Talyn flicked her head up, eyes suddenly darting around the trees, looking for shadows that might be holding gun or sword, or something far worse. For a long moment she thought the nykur was just riled up by the race and being reunited with her. Then the sky began to dance above them.
The former Hunter tilted her head and watched the clouds gathering above. She had seen every kind of weather in her time, and Conhaero’s skies could be almost as tumultuous as the land below, but she had never seen such a strange thunderhead. It was higher in the sky than was normal, and though it was flickering with blue light, no rumbling reached her.
Syris rolled his eye and stamped, narrowly missing her foot. By the time she jigged back out of the way, the odd formation had slid and rolled away with startling speed. It was almost as if it were being pulled by some enormous hand. She watched it for a few more moments, her insides twisting almost as much as the clouds. The clouds moved off beyond the mountains, flickering with occasional light.
Tilting her head, Talyn wondered what signs she wasn’t seeing. When the Harrowing had come upon her people, she had been young, not yet taught all the ways of the Vaerli. Not for the first time did she wonder what she’d missed. It mattered little now. Should she touch another of her kind, both of them would burn thanks to the curse placed on the Vaerli by the Caisah. It severely limited how much she could learn. However, there were some of her kin that she could ask.
With a great deal of weariness she mounted Syris. The smell of salt water rose from his body, an unwelcome reminder of memories she didn’t want.
“Time to introduce you to my new friends, old friend,” Talyn whispered into his ear. “You might not like it, but I am very glad to see you.”
If he had been a horse, he would have neighed to communicate his dissatisfaction, but the nykur was a creature of the Chaos, and the strange, distant storm had fired something within him. Syris reared on his hind legs before bolting off into the mist with her clinging to his back. Talyn tried to concentrate on the momentary joy of that as best she could. It was all she had.
Finn was used to bar fights—but usually observing them instead of being involved. He ducked as another chair came flying his way and knocked one of the enthusiastic participants full in the face. He dropped with a grunt, and Finn took the chance to clamber over his prone body.
The tiny inn was shaking and seemed in danger of coming apart at the seams. Barmaids howled like harpies and laid about them with their wooden trays with real vigor. One man was thrown over the bar before another energetically leapt after him. It was truly amazing how one small question could set off a chain of event in so spectacular a manner.
Finn felt his shirt suddenly being caught in a fist and was forced to jerk his elbow back savagely. His attacker’s startled curse was very satisfactory. As Finn slipped out of that situation, he found himself in a new one quickly: two larger men were bearing down on him. Unlike the majority of the brawlers, who were only interested in having a bit of rough entertainment, this pair had the air of determination in their stride. Their eyes were fixed on Finn as they shoved the mass of fighters out of the way. Formerly, he’d been able to make himself seem inconsequential, but he’d been made aware recently that the power he usually relied on in these situations was not working as it once had. Perhaps it had something to do with Naming a dragon . . .
Finn glanced over his right shoulder to where the door seemed a very long way off, then back to those approaching men. His eyes caught the glint of a knife in the hand of one of them. While he wasn’t afraid of an honest knife fight, Finn was certain that they had no plans to be particularly honest.
Planting his foot on the back of a fallen patron, he leapt up onto the nearby table that was miraculously free of bodies, and from there swung up into the rafters of the inn. This was no great house, so the timber under his feet was narrow oak, and he had to stoop to avoid rupturing the straw roof. Still, this was a better way of making it to the door. Feeling somewhat confident, he grinned down at the two burly men who were contemplating just how nimble they would have to be to follow.
They were not in the scarlet of the Rutilian Guard, but every town in Conhaero was full of informants ready to earn the Caisah’s coin. Finn dared the same question that had started this whole thing off, “Do you know the way to the Castle Shadryk?”
“You little dog’s bollocks,” the tallest and baldest of the men yelled, pointing a thick finger at Finn only barely out of reach. A over-enthusiastic brawler charged him midway through what might have proved to be an informative speech. For his trouble, the man was picked up by the collar and thrown across the nearest table.
Finn winced when the furniture collapsed underneath such a blow. The other man, shorter but somehow slightly more intelligent looking, glared at Finn. “Shadryk was where the Kiv ruled this land from, and emotions remain high about that. How about you come down and I’ll give you all the history lessons you want, boy?”
Finn had always been of the opinion that when people used the word “boy” they never meant it kindly. He couldn’t help the slight laugh that escaped him as he judged the distance, leapt between the beams and nearer to the door. They would be close behind but considerably slowed by the brawlers. It was almost like old times, and for a bit he could forget everything that had happened since he had last spoken in a tavern.
He made it across to the third beam easily, but his swing down toward safety was not as well timed as it could have been. Landing awkwardly, he tumbled into a knot of squawking barmaids now busy clawing each other’s faces. His struggle to get out of that meant he lost almost all of his advantage. Scrambling to the door he yanked it open and dashed outside, only a heartbeat ahead of his pursuers.
And that’s where an ordinary talespinner would have been in serious trouble, possibly earning a beating—most likely something worse. Finn was not anything close to ordinary any more. He’d passed that point back at the Bastion of the Vaerli.
Turning to face them, he realized that they were both armed. Still, he felt it was honorable to warn them. He raised his hands. “Look, if you just throw down those knives, you can walk away from this.”
As he had been expecting, they laughed—he would in their position, too—but the other warnings he could have given would only have reduced them to paroxysms of laughter.
The air above shifted as if a great storm was moving in: heat, darkness, and a presence suddenly appearing over them. The men slowly turned their faces up, and the magnificence of Wahirangi was reflected in their shocked looks. Finn’s eyes followed his attackers’ gaze, and despite the fact he’d spent many weeks with the dragon already, awe washed over him once more as well.
The great golden sides of the dragon gleamed in the moonlight, and the sparkle of stars gleamed in eyes of clear opal. Larger than any of the meager buildings in the village, his wings blocked out all other light in the evening sky while his sculpted head turned on an elegant neck to observe those below. The hovering Wahirangi did not convey rage, but more poised curiosity.
The men did not seem to notice this; they had dropped to their knees, overcome with an emotion between bliss and horror. The dragon had that effect on every living being. Legend called it dragonfear. It expressed itself in either uncontrollable awe, mind-bending terror, or as in this case, a mixture of both. Finn heard horses in the public house’s stables cry out, ready to bust their way free, while rats from the nearby heap scurried for safety.
Looking up, the men witnessed a curl of blue flame lick along the edge of Wahirangi’s jaw and ooze out from between the rows of curved fangs. It was the stroke of a master showman and made Finn wonder if he was influencing the great dragon a little too much.
“Shadryk Castle,” the great beast’s voice rumbled out, at this distance enough to make bones shake. “I believe my friend asked you where it is.”
One man was quite beyond answering, his jaw hanging open and a long thread of drool hanging down. The other, white and swaying slightl
y, was a little more lively. “North, my lord,” he stammered, “In the foothills above the marsh. Not far . . . not far at all.”
Wahirangi’s long neck arched against the moons, and the flames flickered out. “Very well. Flee now, before hunger overcomes me.”
If the CloudLord’s kindness was enough to make a man weep, even a hint of his wrath had the same effect. Finn almost felt sorry for them, running as fast as they could but attempting to keep the dragon in sight even as they fled.
In the years where he’d been traveling by himself, Finn had always wondered why no one would listen to his tales of the Caisah’s reign of tyranny. Now he knew that he would have gained far more attention with a dragon at his shoulder. However, that long time of solitude was now long gone; he was now more than an honorable talespinner.
The words of his long-dead mother—the one he’d never known about until only a month ago—kept him awake at night. My beautiful hybrid son. Hybrid, half-Manesto and half-Vaerli, was a thing that everyone had assumed an impossibility. Yet, now here Finn was—that impossible thing.
“And more, not the only one.”
Wahirangi’s eyes for a brief instant were wreathed in flame, and hinted at his real nature. Inside that body still burned the power and mystery of a Kindred.
“My brother,” Finn said with a sigh, thinking of the boy he had found in the simple string pattern he’d woven between his fingers. He’d spoken to that boy, and never understood that they were brothers—there was a huge age difference, and Finn had never known his true parents and heritage. It had been a great deal to take in.
Though his mother had said Wahirangi would know where Ysel was, she had been wrong. His mother was dead, and only the information of a tiny sliver of herself remained in places throughout Conhaero. She was not omniscient, and many things had changed in the chaotic world since her death hundreds of years before. Such as her son’s location.
Following the trail from place to place had taken time, and always there had been obstacles, setbacks, and false hope. Ysel’s guardians had moved him about, apparently afraid of something. Eventually, with clues Finn had recalled from speaking to his brother, they had decided the long-abandoned fortress of Shadryk was the most likely place. Unfortunately, it also had an unwholesome and difficult reputation.
The dragon ceased beating his wings and landed in the narrow confines between buildings. His form took up the whole length of the street and caused a house across the way to creak alarmingly.
Finn quickly scrambled up the dragon’s offered leg to sit behind the mighty shoulder blades on the rude saddle he’d constructed. After only one day flying with Wahirangi, he’d worked out that if he didn’t want to end up a smear on the landscape he would need something to hang on to.
As he contemplated life atop a dragon, it still seemed so impossible that merely by giving a Kindred a name he had caused this to be. Every time he sat on this spot it made him feel both glorious and terrified. Glorious, because he sat on the back of a dragon—something that had only happened in legend. Terrified, because it was such a magnificent feeling of power that he might grow to love it too much.
“It is a good name, the one you gave me.” The dragon’s huge head turned back to look at him with something that could have been pleasure gleaming in his opal eyes. The curious linking of their minds had been growing stronger, something that Finn was vaguely concerned about. While his own dark moods had not overtaken him recently, he did wonder in the odd moment what would happen if he shared them with a dragon. “When I was Kindred I never realized how wonderful it would feel to have my own name and my own shape.”
It was a kind thing for Wahirangi to say, something to soothe Finn. The dragon, for such a large creature, was surprisingly generous—not at all what Finn would have expected. It felt good to have a friend and ally in all this madness.
“We should find this Castle Shadryk, then,” Finn said, though the desire to do so was draining from his body. The closer they got to their goal, the more he was worried what he would say to Ysel when they finally met in person. It was very strange to find a brother, let alone one that was mysteriously so much younger than he.
The dragon did not make comment, but shook himself like a great golden dog, and then thrust with his legs, propelling them both upwards into the sky. Finn’s stomach lurched dramatically, and he closed his eyes as the sky spun in several directions at once. On each side of him, wings like sails on a great ship flexed and beat the air. For a long time, until they reached warm air on which to glide, all the talespinner heard was the rush of the wind about him.
They flew silently through the night; Wahirangi’s wide wings powered them up into a sky scattered with stars and illuminated by the white of the moons. Below, the world of Conhaero passed by. Hidden by night, the only way to tell wilderness from civilization were the pin-pricks of light from houses. Yet, Finn did not like looking down. He understood this was how the Vaerli must have felt; aloof and powerful.
They did not have far to go, and soon enough the dragon began a slow circling descent. For a dragon, the miles were nothing, and Castle Shadryk was easy to find with instructions. They followed the narrow Itea River where it cut through the mountains, trapped in stillness thanks to the Caisah’s spell. Conhaero’s lands were meant to be in movement. The bond between man and dragon made Finn uncomfortable about that. Everything should have been moving in the eyes of the Kindred; even those with Names, like Wahirangi, felt it.
The remains of the castle were not immediately apparent to Finn, but the dragon’s sharp eyes soon made them out; a huddled and broken shadow on a wooded hilltop. The woods at least were capable of movement, growing up around any structure civilization abandoned. The faintest human malkin, the will to keep things permanent, held this place together. When it faded Conhaero would swallow the remains.
As they circled lower, it was apparent that it must once have been a grand structure. Two tall towers, one now half fallen in on itself, soared above the main building which also looked rather as though a large child had kicked aside blocks of it. Alongside was the wreckage of a collection of smaller buildings, most likely stables.
“Not made for defense,” Finn commented. “No moat, no walls to speak of, so it’s something more like a grand hunting lodge than a real castle.”
Wahirangi dropped elegantly to the ground and looked about. “So much for an attempt at permanence. Not much malkin holds this place together—amazing it has lasted so long.” He might be a dragon, but he had only been Named barely a month, and as a Kindred he’d never had much experience with people. It had been nearly a thousand years since his kind had walked the earth in partnership with the Vaerli. Sometimes Finn had to remind himself of that fact.
As the talespinner walked around the forgotten garden, the smell of rotting wood and wet earth was thick enough to choke on. He did not like this place much either. It felt as if it were a stale memory, and he hated to think that this was where his brother had spent his time.
“I smell old violence here.” Wahirangi’s wings shuttered open and shut almost like a great eagle that had been disturbed. Like all Kindred, he also had a strange perception of time. Something that happened hundreds of years ago was as yesterday to the creatures of chaos. Finn, despite their bond, could only imagine how the slim line between now, the before, and the future appeared to the dragon.
Wahirangi shook his head and snorted, shooting tiny jets of blue flame across the courtyard.
Finn wandered over to the remains of the gate lying on the ground. It was hard to know how long it had lain there, but it was still possible to see the scars of axe blows on its surface. He sighed as he put his foot under the rotting wood and lifted a piece. It had the sign of the running river on it—a piece of ancient heraldry now fallen out of favor. “This does look like the symbol I glimpsed briefly when I first found Ysel in the pattern.”
“Then this could well be where he was hidden. Make haste, Finn, this place reeks of deat
h.” Wahirangi’s claws rattled on the aging cobblestones as he turned to look up at the two towers above them. Sometimes the things Wahirangi said revealed a great deal about the Kindred. Now, for example, the talespinner knew that they could in fact comprehend death, and it made them uneasy. Interesting, indeed.
His companion did not expand upon his comment, and after a while Finn decided to make his own study of the place, from the inside. The door to the inner keep was also hanging loose with axe marks even more evident. Finn managed to kick it apart enough to shoulder his way through.
Wahirangi lowered his head and peered in after him, his opal eyes gleaming like lanterns in the darkness, yet he could not follow. “Be careful.” His voice was low and concerned, though blue flames flickered at the edge of his mouth.
Finn smiled at little. “I will be. I managed to take care of myself well enough before you were Named. You can go no further without bringing the whole place down. Please, wait here.”
It was impossible to read the dragon’s expression, but he did not push further in. Finn walked into the corridors, and the aerial impression was confirmed; the place had been abandoned for a long time. The mosaic floor underfoot glittered in the weak moonlight, while moldering curtains hung off the remains of gilded rods. The chill in here was not the only thing that sent a shiver up Finn’s spine—the place did indeed reek of death and ancient wrongs. He knew that was not just his talespinner training.
As he walked down the long central corridor he could see that it had once been a picture gallery. Shattered carved frames leaned drunkenly on the walls where long-dead looters had left them. Several times Finn had to step over the sad remains of statues that had been flung to the floor. An artist himself, he didn’t like to see art despoiled in such a manner, but he knew that these were the least of crimes committed here.
Just as his talespinner imagination began to work even harder, something caught his attention: a noise. Finn stopped, his heart pumping furiously. It sounded like something rough sliding over the marble, perhaps something being dragged. As blood surged in his straining ears, the noise came again. Something was moving in the shadows, making a low scraping noise that sounded very ominous, even with a dragon outside.
Kindred and Wings Page 2
