Ring. Sister. Piano (Book 4 of The Powder Trail)

Chapter Forty Nine: Girl and Gryphon

Vassago's Canyon must have been where the black sandstorm had come from. It was a dark fissure in a desert of midnight-black dunes. 

But calling the sand black – or even midnight-black – didn't do it justice. It was the kind of shade that only needed a light shining on it to unleash a hundred different colours, all of them black, and all of them so much more: rose-black, moss-black, peacock-purple-and-green black.

At one end of the canyon – the end that Jack and the king were heading towards – a gigantic waterfall thundered down into the depths, foaming white and seething with compressed energy even before it hit the riverbed. At this distance, the roar was deafening. Jack could feel the sound vibrating in his chest.

This was the waterfall Sita had arrived by. The king told him that the Queen had stretched a net from one wall of the canyon to the other, in order to filter out anything of value that was being carried along the river's course. But Jack couldn't see it: everything was lost in foam and ferment. Apparently, it was staffed by demons who walked out onto the net, wearing protective clothing to shield them from the torrent, and picked up anything that had become entangled.

They had spotted Sita at once, the king said. She might not have sparkled, but it had been obvious from the first that she was a jewel.

She was at the canyon too, walking up and down one side of the crevasse with her gryphon – or sphinx, if that was what he was. She was still slightly transparent. Her feet didn't make any impression in the black sand. 

The roar of the waterfall was quieter here. Girl and gryphon seemed to walk the bounds of a little charmed circle which the commotion couldn't reach. At the centre of the circle was Sita's body, propped up on a pile of wood and sticks and grasses that looked like a funeral pyre, but which Jack was willing to hope was just the gryphon's nest.

In fact, it was so quiet that he could hear the little body breathing – which it did with a strained, raspy, sucking sound that drew her whole chest upwards. All the life in that body seemed to be concentrated in that desperate act of breathing. He wondered how long it could go on for.

It should have been the gryphon that drew his eyes, perhaps – although at least he was in-keeping with the landscape. He was a massive, shadowy edifice of a thing – winged and hairy and clawed. But there was a padding delicacy to his movements, and his lion's face was gentle, even though it ended in a cruel, hooked beak.

The Queen was standing a little way off, looking down on them. Jack could only see her back, although that was more than enough to be getting on with. It was almost laid bare by the sheer black lace, and it was lithe, shapely, and muscular. Her golden skin shone in the firelight and made her look like some kind of heathen idol. 

She was holding a torch that appeared to be made of bone, with oily rags wrapped around one end and blazing merrily. She was letting it droop, though. It had dipped almost to the level of the sand by the time Jack and the king reached her, presumably because she was so enthralled by Sita's conversation. 

What was so important there? What was it that was engrossing her? Just a riddle, and a child's childish efforts to answer it. Sita had been asking the gryphon to repeat it when Jack and the king got close enough to hear, and he had sketched it out like this:

"Poor people have me, rich people want me, and, if you eat me, you'll die. What am I?"

"Poison," said Sita, with a promptness that made the gryphon blink.

"Why would rich people want poison?" he asked. He had a strange voice: purring and ponderous, gentle but ageless, as if you were to find a sense of humour in a rock-face.