Thursdays with the Crown (6 page)

“Oh.” She sighed, earning a dirty look from Darryn.

The egg rocked again, and half the shell broke away, revealing a wet, dark gold lion's rump. Then the rest of the shell collapsed, and the newborn griffin shook its bedraggled wings and eagle head free.

“What is this hideous beauty?” Lulath breathed.

The newborn griffin blinked its big golden eyes, looked around, and then made straight toward Lulath. Darryn, an expression of awe on his face, dropped to his knees in front of the little creature and reached for it, but it went right around him with single-minded purpose and threw itself at Lulath's feet.

“Don't touch it, Prince,” the Arkower cried. “It's for Darryn!”

Lulath put his hands behind his back, but Celie could see that they were shaking and Lulath's face was filled with longing. The baby griffin was hardly bigger than one of his dogs, and it was crying piteously.

“Then you must be taking care of it with a quickness,” Lulath said to Darryn. “It hungers.”

“Yes, be quick now,” agreed the other young man. He
handed Darryn something that looked like a small cake made out of seeds. “Feed it!”

Darryn waved the cake in front of the griffin's beak, but it just cuddled up to Lulath's shins and wouldn't look at the boy. It was crying even louder now, and Rufus was hovering over it, wings half raised in distress.

“Control your beast,” the Arkower snapped as Rufus hissed at Darryn when he tried to shove the cake into the newborn's beak.

“This is awful; they're both upset,” Celie told the Arkower. “He doesn't want him!” She pointed at Darryn. “Back away,” she urged the boy.

“No, it's my turn!” Darryn sounded near tears.

“You've tried,” Celie said, softening. “He's got to eat … if he won't take it from you, let Lulath try.”

“No!”

Darryn tried to pry open the griffin's beak and force the cake in. The little griffin screamed, and Lulath moved so fast that Celie didn't even see what had happened. All she knew was that suddenly Darryn was halfway across the room, lying on his back with a stunned expression, and Lulath was picking up the newborn griffin and the fallen seed cake. The little griffin took the cake eagerly from Lulath's long fingers and began to munch as Lulath crooned to him in Grathian.

“Is he not the very wonder of wonders?” Lulath said a moment later, in Sleynth. His voice was reverent. “I shall be naming him Lorcan the Destroyer.”

“No! It's not fair!” Darryn scrambled to his feet.

“The griffin has chosen,” the Arkower intoned, but his face was not pleased.

“It's my turn!” Darryn repeated.

“And you failed,” the other young man said sadly. “Again. Just like we all fail, time and again.”

He met Celie's eye and gave a grim nod. He held out the basket of seed cakes to her, and she took it, handing them one at a time to Lulath as Lorcan snaffled his way through cake after cake.

“How many eggs have you tried to, um …?” Celie trailed off, unable to think of a word for what she had with Rufus, and now Lulath had with Lorcan.

“Bond?” the young man asked.

“Yes,” Celie said.

“I've tried with two eggs; this was Darryn's second.” He flicked a glance at the Arkower, and then looked away again.

Celie wondered how many eggs, over how many years, the Arkower had tried to bond with. Tried, and apparently failed.

“I am a wizard,” the Arkower said, seeing their looks. “I have no need of a griffin. They are for fighters, not thinkers.”

But Celie knew that he was lying. And so did the young man.

“I'm Ethan,” he offered.

“Celie.”

Her heart was pounding, and she asked the question she couldn't hold back any longer. “What if Darryn had been the only person here?”

“It wouldn't have mattered,” Ethan said, and Darryn made a small noise that almost made Celie feel sorry for him. “In the wild his parents would have fed him,” Ethan continued. “But since they're … gone … the griffin would have gotten sick from not eating,” Ethan said, and Darryn clenched his fists and turned away. “If they don't like you, they don't like you, and if there's no one that they do like …”

“Oh,” Celie said. She felt tears in her eyes again. She'd often worried that she was an unfit parent for Rufus, that it was only sheer dumb luck that they had ended up together. But Rufus really had chosen her, and their bond was no accident. If she hadn't been there when he'd hatched … she shuddered to think of him alone and sick in the high hatching tower. Another question struck her. “How do you get them to eat once they refuse you?”

“You don't,” the Arkower said heavily. “If there isn't an acceptable rider at hand, nor any parents … they don't ever eat.”

“Oh,” Celie said again, feeling sick as he confirmed her suspicions. She looked at him in horror. “How many griffins don't bond with a rider? Is it common?” She frowned around the room. “And how did you bring the egg here? Where are his parents?”

The Arkower silenced Ethan with a chopping motion before the young man could even speak. Darryn looked at
Lulath, looked at the Arkower, and then stormed out of the room.

“We may as well rejoin your companions,” the Arkower said, his voice bitter. “I will have more food brought for the beast.”

“Darryn's on duty, but I'll bring it,” Ethan offered. “He needs to take some time, I'm sure.”

Rufus strutted up the corridor to the room where they'd left the others. Celie wasn't sure how much he understood of what had just happened, and how much he'd known was going to happen. Had he sensed the egg, and wanted to go to it? Or had he merely wanted to stretch his legs, and found the egg by accident? And what would have happened if they hadn't arrived? Her heart clenched at the thought.

“Where have you been?” Lilah's face was pasty white with fear when they reached the room again. “We heard noises and … oh!” She saw the little griffin and stretched out her hands to stroke it. “Precious!”

“Indeed! Is he not the very precious?” Lulath beamed, holding the baby griffin out for her to admire. “He is being named Lorcan the Destroyer.”

Rolf burst out laughing. “I was
not
expecting that,” he said. “The name. Or the griffin. Where have you two
been
?”

“We heard a noise down the corridor,” Celie began, but the Arkower entered the room behind her and she stopped. She had a feeling that he wouldn't like hearing again about how Darryn had failed to imprint a griffin.

“Yes, yes, now this foreign prince has a griffin,” the
Arkower said as though it were of no importance, “and so now we must have a very serious discussion.”

They all stopped fussing over Lorcan and gave the wizard their full attention. Celie sank down in a chair, one hand gripping Rufus's harness tightly. Lulath sat on the floor with his new charge, and Ethan slipped in and offered him a platter of food, cut into bite-size pieces. Seeing the look on the Arkower's face and the stillness of the others, Ethan bowed himself back out immediately, though Celie saw a twitch to the tapestry covering the doorway a moment later. She didn't say anything; she could hardly blame him for eavesdropping.

“Now, Prince Lulath of Grath,” the Arkower said, “you have an infant griffin. What are you going to do with it?”

They all looked around, communicating as best they could with eyebrows and meaningful looks. Rolf wrinkled his nose at Celie, and Celie grimaced back and made a little motion with one hand at Lulath. Rolf wanted her to do the talking, but he was the Crown Prince and it was Lulath's griffin. Besides, the Arkower frightened her. Lulath was so caught up in feeding Lorcan that he might as well have been back in the Castle for all the attention he paid them.

Rolf sighed and straightened his spine. “We're going to take him back with us to Sleyne, naturally,” he said. “Lulath loves animals and will take excellent care of him, just as my sister has taken care of Rufus.”

“A fine sentiment, Crown Prince Rolf,” the Arkower said. “There is, however, one small problem.”

“And what is that?” Celie couldn't help herself.

“I'm afraid that there is no way for you to take these griffins back to Sleyne,” the Arkower told them in a tone of gentle regret. “Either of them.”

They all sat in shocked silence for a moment.

Lulath was the first to recover. He shook his head at the wizard. “You are telling us the lie,” he informed the Arkower. “Rufus is being coming from the Sleyne just this very day of yesterday with us. Why is he not going to his home again? And why is my Lorcan not with him and us?”

“I am certainly not ‘telling the lie,' as you so poetically put it, Prince Lulath,” the Arkower said. “Once I gladly would have sent you all to Sleyne, children, but no more.” He spread out his frail hands, studying the gnarled fingers, and shook his head.

“Come to the point,” Rolf said, folding his arms across his chest.

“Princess Cecelia and Prince Lulath just witnessed the problem that has been an even greater plague in our land than the poisoned lake,” the Arkower said. “We have few royal griffins left. Whenever people find an egg, they bring it here, and we attempt to bond with it. The young men who serve me take turns in trying … and every one of them has failed since the griffins were sent away to Sleyne. We need these bonded griffins here, to show our people how it is done. Apparently we have lost the knack for it, but you have somehow discovered it.” He said this as if it pained him.

“There are no griffins, royal or wild, in Sleyne,” Celie pointed out. “And that's where the Castle is.”

“The Castle is beyond my reach now, and I care nothing for it,” the Arkower said, and his words sounded like a lie. “But the griffins, we need the griffins more than the Castle does!”

“You are needing these griffins?” Lulath said in a careful voice. He had stopped feeding Lorcan and was looking at the Arkower with such intensity that it transformed his face, and Celie thought she wouldn't have recognized him if he hadn't been sitting right in front of her. “Why for are you needing the griffins, if the Castle does not?”

The Arkower appeared to have noticed the change in the prince as well. “The Castle hardly needs defending,” he blustered. “And the griffins are native to this land, not yours. They belong here.”

“There is being only one reason that a brain like to mine can see for having a great many young men with a great many griffins, as you are wanting,” Lulath said, absently feeding Lorcan with one hand while he continued to gaze with piercing blue eyes at the wizard.

“And what might that be?” The Arkower's voice had an edge like a razor.

“For going to Sleyne and attacking those with no griffins, for bringing the Castle that you love so well back to you and you alone,” Lulath said in a voice that was just as sharp. “You are knowing how to go to Sleyne, you are speaking the language in a betterment than I am having, and
must have much knowledge of that land. We are not knowing how to get to here, or how to get back from here. You are having griffins, we are not having griffins … You are having the lie with us so that you are attacking us.”

“Celie,” Pogue whispered directly into her ear and she jumped. She hadn't even heard him leave his seat and move over to her. Now he was perched on the arm of her chair, one hand on her elbow to keep her from leaping up.

“What?” Celie tried not to move her lips, after she'd recovered.

“Get on Rufus and go.”

“What?”

“Go. Get on Rufus and fly away.” He paused. “Lilah, too.”

“This is nonsense,” the Arkower was saying to Lulath in a level voice.

“Then let us be coming and going with freedom,” Lulath retorted.

“Go now,” Pogue whispered again.

“No, I—”

Pogue seized her around the waist and whipped her off her chair and onto Rufus's back before she could finish her protest. Then he had hold of Lilah, and Lilah leaped behind Celie with little urging.

“What are you doing?” The Arkower half rose from his seat in alarm.

“Be going,” Lulath shouted. “We can be finding you later!”

“Stop them,” the Arkower said, hardly raising his voice.

Ethan and Darryn burst into the room, along with another man Celie had never seen before. She grabbed the handles of Rufus's harness.

Rufus took off.

Celie was amazed that Rufus could understand the underlying menace in the Arkower's words. That, or he just wanted to be away from the Arkower as desperately as Celie did. He ran right around the startled Ethan, heading to the edge of the long spiraling ramp that had brought them to the Arkower's chambers.

Extending his wings, he plunged over the edge. Celie screamed, though she knew he had plenty of room to fly, and tried to get a better grip on the harness. Lilah grabbed Celie's waist painfully tight and buried her face in Celie's hair. Celie recovered quickly and pushed the handles forward, urging Rufus to go down to the entrance. But Rufus circled and then began to fly upward, toward the hollow peak of the mountain.

“Where are you going?” Celie called to him, and he screeched in reply.

Then, just above the Arkower's living quarters, she saw it: a broad, jagged hole in the side of the mountain. It was large enough for a full-grown griffin to pass through without pulling in his wings, and Rufus was only half-grown. They sailed through and out into the open air, where another griffin waited for them.

It was Rufus's father. He gave a cry of greeting and turned to fly alongside them.

“Are you coming?” Celie called to him. “Let's go that way!”

And she pointed both griffins toward the ruins of the Castle.

Celie had never flown with Rufus for such a great distance, and with such speed. It was exhilarating, though it also made her sad that her poor griffin hadn't been able to really stretch his wings before now. It comforted her to think that if they returned to Sleyne, since everyone at the Castle knew about him now, he would no longer be a secret. He could fly as much as he liked, and in daylight, too.