Sworn To Transfer (24 page)

Outside of the wild magic of the griffin, she felt the cautious and steady beat of a complex system of magic surrounding the fence. It was built layer upon layer with all the efficiency of a seamstress’s prized cross-stitch. She wouldn’t be able to get around it; it had been built too well. Ciardis began to grow frustrated as she searched for a way in. She could hear the griffin’s magic and feel the distress in its mind. Both called to her, but in different ways. The magic felt like a power she could meld with, enhance, and push to greater heights. The mind was one she wanted to soothe and comfort through its agony.

Ciardis surfaced and looked behind her. Meres Kinsight couldn’t help her push through the barrier, but she had a hunch who could.

“Vana,” she called as she caught the woman’s eye. The mage was watching her with a cautious expression, legs crossed as she sat on a large rock conveniently placed nearby.

Sighing Vana asked Ciardis, “Do you know what you’re asking for?”

“Yes,” replied Ciardis, but she was beginning to wonder whom she was asking. She didn’t know much—okay,
anything
—about the background of the woman known as Vana Cloudbreaker. She knew that she was mage of the unknown—a dark specialty of mages whose powers took unique forms. But exactly what the extent of Vana’s experience was happened to be information that she didn’t know and she doubted anyone else knew, either.

Walking forward, Vana came to stand to Ciardis’s left. Over the girl’s head, she caught Meres’s eye and shook her head slightly.

To Ciardis she said, “I’ll help you get through this barrier, but understand this: we will not
break
it. We will only unlock it.”

Ciardis nodded in acceptance.

“Do you understand?” Vana repeated slowly with a glint in her eye.

“Yes,” Ciardis said, returning the look with a firm gaze.

Assured but wary, Vana latched onto Ciardis’s other hand and melded their magic.

Taking the lead, Vana formed a purple spear of magic in her mind. She mold the purple spear until it touched the edge of the enclosure. Wriggling it gently, she helped it ease a slight bit further into the barrier’s magic. Built by powerful mages, the enclosure’s magic resisted her advances and already sought to push the invading magic out of its meld. But the key was that Vana was in, and once she was in she could break anything. This she didn’t want to break, though. She just wanted to peek through for a second.

Focusing on that intent, she sent tiny tendrils of her magic out. Carefully pushing magic into the opposite end of the spear, she began to widen the end that sat in the barrier meld until it resembled a trumpet with a wide, shallow end inside the enclosure and a hold tube piercing the enclosure’s magical barrier to the outside. Smiling, Vana opened her eyes and looked over at Ciardis.

“Your turn,” she said while looking at Meres and Ciardis.

Ciardis and Meres poured their magic into the enclosure through Vana’s tunnel. When Ciardis reached the interior, she felt and heard a warning cry.

Warily, she halted, not backing up but not pushing forward, either. And then she heard Meres’s voice in her mind.

“The griffin is alert and she’s wary. Too many mages are surrounding her. Pull back, Ciardis. Now that I’m through, as long as the tunnel is here, I can get through on my own”
, Meres said.

Ciardis felt like a child that had been shown a prize that had been snatched back immediately. She wanted to pout, she desperately did, but she restrained herself and did as he had asked. As she opened her eyes and saw Vana watching her, she said, “Meres said—”

“I know what he said,” said Vana curtly. “Just stand still and wait.”

Ciardis was miffed; why was she being so cold? Deciding not to bother with it now, she closed her eyes and leaned on the barrier physically. She might not be able to be inside the fence, but she might be able to hear what was going on.

Slowly, Meres’s voice began to trickle down the tunnel. At first it was distorted, but as she listened carefully she understood more and more of what he was saying.

On the other side of the fence, Meres stood facing an angry griffin imprisoned in a fence, its hackles raised and feathers fluffed. Standing firm so as to not give the appearance of fleeing, he began to speak using soothing words and a quiet voice. The pregnant griffin wasn’t really in the mood for the lullaby. She screeched and moved forward, raising her forearm in an intimidating manner and clawing the air in front of him.

“Let me go!”
she screamed in his mind, enraged.

Time to change tactics.

“We’re trying to help you,”
he pleaded.

“No, no.”

He crouched in pain, not from the mental shouting, which did hurt, but from the images she was sending through the link. She and her mate in flight. They’d been hunting and had dived down on unsuspecting prey—a juicy deer that they had torn to shreds with relish. Without warning, shadows had come from nowhere, a human walking behind them. He had ordered his creatures to attack them. She had barely gotten away.

She bore resentment for what she saw as one of his village warriors’ attacks.

“It wasn’t us, Queen of the Air
,” he protested. 

“Human, I saw—it was human!”

“There are many humans,”
he said,
“Many different ones.”

A gleam came into her eye. Meres continued to talk to her. To placate her, all the while using his mind magic to calm her down imperceptibly, to push the anger back and allow reason to flow through.

Finally she trembled and lowered herself to the ground. With all four legs beneath her and her wings smoothed along her back, she was beautiful, a radiant golden goddess of the air.

“Raina
,” she said. “
My name is Raina.”

“Raina, then
,” he replied.
“Your kits have been fueled by your rage. Are they well? Can you feel them moving inside you?”

She tilted her head quizzically at him, as if trying to understand his query, and then quickly stuffed her head under her wing and looked at her stomach.

Looking back at him, she said, “
They move. They are whole.

“May I help?”

“Help? Help how?”

“By giving them energy and life.”

“Take me from this prison first.”

He raised an eyebrow. Griffins were intelligent and she knew how to bargain.

“I can only do that if you keep calm,”
he said
, “If my companions can speak with you and see that you are back to being of sound mind, they will free you so that you can birth your kits in freedom.”

She nodded.

Meres left the enclosure and retreated back to his physical form. Sighing, he stretched his neck to let out a crick in the side. Looking over at Vana, he said, “She wants out.”

“That wasn’t part of the deal.”

“She’s better now. Sane.”

“I don’t care.”

“Excuse me,” said Alexandra, venturing forth. “She told you this? Is she truly well?”

They all heard an angry shriek inside the enclosure when Meres removed his hand from the barrier.

Vana shot him a look and said, “Sane, huh?”

“She just doesn’t want to be left alone in silence in that stupid cage,” he retorted.

“Can you prove it?” Alexandra asked with an unwavering stare.

Meres nodded and said, “Take a look for yourself.”

She stepped forward to touch the barrier and he guided her down to speak with the imprisoned griffin. Julius followed after that, and then Vana took a brief look inside. Finally, when they had all emerged once more, Meres said, “So can we release her?”

“It is possible,” said Julius reluctantly.

“More than possible,” said Alexandra firmly. “No creature of the Ameles Forest shall be imprisoned against their will when it’s clear their mind is whole and well.”

“I suppose the deaths are just going to be forgiven?” said Julius sardonically.

“She was driven by rage at the death of her magic.”

“By that logic, if someone killed you and I decided to kill five sylphs in retaliation, I would be freed?”

Alexandra sighed and rubbed her forehead.

“Is there a council here?” Ciardis ventured. “One that your grandfather is part of? Now that she is well, they can decide.”

As all four adults looked at her, she added, “Can’t they?”

“It’s true,” Alexandra said slowly. “They can do it.”

“Until then she stays inside the cage,” said Julius firmly.

“A twenty-foot cube is no place for a pregnant griffin or any creature of the skies,” said Meres tightly. “In fact, I’m surprised she has survived this long.”

“What would you have us do?” snapped Julius. “Kill her?”

“Even if this imprisonment were a punishment for crimes committed rather than an attempt to keep her from harming herself or others, it could not last forever.”

“We can feed her, make sure she has nutrients and is as comfortable as possible.”

“It will kill a person’s mind,” Vana interjected with shadowed eyes. “It would take longer in a creature with the magic and mind of a griffin but it would happen.”

They all looked at her, flabbergasted. “What?” asked Alexandra.

Vana sighed and said, “I’ll tell you this much and no more. During the Initiate Wars, prisons were created to keep enemy combatants in. For the strongest mages, it broke them down over time. It wasn’t really designed for
kith
, hence the size. What the Princess Heir was doing with it, I don’t know.”

“How she got it is what I want to know,” demanded Meres.

“And why in the seven hells is it in our forest?” demanded Julius.

Vana shrugged.

“After the wars, a lot of the artifacts were left out on the battlefields. It wasn’t until the school of mages made a concerted effort, ongoing even now, to clean up the sites that we truly saw all of the atrocities of the war,” said Ciardis.

At a surprised look from Vana and Meres, she gave a sheepish grin. “I read a lot.”

“Right, well—”

“No,” interjected Alexandra. “It’s time. It’s time to get her out.
Now
.”

Alexandra looked over at her brother firmly. This time he didn’t object. Even he couldn’t condone an individual being stripped of their mind and magic slowly; it was torture.

Vana, Serena, and Meres backed away as the siblings strode forward to take their place. Alexandra lifted a necklace out from under her robes. At the end of a long silver chain was a beautiful key made of polished metals with intricate detail work.

She and her brother put their right hands on the wall, careful to keep the rest of their bodies at a distance. The fence began to pulse with a white light. Alexandra took the key and inserted it directly into the glowing wall. As she turned it, they all heard the
click
of a lock springing open, and then a portion of the fence began to dissolve. The siblings backed up in haste, preparing to face a potentially angry griffin.

When Rania stepped out in the sunlight, she blinked at the natural light shining in her eyes and dipped her head at Meres in thanks.

“Now,” he said slowly after bowing to the silent griffin, “I’d like to check on your kits.”

After all was pronounced well, Rania spoke, “I leave for my nest.”

As she turned, she spread her long wings to fly.

They watched silently as she flew away.

A
s they walked back toward the village, Meres said, “I’ll check on Raina as much as possible.”

Turning to Julius, he said, “I assume you know where the nest is?”

“About twenty miles north, in the cliffs above the waterfall,” Julius said.

When they arrived back Alexandra called the council of elders to a meeting. Since the meeting hall was on the forest floor and fairly large, Ciardis saw no reason why she couldn’t attend. Vana left, whether to avoid being asked more questions about the prison in the middle of the forest or to take a small rest, Ciardis couldn’t tell.

A few minutes into the conversation, Ciardis was beginning to wish she’d taken the chance to leave, too. No one could agree on anything, but they all thought Julius and Alexandra had made an impulsive and potentially reckless decision to allow the griffin to be set free.

A woman with long feathers in her golden hair and the wisdom of ages in her eyes stood and said, “This is a grave decision that has repercussions for us all. What if she returns in a fury as she did before?”

“Then we will aid her, heal her,” Alexandra’s grandfather countered before Julius or Alexandra could speak.

“But—” protested another gentleman.

He was interrupted by a loud
bang
as the outer door of the meeting hall burst open in a gust of wind. When Ciardis looked over at the door, she reassessed her previous impression—it was more like a gust of angry woman.

In the doorway stood a stocky human woman, very unlike the svelte Panen people around her. She put her hands on her hips and angrily demanded, “What have you lot done to that poor griffin?”

Alexandra stepped forward. “She was imprisoned, but she’s gone now.”

“Gone?” huffed the woman. “I should hope not, since I just got her bandaged and fed in my healing center.”

The entire room stared at her in confusion.

“You have a griffin?” said Julius slowly.

“Here, Helen? Now?” said Alexandra.

“Ain’t that what I just said?”

“What color is it?” This came from Meres.

“I’m not here to answer ten question from you lot. You want to know about the griffin? Come see for yourself.”

As they all rushed down the aisle, she held up a warning finger, staring up at the Panen who all towered at least two feet above her. “But I’m warning you lot. Disturb her rest and I’ll have your heads.”

To a person they hastily nodded, and she turned and slowly walked out of the meeting hall, the group behind her following like recalcitrant children.

When they arrived at the healing center, it was as she said. Raina was looking a little bedraggled in a nest that took up half the room. “What happened to her?” demanded Meres.