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L
ady Arwydd prayed again shortly after the beginning of her search for Morgan. She had already prayed to the Night God, but when she and her four companions stopped to rest on the second night she felt the need to pray to another power as well.
Her fellow travellers were both griffiners, of course. One was Leolin – a friend of Morgan’s who was also an assistant to the Master of War like herself. He was a good fighter, along with his partner Rukeera, and should be useful. More than that, he had asked to go.
The other two were Lady Nelwyn and her partner Serraka. Nelwyn was a healer – young, but apprenticed to the Master of Healing and already a good healer in her own right. Her silver feathered partner was unusually large – probably one of the Mighty Skandar’s many offspring – which would be an advantage.
Arwydd didn’t want to admit it to herself, but she felt inadequate to be in charge of the other two. She had never commanded anyone in her life. But she wasn’t going to let her uncertainty show. Morgan needed her now, and she would do whatever she could to help him.
She left her partner Essh to sleep, and slipped away into the darkness of the trees where they had made camp. Once she thought she was far enough away, she pulled out the prayer stone she kept hidden in her clothes. Nobody knew about it, not even Essh.
As always, she found a moonlit spot and settled down with the prayer stone between her hands. Once she felt comfortable, she took out her knife and tentatively sliced it across her thumb. The blade was sharp, and the skin split open under it.
Arwydd winced, but quickly put the wound close to the stone and squeezed some blood out onto the carved design of a heart with a triple spiral inside.
‘With this offering of true Northern blood, I call to you,’ she said softly. They were the same words used in the great Moon Temple in Malvern, where a knife lay on the altar ready for anyone who wanted to pray to the Night God. An offering of blood had always been the proper summons.
But Arwydd offered her prayer up not to the Night God, but to someone else – just as the apprentice priestess she had met had taught her.
She remembered the woman very well. She had been in her thirties, but young for her age, full of a passion and conviction that Arwydd had never encountered before. She had persuaded the initially sceptical griffiner to follow her new faith, and done it very well. Arwydd had been praying to the Shadow That Walked ever since.
And, like Teressa, Arwydd had chosen to pray to one in particular.
‘Great Arenadd,’ she murmured, putting her hands around the stone and closing her eyes, ‘I ask you to give me strength. Help me to serve the Night God faithfully, and with courage. And help me to do what I have to do now. I...’ she hesitated. ‘Help Morgan. Keep him safe. Help me find him. I know he needs me now. Help me get to him before it’s too late. There were so many things I wanted to tell him. Please...’
She continued to pray like that for some time, but she had said what she wanted to say, even if she still couldn’t bring herself to put the wild feelings that had begun to live inside her into words. It was enough to ask for courage.
Praying made her feel better, and when she had finished she carefully wrapped the stone up and put it away again before she returned to Essh and her bed-roll by the fire.
She hated camping, but she was so tired by now that she had no trouble falling asleep. She lay on her back and looked up at the moon, one hand unconsciously resting on her tunic where the prayer stone lay concealed in an inside pocket. Before long, her eyes closed and she fell asleep with the white moonlight shining on her face.
Her sleep was deep – deeper than the normal sleep of someone lying on hard ground in a cold forest. She could feel that she was asleep, but in such a way that she felt convinced that no power on earth could wake her up.
As she lay there in the comforting blackness, the dream came.
She dreamt of Arenadd.
He stood there, robed and bearded, staring at her. He did not smile, but he inclined his head towards her, in a gesture that might have been respect.
Arwydd stood and stared back at him, wanting to reach out to him but unable to move. A thousand questions filled her head, but she couldn’t speak. But she smiled. She could do that, at least.
Arenadd smiled back, knowingly. Then he changed. The eyes stayed, but the face and the body changed around them. Now she was looking at someone else, someone she vaguely recognised. She saw a Southerner, big and burly, with red hair. He wore the armour of a guard, and his face was strong and square-jawed.
A Southerner. But a Southerner with Arenadd’s eyes staring out of his face.
The Southerner spoke, and his voice was Arenadd’s voice.
Serve the Shadow That Walks.
The dream ended there, but it would stay in her mind, as Teressa’s dream had stayed with her. She found herself thinking about it the next day, and the day after that, endlessly turning it over in her mind, unable to shake off the feeling that she had finally been given the guidance she needed – but guidance to do what, she wasn’t sure.
*
Several more days passed, while Arwydd and her companions travelled southward. They had to travel carefully; the Southerners might have been subdued and their leaders captured, but the whole country hadn’t been brought under control yet, and there could well be enemies about. Luckily, though, the three Northerners barely saw anyone – only a few farmers working in the lands they flew over.
They were getting close to the last place Arwydd had seen Morgan and Echo; she knew it for certain once they had passed Dead Mountain. The great plateau at its top that had once been home to Old Eagleholm still had plenty of ruined buildings in evidence, but it was obvious without even landing there that the last of its inhabitants were long gone. Arwydd had no desire to go any closer to it than they did; even in the North, Dead Mountain was said to be cursed.
Beyond it, they found themselves in lands that were surprisingly well-populated. Before Dead Mountain, former farmlands had become largely barren. Beyond it, though, new farms and villages had begun to be built. The travellers saw plenty of crops and cattle, and Southerner peasants hard at work. They decided not to risk bothering them, but Leolin wasn’t above stealing some food out of a field when their supplies ran low, and the three griffins helped themselves to some livestock.
Nobody would be likely to try and stop griffins from taking what they wanted.
‘What I want to know,’ Nelwyn said one evening, ‘is what Eyrie owns these lands now? Somebody must be taxing these farmers and organising these villages. But who?’
‘No idea,’ said Leolin. He took out the sickle he favoured as a weapon, and started to sharpen it. ‘According to the maps these are Eagleholm’s lands, but Eagleholm is gone.’ He looked at Arwydd. ‘Do you have some idea, Wydd?’
Arwydd paused to think it over. ‘We’ve picked up some things from the Southerners we captured. Most of Eagleholm’s lands were seized by the other Eyries, or just left to rot. Anyone could have claimed all this,’ she said, adding, ‘We could ask the locals, of course.’
The other two laughed. ‘Maybe we’ll find out later,’ Arwydd smiled.
And, some days later, they did.
They flew on, and soon reached the last campsite that Arwydd and Morgan had shared. There was nobody about, so the three of them split up and began quartering the lands around and beyond it, meeting up each evening to compare notes. At first they found nothing, but they persisted, gradually working their way further south until the Coppertop Mountains were in sight.
And there, right at the base of those mountains, in the middle of what had once been farmland, they found it.
A city. A new city. A city none of them had heard of. Though only half built so far, out of the coppery coloured stone that gave the mountains their name, all of them could see the handful of griffins circling above it, and the guards posted on the walls.
All six of them stood and stared at it from a safe distance.
‘I’ll be damned,’ Leolin said eventually. ‘Did anyone know this was here?’
‘None of us knew,’ said his partner. ‘I did not, and nor does Shar.’
‘This must be the seat of the one whose territory we are in,’ said Essh. ‘Echo’s human was captured in this territory, so perhaps this is where he has been taken.’
Arwydd’s heart sank. ‘But if he’s in there, how do we get him out?’
‘Simple – we can’t,’ said Leolin. ‘What we’ll have to do is try and make certain that he’s in there, before we go and report back to the King. Either way, this place will have to be captured as well. Don’t worry, Wydd,’ he added. ‘If Morgan is in there, we’ll free him when we take the city. And if they’ve hurt him, you can take revenge for him. The King won’t show mercy to anyone who lays a hand on his own son.’
Arwydd felt ill, but she knew she had to take charge. ‘How are we going to find out if he’s in there?’
‘We can’t infiltrate the place,’ said Leolin. ‘None of us have the skills for it. We could try kidnapping one of the Southerners.’
‘Or we can search for Echo,’ Essh put in. ‘If he has not been captured, then he will be here somewhere, seeking for a way to take his human back. It may be that he is hiding somewhere – perhaps in those mountains.’
‘That’s a good thought,’ said Arwydd. For some reason, the thought of Echo made her feel better. The spotted griffin could change his coat at will – maybe he would be able to sneak into the city. Maybe he’d done it already.
Nelwyn, Leolin, and all three griffins were looking at her, waiting for her to make a decision.
‘All right,’ she said, doing her best to sound strong. ‘We’ll go into the Coppertops. But we’ll do it carefully – we can’t fly over the city without being spotted, so we’ll have to go around. We’ll search around in the mountains and see if Echo is there, or some clue that he’s been in the area. If we don’t find anything, then we’ll try your plan of capturing someone from the city and questioning them.’ She dearly hoped that it wouldn’t come to that.
‘All right,’ Nelwyn nodded. ‘Let’s go, then.’
‘Echo is the key,’ said Essh. ‘Come, get onto my back.’
The three griffiners mounted up, and the three griffins flew – westward until the city was nearly out of sight, and then south once again, into the Coppertops.
The Coppertop mountains were one of the few wild places left in Southern Cymria, mostly because they were too rugged to build on, and too impassable for the land on the other side of them to be worth it. Thick, lush forest covered the lower-lying areas, populated by wild goats and striped Southern wolves. Wild griffins lived there, too – though not many of them.
The three partnered griffins flew in over the mountains, and chose to land on the top of one, where their humans dismounted and all six of them surveyed the landscape.
Arwydd took in the dense forest that lay below them in every direction. ‘How are we going to find anything in this?’ she wondered.
‘There is a way,’ said Serraka, Nelwyn’s partner. ‘If we send out a call, Echo will know our voices. He will come to us.’
‘Wild griffins may hear as well,’ Leolin’s partner Rukeera put in.
‘They may, but they will not dare to challenge us,’ said Serraka. ‘We are three, and larger than them. I will call now.’
And, without further ado, she did just that – raising her big rough-feathered head to the sky and letting out a deafening screech. The other two joined in, while the three humans cringed and covered their ears.
Every griffin could call, of course. It sounded like a mixture of a lion’s roar and an eagle’s cry; a screech with a snarl and a rumble behind it. But calls could be modulated to include the sound of the griffin’s own name, and that was the territorial call, and the one used to summon their partner.
All three griffins did that now, screaming their names to the sky so that they echoed over the mountains, again and again. It would be audible from miles away to a human, and from even further away to another griffin.
After a while, the three griffins fell silent and everyone there listened intently.
‘I hear him!’ Essh said sharply. ‘Quickly. Call again!’
They called again, and then listened again.
‘I hear him too,’ Serraka said. ‘He is further to the North. Come.’
Arwydd hadn’t heard anything at all, but she eagerly climbed onto Essh’s back. The three griffins set out again, sometimes calling while they flew, and as they went further on, Arwydd started to hear Echo’s replies. She had grown up among griffins and could recognise their individual calls, and as this one grew clearer, she recognised it as Echo’s.
Eventually, as they got closer to the edge of the mountains and the new city, they could see him. The spotted griffin was circling over a mountaintop above a valley, calling them to him.
Essh, Serraka and Rukeera flew to him, and when they were close enough, Echo went down to land. They followed.
Echo had landed in an overhang partway down the mountain, which was easily large enough for the three griffins. He stood on a heap of tumbled rock, waiting for them.
Essh landed, and her paws had barely touched the ground before Arwydd leapt off her and ran to meet Echo.
‘Echo, there you are!’ she called. ‘Thank gods. Where’s Morgan?’
Echo had indeed reverted to his customary spotted hide, but he looked thin and bedraggled. ‘Essh,’ he said. ‘You have come to find us. You – human – Arwydd? You must come with me immediately. Morgan needs your help.’
‘Where is he?’ Arwydd asked sharply. ‘Take me to him.’
‘He is here,’ said Echo. He jumped down from the rock pile and led her around it to a deeper part of the overhang. It went deep into the mountainside, and as Arwydd entered she saw the strange pictures painted on its walls. Images of human hands, and stylised animals with their bones clearly visible inside them. At the centre was a painting of a griffin, spewing magic from its beak.
She had no time to wonder about any of that though, because of what lay on the floor.
Bones. Human bones. They lay scattered around the sandy floor, most of them blackened with mould. She saw a skull, so small it must have belonged to a child, which had a big hole smashed through it.
In the midst of all that, someone had cleared a space and piled it high with dry grass and leaves, and that was there Morgan was.
He lay on his back on the makeshift bed, one hand clutching a long rope with a noose on the end. His clothes were ragged and filthy, and she could see painful looking bruises on his exposed skin. His cheeks were hollow and sunken with hunger and exhaustion, and one of his legs was in a crude splint.
Arwydd ran to him. ‘Morgan!’
Morgan coughed and opened his eyes. He made a sound that might have been speech.
Arwydd crouched by him, and reached down to touch his face. ‘Morgan, it’s me. It’s Arwydd. And Leolin and Nelwyn are here. We came to find you.’
Morgan smiled. ‘Glad,’ he said in a strangled whisper.
Nelwyn and Leolin had already come running, and Arwydd turned to them.
‘Nelwyn!’ she said, in a sharp voice that surprised her. ‘Quickly. Morgan’s hurt.’
The healer didn’t need telling twice. She sprinted over, and Arwydd stood aside to let her examine him.
Nelwyn pulled Morgan’s torn tunic open, and expertly ran her hands over his chest, throat, and limbs. She examined his face as well, and his leg.
‘Is it bad?’ Arwydd asked, unable to stop herself.
‘Broken ribs – they’ve mostly healed by now,’ said Nelwyn. ‘And that leg was obviously broken... I don’t think it’s healed straight.’
Morgan nodded weakly. ‘Southerners got me,’ he whispered. ‘Been stuck here for months... they were hunting for us.’
Leolin swore. ‘Those sons of bitches. Don’t worry, Morgan – we’ll get them. That city’s done for. I wouldn’t be surprised if the King razes the whole thing to the ground once he finds out about this.’
Morgan coughed. ‘Like to do it myself.’
‘That’s enough,’ said Arwydd. ‘We’ll take you back to Liranwee, and you’ll recover.’
Morgan smiled weakly and clutched at her hand. ‘Thank you.’
Arwydd gave Morgan an encouraging smile. She couldn’t quite believe that she had taken command like that, but she was glad. Maybe she could do more than she had thought, and that was just as well. She wasn’t going to let Morgan die; not before she had told him how she felt. Not ever.
But, to her surprise, while she and the others got to work preparing some food for him, she found herself thinking of the dream, and murmuring those sacred words to herself.
‘Serve the Shadow That Walks...’
