It didn't take her long to determine where the nest was; she heard the murmur of voices echoing among the stones of the ruins, and traced them back to their source. She froze just behind the shelter of a broken-down wall, hearing not only the gryphons, but Darkwind as well.
"There was a red-shouldered hawk circling around you when I left," he was saying. His voice sounded odd, thick with emotion, and hoarse.
"Dawnfire's Kyrr was a red-shouldered-you know, I made her promise me that she wouldn't come around here today-"
"Which may have been a missstake," Treyvan interrupted wearily.
Nyara peeked around the end of the wall." Sssshe wasss curiousss. Very curiousss. It isss entirely posssible ssshe did full-bond with her birrrd.
And whoeverrr it wasss that attacked usss, may have attacked and killed herrr asss well. If the birrrd diesss, the bondmate diesss, no?"
"Yes," Darkwind replied, but he sounded uncertain. "If they are in full-bond at the time. But I didn't see any dead-" he faltered,
"_birds-"
"You might not," Hydona said, emerging slowly from the entrance of the nest, the little ones trailing after her. "It might not have ssstruck the grround. Perrrhapsss it wassss caught in a tree... " She went on to say more, but Nyara didn't hear her. All of her attention had been caught by the female gryphon and the nestlings.
They bore the unmistakable stamp of her father's taint.
Hydona wore the contamination only lightly, a glaring red tracery like burst veins... and it was fading, as if Mornelithe had attempted something against her, and had failed: But the gryphlets- She moaned silently, to herself, as she had learned only too well to do.
Now she knew that it had been her father who had masterminded the attack on the gryphons. And how, and why.
The physical attack had never been intended to succeed. It had been intended to bring the gryphons down out of action, and only incidentally into his reach. He had attempted to subvert Hydona, to insert his own Will and mind into hers. He surely found her too tough for him to take, at least, given the short amount of time he had to work in. She knew he had never really meant to do more than make a cursory attempt to take them, on the off chance that he would succeed by sheer accident.
Because what he had really wanted was the opportunity to get at the little ones and work with them, undisturbed. She knew from bitter experience that it would not take him long at all, with a young thing, to subvert it to his will. The gryphlets would not be as useful, as quickly, as the adults-but they were more malleable, and far less able to defend themselves against him.
And they had one thing the adults did not; a direct tie into the power-node beneath their birthplace.
Mornelithe wanted that; he could pull power away from nodes, by diverting some of the power-flows into them, but he had no direct access to any nodes. The only nodes anywhere near this area were the one beneath k'treva, and the one beneath the gryphons' nest. Both were within k'treva territory, and out of Mornelithe's reach.
The power-node here was very deep, but very strong, and its ley-lines ran into k'treva Vale. Through the young, tainted gryphons, Mornelithe would have direct access to the node, the line, and very possibly, could drain the node beneath k'treva.
Or move it to his own stronghold.
It was entirely possible he would also have access to lines and nodes in the Plains; she had no idea if the node here was connected there, or not.
And these ruins themselves could conceal artifacts from the ancient Mage Wars. Mornelithe had been trying to collect those for as long as she had been aware of his activities; he had only been marginally successful in his quests, gathering in creatures and devices either flawed, broken, or only marginally useful. His ambition was to acquire something of great power; one of the legendary permanent Master Gates, for instance. One of those would give him access to the old Citadels of the Lord Adepts; and those, however ruined, wherever they were hidden, would undoubtedly contain things he would find useful.
But having access to this node is going to be bad enough! She shuddered at the idea of Mornelithe with that much power in his hands. This nexus was far more important, far more powerful than the Birdkin guessed. If they had known, they would have either drained it or built their Vale here. Nyara closed her eyes and saw her father's face, slit eyes gleaming down at her, gloating with power beyond her weak imagination as she trembled.
With that much power, she would never be free of him.
She straightened and walked into the circle of stones before the nest.
Her foot stirred a tiny stone as she moved, and the human and gryphons sprang up, gryphons with talons bared, Darkwind with his dagger drawn.
They relaxed when they saw her; Treyvan sitting back down with a sigh.
"Gesssta sssaid that ssshe would assk Nyarrra to some ssstand watch thisss night for usss," Treyvan told Darkwind. "Ssshe sssseesss well by night, and we trussst herrrr-"
"You shouldn't," Nyara replied, stifling a sob. "oh, you should not have trusted me." Darkwind seized her by the arm, and pulled her into the stone circle.
"Just what do you mean by that?" he snarled.
And slowly, holding back tears, she told them.
*Chapter Eighteen ELSPETH
This was, possibly, the strangest land Elspeth had ever crossed. There were no roads and no obvious landmarks; just furlong after furlong of undulating grass plains. There were clumps of brush, and even tree-lines following watercourses, but grassland was the rule down on the Dhorisha Plains. It was truly a "trackless wilderness," and one without many ways of figuring out where you were once you were in the middle of it.
Right now, the Plains were in the middle of high summer; not the best time to travel across them. Nights were short, days were scorching and long; the grass was bleached to a pale gold, insects sang night and day, down near the roots. Otherwise there wasn't much sign of life, no animals running through the grass, no birds in the air. Or rather, there was nothing they could spot; the Plains might well teem with life, as hidden in the grass as the insects, but silent. Here, where the tall, waving weeds made excellent cover, there was no reason for an animal to break and run, and every reason for it to stay quietly hidden where it was.
A constant hot breeze blew from the south every day, dying down at sunset and dawn, and picking up again at night. And not just hot, but dry, parchingly dry. Thirst was always with them; it seemed that no sooner had they drunk from their water skins than they were thirsty again. Elspeth was very glad of the map; since they had descended into the Plains near a spring, she'd puzzled out the Shin'a'in glyph for "water"- the water that was very precious out here in the summer. This was not a desert, but there wasn't a trace of humidity, day or night, and there would be no relief until the rains came in the fall. The mouth and nose dehydrated, skin was flaking and tight, and eyes sore and gritty, most of the time. Many of the water sources shown on the map were not springs or streams, which would have been visible by the belt of green vegetation along their banks, but were wells. There was no outward sign of these wells anywhere; in fact, they were frequently hidden from casual searching and could only be found by triangulating on objects like rocks, a mark on the cliff wall, a clump of ancient thornbushes. There were detailed, incredibly tiny drawings of the pertinent markers beside each water-glyph. Elspeth marveled again and again at the ingenuity of the Shin'a'in and their mapmakers. And she was very glad that she did not have to travel the Plains by winter. A bitter winter wind, howling unchecked across those vast expanses of flat land, would chill an unprotected horse and rider to the bone in no time. And there was little fuel out here, except the dried droppings of animals and the ever-present grass. Would it be somehow possible to compact the grass into logs?