Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga)

by Ellyn, Court

  Traitors. So she had already passed judgment. Thorn was troubled but not surprised. Nothing to his knowledge had ever struck such a heated chord in the Lady more than the betrayal of her own Guard. She took it personally, but Thorn suspected their flight had little to do with her.

  “Could they have taken up residence with societies of Elarion outside the Wood?” he asked. “The Miragi or the Elarion of the Drakhans?”

  This earned him peculiar stares from the Elders, and he couldn’t decipher why. Aerdria graced him with a small, tolerant smile. “Your studies are incomplete, love. We’ve not heard from either of these enclaves since the war, a thousand years ago now. They were surely annihilated. No, the traitors are isolated somewhere, in a windowless castle. A cavern. Yes, it could’ve been a cavern, carved, not natural. Years ago, I saw Lasharia fleeing north toward the Silver Mountains. We will begin our search there. Elliora, go up to the barracks and bring Commander Tíryus.” The young squire at the door hurried from the Hall.

  While the Elders discussed the logistics of a large-scale search outside the refuge of their Wood, Thorn gave in to the insistent voice calling for him. The throbbing in his head ebbed a fraction when he heeded it. He searched among familiar halls masked in gloom. Doors. So many doors. Which led to the voice?

  “Dathiel?” A hand touched his shoulder. Waking with a start, he found Lyrienn sliding into the chair next to him. Her golden curls were tucked behind delicately pointed ears, and concern clouded her gray eyes. “You look ill.”

  “The interrogation was taxing. You?”

  Lyrienn’s lovely mouth was pinched, her hands fidgety. “All this … it scares me, and I don’t like being scared.”

  “I didn’t think you could be scared.”

  A grin crept across her face; the mischief in it was unmistakable. “We could help each feel better, you know.”

  When Thorn fled to Avidan Wood in the snow, grieving for Rhoslyn and determined to starve himself to death, Lyrienn had helped him change his mind. For years afterward, neither spoke of what happened between them. They hadn’t fallen in love; they were still not in love. But at some point, hard to say when, after the Turning Festival four or five winters ago, they had become lovers.

  Her invitations usually came at the oddest times and rarely failed to catch him by surprise. Thorn snorted but failed to swallow an outburst of laughter. Aerdria and half the Elders turned to glare at him, their debate silenced.

  Lyrienn bit down hard on her lower lip, and her pearlescent cheeks flushed.

  Thorn eased out of his chair. “Apologies, Lady, Council. I’ll just—” He jabbed a thumb at the door. When they excused him and resumed their chatter, he whispered in Lyrienn’s ear, “After dark. Bring mead.”

  ~~~~

  Kieryn! Where are you? Such pain. Kieryn … Doors lined the dark corridor. Yellow mist like the breath of disease drifted down from a ceiling he couldn’t see. The voice echoed ahead of him, behind him. The rooms were empty, he knew it without having to open the doors. He ran down a staircase. No, he was climbing. Such an arduous climb. At the end of the passage, a door he recognized. Wisps of incense curled from under it like smoke from a funeral pyre.

  Kieryn? Now that he’d found the right door, he feared to open it. A little boy’s sob clogged up his throat. He put a hand on the latch and pushed the door open, even as he turned his eyes away. Help me. The door slammed shut. In the instant before it closed, he glimpsed her lying on a bed of the yellow fog. Who was she? He didn’t see her face. Her hand, the shrunken hand of a corpse, reached for him. The door slammed shut again and again and again.

  He woke in a cold sweat, his heart thundering in his ears. Lyrienn’s arm was flung across his ribs. She breathed fitfully, as if through the contact of their skin she shared his nightmare. He eased out from under her arm and padded out onto the balcony. Icy wind hurtled up the tower. It stung his skin and tore away the fraying images of the nightmare. Soon all that remained was a painful certainty.

  Far below, the Avidan River split the city in twain. Lamps burned golden to either side of the swirling water, their light glittering upon the ripples and illuminating twisting paths between trees carved of stone. The Elaran houses were hung with agate leaves that did not shed for winter. They tinkled a soft music in the nightwind. Overhead, the sky hung near, but the pulsing dome of the Veil dulled the light of the stars.

  Warm hands laid his robe across his bare shoulders. Lyrienn leaned on the balcony rail, snug inside a fur-lined blanket. “You’re leaving.”

  He nodded. “Something’s wrong. At home. It isn’t Carah this time. Saffron would’ve told me. I should’ve gone weeks ago, but I hoped the feeling would go away. It’s only grown more insistent.”

  Lyrienn turned to gaze northward across the tops of the andyr trees, then up at the moons sliding slowly across the field of stars. “There’s a ring around Thyrra. Rain’s coming. Maybe snow. You’ll want to hurry.”

  ~~~~

  The journey home, when riding a human-bred horse, took two days, but Sarvana, the Black Song, carried him through Ilswythe’s gate by the following afternoon. Exhausted, bruised, and windlashed, Thorn dismounted in the courtyard to the bellows of sentries announcing his arrival. Grooms led Sarvana away, and Thorn ran up the steps. The keep’s great bronze doors opened, and Kelyn met him on the landing. His tunic was wrinkled from days of wear, and his eyes looked bruised from lack of sleep. “Why didn’t you come?” he demanded, voice ragged. “We were sure you’d come before now.”

  “Is it Carah? Rhoslyn?”

  “Mother.”

  He shoved past his brother and ran along the Great Corridor and up the stairs, the terror of his nightmare surging through him and setting his heart to pounding in his throat. He stopped outside the door to Alovi’s rooms but couldn’t bring himself to open it. Ixakan incense seeped under the door, smelling of sandalwood and cloves and ginger.

  He extended his hand, but the door opened without his touching it. A face peered out. Esmi. Mother’s handmaid. How gray-faced and frayed she looked. She dipped her chin in a shallow curtsy that revealed her weariness and stepped aside for him.

  The shutters were drawn to keep out the blinding winter sunlight. Scented smoke hung in a haze about two dim lamps. Empty bottles cluttered a side table. The poppy wine left a white residue on the glass. Mother lay in her wide bed, propped on a cloud of pillows. Her face was as pale as the wisps of smoke rising from the censors, the fullness of her features shrunken and sagging. She wore a frown even in sleep.

  Someone rose from the bed as Thorn approached. A rustle of stiff linen. Etivva’s cinnamon-brown hand on his arm. ‘Sorry’ cried out from her eyes, but she did not give it voice.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “I do not know. I have seen the like before, long ago, though it does not have a proper name. A blood disease.”

  “When I was here for Carah’s birthday, I saw a change in her.”

  “She calls for you, mutters in her sleep, but she would not let us send for you.”

  “Why not?”

  Etivva shrugged.

  A whisper from the pillows. Mother raised her hand, a pale skeletal thing.

  Etivva and Esmi slipped quietly into the corridor.

  Thorn clasped his mother’s hand and sat beside her; it felt as fragile as a crumbling leaf. Bruises darkened her fingers. Another marred the corner of her mouth. She smiled, and her teeth had grown too big for her face. “I thought you were your father.” She barely had strength enough to speak. “Both of you.” Kelyn stood in the doorway, a grieving shadow. Mother beckoned for him, too. He hurried around the bed, sat on her other side and managed an unsteady smile. She clenched their fingers with fierce affection. Her green eyes, shrunken deep into the sockets, had turned glassy from the pain and the poppy wine. “Can you fix it, Kieryn?” she asked.

  Through the contact in their hands, he focused on the illness coursing through her body. In his mind, the negative energies looke
d like yellow and black sludge polluting her veins. It was everywhere, rooted so deep he couldn’t find the source of it. He fell forward and kissed her brow, her cheek, the stone in his throat not letting him speak.

  “I didn’t think so,” she said. “It’s all right, son.”

  He sat back again, not able to look at her.

  “Do you hear me? It’s all right. I knew it this summer. The Mother-Father is probably near her wits’ end putting up with your father. I need to go help her. And look, Esmi has braided my hair, so Keth will recognize me.” How Da had loved her dark hair flowing loose in waves after it had hung in a maiden’s braids all day, even after it was laced with gray. But it was always getting in the way of her weeding, so after Da died beneath the standing stones of Slaenhyll, she had pinned up her hair. But today, one long braid, more silver than brown, lay heavily upon her shoulder.

  She tried to sit up straighter. “Listen to me, both of you. Things were bad between you once, but you must never let anything tear you apart again. No one, nothing is more important than the friendship you have with one another.”

  Thorn nodded.

  “Yes, Mama,” said Kelyn, and Alovi tugged him closer, eyes brilliant as they bored into him.

  “Neither must my next request cause you to feel resentment toward your brother.” Kelyn frowned, confounded. The weight of Alovi’s head seemed too much for the spindle of her neck as she turned to look at Thorn. “Finish it for me?”

  Thorn tried to pull his hand free. “Mother, don’t ask this—”

  “Don’t force me to endure this any longer. I’ll beg you if I must—”

  “No!” he cried, but not in refusal. She mustn’t surrender her dignity, not because of him. He wouldn’t allow that, above all. He risked a cautious glance at Kelyn, whose face reflected Thorn’s own horror like a mirror, but he clenched his jaw and nodded.

  Thorn relayed that nod to his mother. Satisfied, she snuggled deeper into her pillows, kissed Kelyn’s hand and touched his unshaven cheek, then looked at Thorn and whispered, “Ready, love.”

  He’d seen it done once. Two years before, Alethyr, one of Laniel’s dranithion, was overtaken by an ogre ambush. He slew three of the beasts before a fourth broke his back and busted him up inside. His wounds proved too grievous for a healer’s touch. At Alethyr’s request, Laniel himself performed the spell, one of few in his arsenal, and Thorn had learned the formula, hoping he’d never need to use it. How to manage the conviction such a spell would take? He had only to remember how beautiful his mother had been the last time he saw her and to consider how much she would continue to suffer. Peace, give her peace.

  His hands shook as he placed one upon her forehead and the other over her heart. In a whisper he chanted strange, beautiful words: “Azeth er’sha, ferdilë fann Sha. Tar ana, ferdilë fann tae h’Ana.”—“Soul of light, return unto Light. Mother mine, return to your Mother.” Over and over, he chanted the words until they became a silken river of sound, filling the chamber with a soothing current.

  Alovi’s lifelight flared like a lamp turned high. Thorn’s avedra eyes saw it, but Kelyn’s were blind to it. He gripped her hand and watched for signs of distress, but Alovi lay entranced, listening to Thorn’s words with a peculiar, wistful smile.

  A second glow appeared at the foot of the bed. The rhythm of the spell faltered. Thorn reclaimed it quickly, chanted on. Gently rippling beams stretched to the ceiling and the walls but painted no shadows. Mother’s eyes widened. “Goddess above. I see him.”

  Thorn wanted to look into the light and see the familiar face. Would it be angry with him for what he was doing? But he couldn’t afford to look; he had to concentrate. Sweat beaded on his face. The beating of his mother’s heart became a slow grand march against his palm.

  Kelyn searched the room, desperately trying to see what his mother saw, but the only light came from the slats in the shutters.

  Alovi stretched out her empty hand and her azeth drifted toward the foot of the bed and melted into the light. The rhythm of her heart stuttered to a stop. A sigh escaped her lips and her hand dropped across her belly. The chant ended mid-word. Thorn sat very still for a moment, swallowing the ache of sorrow, of rage, that threatened to break free. Then his hand slid down over the sightless green eyes. “Kelyn?”

  His brother stared at him, a numb, awed haze fogging his eyes. Finally he wiped a cheek dry, cleared his throat. “I’m all right. You?”

  Thorn said nothing. He smoothed his mother’s fingers over the coverlet, straightened her braid, and traced a finger over lips that still turned in the faintest smile. A terrible, consuming fire spread fast through his blood. Damn these hands. They doubled into fists, and he fled the room.

  A crowd had gathered outside the door. Etivva, Esmi, Rhoslyn, the children. The duchess shouldn’t be here. She ought to be at Windhaven by now. What the hell was she doing here, gazing at him with what she thought was profound understanding of his pain? She didn’t understand a damn thing. How could she? This rage went deeper than the loss of his mother. Several tender hands reached for him, but he evaded them all. Carah’s clear, sweet voice called after him, but he ignored that, too. His library, all his inherited domain, provided his only refuge. Safe inside, he locked the doors.

  Kelyn paced outside the library for an hour or so. Etivva tried to sneak in the back way, up the spiral stair from the ledger room, but Thorn had locked that access, too. “Shall I fetch the keys, m’ lord?” asked Master Yorin.

  “No,” Kelyn told the steward. “He’s not harmed himself. I can hear him rustling around in there. We’ll let him alone. For now.”

  Thorn didn’t come out that evening, nor during the night. Even when Kelyn pleaded through the door, he refused to answer and come out for his mother’s burning. The ashes drifted low along the ground while heavy, wet snow gathered them up and carried them back onto Ilswythe’s soil. Mother would’ve wanted it that way.

  That night, Kelyn herded his family and his household in from the Burning Yard for hot mead and a solemn supper. But in the corridor, a maid intercepted them. Panic contorted her face as she ran to Master Yorin, whispered hoarsely while pointing up the stairs. The steward dismissed the girl and turned to Kelyn, worry obvious on his lined face. “Get your keys,” Kelyn told him. “Rhoz, keep the children downstairs and away from windows.” Her eyes grew round at the memory of shattered glass and blue fire. She and the nanny whisked Kethlyn and Carah into the family dining room and shut the door.

  Kelyn hurried up the stairs and found Etivva keeping pace with him, her wooden foot clicking sharply. They heard the crashing of furniture as soon as they topped the landing.

  “Damn him,” Etivva said through pinched lips and ran to the end of the corridor. Her small brown hands pounded on the locked door. “My lord! Stop! Your books, my books! I care for them when you are away. Stop it!”

  Kelyn caught up to her, but the door was too old and sturdy to break through; the oak had turned to iron over the centuries.

  The crashing and rending of paper paused. “Leave me!” came the muted roar.

  “No!” Etivva retorted. “You will have to blast me dead. Open the bloody door.”

  Yorin, arrived at last and had to ply the key after all. Kelyn took charge of the key ring and dismissed the steward.

  Inside the library, he and Etivva found Thorn hunched over in one of the chairs, forearms on his knees, head drooping and face hidden behind a tangled veil of hair. Scrolls and books carpeted the floor. Shelves lay on their sides; chairs had been reduced to splinters.

  Etivva gave a cry of outrage and ground her teeth. “I do not care who died, you are not running back to your precious trees until you help me straighten this mess!” Etivva expended her anger on the books, too, kicking them into a pile to make a path and muttering under her breath.

  To Kelyn, the mess was a small matter. The windows remained intact; only one liquor bottle from the sideboard had been smashed; nothing appeared to have been burned. And
yet the pungent odor of burning hung in the air. Was Thorn’s fit over, or was the house still in danger? Kelyn examined his brother for any indication. Thorn neither moved nor spoke. Was he a defeated dragon or a cornered one?

  Thorn’s eyes clamped shut. He grunted and grit his teeth; his fingers twitched. The flesh of both hands was blistered and red, cracked and oozing.

  “Brother, what have you done?”

  The shuffling under Etivva’s feet paused and her hands flew to her mouth. Even while they gawked, new blisters bubbled up, new cracks appeared, and Kelyn realized Thorn was burning them up from the inside. He rushed forward, dropped to his knees, and shook his brother by the shoulders. “Stop!”

  Through his teeth Thorn said, “I do not want them.”

  “Heal them, damn you. Will you write with your teeth or your toes? How will you train my daughter? Heal them!”

  Thorn reeled in the chair, the pain making him faint. “I could not heal her.”

  “Mother didn’t want to be healed, you fool! She could’ve sent for you at any time, but she knew. She knew this was the Goddess’ desire, maybe even Da’s.”

  Thorn’s eyes snapped open, and they blazed with the madness Kelyn hoped he’d never see again. He flung Kelyn’s hands away and surged from the chair. “Fuck the Goddess! Curse her to the Abyss and these hands she gave me. May they rot! This was that bitch’s plan, all right, and she gave it to me to do, and I hate her for it. I longed for her, but I would go gladly into the Abyss to be free of her.”

  A book sailed past Kelyn’s ear and struck Thorn in the chest. Horrified by the blasphemies, Etivva cried, “What happened here was not about you!”

  “The hell it wasn’t,” he retorted. “Or why shouldn’t you put a razor to my mother’s veins or pour a bottle of poppy wine down her throat? I’m finished with your beloved Goddess, Etivva, and everything she wants. She can find someone else to torment!”

  Etivva’s stance had gone so rigid that the tendons in her throat stood out like ropes. Her black eyes were as lusterless as stones. “Hear this. You may reject her, but she will not reject you. She has her plans, and they will not be denied.” Stiffly, she turned and limped from the library.