Hand and Talon (World of Kyrni Book 1)

by Melonie Purcell

  “How long has it been?”

  Men shouted orders from the opening. Royden shifted under the burden of the prince still hanging limp between them. He just shook his head.

  “I can’t hold you, my friend. I won’t try.”

  “So we just sit here and die because you don’t want to try?”

  Sorin leveled the man with a hard stare. “Aye. I would rather die than watch someone else I care about fly away to never return.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Krea said. “I don’t know how to shift again, and even if I could, I don’t know how to fly.”

  That stopped the argument.

  “I know a place where we can hide in the city if we can get there,” Krea said.

  Both men looked skeptical. Royden shifted again, causing the prince to let out a mumbled groan, but nothing more. It was quickly drowned out by shouts from the wall. Guards popped up along the top, bows drawn. As long as they continued to hug the wall, the bows couldn’t reach them thanks to the narrow overhang, but they couldn’t stay forever.

  Krea scrambled to think of anything that could save them. Maybe she could fly. Maybe if she just let her wings do what wings do, they would be okay. She turned to share her newfound confidence with Sorin, but he still stared at the guards. Why weren’t they at least trying to shoot? She looked up. They stood, bows drawn, eyes focused on the field. She and Sorin both turned to follow their gaze. On the farside of the meadow, hundreds of guards charged the palace—swords drawn, shields up.

  “Whose side are they on?” Krea asked.

  Sorin shook his head. “I have no idea.”

  “And we’re not sitting here to find out. Sorin, take him.” Royden thrust the prince the rest of the way into Sorin’s arms and started pulling off his tunic. “I’m flying out of here. You can watch me go, or you can go with me. You choose.”

  “Mother of mercy,” Sorin mumbled as he eased the moaning prince to the ground.

  Krea glanced from Sorin to Royden in confusion. “I don’t understand. I thought your clothes disappeared when you shifted. Why are you taking off your shirt?”

  “Because the prince will need to be tied on, and you are flying out of here, too. You will need some way to carry the sheema.” He began knotting the sleeves and slicing the fabric to form a large sling.

  “I don’t know how to fly!”

  “Aye, you do. You just don’t know it yet.”

  “I don’t know how to shift! It happened by accident the first time.”

  “And this time it will be on purpose, or we all die.”

  Sorin grabbed the torn cloth from the man. “Royden, shut up. Krea. You can do this. Tie these together into a rope.”

  Krea focused on the sleeping sheema without really seeing her. Hands reached in and took the furry bundle from her arms. Krea looked up into Sorin’s birch eyes. “Krea,” he said. “You can do this. You are the prophecy. Do you hear me? The prophecy.”

  A blast of screams erupted from the tower as the first volley of arrows sunk into the charging horde. With great care, Sorin placed the sheema next to the moaning prince and started knotting and slicing the tunic. Krea rushed to join him.

  A great creaking sound echoed from somewhere around the other side of the palace wall. It reminded Krea of snapping timber.

  “They opened the gates,” Royden announced. “Are you done?”

  Sorin nodded and took the last of Krea’s rope. “Aye. Let’s do this.”

  “You better keep one of these for yourself,” Royden said, handing his own rope over. “With no harness, my scales won’t be a friend.”

  “You’re no hatchling, and I’m no scrub. Don’t worry about me. Are you ready?”

  The wall of men still pressing across the field faltered, some backing into the row behind them. A cacophony of shouts and commands erupted as a new threat rounded the corner wall.

  Royden spat. “Torbadyn! We go now, or we don’t go. I’m ready.”

  “I’m not!” Krea protested. “I don’t know how to do this. How do I change? How do I fly?”

  The line of blue dots across his brow smoothed out as he turned to Krea. He didn’t even blink as something exploded in the field behind him. “Focus on the power. The raw power of your gryphon counter. Focus on that, and just let it swallow you.”

  “I’m supposed to let it eat me? Wonderful. How do I fly?”

  “That’s a little trickier. Long, full strokes. Once you’re in the air, it’s no problem, but getting launched…it’s like you’re using your wings to push off the ground, but be sure to bring them down after you leap, not at the same time.”

  “Really? That’s my flying lesson? Almost at the same time, but not quite?”

  A chunk of rock wall shattered behind them in a burst of white lights.

  Sorin held up the sling they had made, now bulging with the little sheema. “We have to do this now. Krea, when you are shifted, goddess help us, I will hook this around your neck. Royden, I’ll need a second to tie the prince on your back.” He placed his hand on Royden’s shoulder. “Here we go.”

  His friend pushed Sorin’s arm away and grabbed the fae-hand instead. “I want this one,” he said, pressing it to his forehead. “Just for luck. Krea. Watch me.” And with that, Sorin began to sing.

  Around them, the battle closed in. Arrows rained onto the meadow. Balls of yellow, red, and blue light plowed into the ground, hurling rocks and mud in their wake. But as Krea watch Royden, it all faded away. His face relaxed. A smile of pure bliss replaced the creased brow, and as he sucked in a deep breath, a wall of light swallowed him. Or her. Krea didn’t know which. When the light faded, the world felt brighter, more alive, and she knew she was once again the gryphon. The fighting across the field sounded like it was a stone’s throw away, and when she gazed out across the field, she saw that it was.

  “Here,” Sorin said, hooking the sling around her neck. “I hope that holds. Royden!”

  An arrow whipped by Krea’s head, blowing feathers in its wake. A tiny ting sound marked its landing. When Krea turned, even as tall as she was, she had to look up. The arrow had bounced off the gleaming scales of a dragon so blue he could have been black. The dragon, Royden, turned his flat face toward the offending arrow and flared webbed horns that circled his head, protecting his neck. Both Krea and Sorin stared until he nudged the prince, poking him with a tiny horn on the end of his nose.

  “Take the caller!” screamed a voice from somewhere above. Krea knew without looking it was Mishtryl.

  Sorin heaved the prince onto Royden’s back and lashed him flat against the dragon’s neck, or as close as he could get given the long horns sweeping back from the dragon’s iridescent head. As Sorin was pulling himself up behind Talyth, Royden took off at a great galloping run. Krea closed in behind him.

  Following Royden’s lead, Krea leaped into the air and pulled her massive wings down beside her. The tips of her wings dragged in the grass. She stumbled forward, nearly stepping on Cricket in the process. Ahead, Royden was already in the air.

  “Do not let them go!” Mishtryl yelled.

  Krea took off running again just as a sunball exploded behind her. She stretched her wings and leaped up into them. When she pulled them down, the wind whispered along the edges of her feathers. The third leap didn’t touch the ground.

  Another ball of light blazed by, and she leaned away from it. The bag around her neck swung out to the side, and the lean turned into a hard bank. The wall loomed ahead. She pumped her wings, but that only brought her closer to the massive stone surface. In desperation, she thrust out her front paws and leaned back. Wind whipped her wings back. Her shield-size paws thumped against the wall and she ran. One stride, two strides. On the third, she bunched up her haunches and leaped away. Cricket’s bag swung hard to the left, but the knots held. A wall of trees beckoned ahead. A wall of torbadyn did as well.

  A thundering roar cut the air. Krea pumped her wings and tried again to angle away from the elven army. She ti
lted again, but she managed to throw herself into a towering elm before she leveled out. A black shadow plunged out of the trees. The screech of a dragon echoed across the field. Krea breathed a sigh of relief, until she realized the sound hadn’t come from Royden. She turned her head.

  Overhead two dragons, one red and one orange, dropped down out of the sky and swooped over the fighting guards. Another red dragon flew over the field and launched back into the air. Moments later, two more dragons cleared a stand of aspen and raced for the palace roof.

  “Krea!” Sorin yelled, waving his sword. “Come with us.”

  Royden dipped toward the field and swooped left. A beheaded torbadyn marked his passage. Sorin changed sword hands, ready to take out a guard on his left, but Royden reached for the treetops again. He already looked tired.

  More kyrni dropped out of the sky, converging on the castle, their callers launching sunballs and swinging swords at everything in their way. Part of her wanted to stay and watch, to help. The bag swinging against her chest changed her mind. She leveled out as best she could and followed Royden over the trees.

  By the time they flew over the landing fields, she was breathing hard. How Rhin had carried two people halfway through the forest was beyond her. She wanted nothing more than to drop onto the inviting grass below and collapse. But Cricket needed the forest. Apparently, so did Sorin. He had begun to droop left on Royden’s back, and more than once the dragon had to correct for the shifting weight.

  The sound of wings closed in behind her, but Krea dared not try to look. No doubt it would end with her plowing into the ground. Instead, she just pushed forward with everything she had. It wasn’t enough. The rustling drew closer. After a few more pumps of her wings, Rhin and Jaydar pulled up beside her. Jaydar’s expression was pure horror.

  “Stay with her, Rhin. She looks tired. If we can follow her to the ground, I can try to shift her back.” Why Jaydar yelled was beyond her. She could hear him as if he were screaming into her ear, and she knew Feydrhin could as well.

  She shook her head. Something tingled in her head. Jaydar. He was trying to meld. She screeched at him to stop and shook her head again. The knot on the sling slipped. Cricket’s bag slid off her neck.

  Without a thought, Krea threw her wings back and stalled in the air. She pumped them forward to level out and dove.

  Wind rushed across her beak and forced her ears against her head. Almost as soon as she began her dive, she had overtaken the bag. With no other option, she closed her beak over the thin cloth and struggled back into the air. The Nayli lay just ahead. So did the giant mutant trees.

  Krea pushed against the wind, trying to fill her wings with every pump. As Jaydar screamed instructions at her, she played with the angle and finally began to climb. Leaves brushed her paws as she cleared the barrier marking the Nayli Forest.

  Ahead, Royden continued to dip and recover. Each time he sunk a little lower. Each time, Sorin sagged longer before regaining his focus. Jaydar moved his yelling to Sorin, and Feydrhin took the lead. He led them over the forest and banked left. A clearing opened up beneath them—the most perfect and beautiful clearing Krea had ever seen. Had it been strewn with dead bodies, she would have loved it just as much. Exhausted, she dropped down and managed to land without breaking her leg. Not for lack of trying, though.

  With as much care as her massive head allowed, she laid the bag on the grass and focused on being hu…on her counter. When the white light faded, the meadow dimmed as well. She glanced down at her hands and at the glowing red spiral, then at the bag lying motionless on the ground.

  She was afraid to look. What if she had snapped poor Cricket in half with her beak? How could she live with that? She didn’t see blood. She didn’t see movement, either.

  “Krea! You’re…you’re…you’re Krea. How could you…how did you shift? With no caller?”

  She looked up to see Rhin running toward her. He stopped and stared. After a moment, he followed her gaze down to the still bag. He knelt down beside the sling and peeled back the slack cloth. Cricket didn’t move. She didn’t breathe. She didn’t anything.

  Krea’s hand flew to her face and tears spilled down her cheeks. “I killed her. Oh, goddess. I killed her.”

  “You didn’t do this, Krea.” Rhin lifted the lifeless sheema out of the bag. Her tail dangled limply from his arms.

  “But my beak. I can’t really feel it. I grabbed the bag with it.”

  Rhin shook his head. “You didn’t hurt her.” He stood and pulled her to his chest. “Hawthorn. Hawthorn,” he mumbled, turning a circle as he searched the clearing. “Come on! Just one good hawthorn.”

  “There!” Krea said, pointing out a thick-trunked tree at the edge of the meadow.

  “Perfect. Hurry. Go get the water skin from Jaydar.”

  Krea turned and found Jaydar kneeling over Sorin with a very worried Royden staring over his shoulder. She ran to the group. “Is he okay? What’s wrong?”

  Royden looked up. “Holding me nearly killed him. When he said he was dry, he actually meant it. Damned stubborn caller. He’d die just to be right.”

  Jaydar looked over at Royden and smiled. His hands still glowed against Sorin’s chest, and this time as she watched the healing, Krea felt the Essence flowing through them both. “I need your water skin,” she said.

  Both men turned to find Feydrhin. He had one hand on the tree; the faerie lying at the base of the trunk. Jaydar pulled the skin’s strap from around his neck and handed the water bag over. Krea didn’t linger over Sorin. He was in his forest. He would recover. Instead, she ran to Rhin. Without asking, she poured the skin’s water out around the tree and then stepped away to watch.

  Unlike the time with Sorin, the tree nymph didn’t hesitate. Cricket was one of her own, and apparently Feydrhin had already made the introductions. Wispy tendrils of light reached out of the bark. The fleeting ribbons formed into a face framed by delicate, flowing locks of glowing hair. As the nymph pulled away from the tree, she formed hands, a body, and one foot. The other foot never left the bark. It just stretched longer as the tiny being buried her smokelike fingers into the sheema’s dull brown fur.

  The nymph spread herself over the unmoving sheema. For a moment, nothing happened. Both magical creatures lay unmoving in the approaching darkness. Then, the nymph melted into the sheema’s dark coat and disappeared.

  Krea looked up at Rhin. He smiled and nodded back toward the sheema. She looked down just as Cricket shifted from bark brown to her green tree form. She was the color of dead leaves, but she was alive.

  “Let’s leave them alone for a little while. That sheema needs time to heal.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t kill her.”

  “Isn’t that what Sorin usually says about you?”

  Krea smiled. This time as she headed back to the rest of the group, her legs didn’t feel quite as confident. The adrenaline that had gotten her to the meadow was gone. The reality of what had just happened settled across her shoulders like wet wool.

  Sorin and Jaydar both leaned against a boulder. Prince Talyth still lay on the ground, but he was at least moving and mumbling, which was a good sign. She and Rhin were halfway to them when the thump of beating leather wings reached the clearing. In an instant, all five of them had their blades drawn and ready to face the incoming threat.

  A rusty red dragon cleared the treetops and circled the field. At first Krea thought it was Kinara, but the dragon was smaller and colored the burnt red of a sunset with none of Kirara’s bright copper gleam. The men sheathed their swords as the dragon dropped into the field. Bri, brown hair plaited tightly against her head, leaped down and ran to Sorin.

  “Thank the goddess! I swear I thought you were dead. When that dirty little street crawler showed up talking about torbadyn and pulks, I went to find you. Your room had been tossed. Blood was smeared everywhere, and you were gone. I ran to tell Doran, but I thought for sure you were…”

  “Bri. Shh.” Sorin grabbed h
er and kissed her. This time Krea knew she was the one blushing, but she didn’t look away. “Thank you for raising the hold. You saved us. You probably saved the Royal City.”

  “I don’t know about that. The torbadyn are in deep. We did get the jump on them, though. Our best guess is that they planned to launch their attack once all the nobles were in the city. Even though they had called in most of the kyrni to get them there, carting around so many people was wearing everyone out. Their plan probably would have worked. The kryni would have been too tired to stage a proper defense.” Bri took a deep breath and looked around. Behind her, Yiryn shifted in a flash of white light. “What brought that kid into the hold, I don’t know, but I’m glad he came. When we tried to run him off, he stood right there on the dais and called us all good for nothin’ fluffs who couldn’t see a leech if it was stuck to our eyeballs, whatever that means. We figured he must have been serious at that point.”

  Sorin pointed to Krea. “She sent him. She came looking for me.”

  Bri turned to Krea. “You never did hook up with Yiryn that day, did you?”

  “No.”

  “You went into the city instead?”

  “Aye.”

  She nodded and looked around the clearing again. Her eyes went from Sorin to Royden to the prince, and finally to Rhin. She frowned. “How did you all get here? How many did you carry, Rhin?”

  “Only Jaydar. Royden flew Prince Talyth and Sorin. Krea flew herself.”

  Her expression betrayed her horror, and she turned back to Sorin. “You held both of them? What were you thinking! I don’t care who you think you are—that’s insane! They both could have been lost.”

  “Bri,” Rhin said, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Calm down. He only held Royden. Krea can shift on her own.”

  “What?”

  Krea pulled back her sleeve to reveal the spiral on her forearm. “I can shift without a caller.”

  “She’s the prophecy,” Royden said. “Eothi.”

  Sorin stared down at the spiral. “I shall call out from creation the unity of one. A kyrni and caller in one. The very thing the torbadyn were trying to create. From the creation of the two, Justice will call…”