Still, it wasn’t hard to pick out the High Priest, with the single thick stripe of black that ran down the back of his cloak. He was sitting with a group of the older Priests, picking at a chunk of bread and listening to their discussion.
Talo started making his way through the tables. Syrah, smelling food, peeked from over his shoulder, her eyes hungry, following each unfinished plate they passed. Her stomach growled, betraying her, and Talo chuckled.
He must have laughed louder than he thought, because the High Priest broke off his listening and looked around. Catching sight of the pair, he got up quickly, or as quickly as a man of his age could manage.
“Talo,” he greeted the Priest warmly, spreading his arms wide and stepping over the bench. “My young apprentice, how are you?”
“No longer young, Eret,” Talo told the old man with a laugh, accepting the embrace carefully. He was sicker, Talo could tell. Eret’s fatherly hug was even weaker this time, and as he pulled away Talo could see the toll the years were having on his former Priest-Mentor. The High Priest’s eyes were dimming, the crinkles in his face deeper, and his white hair no longer even hinted of the pale golden-blonde it had been twenty years ago when they’d first met.
“And this must be the young lady you spoke of in your letters?” Eret asked pointedly, turning his attention to the small form that was huddled against the Priest’s broad chest.
“Syrah,” Talo said with a nod, reaching up and attempting to pull down the hood of the child’s oversized coat. Syrah wouldn’t let him. She clung to the cowl crossly, hiding her face from view. Eret smiled, amused.
“Come now, child,” he said kindly. “There’s no need to fear anything here. Are you hungry? Jerrom, my plate, if you would be so kind.”
One of the elders got up and brought the High Priest the metal dish with his dinner. The food, Talo noticed worriedly, was nearly untouched. Jerrom seemed to be thinking along the same lines, because he handed Eret the plate almost hopefully, as though thinking the old man might take something for himself.
Accepting the dish, however, the High Priest held it up and passed his free hand over it. There was a bare glimmer of white light, and suddenly the spiced lamb, potatoes, and sprouts steamed with heat. Syrah jumped at the magic, but didn’t slacken her grip from the edge of the hood.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to let go of that if you want to eat,” Eret said with a chuckle, putting the plate back on the table beside them. “Talo, let her down. Lazura child, make room for our newest guest, please.”
Talo did as he was told, depositing Syrah gently on the ground and smiling when she immediately clambered onto the bench beside the little blonde girl Eret had addressed. He chuckled as, with barely a pause to roll up the oversized sleeves of her robes, Syrah dug into the plate of food with her bare hands.
“Her family?” Eret inquired quietly after a moment, not taking his eyes off the girl.
“Alive and well, actually,” Talo said with a sad smile. “One of the few lucky enough to be. Drangstek was a charred ruin when I passed it on the way to Stullens. Most of the town was burned to the ground.”
“How many children did they have?”
“Her parents?” Talo asked, glancing at Eret, who nodded. “Five. Two boys and three girls.”
“Too many mouths to feed when there isn’t even a roof over your head to shield you from the freeze. They made a wise choice.”
“It was that or the orphanage in Stullens,” Talo added. “Barely more than an old house filled with children who lost their parents to earlier attacks. The oldest children might have fared decently, but I doubt Syrah would have done so well.”
“Your reasons?” Eret asked. In response, Talo reached out carefully, pinching the top of the girl’s hood, and slowly pulled it back. She didn’t fight this time, more concerned with the food that still steamed on the plate in front of her.
Straight white hair, as white as the snow outside and even whiter than Eret’s, fell just past her shoulders. Her skin was pale even for a Northerner, almost chalky. She glanced back at them curiously, and the High Priest got a good look at her eyes, those pink orbs that gazed with a mixture of innocence and old grief.
“Ahhhh,” Eret breathed, realizing. “Yes… Children can be cruel, can’t they? The orphanage would have been a poor place for this one.”
Talo nodded. The old man continued to watch the girl for a time, almost contemplating. Then he moved to sit beside her, leaning against the table, his eyes following the food she was shoveling into her mouth at an imposing rate. After a moment he held up a hand, palm up. There was another glimmer of light, a small flash, and suddenly a tiny glowing white flame danced across the air, coming to a halt and hovering inches above Syrah’s plate. The girl stopped eating at last and stared. With wondrous fascination she took in the little bit of fire glimmering like a tiny star barely six inches from her nose. It lit up her face in a wash of light, and her pale eyes shined as she watched the glimmering dance.
“A gift, child,” Eret said with a smile, dropping his hand as he, too, watched the tiny flame. “One of many given to us by our creator, Laor, the Lifegiver. I hope you will find some measure of comfort living amongst us, or at least find that our love will fill a little bit of that void you feel now. Welcome to Cyurgi’ Di, Syrah. Welcome to the faith.”
PART II
CHAPTER 13
855 v.S.
“… v.S.—or ver Syul—is broadly known as the Common Age, or the Age of Sands here in the South. There are discrepancies as to what marked the start of the period, but general belief is that year 1 v.S. was the first year the sand plains of the southern lands—previously called the Tura i’Syul, or “Land of the Sun” translated from old desert—grew to such proportions that special trade routes had to be developed to cross it safely. The plains were retitled as a desert, and the name was changed to the Cienbal, which has no direct translation that we know of.”
—Kosen Arro, concerning the Common Age
The dune scorpion was a vicious thing. Hissing wildly, it spun to and fro, snapping massive pincers at anything that came within reach. Sand flew everywhere, thickening the early end-summer air as the creature scuttled over the desert back and forth in an impatient dance. Worn black carapace shone in the hot Sun while Raz toed a deadly circle around it, poking and prodding with the bronze-tipped whitewood stave he held in one hand, looking for an opening. His wings—all fifteen feet of them—flickered in warning, his crest edging up along the back of his head and neck. The scorpion, too dull a being to realize the danger of its situation, didn’t draw back.
Raz dodged another snap of the claws, leaping back then forward again, landing a heavy blow on one of the beast’s six legs. It buckled, snapping with a sickening pop, and the scorpion shrieked, scurrying backwards slightly lopsided. Raz didn’t drop his guard, his amber eyes following the giant arachnid’s movements, waiting.
The scorpion didn’t retreat too far. A few feet away it stopped, pincers raised and snapping at the air menacingly, the venomous tip of its barbed tail curling like a deadly whip above its head. All eight black eyes glistened, reflecting the Sun and sand and Raz, who stood his ground, crouched in Jarden’s favorite defensive position.
There was a pause. The scorpion seemed to be contemplating what to do next. The wagon ring was barely a dozen yards away, the horse it had already stung convulsing at its edge while a half-dozen men and women tried to calm the poor animal. Only the atherian, with his slender stick, stood in the way of nearly a half ton of fresh meat…
Without warning the scorpion lunged forward. It rushed Raz so fast he was nearly caught off guard. Jarden’s staff was knocked from his hand when the beast’s barb shot toward his chest, but Raz was just as quick. Dodging to the side, his clawed hand moved in a blur, catching the base of the stinger.
His own tail swung in a heavy arch.
Scaled muscle connected with a bony joint, and with a crack that made even Raz flinch, the scorpion�
��s tail snapped clean off. The beast shrieked again, but before it could retreat once more Raz leapt on its back, his weight almost pinning it to the ground. Drawing the long dagger from his belt, he rode out the beast’s mad turns and bucks, wings high and out of reach. For some time they struggled, the scorpion jerking about, fighting to catch him and pull him off, but to no avail. Eventually the dagger tip found an overlap in the carapace, and the fight ended abruptly as steel slid home.
For a while Raz lay there, breathing hard but not loosening his grip on the scorpion’s shell. Only when greenish blood began to ooze convincingly from around the hilt of his dagger did he relent. Wrinkling his snout at the stench, he stood up, pulling the weapon loose and wiping the blade against the side of his baggy cloth shorts before turning around.
The group surrounding the stung horse—now motionless and very clearly dead—had grown. One of the kneeling men looked around when Raz moved toward them, glanced back at the still scorpion, then flashed a grim smile.
“Took you long enough to handle the roach,” Jarden joked halfheartedly, getting to his feet.
“There’s just something about inch-thick armor, big claws, and a fist-sized stinger I can’t seem to get around,” Raz responded with a shrug, playing along. Jarden snorted.
In the thirteen years that had passed since the events along the shores of the Garin, a thousand things had changed. The Arros, once only one of the larger nomadic clans to travel the desert routes, had arguably become the leading trade family in the Cienbal. They were thirty-nine strong now and still growing. If the rumors were true, Agais and Grea’s attempt at a third child would notch them up to a solid forty within the next year. They already had one newcomer—Ahna, their daughter of eight, and Raz’s favorite little companion.
“The horse can be buried.”
Agais got to his feet. Still a strong man, the clanmaster was only just starting to show the signs of quickly passing years. He stood tall and looked around, silver chain shining over a thick beard that held only the slightest hints of gray in the bleached white. Squinting—his eyes had been slowly going bad in the last half decade—he frowned at the animal at his feet.
“I’d say save the meat, but the poison won’t cook out. Have Samso, Ivas, and Ahsabet help you, Jarden. I have to meet with the Grandmother, but I’ll be back to lend a hand.”
“It wouldn’t bother me!” Raz called out in an amused tone from where he was retrieving his uncle’s staff. “And I’m starving!”
Agais and Jarden chuckled while the women in the group made a face.
“Raz i’Syul Arro,” Grea warned sternly, standing up beside her husband and glaring, “if I hear even a whisper that you took so much as a nip out of this poor beast’s hide, I swear by the Twins I’ll add your skin to the Grandmother’s wagon by nightfall.”
Raz shuffled his feet, ducking his reptilian head, webbed ears flattened.
“Yes, Mama,” he murmured, abashed. Jarden chuckled again, helpless, until Grea shot him a look too. He snapped to attention, winning a brief smile.
“I’ll keep an eye on your boy, don’t worry,” he told her, relaxing and looking down at the horse. “Damned shame, though. We’ll have to buy another animal for Tolman’s cart once we get to Karth.”
“It’s definitely a problem,” Tolman himself agreed sadly from the other side of the circle, patting the dead mare he was kneeling beside. Prida—his wife of six years now—stood next to him, one hand on his shoulder, the other hitching their little boy, Aigos, after Agais and Jarden’s father, higher on her hip.
“We aren’t far,” the young woman said. “We’ll manage. The least we can do is give the poor creature a proper burial.”
Jarden, Agais, and Tolman all nodded, and soon everyone was back about their usual business.
“You’d think a scorpion attack would have flustered them even a little,” Asahbet muttered after Jarden sent one of the boys to get the shovels.
Jarden shrugged. “Raz can handle himself,” he said, glancing at the atherian behind them now rubbing sand on the stave in an attempt to clean off the greenish blood. “I wasn’t worried.”
“It was a good fight,” Asahbet agreed with a mischievous smile. The skinny boy had developed into a strong, handsome man, filling out and sprouting until even Jarden was looking up to him. His brothers, too, had grown, especially in the time since their father had remarried to Leda, a shy and kindly woman from the fringe city of Cyro. The two had birthed another girl, Giovi, who was nearly eleven summers old now. Izan, Ishmal’s oldest, had also married, though any talk of children made the poor boy cringe and his wife, Yahna, giggle and blush.
Still, no matter how big they had gotten, even Asahbet and his brothers had to look up to Raz.
Jarden watched the boy finish polishing the wood clean and stand up, giving his folded wings a thoughtless shake to clear the sand from their frayed edges. Well over six and a half feet tall and at a thought to be sixteen summers of age, Raz was a beast of a man—or that was the common joke amongst the family. His body was long and strong, rippling with lithe muscle beneath dark scaled skin. When he moved toward them it was on the balls of his feet, like the rest of his species, his tail lifted above the sand behind him. His clawed hands, ringed with the silver bangles and wooden bracelet he’d been given when he’d first come to the Arros, were still slightly too big for his body, foretelling yet more growth in future years.
Or months, Jarden thought.
It wasn’t just how much he’d grown, though. Raz had changed in truth, in both body and mind. Not only was it the membrane of his wings, ears, and crest, steadily fading as he got older from aquamarine to sky blue, hinting of a sunset at the edges now. Not only was it the slim iron clan-chain that ran from one nostril at the end of his reptilian snout to the base of his right ear. Raz had learned and developed as a child. A human child. He’d taken to the language like he’d been born to it, though he continued to have some trouble with a few pronunciations. Still, he was getting better with each passing year.
And the customs? The beliefs? No one cursed or swore to the Sun and Moon more than Raz i’Syul Arro. And—as he slept less than the rest of his family—he could often be found sitting on the roof of Agais and Grea’s hardtop wagon in the earliest hours of the morning, taking in Her Stars, his personal deities.
He wasn’t perfect, of course. No child ever was. Raz’s imperfections were simply… different. When it came to his responsibilities as a son, Agais could often be overheard boasting proudly that the boy was a gift. He was strong and fast and loyal, always ready to help. As a man, Raz was developing into one of exceptional character, always to be counted on.
It was just the part of him that was not man, the wedge of his instincts that were animal, that Raz had trouble dealing with on occasion.
He ate nothing but meat and fish, preferring it raw when his mother allowed it. More than once in a fight Raz had lost his grip, finding himself with a mouthful of human or animal flesh that was already halfway down his throat. Though he’d never hurt anyone who’d meant him no harm, Raz had killed to protect his family, just as Jarden had killed to protect them before his strange nephew had come along.
And it hadn’t bothered Jarden half as much as it bothered Raz.
“Aw, come on! Just one bite!”
Jarden blinked, turning to watch Raz and Asahbet.
“No.” Asahbet smiled, punching his cousin’s scaly chest jokingly. “You heard your mother. Grea would have our heads if she found out.”
“Not all of them,” Jarden cut in, jumping forward and plucking his borrowed staff from Raz’s grip. “Just mine. I’m the responsible adult here, after all.”
“Right,” Ivas interrupted, returning with Samso, one of the Arro’s younger newcomers, and all five of the camp’s shovels. “And the Grandmother is the Moon herself, while Raz is being named king of the North mountain tribes today.”
“So long as they don’t tell me I have to be human, that’s fine,”
Raz retorted, sticking his forked tongue out. “I could smell you from across the camp, Ivas. Humans reek—or wait, that might just be you.”
Ivas threw a shovel at him. Raz caught it, making that sharp series of odd throaty sounds they all knew to be laughter. Grinning to a one, they got to work, a little ashamed to be so amused over the sad body of the dead horse.
Tucked away in her wagon, the Grandmother sat cross-legged on a cushion at the low circular table that took up the center of the cart floor. The years had been kind to her. They always had. But as blessed as she seemed, even the old woman could feel the weight of time start to pull at her thin frame. Her hair, once more bleached than silver, was a pale sheet of silken gray now, tied in the tight bun she’d always preferred. Her eyes were still good, even better than Agais’ in fact, but they strained today to see the bones she tossed across the table for a third time, her frown deepening the wrinkles that lined her aged face.
The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1 Page 11
