Crown of Three (15 page)

I thought Yalasti was cold. It's nothing compared to the Icy Wastes.

Wind gusted down from the north, blasting directly into Tarlan's face. It was the same wind they'd been fighting against all the way here. At first, its bitter touch had scoured his cheeks; now he couldn't feel it at all. The wind blew over his tangled hair, his black robe, but neither hair nor robe moved: both were frozen solid.

Tarlan could hear something: a vague, chattering sound. Tiny dancing shapes materialized in the air ahead of him, like fireflies or falling stars. They were beautiful. Fighting the lethargy that had overpowered his limbs, Tarlan reached toward the glittering cloud, but it was still far, far away.

“Storm,” said Theeta.

“Always storm,” said Nasheen, weaving in the air to their left.

Kitheen, as usual, said nothing.

Tarlan tried to remember what Mirith had told him about the Icy Wastes. But his thoughts were frozen, just like his hair and cloak. All he knew was that it was a dangerous place, and that few who ventured there ever returned.

The glittering shapes grew bigger and more beautiful. Tarlan still had no idea what he was looking at. But he couldn't ignore the thorrods' unease.

“Take me down,” he said. “You've come far enough. I'll go on alone. There's no need for you to risk your lives for me.”

“We fly,” said Theeta.

Tarlan bowed his head. These giant birds were his dearest friends. But he couldn't bear the thought of leading them into danger.

“I'll be all right,” he said. “It's what Mirith would have wanted.”

“Thorrod is sky,” said Nasheen.

“What do you mean?”

Nasheen's golden head twitched with frustration. When he was younger, Tarlan had thought the thorrods stupid. Now he knew that beneath their simple language lay profound wisdom.

“Sky above,” said Nasheen. “Land below. Thorrod is sky. Mirith is land.”

“But Mirith is dead.” Tarlan pressed down his grief in his efforts to understand what Nasheen was trying to say.

“Yes, yes,” said the thorrod, tossing her head. “Now Tarlan is Mirith.”

“Sky needs land,” said Theeta gently. “Thorrod needs Tarlan.”

“It is,” added Nasheen. Tarlan waited for her to complete the statement, then realized she'd said everything she wanted to say.

It is.

The loyalty of these majestic birds took his breath away. Wherever he went, they would follow.

If it weren't for Mirith, I'd never have known you,
he thought with a pang of grief.

Tarlan had a sudden sense of his own place in the great flow of history. The thorrods were old, he knew that, and Mirith had told him there had been frost witches in the mountains of Yalasti for thousands of years. He had no doubt the alliance between the two extended far, far back in time.

“Then I say to you now that Tarlan needs thorrod. As you are mine, so I am yours. I will be here for you, always. I will never let you down.”

The glittering shapes turned out to be ice crystals, torn up from the winter landscape and whirled into a frenzy by the howling wind. As the thorrods flew into the storm, Tarlan hunched over, burying his head as best he could under his frozen cloak. When the ice penetrated his defense—as it frequently did—it cut like a thousand tiny knives.

The veil of cloud and flying ice swallowed the sun. It was like flying into the thickest—and deadliest—fog Tarlan had ever known. Nor could he tell in which direction they were headed; he just hoped the thorrods knew where they were going.

“Low!” shouted Theeta, dipping her wings.

She led their tiny flock closer to the ground. Here the wind was just as strong, but the air was filled more with snow than ice. Tarlan clung on as the thorrods plowed their way through the blizzard, afraid they might be forced to return to Yalasti, where the elk-hunters would be waiting for him.

Never mind the elk-hunters,
he thought.
Turning back means failing Mirith. I promised her I would bring the jewel to Melchior. And I will. . . .

He was about to touch his fingers to where it hung frozen around his neck, when something loomed out of the fog of swirling snowflakes: a gigantic shape like a huge, twisted tree arching high above Tarlan's head. As the thorrods flew beneath its curve, he saw it wasn't a tree at all, but a huge, bleached bone.

More bones rose from the murk, row upon row. They were flying through the rib cage of some unimaginable beast. Tarlan felt his fingers tighten in Theeta's neck ruff, felt his frozen jaw creak open. Ice filled his mouth, but he was hardly aware of it, so astonishing was the sight.

They flew on through the vast boneyard. Far to the left, Tarlan glimpsed something mountainous that might have been a skull. Dark shadows set deep in its contours hinted at eye sockets the size of the cave he'd shared with Mirith.

Unsettling though the huge skeletons were, they did at least afford some protection from the wind. Theeta dipped lower, skimming the ground so that her wing beats raised fountains of snow. The other thorrods followed, their keen eyes scanning constantly for any sign of danger. Tarlan stared ahead, wondering what they would do if they encountered one of these unimaginable monsters still living.

Eventually they left the bones behind. Though the storm continued, the air felt a little warmer. Tarlan rubbed his hands over his body, his face, encouraging the blood to circulate. For the first time in this long flight, he began to feel optimistic.

“Look!” said Theeta.

Six figures emerged from the blizzard, running across the snow more quickly than Tarlan thought possible. They wore thick outfits made from overlapping plates of some material he couldn't identify, giving them an oddly reptilian appearance. On their feet they wore broad shoes that prevented them from sinking into the drifting snow.

“I didn't know there were people out here,” said Tarlan, suddenly afraid.

“Wastelanders,” said Nasheen.

“Cannibals,” said Theeta.

“Madmen,” said Kitheen.

Tarlan stared at the third thorrod. He spoke so rarely that, when he did, it was quite an event. He and the other birds waited to see if there would be more, but it seemed their black-breasted companion had spoken his fill.

“Well,” said Tarlan. “Whoever they are—whatever they are—we're not going near them. Come on, let's—”

A cry rang out across the Icy Wastes:

“Help me!”

The voice had a liquid, purring quality Tarlan had never heard before. Glancing to his right, he saw a bulky shape battling through a deep drift of snow. At first he thought it was a child crawling on all fours, then he saw it was an animal. The creature's thick fur was striped blue and white, camouflage against the icy terrain.

A tigron!

Years earlier, he'd seen a pack of these rare and ferocious beasts from a distance, prowling the foothills below Mirith's mountain. This one looked small, just a cub.

“Help! They'll kill me!”

It was the tigron that was shouting. He could hear it, understand it. Its voice was high and wavering, and he knew instinctively it was a female. He'd always taken for granted his ability to communicate with the thorrods: Mirith had been able to do it; why wouldn't he?

But in all the times he'd wandered the mountains, watching the whitebears lumbering from their lairs, the winter rabbits grazing on the heather, he'd never heard such creatures speak. Only the thorrods.

And now a tigron.

What does it mean? Why now?

“We go,” said Theeta, wheeling away from the Wastelanders, who by now had spread into a half circle and were closing in on the tigron cub.

“No,” said Tarlan, gripping her neck ruff firmly. “We save her!”

The thorrods came in low, from behind. At the last moment, the Wastelanders turned. Tarlan saw their outfits were in fact plates of bone, with tufts of white fur protruding from the places where they overlapped. Scaly hoods covered their heads, the openings studded with hundreds of teeth, so that their weather-beaten faces seemed to be peering out from inside the jaws of some monstrous lizard.

The Wastelanders unsheathed long bone spears and launched them at the attacking thorrods. The giant birds dodged them effortlessly. Theeta cut low over the nearest man and raked her talons down his back, penetrating his bony armor with ease. He screamed something in a language Tarlan didn't understand and fell face-first into the snow.

Kitheen was making straight for another Wastelander when two more men rose up out of the ground like the buried dead brought back to life. They shook off the snow beneath which they'd been hiding, presumably, thought Tarlan, as part of the operation to ambush the tigron. Both were carrying heavy bone axes.

It was too late for Kitheen to pull out of his dive. He screeched, cycling his wings in a desperate attempt to avoid them. The two men drew back their axes.

Nasheen appeared from nowhere, slashing the first man's chest open with her beak and knocking the other to the ground with her tail. He dropped limp into a spreading pool of his companion's blood.

Three of the remaining five Wastelanders had reached the tigron cub. The other two stood guard, swinging long ropes in circles over their heads. On the ends of the ropes were heavy, spiked weights.

“Help!” screamed the tigron, thrashing helplessly in the snowdrift as one of the men thrust a sharp bone knife toward her throat.

“Closer!” Tarlan shouted. Reaching under his cloak, he snatched up the bow he'd stolen from the ice fortress. As Theeta swooped low over the snowdrift, he jumped. In midleap, he nocked the arrow into the bowstring, drew, and loosed. The arrow pierced the Wastelander's throat just as he was about to deliver a killing blow to the tigron cub. With a gargling gasp, the man dropped dead in the snow.

Tarlan hit the snowdrift and rolled clear in a flurry of white powder. He staggered to his feet, spitting snow from his mouth. His hands were empty; he'd dropped the bow.

Two Wastelanders were sprinting toward him, faces furious inside their tooth-lined hoods. In a flurry of snow behind them, Nasheen and Kitheen were grappling with the remaining men. Theeta was wheeling around, still recovering from her dive, too far away to come to his aid.

Both of the men advancing on Tarlan hurled their upraised spears at the same time. His feet paddled uselessly in the soft snow as he tried in vain to dodge them.

Something heavy slammed against his hip. Air exploded from his lungs in a crisp cloud. He flew sideways, limbs flailing, skidding over an exposed patch of icy ground. Recovering, he lifted his head, expecting to see one of the thorrods standing over him. Instead he found himself looking into the face of the tigron.

“You helped me,” gasped the cub. “So I helped you.”

The little animal slumped against him. Blood oozed from a long gash in her flank. Enraged, Tarlan clambered to his feet, retrieved his bow, and turned to face the oncoming Wastelanders, but suddenly they began backing away from him.

“Come on!” he yelled. “Are you scared?”

They didn't look scared. Nevertheless, they continued to retreat, until they reached their companions. The four men stood back-to-back, armored plates drawn tight around their bodies, weapons held high, so that they resembled a single organism, spiked and deadly. Kitheen and Nasheen circled them, jabbing with their beaks and claws, unable to make a proper strike.

“Theeta!” Tarlan called, but she was already there, towering over him. The men had been retreating not from Tarlan but from his thorrod friend.

“Come,” said the giant bird.

“I'm coming,” Tarlan replied. Wincing with the effort, he heaved the wounded tigron cub onto his shoulder. “And so is she.”

They left the surviving Wastelanders in the snow and struck out into the wilderness. Tarlan had no idea which way they were going, nor did he care. He just wanted to get away.

“High,” said Theeta as she led the other thorrods up through the whirling clouds of ice.

Lacking the strength to object, Tarlan concentrated on keeping the tigron warm under his cloak. The cub was panting rapidly, obviously in pain, but her pulse was strong.

At last, the thorrods climbed out of the storm. The ice clouds were spread below them, a seething ocean of crystals. The air was bitterly cold and very thin, and Tarlan found it hard to breathe. But for the first time in what seemed an age, he felt safe.

“Filos,” said the tigron, poking her blue-striped snout from under his cloak. “My name is Filos.”

“I'm Tarlan.” Though he spoke the Toronian tongue, she somehow understood him.

“They killed my pride. My family. They are bad men.”

“I'm sorry.”

She nuzzled him, her eyelids drooping. “You are good.”

Soon the tigron was asleep. Tarlan spread half his dwindling supply of black leaf on her wound, then dabbed a little on his shoulder, which ached terribly.

The thorrods flew on. Now that they had cleared the storm, Tarlan could see exactly where they were. Behind them, the sea of cloud melted into the white mountains of Yalasti, his home. In front—very near, in fact—the clouds dissolved to reveal a world so green he thought his eyes were deceiving him.

The sun was low to his left, heralding the end of the day and confirming what he already knew: ahead, to the northwest, lay Ritherlee. Tarlan had heard of this land of pasture and plenty but had never seen it. It looked . . . beautiful.

At last everything was clear: the air around him, the thoughts in his head. Ritherlee was far from the elk-hunters, far from the painful memories of Mirith's death, far from everything that had caused him pain. Somewhere he might make a new start, and finally find his place in the world.

Somewhere he could begin his search for Melchior.