Mercedes Lackey - The Silver Gryphon

It had been inhaled, absorbed completely. And what was more—an additional fraction of Tad’s personal mage-energy had gotten pulled along behind it as if swept in a current.

“Oh. My. Gods,” he breathed, feeling utterly stunned. Now he knew what had hit them, out there over the forest. And now he knew why the wyrsa had begun following them in the first place.

The wyrsa were the magic-thieves, not some renegade mage, not some natural phenomena. They ate magic, or absorbed it, and it made them stronger.

Blade shook him urgently. “What happened?” she hissed in his ear. “What’s the matter? What’s going on?”

He shook off his paralysis to explain it to her; she knew enough about magic and how it worked that he didn’t have to explain things twice.

“Goddess.” She lay there, just as stunned for a moment as he was. And then, in typical fashion, she summed up their entire position in a two sentences. “They have our scent, they want our blood, and now they know that you produce magic on top of all that.” She stared at him, aghast, her eyes wide. “We’re going to have to kill them all, or we’ll never get away from here!”

Nine

Tad hissed at the cluster of wyrsa across the river. The wyrsa all bared their formidable teeth and snarled back. They made no move to vanish this time, and Tad got the distinct impression that they were taunting him, daring him to throw something magical at them.

Well, of course they were. They had no reason to believe he had anything that could reach across the river except magic, and they wanted him to throw that.

Throw us more food, stupid gryphon! Throw us the very thing that makes us stronger, and make it tasty!

He’d already checked a couple of things in their supplies. The stone he had made into a mage-light and the firestarter he had reenergized were both inert again; if he’d needed any confirmation of the fact that these were the creatures that had sucked all of the mage-energy out of the carry-basket and everything in it—well, he had it.

I wonder what Father would do in a situation like this? But Skan would not likely have ever found himself in a situation like this one. Nor would his solution necessarily have been a good one . . . since it likely would have involved a great deal of semi-suicidal straight-on combat and high-energy physical action, which he was not in the least in any shape to perform. Skandranon was more known for his physicality than his raw inventiveness, when it came right down to facts.

Oh, Tad, not you, too — now you are even comparing yourself to your father. The real question is not what my father would do, the real question is, what am I going to do in this situation!

He raised himself up as high on his hindquarters as he could get, and gave a battle-scream, presenting the wyrsa with an open beak and a good view of his foreclaws. They stopped snarling and eyed him warily; with a little more respect, he thought. He hoped.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that.” Blade emerged from the back of the cave where she’d been napping, hair tousled and expression sour. “It’s a bad way to wake up, thinking that your partner is about to engage in mortal combat.”

“They don’t seem to like the look of my claws,” he replied, trying to sound apologetic without actually apologizing. “I was hoping I could intimidate them a little more.”

He studied the knot of wyrsa, which never seemed to be still for more than an eyeblink. They were constantly moving, leaping, bending, twining in, around, over and under each other. He’d never seen creatures with so much energy and so much determination to use it. It was almost as if they physically couldn’t stay still for more than a heartbeat.

They had come out of the underbrush about the time that the fog lifted and the rains began; if the rain bothered them now, it certainly wasn’t possible to tell.

Then again, why should it bother them? That it did had been an assumption on his part, not a reflection of what was really going on in those narrow snake-like heads. They had neither fur nor feathers to get wet and matted down. The only effect that rain had on their scales was to make them shiny.

“On first blush, I’d say they don’t look very intimidated,” Blade pointed out. But her brows knitted as she watched the wyrsa move, and her eyes narrowed in concentration. “On the other hand—that’s a very effective defensive strategy, isn’t it?”

Tad gazed at the stalkers’ glistening hides, the way it moved and flashed. The patterns they moved in knotted and reknotted, like a decorative interlace. “Is it? But it bunches them up all in one place; shouldn’t that make it easier to hit one?” He watched them carefully, then suddenly shook himself as he realized that the creatures’ constant movement was making him go into a trance! He glanced over at Blade. She lifted an eyebrow and nodded.

“Not bad if you can put your attacker to sleep, hmm?” she asked, then smiled slyly, which put Tad instantly on the alert. He’d seen that smile before, and he knew what it meant. Trouble, usually for someone else. “Well, let’s see if we can take advantage of their bit of cleverness, shall we? Stay there and look impressive, why don’t you? I need something to keep them distracted.”

She retreated into the cave. The wyrsa continued their hypnotic weaving as Tad watched them, this time prepared to keep from falling under their spell, glancing away at every mental count of ten.

“Duck,” came the calm order from behind him.

He dropped to the floor, and a heavy lead shot zinged over him, through the space where his head had been. Across the stream, one of the wyrsa squalled and bit the one nearest it. The second retaliated, and Tad had the impression that it looked both surprised and offended at the “unprovoked” attack. The weaving knot was becoming unraveled as the two offended parties snapped and hissed at one another.

Another lead shot followed quickly, and a third wyrsa hissed and joined what was becoming a melee. That seemed to be more provocation than the others could resist, and the knot became a tumbling tangle of quarreling wyrsa, with nothing graceful, coordinated, or hypnotic about it. Now most of the knot was involved in the fight, except for a loner who extricated itself from the snarling, hissing pack. This creature backed up slowly, eying the others with what was clearly surprise, and Blade’s third shot thudded right into its head. It dropped in its tracks, stunned, while the rest of the group continued to squabble, squall, and bite.

Blade stepped back into the front of the cave and watched the wyrsa with satisfaction. “I wondered just how cohesive that pack was. I also wonder how long it’s going to take them to associate a distance-weapon with us; I doubt that they’ve ever seen or experienced one before.”

At just that moment, another one of the creatures emerged from the bushes, and uttered a cry that was part hiss, part deep-throated growl. The reaction to this was remarkable and immediate; the others stopped fighting, instantly, and dropped to the ground, groveling in submission. The new wyrsa ignored them, going instead to the one that Blade had brought down, sniffing at it, then nipping its hindquarters to bring it groggily to its feet.

“I’d say the pack-leader just arrived,” Tad said.

The new wyrsa swung its head around as he spoke, and glared at him from across the river. The dead-white eyes skewered him, holding him in place entirely against his will, while the wyrsa’s lip lifted in a silent snarl. The eyes glowed faintly, and his thoughts slowed to a sluggish crawl.