By late afternoon Gryph had followed the pulsing beams to a point several kilometers from where he had left Sariana. He stopped when he realized how close to the source he was. All the hunting instincts and skills that had been bred and trained into him were fully alert.
The gorge had deepened. The walls rose dizzyingly high overhead, revealing only a tiny strip of sky. Evening shadows were already thick on the valley floor.
The river was a rough and tumble cascade now. White water foamed over boulders and squeezed through twists and turns in the narrowed riverbed channel.
Gryph used the shadows, although he was relatively certain he wouldn't be noticed, even if someone up ahead was watching. There was enough natural cover in the area to hide his movements. Even another Shield would be unable to sense his presence. The pulses of the live prisma were so strong Gryph was certain they masked everything, including the weaker pulse of the neutralized prisma in his lock.
The tricks he had learned fighting bandits in the frontier provinces were second nature to him. He used them without conscious thought while he fine-tuned his focus on the live prisma.
For a moment he was confused. The beams he had been following seemed to be emanating from overhead, not from a point farther along the gorge floor. He looked up, seeking a possible cave or ledge large enough to hold a ship. He used his mind link to narrow the search for the ship while he used other skills to hunt for signs of human beings.
Half an hour later, just as night threatened to overtake the gorge completely, Gryph found what he was looking for. A vapor lamp flared briefly high up on the canyon wall.
He hadn't been able to spot it from the base, but Gryph knew now there had to be an entrance into the
rock up there somewhere. From the records he had studied as a young student, he knew that the ships on Windarra had frequently been hidden in small caves dug into such mountainsides as this one.
There had to be a way to climb to the place where he had caught the glimmer of a vapor lamp. The canyon wall proved to be less sheer than it had looked from a distance. The climb toward his goal
was easier than Gryph had originally thought it would be. In fact, it was more of a scramble over tumbled boulders and small landslides than a real rock climb.
A surprisingly short while after he had left the valley floor, Gryph was crouching within a few meters of his destination. From his vantage point it was easy to see the wide mouth that looked as if it had been gouged out of the canyon wall. A vapor lamp burned deep inside, but there was no sign of anyone around the lamp.
Nor was there any sign of a weapon ship. But the pulsing strength of the prisma rays focusing through his weapon kit lock and coalescing inside his brain was all the evidence Gryph needed of a ship's presence. The rays swamped the area, bathing it in invisible light. No single, cut piece of prisma could produce so much power.
For the first time in his life. Gryph thought, he was doing what he had been created to do. He had tracked a prisma ship to its lair.
This close to the source of live, uncut prisma, Gryph could not hope to isolate the small, delicate ray that would identify another Shield's lock. It was just as well. The masking effects of the stronger beams also concealed his own lock from anyone who might be monitoring the night for intruders.
Gryph watched the cave entrance for a while longer, willing someone to come fetch the vapor lamp. Whoever bad put it there would surely want to retrieve it before long. It made no sense to leave the lamp burning with no one around.
Time slipped past with excruciating slowness and no one appeared. If it hadn't been for the burning lamp, Gryph wouldn't even have guessed there were humans in the vicinity. He was cold, cramped and bored. The best frontier training did not teach a man how to ignore the discomforts of a night watch. It just taught him how to endure them.
Gryph's patience was rewarded shortly before dawn.
The figure of a man appeared from the upper reaches of the gorge wall, following an unseen path that he must have found at the lip of the canyon. He carried a vapor lamp. The tiny light zigzagged slowly down the steep rock wall.
Glyph watched it closely.
The man, who was draped in a stylish, knee-length cloak against the predawn chill, was only a dark shadow behind the lamp, but Gryph was ready for him. The figure passed no more than a couple of meters from Gryph's hiding place. Gryph slipped silently out into the open, closing in on his target from behind. It would have been easy to kill the man, but that was the last thing Gryph intended in that moment. He needed answers, not the silence of death. He took his victim around the throat, choking off any potential scream. The man nailed frantically as his airway was closed. The small vapor lamp he had been carrying dropped onto the rocks with a tiny clatter.
Gryph regretted the small noise, but there wasn't much he could do about it. He concentrated on subduing his quarry. He didn't want to spend any more time out in the open than necessary.
He was in the process of dragging his victim back into the shadows when a ball of fiery light and blazing pain burst inside his head.
Gryph had never experienced such agony in his life. It wasn't like the night he had first linked with Sariana and it wasn't like the silent explosion of light that had rendered him momentarily unconscious the previous night. He sensed vaguely that it was an effect of prisma, but it was nothing he had been trained to handle.
He fought back out of instinct. He held onto consciousness desperately, and rode the light rays in his mind the way he rode a normal prisma beam. There was something drastically abnormal about these rays, but be couldn't take time to analyze them. Gryph groped for the frequency and locked onto it. His fingers burned into his weapon kit lock as he fought to reverse the strangely pulsing rays.
The battle to force the blinding mental rays out of his mind was unlike any combat he had ever faced.
He was learning as he went along. There was nothing like necessity to spur the educational process.
With a surge of effort he managed to tangle and jam the rays long enough to clear his mind. Gryph didn't hesitate. He sensed a second assault was already underway and he was too weak from the first battle to deal with it.
Mentally he studied the tangle of prisma beams he had just created, aware that it was already jamming and neutralizing itself. He knew he needed a barrier against the next slamming prisma ray. The only thing that could stop prisma was more prisma.
Not completely aware of how he was doing it, but driven by the need to survive, Gryph grabbed mentally at the disintegrating rays of the first assault. He touched his lock and deliberately tried to strengthen the retreating frequencies, sending them back toward their source with a positive rather than neutral force.
