"What are you doing up here, Kyl?"

He gave her a sly smile that long practice had made overwhelming against many a maiden, but Gwen simply had to look at the slightly edged teeth to remind herself that this was indeed a drake, not a man. "Your pardon, Lady Gwendolyn. I should not walk with ssssuch ha.s.ste. I hope that you were not disturbed in any way."

She held back the smile that she wanted so badly to display to him. Kyl, for all his perfection, still slipped back into drake sibilance more often than either his brother or his sister. He especially had difficulty when he was in her presence. "And what brings you here in such haste?"

"I come to tell you, gracious lady, that the Manor has visitorsss."

"A servant could have told me that." Try as she might, the enchantress could never warm to Kyl. He was always trying to be near her or, more to her dismay, near Valea. The young heir to the Dragon Emperor throne was always good with her daughter, but his constant "accidents," which always somehow involved touching Gwen, made her worry about the future. It would not be long before Valea was old enough to truly gain the attention of males. In that respect, she was already too pretty now. "You need not have troubled yourself so."

"These are special visitors, my lady. Ssspecial visitors demand special treatment."

"Who are they?" She could recall no one whom she was expecting.

"They are clothed so as not to be recognized, but one ha.s.ss shown an insignia given to him by the Blue Dragon himself!"

The Lady Gwen ignored the way Kyl's eyes lit up whenever he mentioned another Dragon King. Emissaries from Irillian? But why disguised, then? "Lead me to them."

Kyl led her through the Manor and out the front. Any other time, the sorceress would have enjoyed a walk through the grounds. Kyl's close presence and the mystery of the two visitors, not to mention Cabe's situation, made that all but impossible.

The two visitors indeed resembled monks more than emissaries. Nothing but cloth was visible, but she thought that the taller of the two had to be the male that the drake had mentioned. The unknown duo stood just beyond the invisible barrier that protected the Manor grounds from unwanted guests and marauding beasts, which sometimes turned out to be the same thing.

"I am Lady Gwendolyn Bedlam. Before you say anything, let me see the ring that you revealed to the boy here." She heard Kyl hiss quietly. Perhaps he would stop trying to play her now that she had dropped him down a few levels. It was good to remind him on occasion that while he was the heir to a throne, he was also under their guardianship.

It looked as if the one she had directed her demand to was about to say something else, but then he shrugged and raised a hand toward her. The sleeve fell back. The enchantress glanced down to study the ring.

When she saw the hand that wore the ring, however, all interest in the Blue Dragon's gift vanished.

The hand was covered with fur, which by itself was unusual enough, but then Gwen noted a trace of feathers toward the wrist. Astounded, she looked up. With his free hand, the visitor was pulling back his hood. A dignified but weary avian face had been hidden under that hood. Toward the back and sides, the feathers gave way to fur. It was as if someone had crossed a lion, a bird of prey, and a man together.

"It's good to see you, my lady," the Gryphon politely whispered.

She could only gape. After so long . . .

"You have not changed, Lady Gwen," the Gryphon added when no comment was forthcoming from the enchantress. "Still as beautiful as ever."

"You . . . You're here!"

"That we are." There was something sad in the way the monarch of Penacles said that, but Gwen was still too shocked to really take note of it.

Her head jerked toward the other traveler. "Then, this must be-"

The smaller figure pulled back the hood. Again, the sorceress was taken aback. She had never met the Gryphon's bride, only corresponded with her. Seeing Troia now proved to Gwen that imagination had hardly readied herself for the truth. She was, as the Gryphon had first related, a cat woman.

More woman than cat, Gwen could not help noticing. Even the cloak could not completely hide the lithe body underneath. Every movement, no matter how small, was fluid. Her features were exotic. Her dark, arresting eyes, so truly catlike, were half-veiled. She had a tiny, well-formed nose that twitched now and then and long, full lips ever so inviting when she smiled. The hair on her head was cut short and went from pitch-black to dark brown. A closer glance revealed that the tawny, striped coloring was not her skin, but rather a short layer of fur that, if the enchantress recalled correctly, covered her entire body.

Seeing her for the first time, Gwen could not help but feel a little relieved that Troia had come here as the mate of the Gryphon and not a single female. Aurim was already too susceptible to the charms of women.

Only one thing marred Troia's appearance and that was the row of scars on the right side of her face. They did not succeed in detracting much from her beauty, but they made one curious. The Gryphon should have been able to remove them with ease. His sorcery was easily on a par with that of the Bedlams.

She realized she had never finished greeting the cat woman. "I have waited so long to actually see you, Troia!"

"And I you, Lady Gwen." Again there was the hint of sadness that the enchantress had first noticed in the Gryphon. What was wrong?

"May we enter?" asked the lionbird. "I was not certain if the barrier would still admit me and I knew that it would not admit Troia. Also, politeness dictated that we ask permission to enter." He glanced at his bride as if this had been a minor point of contention between them. From their letters, Gwen had been given to understand that there were times when Troia could make her look like a shrinking violet in comparison.

"Where are my manners? Of course, you can enter here!"

The duo stepped forward with caution. The barrier had various ways of dealing with outsiders, many of them seemingly of its own design. Having been given permission by the lady of the land, though, neither the Gryphon nor his mate was hindered in any way.

Gwen turned to Kyl. "Kyl, if you would be so kind as to alert someone that we have special guests, I would like some food and drink ready by the time we reach the garden terrace. Would you please do that for me?"

The drake lordling bowed gracefully to both his guardian and the two newcomers. "I should be happy to, my lady. If you will excusse me, Your Majessstiesss?"

The Gryphon tried to hold back a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt that had dared to rise against the sadness. "By all means."

With a surrept.i.tious glance at both Gwen and Troia, the young heir departed. The three watched until he had disappeared from sight, then returned to their conversation.

The Gryphon shook his head, whether amused or annoyed by Kyl's ways, Gwen could not say. "I had not thought about how near to adulthood the hatchlings truly were. Aurim must be almost a man, too."

"Very much so, although there are lapses. One expects those, however, at his age." Something had been nagging at the redheaded sorceress's memory and now she knew what it was. "And where-"

Troia's eyes widened and the Gryphon raised his other hand in a request for silence. Gwen noticed with horror that two fingers, the lower two, were missing.

"Gryphon!"

He sighed. "I see there is no purpose in holding back."

"Tell her, Gryph," the cat woman hissed. "Tell her why we've braved pirates and raging sea storms to come to her."

The lionbird took hold of his wife, who shook as if every fiber of her being wanted to cry out at the world. Gwen's face went grim; she suspected that she already knew the answer to the question that the Gryphon had prevented her from finishing. Rheena, please let it not be true! Let me be wrong!

"You were going to ask about our son, Demion, were you not?"

"Yes, but-"

The Gryphon, his eyes chilling, would not let her continue. "Demion is in Sirvak Dragoth, Lady Bedlam, his home forever more now." His voice was toneless. "He died at the hands of the wolf raiders."

IX.

FOR TWENTY MINUTES they had sat together in the privacy of the garden terrace and for twenty minutes Gwen had been unable to come any closer to the story behind the terrible words the Gryphon had spoken concerning his son. In truth, only she and Troia sat; the lionbird stood staring off into the main garden, his claws sheathing and unsheathing, his mane stiff. Neither he nor his bride had spoken more than a handful of words since their arrival.

Troia stared at her husband as if nothing else around her existed. That may very well be the case to her, the enchantress pondered. With Demion . . . dead . . . they can only turn to each other.

Still, there were limits to her respect for their turbulent emotions. It was clear that they had been dwelling on their loss since before their voyage, certainly a long time. Gwen did not believe that they should simply forget the loss of their sole offspring, but she was one who believed that life should go on, if only in the very name of the one who had been taken from them.

"Gryphon . . . Troia . . . I share your grief, you certainly must know that, but I need to know what happened; I need to know and I think you need to tell me."

"You are correct, of course, my Lady of the Amber. I have been remiss." He turned back to the two women. A table stood between them, a table with food and wine. Neither had been touched even by the enchantress, but now the Gryphon took the decanter and poured some of the glistening plum wine into one of the gold and silver chalices. Quite suddenly, the avian features transformed into those of a handsome, silver-haired man with patrician features. That image, though, lasted only long enough for the lionbird to swallow the wine in one swift gulp.

The Gryphon returned the goblet to the table, then glanced at his wife. "I will make this short . . . for all our sakes."

She nodded, but said nothing more. A look had come into her eyes, but one directed toward neither her mate nor the enchantress. It was a look that could have only been directed toward the unknown wolf raiders who had stolen a precious life from her.

"How did it happen?" Gwen encouraged. "Is the war-"

He seemed to dismiss the war as something inconsequential to the topic. "The war goes well. Morgis and the Master Guardians of hidden Sirvak Dragoth have helped lead many of the former slave states of the empire to freedom. We have also done our small part."

Small part, indeed! thought the flame-tressed sorceress. She knew, through missives sent by the drake Morgis, of the many things that the Gryphon had accomplished. He, more than any other individual, had been the driving force behind the continent-wide revolt against the sons of the wolf. It was odd that she and Cabe had learned much of what they knew from one of the get of the Blue Dragon. It was odder still that a drake could become so loyal a friend and companion to the Gryphon. From respectful adversaries to comrades-in-arms.

"The war goes well," he repeated, "but because of it, the Aramites grew-have grown-more desperate and treacherous in their actions. When we overthrew Luperion, they began to gather their forces in and around their original homeland, especially in Canisargos, the seat of their power." The Gryphon paused and gazed forlornly at his hostess. "Lady Bedlam, Gwendolyn, you have to understand that we are not like your kind. I was created a hunter and Troia's people are born that way."

"I made my first raider kill at the age of eight summers," whispered the cat woman. Her eyes were narrow slits. "Three of my brothers made theirs at seven. It's the way we are."

The lionbird nodded in agreement. "What I try to say is that Demion was not unfamiliar with the war. He had fought and made his first kill only months before . . . and that far, far later than he could have. We had barely been able to keep him in check for these past four years and believe me, we tried."

Gwen nodded, understanding. She understood quite well what it meant to grow up in wartime.

"Chaenylon, it was." The monarch of Penacles unsheathed both sets of claws again. "Chaenylon, which will forever mean despair to us."

They had only taken the Aramite port city some three months before, but in that short time it had quickly become a valuable part of their western campaign. Chaenylon gave them a new location to ship supplies to the forces ever inching closer to the heart of the empire, Canisargos. After all these years, the empire's great citadel was within striking distance. The Aramites had always been more willing to give up their slave states rather than leave Canisargos anything but much overdefended. Now, not even that would save them. The confederation of free kingdoms, with the help of the Gryphon and Duke Morgis, had put together a combination of armies that would soon launch an attack in the direction of the Aramite city. It was possible that the wolf raider empire would cease to exist within the next three years.

That did not mean that the raiders would be defeated. There would be pockets of resistance for years and more than a few ships had slipped away into the open sea.

Gwen flinched when she heard the last. She had still not told her guests of the wolf raider rumors, in part because she feared that they would leave the moment they knew, but also because she herself needed to know what had happened overseas.

"Either they knew about the impending attack or it was pure bad fortune, but whatever the case, one morning Chaenylon itself came under a.s.sault. Six warships simply sailed in. The harbor was madness. They utilized special catapults to bombard the city. There were gryph-gryphon riders everywhere. Worse, from every ship there came an armed force. We turned back the first wave, but there was no way of keeping the second from landing." The lionbird's eyes lost their focus. He was once again in the midst of battle. "Western Chaenylon was in flames. The Aramites seized control of the docks, then spread through the city."

Lady Bedlam recalled the siege of Penacles long ago. She and Cabe, fleeing the Dragon Kings who had sought the grandson of Nathan Bedlam, had been given refuge by the Gryphon. The drakes had not taken kindly to that. For days, they had tried to take Penacles. While the battle had never quite escalated to the sort of fighting that the defenders of Chaenylon must have gone through, it had been terrible enough. She could only imagine what her two guests had suffered through.

"We can never be certain of what happened."

"We know enough!" hissed Troia. "We know that it was D'Farany again or at least one of his puppets!"

"Yesss, we know that. We know it was D'Farany's curs, Troia, or else why would we be here in the first place?" Gwen would have spoken then, but the Gryphon, not noting her reaction to this latest revelation, continued with his horrific tale. "It happened during the fighting. We thought he would be safe where we had placed him. Understand, Lady Bedlam, that we valued Demion above all else. He was our pride. Despite his desires, we kept him away as much as we could, but no one could count on wolf raider tenacity."

They had moved Demion and several others to what was considered the safest quarter of the city. Well behind the haphazard line of fighting. Not only was there a line of defense to protect him, but there was also little in that quarter that should have interested the raiders. Chaenylon had been one of the empire's centers for cartographical study and thus great archives housing much of the sum of their seafaring knowledge had been built there. Maps dating back thousands of years were stored in the archives as were the most current. Whether drawn up by the Aramites themselves or stolen from some captured vessel, the maps were all carefully stored for future use. Much of the region where Demion had been placed was simply an outgrowth of those archives. There were only small stores of weapons and food there. Anything of true value to the invading force should have been near the fighting.

Yet, someone among the raiders had evidently found some need for those maps. Enough need to send a small but efficient force to hunt down the archives. They had somehow slipped past the lines, a trail of dead sentries marking their way. Their target they reached with minimal resistance, for everyone's attention was on the main struggle. Once inside the buildings, they had proceeded to ransack the archives.

There it was that they had also evidently come across Demion, who had left the safety of the building he had originally been housed in by his parents.

Here again the Gryphon straightened. His mane bristled and his voice was both proud and bitter as he added, "We know that he and a few soldiers evidently with him gave of themselves the best they could. Nine raiders met their end there, three of them definite kills by our son." He clenched his fists together. "But there were more than nine."

"And the coward that cut him down did so from behind!" roared the furious and frustrated cat woman. She was on her feet in an instant, her own claws flashing in and out as she no doubt pictured the scene in her mind.

Despite barely being able to keep her own composure, Gwen responded in soothing tones. "But he did not let them take him without paying for it, Troia, Gryphon! He did not let himself be taken without payment. He fought honorably to the end. I grieve for your loss, but it is the good memories of him you must keep in mind from here on. The memories of what he was to you and how he will always be with you no matter where you are." She was aware how different the thinking processes of the two were compared to that of either herself or Cabe. Both the Gryphon and his mate were civilized, but they were also predators, more than even humans were. She could only hope that her quick words carried some meaning to them. "Demion would want you to be looking forward, not dwelling in a maelstrom of hurt and anger."

"We look forward, Lady of the Amber. We look forward to the final hunt, the snaring, and the running down of the curs responsible for his death." The Gryphon's part-avian, part-human eyes glared at the empty sky. Both he and his bride calmed a bit, if only on the outside. "Curs who have run to the Dragonrealm, if what we discovered is true."

"The Dragonrealm?" It was a verification of everything she had feared, but Gwen did not reveal that fear to the duo.

Unwilling to sit down again, Troia began to pace gracefully back and forth. "In the end, we repulsed the d.a.m.ned dogs' attack. They lost two ships there, but Chaenylon was in ruins. It took us the better part of the day to discover . . . his body. Whether the raider who killed him returned to the ships with the other survivors or died in the city before he could flee, we'll probably never know, my lady. I wish we would . . . I'd follow him personally to the ends of the world . . . What we do know is that they seemed most interested in charts concerning the Dragonrealm."

"And we discovered then that three of the ships never returned to the empire," interjected the Gryphon. "Three ships, including the one carrying Lord D'Farany."

"You mentioned him twice now . . . who is he?"

"He is a keeper, Lady Bedlam. An Aramite sorcerer."

His words struck her with the force of a well-shot bolt. Having kept abreast of the distant war since its inception, the enchantress was aware of most of the major events. There was one in particular she recalled about the sinister keepers. "But they all died! Almost twenty years ago!"

"Died or gone mad, you mean? Lord Ivon D'Farany did not die; as to whether he went mad, that is another question."

"Even still, he should be powerless!" Was Cabe heading toward a confrontation with a sorcerer of the darkest arts? "You said that they-"

"Had lost their link with their G.o.d, the unlamented Ravager, yes. You recall correctly. That loss, that withdrawal, was enough to kill most of them and leave the others mindless." He squawked. "Somehow, a young keeper named D'Farany survived and although it cannot be vouchsafed that he had no power of his own, he has time and time again brought forth sorcerous talismans and artifacts that were thought lost and used them to the raiders' advantage." The lionbird held up his maimed hand. "This is the work of Lord D'Farany; even my skill is insufficient to heal it proper. Troia, too, bears the mark of one of the keeper's discoveries." She turned so that Gwen could better see the scars across her face. For the first time, the enchantress noticed that they glowed ever so slightly. Glowed bloodred. "He, more than anything else, has slowed the course of the war by at least three, perhaps four years."

"And he does all this even though the dogs themselves mutter about his sanity!" Troia snorted, still pacing about.

Her quick, constant movements were disrupting Gwen's attempts to remain calm. "You think he's here."

"He has to be," the lionbird returned, almost pleading again. "There is no other place for him to hide so great a force. He cannot stay anywhere near the empire or the free lands. D'Farany, by abandoning the war, has in a sense made himself enemy of both. That is why he must be here."

"What about the war? What will happen with you gone?"

He looked closely at her. "The war now moves well even without us and especially without D'Farany to aid them. We have given more than a decade of our own lives in addition to the life of our one child. There was no one who did not think we were ent.i.tled to depart. I did not abandon them. In fact, Sirvak Dragoth would only be too happy to see an end made of the curs. D'Farany and his men, as long as they live to fight again, will forever be a fear covering the freed lands and the surrounding waters."

"We'll find him, my lady," hissed the cat woman. "He killed Demion as good as if he were the one who struck the blow. His death alone will pay for our son's."

The anxious sorceress could not help but blurt, "Do you truly think so?"

Neither of them could look at her then, but Troia slowly replied, "Nothing else will balance that scale, not even . . ." She held her tongue at the last moment, apparently unwilling to share some further revelation with her host. "Nothing."

"The voyage across did nothing but stir the embers to new life," the Gryphon added. It seemed whenever one faltered, the other was there to continue the tale. To Gwen, it revealed just how close the duo were to each other and in turn how close they had been to their son. "When we arrived on the sh.o.r.e of southeastern Irillian, I was barely able to control my desire to use sorcery to speed our journey to here along. Out of respect of the Blue Dragon, I held off until we reached the borders between his domain and that of the Storm Dragon. Then I found I could not wait any longer. Daring the lord of Wenslis's ire, I teleported us from his lands to the ruins of Mito Pica, just beyond your forest. We would have even materialized at the very border of your domain, but the Green Dragon has ever been a good neighbor to Penacles and I would not wish to cause my former home any ill will."

"We've told you our story, Lady Bedlam." Troia stalked up to the enchantress, then nearly went down on one knee just before her. "Gryph said that if anyone could help us, if anyone had some word, it would be the Bedlams."

The Gryphon stood beside his mate, the maimed hand on her shoulder. "Even if you have no word of the raiders, I ask that you might grant us the boon of letting us stay but one night so that we might be refreshed for the hunt ahead of us. You have my word that I will make amends for the trouble."

She looked at them, at their eyes that both pleaded and hoped, and wanted to say that she had heard nothing. Like Darkhorse with Shade, they were obsessed. Gwen could not find it in herself to lie to them, though, possibly because she knew that under the circ.u.mstances she would have acted the same way.