The Dark Griffin (37 page)

Cardock ignored him. “We’ve brought something for you,” he said, showing him a bundle he was carrying.

Arren looked at it. “What for?”

“What for?” said Annir, with a kind of forced cheerful-ness. “Arren, don’t you know what day this is?”

“I don’t . . .”

“It’s your
birthday
,” said Annir. “Your father and I were coming to see you, and then someone told us you’d been arrested, and—”

“And we came to bring you your present,” said Cardock, holding it up. “Your mother and I put a lot of work into it.”

It was made of black cloth and looked like a piece of clothing. “What is it?” said Arren.

Cardock unfolded it and held it up by the shoulders. It was a long black robe with wide, full-length sleeves and silver fastenings that stopped halfway down, so that the wearer’s legs would be visible and free to move.

“What’s that for?” Arren said blankly.

“To wear, of course,” said Cardock. “Here, feel it. It’s the best-quality material I could get. Warm and tough. It could just about stop an arrow.”

Arren reached through the bars and pulled the robe into the cage. It was woven from wool and was indeed thick and strong, though a little coarse. “Why did you make it for me?”

“Because it’s part of who you are,” said Cardock, almost fiercely. “Take it. If you go into the Arena tomorrow, wear it.”

“Why?” said Arren.

“Because you’re a Northerner,” said Cardock. “When we went into battle, we always wore robes just like this. Let them see you wear it, Arenadd. Let them see you’re not ashamed of what you are.”

Arren bowed his head. “But I am ashamed,” he said.

“Arenadd Taranisäii, don’t you
dare
say that in front of us. You are a Northerner, and you have no reason to be ashamed of it. It’s part of you and it always will be.”

“And I don’t want it to be!” Arren shouted. “I never did! What godsdamned good did it ever do me? When did it ever make me happy? Everywhere I go people look at me like I’m some kind of animal! And now they’re calling me insane. They’re saying—” He broke off suddenly, wide-eyed with helpless dread. “They said it was my blood coming through. The Northerners’ madness. And—” He looked out at them, almost pleading with them. “And I can feel it,” he whispered. “I can feel it in me. Someone called me a blackrobe and I tried to kill him. I tried to kill Lord Rannagon. I couldn’t stop myself. I’m going mad.”

“No,” Cardock rasped. “Arenadd, no. Stop it. You’re not mad.”

“Well then, what am I?” said Arren, his fingers tightening on the robe until the knuckles whitened. “You tell me, then.”

“Every Northerner is a warrior at heart,” said Cardock. “It’s your spirit coming through. You were born to fight. Why else do you think they made us wear those collars? They had to. It was the only thing that could subdue us. A Northerner is like a griffin. Nothing can ever break his spirit, and he will never stop fighting back until he dies. That’s what my own father told me, and it will always be true.”

Arren gripped the robe in both hands and pulled, as if trying to tear it apart. Then he threw it away. “The blackrobes are savages,” he snarled. “And I won’t let myself become one. Not now, not ever. No matter what happens.”

Cardock looked at him, shocked and hurt. “Arenadd, please—”

Arren turned his back on him. “Leave me alone, Father. If you want, you can come to the Arena tomorrow. See how a blackrobe dies.”

“Arren, please, don’t do this,” said Annir. “Please.”

But Arren did not turn around. As she began to cry, shame bit into him, but he forced himself to look away. Finally, he heard them start to leave.

“Dad!”

Cardock almost ran back. “What is it?”

Arren couldn’t look him in the eye. “I wanted to ask . . .”

“Yes? What is it, Arenadd?”

“When—when they give my body back to you, I want you to take it to Rivermeet. Bury it in the field, where Eluna is. The locals can show you the spot. Can you do that for me?”

Cardock’s face creased in pain, but he nodded. “Yes, Arenadd. I promise I’ll do all I can.”

“Thank you,” Arren whispered.

Annir looked as if she wanted to stay, but Cardock took her by the arm. “Come on. We have to go and see the Mistress.” He looked at Arren. “We’ll see you again, Arenadd, I promise. I swear you’ll get out of there alive and we’ll take you home.”

Arren managed a weak smile. “Goodbye, Dad.”

He watched silently as they left and then sat down again, miserable with guilt. The words he had spoken to his parents repeated themselves in his head, and they sounded even more bitter and cruel than he had realised. But they were the truth, and they always had been.

The robe lay crumpled in the corner where he’d thrown it, and some part of him wanted to hold it again. But he left it lying where it was and didn’t look at it for the rest of that day, and then night came and it was too dark to see it anyway.

The moon rose, appearing over the distant mountains, faint and dull at first, until it passed through the clouds and soared up into the sky. It was a fat crescent, nearly a perfect half, and Arren kept his eyes on it as it rose higher and higher. In the darkness, he couldn’t see the ground below him or even the mountain in front. Everything was utterly black, as though he was standing in space. Alone in the world, hanging in the air with the moon and the stars. The stars glittered brightly, and he remembered the Southern belief that they wove the future.

But they were all outshone by the moon. Pure white light shining on his upturned face, he walked slowly to the other side of the cage, not noticing when it shifted and creaked against its supports. The moon, huge and silent, like a cold sun, filled him with awe and a strange sense of humility.

He stared up at it, speechless, and then bowed his head and started to murmur under his breath, speaking not griffish or the Southern tongue but another language: a harsh, lyrical, cold language, one he had not spoken in front of anyone but his parents for as long as he could remember. One he had spent most of his life pretending he did not know.

“Help me,” he whispered. “Please help me. I’ll do whatever you want. Please, I don’t want to die. Help me.”

A
rren was not the only one watching the moon.

Darkheart lay in his cage in the darkened enclosure and stared up at the glowing disc. Hunger was burning inside him, and thirst as well. He had not eaten in four days and had not taken any water in nearly two. There was water in his trough and a joint of meat just beside his beak, but he ignored them.

His captors had tried to make him eat and had even attempted to force food into his beak, but they had failed. He had only hissed and cursed at them, and tried to attack. When he caught one of them with his beak and ripped a deep wound in its side, they had finally left him alone.

“You must eat,” Aeya said softly. “You will weaken and be unable to fight.”

Darkheart didn’t answer her. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in nearly a week. He had even stopped bashing his beak on the bars, and he had ceased his evening call. He lay on his belly, making no sound or motion other than the slow in-out of his sides, and the faint rumble of his breathing. His eyes stared straight ahead, not turning to follow movement as they normally would, as if he had gone blind.

Now they were fixed on the moon. He could just see it over the wall of the enclosure, shining out of the darkness. The light reflected in his eyes and he blinked slowly, just once. There was a strange feeling inside him, and it was not hunger or fear or pain, or even despair. It was in his throat, ice-cold, burning hot, powerful and maddening. The imprisoned scream was resting just behind his tongue, trapped and striving to be free and yet refusing to come out. Unable to emerge from his beak, it spread back into the rest of his body, filling him with its energy. Strange mutterings and whisperings sounded in his ears, and vague visions flitted before his eyes. He thought he could see the shape of a human standing there, and a griffin as well, and a pale mist. His eyes ached, and still the feeling stayed with him. It was like the hunger in his stomach, but he knew food would not make it go away. It infused his fur and feathers, and the skin and muscle beneath, not painful and yet so powerful that it made his vision waver.

He started to tremble. The feeling turned and gnashed in his throat until he felt as if he was suffocating, and he opened his beak wide, trying desperately to rid himself of it. But it would not leave him and he kept his neck arched, head held out rigidly, beak wide open, until saliva slowly started to drip from its tip.

But still the feeling would not leave. It grew and grew until he began to feel nauseated and then, quite suddenly, he started to bash his head against the wall of his cage. Stars exploded in his eyes, but he kept on doing it, harder and harder, until his beak cracked and he slumped back, panting. The feeling slowly faded away, and he sighed a deep, exhausted sigh and slipped into a fitful sleep.

A
rough hand shook Arren awake.

“What?”

“C’mon, get up,” said a voice. “Time to go.”

Arren sat up. He was stiff and sore, shivering in the cold wind. He didn’t even remember having fallen asleep, but he found himself lying in the middle of the cage floor with a pair of guards standing by and watching him impatiently.

He got up, supporting the collar with his hand. “What—what’s going on?”

“It’s nearly noon,” said a guard. “They’re expecting you.”

“Who are?”

“The people at the Arena, idiot. Want something to eat before you go?”

Arren’s insides started churning. “No—can I have some water?”

The guard picked up a jar of water that was sitting by the door and gave it to him, saying, “Hurry up.”

Arren drank deeply, not caring when the water spilt out over his face and soaked into his beard. It made the wound on his face sting a little, but he didn’t bother to dry it off. He gave the jar back to the guard, who tossed it aside and produced a pair of manacles. “Hold out your arms.”

Arren obeyed, and his wrists were chained together once more. “I’m not going to try and run away,” he said.

The guard ignored him. He and his colleague took him by the shoulders and shoved him out of the cage and onto the platform, and he walked stiffly between them toward the guard post. Bran was not there any more—his shift must have ended—and Arren was taken through the stone entrance and into a small cave. It was fairly dry inside and well lit by torches. Arren had expected there to be a staircase in there, but there wasn’t. Instead there was a wooden platform, like a miniature version of the lifters all over the city. The guards walked him onto it and then one of them pulled a hanging length of rope. A bell rang from somewhere in the darkness above them, and a few moments later the platform jerked once and began to rise.

Arren, seeking desperately for something else to occupy his mind, decided that this system must have been devised to make it harder for prisoners to escape. The cages were utterly exposed, with no secret crannies where things could be concealed and no way of hiding from the guards. And even if a prisoner managed to get out, he would be trapped on the platform with no way up or down except for this small lifter, which, when Arren and his escort reached it, turned out to be very well guarded at the top. There was a room carved into the rock, manned by several attentive guards and sealed off by not one but two metal gratings, both of which were locked from the outside.

A guard was waiting for them, and once he had examined them briefly he unlocked the grate and let Arren and his two comrades come through into the chamber. The grate was locked behind them, and one of Arren’s guards showed a piece of paper to those in the chamber. One of them glanced at it and then nodded and let them go toward the second grate, which led out of the chamber. The pair of guards on the other side also checked the paper, and then let them through.

After that there were stairs, which took them up to the level of the city. From there they passed through the main building of the prison district. There were more checkpoints and locked gates to pass through, and the document—no doubt some kind of official form stating the reasons for Arren’s removal—was displayed several more times before they finally reached a large pair of wooden gates studded with nails, and passed through them into the Arena. There, Arren was placed in a small cell under the stands, one that was rank with terrified sweat.

There was a bench there, at least, and he sat down and tried to breathe deeply as the guards departed, leaving him alone. Food was brought to him a short time later, but he didn’t eat it. From somewhere far above him, he could hear the noise of the crowd.

He was not left alone for very long. After a while he saw movement on the other side of one of the two cell doors, and Sefer arrived, followed by Orome. He was clad in red and looked a little sombre, but excited as well.

“Good morning, Arren. How are you?”

Arren only stared at him.

Orome sighed. “I’m sorry about this, Arren, but it was your choice. Now, you requested—actually,
demanded
, from what I’m told—to fight Darkheart in the Arena today, on your own. Well, I’ve come to tell you that we’ve decided to go ahead with it. All the arrangements have been made. It’ll be just you and him in the pit.”

“Good,” said Arren.

Orome nodded. “Okay, I’m fairly sure that’s all I had to say. We’re ready to take you out of here. Is there anything you want to know before we go ahead?”

Arren thought it over. “What happens if I kill it?”

If Orome thought the question was ridiculous, he didn’t show it. “Well, the standard procedure then is to let you go free. It’s a little silly, now I think about it—we certainly won’t be setting the griffin free if he kills you, but there you go, I suppose. Is there anything else?”

“What weapons will I have?” said Arren.

“A spear,” said Orome. “It’s the best thing for fighting a griffin; you can keep well away from the thing’s talons while you’re stabbing at it.” He looked past him, at the door on the opposite side of the cell. “They’re here. Good luck, Arren.”