by Martin Frowd
A few hours later, Zorgh’s appreciation of Zarna’s logic and wit had risen to new heights, compared to the other women of the clan. The Druid Master had little enough experience of dealing with females, as his normal duties with the Watch kept him at the Keep rather than out among the clans of the Twelve Tribes of the People. Zarna’s intellectual capabilities, even in the face of the limited education available to a woman of the People, contradicted his assumptions about her gender. The other women instead reinforced those assumptions. Simpering, whimpering, or too terrified of a Druid Master to speak at all, until forced under threat of torment in this life or the next, they gradually corroborated Zarna’s story but told him nothing he did not already know. Not one of them would dare to speculate on matters they had not witnessed with their own eyes, or to make the logical leaps that Zarna had regarding why her heretic friend would not leave her unsupervised in her yurt, or the likelihood of the late chief hunter, being able to go places women could not, having first fallen into heresy and having then brought it back to his yurt and his woman like a disease.
A few of the other younger women had spent time looking after the boy abomination Zarynn, so they had admitted to Zorgh. Again none had ever had cause to believe that he hid natural magical capabilities. All insisted that he had never displayed any such powers until the night his parents were slain. Like Zarna, none of the women had themselves witnessed the slaying, all having been kept safely inside their yurts, or else intercepted by their men and shielded from the sight. All told a similar story about how the heretic Zaryth had fought like a madman and could not be taken alive, and how his woman Sheynsa had picked up a spear from one of the hunters he had felled, and fought at his side, until she too was speared to death. Zorgh remained dubious that a female could truly fight like a trained hunter, and he suspected the men of the clan had all stuck by this story in order to justify slaying her in the heat of the moment. But still, she was a heretic, and thus anything was possible.
A glance outside the chief’s yurt told Zorgh that the sun was sinking lower in the sky, and the rising noise levels and the wafting scent of cooking meat suggested the men, women and children of the clan were gathering for the communal evening meal. The Druid Master saw no value in interrogating any more of the clan’s womenfolk and hearing yet another rendition of the same tale, and even Druids needed to eat. Stowing crystal and stylus away in a pocket of his robe, he rose to his feet to exit the yurt. Interrogations of the men of the clan could begin the next morning.
When he emerged into the fading sunlight, where the Duskwalker clan were gathered around the cooking fires, the sight before him stopped him rigid and anger flared as he beheld the back of the brown-robed Wanderer Ryvyth, in conversation with Chief Zovyth. Ryvyth, whom he had ordered away into the hills to join the search for the outlander necromancer and the boy, the abomination.
Zorgh swiftly scanned the crowd for any sign that Rhobyth, too, was there, but could see no sign of the Druid Wanderer who had flown here with him from the distant Keep. Presumably, then, Rhobyth at least had obeyed his orders.
Zorgh strode swiftly over to the other Druid, the chief and the knot of men with them, reaching them just as one of the women was about to serve food to the robed Druid Wanderer.
“Wanderer Ryvyth,” he grated, clenching his teeth to avoid unleashing his anger to its fullest. “A word. Now.”
Zorgh had the satisfaction of seeing the taller, younger Druid stiffen for a moment before nodding respectfully and following Zorgh away toward the edge of the camp. So, the Druid Wanderer knew he had transgressed, then. In scant minutes, the two robed men were out in the grasslands beyond the camp’s perimeter, far enough that the Duskwalker sentries on the periphery could see them in the fading sunlight but not overhear them.
“I gave you clear orders, Wanderer Ryvyth,” Zorgh grated. “You were to accompany Wanderer Rhobyth into the Hills of Dusk, to make contact with our brethren attached to the Dusk Hunter clan and join in the search of the hills for the necromancer and the abomination. Again, you defy me. By the Empty Throne, explain to me why I should not have you reassigned to spend the rest of your life on the border with the Fleshtearers, with no hope of relief nor respite – or simply kill you where you stand?”
“Master, I tried to explain before,” Ryvyth protested, “my Animal-Gift is not strong. When you ordered me out of the chief’s yurt, I thought to explain to Wanderer Rhobyth, my peer-”
“You may be of the same rank, but you are scarcely peers, boy!” Zorgh glared up at the taller Druid, his anger overflowing for a moment. Conscious of the Duskwalker sentries in the distance, he bit it back again.
“Excuse me, Master, I thought to explain to Wanderer Rhobyth so that he might explain to you, that perhaps you would accept it coming from him, Master. But he took to his doomhawk form and was in the air and gone before I could say another word. He did not wait, Master, for me to explain that I cannot fly yet. Nor did he come back, when he noticed – he must have noticed! – that I was not with him. I reasoned that it would be foolish and pointless to set off into the hills on foot, Master, with our quarry having a three-day lead. So, I thought to make myself useful by continuing to heal those who yet suffer from the wounds inflicted by the outlander with his necromantic magics, and I have spent the day thus.”
“You…cannot fly…yet.” Zorgh regarded the younger Druid with a mixture of anger, pity, disbelief and horror. “How long have you been a Wanderer?”
“Six years, Master. I was ordained Wanderer at nineteen.”
“A year later than usual,” Zorgh observed. “You were held back a year, in the hope that your Gifts would grow stronger?”
“Yes, Master.” Ryvyth bowed his head. “My Healing-Gift was always my strongest, ever since I was a Novice. The others were – are – weaker. My Earth-Gift did grow stronger, over the extra year as an Acolyte, but not my Animal-Gift. My instructors chose to ordain me rather than continue to hold me back, in the hope that my other Gifts would continue to develop in the field.”
“And you…walk…everywhere you go? Have you no animal forms at all?”
“I can take the form of a squirrel, or a fish, Master. Much of my training was at the Keep, by the shore of the Black Lake, or in the Hills of Twilight, which you must know are heavily wooded. Neither of those would serve me here, I judged. In the field, sometimes a clan will loan me a pony, Master, to return to them later. But yes, for the most part, I walk. One observes things, sometimes, on foot that would be missed from the air.”
“You have made a virtue from a weakness,” Zorgh observed, reassessing the younger Druid, his fury gradually dimming to exasperation. “Where some of our brethren would chafe at being groundbound, you instead see it as opportunity to achieve other things? Perhaps there is hope for you yet, Wanderer. But by the Empty Throne, the next time I give orders, on any matter that does not involve you flying, you will obey them,” he growled, daring the younger Druid to object. Ryvyth wisely did not, merely nodding in agreement. “Now, let us return to the camp while there is yet hot food left to be had. After, we will discuss my assessment of this clan so far, and perhaps tomorrow you can sit in upon my interrogations of the men of the Duskwalkers.”
FIFTEEN: ON BLACK WINGS
While Druid Master Zorgh interrogated Zarna, many miles to the west of the Duskwalker camp and up in the sky, Zarynn and Glaraz flew southwest under the mid-morning sun, astride a flying creature far larger and more formidable than a doomhawk.
The wind whipped past Zarynn’s face and the sun was bright, even though the air was cold at this height. The monster – Furiosa, if that was her name and not the name of her kind? – flapped great black wings and soared through the sky. Now and then, Zarynn saw, she held her wings level and glided for a while, as he had seen bats and birds do on occasion, before flapping again. Her wings resembled those of bats more than they did those of birds, although of course far larger. Each wing, unfurled in flight, was longer than three men laid e
nd to end!
The creature was scarcely what one might call beautiful, but she was fierce and formidable – as the bears had found out – and Zarynn’s fear of her was now gone, evaporated in the miracle of flight and in an attempt to emulate Glaraz’s confidence. As the wind howled, he held on tightly to her neck ridge, and wondered how far they still had to fly. Flying was another thing – another of the many things – he had never done, and never expected to do, before the necromancer rescued him from an untimely death, and Zarynn had decided he liked it, even if the wind was sometimes noisy and cold. He had never imagined before how the lands of the People of the Bear would look from the air. Directly below, and as far as he could see to the left, the Hills of Dusk were a mass of tiny grey-black blobs, while far off to his right – to the north, he realised – the ground was a vast plain of yellow-green grasses. He tried hard to remember his mother’s, and Zarna’s, lessons about the different lands of the People, and wondered if he was seeing as far as the lands of the People of the Vulture, or if the most northerly point he could see right now was still part of the Bear lands.
Even from this height, he could not yet see the sea, which Glaraz had said lay ahead of them. Zarynn wondered how much longer they would have to fly, before it was visible – and how much longer before they reached the ship that the necromancer had spoken of, that waited to carry them away to his school on the other side of the sea. And, for that matter, how long the sea voyage would take! There was still so much that was strange to him. He recalled his mother teaching him that most of the People never saw the sea in their lives – as indeed she never had – and the few that did, mostly the catchers of fish, were forbidden from travelling beyond sight of the lands of the People. His father had said that the Druids were afraid that if people could travel to the lands beyond the sea, the Druids would lose their control of the Twelve Tribes. From Zarynn’s admittedly limited experience of Druids, he did not think they were afraid, but he readily accepted that they would be angry indeed if the People stopped obeying their every command.
The wind had risen again and continued to rush past Zarynn’s face and batter against it, bringing occasional tears to his eyes, as they flew through the morning. He held on tightly to the monster’s neck ridge all the while. Glaraz’s arms secured him to either side, as the necromancer too gripped the beast’s neck ridge, his hands to the outside of Zarynn’s own. The necromancer’s chest was solid and comforting against Zarynn’s back as they flew. Conversation was next to impossible in the face of the wind, so Zarynn focused on sight rather than sound, glancing at the hills and grasslands far below them and the irregular shapes of the white clouds in the blue sky.
All the while, as they flew, he was aware of wisps of grey smoke or mist continuing to rise from Glaraz, drifting up from his sleeves and gloves and no doubt from the back of his curious one-piece garment too. As their flight continued, the necromancer’s gloves and sleeves slowly began to develop holes where the strange shadowstuff that the First People lord had given him had boiled away entirely under the sun. Zarynn had once seen an old cloak that had inadvertently been left outside its owner’s yurt, near the camp fires, overnight. Moths had descended on it in a feeding frenzy, and by morning, the cloak had been full of holes. Glaraz’s sleeves and gloves now resembled that cloak, as the shadowstuff evaporated in the daylight, and Zarynn suspected the rest of the necromancer’s garb fared no better.
Abruptly, the flying beast that carried them veered to the right, without any instruction from Glaraz as far as Zarynn could tell. Certainly, he had not heard the necromancer say a word of command, nor had he noticed any change in his grip or posture in the way that a hunter of the People might steer his pony. Yet nevertheless, the monster had turned, and was now flying in a different direction than before, a little closer to true west judging by the rays of sunlight streaming past them from behind. The rocky ground rushed past, far beneath them, each beat of the great batlike wings propelling them further.
With their change of direction, they were no longer flying directly into the teeth of the wind, and Zarynn could hear Glaraz when he spoke.
“We have turned west of southwest now,” the necromancer stated. “Out of the wind’s fury, yes? Soon, I think, we shall see the sea. It will be some hours yet before we have crossed the bay to the island, but by the sitting of the sun, we should reach my ship.”
Zarynn was growing more used to Glaraz’s strange accent, enough so that he realised the necromancer must have meant the setting of the sun and made no attempt to correct him. He considered Glaraz’s words and was as sure as he could be that they would soon be in sight of the sea. The sea! The thought filled him with new excitement and made all that had befallen him thus far somehow seem even more real. Not that flying was in any way ordinary in his experience of life so far, but they were still – as yet – flying over the Hills of Dusk, not so far from the reach of the People, or at least the Druids who ruled them. But the First People lord had said, in his chamber beneath the silent vale, Druids did not cross the sea. Once across it, surely, he would at last be safe.
Neither Zarynn nor anyone of his old clan, since time beyond memory, had ever so much as set eyes on the sea, though they knew vaguely that it was out to the west or southwest, beyond the Hills of Dusk. Indeed, from the lessons of his mother, none of the clans of the People of the Bear had much to do with the sea. The hills where no man lived separated the Bear grasslands from the water’s edge, unlike the People of the Vulture to the north, or the People of the Nighthawk to the south, whose lands held great stretches of low-lying coastline. Thus, Zarynn had no real concept of what it meant to travel on the sea, or of the distances that separated the lands of the Twelve Tribes of the People from those of the outlanders, or of how long it might take to sail to those faraway lands. He boy wondered whether, when they reached the island of which the necromancer spoke, they would be able to see Glaraz’s land on the horizon.
Focused on what lay ahead of them, neither Zarynn nor Glaraz spotted the hookbeak gliding on the wind high above even them.
◆◆◆
Glaraz Vordakan’s sense of relief grew with each mile that passed, as Furiosa flew on into the early afternoon. The sooner we clear this wretched land altogether, the better. This year’s visit has definitely been the worst yet. But well worth it, if the boy lives up to his potential. And perhaps it would be just as well to harvest from the northern rather than the eastern realms for the next few years, if the shades are truly still taking that much of an interest and have still agency as well as power. His dialogue with the ancient shade lord, Vrnx, had been pleasant enough on the surface, but he had not missed the implied threat if he failed to do right by the boy – and the shade lord’s last muttered rhyming couplets, as they departed, had certainly had the ring of prophecy to them. Perhaps it would be best to consult the Black Skull’s own seer, once he finally returned home. She might have insights of her own into the boy’s future. Not to mention that the Druids are stirred up now like a nest of deathstings in a fire and will be watchful.
At the least, he resolved, any future expeditions to this wretched land of demon-worshipping savages would have to consider carefully indeed whether continued use of the ancient portal network, left behind by the shades long ago, was still a viable risk, if the shades could in fact still monitor it – or worse, interfere with it. And if the old portals could no longer safely be used, a great deal more time might need to be set aside for any such future expeditions.
The necromancer was pulled from his reverie as he noticed the expanding blue on the horizon, as the grey-black of the hills gave way to the first sight of sea ahead of them. Furiosa’s wings pumped with renewed vigour, propelling them swiftly forward, rapidly closing the distance toward the water’s edge.
“The sea, young Zarynn,” he raised one hand from Furiosa’s neck ridge for a moment to point ahead of them. “We draw closer to the water’s edge. An hour, I think, no more, and we shall be out over the sea. The sky
is clear. Soon we shall see the Isle of Crows in the distance.”
The hookbeak came out of nowhere. One moment, Glaraz was pointing at an expanse of blue on the horizon. The next, his face was full of grey feathers as the ugly bird dived under his arm to rake at Zarynn with its talons, screeching loudly all the while. The boy yelled and instinctively flung up his arms to protect his face. Glaraz backhanded the bird away from them, while keeping a tight grip on Furiosa’s neck ridge with his other hand, pressing his arm more firmly across young Zarynn’s knee to keep the boy steady on Furiosa’s back.
A quick glance told the necromancer that the hookbeak was not alone. Three – no, five – no, seven more of the hideous birds circled above them, and even as Glaraz glanced around, the original attacker looped back around and stooped into a fresh dive at them, while the other seven circled, screeching.
This time, Glaraz was forewarned enough to call upon his magic. Though his powers were still depleted after his encounters with the lion-Druid and his minions in the hills, and his wands were lost to him after the fight with the doomwolves in the cave, the necromancer was entirely confident that he could handle a flock of hookbeaks with no difficulty. What concerned him more was the idea that another Druid, or more Druids, could be watching through the hookbeaks’ eyes – or could be speeding their way right now to join the fight – and the more magic he expended on minion birds, the less he would have left if the true enemy caught up.
“Vish’te’shuch!” Glaraz flicked one finger toward the diving hookbeak as he spoke the words of the Tongue Arcane that focused and actualised his intent. The bird’s attack dive became a graceless plummet as its heart gave out in its feathery grey breast and it fell like a stone, slain instantly by the invisible bolt of death magic.