“Heard o’ them, I have,” and Geryn proceeded to show off what he knew. “They hail from the plains beyond the Stairs to Heaven.”
Three great rivers defined the Sunset Shore, as this end of the continent was known, and two mountain ranges as well. One was the continental divide, where Geryn had found Thorn—though there was a lesser range right along the coast, giving the impression that, back when the world had yet to settle into its final form, a monster wave had hurled itself against the shore with such force that the land was shoved backward into a bunched-up jumble to form a barrier wall of phalanx peaks. The last and most magnificent, however, went the other way, perpendicular to the divide along the Sun Road from east to west, and were named the Stairs to Heaven because their peaks stood too high and proud to be believed. The greatest river in the world, the legendary Gillabraie, sprang from its heart. In a land of such natural superlatives, it was small wonder the warrior race who claimed it for their birthplace considered none that lived their equals.
“ ’Cordin’ t’ story,” Geryn continued, “they got no proper home. Born on horseback, they live with what they can carry an’ no more. ‘When the Thunder rides, it leaves Desolation as its trail,’ ” he finished formally.
They wear eagle feathers, Drumheller, Anele’s voice bloomed suddenly in Thorn’s mind. Her tone was cold, deliberately stripped of all emotion.
“So have others we have known, Anele,” he replied, in silent speech as well.
Thorn heard her outcry, made thin by wind and distance because she was so high, and all the more passionate because of it. Grief and rage, bundled tight together. He saw a flash of movement, no more than a dark dot really against the azure canopy of the sky, no way to see details without his spyglass, and when he tried to shift to her mind he found himself blocked violently away. He sprang to his feet and hurried to the dromond’s forepeak, never taking his eyes off the eagle, trusting to others to get out of his way. He had a vague recollection of a slight collision with somebody’s rump and a fair scattering of profanities, but he didn’t really care; his focus was wholly on Anele as she tucked wings tight to her body and stooped for the shore.
She was attacking like a falcon, only she was the size of a Daikini child, with strength and speed to match. A decent sideswipe of her wings could break bones, and she could wield her claws as effectively as a warrior could his sword.
Thorn shifted attention to the shore, thoughts racing through the catalog of options for a ploy that wouldn’t actually make things worse. But when he cast his InSight toward the troop, he found himself bounced away again.
“Bloody hell!” he breathed in astonishment. They have a Shield Wall, he thought, and a damn fine one in the bargain.
He had no doubts he could break it. He also had no doubts that act would attract more attention than he was prepared to deal with at the moment. Fortunately, that fractional contact had given him at least a decent look at the riders’ faces. They’d seen the eagle, heard her cry, were watching her madcap descent. Bows were already in hand and arrows nocked. The troop had split into three distinct sections, each moving smoothly apart from the other. One would bear the brunt of Anele’s charge; they would take the casualties, and thereby leave the others a clear shot at her when she pulled up and away. Powerful as the eagle was, she was also at her most vulnerable in a climb, beating against the pull of gravity. The riders were already celebrating their triumph—eagle feathers all round!
They’d reckoned without Bastian.
He and Anele had mated young, and mated for life, and he wasn’t about to lose her. He blew out his wings so close in front of her it seemed to all watching that there was no way to avoid a horrible collision that would send both birds crashing to the water. Yet she merely threw wide a wing of her own and tucked herself around him in a brutally tight pivot. Which was precisely what Bastian had intended, because the maneuver not only bled off a fair piece of her diving velocity, it also left her in level flight, headed away from shore.
The waiting troopers didn’t like that one bit. A few tried their luck with arrows. None came remotely close, although when Geryn offered a raucous cheer at the eagles’ escape, a small volley let fly toward Morag’s dromond. One bolt struck home, right at the end of its travel, managing to snag its head in the railing within an arm’s reach of Thorn.
“Bastards!” snarled Geryn, and then, much louder, “Bloody bastards!”
“If you don’t antagonize people,” Thorn told him, “they’re less likely to throw things.”
“Ain’t afeard o’ the likes o’ them!”
“More fool you, then. We’re not talking fear anyway, Pathfinder, but respect.” Thorn hefted the bolt. Ironwood, a dense relative of the oak, ideal for pikestaffs and crossbows. A broad bodkin bolt, designed to penetrate both plate armor and mail. He noted barbs at random placings on the point, to tear the flesh going in. Nothing compared with the damage it would do when it was removed.
“Crisis is past,” Morag told him as he returned aft, both of them watching the eagles beat their way back to altitude, Bastian making sure to keep himself between his mate and her prospective targets. “Though, if I’m any judge, he’ll na’ find welcome abed f’r a wee while.”
“They’d have killed her,” Thorn said, allowing some of his own outrage to show. “They knew how. They’ve had practice. She could see all that…!”
“An’ it did na’ matter a tinker’s damn. Wild times, Drumheller. They touch us all, in ways we canna begin to imagine. If the King brought in the likes o’ them”—a grim jut of her chin toward the shore, where the troop had reformed and was now pacing them—“for his precious celebration, I’ll be glad t’ see the back o’ him an’ his precious Angwyn. Like swimmin’ in a shark pit. An’ if they’ve come on their own—be hard put t’ say which is worse.”
Drumheller!
“Yes, Bastian.” The eagle’s tone was strained, as though he was shouting his message from the middle of a fight. Which was probably the case.
I’m taking Anele across the Gate, to the forests of Old Angwyn. There are old nests, good hunting, bright water. We’ll hear you when you call.
“Is Anele all right?”
He heard a rueful chuckle. In as fine a fighting form as ever I’ve seen her.
“I’ve never seen her so upset.”
These two-legs like us for their standards.
“Common enough practice, the world over; your kind are noble creatures.”
They don’t merely use our image, Drumheller. They take us in our prime, they take us in blood, and use that blood to bind our spirits to their own, in much the same way the Daikini child was lashed to the hounds. To earn a feather, one of our kind must be taken alive and ritually butchered. No simple task, I grant you; only few among them would even make the attempt and even less succeed. We in our turn marked them well, and made certain our paths would rarely cross. In a hundred years, only one Maizan had claimed the prize of such a hunt, and that is the current Castellan, Mohdri. A whole nest he took, parents and offspring, with nothing but the stench of sorcery to speak of how the slaughter was accomplished. Since his accession, they have hunted us with the tenacity of Death Dogs and used any means possible to drag us down.
You wonder why we have suddenly grown so few; these riders are the reason.
“I’m sorry.”
For those who ride the Thunder, Drumheller, we have no mercy.
“I understand. I’ll miss your company, my friends, and try my best not to need you.”
Our thanks.
“Idiot,” Franjean fumed from his hidey-hole under Thorn’s collar, once Thorn had passed along the news. “Better you should have asked them to take us along!”
“I’ll call them back, Franjean, for you and Rool.”
“Determined to play the hero.” The brownie made his exasperation plain.
“I have to see how Elora’s turned out.”
“After half a score of years? Your concern is touching, Master Drumheller.”
“And your tongue is far more cutting than usual.”
“Those riders have marked you, mage, even if you’re too headblind to notice. The boy may have been making all the noise but it was you their eyes were on.”
“You saw that?”
“The eagles,” Franjean said with prim pride, “aren’t the only ones blessed with sharp sight. Go with them, stay with Morag,” he hurried on, intent on making his point, “it’s the same to us so long as we pass Angwyn by.”
“You’re afraid, too?”
“Careful,” was the correction. “Cautious. Wary. At our size, a matter of survival. You’re not so big yourself, you should learn from us.”
“I’ve never heard you talk this way.”
“You’ve never been so hell-bent on waking a bear from SnowSleep.”
“Elora’s as much a talisman for me as anyone. I need to see her.”
“You don’t even listen to yourself speak the truth, Drumheller, why expect anything different with us?”
“I don’t understand.”
“What! A revelation!” The brownie grabbed one of Thorn’s braids, using it like a climber to swing outward and balance himself on the point of Thorn’s chin, one hand claiming tight hold of the length of hair while he waved the other in a clenched fist. He was too close for Thorn to focus comfortably, but the intensity of the elegant little creature’s fury held him in place as though he was manacled.
“Tell me, Thorn the Mighty, Thorn the Magus,” Franjean challenged in a singsong tone that was an eerie parody of the High Aldwyn.
“Stop it.” Thorn might have been shouting at the sun to stop it rising.
“Which finger contains the Power of the universe?”
“Stop it!” He swept the brownie free of his perch and held him, the pair of them exchanging glares like duelists crossing swords.
“You’re hurting, Thorn,” Franjean said softly.
“Be thankful I don’t do worse.”
Morag had altered course to take her dromond farther out into the channel; it may have been a lucky shot that struck, but she was in no mood to learn different the hard way. The wind had shifted as well, the lateen yards turning with it, just enough to block Thorn’s view of shore from his perch on the aft cabin as he set his companion aside. He could cross to the railing, but it stood higher than he; there was nothing convenient to stand on and he had no desire to dangle from his arms like some would-be monkey, so instead he made his way to the steering post to rejoin Morag.
“Another few points to starboard,” she said conversationally, “ ’s all it’ll take to clear the harbor. Then it’s through the Gate an’ away t’ home.”
He knew Morag had seen his argument with Franjean and was thankful she’d let it pass. Generally speaking, sailors are as fond of the Wee Folk as brownies are of open water—which is to say, not at all—and out of respect and courtesy Maulroon would have told her of Thorn’s companions. That way, had there been a problem, it would have been resolved long before Thorn came aboard, thus sparing all parties any undue awkwardness. By the same token, though, Thorn kept them out of sight. This had been a breach of courtesy, but he didn’t know how to apologize.
“Could you spare a dinghy? That way you’d be less at risk.”
She looked at him, straight on, with a directness of manner that marked both family and profession. It was how Maulroon dealt with people, and Thorn had learned how good captains did.
“Could,” she agreed. “Won’t. Shando,” she called to her mate, who was also her husband, “break out the house colors.”
“Whyfore, Morag?” Thorn asked her.
“I want no mistakes, or ‘accidents.’ I want all to know who’s coming. That way, those riders start something, they’ll know full well who they’re starting it with.”
There was a stiff breeze, so the moment the huge pennants were run up their respective yards, they snapped out to their full length.
“We goin’ to a fight?” asked Geryn.
“Different set o’ rags entire,” Shando told him. “House berth, Morag?”
“We own it, don’t we? Y’r as welcome at my table as Maulroon’s, Drumheller.”
“I appreciate that, shipmaster.”
“So come, then.”
He smiled and shook his head.
“Daft, y’are.”
“Too damnably dumb to know better,” piped up Franjean, in a voice to be heard.
“Could be the wee one has a point,” Morag agreed, but her smile faded—all jollity fled—when Thorn turned his eyes on her.
“I saw the greatest fortress in a thousand ages—perhaps the greatest since Old Angwyn itself—turned to wasteland. I’ve seen a score of other sites on this globe, all places of Power, where the ley lines intersect, savaged just as badly. For all that time I’d no idea why, or what, or even if there was a ‘who’ responsible. Only that it happened. In the purely physical world, there are volcanoes and earthquakes and storms, why not in the magical one as well? A tragedy, but they happen.”
“You wandered, you saw all that, yet you did nothing.” A new voice, as rich and warm as its fur, the shape of a Wyr mouth casting the words in odd accents. Thorn cast a glare at Ryn, though he was more angry at himself for being taken so unawares, and a sharper one at Morag for permitting such eavesdropping. Surprisingly, her response was a gesture of reassurance; the Wyr was as worthy of trust as she, on that she pledged her all.
“I did nothing,” Thorn said simply, in agreement. His instincts were fiercely at war within him; he’d been alone so long he’d grown unused to trust, offered or given, even from his oldest friends. Something about the Wyr reached out to him, but the resonance it struck still felt out of tune. “The walls of Tir Asleen were not just stone, and its defenders weren’t armed only with wood and steel. The King had a clutch of household sorcerers, led by Fin Raziel, there were amulets and wards galore—for the structure itself and for every person within. The Veil Folk did their part as well.
“Yet they were wiped away in a heartbeat.” He took a breath. “Just long enough for all to know they were utterly helpless.” Another breath, the slightest shudder to it, his eyes gone hooded to hide the pain. “Utterly doomed.”
“So what’s changed?”
“What’s it to you?”
A shrug. A hint of something beneath his facade, like a deep ocean current, the smooth surface belying a darker passion roiling far below.
“The Death Dogs,” Thorn told him and Morag both. “Not natural, nor an accident. They were all young, you see, in their prime. These aren’t leftovers from the old days. Someone whelped them, raised them, trained them, set them loose as a Great Hunt. Someone cast a bane on Faron to lead them after a specific target. That ‘someone’ may still be mostly Shadow, but now I know it’s there….”
“With nary a care,” he heard from beneath his pocket, again in a voice loud enough to carry, “of what’ll happen then!”
“Could be he has a point,” Ryn echoed.
“No doubt about it,” Thorn nodded. “It doesn’t matter.” He was thinking aloud, more for his own benefit than his companions’. “Death Dogs after me, Maizan after the eagles, with the tenacity of Death Dogs and a ferocity to match. Sorcery links them both. Maizan in Angwyn. Elora in Angwyn. Something changed the behavior of the Maizan; they were cruel to begin with, now they appear more so. You have to wonder why, and who’s responsible.”
“You have nothing, wanderer,” Ryn scoffed, mainly to observe Thorn’s response, which was a shrug as offhand as the Wyr’s had been earlier. “Random elements without connection.”
“Pieces of a puzzle,” Thorn corrected. “Whether they belong to the same puzzle, and what the puzzle means, that’s yet to be learned. Which I won’t do staying on this boat, however much I might prefe
r it.”
“Then be set wi’ y’r gear, Drumheller,” said Morag. “Tide’ll be turning when we dock; I’m not quick away, I’m stuck till the morrow.”
Nobody wanted that, and he hurried to work.
Farewells were brief, and Thorn couldn’t help noticing that Morag and her husband, and the Wyr, swept the bustling wharf with the same focus and intensity that Maulroon had used on the riverbank days before. None wore swords, but there were knives in abundance and he knew the bigger blades were close at hand, discreetly out of sight. Sails were loosely furled, the ship held to its mooring by only a couple of lines, and those were fully manned. One command, and the dromond would be free.
He barely touched the dock before he heard that command given. By the time he looked around, the ship had slipped its tethers altogether and moved farther from the quay than a strong man could jump. Morag had her eyes on the way ahead, Shando on the harbor behind, ready to warn her of any attack.
Thorn shivered, feeling the intensity of their emotions wash over him like a cresting wave, a fear so real it was almost tangible.
Whatever the cause of the Islanders’ apprehension, there was no evidence of it on the quay. Not the slightest bit. The crowd was bustling and excited, full of that special energy that comes from the art of commerce. At the same time there was a tremendous air of celebratory anticipation. Everywhere Thorn turned, somebody was hawking souvenirs. Banners and pennants, commemorative mugs, shirts emblazoned with silkscreened sayings and sigils, most notably one ascribed to the SACRED PRINCESS ELORA, gewgaws of every size and shape and description. Even reputable merchants had gotten into the act, as Thorn passed one shop that proudly displayed a carpet emblazoned with the date and images of the King, Elora Danan, and their respective heraldic seals. There was food in abundance and entertainers to distract the unwary while pickpockets plied their age-old trade. And constables, in turn, to give the thieves a run for their money.
The docks backed onto a row of monstrous warehouses, which in turn gave way to an equally impressive market whose boundaries were defined by the broad avenues that gave hulking transport wagons, with their eight- and ten- and twelve-mule dray teams, easy access to the waterfront. Permanent structures—four stories tall, and constructed of red brick, as modest in ornamentation as they were rock solid in construction—formed the basic layout of the plaza, these were the old, established mercantile firms; the others made do with canopied cubicles arrayed in lanes within the square. Central to the plaza was a raised platform, which at the moment was serving as the venue of some auction of dramatically patterned and colored bolts of shimmery cloth.
Shadow Moon Page 13
