He stood up sharply, tail twitching, and scanned the sky. No sign of other griffins. He could fly away without being seen.
He looked down and saw Arren, still lying where he had been the previous night, and that was when he remembered everything else. The struggle, the scream, the light . . . and the strange and terrible feeling of something pouring out of him and into the human’s body, taking all his strength with it.
Darkheart sniffed at Arren, and pushed him lightly with the back of one talon. He was no longer stiff, but he still did not move.
Yet Darkheart persisted. He continued to nudge him. “Arren,” he whispered.
And then something happened. A great jolt went through Arren’s body and travelled into Darkheart, making him shriek in alarm and back away. It had felt like a single, massive heartbeat—one so powerful it had made his entire body jerk with it.
On the ground, Arren’s mouth opened wide and he breathed in a great gasp of air. He twitched once, all over, and then started to breathe again, his chest heaving frantically. His eyes snapped shut as he coughed, but then he opened them again and looked up at Darkheart, and they were alight with life and intelligence and personality. Alive.
The first thing Arren felt when he woke was pain. It went ripping through him in one massive burst, like a giant heartbeat pumping burning-hot blood through his system. He felt himself jerk violently, and then his mouth opened and he began to breathe. The moment the air flooded into his lungs, the pain disappeared. He sucked it in greedily, and it brought everything back. Light, sound, thought and vision. His eyes opened and he saw the black griffin looking down at him, looming in the sky like a feathered mountain.
He tried to get up for a moment, but then slumped back, trying to think. He didn’t know where he was or how he had got there, or what had happened to him. He couldn’t even remember his own name.
His hand went to his throat, and touched a cold metal surface. It was scratched and dented, clinging to his neck, and he pulled at it. It came free with a sick, wet sound, and he flung it aside and sat up. He felt strong, and he stood up and dusted himself down. There was an arrow sticking in his leg. He pulled it out and dropped it, then looked around. He was in a forest at the base of a mountain, among some rocks, and there was a huge black griffin sitting nearby watching him.
He looked at it, trying to remember what it was. There was something familiar about it.
The black griffin stood up. “Arren Cardockson,” it said.
And then he remembered. It came rushing back in an instant, hitting him all at once. Run, fight, escape, fear . . . and then the fall. He remembered seeing Bran’s face as he toppled backward and then fell from the edge of the city. He remembered falling into darkness, screaming, the wind tearing at him, blood crawling up the shaft of the arrow embedded in his body and being whipped away. And he remembered hitting the ground. He remembered the agony that had smothered him as he looked up at the face of the black griffin . . . and died.
When Arren opened his eyes, he found himself lying on the ground. He hadn’t even realised that he had fallen over. He got up and patted himself frantically, feeling his stomach, chest and face. It was all still there, just as it had been before. His curly hair, grown quite long over the last few months, the ragged beard that Flell had complained about, the puckered scars left by Shoa’s talons, the wound under his right eye. The collar was gone, but it had left a ring of puncture wounds all around his neck. They were bleeding, but they didn’t hurt. In fact, nothing hurt. There was no ache in his back, no twinging from his ribs. There was an arrow wound in his leg, but that didn’t hurt, either. Nor did the slash on his cheek.
Panic-stricken, he turned and ran away from the black griffin as fast as he could go, dashing into the trees. His wounded leg was weak, but he didn’t let it slow him down much. He ran on until he reached a small pool among the trees and there limped