On Wings of Air (Earth and Sky Book 1)

by J. L. Griffin

  There was another flicker of something—what was that?—in his father’s face, but then the mask of anger returned in full force, and Tempest was yelling with such fierce animalistic brutality that spittle jumped from his mouth to the floor. “I have seen you look at my wife before, Skye! I had thought you would be able to maintain control of yourself, but I see that I was very much mistaken!”

  “You would believe that—that—that wisp of a wife over your own son?” Skye shouted. “I’ve never had so much as one lusty thought about that empty-headed girl!”

  Hawkins broke in: “Your father is wise in the ways of the world and knows what sort of troubles a young man’s body can bring him to. But it disgusts me that you would choose my niece—and your stepmother—to satisfy your body’s base desires.”

  “I’ll kill you,” the prince growled just before he leaped at the Seneschal.

  Skye knocked Hawkins to the floor amid Mista’s shriek. In a blind rage, he wrapped his trembling hands around the man’s neck. He meant to crush the life out of the Seneschal.

  Then he was ripped away, struggling, by a pair of guards who pulled him to his feet. He tried to wrench himself free, but more Sentinels came forward to restrain him.

  Hawkins rose slowly to his feet, looking slightly shaken. “You can see, Your Majesty, how unstable this young man has become,” he said, attempting to hide his lack of composure with displeasure. He rubbed his neck, as if he could still feel the press of hands there.

  “Your behavior this night shall not go unpunished,” King Tempest said in a voice that was strangely emotionless. “Your foolish actions have stripped you of your honor.”

  For an instant, Skye paled. Honor was of the utmost importance to his people. For Tempest to say that Skye had lost his honor entirely was more than the prince would have ever expected. Any Skychild would rather die than lose his honor.

  But then reason reasserted itself.

  “You can say all you like about me losing my honor,” Skye growled, staring hard into his father’s eyes, “but I know who I am, and I know that my honor is intact. You can cry it out from every rooftop in the sky realm, and your claim will still be false. I am the only one who can strip myself of my honor, and I know that I have done nothing to deserve this treatment.”

  “I am the king!” Tempest shouted in fury. “What I say is the law!”

  “I can’t believe this is coming from the man who taught me that a king is not above his people,” Skye spat. “What happened to you, Father? You are not the man I knew when Mother was alive.”

  Tempest’s face fell, and for a moment, it seemed as if Skye’s words had pierced through the fog that had been confusing his actions. Though Tempest had never been given to outward displays of emotion, he had loved Dawn in his own way. Unfortunately, Skye’s goal to appeal to Tempest’s emotions was not met, as a hardened mask quickly replaced Tempest’s tender expression.

  “The ground world is the only place with interest in his kind,” the Seneschal said, not taking his eyes away from Skye’s face, which grew red with fury at his scrutiny.

  “Yes,” Tempest responded distantly. “The prince will be banished, and then he shall not be able to touch my wife.”

  “Or your Seneschal,” Hawkins added in a low voice.

  “Yes. Disobedience shall not be tolerated. Guards, I shall dress, and then we shall go outside to dispose of this traitor once and for all.”

  “Father, you can’t do this!” Skye hissed. “I’m your son . . . and the crown prince! You can’t treat me like I’m some lowly assassin or heartless murderer. What would Mother have thought?”

  “Your old mother,” Tempest said sharply, “is dead. And you have dishonored your new mother. You should have thought of the consequences before attempting to assault her.” He shook his head, as if to clear it. “And as for your status as crown prince, I have a wife, and I may easily father another son to carry on my legacy.”

  “This is a mistake!”

  “No, the mistake was not taking you into hand when I had the chance. The mistake was allowing you to spend so much time with Sentinel Cirrus, who filled your mind with traitorous ideas.”

  “You’re wrong about him, and you’re wrong about me,” Skye growled. “Father, you’re going to regret this.”

  “No, I won’t,” Tempest muttered. He had become withdrawn once more, and he said with effort, “Guards, take him from . . . from my quarters and wait in the halls for me. Consider him your prince no longer, and treat him as . . . as you would treat any criminal. I shall join you shortly.”

  The Sentinels who held him began to manhandle him from the room, and he struggled with them out of anger, not because he had any true hope of escape. He was infuriated by the realization that King Tempest’s declaration that Skye had lost his honor would carry some weight with other Skychildren. Now, Skye would be required to prove his innocence to his people.

  Skye wanted to castigate the guards for serving a king who would treat his own son as something worse than dirt, but he settled for a fierce glare as he stood and waited for his father to appear. He got a small amount of satisfaction out of the fact that the Sentinels looked away from him uncomfortably.

  When King Tempest exited the royal quarters, he was followed by Hawkins. Mista was conspicuously absent, which was fortunate for her sake. Skye had never before felt such a strong urge to strike a woman. He might not have been able to hold himself in check had an opportunity presented itself.

  Tempest led the way out of the palace with scarcely more than a glance at his son. The sight of his father’s indifference galvanized Skye to action. He tried to rip himself away from the Sentinels propelling him down the hallway. But though he heaved his weight this way and that, attempting to dislodge them, they kept an iron grip on his arms.

  “Unhand me!” he yelled. But while the guards may have been uneasy about the situation, they maintained grim countenances and did as the king had told them, forcing Skye down the hallway.

  “Father, stop this!” Skye pleaded as they reached the front entrance to the palace.

  The king did not answer. He merely continued walking, his back stiff and unyielding, as though it had been chiseled from a block of stone.

  Skye sagged as if in a faint, throwing the guards holding his arms off-balance. With a heave, he pushed with all his might, loosening his arms from their grip and wrenching away from them.

  Suddenly free, he sprinted up to his father and grasped him by the shoulder.

  “Father!” Skye exclaimed, the word a desperate plea.

  The king looked back at him with lifeless eyes. There was no expression on his face, as though he did not even recognize his own child. This was a man whom Skye did not know. How could he reason with him?

  As Skye stared at his father, the embers of hope within his chest flickered into darkness, and the Sentinels caught up to him and promptly wrestled his hands behind his back.

  Skye turned to say something to them when pain exploded in the back of his head. He collapsed to the ground with a groan.

  As the world darkened, Hawkins appeared within the haze of Skye’s dimming sight. A look of hauteur and satisfaction was stamped on the Seneschal’s countenance.

  “How I’d love to knock that smile off his face,” was Skye’s last thought before the blackness claimed him.

  Though the descendants of Celesta were free-spirited and carefree, much like the flying creatures with whom they shared the skies, there was one amongst their number who shared more in common with the free-roaming birds than any other of his kind. His days were filled with idleness and play, and he had no employment, living his life for the enjoyment of the moment. He was known as Goose, the slothful.

  Goose possessed a great measure of pride in his skill in the air, and his vanity was not misplaced. His ability to swoop and soar in the sky was unmatched, and his talents in piloting his glider ensured that he was always first in any race.

&n
bsp; So certain was he of his ability to evade the Groundbreathers who attempted to capture his kind that he went down to tease the farmers in their fields and the fishermen in their boats each day as soon as the sun began to set.

  But one afternoon, the Groundbreathers were waiting for a Skychild to arrive in their midst, and they employed their foul magics and confined Goose in a great ground-cage and took his glider from him. Their shouts of triumph filled the air as they gazed upon the bounty of their capture. And Goose hung his head in despair.

  —The Book of Celesta

  CHAPTER

  SIX

  Capture

  Even from the darkness of the blackest night, a little light must intrude. The light in this case was reddish hued, a warm and vibrant light of the sort one relishes on a bright summer day, and it seemed to be coming from a great distance.

  Sounds encroached on the darkness. The buzzing of insects, the sound of birdsong, the rustle of leaves swaying in a current . . .

  Wind, the merest puff of a breeze, eddied and flowed, touching his cheek with the feathery caress of a lover, and the bower of heather and loam felt velvety soft under his abused body.

  Slowly, Skye opened his eyes to the bright light—and immediately wished he had kept them closed. The light assaulted his dilated pupils and pierced his head with a lance-like stab of pain. Groaning, Skye rolled onto his back, willing the pain to subside to a dull ache. The vile concoction Cirrus had plied him with the previous night was making him wish he had never met the accursed guardsman.

  The thought of his friend caused Skye’s eyes to snap open, and the memory of the previous few days flooded back to him. The things all about him—the trees and the cornucopia of plants and shrubs—were not to be found in the sky realm. He had not over-imbibed with Cirrus; rather, his father had banished him from his home, tossing him out of the clouds with all the single-minded malice instilled in him by the Seneschal.

  Panicking, Skye rolled once again, getting to his knees with difficulty. Waves of pain hit him, and he hunched down and tried to concentrate on breathing. Before his squinting eyes, the bright green of plants and the darker brown of dirt mingled with the cheerful colors of the tiny wildflowers which made up his unwitting bed.

  When the pain had subsided somewhat, Skye glanced around the area, taking care to move his head as little as possible. He was in the midst of a forest at the base of a tall mountain, and the foliage was so thick that he could not see much in any direction save for the rough crags of the peak above him. Overhead, the fluffy white clouds and blue sky peeking through the canopy of leaves and branches taunted him with their superior standing high above him.

  Skye let out a groan at the undeniable knowledge that he was on the ground world, and he found himself struggling to breathe. While the climate was not truly warm since it was not yet summer, the air felt thick and oppressive and was much warmer than he would be accustomed to in his father’s palace.

  In despair, Skye sat back on the ground, leaning against a nearby tree. Obviously, the Seneschal had deemed it prudent to knock Skye unconscious. It had certainly been a wise decision on his part. Had Skye been in possession of his faculties when hurled from the sky, he could have stopped his fall on the winds and flown right back up, though it obviously would have been foolhardy to have returned to the palace. Still, there were plenty of settlements he could have fled to, and once there, he could have begun to plan his next move. And my next move would have been messy for the Seneschal, he raged in the dark recesses of his mind.

  The thought of that man suddenly caused Skye to take stock of his person, and several oaths escaped his lips as he looked down at himself. Skychildren were fond of jewelry, and Hawkins had evidently seen fit to strip Skye of the items he had been wearing. His golden necklace with the symbol of his house—a crested bird against the outline of a cloud—was missing, as were all of the rings he had been wearing. The absence which was most noteworthy was that of his signet ring. For the Seneschal to have taken Skye’s signet ring was especially insulting. The fact that the man waited until Skye was unconscious to do so was simply cowardly.

  And now Skye was on the ground world, stripped of the trappings of his station, accused of having lost his honor, and battered by the worst headache he had ever had. He had never even ventured to the ground before. While many Skychildren considered it great sport to raid the Groundbreather settlements and taunt their inhabitants, Skye had never indulged in that frivolity. And there would have been no reason for the crown prince to personally take part in the more serious raids that the Skychildren sometimes undertook to provide food for their people.

  As a result, Skye was completely unprepared for what met his eyes. The sky realm had trees and dirt and an abundance of plant life, but never had Skye seen such . . . density, such a broad scope of plants in so little space. The sight was overwhelming, and the roof of leaves overhead made Skye nervous. He was accustomed to the open spaces of the sky realm, where one could see up into the heavens of Celesta. How did the Groundbreathers exist here?

  And to have lost his honor . . .

  No, Skye thought firmly. I have done nothing to lose my honor, no matter what Hawkins and my father might say.

  Putting one hand on the tree to steady himself and the other on his head in anticipation of what was to come, Skye slowly got to his feet. Even that small movement, however, was jarring enough to bring back the splitting headache and induce a groan. Unable to help himself, he clenched his eyes shut and pressed his temple into his hand. Hawkins had really hit him hard. The corrupt Seneschal had probably not even waited two minutes before shoving Skye over the edge of the clouds. Even an unconscious Skychild would not die from a fall, so it would have been obvious that Skye would survive, yet he could picture the Seneschal’s smile of triumph when Skye’s body had tumbled downward, passing forever from sight through the clouds.

  No, it would not be forever. Skye would return to the palace again one day, and he would make King Tempest and Seneschal Hawkins both pay. Not even Skye’s father—his own flesh and blood—would receive any quarter from him.

  Skye opened his eyes once more, his gaze swimming in and out of focus. He probably had a concussion, and he worried that he would be unable to summon the strength and concentration to lift himself back into the clouds. The idea of walking on the ground brought on a feeling of distaste, yet he took a couple of steps forward to test his limits. That was a mistake, as it brought on a dizzy spell that had him sinking to his knees and emptying his stomach of its contents.

  He scarcely had the opportunity to wipe his face on his long-sleeved shirt—though the spring air was warmer than he would have expected, he was glad for the extra warmth it provided—before he heard the noise of an animal rushing through the undergrowth toward him. Despite the fog clouding his mind, he knew it was likely a garm. They had managed to tear Cirrus—a seasoned member of the Cloud Sentinel—apart, and Skye could only wonder what they would do to him in his handicapped state.

  Before he could make it past that thought, a slavering beast was upon him.

  In moments, the dog had knocked him to the ground. He struggled to keep its jaws from latching onto him. As he held back the garm’s head, its claws slashed at his arms and face. He brought his legs up beneath it, and with a monumental effort, he flung it off him and against a tree.

  His head was pounding—dirt take it all, he could not fly!—and he reached out a hand to palm the ground. His fingers closed around a rock.

  The garm jumped on him, snarling.

  Whipping his hand up, he flailed wildly, bashing the rock against the beast’s head. The garm yelped.

  For a brief moment, he enjoyed the satisfaction of watching the garm collapse to the ground. Then he heard a shout.

  He staggered to his feet. Though his eyesight was becoming blurrier by the moment, he saw a figure coming through the trees. He could not outrun anyone. So he did the only thing he could. He charged.

/>   The Groundbreather halted in surprise. He let out a cry as Skye threw a fist at his head.

  The punch was a glancing blow, but it was followed up with a few hits to the guardsman’s chest. A final knee to the groin dropped the Groundbreather to the ground.

  Skye knew he could not use the same trick with the other man bearing down on him. So he began to sprint away, trying to gather his strength for a last-ditch effort to take to the skies.

  He had risen two or three feet in the air when the ground exploded beneath him. He gasped as dirt came up over his head and surrounded him. Unable to stop, he knocked his head against the newly formed cage with no small amount of force.

  He dropped out of the air with a moan, his face plowing down into the filthy ground. He grimaced in disgust as he lifted his head to look at the approaching Groundbreather through the bars in his newly made dirt-cage.

  Had he actually had all his wits about him, Skye would have given this pair of Groundbreathers the fight of their life. But because of his father and Hawkins, he had not had a chance. His vision had doubled, and he was having trouble resolving the two Groundbreathers in front of him into one image. There was no way he could escape now.

  “Blasted Skychild,” the Groundbreather said, kicking at the ground-cage.

  Skye snarled at him and flung himself at the dirt bars, causing the man to jump back in surprise. The prince laughed in response, closing his eyes and pressing a hand to his head to try to relieve the pain there. Being caught by a Groundbreather might have been considered dishonorable in most cases, but this had not been Skye’s own doing, and he considered his honor intact. He refused to submit quietly to these heinous Muckswallowers.

  Closing his eyes for one final effort, he reached out to touch the wind, using it to pick up all the nearby rocks and pebbles and pelt the Groundbreather with them. What he did not expect was for the Groundbreather to grab one of the rocks and send it flying at him through a hole in the cage, knocking him once more into that wretched blackness.