Blood of the Falcon, Volume 2 (The Falcons Saga)

by Ellyn, Court

  The Dranithion Quethiel had run with him to the eastern eaves of the Wood. There, he found the road that followed the southern bank of the Avidan and let Sarvana have her head. Knowing Laniel’s eyes covered his flight homeward diminished his fear of shadows and assassins.

  By late afternoon, the gray towers of Ilswythe rose high on the hill above the Avidan River—a two day journey made in a single day. What would Kieryn give to enter Sarvana in the races at the next Assembly? He’d leave Brandrith in the dust and Kelyn gaping in his wake. A lovely vision, but impossible. He would have to get back on a common gray as soon as possible.

  The river road joined the King’s Highway just south of Ilswythe Village. Kieryn coaxed Sarvana to a halt upon a hillock, so he might catch his breath and savor the sight of home. In timeless autumn routine, farmers cut long swathes of golden grain with swinging scythes; their women and children followed behind gathering the stalks into sheaves, golden pillars of plenty. Among the shops and cottages, the people traded fruit, flour, and shanks of mutton, woollen fabric, roasted andyr nuts, and lumber from the mill to repair shutters before winter set in. In the far pastures, sheep with moss growing on their backs wandered over graying meadows, and shepherd girls with shaggy dogs herded the flocks toward folds for nightfall.

  The vast sweep of the land, his family’s land, Kelyn’s land, brought a bittersweet ache into Kieryn’s chest that he didn’t expect. He had been too busy to feel homesick. Too determined to stay the course. Now, he could scarcely believe he’d allowed himself to stay away so long.

  Sarvana pricked her ears and whickered in alarm. Saffron appeared over the horse’s head, gazing away south. “What I feared,” she muttered.

  Kieryn searched the sky for a black cloud descending, but the sky was clear. A rhythm like drums, muffled, indistinct trembled along the breeze. Slowly nearing, the sound gathered into an unmistakable and ugly song. It was the rhythm of marching feet. Low hills teased the land between Ilswythe and Bramoran, and the Highway cut a straight path across the crests, like the wake of a ship that refused to steer aside. Over one of these crests a banner appeared, followed by another: the first was green with a white falcon; the second, black with a coiling green serpent. Kieryn remembered the reports about Tírandon. Razed. They mean to do the same to Ilswythe. He was sure of it.

  Something feral woke in him, and he decided if Ilswythe fell, he himself would be long dead. He spurred Sarvana up the Highway, into the center of the village, and cried, “My people!” Sweaty faces rose from the nearest fields; others emerged from windows and doors.

  “M’ lord?” said the miller, who had once filled Kieryn’s head with frightening tales of Avidan Wood. Quite a sight he must make, wearing a billowing robe and sitting astride a dancing black steed. Saffron had winked out, saving them some shock. But why bother when Kieryn brought such news? “The enemy approaches from the south,” he shouted. “Gather your families immediately and take them into the fortress.”

  Matrons screamed and grabbed the hands of their young ones.

  “But our grain, our flocks,” one man protested, indecision contorting his sunburned face.

  “Leave them,” Kieryn commanded. “There’s no time.”

  Shrill cries spread the word. Men and women scurried like mice found hiding under sacks of grain. Kieryn hoped they would collect their wits in time and raced ahead of them over Ilswater Ford and up the sharp rise to the castle gates. Both the bronze-banded doors and the portcullises had been locked into place, in guard against any surprise the war might hurl at them. Guards glared through arrow loops at the arrival of one they no longer recognized. Anyone sitting a black horse, other than the king himself, surely hailed from someplace south of the Bryna.

  Kieryn had no time to dally with explanations. He identified himself with a brusque command that echoed his father’s battlefield voice, “Captain Maegeth! Open the gates. Now!”

  The familiar face and wind-tossed black hair of the garrison captain leaned through the embrasures. She bellowed an order and the portcullises squealed upward. The bronze doors cracked open, and Sarvana charged into courtyard. The villagers began pouring in after him. Vaulting from the saddle, he met Maegeth coming down the gatehouse steps. “Get the garrison atop those towers,” he said. “The Fierans are on their way.”

  Maegeth swore and sent the sentries running to the barracks to rouse the men and women who were off duty. “You people!” she said to the villagers. “Move to the inner wards near the well and stay there. Men with courage to fight, get a pike from the armory. Go!”

  By this time, soldiers emerged from the barracks. Mostly men too old to march south or women who wouldn’t leave their children, they dressed and armed as they ran for the tower stairs.

  “Captain,” Kieryn said, taking Maegeth’s arm, “they are to await my order.”

  She looked stunned, perhaps wondering if she had misunderstood which of Keth’s sons had identified himself at the gate. She complied with a nod nonetheless, and Kieryn hurried for the Hall. His mother met him on the steps. “Son!” she grabbed, reaching for him. “What is happening?”

  Kieryn choked. The timing was all wrong for tears and words of sentiment and consolation. She looked changed somehow. Kieryn thought it was, perhaps, the grief that made her look so unlike herself, until he realized. “Mother, your hair,” he muttered, then felt ridiculous with Fierans approaching, his father dead, and these his first words to her in months.

  The long locks, which had always hung down her back, plaited or loose in maiden-like fashion, were now twisted into a coif on the back of her head. The silver at her brow and temples stood out more starkly.

  Alovi put a reflexive hand to her hair. “It was impractical, really, all those years, in the way all the time. I considered shaving it off like Etivva—” She stopped, chin quivering, and she tried to hide it behind her hand. Kieryn pulled her to him, and she held him with all her grief and joy. “My son,” she said between silent sobs. “My son is home.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t here—”

  “No, no. You’re here now, and I’m all right,” she insisted. “Etivva has been such a comfort, and Esmi. I don’t know what I would’ve done without them.”

  “Go to them now. To a safe place inside the keep. Stay hidden until I come—”

  Alovi squeezed his wrist. “You’re coming with me.” Half question, half demand.

  “No,” he said, taking her hand away.

  “They’re nearing the ford!” Maegeth called from the battlements. “A hundred fifty strong. We could counter such a number in open—”

  “Don’t risk it,” Kieryn interrupted. “Once the villagers are safe inside, lock the gates and prepare arrows.” Over sounds of weeping and shouting rumbled the notes of marching feet. Yes, they were close now. Tenderly, he nudged his mother toward the keep. Her expression of terror softened; she smiled at him and touched his face, then hurried inside. The doors clanged as she dropped the bronze bar into place.

  Kieryn ran for the gatehouse.

  “My lord!” Panic punctuated Maegeth’s cry. “They’re burning the fields.”

  Reaching the battlement, Kieryn saw foreigners in mismatched armor manning bellows on wheels. Flame spewed from long hoses. The sheaves of bundled grain, and the acres of that yet unharvested, lit the dusk. Such bounty wasted, and winter on the horizon.

  Fifty Fieran archers jogged across the ford, then fanned out below the hill. Their commander rode boldly toward the gate and declared, “In the name of the Great Falcon, King Shadryk the Third, we demand your surrender.”

  Maegeth glanced at Kieryn; he lifted a stilling hand. She grunted in unspoken disagreement and flung a questioning hand toward the man who waited for an answer. Her thoughts were plain without Kieryn needing to peer into her mind. He was no War Commander. Not even a common soldier who had tasted battle. He hoped he wasn’t about to make a terrible mistake. “Saffron, can you shield me with a ward?”

  Maegeth stepped back i
n surprise when a tiny female voice answered from nowhere. “I can, but what do you mean to do?”

  He took a deep, shaking breath and said, “To put Zellel’s lessons into practice. And the enemy must see me do it.”

  “I’ll shield you, but be careful, my Kieryn.”

  Steeling himself and placing every measure of trust in his guardian, he climbed onto the wall of the battlement and braced himself between a pair of merlons.

  “My lord, no!” Maegeth exclaimed.

  “Captain,” he replied, “tell the garrison to save their ammunition, unless I give them direct orders.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Then watch.” He concentrated on the fires and the shriveling grain across the river. The flames were so far away, no more than a hint on the edge of his mind, and connecting with them required that he forget about the hostile men below and Maegeth’s fretting at his side. He swept a hand slowly; the fires in the fields diminished and, at last, vanished in tendrils of smoke. A cry echoed across the river as bewilderment spread among the men operating the nozzles.

  “The gates will remain closed,” Kieryn called down to the Fieran commander. Frost sparkled on his breath. “In the name of my brother, Lord Ilswythe, I order you to turn your troops around and leave Aralorr forever. If you do not, your deaths are on your own hands.”

  The commander glanced from Kieryn to the smoking fields and back again. “Shoot him!” he cried. “Shoot him now!” Fifty bows stretched taut. The commander dropped his fist, and fifty arrows sped straight for Kieryn. He barely had time to flinch before the iron heads struck the fairy ward and bounced away.

  Maegeth and the soldiers nearby cried out in wonderment. So did Kieryn. “Well done, Saffron,” he whispered, breathless.

  “Are … are we to return the attack?” Maegeth asked.

  Below, the Fieran commander had to shout his voice raw to force his archers to stand. He bellowed for the Zhianese to hurry their contraptions across the ford. With fat ropes, they tugged them across the stones and up the hill toward the gate. “Maegeth. The men with the ropes. Bring them down.” How calm he sounded, even to his own ear. He couldn’t decide how best to protect the gate from the flames. Could Saffron’s ward hold up to fire?

  The garrison loosed several rounds of arrows on the outlanders, and though the men with the ropes fell in agony, others ran up behind and pushed the contraptions into range. Slaves held shields blazoned with the green snake to protect the men pumping and those wielding the nozzles. A low gurgle rumbled up the hoses as they belched out the air, and a yellow, reeking liquid spewed, not at the gate, but high at Kieryn’s perch. A torch-bearer touched flame to liquid, and it became a tongue of fire roaring toward the battlement. Maegeth screamed for her soldiers to flee, and Kieryn hadn’t enough time to leap down before the flames engulfed him. Like floodwater beating and flapping around stones, the flames washed over him. The intense heat terrified him, but he did not burn. He opened his arms wide as if to embrace the fire, threw his head back and relished the fiery fingers tickling his face. He found himself laughing at the sensation. He should be dead, burned to ashes, but he breathed and laughed—and the Zhianese heard.

  The flow of fire ceased. The enemy gazed up in horror. Not one hair upon Kieryn’s head had been singed—and he glowed. The heat from the fire had galvanized the ward’s energy, producing a soft golden radiance.

  The Zhianese abandoned their machine. Fleeing to the ford, they shouted curses upon the sorcerer in the fortress. The archers followed, despite their commander’s orders.

  Once across the river, their courage seemed to return, for they heeded the commanders cries and reformed their lines. “Damn it,” Kieryn muttered.

  Rejoining him, Maegeth said, “They don’t mean to give up.”

  A phalanx of twenty Zhiani foot soldiers linked shields, poised curved swords and started back across the ford. Another phalanx followed, and another.

  “They will wish they had,” Kieryn said. Emboldened, he shouted heavenward, “Frinach!” Storm! In misty tendrils, lazy at first, but gaining speed and power, a cloud rose from the river and thundered black against the twilight. The Zhianese stopped and stared at the new sorcery. A few made warding gestures with their fingers and hurried away from the cloud’s shadow. Focusing on his target, Kieryn brought his hands together as Zellel had taught him. A bolt of lightning exploded from the clouds, striking the commander atop his helmet. The electricity sparked around him, inside him for one brilliant instant, then entered his horse, and splintered out through the ground. The animal reared before falling dead. The commander didn’t get up either.

  The Zhiani mercenaries and Fieran archers broke with screams of terror and scrambled down the Highway in a panicked rout. But to what end? They would rejoin their countrymen, burn and hack their way through another village, another fortress. These same men might even return to Ilswythe after Kieryn was gone. Damned if he would leave his mother and his brother’s lands to suffer at their hands. Imagination, will, execution, he reminded himself. As he had done countless times when calling on the earth to help him mend the wounds his lightning caused, he cried, “Lethryn, emilë th’oän chávalë allysh!”—Earth, hear and give me aid! He sent an order down through the stones upon which he stood, into the earth below, wider and deeper than he’d ever before attempted. The energies holding the ground firmly together responded. The Highway directly beneath the feet of his fleeing enemies yawned open. Down they tumbled, screaming. The chasm closed as quickly as it appeared, stifling the cries of nearly one hundred and fifty men.

  Kieryn’s head spun. He grappled for the edges of the merlons, and Maegeth clenched onto his robe. The north wind whistled over the towers, a stunned stillness that announced his victory. The land stretched away from the walls, empty but for a few sheep that had escaped over the meadows. Kieryn felt the eyes of the garrison clinging to him. Did they see him shaking head to foot? “Captain,” he said with the little voice he had, “help me down, please.”

  Maegeth jumped to obey, lifting gloved hand. He dropped to the battlement beside her, ignoring the stares as best he could. “There are wounded men on the hillside, Maegeth.”

  “Our arrows?”

  He nodded. “Load them into a cart and have them delivered within sight of Bramoran. Let those men tell their commanders why it would be a mistake to attack Ilswythe again.”

  Maegeth grinned and hammered a fist to her chest. She hurried down the stair, taking half a dozen men out the gate with her.

  With the silence, the villagers gathered into the courtyard, muttering among themselves, asking questions of soldiers hurrying past. A couple pointed up the wall at Kieryn, so now the villagers’ eyes pinned him, too.

  Across the gulf between the gatehouse and the keep, he saw his mother on the balcony of her suite. How long had she been watching him? The whole time, he’d wager, despite his orders. She made a minute gesture, one he almost missed: with her forefinger, she brushed the underside of her chin, and her head rose a fraction higher. Though the weight of the eyes made him want to hide his face, he straightened his shoulders and descended the steps along the wall. He went slowly, his legs feeling as limp as bones steeped in vinegar. The villagers and the garrison shuffled back, giving him a wide berth. In fear? In reverence? He couldn’t tell, but either pained him. By the time he made the agonizing walk across the courtyard, his mother was waiting for him on the steps. What did she think of her son now, after seeing, in full, what he was? Her face wore a disciplined calm, but her green eyes were almost wild. With pride, Kieryn guessed, and his spirits soared.

  Alovi gave him a quick little nod and said, “You’ve shown them your place in the world, my son. Now you must speak to them, quiet their fear.”

  How he hated the press of their eyes. All his life he’d dreaded it. But when he turned to face his people, he saw their scrutiny turned to a willingness to trust if only he said the right things. What would they accept? What did they want to hear?
“For my mother living and my father dead. For my brother and for Ilswythe. For you. The danger is past. You have no need to fear again tonight. Return to your homes and be at peace.”

  He turned to go, but the villagers didn’t move. The old miller started it, and suddenly every man, woman, and child was shouting Kieryn’s praise. Shouting for this bookish misfit who for so long had been called Lord Keth’s “other son.” He stood in amazement of their boisterous approval.

  His mother’s arm went about him, and she raised a hand. “Please. You have every right to celebrate the Mother-Father’s good will, but my son is exhausted from these exertions. Go and rejoice.”

  Finally, the people began bowing and drifting out the gate, while Alovi helped her son up the steps and into the quiet familiarity of the keep.

  ~~~~

  Kieryn breathed in deeply the cherished scents of dust and leather and ink as he took a slow turn about the library, all his inherited domain. His fingers brushed the well-worn spines, and his heart was full. He told his mother he wanted to have his supper here. She would arrive soon with a tea service.

  He heard a step-click-step-click on the winding metal stair, but it wasn’t Mother coming up the back way. Etivva’s shined and shaved head rose into view. “Is it a mouse, I hear?” She topped the stair and gazed on him with a mother’s affection. “No, it is an avedra. All the better. The books will suffer less.” She started toward him, one hand reaching, the other leaning heavily into a polished andyr cane.

  Kieryn turned from her quickly, a hand smashed over his mouth. It was all too much. Da and Kelyn, all those screaming men, a shadow hunting him in the dark, mum’s hair, and Etivva. Mother’s letters had said only that she was recovering with remarkable speed, surely a blessing from the Mother-Father, but clearly Mother had lied to keep him from worrying.

  “Oh, no, my lord,” Etivva urged him, “come see.” She lifted the hem of her linen robe, revealing a foot carved of wood. Snug cross-gartering bound the thing to the stump of her leg. She rarely smiled broadly enough to show her teeth, being far too modest, but she couldn’t repress it as she raised the wooden foot and stepped down again, showing it off. “Your mother had it made for me. I have only been on it a couple of weeks, and it still chafes, but I will get used to it. My days of running through swamps are done, however.”