CHILDREN OF AMARID

by DAVID B. COE

  The smile vanished from Calbyr’s face. “How can you be certain that the journey to Theron’s Grove will fail?” he demanded after a long pause. “How do you know that this Baden and the one you call the Hag will die?”

  “I’ll be part of any delegation that travels to the grove,” the mage replied simply. “I’ll make sure of it.”

  “Without dying yourself?” Calbyr asked, arching an eyebrow. “I thought you said that no one—”

  “Leave this to me, Calbyr,” the mage commanded in a tone that left no room for argument. “You just take care of your end of things.”

  Calbyr stared at the mage for a moment before nodding once. “We’re ready to move to the second phase of our plan,” he announced crisply. “Until now the feathers have been the only clue we have left as to the identity of the attackers. Beginning with our next strike, we’ll leave witnesses, who will have seen our cloaks and birds and staffs. We’ll also continue to escalate the level of violence. Soon, the Order will be disgraced and its standing in Tobyn-Ser will be completely undermined. You will rule the land as you desire, and we will have access to your resources as we desire.”

  “Limited access,” the mage corrected pointedly, “and only to those resources for which we negotiate a price. You would do well to remember, Calbyr, that soon—very soon—I will be more powerful than all the mages in Tobyn-Ser combined. You and your friends will get your resources, but in a manner, and at a price, that I decide.”

  Calbyr smiled coldly. “Of course, Child of Amarid. I would not have it any other way.”

  “Good. I’m glad to hear you say so. I’d hate to have to remind you that I hold your life and that of your companions as a small thing in my hand; that I could reveal you and have you killed before you could say anything about my role in your little plot. In fact, that reminds me of something,” the mage continued, addressing himself to all of those in the clearing. “Baden’s new apprentice had a vision of one of you, which he described to the Gathering this morning, in stunning detail, I might add.”

  “What!” Calbyr exploded, as his companions looked at one another in alarm.

  The mage laughed. “Calm yourself, Calbyr. Such visions are quite common among my kind. I’m surprised that this boy is the only one to have seen you.” Calbyr glared at the mage, his expression unchanged despite these reassurances. “He merely described your cloak, staff, and bird,” the mage went on. “He saw nothing that would tell him that you come from Lon-Ser. But, to be safe, I would suggest that you maintain your facade at all times and that we keep our meetings short and to a minimum.”

  Calbyr nodded. “Do we have any more business to discuss?”

  The mage considered the question and, at length, shook his head. “I don’t believe so. Where will your next attack take place?”

  “The town of Kaera, on the west fork of the Moriandral, within a fortnight.”

  “Why Kaera?”

  Calbyr shrugged. “No reason, really. We just wanted a target that would be close enough to the site of your Gathering to be plausible.”

  “Very well,” the mage said, turning to leave the clearing. “Do you still carry the ceryll I gave you, in case I need to contact you?” he asked over his shoulder.

  “I do,” Calbyr replied.

  The mage nodded once, and without another word, he stepped out of the clearing.

  Calbyr watched the glow of the mage’s ceryll recede into the blackness of the forest, and, as he did, he felt a knot loosening in his stomach. When all this is over, he repeated to himself, I’ll kill him.

  He was walking quickly. Too quickly. He needed time to think, and, at this rate, he would be back in Amarid too soon. He stopped and tried to force himself to calm down. Calbyr did this to him: made him edgy, made him say things he didn’t mean. He didn’t know what it was about the strange man from Lon-Ser that disturbed him so. They were actually quite alike, the mage thought with a rueful smile. Perhaps that was the problem. They were too much alike. Given the malice, bordering on madness, that the mage saw in Calbyr’s dark eyes, that scared him.

  There could be no denying the fact that Calbyr and his company had proven themselves useful in the year since he first happened upon them in western Tobyn-Ser. No doubt he had been an equally valuable ally. They needed someone who understood the Order and its workings. And he needed someone on the outside who could help him destroy his rivals within the Order. Alliance or no, however, he did not trust the outlander, and he certainly didn’t like him. He knew that the verbal parry and thrust in which they engaged each time they met was counterproductive, perhaps even dangerous. But he could not help himself. All his composure, all the self-control that he used to conceal his treachery when he attended Gatherings or met with other mages, seemed to disappear when he spoke with Calbyr.

  Nonetheless, things did appear to be going well. The attacks carried out by Calbyr and the others were having the desired effect. People across the land had lost faith in the Order, and the Order was already showing signs of tearing itself apart. And then there was Baden. . . .

  The mage smiled as he resumed his walk toward Amarid at a more normal pace.

  “Baden, you have given me a gift beyond my wildest dreams,” he said to the night.

  For months he had wondered how he might rid himself of Baden and Jessamyn. The others were foolish and weak. They did not concern him. But these two . . . Jessamyn, he knew, elicited love and loyalty from the other mages, emotions that could unite and fortify the Order in the hands of a wise leader—and, he had to acknowledge, she did have a certain wisdom. Baden represented a danger of a different sort. Indeed, in another time and place, the mage thought, smiling at the irony, he might have liked Baden. Despite his pomposity, Baden had a sense of humor, he was intelligent and persuasive, and he was more powerful than most of them realized. The mage laughed; it seemed that he also had much in common with a second adversary.

  What mattered now, however, was that Baden had handed him a means of eliminating his most dangerous opponents in the Order: Theron’s Grove. He was honest enough with himself to admit that he found the idea of this journey daunting. Powerful as the mage was, he realized that he was no match for Theron’s spirit. But his recognition of the opportunity with which he had been presented far outweighed his fear. And in thinking about this he remembered something else Baden had said during today’s session in the Great Hall. Jaryd, Baden had predicted,would one day be more powerful than any mage in theroom. Leave it to Baden to bluster on about his Attend’s potential, the mage thought with more than a little contempt. Perhaps he had merely been boasting; perhaps he had exaggerated. But the mage could not take that chance, and Baden, by asking that the boy be allowed to accompany them to Theron’s Grove, had provided him with a solution to this problem as well. If necessary, he would join Baden in the Owl-Master’s effort to have the boy included in the delegation, even if he was unfledged. And Jaryd would die with the rest of them.

  Even before he had fully awakened, as the sounds of the stream and the forest morning seeped into his sleep and gently tugged him toward consciousness, Jaryd sensed that he was being watched. He tried to rouse himself, hoping that the feeling would vanish like a dream. But as the singing of the birds and the sound of water dripping from the branches above grew clearer, so did the sensation. Thinking suddenly of the bandits, Jaryd opened his eyes with a start, and found himself covered with dew. The fire he had conjured the night before had died out. Rays of early sunlight filtered through the mist and trees, and small birds chattered noisily as they flitted in and out of sight among the fir boughs. Sitting up and turning his gaze in the direction of the stream, Jaryd froze. No more than ten feet from where he sat, perched on a low stump and staring intently in his direction with its head slightly cocked to the side, sat a large slate-grey hawk with a pale belly and fierce red eyes.

  “Amarid’s Hawk!” Jaryd breathed, not quite believing what he was seeing.

  It was his last clear thought for some ti
me, for in the next instant his mind was deluged with a bewildering stream of seemingly random thoughts and images, some wild and dizzying, others so alien that Jaryd could make nothing of them other than a vague emotion. At one point he saw the same image of himself that he had seen the night before as he lit the wood on fire, and then the vision seemed to waver and fade, and suddenly Jaryd saw himself as he appeared in that very moment, staring at himself, his features looking slightly odd and distorted. And as the images continued to pour into him he felt something else as well: a presence in his mind, similar to the one he had felt the previous night, but far, far stronger. It was as if something or someone was reaching to him, compelling him to share his thoughts. Without any conscious effort, acting on instinct, but drawing on the skills he had gained from Baden’s exercises, Jaryd reached back.

  Baden had warned him of the difficulties, even dangers, of sharing one’s mind with a wild creature, but until that moment, Jaryd had not truly understood. The first images sent by the hawk had astounded him with their fluidity and swiftness. But with the connection that Jaryd and the creature established in that moment came a tidal wave of thought, memory, sensation, and emotion that threatened to obliterate Jaryd’s sense of reality. Abruptly, he was flying, darting with bewildering speed among branches and tree trunks, changing direction with the flick of a wing or the twist of a tail. Then he was tearing hungrily into the still-warm carcass of a jay, both exhilarated and nauseated by the hot blood that flowed over his beak and claws. Flying again, he fisted his talon and dove at a large brown hawk, barely able to control the rage that filled him, driving him to pursue the other bird. Through it all, clinging to the last scrap of his sanity, Jaryd fought to resist the tide, to impose some hint of rational order upon the rush of chaotic thought. But there was too much to hold, too much to control. He felt himself becoming more bird than man; he felt as though he were drowning. He was flying again, stooping to hunt, tearing into another carcass, tasting the blood and flesh once more. And in some distant corner of his mind, with the last remaining sliver of his own identity, Jaryd felt his stomach heave. Overwhelmed by his connection to the bird, yet terrified that he might break it if he allowed himself to be sick, Jaryd fought the urge to retch, choking down the bile that rose in his throat.

  And with that effort, with that last, desperate assertion of his own mind, he heard once more the words Baden had spoken to him in Leora’s Forest their first night out from Accalia: “You must learn to open your mind to the bird, while at the same time maintaining the clarity of your own consciousness.” And remembering his uncle’s instructions, Jaryd stopped fighting. Instead he allowed himself to be carried by the current he had struggled against a moment before. And he was flying again, pouncing again, but it began to make sense. Accepting the images as the hawk sent them, rather than trying to force them to match his own conception of time and reality, he sensed a pattern emerging, one that he could follow. It came slowly at first, but with each moment, comprehension grew easier, and Jaryd felt the chaos subsiding as his own consciousness reasserted itself within his mind.

  He found that he could see again with his own eyes. The hawk—Ishalla! The name somehow came to him. Ishalla remained in his mind, though he no longer felt quite so overwhelmed by her presence.Her presence. He knew somehow that Ishalla was female.

  The flurry of images and thoughts continued to flow through his mind although they seemed to grow more familiar with each moment. He saw the Parneshome Mountains and Tobyn’s Wood; the Northern Plain and Taima; and finally, most unexpectedly, he saw his home in far-off Accalia. His mother was there, and Bernel and Royden as well. So vivid was the image that Jaryd felt he could reach out and touch them. He had to suppress an urge to call out to them. The sight of them filled him with joy, and yet his heart grew sore with how much he missed them. Struggling to control his emotions, it took Jaryd several moments to realize that this image, like the others, came from Ishalla. Just as her thoughts and memories had become a part of his mind, she seemed to be telling him, his thoughts and memories had become part of hers. They had bound to each other. He really was a mage now.

  Slowly, stiffly, he climbed to his feet. The bird still sat before him, as motionless as the crystal statues atop the Great Hall. The sun had climbed higher over the clearing and burned off the mist. Jaryd had no idea how much time had passed, but, given the angle of the sun, he knew that the morning was almost gone. Certainly the mages in Amarid had reassembled some time ago. Moving carefully, so as not to startle the hawk, Jaryd walked toward the great bird. As he drew closer to her, he was struck by her awesome, wild beauty, just as he had been when he first saw the painting of Amarid’s familiar on the ceiling of the Great Hall. She was as large as any hawk he had seen at the Gathering the day before. Her back was bluish-grey, and her long grey tail was banded with broad black lines. Her breast and belly were pale and finely barred. And her head, with its black cap and cheeks and a white stripe over each red eye, gave her a look of intelligence and ferocity unlike any bird Jaryd had ever seen. Still staring at her, still moving slowly, Jaryd trembled as he approached her. He stopped just in front of Ishalla and held out his arm. Without hesitating, she hopped on to the offered perch.

  Jaryd winced, feeling her powerful talons grip his arm, the sharp claws digging through his shirt sleeve and into his flesh. Still, despite the pain and his continued trembling, he managed to hold his arm fairly steady. Given her size, Ishalla felt surprisingly light.

  Unable to take his eyes off his familiar, Jaryd grinned with unrestrained delight. If only his family could see him now, Jaryd thought. Even Bernel might have smiled at the sight of his son with such a magnificent bird on his arm. Jaryd couldn’t wait to see the expression on Baden’s face.

  “I’m a mage,” he said out loud, just as he had the night before. And then, as if to confirm it, Jaryd spoke her name. “Ishalla. I know that your name is Ishalla.”

  By way of reply, the hawk hopped up to his shoulder and began preening herself, seeming so comfortable that Jaryd actually laughed out loud. Her talons carved into his skin again and Jaryd felt a small trickle of blood on his shoulder, but somehow it didn’t matter.

  “We should get going,” he told her. “With all the running I did last night, I have a feeling we’re a good distance from Amarid.”

  An image entered his mind: flying swiftly among pines and spruce, striking at a smaller bird, wheeling back and swooping to find it on the ground, ripping at its flesh.

  Yes,Jaryd sent back, the connection feeling both strange and thrilling,Iunderstand. Can we meet farther up the trail so that I can start back towardthe city?

  Another image came, of the two of them doing just that. An instant later Ishalla leaped off his shoulder, her talons digging into him so suddenly that he gasped in pain.

  Rubbing his wounded shoulder Jaryd watched her dart across the stream and into the trees. And, as he did, he felt their connection growing weaker. He began to miss her presence immediately, odd though it seemed to him, given how briefly they had been bound to each other. For just a second, he worried that she might not return to him. He shook his head, smiling at his foolishness, and then he started down the trail. After just a few steps, however, he paused, gazing back over his shoulder at his campsite. “The place of my first binding,” he remarked to himself, thinking incongruously of Theron and the curse. He flinched slightly at the thought, and after another moment, he turned again and began to walk back toward the Great Hall. A short while later, Ishalla joined him, startling him as she alighted on his shoulder, her claws tearing his flesh once more.

  “I’ll have to get used to that,” he said aloud. She merely began to preen. But, much to his relief, he again felt her presence in his mind. From what Baden had told him, he knew that, as time passed and his bond with Ishalla grew stronger, temporary physical separations would have less effect on the bond they had just forged. Right now, though, Jaryd had trouble imagining that their bond could grow any stronger. Alread
y, her presence in his mind seemed to have become part of him. In a way, he found it a bit distracting; it was almost as if he were constantly catching a glimpse of something out of the corner of his eye. But he had realized during her brief absence that having access to her thoughts also gave him access to her perceptions. As he walked along the trail, Jaryd found that his awareness of his surroundings was far greater than it had ever been. He still saw things through his own eyes, but his peripheral vision seemed greater, his hearing sharper. He felt attuned to the forest, as if he had lived here all his life. And he made his way back to Amarid slower than he knew he should, savoring his journey through the wood.

  When Jaryd reached the Great Hall he found the gathered mages just ending their midday meal. Naturally, because they were looking for him, Baden and Trahn spotted him first and practically jumped out of their chairs to greet him. Walking toward them, acutely aware of Ishalla’s weight on his shoulder, Jaryd suddenly understood the magnitude of what Baden had done for him the night before.

  “You knew, didn’t you?” he asked his uncle as the mages reached him. “That’s why you sent me out into the forest last night.”

  Baden nodded. He was grinning now, as was Trahn. “I spotted the hawk following us during the last few days of our journey across the mountains. I had a feeling she would find you if I gave her the chance.”

  “Thank you,” Jaryd said earnestly. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more cooperative.”

  Baden laughed and shrugged. “Think nothing of it.”

  Jaryd turned to Trahn. “You knew as well?”

  The Hawk-Mage shook his head. “Not until this morning, when Baden explained it to me. But as I indicated to you yesterday, I know that Baden rarely acts out of caprice.” Trahn glanced at Ishalla, who was looking around the chamber, cautiously eyeing the other birds. “She’s beautiful, Jaryd,” he said. “May Leora make your time together long and rewarding.”