Hand and Talon (World of Kyrni Book 1)

by Melonie Purcell

  “Good. You find your core and just project your Essence as if you were…” He paused, trying to find the right analogy. “As if you were willing a dog to back away. Do you know what I mean?”

  Dane regarded him suspiciously for a moment longer and nodded. All at once, the area between Dane and Sorin was charged with magic. Concern flashed across Sorin’s face, but he quickly concealed it with a smile. “Very good,” he told Dane. “That is how you clear a stream. Then you do something nice for the faerie that lives there, like clear away a branch or a log that may be blocking the stream. If nothing else, toss in a rock or leaf for the faerie to play with. Whatever you do, make sure you project your good intentions, and the nature spirits will mark you as a friend and leave you be.”

  “How do I do it?” Krea asked.

  Sorin regarded her for a moment before answering. “You are not going to like the answer.”

  Krea wiped her hand down her tunic. He was probably right. “Go ahead. Tell me.”

  “You just have to let them know you are kin,” he said finally.

  He was right. She didn’t like his answer, and she didn’t think he was the least bit funny. “I’m being serious,” she complained. “I should know how to go near the water, too. What if we get separated or something? Or what if you’re hurt again?”

  Sorin gave her one of his patient smiles and shrugged. “I am being serious. You are a wild creature of magic, just like they are. I know you don’t want to believe that, Krea, but you are. You are as much a creature of magic as that fuath, and when you come to a faerie, all you have to do is let them know that you are kin and that you don’t plan to move on their territory. Just like that faerie-born in Ryth, they will welcome you.”

  Krea wanted to argue, but stopped herself. It was time to stop fighting what she was. She had long since decided that the caller must be right. She was kyrni. So, why could she not embrace what that meant? She wasn’t human. Why did that matter?

  Krea watched Sorin watching her. She wondered what he was waiting for. What did he want her to say? She stared into his birch eyes and recalled sitting at the table with him at his manor. Why was this so hard to accept? She knew why. She wanted to be accepted and that meant being human, but maybe it was time to move past that. Maybe it was time to stop waiting for others to accept her and just accept herself.

  She smiled. It was definitely time. “Dane,” she said, dropping her hand on his shoulder. “Did you hear that? I am kin to the monster that just tried to eat you. You had better be nice to me, or I shall have to call my cousin to pull you under again.”

  Dane swore and shrugged her arm off his shoulder. “You ain’t kin to no pulk,” he said, striding off down the path. “You is a pulk.”

  Krea laughed and fell in alongside him, but when she looked back at Sorin, she noticed he wasn’t smiling.

  They pressed forward for what felt like half a day, and Krea wondered again how the horses had managed to get so far ahead of them. Sorin had declared with certainty that the traitorous animals were definitely alive and not far ahead. But he had been saying that for forever, and Krea wasn’t sold.

  She reached again for the horses, and for the first time since they had started walking, something pushed back. It was a shy touch. Barely perceptible. In fact, Krea had dismissed it to imagination when the push came again. She closed her eyes to focus and ran smack into Dane. He had stopped on the narrow game trail and was staring hard into a patch of tall fern growing at the distant edge of the trail. Sorin too searched the forest floor.

  Krea followed their gaze, but saw nothing. Just green ivy, green fern, green leaves and... She paused. Something moved in a bush. She heard a small crunch, the bush shivered, and the forest fell still.

  Two heartbeats later, a flash of brown streaked across the forest floor and dipped behind a tree. Krea nearly jumped out of her skin, and when she turned to Sorin she saw that he had a sunball collected in his fae-wood palm, ready to throw. They waited again, watching, listening. Nothing.

  After a long pause, Sorin scattered the swirl of light back into the air and headed up the barely discernible trail. Krea and Dane fell in step behind him, but they hadn’t gone far when Krea felt the push again. She glanced around. Something was out there.

  “Did you feel that?” she asked Sorin, jogging to catch up. “In your head, did you feel it?”

  “Aye,” he spit out between clenched teeth. “I felt it.”

  “What is it?” she asked. “It doesn’t feel like the horses.”

  “It’s not the horses,” he returned, glancing into the thick underbrush. All at once, Sorin stopped and turned his face up to the sky. “What did I do?” he asked. “What did I do?” He flourished his hands around, indicating the forest settling on Krea and Dane. “It’s not enough that I am ushering not one catastrophe-waiting-to-happen but two catastrophes through your forest, and I have to lose my horses doing it? And now this?” He dropped his head and locked his fingers together behind his neck. “What I could use here is a little help, not another problem.”

  Krea expected the goddess to be as silent for him as she always was for her, so when a soft trill sounded from a sapling just ahead, her heart tried to jump through her open mouth.

  Chapter 18 - Truce

  Krea yelped and scurried backward. Dane tried the same thing, and they both ended up in a pile on the forest floor. Ahead, a small four-legged creature that wouldn’t have come to her knee leaped up onto the lowest branch of a yawning elm and stared down at them with huge, round eyes as green as the moss that crept up the tree.

  “Merciful goddess,” Sorin swore, rubbing his eyes with the heel of his flesh hand. “Fantastic! Just what I needed. First the horses, now this.”

  The little creature blinked once, wrapped a tail that was considerably longer than its body around the branch, and leaned down at a precarious angle to stare at Sorin.

  “It’s so cute,” Krea said, climbing back to her feet. At the sound of her voice, the creature turned its fern-green gaze on her and cocked its little round head to one side. The shape of its face seemed almost weasel-like, except that it didn’t have a pointed nose. Instead, its mouth curved out just enough to keep it from appearing flat. As the little animal looked from Krea to Dane, large, pointed ears that ended in dark-brown tufts of fur stuck out from the side of its head and angled down. The effect gave the creature an innocence that Krea suspected wasn't entirely truthful.

  She stepped forward to get a better look. The tail twisting around the tree limb had tan and deep-brown bands extending from base to tip. Its silky fur and tufted ears made it seem tame and cuddly. Krea wanted to hold it or at least pet it, but one look at its feet kept her from trying. Like the tail, they were ringed in variations of brown, but each little paw ended in wicked claws that curled back, allowing it to hold fast to the tree. As cuddly as its dark fur made it seem, she could tell the little animal could fend for itself in the woods.

  “What is it?” Dane asked, moving in for a better look. The creature settled back onto the limb and trilled again, a soft tinkling sound from deep in its throat. “I ain’t gonna hurt ya,” he said as he ventured another step toward the tree. Its ears lifted slightly and rotated forward. It cocked its head again, and three little horns that Krea hadn’t notice before popped up, one in front of the other, on top of its head, the longest no taller than her first finger.

  Sorin pulled Dane away from the tree and started down the path again. “It’s called a sheema,” he explained, heading up the trail. “Don’t look at it. Don’t talk to it. Don’t encourage it in any way, or we will never be rid of it.”

  “Do it bite?” Dane asked, reluctantly falling into step behind Sorin. Krea didn’t blame him. She didn’t want to leave, either. The little sheema was adorable.

  “Does it have a mouth?” Sorin snapped back.

  Dane mumbled something under his breath, and Krea was fairly certain she didn’t want to know what it was. “Is that why you don’t want us to t
alk to it?” she asked. “Is it dangerous?”

  “You have no idea,” Sorin returned, more to himself than in answer to her question.

  Except for the claws, it didn’t look dangerous. Its fur seemed thick and soft, and its little trill was so soothing she could listen to it all day.

  As they walked along the game trail, the sheema followed beside them, sometimes leaping from tree to tree and other times disappearing into the thick underbrush, only to be waiting alongside the path farther ahead.

  Sorin completely ignored the creature. The sheema, on the other hand, watched Sorin’s every move. Krea couldn’t imagine what threat the strange animal could pose, so she and Dane took turns finding it in the forest until finally Sorin stopped and closed his eyes. After a moment, he opened them again and sucked in a long breath. “The horses are just ahead,” he announced.

  Krea was glad to hear it. Sweat trickled down her temples from their long walk, despite the fact that the sun was long out of its crest. She didn’t relish the idea of traveling the forest in the dark.

  Not long after Sorin’s announcement, they pushed through a cluster of saplings and emerged on a hill overlooking a meadow so green it looked blue. A small lake opened up at the far side, and there, heads buried in grass, were the two horses. Krea called to Caldir with her mind, just as she had done at least fifty times. He picked up his head, regarded her with casual interest, and went right back to eating. He didn’t so much as move a hoof to heed her bidding.

  “I guess they were hungry,” Sorin announced after getting a similar response from Drindoc. “Can’t say I blame them. We have been riding harder than they deserve.” He glanced up at the sky, a welcome sight after trudging through dark woods for so long, then back toward the meadow. Krea noted how he intentionally avoided the sheema, who sat perched on a limb in plain sight.

  “We’ll stay here tonight,” he said after a long pause. “We will stay right here, though. Not by the lake.”

  He got no argument from either of them. In fact, when Sorin offered to fill their now empty water skins, they both handed them over without a word of protest.

  Dusk was fading to night by the time camp was set and the fire started. Sorin had insisted that they both bathe and wash out their mud-caked clothing, but he had stayed close the entire time. Even so, it took considerable coaxing from both of them to get Dane in the water.

  Now clean and changed, Krea was already feeling the pull of her bedroll. Still, something about the meadow and the way the moonlight danced on the lake made her loathe to close her eyes just yet. Bugs and small animals rustled around in the woods behind them, and she could hear the occasional splash from the lake. Cool air smelling of water and growing things filled the air. The horses were still munching in the lush meadow, ripping grass and occasionally snorting their obvious pleasure. The whole scene felt like a dream. She wanted to stay here forever.

  “Is this the lake from the story what you told of when your friend almost broke his wing?” Dane asked, breaking the silence.

  Krea kept silent. She had been wondering the same thing.

  Sorin finally drew in a long breath and sighed. “Aye. This is the lake.” He tossed a small limb on the fire.

  Krea and Dane exchanged looks.

  “What happened to him?” Dane asked.

  Krea started to warn the boy away from the conversation, but a part of her wanted to know what Sorin would say. He had shared a bit about his life with his link, but she desperately wanted to know more.

  Sorin picked up a forked stick and used it to poke at the burning limbs, sending a cloud of sparks shooting into the air. They died out in an orange rain. After a long pause, he looked up and met Krea’s gaze across the crackling fire. He was still staring into her eyes, and maybe her soul, when he started to speak. His voice was soft. The words struggled to come together, as if his story had never been told before. In truth, Krea wondered if she and Dane were not the first ones to hear it.

  “Tormismir and I had been together for nearly forty years. At least half that time had been spent fighting the war. We knew each other so well. I can’t explain it. We could think for each other. We answered for each other. When he shifted, we could talk without melding. He was one of the last rukhs. They are like giant eagles with ears. We were often entrusted with critical missions. Seems like we were forever flying into enemy strongholds to bring back some key piece of information that would win us the war. It never did.”

  Krea glanced at Dane to see if that made sense to him, but his expression was unreadable. When she looked back at Sorin, he was watching her again. “Rukhs are smaller than dragons. Their wings are made of feathers, not skin. It makes them much quieter,” he explained, as if reading her mind— which given what she knew about Sorin, he may have. “When you are spying on the enemy from their own ledges, it helps if no one knows you’re there.”

  Krea nodded. “I guess it would,” she mumbled, mostly to herself.

  Sorin nodded back. “We went into a torbadyn camp that had been built into a cliff along the Bothri not far from the Dakel Forest. It was deep into the enemy's lair, too deep, but we had been told that the torbadyn were massing troops somewhere up there in an underground cave. We were to find the cave so it could be destroyed.

  “We were so careful flying in; we came across the Bothri toward the coast. Even so, it was as if they were waiting for us.” Sorin shifted on his log and stabbed at the fire again. Flames caught a small dry stem farther up the stick, and all three of them watched as it consumed the dead leaves in a flickering orange and red ball. “We were both hiding on a ledge where the troops were supposed to be, and Tormismir was footed—in human form. We had no idea they were there. Not even Tormismir heard them coming. We were there, looking for the evidence of the troops, and then we were being netted and dragged off the ledge. Tormismir managed to break free of the net—I still don’t know how—and he shifted. I tried to call to him to establish the link, but the torbadyn covered my mouth.

  “Tormismir was no hatchling. He could hold on to the link for a while even without the spoken magic. He dived and clawed, trying to free me. It worked. He freed me. But he was already losing control. He grabbed for my arm, but…”

  Sorin shoved the stick into the fire and sat back on his log. When he spoke again, his words were cold, empty of emotion. His speech clipped. “His claws severed my wrist. My hand was dangling and I was losing blood. I barely had the sense to tie off my forearm with my belt before I was lost to the darkness. When I awoke, torbadyn lay dead and dying in every direction I looked. Tormismir had killed them. He had shredded them as only the kyrni can. Then, he had flown away.” Sorin paused, his face contorted with rage vivid even in the light of the fire. “There weren’t that many of them,” he added as if to himself. “There was no way they were massing troops.”

  “What about your hand?” Dane asked.

  “What about it?” Sorin turned back to the fire. “Even a skilled healer could not have saved it. I drifted in and out of the darkness, each time wishing that the darkness would swallow me. I was too confused from the blood loss to fully understand that Tormismir was gone. I thought about untying the belt, but then I would think of my link and struggle for life.” Sorin's voice took on that hollow tone again, and it was as if he were telling about last season's crops. “Infection was setting in. I knew I had to cut off the rest of the hand, so I did. I managed to start a small fire, goddess knows how, and I seared the dead skin.”

  The fire crackled as it ate through the dry wood. The forest around them crackled also with the sounds of the night lovers waking up to the darkness. Krea glanced at the fae-wood hand. She was used to it by now, but it was still amazing to watch. The way the grain of the wood streaked along it like veins; the way it moved with eerie grace as no real wood ever could. He had only told her he had lost the hand in battle. No more. Now she knew why. “Did you walk all the way out of the mountains? That had to have taken months.”

  Sorin sho
ok his head. “I walked for a while, but I was fevered from the infection. I slept more than walked. I don't know for how long. I finally woke up in a camp, a drykir camp. They…”

  “You was with the drykir. Ain't no way. Ain’t no one ever seed a real elf before.”

  Krea glanced over at Dane, willing him to fall off his makeshift seat. “Do you ever listen to yourself? If no one has ever seen an elf, then how do we know they exist? Honestly, Dane. I can't understand how you even fed yourself.”

  Dane sat up and mimicked Krea as he spoke. “Honestly, Krea, I don't understand how you wasn't killed by some runner what got sick of you talking like you was a noble.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned back to Sorin. “So, you were saved by the drykir?”

  “Saved? Saved from what? Saved for what is more of it.”

  Dane started to speak, but Krea waved him off. She had been with Sorin long enough to know his ways.

  After a long, heavy pause, Sorin's frown relaxed and he leaned back on his log again, assuming a neutral emotionless tone. “Aye, I woke in a drykir camp. They had mended my arm. My hand was lost, of course. The infection was gone. They left me this.” He held up his hand. “They told me the goddess was not finished with me. I was to serve the prophecy. They fed me, put me on a horse, and sent me back to Shaylith, just like that.”

  “Drindoc?” Krea asked.

  “No. Some thick-boned mountain mare who took me as far as the Morkeen Plains, dumped me right there in the dirt and headed back into the forest. I had to catch a ride the rest of the way into Shaylith with traders.” He shot Krea a meaningful glance. “You can imagine how much fun that was.”

  “What about the torbadyn? Wasn't there proth out looking for you?”

  Sorin shook his head. “No proth. No torbadyn other than the ones Tormismir killed. No army. Nothing. And, now, no hand and no link.”

  “You was rused,” Dane said after Sorin had been quiet for a while.