The Sheening Of The Blades (Book 1) (43 page)

             
Like the throne room, which had been so exotic, so ornate, that Ari wasn’t sure he hadn’t imagined it, their breakfast room sat at the edge of the cave system.  A carved, twining railing kept anyone from casually plunging over the edge, and the view of the falls, the birds swooping through its mist as the sun came up…well, it was slightly different than what Ari had envisioned when he’d heard ‘city.’

             
Loren sighed happily next to him—and he wasn’t gazing at the view either, at least not the view outside.  He’d never thought he’d see his Cyrrhidean princess again, and here he was eating breakfast with her.  Rodge looked at Ari, who thought Loren was being a little obvious, not to mention pathetic, and rolled his eyeballs.  Fortunately, the Skyprincess seemed too enervated to notice more than one thing at a time, currently fruit juice. 

             
Cerise finally ventured carefully, “It is a great honor to be here, Highness, and to, er, share your company.”

             
“The honor’s all mine,” the Princess sighed, so disinterested that the diplomacy on Cerise’s features slipped a little.  “It’s a rare thing for Northerners to brave the wilds of Cyrrh.”

             
“It wasn’t our idea,” Rodge told her baldly.  If he thought rudeness would get a sign of life where courtesy failed, he was disappointed.  Ari frowned at him anyway.  Rodge’s mouth had gotten them in enough trouble on this trip.  Loren just sat, blue eyes obliviously fixed on his true love, chewing happily at his ninth little hard-boiled, blue-shelled egg.

             
“The Dra got in shortly after your party retired last night,” she commented into the awkward silence and the Northerners all looked up brightly.  How they’d missed
him
these past few weeks.

             
“Dra Kai?” Ari asked.

             
“There’s only one Dra,” she answered cryptically, dully lifting a tiny piece of sweetbread to her mouth.  Rodge watched her drolly—there’d be no end of comments later, Ari was sure.  She was fascinating, he had to admit, and not just because it had been weeks since they’d seen a girl.  Technically, she should have been a breathtaking beauty.  Her face was delicate and elfin, with soft cupid’s-bow lips and fine brows like pale gold arching over the clear, sage-green eyes.  But there was no character to her face, no light or life.  She was like a doll or a statue.

             
The mannequin shocked them all by saying next, “There’ll be a Circle of Silk this afternoon once everyone’s rested.  I thought this morning you all might like to visit the gryphon eyries.”

             
Loren almost choked on his egg.  Rodge groaned.  Cerise looked determinedly polite.  It was up to Ari, barely able to conceal the surge of excitement coursing through him, to say, “Yes.  We’d be very interested, thank-you.”  Possibly the grossest understatement to ever leave his lips.

             
When Kindri rose slowly to her feet a few minutes later, apparently done with her few crumbs of breakfast, Loren and Ari almost knocked over their chairs jumping to their feet.  For a second, they forgot the ridiculous, thin silk tunics and baggy trousers they were wearing.  They were acquiring quite a wardrobe, trundling around the Realms, but this latest was way down on the list—pale, filmy colors, even, that no self-respecting Imperial man would be caught dead in.

             
It was helpful that the Skyprincess looked considerably better in her version.  The shiny, dewy grey gown puddled around her feet standing and clung fascinatingly when she walked, which was a head-turning thing anyway.  None of that business-like marching of the North, here, just a slow, indolent, languid sway that sent a distracted Loren promptly into a wall trying to follow her.  Cerise shot him a look of withering scorn.

             
They trailed wordlessly after their limp escort through several rooms, until they came to an opening in the cliff face that could hardly be considered a chamber at all.  It was more like a bay, a gaping, enormous cavern with an arched ceiling of mirrors and shifting, glorious light.  At its edge, leading out into nothing but the sheen of waterfall mist, arched a bridge, disappearing into the dew-laden air.  It had to be the most enchanting thing Ari had seen yet, leaping weightlessly away from them in white iron and sprinkled like dew on grass with sparkling pastel gems.

             
It was surprising that it was so sturdy, and a little intimidating that they couldn’t see more than a few yards ahead of them.  Cerise, as she walked with the air of someone who doesn’t want to think about anything else, began a deeply interested survey of the fanciful fretwork spanning the railing.  It wasn’t that long of a bridge actually, and on the other side was just a plain rock path carved out of the looming cliff face.  You could see the valley bowl of the Heart here, without pockets of mist obscuring everything, and Ari leaned out over the wooden railing to trace their path last night.  From this angle, you could see another couple of falls on the back side of the valley bowl, and maybe a third.  He picked out the trail they’d come in on, winding broadly south along one of the Fall’s rivers, and there was the ingenious lift that had brought them up to the Skypalace…he stopped, sucking in his breath.

             
“Loren!”  There were sounds of amazement as the rest of the party turned around and followed his gaze.  Last night hadn’t just been a trick of the eyes, a deception of the waterfall mist in lantern-light.  The entire cliff face
was
covered in jewel-like bits of light, for hundreds of yards down the bowl, beyond where distance dimmed it into a dull glimmer.  You could see the dark half-circles of chamber openings, and here close to them, the fantastic likenesses of trees and vines and dragons and other creatures carved into solid rock.  The whole side of the mountain was a blazing glory of art.  Surely, though, those were bits of glass that decorated the cliff, not the real-looking gemstones that had sprinkled the fairy-tale bridge they’d just crossed?

             
Kindri, realizing she had lost something important, came wandering listlessly back to their staring, gesticulating group.  “It’s to make the gryphons feel at home.”  Her quiet, indifferent voice was more like a disembodied narrator than an interruption; they all continued to gawp, captivated.

             
“There’s nothing they love more than sparkle and glitter and shine, so when the original settlers built Lirralhisa, they covered it in jewels to draw the gryphons to it.  ‘Course, it draws dragons, too, but you can’t have everything.”  Four heads swiveled wide-eyed around to look at her.               

             
“Shall we?” She turned and led them on without any indication of having said anything disturbing.  It was a short walk along the south-facing cliff to another set of openings, where a young man with a smear of dirt across his forehead and twigs of straw stuck to his leather knees came to meet them.

             
“Lady Kindri,” he greeted her, bending over his arm in the Cyrrhidean courtesy. Cerise’s nostrils flared.  “No ‘Highness?’” she muttered.  “No ‘Skyprincess?’”

             
“Who’s on Ring duty today?” the unoffended royal asked blandly.

             
“Topaz, Kindri.  Let me get Chief Flyr for you.”  He moved off quickly into the caverns behind him, where they could hear rustlings and strange, gurgly kinds of warblings.  It was so bright out on the cliff edge, flooded with morning sun, that they couldn’t see more than a yard or so into the caverns.  Ari’s palms were sweaty with anticipation.

             
“Kindri!” a bold voice cried.  Another young man was striding toward them, rather cleaner than the previous, with an open, ingenuous face and laughing eyes.  He was brown from head to toe, brown curls, golden brown skin, brownish-green eyes, brown leathers—a vision of cheerful brown.  “And our intrepid visitors from the North,” he added, grinning at them all.  After all the unassuming reserve of the Sentinels, this guy was shockingly effervescent.

             
“I am Flyrcanet, Flyr.  Welcome to the Eyries.” He gave a warm, sly smile.  “At least, I assume you have some interest in our little beasties…?”  He winked at Ari and Loren, whose enthusiasm was more readily apparent than Rodge and Cerise’s.  “If I may, Kindri?” he said politely.

             
She waved apathetically, eyes focused somewhere in the distance, and he gave them a conspiratorial head jerk, bowing them into the Eyries.

             
They all huddled up on him nervously while their eyes got used to the dimness.  He led them through the stirring shadows of the chamber, half-seen presences more sensed than felt, as their feet rustled through straw and their noses were assaulted with the unmistakable stench of concentrated animal life.  Ari would never forget that pungent scent of gryphon, like nothing he’d ever smelled before.

             
“You’ve come during muck out time,” Flyr apologized, his strong, confident voice, like Traive’s, a tremendous comfort in the dimness, with mysterious shapes shifting just out of reach of discernment.  A clod of straw loaded with dark manure came hurtling out of the gloom, landing next to Cerise…who had the look of one whose day is getting irredeemably worse.

             
Aided by adrenaline, their eyesight was adjusting rapidly, and by the time they’d made it to the back of the chamber, Ari could make out the size of those huge, eerie shadows.  Some were sitting upright, hunched and with an intent, watchful air.  Some lay curled up in enormous horse-sized balls while their handlers cleaned around them.  The sense of awareness, of waiting, came off of them in almost paralyzing waves, worked on by the dry-throating darkness.  Ari realized, just as they passed out of the chamber and into another, that they were hooded.  That’s why there was such a weird blankness to those big heads, where eyes or beaks or feathers should be reflecting a least a little light.

The next cavern was a large, soaring space,
but still made cramped by the size of the beasts in it.  These were NOT hooded, most of them sitting in brilliant, bare view at the ledge.  Silhouetted by the sun, feathers in gorgeous, flaming color, they brought the Northerners to a wide-eyed halt.  Ari didn’t think he’d ever seen a creature so beautiful.  Rodge and Cerise were perhaps thinking different thoughts, but Ari was entranced.  He’d walked into a dream.

“
Right this way,” Flyr said loudly, laughing, in a voice that suggested he’d had to raise it to get their attention.  In a speechless huddle, they followed him toward the next chamber on this unbelievable tour.  He was walking backward, encouraging them.  “Don’t be afraid—these are parade gryphons.  They’re bigger, but much more mild-mannered.  Just don’t go near their heads…believe me, the only thing they’re interested in right now are those luscious air currents…”

“
As long as they’re not interested in lunch,” Rodge murmured nervously, eyeing the next group that was similarly lined up on the ledge.  They
were
staring pretty intently out at the valley, Ari thought.

“
They were just fed yesterday,” Flyr assured him, coming to a stop.  They could see now that his wandering path had been to avoid the thick chains crisscrossing the floor.  Every one of which led to a gryphon leg.

“
Yesterday!” Rodge croaked.  “You think it’s a good idea to keep them
hungry
?”

“
They only eat every couple days.  Kind of a gorge-starve routine.  It makes them happy,” he added at Rodge’s appalled face.

“
Well, we want them happy…” he conceded.

Looking around,
Loren cleared his throat and said quietly, “Are they color-coded?”  Their feathers had seemed to come in every shade of the rainbow, but in this chamber all the gryphons had either brilliant yellow or orange or rich brown plumage.  They were smaller, too, and more lively, shifting restlessly on their ledge and opening those enormous beaks to taste the air.

“
The Talons are.  This is Topaz Talon,” he said proudly, wending his way over to a towering golden creature with wings of flaming orange.  He patted it affectionately on the shoulder and, amazingly, it leaned into him, lifting one immense folded wing so he could scratch underneath it.  The Northerners gathered slowly around, awed.  Ari tentatively reached out to stroke the tawny leonine haunch, and Rodge and Cerise looked at him like he was mad.

“
Is he yours?” Loren said, probably unnecessarily, but it was hard to get a Northern mind around the thought of…well, bonding with such a creature.  Nevermind riding it.  They had such a lethal, magnificent dignity.

“
What’s his name?” Ari asked softly.  The great, fierce head towered almost a yard over his own; he was trying to picture how high the wings would be, unfurled.

“
Skippy,” Flyr said easily.

Loren
’s face fell.  Rodge guffawed, quietly.  The rest of them just stared at him.  “Skippy,” Loren echoed flatly, as if hoping he’d misheard.  “Not ‘Flaming Comet’ or ‘Firestorm?”    

Flyr reached up to stroke the smaller golden feathers under his gryphon
’s chin.  “Nah.  He’s a clown.  Fancy and ferocious just doesn’t fit him.”