“Ah. Well…some might say. And me being such an ugly little girl. He did not intend it like that, no, but…” Her smile went sad. “But you’re here now. At last. Not in the way I’d hoped, but…” She nodded to the scroll. “I never looked. He told me not to, so I never did. He must have known you would come. My uncle…they say only Thala saw more clearly through the Eye than he did. So you read that note, Elyon Daecar. Read it and fulfil a dead man’s riddle, and leave this sour old woman to rest.”
Elyon did as she bid him. He broke the seal, unrolled the scroll, and read, running his eyes down the dead king’s words.
In Godrin’s graceful script was written a story. A love story, an adventure story, a story of shipwrecks and slavery and sacrifice. A story about a sister and a king, a nephew and a princess…a story about a girl in silver and blue.
48
“Feeling better, Ranulf?” the princess asked, as he stepped around the rock to rejoin her.
He brushed himself down and smiled wanly. “Yes, thank you, my lady. It must have been something I ate.”
Talasha Taan arched a sleek, black eyebrow. “Something you ate? Yes. It had nothing to do with the flight, of course.” She smiled at him. “I did not take you for a braggart, Ranulf Shackton. Why not admit to this failing? You do not have the stomach for dragonflight, there is no shame in it.”
Ranulf wiped away a bit of spittle from his chin with the back of his dusty sleeve. “I am a good friend to failure, my lady. It is failure that makes a man. Or woman, as the case may be.”
“Yet you still contend that it was something you ate that brought on this sudden sickness?”
“Of course. Something I ate, most certainly.” He grinned playfully. His stomach had been doing somersaults ever since they landed and it had taken his head a good long while to stop from spinning as well. It was, of course, the flight that had done it. He knew it, she knew it, but his pride demanded he spin the lie. I am the famed adventurer Ranulf Shackton, he told himself. I have scaled the highest peaks and sailed the wildest seas. I ought not be unmanned by a short hundred-mile flight.
“Well, just make sure to watch what you eat from now on,” the princess said, gamely playing along. “We have a much longer flight to make, and cannot be stopping every five minutes so you can bring up your breakfast and lunch.”
And dinner. The flight would be long enough to include all three meals, he judged. It might even take days. A long flight, a dangerous one, and an increasingly cold one too. “I will keep to a diet of fresh fruit and nuts, my lady,” he said. “They have always agreed with me.” He was not certain how long he could keep up this charade before he began to annoy her, but the princess seemed a good sport when it came to his jests. He had not known her long, but in their short days together she had supplied him with an ample allowance of laughter and smiles to accompany his silly japes.
As if she needed to be any more delightful. Hers was an exquisite beauty, exotic and rich and wild, yet she more than matched it with her wit and charm. And that laugh. Gods. Has there ever been a sweeter sound? It was small wonder the Varin Knight Lythian Lindar had fallen in love with her. Ah, poor Lythian. He does so struggle in that cold wet ruin of his.
“Saska struggled with her first flight as well, you know,” Talasha said. “Well, perhaps struggled is not the right word. Certainly not like you. She became somewhat queasy when we landed, though quickly settled after a few deep breaths. And I did subject her to rather more acrobatics. Our flight was terribly dull.”
“Not to me, my lady. One always remembers their first.”
She tipped her head back and laughed. “Too true. First flight. First fornication. I do hope your first coupling with a woman was better for you, Ranulf Shackton. Or did you throw up on her as well? Neyruu is not best pleased.”
Ranulf lowered his eyes. “Why do you think I’ve been hiding around that rock?”
She grinned and looked out across the dusty plain that led eastward to the clifftops. The soldiers and watchmen were still watching them warily, their blades drawn and arrows nocked just in case Neyruu should stir.
“They are still terribly tense,” Talasha observed.
“They are Tukoran, and there’s a dragon about. Of course they’re tense.”
“A small dragon who clearly means no harm. If we wanted to attack them, we’d have done so already. And you claim this Bernard Westermont to be a great Bladeborn knight and Emerald Guard…the personal bodyguard of the crown prince, no less. He should have no fear of a little dragon, Ranulf. She is only a gentle soul.”
A gentle soul who fought savagely against Paglar, Ranulf thought. And not so little as you’re making out. Still, Paglar was a great deal larger, and without the intervention of mighty Calacan he would have caught his prey eventually and conducted Neyruu, Talasha, and Cevi to a most unpleasant and untimely end. Instead it was he who became the prey, as the Eagle of Aramatia soared down from the storm in a net of golden lightning to tear Paglar wing from limb.
A battle I should have liked to see, Ranulf thought…though he had to settle for hearing a pair of secondhand reports instead, firstly from the Fourth Elder, who had witnessed the fight through the eyes of one of her bonded eagles, and secondly from Talasha herself when she arrived at the Everwood the following day. That had been by invite of the First Elder, the oldest and wisest and most powerful of the twelve, the First Elder who was in fact the tenth First, as he’d told Ranulf the very first time he’d met him. The day Calacan returned to the world, Ranulf thought. The day I scaled the steps to the high eyrie atop the First Tree and saw him plunge down from the skies…
It still gave him shivers, even now. The sound the great eagle made. The width of his wings as he opened them wide and bathed all the Everwood in a wash of golden light. He had not seen him since that day, leastways in nothing more than distant glimpses as Calacan soared on his patrols, high in the skies, warding off threats and protecting his borders. Paglar had been foolish enough to enter uninvited, and thus Calacan had destroyed him. Others would not yield so easily. One in particular. And he is stirring.
A screech rang out through the air, the high-pitched call of an eagle. Ranulf understood. “They’re nearing the top of the steps, my lady,” he said to Talasha Taan. Ranulf could speak eagle now. The clicks and whistles and cries made for a fairly basic language, but during his time with the Calacania he had learned to comprehend their tongue.
“Your bird told you?” The princess peered at him.
“Kamcho,” Ranulf said. That was the name of the eagle he had chosen. And the eagle who had chosen him. It had been a mutual pairing, as did happen when man and beast built their bonds. One day, shortly into his time with the Calacania, the First Elder had invited Ranulf to join him atop his eyrie. There, rather than discuss with Ranulf the fate of the world, and describe to him the events he had witnessed, he had opened out a feathery arm and presented to him a great convocation of eagles.
“Choose,” the ancient had said. The command had been given to both Ranulf and the gathered birds, and so followed a period of deliberation as Ranulf walked among them, the eagles peering at him with those piercing eyes, some flapping up close to take a good long look, even nipping gently at his hand as he reached out to touch them. Eventually a strong bird with plumage in gold and blue had come forward. Ranulf knew several of their names by now and this one he knew as Kamcho; handsome, strong, quick and courageous, with eyes of burnished gold. Somehow he knew he was the one, and it seemed that Kamcho did as well. When the eagle opened his wings and gave a screech, then flapped up to land upon Ranulf’s shoulder, the choice was made and the bond was sealed.
“A fine pairing.” The First Elder had smiled at them both with that face three centuries old. “Kamcho’s colours are the same as your homeland, Ranulf. Yes, a fine pairing indeed. You shall do well together, I think.”
In the days that followed Kamcho had accompanied Ranulf everywhere. He stayed by him at night when he slept in his hammock, and soared about him by day as he strolled through the glade. When Ranulf climbed the trees and met the Elders in their eyries Kamcho would be there, circling and watching. Soon enough his clicks and whistles and cries were as familiar to Ranulf as the speech of man, but that was just the start of it. One day, soon after Ranulf and Kamcho had made their choice, they were invited to join the First Elder again.
“Sit down, Ranulf. Take a drink of water.”
The water was from the Spring of Aramatia, rich in magical properties, a source of great power. Ranulf drew on its sweet taste as he perched in a seat of woven branches, looking out across the Twelve Trees and the Greater Everwood beyond.
“Tell me of your great-great-grandfather,” the First Elder said. “Do you know much about him?”
“Only what I heard from my grandmother as a boy.” Ranulf Shackton was not the only adventurer in his family. Though his parents had been somewhat strangled of that ambition, that was not true of those who came before. His grandmother herself had been a dedicated climber and his great-great-grandfather had travelled through much of the southern continent, visiting lands so far off as the Unseen Isles if the tales were to be believed. “His name was Edmond,” Ranulf recalled. “He was said to have some southern blood in him, a touch of olive in his skin. And keen eyes.”
The First Elder smiled. His robes of feathered plumage were mixed silver and bronze and gold, and a great long beard, white as snow, flew from his chin like a banner. “More than a touch, Ranulf. He was sired here in this very glade.”
Ranulf frowned. He must not have heard. “Apologies, Great Elder, I…”
“His mother, your great-great-great-grandmother, visited us once before,” the ancient went on. “She stayed with us for some months, oh, it must be almost two hundred years ago now. I was a young man back then, barely more than a century old. I knew her well, though not as well as the Eighth Elder of that time. They fell in love, Ranulf. The Eighth was young, headstrong, and your great-great-great-grandmother was a beautiful woman. When she left us she did so carrying his child. That Eighth Elder is long dead now, of course, and your great-great-great-grandmother as well, but the seed that was planted lies dormant in you. The power of Light, Ranulf. I did tell you there was light in you, did I not?”
Some of that light shines in you, Ranulf Shackton. He had said that the day they met. “I…I did not think you meant…” The truth of it was dawning. “There is Lightborn blood in me. Elder blood?”
“A smidge of it, yes. Diluted by time and generations of breeding, but enough for you and Kamcho to develop a more special bond. Speech is one thing, sight and senses another. The water from the Spring will hasten your learning, Ranulf. Drink freely, and drink often. You will not be with us long.”
