Sky Rider

by Terry Mancour

  “Which makes you the best of what humanity has to offer,” Ithalia concluded, cheerfully. “Speaking of magic, even by using the Ways I have a long journey back to my grandmother. I best be going. Farewell, Dara!” she said, before singing a short phrase, and popping out of existence while fingering the stone in her necklace.

  Dara shook her head on the way back down the trail by herself. Ithalia took such miraculous spells as using the Alka Alon Ways – a magical means of transporting them from place to place – as commonplace, and yet was impressed by hunting dogs and draught oxen! The Alka Alon were a strange folk, she reflected.

  Just as she got to the back side of the knob on which her mews was being constructed, she realized that someone was watching her. She peered into the thick brush surrounding the trail, and reached out with her senses until . . .

  “My lady!” squeaked a thick Wilderlands accent. Nattia, the falconer’s apprentice, tumbled out of the brush in front of her. The girl looked guilty, her eyes wide with fear and shock.”

  “Nattia? What are you doing?”

  “I was just returning from the lower wood, where I’d hacked out these birds in a clearing,” she explained, as she tugged on the heavy cage of one bird while trying to balance another on her arm. “Master Arcor likes to give them each a spell in the wood, as it keeps them from getting moody.”

  “Is that . . . all you were doing?” Dara asked. She would not have pried, but from the anxious expression on the girl’s face, there was clearly something more than staking the jesses of a couple of hawks to a board for an afternoon.

  “Nay, my lady,” she admitted, her eyes downcast. She set the heavy cage down by her feet and calmed the larger bird. “I was searching for good foraging spots from the branches of a big oak when I saw . . . I saw . . . you!” she whispered.

  “Me? You saw me?” Dara asked, confused.

  “You and that elf lady,” she said, shaking her head nervously. “Up in the high meadow.”

  “Oh. Oh!” Dara said, realizing what the girl was admitting. “You saw Lady Ithalia and me . . . working on a special project,” she offered, lamely. “She is assisting me with a bit of magic we’re experimenting with.”

  “It was sorcery!” Nattia hissed. Dara winced. That was the same thing her father had accused her of.

  “It was magic,” she conceded. “But I’m a magelord, and an apprentice wizard. That’s what we do,” she said, defensively. “In this case, I am attempting, with the help of the Fair Folk, to grow falcons to large size,” she explained, as if it was a common thing and not a violation of the natural order.

  “Why?” Nattia asked in a whisper, finally looking up toward Dara.

  “Can I trust you?” Dara asked, nervously.

  “I am trustworthy!” the girl asked, stiffly, as to assume otherwise was insulting to her. “And loyal, my lady,” she added.

  “Then I bid you keep what you saw in the strictest of confidence,” she warned. “For now, at least. There are those who would object to this project, and I wish to conceal it from them. Thus I steal away to secluded meadows. I must insist, Nattia. This is actually a . . . a military matter,” she confided, uncomfortably.

  “I . . . I will speak to no one of it, I swear on my honor!” the Wilderlands girl assured her, earnestly. “You may trust me, Lady Dara. Only . . . why?” she asked, with undisguised curiosity.

  Dara decided that if she’d trusted the girl with the existence of the project, she might as well understand its purpose. “Dragons,” Dara said, in a low voice. “We’re creating them to challenge the dragons and their mastery of the sky.”

  “Falcons . . . against dragons?” Nattia asked, amazed at the idea.

  “Giant falcons against dragons,” Dara nodded, gravely. “Lady Ithalia thought of it, and received permission from the Spellmonger to begin research. Eventually, we’ll make them large enough to bear a rider and fight in the air, before a dragon even lands. I’ve seen one up close,” she added, with a shudder. “You don’t want them to land, if you can help it.”

  “I . . . I see, my lady,” Nattia nodded. “It is a cunning idea,” she admitted. “But if you wish the bird to bear a rider, you should consider the Minden’s hawks. They have the strength to fly bearing twice their weight and more. As pretty as your Silver Head is, my lady, she’s a fast bird more than she’s a strong one.”

  “She’s merely our first experiment,” Dara agreed. “If we can prove the spell on her, we can use it on other birds. Stronger birds. But I’m unwilling to risk another bird. Until you and Arcor showed up, I didn’t have another bird,” she admitted.

  “I don’t know how Master Arcor will take it, seeing his birds grown giant,” Nattia said, as she hefted the goshawk’s cage.

  “He will adapt,” Dara said. “As will my father. He did not want me to build the mews I will need for this project, but I am. Arcor will come around, when he sees the necessity.” It pained Dara to mention her father, after their argument. She had learned that morning that he had quit the Westwood to go inspect Caolan’s Pass. As if by mentioning him, the girls heard footsteps pounding up the narrow trail from below.

  “Dara! Lady Dara!” called a young boy’s voice. She recognized it – Kalen, who’d once helped her train Frightful right after she’d been caught. The lad had grown by a head since then and was now running errands for the manor.

  He pounded his feet to a halt right in front of her. “Master Gareth bid me find you!” he said, his breath heaving from the run. “The dwarves showed up with a cart of lumber at the bridge, but the sentry won’t let ‘em pass!” he reported, breathlessly. “They can’t get across the crevasse!”

  “Why not?” Dara asked, her heart pounding and her head growing hot.

  “The bridge is down. Your uncle says it’s to repair and maintain the rope bridge,” Kalen said, doubtfully.

  “Repair? It’s not damaged! And it was re-roped just a year ago!” she scoffed, angrily. “He’s doing this on purpose! He’s trying to keep me from building! Kalen, here, take Frightful and help Nattia get her birds back to the mews. The temporary mews!” she emphasized. “I will speak to my uncle!” she decided, as she stomped away down the mountain.

  Gareth was awaiting her in the yard of the manor, near the heavy rope bridge. Uncle Kamal and a couple of her cousins were nearby, and a few more men had stripped shirtless and were slowly untying the complicated knots that held the planks on to the narrow span.

  The narrow footbridge on the side was still available, but that passage required steady nerves or long practice to make it across. Carts and horses and livestock used the plank bridge. Without them, there was no way a cart could cross. On the other side of the chasm she saw two bearded Karshak leaning against a cart they’d hauled up the road by hand, filled with long planks.

  “What is this I hear about a repair to the bridge, Uncle?”

  Uncle Kamal bowed with only a hint of exaggeration. Her cousins straightened, but did not smile.

  “My lady, the estate does require the bridge to be out of service, from time to time, to ensure that it remains in good repair,” he said, smoothly.

  “Who ordered this?” she demanded. “You?”

  “I believe the Master of the Wood set the repair schedule before he left for his inspection tour,” Kamal reflected. “Indeed, he approved the work schedules in advance for the next two weeks. In case he is detained up at the pass.”

  “Two weeks?” Dara asked, incredulous. “I cannot wait two bloody weeks for the bridge to be repaired . . . when it doesn’t need to be repaired!”

  “My lady is always welcome to use the long passes,” he suggested. While the Westwood was cut off from the rest of Sevendor by the massive crack in the earth, there were two other passes that allowed passage to the secluded estate. Both required extensive journeys outside of the domain, and the trails were not wide enough for even a narrow cart.

  “That won’t be necessary,” she replied, coolly. “I will find another way.” />
  “As my lady wishes,” Uncle Kamal said, bowing again and returning to his work.

  “As impressed as I am by how you kept your temper, Dara, just how do you propose to get that lumber over here?” Gareth asked, curiously.

  “Magic, I expect,” Dara said as she stared daggers at her smug-looking uncle.

  “That’s what I mean,” Gareth said in a low voice. “I can probably shatter that wood into toothpicks and carry them across that footbridge one by one, but I can’t re-assemble them once they’re on this side. Not to mention how many trips that would be.”

  “There has to be a way,” Dara said, twisting her hair as she thought. The very idea of destroying the sturdy, mage-cured and mage-planed lumber she’d paid so dearly for disturbed her. The carpenters had sold it to her on credit, which would have to be paid within two market days. If she paid that much silver for a pile of splinters, she would never forgive herself.

  “Dara, that’s a forty-foot wide chasm that’s at least as deep!” Gareth reminded her. “I’m not saying it’s impossible, but I can’t think of a way, off hand, to do it.”

  Dara looked around in frustration. “I could try to order him to stop work and replace the planks, but I have a feeling he’d refuse.”

  “He couldn’t disobey the Master of the Westwood’s commands without good cause,” Gareth nodded. “I’m guessing that if you insist, he will dispatch the slowest messenger in the Westwood to ask your father’s permission,” he predicted. “I’m also guessing that he won’t be particularly forthcoming with that permission.”

  “What would Master Minalan do, in a situation like this?” she asked, suddenly.

  “Minalan?” Gareth asked, surprised. “He might appeal to his overlord . . . which would be Minalan.”

  “I don’t want Master Min involved in this,” Dara insisted. “Not unless I have to. I want to handle this on my own! My father is just waiting for me to go crying to the Spellmonger to make him do what I want. That’s not what I want.”

  “What do you want, Dara?” Gareth asked, sounding discouraged.

  “I want to get a quarter-ton of lumber across a forty-foot chasm,” Dara decided. “That’s what’s most important, at the moment.”

  “Then Master Minalan would gaze at the problem in determined contemplation, stroke his beard thoughtfully, and likely smoke his pipe until a suggestion arose in his mind,” Gareth decided.

  “As I lack both pipe and beard I shall have to make do with contemplation,” Dara sighed, stepping to the edge of the chasm. There was a short fence separating the yard to keep the toddlers of the estate from plunging to certain doom with any frequency, which Dara chose to lean against.

  She wished, with a wild thought, that her experiments with Frightful were advanced enough to have her falcon pluck up the lumber like a dead hare and fly it directly to the knob. But that was unlikely – at her present magical size, Frightful couldn’t carry more than one plank at a time, and Dara didn’t even know how to trigger the transformation.

  She tried to approach the problem more analytically. There had to be a solution, she knew, and one that she could figure out. After all, Tyndal and Rondal had destroyed entire castles before using magic. Master Minalan had transformed an entire mountain and two miles of land around it with magic. By the Flame, she swore, she was a smart enough wizard to figure out this simple problem!

  Gareth joined her in starring over the chasm at the two bored-looking Karshak and their cart and helpfully kept his mouth shut. There was no way Dara could use the rope bridge, not after being explicitly told not to. Her father was well within his rights to declare when and how repairs were made to the bridge – he’d used similar schemes, back when Sir Urantal was ruling Sevendor. It was just galling to Dara that he would stoop to using them on her!

  She had been staring in silence for nearly ten minutes when she and Gareth were joined by Nattia. The falconer’s apprentice quietly reported that the birds were back in the mews and under Arcor’s watchful eye.

  “If there is any way I can lend my assistance, my lady,” she said, apologetically, “please direct me.”

  “This is as much a political and legal problem as a magical one,” Gareth said, after explaining the situation to the girl. “Dara dare not violate her father’s rights as yeoman, else she get in trouble with the Spellmonger, herself. Yet she doesn’t wish to involve him in this dispute and demonstrate her weakness to her father, either.”

  “Master Kamen seems a good man,” Nattia said, hesitantly.

  “Oh, he is,” Dara agreed, solemnly. “By the Flame, he is a good man. That doesn’t mean he can’t be wrong. And stubborn,” she added.

  “Such attributes are oft thought strong in some families,” Gareth reflected. “Thus, I expect Dara to continue working on this problem until it’s solved.”

  “Can you affix the timbers to each other, the way you break stone?” Dara asked.

  “Honestly, that kind of thing is more Tyndal’s strength than mine,” Gareth admitted. “I might be able to do it, but it would take time. Why?”

  “I don’t know, I’m just looking for possibilities,” she said, frustrated.

  “Does . . . does the wood have to come over all at once?” Nattia asked.

  “No, it can fly across on magical wings, if Dara can figure out a way to do it,” Gareth chuckled.

  “That’s . . . that’s not a bad idea,” Nattia said, to herself, her eyes darting from point to point across the chasm. “Does my lady have recourse to some rope? A lot of rope?”

  Dara straightened. “Why? Do you want to build another bridge?” Dara asked. “I thought of that. Even with magic, it would take too much time.”

  “Not a full bridge, my lady, but a single line,” she proposed. “I notice that while this side of the ledge is somewhat higher in elevation to the other, the trees upon it are quite tall.”

  “We may harm no tree on either side without the permission of the Master of Wood,” Dara pointed out.

  “We would not need to cut it, my lady, merely tie a line to it a good portion up. We secure that line to the base of that tree,” she said, pointing out a stout ash just off the paved courtyard. “Then the level of the line will allow us to send the lumber across piece by piece, using gravity to propel them,” she suggested.

  “That . . . that might work,” Dara conceded, warming to the idea as she considered it. “I’ll grab a couple of coils of rope from the rope shed, and arrange for a cart on this side. Uncle Kamal will charge me,” she said, screwing up her face, “but he’ll do it.”

  With a little more discussion, the three of them polished the plan before putting it into action. While Dara hired a cart from her uncle and secured the rope, Gareth and Nattia took the narrow rope path over the chasm and explained the situation to the Karshak who were waiting.

  Uncle Kamal was hesitant about loaning Dara a cart, and insisted on charging her a penny for the service, as she predicted. By the time she returned from the rope shed with two hundred-foot coils of good hempen rope on each shoulder, Nattia was ready. She nimbly climbed up the great mountain ash on the far side of the chasm secured the end with a stout-looking knot.

  “All Kasari are good with knots,” Gareth noted. “It’s like a cult with them. But that should leave plenty of slack to cross the gorge and tie off, and plenty of drop to propel the lumber.”

  “How do we get the other end of the rope across?” Dara asked. “Magic?”

  “Rumel,” Gareth corrected, shaking his head. The leader of the Karshak was already grabbing the other end of the coil. Dara watched as his stubby fingers tied it around a longish rock he’d pried from the dirt. With a mighty throw he sent the missile unerringly past the ash tree. “Forty feet of chasm is nothing for a dwarf.”

  Dara gleefully returned over the rope bridge to the manor side of the chasm with Rumel, who earned stares from everyone present after his prodigious throw. It only took him moment to use his mighty arms to wrap the rope around the oak, pu
ll it taught, and tie it off.

  Ten minutes later, the first twelve-foot timber was tied to the guide rope and sailed across. Rumel caught it easily, and by the time he was finished untying it the second plank was on the way.

  Dara was ecstatic – she’d not only solved the problem, she’d done it without magic! One by one the great timbers glided across the taut rope where Rumel caught them, untied them, and stacked them in the hired cart. Dara was impressed how easily the dwarf, who was shorter than she was, could handle the foot-wide planks and twelve-feet long beams like so many sticks of firewood.

  Everyone else was amazed by the ingenuity of the scheme – and how quickly the work was done. Within half an hour of the first plank arriving, the last was finally stacked atop the cart.

  “Well done!” Dara cheered, as Nattia untied the rope on the other side of the chasm. “Now we can get that timber up the road and start construction!” The Karshak had established a solid enough foundation quickly enough to allow the first beams to be laid. The beams and planks had already been cut and fitted together in the Karshak’s workshops, they just needed to be assembled.

  “If we don’t run into any more of these unforeseen obstacles,” Rumel chuckled in his deep, gravelly voice, “my lads should have the structural elements of the first floor in place by the end of the week. Then you can get the place wattled up and ready for the daubers while we work on the second. Though transporting clay up that hill will be a job of work!”

  “I’ll get it done,” Dara sighed. “I have to.”

  “Why are your kin so resistant to this project, My Lady?” Rumel asked, politely, as his great arms neatly coiled the heavy rope. “It seems a fair hall, in a place no one else would want.”

  “I’m starting to believe that their objections depend more on who proposed the plan, than the plan itself,” Dara candidly admitted. “At first, I think my father and uncle just had other priorities. They’re still contending with adding Caolan’s Pass to the estate, and they have much more business to conduct as a result.