Урсула Ле Гуин - Darkness Box

Rikard's sword dropped clattering on the floor. His hands were sticky with his own blood, and he could hardly see; the beating of the gryphon's wings had blown out or knocked over every candle but one. He groped his way to a chair and sat down. After a minute, though he still gasped for breath, he did as he had done on the dune top after battle: bowed his head and hid his face in his hands. It was completely silent. The one candle flickered in its sconce, mirrored feebly in a cluster of topazes on the wall behind it. Rikard raised his head.

The gryphon lay still. Its blood had spread out in a pool, black as the first spilt darkness from the box. Its iron beak was open, its eyes open, like two red stones.

«It's dead,» said a small soft voice, as the witch's cat came picking its way delicately among the fragments of the smashed table. «Once and for all. Listen, prince!» The cat sat down curling its tail neatly round its paws. Rikard stood motionless, blank-faced, till a sudden sound made him start: a little ting nearby! Then from the tower overhead a huge dull bell stroke reverberated in the stone of the floor, in his ears, in his blood. The clocks were striking ten.

There was a pounding at his door, and shouts echoed down the palace corridors mixed with the last booming strokes of the bell, screams of scared animals, calls, commands.

«You'll be late for the battle, prince,» said the cat.

Rikard groped among blood and shadow for his sword, sheathed it, flung on his cloak, and went to the door.

«There'll be an afternoon today,» the cat said, «and a twilight, and night will fall. At nightfall one of you will come home to the city, you or your brother. But only one of you, prince.»

Rikard stood still a moment. «Is the sun shining now, outside?»

«Yes, it is—now.»

«Well, then, it's worth it,» the young man said, and opened the door and strode on out into the hubbub and panic of the sunlit halls, his shadow falling black behind him.