The Wings of War: Books 1-3: The Wings of War Box Set, Vol. 1

by Bryce O'Connor

  “Are we stopping?” Raz wheezed, almost desperately, as he finally came to a halt beside Carro.

  “It’s about that time.” Carro nodded and indicated the path in front of them, which continued flat for a ways before curving around an edge in the rock. “There’s an alcove carved into the mountain, about a hundred feet past that bend. It’s a resting spot for pilgrims and traveling Priests.”

  Raz didn’t respond, focusing on catching his breath. He had seen such breaks in the path, flattened and cleared portions of stone cut around the steps or into the mountain. He figured they would camp for the night in such a place, given that the snows were slowing them down so much, and he hoped silently the walls of the alcove were high enough to keep out the mountain winds.

  At Raz’s silence, Carro looked over at him curiously. The Priest took him in with concern, eyeing his heaving chest and his legs, which Raz realized—to his great chagrin—were shaking under his own weight.

  Abruptly, Carro flushed as though in embarrassment, eyes widening.

  “What?” Raz asked, looking down at himself, confused.

  “Uh…” Carro began, sounding like he didn’t know how to start, an uncomfortable, awkward smile coming across his lips. “Well, I… I seem to have forgotten…”

  “Forgotten?” Raz demanded, suddenly concerned. Had they left something important behind? “Forgotten what?”

  Carro hesitated. Then, in response, he set his staff against the wall to their right, turned, and pressed his now-free hand to Raz’s chest.

  Almost immediately Raz felt strength flush back into his limbs, warmth rushing through him and chasing off the aches and pains of the afternoon’s climb like hounds running off an unwanted intruder. Within seconds he felt almost completely rejuvenated, his breath coming easier, his posture straightening as the fatigue vanished.

  In an odd combination of gratitude and fury, he stared at Carro.

  “MAGIC?” he demanded, his voice a shriek of incredulity. “You’ve been using MAGIC to help you climb?”

  “Of course,” Carro grumbled, looking sheepish as he pulled his hand away. “How do you think we manage the stairs every other day during the harvest season? I was wondering why you were so far behind…”

  “I was behind because someone forgot that my gods didn’t leave me with the miraculous gift of sorcery,” Raz spluttered, still utterly bewildered that he had not, in fact, had to have suffered through the last four hours in utter misery.

  “Sorry,” Carro mumbled, not facing Raz as he picked up his staff again. “I was… elsewhere.”

  As he watched the Priest turn to stare off once more at the darkening grey line of the horizon, Raz felt his anger leave him. Carro was lost in his own thoughts again, a small, heartbroken frown barely visible through the snow that caked his blonde beard.

  Raz knew whom it was the man was thinking of.

  “Come on,” Raz said gruffly, stepping past the Priest and plucking the reins from his bad hand as he did. “No use standing out here in the snow and wind.”

  It was a minute or two later—Raz leading the way this time—that the alcove Carro had described finally came into view. As they rounded the corner in the mountainside, Raz saw that the path extended even and straight before them for another twenty-five yards or so, then sloped upwards once again as the stairs resumed their winding climb through the cliffs. About a dozen steps above them, a ragged, worn slice of solid rock had been cut right out of the wall of the path, leaving an opening about five feet wide through which a man and—thankfully—a horse could easily fit. Pulling Gale along carefully behind him, Raz made his way forward along the last flat lane of the path, then up the stairs. He suffered a brief moment of subconscious confusion as his mind fought to cope with a sudden, unnatural lack of fatigue at the climb, his legs abruptly carrying him strongly and surely up the steps, one after another. Getting over this, though, Raz made his way upward, then turned to lead Gale through the rift in the wall.

  At once the wind dulled. Raz found himself in a wide, circular niche carved out of the rock by what could only have been magic. The alcove was open to the elements, its walls extending no more than five or six feet above his head, but it shielded them well enough from the buffets of whatever storm might be brewing around them, and once they cleared the snow from the ground it would be plenty dry. Even as he thought this, in fact, Raz felt a pleasant warmth spread about his feet, and he turned to see that Carro had followed him and Gale promptly through the wall. The Priest was already at work, moving his staff gently through the air before him in a complicated series of motions, winding each into the other. As he did, Raz felt the heat around his legs intensify, and he recognized the spell as one similar to the casted warmth Carro and Talo would sometimes take turns weaving over their little party as they’d pushed north, across the Dehn, and into the relative shelter of the Woods.

  The snow melted quickly, crunching and sinking into itself as it turned first to water then trickling fog. For several minutes Raz did nothing more than watch, leading Gale around the wall of the alcove to stand beside Carro as the Priest worked, his staff moving in constant fluidity. When the last of the piled snow was gone, revealing dry, uneven slate beneath, Carro heaved a heavy sigh and stepped deeper into the space.

  “I’ll get the wards up, if you would be so kind as to start making camp.”

  Raz nodded, and before long the pair had settled into an old routine that—nevertheless—felt uncomfortably lopsided without the presence of the third man now missing from their company.

  A half hour later they were sitting across from each other, silently watching the pitch and dance of the hearty white fire Carro had summoned into existence in the center of the alcove. The heat the magic gave off was unneeded—the protective barriers the Priest had managed to eventually cast offered plenty—but nonetheless Raz reveled in its waves, extending his wings out and around the flames to bath in the arcane warmth. One hand was resting against the coolness of the stone beneath him, the other holding his gladius suspended over the fire, turning it every now and then so that the thin strips of meat impaled along the length of its steel cooked evenly. It was fortunate they were so close to the Citadel, Raz told himself. He wasn’t sure their remaining elk and venison would have lasted more than another two, maybe three meals.

  “How do you do it, Raz?”

  Raz blinked at the sudden question, lifting his eyes to look at Carro across the flames. The man wasn’t looking at him, his gaze on the twisting light of the fire. He had a lost, empty look about him, like a man who’d woken up to a world he knew nothing about.

  “Do what?” Raz asked, though he thought he could guess where the conversation was about to take them.

  “Carry this,” Carro told him quietly. “Bear this… this weight.” His hood was pulled down, and the snow had melted out of his beard and hair. He looked as old as Raz had ever seen him look, staring off, blind to the light and stone and sky around him.

  For several heartbeats Raz didn’t respond. He knew what the Priest was looking for, of course, but he suspected the man wouldn’t like the answer.

  “I don’t,” he said finally, retracting the gladius from over the flames as the meat started to sizzle and pop. “Or rather, I didn’t.”

  Carro looked up at that, eyeing him curiously.

  “Caring for another,” Raz kept on, “comes with risks, Carro. Sharing your soul means giving a part of yourself to another, leaving it exposed, vulnerable. I don’t doubt you are aware of this, in your own way, but age does not always equal experience in such matters. When grief—true grief, the kind that only the theft of a life can elicit—takes us… different people cope in different ways.”

  “What do you mean?” Carro asked, almost desperately.

  Raz sighed, waving the gladius about him slowly to cool the food. “I mean that death is a meteor, and the impact it has on us is relevant to our preparation for it. As a beloved elder succumbs to old age, we see the meteor far off
in the night sky, and have all the time in the world to brace ourselves for it. When illness strikes suddenly, we catch a glimpse of death’s coming, and have at least a moment to ready for the fall.”

  He set the sword down carefully, the still-warm tip propped up on his knee so that the meat wouldn’t become soiled against the ground.

  “But when life is snatched away—when death comes so suddenly it leaves again in a blink—there is no preparation for the pain. There is no bracing for the impact.”

  Across the fire, Carro nodded slowly, his face darkened by shadows that played against the lines of his brow and cheeks.

  “What do you do, then?” he mumbled. “When the meteor strikes, what do you do? How do you bear it?”

  Again, Raz paused.

  And again, he decided to answer honestly.

  “I don’t,” he repeated quietly. “I didn’t. When I lost my family, Carro, I spent the next week in madness. I didn’t eat, I didn’t sleep… I just hunted. I existed as some vicious phantom of myself, some bloodthirsty, ephemeral projection of everything that eventually led the Mahsadën to extend me their hand, led the spectators of the Arena to cheer me as their hero, their bloody champion. I didn’t bear the weight, Carro. I let it crush me, let it break me. I let the weight mold me, until eventually what I was mirrored the moniker of ‘Monster’ all too well.” He held the Priest’s gaze firmly. “I’m sorry, but I’m not the one to ask such a question to. I was young, foolish, and I had the opportunity for an outlet, for vengeance.”

  “I wish I had that outlet,” Carro said in a broken voice. “I wish I had a way to—”

  “No,” Raz said harshly, sweeping a hand before him in anger. “That is not what you want, Priest. I may not be able to tell you how to bear the pain you now carry, and I’m truly sorry for that, but I am the one to tell you that—above all else—you must bear it. No matter what. Let it weigh you down, let it shape you, and you will be looking down a very dark path, Carro. A path that leads nowhere good.”

  “A path you know well?” Carro asked.

  Raz gave a hard, unwilling smile. “All too well, yes. And I can tell you with resounding conviction that it is not a road you will do well on. That trail is more shadow than light, more blood than life. Your Lifegiver does not exist down that path. His warmth does not penetrate the cold of that way.”

  He reached down, tugging a steaming slice of venison from the blade. Juice dripped from the meat over the ground as Raz reached over and around the fire, leaning forward to offer Carro the food.

  “You,” he said, kindly now, watching the Priest eye the meat with disinterest, “are best suited for the harder path, my friend. I caved, and I fell. Talo said that the fires I carry with me don’t consume me, but they did. Once, they did. They burned so hot I forgot what it was to live, what it was to care. I spilled as much blood in a week as any five of the men I killed had in their lives combined. I took the easy road. I don’t know if that’s because I was weak, or simply young and lost, but it doesn’t change the fact that I took the easy road.”

  He shook the meat pointedly. “You don’t get that choice, Carro. Your god wouldn’t let you, Talo wouldn’t let you, and I’m certainly not going to let you. Instead, you’re going to eat. You’re going to sleep. You’re going to hurt and wallow and bear that pain until it becomes a part of you, a scar that adds to the beauty of the ‘gift’ of life you say Laor has given you. In the end, you’ll be stronger for it.”

  There were tears in Carro’s eyes now, as he looked at the meat, understanding what it was meant to imply. If he took it, he admitted a willingness to continue, a desire to go on. If he took it, he was accepting the weight that tore at him now, acknowledging that he would carry it until such time as it was a part of him.

  Slowly, with staggered hesitation, the man reached out his good hand and pried the dripping venison free of Raz’s claws.

  “Good man,” Raz told him. “Laor would be proud.”

  At that Carro gave a helpless, croaking chuckle, then brought the meat to his mouth and started to tear into it.

  They spent the rest of the evening in conversation, talking as they had over the course of the earlier morning, speaking of nothing and of everything, resolutely staying away only from the topic of Talo and what was to be done about the mountain men now that he was gone. They spoke of Raz’s family, of the mother that had given Carro to the faith when he was young, and even of Lueski and Arrun Koyt. They spoke more of the Citadel and its inhabitants, and Raz once again felt the budding excitement well in him as Carro told him more about how the furnaces worked, about the battlements that offered breathtaking views of the world on the rare clear days, and about the education of the acolytes as they grew from initiates into consecrated Priests and Priestesses. They spoke of old friends, Raz telling Carro more about how he had met Eva, now far behind them in Ystréd, and about the master smith, Allihmad Jerr, who to this day worked out of the shithole that was Karth. Carro talked to him of the former High Priest, Eret Ta’hir, of Jerrom Eyr, the last of that generation, and of Jofrey al’Sen, whom Talo had left in charge of the Citadel in his absence.

  When Carro started to speak more of Syrah, though, Raz found himself suddenly hard-pressed to pay attention to the man, distracted once more by the inexplicable image of a white-haired girl dancing across his mind. He didn’t notice Carro smile as the Priest watched him, examining the distance of his gaze and the calmness of his face as he listened to stories of the woman’s youth, and more of her successes with the mountain tribes after she’d been granted her staff.

  Eventually, an hour or two after night had fallen in truth, Carro began to yawn. The ward would tell them if anyone came along the path behind them, but all the same they agreed to split the watch, neither trusting in the fact that the Kayle’s men weren’t hunting them up the mountainside. Raz took first shift, bidding Carro goodnight as the Priest extinguished the flames in the center of the stone floor and made for his bedroll. His sheathed gladius in one hand, Raz moved towards the alcove’s narrow entrance, settling himself against the right wall of the opening from which he could look back down along the path. Spreading his wings so that they wouldn’t get pinned, he slid himself down the stone, coming to a seated rest at its base.

  It had started to snow in earnest again. Looking up, Raz watched the thick tumble of flakes fall across the sky, further muting the already dim glow of the moon behind a ceiling of stormy clouds. He wondered, as he settled in for the night, if Talo waited among Her Stars now. Would his Lifegiver allow it? Would he, rather, already have been born anew to the world, as his faith decreed?

  Raz smiled to himself, chuckling softly, and wished silent luck to the parents of whatever newborn had been gifted with the bright, fiery soul of Talo Brahnt, High Priest of Cyurgi’ Di.

  CHAPTER 27

  “We are not a perfect people. We are perhaps considered as such by many, held in the highest regard by those who draw strength and inspiration from the Lifegiver and his Laorin, but we are not a perfect people. The faith is—like any congregation of different-minded individuals—rife with disagreement, dislike, and enmity. Laor knows that, despite all efforts to the contrary, such difficulties are an inevitable part of life. It is an unfortunate truth, but truth nonetheless: we are not a perfect people.”

  —Eret Ta’hir, High Priest of Cyurgi’ Di

  Reyn Hartlet watched in silent, seething anger as the pale glow of fire, muffled and discolored white by the falling snow, extinguished in a wink far below. As it did there was a rustle of shifting cloth beside him, and Cullen Brern got to his feet at his right, standing up from where he’d been crouched along the edge of the path, peering down the twisting, turning stairs.

  Without a word, he motioned for the advance.

  As one Reyn and ten other bodies straightened themselves up and fell in behind the master-at-arms, moving as quietly as they could. Ordinarily they would have cleared the way with fire and heat as they descended, but Brern had given
the order that they would handle the stairs without such magic for the time being, in case a suspicious lack of snow unnerved possible envoys as they resumed their climb the following morning. That was the official reason, at least.

  Reyn thought it more likely Brern wanted to save all the strength they could, in case the night culminated in a fight.

  The wind was godsend, for once, the storm masking the sound of their feet and staffs crunching through ice and against stone as they took the steps in a careful line, one after the other. Reyn could barely hear his own footfalls, and very much doubted whatever waited for them below would make out their coming. Brern had mercifully allowed for the summoning of three small orbs of light, empty globes of white that floated through the group. It was barely enough to see by, the glow just enough to illuminate the path beneath their feet, but they made do. Any less would have made the descent precarious, and any more would probably have been visible from where the Kayle’s men had settled in for the night, in the alcove far below.