South but were driven back. War ensued, and the griffiners led a massive assault on the North which became known as the Blackrobe War. The blackrobes were soundly defeated and their cities destroyed. Most were massacred, but many others were taken back to the South as slaves.
Very few free blackrobes now survive in Cymria, and in fact the very name “blackrobe” has become synonymous with “slave.” And yet blackrobes have achieved many great things in the modern age. They were responsible for the building of most of the great griffiner cities, including Eagleholm, Withypool, Can-ran and Wylam. Woodger’s Dam was also the work of blackrobe slaves, and indeed the dam is said to have been named after a blackrobe who drowned in it shortly after the wall was completed.
That was all it said, but there were some other illustrations: pictures of a row of black-robed men and women, their wrists shackled together, slave collars clamped around their necks, carrying heavy rocks to a half-completed dam wall, and another of them hauling huge split logs up a mountainside. He recognised the mountain and the lake half-hidden behind it. They were building Eagleholm.
And there was a detailed illustration of a slave collar, a thick metal band hinged so it could be opened and closed. The inside of it was studded with sharp metal spikes. When the collar was put on, the spikes would be driven into the wearer’s neck—not deeply enough to kill or seriously injure, but deeply enough to cause constant pain. Any attempt to remove the collar would only make it hurt more. A perfect device to kill someone’s spirit.
Arren slammed the book shut and dumped it on the hay beside him. He couldn’t bear to have it so close and finally stuffed it down the side of the bale and out of sight.
He looked up. People were staring at him.
“What are you looking at?” he demanded.
His outburst provoked several shocked looks, but no-one answered. They moved away from him, and most of them left the barn altogether. Arren retrieved his bow and sat down cross-legged with the weapon lying across his lap, glowering at anyone who looked in his direction. Eventually the last of the spectators left, and he was alone with the black griffin, still sleeping in its cage.
The sun was going down, and darkness was gathering in the barn. Arren stayed where he was, not bothering to light the lantern. He had good night vision. Always had done.
His anger didn’t last. He looked down at his hands. The fingers were long and thin and sprinkled with black hairs. A blackrobe’s hands.
Arren rubbed his eyes. Misery and despair were starting to close in on him, bringing a blackness over his mind as the shadows gathered around him. Eluna was dead. He wasn’t a griffiner any more. Now he was . . . what?
Nothing. He was nothing now. With Eluna gone, he felt more alone than he had ever been in his life. For as long as he could remember she had been there beside him, guiding him. She was his friend, but more than that she had defined his very identity.
Without Eluna, Arren felt his world crumbling to pieces around him.
The black griffin sighed in its cage. Arren looked at it. He could just see it, a black, hunched mass in the gloom, moving up and down slightly as it breathed.
The black griffin would never fly again. Not in the Arena. They would cut its feathers and chain its wings together. They even cut the wings off some of the wild griffins they used in the pit, or so some people claimed.
How long would it survive? Some wild griffins lived in the cages under the Arena for years before they finally died—from stress or starvation, or in the Arena. Or from despair. Plenty of people disliked the Arena, particularly griffiners. But there was little chance of it being shut down in the near future. It generated too much money, and people liked it too much. If it was removed, there would probably be riots.
It was too dark to see anything now, but Arren continued to stare at the spot where the wild griffin lay. It had killed humans, and now its punishment would be to kill more of them. In a way, this griffin would soon become a slave just like Arren’s parents had been.
Kept alive because it had a use, and fated to die on the day that its usefulness ran out.