Dragon Age: Last Flight Read Online Free Page B

the storm they knew must come.
    Then they were descending past the palace’s curtain walls, and Isseya’s view of the city was cut off by high sheets of stone.
    The palace courtyard was a maelstrom of dust. Two dozen griffons had been assigned to the Royal Palace, along with an equal number of Grey Wardens, and the clamor and chaos of their arrival overwhelmed the castle’s servants. The griffons were particularly difficult; the great beasts were territorial and short-tempered at the best of times, and the long flight had made them especially irritable. Several of them had flown up to the curtain wall, where they beat their wings and shrieked at anyone who came near.
    The Antivans gave the griffons a wide berth as they brought bread and wine to the Wardens, and Isseya couldn’t blame them. She’d been working closely with the animals for months, grooming them and feeding them and learning to read their ever-changing moods, and she was still routinely intimidated by the winged predators.
    An adult griffon could grow to be more than twelve feet from beak to tail, with a wingspan even greater. The males weighed more than a thousand pounds, the females only slightly less. Their beaks were powerful enough to snap an elk’s thighbone effortlessly; their claws could shred plate mail like damp paper. Although the Grey Wardens tended to select their smaller and lighter members as griffon riders, enabling the beasts to serve as steeds longer and under harsher conditions, a healthy griffon was fully capable of fighting with two men in full armor on its back. They were fierce, fearless predators, full of wild beauty and quicksilver rage.
    Isseya loved them. She loved their power and their grace and their musky leonine smell. She loved the way their bright gold eyes would close halfway when they were pleased with her grooming, and the earthshaking rumble that passed for their purrs. And she loved the sheer unfettered freedom they had in the air, and the extraordinary gift of flight that they could share with their riders when they chose.
    Because a griffon always chose . One could not compel the great beasts to carry riders they did not want. A griffon would sooner hurl itself into a mountainside than it would accept servitude to a master it disliked. They were never servants, never slaves. A griffon was a partner and equal, or else it was a foe.
    That was why training a new griffon rider took so long, and why Isseya didn’t fault the Antivans for being wary of their huge feathered guests. A griffon was nothing like a dog or a horse, or even one of the spotted hunting cats that some Orlesian nobles were said to keep on jeweled leashes. They were proud and jealous and wild, and a wise man never forgot that.
    The Wardens certainly hadn’t. They helped the servants set out washtubs of water for the griffons, tasked one of the senior Wardens to watch over the beasts, and filed into the castle. The griffons would be fed later, separately. Offering them meat while they were crowded together was too likely to start fights.
    Isseya hoped no well-meaning servant tempted them, but it wasn’t her duty to watch the griffons this evening. She followed the others into the palace’s shade, falling in alongside her brother.
    Garahel shook dust out of his golden hair as he walked. He’d already washed his face, probably sneaking a few handfuls of the griffons’ drinking water to do it. Isseya hid a smile. Her brother could be unutterably vain … but, she had to admit, not without reason. Elves were widely accounted to be more beautiful than humans, but even by that measure, Garahel was exceptional. High cheekbones, brilliant green eyes, and a smile that made ladies—and not a few men—go weak in the knees. He was far better-looking than she was, and frankly Isseya was glad. Beauty was a poisoned blessing for an elven woman in Thedas.
    Her brother wasn’t smiling today, though. No one was. If the mood in Antiva City had been grim, the mood