Chapter 5 #2
“If you can keep me from noticing what you’ve done, you can claim you never went back on our bargain and always meant to answer eventually.”
The night elf’s amusement turned rather sour. “And yet you noticed. Apparently I’ve grown sloppy over the centuries.”
“To be fair,” Ryn returned in what she hoped was a comforting tone, “you’ve probably not encountered many scholars before.
We at the university are forced to develop absolute mastery of the skill of keeping our professors on track, or it’s possible we would never learn anything outside of their own latest obsessions. ”
If anything, his frown grew deeper. “Did you just compare me to a gaggle of decrepit humans?”
“Well,” she replied defensively, “you cannot truly blame me. They are old and have white hair and wear black robes, and they threaten our lives on a regular basis should we happen to mistake the pre-Illorian period for the Tambric. Or if we…”
She stopped. “I’m such a fool. Now I’m doing it to myself.”
Only then did she notice that Xaviel had stopped as well and was regarding her from beneath lowered brows.
He really was startlingly beautiful, even when he was angry.
Perhaps particularly when he was angry. It made his eyes burn with that deep, red color that reminded her rather terrifyingly of blood.
Even the stern, sharply cut angle of his jaw grew more noticeable, and the muscles of his arms bulged as his hands clenched around the strap of her bag.
Like the storm cat, he was wild, dangerous, and unknowable, but also entirely compelling.
“Are you insinuating that I am old?” he demanded.
Oh, so that was what was bothering him.
“Of course.” Her brow wrinkled in puzzlement. “You just said you’ve been alive for centuries.”
“Immortal is not the same as old,” he retorted, sounding deeply offended.
Ryn blinked in utter astonishment. Immortal?
“How…”
A rasping scream suddenly echoed from somewhere overhead, and it was then that Ryn noticed how much the weather had changed since they left her camp.
The air was thinner and colder here, and the wind nipped at her ankles. Low, scudding clouds darkened the sky, bringing the smell of storms and a dark, ominous energy, while an icy dampness permeated the air.
She shivered and tried to search the sky, but the clouds were too low and too thick.
“I hope that whatever is screaming out there isn’t hungry enough to eat us.” She turned to her companion for reassurance, only to discover…
That she was now utterly and completely alone.
“Xaviel?”
She heard only the low moan of the wind in response.
“You idiot, Ryn,” she muttered under her breath.
She’d assumed herself safe due to the terms of the bargain, but had forgotten to account for other threats.
If Xaviel was unhappy with their agreement—or had grown tired of her presence—he could simply stand back and allow something else to eat her without breaking his word.
Probably he was watching her even now. A piercing ache had formed between her shoulder blades—a sure sign that someone or something was watching—and it was far better to assume that the watcher was a vengeful night elf than whatever had screamed at her only a moment ago.
Perhaps he intended to see what she would do. And the answer was… she had no idea. The night elf had taken her gear. She was lost in the mountains with no weapons, and now she was being hunted before she’d had even a bite of breakfast.
That was, in fact, the only thing she missed about the university—a hot, filling breakfast every morning with no need to prepare it herself. She could just bring a book and read while she ate. No one would bother her except sometimes Fergal, and she’d gotten quite good at ignoring him…
A second scream shivered through the air, and a slight breeze fanned her face. Ryn yelped and dropped into a crouch, wishing she at least had her rapier. Perhaps fencing wasn’t the best defense against flying monsters, but it was better than the nothing she had now.
Wait! In one of her pockets, she had her travel knife. If she could find it…
She wasn’t sure what warned her—perhaps that itch between her shoulders—but some instinct insisted that she move. So she rolled to the left, a mere instant before a vast winged shape hit the ground right where she’d crouched only a moment before.
Massive talons plowed furrows in the dirt only an arm’s length from her face, and Ryn let out a shriek as the air was buffeted by enormous wings. A frustrated cry rasped against her ears, and she had to force herself not to cover her head with her arms and curl into a helpless ball.
“You have to go, Ryn,” she whispered to herself. “Get to the trees.”
But her legs seemed to have gone numb. Her fingers twitched but refused to move, while her brain unhelpfully catalogued every flying predator she’d ever read about before landing on the correct identification.
Gryphon, it informed her calmly. A black one. Probably a female, considering the lack of crest feathers and the color of its beak…
Its very sharp beak, which had turned towards Ryn as it crouched slightly and regarded her out of golden raptor eyes.
So this was what it felt like to be lunch.
“I wouldn’t recommend me, honestly,” she said in a shaky voice.
“They say I’m too old to be reasoned with and too opinionated to be married.
Too rich for a poor man and too poor for a rich one.
My sense of fashion is abominable, my scholarship only passable, and my conversation a bore.
So you’d be better off hunting down a nice, plump… ”
The gryphon made a strange hissing noise.
“Also, I suspect I taste like ink and disappointment.”
Like a cat on the hunt, the gryphon crouched lower as its tail lashed the air.
So it was more cat than eagle, then. She’d wondered which set of instincts was foremost, and whether it preferred to stalk its prey or simply to stoop from the heavens and catch it unawares…
The gryphon sprang.
Ryn shut her eyes.
She heard a thud, a squall of anger, and then a screech of pain that wasn’t hers.
Finally, her limbs agreed to move, so she rolled over, scrabbled backward, and then dared to crack her eyelids to determine whether she’d died and just didn’t know it yet. Honestly, she’d always thought being dead would be less uncomfortable.
The black gryphon lay on its back on the ground, wriggling and lashing out with its beak, yet unable to reach any vital part of the second gryphon that had pinned it down.
Oh, wonderful, now there were two of them. Perhaps she could sneak away very, very quietly…
As if it had heard her thinking, the second gryphon’s head whipped around to stare at her, its dark eyes glimmering with hints of red instead of gold. Its fur and feathers were pure, brilliant white, except for its crest, where they shimmered with silver.
It was a male, of course, and a stunningly gorgeous one. Indeed, if she’d set out to design a predator, she could not have imagined one more suited to ruling this stark and beautiful world. Lethal claws, scimitar beak, magnificent wings…
Ryn backed away, even as she began scrabbling in her pockets.
She knew she’d left a scrap of paper or a notebook in there, along with her best graphite pencil.
It would be a crime against scholarship if she didn’t record this moment.
Indeed, none of the drawings of gryphons that she’d ever seen had accurately captured their size and majesty, the true reach of their wings, or the catlike lash of their tails.
“More cat than eagle,” she repeated in an awed whisper. “More cat than eagle…” When she bumped into a large boulder, she simply sat down and began to sketch, tilting her head and biting her lip as the two massive predators took shape beneath her pencil.
They’d barely moved since that first pounce, the larger of the two poised in dramatic fashion, crest-feathers extended, claws flexed. The smaller female lay on her back with narrowed eyes, hissing softly, until at length she turned her head and her claws disappeared.
Surrender.
The white male ruffled his feathers, clacked his beak, and released her.
Ryn watched in wonder as the female rolled to her feet, bowed her head ever so slightly, and then flew away, disappearing into the low-hanging clouds in a matter of moments.
Perhaps she could also preserve that image in her journal at a later time. But first, to finish her sketch of the fight. The wings still needed more detail, and the eyes were not quite large enough…
A shadow loomed over the page, making it difficult to see the lighter strokes of her pencil, and Ryn looked up to see the white gryphon glaring down at her.
Good heavens, it was so tall. It would have to duck its head to go through even the massive front doors of the university.
“I suppose I should be thankful,” she said matter-of-factly, “that you did not simply fly off and leave me earlier. But perhaps in the future you might offer a word of warning before you disappear.”