Cry of the Falcon (Falcons Saga Book 4)

by Court Ellyn

  “So do I.”

  The queen poured the leaves into the mortar, then set aside the spoon. Looking Carah in the eye, she said, “But you can’t be everywhere at once, and I can’t heal with a touch. We are bound to have disagreements, you and I, because our methods are so different. But rest assured, we will do everything we can to save as many lives as possible.” She handed Carah the mortar. “Mix that until I say stop.”

  Carah mixed until her wrist cramped. Briéllyn filled one bottle after another with the diluted poppy wine, then set her to mixing more. Much more. Carah looked down into a small crate and counted fifty more bottles of poppy wine still to be processed. “We’ll be up all night.”

  “We can sleep in the wagon tomorrow.”

  But Carah was exhausted now. She glanced longingly between a pair of tapestries where her cot beckoned. Briéllyn interpreted her gaze correctly. “If we could mix the medicine in a jostling wagon we would, but the measurements are too precise and the poppy wine too precious to risk a spill. These are the unrewarded labors of the healer, my dear.”

  Carah rubbed her wrist, then picked up the pestle again. She was carefully funneling the medicine into another bottle when she heard voices outside. Many voices. Speaking in Elaran. They rushed past the pavilion, a whisper of feet. She glanced at Briéllyn in alarm, set down the mortar and poked her head through the flaps. Smoke from nearby campfires wafted across her face. Considering how many people camped around the pavilion, the night was eerily quiet. The urgent voices trailed away on her right. Silhouetted against the campfires, a dozen Elarion double-timed it between rows of tents. Not Laniel’s dranithion. These carried dual swords crossed on their backs.

  Briéllyn huddled at Carah’s shoulder. “Go see what it’s about. I see you’re dying to. But hurry back. We’ve much work to do.”

  Carah curtsied, grateful, then sped off after the Regulars. They crossed the heart of the camp, bypassing Da’s blue pavilion, then turned abruptly left. In the glow of the brazier that lit the entrance to the pavilion, Carah saw that Rhian led them. She considered calling for him, demanding answers, but darkness soon swallowed him.

  Perhaps her father would explain. She turned back to the pavilion and saw Alyster emerge. Azhien followed a moment later. What luck! Carah called to her sometime-bodyguard. He and Alyster both turned.

  “I don’t suppose you know where Rhian is leading that band of Regs?” she asked.

  “We do,” said Azhien, “but it is nothing for you to fear.”

  Alyster cleared his throat, loudly. Impatient or uncomfortable in her presence, Carah couldn’t tell.

  “Fear? Me? And why should I fear?” She hoped to tease the facts out of Azhien, but his smile was a lock to which she did not have the key. “Well, then, where are you two bound? More secret missions?”

  Alyster let out a curt sigh. “The War Commander needs eyes, that’s all.”

  Da trusts you to be his eyes? she thought. Interesting.

  Alyster raised his chin in a defiant manner. Had he heard her thoughts, or was her surprise plain on her face?

  “We must go.” Alyster turned toward the dark, but Carah caught his sleeve.

  “Wait. Please. I want you to take this.” She unclasped the delicate chain from around her neck. The silver fairy raised her blue pearl toward the moon.

  Alyster stepped back in refusal. “I winna be indebted—”

  “I know, I know, you said so before, but I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer. This pendent is blessed by the Lady of the Elarion. It’ll protect you. And I’m not giving it to you. It’s very dear to me. I want it back. But I have a feeling that ‘being the War Commander’s eyes’ won’t be teatime in the shade. You’ll need it more than I.”

  Alyster tried to look resentful, but he stood motionless while Carah fastened the chain about his neck. “Only, hide it under your shirt, so Da doesn’t see.”

  He tucked the pendant inside the threadbare wool and stared into the shadows pooled around their feet. For a moment, his mouth worked with words he wanted to say but couldn’t, then he nudged Azhien and said, “Let’s go.”

  The two of them slid off into the darkness. Watching them, Carah ached with the memory of Kethlyn’s livery piled under a tree and a traitor hanging from a branch alongside the road. Uncle Thorn had killed him, and Da had hanged him. Hanged him, and what a statement it made. The breach in her family was wider than she had imagined, wider perhaps than could be mended. But with Alyster, perhaps there was a chance…

  She returned to the queen’s pavilion, dragging a melancholy cloud with her. At the workbench, Briéllyn was hunched over her mortar and pestle, fast asleep. Carah touched her shoulder, though it was improper to do so. “Your Majesty?”

  Briéllyn startled, then rubbed her neck. “I can’t see straight anymore.”

  “We have one more night before battle. Maybe two, who knows? We can finish then.”

  Reluctant, the queen nodded. “You’re right. Unfasten me, and I’ll turn in.” She’d left her handmaid at Ilswythe along with her carriage and the other small luxuries she’d brought from home. Carah didn’t mind filling in; it was quite an honor. Once the queen retreated behind her tapestries, Carah closed the bottles of herbs and stacked the crates of poppy wine. She was about to turn out the lamp when she heard a rustle near the flap. She turned, expecting one of the guards, but there was nothing. The skin along her nape tingled, and too late did she hear Rhian’s scolding in her head: Veil Sight, stupid girl. She blinked into her avedra eyes just as a hand closed over her mouth. Inside the nimbus of light were a pair of gold-flecked gray eyes and a smug grin.

  “Gotcha,” the Elari said. His breath filled her ear. The rapid beat of his heart fluttered between her shoulder blades, and frantic thoughts of Jaedren and all the other missing avedrin sped through her brain. “I have to be clever to capture the likes of you. It was a near thing. They almost caught me, those traitor Regs. But luck’s on my side tonight.” He raised a chain as shiny and pale as polished silver. Carah whimpered and tried to pry his hand away from her mouth, but the Elari only held her tighter, fingers digging into her cheek. “One sound, avedra, and I’ll slaughter everyone close enough to hear you.” She tucked her hands behind her back, fingers gripping the Elari’s leather jerkin tight enough to gouge holes in it. If the Elari wanted to put those chains on her, he’d have to release her first.

  He realized it as well, shifted sideways, and made a wild jab with one of the manacles. Cold teeth bit in the meat of Carah’s forearm. She yelped inside the cage of his hand.

  Her captor’s thoughts raced. Goddess curse you! Feisty bitch. Spell of Arrest. Vil’och eleth—

  No! Carah’s thought shrieked in her skull like a dagger’s point scraping porcelain. She threw her head back against the Elari’s mouth before the spell tumbled out. He grunted in surprise, his thoughts stuttered to a stop, his mind awash in blinding pain, pain, pain. The pressure of his hand let up enough for Carah to raise her face and cry out.

  The Elari’s arm circled her neck in a chokehold, and he dragged her toward the flaps.

  Briéllyn darted from behind her tapestry, tugging a robe over her nightgown. Her eyes searched frantically, and Carah realized the queen couldn’t see her. “A veil! I’m here!” she cried, digging her heals into the ground. The Elari lifted her off the ground in an attempt to drag her through the flaps.

  A pair of guards entered, cutting off their exit. Briéllyn swept up a box from the medicine table and flung its contents wide. A cloud of silverthorn slapped Carah in the face, and her captor too. But it must have revealed something of their shape or location. Briéllyn pointed. “There! Stop them!” The guards lunged. The Elari hurled Carah to the ground and whirled with naked daggers. The men fell aside, wounds gushing red. Enraged, the Elari stooped for the chain that clung to Carah’s skin, his mouth swollen, his nose bleeding. Carah flung out a hand and launched a gout of flame toward his face. He dived aside. The fireball took hold of the silk inst
ead and ate it quickly.

  Briéllyn’s arms encircled Carah, dragged her to her feet. Guards poured through the burning, spreading hole. Lord Rhogan too, and streams of others.

  “The medicine!” the queen cried. “Save the medicine. The rest is nothing.”

  Carah searched the crowd in terror, but the Elari was gone. Pain seared her arm. The manacles pinched deep. Blood bloomed around its shiny teeth. She slapped at the chain and screamed and screamed. She screamed until someone else’s arms, stronger and more familiar, wrapped around her. Da shushed her, led her away from the smoke and flames, but the pain followed her.

  Somewhere else, Uncle Thorn bellowed, “For the Mother’s sake, Laniel, get it off her. Get it off!”

  There was an argument in Elaran. No spell word would open baernavë chains. “Pick the lock then!”

  “With what?”

  Carah didn’t see who produced the lockpick, a delicate device with an ivory handle, but it was Byrn the Blue, of all people, who plied it to the manacle with a confident smirk on his face. Bard, spy, sneak-thief, and Queen Briéllyn likely made use of them all.

  At last, the silvery jaws fell to the ground.

  Uncle Thorn swept up the chain and shook it, shouting, “Find him! Goddess curse you all to hell! Find him, find him!”

  Everyone searched. No one found a trace.

  ~~~~

  26

  The warrior moon turned the highway the color of blood-stained water. Upon it, a line of shadows slipped like shreds of the Abyss back toward Brengarra. Laral heard heavy footfalls crunching in the gravel and saw puffs of dust rise to muddy the moonlight. He relied on his friend’s eyes to count how many ogres approached. Drys splayed the fingers of both hands three times.

  Hiding in the cover of trees beside the highway, all Laral could do was pray that the wind was in their favor, that the horses stayed quiet. He had pushed his companions to ride deep into the night. The highway was broad and level, Forath bright enough to light the way, the horses fresh. But he’d been stupid. His haste to catch up to his family had nearly gotten them caught. He’d ridden ahead, impatient, and Drys hissed a warning. They’d barely had enough time to dive into the trees before the war band rounded the bend.

  “Shimmers,” Drys called it. He had confessed it to Laral alone, earlier in the afternoon when Kalla and the bastard boy had fallen behind by several horse-lengths. “My da could see it too, but he never knew what the shimmers belonged to, just that he was to run from it. His brothers used to kid him about it.”

  “They didn’t inherit the ability?”

  Drys shook his head. “Funny, my da was shorter than all my uncles. They used to kid him about that, too.” He harrumphed, bitter. “My da’s one blue eye, just like a cur, and he passed it to me.”

  “Forgive me, my friend,” Laral said, “but that blue eye, as you call it, will come in handy. I’m grateful for it, even if you aren’t.”

  Once the war band trudged past, Laral and his companions eased back onto the highway. This time, Drys rode point. Night soon began to fade from the horizon. The gray half-light revealed open fields stretching in every direction, empty and silent. The white stripe of the highway intruded, cutting the fields into three uneven pie-shaped wedges: the Crossroads. One arm of the road meandered northwest for Athmar; the eastern arm led to Ulmarr and Nathrachan. Drys stopped his horse on a rise and carefully examined the road in each direction, as well as the town clustered at the intersection.

  “We should’ve gone around,” Laral said, distrusting the inns and taverns. Too late now. They could divert their path across one of the fields, but eyes on a roof could spot them for miles over flat farmland like this.

  “Aye,” Drys said. “I hoped we’d pass the Crossroads while it was still dark.”

  “Don’t ogres see in the dark?”

  “Hell, I don’t know.”

  Kalla caught up. “Do you see any people?” Neither sound nor movement came from the shops or houses.

  “No ogres either,” Drys said.

  “You’re certain?” Laral asked.

  “You’re doubting me now?”

  Laral shrugged, apologetic.

  “I could use a bite to eat,” said Tarsyn cheerily. “If those shops are abandoned, we could add to our supplies.” His voice trailed off as he caught Laral leveling a stern eye on him. “But whatever you think best, m’ lord.”

  For several dark miles, Laral had forgotten about the boy. Tarsyn of Cayndale had kept his distance, riding far to the rear most of the night. Showing some sense, he’d taken off the useless brocade coat and tucked it under his saddle. One of the satin bows that hitched his boots to his belt had slipped its knot and flapped in the morning breeze.

  “At least we’ll be able to look for a trail now,” Kalla said. She rode along the edge of the highway, inspecting the ditches and hedgerows. If the thick grass had been crushed under trains of captives, the wind had fluffed it up again. Kalla pulled a tangle of red hair from the hedgerow. Too fine to belong to a cow’s tail.

  “One human footprint,” Drys muttered. “Wouldn’t that be nice? But not a one.”

  “Let us worry about finding the trail,” Laral said. “Keep your eyes peeled for ogres, will you?”

  Tarsyn leaned close to Kalla. “How can Lord Zeldanor see them?”

  “Don’t ask,” she replied.

  Their search led them into town. Broken windows, burned cottages, overturned wagons hinted at the struggle that came with abducting a town’s worth of people. Blood stained the covered porch in front of a baker’s shop and the stable yard at the inn, but there were no bodies.

  Tarsyn dismounted to let his pretty pony drink the stale water lingering in the bottom of a trough.

  “We’re not stopping,” Laral called.

  The boy ignored him and ducked through a shattered window. When he emerged from the shop, he carried several bottles of wine under his arms. He inspected the labels, nodded. “Lady Kalla!” He tossed a bottle; she caught it and smiled appreciatively.

  “Lord Zeldanor?”

  Drys scowled. “Bear the weight of luxuries yourself, boy.”

  Tarsyn shrugged and shoved the bottles into his saddlebag. He tugged his pony off the water and led him by the reins so he could peek into one shop after another. He bypassed some, darted into others, emerged with new treasures like jars of pickled eggs, apricot marmalade, and foot powder.

  “If you find any soap …,” Kalla called.

  Laral groaned and tucked heel to flank. His big chestnut gelding trotted past the last of the cottages and out into the fields. Bushel-sized baskets full of withered cabbages were stacked as high as the gelding’s shoulder. Others, half-full, hunched among the rows of overgrown plants. An abandoned sickle, an overturned basket, a single glove. It was as if the people had simply vanished.

  Drys galloped after his friend. “Stupid kid,” he groused once he caught up. “His packs’ll be so full his pony might decide to kick him in the head. And if those bottles and jars go to clanking…”

  Laral didn’t hear the rest. He reined in and stared at the pile of bones. On the south side of the highway, among cabbages that had been crushed by the passing of many feet, someone had stacked femurs, ribs, vertebrae, all of them human. The skulls told him that.

  “Mother’s mercy,” Drys breathed.

  Ravens, maybe dogs, had been at the remains. Many of the bones were scattered far into the pasture, like dice tossed carelessly onto a table. Laral didn’t have to look far to make sense of the discovery. Firepits lined both sides of the road. Though he stood in the stirrups and craned his neck, he couldn’t see how far the campsite stretched. On leaden legs, he dismounted and knelt beside the bones, hoping for any sign that told him these did not belong to his loved ones. But one skull looked like all the rest. An accidental nudge toppled the pile. A skull small enough to belong to a child rolled to a stop at Laral’s toes. Bits of flesh clung to a cheekbone in dry, black scraps. The teeth had been plu
cked out. Twenty years ago, Thorn Kingshield had returned out of the blue sitting a black horse that was ornamented with a necklace of ogre tusks. Laral wondered if an ogre wore this child’s teeth in a similar fashion. Then he doubled over and retched.

  Collapsing back on his haunches, he wiped the cold sweat from his face and found that Kalla and Tarsyn had caught up. They stared in horror, their mouths open. The boy bailed from the saddle and ran from one pile of bones to the next, panicked breath clawing at his throat. “Clothes!” he cried and hit his knees and dug through the castoff garments like a dog through soil. “What were they wearing? My lord! What were they wearing?”

  Kalla stopped him with a firm grip to his arm. “He can’t know that.”

  Tarsyn stood, and Laral saw him shaking, even from several yards away. “It’s true,” the young man cried. “They eat them. That’s what this is, isn’t it! Those … things … stopped here and ate them!”

  “Not all of them,” Kalla said. “The ogres are herding hundreds of people. This isn’t all of them.”

  “But it could be—”

  “No,” Laral snapped and dragged himself to his feet. “We will not entertain thoughts about what could be. We keep going.”

  Tarsyn glanced down as if he was ashamed of himself, then with a fierce determination the fear melted from his face. His trembling stopped, and resolve knotted his jaw.

  Laral nodded. “Mount up. We’ll ride a little farther, then find a place to rest.” His horse was happily grazing in the ditch when Laral retrieved the reins. He started to step into the stirrup, but over the saddle he saw Drys kneeling beside another pile of clothes. His friend met his eye, then glanced away fast. Acting nonchalant, Drys started for his horse. One of his hands hid a bundle. With an arm like an iron bar, Laral intercepted his friend. “What is it?”

  “Nothing,” Drys replied, too casual.

  Laral caught his wrist and pried the bundle from his fist.

  “It’s too big to belong to Andy,” Drys blurted, even before Laral unfurled the item.