Fury of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga 5)

by Ellyn, Court

  Alyster dared to ease closer. “Carah? Carah, please…”

  Thorn waved a hand to quiet him, a miniscule gesture, as if he faced a ravenous beast. “No. She thinks she must. Very well.”

  Incredulous, Alyster cried, “You’re agreeing to let her go?”

  Thorn’s glare clung to Carah, and she couldn’t help feeling that something had broken between them, some trust shattered. “Why not? At her age, I was racing over the countryside to avoid a rágazeth. And she won’t be going alone.”

  “Azhien will look after her, aye.” Alyster gestured at the receding tail of the Elarion company, which appeared to have slowed to watch the confrontation from afar.

  “I mean us,” Thorn said.

  Slowly Carah lowered her arms. The rings of fire dwindled. Was he serious?

  “Ach, no.” Alyster shook his head with increasing vehemence. “I’m not leaving my kindred. Not to go gallivanting across country to save some traitor. You’re both crazy! Leave me out of it.”

  He started to chase down Duíndor, who had trotted away from the sparring ground, but Thorn pursued him. “You can’t ride back alone. That’s miles of opportunity for Lothiar to capture another avedra. I shouldn’t give a damn, but I do. I don’t care whose son you are. I sure don’t want Lothiar to have what he wants.”

  “I don’t fear Lothiar,” Alyster insisted, stone-stubborn.

  “That’s because he’s just a name to you. And if you don’t fear the man who has done all this for the single-minded purpose of eradicating avedrin, you’re a fool. You’re coming with us. Mount up, and stay close.”

  Carah found herself smiling as she watched Alyster hobble after Duíndor.

  Thorn cast her a resentful glare, then called for Saffron. The fay glowed like a miniature sun at his shoulder. “Better tell my brother where we’re headed. Tell him I’m sorry. And I may not be back in time to fill the whirligigs. It’s up to Daryon.” He turned to Carah, finger jabbing like a pike. “You better pray this is worth it.”

  She dried tears on her wrist. “It will be. One way or another.”

  ~~~~

  14

  A wasteland awaited the Elarion. As far as the eye could see, endless swaths of forest had been reduced to bones. Charcoal encased the trunks of the largest trees in all Lethryn. The remains of pine trees and andyr saplings speared a sky grayed under a drifting haze. Ash descended like the feathers of some vast plucked bird. Where once the canopy had been too thick for the sun to pierce, morning light now probed blindingly down, exposing the curves of the land, an immodest violation. A black stain was all that remained of the lush undergrowth, once rich with moss and leaf-litter and the meandering tracks of deer. Boulders jutted from the ash, naked. Gnarled roots clutched the ground like fingers stiffened in a death-grip. Fallen limbs still smoldered, giving rise to weary wisps of smoke and sated tongues of flame.

  Ravens circled, searching the ash for the charred carcasses of animals too slow or too frightened to flee the flames.

  Carah half hoped she was seeing an illusion. She blinked into Veil Sight and saw that there was no veil. She gazed upon the appalling truth.

  The music of the trees had become the silence of the dead, broken only by the arguing of carrion birds and the wind scraping past barren branches.

  The keening of Elarion filled the silence.

  Laniel had pushed his troop and the Regs relentlessly, stopping for only three hours the first night and four hours the next. In the dark, the banner of smoke glowed sullen red, lighting their way until dawn brightened the sky.

  Alyster had grumbled and fought the animal he rode, so Carah had taken the opportunity to teach him the finer points of riding, and passed on the command words that Azhien had taught her. By the end of the second day, Alyster looked almost comfortable in the saddle. It might have been a humorous business had their mission not been so somber.

  Now that they had arrived at the ruins of Avidanyth, there was little hope to be salvaged. Laniel staggered across the southern highway, which was rutted with the passing of many ogres, and stopped at the edge of the ash-blight. He fell to his knees and loosed a cry. Centuries of fierce protection had amounted to nothing. “Take them! Take my eyes, Dathiel. I can’t look on it.”

  Thorn dismounted and went to his oath-brother. Carah had avoided her uncle for most of the journey. When they spoke, their words were curt. He hadn’t forgiven her for defying his orders. And this morning, she felt his anger seething, just as flame seethed still inside the trees. His expression was jagged with it, his jaw tight, his knuckles white about the shaft of the staff. “You will keep your eyes, aurien. You will live to see her renewed.” Bitterness lurked in the promise. Aye, the Wood was his home too, but for Thorn, granted only the short years of a human, its beauty was lost forever.

  Carah remembered how she had healed the great andyr in her grandmother’s garden. Leaving Lírashel on the highway, she crossed the narrow swath of wild grass that had long separated human travelers from the secrets of the trees, and entered the waste. The ash buried her up to her ankles, ash that heated her feet through the sturdy leather of her riding boots. The air was so dry that it sucked the moisture from her eyes, nose, and mouth.

  She came to a giant among giants, an ancient mother of forests that might have put down roots here at the founding of the world. Carah tugged off her riding gloves, laid her bare hands to the blackened bark, and closed her eyes. “It’s still alive, Falconeye! She will bloom again. Perhaps many of them will.”

  She went to him and knelt before him. Red rimmed his desolate gray eyes, but they gazed on her with the willingness to hope.

  “When all this bloody business is set right,” she said, “I will come to the Wood and begin healing these wounds. My word on it.”

  He nodded heavily. “Rhian told me what you did for the tree in Ilswythe’s garden. Later I saw it for myself. He said you would be a healer of worlds, Kharah. And this is the mark I see on you.” His ashen fingertips traced her forehead lightly, as if a symbol or word were written there. “As great as the Wood’s need is, the work you would do here is merely preparation. Your destiny is far greater.”

  A brief search exposed evidence of the fire’s origins. Iron bands marked the location of barrels burned to cinders. Sticky, crusted residue of pitch or some other fuel coated the ground and splashed the scorched bark of trees. The barrels had been overturned at regular intervals along the Wood’s southern border, and the hot summer wind had seen to the rest.

  Lothiar, no mistake.

  “There will be no mercy for him!” Laniel kicked the bones of a barrel. The air seemed to heave around him and the wind to bow before his declaration. The ravens roosting overhead took wing and sped off.

  Carah had never seen him so angry. And judging Thorn’s submissive stance, he hadn’t witnessed it much either.

  Laniel tromped through the ash, clubbing the iron rings with a charred branch. “How could he do this? My father’s son. I do not know him. I never did. This I swear upon Ana’s bosom: the moment I see him is the last he breathes.”

  In the east, the fires burned on, voracious, unstoppable. Had they leapt the river? Did Laniel’s Northern Sector burn too? And what of Linndun? Were the city’s walls high enough to keep out the flames?

  Carah wanted to venture deeper into the waste to find out, but her uncle kept her on task. They bid the Elarion farewell.

  Alyster and Azhien gripped hands. “I wish…,” began the latter, haunted. “I wish you could have seen it, aurien.”

  Laniel ordered the Regs to form up, and sent his troop ranging ahead to scout for ogres. The bastards were somewhere nearby, waiting to pounce on Linndun’s sprawling corpse, and they would soon wish otherwise.

  Thorn and Carah and Alyster followed the highway west toward the Leanian border. Mile upon mile, the wasteland stretched away, gray and bleak. But the fires hadn’t reached every corner of the Wood. Islands of green reared up defiantly from the surrounding pall of ash. B
irds congregated in these triumphant branches and sang their hearts out. And eventually, the riders caught up to the vanguard of the conflagration. Thick yellow smoke billowed from russet blankets of pine needles and andyr leaf-fall. Resin burst into flame, igniting entire trees in seconds. Beyond the fire, the proud sentinels stood stoically, helplessly facing their demise.

  Uncle Thorn dismounted and stretched out a hand. The creeping line of fire dwindled and fizzled out. “Carah, practice.” He glanced at Alyster. “Care to try?”

  From the saddle, he waved a hand no.

  “Then watch our backs.”

  Together, Carah and her uncle doused the flames within reach of the highway. It was only a small part of the hungry beast; still, for Carah, it felt like rectification. The towering matriarchs in the western corner of Avidanyth would remain green and replete with life.

  They did not linger long. A mile from the bridge that crossed the Leathyr River into Leania, Thorn turned Záradel off the highway and into the Wood.

  “Where are you going?” Carah asked, gesturing fruitlessly at the bridge. She worried that ogres lurked in the dappled green shadows, preparing to set more fires.

  “Questioning me?” he shot back. “Stay on this highway and we’ll end up at Graynor. And crossing the Leathyr will take us too close to Mithlan. You’d face the ogres holding it? There’s a bridge this way. We’ll cross the Avidan there. Unless you prefer to swim it.”

  Carah grumbled under her breath. “I’d really like to slap him sometimes.”

  Alyster chuckled. “I’m sure he feels the same.”

  They followed Thorn into the cool eaves under the trees.

  “I get to see it after all,” Alyster said, gazing in awe at a canopy so lofty that the eyes could barely touch it. A sunlit haze of smoke drifted through the upper branches like mist.

  Aye, sight of these untouched stretches of forest would fill Laniel with hope. But something was missing. Upon Carah’s first visit to the Wood, the birdsong seemed to reverberate as if under glass. Now the birds’ voices sounded like those of birds anywhere else. And Carah had not felt the tingling deep inside her ears and along her skin as she broke through the barrier between the sunlit world and the shadowed boughs. Had the Keepers of the Veil decided that, with the fires, there was no point in maintaining the illusion over the Wood? Or had war broken into the city?

  Near midnight, they reached the outskirts of Helwende Town. Forath’s throbbing red glow bled across cobbled plazas and slate roofs. This hub of trade between realms was never quiet, never still. The miasma of noise and crowds and exotic smells always served to mesmerize Carah. Helwende was the first place she’d seen a doxy strutting on a corner, and her first brawl between dwarves with bloodied fists. She loved meandering through the markets and touching the bright weave of Ixakan rugs and lowering her nose over baskets of cinnamon and ginger and cardamom. But tonight, fear had transformed Helwende. The emptiness of the streets, the silence of the auction grounds, marketplaces, and stockyards sent a chill shuddering up her nape. The ogres had been here, that was plain. Buildings had seen the touch of a torch, but not recently. The blackened husks had been left to rot, and the outer districts of shops, warehouses, and cottages abandoned.

  Looming over the roofs of town, the lord’s keep boasted lighted windows, and sentries walked the walls of the fortress, wielding lanterns.

  “I hope Gheryn made his way home,” said Carah. She had danced with Helwende’s shy heir the night before the massacre, then Uncle Thorn had helped him and a handful of others flee Bramoran through a sortie gate.

  Thorn cast a wary glance behind them. “I’d wager he did, or Helwende’s castellan has remarkable foresight.”

  The streets nearer the center of town, Carah noted, were barricaded. Entire blocks had been walled off by piles of refuse, overturned carts, and spiked redoubts. Soldiers wearing Helwende’s bold yellow X across their chests strolled vigilantly, pikes in hand. Aye, whoever was giving orders in Helwende seemed to understand the scope of the danger.

  “Thevril,” Thorn whispered and gestured sharply at the two young avedrin. “Stay inside the veil. If there’s a curfew, we don’t want to be caught wandering the streets.”

  Near the fortress gate, they heard music drifting from the lighted door of a tavern. “Goddess be praised, I need a beer,” Thorn said and dismounted.

  Alyster groaned as he slid to the ground. “Ach, highborns are tougher than I thought. I swear on my soul, Carah, if I never walk again I’m blaming you.”

  “What’s wrong, highlander? Arse not made of iron?” Her talk was tough, but her legs, too, ached as if they had distended to the shape of Lírashel’s girth. She hobbled into the tavern and fell into the first empty chair she saw, thought better of it and stood again to stamp the blood back into her legs.

  Thorn had let the veil unravel. The patrons, mostly militia in uniform, turned and stared, then leaned close together and whispered excitedly. Carah heard her uncle’s name pass through the common room like wind echoing through a canyon. He sat with his back to the wall and watched them at their gossip.

  A barmaid approached with three mugs on a tray. “The lads sent these over.” She arrayed the mugs on the table. “Hope you don’t mind warm ale. Icehouse was burnt a couple weeks back. Down to the last couple of kegs, so enjoy it.”

  Thorn raised his mug toward the gawking soldiers and nodded his thanks. Alyster drained his ale in two breaths. Carah tried to mimic him, but ended up gagging and choking instead.

  “You really him?” asked the barmaid, cocking her hip and planting a fist on it.

  Thorn laced his hands around his mug and was silent. Carah thought he meant to snub the woman, until she saw a thin layer of frost build around his mug.

  The woman gasped, and Carah snickered. “Show off.”

  But Thorn wasn’t here to play games. “Is Lord Helwende in residence?”

  The barmaid nodded, and Thorn pushed a silver coin her direction. “Send a boy to the keep to inform His Lordship of our arrival.”

  The woman fisted the coin and bustled off.

  Carah was trying to chill her own mug without shattering the glass when the tavern door swung open. A young man with tousled black hair filled the doorway. At each of the tables, the soldiers surged to their feet and saluted.

  “Gheryn,” Carah cried.

  There was a time when a mere glance from her would have Gheryn blushing, but circumstances had changed him. An entire city’s worth of people depended on him now; he didn’t have time to blush. “Does this mean the War Commander is coming?” he asked, swooping toward the table. “More of those monsters?”

  “No,” Thorn replied, standing to greet him. “We’re here on a different sort of mission. When I sent the messenger, I didn’t expect you to come to us yourself.”

  “Why shouldn’t I? It’s the least I could do, m’ lord. You saved my life.”

  “Since you’re Lord Helwende now, call me Thorn.”

  Gheryn whisked his guests from the crowded tavern and through the castle gate. He asked half a hundred questions as they rode through the torch-lit bailey. “I mean, I know King Valryk went mad and loosed his Falcons on us, but that don’t account for the monsters that burnt us out.”

  The thoroughfare that climbed toward the keep was lined with tents, lean-tos, and shacks constructed of canvas, crates, and other refuse. The people who dwelled in the outskirts of town hadn’t been forced to flee into the hills; they had been evacuated and stuffed inside the walls. Catapults hunched atop the battlements. Soldiers stood guard before the doors of granaries and armories.

  Poor fellow, Carah thought. Gheryn’s first task upon assuming lordship was dire and monumental.

  As they made their way into the vaulted corridors of Helwende’s keep, Thorn had the chance to ask a question of his own: “Is Kelyn aware you’ve called up your militia and fortified the place?”

  Gheryn shook his head. “Honestly, m’ lord … er, Thorn … I didn’t kn
ow if he’d survived Bramoran, or who to ask. I feared we were alone.”

  “Mmm, that’s right. You hadn’t arrived home when I sent the messenger falcons. Apologies. Looks like you’ve done a fine job under the circumstances. Your Uncle Garrs taught you well.”

  “And the War Commander. I’ve studied his tactics all my life. Is this how it’s going to be, forever? Or is something to be done?”

  “We’re working on it. Hold steady. I’ll report to Kelyn that your men stand ready if he should need them. In fact, we don’t know what we’ll find in Windhaven, so you may be exactly where Kelyn needs you. How’s the Pass?”

  “Windgate?” Gheryn beckoned at a steward waiting on hand. “Prepare three rooms for our guests.” He turned back to Thorn. “Taken. We learned the hard way. I sent couriers with an escort to Vonmora, to help spread word of what happened at Bramoran. Only one of the escort returned, wounded and muttering of a bloodbath. Then I sent fifty armed men up there. Disaster. Why?”

  “We need to cross the mountains, of course.”

  Gheryn chuckled grimly. “You can’t. But I wouldn’t advise heading west either. Evaronna is overrun.”

  “We’re aware. But Windhaven is our destination. We have to make it.”

  They rode out at dawn, their Veil Sight sweeping the switchback road that climbed into the Silver Mountains.

  “Rest well,” Uncle Thorn had said the night before, but it was an impossible order to follow. Carah had dozed fitfully in Helwende’s spice-scented bed, and in her nightmares she tried to summon fire as ogres bore down on her, snarling like wolves, but her hands were numb and stupid and no fire answered her call.

  When the maid delivered breakfast an hour before sunup, Carah was already dressed and kneeling before a hearth flickering with lavender avedra-fire. She needed to remind herself that nightmares were only nightmares, that she was indeed capable.