by C. L. Murray
“What was it?” Morlen asked.
Matufinn cleared his throat. “Nottleforf could not bring back the youth she’d lost over the years. So, he transformed her. Into a bird. A songbird. And, pouring out her melodies once more, she took flight and left the Isle, never to return.” He wiped a tear from the corner of his eye.
Voice heavier, he continued. “My father’s grief at her departure turned him cold, and I told him that I, too, would be leaving to stand and fight against the coming enemies. I said that if he chose to stay here forever, he would never see me again. And, on the day of the battle, as I stood alone within the edge of the Isle, preparing to emerge for the first time into a world I had never before seen, he came to me, and we set out together.”
His glistening eyes returned to Morlen now. “The greatest comfort I took was just before the battle commenced, hearing, in the dead of night, the sweetest chirping. And I knew he heard it too, as clear as could be, before he met his end.”
The fire crackled louder between them, and both fell silent. Morlen lay propped on his elbow with full focus still on Matufinn, wishing for him to go on though there was no more to tell. Finally though, he rolled over onto his other side.
“Good night, Father,” he said.
Matufinn’s expression became a thousand times more alert. Observing Morlen intently, he barely exhaled, listening to find if he had misheard. Unable to move, he looked over him as he rested, and when his heart gradually eased its rapid pace, he found the strength to stand.
He forged through the woods until the fire vanished miles behind his trail. Apprehension slowed him, but he pressed forward nonetheless. He would face it head-on; he would not hide another day.
The sea of trees parted as he went on, his pulse rapidly hammering, and then, the wall was there before him, rising high above the Isle, its dense blue mists still brightly discernible through the night.
Sixteen years, he thought. Far too long.
He took one step closer, and then another, inching toward it as though pulling a boulder with rope until it was but a hair’s width from his face. He lifted his right hand and pressed it flat against the contracting fog, and saw it vanish before his eyes. Then, he followed with his left, both arms becoming immersed. Finally, he gulped the largest breath his lungs had ever drawn, and plunged forth, swimming, floating, leaping, and then…
His feet touched down on earth that was hard, cold. And, opening his eyes, he quickly realized, he had never seen land more beautiful. It stretched on for miles and miles, clear in all directions. But, there were people being enslaved, oppressed, tortured. He felt their distress as his mind reached out. Their captor was ruthless, as were those who followed him.
He would go to them, he decided. He would go to Korindelf and its suffering people, be as one of them, help as many as he could to escape. And he would return to Morlen often as well, to see him grow strong.
An eruption of growls broke out as a throng of shriekers came rushing toward him along the Isle’s edge, no doubt stationed there by their master. Standing exposed, he felt no need to reach for his sword while they swarmed all around, and soon, they halted yards away, emitting high-pitched whines when they saw him. And as he slowly walked nearer, pacing before them without pause, they inched back.
“Now,” he began, “I know you remember me. And I remember you. Do not fear, though—I am not going to kill you tonight. But, be careful, because”—and at this, he grinned to himself—“I think I shall be coming and going through here quite frequently now, and if I ever see you near these borders again…” He abruptly scraped the silence with a swift draw of his sword, needing not to even brandish it as they scattered away, yelping into the night.
Laughing with a swell of pride as they dispersed, he kept a satisfied smile on his face. He peered off toward Korindelf, not knowing the struggles he would face there, and found peace in that uncertainty. He would see, and be seen. And nothing would shut his eyes again.
Morlen lay by the fire, sleep eluding him despite his exhaustion. He turned to his other side, and saw that he was alone. Sitting up, he focused on the flames, and their light danced all about the trees to the area in which he and Matufinn had sparred.
With rest seeming a futile effort, he got to his feet and strode out. Scanning the clearing’s perimeter, he went to the large hole that held the old swords and stared into it, hoping dearly that it would be deep enough. Then, he reached into the pocket within the folds of his clothes, and the Goldshard’s jagged edges were sharp against his fingers as he withdrew it.
He looked at it with starving eyes and could think of nothing but what it offered, for which he had longed so desperately. But now, things would be different, he repeated to himself.
He extended his left arm and grabbed the ripped sleeve, stripping away a sizable length upon which he laid the Goldshard. Taking in its sheen for one last moment, he folded the cloth tightly, kneeled to place it deep inside the recess, and covered it with the worn blanket that blended so well into the ground. Then he went to the large flat rock that had guarded the secret spot, and flipped it forward onto its rightful place.
Standing still for a moment, he suddenly felt the sweetest breath of relief, as though an insect knifing into the back of his neck had just been swatted away. He returned to the fire lighter than ever, and bedded down again. When he sank into the grass, he allowed his mind the comfort of knowing that it could look where he hadn’t permitted it to look before. And, this time, rest came to him on quick wings.
Chapter Five
Lady Valeine
A DOZEN SUN-BLEACHED skulls with long, curved horns sat atop the walls of the Eaglemasters’ southernmost city, Veleseor. Their vacant sockets stared across the Silver River toward the Ferotaur Wildlands, silently warning all others that wished to trespass.
In the city’s outer training grounds, hundreds of bright-faced youths clasping untested spears gazed upward at the woman who stood on the wall. Her milky white garments beneath blonde hair distracted no one from the spear she gripped firmly in hand, its blade and shaft chipped and reddened, the weapon of a seasoned warrior who had defied death. Surveying the crowd with pride, she addressed them with a melodic voice.
“You stand here today, no longer boys of twelve, swept from your mothers to snivel under harsh elements and trials of physical aptitude, but a grown, ready crop, scraped from the weeds. You stand at the city named for the grandfather of our king, because his spear and sword carved a place for you here, and because this realm’s true defenders hold it for you still. To one day be counted among our honorable ranks, you must first see what we have seen, taste, smell, as we have, and bleed, too, as we have bled.
“You have endured several assaults over the last year, firing beside your friends to halt clumsy handfuls of enemy ships, striking down those few that we allowed through our defenses. You may have even seen a skirmish or two as you progressed through our sister cities.
“But have you seen a hundred ferotaurs up close, all in the best health that such creatures can be? Have you felt their rough, pale skin on yours, or looked into their ghoulish faces? Have you taken in their rancid breath, billowing out through teeth laced with flesh?”
Mounted on their eagles that perched conspicuously just behind the captivated soldiers-to-be, her three older brothers observed the address with the good humor of sibling rivalry.
“She’s doing well,” Ivrild said with a smirk. “Very inspiring of confidence.”
Verald, the eldest, replied, “I’d rather have her at my side than you against that many.”
“As would I,” said Ondrel. “And besides, if combat were to fail, I at least could escape if they found her more appealing.” They snickered together, listening in.
“Four years’ diligence, excellence under controlled conditions, behind our borders, may be forgotten in two breaths out there,” she cautioned, pointing to the hostile territory beyond the river. “Which is why you must all go, very soon, and know the
true force that swells constantly over our tenuous border, that will spread and drown you all, if you do not remember.
“And now,” she continued, “we can no longer say that only the ferotaurs threaten us here in the West, and that the shriekers cannot reach us. Now, there is a greater enemy, and he will march both hordes against us if given the chance; a great many already follow behind his sword, which he points in our direction.
“The people of Korindelf, our friends and allies, have sat chained under his rule for a full year now, tortured into obedience and fed to his pets for mere sport. His threats of further action against them have hindered our ability to face him head-on, but make no mistake: A great battle is approaching. Whether on his ground, or ours, I care not. All that matters is that however arduous these final weeks prove, you push yourselves harder than I demand, so that when the day of war arrives, and we meet Felkoth along with all his gathered forces, you will have strength enough when it is over to spit on his corpse!”
Thunderous cheers erupted from all who stood below, accompanied by the clattering of weapons against chest plates, in a loyal chorus.
“Our spears are yours, Lady Valeine!” one shouted proudly, those beside him quick to repeat even louder.
Still watching behind the trainees, Ivrild jabbed his older brother. “It seems your position as future king may not be so secure after all.”
Verald grinned. “As though you haven’t held me in your sights every time we’ve gone to battle, thinking you could put an arrow in my back with none being the wiser. I always thought the crown was to be yours, anyway. Isn’t it meant to go to the best-looking heir?”
“Then both of you will be spit-shining the castle floors while I sit on the throne,” gloated Ondrel, unaware that their father descended briskly toward them.
“What is this conspiracy I hear?” King Valdis asked, joining his sons. “As if any of you could take my place.”
Pleased to hear his voice, the brothers directed their huddled eagles to part and let him take his position in between, all four now looking directly at Valeine, who stood more than aware of their close attention.
“There was no morbid plot in my words, Father,” Ivrild joked. “I only presumed that one day soon, you would pass the crown to me when you grew tired of your kingly duties.”
“I grew tired of my kingly duties before you were born,” Valdis replied. “And my fatherly duties soon after.”
Trying to avoid the scrutiny of her father and brothers, Valeine focused on the devoted host as their raucous support quieted down. “My spear is for all people of the realm. And so too shall be yours. An Eaglemaster is deadlier on the ground than in the sky. If you are to rise as one of us, then first, you must be deadly. Be deadly here. Be deadly wherever swords, arrows, horns or fangs aim to rip you open. Then, you will be counted as true protectors of this kingdom, and the sky will be yours for the taking.”
The enthusiastic group stared up in admiration, finally breaking off as other instructors began conducting the day’s training exercises. Waving a smooth hand at her nearby eagle, which fluttered down and waited for her to mount, she wondered fondly what scheming she’d soon come upon as she flew toward her ascending family.
“Not bad for a girl of, what is it now, fourteen, fifteen…?” Ondrel greeted her playfully as she joined them in the air.
“Well now,” replied Valdis, “I don’t recall any of you having command of a city at seventeen. You were all too occupied giving flying lessons to every girl in sight.”
“Is that what they called it back when you were a lad?” Ivrild laughed, his brothers and sister quick to join.
With his children all around, gliding to land atop the tall hill that offered a quiet vantage point, Valdis released much of the weight that lately had sunk him. He hoped to steer conversation away from deteriorating campaigns in the East for as long as possible. Felkoth’s hand reached nearer every day, and they could ill-afford to lose any more men trying to halt it while other threats closed in.
“You’ve done well with them,” he praised his daughter. “They seem eager to fight, eager for honor. Perhaps the Wildland Test will take some of that wind out of their sails, as it did for most of us.”
“They’re ready for it,” she assured him. “I’ll take them over the river before month’s end, and they’ll earn their horns as we’ve all done.” She proudly glanced at the scythe of sharpened bone fixed into her spear’s base, a trophy as lethal as the ones that her brothers and father each had fastened to theirs.
“You may not need to,” said Ondrel. “The ferotaurs may come to you in droves before you send your students onto their final task.”
“Perhaps if you traveled more often down to the kingdom’s most dangerous corner, you’d see the droves we frequently repel,” she replied.
“Aye,” said Ivrild, “but when your boys get their first glimpse of what it’s like not to have the river between them and what’s out there, they’ll lose half their body weight through their trousers. Do you remember your first time, big brother?”
Verald nodded. “One never forgets.” He gazed off in silence for a moment, not eager to dredge up the memory. “We were dropped about twenty miles in. And on the journey over you finally grasp how few we all are, next to the packs that cover the land like insects. But I still felt separated from that place, safe somehow, until the instructors ordered us to dismount. After all the ugly things I’d seen, watching them fly away was by far the worst. You’re never deadlier than when you hear those first snarls closing in to welcome you.”
With a chuckle, Ivrild chimed in. “Even though they didn’t drop my group near the biggest clusters, and they seemed confident they’d return for us before we got overrun, we thought we were as good as dead. We ran more that day than in the four years leading up to it. All those exercises they make you do when you’re just starting out, not a single hair on you from knees to nose—scaling walls, crawling on your elbows through mud. It’d be more authentic if they sicced the dogs on you while you’re at it, and you had to bash their heads in every time you stopped to breathe.”
“We emptied our quivers in the first half hour,” said Ondrel. “There must have been four hundred of them littering the fields when we fired our last shots, and that was barely a fraction of what came after.”
The three glanced at Valeine, waiting for her to give a similarly suspenseful account. Their father, though, knew that she was never one to conform.
Instead, she turned her head to look out over the distant Wildlands that stretched fallow and brown to mountains that concealed a vast network of caverns, which crawled with enough vermin to make the ones they fought in the open seem like barely a trickle. “I felt strangely alive there,” she said, and her brothers scoffed as though it were nothing but false bravado to shame them.
“Not because I wasn’t afraid,” she added. “We all were. But because I was outside the world we were born into, back to the way everything was in the beginning, when there were only monsters and chaos. And I realized we’ve been in their world all along. We’re just a patch of moss on their rock, and we’re on borrowed time.”
“What are you saying?” asked Ondrel. “That we should stop patrolling the river, abandon our garrisons, and let them pour in? Make it like it was centuries ago, when there were no Eaglemasters, and a good day for a man was not getting his leg chewed off?”
Valeine shook her head. “I’m saying it’s easy to think that this way of life is what’s meant to be. But when I stood in that chaos, I saw so much more that could have been, so much that can be. Our tradition that demands devotion is just a stepping-stone to greater knowledge and freedom. And I’ll gladly man the defenses while you three do whatever it is you do, so that some of us can be around to find it.”
Her brothers quieted down at this, and their expressions gradually abandoned the ridicule they often showed. Her father, too, looked at her as though having forgotten she was his youngest born.
Val
dis wished that matters of war and governing did not have to intrude on time spent with his children. But he knew their remaining days together would be few indeed unless he kept firmly to his role as king, saving that of father for rare moments of peace. “I’ve been hearing reports,” he reluctantly began, “like before. More people showing up in the realm, with whispers that they came from Korindelf.”
“Spies?” Verald asked with a less jovial tone.
Valdis shook his head. “No, I don’t think so. The accounts I’ve heard suggest families, mostly. Mothers with children.”
“But how could they manage to reach us from there?” asked Valeine.
Valdis breathed against a gnawing fear. “Someone is smuggling them in,” he answered plainly.
“Going back and forth, without being seen by either side?” Ivrild asked. “Can we recruit him?” Valeine arched a brow at him, “Or her?” He bowed apologetically.
“I’d say the wizard is out of the question, or he’d have told us,” suggested Ondrel.
Valdis nodded. “Agreed. I’ve not yet been able to produce someone we could question. But if these rumors are true, then, I am at a loss to say who is responsible, though my instinct says friend over foe. Still, with such a feat being possible, the capital may no longer be safe. If the reports continue and I ascertain their source, evacuation may be prudent.”
“Evacuate?” Verald looked over in alarm. Then, understanding the real danger at root, he said, “You think Felkoth would dare follow them here?”
“I know,” Valdis said sternly. “He means to conquer us at all costs. He would spend every last drop of his men’s blood just to stand, for a few thrilling moments, unopposed. And he would gladly see all of us ripped and burnt, and leave our cities fodder for the ferotaurs.”
“And what about Korindelf’s people?” asked Valeine. “While we take these precautions they’re trampled and whipped, now, and every day. He laughs at us, too, knowing what fools we are for thinking our inaction will spare any of them.”