The Winged Hunter

by F. T. McKinstry

  “How much time?” she asked Freil.

  “We’re almost there.” His strong, warm hand closed over hers.

  Aradia must have known what Caelfar had done. The crone certainly hated him enough. Their argument in the garden made sense, now. It seemed every woman in Tansel’s family had known of Caelfar’s wrong except her.

  Her thoughts scattered as Freil stopped. He knelt, bringing her with him. “There.” He pointed through the trees into a moonlit clearing over a low outcropping surrounded by white birches. The portal shimmered there, so beautiful it took her breath away. Thin lines of red light converged on the rise into dense patterns that looked like a glowing, faceted crystal. It formed a gate; on the top, an eye stared from the center of a pentacle.

  “You see it?” Freil asked softly.

  “I see the Eye,” she whispered.

  “The Keepers of the Eye built the solsaefil centuries ago. Master Caelfar tends it, as has every Raven who lived here before him.”

  “Who will do it after he’s gone?”

  He hesitated, as if startled by the question. “I don’t know. Let’s go.”

  They crept through the trees towards the portal. Just as they approached the tree line, however, hoof beats clattered on the rocks. Freil pulled her down and hushed her with a breath as something moved on the edge of the clearing.

  Tansel tried to see over the ferns. “Who is it?” she whispered.

  Freil’s hand came over her mouth as he leaned down and breathed into her ear: “Stay here. Don’t move or make a sound. I’ll be back.”

  Tansel’s heart leapt into her throat as he touched her forehead with a kiss, then got up and slipped into the shadows.

  *

  Under the impact of Caelfar’s confession, Eaglin didn’t have the wits to react to Tansel’s presence at the door until she fled. He called out to her, but hadn’t risen from his seat before Freil ran out of the room, shouting her name.

  “Let him go,” Lorth said tiredly.

  Eaglin turned to Caelfar. The old wizard leaned against the mantel with his hand over his heart, breathing heavily. Lorth drew near and placed his hand on the wizard’s shoulder with a soft word.

  The pale, winged apparition perched on the mantel, her empty eyes staring at nothing.

  Caelfar bent over as if a great weight had come down on him. “Alas, my every move is wrong!” he said in a thin voice. “You must believe me: I love that girl with all my heart and I never wanted to hurt her. I couldn’t bear to lose another woman to something I cannot control!”

  “You can’t love a woman you control,” Eaglin said carefully. “She must be freed.”

  “How can I protect her then?” he complained. A tear slipped from his chin and hit the floor.

  “A woman who is free is strong.”

  “Rubbish!” he wheezed. “You freed Tansel and I violated her because of it! Where was her strength then?”

  “You tried to violate her. I prevented you because she called me. Had I not freed her, she wouldn’t have been able to do that. But then, you wouldn’t have done what you did, either. Protection is built into such things.”

  “Not always,” the old man rasped. “Not always.”

  “True,” Lorth agreed. “Not always. Sometimes, a woman falls to evil, free or not. But controlling her doesn’t prevent that.”

  “Tansel needs love,” Eaglin said. “You can give her that.”

  “Not anymore! She’ll never trust me again—”

  The specter lifted off and flew into the flames.

  Caelfar collapsed.

  Eaglin and Lorth scrambled into motion. Swearing under his breath, Eaglin knelt by the wizard and felt for a pulse. “He’s alive. Let’s get him to bed.”

  As he and Lorth carried the Master of Muin into the hall, someone shouted ahead of them. Inos came around the corner, his expression wild. “Masters!” he panted. When he saw Caelfar, he paled.

  “He’s all right,” Eaglin said, not knowing if the statement were true.

  “The Albatross has escaped,” Inos said.

  The wizards stopped in their tracks. Eaglin shot Lorth a glance. “I thought you put a watch-web on him.”

  “I did,” Lorth said. “He must have learned how to slip by one. I’ll go after him. Inos...” He let the man take his place under Caelfar’s shoulder.

  “I’ll find Freil and Tansel,” Eaglin said.

  The hunter nodded, and then moved down the hall like the wind, one hand forming a spiral towards the ground.

  *

  The singing of birds wove into the burbling of the stream like bright threads in an intricate tapestry, pulsing and alive. A gust of wind from the north drew the trees into an uneasy thrall. As it passed, Aradia came to herself.

  Loralin. Summertime. Her blood ran cold.

  “I’ve never seen periwinkle so fine,” Ana said. “And blooming, too!” She pulled a short, curved knife from her basket and began to mutter an incantation.

  Periwinkle—protection, desire, death—of all things on this day, Aradia might have known. Periwinkle blooms in spring, she heard herself say. But she didn’t say it.

  Ana turned around with a smile. “I think it’s a sign.”

  Hurry up. Evening’s coming on.

  Ana rose slowly. A clump of shiny, evergreen cuttings dangled from her hand. “Why are you acting so? You’ve been off all day.” She glanced skyward. “We’ve hours yet.”

  The wind rose again. Aradia bled from the wounds in her chest and womb, empty and soaked with pain. She couldn’t move.

  A large shadow passed overhead, blocking the sun. The sparkle left Ana’s eyes and her face bled pale as wax. She dropped her plants and ran as the crowharrow came from the air in a tempest of black wings and cold strength.

  Aradia spoke a word. But the word was just a word and she didn’t change; her powers were bound. She remained in her human form, vulnerable and weak, as the immortal hunter tore her sister apart. Nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. She was nothing; they were all nothing. Marked for the transgression of a wicked Raven.

  You must forgive him. The Old One would never ask her to forgive Caelfar. And the crowharrow was above such things. The gods didn’t care about forgiveness. They didn’t care about anything. As for the son of the Aenmos, or even Freil, she had plenty to blame on them. But her forgiveness changed nothing.

  Your powers are the reason this happened, the black-haired Raven had said after stripping her powers away. Lying son of a bitch! So easy for him to say that. And yet, though she could scarcely distinguish him from the crowharrow, she couldn’t rattle the wizard’s quiet, thoughtful voice from her mind.

  The crowharrow leveled his pale blue gaze on her, his face and chest covered in Ana’s blood. In one hand, he held her head like a trophy.

  Rain fell from the sky. It was warm, and tasted like tears.

  Aradia awoke in the garden of Muin, just inside the wall. Fog cloaked the forest. The crowharrow stood on the path, his wings half folded. Tansel knelt before him, trembling and pale as frost, her hair plastered to her face and her nightclothes soaked with rain.

  “No,” Aradia breathed. As before, no one heard her, and she couldn’t move.

  Tansel reached up with a soft cry. The crowharrow said something that felt like flowers. His loins were full with the lust of a god, a consummate male being. He knelt, took the girl into his arms and closed his hand in her hair, drawing her face to the sky. She stiffened as he sank his fangs into her neck. Her cry rose into a rippling scream he pressed her beneath his marble limbs and bore into her cleft with a low groan.

  Aradia screamed. His black deed done, the immortal rose and turned to her in triumph. Tansel’s blood stained his mouth and thighs. No sound came from the girl’s body now, crumpled on the ground like a discarded bouquet.

  What do you fear that’s worse than watching her die? said the Raven of Eusiron, in the Old One’s voice.

  Kalein lay on the path in a puddle of blood. She was pregnan
t.

  Darkness fell.

  Light emanated from the silent void. It shimmered into an intricate pattern of red beams woven into a gate. A moonlit forest stood beyond.

  A cloaked rider emerged from the trees. A man. Silvery light gleamed on his thigh, the bottom of his face beneath a drawn hood and his hand gripping the reins of his horse. A sword hilt glinted on his back. He moved as if listening or waiting for something. Then he turned his mount and melted into the shadows.

  Aradia hung before the moon rising through the trees. Grief tormented her like a seedling in the dirt that couldn’t get up into the sun.

  You must forgive him. Choices. Lies. And with them, tears.

  The gate looked familiar. The birch trees, the stones, the gently sloping shape of the woods...even in moonlight she knew it from her travels as many creatures. The place was in the woods on the south side of Muin.

  You must forgive him. Tears streamed down her face and neck, burning the bite wound. It was infected. Her chest hurt, her womb hurt and she couldn’t feel her arms. Forgive whom?

  You know that.

  In the dark, alone and bleeding with her life in ruins at her feet, Aradia saw the truth.

  Perhaps, came the Raven’s voice again, instead of blaming that old man for the troubles in your life, you can own your choices and leave him to his.

  Forgive Caelfar? Shocked silence filled her nerves. Surely, the Old One wouldn’t ask her to forgive her grandfather after what he had done. That was the one thing she could not do. She wouldn’t even be alive, if not for his sin. None of this would have happened. Not even in death and non-existence, could she forgive him.

  A scream rent the night beyond the glowing gate. It rippled down Aradia’s spine like a saw. It sounded like Ana.

  Tansel.

  Aradia struggled against her chains. She cried out, helpless and frustrated, her dirty face stained with tears. But she couldn’t make the one choice that might free her from this place. Only Caelfar’s choice existed now, the one he had forced on Kalein, on them all.

  Another figure entered the clearing beyond the opening. A second man, also cloaked but on foot, his bright hair shining in the moonlight. He stopped, said something, and then vanished. A small animal shot across the rocks of the outcropping and into the forest.

  A wizard. No one in Muin except Freil had hair like that. But who was the rider she had seen earlier? He had not looked or acted like a wizard. More like a warrior. After a time, a fox entered the clearing. The creature trotted back and forth in front of the gate, and then sat down.

  “Freil,” Aradia cried in a gravelly screech. “I’m here!”

  The young wizard materialized before the opening. He grew still, raised his chin and turned his head slightly, as if listening to someone talking. Aradia gasped his name. But his presence here had nothing to do with her. He stirred, and with one last glance, hurried away over the rocks and into the night. Silence returned to the forest.

  Aradia closed her eyes and surrendered to despair.

  Loralin stretched out beneath her wings in a tapestry of emerald green. The air was fresh and fragrant with spring and the rivers ran deep. Sunlight glimmered on her body as she circled the meadow where her favorite flowers grew.

  She landed and spoke a word, then stood in a plain green dress, barefoot and shining with the vitality of youth. Her curling, reddish hair twined in the wind of this high place, surrounded by mountain peaks and overlooking the valley and the Waeltower of Muin. In the late afternoon sky, white clouds tinged with gold and peach moved slowly over the blue. Caelfar liked his tea in the evening. She would have to hurry.

  She leaned down and plucked a crimson columbine and some meadowsweet. She paused, and then straightened her back as the forest eaves stirred on the edge of the field. Something pale moved there, with a darker shadow surrounding it. A chill rippled over her heart as it came into focus, a magnificent man with the wings of a raven twice his height. Clad in the forest, he moved with the grace of dreams, his feathers settling in whispers as he turned and gazed at her from eyes the color of stars.

  Kalein dropped her flowers and sank to her knees in awe. There was not a creature in the forest she didn’t know or had become in one form or another, but she had never seen anything so beautiful and wild as this. A crowharrow! A creature of legend, something she had never believed existed. His beauty struck her heart like a sword. But his airy gaze didn’t stay. His twining hair slid over his shoulders as he turned with all the interest of a male cat with better things to do, and lifted from the ground and into the hidden dimensions of immortals.

  From her knees into the sky, into the heavens and beyond, Aradia saw love for the first time through her grandmother’s eyes. There was nothing as innocent as a girl gone wild, a girl whose heart had never been taken until now, not even by the wizard in his garnet tower. She had never known anything like this and nothing compared to it. Nothing.

  But Aradia knew this love could not be. It was death to love something so fair; the crowharrow didn’t know mortal love. The wound in Kalein’s heart and womb had been struck at this moment, and not when she had found herself pregnant. They were the same wounds the crowharrow had struck into Aradia in his black lair, wounds of womanhood and love that could not be requited by something so pure.

  Was it love? Now herself, Aradia stood up shakily and stared around at the meadow, the clouds and the beauty of spring on the threshold of life. It had lost its color. She looked down at herself, a ragged old woman, torn and bleeding, never knowing love, never wanting to. Why? Was this truly her path, to die feeling this?

  You must forgive him.

  Caelfar. Who was he, but a man who hadn’t been able to break the spell of an immortal in the woman he loved? Aradia knew, from the wrath in his eyes and the crack in his voice when he had yelled at her, that he loved Kalein. No matter what she wanted to believe, she knew this. His choice to cage Kalein was terrible and wrong, and by his meddling, he had cursed them all. But he hadn’t known what he faced. He hadn’t known how deeply a woman loved, when she loved, or how completely the light of gods could devastate the uninitiated.

  ...Or perhaps he had. Perhaps this drove him to take such terrible measures. Aradia couldn’t forgive him for that. But she understood.

  The air stirred again. Thinking the crowharrow had returned to finish her off, Aradia clutched her belly and prepared for the worst. Something ethereal appeared from the air, a winged, flowing shadow, pale and swirling into the shape of a woman. She was breathtakingly beautiful and terrible too. She spoke in the tongue of the earth.

  “Why do you refuse life?”

  “It was not my choice,” Aradia returned. “I’m cursed by the choices of my ancestors.”

  “You are not. Free will is pure; it is born anew with every life that knows it, in every moment. Kalein made her choices. You must make yours based on your own experience. Not hers. You do not have to accept what he did. But you must release this pain that is not your own.”

  “But I was born of it! I wouldn’t exist unless—”

  The apparition raised her hand and stepped close, her snowy wings settling around her. “You were born of the Old One. All things live and die by her hand. She is the mystery, the darkness between. She is the balance. Through every choice you make in every moment, she turns the wheel.”

  Aradia sank to her knees. The apparition’s words brought into sharp relief years of hatred and regret. Caelfar had never hurt her. He had never done anything to her at all, and yet she hated him because of something he had once done, something none of them had understood.

  When she looked up again, the apparition was gone.

  “I am so sorry,” Aradia breathed. She hung in anguish, bleeding and dying in the crowharrow’s lair. She didn’t cry to Caelfar alone, but to Tansel, and Ana, every man they had known and lost, and their mothers before them. And in that moment, cleansed and burned by tears, Aradia made a choice.

  “I want to live,” she s
aid, and then her heart swelled up into a wrenching sob. “Mother! I want to live!”

  The surrounding darkness came alive. It struck the chains. Water, air, earth and fire tore the flesh from her bones as she passed through a stunningly complex pattern of light. The reflections in the forest gathered into a beautiful bird with flowing hair. She took Aradia into her arms, held her close and bore her on shining wings into the night, up and away into the sky, over the forest and into the moon.

  Releasing the Serpent

  Tansel huddled under a low-hanging hemlock branch and waited for Freil’s return. Beyond her shelter, the portal glowed on the fabric of the night. She didn’t like the idea of waiting here, but her history of being yelled at by wizards for running away kept her still. She listened to the crickets, the hoot of an owl. She shifted positions to get comfortable. But a knot in her stomach smoldered with unease.

  She got up, parted the boughs and peered over the tall ferns carpeting the woods’ edge. The glade revealed nothing.

  The hairs on the back of her neck rose. She turned around. As if summoned by her attention, the moonlight glinting on the leaves began to gather into a sinuous pattern. A tall woman with silvery wings stepped from the light. The specter cast no shadow. Seemingly unaware of its surroundings, it flowed like water, stirring nothing as it passed.

  Tansel backed deeper into her hiding place to avoid being seen. Her heart thumped in her breast as she waited for the otherworldly creature to move on. For a moment, it seemed to fade. Then, suddenly, light blazed across Tansel’s eyes, blinding her. She screamed and fell back, then clambered up and out of her hiding place.

  She ran with the irrational terror of prey. She had no idea if the specter followed her; she didn’t look back. She fled through the forest, slapped by branches, running into and tripping on things as she moved on.

  Freil. The thought caused her to stop abruptly, gasping for breath. She had no idea where she was. She started walking back the way she had come, shaking her head and muttering to herself. Why had she run? Whatever that thing was, it probably wouldn’t have harmed her.