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Year of the Leopard Gryphon

Part One

Anril, Ashen, Saphier

Footsteps echoed through the massive chamber. Anril flattened himself along the stone at his back, shoving his book into the bag at his side.

He peered around the pillar, one of many supporting the impractically large room where counsel meetings took place. Silken drapes dangled from far above, cloaking the columns surrounding the room. They were like stone sentinels, dressed up in colorful spills to hide their true power beneath.

Shifting the silk aside with fingertips, he peeked out. A table crouched in the middle of the room, polished legs gleaming. The wood curled in artfully carved shapes.

People filed in from the left, their approach rippling the silken drapes around the room. They moved in a soft, almost liquid dance in the counsel's wake.

Anril curled his fingers a little farther around the drape in front of his face, edging it to the side. The cloth was slippery smooth and cool in his hand.

Faces he recognized moved past one by one. Lady Keinon, hands folded stately in front of her, steps measured. Lord Dustil and his wife, both dressed in matching blue robes so dark they bordered on being black. More, most of the highcourt, nobility and the obscenely rich who'd bought their way in. Only a few unfamiliar faces passed.

His father came in last, Lord Balis at his heels like an overweight lapdog.

They stopped at the head of the table. Anril's father glanced over his shoulder at the other man.

"Ah, right." Lord Balis shrank back slightly, then turned and quickly moved to stand in the last open place around the table.

"Dothwin," a clipped female voice cut into the silence. Anril's father didn't look up, smoothing his hands over the table with a soft crinkling sound that hung loud in the quiet. The woman put her own hands atop the table, the sleeves of her golden-yellow shirt forming puddles of fabric. She leaned into her palms. A long blonde braid slid down her shoulder and fell to a small pile on the table in front of her. The middle of it caught against the side one poorly concealed breast. They moved when she spoke, her loose shirt shifting with them. "Why did you call this meeting?"

Dothwin studied whatever lie on the table with intense eyes, his black hair dangling down so it covered most of his face. "Vilia." His voice held an unpleasant chill. "Hold your tongue, and you may understand."

The woman bristled, her long, elven ears tipped back like an angry cat's. Straightening she flipped the braid back behind herself with delicate fingers. Her amber eyes bore into Dothwin's icy blue ones like burning augers.

Anril's father didn't seemed to notice. He folded his hands in front of himself, confidence and control radiating from him. Any more and it might cause a visible heat haze. Overconfident prick.

No amount of real bravery could ever make Anril look half as impressive as the act his father put on like clothes everyday. He folded his arms in against himself, still holding the drapes open a fraction with one hand. Nothing at all could make sickly and thin look intimidating. He leaned his shoulder into the stone at his side.

"I called you here to address two things," his father said. "We will begin with the obvious—the queen's absence."

Anril straightened from his slouched against the pillar, fingers tightening around their handful of silk. A slow cold bled up into his stomach.

"What?" Vilia's voice cracked against the tense room like a whip. Her hands collided with the table, a solid smack following her words. "Absence, what do you mean, absence? Where is my mother?"

Mother? This girl was no Rosemary. She didn't even look like Rosemary, or the Queen.

Gone. The cold inside him spread. This was most definitely not something meant for his ears or anyone's but the counsel's. It didn't even have anything to do with why he'd waited for them to come in. Merciful hells, he shouldn't have come in here.

"The Queen is gone," one of the other men at the table said. "Since the full moon."

"That was seven days ago!" Her shrill voice cut against the whole room. The man standing at the table beside her winced.

Niavel, a twig thin woman with a waist strangled so small from whatever contraption hid beneath her dress you could wrap your hands around it fully, flicked a small fan from her sleeve and began waving it at her face. Vilia glared around the table, gaze pinning the other woman for a moment. A predatory sheen hung behind her dully reflective elf eyes.

"Who knew?" Her voice turned the words to steel.

Dothwin took a breath. "All of us."

"My mother is missing and you saw fit to tell the rest of the counsel except for me?"

Dothwin didn't react to her rising voice. "We decided it wasn't a thing to entrust to a messenger, Vilia."

Anger poured from her amber gaze. "She is my mother, Dothwin Asanrin." Vilia said, voice deathly even.

"We weighed the risks, and knew you would return soo—"

"My. Mother!" Her hands struck the table again.

Dothwin leaned forwards, his own palms flat against the wood. His gaze turned hard with cold edges as he stared her down. The rest of the table tensed, the air in the room buzzing under the hostile energy. "You left us," Dothwin spat, anger shattering through his calm. "You are not a part of this council ninety percent of the time. You are not here, you are not a part of ruling, or decisions. I am, and I made choices to protect the entire bloody Empire. What do you think will happen if word of this spreads? Riots, and disorder, and in a time in which we can afford neither."

The elf snarled, ears tipping farther back till they lay nearly flat against her head. Darkness seemed to collect against her eyes, making them shine and not at the same time. "You son of a bitch—"

"Dothwin is right," an older man Anril didn't recognize cut her off. "You are a member here by courtesy alone. Don't wear your welcome thin."

"I can't believe this." The words came out a seething hiss. "All of you think this?" Her head snapped from side to side, anger filled gaze raking over the whole table. Lady Keinon shifted, her pink and blue skirts rustling against the smooth floor tiles. Anril carefully let the silk drape fall back into place in front of him as her piercing eyes slid in his direction. The room grew haze behind the close, the forms around the table blurring.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Yes," Lady Kia said, then shrunk under the weight of Vilia's glare.

"We do," Lord Balis' voice chimed in. He would agree with anything Dothwin supported. The man is a toad. An inelegant, faithless toad.

"You could have stayed," Dothwin said coolly. "You could have taken your place next to your mother, a step from the throne, but instead you left to mill about the countryside—"

"Agh!" She turned to glare at him. "I do more than you've ever done, Adviser." Her teeth grit in a soundless snarl. "Do you have any idea where she is? Is she dead?"

"We are unsure." Dothwin ran a hand over the table again, crinkling whatever parchment lay on it. Looking up, he glanced around at them. "I suggest we spread word that she is with child, it will insinuate she is unwell, but for a reason which will pass. And ones that will not make her seem weak in the long run."

"And when there is no new prince or princess?" Lord Balis asked hesitantly.

"We will deal with that when the time comes. What is important now is to select someone from the known council to rule as her regent, Princess Rosemary is too young yet."

He saw people nodding through the drapes. This was going to descend into political bickering he had no use for. Vilia stood with her arms crossed, face a mask of unhidden anger.

Easing a slippered foot back, Anril carefully began moving deeper into the shadows behind the pillar. If he get away while they fought, no one need ever know he'd been here to begin with.

"I am sure each of us will suggest ourselves," his father continued. "But we must consider who will be the most stable—"

"You," Vilia snapped. "You want it to be you."

"I think my current station makes it the wisest choice." Anril could hear the pained look his father had perfected in his voice.

"I second," Lord Balis said, raising his hand.

"I was not nominating him," Vilia said, disgust dripping on the words.

"Fine." The lord shot her a look Anril couldn't quite make out through the silk screen. "I will. All those in favor?"

Hands rose around the table, a few reluctantly, but most not. Vilia kept her arms in a knot in front of her chest, posture stiff. Anril slipped farther back into the shadows. Only a few more steps and the wall would be within reach.

"Good," Dothwin said, glancing around the table. Even through the distance and silks Anril could make out the purposeful shine behind his eyes. "Good," he repeated. "So that's settled. Next, and more pressing, we need to address the issue of the Shade."

Anril froze. Finally. He glanced back at the corner of the chamber, five or six quick steps away and he'd be free. He could feel his One damned curiosity getting the better of him and clenched his fingers, remaining rooted in place.

Silence hung over the room following the word, as if it had been gagged by it.

"Yes," Dothwin said, "An uncomfortable subject to say the least." Lifting a hand, he made a quick, beckoning motion. "Come here." A lurch of dread rolled up from Anril's stomach. How had he seen him? He'd been so quiet, so careful. Anril took a reluctant step forwards, drawing a breath.

To his left, something moved. A man straightened off of one of the pillars on Anril's side of the room, several away from where he hid. He came to a stop at his father's side and Anril almost laughed as relief rushed through him. The strength of it was heady.

"As you may know," the new man said, "My job is to monitor the shields, and unofficially the Shade itself. We have been in an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity, and as such, some people forget about the Shade. With its progress stopped for so long, we have almost come to see it as a mere nuisance, a novelty, even." He glanced over the nobility pointedly. "It was nothing but any of those things, that is, until a few weeks ago." He took a deep breath, running a hand through short, choppy hair. It stuck up in sweaty spikes when he removed his fingers.

Everyone at the table watched him with different levels of tension. Quietly, Anril creep forwards again, sliding his slippered feet over the smooth stone to make even less sound. He pulled a drape aside a fraction, peering out.

The new man could hardly be a handful of years older than him. He was as young as Vilia, and he looked more like he knew it. His eyes danced uncomfortably over the table of mostly middle aged nobility and a few who were downright old.

Dothwin gave him a sharp look and the younger man cleared his throat sharply in the silence. "Right, well, as part of my job, I travel through the Shade to Island cities, in order to give maintenance to their shields."

Didn't master Mothalus and his coterie watch the Shade? Only a mage could maintain them, only many, many mages. This man had no Order clothes or colors. He looked too... alive to be a mage at all.

"The day it began to move, I was in the Shade." He swallowed. Anril pulled the drape he held a little father aside. His chest felt too tight, his blood too fast. The Order had been informed of the Shade's activity as soon as it had been known. Rumors passed lips, even if those were owned by mages who should have kept them sealed. He'd waited almost two weeks now, hoping his father would decide to take him into confidence and tell him anything. Confirm or deny any part of it. But he hadn't, not once, not even a little. If he'd simply been Dothwin's son, he wouldn't have been surprised, but he'd spent the last two years studying everything they knew about the Shade. And still, he'd told him nothing.

And now the full truth was standing thirty feet away. He could hardly believe it.

"I escaped because I never go in unprepared," the man said. "Never without the best gear, and the best men with me." He ran a hand over his face, fingers catching around his chin for a moment. "And we still barely got out with our collective asses in tact. I don't know if the One was looking down on us, or if we were just very, very lucky bastards, but the things I saw... they're worse than any I've seen before."

Anril's father leaned over the table, he poke a finger against the parchment on it. "Here is where our friend Ellaris was, the parch surrounding Duncell. The city has a shield and should be safe, but there are outlying settlements surrounding the borer of the Shade, only a few leagues away."

"So we move the villages," a man said, tone flat. "Commoners are used to strife and having to shuffle about." Vilia glared daggers into the side of his head.

"It isn't that simple," Ellaris said. "Not by a long shot. We have no way of knowing how far it will spread, and that isn't even the worst of it." He ran fingers through his hair again, taking a slow breath. "The creeks leading from the Duncell patch have... been blackening." His voice went soft, then died on the last words, so quiet Anril could hardly hear. Part of him wished he hadn't. If the Shade had become waterborne... One save them all. The faces he could see around the table looked ill, his own stomach did a weak sidestep, as if still too shocked to give a proper go at feeling truly sick.

A/N If you liked this chapter please remember to hit the little vote button! Thanks for reading guys, the second half will be posted just after this one, and I'm starting edit work on the next as we speak... well, as I write this.