Oh. My. Word. I can’t say I like the way this is headed at all.
“Think of it as being remade into a tribute to the departed lesser artist Ma’ar, Skandranon! Like Ma’ar himself, though, the lifespan of the work will be only temporary. A pity, but then again, transforming the ‘Black Gryphon’ into the ‘Bleeding Makaar’ is art enough. The knifestrokes begin here. . . .”
He went on at some length and in great detail, describing all of the things he had in mind to do to Skandranon, starting with that most private of parts. He tried to push the mental images of what was going to be done to him away from the fore of his thoughts, although it was difficult. The descriptions of the mutilations were bad enough, but Hadanelith gloated over how the agony could be made to linger. Skandranon had never liked pain at all.
Skan could only stare at the wall, listen, and hope that there were no mind-shields around this place, that none of Hadanelith’s “colleagues” were aware of the gryphonic ability to Mindspeak, and that Kechara would find him quickly enough for the others to search for him.
Because, in three days’ time, it was all going to be too late for Skandranon’s life to make a difference in the relationship between White Gryphon and the Haighlei. Hadanelith, without a shadow of a doubt, had timed his plans to come to fruition before then.
Zhaneel was doing an admirable job of not panicking, but she wasn’t far from it. Her ear-tufts were flat to her head, and her entire posture suggested she was restraining herself by pure will alone.
“Where was he supposed to be flying last night?” Amberdrake asked her. It was hard to think; he was very tired, and last night had been a late one for him. He rubbed his temple, trying to will his fatigue headache away.
She shook her head. “Mostly over the Palace, but he also intended to fly some patterns over the city nearest the Palace walls,” she told him. Her feathers already showed signs of overgrooming, ragged around the edges and a bit frayed. “Leyuet says that he last heard from Skan at three on the waterclock, when he brought in another trespasser. This one was let go—he was only trying to sneak in to see his lover among the servants.”
“Did Leyuet check that out this morning?” Amberdrake asked sharply.
“I don’t know—” She shook her head, sadly. “They did not let the boy go until dawn, to frighten him.”
“He couldn’t have anything to do with it, then.” Amberdrake bit his thumbnail and tried to think. “Skan must have discovered the murderers, maybe even stopped them before they could strike again—but then what? Why would he disappear?”
“What could they want with him? Where could they have taken him?” Zhaneel echoed, her voice shrill with worry. “Kechara has not yet found him!” She dropped her head with distress.
“Remember, she has to know where to look, what minds to find him among,” Amberdrake told her, patting her shoulder to comfort her. “Right now, she’s going to have to search through the whole city to find him.”
And we have to hope they don’t have shields up to cover him. Kechara is good, but I don’t know that she’s ever broken a shield. Would she know what to look for? “Does Kechara know anything about mind-shields?” he asked, wanting to give her something she could act on. “All I know is that they exist, and that some kinds of magic shielding acts like a mind-shield. Could she break one if she found it to see if Skan’s under it?”
Zhaneel brought her head up, quickly. “I do not know, but I think I can explain it to her!” the gryfalcon exclaimed. “It would be much faster to search for a shield than to search for Skan! As for breaking one—Amberdrake, there is nothing she has tried with Mindspeech that she cannot do, and she might well be able to break one.”
“Talk to her, then, the next time she calls you, and ask her.” This was the maddening part; the only time the people here, where Skan was presumably captive, could speak to Kechara was when the little gryphon stopped searching long enough to talk to one of the strong Mindspeakers here. There were only two, with Skan gone—Zhaneel and a Kaled’a’in trondi’irn named Summerhawk. Aubri was a Mindspeaker, but not very strong; Winterhart was on a par with Aubri, and Amberdrake’s Gifts were in the sensing of emotions and the healing of the spirit, not in Mindspeaking. It was incredibly frustrating—
But at least Snowstar was in charge of Kechara and her search, and he was interrupting her at regular intervals to get her to talk to one or more of them and to rest and eat. Otherwise, the poor little thing was so frantic to find her “Papa Skan” that she was likely to drive herself until she dropped.
If ever we find her limits, it will probably be now.
He racked his brain, trying to think of any other way they could look for the gryphon. No new murders this morning, and all courtiers accounted for at Morning Court, so if Skan had intercepted the killers, he’d done so before they even got at their potential victim.
And at least he won’t be blamed for another killing.
So what else could they do? Ask for a room-by-room search of the Palace? What would that accomplish, besides getting people more annoyed with the Kaled’a’in than they already were?
And besides, if they know there is a search going on, they could and would move him.
“You stay here, just in case he comes flying in with his tail singed,” he ordered Zhaneel. “I’m going to go talk to Silver Veil. Maybe she can help.”
He left Zhaneel consoling herself with her twins, who played on, oblivious to their mother’s worries, and left the suite in his “guard” guise. Like most kestra’chern, by the very nature of her work, Silver Veil was usually alone in the morning and early afternoon, and he found her enjoying a solitary lunch beside the pool in her own garden. She knew immediately that something was very wrong, of course, even though she did not have the level of Empathy he did.
“What is it?” she asked, leaving her lunch forgotten and hurrying across the garden as soon as she spotted him. “What has happened? I heard nothing of another death!”
“No death that we know of, but Skan is missing,” he told her, taking the hands she held out to him with gratitude. “We have a Mindspeaker searching for him, but that takes time.”
Her eyes went wide when he said that Skandranon was missing, and her hands tightened on his. “Is there anything I can do to help?” she asked quickly.
“I was going to ask you that; can you think of anything?” He tried not to show his disappointment when she shook her head, but his heart fell a little anyway. He hadn’t exactly counted on her coming up with a brilliant plan on the spur of the moment, but he’d hoped, just a bit. She was so resourceful, it was hard to realize that she couldn’t do everything, solve every problem.
“I cannot solve every problem,” she said softly, as if she had read his thoughts. “I cannot even solve my own.”
Only then did he see that her eyes were red, as if she had been weeping, and that there were shadows beneath them that told him she had been spending some sleepless nights.