Elanraigh - The Vow

by S. A. Hunter

  Edred smiled, and patted Alba’s shoulder. “Which was first foot, Alba?”

  “Do not be asking me to judge! All I saw was a whirling storm of arms and legs coming straight at me!”

  Thera wheezed a laugh. “What have you…there, Alba?” she eagerly eyed the small scroll Alba held.

  “Something important enough that I stood in such unexpected danger to get it to you, Lady.” She handed the paper to Thera, “A carrier bird from Allenholme came in just now.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Daughter,

  Be assured that your lady mother and I are well.

  The Memteth invaders increase the frequency of their harrying attacks on our shores. At Kenna Beach, a band of Ttamarini scouts fought to repel a landing of three Memteth ships. This battle was bloody, as the Ttamarini scouts who first encountered the Memteth were greatly outnumbered. Word came to me by way of a wounded Ttamarini sent to alert Allenholme and the Ttamarini encampment. We rode out after the Ttamarini warriors with such dispatch as our heavier horse and armor would allow. By the time we of Allenholme arrived at Kenna Beach, the scouts had been joined by the Ttamarini, and together we forced the raiders back.

  We fought with the tide lapping at our feet. A line of Memteth took a stand at the water’s edge and fought so fiercely that we were withheld while many of their number escaped to their ships. Our archers, lead by Sirra Maxin, did set afire one ship and men cheered to see its black sail catch and burn. Another of the Memteth ships did cut sail to take on crew from the burning ship. I do not believe this was compassion for endangered comrades as much as a practical wish to preserve numbers. Teckcharin, however, believes it bespeaks some code of honor.

  Teckcharin did slay many invaders—as many, almost, as I. Our Ttamarini is grim and silent in battle, unlike my Heart’s Own whose war cries fire the blood. I did only hear Teckcharin call out once—when his son fell. After the battle, Teckcharin was as a man possessed until the boy was found and the old Maiya pronounced the wound not likely to be mortal. The lad fought well. Indeed, he rode to defend Dougall, who was trapped under his slain horse. Two Memteth were about to finish him as he lay pinned. What honor there, I ask you? Chamakin took his blow after killing the one Memteth and mortally wounding the other. I am grateful to this young warrior for saving the life of one so dear to me, though the incoming tide almost accomplished what the Memteth failed to do. Dougall was half-drowned when we did get to him and the fallen Ttamarini youth. I will tell you plainly, that I wish we had pursued peace with these brave Ttamarini before now. The lad, Chamakin, seemed feverish from his wound but after I spoke to him of your being safe at Elankeep, he fared better. Perhaps, it was Cook’s possets that did the deed.

  Your mother bids me tell you how it eases her heart to know you are safe in the Elanraigh’s care, but she is sorely grieved to learn of Nan’s death. The names of your escort have been inscribed, into the scroll, with honor. Sadly, the Lament has been sung for all too many.

  We grimly prepare for attack on Allenholme itself. The raiders grow ever bolder. Teckcharin feels these raids have been but to take our measure. I have instructed Mika ep Narin, Fishing Guild Master, to organize the fishing fleet—they cargo rocks to the harbor entrance and there off-load them. Some Memteth ships are rigged to sling fiery projectiles. These fearsome spheres hurl flaming fragments in all directions when they strike. We lost Arnott’s father, Goodnath, as fine a fellow as I’ve met. Young Branson also—struck by one of these cursed flaming rocks before his sword was even blooded. Some others have since died of their wounds. We lost too many a fine horse as well.

  These ships must not be allowed to approach Allenholme. Mika ep Narin has vowed he will sink the fishing fleet itself, if he must, to form a barrier against the Memteth. I stared to hear him utter such words, for all know what each mariner’s ship is to him. Yet I saw Mika’s eyes as he pledged the vow. Elanriagh forbid. Yet, the old man’s spirit did make my heart swell.

  Be well, my own.

  Your loving father,

  Leon

  * * * *

  Hot tears burned her eyes and her hand clenched, damaging the thin parchment of her father’s letter.

  Chamak wounded! She stopped, and smoothing the letter on her dresser, read it again.

  “No, no, and no. I will not hide away here when my people are fighting and dying. Elanraigh Bless! What does all this mean if I do not fight for my home, my people, the ones I love.” Her throat tightened.

  Chamak. Chamak had been hurt and the Elanraigh had not told her!

  Her hands gripped the window ledge, her arms aching with tension, “How could you not tell me?” She sent.

  No response. Thera felt a frisson of foreboding. The Elanraigh felt elsewhere.

  Sussara, however, swirled outside her window, the small wind elemental sounded worried. “Therrra?”

  “Sussara. Blessings, it isn’t you I’m angry at.”

  Sussara curled about her. “Fly soon?”

  Thera’s fingers relaxed their tension. “Yes, Sussara. Now. We fly now. Meet me at the top of the tallest tower.”

  She tried to ignore the clenching of her gut, as an increasing sense of urgency threatened to cloud her thinking. “Yes, I must see how things fare at home. I will call the sea hawk,” she affirmed aloud, “I will enter the Bear’s Sleep Trance. When they find me …” her brow puckered, and she felt a pang, “…well, they will worry.”

  Thera paused, her hand gripping a thick woolen cloak, “Well I can’t help that—I must go. I’ll be back before anyone really misses me, and if I’m found, the healing mistress will know I am in trance, surely.” She moved swiftly about the chamber. I just want to see home.

  Thera shrugged into a warm jersey and threw on the cloak. Opening the chamber door, she listened for sound. She heard voices; however, they were far below. She was left in privacy to read her missive from home.

  She ran along the hall and up the steep stairs that spiraled to the north tower roof.

  Brisk winds had come and blown the morning’s grey clouds away. Feeling the need of some kind of ritual to steady her, Thera turned to face the Elanraigh. She raised her arms and asked for Blessing.

  Sussara was so excited by this time it was shouting in her mind, “Therraa! Want to go with you. Go now?” The small wind elemental swirled in tight circles.

  “Hush now!” Thera bid the elemental as she tried to confine her hair into the hood of her cape.

  The wind dropped to a small cajoling breeze that buffed affectionately against her skin. Facing north, the Elanraigh and home, she sent her call.

  “Why not just Thera fly?” whispered the wind elemental.

  “It is not safe for me to be formless for long. I get tired.”

  “Wings.” Thera imaged. “To fly home.” An image of Chamakin lying wounded flashed painfully behind her eyes. Her eyes snapped open. Thera rubbed the skin at her temples. “Something’s different!”

  Visions, not her own, began to fill her mind; Farnash on a rocky hillside, turning his pale, smoky eyes to her. Slowly, his head tilted and from his mouth the long “OOO,” of the wolf’s song.

  She envisioned enormous wings beating golden against a cobalt sky. The raptor’s shrill cry pierced her to the bone and filled her skull with its sound.

  “...an almost human aura!” The response Thera felt was full of emotional nuance, unlike her hawk’s simple sendings.

  “Recognition…love…welcome.”

  Thera yearned, body and spirit, toward what came closer with each beat of huge golden wings.

  “Oh!”

  “Therra!” whispered Sussara, its voice awed and small. “Eiryana comes.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Pulling the sheepskin cloak about her, Thera slumped back on the rough planking of the watch tower deck. Her eyes fixed on the bright swatch of azure sky above, her body already slipping into the Bear’s Sleep rhythm. A winged shape drifted in to the patch of blue sky framed by the battlemen
ts.

  “Thera.” The voice in her mind was feminine in tone and touch.

  Not Teacher. Not the Elanraigh. Thera wondered,”Who…?”

  “Come, Thera. I am Eiryana Sky Weaver.”

  Thera’s consciousness spiraled upward. Sussara trailed, for once subdued, behind her.

  The eagle tilted her head, seeming to watch their progress toward her.

  Eiryana. The name rolled like thunder through her soul. Thera remembered the Ttamarini Dream-speaker’s words to her, ‘When you fly as an eagle, child, then will you be fully fledged.’

  Thera swirled below the span of Eiryana’s great wings that spread a full pike length, wingtip to wingtip.

  “Such beauty and power!”

  “Know that you are beautiful to me as well.” The eagle’s eye gleamed like sunlit amber. “The Elanraigh has promised this joining since I was a nestling—I am in my first year of power, and you now enter yours. Let us be together.”

  The warmth of Eiryana’s welcome drew her.

  “Oh the difference in this joining!”

  Thera felt Eiryana’s chest muscles momentarily tense in a reflex of surprise, and then her wings stroked powerfully. Thera understood.

  The small wind elemental puffed out from under her wings like a bouncing ball. Sussara sent Thera and Eiryana the equivalent of giggling, joyful laughter.

  “Eiryana. Are there many like you who can speak with a human?” Thera wondered.

  “Very few, now. In the time of your ancestors, though, there were others of the Sky Weaver clan, and of the Grey Wolves, who soul-shared with human-folk. Most now have forgotten those bonds.”

  “Not one of my kin has ever spoken to me of those gifts,” Thera mused. “I do not think my people remember.

  “The Ttamarini remember those times,” Eiryana replied.

  “Ah. Well, the Ttamarini are very different.”

  “In the time of your ancient-ancestors, all were the same.”

  Thera mulled over this statement in silence as they skimmed the tall trees by Bridal Veil Falls. When Eiryana spoke again her tone of thought was wondering. ,” I feel as if we are two nestlings long parted. With every wing beat that brings us closer, we share more of our feelings and experiences—do you feel so?”

  “Yes! It is more like reunion than first meeting. Perhaps our ancient-ancestors knew each other this way.”

  Eiryana folded her wings and dove toward the waterfall’s spray, through the mist and rainbow colors she did a tumbling roll. The roar of the falls thundered in her bones.

  “Thera of Allenholme, you are now woven into my song, with the Elanraigh, the wind, the sun, and sea, forever.”

  * * * *

  As Eiryana rose, turning north toward Allenholme, Thera sent an expression of her joy toward the Elanraigh. “Blessings be! Eiryana and I are myia!” The Ttamarini term, of one soul, seemed so right.

  The Elanraigh responded, its thrum was warm, yet distracted. The forest-mind’s attention was on the north.

  “Eiryana?”

  “I do not know, Thera. All seemed well when I passed your home at dawn.”

  They said no more and the young eagle swept her wings strongly, gaining height and following the shoreline northward. With a pang, Thera recognized the black rocks of Shawl Bay. Below them the waves crested, translucent green at their peaks, trailing white foam in the wane.

  “Poor fishing there today,” observed Eiryana.

  “What? Oh.” Indeed, Thera had sensed no hunger.

  “Good fishing at the Spinfisher River,” added Eiryana in explanation.

  “Ah,” Thera commented. Her thoughts were troubled. “Eiryana, I would like to see Nan’s cairn.”

  The eagle veered to fly low over the foaming water’s edge. She settled on a spruce above the site where Thera had found Nan’s body. Below them was the rough stone cairn the Elankeep troop had erected over the bodies of Nan, Innic, and Jon. Thera’s grief thudded heavily through her veins. “Oh, Nan.”

  Eiryana shifted on the sitka branch. “Pain, Thera?”

  “I miss her so, Eiryana. She died an ugly death.”

  Eiryana bent her head to preen under one wing, and withdrew her thoughts as if to give Thera privacy for her own.

  “Blessings, Nan,” Thera sent, just as she had always greeted Nan.

  “ Blessings is it now, and everyone looking high and low for Herself this day!”

  The voice Thera heard in her thoughts was Nan’s, scolding just as she had when she’d found Thera asleep in mother’s garden.

  “Nan!” Thera wondered if this were a dream, something her mind produced out of its longing. She could barely articulate her thoughts. “Are you with the Elanraigh? Are you with Innic—are you happy?”

  “Oh, aye, Button. I’ve gone where I can have peace from children’s questions.”

  Thera felt the sensation of Nan’s arms warm about her, and leaned into it.

  “Go on with you now. Do not be lingering here—there be naught here but a grave.

  A final caress of her cheek, and Thera was aware of no presence but the wind, and a small itching under Eiryana’s wing.

  “Eiryana, we can go now.”

  The eagle lifted and sweeping through the spindrift thrown by the wild sea, she rose into the bright sky.

  Thera’s heart was too full for sharing thoughts until Eiryana asked in subdued tone, “Thera, you have pain still?”

  “Oh. Always I will miss her but she is happy. I feel a great weight is lifted from me.” Realizing this was indeed true, Thera reflected on her good memories of Nan.

  Some wing beats later, curiosity framed Eiryana’s tone as she asked, “Button?”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  “We’re almost home, Eiryana!” Thera’s heart lifted as she saw the familiar landmark of Lorn a’Lea Point.

  No smoke palled the sky, no clash of battle could be heard. With a rush of relief Thera realized how much she had feared she would find Allenholme under attack.

  Eiryana whistled, startled, as they swept around the high rocky bluff above Lorn a’Lea Beach.

  A huge ship, a ship unlike any Thera had ever seen, was making stately progress toward Allenholme. In the far distance, two of Allenholme’s fishing fleet were underway as if to meet it.

  “This can only be the warship from Cythia!” Thera surmised.

  Incredulous, she eyed the ship’s mainsail blazing molten-yellow in the bright sun, elaborate red-griffin banners undulated on the wind as the Cythian vessel slowly maneuvered toward Allenholme. Her numerous crews swarmed the deck as a hand of brilliantly dressed nobles lounged near the helm on the high-turreted stern. One noble had long blonde hair, neither braided nor tied, that blew in the wind. Others, soldiers Thera judged by their gear, kept watch or were at ease on the forward deck.

  “See!” Eiryana’s tone was dire. “There!”

  Bent under the wind and the speed of their approach, sped at least five hands of Memteth ships.

  “They must be mad to attack the warship!”

  Eiryana’s reply was a mental snort. “Why? This vessel wallows like a fat duck.”

  Thera was forced to agree. Though a sight to see with her high turrets, bright sails and shining brass, she was turgid and slow. The Memteth ships approached swiftly, swooping like dark swallows low over the water.

  Alarm rang out aboard the Cythian ship. She heard shouted orders and the thud of feet on the deck as the crossbowmen scrambled into position. Behind the archers, the soldiers readied their pikes, preparing to repel boarders.

  Thera watched the Memteth ships flare apart, to encircle the bigger warship.

  “Eiryana! Those that come from Allenholme—we must warn them if we can.”

  Eiryana swept toward the ships flying the Allenholme banner. Shouts carried faintly on the wind.

  “They’ve seen the Memteth!” Thera was glad of Eiryana’s eagle vision, many times better than her own.

  “That will be my father—see the crimson cl
oak near the prow of Bride O’Wind.”

  Oak Heart was turned to the crew, watching as Mika ep Narin directed them. At midships she recognized the Ttamarini Chief and Captain Dougall. Sun glinted off the helmets of a handful of archers; the rest on board the Bride were simple mariners.

  On the second Allenholme ship Thera recognized Captain Lydia and the Guild Master’s assistant. This ship also carried archers as well as crew.

  “Elanraigh guard them! They hurry to help the Cythians.”

  Eiryana whistled her hunting challenge and swooped low over the heads of those on board the Bride. The Ttamarini chief pointed, gesturing animatedly to Duke Leon.

  “The beauty!” cried Dougall, “An omen the Elanraigh is with us, lads!”

  “An omen!” The men cried to each other. Mariners on the second Allenholme ship also cheered, their voices faint on the wind.

  Teckcharin stared upward, one hand shading his eyes, the other gripping the rail. Thera saw the Ttamarini’s gaze fixed upon her.

  “If only father would look again.” Thera found herself willing her father to sense her presence.

  Duke Leon turned to the men and pumped his fist into the air as he cheered them on. “A noble sign from the Elanraigh, Araghna-hei! ArNarone!”

  “ArNarone!” The crews roared in response.

  “So. Well.” Thera sighed.

  “Thera. How could he know? Who among your people even dreams the dreams anymore? The Lord of Allenholme’s gift is given of the sword and yours of the Elanraigh.”

  She broke off her circling of the Bride O’Wind.

  Chief Teckcharin, though, raised hand to forehead. Eiryana whistled a single, soft note in courteous response, eliciting more cheers and war cries from the Allenholme men.

  “No, Thera. He does not know. It is just that the Ttamarini Chief has always honored our kind.”

  Memteth surrounded the Cythian warship—arrows were fired by both sides. Cythian foot soldiers threw lances when any Memteth ventured within range, though the Memteth merely darted in and out with no attempts to grapple and board.