Wednesdays in the Tower (16 page)

“So, apparently griffins were ridden by giants who threw balls of fire at their enemies and cracked the earth with their war cries,” Rolf reported, tossing the volume of Karksus down on a table in the holiday feasting hall. “But they would lie down and die of ennui if there weren’t any battles happening.”

“What’s ‘on-wee’?” Celie asked as she lovingly turned the pages of Hadlocke’s book and showed Rolf a much more skilled drawing of a griffin.

“Ennui is, basically, boredom. The mighty griffin riders, fierce of eye, noble in battle, bold in love, would get
bored
and die,” Rolf said, rolling his eyes. “I think Karksus had read too many of those unicorn stories Lilah used to like, and decided to try it with griffins.”

“Well, Hadlocke says that the griffin riders were dying when they arrived in Sleyne,” Celie told him. “So maybe Karksus really did know some of them, and thought they were dying of ennui because they were already sick.”

“Hadlocke … Hathelocke … ,” Rolf said. “Do you think this great-great-grandmother of ours was related to the fearsome Hathelockes?”

“No,” Celie said. “The Hathelockes conquered some land called the Glorious Arkower. And I’m not sure they were entirely human.”

“So do you think Hadlocke’s book is real?” Rolf asked seriously. “Do you think the Castle just appeared one day, spilled out a bunch of griffins and sickly giants, and then … what?”

“I guess the griffin riders all died,” Celie said. She cleared her throat a little. To her surprise, thinking of the strange, noble people of the tapestries all dying had made her choke up a little. “And the griffins died soon after.”

She’d just found that part, and turned the pages to show Rolf, not trusting her voice. Griffins bonded to their riders at hatching, and rarely outlived them. Likewise, a rider whose griffin was killed often sickened and died even if he hadn’t been wounded. She supposed that might look like ennui to an outsider, but she couldn’t imagine life without Rufus, even though he’d only hatched a couple of months ago. Her whole day revolved around him, despite the fact that no one but Bran and Pogue knew he existed.

“If I only believed Karksus, I’d be convinced that griffins weren’t real and never had been,” Rolf said. He patted the cover of Hadlocke’s book. “But the amount of detail you’ve shown me in this book makes me think they could be. It’s so matter-of-fact: This is the day the griffins came.
This is what they looked like. This is how they lived. This is how they died.”

“Who died?”

Wizard Arkwright was standing in the archway of the hall.

“No one,” Celie and Rolf said in chorus.

Arkwright raised one of his eyebrows. Celie was struck anew by how much he looked like the griffin riders on the tapestry, and like some of her ancestors from the portrait gallery as well. Really, his eyebrows were freakishly mobile, and his forehead was much too high to be normal.

His eyes lit on the books on the table. “I see you found the Karksus I recommended,” he said. He came over to the table and picked the book up, smoothing his hands over the cover. “What do you think of him?”

“Honestly?” Rolf shrugged. “A bit elaborate for my taste.”

“He felt very passionately about the griffins and their masters,” Arkwright said. “And it’s written in a style that has never been the fashion in Sleyne.”

“Yeah, the verses are a little weird,” Rolf said.

“Well, he wasn’t writing in Sleynth,” Arkwright said defensively.

“Was he Grathian?” Celie asked.

“No” was all Arkwright said.

He put the book down, and then saw Hadlocke’s book. Celie watched him start, and then she noticed that his hands had begun to shake.

“Where did you find this?”

“Prince Lulath gave it to me,” Celie said.

She resisted the urge to leap forward and snatch the book away from Arkwright. He didn’t try to pick it up, though— he just touched it with trembling fingertips, as though he were afraid it would sting him.

“Lulath? How did he …”

“It belonged to one of his ancestors,” Rolf said. He had one eyebrow raised, though not as far as Arkwright’s had been. “But he gifted it to the Castle, and to Celie and me specifically, when he realized that it was a history of Castle Glower.”

“It does not belong here,” Arkwright began. “It belongs …” He trailed off.

“Where?” Celie asked when he didn’t continue.

“I do wish you wouldn’t store such things here,” Arkwright complained. “It’s not wise.”

“Why not?”

Arkwright wheeled around. His face was white and strained, and it looked even less human than the tapestry people now.

“It simply isn’t, you foolish little girl. You have no idea what you’re toying with!”

“Get a grip on yourself, man!” Rolf stood up and faced Arkwright. “You’re a guest in the Castle, and if you don’t watch yourself, you’ll find your invitation revoked by the Castle itself.”

Arkwright started laughing. “The Castle could no more rid itself of me than I of it,” he said. “But if you continue to play with matters you cannot understand, you might find your own ‘invitation revoked,’” he said. Then he turned and stalked out of the feasting hall.

“That was weird,” Rolf said when the sound of Arkwright’s angry steps had faded away.

“Yes, yes, it was,” Celie said. With surprise she found that she was shaking so hard that her teeth chattered when she spoke.

“Let me take you to your room, Cel,” he said.

“No!” She said it a little too vehemently, and Rolf gave her an even more concerned look. “I just … I’ve never gotten a good look at the new map room.”

“Oh, really? It’s quite something,” Rolf said. “Follow me.”

He took her upstairs to a room that was basically the twin of the fabric room, except instead of bolt after bolt of fabric, spools of lace and ribbon, and tables scarred by large steel shears, there was rack after rack of rolled maps and high desks to lay them on. Some of the maps weren’t drawn on parchment, either, but were carved into wood, or burned on leather, or etched on silver.

The royal cartographer was there, working at a high, slanted desk. He looked up when they came in, an irritated expression on his face at being interrupted. But when he saw that it was Celie, he smiled.

“Ah! Your Highnesses! Is there anything I can do for you?”

“No,” Celie said. “I was just looking for a quiet place to study, and realized that I’d never seen this room.”

“I said I’d show her,” Rolf said. “We don’t want to bother you, though.”

“Not at all,” the royal cartographer said cheerfully. “Let me show you some wonderful things.”

He took them around the room and showed them scrolls of maps that had been done in wonderful rich colors. He showed them a map made of wood and clay on a tray that depicted the entire valley. The two etched silver maps were of the stars, though one of them showed constellations that Celie had never heard of before.

“Is this the southern sky?” Celie asked, looking at the strange star map.

“No,” the royal cartographer said. “These are no stars we’ve ever seen before. Even the Royal Wizard cannot identify them.

“But most of these maps are of places no one has ever seen,” he said, gesturing around the room with a broad sweep of his arm. “Cities that exist only in legend, or have never existed at all. Ranges of mountains drawn from the artist’s fancy, countries that could not possibly be real.”

“You don’t think so?”

Celie had lived all her life in magical Castle Glower, and had hatched and raised a griffin. She could imagine quite a lot of things that “could not be real” being real.

“I’ve traveled all over the world,” the cartographer said, matter-of-fact. “I’ve never seen mountain ranges like this, lakes this vast.” He tapped one of the scrolls. “But would you like to see my favorite of these fictional maps?”

Celie and Rolf both nodded eagerly.

The cartographer took a heavy, round platter from one of the shelves and set it on the largest table. Rolf and Celie crowded around to look, and discovered that it wasn’t a platter. It was a circular map made of beautifully inlaid exotic woods.

It depicted a country covered in forest, with a large lake in the northern part bordered by mountains. The trees of the forest were made of a wood that was greenish in color, and the lake was silvery gray. The mountains were a rich, dark wood that was nearly black, and the plains to the south were smooth caramel brown.

“I’ve never seen wood like this,” Rolf said, running a reverent finger over the green wood. “It’s like satin.”

“I’ve never seen most of these woods,” the cartographer confided. “Nor any country like this. Judging from the scale of the mountains and trees, this lake is enormous. And look at this,” he said, pointing to an emblem at the top of the map. “It’s worn, but do you see what this is?”

“A griffin,” Celie breathed.

In the blank space at the top of the map, above the border of the strange land, a griffin made of golden wood had been carefully inlaid. Time had faded its color, and many hands had worn it so smooth that Celie hadn’t
noticed it until the cartographer pointed it out. The map reminded her of something, but she couldn’t put her finger on what it was that seemed so familiar.

“Could we take this down to the holiday feasting hall?” Rolf brushed a finger over the griffin.

Celie thought that the cartographer was going to object, but after a moment’s hesitation, he said, “As Your Highnesses wish. No one else is using it.”

“You can come and look at it as often as you like,” Celie offered. “It’s just that we’re doing a project for our brother, Bran, and gathering up all the things we find that have pictures or stories about griffins and putting them in one place to study.”

“That reminds me,” Rolf said. “You’ve traveled a lot; have you ever found anything in your travels about griffins? Other maps featuring them? Statues? Heard any interesting stories?”

The cartographer frowned, and thought for a while. “No,” he said after a minute. “I never have. There’s the flag, of course, but that’s all. There are no griffins anywhere else in Sleyne.”

The cartographer helped Rolf carry the wooden map down to the holiday feasting hall, where Celie was relieved to find no sign of Arkwright. The cartographer looked at their collection with bemusement, then excused himself to go back to the map room.

Rolf put an arm around Celie, concerned. He helped her carry the Hadlocke book back to her room, just in case
Arkwright decided to steal it in the night. Celie was so distracted by the encounter with Arkwright and then the revelation of the wooden map that she almost couldn’t go flying with Rufus that night.

Almost.

Chapter
21

Flying with Rufus was Celie’s greatest joy.

Three nights in a row now she had gone out, circling the towers and swooping over the fields surrounding the Castle, clinging to Rufus in terrified delight. Pogue had had to rig some extra straps across the chest and back of the harness to hold it in place, and Celie had yet to dare lying along Rufus’s back. But she had started wearing her riding dress for convenience, with a thick, dark scarf wrapped around her head to ward off the chill of the air. A cloak was useless with the wind blowing the hood back, and the body of the cape streaming out behind her made her feel conspicuous.

Rufus’s landings were getting better, and so were his beginning jumps. Celie no longer felt like he was going to shoot her straight at the moon, or knock her silly by rolling her across the floor and into the stone walls headfirst
when they returned to the tower. Impressed by his rapid progress, they had all agreed to try him with another rider, namely Bran, who was the tallest of the three of them but more slender than Pogue, and a wizard besides.

Rufus, however, was having none of it.

To say that he was balking was putting it mildly. He was backed against a wall, hissing, tail lashing, and occasionally swiping at their ankles with his eagle-like foreclaws. Bran was trying to win him over with a biscuit while he talked softly and steadily about what a fine, fine griffin Rufus was. Celie was telling Rufus over and over what a lovely person Bran was, and Pogue had Flat Squirrel and was threatening to tie it to Rufus’s harness so that he could never shake it off.

“I think this is a bad idea,” Bran said finally. “He doesn’t want me on his back, and that’s that. I’d hate to force him to carry me and have him shake me off a hundred paces in the air.”

“Well, I think it’s very bad of you, Rufus,” Celie said, even though she was secretly glad.

“Do you think he imprinted on Celie, like a duck on its mother?” Pogue said.

Bran nodded, tossing the biscuit. “It’s all yours, Rufus.”

The griffin dived for the treat, flipping it into his beak with one claw and swallowing it whole. Then he snuffled around the floor and, eventually, Bran, looking for more.

“Of course I’m his mother,” Celie said. She’d almost said “rider,” thinking of the books she’d been reading, but
stopped herself. She didn’t feel ready to talk about that yet. It was too strange and wonderful to put herself in the same category as those warriors of legend. “I’ve taken care of him since the moment he was hatched,” she went on. “I don’t see any other person or griffin here who can say the same.” She felt her ears turn red when she heard how that probably sounded. “Not that you all haven’t helped a great deal, and I’m very grateful,” she hastened to add.