The Beast of Noor

by Janet Lee Carey

  “It’s true your brother’s stopped him from attacking at each full moon. He saved you and any others the Shriker may have hunted down those nights. No one has ever done that before.”

  The meer’s words sent a thrill down the backs of Hanna’s arms. Miles had taken far too many risks, but he’d also been brave, and he’d kept the Shriker from his kill at every full moon; so far he’d fought him off.

  They stepped past thorny gorse bushes. The Falconer coughed, then took out a cloth and wiped his nose. “It’s good you and Gurty haven’t taken ill from the drenching in Garth Lake.”

  “Aye,” said Hanna. “And you have to get well soon.” She said this out of love for him, but there was a desperateness below the words. He was the only one on Enness Isle who had the power to help her find Miles.

  “Gurty can help you search,” said the Falconer, as if he’d heard her thought.

  Hanna’s pace faltered. “She’s no help at all!”

  “Don’t be unkind, Hanna, she may be of help in time.”

  “I don’t have time! You said so yourself. We have only thirteen days to go. Gurty can’t help me find Miles the way you can. She doesn’t have any real power.”

  “And you do?”

  Hanna felt heat rising up her neck. She didn’t answer or look up at the meer’s face.

  “It was Gurty took us to Garth Lake, if you remember. She’s a seer in her own way, Hanna, and she may play her part yet.”

  The Falconer tapped a boulder with his staff, and a bit of moss fell off “There’s much that’s still a mystery,” he said. “It’s not known how the Shriker found a way to break through the queen’s boundary in Uthor If we knew that, we’d be closer now to finding him, I think, and to find him is to find your brother Miles.”

  Hanna rubbed her arms under her damp cloak as she walked along. She felt chilled even in the sunlit meadow. There was something Queen Shaleedyn had said that still puzzled her. “I was wondering,” she said. “Do you remember what the queen said just before she banished us?”

  The Falconer stopped and looked at her, waiting.

  “She was telling us how she gave Miles his power—a gift, she called it.” Hanna frowned, remembering. “Then she said, ‘So it happens again.’”

  “Ah, you caught that too.”

  “So,” said Hanna, “she gave someone else a gift, I’m thinking, and it all went wrong, the way it has with Miles and …” She stopped herself. She’d had an idea forming in her mind but was afraid to say it. What if she was wrong?

  The Falconer’s brows were tilted. He was still waiting. She had to go on. “Do you know about the tree?” The word “tree” came out in a whisper, and it left her lip trembling in its wake.

  The meer tipped his head, a ray of sunlight falling on his wet hair. “The Enoch Tree, you mean.” It wasn’t a question. He gazed at her intently but not unkindly.

  “Granda said his brother was chosen to be trained up as a meer. I was thinking the queen might have given him the gift for magic, but that it went wrong. Granda said Enoch was sent home from Othlore for some reason, but he didn’t know what happened there.”

  “Enoch stole an ancient text.” The Falconer’s voice was biting. “A book filled with secrets of Oth. And one that told of the beginning time when Noor and Oth were one. Enoch was hungry to learn spells and impatient to gain power.”

  He took a breath, coughed, and tried to calm himself again. “I was teaching on Othlore back then. And if Enoch had come forward and turned the book in once we discovered the loss … but he tried to cover his tracks. The boy burned it.”

  “The only copy?”

  The Falconer nodded. “Only the High Meer was to read from the text, such was the power hidden in its pages.”

  Hanna felt a wave of shame for her family. She didn’t want to hear more, but she needed to know all for Miles’s sake. “Then he did something else once he returned home,” she whispered, “something so terrible the Sylth Queen imprisoned him in the oak tree.” She stopped on the path. “What did he … do you know what evil thing he did?”

  “The queen knows that. I do not. But he was imprisoned fifty years ago.”

  “Around the time the Shriker came back to Shalem Wood?”

  “Aye. I’ve long suspected Enoch had something to do with that, but I had no way of knowing it for sure. The queen’s words gave us more light to see by.”

  Hanna tugged a leaf from the aspen tree. Turned it over in her hand. The Sylth Queen, the Shriker, Enoch. All had come together on the high cliff. Yet none but those three knew the how or why of it. And if a clue to finding Miles was held within the Enoch Tree, the man inside could not speak the way, for though his mouth was open in a scream, it had stayed silent these fifty years.

  CAPTIVE

  Breal of Kelleneur built a worthy vessel and sailed across the Ebring Sea in pursuit of the great serpent Wratheren.

  —THE EPIC OF BREAL

  “LISTEN,” SAID THE FALCONER. MILES STOOD WITH HIM on a platform. Darkness all around, but his teacher’s face shone lamplike in the gloom. In the distance a spinney bird sang, a clear-bright tune that rose and fell, and with the song Miles began to see, as if curtains were parting. He was on a stage in the middle of a great, round amphitheater, with long stone stairways coming out from the center like spokes in a wheel. Thousands of people filled the seats. And on his right the High King of Angalore sat in a favored spot, the king in red velvet robes, his wife in blue.

  “Now play,” whispered the Falconer. Miles should have felt a rush of fear, but his heart was light, so light it seemed the stage was floating upward. He raised his flute and blinked. When had his teacher handed him his own silver ervay? It was a high honor indeed to be gifted with an ervay, and such an instrument was passed on only to a worthy musician. A warm pleasure filled him. He turned to thank the Falconer, but the meer had vanished, only a pale light remaining in his place.

  Miles’s feet lifted off the stage, the air pierced with golden light as he played the silver flute. Joy spread outward from the song, to king and queen, to the people in the seats. As the melody changed, he saw the joy change colors: daylight blue, sea green, then red rose petals falling through the air. He would never leave this moment. He’d stay here forever… .

  A strange voice awakened him. Miles sighed and lifted his groggy head. He blinked his heavy lids. Such a dream! He wanted to lie down and go back inside the song—to see the king smile, watch the queen nod in time to his music. He tried to move his fingers. No, they were paws now, not suited to play the flute at all. Paws. Strong, heavy weapons. He felt a sudden sadness. He should turn back into a boy again. He’d kept himself long enough inside the beast. A sudden sound nearby made him start. He was not alone.

  Open wide now, his eyes slowly adjusted to a dim light, and the clearer the picture became, the more his horror grew. No wonder he hadn’t been able to move. His paws were bound up front and back. He was trapped in some rolling cage.

  He peered through the bars at the two disheveled beings at the low fire. Sylths in ragged cloaks and patched breeches.

  “We’re sure to get well paid,” said the sylth in green.

  The other rubbed his chin. “Aye, we will.”

  How could he have gotten here? He sniffed at the sharp pains in his side and found three arrow wounds. They’d shot him and put him to sleep with a potion. Tamalla, by the smell of it.

  “She’ll restore our wings.”

  The brown-cloaked sylth shook his head. “No, never that. Our wings are gone for good, Reyn, but she may let us live in Attenlore again.”

  “Ah, well, Perth, I’d do anything to be free of the stink of Uthor Vale.”

  Miles began to chew through the cords around his forepaws.

  By the fire Reyn lifted his cup. “We owe the beast something for setting us free.”

  “He didn’t! He only broke through the queen’s wind wall and made a way for us to escape from Uthor.”

  “Us and others, I’m
thinking.”

  Miles cocked his ears. Wind wall? He hadn’t heard of such a thing before, but it was clear the Sylth Queen had tried to contain the Shriker, and still he’d broken free.

  Perth poked the fire with his stick. “I say we don’t owe the Shriker anything. He escaped to please himself!”

  “And now we’re pleasing ourselves,” laughed Reyn. He tossed more kindling into the fire.

  Perth raised his cup. “Aye. No more skullen snakes hanging from the trees!”

  “No more gullmuth beast hunting after us!”

  “No more trolls anxious to dig our graves!”

  “Hear, hear, I say to all that!”

  Front paws free, Miles began gnawing the ropes around his back legs. He was groggy, so even this was hard work. His mouth was numb, and he couldn’t feel the rope on his tongue, but he chewed.

  “The loot will do us good. And she’ll give us plenty for this monster. Three hundred years he’s savaged Attenlore, and as for his latest kill …” Reyn’s next words were a whisper. Miles heard the sound but couldn’t make out what he was saying under his breath.

  “Ah,” sighed Perth. “You almost feel sorry for a beast who’s coming up against the queen’s justice.”

  Miles’s ears pricked. So, he’d been captured for a reward! Why? What had he done? He’d misused the gift she’d given at first, and attacked Mic on the road, but that was long ago now. Since that night he’d shape-shifted for good reason. Shaleedyn wouldn’t blame him for fighting the Shriker to protect his sister. His head felt stuffed with cotton wool. He was dizzy, and his body felt heavy. With some effort he put out his right foreleg and tried to stand, but the tamalla still pulsed through his veins, and his paw slipped awkwardly on the floorboards.

  “He deserves whatever Queen Shaleedyn dishes out for killing her unicorn,” said Reyn.

  Miles started. He tried to call out, “I didn’t kill her!” but his words came out as a growl.

  “Look sharp!” Perth leaped to a stand. “The beast’s awake!” There was a loud cracking noise as Reyn approached the cage with a whip. “Keep down, monster!”

  Miles felt the stinging whip on his right flank. Leaping up with sudden fury, he turned about. The dizziness hit him square on. His head pounded as if he’d crashed into a stone wall.

  He collapsed again into blackness.

  LEAVING

  eOwey open our eyes to find the boy Miles who has lost his way.

  —BROTHER ADOLPHO

  THE FALCONER SAT BY THE FIRE WRAPPED IN HIS THICK green blanket. His cold had worsened but he would not yet go to bed. “There are things you’ll need to know,” he’d said as Hanna hung the kettle over the flames. He turned the page and read a passage from The Way Between Worlds aloud in a scratchy voice as Hanna brewed slippery elm tea. There were only nine days until the next full moon, Listen, she told herself, the book will help.

  The old man read, “‘Whether a meer’s kith be found in the elements of earth, air, fire, water, or ether, a meer is to befriend the natural world.’”

  Hanna found the book confusing. She felt she’d understood the part he’d read about befriending the natural world for she loved her island home and had a special heart for the trees, but the other section … “How does a meer find a kith in the elements?”

  “Tell me how you came to be in Attenlore, Hanna.”

  “I fell. Then I …” She gave a crooked smile. “I flew.”

  A twinkle shone in the old man’s eyes. “You grew wings, then?”

  “No.” She laughed. “I was taken up by Wild Esper.”

  “So you have a sky kith.”

  Hanna wiggled her toes inside her boots,remembering the strange and sudden joy she’d felt when Wild Esper blew her upward. The chill rush of flight as the gusts lifted her over Mount Shalem. But the wind woman hadn’t seemed friendly, only wild and strong beyond imagining.

  “You may find such help between the worlds again,” said the Falconer. “Be vigilant and look for the signs.” It was a line right from the book, and he was saying it to her as if she were a meer.

  “But I’m not …” She turned away, confused. The tea was ready, and she poured him a cup. “Why don’t you read a page that tells us how to get back in?”

  He coughed a hacking cough until his eyes watered. Hanna drew closer. Should she pound his back the way she pounded Mother’s when the coughing shook her so?

  The Falconer blinked his watery eyes and closed the book. “Well,” he said. “the map’s there, as you’ve seen before. But the way to Attenlore”—he ran his hand along the leather spine—“that knowledge is beyond the pages of a book.”

  “Then, why read from it at all?” Hanna bit the inside of her cheek. She hadn’t meant to raise her voice.

  The Falconer tilted his bushy brows. “This book may not tell you where to look, but how to look.”

  Hanna stared out the window and saw two black-winged kravel birds sheltering in the wet trees. What did he mean by how to look?

  Steam rose from the Falconer’s mug, parting in a gray tide as it met his face. He blew on the surface and drank slowly. There was a grayness to his skin Hanna didn’t like the look of. “You need to drink it all to get well,” she said.

  “Sit beside me, Hanna.” He patted the bent-willow chair, and Hanna sat. Aetwan’s feathers ruffled as if a wind were blowing past his perch, but all else in the little room was still.

  The Falconer took a labored breath. His golden eyes shone as if they, too, brought light to the darkened room. The slippery elm might ease his throat, but it wouldn’t touch a fever. She was sure he was feverish, though she was too shy to feel his brow.

  “Hanna,” he said softly. “There may be good reason why Wild Esper helped you cross between worlds, whether she’s your kith or no. The wind woman was sorely hurt by the Shriker.”

  “How can a beast harm a wind spirit?”

  “You can hurt someone well enough by harming someone they love.” The Falconer had the same look on his face that Granda used to have when he was about to tell a tale. But she was in no mood for a story just now; she had Miles to think of, and she had the old man’s health to worry about. If she had a leafer’s skills, she could make him well—now, today—and they could search. Hanna felt as useless as a wet candle and angry with herself. “What you’re about to tell me,” she said, “will it help us find Miles?”

  “A little more knowledge weighs nothing at all, so you won’t find it a burden.”

  Hanna didn’t understand his answer, but he seemed determined to go on. He’d never led her astray, so she settled into the rough-hewn chair to listen.

  “I came to Enness years ago with a magical creature. A golden terrow dragon hatched from an egg I’d found on Othlore.”

  Hanna’s mouth made a little O of wonder. She’d heard of terrows before and the meers of Othlore who rode them skyward, but it was an old tale.

  “I named the terrow Furleon, which means ‘fire keeper’ in Kumarian. He was mine for the raising, his mother having died before he hatched. Meers who raise terrows from hatchlings are meant to be their guardians,” said the Falconer, “but Furleon had a love beyond that of men, for even a meer is held to the soil. So we are bound to the earth, but a terrow is not.

  “Here on the isle he met Wild Esper. The wind spirit played with Furleon day to day as a girl will play with a young pup.” The Falconer stopped, and his eyes had a faraway look.

  Hanna brought the tale back with a question. “Did you give her the terrow?”

  The Falconer coughed. “I would never have done that.” He looked across the room at his falcon. Aetwan tipped his head and peered back. “Creatures of the air have their own hearts to give.” He spread his fingers wide and winglike, though his hands stayed in his lap. “Furleon gave his heart to Esper. So I released him”

  He smiled to himself, his eyes seeing beyond the walls of his small house to something in the past. “That was more than forty years ago, but I can still see th
em. They were happy playmates, and he flew with her in breezes and in storms. There are few who could ever do that,” he said with pride. “He’d be flying with her still if the Shriker hadn’t downed him.”

  Hanna didn’t have to ask how the Shriker had done that, for she’d seen the beast shape-shift into a giant falcon that first night in Shalem Wood. “Why didn’t the wind woman fight back?”

  “It was dark that night with the moon eclipsed, as it always is when he first shows himself in our world. The wind woman fought all she could, but once the Shriker had Furleon, he shifted back into himself again, and Esper can do little to a land creature huddled in the deeps of a cave. So the Shriker killed the golden dragon, Esper’s and mine, and—”

  “Don’t say more,” said Hanna. “Please.” She saw it all well enough in her mind to know the Shriker ate the terrow, and she didn’t want to hear the Falconer say it. Now he was coughing again. She leaped up, poured the last bit of tea into his cup, and slipped it into his hands. He nodded, took a slow breath, and drank.

  Hanna gazed up at the dried herb bundles hanging from the ceiling. “The slippery elm isn’t enough,” she said. “Tell me what else you need to make you well, and I’ll brew it.”

  “The herbs I need aren’t here.”

  “Then, tell me where to find them,” insisted Hanna. “You must get well right away. I need your help to find Miles.”

  The Falconer wiped his nose and folded his kerchief. “You will have to search without me.”

  “I can’t!”

  He gave her a questioning look, as if she’d just told a lie, but she met his gaze. “It’s true,” she said. “Wild Esper rides the wind whichever way she pleases. And I can’t even see her most times.”

  “Aye, wind spirits cloak themselves and are rarely seen by humankind.”

  “I don’t have the power to call her to me,” said Hanna. “And even if she does come and take me to Attenlore, I don’t know how to find Miles once I get there.” She was suddenly trembling, and she worked to control herself, but the trembling only grew worse. “I’m not wise like you.”