The Care and Feeding of Griffins (39 page)

A little rag dolly with button eyes and cute little cloth horns.  A minotaur dolly.  For a Cerosan child.

Taryn shivered, although the air in the apartment was dry and still.  Loathe to return the doll to the floor where she’d found it, she set it on the nearest bed instead.  It looked even worse there.  Taryn turned away, gathering Aisling and moving fast for the door.  She’d seen enough.  The city wasn’t just quiet.  It was dead.

Taryn stepped out into the silent street, all golden with setting sunlight.  She turned toward the archway and stopped, biting down a breathy scream by only the barest of margins.

Her first thought—that the city’s ghosts were rising and coming for her—died before it was fully formed.  The black shape with spreading horns that stood in the archway was nothing but Antilles, and a more welcome sight in this forsaken place she’d be hard-pressed to name.

“
Tilly!” she cried, and flinched at the strident echoes it made.

He raised a hand, beckoning but not calling, and she hurried to him.  Her footsteps threw echoes, a sinister illusion of pursuit.

She stepped out onto the overgrown stair, shedding unease as the sounds of life in the outer world came blessedly to her ears.  Antilles put his hand on her shoulder, guiding her further away from the empty gate.  He didn’t speak.  When she glanced around at him, his face was turned back toward the city, all shadows and grim silence.

“
What happened here?” she asked, hugging Aisling a little tighter.

He didn
’t answer for a long time, long enough that Taryn had begun to try and formulate an apology for intruding.  But at length, he shook his head and turned away.  “A great evil,” he said simply.

“
Are they…Did everyone…?”

“
A decision was made to abandon the city.  They withdrew across the mountains to the holdings of our distant kin.”  He started walking and she followed him.  He’d given her no order, but he must have meant for her to do so because his stride was measured for her legs, not his.

“
Why didn’t you go with them?” she asked.

“
I am the lord of this Valley.  I will never forsake it.”

Taryn thought of the overgrown stair, the thick carpet of dust over the interior of the city
’s buildings.  So much time…

“
Why haven’t they come back?” she asked.

“
The danger that drove them yet remains.  I will send for them when I can be assured of their safety.”

“
What danger?”  She saw again that clean line beneath the archway, separating for all to see the land of the living from the city of the dead.  “Is it plague?” she asked, newly horrified.

“
Nay.”  He sent her an arch look.  “Though well it might have been.  A little caution, human, come future days.”

She scowled, dropping her eyes, and there was Aisling
’s merrily unconcerned face to remind her of how right Antilles was.  He fawned under her guilty gaze, happily preening her stray strands of hair, and she felt about two inches tall.

“
What then?” she asked.

His only answer was a grunt and he kept walking.  After a while, he glanced around at her, ran his eyes thoughtfully up and down her form, and said,
“What were you about today, human?”

She shrugged, looking away. 
“Just had to get away for a bit.”

He left it at that, but his gaze was still on her and the silence became oppressive.

Taryn sighed and said, “I got some bad news from home.”

“
Aye?”

“
My grandmother.  She’s sick.  And I’m here.”

His nostrils flared briefly.  He turned back to watch the path unfold before them.  His ears flicked. 
“Aye,” he said softly. 

“
And I got a really nasty letter from one of the other people in my family telling me what a terrible person I am for taking the things my grandmother gave me when I came.  She threatened me, she threatened my family, she threatened to find out where I was…”

Antilles grunted again.  The sound was an oddly sympathetic one.

“And I’m still here,” Taryn finished.  She looked down at Aisling in her arms, petted him, and looked away.  She was quiet for a while, and then, in a sudden, unplanned rush, burst out, “Everything seemed so simple when this all began!  I didn’t have any doubts.  But now, I don’t know, I feel like…like…”

“
Like you have scaled half a cliff and let go your only rope.”  Antilles continued his relaxed and steady gait.  He didn’t look at her.  His voice was low and even.  “Like ‘tis as far to fall as yet to climb, and the hour grows late.”

Taryn studied his impassive face from the corner of her eye. 
“Just like that,” she said quietly.

He grunted, lost in thought, and did not answer.

They walked together in silence after that.  Soon, the bridge was in sight through the trees, but Antilles cocked an eye at the lowing sun and halted.  “Lo, the hour does indeed grow late,” he mused, and gave his head a shake.  He turned aside, waving her to follow him without bothering to look and see if she did.  “And the dangers that should concern you most now prowl the plains to hunt.  You will stay with me tonight.”

She slowed, looking back at the bridge. 
“Actually, I’m pretty sure I can reach my camp before it gets too—”

He turned around and came back for her, his horns lowering and his fists clenching.  Taryn instantly broke into a run to join him.  He
grunted, giving her a black stare as she slipped past him and into the forest.

“
Have you ever noticed that you never talk to me unless you’re threatening me?” she grumped, keeping just ahead of him on the path.

“
When I threaten, I seldom talk at all,” he replied.  “And I would not need to do even that if only you would obey me without question.”

“
Ha!  Go ahead, Tilly.  Hold your breath and wait for that.”

“
Truly, you are over-arrogant,” he mused.  “Why do I permit you to stay?”

“
Admit it.  Arrogance turns you on.”

“
Nay, lady,” he said wryly.  “Assuredly, it does not.”

“‘
Lady,’ eh?”

Her sly glance caught his startled expression and sudden tension in the instant before his frown consumed his features.  He pushed past her and stalked on ahead of her as the trees thinned and the path became a mountain trail.

“
You are my sunshine
,” she sang after him.  “
My only sunshine
…”

“
Miserable, arrogant human.”

“
You make me haaa-peee when skies are graaay
!”

“
Oh, do be quiet, Taryn!”

“
Taryn!” she crowed, delighted.

He stopped suddenly and swung around. 
“Aye,” he said.  His eyes were fierce, bright as steel and unblinking.  “Taryn.”

Her teasing smile faded into something unsure as he continued to hold that steady gaze.  It occurred to her for the first time in a long time that Antilles was entirely naked and she felt a blush creeping up on her from somewhere.

In her arms, Aisling looked excitedly from one to the other of them and finally cried, “Tilly!” in Taryn’s own happy voice.

The minotaur
’s eyes dropped to the griffin.  Aisling opened his beak for some happy panting.  Antilles raised a hand to stroke the crown of feathers once and then he turned away and continued walking.

“
Tilly?  Too-ra loo!”  Aisling’s feathers came forward hopefully, then slicked back when Antilles merely continued walking.  “Jerk,” he muttered, hunching low in Taryn’s arms.

“
Hush, you,” she told him, still flushed.  “Be nice.”

“
At least I am still someone’s sunshine.”  Antilles turned a corner around a jut of rock and was gone.

She followed, concentrating on just moving her feet and trying not to think about spending the night with the fellow who had just made her this bizarrely uncomfortable.  Oh, he was probably right about not trying to go home tonight.  The sun set fast; with no fire burning at her campsite and fellcats on the prowl, she was in a dangerous place when she was wandering the plains.

‘As opposed to hiking up a mountain in the dark.’

Sure, trust her brain to pipe up with logic, like she needed to hear that.

“Um, about how much further?” she called.

Her answer was the grind of heavy stone and a sudden bar of fuzzy light opening ahead of her.  Antilles stood to one side, a black, horned shape in a post of unmistakable pride. 
“I admit you, human,” he said, gesturing within, “to my own hearth.”

Taryn ascended the last few feet and his hand suddenly swept out and caught her shoulder.

“Do not read too deeply into this invitation,” he said.  “Most of my protected may expect to see it once.”

She blinked. 
“O…kay.  I was going to register for china, but I’ll try to control myself.”

“
Jerk,” Aisling added.

She didn
’t hush him this time.  Antilles noticed.  He tossed his horns, a gesture she was beginning to suspect was one of good humor, a guess his teasing tone would seem to verify as he said, “One would think you glad of the clarification, human.  I am a nudist, after all.”

She felt her lips twitching and gave in to a grin.  This time, when he gestured, she went inside.

49.  The Lord’s Own Hearth

B
ehind the stone doors was a cavern that gave every appearance of being carved out by time and the mountain’s own whim, but when Taryn looked more closely, she could see the marks of tools on the walls, the too-perfect rolls and hollows of rock that surely had been smoothed by hand.  Come to that, did caves ever look this ideal?  High-domed ceiling, gently-rounded walls, smooth floor—other than a Hollywood set or the bat-house at the zoo, Taryn didn’t think such caves existed.

“
Did you make this place?” she blurted, knowing it was a ridiculous thing to ask.  The cave had to be natural.  It would take decades to—

“
Aye,” Antilles said, looking pleased.  He reached out one huge hand and stroked the nearest wall, his eyes tracking fondly over the fluid curves of the rock.  “And a fair flow of years did it consume, but see the winning result.  Come.  Sit.  My hearth is yours this night.”

His hearth was a stretch of rock etched with elaborate knots that lay before a ten-foot wide fireplace.  Just beyond that was a high tumble of thick furs that seemed to be the only bed.  There was a low stone table, round and polished as a mirror, and beside it, a chair made mostly of carved horn and padded with what she thought might be otter.  There was a long wooden chest in the sloping hollow that passed for a corner in the cave, its lid heavily carv
ed with an image of two Cerosan (Cerosans?  Cerosi?) wrestling.  Axes, long-hafted and wide-bladed, decorated the walls, catching the light from the fire and shining back golden as torches.

She put Aisling down, and the young griffin galloped excitedly in two large figure-eights through all the furniture before crashing up against the stone table.  He snarled impressively, attacked with furious might, and then curled up underneath the accompanying chair and fell instantly asleep.

Taryn walked through the cavern, letting her eyes and fingers feast on the adornments of the Cerosan’s devising.  This was no campsite, no lairing place to pass away the years.  This was his home.  Everything was shaped to his satisfaction, everything placed where he could best admire it.  Everything in this perfect place was Antilles.

When she came back to his heart
h, she sat, tucking her legs up Indian-style and running her hands appreciatively over the knots slithering over the stone beneath her.  “It’s wonderful,” she said. 

He grunted, a complaisant sound, and took an embellished horn from a hook on the wall.  He filled it with amber liquid from a wooden cask and brought it to her. 
“When first you met me,” he said, nodding for her to take the drink, “You called me ‘minotaur’.  Why?”

“
Well, it…”  Flustered, Taryn tried to hide in her cup, but her first sip was cloyingly sweet and she had to struggle to swallow it.  “That’s just what…what our myths call people who look like you,” she managed, now hiding from having to drink.

“
Your myths.”  Antilles stretched out on the pile of furs, arching his massive body until Taryn could hear the creak and groan of his muscles.  He leaned back and kicked his hoof-caps off with an expression of pleasure any woman who had ever worn heels would recognize.  And then he looked at her, his eyes flaming with the reflection of his hearth.  “Your stories, you mean.  Tell me.”

“
I’m not a good storyteller,” Taryn protested.  She tried to fake another swallow of the awful honeyed drink, but Antilles gently took the horn out of her hands.

“
You don’t enjoy it,” he said.  “Clearly.  Tell me your tale of minotaur.”

Taryn found a thread on her jeans to pick at. 
“It’s not very flattering.”

Antilles laughed and took a long draught from her cup. 
“Nay, I imagine ‘tis not.  Likewise, the many tales I know of humankind would likely offend even your sensibilities, but I promise I will not be angry when I hear it.  You are not the author of the tale, after all.  You are the friend who is sharing my hearth.”  He tipped the cup at her.  “And my mead.  Tell me.”

Taryn sighed and shut her eyes, trying to remember all the way back to the Greek History portion of her Literature course in the seventh grade.  She said,
“There once was a king named Minos who started the whole thing by refusing to sacrifice a bull to the gods.  The bull was a particularly fine specimen, and anyway, gods don’t notice everything, so Minos thought he could get away with keeping the beauty and sacrificing a steer or something.  Only it turns out that the only sure way to get gods in ancient Greece to pay attention to you is by pissing ‘em off good and proper—”

“
Indeed, all gods,” Antilles murmured into his mead.

“—
and the king of the gods retaliated by filling Minos’s wife, Pasiphae, with a desire for the bull that Minos had kept for himself.”

“
Now.”  Antilles leaned forward slightly.  “When you say ‘desire’…?”

“
I mean
desire
.”

“
Ah.  Go on.”  He didn’t smile, but there was genuine amusement in his voice and not a trace of offense.

“
Pasiphae spent a lot of time mooning around the bullpen, and one day, she approached the royal trap-smith and toymaker, a man named Daedalus, and asked him to help her, er, consummate her desires.”

Antilles burst out laughing.  His hand slapped into the bony ridge between his horns and he leaned into his knees, his great shoulders shaking and his mead dangling from his fingers.  Odd, that even as he was laughing, he wasn
’t smiling.  She was beginning to think maybe he couldn’t.  After a long storm of mirth, Antilles finally raised his cup for another swallow, and waved at her to continue.

“
Daedalus built Pasiphae a very pretty fake cow to climb inside—”

“
Oh gods and grief!”

“—
and had a wonderful romp in the stable yards,” Taryn finished, beginning to smile as she watched the Cerosan succumb to hilarity once more.  “Sometime later, the second half of the god’s curse was revealed when Pasiphae gave birth to a very strange-looking son.”

“
Bull-begotten,” Antilles mused.  He set the now-empty horn upside-down to dry and leaned back into his bed.  He laced his hands atop his stomach, all attention.

“
He was locked away almost at once—”

“
And I imagine the king had a word to say to his lady wife,” Antilles remarked, “as well as losing little time in sacrificing a certain bull.”

“
Probably,” Taryn agreed, grinning.  “And then the king commissioned Daedalus to build a vast labyrinth in the catacombs beneath the palace, where the minotaur, or ‘the bull of Minos’, could be safely contained.  This was done, and so the kingdom of Minos’s reign entered a new stage of weirdness and tyranny because Minos evidently decided that to prevent such a thing from happening again, he should sacrifice to more than just the gods.  Every year, fourteen of the local youths—seven boys and seven girls—”

“
Virgins?” Antilles interrupted.

“
I guess so.  That’s generally how those things happened.”

“
Indeed.  Continue.”

“
Fourteen youths were rounded up and sent into the labyrinth to be devoured by the minotaur.”

“
Fourteen.  For an entire year.”  Antilles ran his gaze down Taryn’s body with an assessing eye anyone else might have found a trifle…disturbing.  He grunted thoughtfully.  “He was a thin lad come the new year,” was his final verdict.

“
This went on for many years, and then one day, the half-human son of one of the gods decided he had to prove himself to Dad, and went out to kill the minotaur.”

Antilles started up from his furs. 
“Kill him?” he echoed, alarmed.  “But why?”

Taryn blinked. 
“Well…he was eating people.”

“
Only those his king sent in to his prison to be devoured,” Antilles argued.  “He was not running wild through the streets to prey on old men and infants!  And I am certain he would eat a sheep if one were only offered him!”

“
I agree,” she said, a little uneasy.  “I always did think Theseus would have served his fellow man better by killing King Minos, but that’s not how the story goes.”

“
Mm.”  Antilles settled himself again, glowering.  “You did warn me,” he muttered.  “Pray, continue with your tale.”

“
Theseus took the place of one of the doomed youths and lost no time in making eyes at the king’s daughter—”

“
This one, presumably, conceived outside the stables?”

“
Presumably.  Her name was Ariadne, and she offered to help Theseus so long as he took her away with him when he was done.”

“
Done slaying his monster,” grumbled the Cerosan, but laced his hands atop his hard stomach once more.

“
On the day of sacrifice, Ariadne snuck into the holding cell of the labyrinth and gave Theseus a ball of golden thread and a sword.  Theseus renewed his promise to marry her and marched off into the labyrinth.  He tied the thread to the door of the holding cell and unwound it as he walked, so he couldn’t get lost, and he just wandered around until he worked his way to the center of the maze.  He found the minotaur.”

“
Who, after one year’s hard rations, was thin as a feather and easily defeated by a well-fed human with a sword.”

Taryn winced and dropped her eyes. 
“Actually, the minotaur was asleep.”

Silence.

“Ah.”  Antilles shook his head slowly and stared up at the ceiling.  “So the boy slew the beast and thus became a hero of Man.  He wed himself to the daughter of a king and returned to his homeland in triumph.”

“
Theseus was a crudhook,” Taryn said.  “He only took Ariadne as far as the first isle out of Greece.  Then he slept with her and marooned her and sailed off into the sunrise while she was sleeping.  He even forgot to fly the right sails, so when his human dad saw his ship coming back, he thought Theseus was dead and he flung himself into the ocean.  Some hero, huh?”

“
A miserable excuse for flesh.  A murderer and a misuser of women.”  Antilles paused and turned to meet her eyes.  “But a fine story,” he added.  “I thank you for sharing it.”

“
You’re welcome.  Now how ‘bout you tell me one of your horribly-offensive human stories so I don’t feel like I’ve spent the whole night insulting you.”

“
Ah.  Very well, let me think a moment.”  Antilles bent his great head and closed his eyes.

Taryn inched a little closer and sunk her feet into the nearest folds of fur.  On the other side of the cave, Aisling still slept beneath the chair with his belly exposed and his
scaly forefeet curled over his beak, occasionally emitting little purring breaths of contentment.  Taryn watched firelight throw giant shadows across the stone walls, waiting, more than half expecting Antilles to start snoring.

He did not.

“Long ago, before the coming of the Great God Pan, my people journeyed to the world of Earth and lived in the outlands of humankind, with whom they shared an uneasy truce.”  Antilles opened his eyes, already gazing intently into Taryn’s face.  “My ancestors dwelled alongside the kingdom of Greece, as you call it.  But in those days, the kingdoms were very small, and the roads that ran between them were beset by many dangers.  The Cerosan alone could travel in safety, for they were new to those lands and fierce to behold.”

“
I’ll say,” Tayrn said, comfortably settling into the role of active audience.

Antilles raised his head in that foreboding horn-glinting gesture that meant he was receiving a compliment. 
“It could only have helped that every Cerosan came armed with fine metal forged in the hills,” he said.  “When your humans wore leathers and carried arms of bronze, my clan had mastered the arts of blended steel.  Be that as it may, there were perils on the pathways of men, and my ancient fathers had made it known that our kind should practice a role of non-interference, for if there is one thing humans do very well, it is that they sort themselves out.”

“
We do?”

“
Aye, well, you kill each other until the defeated few stop complaining.”  Antilles lifted one hand in a half-apology.  “But there came word one day that a king of Greece had offered a great treasure if there was a hero fit to rid the roads of its greatest dangers.  And there were two great warriors among the Cerosan who were determined to answer the challenge.”

“
Why?” Taryn asked.

“
I have no idea.”  Antilles grunted at the giggles this answer inspired, and rolled one shoulder in an awkward shrug.  “Certainly there was no threat to themselves, and they faced considerable disapproval from their chieftain and father, who had himself commanded a policy of neutrality.  That aside, we Cerosan have very different concepts of ‘treasure’ than you humans.  You…You,” he said suddenly, cocking his head to one side.  “What would you desire for treasure?”