Hand and Talon (World of Kyrni Book 1)

by Melonie Purcell

  Sorin was quiet for a moment, which was good. Krea tried not to remember that time of her life, if she could help it. It was associated with so much pain, so much despair that it was hard to even think about it. She had spent as long as she could remember pushing it back and she didn’t especially want to talk about it now. But something in that dark past could shed light on her situation, and Sorin might be the person capable of putting those pieces together. Resolute, she let her mind drift.

  “I remember men. Maybe four or five. They are all standing around me, poking me with something. A stick, maybe. I was cold, very cold. They were talking, but I couldn’t understand them. I couldn’t hear them. I just knew that they were talking. I kept looking up like I was waiting for someone, but no one came, and then I remember the orange.

  “I think I bit someone, because I remember getting hit and tasting blood, but I was glad to taste the blood. Then I don’t remember anything until I was inside the cart. There were things on top of me. I couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe. The girl was there, but she wouldn’t help me or even look at me. From there, it’s just images. The cart. The trader. Getting hit.

  “I can still hear the trader and the farmer talking. I don’t know exactly what they said because I still couldn’t understand most of it, but I have the impression that the farmer wanted the older girl, not me. The trader and the farmer argued back and forth. At one point, the trader untied the older girl and brought her to the farmer, which left me tied to the cart alone. The farmer reached for the girl and she kicked him. The farmer started beating her, and the trader was trying to pull him away. At least, I think he was. In the confusion, I ran.”

  As Krea remembered the scene, the gruesome details became so vivid in her mind that she thought she might be reliving them. She could smell the stench coming off the farmer: manure and sweat. But there was another smell there, too. One that grew stronger as the farmer watched the older girl tied to the cart. Terror welled up, and the ropes holding her to the cart snapped like blades of grass. Rocks stabbed through her thin leather sandals as she ran, sucking air into lungs about to burst.

  She darted into the forest, thinking it was her friend, but it wasn't. Angry branches slapped her face and thorns clawed her skin. Finally, the heap of trash loomed before her in an area black from the multiple fires that had been set to burn the waste. The rancid smell of rotting flesh was suffocating. She wanted to wretch, but she didn’t have time. A massive ox lay against a charred tree, bloated with maggots and starting to rot. Krea dropped down behind it and waited. The scraping of the little insects rooting around inside the carcass nearly drove her away, but fear won out.

  She barely let out a breath when the quiet footsteps of the trader stepped into the blackened clearing. He looked around, hand over his mouth to filter out some of the stench, then left just as quietly. Two more times the man came back into the clearing, but he didn’t stay long before the choking stench drove him away.

  A hand on her arm brought her back to the safety of her shelter and the warmth of the blanket and fire. Sorin crouched at her side, and only then did Krea realize she was trembling.

  She shook her head and drew in a deep breath, thankfully clear of the stink she had been remembering. “Like I told you, I stayed in the garbage heap until the villagers came to burn it again. Then I left. I stayed on the main trade road for the most part, and eventually found myself in Trasdaak.”

  “What about dreams? Do you have any dreams that keep returning to your sleep?”

  Krea looked into the birch eyes of the caller who watched her so intently. She wondered what he hoped for. What answer did he want her to give him? Probably not the one she had. “I dream about a forest a lot. Not like this forest. The forest I dream of is filled with moss-covered trees so tall the clouds hide their tops. The rocks are like cliffs and on their ledges are eagle nests the size of your barn. I know that they are rocks, though, because I can climb up on them. When I’m dreaming, I look down at a tiny stream. I see a minnow swimming in a little pool, and then I jump like I’m going to dive into that little creek and get the minnow. That’s when I always wake up. Stupid dream, isn’t it?”

  Sorin laughed. “Odd,” he said, giving her arm a soft pat. “Definitely odd.”

  “That’s the only one I have more than once.” She edged closer to the dying fire.

  After tossing another small branch into the pit, Sorin walked around their camp as he had every night before chanting under his breath and making signs in the air. She never asked. It was some sort of magic, and she didn’t want to know.

  When he finished, he climbed over the log and began kicking stones out of the way. “We’ll sleep over here,” he said, once the area was clear enough for his intentions. Krea watched him unroll his bedding, then use a small rope that he had tied to his saddle to suspend their food bags from an overhanging branch, as he had done so many times before.

  “Won’t a squirrel or something just climb down the rope?” Krea asked, watching the small pouches swing back and forth.

  “It’s not the squirrels that I’m worried about. There isn't much in it, anyhow. Are you ready to go to bed? We need to be up and moving early tomorrow if we are going to make Ryth before nightfall.”

  Krea nodded. “Do you think my clothes are dry?”

  Sorin picked her riding clothes off the roots and tossed them on her lap. “I’m afraid our cloaks have a ways to go yet. But those will be nice and warm.”

  They were indeed warm, and except for a few spots, completely dry. “What about the horses?”

  “Don’t worry about them. They’ll be in when their bellies are full and the fire is out.” The caller settled into his bag and groaned. “I forget every day how hard the ground will be that night,” he mumbled, before falling silent.

  Krea settled into her bag and watched the flames flicker and dance as they consumed the last of the logs Sorin had fed it. Sparks popped into the air as the dry wood crackled in the fire. The shadows it cast on the far wall as the light shone through the root branches started telling their own story. Mithtrae was there, hidden behind a cloak of glowing embers. She conjured a spell from magic so dark it came from the center of the world. A branch fell in the fire, sending sparks raining into the air; an answer to the hissed chant of Mithtrae, and from that conjuring came…

  Krea stopped her mental story to ponder how little she really knew about the kyrni. How little she knew about herself, if she came right to it. What did Mithtrae conjure? Was it a man or a beast? “Sorin?” she asked when she realized that her story could go no further.

  “Hmm?” he mumbled, nearly asleep already.

  “Where do the kyrni actually come from?”

  The caller shifted. “You can find them under rocks,” he said, after a long silence.

  “Really?” Krea was astonished. All this time the villagers had been right. She had come from under a rock. “What kind of rocks?”

  “They don’t come from rocks, Krea. I was just kidding. Go to sleep.”

  The flames danced sideways again, changing the shape of the cloak into a large ball. “They come from eggs, don’t they?” she asked, remembering one of the stories she had heard in Trasdaak. “A human child hatches from the egg laid by the beast, doesn’t it?”

  “Aye. Good night. If you speak to me again, I’ll hang you up there next to that food bag.”

  Krea smiled. This noble wasn’t as old and crotchety as he made himself out to be, but she certainly didn’t want to be on the receiving end of his ill temper. Instead, she contented herself to watch the shapes shift and morph against the back wall, until eventually her eyes grew heavy and she drifted off.

  A noise in the night brought her reeling from her sleep, and from somewhere in the pitch-black cave she heard branches breaking as heavy feet stomped into their shelter. A hand fell on her shoulder and she tried to spin around to fight off the intruder, but her blanket wrapped around her legs and she couldn’t break free. The hand pushed her
down, and she heard Sorin’s voice in her ears. “Krea, hush. It’s just the horses. Settle down.”

  Her heart hammered in her chest. Her ears were ringing again. When the steady hum that she knew and dreaded finally faded, Sorin’s soft chanting hummed around her head. One of the horses snorted and then the cave fell silent. Only then did Krea realize she had been about to shift, again. Like what had happened in the alleyway. Like what had happened once before in the woods behind the smith’s barn. She had tried to transform into the beast that she was.

  “We must get to Shaylith,” Sorin said, patting her arm once more for encouragement before settling into his bedroll once again. “We must get there soon.”

  For once, Krea agreed with him.

  Chapter 7 - Visit

  Krea woke to the smell of wet pine needles, dead leaves, and cooking meat. Warm tendrils of light broke through the trees and into the cave, but the air was still thick and humid. Even though the shrubs filtered out the full light of dawn, it was bright enough to see that Sorin had the fire going again, with two large bird breasts roasting over it. Her mouth watered.

  “Not much, but it beats dried meat any day,” Sorin said from his perch on the log.

  “It sure does.” When Krea managed to untangle herself from her blanket, she realized that Sorin had already broken camp. She hadn’t heard a thing. “How did you get the birds? Did you throw a sunball at them?”

  Sorin turned to her. “What are you calling a sunball?”

  “That thing you used to kill the proth.”

  “Oh. No. I threw rocks at them.” He pulled one of the sticks out of the fire and examined the golden meat. Apparently, they weren’t to his satisfaction, because he shoved them back into the fire.

  “You’re going to burn them,” Krea said, carefully shaking out her blanket so as not to kick dirt up.

  “You put your things away. Leave the cooking to me.”

  There wasn’t much for her to do beyond roll her money bags back into her bedroll and tie it to the saddle. She refilled her water skin from one of the pools by the boulders and headed for the fire. When she sat down next to him on the log, he was just pulling out the crispy remains of the two birds.

  She took the stick he offered and examined his work. The meat was almost too hot to touch, but she was hungry, so with short jabs she managed to peel away the first strip and wave it around in the air to cool it. Not surprisingly, the meat was dry and chewy. The crispy casing was difficult to bite through, and it tasted like smoke, but as he had said, it was better than dried meat. Not much better, but a little.

  They ate quietly until Sorin finally broke the silence by spitting what must have been a particularly challenging piece of burned meat out into the trees. “Okay, so they’re burned.”

  Krea chuckled. “My thanks for the effort,” she said, tossing the carcass out into the shrubs. She threw her roasting stick into the fire and turned to leave through the narrow gap in the brush.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To relieve myself.” With that, she slipped out a side opening and stepped in a fresh pile of what, she didn’t know. “Ahh! Disgusting!” she yelled, shaking her boot. Slimy bits of green goo dropped off her sole to join the puddle on the ground. “Yuck!”

  “It’s muddy out there,” Sorin said. She could hear him laughing at her.

  “Aye. Got that. Thanks. But this isn’t mud.” Krea hobbled over to the nearest tree and tried wiping the clinging green strings off her boot. It just seemed to smear that much more from her efforts. “How could I have missed that?” she mumbled to herself as she renewed her efforts with a small stick. “This is vile.”

  “What? Did you step in bear leftovers?”

  “If this came from a bear, she is soon to die!” The stick yielded better results than the tree trunk, but her favorite brown leather boots were taking on a decidedly green tint. From the direction of the cave, Krea heard Sorin’s scuffling. She turned around, hoping to see Sorin take a nosedive into the stuff, but instead he made a graceful leap, deftly avoiding all contact.

  “Wonderful,” he muttered, bending to inspect the puddle. Oddly, the stuff didn’t smell half as bad as it looked.

  “See what I mean? I wouldn’t cross that bear if she were serving pie for dinner.”

  “This isn’t from a bear,” Sorin said, poking at it with a stick.

  “What is it, then?” Krea had the worst of the slime scraped or rubbed off her boot, but the green tint remained.

  “It’s a message from the proth.”

  “That came from a proth?”

  Sorin stood, nodding.

  “You mean, they were this close? They could have attacked us last night?”

  “No.” Sorin tossed his stick into the puddle and turned to examine her boot. “You stepped in it?”

  “Aye. What do you mean, no? They were right here. Why didn’t they attack us?”

  “Let me see your boot. Did it get on both of them or just this one?”

  Krea used a small sapling for balance and lifted the offending boot for him to survey. “Mostly on this one,” she said. “I think I got most of it off. Why didn’t they attack us?”

  Only after he finished his inspection did he offer her an explanation. “I spelled the cave. The proth couldn’t get in. This must have happened early this morning, which was just as well, or they would have killed the horses. In fact, their presence may have been what drove the horses back into the cave.”

  Krea was stunned. They had been so close she should have smelled them, but she slept right through it. “I can’t believe they were that close. I didn’t even know. They could have killed me last night, and I wouldn’t have even known they were there.”

  “Don’t be so sure about that. Do you have any other shoes?”

  Krea shook her head. “Just these. What do you mean?”

  Again, she had to wait until he was finished scouring every bit of landscape within sight before he finally looked back at her and answered. “You nearly shifted again last night.”

  “Aye, I know.” Krea’s tone was slow and methodical as she tried to break into Sorin's thoughts. “I was there. The horses scared me when they came in.”

  Sorin smiled and gave her his full attention. “True, but that shouldn’t have caused a shift. I mean, granted, the time before the first shift does get unpredictable, but I’d be willing to bet that it was the proth and not the horses that brought you to that point. Always trust Nature, Krea. She will never lead you astray.”

  “Well, She led me straight into a pile of…of whatever that is, now, didn’t She?”

  At that Sorin laughed. “No. You not paying attention led you there, not Nature. Unfortunately, your boots will have to stay here.”

  “Oh no, they won’t,” Krea said, trying again to get the green filth off them.

  “Aye, they will.” Sorin kicked dirt and leaves over the green puddle, then used small, fallen branches to box off the contaminated area. “Those proth weren’t just leaving a hello message. They were leaving themselves a way to track us. I’m sure they assumed the horses would step in it instead of you, but the result will be the same. They will follow their marker wherever it goes.”

  “Well, how do you know the horses didn’t step in it? And what if they had? Would you be asking them to leave their shoes behind?”

  “The horses went out the way we came in last night. I should have put that together. I should have known something was out there. Anyway, they didn’t step in it. The only one dribbling proth puke is you. And that is at least one thing we can thank the goddess for.”

  “Proth puke? As in vomit? The monsters just showed up at the side door, couldn’t get in, so they wretched? How disgusting!” Krea made one more pass at her boot and decided to hide the incriminating evidence with dirt instead.

  “Krea, look at me.”

  With great reluctance, Krea looked up to meet the caller’s expectant gaze.

  “You have to leave your shoes here.”<
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  “You don’t understand,” Krea said. “I pulled these boots off a dead man. I got sick from the same thing that killed him. I almost died from it. I had to shove plants down into the toe for over a year before I could fit into them. Even now there is plenty of room for…” Krea stopped herself before she confessed too much. “Plenty of room for me to grow,” she amended, although Sorin’s smirk told her that he knew the truth.

  Sorin examined the boots with what she hoped was new appreciation, but when he looked up, Krea knew his answer would be the same. “Krea, I understand your attachment to those shoes, and they are a fine piece of workmanship, although from the looks of them they wouldn’t have held you through another winter anyway. Unfortunately, you will never find out, because those boots are staying right here with the vomit.”

  Krea looked down. They were splitting along one of the soles, and she had to admit that he was probably right. They had been patched and mended probably more than anyone would have thought possible. The leather was brittle from so much wear, and it would doubtless crack if she tried to sew a new strip over the split. Still, they were all she had. “What am I supposed to wear, then?” she asked, resigned to the inevitable.

  “Well, that is a problem. If we ride at a good pace, we can make Ryth before the merchants close up for the night, but we will be hard-pressed to explain why you are riding barefoot.”

  With a sigh, Krea went about unlacing her boots. “Don’t worry about that. I can explain a great deal when put to it. So, I’m to ride barefoot?”

  Sorin laughed. “I bet you can explain your way out of most things, can’t you? Aye, you’ll have to ride barefoot. I’m afraid I don’t have any extra boots. Don’t pull those off just yet. I need you to stand over here and guard this area.”

  “You want me to guard the puke?” Krea was revolted at the idea.

  “Aye.” Sorin finished outlining the area with sticks, creating a rough circle that included her in its center, and then pointed to his structure. “I’m going to call the horses. You absolutely must not let them near this area. It is imperative that they don’t step hoof into this circle. Can you do that?”