The White Gryphon

"Did Leyuet check that out this morning?" Amberdrake asked sharply.

"I don't know—" She shook her head, sadly. "They did not let the boy go until dawn, to frighten him."

"He couldn't have anything to do with it, then." Amberdrake bit his thumbnail and tried to think. "Skan musthave discovered the murderers, maybe even stopped them before they could strike again—but then what? Why would he disappear?"

"What could they want with him? Where could they have taken him?" Zhaneel echoed, her voice shrill with worry. "Kechara has not yet found him!" She dropped her head with distress.

"Remember, she has to know whereto look, what minds to find him among," Amberdrake told her, patting her shoulder to comfort her. "Right now, she's going to have to search through the whole city to find him."

And we have to hope they don't have shields up to cover him. Kechara is good, but I don't know that she's ever broken a shield. Would she know what to look for?"Does Kechara know anything about mind-shields?" he asked, wanting to give her something she could act on. "All I know is that they exist, and that some kinds of magic shielding acts like a mind-shield. Could she break one if she found it to see if Skan's under it?"

Zhaneel brought her head up, quickly. "I do not know, but I think I can explain it to her!" the gryfalcon exclaimed. "It would be much faster to search for a shield than to search for Skan! As for breaking one—Amberdrake, there is nothing she has tried with Mindspeech that she ca

"Talk to her, then, the next time she calls you, and ask her." This was the maddening part; the only time the people here, where Skan was presumably captive, could speak to Kechara was when the little gryphon stopped searching long enough to talk to one of the strong Mindspeakers here. There were only two, with Skan gone—Zhaneel and a Kaled'a'in trondi'irn named Summerhawk. Aubri was a Mindspeaker, but not very strong; Winterhart was on a par with Aubri, and Amberdrake's Gifts were in the sensing of emotions and the healing of the spirit, not in Mindspeaking. It was incredibly frustrating—

But at least Snowstar was in charge of Kechara and her search, and he was interrupting her at regular intervals to get her to talk to one or more of them and to rest and eat. Otherwise, the poor little thing was so frantic to find her "Papa Skan" that she was likely to drive herself until she dropped.

If ever we find her limits, it will probably be now.

He racked his brain, trying to think of any other way they could look for the gryphon. No new murders this morning, and all courtiers accounted for at Morning Court, so if Skan had intercepted the killers, he'd done so before they even got at their potential victim.

And at least he won't be blamed for another killing.

So what else could they do? Ask for a room-by-room search of the Palace? What would that accomplish, besides getting people more a

And besides, if they know there is a search going on, they could and would move him.

"You stay here, just in case he comes flying in with his tail singed," he ordered Zhaneel. "I'm going to go talk to Silver Veil. Maybe she can help."

He left Zhaneel consoling herself with her twins, who played on, oblivious to their mother's worries, and left the suite in his "guard" guise. Like most kestra'chern, by the very nature of her work, Silver Veil was usually alone in the morning and early afternoon, and he found her enjoying a solitary lunch beside the pool in her own garden. She knew immediately that something was very wrong, of course, even though she did not have the level of Empathy he did.

"What is it?" she asked, leaving her lunch forgotten and hurrying across the garden as soon as she spotted him. "What has happened? I heard nothing of another death!"

"No death that we know of, but Skan is missing," he told her, taking the hands she held out to him with gratitude. "We have a Mindspeaker searching for him, but that takes time."

Her eyes went wide when he said that Skandranon was missing, and her hands tightened on his. "Is there anything I can do to help?" she asked quickly.

"I was going to ask you that; can you think of anything?" He tried not to show his disappointment when she shook her head, but his heart fell a little anyway. He hadn't exactly counted on her coming up with a brilliant plan on the spur of the moment, but he'd hoped, just a bit. She was so resourceful, it was hard to realize that she couldn't do everything, solve every problem.

"I ca

Only then did he see that her eyes were red, as if she had been weeping, and that there were shadows beneath them that told him she had been spending some sleepless nights.

"I can't do anything more to look for Skan," he told her quietly, drawing her back over to her seat under the trees. "Why don't you tell me about your troubles? I may not be able to help, but at least I can provide a sympathetic ear."

She let him lead her there passively, and sat down again with a sigh. "It is nothing I had not known about when I came here," she said wearily. "It is just that I had not known how it would affect me until I saw Winterhart with the Necklace."

"Winterhart?" he said, puzzled. "What—" But the question was answered by her woeful expression before she could even say a word. "Oh, my very dear! You have gone and fallen in love with Shalaman, haven't you!"

She nodded, a tinge of color creeping over her cheeks. "A dreadful confession for a kestra'chern, to say she has fallen in love with her chief client."

"I did with mine—" he objected, but she waved the objection away.

"Winterhart was not the King," she pointed out. "And you were not in Haighlei lands. It is assumed here, among the Haighlei, that a true kestra'chern is a precious thing, too precious for any one person to have to himself. Yet the King's Consort obviously could not—well. I am caught in a double bind, you see."

"And it would be bad enough that you love him, but he is also in love with you, I suspect," Amberdrake hazarded. "Ah, now a great deal makes sense. That was why he thought he was in love with Winterhart! It was really a reflection of his true feelings for you!"

She nodded. "Your lady is very like me in many ways, and he had every reason to believe that she was accessible to him. I have not let him know of my feelings, and I suspect that custom has made him deny his. As flexible as my King is, he is surprisingly custom-bound."

He let go of her hands and reached out to hold her instead. She did not resist at all but rested her head on his chest with a sigh that conveyed more heartbreak than all the tears in the world.

"I was able to manage when there was no serious contender for his affection," she said softly into his collar. "But when he offered Winterhart the Necklace—oh, it hurt, it hurt! It stabbed me to the heart, and I could scarcely bear to stand there and smile, and pretend to be glad! And even now, although I know it is all a sham, I ca

"One way or another, in two days it will all be over," he reminded her, with a stab of pain and fear in his own heart, as he wondered just how it would all end. With laughter and triumph—or in bloody war?