The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  “I am,” he said after a moment, in as strong a voice as he could manage.

  Taking the sword in his left hand, Raz grasped the man’s shoulder with his right.

  “You will be missed, my friend,” he whispered hoarsely.

  Brahnt swallowed and nodded. “Tell Syrah… when you see her. Tell her I will always… always be there.”

  “I will,” Raz promised, bringing the blade so that the point hovered, unwavering, over the man’s heart.

  One last time, Talo turned his head to meet al’Dor’s gaze, his hand tightening in the Priest’s.

  “I love you,” he said. “Remember me.”

  Then the blade slipped forward, sliding between broken ribs, and Talo Brahnt, High Priest of Cyurgi’ Di, died with a single, quiet exhalation of relief as pain and fear left him forever.

  CHAPTER 19

  “Even in death, some souls leave an intangible mark on the world. It is impossible not to feel them there, feel their presence just beyond the veil that separates the living from those already risen into the arms of the Lifegiver. Though I pray the loved ones I’ve lost have long since returned to the world in Laor’s infinite circle of rebirth, I cannot help but feel that some part of each of them remains yet with me, suspended between this old life I was a part of and the new one they must now enjoy. It is painful to feel that presence and the constant reminder it bears to mind, and yet it is simultaneously wondrously consoling to know that they are—even in some small way—still there to watch over and guide me…”

  —private journal of Eret Ta’hir

  Syrah awoke with a start, shivering violently as her body tried and failed to ward off the winter night. At first the overwhelming fear returned, the crushing terror that consumed her every time she heard booted feet crunching against the icy leaves outside. She lay beneath her thin blanket once more, coughing and shaking against the hard ground through the furs beneath her, numbing the pain of her healing finger and bloody ear.

  The cold was going to kill her.

  Syrah knew it, had known it for many nights now. The winter was too cruel, beating what little magical warmth she was able to cast about herself with her hands chained behind her back. At first it had been a frightening prospect, a horrifying realization that had kept her up for many days without sleep, chasing away every form of fatigue. Eventually, though, she’d started praying for the nights to grow colder, for the freeze to come and deliver her from her torment, and Syrah had found herself sleeping with ease.

  Dreams, after all, were the only escape left to her…

  The irons that bound her wrists and ankles clinked in the dark as Syrah maneuvered herself up with difficulty, listening with dreadful trepidation for whatever it was that had awoken her. It wouldn’t have been the first time Kareth Grahst’s men descended on her in the late hours of the night, drunk and violent in their lust. She’d always heard them coming, when she hadn't been able to sleep, but the last time it had happened had been after she’d rediscovered the momentary peace of slumber, and they had only left her in the earliest hours of the morning, sobbing into the furs.

  Now though, no sound came. Syrah’s left eye blinked against the glow of the ever-burning fires lingering teasingly around the edges of the tent flaps, her blinded right crudely wrapped in a bandage that had long since grown dark and dirty. Men’s voices could be heard, but they were far off in the direction of the camp.

  What was it, then, that had woken her?

  For a long moment, Syrah couldn’t puzzle it out. There seemed to be no reason for her sudden stirring. No cause for it. Nothing moved about the tent, man or wind or tree or animal, and nothing hinted of coming trouble.

  After a minute or two, though, Syrah’s fear subsided, and the fading of that feeling allowed her to become steadily aware of a pain, deep and aching, that had rooted itself like some wicked flower in her heart.

  Something had happened.

  Syrah didn’t know what. There was no hint, no sign. Nothing was granted to her but a chasm of emptiness that ripped through her chest, opening her up and swallowing her whole from the inside out.

  Somewhere, somehow, something had happened…

  Slowly, Syrah let herself down again, easing back onto the furs. For a time she lay there, bathing in the painful wash of the mysterious agony.

  Then she began to sob softly, and it was hours before she finally cried herself to sleep again.

  CHAPTER 20

  “It is a fascinating thing, to compare the great religions and gods of our world. While the concept of omnipotence is a ludicrous ideal in dire need of further examination by the masses, one should never pass up the opportunity to study the theologies of the land and draw one’s own conclusions regarding potential differences and relations. On the one hand, for example, the Laorin believe whole-heartedly that only the foulest of souls do not return to the world after death. On the other, the Southern followers of the Twins seek out their ancestors in the night sky, believing them ever-present in the heavens. Is it not incredible how two people, divided by such drastic beliefs, manage somehow to coexist?”

  —A Comprehensive Overview of Modern Theology, Jek Bor’ht

  Raz watched the ritual in sad, silent wonderment.

  He stood on the frozen surface of the lake, not a foot or two beyond the short embankment of the little island. The steel of Ahna’s blades, slung over one shoulder, glimmered in the somber light of the morning Sun, faint behind the thick rolling storm clouds that had drawn over the world as midnight came and went. The snows had started just as dawn broke, flickering down from the heavens to cling against the thick furs Raz still had drawn over his leathers and armor.

  It caught, too, in the overhanging branches that shielded the unmoving form of Talo Brahnt, his eyes closed and his face peaceful, still propped against the trunk of the old tree that was his last and final companion in death.

  al’Dor stood above Raz, just outside the boughs, sharing a last, lingering moment with his lover as he gazed through the dance of the spiny leaves. He had been there, hovering beyond the shelter of the branches, for a long time now, offering silent prayers to his Lifegiver.

  Raz didn’t rush him.

  At last, after what must have been a quarter hour, and just as Raz was starting to feel the cold finally get to him through his furs, the Priest moved. Raz watched, amazed, as the man slowly raised his right hand, his left arm now strapped to his chest by a crude sling. Over several seconds, a white light spilled outward to outline the fingers of his upturned hand. It didn’t burn beneath flame, as much of the magic Raz had thus far seen entailed. Rather, the light shimmered skyward, like some beacon calling home the souls of the departed.

  There was a clink and the scrape of shifting metal, and Raz’s eyes moved in time to see the glint of silver steel beneath the tree. Slowly, steadily, as though drawn up by careful hands invisible to the eye, Talo’s staff lifted itself from the ground where it had lain beside its master. It took several seconds, turning as it rose, but eventually the staff hung perpendicular to the ground, hovering over a point in the earth just to the right of the High Priest’s body.

  For another long moment al’Dor stood there, and Raz watched in silence as the smothered desire to weep shook the man’s body, hand still upheld. He seemed to be preparing himself, bracing his composure for a single, final goodbye.

  Then there was a flash of light, and the steel staff smashed downward in a single, smooth, lancing fall. It crashed into the frozen earth with a mighty crack of breaking and shifting ground, and bits of dirt and frost-tipped grass were thrown into the air. Raz was forced to shield his face with the hand holding Ahna’s haft as a stone whipped past his chin, thunking off the metal of his pauldron beneath the furs.

  When he looked up again, a thin, silver mist lingered around the base of the steel, the staff itself standing erect and straight, like a narrow tower watching eternally over the final resting place of its fallen master.

  al’Dor let his han
d fall, and it seemed then that he crumpled into himself. So bad was the shaking of his body that for a moment Raz thought the man would tumble to his knees and start sobbing once more, as he had for much of the night. The Priest, though, only took the time he needed to calm himself. Eventually he straightened, took a long, deep breath, and turned slowly away from the shaded resting place of his better half.

  When his eyes met Raz’s, they were red and swollen, but dry.

  “His staff will stand forever in that earth,” the man said, starting to move carefully down the incline towards where Raz stood on the snow and ice. “Even you couldn’t pull it out now.”

  “Then it will mark the final rest of a great man,” Raz said with a nod, reaching out to hand the Priest his own steel staff—which he had been holding in his left hand—and help the man step off the island and onto the frozen lake. “I’m so sorry, al’Dor. I wish… I wish I could have made it…”

  He had wanted to say it sooner. He had wanted to say it all night, as he made camp along the edge of the trees that surrounded the clearing, building himself and an injured Gale a fire to keep warm by. He hadn't slept at all, of course, his body and mind too drunk on the shock and grief that kept his thoughts from settling enough to allow him to drift off.

  He wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyways, though. The Priest’s piercing wails of loss, echoing across the lake from where he had stayed with the body of his lover until dawn finally came, were like the haunting screams of some heartbroken ghost through the trees.

  al’Dor sighed at his words.

  “That makes two of us, boy,” he said sadly as he found his footing on the ice and started making for the Woods. “But I don’t blame you. I don’t think anyone could blame you.” He gave Raz a sidelong look, though, walking beside him. “But after all this, if you don’t stop calling me ‘al’Dor’ I’ll be sure to find something to blame you for.”

  Raz couldn’t help it. He cracked a gloomy smile.

  “As you wish, Carro.”

  They moved slowly, as they left the lake. The lacerations across Gale’s right shoulder turned out to be shallow, but they left the horse with a mild limp even after Carro had tended to them as best he could, and Raz was too tired now to have to keep pace with a trotting horse regardless. They chose to walk, at least for a time, giving the animal a rest from his two-week chore of bearing a rider. Furthermore, neither Raz nor Carro was in any hurry to leave Talo behind for good. They took their time packing up, all the haste they’d carried for a fortnight drained away.

  When they finally departed, it was a painful, silent going.

  For a long time they walked, neither man speaking as they kept their eyes on the ground, moving east and north under the light of the single torch they’d cobbled together after Raz found a suitable heft of dead wood and Carro lit it with his good hand. They’d lost the trail in their mad dash the evening before, fleeing its guidance as the terrifying form of the ursalus had descended on them from behind. They’d run west, though—that, Raz had been able to deduce—and together they’d both agreed that an east-by-north plot would eventually take them back to the trail. Worst case scenario, even if they missed it they would reach the foot of the ranges by no later than mid-afternoon, and from there Carro would be able to guide them to the mountain path.

  That was the only time they spoke for nearly an hour, until Carro’s agitated voice grated across the relative quiet of the winter woodland.

  “What are we bloody well going to do?”

  Raz looked up, jerked from his private thoughts at the question. They were deep in the Woods, now, the last true light of the cloud-veiled Sun having long faded behind them. They trekked once more between the bent behemoths of the forest, guiding Gale across the meandering terrain of the broken hills and thick underbrush beneath the trees.

  “About what?” Raz asked, completely at a loss as to what the man was talking about.

  It was Carro’s turn to start. Apparently the question hadn't been intended to be voiced aloud, or at the very least hadn't been directed at Raz. The Priest looked at him, his blue eyes no longer red and irritated, but rather lined now with a different sort of worry.

  After a second, Carro seemed to decide the conversation was no longer worth partaking in alone.

  “The Kayle,” he said in an anxious tone. “What are we going to do?”

  Raz frowned. He’d forgotten entirely about the mountain man, Baoill. For much of their journey through the Woods, in fact, the man had been a mostly unmentioned topic, as though Talo had wanted one last moment of peace before arriving a Cyurgi’ Di.

  Now that he contemplated the original purpose of their passage north, though… Raz could see the problem.

  “Was Talo so integral to the Laorin’s plan on dealing with him?” he asked.

  Instantly Carro blanched, and Raz realized his mistake.

  “I’m sorry, Carro,” he said quickly. “That was insensitive of me. I shouldn’t have—”

  “I-It’s fine,” the Priest said, cutting him off in a shaking voice and looking away. “We don’t have time for grief right now.” He took a moment, breathing deeply again and closing his eyes.

  “He was,” he said eventually. “At least, in a way. Unless Syrah and the council have thought of something either T-Tal—” he tripped over the man’s name, choking on it.

  He threw a hand up, though, as Raz made to duck under Gale’s neck and reached out to console him.

  “No time for grief,” he repeated, this time with a note of anger that transitioned into firmness as he started again. “Unless Syrah and the council have thought of something either Talo or I haven’t, as far as we know the Citadel has no set plan. Talo was the one we would have relied on to make the plans, truth be told. He had the most experience with the mountain tribes—apart from Syrah—and by far the greatest rapport with the valley towns. He would have played negotiator and, if that failed, herald to the towns, communicating and coordinating their people. If anything, we were returning home to start building off whatever Syrah and Jofrey will hopefully have managed to start in our absence…”

  Raz’s frown deepened, but he nodded. He’d been aware of this, generally. And it didn’t bode well at all…

  “What about Syrah?” he asked. “Would she be able to manage the same role?”

  Carro looked skeptical, and shrugged. “One day, most certainly. This day, though… Syrah is brilliant, and she’s strong. She’ll be of enormous value one way or the other, but spearheading a response to Gûlraht Baoill’s madness… I have my doubts. She’s impetuous, even rash. She’ll grow out of it, given time, but for the moment she lacks the experience of the older members of the Citadel’s council.”

  “Then one amongst you will have to fill the role Talo would have taken.”

  “Yes…” Carro agreed slowly, stepping closer to Gale so as to avoid a thick hedge of spiny shrubbery as they walked. “But none amongst us have near the same pull with the valley towns as Talo did.”

  “The individual might matter little, if Baoill’s intent is to raze the North,” Raz said. “Your god seems to have a firm place in the hearts of many up here, and the Kayle has already burned two cities to the ground if my understanding is correct. The Laorin taking a stand against the tribes might be enough on its own, giving the remaining municipalities a standard to gather around.”

  “You would think so,” Carro said with a sigh, “but again, I have my doubts. For one the valley towns aren’t as tightly knit as you might think. They’re not like your desert cities, interwoven with each other in some way, whether it be commerce or politics—or even your ‘Mahsadën.’ It’s been a hard enough trek for the three of us to…”

  He trailed off quietly for a moment, and Raz let him take his time as he saw tears well unbidden in the man’s eyes. After a few seconds, Carro regained control of himself.

  “It’s been a hard enough trek for us,” he kept on, ducking under tendrils of browned, leafy vines that hung from the
lowest branches of an old spruce. “And we had horses. Imagine trying to get a trading caravan through the freeze. The winter essentially cut the towns off from each other for most of the year. Even when a message must be relayed, it’s common practice to send three, even four birds into the storms, as there’s always a chance they won’t find their destination.” He shook his head. “There’s no guarantee the towns would—or even could—come to each other’s defense.”

  “Some did,” Raz pressed, thinking back to what Talo and Carro had told him as they’d caught him up on the situation in the days before they’d departed Ystréd. “Stullens, was it? And another… Drak-something?”