A low, angry hiss filled the dark spaces around her. A strange smell lingered on the cold air. Zukhara snapped the words to a spell Kelene had taught him, and a bright white sphere of light burst into being. It hovered over their heads, casting its light over a huge stone ceiling that arched above.
“Down there is my weapon for the holy war I plan to launch. Unfortunately, it was injured during its capture. I brought you here to heal it and tame it to obedience. Do that, and your lady mother will get her antidote.” Zukhara pointed down, over the stone wall.
Kelene turned. She saw they were standing on an overhang at the side of a large natural cavern. Slowly she let her eyes drop to the bottom, where a broad floor formed an amphitheater in the mountain’s heart. Curled on the sandy floor, staring malevolently up at the light, was a creature unlike any she had ever seen.
“What . . .” she gasped.
Zukhara’s anger receded before his pride. “That,” he said, “is my gryphon.”
“Father!” an urgent voice hissed in his ear. “Father, wake up!”
Sayyed stirred and groaned out of his stupor. He tried to move his arms until that same voice whispered, “No! Don’t jerk like that. Stay still. Please, Father, try to wake up!”
The frantic urgency in that familiar voice penetrated Sayyed’s groggy thoughts, and he closed his mouth and rested his aching limbs. Something seemed wrong though. Some strange thing had happened to his body that he couldn’t understand. He could be wrong, yet he felt as if he were hanging upside down.
Sayyed opened his eyes. A brilliant morning sun illuminated everything around him with a clear, sharp light. The majestic mountains gleamed—upside down—in an endless sky of blue. Then he looked down, or was it up, and saw there was nothing beneath his feet but air.
The words he spoke were short and emphatic.
“Father!” hissed Rafnir’s voice. “Please don’t move!”
Sayyed’s mind snapped fully alert, and he quickly recognized the precariousness of his position. He was tied back-to-back with Rafnir and hanging head-first over a very deep and very rocky ravine. Also, the rope that held them seemed dangerously frayed and was tied to a very fragile-looking wooden framework that overhung the edge of the chasm. And, he noted in increasing annoyance, his weapons and most of his clothes were gone. Lastly, he realized there were voices other than Rafnir’s speaking behind him.
“I’m telling you, Helmar, these are simply Turics. Uphold the law and get rid of them,” demanded a male voice.
“Turics or not, why waste two healthy men?” a female voice cried. This speaker sounded older and more insistent. “You know we need new blood if our line is to survive! These two are strong and can father children. Let them leave their seed in our women before you kill them.”
Sayyed was so startled by the gist of the conversation that he did not realize for nearly a minute that the speakers were talking in Clannish. Not the Clannish he was used to, but an old dialect combined with new word combinations and Turic phrases. He listened with both fascination and increasing anger.
“And what about you, Rapinor?” A third voice spoke. “You caught them. What do you say?” This third speaker was a woman whose voice was rich and self-assured.
Yet a fourth voice responded, “Lady, I don’t know how to advise you. Yes, I found them in the Back Door, and they look and dress like Turics. But I swear they rode black horses bigger than any I’ve ever seen, and one man had a sphere of light.”
“Are you sure it wasn’t a torch he carried?” the first man said dryly.
“A torch on a night like last? No,” the speaker said, the certainty clear in his deep, resounding voice. “The sphere was greenish-white like magic and went out when the man fell unconscious.”
“There has to he a simple explanation for that,” said the old woman irritably. “We all know magic is dead beyond the mountains.”
Sayyed turned his head in an effort to see these people, and although he strained, he could not see around Rafnir. “What is going on here?” he said in Clannish.
His words caught the speakers’ attention. “A Turic who speaks the tongue of the clans,” said the first man. “All the more reason to kill them. They could get away and tell the clans.”
Tell the clans, Sayyed wondered. Tell them what?
“Traveler,” called the younger woman, “you were caught trespassing on land that is forbidden. Our laws automatically condemn you to death. However, we are having some doubts as to your identity. Who are you?”
Sayyed opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again. By the gods, how should he answer that? If he claimed to be Turic, these strangers would cut the rope and let him and Rafnir fall. If he said clan, they would probably do the same thing. His power itched to break the ropes that bound him and his son and set them on a more upright and equal footing with these people, but he decided to hold off exposing his talent until he absolutely had to. The speakers’ opinion of magic was very unclear.
“We are looking for our family,” Rafnir answered for him. “My wife and my wife’s mother were kidnapped by someone we do not know. Yet the wagon that carried them came up into these mountains. We had almost found them when we were caught in the storm and lost the trail. If we trespassed, we did it unintentionally, and we humbly apologize.”
The people remained quiet while they tried to understand Rafnir’s unfamiliar dialect; then they burst into talk all at once in a babble of questions, demands, and angry opinions. Other voices joined in until Sayyed and Rafnir lost track of all the words.
“Who are these people?” Sayyed asked irritably. His head hurt from his inversion, and he was tired of all the arguing.
“I don’t know. I can’t see them either. They’re just above us on a rock ledge,” replied Rafnir.
Sayyed tried again to peer around his son and only succeeded in making their rope sway. He froze too late. He heard a creak and a snap, and in a sickening jerk, he and Rafnir began to fall.
“Lady!” the Rapinor voice shouted. “The rope broke!”
“Let them go!” yelled the first man.
Sayyed waited no more. He didn’t care who those people were or what they were afraid of, it was time to show them that magic was very much alive and well. “I’ll undo the ropes; you break our fall,” he yelled to Rafnir.
The wind of their descent tore at his words, but his son heard them. Magic flared from Sayyed’s hands, and the ropes dissolved into dust. With his arms free, Sayyed grabbed for Rafnir to keep him close. Rafnir’s eyes closed as his lips formed the words to a spell he had used three years ago to catch Kelene in a terrible fall. The air thickened into a cushion beneath them. Their sickening speed slowed, and they tumbled gently onto a platform of wind and magic barely ten feet from the ravine’s floor.
“Nice timing,” Sayyed said, peering down at the boulders below.
“Gods,” sighed Rafnir, “that was close. Let’s get out of here.”
“Not yet,” Sayyed growled. He glared up at the ravine face where a group of people peered over the cliffs edge. “I want to know who they are.”
He steadied himself on the platform of air while Rafnir carefully steered it up to the level of the precipice top. His arms crossed and his displeasure plain, Sayyed stepped off onto the stone and faced the group of people standing on the rocks. He looked them over and felt his anger begin to recede. He had never seen such a totally unanimous expression of astounded disbelief and awed surprise in his entire long and adventurous life. Not even the first and unexpected appearance of his magical talent had produced such stunned surprise. Every man and woman before him stared at him in speechless shock. As one their eyes shifted to Rafnir as he stepped beside his father and dissolved his spell; then they looked at one another.