The Griffin's Flight by K.J. Taylor Page B

they’d do. He offered some to Skandar, but the griffin groaned and looked away. “Not hungry.”
    “All right. Oh, I got you the lizard I promised.”
    Skandar regarded the pathetic corpse of the skink, and then snapped it up. “Good lizard,” he mumbled, with what Arren was just able to recognise as sarcasm.
    “It was pretty big,” he said. “I haven’t seen many skinks that big.” He looked in Skade’s direction and saw she had finally moved. She’d pushed the robe off and was sitting with her back to a tree, still watching him.
    “Feeling better now?” said Arren.
    Skade was looking at the offal staked over the fire. “I am hungry,” she said at last.
    “Well, you’re welcome to it,” said Arren, very relieved. “I’ll give you some once it’s ready.”
    He gave her the heart and a large chunk of liver, and she ate them ravenously. She also ate the berries he’d been saving and the roots and even the grubs.
    Arren couldn’t help it; he grinned. “So, you really were hungry,” he said.
    Skade licked her fingers clean. “Yes.”
    “Do you feel better now?”
    “A little,” said Skade. She still looked wary, but her demeanour was less hostile.
    “So,” said Arren, sitting down with his own food, “where are you from, Skade? How did you get out here?”
    Skade was silent for a long time. “I am from Withypool,” she said at last.
    Arren gaped at her. “You’re what? But that’s on the other side of the country!”
    “Yes,” said Skade.
    Withypool was one of the great griffiner capitals, and its lands bordered those of Eagleholm. Arren had never been there, but he’d heard it was near the coast. “What’s it like?” he asked.
    Skade thought about it. “Beautiful.”
    “Is it really next to the sea?”
    “A small flight away,” said Skade. “But the land is flat. You can see it from the top of the Eyrie.”
    “I’ve never seen the sea before,” said Arren. “Does it really breathe?”
    “It moves,” said Skade. “The water rises up and throws itself onto the land. At night it rises, and in the morning it returns.”
    Arren tried to imagine it. “Magic,” he said aloud. “I’d love to see it one day. I’ve seen griffins use magic, but magical places—I’ve never seen one of those.” He cursed internally: he shouldn’t have said anything about griffins. If she realised he was—he cursed internally again. She already knew he spoke griffish. She’d been using it since the moment they had met, and though he had been answering her in Cymrian, he obviously understood it. “What’s the city like?” he asked hastily.
    “It is very large,” said Skade. “Stone and mud brick, mostly. The Eyrie is at the top of a mountain, above the other buildings. But there is a great wall around the city, to protect it. And there is a fortress near the sea. We flew out to it every day. There are always three of us there, watching the sea.”
    Once Withypool had constantly had to defend the coast against raiders from the East, Arren knew. But that had died down recently. “Who was the Master of the Eyrie?”
    “Arakae.”
    That didn’t sound like a human name. “Is he a good ruler?” said Arren.
    “Yes. He is just and brave, and his human is cunning.”
    “Wait—Arakae is a griffin?”
    “Of course,” said Skade. “A griffiner is not master of his griffin. Without Arakae, the Lord Ruel would not be a ruler of humans.”
    Arren supposed that was true. In Eagleholm, people had deferred to the griffins at least as much as to their human partners, if not more so. After all, as soon as he had lost Eluna and the news had spread, he had lost everything. Without her, there was no respect from anyone. Even so, it was always the human who was the lord or lady, and the one people thought of first. Arren knew why: though the griffin was the more powerful and revered of the two, the human was the one other humans understood and could relate to. Humans saw the world in terms of other