Of Gryphons and Other Monsters (Taryn's Journey Book 1) Page 27

  “We are not wrong, boy.” There was no malice in Aedith’s intonation. Rather, something like pity shaded her eyes. “We have seen a great deal more of the world than you have. You have been duped—and duped proper.”

  Tears welled up in Michael’s eyes as despair or frustration gripped him. Perhaps there was still part of him that was … him. My own eyes watered, causing my vision to blur. Consequently, it was a smeared version of Zehya that I saw strolling towards me. Hurriedly I wiped my tears away with the back of my hands.

  “Michael,” Aella growled in warning, her crossbow leveling on Zehya.

  “I’m not doing anything,” Michael said hurriedly. “Zehya, leave off!”

  Zehya ignored him, and her gaze locked with mine. Something like a static shock, but bigger, ‘zinged’ through my chest. Somehow, for the first time since I had found Michael’s notes, I was unafraid. I could feel Zehya’s thoughts. There was something like the lightness of falling snow in my mind, and inside of that, a jangling note of discord.

  I kept one hand on the ground for balance and raised the other, signaling for Aella to wait. She made a noise of displeasure, but I didn’t dare take my eyes away from the gryphon. Zehya was a foot away from me when she stopped and sat, looking expectantly at me.

  Tentatively, not believing what was happening, but seemingly compelled to do so. I reached out and cupped Zehya’s beak in my free hand. It was cool, and tacky with sheep blood. I did my best to ignore that last bit.

  I was having the strange feeling of realizing the buzzing noise had been gradually becoming louder the longer I had been in the clearing. It was in my mind, not my ears, as I had previously thought. Touching the gryphon crystallized that knowledge. I thought—no, I knew—it had some sort of connection between Zehya, Michael, and myself.

  Sweat dripped down my back. This was as harebrained as anything I’d ever done, but I couldn’t pull back now. The contact confirmed what I had suspected: the snow that I had sensed was Zehya, and the uneven note ringing throughout it was Michael.

  “What’s happening?” Aella muttered. Aedith hushed her.

  Thoughts that were not my own told me the jangling note confused Zehya. It filled her with a fury that was foreign to her. She wished to be free of it. Or perhaps that part was me who wished to take it away from her. I couldn’t tell. These thoughts were less distinct than words; they were more like feelings, and they flowed between the two of us with no clear beginning or end.

  What I could tell was that Michael’s will was imposed over hers. The more I exposed my mind to hers the more I could feel it. My breath hissed in. It wasn’t just uncomfortable. It was wrong. What was more was that I was certain what she was feeling—what I was feeling—was constant. This jangling note was not something she felt because of a direct order.

  I let myself glance at Michael for a moment. Even from this distance, I could see that his eyes were dark. The black of his pupils nearly overwhelmed the hazel. A jolt leapt through my heart at the malice in his eyes when he looked back at me. How long had he been like this?

  Zehya made a questioning hoot, calling my attention back to the more pressing issue. Taken aback, I realized she hadn’t just hooted. Through our bond, she had asked me a question. I bit my lip.

  “I don’t know,” I told her honestly, speaking out loud. I didn’t know if she could understand my words as well as my intentions, but I also had no idea how to direct my thoughts at her in that way. I turned my eyes up to Aedith. “I think she believes that I can help her… That I’m,” I grimaced, “that I’m like Michael, or connected to him somehow. Do you—”

  Michael made a choking noise that was something like a scornful laugh. It seemed that this revelation was too much for his pride, even if he was being aimed at by more than a handful of weapons.

  “Never mind that you absolutely can’t wield the forces I do, but you ask the mercenary to tell you how? Zehya—Zehya, come to me,” his voice was half a coo and half an order. His skin seemed to become even more sallow as he spoke. It was as though whatever he was doing was draining his body of strength that it did not possess.

  Zehya’s eyes rolled backward in their sockets. Her body shuddered, turning like a puppet on strings towards my brother. Even though this broke my physical contact with the gryphon, in that same moment, pain lanced through my own skull. It did not take a trained mage to understand that it was tied to what he was doing to Zehya to procure her obedience.

  “Stop it!” I gasped, clutching my forehead. “Michael stop!”

  He did stop, causing the gryphon to collapse onto the earth, but it had nothing to do with compassion for me or for Zehya. Another bolt protruded from his opposite shoulder. He screamed in pain, sinking to the ground, unable to lift his arms high enough to use the edge of the cart to ease his fall. I glanced wildly about for the origin as he gingerly touched his newest wound.

  Kaleb gave a small wave, baring his teeth in a humorless grin. “We mercenaries might not have all the knowledge of great mages, but we know enough to shoot the mage.”

  I couldn’t smile back, despite the immediate cessation of the agony in my head. Michael was making a guttural noise, panting in pain. My heart went out to him. I didn’t know how he had gotten to this point, but a part of me felt as though I should have seen it and stopped him. Whatever was happening here I knew there had to be an outside force guiding it. My twin was many things, but he had always loved me, just as I loved him. Perhaps it wasn’t too late. If anything could jar him out of this mad state, I’d have thought a few bolts to the chest would do it.

  “You’ll all pay dearly for this. I swear it,” he spat, ruining those optimistic thoughts. “Taryn, you had best enjoy your time with Zehya while it lasts. She’ll be feasting on you soon enough and then I’ll be—”

  “Shut it,” Aedith said sharply. “Or I will shut it for you. We have been incredibly lenient with you. However, make no mistake, you are living on borrowed time. If you move to exert your control over the gryphon one more time, I will put you down.” He gaped at her like a fish, but she was already looking at me. “It is possible that you can do something to help this creature… but it is something that I’ve no experience in. Ito!” To me she said, “Ito is our battle mage. Good for things we don’t want to waste our healer on.”

  Down from a tree behind where my brother sat, swung one of the men I had seen the night Beth had been bludgeoned. He was tall and svelte, with fair skin and dark eyes; his black hair was pulled back into a low pony tail. Ito gave Aedith a mocking smile. “This thing you want done is actually almost like a healing. I can maybe guide this task, but only if the beast will let me.”

  Two other mercenaries made their way to Michael and began the process of hobbling him and removing the bolts from his shoulders. He cursed them and me and the gods above and below. Once more Zehya had the confused, dazed look of returning to control of her own body. Seeing Michael struggling pathetically against the mercenaries, she snarled and took a step forward. Her bond with Michael, incomplete as it was still insisted she defend him.

  Without meaning to, I lurched forward, burying my fingers in the feathery mane around her shoulders. “Be at ease,” the words came unbidden, and out loud they sounded like a language I had never heard before. Long vowels, and deep tones. I felt power ripple through them, “This conflict is not about you.” Zehya turned back to me; her eye lids drooped, and slowly she lowered to her belly. Finally, her head dropped onto her paws.

  Ito rested a hand on my shoulder, and I flinched in surprise, withdrawing from Zehya clumsily. Sparing him a wan smile at my own jumpiness, I gently reached out to touch the gryphon’s energy once more. Instantly, my mind was flooded to the point of being overfull with the thoughts and feelings of another creature. She was frightened. Images of the crossbows and the grim faces of the mercenaries, slightly distorted to appear more monstrous from Zehya’s perspective poured into my mind like a flood. Looming behind them all was what must have been Michael, a hu
man, swamped in an inky darkness much bigger than himself.

  I sat back on my heels, dumbfounded. The villagers had paid a hefty sum for the death of this gryphon, and regardless of why she caused the destruction, gryphons were never friends of mountain folk. If Master Noland had been the one to command her capture, would he care to collect her, even if Michael himself was unable to deliver her?

  “If you return to the mountains, my people will not harm you.” Ito said this out loud, but I also felt it ring precisely through my mind. Once again, the words didn’t sound like the common tongue, but I understood them. Zehya did not appear impressed.

  “You can hear her? You can speak to her?” I asked, excitement coursing through my body.

  “I hear her through you,” he said simply, eyes still on the great beast in front of us.

  I looked from Ito, to Aedith, to Aella. “Why can I hear her at all?”

  Ito looked at Michael with disapproval. “Your parents told Aedith the two of you are not mage born, but your brother wields magic. His notes indicated you were to be a substitution for a self-sacrifice. He planned to erect a ward. As you walked through, you were hooked into the ritual. It is likely that you share his link with the gryphon because of that. Sloppy.” Michael glowered at him, gagged and blessedly silent.

  I sensed a swelling of animosity from Zehya. She was more intelligent than a normal animal, and she was listening. She shifted as though planning to rise. My throat tightened. “My brother will face the justice of our people,” I said in that strange tongue.

  She mulled that over, her tail swishing unhappily. It seemed I could speak to her, and she was able to reason. She also didn’t hate me as she did Michael. Still, she could decide she didn’t want to talk, and I couldn’t compel her, as Michael did. I didn’t know how. I felt my heart jitter at that thought. If she decided to turn on us, she’d lose the fight overall, but Ito and I were closest to her claws.

  “It is the way of our people,” Ito said firmly, and she snorted, glaring at him. A short staring match ensued. If I hadn’t been close enough to Ito to smell the sweat under his green tunic, I’d have thought he was in a battle of wills with a kitten, not a gryphon. Regardless, it was Zehya who looked away. Ito took a moment before he cleared his throat. “Are we ready? Michael must be taken to the town to face trial and see those wounds properly tended.”

  My heart was racing too fast. This was nonsense. I was no mage. We should be trying to get Michael to see reason. He could fix this if only he’d come to his senses. I screwed my eyes shut against the mad scene in front of me.

  “It’s ok.” Aella whispered. “It’s going to be ok. Just breathe.”

  I opened my eyes; she was crouching next to me, crossbow still at the ready. I took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. She and the rest of the mercenaries were relying on me to unhook this deadly predator from my brother’s control. If I could do that, then no one else needed to get hurt. Not here, and not in the village. It was the least I could do to make up for what Michael had done. I nodded to her. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Part of me was scared the strange language would come from me rather than common tongue. I could feel something humming inside of me, begging to burst out.

  I didn’t have any frame of reference for what I was about to do, but I sensed Ito would know what needed to be removed and would be doing most of the removal. If I was understanding properly, Ito merely needed me to touch Zeyha’s mind since Michael’s magic connected us. I took a deep, shaky breath and opened myself to both of them, one hand on Zehya, Ito’s hand on my shoulder.

  Behind my eyelids was bright yellowish-white light. Draw that into you, I can’t see. That was Ito. Speaking in my mind. Panic bubbled up, and I tamped it down. Mentally I gripped the edges of my own light—sheep and the fields, wood shavings, the smell of hay and leather. Yes, that’s right. Like a cloak, he encouraged me. I drew it closer to myself. With it more tightly compressed I could better see that which was Zehya. The snow, and pine trees; the sky and that harsh jangling.

  Does everyone have this? I asked. My mind’s voice was tinged with awe.

  Ito chuckled from his physical body. Yes, to some extent or other. Make no mistake, you are no mage. You cannot take the earth’s magic and work it. Michael stole the strength of other living beings to connect to the well of power. Otherwise what he wanted to accomplish would have killed him. Because he is a novice he allowed some of that stolen magic to leak into you through the connection he forged in order to make a sacrifice of you.

  Explanation complete, I felt Ito step through me and into Zehya. The discord within the snow moved back from him, then returned to batter against him. I sensed a grimace in his next thoughts. Nasty thing wants to bind me too. Greedy.

  Can I help?

  No, stay as you are.

  Ito was a true mage. Wherever he set about it, the discord could not stand against him for more than a few moments. Like a soothing wave he rolled through Zehya’s being, driving the foreign energy out of her and into another metaphysical hand where it gathered, an inky darkness.

  “Here comes the tricky bit,” he said out loud as he came upon the last bit of wrongness. “Everyone, weapons up. She’s about to be unbound.”

  All around us there was the soft sounds of mercenaries shifting into fighting stances. Those behind her moved to give her room to exit.

  “Warn her,” Aella whispered to us. “Make sure she knows we don’t want to stop her.”

  I waited for Ito to say something to the gryphon, but he seemed to be waiting on me. Hesitantly, I reached out and spoke to her, with my mind, as I had with Ito. You’re about to be free. Go home. Let us deal with the man who bound you. No one will stop you. I promise. Turn and run home. Don’t look back.

  There was a swelling of excitement from Zehya. I was frightened to open my eyes and leave the strange space I was suspended in, which wasn’t quite on the same plane as the forest clearing. This was a gamble, but she deserved the chance to live. It wasn’t her fault that Michael had roped her into this mess. I just hoped she wouldn’t decide to eat me instead.

  “Do it.” I said.

  Zehya screeched triumphantly when the last bit of Michael’s magic left her. I opened my eyes as she reared back on her hind legs, her impressive wings beating hard. They came so close to my face that they almost grazed me. Then she was wheeling away from us, her amber eyes scanning the clearing. Searching for a target or a way out? For a breath, her gaze locked on Michael. I saw his eyes widen in terror, and he tried to scoot backward on his bottom, but the mercenaries behind him blocked his retreat.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, waiting for the sound of her pouncing on him. It never came. When I opened my eyes again, she was gone. I realized I was crying. With shaking fingers, I brushed the tears away. I was alive. We were all alive. I shook my head at Ito in dumbfounded relief.

  “We’re not done yet,” he reminded me. “It is likely the magic that has bled into you will dissipate, but it is probably best to gather it up with the rest while we are thinking of it.” He spoke as though the errant blood magic was simple tidying that needed done.

  Trusting him, I shut my eyes once more. “Ok, what do I do?”

  In a flash, Ito had rejoined me in my mind. With the presence of his experience, I could more clearly feel the layers of the magic that sang through my veins. The magic itself was pure, like boiling spring water, but Michael’s energy and the blood magic he had used sat like a film over top of it. I shuddered. It was gross.

  Not to worry, Ito said. Now that the imminent threat of being mauled by a gryphon had passed, his mind’s voice was much more relaxed, though slightly tired. I wondered how much strength it had taken to undo Michael’s working. The magic is like a bit of gauze running through you. Michael has pinned it in place. All that needs done is to take hold of the pin, and draw the whole thing out, and put it with the rest of the magic he used on Zehya, so that I can take it apart.

  As he spoke, Ito reached out to gr
asp the magic that coated me. When he pulled at it, it was as though a floodgate had been opened. But something was wrong, and we both realized it too late. Rather than the magic in me being pulled to join what he had already gathered, the magic he had gathered from Zehya rushed into me.

  I shrieked and clapped my hands over my ears. The buzzing roared within them. It felt like lightning was in my veins. I couldn’t breathe. I opened my eyes, but I couldn’t see past the bright light that covered my vision. I squeezed them shut again—or at least I thought I did, but the blinding light was inside my eyelids too. It felt like my skin was blistering but from the inside.

  My body was convulsing. I could hear people yelling but I couldn’t understand what was being said. Impossible as it was, the light was in my ears. I could hear screaming and I knew by the roughness of my throat that it was me screaming. I couldn’t bear it. No one could take this pain. It was too much.

  Then, all at once cool, delicious darkness replaced the fire that had been consuming me. My breathing was shallow. I didn’t dare move for fear of breaking the silence in my own head. I realized I could feel my pulse once more in my scraped palms. I was laid flat on my stomach on the cool earth. I could feel the grit of the dirt under my cheek. I could hear my own breath. I could hear someone else’s breath. I opened my eyes. Aella was crouched beside me, her face a mask of fear.

  “Taryn?” she asked tentatively. “Can you hear me?”

  “What?” I croaked. “What happened?” I attempted to sit up, and she moved forward to help me. I noticed a split second of hesitation from her before she touched me.

  To my left, Belinda was propping up Ito. He was haggard, sweat dripping down his face and soaking his tunic. He looked like I felt.

  “I’m so sorry Taryn. I never thought—I didn’t expect …” His voice sounded raw. I wondered if he had been screaming too.

  “The magic reacted in a way he did not expect,” Belinda explained, handing him a flask. “Both of you are lucky to be alive.”