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

by Azalea Dabill

  “Can Truthseeker fly ill?”

  Against the sunlight behind her his eyes were shadowed, his mouth tired, and the fire of his anger was bleak ash. “I wanted such a bird, Nasrany—as an honored gift from these good Aneza, not taken from you by—necessity.”

  Ah, necessity—he protected her from Ali’s wrath. Her smile faltered, and grew strong. It was the last thing Faisal would have of her. “I do give you my falcon, warrior, with all the honor I possess, and my thanks.” She bowed her head and turned to the sheyks.

  “May this falcon, my lords, be a token of my esteem and desire for the peace you have forged. I have nothing else to give, and may not take the shaheen on such a journey as lies before me, lest it affect my service to my master.”

  Shahin did not look displeased. He and Gershem bowed. Kyrin returned the gesture, warmth blooming inside her. They used Tae’s custom to honor her. When she turned toward her camel, the Nubian’s face was split with his wide smile.

  Kyrin took Alaina’s hand. Tears threatened; what did Faisal think of her bold tongue? Aunt Medaen would be proud of her most lordly speech. Gershem stepped close to Kyrin, staring down his fierce nose. “I will not forget your deeds for my blood.”

  “As I will remember his for me.” That jackal’s son. She dared not look at Faisal—her smile would shake.

  “It is well.”

  Shahin interrupted the whispers running up and down the lines of men and women by pulling Faisal to his side. “Here is the one who sealed our tribes together. He defended our Shaheen, who saved the son of my blood. And our brothers have found their lost son!”

  The women raised a ululating call, and the men shook their lances or beat them against their shields. Shahin released Faisal to Gershem’s right hand. And Kyrin blinked hard, and smiled at Shahin. She knew what he had done, beginning to bind the tribes by blood.

  Tae stepped quickly to Faisal, reached out, and laid his hand over Faisal’s heart a moment, staring into his eyes. Loss pinched Faisal’s face. Tae slipped his ironwood stick from his sash and set it in Faisal’s hand. “Remember the right of strength.”

  Faisal raised the weapon to his forehead in salute, and the Twilket warriors murmured. Gershem scowled, so like Faisal that Kyrin wanted to laugh past the prickle in her eyes.

  Gershem strode with his grandson to their horses and mounted. Faisal stroked Truthseeker’s back and looked up to hear something Gershem said. The sheyk had his grandson, and Faisal had his grandfather.

  Gershem raised his arm and let out a whoop. He clamped his heels to his horse, and it sprang into a gallop. With a long shout the Twilkets streamed after him in a thunder of hooves and camel pads, lances high, the baggage camels pacing after them through the dust.

  Faisal paused, staring over his shoulder at Kyrin. Trying to imprint her in his mind, or did he remember her lack of womanliness? He nodded, dipped his head to Alaina, mounted and turned his horse after his people. He did not look back, his horse kicking up fat puffs to join the haze. The dust was cold and pale in the morning.

  May your heart live. Kyrin made herself breathe again.

  Alaina whispered in her ear, “I gave him some words that Tae translated from John’s Book. I hope he reads them.”

  “So do I.” Truthseeker was a good name.

  23

  Paths

  Thou hast taken account of my wanderings. . . . Are they not in Thy book? ~Psalm 56:8

  Mounted, Ali waved his arm, and Kentar called the caravan out. The Nubian laid a great hand on Kyrin’s arm and escorted her to Lilith, and Alaina to a camel behind her. Kyrin told herself that was one thing she had gained: Alaina rode now. It would not do for one beloved of the Aneza to have no mount.

  Nudging his camel after Ali, Umar looked back, and his eyes bored into Kyrin. Ali had been angry with him because he had not warned him of what was in the wind with Truthseeker. Religious as Umar was, he knew she never wore her veil but at Ali’s table.

  No, he was not upset at her loosing her veil before Twilket and Aneza. His gaze was on the Nubian, his lips flattening. Did he despise the black giant’s kindness? Kyrin sighed. Umar was Arab from the heart out.

  She gripped Lilith’s rein hard. Tae had sheathed Shahin’s sword on his saddle. She could leave Ali tonight with Tae and Alaina and follow the Aneza, then go to her father. He would make Tae his weapons master. And Tae would make Lord Dain Cieri the most powerful man but the king—and Alaina would be her sister in truth. And for herself—she need never fear again. Cierheld’s walls would be of her godfather’s thick Eagles’ stone—and no one got past her father’s arm. Tae would teach her the sword until no man could best her.

  White Munira walked to the front of the caravan, jostling Ali’s litter, the red tassels on her headstall feathering in the wind. Kyrin kicked the ground savagely and wiped her face. Tae would not bring danger to the Aneza. She was back to leaping to Ali’s whim, like those tassels.

  Shahin and his people wended toward the desert. The wadi spread up the mountain, lonely and clean but for the scars of fire pits that would fade under the next rain. The spring chuckled merrily, far away and to itself. The Oasis of Oaths, as Alaina called it, cared nothing for her troubles. Mey called across the dust and noise, “I will see you, Shaheen!”

  Kyrin looked up, wordless, her throat thick. She raised her arm to Mey, struggled onto Lilith’s back, and stroked the embroidered falcon on the black bisht. Buried her face in the clean wool. She could not stay, but she left something behind she would not find again.

  §

  At Ali’s command, Kentar did not lead them to Makkah. They camped beside a Persian trader in the mountains near Taif. The oasis had many trees. Date palms leaned above pools of water, and ditches fed life to nearby melons and grain growing in the fertile soil.

  Ali drank tea with the Persian merchant while the stars swung overhead. He traded a fur and some pigs of lead for a bolt of silk for Shema. Her mistress.

  Kyrin wound a curl of hair about her finger. Would Shema be as bitter hot as Umar, or cold as Ali? Indifferent, or ceaselessly biting about this task or that?

  Ali had said his worthless one would be a living warning to his Shema. Marriage to him would be chains for any woman. Kyrin shook her head with a twist of her mouth. Neither she nor Shema were beloved of Ali. Maybe they would find common ground.

  The following days were full: hauling water for the camels, packing and unpacking loads in starlight and dawnlight, walking until her legs buckled and then riding Lilith until her bones felt ready to shatter. Frost coated everything in the mornings. Kyrin yearned for a roof and warmth at night, not to slog onward at every sunrise. She thought of rest, and watching sun and shadows chase each other under the trees and through grass.

  Maybe then a smile instead of an ache would linger in her throat. The tiger stalked her grey thoughts; Faisal would never escape Allah, and her father would not know she lived. In every fight her heart failed, another piece broken, and the falcon witnessed it.

  The caravan clambered along the feet of the mountains for many miles around the edge of Faisal’s great sands. Torturous wadis descended from the rocky heights to disappear into the sand, hiding in their depths splashes of lacy green abal bushes that waited for winter’s rain to hang their pink flowers over white carpets of chamomile. In the sands, dunes of pink, mauve, and tan grains moved ceaselessly under the plucking fingers of the wind. It hissed, moaned, wailed, and laughed. Clouds of grit whipped into the air from the tops of far ridges, like dry ocean spume.

  Near Saa’na they turned east to the Hadramawt plateau. At the end of the first day over the sharp stones, Alaina held a hide bucket of butter for Tae, who dipped Lilith’s torn feet after he tended the other camels. He sewed leather pads to Lilith’s soles while Kyrin crouched over her head, covering her eyes with her bisht, hanging on to her neck with both arms to squelch Lilith’s wild wrenches.
Watching Kyrin’s grim hold, Tae grinned. “That arm is healed.”

  Kyrin grinned back. It was, though her heart, not yet.

  At the well of Shishur near the border of Oman, tradesmen, common people, and merchants mixed in the great traders’ souk to barter and buy. Pearls, fish, frankincense, slaves, and myrrh resin for incense were common competition in the great market. Ali traded the last of her godfather’s tin and his other slaves for goods from across the Indian sea.

  The old pirate shrugged and stepped to his new master’s side. He would find a good position as a guard with the martial knowledge Tae had taught him. Ali accepted the first of his payment, a sack of seed pearls from the old pirate’s buyer. The buyer growled, “Take care of those pearls, they are the best out of Salala. You are blessed of Allah that my ship stopped here this morn instead of next sunrise in Makkah.”

  So shipping ran from here to Makkah, on the Red Sea? It was good. A good place to lose herself—if she was running. Looking at the old pirate’s back left Kyrin with a strange feeling. She was a last strand of a knot of three: she and Tae and Alaina. Without the other slaves to distract Umar she must doubly conceal her flowering womanhood.

  Four days from Shishur, Kentar shepherded the caravan around a grey-white expanse that extended beyond Kyrin’s sight. Dry mud curled at the edges of glittering, hard sheets of salt. Tae’s face crinkled as he squinted against the sun. “Kentar says the liquid earth under that crust swallowed a hunting party last spring. There is less danger now, at the end of the dry season.” Umar looked over his shoulder, and Tae grinned at him.

  Umar snorted. “Only one such as you might dare this place of devils.”

  Tae shrugged. “If the need was great.”

  Beyond the salt flats, the Oman mountains rose, more rugged than any Kyrin had seen. Their western roots struck sheer, their heads soared sharp. Some purpled in the shadows of their brethren, while other bare heights blazed with fire under the falling sun, and all were seamed by water and wind.

  “Those mountains cradle hills and deep, fruitful wadis. Ali has his house in one of them, away from the wet, hot summer shore.” Tae glanced at Kyrin. “We are a day or so from there.”

  She nibbled on a finger. The mountains were cooler, then. And they and the hills at their feet could hide her.

  The seventh dawn from Shishur, Ali sent a messenger ahead to prepare his household. The sun beat at the caravan by the third hour, terce bell. Kentar called a halt to rest, and the Nubian and Umar escorted Ali’s litter underneath some nearby palms. They took their stand at either end, swords bare, arms crossed, still as statues.

  Kyrin’s lips twitched. Ali and his ceremony, even when there were none to see. When he did not feel the need to impress anyone with naked swords, the Nubian and Umar wore scabbards. Walking about with a naked blade knocking against rock, wood, and leather dulled the edge. They must tire of sharpening their blades.

  “Water!” Ali called querlulously from behind the litter’s closed curtains, and Umar sprang for the waterskin. But the Nubian was ahead. He grinned and lifted a thick arm, raising the waterskin in triumph.

  Kyrin smothered her giggle and let Lilith wander toward the water, where the drivers tended their grateful charges. She never tired of watching the water slide down their gullets. Lilith could drink near as much as six oxen. Her camel snuffled at the water and drank deep of the bubbling spring that wound around the palm trees’ roots. When she finished, Kyrin urged her up the side of the ridge before them. They wouldn’t stray too far ahead, for there might be raiders. But the ridge-top was near. Kyrin got down to walk and looped Lilith’s rein over her arm. Topping the ridge, she stopped in delight.

  A wave of warmth undulated across scattered green grass clumps, smelling of damp and a bittersweet tang, lifting her kaffiyeh. Her thawb flapped about her ankles. Kyrin tilted her head back and walked under a thick-leaved tree, creaing under the warm rush, its bright leaves rustling. More trees and grass extended down the other side. Here the desert ended. Here was land that could be farmed.

  In Cierheld’s fields she had crumbled a spring clod chill and dark on her toes, while her father followed the oxen with a bag of seed on his hip. Kyrin rubbed sweat from her nose. Her father would want to know how these people grew fruitful crops with so little rainfall. She would bring him all she could learn.

  The wind stirred her hair from her sticky neck, and Kyrin lifted her arms to a tickle of coolness. Coming rain was in the changeable wind. Maybe it would come tonight, if the dark ranks of cloud on the horizon kept their march behind those touched with gold, scattered overhead.

  Alaina’s faint voice called Kyrin, and she watched the caravan struggle up the rocky hillside. At last Ali’s litter swayed across the ridge-top, and Alaina joined her.

  Under the clouds, afternoon spread rosy over the hills, giving depth to tree-bark and shrub and stone, lengthening shadows. The clouds piled higher. The caravan wended on.

  They passed a village of mud huts tucked high on the side of a terraced wadi. The people stared at Kyrin, the women pulling heavy black veils across their faces. Ali lifted his hand, and the men bowed.

  The Nubian watched the villagers, while Umar ignored them, staring ahead. No one’s eyes quite met Umar’s.

  Kyrin rubbed her throat. Her skin itched under the necklace. Melons and grain and trees of many kinds grew about the village in oblong patches of green, bounded by short walls of stone. She eyed the variety, her mouth watering: peaches, pomegranates, dates, and apples; and millet, oats, and barley. There were other trees she could not distinguish, but branch and leaf blent with the land.

  On the far side of the village the dusty path broadened into a track and climbed out of the wadi, along a ridge, then down and up again. Camels and men lifted their heads and quickened their steps, a ripple that passed from the head of the caravan and down the plodding line to Tae.

  Tae wiped his face, let out a long and silent breath that puffed out his cheeks, and patted his camel’s neck. Kyrin smiled at him, uncertain. Umar and the Nubian rode closer to Ali. They tightened their sashes, checking that sword and dagger angled just so. The drivers beat dust from their thawbs and straightened kaffiyehs.

  Kyrin eased Lilith back beside Alaina. She tucked her dirty hair under her dusty kaffiyeh. Cicero trailed at Lilith’s heels, his tongue out. Kyrin wished they were not so grimy, and that she carried Truthseeker on her arm.

  At the front of the caravan the first riders dipped out of sight into another steep wadi, onto a switchback. Kyrin came to the point of descent, and stared.

  Below the winding track the valley ran roughly north-south. After a rocky drop of twenty arrow-lengths, the wadi descended gently, with few terraces. There was green everywhere, rich and gold-touched in the lowering sun. Three arrow-shots off, a ribbon of water ran down the wadi, winding among grass and shrubs.

  An arrow-shot beyond the water, high above it, Ali’s house lay safe from flood. Red tiles roofed the single-story dwelling. The open end of the U shaped house faced south, enclosed by a gate. A long, inner court divided the wings. It seemed a long, lower building joined the wings at the north end, with two small courts behind it.

  A whinny rose from one of the courts with sheds within, and a chorus of whining barks. Kyrin smiled. Ali kept a kennel. Cicero would be pleased.

  But it was nothing like home, the strongholds she knew. Only the stone walls gave any protection to this place. Instead of the Eagle towers of her godfather’s stronghold, trees raised their proud heads in the main court.

  Lilith followed the road downward, but before the house disappeared behind the east wall, Kyrin spied a curious configuration about the far wing: the roof jutted out toward the west in a short nub that seemed out of place. The road became a slanting track of packed earth, with leaves and blades of grass imbedded in it. Kyrin wound her hair about her finger, and her hand shook.

 
; The track rounded the wall toward the south gate. The tops of olive trees lined the back of the house, and harvested grain fields extended on either side. Running away from the house in a straight line, date palms marked an orchard boundary.

  Orange fruits flashed among the trees, and the perfume of apples tickled Kyrin’s nose. No watering ditches led to them from the wadi. The irrigation system must be underground, or Ali had extensive springs.

  Alaina sighed beside her, drinking it in. There were tears in her eyes. Kyrin smiled, short and weak. They would sleep inside those walls this night. Walls that would keep out the stars.

  Horse droppings beaded a path away from the track that led to a door in the north wall. The stables? Kyrin’s hand tightened on the haft of the falcon dagger.

  Few doors in Araby opened to the outside world, but there would be many opening inward on the beauty of the main court. There was the life of the house. Cicero dropped his nose and sniffed the prints of his own kind.

  Ali said something to Umar, with a laugh, and Umar dismounted. “Dalil!” he cried. “Take them in.” Salukis barked high and sharp, echoing from the kennel on the other side of the wall, and men called inside the court. Cicero perked up his ears.

  Kentar gathered the drivers and their pack camels, and they followed him aside, following the dalil who had led them so far. Kyrin opened her mouth. She would cry to Kentar that she wished him and his daughters well. But Umar’s face forbade her. She closed her mouth. If Kentar did not hire immediately with another caravan she could make him a gift.

  Ali switched Munira’s hide with his camel stick, urging her along the track toward the south end of the house. The Nubian beckoned her and Alaina on. The track ended at an arched gate.

  Shrubs and vines almost buried the pale stone on either side. Kyrin dismounted after the others, holding Lilith’s rope tightly. There was bird-chatter, and the warning call of a parrot, but no voices. Though some carried faint from the stables. Ali nodded, and the Nubian dismounted, but the gate opened silently ahead of her master.