The Silver Gryphon

that’s magical gets all the mage-energy sucked out of it when it enters that area.”

“And if the spell making the basket into something Tad could tow lost its power—” Judeth sucked in her lower lip, as one of the aides coughed. “Well, no matter how they landed, they’re stuck now. No teleson, no magic —they’d have to hole up and hope for rescue.”

Aubri studied the map for a moment. “The only teams we’ve sent out there were gryphon pairs, with one exception,” he pointed out. “You and me, Judeth. We used a basket, and our flight path took us over that area. Nothing happened to us, so where did this come from?”

“Maybe it’s been growing,” offered one of the aides. “Maybe the more it eats, the bigger it grows.”

“Well, that’s certainly cheerful,” Judeth said dryly, and patted the girl on the shoulder when she flushed a painful red. “No, you have a point, and we’re going to have to find out what’s causing this if you’re right. If it’s growing, sooner or later it’s going to reach us. I did without working magic long enough and I’m not in the mood to do it again.”

“That’s a lot of area to cover,” Aubri pointed out. “They could be anywhere in there, depending on how far they got before they had to land.”

Land. Or crash. Skan’s imagination was all too clever at providing him with an image of the basket plummeting down out of the sky. . . .

“We can probably cover it with four teams including a base camp,” Judeth said, at last. “But I think we’re going to have to do a ground search, in a sweep pattern. Those trees are bigger than anything most of us here have ever seen before, and you could drop Urtho’s Tower in there and not see most of it. Gryphons may not do us a lot of good.”

“They can look for signal smoke,” Aubri objected.

Judeth did not say anything, but Skan knew what she was thinking, since it was something that he was already trying not to think about. The youngsters might be too badly hurt to put up a signal fire.

“Right, then the two already in the area can look for signal smoke,” she said. “I’ll fly in a mage here, to set up a match-Gate terminus, and I’ll call for volunteers for four teams who are willing to trust their hides to a Gate—”

“I shall go,” said a deep voice from the doorway.

Skan swiveled his head, as Ikala moved silently into the room. “With all respect, Commander, I must go. I know this forest; your people do not. Forget my rank and my breeding; my father would say that you should, in a case like this. These two are my friends and my sworn comrades, and it is my honor and duty to help them.”

“You are more than welcome, then. I’m going, you can count on it,” Skan said instantly. “Drake will probably want to go, too. Judeth, that’ll give you one mage and a field-Healer, along with a fighter.”

Judeth sighed, but made no objections, probably because she knew they would be futile. “All right, but these are going to be big teams. I don’t want tiny little patrols running around in unknown territory. I want two mages, so you have one for each night watch on each team, and I want at least as many fighters. Ikala, you go call for volunteers among the hunters and the Silvers. Skan, go back to Snowstar and explain the situation and what we need.” She glared at both of them. “Don’t just stand there, go!”

Skan went, but he was a fraction slower than Ikala and reached the door in second place. By the time he was outside, Ikala was nowhere in sight.

But he was overjoyed that Ikala was still willing to volunteer, even with the need to trust to a Gate for transport. The young Haighlei was precisely what they needed; someone who knew the ordinary hazards of such a forest, and how to meet them.

Snowstar had already anticipated Judeth’s decision about a Gate. “As if any of us would be afraid to trust our own Gates!” he replied scornfully. “We’ve been perfectly willing to use them for the last five years, it’s been the rest of you who were so overly cautious about them!”

“Not me!” Skan protested, but Snowstar was already on to other things. “Gielle will fly out with a gryphon as soon as it’s light; I’ll have Redoak head one of the other three teams after you all get through the Gate,” the Adept was saying. “I have more mages willing to volunteer than Judeth needs, but not all of them are suited to this kind of mission. Tell her I’ll be choosing combat experience over sheer power; we can’t take the chance that this dead zone is a freak of nature. No matter what she thinks, it might have a traceable cause, and that cause might be one of the mages who escaped the Wars.”

Skan nodded; he was certain that Judeth had already thought of that.

“I’ll go find Drake,” he said. It was going to be a long night, and one he was certain none of them would be able to sleep through. They might as well start getting ready for deployment.

At least that was something useful.