She and Tamsin leafed rapidly through the pages and soon located the relevant formula. They planned to make two copies, just in case they were discovered; they would turn over one, but not the second, unless Urtho somehow knew that they’d made it.
Suddenly, Skan’s head snapped up, alarm in his eyes, his crest-feathers erect and quivering.
“What is it?” Amberdrake whispered, afraid to make a sound. Was there a guard coming?
“There’s-another gryphon up here!” Skan muttered, his head weaving back and forth a little, his eyes slightly glazed with concentration. “It’s in the next room, but there’s something wrong, something odd-“
Before Amberdrake could stop him, the Black Gryphon had snatched the lock-pick beads out of his hand. He turned and trotted down the hall to a doorway barely visible at the end of it.
Tamsin and Cinnabar became so engrossed in their copying that they didn’t even notice Skan’s abrupt departure. It was left to Amberdrake to chase after him and snatch the beads out of his talons as he shoved them in a bundle against the door lock.
“What are you trying to do?” he hissed, as the gryphon turned to look at him with reproach. “Do you want us to be discovered?”
“I-“ Skan shook his head. “I just felt as if there was-something I should do about that other gryphon. It felt important. It felt as if I needed to get in there quickly.”
Amberdrake did not make the scathing retort he wanted to, “And what if that was the point?” he asked, instead. “What if there is some kind of trap in there and this feeling of yours is the bait? We both know how tricky Urtho is! That’s exactly the kind of thing he’d do!”
“He wouldn’t be mad, at least not for long,” Skan replied weakly. “I could talk him down.”
“Until he figured out that we had taken his precious fertility formula!” Amberdrake retorted. “Now will you be sensible? Did you actually unlock that door?”
“I thought I heard a click,” the Black Gryphon told him, with uncharacteristic meekness. “But I don’t know, I could have heard the beads clicking together.”
These were meant to unlock books, not doors-maybe nothing happened. “Look, Skan, whatever it is behind that door, it can wait until you have a chance to ask Urtho yourself. If he wants you to know, he’ll tell you. You were supposed to be here, after all, and you can say you sensed another gryphon-then you can ask him what was going on. He’ll probably tell you.”
“Just like he’s told me the fertility formula?” the gryphon replied scornfully, sounding much more like his usual serf. He walked beside Amberdrake with his usual unnerving lack of sound. “Oh, please-“
“We’re done!” Tamsin grinned. “We copied legitimate information to cover the notes on the fertility formula, if we meet Urtho on the way out and he asks. Let’s get out of here. I’d rather not try and bluff him.”
“Right.” Amberdrake said. “Come on, Skan. You can solve mysteries later.”
He stuffed the “picks” into a deep pocket, one full of other miscellaneous junk of the kind a kestra’chern often collected; bits of trim, loose beads, a heavy neck chain, the odd token or two. He hoped that among all that junk the beads would appear insignificant. And hopefully, Urtho, if they met him, would not check him over for magic.
He hurried down the hall to join the others, assuming Skan followed. The mage-lights extinguished in his wake, leaving darkness and silence behind him.
Nine
Skan pushed the unlocked door open the tiniest bit. Stupid gryphon. Stupid, stupid gryphon. Going to get yourself into trouble again. This time with your own side! Skan shoved the door open a little more, carefully, listening, watching for moving shadows as he opened the portal, taking a huge breath of air and testing it for scents other than dust. His bump of curiosity was eating him alive. His weaker bump of caution was screaming at him to turn around and join the others on the staircase. As always, his bump of curiosity won.
Metal doors, and I wonder why? Never mind, Urtho’s not going to like this, stupid gryphon. He puts locks on things for a reason.
Yes, but what could that reason be? Why would paternal, kindly Urtho hide something that called to him like a gryphon-only not quite? What if it was something important, something out of keeping with Urtho’s kindhearted image? What if Urtho was as bad as Ma’ar beneath that absentminded and gentle exterior? After all, hadn’t the Mage of Silence been withholding the fertility secret all this time? What if he was hiding something sinister?
Stupid and paranoid, gryphon. Maybe you addled your brains when you struck the too-hard earth. It’s been known to happen.
Still. Just because you were paranoid, that did not mean your fears had no foundation. What if Urtho had no intention of giving the gryphons their fertility and their autonomy because he already had their replacement waiting in the wings, so to speak?
Some kind of super-gryphon, but one that wouldn’t do such an inconvenient thing as begin to think for itself and hold its own opinions. A prettier sort of makaar?
Stupid, stupid gryphon. And if you find out that’s really the case, what then? Take the chance that Urtho won’t know and stay to tell the others, or fly away before he can catch you? If so, to where?
The door moved, slowly, a talon-width at a time. Then, suddenly, it swung open very quickly indeed, all at once, as if he had triggered something.
For a moment, he looked into darkness, overwhelmed by a wash of gryphon “presence,” so strong that surely, surely it must be from many gryphons.
Then the lights came up, albeit dim ones that left the far walls in shadow-shrouded obscurity, and he found himself staring at-
Gryphon-ghosts!
That was his first thought; they hung in midair, floated, and he could see right through them. They were the source of most of the light in the room. Wasn’t that the way ghosts were supposed to look? Surely they must be the source of the “presence” that had hit him so strongly!
But then he saw that they didn’t move at all, they didn’t even breathe; they stared into nothingness, with a peculiar lack of expression. Not dead . . . but lifeless, he thought. As if they never lived in the first place.
And as he continued to stare, it occurred to him that it wasn’t only their surface that he saw, it was their insides, too! Every detail of their anatomy, in fact. If he concentrated on stomach when he stared at one, there would be the stomach, eerily see-through, suspended inside the transparent gryphon.
Fascinated now, if a trifle revolted, he stepped inside, and the door closed softly behind him.
They hung at about knee-height to a human above the floor, so that one could, if he chose, crawl under them to view the detail from below. Each one differed from the one next to it, some in trivial ways, some very drastically. Here was a rufous broadwing, like Aubri; there a dark gray gos-type, with the goshawk’s mad red eyes, blazingly lifelike even in the lifeless face. There was the compact-bodied suntail that was best at flying cover-
They’re all types. I’m looking at types of gryphons! All of them, every kind I’ve ever seen! We aren’t just one race, we’re many races! Why did I never see that before? Is that why Urtho keeps the fertility secret to himself? Is he trying to keep the types pure?
Dazed with the revelation, he wandered past another three of the transparent models, to find himself beak-to-beak with-
Zhaneel!
Only it wasn’t Zhaneel at all, it was a creature with no personality. But there was her general build, her coloration and configuration.
He looked back along the line of gryphons, following them up to where he stood, and the Zhaneel-type. Back and forth he looked, a thought slowly forming in his mind. There was something about this line of gryphons, something that had struck an unconscious chord. What was it? Of course. The types that were closest to the door represented more numerous populations than the ones nearest him, and as far as he knew of the Zhaneel-type there was only Zhaneel-