The Black Gryphon

He put his ear-tufts and hackles flat, and gryph-grinned, trying to look as friendly as possible. Evidently it worked, for the little creature stared at him for a moment, then suddenly sat down on the shredded desk blotter. It came out of its battle posture, instantly deflating, and wiped its foreclaws free of Skandranon’s blood. “Not bad?” it asked plaintively, its anger gone completely. “Not hurt Father? Where is Father?”

Father? What on earth can this creature mean? Surely no other gryphons have ever been up here; no one could keep a secret like this for long! No, of course there haven’t been any gryphons here, otherwise this little thing would recognize me for one.

He looked around at the room for clues who “Father” was, but there weren’t any; just the table with odd bits of equipment and a few books and papers, an old cabinet that looked mostly empty, and a sink. In fact, it looked more like a Healer’s examination room than anything.

“No,” he said persuasively. “I’m not bad. I haven’t hurt anyone. I just opened up a door and came inside.” He edged a little closer to the creature as it relaxed. “Who is Father? Who are you?”

“Father is Father,” the creature replied, as if stating the obvious for a very slow child. “Father calls me Kechara.”

Skan moved right over to the table and sat beside it, which put him just about beak-to-beak with the little one. “Tell me about Father, Kechara,” he said softly. “Everything you can. All right? There are a lot of people where I come from, and I need you to tell me what Father looks like so I know which person he is.”

Kechara (which meant “beloved” or “darling” in Kaled’a’in) was a female, as near as he could tell. It might have been more appropriate to say that Kechara was a neuter, for she had none of the outward sexual characteristics of a female gryphon. That peculiar muskiness of hers was not a sexual musk, just an odd and very primitive scent.

“Father comes here, Father goes,” Kechara told him. “Father bring me treats. Father brings toys, plays with me. He not here for a while, and I play.”

“What does Father look like, Kechara?” Skan asked. The little creature wrinkled up its brow with intense thought. “Two legs, not four,” it said hesitantly. “No wings, no feathers. No beak. Has—long stuff, not grown, not feathers, over legs and body. Skin, smooth skin, here—” it pawed its face. “—long crest-hair here—” it ran its paws down where the scalp would be on a human. “And Father makes pretty cries when he comes, so I know he here. Cries like songbirds, and he dances with me.”

That clinched it; the only person that would come into this area that whistled was Urtho. Oddly enough, Skan had noticed that most mages couldn’t whistle. Vikteren and Urtho were the only exceptions in this camp.

“How long have you been here?” he asked, trying to get some sense of how long Urtho had concealed the creature here.

But it just stared at him blankly, and when he rephrased the question several times, Kechara could only say that there was nothing else but here, for her. Only Father went somewhere else.

Which meant that Urtho had confined this poor thing to this section of his Tower for her entire life.

There were places Urtho had taken her where she could look out through windows, which was how she had seen and heard songbirds, but that was the closest she had come to the outdoors.

For a scant heartbeat, Skan was outraged. But after attempting a few more questions with Kechara, he understood why Urtho had thought it better to keep her here.

She couldn’t possibly function in normal gryphon society without protectors. She couldn’t do anything productive. Zhaneel had been made fun of as she grew up, and she was marvelous. This poor thing would be tormented if there wasn’t always someone watching out for her. Zhaneel was highly intelligent, resilient, and capable of remarkable things; this little one wouldn’t even know how to defend herself without risking injuring herself.

She seemed to be very much on the same level of intelligence as some of Urtho’s enhanced animals, and the biggest difference between her and one of those animals was that she had a rudimentary ability to speak. She didn’t seem to have much of a concept of time, either. She never actually lost track of the conversation, but sometimes there was a long wait between when he asked a question and she answered it, a wait usually punctuated by a short game of chase-her-shadow.

Then again, that might not be a lack of intelligence, that might be because she hasn’t had anyone to model her behavior on but Urtho. The winds only know he’s done the same thing.

He coaxed her down off the table and into taking a short walk with him since she seemed restless and kept fidgeting when he talked with her. After that, the conversation seemed to flow a little better; she bounded ahead or lagged back with him as he strolled through the gallery of “models.” She paid them no attention whatsoever, which didn’t much surprise him. She must be as used to them by now as he was to the messenger-birds or Amberdrake’s eye-blinding clothing.

But suddenly, as they drew opposite the “Skandranon” type of model, she looked from it to him and back again, as if she could not believe her eyes. She blinked, shook her head, and looked again.