The Endless Skies

by Shannon Price

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  To Gaston, my brightest light

  PROLOGUE

  SHIRENE

  “How many are dead?”

  The healer kneeling before the king sways. “Two, Your Grace. With a dozen more in beds already. It all starts the same. A fever, then a cough that steals the breath.”

  No one in the Glass Tower dares breathe, let alone move. The Tower’s high archways and polished windows that were usually let open wide are sealed shut. No one could know of this meeting, except for the ambassadors of the other kingdoms who would be briefed on it later this morning. Their fate is tied closer to ours than any of them would want to admit.

  King Kharo frowns. “And how many know of it?”

  “Just my team here, my king,” replies the Chief Healer, indicating toward the group of healers behind her. “And one more, keeping watch over the sick right now.”

  The sky outside is dotted with stars just beginning to yield to the sun’s light. I fix my gaze on the red line of the horizon. Today will be the longest day of the year.

  Here and there, a winged lion flits from one end of the city to the next, bundles of flowers clutched in their arms as the last preparations for the High Summer festival are made. I’d often imagined what it would be like to celebrate my first High Summer as a sentinel—greeting the citizens, complimenting merchants on their wares, and awarding prizes at the various competitions scheduled from dawn to dusk.

  Instead, I sit with the other sentinels in my sleeping clothes, having barely had time to secure a shawl around my shoulders before making it to the emergency council meeting. A shiver snakes its way down my spine as the cool stone beneath my shoes pulls the warmth from my limbs. As Ninth Sentinel, my chair is closest to the east, giving me a view of Balmora, miles across the sea. I will be the first to see the messenger.

  The king lifts his hand, indicating that the healer can rise. “I trust you will be able to continue to keep this quiet,” says the king. “I ask for total silence from you and anyone else tending to the sick. We cannot risk sending the citizens into a panic.”

  The healer bows low. She knows the grave reason as well as I. “Yes, Your Grace.”

  The king dismisses the healers back to their duties, thanking them again for their discretion. Before she leaves, the Chief Healer’s gaze goes to a figure huddling in the corner, clinging to the shadows as if they provide some protection. Ah, I think. She’s seen him.

  I wonder if she remembers him. The deserter’s name was on everybody’s lips when he abandoned his duties a little over a year ago. But no one knows his name more surely than I. He had been the Ninth Sentinel before me.

  Now I am sitting in his former seat, having taken his place as part of the King’s Council.

  No one gathered here would address him with a title anymore. He is only Noam, a deserter at best and a traitor at worst.

  I desperately want to ask him what caused him to leave the proud city of the Heliana for Balmora—the continent that our people sometimes call the “lost land”—but I set my selfish curiosity aside for now. Such conversations can wait until after we receive the humans’ reply.

  With the king’s permission, Sentinels Hammond and Renna flew to Balmora’s mountains last week in desperation, seeking Noam’s advice about the horrible illness spreading like a fire among the Leonodai children, some just a few years old. The healers were unable to treat it, and the scholars were baffled. Noam listened to the symptoms with a growing dread in his eyes, and Renna told me later that he asked right away if we’d found dead birds in our city. We had.

  “The birds carry the disease wherever they go,” he had warned us. “If what you say is true, you have days to act. You must ask for aid from the human capital city, Ramsgate.”

  Though he was technically exiled for desertion, ironically, we couldn’t have made an offer of peace without Noam. In the year since he’d left, Noam had learned much of the human language. While the king and council of sentinels had discussed our options, he alerted the humans in his village to what was happening. In a blur of days, each of the Four Kingdoms had agreed to offer peace, and the human leaders had agreed to meet our messenger at the Cliffs.

  Back in the present, a flash of gold on the horizon stops time. I stifle a gasp, but not well enough. Other eyes follow where mine linger.

  “My king—” starts Sentinel Renna when she sees.

  “I see her,” the king replies. “Skies keep us. The humans have given their answer.”

  Some agonizing minutes later, and the messenger lands. She drops the white flag in her jaws to the ground before taking her human form. In a rush of gold magic, her bronze lioness fur changes to cloud-white robes and gold armor as her body shifts to that of a woman with olive skin. The messenger’s chest rises and falls as she catches her breath, but she wastes no time. Brushing back sweat from her brow, she kneels before the king.

  “Your Grace,” she says. She reaches into the bag at her side and pulls out a charred stack of parchment. “I delivered your message to the human leader. An offer of peace and permanent trade with the Four Kingdoms in exchange for the disease’s cure.”

  The king leans forward. A lock of graying hair comes loose from beneath his crown as he does. “And? Where is their reply?”

  The messenger’s breath hitches. “They did not give one. They placed our offer in a fire and left.”

  “Skies keep us,” the king says as I think the same. Why would the humans turn down our offer? The king covers his eyes, his fingertips rubbing his temples. “Did they give an explanation?”

  “No, Your Grace,” she replies. “I waited for one until they were out of sight before flying back.”

  They must not have understood, I think. We’d spent so much time convincing the ambassadors from the other kingdoms to agree to a permanent trade route. It took days of bickering, all while sick children continued to fill the healers’ beds in the palace levels below us.

  Fear twists like a knife in my gut. The disease would keep killing if left unchecked, but there was nothing we could do.

  “Noam, step forward, please,” says the king.

  The deserter does so obediently. I know well enough now that he hasn’t forgotten the sense of duty that he shirked when he left. Seeing Noam before the king now, I don’t doubt his loyalty in this moment.

  “Noam,” the king says. “You say the cure for this disease is a wild plant, one that grows on the far side of Balmora.”

  “That is what my human friends have told me,” he replies. “I have no reason to doubt them.”

  If the king has any misgivings about taking information from a deserter, he does not show it. “Then we will send teams
,” the king says. “To find the cure the humans have chosen to keep from us.”

  “They will know we’re coming,” the Second Sentinel, Hammond, says gravely from several chairs to my right. His gray beard reaches halfway down his chest, betraying his age, but his eyes are sharp and clear.

  “I know,” the king responds. “But I will not sentence a generation of Leonodai to death because of my own inaction.”

  “What of the High Summer festival?” asks another of my colleagues. “The citizens will be celebrating soon. Should we call off the festivities?”

  The king considers this. “No. Let the people have their golden hours. We will need the time to consult the other ambassadors. If we are going to throw more fuel on the embers of war, we must get their blessing. Sentinel Renna, you oversee the warriors’ training. I trust you are willing to choose the teams.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” the Fourth Sentinel says.

  “Good,” he replies. “There is one more matter we need to discuss before we leave here. When word gets out, the citizens will look to all sentinels for assurance. It would be prudent to speak as one voice, through one person. Sentinel Faera, as you all know, had for years served as the King’s Voice, bringing the kingdoms together. Given her absence, I wonder if you would elect someone to serve in her place.”

  My peers and I exchange looks of surprise. Faera stepped down two months ago to start her own family as well as to care for her elderly father. Her successor had not yet been named. Per tradition, a search was being conducted for her replacement, and anyone on the Heliana could volunteer himself or herself, as I had a year ago when Noam deserted. The numbers of our ranks were only echoes of a past hierarchy. Every sentinel was chosen the same way, and any Leonodai could ask to be considered.

  Hammond should be the King’s Voice, I think. Older than the king himself, Hammond is a veteran soldier and always keeps the city’s best interests at heart.

  The sentinel in question clears his throat. “Your Grace,” Hammond says. “I am a welder’s son, not a politician. You know I am not one for diplomatic dances.”

  Beside me, my friend Sentinel Lyreina exhales a small laugh, and I share it. Wordsmith or not, I bet Lyreina feels as I do.

  Then Hammond says, “I would elect the Ninth Sentinel, Lady Shirene.” What? I am too new and too young. My mouth opens to protest, but he keeps going. “A capable warrior, Sentinel Shirene has wisdom beyond her years and a depth of patience that the scholars could study.” My heart swells out of my chest. Hammond isn’t one to give compliments unless he truly means it.

  And yet here he is, speaking my name before the king.

  “I second the nomination,” says Lyreina. “The citizens adore Shirene and trust her well.”

  King Kharo turns his attention to me. “Sentinel Shirene,” he says. “Would you serve as the King’s Voice?”

  My heart races. I am a sentinel, the same as everyone else gathered here. I can’t hide behind the newness of my station forever. At some point, I will have to face the sun and rise into her light. This is that moment. I take a deep breath.

  “I would be honored, Your Grace.”

  “Then it’s done,” he replies. “I’ll leave you to gather the ambassadors. I will consult with Noam and the scholars to decide the route the teams will take.”

  Sunlight breaks over the horizon in the east as the king continues assigning duties. I take the moment to breathe. Beside me, Lyreina grabs my hand and squeezes it tightly.

  “Congratulations,” she says. “What an honor.”

  Serving as the King’s Voice is an honor, and one that I had not thought to dream of, at least for a few more years. Sethran will not believe it, I think, reveling in that small excitement. Rowan will probably scream with joy. My younger sister isn’t one to keep her emotions in check.

  When the king stands to go, so do we all. The rising sun sends light directly into my eyes. I have never been in the Glass Tower at first light. Used for ceremonies and council meetings like this, the hallowed room lives up to its name. The twelve sides of the Tower alternate between arched mirrors and open windows. At all times of the day, it catches light and reflects it wildly into the skies. It is the best place in the city to see Vyrinterra and the continent Balmora at the same time.

  Our city, the Heliana, is a paladin in the skies between them. We Leonodai are one part of the Four Kingdoms: two on Vyrinterra itself, one in the depths of the sea, and one in the skies. As far as we know, we are the last of the magical races. We never forgot what happened to the fifth kingdom, the fox-kin, long lost to the humans’ greed …

  For decades, we Leonodai had kept the encroaching humans at bay to the gratitude of the other kingdoms. No matter how bad the battles get at the coast and sea, Leonodai can always retreat and recoup. Humans can’t fly and follow us.

  But as it turns out, they don’t need to fly, for birds already did, and they brought the humans’ disease with them. For as long as anyone could remember, the Heliana had been the safest place in the known world.

  And now that safety is gone.

  1

  ROWAN

  Blood and feathers litter the arena. I flare my wings, digging my claws into the ground and taking a defensive position while I decide my next move. Across the pit, my opponent lets out a snarl of annoyance. Blood drips from the jagged cut above her eye. My strike caught her as her helm had slipped sideways just enough for my claw to slice into the skin of her brow. She shakes her head, and droplets fly.

  Still, she’s a warrior-elect like me, and she doesn’t let up. We may not be fighting to kill as we will when the king calls us to arms, but that doesn’t mean either of us are going to show much mercy.

  We rush each other, teeth and claws bared and searching for any inch of exposed skin. My shoulder stings from a bite I should have dodged, but the heat of the wound drives me forward like a new flame. Leaping up, I use the wall of the arena to launch with my hind legs and try to hit her with my helm, but the other lioness reads my thoughts and dodges. As I twist to meet her again, she bats her wings hard, sending dust and debris into my nose and eyes. A moment later, she slams into my back legs, and I’m knocked off-balance, tumbling into the sandy ground.

  Around us, the audience cheers, flowers gripped tightly in their hands. The blossoms, blue as the uniform of warriors, will be thrown to the victor.

  My opponent’s angry snarl rings loudly in my ear, spurring me to action. I jump to the side, flaring my wing, hitting her in the eyes as I do. Feathers snap and splinter in a shower of gold, and I brace myself against the ground. I shove my body weight into hers, the interlocking plates of our armor scraping shrilly against each other. She catches a bit of my wing in her jaws, and I yowl in pain—but she’s done exactly what I hoped she’d do.

  Shifting my weight back onto my left side, I hook my right paw between her belly and her leg, knocking her off-balance.

  The other combatant digs her teeth farther into my wing as she falls, batting her own wings so hard that we’re both lurched sideways with the force. I tighten my frame and twist quickly until my paw meets a vulnerable place at her throat.

  I hold there, lifting my head to the sun, and let out a victorious roar.

  A high trumpet sounds, followed by applause like rain. I back off my opponent. She shakes her head, blinking rapidly as blood continues dripping into her eye.

  “Damn, I thought I had you,” the other warrior-elect says.

  “You fought well,” I return, brushing my wing against hers. “I got lucky.” It’s not entirely true, but her expression brightens at my words. I’ve had more arena practice than she has, whereas she could best me in an archery tournament any day.

  Across the arena, the royal pavilion is draped lavishly in gold cloth and weighty bundles of white blossoms, but neither the king nor queen are there. It had been empty all morning, so the previous fighters had told me. My heart sinks. I was hoping the king would make it in time. Instead, a warrior named Ezra—a sword
sman in his early thirties who helped train the both of us—leads the formalities.

  “Well done, warriors-elect,” says Ezra. “And congratulations to you, Rowan.”

  “Thank you, warrior Ezra,” I reply.

  My forelegs tremble with excitement and strain as the wound in my shoulder throbs. The citizens toss their flowers, and the blooms start to pile up at my paws. Their excitement melts any momentary disappointment away. I keep my face proud and relaxed, but inside, I’m beaming.

  This time tomorrow, the king will actually address me, but as a fully fledged warrior. After four years of brutal training, my very bones ache to take the oath and fulfill the dream I’ve been working toward since I was thirteen. Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be so eager. Even though the human soldiers have not attempted an attack in months, once I am a warrior, I can be called at any moment to fight.

  It is an honor, but am I ready?

  As we exit the arena, I bat my wings idly, sending the flowers and loose petals into a flurry. The crowd responds with claps and cheers. A curtain sweeps closed behind us as the names of the next combatants are announced.

  “Show-off,” my opponent mutters good-naturedly.

  Ahead of me, she takes her human form. The magic forged into her armor and clothes transforms with her, melting as easily as winter frost against the sun. The armor re-forms to her human head and arms as if it had never been anything but. As she lifts her helm, a healer comes over to her with a cloth soaked in something to halt the bleeding above her eye.

  I summon my own magic. It only takes a thought, bright and brilliant as the sun. The rush of warmth flares at my chest, flowing outward like a cascade of warm winds, until I’m standing on two feet in my human form, my dark wavy hair flowing to my mid-back. Immediately, the throbbing of my shoulder intensifies. Even though I don’t have wings in this form, the soreness will persist. A healer comes over and directs me to a chair.