The Dark Griffin (35 page)

It was too short to wrap around his head, so he folded it and held it over the wound, keeping his arm up with difficulty under the weight of the manacles. “Bran, please, you’ve got to help me,” he said.

This time Bran ignored him. He stood in the doorway, watching the scene outside. Arren could hear screeching mingled with commanding shouts. Griffiners had arrived to break up the flock.

They waited in tense silence until Bran turned around. “All right, it looks like it’s been sorted out. Let’s get goin’.”

Arren was pulled to his feet and the guards set out, taking him with them. They left the building and marched through several blocks and onto the main street, heading straight for the Eyrie. As Arren walked, the manacles and the collar weighing him down, blood soaking into the bandage on his face, he could see people crowding around to watch him pass, all staring at him with expressions of horror and amazement.

Quite suddenly, a wild urge came over him to break free of the guards and run at them. He wanted to hit them, hurt them, scream at them, make them feel some tiny part of the agony inside him. He wanted to burn their houses and take their belongings, clamp slave collars around their necks and twist them until they screamed. He wanted to kill them.

He made no move, but his wounded face twisted with hate.

A shadow passed over him. Griffins, these ones with riders, had come and were following from above. Others brought up the rear and more went ahead. They were guarding him, still wary of the unpartnered griffins from the hatchery, some of which had decided to follow the column. But none of them tried to attack, and most were leaving. They were satisfied that he had been caught and would not escape.

The group reached the Eyrie, and Arren was taken inside and down into an old part of the building, a part dug into the rock of the mountain itself. There were storerooms down here and rooms where slaves had once slept. And there was a dungeon. It wasn’t very large, and the cells were small and dank. The guards took Arren to one of them and threw him inside. He landed hard on the floor, crying out as his collar struck the stone; the door slammed behind him, leaving him in utter darkness.

His eyes adjusted after a while, and he could see faint light filtering in under the door, but it only just allowed him to see the walls of the cell. The floor was damp and filthy, and there was water dripping from the roof. There was no food or water and no furniture except a jar meant to serve as a toilet.

Arren groped his way to the corner and sat down, shivering in the cold. He couldn’t see anything or hear anything except the dripping water and the faint sound of the guards moving on the other side of the door. His cheek was throbbing and so was his neck.

After a while the cold seeped into the collar and the manacles as well, until they felt like ice pressed against his skin. He rubbed his hands together, trying to keep them warm, but it didn’t do much good. Water had soaked into his clothes, which stuck to his skin, cold and clinging.

As he sat there, blind and trembling, a strange thought occurred to him.
Now I know what it was like for them. Now I know
.

I
t was impossible to track time in the cell. He slept fitfully and woke up hungry and thirsty. When he went to the door and called to the guards, asking for food and drink, no-one answered. In the end he resorted to sucking the water out of his tunic. It tasted of dirt and blood, but he drank it anyway, glad to have something to take away the stickiness in his mouth.

He was too cold and anxious to sit down again, so he started to pace back and forth in the dark, his chains rattling. All he had to do was wait. They would take him out of here eventually. They had to. They’d take him out of this place, and then—

The door opened and light flooded in. It was so bright it hurt his eyes, and he backed away, raising his arm to cover his face. He heard footsteps as someone entered the cell, and a voice said, “All right, time to go. Hold out your hands. No funny business.”

Arren stood with his back to the wall and held his arms out, closing his eyes to blot out the light. The guards took him by the elbows and shoved him toward the door, and he went meekly enough. There was no point in fighting back.

“Where are we going?” he asked as they took him back out along the corridor.

One of the guards struck the collar. “To the council chamber.”

Arren cringed. “Why?”

“Well, I’d have expected them to just throw you in the Arena and be done with it, but Lord Rannagon insisted you get a fair trial,” said the guard. “Move it.”

They climbed a flight of stairs that led to the upper levels of the Eyrie and thence to the doors leading into the council chamber. There were guards there, clad in ceremonial armour. They opened the doors immediately and Arren was taken through and into—

His heart seemed to pause in its beating.

They were all there
.

The councillors’ seats were all occupied. The gallery was full of people and griffins sitting together, the humans finely clad and the griffins adorned with their own kind of formal outfit: forelegs decorated with bands of gold, silver and copper, some decorated with jewels, and their heads crowned by plumes and tassels. The place was brightly lit by fine glass lanterns, and light also filtered in from the windows in the roof. But the banners had been taken down and there was a formality, even a coldness, to the room.

In the centre of the floor a kind of wooden pen had been set up, about chest height and open at the back. The guards led Arren toward it.

The pen was facing Riona’s seat, but Riona was not sitting there. Rannagon was. He stood up as Arren entered the chamber, and watched as the guards made their prisoner stand inside the pen, facing him. His wife, Kaelyn, was by his side, and their griffins flanked the pair, staring balefully at Arren.

Arren stood in the pen, holding on to the front of it, and stared around at the chamber, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing. Surely every griffiner in the city was there, and every griffin as well. He recognised dozens of faces. Roland was there, and Flell, watching from a seat in the gallery just behind her father, and Deanne, and Tamran. People he had known. Some he had been trained alongside; some he had just spoken to briefly on official occasions. Even Vander was there, with Ymazu, his dark eyes watchful.

The moment Arren entered the chamber, the mutterings started. Human and griffish voices filled the air, low and ominous, and there were a few shouts, though he couldn’t catch the words.

He stood in the dock, his eyes on Rannagon, and terror paralysed him. The guards silently took up station on either side of him, and then Rannagon stepped forward and raised a hand for silence.

Almost instantly, the chattering stopped.

Rannagon said nothing. He was wearing a tunic made from yellow velvet trimmed with blue and silver, and there were red lines painted on his forehead, the ancient signs of justice and authority. His sword was strapped to his back, its hilt gleaming.

For a moment, the Master of Law regarded Arren, his expression not hostile but a little sad. And then, at last, he began to speak.

“Arenadd Taranisäii,” he said, his voice echoing in the huge space, “also known as Arren Cardockson, of Idun, you have been accused of abducting a griffin chick. You have been brought before me, in the company of your fellow griffiners, for the chance to defend yourself and perhaps win your freedom. What do you have to say for yourself?”

Arren looked at him and then at the gallery. They were all watching. Waiting. “I . . .”

“Go ahead,” said Rannagon. “It’s your right.”

“I didn’t do it,” said Arren. “I didn’t steal the chick. It chose me.”

There was a muttering from the gallery.

“Indeed?” said Rannagon. “Then why did you run away? And why did you restrain it? And why did a dozen witnesses see it break free and tear your face?”

“It was frightened,” Arren replied. “The fire scared it, and it panicked. Hasn’t your griffin ever bitten you, my lord?”

Rannagon’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t presume to speak to me like that. You have not answered my other questions. Why did you run and hide?”

“Because . . .”

“Answer me.”

“Because I knew I had to,” Arren said loudly. “Because I knew no-one would accept it. I knew I had no chance to be a true griffiner again, and so I decided we both had to leave.”

“Why?” said Rannagon. “What were you afraid of, Arenadd?”

“You know the answer to that, my lord.”

“Speak plainly,” said Rannagon. “Speak the truth.”

Arren was silent. He looked down at the wooden edge of the dock, where his hands rested. Long, pale hands with black hair scattered over the knuckles, the manacles resting just behind them. He could see his reflection, faintly, on the surface of the metal. See his own eyes, black and cold as steel.

“Speak,” Rannagon commanded. “Speak now or I will presume that you have waived your right to do so, and I will pronounce sentence on you.”

Arren looked up. “I was afraid of you,” he said.

There was more muttering from the crowd, louder this time.

Rannagon waved them into silence. “Why would that be?”

“You already know,” said Arren. “You
know
. You knew from the beginning.”

“What did I know, Arenadd?” Rannagon asked steadily.

Arren straightened up. “Griffiners! Listen to me!” he shouted, and pointed at Rannagon. “This man is a liar and a traitor! He drove me to do what I did! He betrayed me!”

The guards grabbed his shoulders to hold him still, as the listeners reacted with a flurry of shouts and screeches.

“Silence!” Rannagon roared. He came toward Arren. “Tell me what I’ve done,” he said, raising his voice above the noise. “Tell them.”

“You killed Eluna!” Arren shouted back, provoking further consternation. “It was your fault! You lied to me and sent me to my death! And then you lied to Riona as well! You told them it was
my
fault, you said I was a liar and a thief, you said if I told anyone you’d kill me, and then you murdered my friend because he knew the truth! You sent people after me, made them put this collar on me and destroy my house, and then you set it on fire! You took my life!”

This time there were not mutterings or muted exclamations. This time there was an outburst of shouting and screeching, deafeningly loud and terrible with rage.

Arren ignored them completely. “You can’t do this to me!” he half-screamed. “Murderer! Traitor!”

“Shut him up!” Rannagon snapped at the guards.

They took Arren by the elbows and dragged him back from the front of the dock, and one of them clamped a hand over his mouth, silencing him. Arren bit him, and the other guard hit him in the neck and then grabbed him by the hair, dragging his head sideways. He tried to fend them off, but they only hit him harder; he subsided, fists clenched, unable to speak, the guard’s hand once again firmly in place over his mouth.

Rannagon was busy trying to silence the crowd, but without much success. Then Shoa stood up and screeched. Her voice cut across the babble; as it started to die down, she reared up, opening her wings, and screeched again. The crowd went quiet.

Rannagon watched them sternly then turned back to Arren, and the look on his face was not angry or accusing but full of terrible sadness. “Arren, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t want to have to do this.”

He turned to address the gallery again. “I had been expecting something like this to happen,” he said, “though I hoped it wouldn’t. I take no pleasure in saying it. I’ve known the accused since he was a boy and considered him a close friend. I was always proud of him for having risen so far from such beginnings, and I cannot express how miserable I was when I learnt of Eluna’s fate. I have been doing my best to help him since then, out of sympathy. I have kept an eye on him for the last few months and have tried to help him recover. As some of you already know, I asked favours of certain people to give him a job if he ever asked for one. I have also spoken to his friends and his employer and some of his neighbours and acquaintances. And, unfortunately, it would seem that he did not recover from the trauma of Eluna’s death. I had hoped that he would improve, but as you can plainly see, he has not.”

There was near-silence, broken only by a few curious voices.

“I can say with complete sincerity,” Rannagon went on, “that I have never in my life held prejudice against Arenadd because of his heritage. I have fought his kind in the past, and I know their history in detail, but I never thought of Arenadd as what some call a blackrobe. To me, he was a friend first, and a Northerner second, as I hope it was with all of you. I saw him not as an upstart raised to our status by some outrageous twist of fate; I saw him as a symbol, and an example. An example of the fact that, no matter what his origins and blood, a man may always rise above his past and become something better.

“It is said—indeed, it is known—that all Northerners have a madness in them. I have seen it myself. It is in their blood to be this way. But Arenadd was not like that. All those who knew him agreed with me. Although he looked Northern and was born of Northern parents, he did not act like them. Few men his age were as civilised and intelligent. Some even called him gentle. However—” Rannagon bowed his head, his demeanour full of weariness and pain. “However, I have now been forced to face the truth. Others have told me about his erratic behaviour recently—his violent outbursts, his paranoia and secrecy, and his wild appearance—and only yesterday I received confirmation. Arenadd cannot be blamed completely for his actions. He cannot help himself. My lords and ladies, the boy has lost his mind.”

Arren’s mouth fell open.

The crowd started to mutter again. He scanned the rows of faces, trying desperately to tell what people were thinking. Most looked surprised or contemptuous. Some looked angry. Others merely looked sad or disgusted. He saw Roland, but the old man’s head was bowed. He saw Flell, and her eyes were on him. There were tears on her face.

Rannagon sighed and resumed. “I had hoped that it was not true—that there was some other explanation for his behaviour—but I cannot close my eyes to it any longer. The evidence is overwhelming. Every single person I have spoken to who has associated with him over the last few months has told me that they feared for his sanity. Yesterday his employer, Lord Roland of the hatchery, came to me with a story that confirmed it. Apparently, Arenadd told him a wild tale in which he blamed me for Eluna’s death and claimed that he was being followed and threatened with death if he should ever reveal it. He told a similar story to other people. His delusion is so complete that he blamed the accidental death of Gern Tailor—which took place in daylight and was witnessed by dozens of people—on some secret group of spies that had been following him around and listening to every word he said.”