It was not until he had knelt like that for over a minute that Derk realized that he had never once, not even at the very back of his mind, thought of asking the demon to pretend to be a god. You simply could not bring a god and a demon together in one mind somehow.
The rescue party, meanwhile, was not enjoying itself. Going down through the valley had been easy for the griffins, even Lydda. It was just a matter of a powered glide. But as the glide gathered speed, the swing seat with Shona and Blade on it swung more and more to the rear. This tipped it up, sliding both of them downward. They clung to the ropes frantically. Only the speed of the flight seemed to be holding them on.
“I think I’d better translocate after all!” Blade gasped.
“I’d fall off for sure. Sit still!” Shona snapped.
Blade thought she was right. And they were high enough for Shona to be badly hurt. Then, as they leveled out and flew low over the dusky fields, Kit and Callette began to feel the strain. Neither had done much flying lately. Blade could feel them both trying not to pant as hard as they wanted to. In addition, Callette, although she was huge by human standards, was nothing like as large and strong as Kit. Kit was trying to fly slow, to level the difference out, but he kept hitting his stalling speed and having to go faster, while Callette flapped furiously the whole time—with the result that the swing wagged and dipped and surged. Blade hung on and stared at the dim gray tussocks of grass whipping by under him and hoped they found Elda soon. Out to one side, the naturally fit Don was weaving and wheeling to examine every pale place in case it was Elda’s golden coat. Blade could hear Lydda out on the other side trying to do the same and sounding more like a sawhorse than a griffin.
Night flying made you freezing cold, Blade discovered. Shona kept muttering, “I think I’m slipping. Gods, you’re heavy! Gods, you’re bony!”
After what seemed a century of misery, Kit panted, “There’s the inn!”
“She must have made it there then,” Don said, wheeling in from beyond Callette.
“Let’s check,” Kit gasped.
Because he was dangling so far below Kit, Blade could not see the inn until a short while later, when the swing rushed over a hedge and he saw the building against the sky in the distance, very black, with barely a light showing. Shona, peering around him, asked, “What’s that funny blue light over its roof?”
The light grew into a blue shaft as she spoke, and they all distinctly saw three eyes in it near the top. Don let out a squawk of total terror. All the griffins, with one instinctive accord, stretched their beaks upward and pumped their wings for altitude. Flight feathers whupped, and the swing soared. Blade dangled there, higher and higher, with the air around him frantic with wings being overworked and the roaring of griffin breath, and could only watch the blue thing grow and stretch higher and keep level with the griffins every foot they went upward. The three eyes sarcastically stared straight across at them. Up labored the panicked griffins, and up stretched the blue thing, like an impossibly long pale pole of light, and continued to stare at them in a way that said Do you think you can get away? Forget it!
Then the thing seemed to lose interest. It shrank a little and stood poised on the inn roof. When the griffins wearily leveled out, heads bent down between their spread wings, ready to soar or sideslip if the thing came for them, the blueness leaped into a long flash of azure light, rushing in zigzags underneath them faster even than lightning, and disappeared into the distance behind.
Almost at once, from where the first flash had touched, there came a terrified griffin screech, followed by frantic cheepings from down below.
“There she is!” everyone cried out.
Don and Lydda folded wings and plummeted. As Kit and Callette circled and went down more slowly, towing the swing, Blade had revolving views of a small pale blot on the dark ground, which on the next sighting was definitely Elda crouched in a heap with her wings puddled around her and her beak wide open, cheeping terror and loneliness like a fledgling. On Blade’s next sighting Don and Lydda had got there and were settling, out of instinct, head to tail on either side of Elda, each with a wing thrown across her. Elda’s cheeping died down a little and turned into words.
“I was so tired. That was the demon. My wings hurt. I was so tired. That was the demon.”
“Can you drop me off?” Blade called up to Callette and Kit. “I’ll get her home. You three go on and make sure Dad’s all right.”
“Can do,” Callette called down. “Around again, Kit.”
The swing whi
rled out and lower. Blade watched the dark ground swirl near, slid off Shona’s knees, and landed running and stumbling in uneven grass. He almost fell to his knees because his feet were so numb. Shona’s shoes whirled past his face as Kit and Callette whupped wings and gained height again. The sound receded fast as Blade stumbled over to Elda.
“It was the demon,” Elda was saying from between Don and Lydda. “It came through me. It felt like that soda that melted your talon, Lydda. It was cold, and it burned.”
Blade pushed into the warm huddle of griffins and sat down. “Can you two make it home if I translocate with her? I can’t manage the four of us.” He really meant, Could Lydda get home? but that was not the time to say it.
“I’m all right once I’m in the air,” Lydda said.
“We’ll just coast,” Don said. “We won’t try to prove anything.”
“All right.” Blade shoved his legs right underneath Elda’s shaking body. “Elda, I’m going to hang on to you and I want you to hang on to me hard. Understand?”
“Yup.” Elda fastened her talons onto Blade’s shoulders, too scared to notice she was hurting him. Blade bit his lip against the pain and grasped Elda around the lion part of her body. This was a thing all the griffins hated and probably meant Elda was as uncomfortable as Blade was, but none of it could be helped.
“Ready? Here we go!”
Blade heaved them both home. Elda was nearly half as big again as Blade, and it was truly hard work. For a moment Blade got it wrong, or seemed to. He was aiming for the terrace, and he got there, but it was standing up beside them like a stone wall. Blade wrenched it straight—or maybe he wrenched himself and Elda straight, he was not sure—and as he did so, he seemed to see a blue glimmer, behind his head where nobody ought to be able to see anything, and the glimmer was holding the terrace sideways. Elda began cheeping again.
“Don’t do that!” Blade said to the demon, and he sat on the terrace gripping Elda’s furry torso and pulling the terrace back into place for dear life. “Can’t you see you’re scaring Elda stiff?”
Elda had been right to compare the thing to caustic soda, Blade thought. He felt it against his mind as if he had his head in a bowl of bleach, pushing and sorting at him in a way that said, Hmm. What have we here?