Fury of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga 5) Read online

  Fury of the Falcon

  The Falcons Saga, Book 5

  Court Ellyn

  Fury of the Falcon © 2017 by Court Ellyn. All rights reserved.

  A book by Raven Eye Press

  Book design and cover design by Court Ellyn

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  To James

  for more reasons than I can count

  Table of Contents

  Part One: Wounds

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  Part Two: The Pit

  18

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  25

  26

  27

  28

  29

  30

  31

  32

  33

  34

  35

  36

  37

  38

  39

  40

  Part Three: Embarking

  41

  42

  43

  44

  45

  Appendix: Character Index

  Maps are available at www.courtellyn.com to enhance your reading experience.

  Part One: Wounds

  In the dungeon beneath Tírandon’s towers, an ogre snarled. Small red eyes reflected the light of a single lamp. Bovine nostrils flared, sniffing the air, detecting the man who shared the darkness.

  Great iron chains bound the ogre’s arms and legs, coiling like a constrictor. Muscles strained, but the chains held fast.

  Whispers skittered through the dark, knocked against the deep stone, and slithered back. “You’re sure you wouldn’t have me kill it?” asked the Elari.

  “I’m sure,” said the man.

  They peered through a small barred window on the iron door, watching the creature fight its bonds. Dragging the ogre into the cell had taken a half-dozen Miraji warriors, and this ogre was not yet full-grown. Its ears were too big for its head, its ivory tusks small and little scarred.

  The man palmed a jar. The glass was ice-cold and frosted white. He felt the chill even through the gloves he wore, gloves to conceal abyss-blighted fingers. “I won’t be long,” he said.

  “Don’t get too close,” said the Elari, then left. His feet made no sound as he climbed the winding stair.

  Thorn Kingshield unbarred the iron door, retrieved the lamp from a hook on the wall, and eased into the cell. The ogre’s struggles multiplied. Its snarls shook the echoing dark with animal rage. Thorn crouched, setting the lamp on the floor, and watched the ogre worm around in vain.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” he said.

  The ogre grew still, listening.

  “Do you know where the avedrin have been taken?”

  The ogre’s chest heaved against the chain as it grumbled with laughter. “De pit.”

  “Yes. Where is it?”

  Heavy, hairless eyebrows pinched low. “Dis naeni? Dis naeni don’t know. See for you self, ‘vedra. You rot wid ’em soon.”

  Thorn sighed, disappointed. It was worth a try.

  No answer the ogre gave would have stopped Thorn from doing what he came to do. He raised the jar in satin-gloved fingers, careful not to fumble it, and pulled the cork. The ogre watched his every move intently. Black steam, like the smoke rising off a match, eddied from the jar’s mouth. Thorn blew the tendrils away from his face. The substance must not touch him.

  The ogre sniffed, but the steam had no odor. “Med’cine?” it asked.

  Thorn met the creature’s eye, grinned, and nodded. Then he stretched out his arm and upended the jar. Liquid blacker than the lamp-licked shadows oozed out in a syrupy stream. It clung to the ogre’s flesh like pitch.

  The ogre began to shriek.

  1

  Tírandon brooded under a shroud of unnatural silence. The silence was born of worry, and the worries were whispered. Household staff crept through the corridors as if they’d been horsewhipped. Highborns waited in parlors, pacing off the hours. On the parade grounds, between rows of tents and corrals crowded with disgruntled warhorses, soldiers drilled halfheartedly. Sentries eyed the keep more than they watched the war-pocked plain and the naked stretch of highway.

  Was the War Commander dying? Rumor said the ogre had broken him nearly in half. And Thorn Kingshield? If he was too ill to ride six miles to Bexby Field, was he too ill to fend off the ogres?

  Morale wallowed. Panic clutched.

  Thorn paid the rumors no mind. He climbed the stairs to a corridor lined with guest suites. Sorrow and exhaustion were twin burdens weighing on his shoulders. He should be abed, recuperating from his tussle with a demon. But the past couple of days had forbade him respite. Too much to oversee in his brother’s absence. Too many soldiers to bolster. Too many experiments to refine.

  A woman’s plea echoed along the corridor. Rhoslyn stood outside Rhian’s rooms, fists knotted upon the door locked against her. “Please, dearest. Your father needs you. Thorn tried, but he cannot manage alone. You must come help.”

  A voice replied, muffled through the thick oak. Thorn couldn’t make out the words. Must’ve been another refusal; anger sharpened Rhoslyn’s plea: “Carah, he’s your father! He loves you, don’t do this to him.”

  Thorn laid a hand upon Rhoslyn’s shoulder. She turned, startled. “I have the key,” he said, raising the iron ring that Ruthan had given him.

  Downstairs, gossip provided the house with a delectable distraction. Lady Carah had locked herself in Rhian’s room? This expression of her grief could mean only one thing.

  Two days before, highborns and officers, squires and passersby had gathered at Tírandon’s gate to learn about the debacle that had transpired at Bexby Field. Carah had been among them. No one had missed her reaction to the news that ogres had taken Rhian. Others had seen firsthand the beating Kelyn had dealt the young avedra. Scandal loomed.

  The duchess glowered at the key, at Thorn. “How could you let this happen?”

  Her words tore at an old wound. “Still blaming me for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, Your Grace?”

  Rhoslyn’s resentment wilted. “No, no, I’m sorry, Thorn. I only wish you’d never brought him.”

  “So that Carah would give her heart to someone more convenient? Is love ever convenient?”

  Rhoslyn balled her hands together, as if resisting the urge to slap him. “Don’t try to be wise with me right now. Just talk to her. Make her see reason. Her father needs her.”

  Across the corridor, Kelyn slept at the command of poppy wine. The ogre’s hammer had caught him full in the side and launched him several feet. Three ribs were broken; his lung was bruised. If it hadn’t been for the hutza armor, the War Commander would have died then and there. When he was awake, Kelyn labored to breathe as slowly and shallowly as possible, but trying to prevent the pain kept his injured lungs from clearing and put him at risk of pneumonia.

  “Maybe I should try aga
in,” Thorn said.

  Rhoslyn laid a stilling touch to his wrist. “No, you’ve done too much already. Where will we be if you’re incapacitated too?”

  After fighting the rágazeth, Thorn’s color had slowly returned, and the feverish chills had abated, but he dared not tell a soul that for two full days fire had refused to obey him. Yesterday, he could not so much as light a candle. He feared that touching the rágazeth, wrestling with it as it tried to birth itself into the light, had caused something inside him to die. This morning, however, he finally managed to light his lamps from afar. He’d been as clumsy as a novice. His head throbbed with the effort. His healing touch had been just as ineffectual. Rather than mend the bone and soothe the bruised flesh, he’d only caused Kelyn more pain.

  He plied the key to Rhian’s door. “I’ll bring her out, if I must drag her by her hair.” He slipped into the vestibule and closed the door behind him. One look at his niece withered any ferocity he had managed to conjure.

  She sat against the headboard of the great four-poster bed, clutching the blood-brown velvet of Rhian’s avedra robe. Grief had turned her into a ghost, pale and lost. She winced at the sound of the door opening against her wishes. “No, Mum! It’s his fault!” Peering past the drapes, she saw Thorn instead. Her wan face crumpled with new sobs. She released them, raw and gasping, into the velvet robe, then she raised her face and cried, “H-how can it hurt so much?”

  Thorn wrapped her in his arms and rocked her as if she were a child, and she let him, clinging to him as if he could save her from drowning in a wild, wild sea.

  A woman’s hysterical keening had alerted Thorn to danger. He’d been standing atop the wall, gazing through the crenels toward Bexby Field, listening, watching for any sign of trouble. Distant thunder had rolled over the hills, but it might’ve come from the storm clouds darkening the horizon. Then, farther down the wall, one of the dranithi sentries began shrieking. He’d run and found Danellys on her knees, mindlessly wailing. Her arm reached south. Azhien restrained her from bolting down the tower.

  Her twin brother had scouted for Kelyn that morning. She met Thorn’s questioning gaze, and her thoughts had roiled with a tide made of two words: he’s dead he’s dead he’s dead.

  Thorn had grabbed Záradel from the stables and ridden from Tírandon as fast as the Elaran black could carry him. By the time he caught up to them, Kelyn’s party was halfway back to Tírandon, and he tallied their losses at a glance. Duíndor, Rhian’s horse, carried Kelyn instead. Thorn had urged Záradel on to the village, but it was too late. Signs of battle were everywhere. Bloodstains in the stable yard, in the street; claw marks in the soil, the stamping of many feet; broken chainmail, shards of a shattered bow. Confounded, frightened humans milled about, but he found no ogres, no Elarion, no bodies. Even the dead horses had been carried away. And no Rhian.

  News had arrived with the War Commander, and by the time Thorn returned to Tírandon, Carah was shouting, “You left him! You left him!” The betrayal in her voice and the hurt on Kelyn’s face were unbearable to behold.

  For two days she had sequestered herself, taking no food, accepting no visitors. Carah’s sobs trailed away and she pressed against Thorn’s shoulder. With a shuddering inhale she said, “If you’d been there, it wouldn’t have happened.”

  He shook her by the shoulders. “Stop this! Rhian’s abduction is not my fault. It’s not your da’s fault. It’s not your fault.” She blinked at him in surprise, and Thorn realized he had found the kernel of her anger. “It’s not your fault, Carah.”

  She buried her eyes behind her hands. “I made him promise.” Her confession spouted from her, a strained shriek. “He promised to protect Da, because of me.”

  He gathered her close again. “No, love. Rhian would’ve guarded your da anyway, because that’s who he is. Only Lothiar is to blame. Do you hear? Only Lothiar.”

  “He won’t stop. Not until he’s captured us all.”

  Thorn kissed the top of her head. “I’ll be long dead before I let Lothiar near you. Whatever it takes, Carah, he’ll not have you. My life on it.”

  ~~~~

  Alyster lingered on the skybridge that linked Tírandon’s inner and outer walls. He’d never been up so high, and he didn’t like it. Standing atop a mountain was something else entirely; there was solid rock beneath his feet, but below the skybridge there was eighty feet of air. Chimney smoke from North Town curled under his boot soles; swallows nesting under the great stone arches twittered beneath his toes. Unnatural, it was.

  But he was able to hide here. Remain inconspicuous, anyway. He thought the sentries would order him to move on, but they trudged past, pikes on their shoulders, and cast him not even a sideward glance.

  He didn’t want to explain to Haim or the rest of his kindred why he’d come. Dozens of times he told himself to forget it, to leave fast and return to the highland camp beyond the moats, but he lingered. Waiting. Waiting, like everyone else.

  Tírandon’s keep reared toward the sky, a massive faceted block like a giant opaque cut of quartz. A blue, black, and silver banner flew atop the roof, and pigeons wheeled, no bigger than flyspecks. He watched the upper windows. Cousin Haim had told him that highborns sleep on upper floors. The farther they slept off the ground, the more important they felt. That was Alyster’s theory, not Haim’s.

  Stupid waste of time, this. If the War Commander died, the windows wouldn’t tell him. And why should he care? He’d get his kindred out, that’s why. Alyster wasn’t about to stick around a bunch of leaderless soldiers lost to panic. He’d get his kindred out and return to the mountains, and bogles take the rest.

  Was that a window opening? A hand waving the all-clear? Ach, just a reflection.

  No one saw fit to tell Alyster a damn thing. Carah would. But it was a bad time to trouble her, and he owned no words of comfort.

  A soft shuffle of feet approached. It wasn’t the dogged plodding of a sentry. Someone had found him. It wasn’t Haim. Haim’s step was like a rock bouncing down a mountain. This step was stealthier. The newcomer’s urge to speak circled Alyster like a thirsty midge, but there was only silence.

  Annoyed, he turned and found one of the highborns standing at the next crenel, far too close for a casual passerby. Daxon, he was called. Lord Ulmarr. Though Alyster didn’t give a heap of shit about that. He cared only that this haughty young noble should approach him now—why now?—when he hadn’t so much as sniffed in Alyster’s direction before.

  His fair hair was shiny and groomed, a cap of pale curls. Over chainmail he wore a white surcoat blazoned with three red towers. Though the velvet was clean, it was stained with red-brown smears. Dark eyes gazed past Alyster toward the keep’s lofty windows.

  “You want somethin’?” Damned if he would ‘my lord’ anyone, no matter how entitled they felt.

  Daxon lowered his gaze, but not his nose. “Do you get along well, you and your … the War Commander?” He grinned at the word he’d omitted. Father. He wielded it like a taunt. “Do you feel cheated, I wonder?”

  “Cheated?”

  “Of a decent life. He did cast you off, didn’t he?”

  “How is that any business of yours?”

  Daxon shrugged. “I might have a proposal, if you’re interested.”

  Alyster shaped the kind of grin he’d once seen on a wolf’s muzzle. “And what would that be?”

  “He’s laid up in there. Helpless as a babe. How easy would it be, do you think, to … you know …?”

  Alyster was aware that Daxon was Fieran, that Fierans would rather quench their swords in Aralorri blood than fight alongside them, but this was something personal. His grin faltered not one fraction. “How easy would it be to pitch you off this bridge?”

  Daxon laughed, a dry, scornful bark. “Don’t tell me you feel loyalty toward him. He abandoned you, and if I hear correctly, pretended you didn’t exist. Doesn’t that injustice enrage you?”

  Alyster eased closer, as he did when challenging a man
in a tavern. He shared the War Commander’s height, loomed a handspan over the lordling. “You ask me to assassinate a man, and you talk to me of injustice? What kind of fucked-up bastard are you?”

  The light of false camaraderie snuffed from Daxon’s eyes. They went cold, and up went that nose again. “Listen here—”

  Alyster’s fist filled with stained white surcoat. “No, you listen. I begrudge the War Commander for the way he treated my mother, but that’s all, and that’s none of your affair. And what would you know about my life? You, born with a fat silver spoon in your mouth and soft rugs under your toes, and plenty of folk to clean it all for you. I dare you to face him when he’s strong enough to wield a sword. You want to murder him like a coward, you do it on your own.” Alyster released the surcoat and smoothed it flat again, relishing the hostility in the lordling’s glare. “Approach me again, and I’ll assume you mean me ill.”

  With a nod of farewell, he crossed the skybridge and ducked into the tower. Let these highborns settle their own squabbles, he warned himself as he wound down the stair. But, like an itch in his skin, it wouldn’t let him alone.

  ~~~~

  That evening, Kelyn received his commanders. As gravely as they gathered about the great curtained bed, one would think he’d summoned them to witness his last breath. They brightened considerably when he ordered, “Report.”

  He could barely draw breath enough to speak and had no hope of sitting up. Queen Briéllyn had assigned herself as his personal caretaker. She made him as comfortable as possible, a stack of pillows propping him up, a pack of ice over his ribs, a blanket to help stave off the chills, and half a dose of poppy wine down his throat—enough to take the edge off the pain but not quite enough to deprive him of his senses.

  “Lothiar has wasted no time,” said Laniel Falconeye. The green stripes adorning the Elari’s brow pinched together as he frowned.