or the most recently brought up, can be read and made part of the-' He broke off, then repeated, 'Gestalt,' with a note of defiance. 'Willpower alone defines how much is read, and I am badly out of practice. An active seeker might pull more from me than I want shared.'
'Are you claiming your will is weak, Stoneheart?' Janx’s voice floated on the air, mocking and light. 'After your earlier arguments? Do you now say a gargoyle who has held himself deliberately apart from the memories and minds of his people for three centuries is weak-minded? I would think such discipline would take extraordinary willpower, when done by choice instead of force.'
'In time, it ceases to matter. I’ve become unwelcome in our memories, and without a clear show of repentance, an offering of my experiences will likely be driven out. I believe that’s why Biali stays in New York,' Alban added, more to himself than the dragon. 'To enforce an exile I put on myself. He has reason enough to resent me.'
'How delightful.' Genuine good humor brightened Janx’s voice for a moment. 'The only two gargoyles on the planet holding a grudge match, and they’re both in my employ. I do so love life, don’t you? You work for me now, Stoneheart.' Humor dropped, leaving heat without anger. 'You’ll pursue my request, and keep secrets safe at whatever cost. I want to know how many selkies are left, and if possible, what they’re doing here. Find out, and tell me.'
'Ask properly.' Alban lifted his eyebrows in cool challenge as Janx’s eyes popped with surprise. 'There are rituals, Janx.'
'And if I refuse?'
'Then I may also refuse.' He hadn’t required that Margrit follow the rituals, when she’d sent him into memory to see what he could learn about his life mate’s death. But Margrit was human, and the laws that governed the Old Races didn’t apply to her.
All the more reason to keep away from her, and do what he could to make sure she remained as uninvolved as possible at this late hour. Alban waited on Janx, keeping his expression neutral. Those two things, at least, a gargoyle was good at.
After an exasperated moment Janx blew out a breath and muttered, 'I come to the moon-lit memory of our people to seek what we’ve forgotten beneath the burning sun. I come from fire born of earth and wind born of sky. My name is Janx, and I ask that you share history with me, your brother. Happy now?'
An ache clawed its way through Alban as Janx followed the form, then burst in an unexpected bubble of humor at the dragon’s petulant ending. 'Yes. Thank you.'
Janx huffed another sulky breath and Alban dropped his gaze, half to hide a smile and half in acknowledgment of the loneliness the ritual had awakened. It had been centuries since he’d heard the phrases Janx had spoken. They’d left a hollow place inside him, so empty he hadn’t recognized it until it was filled again. The promises he’d made so many years earlier weighed heavily, borne down now by a taste of regret he thought he’d long ago left behind. 'I’ll return when I have what answers I can bring you.'
Wisdom, if it dictated anything, dictated that he retreat to Grace’s hideaway and try from there to do as Janx…Alban hesitated over the next word, torn between asked and demanded. Duty and desire warred in him again; duty bound by his word, desire to reject that contract and disregard the dragon’s wishes. Duty won, as it must; that was his nature, as profound a part of him as the wings that let him fly unfettered above city lights. Caution, the other god that ruled him, warned again against the poor wisdom of searching the memories beneath the open sky.
But a memory haunted him, the bleakness of mountain peaks and deep valleys that represented the overmind that belonged to all the gargoyle race. It had once been vivacious, a place of life and ever-growing knowledge, but too many had died. Terribly few of the peaks grew now, blunted by time and aging memory. Foothills, the memories of children, were few and far between: all signs of a dying people. Reluctance to enter that dour realm again drove Alban high through the city towers, as if remembering under the stars might help bring life back to what had once been a great repository of memory and legend.
All the history of the Old Races. Not just the remaining five, but innumerable other peoples whose light had faded as humans swept the planet. Exploration and settling was their nature, as much as solitude and contemplation was a gargoyle’s. Humans had not meant, in the first many thousand years, to encroach upon habitat used by different peoples than themselves.
It had been far more recently that mankind began to hunt the legends: dragons and sea serpents, closely related but diametrically different. Wild men in the mountains, always few thanks to the harsh climate in which they existed, were hunted to the brink of extinction and beyond, until only tales of Bigfoot remained. Harpies, winged and bitter even before their female-heavy tribes were decimated, and the siryns whose songs were so haunting that sailors spoke of them even still. Vampires, hungry for the very blood that gave humanity life, were feared even more than dragons. Men who destroyed vampires were heroes among mortals.
All of their stories and more lay in the gargoyles’ memories, in the minds of the one race bound so tightly to stone that daylight took life from them and left nothing but the protective state that could shield memory against even the ravages of time. That was the purpose of Alban’s race, beyond all else: to preserve history.
His people had once gone amongst the others, listening to stories and opening themselves to their memories so histories might be fully recorded. They might be hidden from the world but they would never be forgotten, even as the unadaptable died and were lost to time.
Only the remaining handful had learned the precarious balance between pretending humanity and remaining true to their own natures. Of those, whole tribes of djinn remained in the deserts, riding sandstorms and acting out their hate against humanity in brutal raids that left reporters bewildered and humanitarians horrified. They were the most united, possibly the most populous, of the Old Races, but their ambitions were reined in by desert boundaries, more by choice than necessity. Humans were too many, and the Old Races, even together, far too few.
Gargoyles, after the djinn, still held the most numbers, but even those were countable: fewer than fifteen hundred when Alban had last known. The others diminished far more rapidly, with dragons counting in the tens or dozens, and the selkies thought to be all but gone. The memories carried more sorrow than joy now, their price heavy in emotion and heavier still in cost of daylight hours unshared with the rest of the world.
Alban settled on a building top, reluctance weighing his wings until he could fly no longer. Duty and desire tangled together, becoming more difficult to discern: the last price paid for bearing the memory of the Old Races. A plea for information carried in the gestalt was not to be refused.
He closed his eyes and let memory ride him.
CHAPTER 10
Salt tainted the air. Salt and the scent of fish, bound to the incessant roll of water against the shore. Such unfamiliar sounds and tastes verged on unpleasant to a creature born of inland mountains. The craggy peaks Alban was familiar with lay to the east, blue with distance created in his own mind. The landscape of memory could juxtapose unrelated features and moments in time without difficulty, but to navigate them required structure. It had been a relief to leave behind remembrances of the gargoyles themselves, the worn mountain range too much a shadow of what it had once been.
No barrier had risen up to bar his way this time. No challenge from Biali, the gargoyle set to watch over the exile. No dispute over whether Alban had a right to histories. Perhaps it was because he sought memory for another race, rather than for himself. Perhaps it was a sign of forgiveness, though Alban doubted it. Stone did not forgive easily.
He wheeled in the sky, watching a black echo of his own form flash over the village below. Young children ran back and forth at the water’s edge, dragging sealskins with them and popping up water-sleek heads when the surf surged. A handful of indulgent older children, not grown enough yet to fish the waters and provide for the village, watched over them without worry; drownings happened, but rarely, amongst a people born to both ocean and earth.
This was their existence for centuries immemorial, a life of hard work and idyllic play. Time passed in a blur, children growing up, hunters lost to the seas mourned; the selkies numbers increasing slowly, but more
