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

by Ellyn, Court

  The joggling of the wagon worked an ache into Kieryn’s ravaged muscles and did little to ease his stomach, but he curled up tight, his saddle a pillow, and soon fell asleep. He didn’t wake until the chill shadow of Windgate Pass fell on him. The cold gales on his face were a balm for his nausea. The wagon’s wheels ground as the driver laid heavy on the break and the mules inched down the Evaronnan side of the mountain.

  The avedrin lingered at Vonmora for two days. Lord Davhin’s steward was pleased to put Kieryn in the best of the guest suites and sent the household physicians to attend to him. There wasn’t much they could do but urge him to eat and sleep. Lying among the silk pillows, Kieryn wondered what he was to tell Rhoslyn. She would see that he had been ill. He couldn’t exactly tell her the truth. “Well, I was poisoned by an elf who Zellel beat in a duel of spells.” Not only would he be breaking his oath to Laniel, but Rhoslyn might not believe him. “I was attacked by a bandit.” No, that would only send her into fits. Zellel had promised they would be safe, after all. Rhoslyn would never let him out of her sight again. But wasn’t that what he wanted? Hmm … maybe playing the invalid for a few days would prove to Rhoslyn how much he meant to her. Would he be more than “safe” after she learned he had almost died?

  “Zellel, we have to tell her the same story,” he said. They were walking to the stables, where the steward said a horse would be waiting for Kieryn.

  “Just tell her you ate something that didn’t agree with you.”

  “Food? I almost died because of food?”

  “Happens all the time. She’ll believe that.”

  “It’s not very gallant,” he complained.

  “Neither is being thrown from the saddle and landing in a gutter. Were you going to tell her that part?”

  Kieryn sighed and hurried ahead. Lord Davhin’s best horses had gone south with him, but the gelding wearing Diorval’s saddle and bridle was a sturdy, gentle thing. Mounting up, Kieryn glared at his mentor and said, “Did Diorval eat bad food, too?”

  Zellel sniffed. “Happens.”

  “Bandits. It was bandits, Zellel.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  When at last the moon-stirred sea and the noisy ports of Windhaven spread out below him, the lies became unimportant. Kieryn cantered down the hill to the ferry. Rygg emerged from the boathouse, whipped off his red cap, and bowed in dramatic fashion. “Good journey?” He leaned closer. “You look a bit piqued, my lord.”

  “Eh, bad food.”

  “Ach, sorry to hear it. Damned innkeepers. They don’t care if they kill their customers, long as they get paid, eh?”

  Leading the horse onto the ferry, Kieryn asked, “All is well with His Grace? And Rhoslyn?”

  “As a matter of fact, I heard the duke has shown some improvement.” Rygg grinned smugly, as if he himself had brought about this change in the duke’s health. “Heard he sat up on his own, and his left hand drew into a fist.”

  “Rhoslyn must be pleased.” Kieryn could well imagine her excitement as she told him what he’d missed. All for the better, because he was less than eager to tell her his handful of lies.

  “She was. She was, indeed. When she returns, I’m sure—” Rygg stopped abruptly and fidgeted with his cap.

  “Returns? Is she in the city?”

  “Uh … pardon, m’ lord, it weren’t my place to say.” The ferrymaster barked orders at his oarsmen, evading further talk.

  Kieryn considered prying the truth from Rygg’s mind, but he preferred to hear it from Rhoslyn herself.

  Across the river, he cantered ahead of the contrary mule. The gate wardens took their time in lifting the portcullis. Zellel had nearly caught up to him by the time he made it through the gate. In the courtyard he left orders for the horse to be returned to Vonmora, then hurried into the palace.

  Lady Halayn was waiting for him in the vestibule, her slender hands folded serenely at the waist of her high-collared gown. Her hazel eyes regarded him as coolly as ashes. “So you return to us at last,” she said.

  Kieryn’s spine stiffened at the forced pleasantries. He couldn’t figure the woman. Warm one moment, cold the next. And he recalled the warning she had ordered Zellel to give him once they departed for the Wood.

  “You don’t look well. I do hope the journey wasn’t perilous.”

  “Nothing avedrin couldn’t deal with,” he replied and waited for some word of Rhoslyn. Halayn, however, stood as still and straight as a sentry tower. Her eyebrows lifted expectantly. Then he caught it, a thought flung at him as forcefully as any thrown stone: Come on, boy, ask me where she is, how she is, anything! She’d meant him to hear it, loud and clear. And she expected him to oblige her.

  Instead, Kieryn bowed and said, “If you’ll excuse me, lady, I’m exhausted.” Halayn tried to hide her disappointment as Kieryn stepped around her and made for the stair. Outside his chamber, he encountered the head steward. “Sadév, where might I find Lady Rhoslyn?”

  “Pardons, m’ lord, her ship is not returned yet.”

  “Ship? What ship?”

  Sadév coughed discreetly, aware that he’d broken some rule. “I’m not at liberty to speak of it, m’ lord.” He tried to hurry past, but Kieryn caught him by the shoulder.

  “By the Mother,” he declared, “I will know where she is. And you will tell me.”

  ~~~~

  He found Halayn in the kitchens, venting her disappointment on an unfortunate maid who may or may not have hawked a dozen of the Duchess Rhosamen’s antique silver spoons.

  “You let her sail into a pirate’s grasp?” he demanded. The lamps over the chopping block flared a degree brighter. “You realize the danger she’s in?”

  Halayn’s brow peaked. With a miniscule flap of her hand, she sent the maid scurrying. “Rhoslyn went on my brother’s—the duke’s—order.”

  “He could’ve sent anyone else. Why his own daughter?”

  “His Grace has his reasons,” she said sternly. “And he does not owe you answers.”

  “If those murdering thieves get their hands on her, they can demand whatever ransom they want—or worse.” He paced before the row of brick ovens.

  “You think I’m unaware of this?” Halayn snapped. “You think I didn’t try to convince Harac to send someone else, to abandon this insane scheme altogether?”

  Kieryn refused to be mollified. “I should’ve been here,” he muttered. “I never would’ve let her go alone.”

  “You were not here, you were not involved, and Rhoslyn is not your concern.”

  “Not my concern?”

  Halayn raised her chin, satisfied at last. Having Zellel warn Kieryn about his attachment obviously hadn’t been enough to suit her. It was all he could do to restrain a roar of futility. Who else felt the need to tell him what he already knew? “I never claimed to be worthy of her, damn it! But that does not stop me from loving her.”

  Kieryn might as well have slapped the woman’s face. She stumbled backward. Luckily, there was a stool to catch her. She stared up at him, open-mouthed, and her surprised disgusted him. He was halfway back to the main stair when Halayn called out to him. Politeness alone bid him wait for her.

  Joining him under the high stone vault, she said, “It seems I misunderstood you. Why shouldn’t every young man seek to claim the ducal throne, thought I. You would hardly be the first. But that’s not what you’re after, is it?”

  “I just want her to be safe … and happy.”

  “Happy?” A doleful smile turned Halayn’s mouth. “Happy in life, happy in duty, happy in love, yes. Unfortunately, few people attain all three. If Rhoslyn’s sense of duty is not confused by desire, she may yet find happiness.”

  Acridly he said, “Then you have no need to worry, Lady Halayn. I have been unable to confuse Rhoslyn. But neither let yourself be confused. I will stop at nothing to see her safe, I don’t care what hapless princeling you marry her to.”

  Halayn straightened her shoulders and nodded. “Then we understand one another
.”

  “Hardly.” He proceeded down the corridor, and at the bottom of the stair he glanced back and found Halayn still watching him. She wore a peculiar grin, one she might’ve given to the unexpected victor of a chess match.

  ~~~~

  He woke the next morning to the sight of Zellel’s glowering face. “Time to get started,” he said.

  “Started on what?”

  “Have you forgotten you’ve an apprenticeship to pursue?”

  Kieryn stuffed his head under his pillow. “Leave me alone. I think I’ve got a fever again.” His body ached from travel and poison-induced convulsions; he just wanted to sleep.

  “You haven’t got a fever, boy. This malaise is called laziness.” Zellel prodded his ribs with the end of the staff. “You would be wise to learn to defend yourself against assassins, wouldn’t you say? You never know when the next will show up. Come along.”

  Kieryn muttered into the mattress, “We don’t know another will come at all. Why would elves decide to kill us all of a sudden?”

  “That’s not the point, is it? Preparation, boy.” Zellel waited in silence. Kieryn hoped he would give up and leave him be. But then he said, “If you’re finished with this apprenticeship, start packing your bags.”

  Kieryn followed the old avedra to the top of a tower overlooking a stretch of the courtyard. There, amid a gust from the sea, Zellel explained the essence of the universe. “I told you once before that everything is composed of energy, that wizardry is the bending of those energies with our will.”

  Kieryn nodded, trying to look sleepy and irritable, though in truth, his curiosity was budding.

  “To be able to bend those energies, we must first understand how they function and how they affect everything around them.” He pointed down at the stables, where the duke’s blacksmith pounded out a horseshoe at his anvil. “The smith must understand the nature of the metal he works with before he can shape it as he chooses. Its malleability, the amount of heat and pressure to apply—and where.” He swept his staff in a wide arc, and a rainbow stretched luminous arms over the western rooftops. Kieryn forgot his aches and exhaustion and laughed with a child’s delight.

  “How did I do it?” Zellel asked.

  Kieryn stammered a dozen beginnings but concluded with a shrug.

  “What causes a rainbow?” Zellel prompted. “When do you see one?”

  “When the sun shines on rain clouds,” Kieryn answered. “But there are no rain clouds over the palace.” Indeed, the sky was bright, opaque blue.

  “You think I ignored the physics of a rainbow? That I spread a band of color across the sky like a painter with a brush? No, no. Look to the sun. We stand between it and the rainbow. Anyone approaching from the sea will see nothing but sunlight. So one element of a rainbow’s existence is accounted for. The other?”

  “The rain. You spread rain over the towers?”

  “In essence, aye,” Zellel admitted. “Air is full of moisture. When the moisture condenses, it forms rain. Therefore, I willed the moisture to condense into a mist, the sunlight struck the mist and made a rainbow. But let’s go a step further. What allows the moisture to condense?”

  Kieryn thought of the sweat on a chilled wine glass. “Cold,” he answered.

  “Good, and what is cold but the absence of heat, and what is heat but raw energy.”

  Staggered that so much lay behind the simple gesture Zellel had made to paint the rainbow, Kieryn mused, “So you removed the heat from that space of air, condensed the humidity, and let the light do the rest?”

  “You might amount to something yet.”

  “What of the campfire you lit in Avidanyth?” Kieryn asked.

  “You answer that.” Zellel leant heavily on his staff.

  Kieryn watched the rainbow fade. “The action must be the opposite one. Not removing the heat but increasing it.”

  Zellel glanced down at the blacksmith’s forge, and the fire smoldering in the coals leapt skyward. The smith spun around, startled by the explosion.

  “Is it really so easy for you?” Kieryn asked.

  “Fire is the most basic manifestation of energy,” Zellel explained, “and therefore the easiest to manipulate. But until one learns to control its essence, fire is certainly the most dangerous. Many an apprentice has turned whole villages to cinders. And here let me add, boy, that our emotions too often affect the intensity of our workings. We must learn to control anger, hatred, and other passions. Even experienced avedrin have had workings get away from them.”

  “You’ve mentioned ‘working’ and ‘spell’ before, but what’s the difference?”

  “Spells require words,” the master said. “Always in a set order to conjure the energies and move them as the speaker desires. Spells speak to the awareness, so to say, of the elements. I told you of the duel Dravaen challenged me to. Elarion are able to utilize spells because the magic is in the words and in the contact between those words and the object or energy affected. They have scores of books containing their spells. The White Tomes contain those used for benevolent purposes, such as forming a scrying pool. But the Dark Tomes, which Aerdria keeps locked in some secret vault, contain the secrets of all the evils ever known, along with spells too dangerous for just anyone to learn.”

  “Aerdria said the Dark Tomes tell of the origins of ogres. How can anyone create one kind of life from another?”

  Zellel smirked. “A powerful working, that, eh? Workings require no words, only the focusing of will and the channeling of energy.”

  “Then why the extensive training for avedrin, when their ability is instinctual?” Kieryn hoped Zellel would tell him that the hard part was over, that he’d mastered his eyes and ears and the rest was icing.

  But he snorted and said, “The ability, aye, the will, no. Will and control are somehow tied to personality. Some avedrin make terrible wizards. And the only reason I can give is that they lack will and stamina, or have much of one and too little of the other.”

  “Stamina?”

  Zellel chuckled dryly. “When you begin to perform your own workings, you’ll understand what I mean.”

  After breakfast, Zellel took Kieryn into the countryside, where yellow hills rolled down to the cliffs. Wind from the sea did little to alleviate the midsummer heat. Cicadas sang in the tall grass. Shorn sheep grazed the high pastures, and fields of grain edged toward gold. Zellel chose a hollow among the hills where only the fairies would witness the lessons. There, he ordered Kieryn to build a short pyre from the deadfall of an old thellnyth tree. That done, Zellel extended a spade.

  Kieryn stared at it, glowering.

  “Aye, that’s a peasant’s tool, lordling,” remarked Zellel. “You can afford to blister your hands for one day.”

  “It isn’t that, old man. Why am I the only one breaking a sweat?”

  Zellel grinned smugly. “Because I’m old. I’m also the master, and I did my share of sweating years ago. Get to it.” He slapped the spade into Kieryn’s hand and told him to turn up the soil in a wide circle around the pyre. “When your fire escapes you, there’s no need to burn every village between the river and the Glacier.”

  “When—?”

  Zellel’s beard lifted with that sagacious smirk.

  The ditch dug, Kieryn sank onto the hillside, catching his breath and ignoring his master’s urges to get on with the real work. Near his ear he heard Saffron’s soothing voice, “You know how this is done, my love. Intimidation and hesitation will see your defeat. Will is your weapon, just as a sword is the weapon in your brother’s hand. Neither of you can afford to doubt.”

  Zellel added, “Everything begins with imagining. Imagination, will, execution.”

  Kieryn stilled his mind and focused on the electric void deep inside his mind.

  The hypnotic buzzing overwhelmed his senses. He recalled the image of the campfire in the Wood leaping suddenly to life, then imagined his stack of kindling bursting into flame. The buzzing inside his head exploded into a white cr
ackling behind his eyelids. He willed the flames to manifest with consuming hunger, and a surge of energy ripped down his spine, along his arms and out his hands.

  Opening his eyes, he found the kindling writhing under a ball of flame. Zellel stumbled back to escape a scorching.

  But just as suddenly, the fire went out. The logs were barely blackened. Dismayed, Kieryn asked, “What the hell happened?”

  “Surface fire,” Zellel said. “Nice, intense fire, but you let go too soon.”

  Kieryn heaved a sigh and tried again. This time, his fire exploded with a black cloud of smoke, leapt the earthen barrier, and settled in a patch of grass. With a cry, he let go of his flame. The fire on the kindling went out, but the grass continued to burn. The wind from the sea swept it across the hollow. Zellel raised a hand and snuffed the fire. A swath of sparkling frost coated the grass.

  “Bigger is not always better,” Zellel said. “Again.”

  Kieryn imagined a small tongue of flame gradually spreading to envelope the pyre. The energies responded, and he felt a smaller, gentler tingling rather than the lightning strike along his nerves. A low blaze sprang up on the kindling, growing slowly in intensity. He grit his teeth, forbidding his mind to release its bond with the flames. When he saw the logs themselves burning red, he let go with a long exhale and sat back on his heels to watch the fire crackling happily away. “Unbelievable,” he muttered.

  “Ah, but you must have believed.” Zellel crouched down beside him. “Never lose the wonder of it, boy. The day you do is the day it becomes too casual, too dangerous.”

  “It really wasn’t so difficult,” Kieryn decided, then noticed his hands shaking.

  “Let’s try it without the pyre.” Zellel retreated a few steps and ordered, “Put this one out first.”

  Kieryn imagined a reversing, a dispersing of the energies he’d focused onto the pyre. Whips of flame lashed out at him. He scrambled back, crablike, and scolded himself, Don’t disperse the heat, idiot—remove it!