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

by Azalea Dabill

  Kyrin rubbed a scraped knee and called to Alaina, “You’ll burn too if you miss again: kick him off!” Alaina’s heel thumped the rider’s sternum, and Kyrin caught him and heaved him back up with a groan. They vaulted past each other: one on this side of the rider, and another on that. Good. They remembered they must evenly strengthen their bodies.

  Kyrin kicked next but her foot swung wide, batting aside the rider’s arm.

  Tae let his mouth flatten in displeasure. “Close only works when you cast Greek fire! Strike the precise point!” He waved her and Alaina away in disgust. “Off with you. Run!”

  They swung over the wall and sprinted about the garden. Alaina cried, “Your burn, Kyrin!” Panting and dripping with sweat, they returned, each trying to catch the advancing shade of the olive.

  Tae held back his amusement. It was hot near the wall. They eyed him, panting, wondering if their torture would end if they collapsed. They must learn they could go on. Tae raised his arm. “Ap bal chagi!”

  A hundred snapping front-kicks to the throat, turn by turn. A pause for water and back to the rider, whose stuffing began to come out.

  Legs wavered. His rangdo missed more often, circled the garden slower, and kicked desperately. Again they limped away under his watchful eye. At times they gulped down tears, but the uneven thwack, thwack of their feet against their opponents went on.

  After the testing, the further forging. Tae grinned, knowing his face was mirthless. Nara made a small sound of protest. Tae tapped his stick against his leg. “Pil sung!”

  His rangdo chorused together, “Certain victory through courage, strength, and indominable spirit!” Shaking, breathing in deep gasps, Kyrin eyed Alaina across her fists and drew her body up into position.

  Alaina too lifted her right foot to her knee, a stalking water bird, slender and golden haired. Tae paused while Kyrin found her balance. Last practice she had vowed it was Alaina’s turn to run fifty times around the top of the wall for losing.

  “Ap bal chagi!” he snapped. Kyrin thrust her knee up and her foot snapped into the air high over her head. “Barow!” he barked. She drew her foot back to her knee without touching the ground, her body straight as an arrow. Alaina also brought her leg back on command, but leaned to the side, losing her balance, her arms weaving. Kyrin smiled.

  Tae tapped her ankle with his stick. Her leg wobbled. Panic pulled her twitching mouth straight. Tae crossed his arms, rocking on his heels, and forbade his laugh. Two cranes stalked the same frog. “Yeop chagi!”

  Kyrin lashed out with a side kick. Her leg reached extension a span from Alaina, or her foot would have broken ribs. Kyrin eyed her sister’s equally straining, dirt-dark toes inches from her face. Alaina grinned, her leg a quivering leaf. “I burned your nose!”

  “Burn yours!”

  “Dwi chagi!” Tae cried. Their lives might depend on their strength of will, of limb, of spirit: on souls joined by sweat and blood, bound in the will of the Master.

  Kyrin leaned forward and struck backward with her heel.

  Tae walked toward the massive olive trunk. A good back kick would stop an incoming enemy in his tracks, breaking ribs, shocking lungs and heart. The skill Nara saw in Kyrin was a pebble on a mountain of knowledge she had yet to gain.

  “Naryu chagi!” He grabbed an olive branch, pulling it down to a handspan above Kyrin’s head.

  Wiping her eyes, she focused, shuffled forward, and jumped. Her knee knifed up, she loosed her foot, and her instep struck the tip of the waving branch. The clump of leaves exploded. She struck the recoiling branch with her forearm on her way to the ground and landed, ready to run or strike.

  Tae nodded. Soon that axe-kick would break bones and knock an enemy from his mount without his senses, or dead.

  “Switch, and again! Harder!” Olive leaves fluttered. He grunted. Kyrin’s stolen moments jump-kicking at the vines in the women’s court paid her in gold coin.

  Alaina struck at the olive leaves. Her foot passed through the air fingers away and she jigged in a circle to keep from straining her leg with the empty force of the blow. Tae waved her toward the wall and a long run with amusement. “Go! You write too many letters!”

  Kyrin leveled her hand at Alaina with a hoot, her palm down, pointing in the eastern way with her whole hand. “Your turn to burn, Alaina!”

  Alaina gasped a breath and waved at her with a merry, dismissive smile. Kyrin sprang at her, and Alaina fell back in mock fear. She rolled over her shoulder to her feet. With a grin she dusted herself off and spun, sprinting away, watching her footing.

  “Good!” Tae called after her, and to Kyrin, “Enough killing the olive for this day. You have done well. See, Nara smiles for you.”

  The black trousers and short thawb stuck to Kyrin’s back and legs. Tae rubbed his hand over his stick. His rangdo could pass as a man. She was lean enough as she walked behind the gnarled olive’s thick trunk.

  Kyrin returned after a moment in her serving thawb, smoothing a wrinkle from one blue sleeve. She looked up at Nara on the wall. “Do you think our skill enough for the court, Nara?”

  Tae frowned. Ali had bestowed the blue on Kyrin and Alaina, making them second to Qadira in the house. But as a scribe Alaina had no place to wield her authority, and Kyrin had not tested her rank among the household. Instead she befriended unloved Shema.

  Kyrin had been wise not to antagonize the household until she found who held the lines of power. It seemed Qadira ordered the house, while Nara exerted a compassionate rein on her rule.

  Nara glanced over her shoulder and dropped her voice. “This way of the warrior can do many things: bring life or death, I think.” She stared at Tae, shrewd. “I have heard tales of your land.”

  Tae kept his face still. “You may come when you wish and judge the straight from the twisted.”

  Nara raised her brows. “I will.”

  Tae met her gaze steadily. Words. Some meant nothing; others, danger and death or safety and life.

  Alaina would assist him to heal the wazir when they journeyed to Baghdad—for Shema feared for her father, who had the same blood plague as she—might his white hairs see years of wisdom. Ali sought the wazir’s favor—yet he ordered his hakeem to record everything he heard in the wazir’s passages, room, and court. And then the caliph’s guardsman would ask Ali for his news.

  Tae’s mouth flattened. There was one who pursued something, what, he was not sure.

  Within the courtly talk of silks, perfumes, and jewelry that the women of the caliph desired, and the men’s debates of what a merchant might gain for his goods or what ploys might catch the caliph’s eye, lurked perceptions of the esteemed caliph’s court—the most gracious, most blessed of Allah—and the players for power positioned in it. But there was more than news in the wind, as there had been before. Some words should not be loosed.

  Standing again in the torchlight of his command quarters, Tae watched his rangdo bend his head and step into the warm rain to carry his message in a sealed bamboo case to an enemy. Then word for word to Paekche Kim, their kuksun. Tae’s proposed peaceful surrender to the enemy commander had sparked banishment from his Huen and nearly the parting of his head from his body.

  In Baghdad he must judge whether to drop a bit of paper, scrubbed pure, to blow on the wind, or to give all news into Ali’s hand. Other lives than his rested on his judgment. He could not be betrayed again by words, true or untrue, going where they should not.

  Nor could Nara. That knowing was in her eyes, in the struggle of her love for Kyrin and her son, which strove to push back her fear of him. Tae drew a long breath.

  If it came to their master’s death, it would not be poison. He despised one who could not look his enemy in the face. He smiled. “Mistress of the roast and rice, I say I will not soil your hearth with fire from mine. There is wisdom in this.”

  Nara nodded, short an
d sharp. She turned her smile on Kyrin. “That was well done. A caliph would give much to command such artistry at the lift of his finger. But my pot boils away.” She called to Alaina, yet running on the wall—“Run well!”—and the gateway swallowed her.

  Tae’s mouth twisted. Nara accepted his word.

  The night was quiet except for Alaina’s dragging feet atop the stone wall around the garden. Kyrin stared at him, quiet and wondering. He turned toward Alaina. “Enough!” He vaulted up to sit.

  Water trickled in the wadi below. Dusk stretched to the surrounding hills.

  Kyrin climbed up beside him, then Alaina sat on the other side, breathing hard. Tae snorted softly and put an arm around each of them. Not yet masters of the way of the warrior, their warmth and the smell of sweat comforted him. None here schemed for power.

  Nara would not betray them. She knew nothing to betray. And love was strong in her. He smiled, a bare curve of his mouth. The death touches would come. And the wisdom he needed. The olives outside the wall whispered of it.

  §

  Kyrin felt alive, quivery and good, her hands braced on the cooling stone. She grinned. Alaina ran the wall this time. And Tae’s arm was warm approval about her shoulders. Nara had left them with a smile. The sky before them had no boundaries, only bright stars in clear depth upon depth. He who made this vast moment had no limit of power to find.

  Her smile faded. She had learned the deadly ways of the warrior in the desert, where Tae showed her and Alaina how to bring an enemy down with a few blows. Yes, she knew the muscles must learn with every fiber what the head grasped, and such knowledge would be seasons building. But she did not have seasons. She must learn the sword.

  Soon, Tae said, soon. Not soon enough for her.

  §

  Winter came cold and wet. Rain thundered on the roof tiles, baring the hills of color and leaf. Snow fell once. On one winter day at first light, Kyrin accompanied Tae and Kentar to the stables.

  The carpet of crystals upon Ali’s house, field, and limb graced the wadi with beauty. Ice-blades grew out of patches of frost, and the sun twinkled iridescent among their ranks, more beautiful than jewels, daggers of glass. The hills and the mountains above were silvered.

  In the stables she gave Lilith’s rein into Kentar’s hand; she was old, and Ali and Umar were not kind. “She is thick with fat. Take her on your errand. When I ride again I would have her ready to run.”

  With a smile that recalled their days in caravan, Kentar took the rein in his weathered hand. “She will remember the rabbit that won her, in the hills of the Aneza.”

  Kyrin bowed her head. “My bow has forgotten such a distance.”

  “But your heart has not. All may change at an unforeseen moment.” Kentar touched her shoulder with his camel stick. “Then—”

  Tae broke in, “Do not forget the amounts of poppy, myrrh, and astragulus that I need for mistress Shema. They must be exact.”

  “I will dream of them,” Kentar said dryly.

  Tae’s body shook with his silent laugh. “See that you do, O my messenger.”

  Kentar raised his arm, “As salaam alaykum!”

  “And peace to you!” Tae and Kyrin returned his farewell. Kyrin hoped Kentar turned Lilith out to pasture with his herd for his daughters’ pleasure. Lilith had forgotten how to run. With a groan, she trotted out of the frozen courtyard between the stable and the kennels, past the square-built privy against the wall.

  Kyrin rubbed her cold nose. The frost pricked fiercely this morning. Poor Nimah.

  She had to put ashes down the privy holes before every sunrise, though she protested she was glad to be their master’s most faithful ash strewer. For then she could steal moments with Kyrin and Zoltan, and pet Cicero and ride Lilith about the court in the early morn, breath steaming—with Ali none the wiser.

  Kyrin snorted. If she had put one foot across Lilith’s back the whole house would have whispered of it before the stars gleamed in the sky. Cicero licked her hand, and she stroked his knobby back. Even in the depths of winter Ali forbade her the hills, but Tae had added horn strips to her bow, and it spat arrows with viperish speed. If she could run with Cicero on the sand he might come close to catching the feather fletching. “Wind-runner.”

  She pulled his ears. His wise almond eyes had found her the moment she entered the stable door. His tongue peeked between his teeth, bliss half-closed his eyes, and he leaned against her with a groan of content. Kyrin smiled.

  Her clean-limbed Cicero walked among his shaggy brethren in the kennels as if he had been born their king, with Zoltan his guard. Holding his head high, he ignored the other dogs that circled and sniffed with raised hackles. His solemn manner said he had weighty matters to pursue in the world—he could not behave like a pup. He suffered Zoltan and Nimah to pet him, deigning to eat from their fingers after she put her hand under theirs to offer the first bone. And hearing Arabic gave her practice in the tricky, twisting tongue. She made progress, though not as fast as Alaina.

  After Kentar left, the winter ice did not reach the fountain and the marble hunter. Though the blocked windows were drafty, the Blue Flower room kept warm, the mosaic floor heated by fire beneath. That was one thing the Eagles did well. Hot baths, running water, warm floors. Kyrin’s quarters kept warm by association.

  When the hoarfrost melted, it left her with an empty feeling. She remembered snow in the woods, warm fur, and steam from the smiles of her people as they carried a great king-oak home for the midwinter fire in Cierheld hearth. Her mother had sat as queen before the last bright blaze amid gathered green holly. Her black hair shining loose around her, she had sung with the rest of them of his star in the heavens. Then she had fallen. Because of a stronghold daughter’s fear.

  Kyrin rubbed her eyes wearily. When would she be strong enough to drop over the wall in the night and ride for the coast? She knew enough Arabic to pass, and slave boys were common. But she could not go until she could face a sword.

  Spring burst from the deep-breathing earth: sap rose in the orchard, shoving fragrant clouds of white and pink blossoms out to air, and spikes of downy grass were green-smelling and feathery under her feet. The warmth crept over Ali’s fields and gardens, bringing birds with their important, tiny doings and chirps close to speech. The underground irrigation channels of fired clay pipe rushed precious brown water from the wadi to Ali’s orchard and gardens, while Tae’s herbs poked their green heads above ground; thin or thick, curly or sharp, busily pushing aside the soil.

  Merchants and their messengers visited Ali’s house often. Since his agreement with the Aneza, he dealt widely in the latest goods and news, the changing dangers of the camel road and client demand. Kentar brought it all, and Tae sifted Kentar’s news for his own use.

  Kentar arrived late one evening with a cloth-wrapped bundle and a message that he handed to Tae in the entry room on his way to an audience in the Blue Flower room with Ali. “From the prince of the Twilkets,” he said, with a grin at Kyrin.

  Something from Faisal? Kyrin peered over Tae’s shoulder while he unrolled the pale parchment. “What is it?” Alaina stood at Tae’s other side.

  Tae said, “Truthseeker flies well. And Faisal learns Twilket lore while his tribe roves—tracking, writing, history.” He grinned. “The prince says he pursues peace and wealth with a ready hand and tongue. Gershem Ben Salin leaves the Aneza to keep the caravanseri, and Shahin and Mey live with no one to shake a spear over their tent. Rashid eats of the fat, with milk and honey. The caravans bring them riches—all for a taste of the spring that sealed the Nur-ed-Dam between the Twilket and Aneza into brotherhood, the Oasis of Oaths.” Tae’s voice softened. “Faisal says, ‘I have not forgotten, my father. I keep the rights of power before me.’” Tae tucked the message carefully inside his thawb, then opened the bundle. He paused, stared at what he held, and then laid something hard and small in Kyrin’s hand
.

  It was a jet pin of a long-winged falcon. Kyrin blinked back sudden tears and held her breath against a widening space inside her. Faisal had forgiven her. Strangely, she did not ache for his smile, but for Truthseeker’s solid weight and her father’s strong arms, the hum of his voice in her ear. Kyrin frowned. She ought to feel something for Faisal besides relief. Her heart needed to speak. She must find Cicero, for he would not mind if she whispered in his ear. The falcon brooch would set off the dark bisht Mey had gifted her.

  Next, a handful of quill pens dropped out of a thin roll of paper that Tae lifted from the bundle. With a gasp, Alaina caught them and smoothed the feathers. Kyrin eyed the paper. So different from wax tablets or skin or scraped vellum. Faisal was generous. Alaina ran her finger over them gently. Kentar slipped back out of the Blue Flower room on a waft of incense and camel sweat. He gave them a tired smile. “Our master wishes your service, Kyrin.”

  She nodded soberly. “Nara will send food for you.” Tae would bring it to Kentar’s quarters and gather his news. She walked through the blue curtains, her hand clenched about Faisal’s pin. He had forgiven her, at last. She wanted to smile and cry at once, but Cicero must wait.

  Ali’s thin smile split his face, and he paused in his pacing before his chair. “Bring Shema to me.”

  Kyrin bowed and hurried out. Her master’s news must have been a good return for the gift of swords and spears he sent with Kentar to the Aneza.

  28

  Challenge

  A fool’s lips bring strife. ~Proverbs 18:6

  A seven-day after Kentar departed again for the Oasis of Oaths, Kyrin walked toward the women’s pool, smeared with black spring mud from head to toe. The water would feel good. She had been out since dawn behind the plows, sowing the field, covering the grain kernels with warm earth. She had gotten into a clod war with the men following the other plow, started by Tae. Field work was not torturous, though as hard as the warrior’s way. She grinned.

  She had been careful to more than fill her quota of sown earth. Watching the slaves laugh and enjoy the planting, Umar had tapped his sword hilt. Once she caught him rubbing his scarred hand, his unreadable eyes on her. Kyrin’s smile faded.