The Golden Griffin (Book 3) Read online

  “All our other sisters are married.”

  “The sultan won’t know that. Father didn’t have as many children as the sultan does, but he had enough. There is no chance that Mufashe knows them all. I’ll present him with a beautiful, charming alternative.”

  Kallia considered. The plan had merit, providing they could find someone to pretend she was a member of the Saffa family who could act the part. “Who did you have in mind?”

  Her sister gestured over her shoulder at one of her servants, who were dressing themselves and gathering Marialla’s pillows and oils.

  “Fashima. Come here.” A woman came around the pool to stand behind Marialla’s shoulder. “This is Fashima, the daughter of Vizier Youd.”

  A storm of emotions swept over Kallia. She remembered drowning, fighting against the hands that forced her head under into the pool that day in the gardens. This woman had been chief among Kallia’s tormentors.

  Fashima bowed her head. “I serve in your name, oh Jewel of the West.” Her voice trembled.

  “Now is the time when you prove me right or wrong,” Marialla said, not to her servant girl, but to her sister.

  Kallia said nothing. Her anger burned in some deep place that would be hard to quench.

  “I assured Fashima that whatever history you had,” Marialla said, “you’d forgive her. Dismiss her indiscretions.”

  “Do you have any idea what she did to me?”

  “I do. I wouldn’t suggest Fashima, but she is my best servant. Intelligent and loyal—yes, loyal. She will serve you well, too.”

  “This is true,” Fashima said in a near whisper. She was shaking visibly now. “Khalifa, may you live forever.”

  “You know what Marialla intends for you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then why agree? If you marry the sultan, you’ll be no better than his slave. It will take years to earn a higher place in his harem.”

  “The dark wizard took my father to Veyre. My two brothers were captains of the guardsmen, imprisoned by Mol Khah. Your revolt freed them, and they march with the barbarians to war. I want nothing more than they do, but to serve Balsalom. To serve you, my khalifa.”

  “Serve me?” Kallia’s tone turned sharp. “After what you did?”

  “The stresses of the palace environment overwhelmed me.”

  “Stresses? What stresses? You tried to kill me!”

  Anguish clouded Fashima’s face.

  “Let her explain,” Marialla said.

  “I couldn’t stand the pressure,” Fashima said. “The etiquette teachers, the way everyone reminded me what a minor vizier my father was. That I was destined to be a servant of the rich and powerful. I thought to marry your brother and escape that fate, but he cast me aside.”

  “I grew up in that same environment,” Kallia said. “I know the order they forced us into. It was a strange place, and we were only girls, barely older than children.”

  She shook her head. “But I can’t excuse what you did. How do I know you’ve changed? This is the fate of Balsalom I’m putting into your hands.”

  “I have changed. If only you’ll give me a chance, I’ll prove it. Please, I beg you.”

  Kallia still felt uneasy. “Marialla, you must trust Fashima to recommend her to my service.”

  “I do. I would trust her with my life.”

  “I only wish to serve you,” Fashima said. “Please let me prove it.”

  “Very well. You will have your opportunities. I truly hope you have changed.” She rested her hand briefly on Fashima’s arm. “The Spice Road will be long and the journey tiring. My sister could use a friend. Come, Marialla, the heat is exhausting me.”

  Chapter Six

  “I was very clear,” Daria told her mother. “I told you in no uncertain terms not to follow me.”

  “And I told you if you didn’t come back before dark I was going to fly out looking for you.”

  Palina Flockheart said this with her back turned. She was undressed and wading into the mountain stream. The stream coursed a steep path beneath fallen, moss-covered logs and spilled down cascades into little pools. When she found a spot of relative calm, she sat with a gasp and let the water flow over her.

  Daria watched her mother bathe with her hands on her hips and her lips pinched together. Even after several hours of sleep beneath a griffin’s warm wing she was struggling to let go of her anger. At last she unlaced her jerkin and slipped out of her trousers and shirt. The warm sun mixed with the cold air to prick deliciously at her bare skin. It was bracing, yes, but she didn’t see how flatlanders could prefer their stifling rooms filled with smoke.

  She waded into the stream, shivered at the icy water that swirled around her calves. Soon it came up to her knees. The current tugged at her feet, tried to drag her away. When she reached the calmer water near her mother, she sat down and leaned back until only her mouth and nose were above the surface. The brook swirled through her hair and over her body, washing away dirt and sweat and the thick odor of griffin that clung to her. She closed her eyes and let her mind drift away on the gurgle of the water that rushed past her ears.

  When she rose, stiff and numb, but gloriously clean and refreshed, her mother was already on the riverbank, brushing her hair while the sun and breeze dried her body. When Daria regained the shore, Palina handed her the brush.

  “So that boy was your flatlander,” Palina said as she dressed. “What’s his name again?”

  “Darik. Don’t you think he’s handsome?”

  “I suppose so, if you like that look. There’s something funny about their eyes, don’t you think?”

  “I like his eyes. They’re pretty.”

  “I thought you said he wanted you.”

  “I thought he did,” Daria said.

  The encounter atop the tower keep had confused her. Daria had no talent in reading people, and was so clumsy when it came to such matters that she had only just refrained from leaping into his arms. The last time she’d seen Darik she’d as good as told him that she wanted to throw him to the ground and take him. He had not seemed uninterested.

  So why had he been so reserved this time? Was she wrong about his feelings? He’d promised they’d raise griffins together. There was no way to misinterpret that. In some families that was as good as a betrothal.

  Maybe it was her lie to Darik, that silly bit about Palina trying to mate a white-crowned griffin with one of its wild cousins. The truth was, Daria hadn’t wanted to explain her mother’s absence, not just from Father’s tower, but from the battles in the Free Kingdoms. And, if Daria was honest with herself, she hadn’t trusted her mother to behave around a young man from the flatlands. With good reason, as it turned out.

  “They’re different people,” her mother said. “Especially the ones from the khalifates. They are accustomed to cities and crowds and noise. And the people of the plains and valleys have thin, hot blood. He wouldn’t last long in the mountains.”

  “Then I’ll live with him in the lowlands.”

  Palina laughed. “You would melt like an icicle in spring, my daughter.”

  Daria handed back the brush with a scowl, then pulled on her clothes. She laced her boots, still feeling grumpy. And yet she was afraid that her mother was right.

  By the time the two women returned to the clearing where they’d nested for the evening, Joffa and Yuli were squawking with hunger and tugging at the tethers that kept them tied to a thick maple tree. They could easily break or tear the leather straps, but knew this would earn them a scolding.

  The women turned the pair loose while they ate a cold breakfast of dried berries and deer jerky. The griffins returned about twenty minutes later quarreling over what turned out to be a goat with a bell around its neck, eviscerated by dagger-sharp talons.

  “Joffa,” Daria said sternly. “I told you not to do that. And Yuli, aren’t you old enough to know better? I’m disappointed in both of you.”

  Joffa looked momentarily ashamed, but quickly returne
d to squabbling with Yuli over the raw meat. They tore it limb from limb and gulped down legs, innards, even head and horns.

  “Really? You can’t even act guilty about it?”

  “They’re hunters,” Palina said. “You can’t deny them meat.”

  “They don’t need to pluck it from someone’s herd, terrifying the poor shepherd at the same time.”

  “It’s a small price for them to pay. We keep their skies clear of enemies. Besides, it might have taken all morning to hunt for venison. We don’t have the time.”

  Palina was watching the griffins eat. Suddenly, she cocked her head, raptor-like, then snatched a steaming chunk of raw meat before the griffins could gulp it all. She bit off a piece and smacked her lips as she chewed.

  “Now you’re just making a point,” Daria said. “Fine, give me some.”

  When they were done and the griffins had settled down, Daria checked her swords, a pair of light, graceful blades, their edges and points sharp enough to pierce the armor of a dragon wasp. She checked tethers and knots, then dressed in her fur cloak and gloves.

  Soon, the two griffins and their riders were aloft. Daria led, allowing Joffa to stretch his wings as they climbed the side of the mountain. They soared over meadows and a glimmering mountain lake, scattering a flock of ducks that had settled for a break on their southern migration.

  They flew over the crest of the mountains, where it was so cold that Daria’s breath coalesced into ice crystals around the edge of her hood. Coming down the other side, they passed over the remains of an ancient hill kingdom, its ruined castles and overgrown roads only visible from the air. The Swansins had aeries hidden in this area. They were an extended family of a dozen or so adults, plus their children and griffins. They would fly out in an emergency—had fought over Eriscoba, in fact—but otherwise kept to themselves. The Swansins lived so far north that the forests beyond their lands were broken only by rocky hills and the towering thrust of the massif above and to the left.

  Autumn stained the north country with brilliant hues of gold and red. Above the hardwood forests, the middle altitudes were the rich green of pine and fir, while snow topped the highest peaks.

  Daria’s mother flew alongside and made a series of hand signals. Look up and to the left.

  A sliver of burned forest, two or three miles long and a few hundred yards wide, marked a charred wedge that stretched from the hills up the mountainside. The drier, leeward side occasionally suffered forest fires, but the burn pattern was strange. Coming lower, Daria saw that some trees had burned to charred stumps, but others had only lost their crowns, leaving the lower branches unscathed. It was as if fire had lashed them from the sky.

  Daria made her own signal. A dragon.

  She scanned for wasps and their riders. A dragon was a huge, fearsome beast, the match for a dozen griffins, but they spent most of their lives asleep, rarely rousing from a profound, almost unwakeable slumber except to feed and pillage. And to lay eggs, of course. Anywhere you found a dragon, it was generally watched by the larval form, dragon wasps, and their riders, the dragon kin. But Daria saw nothing.

  The women brought their griffins in among the charred trees to keep away from watchful eyes. The air stank of ash and smoke, and here and there the trees still smoldered. Sweat stood out on Daria’s brow. Joffa pulled higher, and she only kept him down with some effort.

  There was something else in the air as well. A hint of sulfur. A vibrating hum, like the earth itself rumbling. Daria’s heart thumped a nervous beat, like a sparrow fluttering in her hands. The dragon was near.

  She caught her mother’s eye and gave her the hand signal to look for cover. Moments later, they landed the griffins at the base of a cliff where fallen boulders had collected in a jumble. The loose rock and scree kept the slope free of trees, and therefore free of the dead, burned forest and the suffocating heat. Unfortunately, the boulders kept them only partially hidden from enemies in the air. Someone flying directly overhead would spot them easily.

  Daria and Palina hushed their griffins, coaxed them onto their haunches, and squeezed them between the rocks the best they could. The women pulled their hoods up, took to the shadows, and looked down the mountain. The rock-strewn hillside cut steeply for forty or fifty yards before it became burned trees. The stretch below them had charred to stumps and opened a view all the way to the plains, three or four thousand feet below.

  “Can you feel it?” Daria asked.

  “The rumbling ground? Yes. There must be a cave nearby.”

  “Two caves. The dragons aren’t together.”

  Palina pursed her lips. “How can you be sure? Maybe the battle is for show.”

  “Father said that two adult dragons can never live together.”

  “Be skeptical of your father’s dragonlore. Some of it was speculation. The rest came from oral histories and old letters. Before this year we hadn’t faced a full-grown dragon for generations.”

  “It wasn’t just Father. Markal doesn’t think the fighting is for show, either.” Daria shared the wizard’s strange reaction when she’d told him that the dragons had been battling in the mountains.

  “Even so, that doesn’t validate your father’s speculation.”

  “He’s dead, Mother. There’s no need to criticize him anymore.”

  Palina touched her daughter’s hand. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

  Daria’s irritation dissipated like frost in sunlight. She held her mother’s hand for a long moment before they separated and turned their attention to the burned hillside.

  The rumbling grew in intensity. It wasn’t loud, but it was deep and penetrating, reaching into Daria’s bones and making her jaw ache. The stink of sulfur filled her nostrils and coated her mouth until she wanted to spit. Her instincts told her to jump on Joffa’s back and flee and it was only with effort that she kept from doing just that. The griffins crouched in silence, as if terrified by some ancestral memory that warned them that their most deadly enemy was nearby.

  A dark shape appeared against the sky, huge, its wings spread, its coat of blackened scales thick and formidable. Heat shimmered in the air as it passed.

  It was at least eighty feet from its snout to the tip of its tail. Its head alone looked big enough to swallow a griffin whole. By the Brothers, had it been so big two months ago? Had she really faced such a monster in open combat? Fear burrowed into her gut.

  It soared down over the hillside and disappeared. Daria let out her breath. A shiver worked its way through her body.

  “We’ve seen enough,” Palina said in a low voice. She sounded shaken. She started to rise, but immediately ducked back down.

  The dragon reappeared in the sky, this time above them on the mountainside. All it had to do was turn its eye a fraction and it would spot them. Would it roast them alive, or swoop down to tear griffins and riders apart for its breakfast? Daria made to spring for her swords, still tied to Joffa. Grant her one sword thrust before she fell, that was all she could hope.

  The dragon flew overhead, then landed on the burned hillside below. It swung its monstrous, knobby head from side to side. Searching. Its nostrils flared and contracted. Smoke dribbled from its mouth and nose. It roared.

  The roar was a clap of thunder that rolled over the hillside. Daria slapped her hands over her ears until the terrible noise passed. Then came an answering bellow, this one from the earth beneath her feet.

  A second dragon crawled out of the hillside no more than twenty feet to their left. A choking cloud of sulfur rolled over the hillside as it emerged and spread its wings. Daria grabbed her mother’s hand and squeezed. The entrance to the cave holding the second beast had been concealed among the boulders only twenty feet from where they hid. When it was out, it stomped toward the first dragon, smoking and bellowing and lashing its tail.

  The second dragon was smaller than the first, although it would have looked terrifying enough if it hadn’t been facing off against a dragon that was even lar
ger and heavier. It had a single, sharpened horn on its head, as long as Daria’s forearm. The bigger dragon, in comparison, carried twin horns that curved like scimitars. The head of the smaller beast was narrower, but with longer, more wicked-looking teeth. It was black like the first, but when it turned in the sun, it shimmered almost indigo blue. Both animals had scars and scratches along their sides, some healed completely, perhaps wounds from the battle at the Citadel, but others fresh scratches.

  The dragons stood a dozen paces off, snapping, sending gouts of smoke and fire, and lashing at each other with their tails, these being covered with dozens of spikes. The struggle was largely feinting and testing blows at first, but gradually increased in ferocity. The smaller dragon backed toward its cave as if intimidated into returning to its lair. But it had only been gaining distance; when it had some, it launched into the sky. The bigger dragon lifted after it.

  The beasts had none of the swift acceleration of a griffin, or its maneuverability, but once airborne, their powerful wings carried them swiftly over the mountain. The larger dragon gave pursuit for a stretch, and when it had almost caught up, the smaller banked, twisting and rolling. It lashed with its tail as the larger dragon passed and struck the other beast across the belly. A bellow of rage rolled over the mountainside. The bigger dragon disgorged a huge ball of fire, which drove the other one back.

  The dragons disappeared to the north, but their roars could still be heard. After a few minutes, the sound had moved higher on the mountainside, above the two women and their griffins.

  “You were right,” Palina said. “It’s not for show, it’s real.”

  “Yes, but why?”

  “They are powerful, wicked beasts. Hard to control. The dark wizard fled to Veyre. His minions are free to pillage and destroy as they will. Or settle old grudges. They hate each other—what else?”

  It was a simple answer, but Daria wasn’t sure she agreed. If her mother’s explanation held, it could only be a good thing. Two dragons battling each other left the griffin riders valuable time to gather their forces and prepare a defense or even a preemptive attack. But Markal had been visibly alarmed when Daria told him that the dragons were fighting. Whatever was going on here, the wizard thought it was a bad thing.