"We have passed the Adolescents' Perimeter, Faroka," called Erbek.
The young gryphon of the Sun Clan scanned the mix of deciduous and evergreen trees below. She twisted her aquiline head around to call back.
"All the trees look the same from up here!"
Erbek's orange beak hung open in shock.
"Faroka! There is only one frost aspen on this side of the Rhipaean Mountains!"
Faroka's keen eyes caught the snowball shape of the white tree, now a hundred wingspreads astern.
"That is true, Erbek, but have you never wanted to know what lies beyond?"
Erbek's beak clacked shut again. She flapped her wings, roan above beige, and slowly caught up her sister Adolescent. They soon soared parallel, their outermost primaries touching on the downsweep.
"Faroka! We must turn back!"
"Must we?" asked the Sun Clanner, glaring over her brown plane of wing. "What good is the freedom to solo if we can't fly anywhere?"
"We can fly, within reason," called the Bear Clanner. "Within the Perimeter. They will strip even that from us, though, if we do not turn back!"
Faroka let out a gryphon's sigh, a sort of clorp. Friend or no, Erbek weighed one down like sleet. She banked shallowly to port. Erbek mimicked her.
"We have lived our whole lives within sight of the Great Eyrie," the Sun Clanner pointed out. "Do you not grow tired of the same mountain peak, the same valleys and streams and trees?"
She waved an eagle talon toward the unknown south.
"Do you not wonder what lies out there?"
Erbek planed under Faroka, her passage creating a small crest of turbulence.
"Out there are One-Eyes and humans," cried the hefty Bear Clanner. "To say nothing of Chimerae, Graiae, fire-drakes, and things no Folk can even put a name to."
Faroka sought the trees she had seen before: A bushy autumn poplar, wine-red, with the vertical spear of a lodgepole pine thrusting up through its canopy. The two together looked like an arrow skewering an apple.
"There is also treasure and adventure," called Faroka. "One can never begin one's hoard too early. Why, just the other morning as I passed on this heading --"
Erbek's beak fell open again.
"You passed the perimeter before?"
"Purely by accident," Faroka explained quickly, "while chasing a plump bustard. I found myself over yonder poplar, and I swear I saw the glint of --"
"Gold!" cried Erbek.
"Indeed," agreed Faroka. "But I dared not investigate alone."
The Bear Clanner snapped her wings in agitation.
"No! Down there! Gold!"
Erbek pointed with beak and foreclaw. Behind the red and green foliage the ripple of a stream could be seen. The sun flashed silver on wavelets, but it glared yellow and metallic on certain tiny specks.
"Yes! I spotted such glints the other day. Perhaps nuggets have been washed free from the upper peaks."
Erbek soared down. Faroka clorped and dove after.
"Hold, Erbek!" the Sun Clanner cried over the frigid head wind. "What of the Adolescents' Perimeter?"
"Adolescents? We are practically Adults!" yelled her companion.
The Bear Clanner spread her pinions like roan sails and leveled out over the tree tops. Faroka beat her own wings hard to keep up.
"Wait, Erbek! Let us not be too reckless! Reconnoiter first!"
A hard bronze eye stared back over leonine hindquarters.
"Only moderately reckless, then? Very well. We'll overfly a few times. We can't waste much time, however, or we will be missed."
The stream flowed in a glassy sheet barely a claw-span deep. Smooth, egglike stones poked through the surface here and there; the cold water slapped over them, giving them a sparkle like ice.
Faroka scanned the trees, the banks and the stream itself. Little underbrush covered the stony ground, and the trees were straight posts of pine. The gryphon could see deep into the forest. The shores to either side were wide and flat, made, like the stream bed, of smooth stones and yellow-brown sand. No one could approach unseen.
"It looks safe enough," remarked Faroka.
"Yes, yes," called Erbek impatiently. "By Anatha! Look! There are nuggets as large as your fist!"
Faroka scanned the water as she passed again. She spotted metallic lumps nested in the sand and pebbles.
"Most odd! Why haven't the Folk cleaned out this stream, so near the Eyrie? Why has no one spoken of it?"
"Perhaps the nuggets have only recently been uncovered," suggested Erbek. "Faroka! You hauled me out here! Let us land!"
"Very well," answered Faroka. "We'll light on that spit of gravel -- no Two-Leg could approach it without much sloshing through the water."
The gryphons beat their pinions mightily, sending ripples over the stream. Twigs and gravel bounced away like crickets.
Faroka snapped her wings shut and studied the trees again. Nothing moved save a few scolding blue jays.
"A field of gold ripe for the harvesting!" Erbek exclaimed. "Perhaps the Adults do know of it, Faroka. That's why the perimeter was set by the frost aspen."
"Perhaps. Well, if the stream is harvested frequently, we may be seen, and if the gold is newly revealed, it will be discovered soon by Folk or humans or One-Eyes."
"All the more reason to gather what we can and cairn it until we return with supply pouches," said the Bear Clanner.
Erbek sprang into the brook. Faroka plodded over the sandy gravel after her, barely conscious of the cold water through her horny claws and padded paws.
The Bear Clanner plunked her orange beak into the rill as if snapping up a grub. She lifted her head and transferred a metallic nugget to a foreclaw.
"Hah! First strike!" she cried.
She rose on her haunches and tossed the lump onto the gravel spit.
Faroka spied a glint among dull brown pebbles and plunged her head into the cold stream. Her inner eyelids shut automatically. She closed her beak on the metallic lump and ripped it free of the mud. She shook her head vigorously and flipped it toward the narrow strip of land.
"You may have plucked the first nugget," she called, droplets flying from her beak, "but I'll gather the most!"
The gryphons sprang and splashed like foxes after minnows. A sweep of brown wing sent a blanket of spray over Erbek. The Bear Clanner paused long enough to lob mud at Faroka.
Another lump of gold bounced onto the gravelly bar, then another. The bird-beasts rooted through mud and sand like peccaries, lifting their heads only to breathe or toss nuggets.
"We'll have Hoards to shame the Adults!" cried Erbek. "We'll have old Taka hammer out crowns and wristlets and necklaces!"
"What, will you wear it all?" asked Faroka, shaking her head dog-fashion. "You'll never leave the ground."
Erbek let out a caw of laughter.
"Plover-brain! In such finery I'll parade before the males."
"Do," called Faroka. "It is the only way you will ever attract any."
The Sun Clanner seized a golden lump in her beak, and another in her foreclaw. She flipped the first away and raised the second.
She studied the second nugget as Erbek laughed and splashed. It appeared, like most nuggets, to be composed of many acorn-sized lumps fused together. One of the nodules on this object, however, bore a design: the profile of a human head, with curves of indecipherable writing above and below it.
"A coin?" asked Faroka of the air.
She sat up like a squirrel and worked the lump around in her claws. Coins, plural. She could just make out the milled edges. The gold pieces had been melted into a single crude mass.
"Erbek," she remarked, "this is not natural gold -- they're coins fused by heat."
Erbek rooted in the sand, her head completely hidden in the fashion of the mythical ostrich. Faroka sloshed through the chilly brook, lifting her wingtips and tail above the surface.
"Erbek!"
The heavy-set Bear Clanner jerked her head up, water fanning out like a liquid cock's comb.
"What?" she asked around another nugget.
Faroka sat in the brook, silk-fine grit swirling around her ankles.
"Look at that gold nugget. There is something strange here."
Erbek sat up as well and dropped the shiny lump into her foreclaw.
"What, Faroka? Do you think yours are better than mine?"
The mud shifted and flowed around Faroka's legs. She rose and re-settled herself.
"These are not nuggets. They are coins and trinkets, half-melted."
Erbek studied the metallic lump in her talons. She pecked something with her curved beak. A chain of tiny gold links dropped into view, hanging from the nugget like a tail.
"Asshur's Claw's!" exclaimed the Bear Clanner. "This was a necklace! You're right, Faroka!"
The two gryphons scanned the gold field in puzzlement.
"Perhaps it is the remnant of a treasure gathered before the Great Cataclysms," suggested Erbek. "When the mountains shook and spewed fire, the lava melted some mighty king's hoard into these lumps."
Faroka looked upstream.
"How did they get here, then?"
"There was a Cataclysm of Flood as well as Fire," said Erbek. "The torrents might have washed the gold down the mountain."
Faroka clucked her tongue. She studied the pseudo-nuggets strewn like glitter over the sand bar.
"I suppose that's possible. Perhaps we should cairn what we've harvested, Erbek, and leave for the day."
She half-turned to wade to the gravel bar. Her hind legs would not move.
"Braak!" she cried.
She rose onto her haunches, forelegs outstretched as if to seize an enemy. She stared down the length of her body. Swirling sand and mud hid most of her hindquarters.
"What is the matter?" asked Erbek.
Faroka dropped to all fours and lurched forward.
"I can't move!"
Erbek flipped the chunk of gold aside.
"What fox-feathers are you talking?"
The Bear Clanner started toward Faroka. Her hindquarters did not leave the bed of the stream.
"Hissst! My feet are stuck!"
Faroka stretched her wings back and pushed to rise. Her eagle claws would not rip free of the mud.
"Braak! Now my claws are stuck!"
She strained to pull loose, as did Erbek. Her talons might have been the roots of an oak, and the mud of the stream bed fissured stone. She leaned to one side, putting all her strength into freeing one foreclaw. Her wrist felt ready to part, but her talons would not budge.
"Quicksand?" asked Erbek.
Faroka clorped.
"Quicksand draws one down because it is as yielding as water. This -- whatever it is -- is strong as steel. We are stuck like flies in a web!"
Erbek's beak opened in her familiar gape of shock.
"Worse yet, Faroka! You're sinking!"
Faroka felt the cold water lapping over her haunches. At the same time, the level of the stream crept visibly up Erbek's orange forelegs.
Faroka did not have to point that out. The Bear Clanner screeched and flapped her wings wildly. Faroka tried uprooting her claws for a moment more, then she, too, gave in to terror.
The gryphons' wings slapped the water with deep pops, sending out sheets of spray but not lifting them from the stream bed. Faroka's plumage protected her from the sensation of the icy flow, but she felt the water press against her breast as it slipped up her feathered torso. Erbek trumpeted for assistance.
No help will come, because I timed our foray well between the border patrols. You are too clever, Faroka.
The gryphons sank lower into the freshet. The water swirled around their shoulders, slowing their wing beats to useless sloshes. The sand and mud felt like hard-packed clay around Faroka's body.
Only Erbek's head remained above the silver water. Faroka felt the current against her throat. The Sun Clanner wondered if it would not be quicker simply to let the water rush into her lungs, but a gryphon's pride would not let her release life so easily. She inhaled just before the giggling brook swallowed her.