The Winged Hunter

by F. T. McKinstry

  “Why would she do that?” He moved his hand over his long white hair, stringy and dull around his temples. “It’s probably only her hatred of me that’s keeping her alive! That hatred drove her to attack the sioros in the first place. To her, he is the embodiment of all that is male—and evilly so.”

  Eaglin tilted his head. “He can be that. But Aradia still defended Freil against him, so I don’t think her hatred includes all of mankind.”

  “Freil is young—and according to Lorth, he has proven his lack of respect for the truth. You have only his word for what happened out there.”

  Eaglin turned in his chair and stared at him. “Freil is a high wizard and my friend. His issues with Gabran aside, he has great respect for Aradia for having risked herself on his behalf. Why would he relate that falsely? Aradia had no reason to defend him. If your belief would have its say, she should’ve condemned him to his well-deserved fate. Yet she didn’t. Perhaps hatred is not all there is to her.” He paused, and then added in a softer tone, “Hatred is nothing more than a need for love.”

  The old wizard’s bony knuckles turned white on the arms of his chair. “You dare to judge me?”

  Eaglin met the old Raven’s gray-violet gaze steadily. “You have judged yourself, Caelfar. Now you’re attacking your own reflection.”

  As the words fell between them, Caelfar’s whispery apparition appeared at his elbow and blew around his feet, her face hidden and wings raised to the smoke-blackened rafters of the room. Her appearance caused Eaglin to wonder—not for the first time—what this old wizard had not said about his family’s past.

  They sat there in heavy silence for a time, until a knock sounded at the door. Inos put his head in. He carried a tray. With a set jaw, Caelfar rose and shuffled across the room to fetch it. The winged specter disappeared, but her presence remained, like a draft.

  Inos said, “The Raven of Ostarin has returned, Master.”

  “Returned from where?” asked Caelfar, after a pause.

  Eaglin closed his eyes as Inos innocently replied, “From the forest. He brought Lady Tansel and Keeper Freil.”

  Eaglin rose and turned as a legion of fiery ghosts gathered in his solar plexus. Caelfar stood by the door, fists clenched, his gaze bearing down with the force of an avalanche.

  The apparition hovered by his side with a faint smile.

  *

  Tansel pulled Freil’s breeches up around her waist as she shuffled towards the stairwell that led to her room in the Hall of Muin. Freil made a valiant move to follow her, but Lorth steered him from this course with a look that said, I think not. The Raven had an amazing way of saying things with looks like that.

  “If you decide to go see Caelfar,” the warrior said softly to her, “find me first.” He didn’t wait for her response as he gestured to Freil to follow him. With a parting touch, the young wizard swept after Lorth into the hall. Tansel hoped Eaglin wouldn’t go too hard on him.

  Feeling empty, she descended into the room. Mushroom got up from the bed and stretched, then jumped down and came to her, tail raised. Tansel scooped him up and held him close.

  Someone had built a fire and prepared a bath in a tub near the hearth. She walked over and dragged her fingers through the water. It was cold; plainly, they had expected her hours ago. On a small table sat a tray with bread wrapped in cloth and a bowl of tepid soup missing most of the liquid. She guessed whoever had left this didn’t keep a cat. “Was the soup tasty?” she said to Mushroom, kissing him. He purred softly.

  She let the cat down and moved to the mantel where she had left some dried plants: chamomile flowers, basil, peppermint and raspberry leaves. She took her small cauldron, filled it from a pitcher of water and then hung it on a hook over the fire using an iron tong. Hovering near the warmth, she kicked off her boots. Then she slipped Freil’s clothes from her body and stepped into the tub, shivering as the cool water touched her skin. She grabbed a cloth and a geranium-rosemary-verbena block and began to clean herself.

  Her mind raced with impressions: the sioros’ voice, Eaglin’s touch and the strength of his hands, the moon, the scent of horses, the gaping cottage door, and Freil’s bright, careless smile. As she thought of Aradia, a snow cloud passed over her heart. If she lost her aunt, she would be alone, but for Caelfar. What would she do when the wizards went away?

  A short time later, clean and dressed in a long white shift, she sat on the bed, sipped her tea and ate some bread. She worried for Freil. The hall was so quiet, so empty; not a voice, a step, or a breeze. She wished he would return and sit with her by the fire. She wanted to walk with him in the moonlit garden or go with him into the forest to see the Midsummer Portal. But the silence of the hall forbade it.

  She set her tea aside and lay down, nestling in the covers. Mushroom crept beneath and curled up against her belly. Though she was exhausted, sleep didn’t overtake her. The fire cast strange shadows on the walls. The way it moved soothed her like the fishes swirling sinuously in the pool beneath her great grandmother’s statue.

  She closed her eyes.

  “Why did you leave him?” she whispered to the faceless stone. “He loved you.”

  From the misty fog of the warm Rose Moon, the mermaid gazed from beneath her hooded mantle like a heron. On the bank of the pool by her tail, moving in the lapping water, grew a falistrom plant. It was dead.

  “You refused Maetor,” Kalein said.

  “That isn’t the same. He hurt me. Caelfar protected me.”

  “As long as you were innocent, yes. Now that you are not?” Her eyes glittered in the reddish flash of a Waeltower beam. Behind her, the crowharrow rose, his lust gone empty as he vanished for the last time, his song silent and his desire as cold as forgotten bath water. “Your heart is worth something as a maiden, but nothing as a woman. The priest has abandoned you to loneliness, with his Rites.”

  Tansel tasted tears as the night settled around her. On the wings of a wren, she sought the garden bathed in silvery light. Bitter wind breathed frost in angular patterns on the glass; ice formed on the water in the tub. One by one, the plants stilled. The flowers drooped, falling, shattering on the stone. Wind rose in rhythmic patterns of feather and root, dying with a cry.

  Tansel awoke. Her heart pounded and her blood felt like a river of ice in her veins. She pushed herself up. Outside, the lush summer garden wavered quietly in the night.

  She jumped like a hare as someone rapped on the door.

  *

  Pale red lines painted the halls, windows and arches of Muin as the moon rose over Loralin. Eaglin walked to the Waeltower in a long stride, his cloak billowing around him. He had a headache. He opened the door with only slightly less discomfort than he had the first time.

  Lorth sat against the wall, gazing at nothing. As Eaglin entered and closed the door, the hunter broke from trance.

  “Here you are,” Eaglin said. He approached his friend and knelt. “Did you get anything out of Gabran?”

  Lorth leaned forward and rested his arms on his knees. “He denies ever planning to bring Tansel to Caerroth.”

  Eaglin snorted. “I’ll wager he does.”

  “It’s possible he told his men that to quiet them, and was not intending to carry it out.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  He shrugged. “He swore it on his blade.” After a pause he added, “All right, no. But it doesn’t matter. I could gut him for thinking of it.”

  Eaglin rose, walked to the iomor and sat down over it. Warm, soothing energy moved up his spine and gathered in the space between his eyes like humming bees.

  “Freil and Tansel are back,” Lorth said.

  “I heard. So did Caelfar, unfortunately—after I told him that Tansel was resting.”

  The hunter hissed a laugh. “Earlier, I saw the sioros moving over the sky to the north. I went out to fetch our young friends, for fear of it. They wouldn’t have been back by nightfall as you can guess.”

  “No surprise, that. I saw the
sioros in a dream.”

  “Should we raise a Formation Pentacle?”

  “No. It’s Midsummer’s Eve; the sioros would be out anyway.”

  The hunter nodded. “If he were up to something wicked, he certainly had his chance. I found Freil and Tansel resting by a pool not far from here. That sioros could have leapt in there with a scream and they wouldn’t have noticed.”

  Eaglin lowered his forehead to his fingers. “I don’t like where this is going, Lorth.” When the hunter didn’t respond, he lowered his hand. “‘Resting?’ Tell me he didn’t fuck her.”

  “Na, I don’t think so. Tansel made a point to tell me that because she ended up in his clothes.” He flashed a dry smile. “I had to sneak her back to her room, such a state she was in. Freil is praying to Maern that Caelfar doesn’t find out about it. What did you tell him?”

  “What could I? I honestly didn’t think Freil would linger with her after you threatened him. I told Caelfar that I had asked Freil to bring her, and that they were right behind us. Then I left. I didn’t avail myself to his questioning.”

  Lorth gazed up at the stone-crystal star spread across the ceiling. “Perhaps you’re the one who should be praying.”

  Eaglin moved off of the iomor. “The Old One doesn’t answer prayers. Only intentions.”

  Lorth’s animal eyes rested on him calmly. “If she did, for what would you pray at the moment?”

  “Besides Freil’s life?”

  Lorth started to say something, then fell silent as uneasy energy began to gather in the space directly above the iomor. “What’s this, now?”

  A rising, discordant hum began to vibrate around them.

  Eaglin jumped to his feet. “Caelfar,” he breathed.

  Lorth was already running for the door.

  *

  Tansel leapt up from her bed, disentangling herself from the covers with an urgency that sent Mushroom bounding to the floor. She ran to the stairs and stopped at the bottom. “Come in!” she called up. Then she ran back to the bed, where she milled around in an attempt to look interesting and yet unoccupied.

  But it was not Freil who came down the stairs and emerged from the shadows. The Raven of Muin stopped at the foot of the steps with a strange expression that should have been pleasure but was not. Tansel’s heart tapped in the hollow at the base of her throat.

  “Master!” she said breathlessly, unsure, as always, what to call him. She walked to him with a smile and put her head against his chest for a hug. He put his arms around her, but it was brief and cold.

  In the corner of her eye, Mushroom slipped through the cracked door and out into the garden. Not a good sign. She hated it when the cat did things like that.

  Caelfar moved past her into the room, his attention stopping on the floor by the tub where Tansel had dropped Freil’s clothes. A fist gripped her belly as he picked up the young wizard’s leather breeches and held them up to the light.

  “My dress got muddy,” she said quickly. “I fell off the horse.”

  Caelfar lowered the garment. “How long have you been back?”

  “A while.” He didn’t seem glad to see her. She ran through her impressive assortment of dangerous experiences over the last three days. Did he not care?

  As long as you were innocent, yes. Now that you are not?

  He cared only about her one pleasant evening in Freil’s company.

  The wizard tossed aside the breeches and looked at her as if she were a misaligned focusing stone. Finally, his manner stirred up her mettle. “Why are you acting like this?” she demanded.

  “What is Freil to you?” he returned.

  “He’s my friend.” All thoughts of sheltering oak trees had fled, at this point.

  “What is between you?” he repeated, too softly.

  “I—” She stopped as she recalled what Lorth had said to her in his gentle, amused way. Such as your private affairs with two of Eyrie’s finest?

  “Did you lust with him?”

  “That’s my concern,” she declared, her cheeks aflame. “Not yours.”

  “You’re too young to have concerns like that. You will not—”

  “I’m not a child. I’m free to choose.”

  “Not when your choices are foolish.”

  Bristling like a bear, Tansel stepped up to him. “Where were you for the last seven years when I had to make every choice alone? Where were you when my mother was taken, and my aunt in fear for her life?”

  He waved off her tirade as if she were singing in Tarthian. “I didn’t know of you or anything your mother or aunt were doing. I cannot help unless asked. When you asked for me, I came.”

  “Well I’m not asking you now. I was woman enough to refuse the crowharrow and let him abandon me.”

  “That is the same choice you must make now, Tansel.”

  “Why, because Kalein didn’t?” she said acidly.

  She thought he was going to strike her. Instead, he straightened his back, drew his arms to his sides and rose up to full stature, his wizard’s shadow creeping up the wall like an angry stain. The power of the hall tightened around her.

  Just then, the door opened and slammed at the top of the stairs. Heavy, urgent footfalls echoed on the steps. Freil all but fell into the room. “Tansel!” he panted.

  Then he realized Caelfar was in the room.

  The Raven of Muin grated a word that hit Tansel in the gut like a fist. A crackling force gripped her scalp and neck as a pattern of red beams whirled from the walls and hit Freil in the chest, throwing him across the room and into the windows, shattering them.

  Tansel screamed. She ran outside, knelt in the broken glass and cradled Freil’s head in her arms with a cry. Choking on tears, she looked up as her great grandfather approached. “You bloody fiend!” Her voice cracked into the night. “Get away from me! I hate you!”

  The old wizard reached down and grabbed her by the arm. “Come with me.”

  She yanked her arm out of his bony grasp and stayed on top of Freil’s unmoving body to protect it. “I will not. Get out of my room.”

  “What’s he to you now?”

  “You know nothing,” she rasped. “Nothing!”

  “You are dark.” His cruel gaze moved over her, seeing something she couldn’t. “Are you carrying his seed already?”

  What? Tansel was too stricken by astonishment to respond. Shimmering with power, the old wizard began to utter horrible sounds that crawled into her body like an eye, creeping closer and with sickening determination towards her womb, into which only days ago she had so achingly allowed Eaglin.

  Your heart is worth something as a maiden, but nothing as a woman.

  This couldn’t be right. It went against everything she had learned.

  A name tore from her throat like a sword.

  Caelfar stopped chanting. A swelling gale bore down from the sky above the garden and into the room, scattering glass along the floor. The air turned gray and damp. The wizard stepped back, terror lining his face as the marble-white figure of a crowharrow appeared from the mist, his gray-green eyes burning with wrath. He spoke words in the no-tongue of immortals that caused Tansel to take shelter in Freil’s chest with her arms over her head.

  When she looked up, her great grandfather lay crumpled on the floor. Eaglin folded his wings, came to Tansel and knelt. First, he touched Freil’s head with a swirling motion. Then, he lifted Tansel a little and moved a clawed hand to rest on her lower abdomen, over her womb. A chill moved through her body as Caelfar’s words vanished, leaving her intact.

  “He thinks I’m with child,” she said. “Said I was ‘dark.’”

  “He saw my protection,” the winged apparition soothed in his abyss-like voice. “He misinterpreted it.”

  Tansel studied the side of his face as he rested his hand on Freil’s head. “How did you change? I thought you weren’t strong enough.”

  “Your call put this in the Old One’s domain. Her strength is mine.”

  Boot st
eps crunched through the glass outside. The crowharrow stood and tilted his face to the sky like a sentinel as Eaglin walked in, passed through him and spoke a word by which immortal and mortal became one.

  The wind ceased; silence fell.

  Lorth entered the room from the stairwell and ran to where Tansel sat with Freil. “He took a blast,” Eaglin said to him. Lorth gently disentangled Tansel from the young wizard’s body with a reassuring word, and then began moving his hands over Freil’s chest while mumbling in the wizard’s tongue.

  Caelfar regained consciousness. Cowering like an animal too wounded to move, he turned a horrible shade of pale as the Raven of Eusiron stepped up to him. “It never ceases to amaze me,” Eaglin said calmly, “how beautiful and intricate the designs of the Old One are. Here is some irony: If I hadn’t brought Tansel through the Rites of Hawthorn and taken from her—by her own request—what you so fear to lose, you’d have violated her in the name of protection and the preservation of your guilt.”

  Caelfar’s eyes widened and his lips parted. “You,” he breathed, too stunned even to show outrage. But he made no move towards confrontation. There was only remorse, like a mountain of ash raining down.

  Eaglin continued, “Fortunately, as a woman, Tansel remembered to call me through the bond we now share. But this doesn’t change the fact that you, my friend, have just twice violated the Wizard’s Code.” He knelt and faced the old wizard eye to eye. “Now tell me why I shouldn’t transform you into a grasshopper and feed you to a frog.”

  Lorth placed a hand on Freil’s chest and said, “Ask her what she thinks.” At first, Tansel thought he meant her, until Lorth gestured to the empty space next to Caelfar as if someone stood there. Tansel saw nothing but shadows.

  Eaglin actually laughed. In the context of the moment, it was the scariest sound Tansel had ever heard.

  The Sioros’ Curse

  Tansel sat on the ground beneath the eastern wall in the scary garden. White roses glowed in the moonlight. Her knees and feet stung with cuts from broken glass and her womb felt strange, dark and yet warm with Eaglin’s touch.

  The Ravens had assured her that Freil would be all right. He had been able to block Caelfar’s blast even though it threw him through the windows. They wouldn’t allow her to see him, though all her heart desired to care for him with her plants and salves. Let the dust settle, Lorth had said. This is a mess and we need to deal with it.