The White Gryphon

One

Light.

From crown to talons, tailtip to wingtip, it will be a sculpture of light.

Skandranon Rashkae rested his beaked head atop his crossed foreclaws and contemplated the city across the bay. Although his city was considered dazzling at night by the most jaded of observers, even by day, White Gryphon was a city of light. It gleamed against the dense green foliage of the cliff face it had been carved from, shining in the sun with all the stark white beauty of a snow sculpture. Not that this coast had ever seen snow; they were too far west and south of their old home for that.

Of course, given the way that mage-storms have mucked up everything else, that could change at a moment’s notice, too.

Well, even if such a bizarre change in climate should occur, the Kaled’a’in of White Gryphon were prepared for it. We build our city to endure, as Urtho built his Tower. Let the most terrible winter storms rage, we are ready for them.

It would take another Cataclysm, and the kind of power that destroyed the twin strongholds of two of the most powerful mages who ever lived, to flatten White Gryphon. And even then the ruins of its buildings would endure, for a while at least, until the vegetation that covered these seaside cliffs finally reclaimed the terraces and the remains of the buildings there. . .

Skan shook his head at his own musings. Now why are you thinking such gloomy thoughts of destruction, silly gryphon? he chided himself. Haven’t you got enough to worry about, that you have to manufacture a second Ma’or out of your imagination? You came over here to rest, remember?

Oh, yes. Rest. He hadn’t been doing a lot of that; it seemed as if every moment of every day was taken up with solving someone else’s problems—or at least look as if he was trying to solve their problems.

There was no one near him to hear his sigh of exasperation, audible over the steady thunder of the surf so far below him.

He dropped his eyes to the half-moon bay below his current perch, and to the waves that rolled serenely and inexorably in to pound the base of the rocky cliffs beneath him. On the opposite side of the bay, where the cliff base lay in shelter thanks to a beak of rock that hooked into the half-moon, echoing exactly the hook of a raptor’s beak, the Kaled’a’in had built docks for the tiny fishing fleet now working the coastline. One year of terrible travail to cross the country to get here, and nine of building. We have managed a great deal, more than I would have thought, given that we cannot rely on magic the way we used to.

Now his sigh was not one of exasperation, but of relative content.

From here the half-finished state of most of the city was not visible to the unaided eye. Things were certainly better than they had been, even a few years ago, when many of the Kaled’a’in were still living at the top of the cliff, in tents and shelters contrived from the floating barges.

The original plan had called for a city built atop the cliff, not perched like a puffin on the cliff face itself. General Judeth was the one who had insisted on creating a new city built on terraces carved out of the cliff face. Like so many of the Kaled’a’in and adopted Kaled’a’in, she was determined to have a home that could never be taken by siege. Unlike many of them, she had a plan for such a place the moment she saw the cliffs of the western coastline.

Skan still marveled at her audacity, the stubborn will that saw her plan through, and the persuasion that had convinced them all she was right and her plan would work. Small wonder she had been a commander of one of Urtho’s Companies.

The rock here was soft enough to carve, yet hard enough to support a series of terraces, even in the face of floods, winds, and waves. That was what Judeth, the daughter of a stonemason, had been the first to see. The cliffs themselves had dictated the form the city took, but once folk began to notice that there was a certain resemblance to a stylized gryphon with outstretched wings—well, some took it as an omen, and some as coincidence, but there was never any argument as to what the new city would be called.

White Gryphon—in honor of Skandranon Rashkae, who no longer dyed his feathers black, and thanks to the interval he had spent caught between two Gates, was now as pale as a white gyrfalcon. The only black left to him was a series of back markings among the white feathers, exactly like the black bars sometimes seen on the gyrfalcons of the north.

The White Gryphon regarded the city named for him with decidedly mixed feelings. Skandranon was still more than a little embarrassed about it. After all those years of playing at being the hero, it was somewhat disconcerting to have everyone, from child to ancient, revere him as one! And it was even more disconcerting to find himself the tacit leader of all of the nonhumans of the Kaled’a’in, and deferred to by many of the humans as well!

I thought I wanted to be a leader. Silly me.

Truth to be told, what he’d wanted to be was not a peacetime leader; he’d wanted to be the kind of leader who made split-second decisions and clever, daring plans, not the kind of leader who oversaw disputes between hertasi and kyree, or who approved the placement of the purifying tanks for the city sewage system. . . .

Council meetings bored him to yawning, and why anyone would think that heroism conferred instant expertise in everything baffled him.

He wasn’t very good at administration, but no one seemed to have figured that out yet.

Fortunately, I have good advisors who permit me to pirate their words and advice shamelessly. And I know when to keep my beak shut and look wise.

Somehow both the refugees and the city a-building had survived his leadership and his decisions. Most people had real homes now, homes built from the limestone that partly accounted for the city’s pale gleam under the full light of the sun. All of the terraces were cut and walled in with more of that limestone, and all of the streets paved with crushed oyster shells, which further caught and reflected the light. There was room for expansion for the next five or six generations—

And by the time there is no more space left on the terraces, it will be someone else’s problem, anyway.

Sculpting the terraces and putting in water and other services had been the work of a single six-month period during which magic did work the way it was supposed to. It had been just as easy at that point to cut all of the terraces that the cliff could hold, and to build the water and sewage system to allow for that maximum population. Water came from a spring in the cliff, and streams that had once cascaded into the sea in silver-ribbon waterfalls, carried down through holes cut into the living rock to emerge in several places in the city. It would not be impossible to cut off the water supply—Skan was not willing to say that anything was impossible anymore, given what he himself had survived—but it would be very, very difficult and would require reliably-working magic. It would also not be impossible to invade the city—but every path, either leading down from the verdant lands above, or up from the bay, had been edged, walled, or built so that a single creature with a bow could hold off an army. The lessons learned from Ma’ar’s conquests might have been bitter, but they were valuable now.

Skan raised his head and tested the air coming up from below. Saltwater, kelp, and fish. New fish, not old fish. The fleet must be coming in. It had taken him time to learn to recognize those scents; time for his senses to get accustomed to the ever-present tang of saltwater in the air. No gryphon had ever seen the Western Sea before; his scouts hadn’t even known what it was when they first encountered it.

Huh. “My” scouts. He shook his head. I had no idea what I was letting myself in for—but I should have seen it coming. Amberdrake certainly tried to warn me, and so did Gesten and Winterhart. But did I listen? Oh, no. And now, here I am, with a city named after me and a thousand stupid little decisions to make, all my time eaten up by “solving” problems I don’t care about for people who could certainly solve those problems themselves if they tried. Now he knew what Amberdrake meant, when the kestra’chern said that “my time is not my own.”

And I don’t like it, damn it all. I should be practicing flying, or practicing making more gryphlets with Zhaneel. . . .

Instead, he was going to have to return for another blasted Council session. They could do this without me. They don’t need me. There is nothing I can contribute except my presence.

But his presence seemed to make everyone else feel better. Was that all that being a leader was about?

:Papa Skan,: said a sweet, childlike voice in his head, right on cue. :Mama says it is time for the meeting, and will you please come?: Even without a mage-made teleson set to amplify her thoughts, Kechara’s mind-voice was as clear as if she had spoken the words to him directly. It was another of the endless ironies of the current situation that the little “misborn” gryfalcon had become one of the most valuable members of the White Gryphon community. With magic—and thus, magical devices—gone unreliable, Kechara could and did communicate over huge distances with all the clarity and strength of teleson-enhanced Mindspeech. She was the communication coordinator for all of the leaders—and, more importantly, for all the Silver Gryphons. The Silvers were a resourceful policing organization formed of the remnants of the lighters and soldiers who had made it through the two Kaled’a’in Gates, rather than through the Gates they’d been assigned.

Kechara’s ability, combined with her eternal child-mind, would have caused her nothing but trouble in the old days, which was why Urtho had hidden her away in his Tower. But now—now she was the answer to a profound need. No one ever questioned the care lavished on her, or the way her special needs were always answered, no matter what else had to be sacrificed. She, in turn, had blossomed under the affection; her sweet temper never broke, and if she didn’t understand more than a tenth of what she was asked to relay, it never seemed to bother her. Everyone loved her, and she loved everyone—and with Zhaneel watching over her zealously, making sure she had playtime and naptime, her new life was hundreds of times more enjoyable than her isolation in Urtho’s Tower.

:I’m coming, kitten,: he told her with resignation. :Tell Mama I’m on my way.:

He stood up and stretched his wings; the wind rushing up the cliff face tugged at his primaries like an impatient gryphlet. He took a last, deep breath of the air of freedom, cupped his wings close to his body, and leaped out onto the updraft.

The cliff face rushed past him, and he snapped his wings open with a flourish—and clacked his beak on a gasp of pain as his wing muscles spasmed.

Stupid gryphon—stupid, fat, out-of-condition gryphon! What are you trying to prove? That you’re the equal of young Stirka?

He joined the gulls gliding along the cliff face, watching the ones ahead of him to see how the air currents were acting, while his joints joined his muscles in complaining. Like the gulls, he scarcely moved his wings in dynamic gliding except to adjust the wingtips. Their flight only looked effortless; all the tiny adjustments needed to use the wind instead of wingbeats took less energy, but far, far, more control.

And a body in better condition than mine. I should spend less time inspecting stoneworks and more time flying!

He could have taken the easier way; he could have gone up instead of down, and flapped along like the old buzzard he was. But no, I let the updraft seduce me, and now I’m stuck. I’m going to regret this in the morning.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, by the time he got halfway across the bay, he’d collected an audience.

His sharp eyes spared his bruised ego none of the details. Not only were there humans and hertasi watching him, but someone had brought a dozen bouncing, eager young gryphlets.

A flying class, no doubt. Here to see the Great Skandranon demonstrate the fine details of dynamic gliding. I wonder how they’ll like seeing the Great Skandranon demonstrate the details of falling beak-over-tail on landing?

But with the pressure of all those eyes on him, he redoubled his efforts and increased the complaints of his muscles. He couldn’t help himself. He had always played to audiences.

And when he landed, it was with a clever loft up over their heads that allowed him to drop gracefully (if painfully) down onto the road rather than scrambling to get a talonhold on the wall edging the terrace. He made an elegant landing on one hind claw, holding the pose for a moment, then dropping down to all fours again.

The audience applauded; the gryphlets squealed gleefully. Skan bowed with a jaunty nonchalance that in no way betrayed the fact that his left hip felt afire with pain. Temporary pain, thank goodness—he’d been injured often enough to know the difference between the flame of a passing strain and the ache of something torn or sprained. He clamped his beak down hard, tried to look clever and casual, and waited for the pain to go away, because he wasn’t going to be able to move without limping until it did.

Stupid, stupid gryphon. Never learn, do you?

The burning ache in his hip finally ebbed; he continued to gryph-grin at the youngsters, then pranced off toward the half-finished Council Hall before any of the gryphlets could ask him to demonstrate that pretty landing again.

* * *

Amberdrake took his accustomed chair at the table, looked up at the canvas that served as a roof, and wondered how many more sessions they would meet here before the real roof was on. Right now the Council Hall was in a curious state of half-construction because its ambitious architecture absolutely required the participation of mages for anything but the simplest of tasks to be done. The mages hadn’t been able to manage more than the most rudimentary of spells for the past six months, not since the last mage-storm.

That left the Council Hall little more than the walls and stone floor, boasting neither roof nor any of the amenities it was supposed to offer eventually.

But the completion of the Council Hall was at the bottom of a long list of priorities, and Amberdrake would be the last person to challenge the order of those priorities. Just—it would be very nice to look up and see a real roof—and not wonder if the next windstorm was going to come up in the middle of a Council session and leave all of them staring up at a sky full of stormclouds.

The Kaled’a’in mage Snowstar, who had once been the mage that their Lord and Master Urtho had trusted as much as himself, took his own seat beside Amberdrake. He caught the Chief Kestra’chern’s eye and glanced up at the canvas himself.

“We think the next mage-storm will return things to normal enough for us to get some stonework done,” Snowstar said quietly. “This time the interval should be about nine months. That’s more than enough time to finish everything that has to be done magically.”

Including the Council Hall. Amberdrake smiled his thanks. Snowstar had been put in place by Urtho, the Mage of Silence, as the speaker to his armies for all of the human mages in his employ, and no one had seen any reason why he shouldn’t continue in that capacity. General Judeth, former Commander of the Fifth, was the highest-ranking officer to have come through the two Kaled’a’in Gates before the Cataclysm—purely by accident or the will of the gods, for she was one of the Commanders who appreciated the varied talents of the nonhumans under her command and knew how to use them without abusyig them. On Skandranon’s suggestion, she had organized the gryphons, the other nonhumans who had served in the ranks, and the human fighters into a different kind of paramilitary organization. Judeth’s Silver Gryphons had acted as protectors and scouts on the march here, and served in the additional capacities of police, watchmen, and guards now that they all had a real home.

Amberdrake liked and admired Judeth. I would have willingly named her Clan Sister even if no one else had thought of the idea. Members of the Kaled’a’in Clan k’Leshya comprised the bulk of the humans who had wound up together—and with no qualms on anyone’s part, they had adopted the mixed bag of service-fighters, mercenaries, kestra’chern and Healers who had come through with them. The adoption ceremony had ended the “us and them” divisions before they began, forging humans and nonhumans, Kaled’a’in and out-Clan into a whole, at least in spirit. And the journey here had completed that tempering and forging. . . .

Well, that’s the idealistic outlook, anyway. Amberdrake did not sigh, but his stomach churned a little. Most of the people of White Gryphon were folk of good will—

But some were not. The most obvious of those had marched off on their own over the course of the arduous search for a place to build a home, and good riddance to them, but some had been more clever. That was why Judeth’s people still had a task, and why they would continue to serve as the police of White Gryphon.

Because, unfortunately, the Silvers are needed.

In an ideal world, everyone here would have had meaningful work, status according to ability, and would have been so busy helping to create their new society that they had no thought for anything else.

But this was not an ideal world. There were shirkers, layabouts, troublemakers, thieves, drunks—any personality problem that had existed “back home” still existed somewhere among k’Leshya. There were even those who thought Skandranon was the villain of the Cataclysm, rather than the hero. After all, if he had never taken Urtho’s “suicide device” to Ma’ar, there would never have been a Cataclysm. And in a way, there might have been some truth in that idea. There would only have been the single explosion of Urtho’s stronghold going up—not the double impact of all of Urtho’s power and Ma’ar’s discharged in a single moment. Perhaps they would not now be suffering through the effects of mage-storms.

And perhaps we would. Even Snowstar is not certain. But there is no persuading someone whose mind is already made up, especially when that person is looking for a nonhuman scapegoat. Not even Judeth herself could reason with some of these idiots.

As if the thought had summoned her, Judeth arrived at that moment. Her carefully pressed, black and silver uniform was immaculate as always. The silver-wire gryphon badge of her new command gleamed where her medals had once held pride of place on the breast of her tunic. She wore no medals now; she saw no reason to. “If people don’t know my accomplishments by now,” she often said, “no amount of medals is likely to teach them, or persuade them to trust my judgment.”

She smiled at Amberdrake who smiled back. “Well, this is three—Silvers, Mages, Services—and I know that Cinnabar can’t be spared right now for Healers, so where is our fourth?”

“On the way,” Snowstar said promptly. “Zhaneel had Kechara call him.”

“Ah.” Judeth’s smile softened; every one of the Silvers liked Kechara, but Amberdrake knew she had a special place in her heart for the little misborn gryfalcon. Perhaps she alone had any notion how hard Kechara worked to coordinate the Silvers, and she never once took that hard work for granted. “In that case—Amberdrake, is there anything you want to tell us before Skan gets here?”

“Only that I am acting mainly as Chief Kestra’chern in this, rather than as Chief of Services.” With no one else to coordinate such common concerns as sanitation, recreation, medical needs, and general city administration, much of the burden of those tasks had fallen on Amberdrake’s shoulders. After all, the kestra’chern, whose unique talents made them as much Healers as pleasure-companions, and as much administrators as entertainers, tended to be generalists rather than specialists. Amberdrake had already been the tacit Chief of Urtho’s kestra’chern, and he was already Skandranon’s closest friend. It seemed obvious to everyone that he should be in charge of those tasks which were not clearly in the purview of Judeth, Snowstar, or Lady Cinnabar.

Judeth raised an eyebrow at that. “Is this an actionable problem?” she asked carefully.

“I think so.” He hesitated.

“I think you should wait long enough for me to sit down, Drake,” Skandranon said from the doorway. “Either that, or hold this meeting without me. I could always find something pointless to do.”

The gryphon grinned as he said that, though, taking any sting out of his words. He strolled across the expanse of unfinished stone floor to the incongruously formal Council table, the work of a solid year by one of the most talented—and unfortunately, disabled—woodworkers in White Gryphon. Since an injury that left him unable to walk or lift, he had been doing what so many other survivors at White Gryphon had done—used what they had left. He’d built the table in small sections, each one used as an example to teach others his woodworking skills, and then had his students assemble the pieces in place here. Like so much else in the settlement, it was complex and ingeniously designed, beneath an outer appearance of deceptive simplicity.

“So, what is it that was so urgent you had to call a Council meeting about it?” Skan said, arranging himself on the special couch that the same woodworker’s students had created to fit the shape of a gryphon. “I know you better than to think it’s something trivial—unless, of course, you’re growing senile.”

Amberdrake grimaced. “Hardly senile, though with an active two-year-old underfoot, I often wonder if I’m in danger of going mad.”

Skan nodded knowingly, but Amberdrake was not about to be distracted into discussions of parenthood and the trials thereof. “I’m afraid that as Chief Kestra’chern, I am going to have to bring charges against someone to the Council. That’s why I needed three of you here—I’m going to have to sit out on the decision since I’m the one bringing the charges. That means I need a quorum of three.”

Snowstar folded his hands together on the table; Judeth narrowed her eyes. “What are the charges?” Snowstar asked quietly.

“First, and most minor—impersonation of a trained kestra’chern.” Amberdrake shrugged. “I do not personally remember this man being in Urtho’s service, as a kestra’chern or otherwise. I can’t find anyone who will vouch for his training, either. I do know that his credentials are forged because one of the names on them is mine.”

“That’s fairly minor, and hardly a Council matter,” Snowstar said cautiously.

“I know that, and if it were all, I wouldn’t have called you here. I’d simply have examined the man and determined his fitness to practice, then put him through formal training if he was anything other than a crude perchi with ambitions.” Amberdrake bit his lip. “No, the reason I bring him up to you three, and in secret session, is because of what he has done. He has violated his trust—and if he had been less clever he would already be in Judeth’s custody on assault charges.”

Judeth’s expression never varied. “That bad?” she said.

He nodded. “That bad. We kestra’chern are often presented with—some odd requests. He has used the opportunities he was presented with to inflict pain and damage, both emotional and physical, purely for his own entertainment.”

“Why haven’t we heard of this before?” Skan demanded, his eyes dangerously alight.

“Because he is,” Amberdrake groped for words, “he is diabolical, Skan, that is all I can say. He’s clever, he’s crafty, but above all, he is supremely adept at charming or—manipulating people. He has succeeded in manipulating the people who came to him as clients so thoroughly that it has been over a year from the time he began before one was courageous enough to report him to me. Even the other kestra’chern were fooled by him. They couldn’t tell what he was doing behind his doors. But I know—I have felt what his client felt.”

Skan’s beak dropped open a little. “What is this man?” the gryphon asked, astonished. “Some sort of—of—evil Empath?”

“He might be, Skan, I don’t know,” Amberdrake replied honestly. “All I know is that the person who came to me needed considerable help in recovering from the damage that had been done, and that there are more people who are more damaged yet who have not complained.” Amberdrake had been very careful not even to specify the client’s sex; while the victim had not asked for anonymity, Amberdrake felt it was only fair and decent to grant it. He spent several long and uncomfortable moments detailing exactly what had been done to that victim, while the others listened in silence. When he had finished—as he had expected—all three of them were unanimous in their condemnation of the ersatz kestra’chern.

“Who is he?” Judeth asked, her voice a low growl as she reached for pen and paper to make out the arrest warrant.

Amberdrake sighed and closed his eyes. He had hoped in a way that once the charges had been laid and the Council decision arrived at, he would feel better. But he didn’t; he only felt as if he had uncovered the top of something noisome and unpleasant, and that there was going to be more to face before the mess was cleaned up.

“Hadanelith,” he said softly, as Judeth waited, hand poised over the paper.

She wrote down the name.

“Hadanelith,” she repeated as she sealed the order with her signet ring. “Can I deal with him now, or is there something else you want to do with him first?”

“Now,” Amberdrake said quickly, with a shudder. “Arrest him now. He’s done enough damage. I don’t want him to have a chance to do any more.”

“Right.” Judeth stood up. “Skan, would you have Kechara call Aubri, Tylar, Remain, and Vetch, and have them double-time it over here to meet Amberdrake and me?” She handed the arrest warrant to Amberdrake, who took it, trying not to show his reluctance. “I’ll be going with you to take this Hadanelith down. This could look bad—I am considered to be the military leader here. A military leader arresting a putative kestra’chern under any circumstances will cause some discontent. Still, I don’t want to be seen as being above getting my hands dirty or unfit for service with the other Silvers. And I definitely do not want someone like that loose to deal with later. Hate to saddle you with this, Drake, but—”

“But I’m the one bringing the charges, so I had better be there. It’s my job, Judeth,” he replied as he wrung the warrant loosely in his hands. “Though it’s times like these when I wish I was just a simple kestra’chern.”

Judeth snorted and gave him a sideways look. “Drake,” she said only, “you were never a simple kestra’chern.”

“I suppose I wasn’t,” he murmured as she, Snowstar, and Skan left the table and the Council Hall.

Hadanelith whittled another few strokes at the wooden bit before setting it down. After some more cutting and rounding—not too much rounding, though, it needed to remain a challenge for the client, right?—he’d add the pilot holes for the wooden pegs and straps later. Carving wood was so much like what he did for a living with his clients, it was natural that he would be excellent at it. He could grasp the roughness, grip it firmly, and then cut away at every part that didn’t look like the shape he had in mind.

Telica, here, was one of his works. A slice here, a chunk taken off there, and before long she’d be another near perfect item. Her mind was his latest work. She was nude, kneeling on the floor, held in place by several lengths of thread binding her neck to her wrists, her wrists to her ankles. The thread was completely normal in composition, which was what made it so amusing to him.

Virtually any effort at all would have snapped them, without leaving so much as a welt; no, the real bindings here were those of his will over hers. The regular training that made her one more of his items held her as firmly in place as any set of iron shackles or knotted scarves. She was one of his carvings, inside, though she didn’t presently show so much as a scratch on her alabaster-smooth skin.

Every time Telica came to him for one of her appointments she knew she would be trained and tested in a dozen ways. All of his girls knew this. They could be trapped or tricked, hurt or caressed, abused or set up for humiliation, and after a while, they came to love him for it—or at least obey him. Obedience was close enough for him; he’d take that over love any day.

So it was with no worry at all that he took three steps to stand before her steadily breathing, still form, and put a hand to her jaw. “Open,” he said in his rich voice, and her lips parted in instant compliance to receive the wooden bit he’d been trimming. As he pressed it deeper into her mouth, he noted that it scraped the gums, and probably pressed the palate about there. Good, good. It would serve as another test of her training in itself, then, and the soreness that lingered after Telica’s visit would simply be another reminder of his attentions, and who she served now.

Who she served? That was another delicious irony. Hadanelith was, as far as anyone else knew, serving her, but behind these doors, she was his as surely as any other of his whittled treasures. His treasures were six now; Dianelle, Suriya, Gaerazena, Bethtia, and Yonisse, and Telica here, each one a good but still slightly flawed carving.

There was always something wrong with them by the time he’d made them his artworks. Why was that? Why was the wood always unseasoned, or knotty, or split down the middle, when he’d finally carved away enough of the bark to make something beautiful? It was as if the wood that looked so promising on the outside failed to live up to the promise; that by the time he’d gotten enough of the useless wood shaved away to refine the details, the flaws in the material showed themselves.

Telica here, for instance, was too quiet. It was nearly impossible to get as much as a whimper out of her. He was no more lusty than any other man, he felt, and there were times, just as when one craved a certain dish or fruit, when he simply had to hear a muffled cry of anguish or a sob. Telica was mute as a stick unless he lacerated her with a blade or pierced her flesh with a needle. She was just as flawed in her silence as Gaerazena was in her garrulous, hysterical chattering and Yonisse was in her shuddering anxieties.

It couldn’t be his skill; it had to be the material itself. If only he could get his hands on a woman of real substance, breeding, true quality. A woman like Winterhart. . . .

That one he had yet to touch, although he had watched her hungrily for ten years. Now there was a creature fit for an artist! Not wood at all, she was the finest marble, a real challenge to carve and mold. But he could do it. He was more than a match for her, just as he was more than a match for any of them. What sculptor was ever afraid of his stone? What genius was ever afraid of his toys? The challenge would be to unmake and then remake her, but to do it so cleverly that she asked for every change he made to her.

What a dream. . . .

But a dream was all it ever would be. She would never come to him, not while she was mated to the oh-so-perfect Amberdrake. And not when the whole city knew how disgustingly contented she was with her mate. It was all too honey-sweet for words, just as sickeningly, cloyingly sweet as that sugar-white gryphon, Skandranon, and his mate.

It was just a good thing for him that not everyone in this little Utopia was as contented with life as those four were.

He would certainly enjoy giving all of them a bitter taste of reality when the time was right. Especially Winterhart. Get under that cool surface and see what seethed beneath it. Find out what she feared.

Not the ordinary fears of his six creations, he was certain of that. No, Winterhart must surely fear something fascinating, something he would have to work hard to discover. What could he cut free from inside her? Now there was an interesting image; a hollow woman, emptied out slice by slice, with only a walking shell left for everyone else to see. How could it be done? And how thin could he carve those walls before the sculpture collapsed in on itself? Well. If the wood was good enough, he could scoop out quite enough to satisfy his needs.

These thoughts were on his mind as he lowered his knife down between Telica’s thighs. That, and his craving for her to make some noise for him.

The blade touched the birch-white skin of one thigh.

At that moment, a shadow moved across Telica’s still skin. The lighting in the room shifted as someone—no, several someones—came into the room uninvited. Now this was an outrage! Hadanelith whirled, knife in hand, to confront these presumptuous invaders. Before he could utter more than a snarl, a boot to his face made things quite different than a minute before, when he was the one in control.

Amberdrake’s trepidation had hardened into a dull, tight pain in his gut. It certainly wasn’t because he hadn’t seen horror in his life, or felt himself grow ill from feeling others’ suffering. It wasn’t precisely because he feared a violent confrontation, or the cleaning up that was always needed after such a thing happened. The sensation he had, as the group arrived at Hadanelith’s home—or perhaps it should be called a lair—was dread for its own sake. Amberdrake had the feeling that nothing good was going to come of this arrest. Morally it was the right thing to do, by Law it was the right thing to do, yet still there was that gnawing in his gut that told him they were doing more harm than good.

Aubri, the Eternally Battered, apparently felt it also, although it might have just been a bad breakfast that caused his disgruntled expression. He was a gryphon who never had any good luck, if you believed what he said.

“It’s too quiet in there, Drake,” he wheezed, as they held themselves poised just outside Hadanelith’s door. “We know he’s got someone in there, so why isn’t there any sound?”

“I don’t know,” Amberdrake replied, in an anxious whisper. “I don’t like it, either. Judeth?”

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this,” she said shortly. “Let’s get in there—now.”

With a wave of her hand, she led her group of ex-fighters through the door in a rush. Amberdrake trailed behind, warrant still held in his clenched hand, dreading what they would find.

So he didn’t actually see Judeth kick Hadanelith in the jaw and send him sprawling to the floor, but once he saw what had prompted that action, he also saw no need to protest what might be considered an act of brutality.

The young woman was bound only by thread, in one of the most excruciatingly uncomfortable positions Amberdrake had ever seen. Her skin was sheened with sweat, and her muscles trembled with the effort of holding herself in place. There were faint scars in many places on her pale skin. With Hadanelith’s carving knife lying on the floor where Judeth had just kicked it, there wasn’t much doubt in Amberdrake’s mind where those scars had come from.

But most horrible of all—she acted as if she were completely unaware of their presence.

No. She’s not acting. She is unaware of our presence. She will not acknowledge that we are here because he has not told her to.

That was what held him frozen, and what made Judeth’s eyes blaze with black rage; that one presumably human person had done this to another.

The scars are only the least of what he has done to her. This will take months to undo. This is a case for the Healers; my people can’t possibly make this right.

With trembling hands, Amberdrake unrolled the arrest warrant and read it out loud. Hadanelith did not move from the place where he lay sprawled across his own floor, not even to finger the growing bruise on his jaw.

He only glared up at Amberdrake in impotent fury as the kestra’chern read out the charges and the sentence.

“You’ve heard the charges. We’ve seen the evidence before our eyes. You’ve been caught, Hadanelith,” Judeth said fiercely, biting off each word as if she bitterly regretted having to say anything to him at all. “Have you got anything to say in your defense?”

In answer, Hadanelith spat at her. Since he was lying on the ground and she was standing over him, it didn’t get very far. The glob of spittle hit the top of her boot and ran down the side. One of the human Silvers snarled and pulled back a fist; Judeth caught his arm.

“No point in soiling your hands, Tylar,” she said coldly. She looked around, picked up a piece of expensive silk that Hadanelith was using for a couch drape, and deliberately wiped her boot with it, dropping it at her feet in a crumpled heap. Only then did she turn to look at her prisoner.

“There are a lot of things I would like to do to you, scum,” she said, her voice flat and devoid of all emotion. “However, we’ve got one Law to deal with people like you. Hadanelith, by reason of being caught in the acts described, you will be taken as you are to the plateau above White Gryphon in chains. You will be taken to the edge of the lands we have claimed and cultivated. There you will be freed of your chains, and you will be given from now until darkness falls to take yourself outside our border marker. If, by tomorrow at dawn, you are still inside them, whoever finds you is permitted to take any steps he deems necessary to get rid of you.”

Hadanelith’s rage showed clearly in his eyes, but his voice was as cold as Judeth’s. “As I am? What, no weapons, no food, no—”

“You are a mad dog, scum. We don’t supply a mad dog with food and weapons.” Her lips thinned, and her eyes glinted as she looked down at him. “You think that you’re so clever—I suggest you start using that cleverness to figure out how to survive in the forest with only what you’re wearing.” She jerked her head at the rest of the Silvers. “Chain him up, and get him out of here before he makes me sicker than I already am.”

The Silvers didn’t need any urging; within moments they had their prisoner on his feet, collared and manacled.

Amberdrake had expected Hadanelith to fight, to heap verbal abuse on them—to do or say something, at any rate. This continued silence was as unnerving as his continued certainty that no good was going to come of this.

He is a mad dog. The forest is going to kill him, but painfully, and perhaps slowly. Shouldn’t we have at least had the compassionate responsibility to do it ourselves?

But his crimes had not warranted execution, only banishment. He could not be cured, that much was obvious, so the rulers of White Gryphon had an obligation to remove him from among those he was preying upon. That meant imprisonment or banishment, and White Gryphon did not yet have a prison.

Hadanelith glared at Amberdrake all the time he was being bound, and continued to glare at him all the time he was being hauled out of the room, as if he held Amberdrake personally responsible for what was happening to him. That just added another level of unease to all of the rest.

If they had found Hadanelith alone, Amberdrake might have turned and bolted at that moment—but they hadn’t, and through all of this, the young woman had not moved so much as an eyelash. Amberdrake’s personal unease gave way to a flood of nausea as he knelt down beside her.

He eased down his own shields, just a trifle, and touched her arm with a feather-brush of a finger to assess the situation.

He slammed his shields back up in the next instant, and knew he had gone as white as Skan’s feathers by the chill of his skin.

He looked up at Judeth, who hovered uncertainly beside him.

“It’s not good, Judeth, but I can take it from here.” He took a deep, steadying breath and reminded himself that this was no worse than many, many of the traumas he had helped to heal in his career as the Chief Kestra’chern of Urtho’s armies. He looked up again and manufactured a smile for her. “You go on along. I can manage. She’ll have to go to Lady Cinnabar, of course, but I can snap her out of this enough to get her there.”

One of Judeth’s chief virtues was that she never questioned a person’s own assessment of his competence; if Amberdrake said he could do something, she took it for granted that he could.

“Right,” she replied. “In that case—I’ll go along with the others. I want to make personally sure that chunk of sketi gets past the border markers by sundown.”

She turned on her heel and stalked out the door, leaving Amberdrake alone with the girl, a young woman whose name he didn’t even know.

And that’s the next thing; go through Hadanelith’s records and find his client list. Where there is one like this, there will be more.

You knew.it could be this bad, Drake. Just think how much worse it would be for her if you weren’t here.

Hadanelith would not run, no matter how grim and threatening his captors looked. He walked away from them at a leisurely pace, as if he was out for an afternoon stroll, keeping his posture jaunty and his muscles relaxed.

It wasn’t easy. The back of his neck crawled, and despite that officious bitch Judeth’s assertions that they were not going to physically harm him—themselves—he half expected an arrow in the back at any moment.

But no arrows came, and he completed his stroll down the furrow of planted ground without incident, carefully stepping on each tiny seedling before him as he walked, and grinding it into powder beneath his feet. A petty bit of revenge, but it was all that he was likely to get for some time.

At the end of the furrow was the land that had not been claimed from the forest—forest that held so many dangers that sending him out here might just as well have been a death sentence. Even the field workers came out under guards of beaters to drive the beasts away, and Kaled’a’in whose specialty was in handling the minds of wild beasts in case the beaters couldn’t frighten predators off.

And archers in case both fail. Thank you so much for your compassion, you hypocrites.

He did not pause as he reached the trees and the tangle of growth beneath them. He pushed right on in and continued to shove his way grimly through the bushes and entwined vines, ignoring scratches and biting insects until he finally struck a game path.

Then he stopped, a little out of breath, to take inventory of his hurts. He wanted to know every scratch, every bruise, for he would eventually extract payment for all of them.

There was the kick to his jaw, the other to his hand; the one had practically broken the jawbone, the other had left his hand numb. His guards hadn’t been any too gentle on the trip up here, either; they’d just about dislocated his arms, wrenching him around, and they’d gotten in a few surreptitious kicks and punches that left more bruises and aching spots under his clothing.

Nevertheless, Hadanelith smiled. They’d been so smug, so certain of themselves—they’d said he was to be sent into this exile as he was, and then were bound by that word from searching him!

Fools. They assumed that a kestra’chern at work would be completely unarmed—but Hadanelith was not exactly a kestra’chern.

And Hadanelith was never unarmed.

He began to divest himself of all his hidden secrets, starting with the stiletto blades in the seams of his boots.

Shortly, he would resume his journey to the boundary markers, and he would be very careful to remain outside them for the few days it took to convince these idiots that some beast or other had disposed of him.

Then he would return.

And then the repayments would begin.