Cry of the Falcon (Falcons Saga Book 4)

by Court Ellyn

  “M-meditate? Are you joking?”

  “Not at all. How can you manipulate the elements, if you don’t know them?”

  “I know what earth is, Uncle Thorn.”

  “Do you? Then this won’t take long. I’ll be back shortly. Don’t move from that bench. And don’t think about anything except what lies in your hand.”

  Carah’s muttered curses pursued him as he walked back to the keep. He chuckled to himself. More than his niece actually learning anything, he merely wondered if she’d stay put and try. She could do with a lesson in self-control before she started throwing flames around. On the other hand, she might seek him out and toss the dirt in his face. In the meantime, he had other lessons to attend to. Saffron was keeping Aerdria’s spell safe from prying eyes, and Thorn hadn’t decided if he wanted to risk opening a hole to the Abyss inside Ilswythe’s walls. Unless he rode beyond the camps where any sentry or highlander might see, he didn’t have much choice.

  ~~~~

  Carah wondered what her uncle would’ve put into her hand if she’d blurted fire instead. She supposed he had a point, even if it irked her to admit it. As a lady, she wasn’t in the habit of getting her hands muddy or lighting her own fires. Strolling in the rain or inviting the wind to blow through her hair was more like to ruin a carefully pinned coiffure.

  She opened her hand and peeked at the grimy contents of her lesson. A grimace crawled over her face, but she smoothed it away. “What’s this compared to healing battle wounds?” she asked herself. Bits of twig, gravel from the path, black flecks of charcoal were mixed into the rich loam her grandmother had cultivated for thirty-some years. But it was still just a handful of dirt. How long must she stare at it? She peered up at the library windows, sure she’d find her uncle laughing at her, but the glass was dark and empty. Right. He was serious then. She pulled out the twigs that didn’t seem to belong and tossed them aside, and the charcoal. She started to toss the gravel as well, but reconsidered. Stone was earth. Beneath the loam lay bedrock, the foundation every living thing needed to stand straight and walk with confidence. Among the angular bits of gray gravel lay a different stone. A smooth round yellow pebble. She raised it to the sunlight and found it transparent, like a drop of honey. It must’ve come from the river, but how had it found its way uphill and into the garden? A flood, a boot, a wheelbarrow loaded with new loam for the beds? Had it always been here, churned up after eons by the spade? She returned it to her palm. Beside it lay a brown, broken leaf. The fragment was too small for her identify which plant it had come from. Maybe one of the rose bushes, or the andyr tree’s last crop of shade. Or maybe it had blown here from across the Silver Mountains or the far south of Fiera. Who was to say how far a leaf traveled before it snared under a hedgerow and rotted to enrich the earth? Under the leaf, she found half a beetle’s shell. She remembered the rites said over the dead at their burnings. Etivva blessed the ashes as they rose, that they might return to earth and do some good. Even her own body would one day mix with the soil. Turning her hand toward the sunlight to seek further treasures, she saw glinting flecks of sand or crystal or stardust.

  All things connected. All things contributing, affecting everything else.

  Sometime later, she didn’t know how long, she heard the crunch of gravel under approaching feet. In one hand she rolled the grains of earth between thumb and forefinger, letting them sift away; in the other she pinched the yellow pebble, focusing on its seeming solidity. She frowned at the intrusion. Too soon. The earth still had much to tell her.

  “Love?” her uncle asked. She opened her eyes and found him gazing quizzically at her.

  She raised the yellow pebble to show him. “It’s confident that it can’t be broken. But that’s because it doesn’t remember when it used to be bigger.”

  He bit away a grin.

  She lowered her prize, hurt. “Did I do it wrong?”

  “On the contrary. You will surpass me yet. You can put that back now.”

  Carah tilted her hand and watched the earth, dry now from being handled for so long, slowly cascade into the flowerbed. The yellow pebble she kept, a small reminder tucked into her pocket.

  Atop the garden wall, in the very turret where Rhian had shown her how to see and hear, Carah meditated on the wind. She understood the significance of the exercise now and was already deep in concentration when her uncle departed. She hardly noticed his steps receding. Nor did she pay attention to the clatter and voices of the soldiers encamped on the other side of the wall. With her eyes closed she unbound her hair and let the wind have its way. Breezes that appeared calm as they ruffled across the tops of the meadow grass barreled up the curtain wall with enough force to chafe her skin and knock her off balance. She peered through strands of tangled hair to watch the wind sculpt the clouds. In early afternoon, they thickened, and a brief shower swept over her. The soldiers below scrambled into the shelter of their tents, but Carah raised her face to the rain, as she had seen Rhian do, and took the opportunity to observe how air and water collaborated.

  She was soaked to the skin when Thorn returned. “Sorry, love,” he said, wrapping a blanket about her shoulders. “I didn’t realize.”

  “No matter.” Her teeth chattered. When she looked at him, she saw exhaustion weighting his face. “Tired of our game already?”

  “No, my own lessons aren’t going so well. A good time to break for lunch, methinks.”

  Because of the raid Drys had led against the ogre foragers, lunch was more than whole wheat broiled in lard. Thorn and Carah carried their trays upstairs to one of the family rooms. Things were so upside-down lately that neither thought it out of the ordinary that they should deliver their own meals. “Uncle Thorn?” Carah asked, prying apart the wedges of an orange.

  “Hmm?” He thoughts distracted him; he’d barely touched the bread and roast goose on his plate. On occasion he mumbled to himself.

  “Is this how you learned about the elements?”

  “Hmm? No. Zellel had neither patience nor love for me. He showed me how to make a rainbow and let me puzzle out the rest.”

  “You can make a rainbow? Why haven’t you shown me?”

  “If we get through today without killing each other, I’ll make you a rainbow.” He smiled in reverie. “It always delights the little ones. Yris loved it.”

  “Yris, our steward?” Carah missed the woman’s efficiency. Under her strict eye and rigorous routine, nothing went amiss. What was such a person like as a child? Carah had never thought to imagine such a thing.

  “Bath in the shade…” muttered Thorn.

  “A what?”

  “Later. Eat.”

  She savored half the orange and set the rest aside for later. Luxuries like oranges shouldn’t be squandered. “What lessons are you working on?”

  “When it’s time for you to know, I’ll tell you.”

  “Hnh. Did you tell Rhian?”

  “Not yet.”

  So she and Rhian were distrusted equally. At least that was something.

  Becoming chilled in the rain was a good reason to build up the hearth and meditate on the nature of fire. “Now listen,” Thorn cautioned. “I’ll be in my rooms next door. Don’t lose yourself to the fire so much that you try to touch it. I’d rather you keep your fingers.”

  Carah thought he was merely being overprotective until she started watching the flames curl around the logs. Who hasn’t been mesmerized by the hypnotic dance of fire? She had fallen asleep many a time watching it. This time was different. She watched the fire with the intent of learning its essence, finding its heart, and it soon writhed and breathed like a living thing. It cavorted with red banners in its hands, its wild mane twisting around its bright face. “A whisper,” she muttered. “Destroy the world.”

  The fire hissed back.

  How could Uncle Thorn hold such a creature and not be burned? She reached, reached. A spark took flight and bit her hand. She yelped and drew back, shook the spell from her head and blinked
the dry heat from her eyes. How long had she been staring at the dance? It had dwindled to dull red and purple flames. Late afternoon sunlight pooled below the windows. Her knees ached from sitting on them; her feet were numb. Using a chair, she hoisted herself up and stomped the blood back into them.

  Better go find her uncle and risk his wrath instead of losing herself to the fire again. She leaned an ear against his chamber door. An irate round of curses rewarded her. Saffron’s high-pitched twitter followed. “I can’t!” Thorn bellowed. “It almost escaped me!”

  “You’re trying too hard,” the fairy said. “You’re afraid of it, that’s what.”

  More curses. A clatter like a chair overturning.

  Carah was backing slowly from the door when it swung wide and her uncle barreled into her. “What are you doing here?” he demanded.

  She raised her hands between them. “You were right about the fire. All too easily it can be the one to take control.”

  Thorn let out a snarling sigh. His anger deflated.

  Carah cleared her throat. “Maybe we should move on to water.”

  The fountain, Thorn said, wouldn’t do. The water there was contained and cycled over and over, like breath breathed from the inside of a waxed burlap bag. He alerted Rhian to keep watch atop the wall, grabbed Azhien from the Elaran camps, and led his niece to the banks of the Avidan. Carah knew better than to tell her uncle to relax, even if she was confident that the ogres didn’t dare attack Ilswythe again so soon. The Elarion had set up camp near the river crossing, ever watchful; Laniel had placed sentries amid the highway south of the burned town; Regs ranged the meadows about the fortress, dual swords on their backs; dranithion crouched atop the keep and in each of the towers.

  It was the cleanup effort, not the threat of danger, that threatened to distract Carah. Queen Briéllyn’s infantry had arrived in the night, causing the camps to grow to the size of a proper town. Because they missed the fighting, the Leanians were given the unenviable task of clearing away the corpses and charred remains of the ogres. The dwarves took care of their own, somberly building pyres for their dead in the burning yard. The recruits from Blue Mountain and Zeldanor were having as much fun digging ditches to channel human sewage. What had once been a lush green hillside abutting the stone walls had become a trampled mound of mud. Home might never look—or smell—the same again.

  “I’ve asked Lady Ulna to leave the craters on the hillside,” Thorn said.

  “As a reminder?” Even if the grass grew back, Carah didn’t like the idea of the approach to Ilswythe being forever marred by her uncle’s artillery.

  “No, for you.”

  “Me? What do you expect me to do about it? You blasted those holes. You grab the shovel.”

  “Tsk, tsk. Still not thinking like an avedra. Love, you reminded a tree how to live. Do you really think you’ll need a shovel to fill in a few craters?”

  She replied with an uncertain smile.

  “Right. Water,” he said and gestured at the river but gave no instruction.

  Carah followed the bank away from the ford and the noise of the camps, past the toppled wheel of the mill, and on toward the tumbling white cataracts. The late spring sun bore down on her back and heated the crown of her head. When the roar of the water drowned out most of the voices, when the scent of sun-warmed reeds and damp earth rose into her nose, Carah pulled off her riding boots, rolled up her pant legs and waded into the crisp, swift current. How many years ago had she followed Kethlyn to this spot? He meant to fish for trout, but Carah’s splashing ruined his efforts. With a pang of regret, she remembered thinking it funny when he got angry and stormed back the castle.

  She closed her eyes and concentrated on the feel of water rushing, eddying around her calves. From afar she had seen Rhian raise the river in a great wall of ice. Son of the Sea. If he was following Thorn’s orders, he was watching her even now. Her eyes cracked open. A few heads bobbed past the crenels. She couldn’t tell which might be him. The taste of the sea was in his skin…

  Right. Water. Meditate. Bright water flowing down from mountain snows. Rich water bubbling up from the earth. Like a vein, the river coursed, leaving life throbbing behind it. Flesh and blood and bone, all one vital organism and down deep, deep down inside, the heart. Carah gasped. “Uncle Thorn!”

  He was crouching on the bank, eyes far away, mouth muttering softly as he strategized a different approach to his own enigmatic lessons. At her outburst he glanced up.

  “Fire!”

  He frowned. “Water. You’re supposed to be focusing on water.”

  “No, we’re floating on a sea of fire.”

  His eyebrow peaked. He didn’t believe her.

  “Don’t you feel it?” She waded toward him and knelt on the bank, and together they pressed their hands to the earth.

  Thorn bowed his head, the tension of concentration knotting his brow, then after a while he gasped and his eyes sprang open.

  “I’m right, aren’t I?” asked Carah. “There is fire below us.”

  “So far below that I can barely detect it, but it’s … everywhere.”

  “Everything connected. Energies of earth and fire, air and water. If I can move one, I can move them all.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself. They may all be connected, but they all move differently. You’ll soon see what I mean.”

  “Tonight?” she asked eagerly.

  “Tomorrow.” He dusted off his hands, grinning at her. “You’ve taught me enough for one day.”

  ~~~~

  Atop the wall, Rhian tried to keep his eyes trained on the meadows and the foothills dark with pine forest. But his attention strayed. Carah drifted through the sun-bright river, a stranger to him. During the race back to Ilswythe, avoiding her had been easy. He’d scouted with Laniel, and around a campfire he had made plans of attack with the warriors. All the while, Carah tended to her horse, turned the meat on the spit, mastered the art of ignoring him in return. She had neither looked at him nor spoken to him nor even approached him with Silent Speech since the morning they departed Linndun. They may have poured water on a bonfire, but embers smoldered beneath the ashes, and Carah was wise to forbid contact between them.

  Rhian thought he possessed greater self-control than this. Since he began his apprenticeship, he had gained mastery over his emotions, but as ever, Carah proved how shaky his mastery was. Last night, when the keep had grown quiet with sleep, he found himself standing outside her door, a hand on the doorknob. He was sick with wondering: did the want of him keep her awake, too? Did he haunt her dreams as she haunted his? Had she really and truly discarded him so easily, like any piece of trash beyond its usefulness?

  Sight of Zephyr’s white glow traipsing toward him across the top of a crenel was as effective as a bucket of ice water dumped on his head. The fairy had that look in her eye. She knew what he’d been thinking.

  “It feels like cutting out my lung or lopping off my right hand,” he said. “But what would you know about it?”

  “Human love?” asked the fairy. “Nothing. But I’m as old as the wind. I carry loss with me, just as you do, my pearl.”

  “Last night I … I decided. When this is all over, I can’t go back to Linndun and be at peace there. Because of her. There’s only one place I know where she’s left no shadow. I owe Sea Bones a new boat anyway, and I’ve not seen my mother in four years.” Aye, the quiet, rotting solitude of Sandy Cape seemed like a good place to get over a girl. He’d fled because the townspeople meant to hang him. He wondered, would they remember their fear of him? Would they recognize him at all?

  “You will do as you must, my pearl.” The sadness in Zephyr’s voice was the sound of stars quietly fading.

  Rhian perked up. Far away, beyond the neglected pea fields, against the flow of hills to the southeast, an azeth flared. It neither advanced nor retreated, nor did it meander like a cottar going about his business. The sun and moons may glide imperceptibly across the sky, but this azeth re
mained more still than both. “There it is again,” he told Zephyr. He’d seen it during the ride home as well, when Dathiel’s small army stopped for a few hours’ rest. It was too bright to belong to anyone other than an Elari. Must be one of Lothiar’s scouts. Nothing else accounted for the azeth’s persistence.

  He called to the dranithi on watch.

  From the nearest tower the Elari replied, “Nihen uhv ië.” Eyes on it.

  That’s when Rhian saw the White Falcon approaching. He ambled along the wall, hands tucked into his pockets, shoulders slouching inside a plain leather jerkin. Rather unkingly, Rhian thought. Lieutenant Rance and Lord Brengarra followed along behind, debating about something and occasionally peering through the crenels at the soldiers training below. The wind hurtling up the walls tossed around shouts and the thump of steel on wood. Lady Maeret’s shrieks, too, as she galloped for the tilt. Her morning star smashed a wooden shield to splinters.

  Maybe the king would walk on past, and Rhian could pretend he hadn’t noticed him. But Arryk stopped at the very next crenel.

  Should Rhian bow? Say something? Hell, he wasn’t sure which style to use. He didn’t even know if it was proper to look the king in the eye or not. On the Islands, it was worth time in prison if a commoner looked Prince Ka’ov in the eye.

  “Your feats on the field yesterday were impressive,” Arryk said. He stood well back from the battlements, but craned his neck to see Lady Maeret make another charge at the tilt.

  Rhian cleared his throat. “Thank you. Sire.”

  Arryk didn’t seem to notice that Rhian had tacked on a style at random, hoping it was the correct one. Or maybe he simply didn’t care. “I’ve never been fond of heights.” Rhian caught a screaming glimpse of why. Get up, get up!