Glancing around at the others, Erin hesitantly raised her hand. Leslyn had also raised his, and Kaleit raised a finger. Arlis just gave his princely cousin an expectant look, not at all concerned with his own lack of a raised hand and, presumably, ability to swim.
“Good enough,” Koben said, and gestured toward Yenner’s black griffin. “Erin, Kaleit—mount up, we’re off to carry out that sentence of yours.”
“Take care,” Tannoran said, gripping Koben’s shoulder for extra emphasis. “King Dufan wouldn’t survive a strong sneeze, much less news of your fool hide—”
“As you say, Tannoran.” Koben airily waved him off. “I happen to know quite well what I’m about to step in, and it isn’t as malodorous as you suspect.”
Their words entered Erin’s ears, but she failed to comprehend them to any significant degree. She was already too concerned with the singular, most mind-wracking conundrum of any age.
Sit in the middle, or in the back?
She had seconds to decide, if she wanted the choice. It would be the first time she’d ever flown on a griffin before, and the thought of leaving the ground far below was not appealing. Neither was the prospect of essentially hugging stupid jerk Kaleit if she sat behind him, arms wrapped tightly about his waist for some measure of security. Griffins didn’t come with seat belts, like a plane or a car.
With someone behind Erin, she might feel a bit more secure without the possibility of losing her seating and just casually falling backward off the griffin to die a super-embarrassing death in front of people to whom flying was just a way of life. That included Leslyn, who’d taken to flying immediately, like he was born on the back of a griffin.
In the end, her fear of flying won out, and she dashed a few steps to slip in front of Kaleit and scale the black griffin’s side with a little help from Yenner’s outstretched hand. He gave her a light, friendly wink as he pulled her up, quelling any concern she might have had about embracing a stranger for the duration of their flight. She easily held on to his brown leather jacket, finding the scent of the oil it’d been treated with to be pleasantly warm and pungent. It triggered a childhood memory of the smell of her father’s favorite well-worn leather wallet.
Enjoying the unexpected nostalgia, she felt secure in her decision—that is, until Kaleit climbed up and placed himself behind her, his knees coming up on either side like bars on an amusement park ride. It wasn’t fear, exactly, but the hair on her arms stood on end in a most unpleasant way as she anticipated his hands doing the unwelcome “hugging” instead.
Falling backward off the griffin suddenly sounded like a perfectly acceptable alternative.
A sudden jolt set Erin to clinging to Yenner as if her life depended on it, cheek pressed into his back as the griffins took off. She had no other awareness but the sense of every internal organ dropping sickeningly toward her feet, the black griffin’s muscles rolling under the saddle with each beat of its wings like an earthquake just below the surface beneath her and wind plucking at her hair and shirt, the terrifying absence of true orientation making the world feel like it was spinning even though her eyes were closed.
The girl remained frozen in that position until the griffin finally leveled out and she gradually became used to the rhythm of its beating wings. Slowly, she uncurled her tense body and opened her eyes.
At first, all she could do was stare at Yenner’s back, keenly aware of the expanse of blue nothingness that filled her peripheral vision. Wisps of white flew by as they passed near the thinning edges of clouds, the surrounding air smelling and tasting cool and damp and very fresh, far removed from the sea-flavored air she’d gotten so familiar with that she didn’t even perceive it anymore.
She never quite realized when the change actually happened, but after a time she found herself naturally looking all over at the sky around her, still a little scared, but as long as she didn’t look down, she could bear it.
The one time she was about to make an attempt to brave that gander downward, she noticed the knees fencing her in on either side of her hips, and suddenly remembered that there was, indeed, someone seated behind her. A someone who, to her memory, hadn’t made any sort of physical contact with her whatsoever since mounting up before the takeoff.
Erin glanced over her shoulder to find Kaleit far too close for her liking, yet he was actually leaning away from her, his hands gripping the rearmost ridge of the saddle instead of any part of the girl, as she’d dreaded. He happened to be looking down at the moment, so she happily escaped any judgment for her glance.
A grossed-out shudder momentarily seized her as she faced forward, thinking about the painfully awkward scenario she’d miraculously avoided. Thinking about it led to wondering how she’d gotten the luck that it’d turned out that way. Thinking about that led to trying to figure out what was going on in Kaleit’s head, which led to the whole exercise going very sour, very quickly.
He thinks I’m gross, she thought, gripping Yenner’s leather jacket with a sudden twinge of emotional spice. He literally thinks I’m so gross that he won’t even touch me, even if it means falling off this griffin. Just who does he think he is?!
Erin never was all that self-aware, and it showed.
Some time later, the ground ahead of them faded into shallow water that grew steadily darker the farther out Erin looked. At the shore were a pair of horses tied to a tree, an unmanned wagon full of barrels waiting nearby. Rocking gently on the water was a large rowboat, probably large enough for six to eight grown men.
With a quick hand signal from Koben, the two griffins began to descend toward the shore, and Erin’s stomach dropped as the sensation of falling struck her. Trying to maintain some sort of dignity, she forced herself to keep her head up and her back straight, even though she was screaming inside.
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The black griffin touched down with another jolt, and the girl slammed into Yenner’s back with an audible oof.
Far more prepared than she was, Kaleit briefly squeezed his knees inward to keep from sliding forward, pinning Erin’s legs so tightly that it hurt. He loosed them immediately after the landing and was down from the griffin’s back before she’d even turned, fist pulled back and ready to release. Glaring after him, she punched the saddle instead, then made her way to the ground, where she immediately went stumbling sideways in some weird reverse adjustment to having solid land under her feet again.
Koben and the three boys were already heading toward the rowboat. Erin joined them as Koben pulled up the anchor, then they all pushed it further out from shore and clambered in. At a wave from Koben, Yenner took his griffin back into the air and started to head home.
They each took a seat and a pair of oars, with the prince taking point. On the front of the boat just in front of where Koben sat, there was a large oil lamp hanging from a pole that jutted up from the bow.
After they had rowed along the shore for a while, Erin looked down into the water, unable to make anything out below except for the increasingly-darkening blue void. “Do you think we’re above the harbor now?” she asked Leslyn.
“The harbor? Not even close. It’s miles northwest of here. We’re on the southern edge of the island.”
Erin looked out towards where the harbor would have stood, and saw nothing but water as far as the eye could see. She couldn’t even comprehend how deep the water below them was, knowing that it was an uphill ride the entire way from the harbor to Nilvar. The thought of the vast unknown down there made her grit her teeth and focus hard as she could on rowing instead.
With all five of them putting in their fair share of rowing, the party continued to make their way along the southern shore, which gradually rose into the stone cliffs that Erin was more familiar with. Eventually, she spotted a large, rough opening in the cliff face. The prince steered them right for it.
As they neared the mouth of the cave, Koben paused his rowing to light the big lamp at the front of the boat, just in time for its glow to spill ahead of them into the darkness. “This cave is completely inaccessible during the Dry,” he said as he sat back down. “Very few know of it, and even fewer are willing to brave Floodwaters to reach it. As a result, it is entirely unexplored.”
“Comforting,” was Kaleit’s dry comment. He continued to row, eyes constantly scanning the dark crevices of the rock walls on either side of the boat.
They made their way down a fairly straight, central passage from which branched several other tunnels that all faded away into a black void much sooner than Erin wished they did. It was all too easy to imagine all sorts of awful things hiding in each patch of endless darkness.
At last, they came to a large, open space with a span of mostly-flat rock that could be stood upon. Erin couldn’t tell how big the room was, for it was only partially lit by four lamps similar to the one on the rowboat, placed at the corners of an imaginary square.
The five rowers maneuvered the boat around to gently come up alongside the natural shelf. As the last of them left the boat and stood safely upon the rock floor, a young man stepped out of the darkness.
He was quite young, probably a maximum of early twenties, if that. His build was slender and on the low end of average height. Framed by sun-bleached blond hair, his face was somewhat feminine compared to the likes of Koben and Kaleit, small and boyishly smooth with lips that were very full, almost to the point of looking silly.
Eyes quickly surveying the five members of Koben’s party, he smiled warmly when they came to rest on Erin. She had a sudden sense of familiarity; she was sure she’d seen him somewhere before. With a face as angelic as she thought his was, she couldn’t begin to guess why she didn’t immediately recall.
“You don’t look like the hardened warrior I pictured, when I first heard of you,” Koben said as he walked toward the stranger, holding out a hand.
The young man let out a gentle chuckle and shook the prince’s offered hand. “If I had a gallon of water for every time I heard that, I’d have myself my own private ocean to rule over.”
He spoke with a very thick, faintly musical accent that Erin would have guessed was similar to Hungarian, or maybe Spanish. She certainly would have remembered that.
She thought little of it, other than the fact that his voice was very pleasant to listen to, but as soon as the words left the stranger’s lips, Kaleit and Leslyn both appeared to raise their guards, closely watching him while stealing glances toward the border of darkness around them, as if expecting others to jump out. Arlis, too, seemed uncomfortable, looking to Koben for some idea of how he should respond.
The stranger seemed amused, fixing his silent accusers with a smile. “As you’ve certainly surmised, I am not native to Nilvar. You may call me Coyrifan, or Coy, if so inclined.”
“Where is your boat?” Kaleit asked.
With a broad smile, Koben stepped over and slapped the tall boy in the back, hard enough to make him stumble forward a step or two. “This fine young fellow is Kaleit,” he announced, “son of one of our esteemed captains.” From there, he touched the shoulder of the shortest one in the group with one hand, and the shoulder of his cousin with the other. “My brave squire, Leslyn, and Arlis, my own kin and son of the general of our Guard.”
“A reputable assortment of representatives, to be sure. And the lady?”
He called me a lady, Erin mentally cackled away like a feathered barnyard biddy, hiding a huge smile behind her hand. No other male she knew had ever done that—certainly not the ones she was currently in the closest quarters with.
“Erin,” the prince said. “Now, about that item we discussed… have you brought it with you?”
“I have, but it’s tucked away in a safe place.”
“Your boat?” Kaleit stubbornly repeated, his voice taking on a much harsher tone than before.
Briefly glancing aside at him, the stranger ignored the question and went on. “I’ll have to show you the way, Prince Koben. If you could be so kind…” He gestured toward the rowboat Erin and the others had come in on.
Like a large, cheerful shepherd, Koben spread his arms and gathered his four young charges, obligingly steering them toward the boat.
They all went in and sat in their former places except for Kaleit, who stayed standing at the bow, glaring at the stranger. “Aren’t you going to get in?”
Koben calmly waved his hand, as if to shoo the boy away. “That really isn’t necess—”
Kaleit braced his hands on the bow of the small vessel, leaning toward Coyrifan. “I’m not going to ask you again. For the last time, get in the boat.” He offered his hand, as if preparing to help the other man do just that.
Coy’s lips had all but vanished into a tight pinch, but as that hand reached toward him, the grin he had been desperately reining in split across his face like a sunbeam, and he laughed.
As Kaleit and the others looked on in surprise, he got down and slipped right into the water below the rock ledge, disappearing under the dark surface. When he came back up, the glow of the rowboat’s lamp reflected back from beneath the water in a scatter of tiny pinkish-purple lights that joyfully bounced about with every movement he made.
Before any of them so much as began to breathe again, much less had any fair chance to stop him, Coyrifan leaned back, lifted his silvery purple-scaled tail out of the water, and slapped it down with all of his might, sending a wave of water crashing over their heads.
“As I was trying to explain before I was so rudely interrupted,” Koben said, breaking the stunned silence as he primly but ineffectually dusted at his now-wet clothes, “our new friend has no need for boats.”