Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (58 page)

“You’ve
been to the sea?” he asked as they ducked under the branches.

“To
Windhaven, aye, several times. When Da’s duties were light, we would ride to
Windhaven to visit Mum and Kethlyn. From the watchtowers I used to watch the
seals on the rocks. But they were far away. I saw the dolphins better, jumping
around the incoming ships.”

Rhian
paused in a patch of coppery moonlight. The branches of the trees hemmed them
in like arms. “Aye, dolphins. But it’s seals we’re kin to. Sailors say that
long ago seals were elves. There’s legends that tell of them stealing fair
maidens and handsome youths away to their underwater kingdom. But seals have
forgotten that air dwellers can’t live in the sea.”

“Is
that so?” Grinning, Carah sank back against the trunk of an andyr.

“Maybe
that’s what happened to my da.”

Carah
could think of someone’s da who could offer this pearl fisher a lesson in
charm. Hadn’t there been enough people dying lately? And here was Rhian adding
another body to the count. Was he purposefully trying to keep her off balance?
Aye, for a certainty.

“Did
you get your eyes from him?”

When
he leveled them on her she realized how close he was standing, even though the
patch of moonlight was large.

“I
did. And where did you get this pearl?” His hand rose out of the dark and
lifted the silver fairy from her chest. The back of his fingers brushed her
collarbone as he inspected it.

“Uncle
Thorn gave it to me,” she said, though she found it ridiculously hard to find
her voice. “For my sixth birthday.”

“Sixth?
My da mighta fished that pearl.”

“Thorn
said it was a charm to protect me. Maybe it worked after all.”

Rhian
laid down the pendant, frowning. “Are you … are you all right?”

Carah
shrugged. “I feel hollow inside. Confused. Is there something wrong with me?”

His
thumb caressed her cheek. “No.” His hand fell away into the dark again. “We’d
best go back.”

Carah
caught him by the arm, just a touch, but it was enough to stop him. She wanted
to order him to get it over with, kiss her, damn it, so this great fire in her
bones would be quenched. He didn’t wait for the order. His hands burrowed deep
in her hair, caught her round the nape, and he was kissing her, hungry and
desperate, a lover’s kiss like the ones she had read about and dreamed about,
and she discovered she didn’t know what to do, so she closed her eyes and
opened her mouth and sank into him. The most exquisite weakness overtook her
knees, her arms, as if she had drunk a bottle of wine. She couldn’t breathe
unless it was to breathe him in. The scent of salt was on his cheek as if the
sea were in his flesh. Her fingers rose to touch his face, but Rhian seized her
wrist and broke away.

“That
wasn’t my place,” he whispered hoarsely.

Carah
was too intoxicated to feel angry or hurt. “Wasn’t it? We’re both avedrin.”

“A
lady and a pearl fisher.”

Her
forehead dropped onto his shoulder and she insisted, “No.” Couldn’t things be
simple for once? It was Rhian who had called himself her equal in all things
avedra. If blood made them equal, how could it separate them, too?

“No
one else will agree,” he said, “not even Dathiel.”

“We
could be found and killed tomorrow, I don’t care.” How warm he was. Warm and
dry inside the blood-brown robe. Carah tucked herself inside it, arms tight
around him, hands delighting in the slide of his shoulder blades. She waited
for him to push her aside, tell her she had no right to hold onto him like
this, but he didn’t. The chill in her skin was plain enough. He closed the robe
snugly around her shoulders, and good sense lost the argument warring in his
head.

His
mouth left tongues of cool fire on her jaw, her lips, her eyelids. A tear raced
down her cheek, and he kissed that too. When Carah opened her eyes, she saw their
lifelights beating back the bloody moonlight, and she couldn’t tell one azeth from
the other.

A
voice called in the distance. They froze, listening, trembling, hoping they
were mistaken, hoping the voice called someone else. A dance of white light
whisked through the trees. Zephyr.

“Well?”
the fairy squeaked at them. “Saffron can delay Dathiel only so long.”

Carah
backed out of the robe, straightened her shirt, smoothed her hair, let out a
bubble of embarrassed laughter. “Let me go first. Come back a different way.”

Rhian
grinned and watched her go.

In
the clearing, Thorn paced, eyes wild with fear. Every one of the highborns
turned her direction when she emerged from the trees. Da’s arm relaxed and the
sword lowered toward the ground. “You roused the entire camp on my account?”
she snapped, glaring at her uncle. “I didn’t go far, only playing sentry.”

“Don’t
leave like that again,” Thorn said, hands gripping her shoulders. “I had a
nightmare you were taken. Where’s Rhian?”

She
shrugged. “I saw him by the lake.” She glanced back for him; he hadn’t
followed. “Really, Uncle Thorn, some nightmares are just nightmares. Mind if I
borrow your robe? I’m freezing.”

~~~~

C
arah woke suddenly. A bird, a scream?
She was sure it was a sound that had disturbed her, but after blinking the
sleep from her eyes she didn’t hear it again. She felt as if she had slept only
moments, but the gray light of dawn seeped through the branches of the trees. She
lay curled against her uncle, his robe warm over them. Stretching and yawning,
she turned and found him already awake. His ear was pressed to the ground, and a
deep frown creased his brow.

“What—?”
she began, but he laid a finger to her mouth.

With
barely a rustle he picked himself off the ground and shook his brother’s
shoulder. Kelyn roused at once. “Trouble. Wake the camp. Keep them silent. Harness
the drays immediately.”

Da
scrambled to his feet. “Soldiers?”

“Aye,
the eight-foot-tall kind. Rhian and I will hold them off while you escape with
the rest. Hurry, or they’ll block your escape.”

Carah
whirled, looking for Rhian, found him across the clearing tying on his robe. Cool
and collected, he didn’t so much as glance her direction as he strode past. Following
Thorn’s hand gestures, the two of them disappeared among the trees.

Kelyn
lifted his daughter by the elbow. “Into the wagon, now.”

Carah
snatched her damp robe from an overhanging branch, then clambered up the wheel
and over the side. The fairy sleep lay heavily upon the White Falcon. For that
she was grateful. His guards gathered close.

“What’s
going on?” Rance demanded.

“We’ve
been tracked,” Kelyn said, laying out the traces. Lords Daxon and Drys led the
four drays into position.

“By
whom? I don’t see anything,” Lord Rorin said, gazing past the trees. Sunlight
lay long across heather-purple hills. Nothing larger than a bird moved there.

“You
won’t,” Carah told him.

“There!”
Maeret pointed. Thorn and Rhian emerged from the trees. A barricade of flame,
ten feet high and fifty feet long, sprang up across the wagon’s tracks.

“Ai,
Goddess, bloody avedrin,” Drona swore. “Can’t they fight fair? Get us out of
here.”

“You
could be useful,” Kelyn snapped. Drona bailed out of the wagon and helped him
buckle the drays into place. “Carah, report!” he shouted while his fingers
raced. The drays sensed the fear and shifted uneasily, which didn’t help matters.

She
stuttered in response. Her da bellowing at her like she was one of his
soldiers? Aye, so she was. “Er, n-nothing yet,” she said, turning to watch the crackling
wall of flames. A sword gleamed bright silver in Uncle Thorn’s hand, and Rhian
spread his arms. Shimmering streams of dew lifted from the hillsides and
gathered to his hands. The two of them ducked through the wall of fire as if it
were drapes made of velvet.

A
mule-like bray raked at the still morning air.

“What
the hell was that?” demanded Daxon.

“Done!
Drys, back them up,” Da ordered, springing onto the bench. One of the Mantles
helped Drona into the bed, and slowly the drays backed the wagon out of the
trees. They felt the heat of the flames and balked, but Drys cursed them for
cowardly asses and pressed them harder.

“I
hate all this running,” muttered Rance.

“I’d
prefer a fair fight myself,” Drona said.

Rich,
thought Carah, coming from the sheep-raiding queen of Fiera. She suspected that
Lady Athmar more truly hated feeling beholden to the avedrin for covering her
arse.

Lightning
sparked on the hillside. Thunder cracked like boulders breaking. One of the
drays tried to rear, but Da pulled hard on the traces and turned the horses out
into the open. Drys climbed onto the bench beside him, and the wagon raced up a
hill, jolting so hard that Carah felt her eyes would be shaken from the
sockets. She could see over the wall of flames now. Twelve giants with
gray-green skin and gray lifelights ran across the moor in tight formation. A
bright azeth led them.

“I
had no idea,” Carah said through vibrating teeth. “The green men are enormous.”

“What
the hell are you talking about?” Drona demanded. “You avedrin are crazy, that’s
what.”

Carah
ignored her.

The
ogres divided, sweeping left and right toward the trees. Whips of lightning
lashed. An ogre tumbled. The others descended upon Thorn and Rhian. Carah
whispered a prayer.

One
of the ogres barreled through the fire. Long muscled legs seemed hardly to
strain as he gained on the wagon. “Da! Faster!” The drays topped the hill,
entered the road, and their stride opened up. Undaunted, the ogre ran a little harder.

A
spear of lightning tore through his chest. It danced along his tusks and axe
blades, convulsed in his limbs. The creature rolled into the hedgerow. The veil
concealing it unraveled, and Lords Rhogan and Rorin, seated in the rear of the
wagon, swore at the sight of it.

The
wall of fire disappeared below the brow of the hill. So did Thorn and Rhian. Carah
kept watch. She couldn’t stand it. What was happening back there? Peals of
thunder were soon barely louder than the rumble of the wagon wheels, then they stopped.
That meant one of two things. The ogres were beaten, or the avedrin were dead. To
keep herself from thinking about it, Carah busied herself tucking her robe
around Arryk’s shoulders and fruitlessly trying to give him the last of the
water from the flask.

After
a few bone-jarring miles, Da hauled back on the reins. Once the wagon came to a
standstill, Carah climbed to her knees and peered between Drys and her father.
A column of black smoke filled the sky. An entire town appeared to be burning.
Men, women, and children poured from the gates and stood on the hillsides watching
everything go up in flames. Bodies lay strewn outside the wooden palisade. A
woman wailed over a corpse. Clusters of people trudged up the road toward the
wagon, covered in soot or blood.

“Da,
what is it?”

“Longmead.”
He turned on the bench. “Are the ogres still here?” He was sure, then, who the
attackers had been.

“Ogres?”
cried Lieutenant Rance. “Is that what that thing was back there?”

Carah
shook her head in despair. “Only people.”

Kelyn
stood and beckoned to the nearing crowd. “Where is Morach?”

“His
Lordship, sir?” asked a man broad enough to be a smith. “He’s dead. Died defending
the gate. Weren’t nothing he could do. We never saw a thing. Just people and
blood. Half the town died with him. We’re on our way to Bramoran to tell the
king.”

“No!
Avoid Bramoran. It’s fallen, too.”

The
smith and his companions traded horrified outbursts. “Where are we to go?”

“Lunélion’s
closer,” someone proposed.

Kelyn
pointed at another plume of smoke far away on the horizon. “That’s Lunélion.
You can’t go there either.”

“What
about Ilswythe?” asked another.

Da’s
hesitation spoke volumes to Carah. “I don’t think so,” he said at last.

Carah
lowered her forehead onto the back of the bench and bit her lower lip to stifle
a sob. Mum. Esmi. Etivva. Jaedren. Goddess, no. Where could
any
of them
go? They would keep running and running, and if Carah didn’t keep her eyes
open, ignoring the pain ripping at her skull, she might lead the wagon straight
into an army of enemies. The nightmare never indicated the horrors would
continue outside Bramoran. Only a half-truth then, and curse the Mother-Father
for it.

“Lose
yourselves in the towns and hamlets,” Kelyn suggested. “As far as I know,
they’ve escaped notice.”

“And
who are you to know, sir?”

“I’m
Lord Ilswythe.” Da’s voice rang loud over the heads of the murmuring townsfolk.

The
smith’s eyes popped. “The War Commander?”