The Black Gryphon

He’s going to do it!

“I always said you were the luckiest—” Aubri muttered, before Skan hushed him.

“It’s not luck,” he muttered back. “It’s memory. Cinnabar used to play with the Princes, and she showed me all the secret passages. I took a chance that Ma’ar wouldn’t have found them all, and that I could take care of the traps he put in the ones he did find.”

He didn’t like to think of how Cinnabar had shown him all the secret passages; she’d impressed them directly into his mind, and it hadn’t been a pleasant experience. Nor had the circumstances been pleasant. She’d put him in charge of searching the passages for that damned dyrstaf, because he was the only mage there she could do that to.

She took the human-sized passages, and I took the ones big enough for a gryphon. . . .

He shook off the memory; it didn’t matter, anyway. What mattered was how many guards Kiyamvir Ma’ar had with him in that Throne Room.

Please, please, please, O Lady of the Kaled’a’in, make him so arrogant that he does without guards entirely! Please. . . . The gryphons didn’t have a deity as such, and this was the first time he’d ever felt the urgent need to call on one. The gryphons had only had Urtho and themselves.

And when this is over—take Kechara somewhere safe and warm, and bring Urtho to her—and keep Amberdrake and Zhaneel happy.

There were no peepholes in this passage, and no human would have been able to hear what was going on in the Throne Room. Anyone using the entrance here would have to do so blindly, trusting that there was no one there.

Unless that someone was a gryphon.

He closed his eyes, and concentrated, becoming nothing in his mind but a pair of broad, tufted ears, listening. . . .

He’s talking to someone? Demonsblood! It’s now or never!

“Go!” he hissed at Aubri. The broadwing hit the release on the doorway, and rammed it with his shoulder, tumbling through as the panel gave way. Skan leapt his prone body and skidded to a halt on the slick marble, Kechara romping puppylike behind him.

Ma’ar swung around to stare at the open panel, and now faced away from—

Urtho? Oh, Star-Eyed Lady, is that a Gate?

What else could it be, when Urtho lay back in a chair framed by an archway, with a faint shimmering of energy across the portal?

Skan did not even stop to think about his incredible, unbelievable good fortune; did not stop to think about the poleaxed expression on Urtho’s weary face. “Aubri!” he screeched, “Get Kechara across now.”

But Aubri didn’t have to do anything. Kechara spotted Urtho on her own, screamed, “Father!” in a joyful, shrill voice, and shot across the intervening space like an arrow, squeezing through the Gate as if she’d been greased.

Aubri followed—and stuck.

Skan reached for the box, while Ma’ar stared at all of them as if he thought they were some kind of hallucination. Finally he spoke.

“All of this was to save two gryphons?”

The Black Gryphon held the weapon before him and slid his foreclaws home, and triggered the box.

“No. To save all of us.”

He ducked out of the carry-strap, and slung the whole thing across the floor at Ma’ar, who dodged in purest reflex. But dodging didn’t help; the box’s strap caught his feet and tripped him. The fall knocked the breath out of him, and delayed any reaction he might have for a crucial moment.

Ma’ar clutched at the box, which glowed and sparked when his hands touched it. His expression changed from one of indignation to one of surprise and then—fear. Then insane anger. He stood, trembling with rage, and