Falcon Heart: Chronicle I an epic young adult fantasy series set in medieval times

by Azalea Dabill

  Kyrin sighed. Words flowed to Alaina. She would fly their sky-hunter and find her name in moments. Would she choose a name that wove a picture of a queen, soaring above all she surveyed, wind rippling her flight feathers on a warm day?

  Kyrin eased the falcon’s hood back on and set her on her perch. She ruffled and settled. Were Tae and Faisal creeping from the Twilket camp or fleeing their hunters while her bird bent her head and cleaned her beak with her foot?

  Outside the last stars were fading. Kyrin walked to the island edge. Birdcalls hovered high over the still wadi. Women began to move among the tents, silent wraiths.

  Kyrin loosed Cicero, his strong neck wiry under her hand. He danced around her and dashed to nose about the Aneza women kneeling on the flat south edge of the island. They let down skin bags from the rocky height, dipping them into a crack at the island’s base where water pooled, then brought dripping burdens up from the bottom. She rubbed her nose wearily. Tae had chosen well. Their water supply was protected by the same height that kept them from their enemies.

  After a few dates and a cold drink from Mey’s waterskin, Kyrin walked to the north end of the island. There granite towers nestled about the single path downward. The tallest rock, which leaned out over the wadi, was higher than Samson’s oak. The powdery dust of the path lapped Kyrin’s toes with icy softness. Against the echoing expanse of night-cold air and the purple-blue of the wadi, she felt small. Her father could barely get a shaft across that shaded depth with his long yew bow. She fingered her hair as the top edge of the wadi gleamed under the first fingers of the sun.

  She followed the thin path that crept back and forth down the rocky drop. Toes numbing, Cicero at her heels, she picked her way across the uneven wadi bed and up to where Alaina sat atop the south-eastern wall under a sprawling juniper. Fragrant and twisted, the tree grew apart from its fellows. At home the bell for prime would be ringing.

  “Our falcon ate some liver, Alaina. You’ll feed her at mid-day.”

  Alaina set Tae’s Holy Book down in her lap. “Yes,” she said, sober. She gazed over the wadi and whispered, “In quietness and trust is your strength . . .”

  A lark called, and wind sighed in the branches. Did Tae lie cold somewhere, earth clogging his ears? Kyrin edged closer to Alaina. Bring Tae and Faisal back to us.

  Alaina released the Book, and the scroll rolled closed in her lap. Her sash was blue—old and torn and mended. Kyrin opened her mouth, and stopped. It was well that Alaina remembered Faisal by wearing his sash. She rested her chin on her knees.

  Faisal had avoided her. He had not run his hand over Cicero’s head or stroked Lilith or spoken to her before he went. But she had not sought him out. His words had been short after the assassin fell to his blade. And he’d scowled the day Shahin and Mey gave her the falcon. Kyrin sighed. She had faced the raiders’ lances and Shahin for him.

  Alaina leaned over her knees, a few blue-green juniper needles in her hair, staring across the wadi as if she could pierce the mountains and see the Twilket camp.

  Kyrin scooted close until her shoulder touched Alaina’s. In the medicine tent her sister had hovered over a stock of salves, poultices, and brews, picking up one and setting it back down in the same place. She’d avoided Tae’s herb bag that stood against the center pole. As if his bag could bring him back to open it.

  Kyrin cleared her throat. Had the line between Alaina’s brows been for fear of the war and whether she could bind the wounds that would come?

  She nudged Alaina’s shoulder. “Alaina, your hands have healed every one of Ali’s camels—they have not complained. You will not do less for us, it is not in you.”

  “I know. See?”With a wry smile, Alaina pointed. On the far side of the wadi, the Nubian carried Ali’s wash water out of his tent to set before his camel. The beast lowered its head to drink. “My medicine is better than that.”

  “Your medicine never poisons anyone, even if it tastes like Ali’s camel water.” Kyrin grinned as Alaina’s laugh warmed her.

  Ali flipped up the side of his tent, and Kentar rose from a group of drivers sitting on their heels near the lead camel. Kyrin’s smile faded.

  Ali had not let his animals go with Shahin’s men to safer pasture. Kentar and his drivers had not been pleased. One had muttered, “Does he trust none of his brothers?”

  “Shahin does not trust Ali, either,” Kyrin whispered.

  “What?”

  “There, see them, Alaina?” Kyrin held out her arm. Three Aneza archers rested on the north rim where the junipers grew shaggy, clinging to the mountainside. And more Aneza were concealed in a great circle out of sight of the island, watching all that moved over sand, wadi, and mountain. Kyrin pushed her dangling kaffiyeh behind her shoulder.

  Alaina shaded her eyes with her hand. “Yes, I can see them.”

  Tae should come soon if his errand had succeeded. Kyrin bit her lip. How she wished the waiting were over.

  Far down the dry watercourse the wadi walls towered sharply above a water-carved rock of pale limestone, a giant falcon’s egg nestled in the deep rocky bed. Twenty of Shahin’s warriors waited in the brush and low trees about it for Tae. Did they believe they gathered to honor their war leader, or did they feel like lambs staked out for Twilket wolves?

  Beyond the giant egg, the wadi descended an Eagle mile before disappearing into the gravel plain. The wadi was the easiest way to approach the path to the island. But if Tae’s plans went awry, he and Faisal might flee down from the mountain or come up from the desert side.

  Kyrin let her coiled hair spring undone. Below her, women busily sharpened long juniper poles and fastened them with cords into sections of paling. Children dragged juniper branches into the wadi that the men had cut, and fetched and carried oddments. Older men sat about the tents above; repairing weapons, making arrows and lances; and sharpening daggers and swords till the blades would shave hair.

  Shahin walked among them all. He bent over a child and laid a hand on his head in assurance, and explained the paling placements to Youbib, gesturing above and below at the camp. Youbib nodded.

  Walking down to join the women, Kyrin hoped Youbib learned war was not glory before it was too late. The smell of blood and the emptiness in her mother’s eyes returned to her.

  Mid-day slipped toward evening. Working alongside the women, Kyrin flipped the fish at her throat up and down, up and down. Tae had not come. The tightness in the women’s faces grew. Fear closed in with slicing claws.

  §

  What time I am afraid I will trust in you. The first shadow crept into the wadi.

  Alaina waited for Kyrin’s attack between two lines of Aneza women. Kyrin raised the dagger over her head and sprang, bringing the blade down. Alaina deflected her arm with her crossed forearms and grabbed, twisting Kyrin’s blade toward her shoulder.

  Her sister crashed to the ground and Alaina mock-slashed her throat on the way down. The women murmured, and some gasped.

  “Again! Watch.” This time Alaina deflected Kyrin’s overhead stab into her leg. She took the blade from Kyrin, and holding it reversed along her forearm, drove in low and swift. “Slash in and out like a whirling wolf. Don’t stab. You don’t want to lose your blade in a Twilket’s ribs. You want to make them bleed out.”

  The line of defending women gripped their daggers, their bishts wrapped around their lead arms, fat as wasp’s nests swollen about apple limbs in an orchard. Eagar, their opposite line of attackers lunged as one, hacking at their “enemies” with their sticks. Pale thawbs and dark bishts whirled as the defending women countered, taking the stick blows to their shielded arms, their daggers flashing under to stop a handbreadth from their attacker’s belly or throat.

  The Aneza women seemed to know where their blades were in relation to themselves and their attackers at all times. Alaina shook her head. It was what came of using blades since chil
dhood for all sorts of things, not to mention killing goats for the pot.

  The women disengaged smoothly. Alaina called for the slashing drill, and the women sprang toward each other again—with the will to kill. They needed no one to teach them that if their men’s defensive line broke they fought for their lives and their children.

  Alaina met Kyrin’s gaze. She nodded, and Alaina smiled grimly, satisfied. She had been right to fight Kyrin and the women’s rising fear with something they could do. At times, a single blade in determined hands could turn a battle. As in Tae’s land, where women often trained as bodyguards. If a leader fell others took up the fight.

  Alaina’s throat dried. But if a falcon fought, it fought to the end, and many died. She handed the dagger to Kyrin, releasing it as if it stung her.

  Kyrin slid the blade into her sash, tapping its head lightly, content with its presence.

  Alaina swallowed. The falcon dagger did bring death—but it was also beautiful—and it could save. Though the verdict rested in the hands of the Master of the stars.

  Sweat glinted on the skirmishers’ faces and Kyrin called the halt. Alaina nodded. Warm and ready was good, tired was not. Tae said so often enough.

  The women laughed, patted each other’s arms, and scrambled up to the island, hope in their voices. They set out cold food for the men, then ate and fed the children. Alaina scuffed the ground with her foot. Without doubt the Twilkets knew their position. But there would be no fires this day. The sun set.

  20

  Unravelings

  Waters . . . break forth in the wilderness . . . ~Isaiah 35:6

  Kyrin told herself for the twentieth time to pay attention to the camel butter she churned, rocking the skin bottle with her stiff left arm to strengthen it. Her bow close beside her, she kept her eyes on the wadi rim. “What time I am afraid . . . I trust in thee.” Crouched over the dust before the tent, a child playing with a stone looked up at her whisper. Kyrin smiled at her.

  Gilded by the evening, an Aneza archer raised a silent arm on the rim. Kyrin left the butter bottle to rock in diminishing lonely arcs and ran to the edge. The wadi opened cavernous and silent below. She knelt, licking dry lips. The smooth, cool wood of her bow under her fingers felt dreamlike despite the falcon dagger heavy in her other hand.

  Tae picked his way up the wadi past the giant limestone egg, his head bowed. He was alone. An Aneza moved around the curving limestone behind Tae—and stopped, looking about. A reverberating hum shivered through the air, filling the wadi to the brim. The earth swayed.

  Kyrin clung to the ground, frozen. Aneza poured out of the shrubs behind Tae, staggering toward him, their feet spread, arms wide. They huddled near him, looking upward. Dust drifted thin in the air. Was that a bit of blue behind them? Maybe Faisal’s kaffiyeh? She drew a cautious breath, loosening her tight grip.

  The wadi jolted—a stiff-legged camel with a grudge. Rock groaned. Man-size boulders and huge slabs crashed and slid down the wadi sides. A splitting juniper shrieked. Gravel trickled past the edge, tumbled down a ledge below Kyrin, and spun over tenacious shrubs into free-fall.

  She scrambled back from the edge, could not stand on the heaving earth, and rolled. Booms and thuds of colliding boulders mingled with the scream of tortured rock. Plumes of dust shot up all along the wadi. The earth surged again—and quieted.

  Behind Kyrin, Alaina hugged the tent flap around her, wide-eyed. Cicero peeped out between her legs, his ears pinned, his jaws a frozen snarl. Kyrin’s ears buzzed.

  All sound was muffled. She put down her bow and slid her dagger into her sash. Other Aneza, as dazed and shaky as she, moved here and there to help those on the ground and the crying children.

  One of the archers on watch above the other side called, anxious and questioning. He raised his lance when Shahin shouted back, and returned to his post. Kyrin walked shakily to the edge. Golden dust billowed and drifted, revealing crushed trees and piles of shattered rock. The haze hid the place where Tae had been.

  “Tae! Tae!” She yelled, her voice tight and strange. Cicero bounded over to press himself against her leg, and Alaina ran to grip her arm on the other side.

  “We are here!” Tae called, his voice echoing up. “Do not fear!”

  Kyrin turned to Alaina, weak-kneed. “He is all right, they are all right.” The round dome of the egg gleamed through the dust. Alaina hugged her back and wiped her cheeks. The tension broke, and their tears burst in a quick flood until Cicero wormed his head between their knees. They patted him, laughing a little, and Kyrin dried her face.

  Near the medicine tent someone cried out, high and shrill. A small girl was curled on the ground, clutching her thigh. Alaina gripped Kyrin’s arm. “She’s hurt!”

  A long gash bled under the girl’s hands, blood sheeting down her leg. Kyrin followed and helped lift the girl into the tent and onto a rug.

  “I will start on her, but I need Tae!” Alaina grabbed bandages from a nearby stack and pressed them against the wound under the girl’s fingers. The girl twitched and leaned forward when Alaina clamped both hands on her leg, her hair falling in a curtain around her pain. Kyrin whirled toward the door.

  The dust was thinning and some tents were down. Aneza were lifting the poles to shake clean the felt. Kyrin met Tae at the bottom of the path. She gasped out her news, and he sprinted up after her.

  Mey had a fire going outside her tent. They passed her at a trot, and Tae asked her to boil as much water as her pot would hold and said he would need more soon. Avoiding the press about the medicine tent door, Kyrin pulled up a loose felt side. Tae ducked under it and she followed.

  Strong herbs on a wave of steam made Kyrin cough. Alaina bent over the girl’s leg in the light of a lamp, wiping around the wound with a steaming cloth. The girl gripped her rug in rigid hands, panting and fearful with pain. Alaina dropped the cloth and reached out a bloodied hand, her gaze on her needle and thread in her fingers. “Hand me that cup.”

  “I’ll do it.” Kyrin lifted a vessel of hot dark liquid from beside the girl, who rolled her head restlessly. Kyrin froze. It was the little Aneza who had admired her falcon blade.

  “Kyrin,” Alaina said.

  Kyrin blinked and held the cup to the girl’s lips. She drank, her pleading gaze never leaving Kyrin’s. She gagged a moment then quieted. Kyrin set the cup down, drew her falcon dagger, and put it in the girl’s hands. “What is your name?”

  “Neddra.”

  “Be brave, Neddra.” Neddra touched one jet eye and smiled, clasping the falcon close. Her eyes flickered shut. But there were others hurt.

  Kyrin rolled cut bandages from the nearby stack. Alaina glanced at her. “Did you wash?”

  Blushing, Kyrin went to scrub her hands in the basin at the end of the tent where Tae was already elbow deep. She finished and returned, gulping down her stomach as Alaina’s needle wove Neddra’s flesh together over white tendons.

  Tae took the girl’s wrist, counting the beats of her heart. He laid her arm down gently and wiped his forehead. “How do you say she is?” He asked Alaina.

  Alaina tied off the bandage ends around the girl’s leg. “She is good, now. The blood has stopped and her skin is pink. She breathes well, and you know her blood-beat is steady, though a little fast from the pain. If we can keep the green swelling away, bathe it in myrrh every day . . .”

  “Yes. The myrrh heals. And your hands bring healing.” Tae put his hand on Alaina’s shoulder in approval. “Now we must see who else needs help. I will ask outside.” Alaina looked after him, and glanced aside at Kyrin, shy. Kyrin grinned, and nodded.

  The Aneza moved camp down to the middle of the wadi, out of reach of rocks falling from the sides. If the earth quaked again the island might collapse. There was more danger from the gaping cracks spidered across the top of the island than from the Twilkets. At least the sentries would send warning of their ene
mies’ attack. The earth gave none. Faisal lurked near Kyrin’s back as she worked, silent, and Tae went to take council with the elders.

  §

  Kyrin waited outside Shahin’s door, a bed of coals casting shadows across her. She twisted a long piece of grass around her finger up to its bristly head then let it go; over and over until the grass was a ragged cord. Tae strode out. She scrambled to her feet.

  “Tae, what did the Twilkets say? Will their sheyk speak with Shahin?”

  Tae stopped short but did not turn. Shoulders bowed, he said, “The Twilkets want half the Aneza herds and everyone’s right little finger in tribute, down to the last child.”

  Kyrin bit her lip.

  Tae raised his head, his face bleak. “It is not certain yet, for the sheyks will talk. I have done that much. Go back to your tent, you need what sleep you may have. I must speak with the Master of the stars and see what he will say.”

  Back in the tent, Kyrin’s arm ached savagely, and the ghost of burning settled in her scar at her throat. Alaina took some salve and began to work on her arm. She whispered to Kyrin, “The Aneza know that someone looked out for us in the earthquake, it is just—they are not sure who he is. The women say their spirit of the air cannot move the earth like that.” Her strong fingers slid under Kyrin’s necklace and down her shoulder and arm, rubbing in warmth and salve, chasing away pain and aloneness.

  Kyrin worked her throat. “The Twilkets will come in the morning for Shahin’s answer.”

  “Yes. But the one who rules our destinies is here.”

  Kyrin wished she could be so sure their destiny would be good.

  Alaina sang softly, “Giver of all good gifts, all things work for good. Council me with Thine eye upon me, give me courage, be a strong tower unto me. For by Thee I can run upon a troop . . .” Kyrin lay back on her blanket. If he willed it . . . After a bit, she took a turn rubbing Alaina’s feet. Alaina’s breathing evened. She never slept ill.