“We can go through the motions of breeding as much as we like,” Skan said tonelessly. “But without that knowledge, or that component that Urtho keeps to himself, it’s strictly recreational.” He shook his massive head. “Not only is it slavery, or worse than slavery, it’s dangerous. There are never more than a tenth of us fertile at any one time. All it would take is one spell from Ma’ar-or for Urtho to die-and our race would die! You can’t have a viable breeding population with only a tenth of the adults fertile! Even the breeders of hounds know that.”
“But why?” Vikteren said, bewildered. “Why does he hold that over you?”
Skan sighed gustily. “I have no idea. None. We don’t need to be controlled. Do you know how much we revere him? We’d continue to serve him the way the kyree do. We’d do it because he is right, and because we respect and care for him, not because he controls our destiny. We’d probably serve him better if he didn’t control us like that. Damn! If he doesn’t give it to us, maybe we ought to steal it.”
“So-steal it? The spell, or whatever it is?” Vikteren said slowly. “That’s not a bad idea.” Amberdrake stared at him, not believing the mage had said anything so audacious even though the words had come out of his mouth.
“What good would that do?” Amberdrake asked. “If you need a mage to make it work-“
Skan closed his eyes for a moment, as if Vikteren’s words had caused a series of thoughts to cascade. “About half of the gryphons are apprentice-level mages or better,” he rumbled. “We are magical by nature. We wouldn’t need a mage to cooperate with us. I’m a full Master, for instance.”
“Even if you lacked for mages among yourselves, you’d find plenty of volunteers with the human mages,” Vikteren insisted. “Do it, Skan! You’re right! If he won’t give it to you, steal the damn spell! And if you’re a Master, then make the change permanent! Don’t put up with being manipulated like this!”
Much to his own surprise, Amberdrake found himself agreeing.
Think of the families sundered by Ma’ar. They, who did not deserve such horrors, and now these gryphons you know and love cannot have families at all unless their lord wills it.
“Take your freedom, Skan,” Amberdrake whispered. “Steal the spell, and teach it to everyone you trust.”
Skandranon backwinged in place, then pulled himself up to his full, magnificent height.
The brisk wind from the Black Gryphon’s wings sent Vikteren’s hair into his face and kicked up a bit of dust that made Amberdrake squint for a moment.
“Stealing a spell from Urtho, though . . .” Vikteren’s eyes lit up with a manic glee. “You know, that’d be nearly impossible? Not working the spell itself, that would be pretty simple, fertility spells nearly always are. No, it’s the stealing part that would be hard. Getting into Urtho’s Tower, getting past all the protections . . .”
From the look on Vikteren’s face, he relished that very challenge and impossibility.
“It would not be impossible for me,” Skan replied, his crest-feathers rising arrogantly.
But Amberdrake shook his head. “Be realistic, Skan. You’ve always flown directly to Urtho’s balcony when you went to see him. You have no idea what safeguards are in that Tower, many of them built only for human hands. It would be impossible for you. But not for us.”
“Us?” Skan asked, eyeing them both. Vikteren nodded gleefully, seconding Amberdrake.
“Exactly,” the kestra’chern said with immense satisfaction, feeling as if the weight of a hundred gryphons was lifted off him. “Us.”
In the end, the “us” also included Tamsin and Cinnabar. After a brief discussion, the means of bypassing all those special protections turned out I to be absurdly easy.
Cinnabar crafted a message to be sent to Urtho just before Urtho was to meet with the leader of the mages’ delegation. She claimed that there were some problems she and Tamsin were encountering with gryphon anatomy-not even a lie!-and that she and he needed to consult the records on the gryphons’ development so that they could tell what Urtho used for a “model.”
She did not specify who she would have with her, only that she needed some “help.”
“Urtho keeps records on everything he’s ever done,” she said, as they waited in her tent for the reply. She sat as calmly and quietly as if they were all her guests for an evening of quiet social chat and not gathered to perform what could, by some standards, be considered a major theft. Her hands were folded in her lap, and she leaned into Tarnsin’s shoulder, wearing an enigmatic little smile. Her pale green robes were as smooth and cool as tinted porcelain; beside her lover, she looked like an expensive doll propped next to a peasant-child’s rag-toy. “I know he has extensive records on how he put your race together, and what he modeled you on. I specified ‘internal problems,’ which could be anything in the gut, and that’s difficult stuff to muck about with when you don’t know what you’re doing. It isn’t enough to be a Healer familiar with raptors in order to be successful with gryphons, even though that is how I became a default Healer to your people, Skan. You aren’t all, or even mostly, raptoral. I’m counting on his being preoccupied with this mages’ meeting; he should simply give us access to the Tower rather than taking the time to explain things to us in person.”
“A pity about the timing on that,” Skan observed dispassionately. “Vikteren did want to be here, and he has some-ah-unusual talents for a mage. He could have been very useful. Still, he will surely keep Urtho’s attention at the meeting.” The Black Gryphon lay along one side of the tent on Cinnabar’s expensive carpet of crimson and gold, where the furniture had been cleared away for him. Until he moved or spoke, he looked like an expensive piece of sculpture, brought in to match the carpet. Or, perhaps, like a very expensive and odd couch.
Amberdrake chuckled. “Well, he’ll be here in spirit, anyway,” he said, patting his pocket where the bespelled lock-breaker Vikteren had loaned him resided. “It’s just as well, given that we’ve been huddled together like conspirators for the whole afternoon. This way, if anyone has seen us all together, they can assume we won’t do anything without him, and won’t be watching us.”
Tamsin laughed and reached across Cinnabar for a cup of hot tea. “You’ve heard too many adventure tales, kestra’chern,” he mocked. “Who would be watching us? And why? Even if Urtho catches us, the worst he’ll do is dress us down. It’s not as if we were trying to take over his Power Stone or something. We are not even particularly important Personages in this camp.”
Skan raised his hackles at that. “Speak for yourself, Tamsin!” he responded sharply. Tamsin only laughed, and Cinnabar smiled a little wider.
Before a verbal sparring match could begin, one of Cinnabar’s hertasi scratched at the tent flap, then let herself in, handing the Lady a sealed envelope. Cinnabar opened it, read the contents, and nodded with satisfaction.
“As I thought,” she said, to no one in particular. “Urtho is so caught up with the mages that he didn’t even ask me what the complaint is. He’s leaving orders to pass us into the Tower. We have relatively free access to the gryphon records; he warned me that some things have some magical protections on them, and that if I want to see them, I’ll have to ask him.”
“Which, of course, we will not,” Amberdrake said. “Since we have other means of getting at them.”
“So, you see, we didn’t need all that skulking and going in through windows that you three wanted to do,” Cinnabar replied, with just a hint of reproach in her voice.
“Lady, don’t include me in that!” Amberdrake protested. “It was Tamsin, Skan, and Vikteren that wanted to go breaking into the Tower! I knew better!”
“Of course you did,” Tamsin muttered under his breath, as they all rose to go. “And you never collected ropes and equipment for securing prisoners. I don’t even want to know why you conveniently had all that stuff on hand!”