by S. G. Night
Before she replaced the blades, she gave the Stingers a thoughtful assessment. The machines were marvelous, the products of her hands. Before Mrak had made her the Genshwin Mechanist, Ioan steel had been a fairly one-dimensional material. It had been — and still was — a staple of the country, made from smelting the ingredients for standard steel with the flaky orange ore that could only be found beneath Mount Eranil and the Kanar Mountains. It was a good product: strong, flexible, and noncorrosive.
But Alexis had made Ioan steel even better. Years ago, she had developed a set of variant alloys from the old formula. And almost all of those new alloys were integrated into the Stinger’s design. The sword-metal variant for the blades — quality inox steel, full of chromium, smelted with the Eranil ore: stainless, flexible, durable, held a perfect edge. Modified spring-steel for the release mechanism — a compound of iron, carbon, manganese, phosphorous, nickel, Eranil, and rotendrial runes that made a nearly unbreakable spring with enough tension to launch the blade through sheet metal. And a whole host of other alloys for the gears, locks, and housing.
Pure beauty.
Alexis knew that not even Racath could really dull the Ioan steel blades, but she gave them a thorough sharpening on her grindstone anyway, then reassembled the gauntlets. Once that was done, she retrieved Racath’s newly-cleaned raiment from the journeymen. When all that was done, she restocked the arsenal of throwing knives in the chest-piece, replaced the long knife and vindur’scain he’d lost, and met Racath back in his room.
——
Racath thanked Alexis profusely for the help. After one last, long hug, he dressed in his refreshed equipment, and left. Sokol on his shoulder, Racath went thence from Velik Tor. He navigated the twisting subterranean labyrinth, and eventually made use of one of the three one-way exit tunnels.
Reemerging from the earth just outside Oblakgrad’s wall, he made his way to the road, his brow furrowing as he examined the map that Mrak had given him. Sokol flew slothful circles over his head as he walked, and together, they trekked westward toward the Spikes.
SIXTEEN
A Free Sky
The skyward thunder rumbled. Its bitter, churning groan echoed between the Spikes. The unhappy mesh of black, roiling thunderheads flickered with the threatening dance of lightning as the peaks brushed its bloated belly. And in reply, the mountains murmured to each other, their voices carried on the wind that flitted through their valleys.
To them, it was just another storm. They had seen ten thousand storms just like it before, and tomorrow another would take its place. There was nothing special about it. There was nothing new in the arrogance of its lightning, nothing novel in the pride of its thunder. Its rains would be just as wet as they had always been before.
It was just another storm. And the mountains were not afraid.
There had been a time, now decades-past, that the storms had been different. Long ago, in the time after the little people had found a home in this land, the storms had been soft and sweet. The sky had sent them to feed the mountains with their life-giving rains, to make them tall and strong with the refining winds. Back then, the storms had been welcome as the company of old friends.
But that was back when the sky was free. Before the coming of the Demons.
Since that awful night, the sky had been blackened. Her great, gem-blue face was shrouded, chained beneath wicked clouds. The little people thought she might be angry, turned to evil like the rest of the world. But the mountains knew — those clouds were the doing of dark powers. The product of the devils’ magic: arcane shackles that held the heavens fast. They, the Demons, had enslaved the sky.
And now the storms were no longer friendly. They were angry, forceful. Sent not to rejuvenate, but to fetter and berate. The mortals had felt their fury, languished in the depression of the grey. But the mountains were strong. They stood firm.
And today, something else demanded the attention of the immortal peaks. It began when one mountain noticed something in its valley. It whispered excitedly to its neighbor, and the whisper darted from peak to peak, spreading until every Spike had taken heed. It was one of the little mortals — a very special, little mortal.
A Majiski — a rare sight for the mountains since the fall of Io — with an elegant gyrfalcon flying above his shoulder. The mountains recognized him, for he had lived within the shelter of their embrace many years before.
They forgot the storm completely. A gust of wind carried their enthusiastic whispers amongst themselves, and an animated debate arose. Soon they were in agreement: this Majiski, this returning child of the mountains, was the one they were waiting for. The one whose coming the little augur had foretold. The one who would break the iron clouds above.
Excitement grew among the Spikes, anxious as they were to have such a guest within their domain of stone. Such fortune! Such honor! One peak noted that a name was needed, an honorific for such a historic man. Briefly, the peaks bickered back and forth over various titles. Then the great mountain, He-That-Stands-Tall — the peak that the mortals knew as Mount Tarek — silenced them with a gusting gale.
The mountains quieted, turning their reverent attention to He-That-Stands-Tall. In his voice of gentle, omnipotent wind, the great mountain declared the perfect, definitive name for the Majiski: He-That-Frees-Skies.
The other Spikes murmured a giddy ascent. There was a joy in the mountains today that they had not felt for decades. But their jubilation did not impair their foresight — they understood what the presence of He-That-Frees-Skies implied. Yes, freedom was coming. But at a cost: blood. The blood of the little people and Demons alike. The Spikes could see that, in the coming months, a conflict would besiege their land.
The war for a free sky. Nothing could escape it. Not even the mountains. Before long, they would have to fight their own war against the wicked storms above while the little mortals battled the enemy below.
And so they readied themselves. From the range’s northern head, to its southern tail; from their Kanar cousins in the east, to the solitary figure of Mount Eranil, He-That-Stands-Alone, the whispers spread. Together, they joined in a rallying chorus of wind, bracing together against the storms above.
Singing a song of hope and conviction, the mountains readied for war.
——
Racath was hopelessly lost.
The map that Mrak gave him had proven itself to be about as useful as a hole in the head. Over the last three days, Racath had noticed that the closer he got to his destination, the more confusing the chart became. It had directed him into the hem of the Spikes about fifty miles south-east of Oblakgrad, and from there it took him through an overly-elaborate trek through a series valleys and canyons until he had found the mouth of a deep ravine. But that was where its utility ended.
The map seemed to indicate that his destination lay on the other end of the ravine, but it failed to mention that the crevice’s high, narrow walls branched and split off like a spider web. Before long, the natural maze had ensnared him — not only could he not find his way through, but he was no longer even sure which way he had come from either.
After hitting another dead end, Racath growled and shoved the map into his Shadow. He began backtracking again, swearing angrily under his breath. A frustrated headache was beginning to pound in his temples.
As he slouched onward, Racath kicked bitterly at a clod of dirt in the crevice floor. The resulting spray of brown puffed into the air in front of him, then blew back into his face.
“Gah! Bloody — faul!” he swore again, rubbing soil out of his watering eyes. Spitting, he blinked the last of the dirt away and saw Sokol hovering at eye-level in front of him.
She gave him a disappointed stare.
“Well, clearly we’re lost,” he scowled at her.
Sokol chirped indignantly.
“Alright, fine!” he conceded snappishly. “I’m lost! Feel better now?”
Pause. Then Sokol let loose a chittering stream of tweets.
/> “Wait, wait,” Racath said, holding up a hand as he rubbed his throbbing forehead. “Say that again.”
Sokol repeated herself.
“What do you mean you know how to get there?” Racath demanded. “How do you know where we’re going?”
The gyrfalcon looked as though she were about to explain. But then a raptor’s cry split the air. Both Sokol and Racath looked up to see the graceful silhouette of another bird-of-prey against the blanket of grey clouds.
“Friend of yours?” Racath asked Sokol absentmindedly.
Suddenly, Sokol’s eyes lit up. She let loose a delighted cry, as if in answer to the other bird, and launched herself into sky beyond the high walls of the ravine.
“Sokol!” Racath shouted in surprise and annoyance.
The pair of birds met in the air, flapping about each other in the sky. More joyful cries came from each of them.
“Sokol!” Racath barked again. “Dammit, bird, I wasn’t serious!”
After a moment of enthusiastic hovering, the birds dove back to earth together, dropping out of Racath’s sight behind the crevice walls.
Angry panic flashed through him. He sprinted, darting through the maze, following whatever routes he could that led in the general direction that Sokol had flown. Rebounding off stony walls as his momentum carried him around sharp, constricting corners, he delved deeper into the gulch.
He rounded a bend and suddenly the sky vanished. The once-open ravine abruptly became a cave, its ceiling a solid slab of mountain stone. The narrow path opened up into an expansive cavern chamber.
Strangely, the floor was not rock, but rather the same black, mountain soil as the ravine. Weeds coated the dirt, climbing the walls in sheets of green ivy that stretched nearly fifty feet to the ceiling. Broken boulders and stalagmites littered the perimeter, glacially becoming one with the dirt floor as tendrils of vines embraced them.
Then Racath knew: he was in the belly of one of the Spikes.
High on the left wall, a round opening pierced the rock, allowing a slender beam of daylight to enter the chamber. Beneath it, a curious brook of clear, clean water flowed along the stone. The brook did not seem to come from anywhere. Nor did it seem to end anywhere. Like he could only see a small piece of it.
At the edge of the brook, bathed in the light that poured through the fissure in the wall, grew a pair of magnificent trees. Thick roots spread out from their trunks, tangling in the dirt, reaching to drink from the pure stream. Their thick, healthy branches plumed upward, oval leaves creating an emerald, mushrooming cocoon. The two trunks grew less than ten feet apart. Racath noticed that each had one lower branch that reached across the space between them. The branches met halfway, helixing around each other and binding together, like some great gardener had grafted them together. Like the two trees were bound by a natural cord.
Those two branches made a perfect, horizontal perch beneath the heaven of gem-like leaves above. Upon that perch sat Sokol and her unfamiliar companion. Sokol had a wing around the other raptor as they nuzzled each other.
The other bird was also a gyrfalcon, but slightly smaller than Sokol — a male. In contrast to Sokol’s ivory, black-speckled coloring, the male boasted a rare and exemplary beauty. His feathers gleamed with a glossy sheen like water under moonlight. Every inch of him was ebony, a perfect, enchanting black, except for the alabaster tips of his pinion feathers.
Beneath the perch, on the grassy earth at the foot of the extraordinary trees, a young, familiar woman stood with her back to Racath, looking up at the couple of nestling birds. A beam of rare sunlight escaped the clouds outside, and filtered through the opening in the wall. The light swathed the trees, the brook, the gyrfalcon, and the woman. In the marvelous illumination, the woman’s hair shimmered like a strand flowing gold as it cascaded down the back of her black tunic.
Cautiously, Racath approached, removing his hood as he did so. His boots sank slightly into the moist earth as he neared the stream bed. When he was not five feet from the foot of the trees, the woman turned to him in a whirl of sunny hair. Even though it had been almost a month since they had first met, he recognized her immediately.
It was Nelle, as he had suspected. Racath lost his composure slightly — he had forgotten how pretty she was. Strikingly pretty. And it didn’t help when she greeted him with a pretty smile. A pretty smile that crossed her pretty face and made her pretty blue eyes glitter. All Racath could think was pretty.
“Hello again, Racath!” she chimed.
Racath fumbled for a moment. “Um…hi, Nelle.”
The glow of sunlight on the augur’s face seemed to brighten. “Aww, you remember my name! That’s sweet!”
“Uhm…” Racath faltered again. “Thank you?” What was wrong with him? Nothing did this to him.
“Glad you found your way,” Nelle said cheerily. “I was afraid you’d get lost in that stupid maze.”
“I almost did,” he murmured. He got enough of a hold on himself that he could walk again, and he came to stand beside her. “I wasn’t expecting to find you here.”
Nelle shrugged and returned her attention to the two gyrfalcons in the tree. “Oron and I have known each other for a long time. We understand each other. I spend most of my time here with him.”
“When you’re not out hunting Demons?” Racath said.
“When I’m not out hunting Demons,” Nelle answered with a musical chuckle. “It’s safe here with him. This place is my home.” She rocked back and forth on her heels. “Also, it’s in my nature to be where important things are happening.”
“And important things are happening…here?” Racath asked, looking around the cave.
“Well…” Nelle said, wobbling her shoulders from side to side as if she were reconsidering. “Not right here. The real place to be is down that way.”
She nodded towards the back of the cave, and for the first time Racath noticed that the chamber extended into a lightless, high-ceilinged tunnel that led deeper into the mountain.
“Aha…And what exactly is down that way?”
Nelle gave him another luminous smile. “Oron! That’s where he’s going to make you a Scorpion. And I’m going to stick around to help train you!”
Her enthusiasm seemed so genuine that Racath wasn’t exactly sure how to reply. “Sounds fun….” He swallowed. “So…uhm…I have a few ques—”
Before he could unload his pent-up curiosities, Nelle interrupted him abruptly. “Aren’t these two adorable?” She nodded at Sokol and the male bird.
“Um…sure…” Racath answered, again caught flatfooted. “But…what is the whole deal with them? Sokol’s been with me for more than a year now, and I’ve never seen her with a male. What’s with the snuggling?”
Nelle chuckled quietly to herself. “That’s Elohim,” she told him, indicating the black male. “He’s Oron’s. Sokol was too, before she was yours. When you caught Oron’s eye as a potential Scorpion, he had Mrak give Sokol to you so that she could watch you for him.”
“Wait,” Racath interjected, his brow furrowing. “Watch me?”
Nelle bobbed her head once. “She’s been scouting you out for Oron since you got her. She’s the reason that I was able to figure out that you were the man from my visions.”
Racath’s head spun with more questions. “Ah…so—”
Nelle interrupted him again. “She’s a really special bird,” she said, almost like she was commenting on some piece evocative art. “They both are. And they’re together, too.”
“Together?”
“Yeah, together. You know,” she smirked meaningfully. “Mates. They’ve been with each other a long time. Like, they were together when they first came to Oron, and that was more than thirty years ago.”
Racath made a puzzled face at her. “That doesn’t make sense. I’ve researched gyrfalcons, after Mrak gave her to me. They don’t live much past twenty.”
“Ordinary gyrfalcons don’t, no,” Nelle shrugged. “But like I said, these
two are special. They’re really old as far as we can tell. And they’ve got as much personality as they do brains. Not to mention how attached they are to each other, like they’re actual lovers. It’s almost like they’re real people, not birds.”
“You’ve got that right…” Racath muttered, thinking back on all his experiences with Sokol. “No one really believed that I could understand her. The other Genshwin thought I was crazy whenever I talked to her.”
The augur patted him on the head, beaming. “Well, I’m glad to inform you that you’re not crazy. They do communicate. Not everyone can really understand them. But then again, not everyone really listens, do they?”
Racath laughed once in spite of his confusion. “Amen. So, what exactly makes them so unique?”
Nelle made a face and held up her hands. “I dunno. We don’t really know anything about their history before they came to us — did I mention that? They found us. We didn’t domesticate them, they adapted to us — but if you want my opinion…” she leaned close to him, putting up a conspiratorial hand, like she didn’t want the gyrfalcons to hear.
Racath reluctantly leaned towards her.
“I think they work for Gospodar,” she whispered.
The words took a moment to process in Racath’s mind, distracted as he was by the warmth of her breath in his ear. “Wait…you mean God?”
Nelle nodded excitedly. “I think they’re actually angels in disguise. That’s just my theory. But it makes sense if you think about it.”
“Uh huh…” Racath said, somewhat skeptical. He looked up at the pair of nuzzling birds; both Sokol and Elohim seemed completely oblivious of the spectators below.
The conversation made another abrupt turn. “They always loved these trees…” Nelle noted, gesturing at the peculiar duo of interlocking branches. “So magnificent….” There was a pregnant pause; she was trying to bait a question out of him. Racath saw no harm in indulging her.
“The trees?” Racath said. “I noticed those when I came in. What are they?”