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GRYPHONS SETTLED TO the ground around us, wind from back-pedaling wings flattening the grass as they slowed their descent, and strode toward us from all sides. Even without reason to suspect anything, it’s unsettling to be surrounded by a ring of large, winged predators. Ironwing and her father had returned, but her sons had not. I wouldn’t have minded the youngling in our company, but his older brother Slashtail had a chip on his shoulder I really didn’t want to deal with. There were three Guardians, two men and a woman, with the group. They sat astride the necks of gryphons who studied us calmly; the faces of the riders were hidden by helmets and goggles with round lenses. All three were armed with dart rifles equipped with long, slim bayonets, and over their breastplates wore short white tabards featuring the silhouette of a gryphon rampant. Everything about them seemed worn and dull, as you’d expect from a military force cut off from its sources of supply for two years. All three saluted the Prince by holding their weapons horizontally over their heads; so they knew who he was.
One Guardian gave Grevin a shout and tossed a canvas bag down to him. Inside we found leather goggles with clear glass lenses, mercifully more than enough to go around. The importance of keeping them on was stressed, and soon we all looked a bit bug-eyed and ridiculous. Which beats the hell out of losing an eye to a collision with a stray insect.
There were gryphons enough to bear us, with half a dozen more circling in the sky, gryphons of various shades and wing colors. Ironwing issued a command in gryphon speech, ending it with a sharp bill snap. Gryphons approached our party, ducking their heads down in gestures indicating peaceful intentions. There were quiet introductions between gryphons and first-time riders; advice was provided by the Guardians. Parick handed a very nervous-looking Veresa over to a golden gryphon with black-feathered wings and mane. The gryphon extended his right foreleg to steady her and she scrambled aboard. It was a sucker’s bet which were closed tighter, her fists in his feathered mane or her eyelids, and this before we were even airborne.
The forelegs of a gryphon are double-jointed, which allows them to assist riders. Even so, there was some awkwardness in getting people settled and ready, and it was a few minutes before Sid and I alone stood with our feet on the ground. The young female gryphon assigned to Sid brought her head down to Sid’s eye level and said, “Is it true no Islander has ever flown with one of my people?”
“To the best of my knowledge,” Sid replied.
“Then I am most honored to be the first gryphon to bear an Islander into the sky,” she said. “I am Cirrus. Here, I will help you.” Cirrus bent one leg to give Sid a lift, and a moment later Sid was perched behind the feathered mane. “You balance yourself well,” Cirrus told her.
“Thank you.”
“Be not afraid, Islander,” Cirrus said. “You will not fall!”
“I am called Sidraytha.”
“Well met, Sidraytha.”
I looked around and realized only Ironwing remained without a rider. I looked into those big, ruddy-gold eyes and said, “Really? You’d consent to this?”
The eyes blinked several times and in a low voice she said, “I would consider it an honor to bear Daffyd Outworlder, savior of my child, into the sky.”
I set the palm of my hand on the razor-sharp hooked bill just before me. It was hard and smooth and cool. “The honor, great lady, is surely mine.”
Using the offered raised foreleg, I vaulted to a position behind her mane. “You’ve done this before,” she observed.
“Well, ah, yes. I have.”
“Then you are ready for what comes next.” Ironwing let out a high-pitched eagle cry, a command to loft in gryphon speech.
When a gryphon lofts there is no sense of moving up. There’s a prickly feeling all over, like static electricity, and then the world falls away from you — with shocking suddenness. It’s weird, no doubt about it, and no few people abruptly disgrace themselves when it happens. This made the reactions of my companions perfectly understandable.
Veresa emitted a scream of pure terror. Parick and Grevin vented their surprise and fear with brief but lurid curses. I looked around as Ironwing swept her wings down to speed her ascent, and saw these outcries followed by stricken looks on the faces of those who had shouted. There was no sign anyone had suffered embarrassing consequences. Chalk that up to good intestinal fortitude, I suppose. It was hard to be sure, but although she had made no sound, I thought Sid had her eyes clamped shut behind the goggles she wore.
Sid is a beautiful woman, but everyone looks like an idiot wearing round-lensed gryphon goggles. Some of us, more than others. Trust me, I’ve seen photos of myself wearing the things. I don’t know why they’re round. Tradition?
With long, powerful wingbeats, Ironwing increased our upward speed, then angled those wingbeats to move us forward after the desired formation took shape. The Sky Guards were on point, with two unridden gryphons taking the rear. Ironwing was flanked by Sixtalon on her right and Cirrus on her left; the rest followed just behind. In seconds we were moving forward rapidly, wind blasting by and making me very glad of the goofy goggles. Without them, you’d be flying blind. Hell, without them, you might very well end up blind. I keep my hair fairly short, but it still whipped around in a way that made me envy the Guards with their helmets.
I glanced around and found that my comrades, with two exceptions, were hunched over the necks of their gryphon companions, clutching the feathered manes before them. Trey, of course, rode without fear. Like me, he’d done this before. He happened to look my way and grinned; I smiled and waved a hand in salute. The other exception was Sid, who sat erect, looking forward with the wind in her face. It may have taken all her courage, as she’d said, but there’d been courage enough.
Ironwing screamed out over the wind in gryphon speech, and the formation angled a bit to the right. Rising from the horizon, still low but easily recognizable, were the peaks that defined the Gryphon Heights, tallest of all the Shikinma Mountains. At the speed we were flying, I guessed we would reach the Aerie just before sunset.
Still in the speech of her kind, which evolved to be heard in flight, Ironwing shouted, “You know the joy of the wind.”
“I do!” The wind seemed to blow my words back, but somehow she heard me.
“As does she!” And Ironwing twitched her feathered head to the left.
Sid rode properly at the base of Cirrus’ neck, just ahead of her wings. Her hair had somehow come unbraided and streamed out behind her, and she had her arms out, partially upraised in the air. She suddenly let out a shout, then laughed with clear delight. From Cirrus came the eagle cry of a gryphon feeling the freedom of the wind, and sharing the joy it brings with a rider. The gryphons around them answered in kind. I shouted her name and saluted her; Sid waved back.
Our other comrades, except for Trey, all looked up at the outcry. Their expressions made it plain that Grevin and Parick thought we’d completely lost it. Some people take longer than others, but when you realize what an incredible thing is happening to you, flying on the wings of a magnificent gryphon, you do feel it. You feel alive in a way that nothing else can duplicate. The way Grevin and Parick looked away and hunched their shoulders told me they would take a while adapting. Veresa, on the other hand, was watching Sid, her own unbound hair streaming in the wind, an unreadable expression on her face. Sid let out another joyful shout, this time Veresa’s name, and I saw a grin replace the anxious mask Veresa had worn a moment before. The girl waved, then raised her arms into the wind when Sid did so again.
The look of sheer astonishment on Parick’s face as he watched his lady embrace the wind was priceless.
Far below us, glimpsed between the puffs of cloud through which the gryphons flew, the world rolled away. We overflew the dreyfts, and soared far above the old, walled city of Daylis, a broad, pentagonal shape by the river, briefly seen and then behind us. The tree-lined river looped through its broad, shallow valley, surrounded by farms, fields, and orchards. Ahead of us the mountains grew ever taller.
Time passed, and both excitement and fear seemed to fade from my companions. Sid and Veresa flew side by side, rocked by the gentle but powerful beats of gryphon wings. Parick and Grevin were no longer hunched against the terror of a long plunge to the earth below. Not long after we crossed the river, Sixtalon let out a short cry, and all the gryphons followed as he banked to the left. There was a thermal, and he had sensed it in that way gryphons have. The gryphons rose with it until our ears popped and breath was short. They knew their business, though, and went no further than needed. Spreading and locking their wings, they soared away from the thermal, gliding without effort as if down a gentle slope. Wing-wise, they call it, a way of conserving energy during long flights. In short order we were back at a more breathable altitude. They were wing-wise three times before we passed over the foothills of the mountains.
The river, now running swift and straight through a low-walled canyon, was joined by numerous small tributaries that cut their way down from the snow-capped mountains. Forested hills alternated with cultivated lands, the freeholds of Tylia Province. A fair-sized town, encircled by a wall, passed under the wings of my gryphon companions.
I saw Grevin point, and heard a shout that I could not understand. Looking where he indicated I saw, perched on a shelf beneath the first of the front range peaks, the Tylian Abbey, a pair of three-story buildings flanking a tall, solid cathedral supported by the sweeps of flying buttresses. All of the buildings had their backs to the dark cliffs behind them, and a broad courtyard opened before the cathedral. The buildings closely matched the color of the natural wall of stone behind them, being built from that very same rock. Woods of fir trees crowded in on either side, and trees marched in ranks up the slopes behind. Passing beneath us was, in a way, the place where this story began long ago, the birthplace of the Gryphon Stone and, ultimately, the Sky Guard.
There seemed to be very few people out in the open, and no traffic at all either up or down the intimidating switchback road that was carved into the steep slope below the Abbey. Given the season, that struck me as odd.
So instead of climbing the road that crawled up the outer cliff face and knocking on the door of the Abbey, we flew over it, hundreds of feet above the ancient mountain keep that long ago was taken from a warlord by the Kings of Morva and given over to the Brotherhood of the Two. Over it and by it and into the peaks and ridges beyond, forested mountains with a clear line between trees and snow-covered rock. Into the heart of the Shikinma Mountains, to the Gryphon Heights that were the tallest peaks on the continent. The gryphons changed formation and flew single file, led by the Guardians. It was cold among the high peaks and breath seemed short; I wished I’d put on my coat before we’d set out. Grevin no longer clutched the feathers before him, and had his arms wrapped around him to conserve heat, chin tucked against his chest. The others, except for Trey, had adopted similar heat-conserving postures.
Fortunately, the long flight was almost over, and we soon swooped past cliffs crossed by broad ledges and studded with the dark mouths of caves. Gryphons watched us from outcrops and spurs, ever vigilant. Others joined our flight, announcing the return of Ironwing and her band in shrieking gryphon speech. We had quite an escort by the time we came to the broad ledge outside the largest cave of all, a flat half circle of dark rock the size of a football field. This was the entrance to the great Aerie itself, home to gryphons and, in these troubled times, the surviving human members of the Sky Guard.
The unridden gryphons that had escorted us at the end peeled away to each side, and the three Sky Guards circled as first Ironwing and then her companions settled to the middle of the smooth stone landing area. Men and women in long, heavy coats strode out to meet us, a dozen of them, all bowing first to Ironwing — for this was her realm — and then to Parick as he slid down a stout gryphon foreleg and staggered awkwardly to his feet. Parick waved off two Guards who darted forward to steady him, then turned toward Sixtalon.
“My thanks for bearing me safely to this place,” he said, making the sign of the Two. “I am in your debt.”
Sixtalon cocked his head, bringing his better eye around. “Reclaim your throne, young prince, and it will be I who stand in debt.”
“I intend to.”
“These people are chilled to the bone,” said Ironwing. “See to their needs, my friends. Send word if something is wanting.” She turned to me. “I must go to council, and tell the elders the truths I now know. I shall return.”
“A moment, please,” and Parick held up a hand as he made the request. “I would thank you, Ironwing, for your aid. For bringing us here, for sending word to Daylis of our need for aid. And for coming when we were beset by many foes.”
“You are most welcome,” Ironwing replied. “We were watching Daffyd, to see what he would do. For we mean to help him and the Alvehn.” She made a soft clucking sound, one I knew signed regret. “We did not know of the bandits until they sprang upon you. I am sorry. We would have stopped them, had we known.”
“It’s regrettable, indeed, my friend,” I assured her, as Parick bowed his head. “But you did come, and lives were saved. Many of those will return home and tell the tale that the Sky Guard has not abandoned them, and that the Regent lies when he says the gryphons have betrayed our trust.”
“More must know that truth,” she said. “And for that to happen, Parick Morvain must wear the crown.”
“That’s the plan,” I assured her.
The curve of that great beak touched my chest with astonishing delicacy. “You honor me, naming me a friend. And you are all most welcome here.”
She lofted, and with a snap of those great dark red wings, vanished up into the deepening twilight.
