Elanraigh
Page 20
“Very few, now. In the time of your ancestors, though, there were others of the Sky Weaver clan, and of the Grey Wolves, who soul-shared with human-folk. Most now have forgotten those bonds.”
“Not one of my kin has ever spoken to me of those gifts,” Thera mused. “I do not think my people remember.
“The Ttamarini remember those times,” Eiryana replied.
“Ah. Well, the Ttamarini are very different.”
“In the time of your ancient-ancestors, all were the same.”
Thera mulled over this statement in silence as they skimmed the tall trees by Bridal Veil Falls. When Eiryana spoke again her tone of thought was wondering. ,” I feel as if we are two nestlings long parted. With every wing beat that brings us closer, we share more of our feelings and experiences—do you feel so?”
“Yes! It is more like reunion than first meeting. Perhaps our ancient-ancestors knew each other this way.”
Eiryana folded her wings and dove toward the waterfall’s spray, through the mist and rainbow colors she did a tumbling roll. The roar of the falls thundered in her bones.
“Thera of Allenholme, you are now woven into my song, with the Elanraigh, the wind, the sun, and sea, forever.”
* * * *
As Eiryana rose, turning north toward Allenholme, Thera sent an expression of her joy toward the Elanraigh. “Blessings be! Eiryana and I are myia!” The Ttamarini term, of one soul, seemed so right.
The Elanraigh responded, its thrum was warm, yet distracted. The forest-mind’s attention was on the north.
“Eiryana?”
“I do not know, Thera. All seemed well when I passed your home at dawn.”
They said no more and the young eagle swept her wings strongly, gaining height and following the shoreline northward. With a pang, Thera recognized the black rocks of Shawl Bay. Below them the waves crested, translucent green at their peaks, trailing white foam in the wane.
“Poor fishing there today,” observed Eiryana.
“What? Oh.” Indeed, Thera had sensed no hunger.
“Good fishing at the Spinfisher River,” added Eiryana in explanation.
“Ah,” Thera commented. Her thoughts were troubled. “Eiryana, I would like to see Nan’s cairn.”
The eagle veered to fly low over the foaming water’s edge. She settled on a spruce above the site where Thera had found Nan’s body. Below them was the rough stone cairn the Elankeep troop had erected over the bodies of Nan, Innic, and Jon. Thera’s grief thudded heavily through her veins. “Oh, Nan.”
Eiryana shifted on the sitka branch. “Pain, Thera?”
“I miss her so, Eiryana. She died an ugly death.”
Eiryana bent her head to preen under one wing, and withdrew her thoughts as if to give Thera privacy for her own.
“Blessings, Nan,” Thera sent, just as she had always greeted Nan.
“ Blessings is it now, and everyone looking high and low for Herself this day!”
The voice Thera heard in her thoughts was Nan’s, scolding just as she had when she’d found Thera asleep in mother’s garden.
“Nan!” Thera wondered if this were a dream, something her mind produced out of its longing. She could barely articulate her thoughts. “Are you with the Elanraigh? Are you with Innic—are you happy?”
“Oh, aye, Button. I’ve gone where I can have peace from children’s questions.”
Thera felt the sensation of Nan’s arms warm about her, and leaned into it.
“Go on with you now. Do not be lingering here—there be naught here but a grave.
A final caress of her cheek, and Thera was aware of no presence but the wind, and a small itching under Eiryana’s wing.
“Eiryana, we can go now.”
The eagle lifted and sweeping through the spindrift thrown by the wild sea, she rose into the bright sky.
Thera’s heart was too full for sharing thoughts until Eiryana asked in subdued tone, “Thera, you have pain still?”
“Oh. Always I will miss her but she is happy. I feel a great weight is lifted from me.” Realizing this was indeed true, Thera reflected on her good memories of Nan.
Some wing beats later, curiosity framed Eiryana’s tone as she asked, “Button?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
“We’re almost home, Eiryana!” Thera’s heart lifted as she saw the familiar landmark of Lorn a’Lea Point.
No smoke palled the sky, no clash of battle could be heard. With a rush of relief Thera realized how much she had feared she would find Allenholme under attack.
Eiryana whistled, startled, as they swept around the high rocky bluff above Lorn a’Lea Beach.
A huge ship, a ship unlike any Thera had ever seen, was making stately progress toward Allenholme. In the far distance, two of Allenholme’s fishing fleet were underway as if to meet it.
“This can only be the warship from Cythia!” Thera surmised.
Incredulous, she eyed the ship’s mainsail blazing molten-yellow in the bright sun, elaborate red-griffin banners undulated on the wind as the Cythian vessel slowly maneuvered toward Allenholme. Her numerous crews swarmed the deck as a hand of brilliantly dressed nobles lounged near the helm on the high-turreted stern. One noble had long blonde hair, neither braided nor tied, that blew in the wind. Others, soldiers Thera judged by their gear, kept watch or were at ease on the forward deck.
“See!” Eiryana’s tone was dire. “There!”
Bent under the wind and the speed of their approach, sped at least five hands of Memteth ships.
“They must be mad to attack the warship!”
Eiryana’s reply was a mental snort. “Why? This vessel wallows like a fat duck.”
Thera was forced to agree. Though a sight to see with her high turrets, bright sails and shining brass, she was turgid and slow. The Memteth ships approached swiftly, swooping like dark swallows low over the water.
Alarm rang out aboard the Cythian ship. She heard shouted orders and the thud of feet on the deck as the crossbowmen scrambled into position. Behind the archers, the soldiers readied their pikes, preparing to repel boarders.
Thera watched the Memteth ships flare apart, to encircle the bigger warship.
“Eiryana! Those that come from Allenholme—we must warn them if we can.”
Eiryana swept toward the ships flying the Allenholme banner. Shouts carried faintly on the wind.
“They’ve seen the Memteth!” Thera was glad of Eiryana’s eagle vision, many times better than her own.
“That will be my father—see the crimson cloak near the prow of Bride O’Wind.”
Oak Heart was turned to the crew, watching as Mika ep Narin directed them. At midships she recognized the Ttamarini Chief and Captain Dougall. Sun glinted off the helmets of a handful of archers; the rest on board the Bride were simple mariners.
On the second Allenholme ship Thera recognized Captain Lydia and the Guild Master’s assistant. This ship also carried archers as well as crew.
“Elanraigh guard them! They hurry to help the Cythians.”
Eiryana whistled her hunting challenge and swooped low over the heads of those on board the Bride. The Ttamarini chief pointed, gesturing animatedly to Duke Leon.
“The beauty!” cried Dougall, “An omen the Elanraigh is with us, lads!”
“An omen!” The men cried to each other. Mariners on the second Allenholme ship also cheered, their voices faint on the wind.
Teckcharin stared upward, one hand shading his eyes, the other gripping the rail. Thera saw the Ttamarini’s gaze fixed upon her.
“If only father would look again.” Thera found herself willing her father to sense her presence.
Duke Leon turned to the men and pumped his fist into the air as he cheered them on. “A noble sign from the Elanraigh, Araghna-hei!
ArNarone!”
“ArNarone!” The crews roared in response.
“So. Well.” Thera sighed.
“Thera. How could he know? Who among your people even dreams the dreams anymore? The Lord of Allenholme’s gift is given of the sword and yours of the Elanraigh.”
She broke off her circling of the Bride O’Wind.
Chief Teckcharin, though, raised hand to forehead. Eiryana whistled a single, soft note in courteous response, eliciting more cheers and war cries from the Allenholme men.
“No, Thera. He does not know. It is just that the Ttamarini Chief has always honored our kind.”
Memteth surrounded the Cythian warship—arrows were fired by both sides. Cythian foot soldiers threw lances when any Memteth ventured within range, though the Memteth merely darted in and out with no attempts to grapple and board.
“Eiryana, does it seem to you that the Memteth deliberately distract the Cythians from that larger, wider ship?”
They watched this particular Memteth ship maneuver—it was armed with a shielded catapult device that now flung a black, pitch-like substance toward the Cythian vessel. Blotches of this substance adhered to the warship’s sides, dark tendrils of slime oozing toward the waterline.
Eiryana hung in the airstream above the warship’s mast. The Cythians seemed unable to effectively injure the swiftly moving Memteth. As it was, neither side was significantly damaging the other.
Thera remembered the Grace O’Gull as she’d been found after the Memteth attack on it—all the crew killed, their bodies carved and cut. “They toy with the Cythians,” she shared with Eiryana.
Just below them, a Cythian soldier yelled, then swore profusely. Alarmed, they looked to see only that he had been pelted with some of the Memteth’s black substance. Other than his disgust he seemed unhurt.
“Blast ya Krist!” cried the man next to the besmirched Cythian soldier. “I thought at the least you’d been skewered! Blood of a Devil! You smell like bilge bottom.” He shoved at the unfortunate Krist, then wiped his hands on his jerkin. “Ach. Now look. Pfah! You’d think they’d do better than fling their chamber pots at us.”
“Thera. See!” Eiryana meant the rocks of the Lorn a’Lea point. The broad beam of the harried warship was close to running aground. They glanced at the helmsman. “He knows.”
The helmsman yelled desperately…something…to a sailor near him, who ran to the stern hauling aside a young mariner crouched below the turret wall. The sailor’s face blanched and he skidded forward to hail the deck crew.
The blonde-haired nobleman near the stern grabbed the shrinking young mariner by his shirtfront, shouted into his face, and then flung him toward the stair. The youth stumbled, scrambled to his feet with a white-eyed glance over his shoulder and ran to join those mariners attempting to climb the mast. A moment later he fell to the deck with an arrow in his neck.
“Fire! They are lighting fire!” Horror rang in Eiryana’s mind-shout.
“Fire arrows!” Closing in now, the Memteth fired volleys of flaming arrows at the warship, aiming for the thick black globs that clung like huge leeches all over the ship. Memteth raider ships now slewed off to intercept the Allenholme vessels that were almost upon them.
Frantic, they spared a glance, using Eryana’s sharp sight, toward the Allenholme ships—they were preparing to engage the Memteth.
The cries of men angry and afraid were muffled by the roaring of the strange blue flames. Flames now leapt high over the Cythian vessel’s sides. Like a dry wick, the mainsail caught and flames went shooting up the mast. The rush of rising heat under Eiryana’s wings tossed her out of the fire’s reach. The roar of it dinned in her head.
“By the One Tree!” cried Thera, as Eiryana panted in the dry, scorching air. “What is it that makes this fire so fierce and strange?”
Cythians were jumping overboard now. They saw the soldier, Krist, backing from the flames that consumed the ship’s sides. He gathered himself as if to jump, when the eerie blue fire seemed suddenly to lean inward, snapping like wild dogs at prey. The flames howled as, afire, he ran through the wall of blue flames and tumbled, voiceless, toward the water. His companion whose hands and forearms were afire, writhed in agony, his screams shrill as a seabird’s until he, too, struck the water.
Eiryana screamed, as Thera struggled with tearless horror and pity.
Many of the Cythian soldiers now leaping from the doomed ship, weighted by their gear or unable to swim, quickly sank beneath the water. Mariners who clung to floating debris were picked off by Memteth archers. The Memteths’ shouts rang triumphant.
Thera could not tell Eiryana’s anger from her own. The Cythian deaths were terrible—Memteth archers continuing to execute the exhausted burned survivors at will. The flaming ship drifted ever closer to Lorn a’Lea point, and the Elanraigh.
Eiryana whistled in alarm.
The Elanraigh!
Chapter Thirty-Four
“Withdraw!” Thera’s mental shout was full of the panic she felt. Leave the endangered area! Her mind flinched from visions of the Elanraigh tree elementals tormented and dying in the Memteth’s fire.
The Elanraigh rumbled, “With common fires we would, as you say, retreat from the stricken ones and group to form a barrier of our will, united we would smother the flames. This fire, though, also has will—we sense it. It hungers after us. We cannot chance it gaining foothold. We will not withdraw, child. Do not mourn—any of us would willingly die, to save The All that is Elanraigh.”
They keened in frustration. The loss of even one tree elemental was grievous. Thera remembered the forest’s rage when the Memteth had cut down the sitka.
“Eiryana, you hear the Elanraigh—how many elementals will be lost in a battle of this kind?”
“Forest-mind is strong,” Eiryana’s mind-voice expressed hope.
“I know. Remember, I told you of the bodies of the Memteth raiders in the ancient grove—like husks ground between the miller’s stones. They are right, this blue fire has consciousness. I feel awareness of it like the aftermath of nightmare.”
Eiryana whistled mournfully.
“Don’t despair. This thing must not overwhelm us, or distract from our belief in the Powers of Good. Elanraigh bless, I must think of something!”
They circled silently, and then Thera gasped. “Wind!” she sent to the Elanraigh, “You can call the wind. It will come for you.”
“We touch minds, child, with those cousins of the air, but we do not command.”
“Oh? What of Sussara? Just a few like Sussara and we can accomplish this!”Thera flung out a calling to the wind elemental.
“Thera”, warned the Elanraigh, “They are unpredictable!”
“They will come. I feel it.”
“They must come”. Thera kept that thought between she and Eiryana.
Eiryana whistled softly. She swept toward the Allenholme ships. The Bride was grappled to a Memteth raider ship, their crews a heaving mass, fighting hand to hand. Father!
“Eiryana, where is my father? Where is he? The red cloak—do you see it?”
Eiryana whistled, her wings sweeping back. Below them a red-cloaked warrior struggled, clenched in a spine-cracking embrace by the largest Memteth Thera had yet seen.
Leon’s neck arched back—tendons straining, teeth bared. His upturned face was a taut mask as he blindly met her gaze. With a throat-tearing roar, he broke free.
Eiryana’s keen sense of smell warned Thera that the deck surface was beslimed with blood. Oak Heart slipped, falling hard on his hip. The Memteth howled and charged. Leon rolled, grabbed his sword, deflecting the Memteth’s powerful down stroke. Thera’s scream was an eagle’s shrill-pitched call as they watched her father struggle to his feet.
He limps! He cannot keep this up! Oh where are the others?
They saw Dougall, hard-pressed, casting frantic looks aft, striving to hack his way to the Oak Heart’s side. Teckcharin fought with strength and skill but there was something about his footing…
The Ttamarini may never have been at sea before, and look how the deck is tossing!
A throbbing cry burst from the throat of another Memteth on the raider ship. This one grabbed a pike and vaulted the gap between the two ships to join his companion.
Eiryana shrilled her hunting cry, and before Thera could even form the thought, folded her wings and attacked.
Both Memteth wore helmets, but the pike-wielder’s was made only of leather. The eagle’s vision was focused on her chosen prey, though the speed of their plunge would have dizzied Thera’s human perceptions. She attacked from high and behind the pikeman. Oak Heart’s eyes widened in surprise as he saw what came towards him. Eiryana, talons extended, struck hard. Thera felt terrific impact as her hurtling weight snapped the Memteth pikeman’s neck and propelled his body against his companion’s sword.
She heard the cracking of bone and smelled the scent of rising blood.
Thera refused to submit to the lightning-like flash of exaltation that now blinded Eiryana to all other senses. “I will not allow you to be hurt as the young sea hawk was. Eiryana. Arrows! Get out of range of their arrows. Quickly!”
“Eiryana! “Thera’s mind-voice almost sobbed with anxious care.
“I will kill this other one! Leave be!”
“Do you think the Memteth will stand still to watch? Eiryana Sky Weaver is not foolish. Now! “Understanding too well how Eiryana felt, Thera exerted the steady pressure of her will even as Eiryana opened herself like a floodgate to share with her the rapture of this victory.
“No!”
Finally Eiryana obeyed. Snapping her wings, she lifted away. Memteth, crying out in consternation, sent arrows to harass their flight. Eiryana screamed defiance.