a nightshirt with him, and in any case he was used to sleeping in his clothes. His back ached, and when he stretched he felt it crack. Even after more than seven years, it still hurt from time to time. Perhaps it never would completely heal.
He didn’t realise he’d fallen asleep until the screaming woke him up.
He jerked awake and climbed out of bed almost before he knew what he was doing. The scream split the air again. It wasn’t human, he realised abruptly. It was a griffin’s voice.
Arren pulled on his tunic and boots and grabbed his bow and arrows. He found the little bottle of poison on the table and stuffed it into his pocket. The light of dawn was coming in through the window, and he heard the griffin screech again.
He ran out of the room as fast as he could go, tripping over his unlaced boots. “Eluna! Eluna!”
She burst into the corridor, all bristling fur and feathers. “Arren!”
The screech rang out again. Eluna flattened herself to the ground slightly. “Come!” She turned and scrambled away. Arren ran after her, and the two of them barrelled through the front door of the house and out into the street.
The sun was rising. Overhead the sky was dark blue, still dotted with stars, and the sun was a yellow line spread out over the horizon. The light was pale, painting everything in unreal shades of grey. Arren barely paused to take this in. He looked straight upward, and his stomach lurched when he saw the dark shape circling high above.
The screech split the air yet again. Everywhere people were appearing, running out of their houses to look up at the distant shape of the black griffin.
Renn was there, and hurried toward Arren, his face rigid with terror. “It’s come!” he yelled. “It’s come back to find me!”
Arren put his hand on Eluna’s shoulders. She was trembling.
“Go back inside,” he said harshly to Renn. “Now! All of you!” he added, turning to address the people in the street. “Go inside! Get out of sight! Now, damn it! I have to be the only person it can see! Otherwise it can choose who to go after!”
The people obeyed; he watched them run off in a disorderly scramble, doors slamming shut behind them. Overhead, the black griffin continued to circle. It had ceased its calling.
Arren was amazed by how fast his mind was working. “We’ll call to it,” he told Eluna. “It’ll come after us. We’ll pull it after us, get it out of the village, out into the fields.”
Eluna didn’t reply. She lifted her head and screeched. “Eluna! Eluna!”
Arren raised his head, too, and screamed his own name at the heavens.
He thought he saw the black griffin pause in its circling. Then it screamed back. There were no discernable words there, just a long, harsh screech, like an eagle’s. Arren paused at this; he’d never heard a griffin’s cry that sounded like that. But as the black griffin began to descend and he began to run away out of the village, toward the fields, a thought flashed across his mind: this griffin had no name.
The black griffin followed them as they ran. He could see it flying lower, homing in on him as Eluna had done back in Eagleholm.
Arren vaulted over a fence and ran on, through the dewy grass of an empty field. Eluna leapt after him and ran on ahead, still screeching her name. The black griffin flew lower. It was preparing to dive on them.
Arren stopped when he was well away from the village, in an isolated, open spot where the black griffin couldn’t fail to see him. Eluna crouched beside him, and the pair of them continued to call their challenge.
The black griffin took the bait. Arren saw its circles getting tighter as it singled him out. He unshipped the bow from his back and strung it as fast as he could. The cork in the bottle of poison seemed to take forever to come out; once he’d pulled it out and stuffed it in his pocket, he took an arrow from the quiver and dipped it in the liquid. It came out dripping, and he put the bottle down on the ground beside him and nocked the arrow onto the bowstring. His heart was pounding so hard it made his head spin. Would it be enough? It had to be enough; it had to—
The black griffin folded its wings and dived. Arren looked up to watch