Kelene raised her hand to relight her sphere when a small handlamp flared to light in an entrance she had not seen before. A stone door, cunningly set in the rock of the cavern wall, creaked closed behind Counsellor Zukhara. He set the lamp on a ledge and moved toward her pallet. Kelene sprang to her feet in alarm.
“I have been watching you and your progress with the gryphon. It is almost ready.” Kelene said nothing and warily watched him approach. He paused an arm’s length away and eyed her from head to toe. “You are not wearing the clothes I chose for you.” he said levelly.
“I had other need for them,” Kelene replied. Nervously she edged back, very much aware that Zukhara wore only a loose-fitting robe open to his chest and his ivory ward. Deliberately she turned to run and, under the cover of her more violent movement, she dipped her fingers in her waistband and palmed the wad of fabric.
Zukhara lunged after her. His hands closed on her shoulders and wrenched her off balance. Her tunic ripped across the back. Half-hauling, half-dragging her backward, he flung her to the pallet and pinned her down with the full length of his body. Kelene lay panting and wild-eyed. She struggled against his weight, and as she tried to heave him away, she clamped the rag with oily sedative against his upper arm.
To keep his attention on her, she screamed and fought with all her might and prayed the sedative would work. She could feel his passion exuding from him in a heavy cloying aura, and she desperately closed her mind to his touch, terrified of being overwhelmed by his need.
Zukhara forced his hand over her mouth and silenced her screams. In the sudden quiet, she heard the gryphon lunge against her chains. The beast’s growl rose to a hair-raising cry that shivered to the vaulted ceiling of the cave.
Zukhara heard it and exalted. “Tonight, my chosen, we consummate our union in the presence of the sacred gryphon.” Kelene lay still, her face marble-white, her fingers still fastened to his arms. “You are like the gryphon,” he told her. “Untamed, fierce, and proud. I have waited a long time for this.”
Kelene’s eyes widened. Did his voice seem to slur a bit on those last words? No sooner had she thought that, than Zukhara’s eyes rolled up in his head and he slumped over her, dead to the world.
The sorceress gratefully pushed him off. She wrapped the rag back in its cloth and grinned. The sedative was potent stuff indeed. She had no idea how long the drug would last, so she quickly went to work. First she tried the stone door, but as she had feared, it was locked with a powerful spell. Not that she was certain she wanted to escape yet anyway. She had no antidote for Gabria and no knowledge of where to find her mother, Nara, or even a way out. Nor did she want to kill Zukhara yet, for those same reasons. There would be a better time to escape — a time perhaps when she could free the gryphon. Instead she decided simply to play along with Zukhara’s plans. Let the man think he had succeeded, she thought grimly; then maybe he would leave her alone for a while.
Setting one blanket aside, she mussed her pallet as if it had been vigorously used; then she draped the Turic’s long body over the whole thing. Her fingers found the ivory ward, pulled it out, and she cracked it ever so slightly under her knee. The crack would weaken the ward’s effectiveness, and if all went well, he would not notice the damage until too late. She pulled off his robe, averting her eyes in distaste, and dropped it in a pile with her own torn, dirty tunic and skirt. Then she transformed the spare blanket into a pair of riding pants and a thick, warm tunic similar to those she had worn before. She looked around for a place to lie down away from Zukhara and was surprised to see the gryphon sitting at the end of her chain and regarding her with calm, friendly eyes. In fact, she was purring. She walked up to the creature, waiting for her perked ears to go flat, but the gryphon only lay down on her side as if inviting Kelene to join her. Kelene threw all caution to the winds. She curled up beside the gryphon’s warm, furry-feathery side and waited for Zukhara to wake up.
She didn’t have long to wait. The sedative was old and there hadn’t been much to work with on the rag. In a matter of minutes, Zukhara stirred and sat up rather groggily. He looked around for her. Kelene huddled closer to the gryphon’s side and tried her best to look like a wounded maiden. The Turic’s eye roved from himself to the bed to their clothes to Kelene’s miserable expression, and Kelene was rewarded by a flicker of confusion in the man’s dark eyes. Finally he stood, donned his robe, and strode toward her. The gryphon’s tufted ears snapped flat, and her warning growl stopped him in his tracks.
He lifted a sardonic eyebrow. “I see you have tamed the beast,” he said to Kelene.
“She and I have something in common,” Kelene retorted.
“She? I didn’t realize.” He smiled in pleasure. “How appropriate.”
“I thought gryphons were extinct,” she said, trying to keep the aggrieved tone in her voice while leading him to any subject other than what had
not
happened between them.
She needn’t have worried. Zukhara’s pride would never let him admit he didn’t remember a thing. He thankfully accepted her lead to an area he could discuss with authority and assurance. “My hunters found one tiny pride so far back in the mountains it took days to reach them.”
Kelene noticed the gryphon was paying close attention to their exchange, and she pondered just how much the animal understood. “Are the others still there?”
“As far as I know. I took only the one.”
“But why? What use will she be to you?”
“You do not know the Turic religion,” he said scornfully, “or you would understand. Gryphons are the sacred messengers of the Prophet Sargun. In our ancient tales, it was a gryphon who freed the prophet from his prison and carried him home. The gryphon is a powerful symbol to my people, and this one will be the vanguard of my conquest. When she flies, the people will know my armies are blessed by the Living God, and they will flock to my call.”
Kelene merely nodded. She had given up being surprised by the scope of this man’s plans. “And when you are finished with her, will you let her go?”
Zukhara’s mouth lifted in a cold smile. He knew she was talking about more than the gryphon. “When I am finished, she may not want to go.” He bowed slightly to them both. “Good day, my lady. Stay with the gryphon and be sure she will come at your call. Tomorrow we leave for Cangora.”
Kelene jumped to her feet. “And my mother?”
“She comes with us.” He laughed as he turned to leave. “And the antidote, too.” He blew out his lamp, leaving Kelene and the gryphon in the darkness, and the door boomed shut behind him.
The Clannad mustered at daybreak in the meadow at the foot of the cliff settlement. Fifty warriors, men and women armed and dressed for battle, mounted their white horses and fell in behind their chieftain’s standard. Sayyed and Rafnir, astride their Hunnuli, marvelled anew at the beauty of the Clannad horses and their training. Except for simple saddlepads, the horses wore no tack of any kind, yet they obeyed their riders as well as any Hunnuli. As soon as the ranks were mustered, Lady Helmar raised a gloved fist. She rode her star-coloured mare that morning and wore a shirt of silver mail that glistened like water in the pearly light. Her bright red hair hung below her helm in a heavy braid that dangled over one shoulder, and a bow and quiver were strapped to back. She gave a single piercing call that was answered by fifty voices in a shout that rang across the valley. In the city above, those who remained behind waved and shouted good-bye.
The troop trotted down the valley, sorting themselves into a single file as they approached the passage of the Back Door. One by one they rode down the narrow crevice and worked their way down the rugged glen beside the tumbling stream. Even in the light of a sunny spring day, the going was slow. It was nearly midday before the first of the troop came to a halt by the tall, grotesque pole of faces that guarded the faint trail.
“Do you know anything about that statue?” Rafnir asked the rider closest to him.
The man looked up the length of the pole and grinned. “Those things have been in the mountains since long before us. But this one was found many leagues away. My grandfather helped move it here to guard the Back Door. The local shepherds are terrified of it and stay away from the valley.”
The clansmen fully expected to travel the rest of the afternoon. The day was clear and mild, the trails were drying, and the travelling would be easy. But to their astonishment, as soon as the last Clannad warrior reached the ancestor pole, instead of mounting and moving on, Helmar led her riders into the shelter of a thick belt of trees and ordered them to dismount.
“Because,” she insisted when Sayyed demanded to know why, “we always travel at night. The only reason we left early was to traverse the glen in the daylight. But now we’re out of our territory. Now we rest the horses and travel at night.” And that was that.
Sayyed and Rafnir could only swallow their impatience and wait. The stallions didn’t seem to mind. Sayyed noticed Afer and Tibor had taken a strong liking the white horses and apparently found something amusing about their company. When asked, though, neither stallion would give a definite answer.
Sayyed scratched his beard and tried to relax. It was not easy. The afternoon wore slowly on while the horses quietly grazed, the warriors dozed, and the insects droned in the undergrowth. Finally Sayyed brought out his tulwar and the special stone he kept solely to sharpen the weapon, and he began to run the one smoothly along the curved blade. After several strokes, he felt the tingling on the back of his neck he always got when he was being watched, and he looked up into Helmar’s intent gaze. Her eyes sparkled, green and intense, the colour of sunlight in deep water. She met his regard with frank interest.
“Are you as good with that blade as you are with magic?” she asked, her voice lightly teasing.
He lifted an eyebrow and kept working. “You have only seen me use one spell, so you cannot know whether I am good or not.”
Beside the chief, flat on his back, Hydan chuckled at the remark.
“If half of what you told us is true, then you must be one of the finest sorcerers in the clans,” she said.
“He is.” Rafnir spoke up from his resting spot by the trunk of a tree.
A hiss of humour escaped Sayyed. “All of what I told you is true,” he said shortly. “Now tell me a truth. Where did your people come from?”
“Over the mountains.” She shrugged. “We have been in Sanctuary for generations.”
“Why did you decide to save us when you learned were sorcerers?”
“You saved yourselves. We couldn’t very well argue with magic-wielders.”
He grunted. “Where did you learn to speak Clannish?”
“We didn’t know we were until you came along.”
Exasperated, Sayyed put away his stone. He felt as if he were running into walls with every question asked. Either they had a poor oral tradition, they simply didn’t care about their ancestry or — and Sayyed was more inclined to believe this — they were deliberate concealing a secret they weren’t ready to share.
He shoved his tulwar back in its sheath, crossed arms, and leaned back against a tree, shutting his eyes to end the conversation. The Clannad would reveal their truths when they wanted, and until then he was not going to beat his head against their walls.
When night came, the troop ate a cold meal and continued across the mountain slopes toward the trail Sayyed and Rafnir had lost in the storm. The two sorcerers quickly acknowledged that the Clannad warriors were quite good at night travel and their horses were sharp-eyed and agile. But the darkness disguised details, drained colour, and turned the world to shadow and even the most seasoned traveller was slowed by night on treacherous paths in the mountain wilderness. Worse yet, the heavy rains of the storm two nights ago had washed out many sections of the trails they were trying to follow, and a huge, muddy landslide blocked one shortcut they tried, forcing them on a long detour out of one valley and up a traverse over a high, spiny ridge before they could find their way to the wagon trail. By dawn they were tired, muddy, and still leagues from the fortress.
When daylight painted the eastern horizon, the Clannad began to look for a place to shelter for the day. Sayyed, though, urged Afer close to Helmar’s mare. “We can’t stop now,” he said bluntly. “Gabria and Kelene have probably been in that fortress almost three days. We have to get them out!”
“And we will,” Helmar replied. “But the horses need a rest and we—”
“Do not travel in daylight. I know,” he cut her off. “But we don’t have that time to waste.”
“I will not endanger my people for—”
“What is
that
?” Hydan exclaimed.
All eyes swept to the brightening sky in time to see something large and dark swerve toward them. A shadow swift as a storm cloud raced overhead and plunged out of the dawn light. The white horses neighed a warning.
Hydan’s warrior instincts brought his hands to his bow and an arrow before he stopped to think. In a blur nocked the arrow, raised the bow, and drew the string to his jaw. “No!” bellowed Rafnir.
Tibor sprang forward and rammed into Hydan’s horse, knocking the man’s aim askew. The bow dropped, but his fingers released the string, and the arrow sang wildly into the group clustered around Helmar. In the same second the downdraft from a huge pair of wings swept over the party and blew the shaft farther off course.
I found you!
trumpeted a Hunnuli voice.