you not to let him drown. Think of what Winterhart would do to you if you did! Think of what Gesten would do! Amberdrake has been with you all your life, gryphon, all your life. He's had his hands in your guts and your blood in his hair, putting you back together from pieces.