Blood of the Falcon, Volume 1 (The Falcons Saga)

by Ellyn, Court

  A smile grew on Kieryn’s face, like a sprout after a drought, tentative and fragile. Keth’s grip tightened on Kieryn’s shoulder. “You did well, saving Rhorek’s life, how ever you managed it.”

  If Da had undergone a change of heart, perhaps he would give his blessing to something more. “The Lady Rhoslyn has told me that an avedra lives at Windhaven,” he began cautiously, weighing his father’s expression. “She’s invited me to return with her to meet him and learn what I can.”

  Da’s expression darkened. “You mean you intend to … develop those … abilities?” There was a twist of disgust to his mouth.

  Kieryn’s belly clenched. “To understand them—”

  “I’d rather you didn’t,” Keth interrupted. “Kelyn and I will both be leaving, and we mustn’t completely abandon your mother.”

  “Mother doesn’t need me to watch over her.”

  “If you’d rather, accompany me as squire, and we’ll have you knighted on the field.”

  “No, I wouldn’t rather.” He edged away from his father and started for the keep. At the vine-entrapped arbor, he turned and said, “You love me despite my flaw, not along with any gift I may possess. So be it. But to the Abyss with your preference, Father. I’m going to Windhaven, to perfect every skill that avedra can teach me—and to learn who I am.”

  ~~~~

  Part Two:

  JOURNEY

  8

  At dawn, Rhoslyn, Davhin of Vonmora, and Erum of Brimlad gathered to their horses in the courtyard. Princess Rilyth urged her son into an open-topped carriage, then climbed up after him and fluffed pillows behind her back. Servants and squires pressed one another for space in several supply wagons along with the trunks of clothes, silken tents, and fine food. Whether rain or shine, the highborns of Evaronna would be spared the worst discomforts of travel.

  Kieryn stepped from Ilswythe Keep with a single tote bag slung over his shoulder. A change of clothes, a warm cloak for the mountain pass, a book to read at the campfire, a quill, ink pot, and parchment to document … well, anything that might need documenting, were all he decided he needed.

  Hopeful that the night may have worked a miracle, Kieryn searched for his father. Keth stood below the steps with Rhorek, waiting to bid farewell to the entourage, but he made a visible effort to avoid his rebellious son. He struck up a conversation with Rorin of all people, clapped the obsequious young lord on the back, but spared not a glance for Kieryn. Miracles, it seemed, had been reserved for someone else. Kieryn tried to summon rage, jealousy, anything to drown the regret that threatened to choke him. He started for the gatehouse, where Laral held Diorval’s reins, but his mother caught him by the sleeve.

  “Don’t leave angry, son,” Alovi said. Her eyelids were red and puffy. Da’s stubbornness had reduced her to long tears. Kieryn couldn’t bear to see her grieving. She swallowed hard to press down her heartache, and Kieryn almost changed his mind, almost dropped his bag and told Laral to return Diorval to the stables. But Mother hadn’t asked him to stay.

  “I’ll never understand him,” he said.

  “I know,” she whispered. “But he understands it’s time for you to leave us.”

  “He hates the reason I’m leaving.”

  “He doesn’t hate you, Kieryn.”

  “Small difference.”

  “Don’t let him cower you into staying. And don’t go only because you’re angry with him.”

  Kieryn bowed his head, shamed. His mother put a small hand to his face. “I want you to go. This is your time, son, your journey. You have chosen to walk this path. And you have never made me prouder.” Her green eyes welled, emeralds in a glistering pool.

  “You’re going to make everyone late for a good start,” Kelyn said, approaching from the baggage train, where likely he had been inspecting the Duchess’s handmaids. “I’ll be damned if you’re not leaving home before I do. Never thought that would happen. Be careful. Watch out for bandits and ogres and things.”

  “I’m merely going to another library. You’re the one who needs to be careful, noble knight.” He turned abruptly to hide his worry. Who would look after Kelyn now? Who would be there to keep him out of trouble? At the gatehouse, open to the meadows and the long highway, Kieryn took the reins from Laral.

  The squire regarded him with reverent gray eyes. “I tied a bow and quiver to your saddle, m’ lord, just in case. It’s a long way to Windhaven, and I hate to think of, well, bad things happening to you.”

  Kieryn tousled Laral’s curls. “Do as my father tells you, and the next time I see you, I expect you to be two feet taller.”

  Laral laughed a boy’s high laugh. “I’ll do my best, m’ lord.”

  Kieryn swung into the saddle and found Kelyn at his knee. “Learn everything you can,” he said, then cast a glance toward Rhoslyn where she waited upon her golden filly.

  Kieryn was not blind to Kelyn’s meaning. “Don’t worry, brother, I know my reasons for going.”

  “Good,” Kelyn said and slapped his brother’s thigh. “When we come home, you can conjure the world’s most beautiful woman for me.”

  Kieryn laughed. “Keep dreaming, you wanton dog.”

  With the king’s blessing, the entourage rumbled through the gatehouse and onto the wide road. Kieryn gave Diorval a nudge and fell in behind the other highborns. He felt wooden somehow, as if he were trapped inside an insensible shell. Ilswythe reared up behind him as he descended the hill. The smoking chimneys, thatched roofs, and noise of the village passed away on his left, and falling prey to the urge, Kieryn glanced over his shoulder. Between the merlons atop the battlements, his mother’s hair glinted black-red in the morning light. Kelyn stood with her, arm raised in farewell. He turned away from them, reminding himself he wouldn’t be gone forever. This was just a short excursion, after all.

  Kieryn found plenty to divert him from homesickness. To either side of the Highway, vast meadows bared green bellies toward the sun, and Ilswythe’s sheep drifted through nodding wild flax. The Silver Mountains reared up jagged shoulders, their snow-bearded faces watching the procession pass. Far ahead, Avidan Wood was no more than a bluish smudge. To avoid the shadowed eaves of the Wood until absolutely necessary, the King’s Highway would eventually veer away from the river and head northwest toward Thyrvael. The perpetual darkness, strange sounds, and sinister reputation of the Wood dissuaded travelers from entering the vine-ensnared trees. Wayfarers unlucky enough to become lost in the Wood’s embrace never ventured out again. At least, that was the tale. Despite Ilswythe’s proximity to the Wood, Kieryn knew of no one who had journeyed into the Wood and vanished. The miller of the village liked to regale visitors—Kieryn in particular—with stories of this relative or that who had been swallowed by the Wood’s evil denizens, but Kieryn noted that the names of the miller’s relations changed with every telling. Still, no one dared challenge the veracity of the tales.

  Nor did anyone seem to know exactly what the evils of Avidan Wood were. Historians only theorized. Jonyth Holyhand, whose works Kieryn most admired, had written that the Wood’s branches had been hung with the bodies of warriors slain in some nameless, ancient battle, and now their ghosts were trapped there, restless and vengeful. Klarinda the Word Hunter claimed in her boastful tales that the Wood was a haunt of ogres, elves, dragons, and far fouler creatures of no name. The Reverent Veon wrote that sorcerers—avedrin, likely—had cursed the Wood, and the evils were all manner of illusions and traps that drove travelers mad.

  Late in the morning, Kieryn remembered to look behind him, but Ilswythe had disappeared behind the green swells of the meadow-sea. He was glad he had missed the tips of the towers slipping below the horizon. The sight of it might have made him sick.

  “Five days,” chirped Rhoslyn, drawing up beside him on her prancing filly. “Five days and we’ll be at Windhaven with the sun on the sea.”

  “I’ve never seen the Great Fire Sea,” Kieryn said, and Rhoslyn’s wistfulness became slack-jawed incredulit
y.

  “Never ever never?” she asked. “But I’d be lost without the sea. I’m parched after only two weeks away from it.”

  “When we went to Wyramor, where my mother grew up, even then we didn’t visit the shore. We planned to, but there was rain or something and the hassle wasn’t worth it.”

  “Not worth it! Just you wait. Why, it must be a rite of passage to experience the sea for the first time. An induction into something … well, more grand.” The glitter in her eyes, the excitement in her voice, her gestures, caught Kieryn by the throat and he had to remind himself to breathe.

  Their brief exchange had given Lord Rorin enough time to notice Rhoslyn devoting attention to someone other than himself. He trotted up on Rhoslyn’s other side, a boisterous red feather flapping behind his green riding hat. “The Mother has blessed us with fair riding weather,” he said in greeting.

  Rhoslyn stiffened and replied, “Clouds on the horizon.”

  Rorin ignored her oblique insult and regarded Kieryn with a sneer and a wrinkle on his nose. “Talking of black magics, are we?”

  Color rushed into Rhoslyn’s cheeks. “If we wanted to include you—”

  “We were talking of the sea, Lord Rorin,” Kieryn broke in, sure that Kelyn would’ve lauded his demonstration of grace. “I explained to Her Ladyship that I’ve never seen it before.”

  Rorin’s dark eyes went blank for a moment—as if trying to find the snare laid for him—then brightened again. “Ah, you’ve never lived till you feel the swell of the main beneath your feet, lad.”

  Lad? Rorin couldn’t be but three years older. Kieryn grinned amiably and remarked, “Sounds more like trying to keep from drowning than living.”

  “Ha, a land-lover’s ignorance.”

  Something viperish surfaced in Rhoslyn’s fair face. “I was under the impression you were a land-lover, Rorin. Though the number of your ships is second only to my father’s, you always take the Highway when you attend on us at Windhaven. And you yourself have said that you can’t see how my father enjoys accompanying his merchant ships.”

  “Yes, well, the threat of pirates—”

  “You fear the pirates?”

  Rorin glanced from Rhoslyn to Kieryn and back again. “Any man would be a fool not to fear the pirates, my lady. You yourself fear them enough to have sought Rhorek’s aid against them.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I sought my cousin’s aid, because the pirates cost us much silver in stolen goods every year, and if you ever again presume to tell me what I’m feeling, I’ll have a hard time restraining myself from begging Father to relieve you of all your pretty ships. Now, if you gentlemen will excuse me, I prefer to ride in the fore with Lord Davhin.” Her filly’s hooves showered them with dust.

  Rorin whipped out a silk kerchief and gasped, “I believe I overshot my aim. What—cough—think you, lad?”

  The sight of Rorin dusting the road from his waxed, pointed beard and slapping it from his puffy slit sleeve was too disgusting to watch. He was too much in love with himself to realize Rhoslyn’s loathing of him. Stating the obvious would probably be a waste of Kieryn’s breath. “If your purpose was to gain her favor, my lord, I’d say you were counterproductive.”

  “She’ll come around.”

  Kelyn had said the same thing about the laundry maid. Arrogant bastards both. Kieryn surrendered the argument before it became one, wanting only for Rorin to go away. A wicked bit of inspiration prompted him to pat Diorval’s shoulder with his bandaged hand, a gesture Lord Westport could not possibly miss. Rorin’s face drained to a hue resembling the gray of the road; he wheeled his mount around and rejoined Lord Erum near the rear.

  Something besides the dirt kicked up by the vanguard caused Kieryn to feel suddenly soiled.

  About midday, the King’s Highway turned north for the mountains, and in late afternoon, the entourage passed the guard tower that marked the halfway point between Ilswythe and Thyrvael. Atop the crown of the countryside’s highest hill, the tower acted as the eye that watched for silver thieves and wayward evils. A sentry on the ramparts raised a pike in salute.

  At sundown, the highborns stopped at the Silver Stag, an inn run by enterprising dwarves, kin of those who ran Thyrvael’s mines. Kieryn’s window faced the mountains. Up and down the southern crags, lights began to glow orange against the dusk. Deep within the lantern-lit mine shafts, Kassen’s dwarves labored day and night, hauling out cartloads of ore to be processed in the valley below. The sight was familiar to Kieryn. He and his family had traveled several times to Thyrvael as guests of Lord Kassen. There, Kieryn had marveled at the white ore glinting from the mountain stone and at the miners’ broad, crevassed faces, caked in stone dust.

  He hoped the old Minister would be able to convince the dwarves to fight beside the king. In battle, sang the bards, the bravest of knights feared to cross paths with fierce dwarven warriors. Their war-cries were said to freeze a man’s lifeblood, and their khorzai—pickaxes adapted for battle—were rumored to be invulnerable. Whatever method or enchantment they used to forge their weapons, the dwarves kept the knowledge strictly to themselves, much to the dismay and ruin of their foe.

  Whether or not the songs were true, the dwarves of the Silver Mountains dwelled within the Black Falcon’s realm, and in Kieryn’s opinion, ought not be given the option of abandoning the king to his enemies. But the decision was hardly his to make, and he wouldn’t allow thoughts of war to cloud the evening.

  He joined the rest of the party in the great room for dinner. Servants had netted coveys of quail along the roadside and the Stag’s matron was pleased to have them roasted and basted in red wine, as long as the highborns paid the regular price for the wine. Frugal people, the dwarves. Waste was a crime among them; bargains were almost as disdained, unless it was the dwarves who profited.

  Rhoslyn had saved Kieryn a seat at her side. “Ready to go home yet?” she asked. She had bathed the dust from her face and brushed out her hair for the night. The golden curls swept the bench. He warned himself not to look at her, lest the others catch him staring. He shook his head in reply. “Good,” she said. “Wouldn’t do you any good if you were. I wouldn’t let you go.”

  Across the table, Princess Rilyth grinned at them. Her eyes narrowed craftily, and Kieryn felt he was among dangerous company, indeed.

  ~~~~

  The next day, the blue smudge of Avidan Wood grew into a discernable forest, ancient and impenetrable. The trees were so tall that the canopy snagged drifting clouds and shielded the ground from the sun. Deep cloistering shadows provided cover for any number of watchful predators. Silence like a tangible weave surrounded the Wood, for neither bird, nor squirrel, nor breath of wind could be heard among the swelling leaves. Kieryn well imagined fanged, slavering beasts emerging from the vine-clad dark, but he couldn’t help but find beauty in the Wood: the age of it; the primeval wildness; the velvet, moist softness of the shadows; the hints of light deep down like hidden jewels winking, beckoning. There was a magic to the place, no one could deny that, but was the magic truly evil, or merely misunderstood?

  The trees slipped slowly by, and the foothills tumbled closer, forcing the Highway into a tightening strait. There would be no inn to stay in tonight. Even the dwarves dared not build so close to the Wood. No, anyone traveling the King’s Highway had to risk at least one night of sleeping out in the open, exposed to the rumors lurking under the branches.

  As though some force repelled them, wagons and riders edged toward the steeper rocky ground on the north side of the road. Kieryn found Diorval following the pattern and decided to test the myth. Any rider could fear the Wood and unconsciously guide his horse away, but what would Diorval do if Kieryn urged her toward the tall green grass on the southern edge of the road?

  To his astonishment, the docile old mare fought the tug of the reins. She flailed her head, stomped, and sidled. She even attempted to rear, but Kieryn relinquished the struggle and soothed her with soft words.

  “
She’s no fool, lad,” said Lord Erum, riding by with the rear guard. “Come back onto the road.”

  Diorval seemed only too happy to join Erum’s gelding and nuzzle noses. “The Wood puts a strange spell on man and beast alike. Saps the courage right out of them. My princess has a stout heart—she’s Rhorek’s sister for certain—but on the way to Assembly we failed to get the tents raised before dark and damned if she didn’t go into hysterics.” Ahead of the wagons and the greater part of the dust, Princess Rilyth rode in her carriage. Drem and Rhoslyn rode across from her, but not one of them spoke. They were watching the trees. “She’ll never admit to what happened, but mark me, we’ll have camp set up before sundown.”

  Lord Erum was not mistaken. The scouts were sent ahead to locate the remains of the fires that Galt’s party had lit on their return to Helwende, and an hour before dusk a new fire blazed beside the princess’s pavilion. Every dark red tent was erected on a space of flattened ground on the road’s north side, as if the road itself provided an effective barrier.

  The party ate in silence, fearful that the slightest breath might call the evils down from the branches. Heavy moss and curling vines drooped from the limbs like sleeping serpents, and all too often a strange glow appeared high in the canopy or low among the underbrush, then vanished suddenly. The lights were too large and nebulous to be glowworms or fireflies. “Dragon Eyes,” Rhoslyn whispered over her plate when Kieryn aimed a questioning glance at her. “They miss nothing that passes on the road, and they snatch away fools who venture too close.” A grin undermined her attempt to frighten him. All the same, he untied the bow and quiver from his saddle and blessed Laral for his foresight.

  After dinner, Rilyth called for Drem to hurry into their pavilion. “The night air isn’t good for your cough.” The excuse of her son’s health wasn’t enough to hide the frantic note in her voice. The rest of the highborns were as eager to duck behind their tent flaps, but Kieryn remained beside the fire. Rhoslyn emerged from her pavilion, the picture of gentility in a robe of rose silk-velvet; the gray fur of a glacier fox embraced her throat and wrists. Fox-fur slippers silenced her steps. One of her handmaids unfurled a leather camp-chair for her. “I don’t suppose you stuffed a tent into that little knapsack of yours?” she asked Kieryn. “I took the liberty of speaking with Lord Davhin. He’s agreed to accommodate you in his tent until we reach Helwende. He’s got a humorless personality, but he’s amiable. I spared you Rorin’s idiocy, anyway. But I confess,” she added, leaning closer, “my first impulse was to share my tent with you. Then I remembered that wouldn’t be proper. Why, before we reached the coast, the countryside would be dizzy with the scandal.”