Shennan helped bring in the harvest near Aarllu, and he trebled the silvers he earned there at a card table in Methlos. He slept in a barn, and the morning found him on the road to Kelonis, the Market City.
He followed a wheel-rutted trail across the grasslands, whistling as he walked. At midday a huge shadow slid across the plain. Shennan looked up and spied a winged form. The tawny body and tufted tail of a lion trailed behind feathered pinions.
"By the Thrice-Great One," whispered Shennan. "A gryphon!"
The bird-animal banked high above. Its raptorial beak and forelegs were deep orange. The feathered head was chestnut brown, the wings' undersides buff.
The gryphon scanned the earth. On its head two curious pointed ears rose. Suddenly the bird-beast dropped like the wrath of the gods. Shennan threw himself flat; the creature's shadow engulfed him and passed on.
The wanderer raised his head. He was not the gryphon's target. There came a "Whup-Whup" of wings, and yellow dust exploded up on his left. The bird-beast lit on its leonine feet and seized something with its foreclaws. It stared down its wicked beak at him.
The emerald-colored and emerald-hard eyes were not what commanded his attention, piercing though they were. Instead the traveller studied the pointed ears atop the aquiline head. They twitched as if shy of scrutiny then vanished in a brindled cloud as their owner beat its wings.
The gryphon mounted to the sky, a large rabbit in its talons.
"Half lion and half eagle, they say," muttered Shennan as he marched. "The lion I saw in its hind parts, the eagle in its head and wings. But its ears. . ."
Shennan kept on apace, and when he next checked the horizon he found the walls of Kelonis stretching across it like a mountain ridge. He stepped from his rutted trail onto the paved Laxarian Road, and he soon joined a river of wagoners and horsemen and travellers afoot. With them he passed through the gates of Kelonis.
Shennan found himself crowded against a fellow in a green cloak who clinked as he walked. With no effort of mind or fingers, he relieved the man of a bag of silvers.
He emerged from the tunnellike entrance into the noisy market city. A dirt-caked little girl caught his eye. She stood at an alley entrance in a ragged sack of a dress, holding an alms-plate -- or half of one, anyway.
Shennan smiled. He remembered another such waif, far away in Nelikan, fighting rats for fruit rinds in the summer and huddling with them in the winter. But Bezhan the Light-Fingered took that lad as an apprentice, and the boy had prospered -- at least, he ate regular meals and slept under a roof.
The boy's mind ached with curiosity, however, and he wished to see new sights and other cities. He grew unsatisfied, also, with the rigors of the Thieves' Guild, so he left Nelikan, and the Guild sent only two assassins after him. These cutthroats were themselves apprentices, for Shennan was of no great importance. One he eluded as easily as a dim-eyed ox, and as for the other -- well, the cistern behind the Temple of Twelve was better than a life of professional murder.
He whistled at the urchin and flipped her a coin. A smile broke through the grime of her face, and the girl called thanks before disappearing behind a shop.
"Hah!" someone burst out. It was the clinking man. "You fell for the old beggar-girl trick, my lad?"
The fellow pursed his lips and shook his head sadly.
"I can only observe that a fool and his money are soon parted."
A boy of no more than ten crept up behind him and disappeared afterwards with something in his hand. Shennan nodded.
"I must agree with you, sir."
Shennan entered a plaza. Merchants sang and wailed like the professional beggars of Duat.
"Look you, good sir, at the quality of this jade!" a bearded man called from a booth. "And at the intricate carving, which not even the finest artisans of Bakhau can duplicate! A thousand men and a score of ships lost, conveying this treasure from the land beyond the Thick Sea to Kelonis. Yet for you, sir, a price of only one hundred dekkae!"
Shennan studied the idol, which resembled nothing so much as a squatting ape sticking out its tongue.
"I think not, good merchant," he said.
"Ninety dekkae, perhaps!"
"No; nor nine."
The corpulent merchant set the ape down and lifted a statuette of shimmering ivory into view.
"The gentle sir has an eye for beauty, I see! Cast then your gaze upon this, the Queen of the Limneads, a priceless eidolon from the Land of Lakes! Carved from the tusk of a most unwilling Mammoth, carried off by a horde of ravaging Scoloti, and presented to me by a dying Issedi chieftain. A bargain at two hundred dekkae!"
Shennan gritted his teeth to keep from guffawing.
"This white goddess is more appealing than yon ogre," he admitted, "but you overestimate the length of my purse."
The wanderer made to step away, but a clay statuette of a gryphon caught his eye. There were the vast wings, the wicked eagle's beak, and the great pricked ears.
The merchant seized upon Shennan's obvious interest.
"Ah! The gryphon! Magnificent, yes?"
He lifted the figurine, which was about the size of a domestic cat, and set it on the counter.
"Note how smoothly it fuses the majestic Lord of Birds with the most noble King of Beasts, creating a whole of utmost power and grace! Observe how each feather seems to be made of down rather than glazed clay! Why, one can imagine it springing into the sky from this very spot, crying a challenge at some marauding Fire-Drake! And at a price of only fifty dekkae --"
"The ears," said Shennan suddenly.
The merchant paused, blinked, and opened his mouth again. Shennan cut him off.
"I was wondering about the gryphon's ears. They are not the ears of a lion, and certainly not those of an eagle. Why do gryphons have long, pointed ears?"
"I really cannot say, gentle sir," answered the merchant. "But you can study the gryphon and its ears at your leisure for a paltry forty-five dekkae."
Shennan scanned the wood and stone buildings that reared up beyond the market square.
"Might there be a sage or hunter in this city who knows the lore of gryphons?"
"Doubtless there is, good sir, yet I am but a humble merchant, not a gazetteer of the folk of Kelonis. I merely buy, barter, and sell priceless antiquities, such as this handsome lion-bird, for which I ask the miserable sum of forty dekkae."
"Might you know anyone with knowledge of gryphons?" asked Shennan. The merchant eyed him darkly.
The statuette's wings jutted conspicuously out of Shennan's pack. He worked his way through the city, counting his remaining coins. At least the merchant had given him three names with which to pursue his inquiry.
The shop of Alkinoos the Trapper, on the shore of Lake Kelon, was his first stop. The growls of wolves and lions and Stefnivargr drowned out the calls of tradesmen as Shennan stepped in. The sun-browned Trapper, his leather garments pocked by fang and claw, appeared abruptly at Shennan's side. It was rare that anyone crept so near to the wanderer without him noticing.
"Er -- I was told you know about gryphons," said Shennan.
"Difficult creatures to take alive," said Alkinoos. "Not so hard to trick or trap, but holding them's another matter." The muscular hunter looked over Shennan's travel-worn apparel. "Quite expensive, I might add."
"Purchasing the beast itself, I fear, is beyond my means," admitted Shennan. "A bit of intelligence is all I desire."
Alkinoos crossed his iron-hard arms impatiently.
"And what intelligence, pray, do you seek?"
Shennan paused, studying a winged serpent in a brass cage.
"The ears," he said.
Alkinoos uncrossed his arms. "The what?"
"Gryphons are half lion and half eagle," continued Shennan, "yet they have long, pointed ears unlike either the bird or the beast. Why, do you suppose, is that?"
The trapper studied Shennan as if awaiting the final line of a jest. Then he laughed as if one had been delivered.
"It is a point I never considered, myself, lad!" He rubbed his rock-solid jaw. "The wizards of Hyperborea created gryphons before the Four Cataclysms. . . And the cats I've caught in the northern reaches -- lynxes, they're called -- have pointed ears. Perhaps the ears of the Hyperborean lions that spawned gryphons were similarly pricked."
"Have you ever seen any Hyperborean lions, good sir?"
"No," said Alkinoos. "But have you a better explanation?"
Shennan worked his way through Kelonis to the College of the Seven Paths. Here, according to the merchant, he would find the sage Detrona, author of the Bestiary of the Sakrian Continent. He entered the main hall, his cap humbly in hand, and eventually a serving lad led him to the chamber of Detrona.
The elderly sage sat in an ornate chair with lion's-paw legs. Her study smelled of pine and myrrh and hyacinth. The woman herself was pale and wizened, with silver hair hanging to her waist and long, frail fingers like spider legs.
"I am told you know something about gryphons," said Shennan, after the sage offered him a chair.
"That I do, that I do," the old woman answered. She patted a folio on a table cluttered with skulls and feather-pens and black-letters. "Gryphons, Pegasi, Minotaurs -- all that is known of the Chimerical species, I gathered together in my Bestiary."
Shennan brightened.
"Then perhaps you could tell me, kind lady -- from whence came the ears of gryphons, which are those of neither eagles nor lions?"
The sage took up a tress of hair and twisted it as if to spin it into gold.
"The ears -- the ears --" she mumbled. She opened her great book and turned many pages.
"I have it!" she cried. "They are horse's ears!"
"But what is there of horse in lion-eagles?" asked Shennan.
"That has to do with the Hippogryph," declared Detrona. "First the Ancients bred the Hippogryph, which has the head and wings and talons of an eagle, and the hind parts -- and ears -- of a horse. Later they bred lions with Hippogryphs to obtain gryphons. The ears are all that remain of the equine ancestor."
This made sense enough to Shennan, but. . .
"Gryphons, all know. But a Hippogryph? Have you ever seen one, venerable lady?"
"Well. . . no," admitted the sage. "But it is a hypothesis that explains the facts."
Next Shennan visited Barnaby of the College of Heralds.
"Oh, there's a simple enough explanation for gryphon's ears -- uncomplicated, you might say," said Barnaby, a short, stout fellow with a mustache like walrus's chops.
He led Shennan along a row of banners on which devices of various kinds had been embroidered. He indicated the portrait of an eagle's head, its neck ragged as if torn from the body.
"There's an eagle's head, erased, as we say. And yonder --"
He pointed at a shield on which was painted a similar head. This one, though, had long ears, and the neck was cut cleanly through.
"Yonder is a gryphon's head, couped. As you can see, with the head alone, there is no way to tell eagle from gryphon save by the ears. It was heralds put the ears on gryphons, sir, mark me, solely for such a convenience."
Shennan shook his head.
"My good man, that cannot be. I've seen a gryphon up close, and it did possess such ears."
The stocky little herald shrugged.
"In that case, sir, I cannot help you."
Shennan spent the night in a tiny but private room above a tavern. He sat on a stained pallet and studied the gryphon statuette by the light of a candle.
"Herald, Sage, Trapper -- all have theories, nothing more. Well, it was an amusing way to pass a day, but I have fortunes to make -- and spend."
He stretched out on the pallet, ignoring the shouts and thumps from the brothel upstairs.
In the morning the gargantuan wooden gates of Kelonis crept open, and the human flood began. Shennan followed alley tributaries toward the river of people.
He grew aware of a knot of heavyset men, an unmoving islet in the sea of flesh. The men wore officious white robes with rust-red vertical stripes. Headdresses that resembled desert turbans weighed down their skulls. Long, black, braided beards depended from their chins. Their large green eyes rolled in Shennan's direction, and one fellow broke from the group to ford the crowd.
"Sir!" called the bearded one. "Sir!"
Shennan worked his way over to a bakery's wide entrance, glancing past the flour-strewn tables to mark a back door -- just in case.
"You wish to speak to me, my good man?" he asked.
The bearded fellow stepped into the calm eddy and bowed.
"Forgive my forwardness, sir. I am Taresh-Tar of the Exalted Temple of Enkidu. Am I addressing the one who has queried folk about the city on the matter of gryphons?"
"Perhaps," said Shennan. "What is it to you?"
The bearded man smiled, showing amazingly white teeth.
"We -- the order I represent -- share an interest in gryphons also."
"Indeed?" asked Shennan. "Well! I wish you better success than I enjoyed. My inquiries have come to naught, so I have set my tiller for Bastet on the coast."
The priest looked surprised -- although his large eyes gave him a perpetual appearance of mild astonishment.
"The Exalted Temple of Enkidu wishes to query the gryphon folk on certain theological points. We are, however, prohibited from venturing so far from the Temple. Also, to be candid, few of us are in the condition required to climb to the Eyrie where the lion-birds dwell. We are interested in employing an ambassador of sorts --"
"That's all very well," said Shennan, "but I am not of your faith, Father -- or Brother, or whatever you are. I've wasted enough time on this wild gryphon chase -- time, and money as well."
Taresh-Tar smiled through curly blackness.
"Ah! But the ambassador we choose need merely deliver certain letters and gifts to the Eyrie -- and he will be rewarded for his troubles."
Shennan broke fast in a low building near a layered temple on the east side of Kelonis. The hall was simple and straightforward in design with tall columns, striped hangings, and statues of bulls, lions, and gods.
"You spoke of the gryphons as if they were people -- and reasonable people, at that," remarked the wanderer.
"That is quite true, Shennan," said Taresh-Tar. The bearded priest sat across from him at the long table but did not eat. "The bird-beasts consider themselves the most intelligent and civilized of the chimerical races, despite their fearsome appearance. Most of them speak the common tongue of Sakria in addition to their own language."
Shennan watched a dark-haired wench pour him another measure of wine. He did not miss Taresh-Tar's words, however.
"Most of them, you say. I envision myself approaching a gryphon and finding that he does not even understand a simple phrase such as, 'Don't eat me, I'm poison.'"
Taresh-Tar smiled again through his rectangular beard, reminding Shennan of the squat ape-statue he had seen the day before.
"Oh, there's no danger of them eating you, good sir. They've a taboo against it. Even if they had the inclination, they know it would stir up all the armies around the Erythraean Sea."
"Small comfort," said Shennan.
Taresh-Tar leaned back and called to the serving wench in his uncouth language. She vanished into a doorway.
"Many faiths do not acknowledge the chimerical races as having minds or souls," continued the priest. "We of Enkidu feel that all intelligent creatures should join in brotherhood."
"Very open of you," said Shennan. "And the Gryphons, I am told, have great treasures which they no doubt wish to donate to your charitable Temple."
Taresh-Tar harrumphed.
"Unfortunately, the chimerae live far from men, and, as I have explained, priests of Enkidu are not allowed to venture too far from their holy places."
The black-haired girl reappeared with a covered dish. Shennan watched her again, remarking absently, "It must be difficult sending out missionary forces while conforming to such an edict."
"Oh, we spread the Word, Shennan, slowly but surely. But on a venture such as this --"
"You need a go-between."
Shennan smiled as the serving woman set the platter down.
"Really, my dear, I could not eat another bite."
"I think you will appreciate this dessert, Shennan," said the priest.
The woman lifted the silver cover, revealing several coin bags filled to bursting.
"Three hundred dekkae now, and five hundred more to be paid after your return. The Eyrie sits in the heights, and we would not wish to weigh you down unnecessarily."
Shennan tried not to whistle.
"That is very considerate of you," he said instead.
"You need only deliver our letter of greeting, in which we request an audience with gryphonian representatives, as well as carry a few bright trinkets they will appreciate."
Shennan dug a gold coin from one bag.
"Yes. Bright trinkets are always a convincing argument."
"We can assign but a few acolytes to carry your supplies --"
Shennan smiled.
"I have never depended on anyone but myself for my needs, Taresh-Tar. Where I travel, I travel alone."
The priest leaned forward and interlocked his fingers.
"As you like it."
Shennan left Kelonis by the North Gate. As the crowds thinned and the cottages gave way to fields, he checked the road behind. He saw no one who struck him as a spy. The priests of Enkidu were very trusting.
He shrugged. He would probably fulfill his end of the bargain. It would be interesting to visit the gryphons in their eyrie. Perhaps he could even work the subject of their ears into the conversation.
The afternoon grew into evening by the time he reached the foothills of the Marantan Mountains, following a map provided by Taresh-Tar. He sat beneath an old ash tree to examine the trinkets and letter.
Not simple nosiness, he told himself. How do I know I am not considered one of the gifts to the doubly-carnivorous lion-eagles?
The letter, written in ancient Ataranian, proved difficult to decipher, but it appeared to be the boring and officious document Taresh-Tar named it.
"Old misunderstandings should be buried. . . All thinking races should be brothers. . . propose a meeting in the Golden Fields north of Kelonis. Nothing about eating the messenger, at least."
Shennan removed his carrying pouch and drew out the carefully-wrapped presents. A jade breast-plate that felt heavy enough to ground a Crag-Roc. Diamond wristlets, ear-studs, and gems of walnut size lay in pouches of chamois.
"The priests are very trusting," muttered the wanderer. "Perhaps there is a curse, should I break my word."
He replaced the treaure carefully. A wanderer such as he possessed few solidities in life, neither keep nor castle, family nor friends. Honor, however -- only he could ruin that. Taresh-Tar needed no curse to insure the treasure's delivery.
Shennan examined his own offering to the winged ones. He frowned as he inverted the gryphon statue; he found a tiny crack around the base he had not noticed before. Even unmarred, the statuette paled beside the treasures of the priests.
Again he shrugged. If they did not want it, it could be his own keepsake of this venture. He slipped it back into his travelling wallet.
That night he slept in a hollow under a fallen tree, and at dawn he emptied his pack of everything save the letter, the gifts, the gryphon-ette, and his coin-sacks (no hiding place below looked secure enough).
Taresh-Tar's map indicated an approach on the southwest face of the eyrie-mountain used by human traders until the last Cataclysm. Even now it resembled a flight of Titan stairs. It was more inviting, at least, than the crumbling cliffs offered by the rest of the peak.
After breaking fast on dry venison and travel-cakes, Shennan reached the Staircase, which tiered level upon Cyclopean level into the heights. Each step was roughly one rod high and several wide.
It would be easier were I a Titan myself, thought Shennan. Nonetheless, he started up.
Hours passed. Three or four gryphons circled overhead, and Shennan was not sure whether they gathered around their eyrie or around him. Another hour passed; Shennan's hands grew jittery and his breath short. Shadows engulfed him and rippled on. The giant steps grew irregular and broken, finally shading into a cracked incline that taxed all his training as a thief and acrobat. The world shrank to a dusty-silver expanse of granite, and his only goals in life became the next hand- and toeholds.
Eventually he sensed, by the whistle of the wind, that a wide ledge loomed only a cubit above. He no longer cared what the gryphons thought of him; all he desired was something solid beneath his boots. He reached up blindly and touched the lip of the shelf. He pulled his head level to the ledge -- and screamed.
A huge scaly face, green-brown with glittering yellow eyes, bobbed barely an ell away. A body as thick as Shennan's thigh stretched off endlessly along the shelf. A pale tongue shot out, then the serpent swelled like a puff-adder, as if it were not big enough already.
Shennan ducked, but as he scrabbled for a grip with his right hand, his left came loose. He toppled back into the void.
Eagle talons enclosed his upper arm, and more squeezed around his thigh. Huge wings whupped to either side, and he was borne aloft. He glimpsed the serpent on its ledge, then more cliff-face, then a plateau on which leonine figures reclined. The plateau shot up at him, and he knew no more.