Year of the Griffin (Derkholm 2)

Except that it was not. Corkoran did not feel in the least like a teddy. He felt wide and stiffish, with a layer of meaty plumpness around the stiffness, which, try as she might, Elda feared she was digging her talons painfully into. And coming in gusts from under her talons was a most unpleasant smell of sweat. Corkoran was sweating with distress, probably because she was hurting him with her talons. Or maybe he was scared of heights. Elda had heard some humans were. Or perhaps he was scared of the assassins. Or perhaps—Elda did not want to think this, but she suspected it was the true reason—Corkoran was scared of her. She told herself that, anyway, to do this when he was so frightened meant that Corkoran was being very brave, but she did wish it didn’t make him smell so bad. And he was so heavy. Far too heavy to carry straight up to the tower in one swoop. Elda had to bank to find an updraft and circle for altitude.

“You’re going the wrong way!” Corkoran said. His voice had gone rather shrill.

“Circle … for … height,” Elda panted.

“Oh, I understand,” said Corkoran.

Elda hoped he did understand, because she had to keep on circling until their upward path became a spiral, while the courtyard full of upturned faces, the walls and turreted roofs, the other courtyards, and the town beyond wheeled this way and that underneath them. By the time they were on a level with the madly spinning dome, Elda’s forelegs ached from carrying Corkoran, and every muscle in her wings was a different fiery pain. The trouble was, she realized, she had spent nearly three weeks almost without flying a stroke. Kit was always telling her you had to fly at least every other day to keep in condition. And I will, I will! I promise! Elda thought as she crept toward the tower with long, laboring strokes. And it was not over yet.

“Go around to

the left,” Corkoran said to her. “We’ll pick off the one on the spike first. He’s helpless.”

He said it with an airiness that Elda knew was totally false. Gusts more sweat came off him. Elda made herself think how brave he was, but she knew, underneath, that Corkoran sweated because he felt as helpless as the assassin, dangling in the grip of a monster half bird, half lion. And she almost groaned aloud at what he said. In order to get at that assassin, she was going to have to hover, and she was bad at hovering even when her wings didn’t ache like this. Don, who was the family expert at hovering, always laughed when Elda tried it. Worse still, the assassin on the spike had seen her heading for him, and he had his poisoned dagger out. He was not that helpless.

Grimly Elda backed her wings and started the fast back-and-over hovering movement, leaving herself enough momentum to inch slowly closer to the man. He held his dagger forward, and his lips were spread in a grin, because her head was stiffly out with the effort, and he was going to get her in the eye, she knew he was, and so did he. And she hurt. It was horrible. Her brother Blade always said that when things were horrible, you thought of something else to keep yourself from noticing, but Elda couldn’t. The dagger stabbed at her. She wove her face aside and stabbed back with her beak. Then they were fencing, dagger and beak, stab and weave, high in the air, while Elda tried to hover and tried not to drop Corkoran and tried not to get poisoned and tried not to scream....

Corkoran wriggled in her grip, and she nearly yelled at him to keep still. But the assassin was quite suddenly the size of a bumblebee and dropping down into the little bag Corkoran was holding out under her neck. Of course he had to touch the person for the spell to work, Elda realized.

“That’s one,” Corkoran said. He sounded as strained as Elda felt. “Rise up to get above the dome now.”

No, I can’t! Elda thought. You don’t know what you’re asking! But she reminded herself that she had after all offered to do this, and somehow she got her wings out of the hover and was somehow going forward again, circling the giddy dome, up and around and up, to where the dizzily twirling final assassin sat clutching the hatch that covered the great telescope inside. He had a knife out, too. As each rotation brought him to face them, he made a threatening stab toward them with it. It was one of the big, spear-shaped knives, and it had quite a reach. As Elda winged in closer, the man even managed to stand up. Not bad for someone who ought to be too dizzy even to sit straight, Elda thought. But I’ve had enough of this! One thing griffins were extremely good at was the calculation of speed and angles. Elda sideslipped until the man’s back was briefly toward her and then pecked him hard in the rear.

He overbalanced with a scream. Corkoran cried out, “Whoops!” and just barely managed to snatch hold of the assassin’s nose as he toppled past. “There,” he said. “All over.” A calming sort of gesture in the opposite direction brought the dome to a grinding stop. Elda could hear cheering coming from inside the dome and distantly from the courtyard, too. “Now put me in through one of the windows,” Corkoran said. “Quickly. I can’t stand any more.”

Elda had no breath left to speak. She simply sideslipped again until she was level with a window and did more of the beastly hovering while some of the students inside wrestled it open. She watched Corkoran topple inside over the sill, helped by numerous arms, and then toppled herself, in a half glide, down onto the roof of the Spellman Building, to lie there in an aching heap.

He might have said thank you! she kept thinking, heavy with cramps and with memories of that nasty smell of sweat. She did not feel in the least triumphant. It was more like being racked with bouts of shame. She felt a complete, useless fool. Once or twice, though, she found she was wondering how Corkoran would manage going to the moon if he was that scared of heights. She decided to stay on the roof. Anything else was too much.

Half an hour later a trapdoor beside one of the chimneys opened, and Ruskin climbed out. Elda did not look, but she could tell it was Ruskin by the clacking of his hairbones. “So there you are,” he growled. “Are you in one piece?”

“I ache,” Elda admitted. “All over.” In my soul, too, she thought.

“And I bet he didn’t say thank you, did he?” Ruskin said.

“No,” said Elda.

She wanted to go on and explain that it was just that Corkoran was afraid of heights, but before she could muster the energy, Ruskin said, “There you are then. I’m beginning to think there’s not much to choose between wizards and the forgemasters back home. Selfish, overbearing lot, all of them. Think the world’s made just for them. There he is down in the buttery bar, being bought beer and playing the modest hero, and hasn’t even mentioned you! You want to come down now? Claudia’s over in Healers Hall arranging for a herbal steamroom for you. She says that’s what you’ll need.”

“Oh, yes!” Now, it was mentioned, Elda knew this was the one thing she wanted. Hot steam. Nice smells. Aches easing away. How clever of Claudia. She began to feel better just at the idea.

“Lukin’s with Olga and Felim down in the yard, ready to help you over there when you’re down,” Ruskin told her. “The question is, can you glide, or shall I let you down on a rope?”

Elda found she felt a great deal better already. She slewed her head up and around until she could see Ruskin’s wide, short shape above her against the sunset. There was the outline of a coil of rope over one of his massive shoulders. He really had come prepared to take her half ton or so of weight, even though he weighed barely a tenth of that himself.

“Easy enough with a rope. Dwarfs do this all the time,” Ruskin explained. “Take a turn around a chimney with the rope and pay it out slowly. The others will catch you.’

A little squawk of a chuckle escaped Elda’s beak. How kind. She really did have friends. But I bet there’s usually a whole team of dwarfs for something of my weight. “It’s all right, Ruskin. I can glide down. Thank you.” She surged to her feet and managed to crawl across to the parapet. When she put her head over and saw the distant faces of three of her friends turned anxiously up to her in the dusk, they seemed so far down and the courtyard looked so small and dark that there was a moment when she almost understood how humans could be afraid of heights. Then she climbed on the parapet and spread her wings, and it was all right. She came down in a smooth, sloping glide, to land just beyond Olga, Lukin, and Felim, almost without stumbling.

They rushed up to her. “Elda, you were wonderful! Are you all right? Can you walk?”

“I’ll be fine once I’ve had a steam bath,” Elda assured them. She knew, somewhere behind the ache in her wings and in her forelegs, that what she was really suffering from was disillusionment, but that was something she was not ready to think of yet.

SEVEN

THE DAY AFTER Corkoran crammed the last two assassins into a cage designed for two rats and then forgot about them was an almost uneventful one. Everyone went about normal University business in quiet relief. Practically the only event of note was that Melissa met the lofty student after breakfast and purchased eight essays off him for twenty gold pieces. The lofty student got very drunk that evening, but that was hardly unusual. Ruskin grumbled about the food all day, but that was hardly unusual either. Possibly more noteworthy was the way Ruskin collected the forty-odd library books lying on Elda’s floor and explained kindly to Elda (who was lying on her bed, aching rather but fiercely finishing her essay) that he would see to them for her. Then he took them back to the library.

“These have not been taken out in your name,” the librarian pointed out.