Cry of the Falcon (Falcons Saga Book 4)

by Court Ellyn

  Finally Kelyn understood the nature of his inexplicable fear.

  People were listening, hoping for something juicy. “You know Thorn. I’m sure he’s just throwing a tantrum.”

  Etivva’s concerns were not abated. “Please, it is … how do I describe it? … cold up there.”

  The signs added up: his brother’s pale face, the blinding headaches, the gloves he wore at all hours, the secret plan he’d refused to divulge.

  Kelyn raised an untroubled smile to the room, beckoned Ruthan and asked, “Can you bring your keys, please?”

  Once he had left the curious eyes behind, Kelyn gave in to panic and ran up the stairs. He hammered on his brother’s door. Silence answered.

  Quick steps announced Ruthan’s arrival. Etivva limped alongside her, her wooden foot clicking a note of alarm. Keys jingled, and Ruthan opened the door. A gust of frigid air struck Kelyn in the face. A fine layer of frost sparkled on broken glass, an overturned chair. Thorn lay crumpled on the floor.

  “Goddess’ mercy, he’s blue!” Etivva cried.

  At the same instant, Kelyn thought, He’s dead. My brother is dead. But that didn’t ring true deep inside him. He dived to his knees at Thorn’s side. His skin was pale as snow and cold to the touch, his eyelids and lips almost purple, his fingers curled into claws, and they were black with frostbite. “Ah, fool, what have you done to yourself?” Kelyn rubbed his brother’s hands, patted his cheek roughly. “Thorn? Kieryn, wake up. C’mon now.”

  Etivva leaned close, giving advice, muttering prayers. Ruthan tore a blanket off the bed and bundled it around Thorn’s shoulders.

  A hard crease of a frown developed on his brow. His eyes snapped open. Frost limned his lashes, melted fast. “Did it get out?” he blurted. His voice cracked like ice melting. “Is it loose?”

  Kelyn released a breath in relief. “Is what loose?”

  Thorn’s eyes searched wildly. “The rágazeth.”

  Ah, nightmares. Kelyn humored him, gave the room a cursory glance. “I don’t think so. Etivva build a fire.” Being high summer, there wasn’t much wood in the bin. She rifled through a desk drawer, brought out a ream of paper and began wadding sheets and tossing them into the hearth. Ruthan dug through the sideboard, popped open a bottle of brandy.

  Kelyn pried Thorn up by the shoulders.

  He began to shiver violently. His teeth knocked together. “S-s-stupid. I was too ex-c-cited. I got careless. It was waiting for m-me. I should’ve expected…”

  “Stop talking, drink this.” Kelyn pushed the glass of brandy into Thorn’s hand, helped him raise it to his mouth and hold it steady. As soon as the brandy was gone, Thorn prattled on. “If a pinhole of d-d-darkness could be seen on our side, a pinhole of light must’ve shined like a b-beacon on the other. Of course it knew where to find me.” Color seeped back into his face.

  Kelyn was getting worried now. Maybe Thorn wasn’t speaking of nightmares. “But you destroyed the rágazeth, at Brengarra.”

  “No, no, it’s all one consciousness. All one non-thing.” Thorn rubbed his hands together, wincing. “No way to destroy it entirely unless one destroys the Abyss itself. It tried to escape. I pushed it back in.” He raised one hand and marveled at the meat of his palm; it was swollen red with cold.

  “Hold it to the heat.” Kelyn helped him scoot closer to the hearth; a small blaze crackled.

  Voices in the hall announced the arrival of curious folk, Carah’s most strident of all. Kelyn asked Etivva to go out to them and alleviate their fears. “Tell them he’s ill but he’ll be fine, nothing else. Ruthan, will you send for hot soup? That should do the trick.” When the ladies were gone, Kelyn took the opportunity to look around the sitting room, at the bottles and jug filled with liquid blacker than pitch. “What is all this?” He reached for a frosted bottle.

  “Don’t touch it!”

  Kelyn withdrew his hand. “You’re going to tell me everything. No more secrets.”

  Thorn tucked his hands inside the blanket, shuddering hard enough to rattle bones, and glanced from one shadowy corner to the next. “You’re sure it didn’t get out?”

  “I’m sure. What’s in the bottles?”

  With a groan Thorn gave in. “It’s oil infused with the Abyss. It’s meant to undo what Uthaya did thousands of years ago.”

  “The Abyss … literally? Who’s Uthaya?”

  “An avedra. I told you about her, didn’t I? She was such a novelty that the Elarion didn’t know what to do with her. She learned everything on her own. She understood the life force in every living thing, and she was able to manipulate it. She created the ogres, Kelyn. She captured toads, salamanders, water dragons, lizards, and used avë to change their very essence, their physical form, their consciousness. And if an avedra could do all that, then an avedra can undo it. But I don’t know if this is the way. The oil might do nothing—”

  Kelyn knelt beside his brother, made him look at him. “Wait, you’re telling me you have risked your life over something that might not even work?”

  “Sha’hadýn has agreed to capture test subjects. Let her secure them in the dungeon … no one needs to know.”

  Kelyn grabbed a fistful of blue robe and shook Thorn angrily. “Have you forgotten we’re to leave for Bexby in the morning? We can’t win this war without you. You can’t afford to be careless.”

  Thorn grimaced and nodded. “Soon as I get warm I’ll be fine.”

  “No. Do you hear me? No. You’re staying here.”

  “Kelyn—”

  “No! Rhian is going. He’ll suffice. You’re to stay here and recover. And stop this foolishness.”

  “I can’t.” How exhausted, how dogged he sounded.

  Kelyn pointed at the ominous glass jug. “You have enough. Test it before you risk making more.”

  Thorn waved a black-tipped hand. “All right, all right.” He cast Kelyn a confused frown. “Rhian is going? You’re sure?”

  Worried that the cold had damaged Thorn’s memory, Kelyn nodded slowly. “Yes, Rhian is going. We’ll be fine.”

  ~~~~

  45

  Laral woke to a wrenching cough. Someone had torn out his lung, he was sure of it. Scorching pain raked through his chest, pounded in his skull. He tasted blood on his breath. The coughing fit spent, he sagged back, back, through a liquid blackness, and something soft cushioned his head. He opened his eyes expecting to see an ogre’s gloating face looming over him, but there was only the canvas of a tent, rippling in a soft wind. Daryon sat cross-legged beside him, his fingers laced under his chin, his eyelids heavy. The coughing had woken him, too. “Healing isn’t my strong suit,” he said. “You’ll have scars. Clearing the lung was the real problem. I won’t go into details, but it was a delight I’ll never forget.”

  Too many words. They lunged at Laral through a fog. For a time he lay listening to the crackle of a campfire, the whisper of feet, the sigh of wind in pines, and far away, a wolf howling. Night sounds. Daryon’s hand fluttered about Laral’s face, feeling for fever, maybe tracing designs like the dwarven healers. “Did I die?” he croaked.

  “Not quite. If you had, you’d be beyond help, now, wouldn’t you?”

  Shows what you know. “Carah, she…”

  “Who?”

  Laral didn’t have the strength to explain. If Daryon was the avedra he claimed to be, he could glean the information for himself.

  The tent flap shuffled aside. “I thought I heard voices,” said Tarsyn. He crouched down opposite Daryon, conducted an inspection. Laral grimaced. He felt like a specimen.

  “How do you feel, m’ lord?”

  “Like I’ve been stabbed in the chest. How are you, lad?” Tarsyn sported a gash on his cheekbone and a bruised eye. Were he and Drys fighting again? Or was this an ogre’s handiwork?

  “Just sore. It’s been two days.”

  Damn. Laral tried to prop himself on an elbow. Daryon pulled the arm from under him. “Lie still. You’ll undo everything.”

  “D
id you find them?” Laral asked. Breath still failed him. His voice had little substance. “Are they here?” He didn’t care what condition he was in, he wanted to see Wren.

  Tarsyn’s fingers drummed on his knees. He exchanged a glance with Daryon, then dived in. “They weren’t in the mine. We searched every inch of it.”

  Not there … that meant … the piles of bones and discarded clothing … his family must be among them after all. Why, then, did Tarsyn look so pleased?

  “Deep down we found where the captives were stowed,” he added. “Only a hundred or so still lived.” Only a hundred, when how many thousand had been taken from every town between Brynduvh and the mountains? “They told us that Lady Bethyn, Lesha, and Andy had escaped. During the uprising. Can you believe it?”

  The ogre—Lohg, he’d called himself—he had told Laral the truth? “But where did they go?”

  “I’ve deployed trackers,” Daryon said. “It won’t be difficult to find human prints where none belong.”

  The next morning, No’ak paid him a visit. The old dwarf’s face was as gray as stone, his shoulders slumped as if he were ill. Laral looked for signs that he’d been wounded but found none. “Here, Drys said this is yours.” He extended Guardian, diamond-studded hilt first.

  A knot uncoiled in Laral’s belly as he took the dagger and clutched it to his chest. He’d reclaimed something at last, even if it was only a bit of steel. “In that ogre’s fist, it looked like a paring knife.”

  No’ak’s smile was brittle.

  Laral pushed himself up; Daryon wasn’t around to stop him. “Is there bad news?”

  The dwarf knelt heavily, as if he carried boulders on his back. “I lost four of my cousins. Ralto, Fidus, Ror. And Vosti. The donkeys are restless without him. All told, nearly a hundred Elarion, too. You’ll smell the smoke from their pyres today.”

  So high a cost to rescue a handful of captives. And humans, at that. How could Laral ever repay the debt?

  “But we got all the slavers,” No’ak added. “Not a single one of those bastards escaped. The battle was a long time coming. Felt good.”

  “Where are the people you found in the mine?”

  No’ak gestured at the world outside the tent. “Camped under the trees. Starved for food and rest, they are. Some, I fear, are too ill to make it. But the Elarion are tending to them. They have their way. Your people might pull through yet. Daryon pledged to dispatch a company of his own to escort them home, and my kin will see them as far as Szhehault. But it will be some days before they’re able to travel.” No’ak slapped his knees, brightened a bit. “After the uprising, Screamface and his ilk musta realized they slaughtered too many of their miners and raided a highland village for more slaves. They were on their way back the morning we attacked.”

  “We were able to save more, then.”

  No’ak nodded. “Take comfort where it comes, eh?”

  Daryon ordered Laral to remain in the tent for two days, preferably lying still. In truth, Laral hadn’t the strength to argue about it. Knowing that his family had escaped the ogres’ clutches helped him rest easier. Secretly he feared they would only be captured again. Or that they suffered in the cold, exposed to rain and wolves on empty bellies.

  Shadows populated his nightmares, shadows slipping out of reach, no matter how loudly he called for them.

  On the evening of the second day, Drys and Tarsyn helped Laral to his feet, held him steady until his head stopped spinning, then he hobbled around the hilltop where the tent overlooked the rest of the camp. The Elarion had chosen a hollow between two shoulders of a mountain. Water babbled somewhere nearby, and the pine trees hemmed in close and thick. The people had proven resourceful. A settlement of pine boughs had bloomed under the trees.

  Kalla climbed the hill and offered Laral a small bouquet of flaxenmane. He rewarded her with a quizzical frown. “From one of the captives,” she explained. “She said she’s the wife of the cobbler in Brengarra Town. Wanted to give them to you herself, but we asked her to wait till you were stronger. Your people are worried about you.”

  “How many are from Brengarra?”

  “About a quarter. They claim their liege lord is the bravest and most faithful, for he alone cared enough to come find them. I told them I can’t argue. So prepare yourself, you may inherit the lot.”

  “Pff, nonsense.”

  The Elarion brought Laral and his companions a leg of wild goat, and Tarsyn contributed two grouse that he’d snared in the underbrush. Laral was hungry enough to eat the feast all by himself. He was enjoying the rich, dark fowl when he thought to ask, “Where is Daryon?”

  His three companions exchanged a taut silence. Drys cleared his throat and said, “About noon, his scouts returned. He asked us not to tell you until he checked into their report himself.”

  “What was their report?”

  “Dunno. Honest. I don’t speak Elaran, do I?”

  It wasn’t until the next morning that Daryon emerged from the pine forest. Laral was scrubbing himself raw in the icy waters of the stream. How many baths would it take to cleanse away the reek of ogre? His beard, too, had grown into a thicket; he shaved with Guardian’s razor edge and felt human again.

  No’ak was sunning himself on a rock nearby, smoking his pipe. “There, lad!” He jabbed the pipe in Daryon’s direction. The avedra’s armor flashed like a ray of sunlight, a flame in which he did not burn. The iron dragon clanked beside him.

  Laral dressed in a hurry, careful to guard flesh stitched without thread, and climbed the hill to meet Daryon outside the tent.

  “They’re in Sýnnedan,” the avedra announced.

  “What’s Sýnnedan?”

  No’ak explained, “We call it Smedrhault. Forge Mountain to you. Ersteng is the name of her city. It lies a day’s journey west.”

  “Your woman chose a difficult path,” Daryon added, “out of sight from the roads.” How could he remain so calm? He stacked firewood in the ring of stones, which meant he intended to eat, rest, delay. “Smart move, really, considering how active the war bands are these days. Then either she or your daughter diverted onto the road, at a dead run. That’s where my scouts found the tracks of dwarves, headed south. Nearly two score. Miners or soldiers, who’s to say? But they were willing to help, for they turned around and took your family with them, straight back to Ersteng.”

  “You saw them?” Laral asked.

  “Your daughter, aye. She looked well, from a falcon’s viewpoint. Your wife and son must’ve been inside.”

  After so much dread, so many setbacks, Laral found the news hard to absorb. Surely his search would continue forever. “I’ll believe it when I see them with my own eyes.”

  “We’ll leave in the morning. No arguments.”

  Laral had half a mind to ask the dwarves to escort him immediately. Clearly, No’ak knew the way. But the climb up the hill had winded him and set his knees to shaking. Daryon’s decision was wise, but Laral didn’t want to be wise. He wanted to run to them.

  “I’m surprised the people of Ersteng took in your family at all,” No’ak said, tamping out his pipe on the stones of the firepit.

  “Why exactly?”

  “It’s one of the places we manufacture hutza. Never known an outsider who was allowed to enter. I doubt you’ll be given access to much of the city, and if you value your skin you will not ask for a tour.” He jerked a thumb at Daryon. “He won’t be permitted past the gate.”

  The avedra offered an acquiescent shrug. “Still, I must follow the storm, so I’ll take you on, regardless.”

  No’ak huffed. “You’re a right trooper, Daryon.”

  “Self-denial is a virtue, my friend.”

  “One that I’m pleased to see you practicing at last.”

  Forge Mountain had been chiseled in two. The peak and all the guts beneath it had been cut out to form a sheer-walled canyon down the middle of the massif. Gates of iron and bronze sealed off the north end. According to No’ak, similar gates gu
arded the southern entrance as well, but to reach them was half a day’s walk. Laral took his word for it; the journey to Sýnnedan had proven more difficult than he’d anticipated. His bruised lung fought him every step of the way, and nearly every step was uphill.

  Outside the gate, the sentry towers were hard to differentiate from columns of wind-carved rock. The dwarves on watch called down. No’ak bid his party stay put and stay silent, then approached the towers and called back in dwarvish. It sounded as if they were growling and cursing one another, but when No’ak returned he had a spring in his step. “We’re at the right place.”

  Laral’s stomach somersaulted.

  “Master avedra,” No’ak added, “you’re asked to wait two hundred yards from the gate. If you or your Elarion approach—”

  Daryon waved the rest away. “—you will be shot at, yes, yes. Laral…?” Words lay heavy on his tongue, and he decided not to say them. Or perhaps he did, but Laral lacked the skill to hear. The avedra nodded a farewell and returned to his warriors, barking orders to get camp set up.

  “Should we wait with them?” Kalla asked.

  Drys started to argue; he wanted to see the end of their labors as well, but a look from Kalla shut him up.

  “Thanks, yes,” Laral said. “Tarsyn, come with me.”

  The massive gates—four or five stories tall—swung ponderously open. Gears and chains grinded. A black yawning mouth gaped beyond. No’ak led the way. Laral longed to run into that black open mouth but he stayed half a step behind because No’ak ordered him to.

  On the threshold, a dwarf with braids in his long black beard greeted them. “Master No’ak? You and your friends are welcome in Ersteng. I am Bryk, master mason.” He looked Laral over. “You are the one seeking his family?”

  Laral nodded. Anticipation lay too thick in his throat for more.

  “My wife is caring for them. Follow me.”

  A blue finger of sky stretched between the halves of the mountain, remote and inconsequential. Yet light was not scarce. Lanterns hung in every nook and cranny, on lines across the roadway, on stakes at knee-level. The glass globes glistered with the sharpness of crystal; set upon the oil canisters, amethyst and topaz gleamed. Green moss grew lush on each side of the flagged road, beside walks and side streets, cultivated apparently like a lawn. Water cascaded from a cleft and gathered in a mosaic-lined pool, only to be channeled off through a complex system of aqueducts. Domed buildings lined the thoroughfare; in deeper recesses, doors were set into the cliffs themselves. Laral imagined honeycombs of streets and dwellings cut into the living rock, much like he’d seen at Szhehault.