Kindred and Wings
Authors: Philippa Ballantine
Published 2013 by Pyr®, an imprint of Prometheus Books
Kindred and Wings
. Copyright © 2013 by Philippa Ballantine. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Cover illustration © 2012 Cynthia Sheppard
Cover design by Grace M. Conti-Zilsberger
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The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:
Ballantine, Philippa, 1971–
Kindred and wings : a Shifted World novel / by Philippa Ballantine.
pages cm
ISBN 978–1–61614–779–2 (paperback)
ISBN 978–1–61614–780–8 (ebook)
1. Good and evil—Fiction. 2. Imaginary places—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9639.4.B39K56 2013
823'.92—dc23
2013012124
Printed in the United States of America
For my daughter,
who came into my life as vibrantly and wonderfully as a dragon taking flight.
Chapter 1: The Hunter Must Hunt
Chapter 2: Being Within the Flame
Chapter 3: Proposals and Desperation
Chapter 5: The Heart of the Dragonsoul
Chapter 9: Hope and Nightmares
Chapter 10: A Meeting of Wings
Chapter 12: Homecoming for All
Chapter 13: In the Heart of the Vaerli
Chapter 15: The Lessons of the Dead
Chapter 16: Retracing the Steps
Chapter 18: A Brother’s True Form
Chapter 19: The Coming of the Dragon
Chapter 20: Hunter, Seer, and Void
As Talyn is beginning to find out, you need people around you to help you get anywhere in this world. As a writer I learned that a long time ago. So here are some people who made this book possible, and have kept me on the straight and narrow.
Lou Anders, whose knowledge and guidance helped me find my way to finally writing about dragons! His hand on the editorial tiller is something I will never take for granted.
Gabrielle Harbowy, for being my rudder in the sea of commas and red ink. Thank you for working with me all these years!
Laurie McLean, my agent who first saw potential in this tale of a woman in need of redemption. Thanks for taking a fledgling writer on, and holding her hand through the woods of publishing.
My cover artist, Cynthia Sheppard for giving form to two of my favorite creatures, and making them as wonderful as I imagined.
And I could not forget to thank all the fans, readers and listeners who have traveled along with me. You’ve made this writer’s dreams a reality.
It was always about proving herself. Standing in the pale moonlight on the hilltop, her hand on an unfamiliar sword, Talyn felt the irony of that sink into her bones; she had traded in proving herself to the Caisah to proving herself to some new masters. In a world of chaos like Conhaero, it was strange to have everything stay so much the same. She pushed her dark and now damp hair out of her eyes, and kept her gaze fixed on the road.
It was a symbol of permanence on the ever-changing face of this world, where even mountains could not be relied on to be permanent from one week to the next. It was not a symbol she welcomed, since the Caisah had placed all the roads here. That tyrant who sat on the throne at Perilous and Fair was still her enemy.
The hill on which she had taken up position looked over a town, though it was now shrouded in mist, so that even the pinpricks of light from the buildings below dwindled to nothing. The chill damp of it clung to her skin, but the Third Gift of the Vaerli stopped it going any further. Her new masters, like her old one, had seen that some of the gifts taken from her people clung to her.
Still, it was not as it had been. Her lungs sang with the cold.
The mist had another effect: every sound was muffled, so even her sharp ears could make out no hoof beats on the road below.
The courier had not come this way yet—she was fairly certain of that. Talyn’s jaw clenched as she checked the powder in her pistol. It was the one the Caisah had given her on entering his service, and yet she couldn’t bear to part with it. Considering how much she had once loathed it, Talyn knew this was a curious reaction. She liked to think that it reminded her of what had happened to her before.
Still, if she stayed in this mist much longer the powder would be too damp to be of any use at all.
Finally, it was the faintest of shudders running up from the ground that told her that a horse was galloping up from the village below. It wouldn’t take him long to crest the ridge. From there it was a straight shot down the valley, and in another two days he would reach the capital of Perilous and Fair. That couldn’t be allowed to happen. If he arrived there, the item she needed would be totally out of reach, so she had to hurry.
Racing along the top of the hill, pumping her arms, Talyn caught a glimpse out of the corner of her eye: the flash of a gray horse with a caped figure clinging to its back.
Lowering her arm, she fired her pistol at the courier, but she dared not stop to aim properly. Without all of her Kindred gifts it was an awkward shot, almost backwards from the direction in which she ran, so of course it went wide. The gallop now sounded broken, as if the mount was spooked, which in this mist was understandable. Horses were fine animals, but they were not native to Conhaero, and therefore not used to the shifting of the land. It tended to make them stressed and unreliable.
“Hah!” the rider yelled at his mount, probably unsure just how many people were accosting him. If he’d been able to make out the small female figure he’d have been a little less worried, but if he’d recognized the erstwhile Caisah’s Hunter he would have been terrified. Talyn had plenty of experience working with the terror she generated.
The Vaerli, though, knew she was not what she had been, and she also knew there was no way she was going to be able to catch the man if he got much further away from her. Just as that realization hit her, a prickle of heat ran up her spine and sudden energy filled her limbs. Her breath caught in her throat. This was the third time in as many months that she’d been made aware that her new masters were keeping an eye on her.
It was an unpleasant thought, but she shoved it to the back of her mind as she crouched low and leapt from the slope. Talyn had judged it perfectly. She landed behind the courier just as his horse surged forward. She did not have enough mass to unseat the man, but the mount reared as her weight came down on its hindquarters, frothing and snorting at this sudden disruption. Vaerli generally unnerved animals, especially when they jumped on them from out of nowhere.
The courier swore, struggling to both keep his seat and reach the knife at his side. Her gifted strength would usually have allowed Talyn to dispatch him quickly, but she found herself floundering to hold him off. The strength her new masters gave was a fickle thing—not nearly as reliable as the Caisah’s.
The courier’s elbow caught her in the diaphragm directly below her rib cage, knocking the wind out of her. When the courier kicked his heels, the horse surged forward. Talyn grabbed a second too late for the saddle, and she was jolted off the haunches of the creature.
Some small portion of her previous talents kicked in, so she landed on her feet, more frustrated than hurt as the courier galloped off once more into the mist. Pushing her hair out of her face and stuffing down her rage, she considered her options. There were not many.