Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (19 page)

He sat back again, not able to look
at her.

“Do you hear me? It’s all right. I
knew it this summer. The Mother-Father is probably near her wits’ end putting
up with your father. I need to go help her. And look, Esmi has braided my hair,
so Keth will recognize me.” How Da had loved her dark hair flowing loose in
waves after it had hung in a maiden’s braids all day, even after it was laced
with gray. But it was always getting in the way of her weeding, so after Da
died beneath the standing stones of Slaenhyll, she had pinned up her hair. But
today, one long braid, more silver than brown, lay heavily upon her shoulder.

She tried to sit up straighter.
“Listen to me, both of you. Things were bad between you once, but you must
never let anything tear you apart again. No one, nothing is more important than
the friendship you have with one another.”

Thorn nodded.

“Yes, Mama,” said Kelyn, and Alovi
tugged him closer, eyes brilliant as they bored into him.

“Neither must my next request cause
you to feel resentment toward your brother.” Kelyn frowned, confounded. The
weight of Alovi’s head seemed too much for the spindle of her neck as she
turned to look at Thorn. “Finish it for me?”

Thorn tried to pull his hand free.
“Mother, don’t ask this—”

“Don’t force me to endure this any
longer. I’ll beg you if I must—”

“No!” he cried, but not in refusal.
She mustn’t surrender her dignity, not because of him. He wouldn’t allow that,
above all. He risked a cautious glance at Kelyn, whose face reflected Thorn’s
own horror like a mirror, but he clenched his jaw and nodded.

Thorn relayed that nod to his
mother. Satisfied, she snuggled deeper into her pillows, kissed Kelyn’s hand
and touched his unshaven cheek, then looked at Thorn and whispered, “Ready,
love.”

He’d seen it done once. Two years
before, Alethyr, one of Laniel’s dranithion, was overtaken by an ogre ambush.
He slew three of the beasts before a fourth broke his back and busted him up
inside. His wounds proved too grievous for a healer’s touch. At Alethyr’s
request, Laniel himself performed the spell, one of few in his arsenal, and
Thorn had learned the formula, hoping he’d never need to use it. How to manage
the conviction such a spell would take? He had only to remember how beautiful his
mother had been the last time he saw her and to consider how much she would
continue to suffer. Peace, give her peace.

His hands shook as he placed one
upon her forehead and the other over her heart. In a whisper he chanted
strange, beautiful words:
“Azeth er’sha, ferdilë fann Sha. Tar ana, ferdilë
fann tae h’Ana.”
—“Soul of light, return unto Light. Mother mine, return to
your Mother.” Over and over, he chanted the words until they became a silken
river of sound, filling the chamber with a soothing current.

Alovi’s lifelight flared like a lamp
turned high. Thorn’s avedra eyes saw it, but Kelyn’s were blind to it. He gripped
her hand and watched for signs of distress, but Alovi lay entranced, listening
to Thorn’s words with a peculiar, wistful smile.

 A second glow appeared at the foot
of the bed. The rhythm of the spell faltered. Thorn reclaimed it quickly,
chanted on. Gently rippling beams stretched to the ceiling and the walls but
painted no shadows. Mother’s eyes widened. “Goddess above. I see him.”

Thorn wanted to look into the light
and see the familiar face. Would it be angry with him for what he was doing?
But he couldn’t afford to look; he had to concentrate. Sweat beaded on his
face. The beating of his mother’s heart became a slow grand march against his
palm.

Kelyn searched the room, desperately
trying to see what his mother saw, but the only light came from the slats in
the shutters.

Alovi stretched out her empty hand
and her azeth drifted toward the foot of the bed and melted into the light. The
rhythm of her heart stuttered to a stop. A sigh escaped her lips and her hand
dropped across her belly. The chant ended mid-word. Thorn sat very still for a
moment, swallowing the ache of sorrow, of rage, that threatened to break free. Then
his hand slid down over the sightless green eyes. “Kelyn?”

His brother stared at him, a numb,
awed haze fogging his eyes. Finally he wiped a cheek dry, cleared his throat. “I’m
all right. You?”

Thorn said nothing. He smoothed his
mother’s fingers over the coverlet, straightened her braid, and traced a finger
over lips that still turned in the faintest smile. A terrible, consuming fire
spread fast through his blood.
Damn these hands
. They doubled into
fists, and he fled the room.

A crowd had gathered outside the
door. Etivva, Esmi, Rhoslyn, the children. The duchess shouldn’t be here. She
ought to be at Windhaven by now. What the hell was she doing here, gazing at
him with what she thought was profound understanding of his pain? She didn’t
understand a damn thing. How could she? This rage went deeper than the loss of
his mother. Several tender hands reached for him, but he evaded them all. Carah’s
clear, sweet voice called after him, but he ignored that, too. His library, all
his inherited domain, provided his only refuge. Safe inside, he locked the
doors.

K
elyn paced outside the
library for an hour or so. Etivva tried to sneak in the back way, up the spiral
stair from the ledger room, but Thorn had locked that access, too. “Shall I fetch
the keys, m’ lord?” asked Master Yorin.

“No,” Kelyn told the steward. “He’s
not harmed himself. I can hear him rustling around in there. We’ll let him
alone. For now.”

Thorn didn’t come out that evening,
nor during the night. Even when Kelyn pleaded through the door, he refused to
answer and come out for his mother’s burning. The ashes drifted low along the
ground while heavy, wet snow gathered them up and carried them back onto
Ilswythe’s soil. Mother would’ve wanted it that way.

That night, Kelyn herded his family
and his household in from the Burning Yard for hot mead and a solemn supper. But
in the corridor, a maid intercepted them. Panic contorted her face as she ran
to Master Yorin, whispered hoarsely while pointing up the stairs. The steward
dismissed the girl and turned to Kelyn, worry obvious on his lined face. “Get
your keys,” Kelyn told him. “Rhoz, keep the children downstairs and away from
windows.” Her eyes grew round at the memory of shattered glass and blue fire.
She and the nanny whisked Kethlyn and Carah into the family dining room and
shut the door.

Kelyn hurried up the stairs and
found Etivva keeping pace with him, her wooden foot clicking sharply. They
heard the crashing of furniture as soon as they topped the landing.

“Damn him,” Etivva said through
pinched lips and ran to the end of the corridor. Her small brown hands pounded
on the locked door. “My lord! Stop! Your books, my books!
I
care for
them when you are away. Stop it!”

Kelyn caught up to her, but the
door was too old and sturdy to break through; the oak had turned to iron over
the centuries.

The crashing and rending of paper
paused. “Leave me!” came the muted roar.

“No!” Etivva retorted. “You will
have to blast me dead. Open the bloody door.”

Yorin, arrived at last and had to
ply the key after all. Kelyn took charge of the key ring and dismissed the
steward.

Inside the library, he and Etivva
found Thorn hunched over in one of the chairs, forearms on his knees, head
drooping and face hidden behind a tangled veil of hair. Scrolls and books carpeted
the floor. Shelves lay on their sides; chairs had been reduced to splinters.

Etivva gave a cry of outrage and
ground her teeth. “I do not care who died, you are not running back to your
precious trees until you help me straighten this mess!” Etivva expended her
anger on the books, too, kicking them into a pile to make a path and muttering
under her breath.

To Kelyn, the mess was a small
matter. The windows remained intact; only one liquor bottle from the sideboard
had been smashed; nothing appeared to have been burned. And yet the pungent
odor of burning hung in the air. Was Thorn’s fit over, or was the house still
in danger? Kelyn examined his brother for any indication. Thorn neither moved
nor spoke. Was he a defeated dragon or a cornered one?

Thorn’s eyes clamped shut. He
grunted and grit his teeth; his fingers twitched. The flesh of both hands was
blistered and red, cracked and oozing.

“Brother, what have you done?”

The shuffling under Etivva’s feet
paused and her hands flew to her mouth. Even while they gawked, new blisters bubbled
up, new cracks appeared, and Kelyn realized Thorn was burning them up from the
inside. He rushed forward, dropped to his knees, and shook his brother by the
shoulders. “Stop!”

Through his teeth Thorn said, “I do
not want them.”

“Heal them, damn you. Will you
write with your teeth or your toes? How will you train my daughter? Heal them!”

Thorn reeled in the chair, the pain
making him faint. “I could not heal her.”

“Mother didn’t want to be healed,
you fool! She could’ve sent for you at any time, but she knew. She knew this
was the Goddess’ desire, maybe even Da’s.”

Thorn’s eyes snapped open, and they
blazed with the madness Kelyn hoped he’d never see again. He flung Kelyn’s
hands away and surged from the chair. “Fuck the Goddess! Curse her to the Abyss
and these hands she gave me. May they rot! This was that bitch’s plan, all
right, and she gave it to me to do, and I hate her for it. I
longed
for
her, but I would go gladly into the Abyss to be free of her.”

A book sailed past Kelyn’s ear and
struck Thorn in the chest. Horrified by the blasphemies, Etivva cried, “What
happened here was not about
you
!”

“The hell it wasn’t,” he retorted.
“Or why shouldn’t you put a razor to my mother’s veins or pour a bottle of
poppy wine down her throat? I’m finished with your beloved Goddess, Etivva, and
everything she wants. She can find someone else to torment!”

Etivva’s stance had gone so rigid
that the tendons in her throat stood out like ropes. Her black eyes were as
lusterless as stones. “Hear this. You may reject her, but she will not reject
you. She has her plans, and they will not be denied.” Stiffly, she turned and
limped from the library.

Thorn seemed to wilt as the fight
ebbed from him. He leant heavily on the back of a chair, blistered palms turned
up, smoldering fingers curled. “Brother,” he whispered, and his knees buckled. The
chair toppled over on top of him, and he made no effort to move it. Out cold.

Kelyn knelt beside him, touched the
pulse in his throat. “Crazy bastard.” When he saw that the swoon had put a stop
to the burning, he went to fetch Master Odran to bind up Thorn’s hands, just as
he had so many years before.

~~~~

The
lady of mists

Cold
as the snow-laden hills

Bides
her time, waiting

For
love, for conquest …

—from
Chants of Fire
, by Byrn the Blue

T
he song of the elk horn echoed back from
the flanks of Mount Drenéleth. Eliad lowered the horn from his mouth and stood
motionless, listening. Prince Valryk mimicked his stance, though he was keenly
aware of the soft snow settling and squeaking under his boots. He heard nothing
in response but the whicker of a horse, the thud of clumps of snow tumbling
from the swaying pine boughs, the restless shifting of the highlander scout’s
feet, and his father’s impatient sigh. Breath clouded before the king’s bearded
face.

Kelyn muttered something about a few
more minutes, then the party would turn back to the lodge. “We don’t want to be
caught out in the cold after dark.”

“Ach, what I wouldn’t give for a brandy,”
Rhorek said, blowing on his knuckles.

Valryk gritted his teeth. If an elk
bugled in some distant valley, none would hear it for all the chatter. This was
his first hunt, and it was not going as he’d hoped. His fingers and toes were
numb with the cold, his belly was empty, and for what? All day he and the rest
of the party had tromped through the snow, up steep hills and across frozen
streams, chasing ghosts. Here and there, tracks continued to give him hope, but
he began to believe the elk mocked him.

A few weeks ago the Black Falcon
summoned him to his study to ask, “What does my son want for his thirteenth
birthday?” The king actually looked up from the stack of correspondence long
enough to look Valryk in the eye. For all of half a minute.

He had hoped for this chance but never
expected his father to ask. Usually, the king sent him something practical,
like a practice sword with his name engraved on it, a pair of boots made of
leather so fine that they appeared to be melting, a saddle with stirrups that
barely let out long enough for him to use for more than a year. But he always
sent a servant to deliver the package. Valryk might as well be living on the
other side of the continent rather than in the same castle.

“Did Mother tell you to ask?” he’d said,
standing in that study and feeling like a stranger in it.

“She doesn’t know I sent for you. This
is between us. You’re not a boy anymore.”

Valryk’s heart soared and he confessed
his fondest dream of spending time with his father, “I want to go on an elk
hunt with you. Now’s the season for it, isn’t it?”

The Black Falcon smiled at the idea.
“Good. Very good. I’ll consult my secretaries and schedule it. We should be
able to leave for Drenéleth in a couple of weeks. And we’ll ask Kelyn and his
son to accompany us.”

“No! Not Kelyn.”

Father’s smile slipped at that, but
Valryk couldn’t take it back. He didn’t want to. Whenever Kelyn was around,
Father seemed to think he was the only person alive. Valryk could ride a
roaring bear buck-naked into the Audience Chamber, and Father wouldn’t notice.
It was bad enough that Eliad, as their host, would be there claiming some of
Father’s attention. Perhaps he should have asked for something else, something
that allowed him to be truly alone with his father, but it was too late and
Valryk had never been allowed to go on a hunt. His mother always refused.

“Of course he can’t go,” she said this
time, too. “You’ll turn your back for one instant and something will happen to
him.” For the next two weeks Valryk worried that the king had caved; nothing
more was said of the hunt. Then the day after the first snowfall, Valryk
returned to his rooms, head muddled with a history lesson, and found his
chamberlain packing his warmest clothes.

He may have won his way this time, but
Father also won his. Kelyn was sent an invitation and met the king’s party at
Drenéleth Lodge. Kethlyn, however, was in Windhaven with the duchess, as he was
every winter.

It wasn’t long before Kelyn and the
scouts and even Father seemed to endure the cold merely out of an obligation to
humor a boy’s whim. Eliad alone gave it his all. Eliad alone seemed to remember
the reason for the occasion. The party rode sturdy mountain ponies around the
base of the spire-shaped mountain to a valley where, only three days ago, Eliad
had seen a herd of fifty cow elk in their finest white winter raiment. The
valley was empty now, but tracks crisscrossed the snow. Eliad called Valryk
down from his horse to inspect the tracks; crouching down, he took the time to
explain the difference between an elk’s print and those of sheep and cattle.

Valryk watched his bastard brother
closely. He looked like a younger version of the king. More than Valryk did
himself. He was probably being nice only because he wanted Valryk to like him.
Princes had to put up with that kind of thing. Mother said so. “Don’t trust
him,” she told him for the hundredth time as he climbed into the fur-lined
wagon to travel north. “
Like
Eliad, fine, we all do, but never trust
him.”

When Valryk nodded that, yes, he
recognized the differences in the tracks, Eliad laid a heavy arm around his
shoulders and asked, “Will you try to take one?”

Valryk shrugged, too embarrassed to
admit that he would have to be fairly close to make his arrow fly straight. The
bow sheathed on his saddle was a gift from the Duchess of Liraness. Though he
practiced weekly, the pull was still too strong for him. But what greater shame
than to drag his father away from important duties, only to return empty-handed?

Eliad saw his hesitation. “Don’t worry,
Highness, we’ll find something. Come, the bull went this way.” He slung the
horn around his neck, and the party mounted up again.

The highlander scout crept up the slope
and into the pine trees. The rest followed, riding slowly, keeping their mouths
shut and their eyes open. White elk hiding in a snowy forest were hard to see, so
they said.

In the shade, the temperature plummeted.
Valryk was grateful every time the scout led them into a clearing so the sun
could warm his back.

“Tell you what, Highness,” Eliad
whispered, turning in his saddle. “We’ll build a blind tonight, over there at
the head of the valley. You and I will come back tomorrow morning and let our
quarry come to us. Sometimes it takes days to catch the prize, so don’t feel
discouraged.” He would go to that much trouble for a prince’s thirteenth
birthday? Maybe Eliad really
did
like him. Maybe he just liked to hunt.

The party entered the shade again, and
chill bumps shivered up inside Valryk’s heavy woolens. He glanced ahead for the
next warm spot of sun. To the left of the trail, a beam of light … no! a
ball
of light shifted, ducked, rose, then darted behind the spruce trees. Valryk
reined in so hard that his pony tossed her head and sidestepped.

The king caught up, looked him over,
concerned, hopeful. “Are you tired, son?” Rhorek refused to ride the small
ponies, even though he knew better. His black Roreshan pawed the snow
irritably. Brandrith was built for racing on flat ground, not trudging around
in the foothills, and he was getting old and grumpy. Father, too. Just like him
to grow weary of spending time with his son so soon.

“I’m not
blind
,” Valryk wanted to
say, but held his tongue. All Father wanted to do was sniff some brandy and
have a pretty maid sit on his lap by the fireplace. As soon as they arrived at
the lodge last night, Valryk had been sent to bed, but he hadn’t stayed there.
He wanted to hear the men talking about plans for the hunt, so he crept
downstairs barefoot and sat outside the door of the Bear Lounge. Eliad had
built the room especially for talking about tracking and trapping, weaponry and
war stories. A sideboard glittered with dozens of liquor decanters, and two
gray-and-black hides of brindled bears, all the way from Valrosk, adorned the
floor. That’s where Valryk saw the pretty woman sitting on Father’s knee. It
wasn’t the first time. Valryk was always sneaking through the castle, catching
the king up to something and listening to rumors and whispers. Fights
sometimes. Only Mother dared shout at the king, but she didn’t shout about the
other women so much anymore. Last summer, Valryk heard Mother’s handmaid say to
Nanna, “The queen is more concerned about not losing more babies than she is
about being His Majesty’s exclusive bed partner, so keep a civil tongue. It’s
none of your business.”

“Son?” The king peered into the trees, trying
to see what startled him.

“I thought I saw—” What? A bright light?
The forest was full of sunlight bouncing around, shining off the snow, dazzling
his eyes. “I thought I saw an elk.” He nudged his pony after Eliad. Sweeping a
bough from his path, he glanced off into the trees again. There it was! A
nebulous, pulsing light with a black center, just like a glowing eye, but
enormous. “There, do you see?” He pointed frantically, but even as his father
caught up and bent low to follow his finger, the light disappeared.

The king squinted. “That’s just a dead
tree sticking out of a snow bank. Hurry along. Supper is waiting back at the
lodge.” He trotted ahead. Kelyn followed, peered into the same space of shadow
and light, saw nothing special. The pack mules and another highlander brought
up the rear.

Whatever that light was, Valryk didn’t
appreciate the trick it was playing on him. Likely, Father and Kelyn both
thought him a simpleton who didn’t know an elk from a bowl of porridge.
Deciding to avenge himself, he turned his pony off the trail and into the
trees. The tracks of the others were easy to follow; he’d catch up later.

The snow was deeper than it looked. His short-legged
pony struggled to make a path, lurching and pawing through the drifts. A fallen
branch hidden under the snow snagged a hoof and pitched the horse onto her
nose. Valryk rolled out of the saddle and landed in the drift. Snow clung to
one eyelid, clogged an ear, filled his mouth. He sat up spitting and scooping
away the snow and found the light looming over him. It hovered not five feet
away, the most beautiful star, shimmering with streaks of pink and green and
gold.

He’d heard of the Dragon Eyes that
guarded Avidan Wood. Travelers disappeared there. Terror shivered through him
along with the cold. He hadn’t considered that Dragon Eyes might live in other
forests, too.

“Don’t hurt me.” He tried to sound
brave, but all that came out was a quivering squawk.

The great eye winked out. Snow crunched
and footsteps appeared, deep impressions receding fast. How could a floating
eye leave footprints?

Valryk scrambled out of the drift and
examined the tracks. They were humanlike, narrow and long and shoed with soft
soles.

The crunching of snow went silent and
the light appeared ahead, vanished again, reappeared farther away. Valryk ran
after it, stumbling, kicking his way through the drifts. The tracks led to a
giant spruce and stopped. He peered up into the gray-green boughs, walked all
the way around the tree, but the light was gone.

Disappointed, he started back, retracing
his own trail so the going was easier. Halfway back to his pony, he paused,
listening. Music? Yes, indistinct notes of what sounded like a harp drifted
through the trees. He turned back to the giant spruce; the music was coming
from farther away, over the next hillock. Valryk trammeled a new path through
the snow, stopping now and again to make sure he wasn’t hearing a strange bird
or icicles tinkling together. When he topped the hill, he heard a voice
singing, too. The most beautiful voice he’d ever heard, like heartbreak and
longing and one’s fondest dreams pouring from the sky, rising from the snow,
swaying slowly through the trees.

The song came from a stand of
evergreens. Valryk tiptoed, but the snow failed to muffle his steps. Could the
singer hear his approach? A woman, it had to be a woman, a highlander maybe,
but what highlander was fool enough to sing in weather so cold that spit froze
before it hit the ground?

Valryk slowly lowered a branch. Snow
slipped off the needles, cascading with an icy whisper. Seated amid the pine
trees, a woman in a white gown plucked a silver harp perched in her lap. A lush
ermine cloak draped her shoulders, trailed off into the snow, and her hair
curled silver-gold down her back. The cold air turned her cheeks pink, but her
skin was as smooth and pale as the cream Valryk poured into his tea. A rancid smell
wafted from the clearing, spoiling the beauty of the spectacle, but the breeze
shifted, and the smell was gone.

For a long while the woman sang, too
caught up in the music to notice her audience. The words were foreign, their
meaning lost, but the sorrow in her voice made Valryk’s heart ache.

The song ended before he realized.
Trapped. He couldn’t leave now without being heard.

The woman’s eyes opened. She turned to
him as if she had known he was there all along. “Why, hello. Do I know you?”
Her accent was funny, not highlander. More silken, as soft and musical as her
song.

Well, it wouldn’t do to stand among the
prickly pine needles pretending he hadn’t been eavesdropping. “I’m Valryk, son
of the Black Falcon,” he announced, pushing his way into the clearing. And why
not? The ground they stood on, the trees, the snow, even this lady’s life belonged
to his father, and one day to Valryk himself.