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

by Ellyn, Court

  Rhoslyn slipped to the floor, arms hugging her belly. “No, you’re lying!”

  “I’ve never lied to you. I’ve never done anything but love you.” He looked on her as if she were no more than a bleached shell upon the beach, some husk of life no longer worthy of his regard. He did not look on his brother at all. Then he walked away.

  Lady Halayn and Captain Drael hurried into the corridor. Halayn took one look at Kieryn’s face and scuttled aside. Drael tried to stop him. “What’s going on here?”

  With a sweep of his hand, Kieryn flung him into the wall. He retrieved Sarvana from the stables, and thundered from the walls of Windhaven. Kelyn’s voice called frantically after him.

  ~~~~

  52

  Snow caught up to him in the Pass. Even Sarvana struggled to see. Kieryn let the reins slip from his hands, uncaring whether the horse turned around or continued on and hoping she’d tumble over the edge with him.

  Wind screamed in the peaks. Ice scored flesh and hissed a song in Kieryn’s ears that he had heard somewhere before, in a sunny meadow beside a wide river bend:

  Down she dove ‘neath the indigo main.

  Stoven keel and broken mast

  Took wind and sailed the last dark lane

  And from her arms she her captain cast.

  Roll on! roll on, mighty wave.

  Embrace the hulls and hearts you stave.

  Lost on the tossing purple sea

  He cries for the leeward shore.

  To silver moon he lifts his plea,

  His prayer drowned in the billow’s roar.

  Roll on! roll on, merc’less wave …

  The snows swallowed the light of torches and yellow windows, and so the walls of Helwende passed by unseen. Near daybreak, Sarvana trudged to the bank of a narrow stream and paused to stomp a drinking hole through a thin layer of ice. Kieryn had argued here with Zellel on his first journey to Avidanyth. What had they quarreled about? Yes, about Rhoslyn. Zellel had warned him to remember his place. But he had won her somehow. And somehow he had lost her. Lost them both. They might as well have boarded the ship with Zellel and sunk into the sea.

  … sailed the last dark lane

  and from her arms she her captain cast.

  Kieryn slid from the saddle, the snow as reluctant to receive his foot as the sand on a beach and the foam of the wave. Stumbling mindlessly through the stream, he decided he would go no further. The rising drifts would provide a burial mound till spring when the floods would carry him to the Avidan, and from there to the sea. He climbed the far bank, rolled onto his back, and stared up at the falling snow.

  “No, Kieryn,” he heard in his ear. A vague golden glow hovered beside him. Saffron touched his face, but his flesh had become too numb to feel her hand.

  “Leave me be.” Howls of wind swallowed his voice. “Find some other accursed soul to cherish.”

  The fairy wept with a high-pitched whine and finally left him. Kieryn grinned, satisfied. Soon, the snow blowing over him, blanketing him, began to feel warm, comforting, and he closed his eyes to sleep.

  ~~~~

  The wind spoke the Elaran tongue. Gray, hooded shadows pressed around him. Green-rimmed eyes peered down from a great distance. Miles. Lips moved with no sound at all. Ages later, he heard his name and the song beginning again. “Cries for … leeward shore. To … silver moon …” He felt himself sinking into the sky, the wind all about him, and nothing else.

  ~~~~

  Aerdria ran along the marble corridors, following the golden tracers of Saffron’s frantic light. The fairy led her to the sitting room that Zellel and Kieryn shared, then to the left through Kieryn’s chamber door. Soaked with melting snow, Laniel greeted her with a solemn bow, then turned toward the bed. Kieryn’s eyes stared, unblinking, at the ceiling. It might’ve been the stare of death, but his hands were clenched into fists upon his chest, and his body shuddered with the cold. Nyria knelt before the hearth, piling kindling to get a fire going.

  “Was it Lothiar?” Aerdria asked. The Guardians of the Western Wood had found his tracks miles down the river. He must have floated most of the distance to evade search parties. Captain Evriah had returned with a pair of baernavë leg irons. But the snow had come and buried his trail.

  “We couldn’t find any sign that he’d been attacked,” Laniel said.

  “This isn’t Lothiar’s doing,” Saffron whimpered and sank onto Kieryn’s pillow. “I heard everything. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t stop him. He made his choice. They all did.” She explained what had transpired at Windhaven.

  “Oh, sweet Goddess,” Aerdria murmured and sitting at the bedside, took one of Kieryn’s frozen fists and chaffed it roughly.

  “He was every shade of blue when we found him,” Laniel told her. “Saffron led us to him, but I thought we’d come too late. He hasn’t moved or spoken since. Just bits of some song about a sunken ship.”

  The fire crackled now, and warmth spread through the room. Aerdria smoothed away the hair clinging to Kieryn’s face and felt a fever starting to flare. “Don’t leave us,” she whispered.

  His jaw clenched as tightly as his fists, and his eyes hardened. He lunged, tossing Aerdria away, and roared, “Whore! He’ll leave you like all the others!”

  The fire in the hearth exploded outward. Only the melted snow in Nyria’s clothes kept them from igniting. Laniel pounced his friend. Kieryn fought him, crying, “Traitor!” The fire continued to rise and lick the underside of the mantel. Saffron pressed Kieryn’s eyelids down, and he stilled with sudden sleep. The fire diminished. Aerdria picked herself off the floor and brushed her skirts to her ankles.

  “Are you hurt, Lady?” Laniel asked.

  She shook her head. “Only shaken. I had no idea his link with the energies was so strong.” She cast a wary eye to the blazing hearth. “The fire wasn’t even his conjuring.”

  “Nyria, douse it,” Laniel ordered.

  “No, he needs the warmth,” Aerdria said. “As long as he sleeps he’s not a threat.” She sighed, grief-stricken. “I’ll send someone to watch him.”

  “I’ll stay,” Laniel said.

  “But your troop—”

  “Nyria will lead them. I’m staying.” He gave the Lady no room for protest.

  “Very well.”

  ~~~~

  By the next morning, Kieryn’s fever rivaled the flames. He shuddered violently though he huddled under piles of blankets. Laniel called for ice to bathe Kieryn’s face and for vinegar and herbs to break the fever, but nothing worked. He tried coaxing broth down his throat, but, conscious of the effort, Kieryn clamped his jaw and turned his face to the pillows. “Determined to die, are you?” Laniel asked. “Get that idea out of your head.”

  “Should’ve … broken your neck,” Kieryn said through chattering teeth.

  Laniel doubted the threat was aimed at him. “You couldn’t catch me, weakling. You want to break my neck, you’ve got to get well. So drink up.”

  Kieryn refused. His condition deteriorated throughout the day and the following night. He repeated lines of the Sailor’s Song until Laniel could recite it in full. His outbursts became more frequent and more violent as untold visions burned in his brain, and Laniel caught many a fist meant for someone else. Saffron offered to quiet him with sleep again, but Laniel argued that it might be better for Kieryn to fight it out. Saffron spent her time instead quelling the hearth-fire when Kieryn’s rage flared. He held onto those energies as if they were the reins of a wild horse: whichever direction Kieryn pulled, the fire followed, whirling and spitting, and Saffron’s duty was to pull the other direction, to keep the energies neutralized. No amount of soothing on her part could convince him to let go of his hold on the fire, as if the fire was all he had left.

  ~~~~

  Kelyn was only minutes behind his brother, but minutes made the difference. The blizzard caught him halfway up the mountain and forced him to turn back to Vonmora. He paced for two days until the snows barreled farther sou
th, then he argued with the head steward until the man relented and put together a team of laborers to cut a path through Windgate Pass.

  In Helwende, he inquired after his brother at every inn and at the castle. Lord Galt told him he’d seen nothing of Kieryn since his visit in the spring. Refusing to believe that the Pass had claimed his brother, Kelyn hurried on. Near the snow-robed trees of Avidan Wood, he stopped for only a few hours to build a fire and catch a wink of sleep, but the Dragon Eyes collected in the branches, watchful, and Kelyn didn’t linger.

  The snows grew thinner the farther east he rode, until tufts of grass tucked mere traces of white in their shadows, like secrets. He reached the Silver Stag well after dark. Melting snow dripped from the thatch, and savory smoke curled from the chimney. Dwarven miners and human farmers gathered around the fire pit, mugs and ale tight in their fists.

  Dagni sat among them. She was the crag-faced wife of Brugge, the foreman of Thyrvael’s mines. While he was away, leading the dwarven division, Dagni had taken charge of the mines. She saw Kelyn enter and shooed her neighbor from his chair. “Make way for Lord Ilswythe, dust eater.” The miner scurried aside, and Kelyn warmed his hands at the fire. His shoulder throbbed with the cold.

  A wench brought him a mug. He gulped it down, but refused a second.

  “Sorry I was to hear of your da, young Ilswythe,” said Dagni, her eyes like chips of stone glinting in the firelight.

  “As was I when we lost Lord Kassen,” he replied.

  The dwarves nearby lowered their heads and made a sign of sorrow with their fingers.

  “Aye, great losses both. But the king seems to have things well in hand, for his flag flies atop Bramoran’s towers. It isn’t vengeance enough, but it’s a start.”

  A gruff chorus of “ayes” circled the fire pit.

  “What business does a Falcon have away from the king’s side?” asked Dagni, brusque and unapologetic.

  “I’m looking for my brother.” The dwarves and farmers exchanged glances. None had seen him. Nor had the Stag’s matron. Kelyn stayed the night in the inn, grateful for a warm bed after the sleepless, cold night near the Wood, then early in the morning, he hurried home. Low clouds were drifting down from Mount Drenéleth as evening came on and light snow swirled about the familiar towers. At first, the fortress appeared to be abandoned. Neither flag nor face could be seen atop the walls. Down in the village, the windows were boarded up against the cold and the street were empty. The place still seemed to be in a state of mourning over the death of Lord Keth. Or did they know something about Kieryn that Kelyn didn’t?

  In the gatehouse tower, a sentry raised an arm. “Hail, my lord!” The portcullises clattered open. In the courtyard, Captain Maegeth whispered an order to her squire, and the boy ran past Kelyn and up the tower step to raise the lord’s banner. The sight of the black falcon flying in his honor made him sick. He had sullied it before ever it flew for him.

  His mother’s laughter turned his head. She ran from the Hall with her arms open. “How well you look,” she cried, embracing him. “I never expected you so soon.”

  Her joy felt … misplaced. Either Kieryn had lied to her about what had happened at Windhaven, or he had never arrived. How to broach the matter? There were other things to attend to first, though they made him no happier. Alovi released him, and he saw her hair pinned up, elaborate and proper, and against Da’s wishes. “I couldn’t get to him fast enough,” he said and freed the pouch of ashes from his belt.

  Alovi clamped her lips between her teeth and took it in hand, so light and so small. “I told him … it doesn’t matter now. And what am I to do with this? He was warm, living flesh to me. These cold ashes mean nothing.” After a moment’s reflection, she handed the pouch back. “Throw them away.”

  Smiling behind welling eyes, she added, “Come inside and get warm. I won’t lose you, too.” Kelyn folded her inside his own black cloak, and they hurried up the steps together.

  In the solar, shutters and heavy tapestries had been drawn over the windows, but Alovi’s herbs flourished, fragrant, beneath the skylights. A fire blazed in the hearth, and Kelyn’s bones slowly thawed. His mother warmed him a brandy. He sipped it to be polite, then set it on the mantel. Casually, he asked, “Let me guess, Kieryn’s in his library, right?”

  Alovi sat up straight in her armchair. “What do you mean? Did you miss each other on the road?”

  Kelyn dropped his forehead into his fingers and swore.

  “He left for Windhaven days ago,” she explained, voice rising. “He got there, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, he got there.”

  “You were riding home together? How did you get separated?”

  “He left Windhaven before I did. I tried to catch up to him, but the snow covered his tracks and buried me at Vonmora.”

  Alovi rose, paced, paused and gripped Kelyn’s arm. “You must’ve missed him somewhere. Helwende? The inn?”

  “I asked everywhere. No one had seen him.”

  Her glance turned inward to look at the most horrifying possibilities. “You don’t think you passed him, lying—”

  “I don’t know,” he interrupted, miserable, and sank into a chair.

  “I don’t understand,” Alovi said. “If he’d only just arrived at Windhaven, why would he leave again?”

  “Because of me,” he muttered, staring at the carpet between his feet. He felt his mother’s eyes like two sharp daggers skewering him.

  “What could you possibly have said?”

  He dared to raise his face and look at her. “Said? Nothing.”

  Her mouth grew hard. “Tell me the truth of it, son.”

  He let it all pour out, from the duke’s funeral to fishing Rhoslyn from the sea; from the broken stitches in his shoulder to the poppy wine. By the time he told her how Kieryn had found out and what he’d done in response, Kelyn was rambling so fast he barely made sense. Nevertheless, he hadn’t courage enough to confess the worst thing of all. Damn you both and your bastard, too!

  Maybe Rhoslyn’s aunt would insist the Duchess of Liraness do something to prevent such a disgrace and spare them both the shame. Weren’t there a thousand concoctions that caused miscarriages? Then Alovi would never need to know.

  The rest was enough. Alovi covered her eyes and sobbed. “How could you?” she kept saying. “How could you?”

  He reached out to her, but she brushed off his touch. “Mother, it wasn’t my fault. Please. I didn’t know. It just happened—”

  The back of her hand popped him in the mouth. “No! Those things don’t just happen, Kelyn. You are a man grown with too many responsibilities. That childish excuse won’t work anymore.” She hurried to the windows and flung open the drapes and the shutters, as if the room were suddenly stifling. “He’s out there somewhere. We’ll organize a search party. Start looking tonight.”

  “Mother—”

  “Tonight!” she insisted. “With lanterns. All the way back to the Pass. Go!”

  He hadn’t the heart to argue. Every old man and boy left in Ilswythe Village and half the sentries from the garrison joined him in the search. They reached the Silver Stag near noon the next day, having found no sign of Kieryn along the roadside. While the party rested around the fire in the common room, Kelyn endured one tale after another of how Kieryn saved Ilswythe, how he had bathed in Dragon fire and come out again unscathed, and how he had delighted the children with rainbows.

  When his people had recovered, he sent them home with a message for his mother. It read simply, “Nothing.”

  He remained at the Stag and raised a second party of dwarves and farmers. They searched the foothills, all the way to the campsite north of Avidan Wood, but they refused to stay the night there. Instead, they fled back to the Stag. Kelyn paid a dwarf to carry a message to his mother. “Nothing,” it read. After the night peeled away enough for him to see, he searched alone. Here the snows remained deep, though the sun shone brightly on the drifts. He dug with gloved hands, looking f
or a scrap of blue robe, a hand, a frozen eye, the hide of a black horse, anything. He reached Helwende three days later and sent back a letter that said, “Nothing.”

  Lord Galt begrudgingly rousted together a party to help Kelyn search the road up the mountain, though he couldn’t trouble himself to rise from his dinner table. Snow had been shoveled from the roadway in the days since the storm, so Kelyn had the team search the drifts under the spruce trees and among the boulders where a rider may have tumbled during the blizzard.

  There was little to be done about the Pass. None of the party had the skill to drop down the cliff and search the bottom of the ravine. Kelyn fully expected to return in the spring and find his brother’s body broken on the rocks below.

  He sent back one more letter, through an official courier, that stated he was on his way home. He rode slowly, searching the drifts and gullies that he had failed to search the first time. Seven days after searching the Pass, he arrived home, half-frozen and exhausted. In the corridor, his mother read the despair on his face, then fled to her rooms. She refused to speak to him, look at him, for two days. In the meantime, Kelyn saw to the duties he’d inherited and listened to the complaints of his artisans, falconers, grooms, and garrison, as well as the villagers who claimed they were still waiting for compensation for what the Fierans had destroyed. Like his father, he wished he was back on the battlefield. At least he had one to run to. He packed his things, and while Chaya was being outfitted with new shoes, he looked for his mother.

  Entering her garden by the wrought-iron gate, he found her atop the west wall. The fur-lined hood of her cloak covered her bound hair. Joining her, Kelyn said, “I can’t stay another day. I’m long overdue.”

  She returned a little nod, but otherwise remained unmoved. Her green eyes stared across the western hills. Yesterday, a storm had slid down from the mountains, covering the meadows in a foot of fresh snow.