The question surprised her. She knew Jet was intelligent enough to understand the choice she was facing, but he often considered such foolish human dilemmas unworthy of his attention.
I don t know, she said. Do you think it would be hard on him if I don t?
The griffon laughed again. He s a hundred years old, he replied. He s had more mates than he can remember. He s survived more battles and foes than he can remember. He can survive losing you, too.
Cera sighed. Yes. Of course, she said.
But that doesn t mean he d like it, Jet continued. He cares about you, and you fit in his life. You fit with the rest of us.
She touched her hand to the feathers on his neck. Thank you, she said. That s good to know.
There s no reason to talk in that hushed cooing way to me, the griffon said. I didn t say that I care what you do. Look, there are the Aglarondans. Can you see them yet?
She couldn t at that moment, but when he carried her closer, she made out vague shapes racing through the sky. As Jet had anticipated, some of the other griffons screeched at the newcomers approach, but as he d also expected, the riders didn t pay it any mind except to order their steeds to cease their clamor. She and Jet flew along quietly on their rivals flank.
The Aglarondans were headed pretty much straight east from Immilmar, essentially following the track named the Huhrong s Road. If one could consider any part of northern Rashemen civilized, it was that corridor. Cera occasionally caught a glimpse of hamlets and isolated farmhouses, and land that appeared to be fields and pastures rather than woods and lonely moors. If the undead were raiding there, then that, like the attack on the sacred grove north of the Ashenwood, attested to the boldness and seriousness of the threat.
The Aglarondans griffons started screeching again.
Do they sense undead? Cera asked, keeping her voice low.
No, Jet answered. They smell horseflesh.
A moment later, Cera smelled it, too. She realized that wasn t right. She wasn t a beast with a beast s keen senses. She was a human being, who might not smell a horse even if she was standing right beside it. She definitely shouldn t have been able to smell one from high above the ground.
The Aglarondans steeds swooped lower.
In a superficial sense, that wasn t strange because horse was a griffon s favorite food. Still, properly trained mounts would ignore the distraction if they were working, and if they didn t, experienced riders could quickly reassert control.
But that wasn t what was happening. The Aglarondans barked orders at their mounts, and their voices became louder and shriller as the griffons ignored the initial commands.
The smell of warm, juicy meat thickened in the cold night air. Lightheaded, Cera realized her mouth was watering. She looked for the horses and finally spotted them. Apparently oblivious to the threat descending on them, the animals were standing placidly in a snowy paddock.
The griffon in the lead Cera wondered if it was Folcoerr Dulsaer s slammed down on a horse and crushed it to the ground. Screaming, the equine thrashed. The griffin dipped its beak and tore loose a first chunk of flesh. The man astride the steed bellowed at it and pounded it with the butt of his lance. His efforts were no more effective than the maimed horse s struggles to writhe free.
More griffons plunged down, each on its chosen prey. Then Jet screeched, furled his wings, and dived.
The unexpected plummet jolted Cera out of her daze. Amaunator! she called. Please, give us your light!
The god s power manifested as a warm golden glow in her hands. She leaned and stretched forward as far as she could and laid them on the sides of Jet s head.
The warmth surged out of her flesh and into the griffon s. For a heartbeat, she was afraid it hadn t been enough, for, while her deity s might was limitless, a mortal s ability to channel it was not. But with a snap like the crack of a whip, Jet extended his wings and leveled off. He hurtled along just above the slaughter, while Cera winced at the ripped flesh and spilled blood and viscera, at the screams of the dying horses, the crunching as the griffons bit and clawed through bone, and the frantic, bewildered cries of the Aglarondans.
Then the horses changed.
Had it happened more gradually, Cera might have not have spotted it immediately, because by then, all the animals were shredded, eviscerated, dismembered, dying, or dead. But they changed into a different sort of ruined thing virtually all at once, as a wave of mottled discoloration swept through them. The smell of raw meat and spilled blood in the air became a nauseating stench of decay.
The equines struggles had become feeble, turned to mere twitches and shuddering, or subsided altogether. But paradoxically, as their aspect changed from that of creatures killed moments before to that of ones that had lain dead for some time, their movements became far more vigorous. They no longer appeared to care about escaping. Rather, their only concern was biting a griffon and its rider, or battering them with their hooves.
Even though the griffons were gorging on putrescence and likely had been all along, with only illusion making it appear otherwise their riders still couldn t compel them to stop. Thus the soldiers only option was to stab at the undead horses with their lances. They set about it with fierce determination, oblivious to the other tattered, shambling forms rearing up out of the snow all around them.
Jet streaked beyond the edge of the battle. Cera looked over her shoulder but could already see little of the rapidly dwindling figures at her back.
Turn around! she said. We have to help them!
They re our rivals, Jet replied. We want them to fail.
Turn! she said, then realized that despite his protest, he was already wheeling. As he lashed his wings and flew back at the combatants, she reached out to the Keeper and prayed for all the strength that he could give her. The magic flared inside her like the Yellow Sun itself, filling her with an ecstasy that nearly washed away her ability to think. Almost, but not quite. She still remembered her purpose.
She swung her hand over her head, and golden light blazed down from the black starry sky to illuminate the field below. The undead cringed, and rotten flesh sizzled and crisped like bacon frying in a pan. But those effects were incidental. Cera s actual intent was to free every griffon from the enchantment trammeling its mind, and she shouted with joy when the mighty beasts started to spring away from the horse-things and shake out their wings.
One griffon leaped but fell back down onto the ground. Another started to trot and then staggered off balance. A third gave a strangled cry and vomited.
Cera realized the rotten horseflesh had poisoned the griffons, and they could no longer fly. She snarled an obscenity.
The things that had hidden under the snow Cera thought they were mostly ghouls, although the dark made it difficult to tell for certain lunged at their prey from all sides. They clawed at the stricken griffons and reached to drag the riders from their saddles.
Cera asked Amaunator for more power. Somehow seeming both to descend from above and to rise from deep within her, it came in the form of the deity s wrath, of his loathing for creatures that made a mockery of the natural progression from life into death and what came after. The magic was as hot as a cauterizing iron, but she held it without discomfort. It made her feel as taut as a drawn bow ready to drive an arrow.
She swept her hand over her head and downward. Light blazed from her fingers. One of the ghouls crumbled to dust in an instant. The Keeper s power burned holes in two more, and still others cringed, dropping onto their bellies and hiding their fanged, vaguely canine faces in the gory snow.
But those were the only three that fell. For a moment, she wasn t sure why, because it had certainly felt like she d hurled a prodigious flare of the sun god s power. Then she spotted the grotesque figure looking back up at her with three pairs of empty eye sockets.
She d never encountered such an undead before. But from Aoth s tales of the War of the Zulkirs, she recognized the armored figure with the war hammer in his hand and the three skulls perched on his one set of shoulders as a skull lord. Such beings possessed arcane abilities, and it was likely his power was shielding the lesser undead from the full effect of Cera s magic.
Looking back at her, the skull lord tossed an arm that wore a bulky gauntlet like a falconer s glove. Vague, murky shapes, somewhat manlike but with long, curved horns and batlike wings, burst into existence above his hand. They flew at her and Jet.
The griffon instantly started flying faster and veering back and forth and up and down. Cera didn t have the
