The Griffin's War (Fallen Moon Trilogy) (29 page)

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Authors: K. J. Taylor

BOOK: The Griffin's War (Fallen Moon Trilogy)
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The healer nodded. “Understood.”
“Good. I am going back to my chamber. Send every piece of information you find to me as soon as you find it.”
“Yes, my lady.”
Elkin climbed onto Kraal’s back as quickly as she could, and held on as he flew up and out of the chamber. He went straight back to their home, but refused to let Elkin enter until he had gone in and smelt every inch of it, searching for any sign of an intruder. Elkin waited outside, on the balcony, shivering slightly in the wind, until he returned.
“It is safe. Come.”
They went to her room and from there into the audience chamber. Elkin, moving stiffly, went to the platform where she and her partner habitually sat. She slumped down on it, staring blankly into space.
Kraal did not sit. He paced back and forth, his claws clicking on the marble floor, his tail lashing violently and his wings twitching.
Elkin finally found her voice. “How?”
Kraal stopped. “I do not know,” he said softly.
“But . . . how?” she repeated, not really hearing him. In her head, she saw the councillors fall, again and again, caught up in an endless loop. Her control—the agents of her power—dying in front of her while she looked on, utterly helpless. “How? Who could have done this? How did they get at them? Was it one of the servants? Was someone working for
him
? How could it have happened so quickly—he only escaped a few weeks ago, and he couldn’t have even found his friends yet, and . . .”
Kraal resumed his pacing, his big muscles sliding and flexing under his skin, full of nearly tangible power, like a great coiled spring. “This is evil,” he said. “This is magic.
Kraeai kran ae
has done this; this smells of him.”
“But if he came back into the Eyrie, then someone must have seen him,” said Elkin. “I don’t understand. His face is too familiar. Someone would have recognised him, surely.”
“I do not know the powers of
Kraeai kran ae
,” said Kraal. “But the shadows are his friends.”
Elkin began to feel afraid—more than she had done in a very long time. “Oh gods. This is too much. It’s too soon. We’re not
ready
!” She covered her face with her hands. “Half the council is dead—all my best advisors and officials. And they died in
public
. Everyone saw it happen; they saw us stand there and watch it happen. They saw us
fail
.”
“Oh, but it gets worse.”
Elkin looked up sharply. “What?”
Kraal stood. “Who is that?” he demanded. “Who spoke? Show yourself!”
They heard a laugh. It came from nowhere, from out of the air. “I see you,” the voice whispered. “Do you see me?”
The giant griffin darted here and there, searching. Elkin, not daring to rise from her seat, turned this way and that, watching for the slightest sign of movement, but there was nothing. Nothing. Just an empty room.
“Where are you?” she called.
“I am the shadow that comes in the night,” the voice replied, from behind Kraal. He swung around sharply, but found himself biting at the empty air.
“I am the fear that lurks in your heart,” it said, this time right beside Elkin’s ear. She cried out and lurched upward and away from it, while Kraal ran to protect her, but there was nothing there.
“I am the man without a heart,” the voice called, this time from over by the door.
“Move this way,” Kraal rasped to Elkin. “Stay back, close to the wall. Do not move.”
There was another laugh, cold and sadistic. “I am the avatar of the Night God. I am the Dark Lord. I am the Master of Death.”
Kraal herded his human into a corner by a drape and stood in front of her, guarding her.
“I killed your council,” the voice taunted. “You couldn’t stop me, could you? And you can’t stop me now. How can you stop . . . what you can’t see?”
Kraal snarled and jerked toward the sound. “Show yourself! Come forth and fight! Coward!”
There was silence. The giant griffin began to tear at the drapes and the tapestries on the wall nearby, caught up in a frenzy. “Show yourself!” he bellowed.
In her corner, Elkin took a step toward him. “Kraal, please—”
He turned. “Elkin, I said—”
It all happened in less than a heartbeat. As Kraal moved toward her, angry and afraid, a pair of hands reached out of the shadow behind Elkin. Pale hands, clad in a pair of fingerless gloves. The fingers of one hand were long and elegant, and on the other they were twisted and maimed. Kraal opened his beak to shout a warning, but he was too late, too late. The hands seized Elkin by the shoulders and dragged her away, pulling her into the shadow.
Kraal charged, screeching, but there was nothing he could do. He tore through the drape and struck the wall on the other side. There was nothing there. Elkin had gone.
18
 
Evil Tactics
 
T
he Eyrie Mistress proved to be much lighter than Arenadd had expected, even in the shadows. He hastily stuffed a gag in her mouth and slung her over his shoulder before making his escape. He couldn’t afford to stay in the shadows for too long; he was already risking taking too much of Skandar’s magic as it was. Once he was well away from the audience chamber and the maddened griffin in it, he slid back into the world of the living, hiding in a storeroom. There he tied the gag more securely in place and put a bag over his prisoner’s head before tying her hands behind her back. She put up a struggle, but only a weak one, and once he had rested and made sure she was restrained he dived back into the shadows with her and ran on, unseen and unheard.
It was more difficult than he had expected, even invisible as he was. He had long since plotted his escape route, but there were people everywhere, and he cursed himself for not having waited until nightfall. But he had spent too much time hiding in the Eyrie already, and the more he used his powers to stay hidden, the more he risked hurting Skandar. If the griffin was too weak to fly once they were reunited, his plan would end in disaster for both of them.
Feeling strangely calm even in the face of that knowledge, he dodged his way through a knot of shadowy people, whose voices he could hear as he passed. They were high-pitched and frightened, and he caught the words “all dead!” He grinned wolfishly to himself. Even if he failed now and was caught, he would have plenty of time to escape while they found a new Master of Law to try him. The last one had come to regret sentencing him to death.
He found the window whose latch he had broken the previous night, checked to make sure nobody was watching, and slipped out through it and away into the city.
Once he was well away from the Eyrie, he left the shadows and rested in an alley, laying Elkin down beside him. She was making a muffled whimpering sound, and he felt a brief pang of sympathy for her. She couldn’t have any idea of what was happening to her. Still, she was safe enough for now. At the moment he should be more worried about himself.
Having caught his breath, he slung her over his other shoulder and left, this time darting from shadow to shadow to save magic. It worked fairly well, especially aided by the power of silent movement the Night God had given him. Even though his new boots were heavy things, they made no sound at all on the cobblestones. He walked like a cat.
The journey out of the city was a perilous one, as he’d expected, but easier than the one through the Eyrie. He moved from cover to cover, from alley to alley, avoiding people. However, he was unable to avoid every living creature he came across, and he became painfully aware of the effect his presence was having on them. Everywhere he went, horses reared and screamed, dogs howled and cats streaked away as fast as they could go. Even the pigeons and crows that lived on the city’s rooftops flurried up into the sky as if they had seen a kestrel coming for them.
They know what I really am,
Arenadd thought grimly.
It’s getting stronger. Once it was only intelligent animals. Soon
. . .
There was no time for introspection, however. He reached the slums on the edge of the city, and there he finally dared to stop. Behind an old warehouse he found a particularly squalid corner that even beggars apparently preferred to avoid, and went to ground there.
And there, he waited. He stayed for a long time, hiding under a heap of old cabbage leaves and other assorted garbage, ignoring the stench and waiting, with Elkin beside him. He dozed, woke, checked the sky and returned to his bolthole. Elkin, lying helplessly beside him, struggled from time to time or tried to speak through her gag. He ignored her other than to check her bonds and make sure the bag wasn’t suffocating her.
Time dragged by, while the sun ever so slowly sank in the sky. Eventually Arenadd’s nervousness turned to stultifying boredom. He ate some food he’d stored in his pocket and went over his plan in his head again to occupy himself. Elkin, meanwhile, tried to wriggle away from him, and he dragged her back and held her down with a hand to her back. “Stay,” he told her quietly. “There’s nowhere for you to go.”
Naturally, she didn’t reply. However, as the afternoon continued its slow advance toward evening, he began to have some fellow feeling toward her. He might be unhappy with his situation, but it had to be far worse for her.
“Stay calm,” he advised. “You’re not going to be hurt. I’m going to take you to a safe place.”
Elkin wriggled again and made that muffled whimpering sound that was probably a sob or a scream.
“Listen, my lady,” Arenadd told her. “If I was going to kill you, I’d have done it already, like I did to your council. I was there when you were eating lunch, you know. I could have poisoned your food the same way I poisoned theirs. I’ve been watching you for a while, actually. I had a hundred opportunities to kill you. You’re safe with me. If we get caught,
I’m
the one who’s in trouble, not you. So please, just relax and trust
me
.”
He doubted that she had even heard half of what he’d said, but he did notice that she seemed a little calmer afterward. Perhaps she had heard and believed him, or perhaps she was just exhausted. He could understand it if she was.
The sound of griffins screeching echoed somewhere high above him, and he tensed. They had been screeching for a long time, calling to each other as they searched the city.
Too soon to move yet.
As he lay there, trying not to move more than he had to and listening to the threatening sounds of hunting griffins, he felt a strange numbness come over him. Images flashed through his brain, and sounds with them, too. Pounding feet, the buildings of a darkened city flashing past. He saw faces turn to stare at him and ducked into a side street to avoid them. His neck hurt, something was cutting it . . . he could feel cold blood on his skin. But he was carrying something. No hand free to touch it. His fingers were long and thin, and perfect in the moonlight. Unhurt. But overhead the griffins came screeching, and he ran, his boots thudding on the ground and his heart thudding in his chest.
He felt a sharp pain tear into his cheek and gasped involuntarily, reaching up to touch the scar. The motion woke him up, and the visions disappeared, leaving him feeling drained.
None of it had felt familiar. Had it happened to him? Was that one of the memories he had lost? He didn’t know.
Maybe Skade knows. Maybe I told her before I forgot
.
He shook himself. It didn’t matter now, if it mattered at all. “If it was a memory, it was Arren’s, not mine,” he muttered to himself. “Arren can dream if he wants to. Meanwhile
Arenadd
has a city to escape from.”
He peered out at the sky again. The sun was sinking lower toward the horizon now. He touched the hilt of the sickle to reassure himself. The moment dusk set in, he could go.
The sun inched lower, and he watched it with an increasing sense of irritation bordering on anger.
Go away, Gryphus, and take your eye with you
.
He wondered, briefly, if the sun would stop rising once he had destroyed all of the Day God’s temples.
No. That wouldn’t do it
.
Deep down, he was glad about that. The idea of a night that never ended bothered even him. The world needed sunlight.
At long last, the sun touched the horizon and began to dip below it. The griffin calls started to die away, and he knew they were returning to the Eyrie; no griffin liked to fly at night. Other than Skandar, of course.
As the sky darkened and the stars came out, he felt new strength come into him. He stood up, shaking away the garbage that had covered him, and stretched his arms and legs to limber them up before turning to pick up Elkin. She was limp and still—breathing, but apparently unconscious. To his disgust, he realised that there was a damp patch on her gown. Still, needs must. He lifted her onto his shoulder again and sprinted away into the gathering night.
 
 
M
ost of the abduction from Malvern passed in a blur for Elkin—albeit a blur of sheer terror. She had always had weak hearing, and the bag over her head blotted out most sound. But she was aware of a presence near her—breathing but without warmth. Her captor carried her a long way; she could feel him running and dodging, and after that he dragged her through some opening, probably a window. She could feel his feet pounding on the ground and his thin arm wrapped around her waist, holding her in place over one bony shoulder, and yet . . . and yet there was something wrong about him and his touch, something she couldn’t understand. Something not right. Later on, when they stopped and he put her down and lay beside her for a long time, she could feel his skin touching hers, and the feeling of wrongness increased.

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