Sons of the Falcon (The Falcons Saga) (28 page)

“Just curious?”

“Forget it, lad. Avedras is ill
luck. It’s all them eldritch airs ‘anging about ‘em. Deadly.”

Disappointment sank into Rhian’s
belly. He’d hoped the reception avedrin received on the continent would be more
civil than in Sandy Cape. “You know of one or two, then? Where they are?”

The old man gathered his driftwood
and piled most of it in Rhian’s arms. “I ‘eard tales come out o’ the last war.
But no one can find
‘im.
”

“Him who?”

The old man’s face wrinkled up as
if he’d bitten into rotten meat. Beckoning with sharp gestures of his knotted
hands, he scuttled along a widening stretch of beach to a small boat turned
keel up. He piled the wood beside a low fire. A small tuna roasted on a spit,
and a bucket of pitch simmered in the embers. He handed Rhian a skinny, curved filet
knife. “ ‘Elp yaself while I tar me skiff.”

Rhian sliced off a side of the tuna
and savored the meat like he’d never eaten before. When he had his fill, he
watched the old man paint a thick coat of pitch along the hull of his boat.
“It’s a fisherman y’are?”

“Netta,” the old man replied.

“A what?”

“Make nets, I said.”

“Ah, a net
ter
. I’m a pearl
fisher—or was.”

“Aye, ‘ad you pegged for an
Islander. Shouldn’t be much trouble finding ya a boat ‘ome.”

Rhian glanced at the gray smudge on
the horizon and was surprised to feel an ache of homesickness. “I need to stay
for a while.”

The old man’s brush paused. Rhian lowered
his gaze to the embers and stuck out his hands to look busy warming them. All
the while the old man’s eyes clung to him like a gull on a bobbing carcass.

“Set a dry plank on the fire, will
ya, lad?” The tar-gummed brush started swiping again. Long strokes, short dabs
in the grooves and niches. “ ‘Is name was Thorn. The avedra, I mean. Tales
aplenty of ‘im in these parts. But who can say what’s true, what’s tale. ‘Is
name is all I know for fact, mind ya. You want to know more, ya gotta look
elsewheres. But be careful what ya believe. Folk in Windhaven say they knew
‘im, but the mountains is rough to cross on foot. In Westport ya might get a
boat if ya got money. If not, forget Windhaven. Try Brimlad. It’s a long day’s
walk, south ‘long the ‘ighway. And a word o’ warnin’, should ya keep goin’ east,
make sure ya pass by Avidan Wood in the daylight. That’s where the evils dwell.”

“Evils?”

“Aye. Dragons and such. No
reasoning man enters the Wood, day or night.”

Rhian thanked the man for the fish
and the information and apologized for being unable to pay for it. The old
net-maker wished him luck and waved him off. A narrow cliff-side trail led Rhian
onto the broad, well-tended length of the King’s Highway. Having not a single
copper to weigh down his pocket, he headed south for Brimlad. He came to a rise
in the road, stumbled over his own toes, and gasped. To his left, snowy mountains
marched away in an unending chain. Below the blue-and-white slopes, the
foothills flattened into greening meadows studded with flocks of sheep. Beyond
the meadows stretched more meadows. To an islander, land was a limited
treasure, a tiny haven perched in the middle of the uninhabitable and hostile
ocean. If this expanse of land had a far shore, it was too distant to concern
him. How old would he be if he kept walking until he came to the end of east
and had to go west again?

He felt small and unimportant then,
as he felt when he dived into the illimitable depths of the sea.

By the time he reached Brimlad, he
calculated he could’ve walked from Sandy Cape to Rystia and back again three
times. Dusk approached, and a chilly clear night. The city lights hugged the
coastline as if desperate for water and desperate to keep out of it. High atop
the buttresses of a rocky hill, a castle overlooked the busy streets and
bustling piers. Barges and merchanters navigated between the banks of a wide
river that spilled yellow into the sea, and though Rhian didn’t know it, the
flat green land on the other side was another kingdom altogether. Inside the
city gates, a swinging sign boasted a foaming tankard. His legs gave out inside
the tavern’s door, and he sank stiff-kneed and grateful onto a barstool. He
cared not one lick about the regulars staring from their favorite tables, but
indulged in a sigh as his spine and hips relaxed.

“Well, well, drifter, you look as
worn as the ‘eel of me stocking,” said the woman behind the bar. “You need a
cold beer.”

Rhian shook his head. “No money.”
He raked his hair from his face and glanced up at the woman.

“Ooh, lovely.”

He turned his eyes down to the bar.
Get used to it, eejit. Everyone will be a stranger from now on.

The bar wench cast him a
gap-toothed grin and pushed a mug toward him. “This one’s on me, then.”

Feeling foreign and exposed, he
curled his hands around the mug as if it were as steady as an anchor.

The woman leaned on the bar, her
arms pressing her bosom up in ivory mounds. “Anything else ol’ Mirnah can do
for ya, love?”

“Well,” he began, glancing at her
through his lashes and making use of the eyes he hated, “I haven’t ate a thing
since last night.” He let one of his hands fall to the bar and brush her arm.
“I was shipwrecked, see? Been walking all day, so I have. Lost everything.”

“Oh, that storm last night! You
poor thing. That musta been terrible frightening.” She grabbed a bell from the counter,
shook like it was her holy duty, and bellowed toward a side door, “Trini! Bread
and mutton. Double ‘elping!” A kitchen wench whisked through the door, both
hands full of bread trenchers and mutton stew. She plopped the food down on the
bar and the barmaid slid it down to Rhian. “There now,” she said, propping up
her bosom again. “Anything else?”

Rhian just wanted to devour the
food in peace, but he didn’t dare snub the woman now and lose her favor. He set
aside the wooden spoon and tried to look pathetic. Couldn’t be too hard, as
sea-tossed as he felt. “Maybe a place to sleep? And information.”

She squirmed with excitement. “Information
about what?”

“About an avedra
named Thorn?”

“Drifter, you get more interesting
by the minute. And I think I can ‘elp ya there, too.” She put her forefinger
and thumb into her mouth and let loose a piercing whistle. Silence plunged
through the tavern, and Mirnah waved to one of the dozen faces turned her
direction. “Ahmis, come over ‘ere. Tell ya story to me new friend.”

A barrel-chested man with a
grizzled beard hanging halfway to his belly rose from a far table. He jostled
aside a crowd of dice throwers and sat at the bar beside Rhian. “What’s that,
Mirnah?”

“Me friend ‘ere asked about
Thorn
.”
She spoke the name as though it were sacred.

Ahmis’s furry eyebrows leapt high,
and he took a slow measure of the drifter. “Oh, ‘e did?”

Rhian escaped the man’s scrutiny
behind a long pull from his mug. “You know him?”

“Know ‘im, ‘ell!” Ahmis exclaimed.
“I seen ‘im in action, I ‘ave. I were a archer, see. Under ‘Is Lordship, Davhin
of Vonmora. In the last war. Reckon you weren’t even born then, lad.”

Curse this beardless face
,
Rhian thought. “It’s two I was when it ended, sir. A cousin of mine was captain
of one of the Evaronnan blockade ships.”

“We be allies then,” Ahmis
declared, clapping Rhian on the back with an arm still mighty enough to draw a
heavy-pound war bow. “Mirnah, get ‘im another beer.”

Smiling crookedly, the proprietor set
a pair of mugs in front of both men.

Ahmis gulped down half his beer,
slammed down the mug. “Aye, Thorn Kingshield, then. At Little Bridge, it were. We
was marchin’ to Tor Roth, last days of the war, when King Shadryk ‘isself comes
marching over the ‘ill at us, leading ‘is army of Flaming Shavers and their
Dragons. Fire-breathin’, they was, and tall as towers. Wings that stirred up a
mighty storm—”

“Now, Ahmis,” chided Mirnah.

The man glowered into his mug. “Well,
maybe they didn’t have wings.” Rallying, he tossed up his hands in the manner
of a true showman. “But there they was, flooding the valley below while we ran
to take up position.” He swept up the salt dishes and set them on the bar just
so. “We covered these ‘ills, we archers did, with the Zhiani Shavers charging
between. Our arrows were many, but we couldn’t bring down all those mercenaries
or pierce the dragons’ hides. And ‘ere, on this ‘ill, waits the War Commander,
cool as you please, and he points to Thorn Kingshield and says, ‘Stop their
advance, brother.’ They’s brothers, you see, the War Commander and the avedra.
So off he goes, and we got the best seat in the ‘ouse, we archers. All by
‘isself, Thorn marches down that ‘ill and stares those Shavers square in the
eye. My mates and me, we were sure they’d run ‘im down, make mincemeat outta
‘im right quick. But then ‘is arms rise, just like this, and
fire
comes
sweepin’ outta the sky, a
cyclone
of fire, so ‘elp me Goddess! Then all
of a sudden, the cyclone thunders toward the ground, and storms of fire flood
the valley, sweeping over those Shavers and bursting the Dragons’ bellies. What
Zhianese weren’t burnt up turned tail and fled back to Zhian, never to be seen
on these shores again.

“And their prince? Thorn gives him
special regard, aye, so ‘e does. A great ring of fire springs up around that
cowardly scut. He screams and begs for mercy, but the fires close like two
hands coming together,
whap!
and leave nothing of the prince but ashes
and wind. We won the war shortly after.” Ahmis ended with a single sharp nod as
if it were his seal of guarantee.

Rhian’s eyes felt as big as oyster
shells. He remembered to blink and breathe. Shoving a spoonful of stew into his
mouth, he also remembered the net-maker’s warning to be careful about what he
believed.

“Aye, Thorn Kingshield turned the
tide in our favor, for sure, but I never got the chance to thank ‘im. Shame,
that.”

“What do you mean? He’s not dead,
is he?”

The man shrugged massive shoulders.
“Dunno. He were a young fella then. Still is compared to me, I s’pose. We ‘ear
about ‘im on occasion, traveling the eastern parts. ‘E don’t come this way
though.”

“I don’t guess you’d know how I
might find him?” Rhian asked, nonchalant.

Ahmis’s big hands hugged his mug,
and his booming voice lowered to a gruff whisper. “Who can say these days, what
with the vanishings?”

“Vanishings?”

Mirnah grunted disapproval; her towel-swaddled
hand dug inside a mug, polishing away the water spots as if they were as
offensive as gossip. “Don’t talk about it, Ahmis.”

“Why not, woman? It’s a fact. What’s
not
fact,” he added, turning back to Rhian, “is that Thorn is connected
with it. He’s a lecher who leaves women in a bad way, but he’s not evil.”

“Someone’s accusing him?”

“Folks is blaming
all
Magics.
Folks say the evils of Avidan Wood are finally stealing forth and nabbing
folks. By sunlight, moons’ light, young and old. But don’t believe everything
you ‘ear, lad. I ‘eard of these things ‘appening as far away as Fiera and the
Drakhans, so the Wood
can’t
be to blame. You’d think King Rhorek would
order the trees cut down if that were the case, now wouldn’t ya?”

“Oh, certainly,” Rhian replied,
though he was hardly familiar enough with local lore and the ways of kings to
know what to think.

“So if you seek Thorn Kingshield, ‘ead
east.” Ahmis cast him a mischievous grin. “Can’t promise you’ll find him
though. Folks only find him when
he
wants ‘em to. That’s the rumor. Best
of luck to you, lad.”

After Rhian had emptied the two
mugs and finished off both trenchers of stew, Mirnah complied with his other
requests and lent him the use of her tub and bed. Neither did she let him want
for company. In the morning, she sent him off with the smell of soap and
perfume in his hair and a burlap sack stuffed full of more bread than he could
eat in a week. Friendly people, these continentals. But then, anything was
better than neighbors trying to hang him.

Rhian struck out into the sunrise,
just as the seal suggested. The farther from the sea he walked, the more surreal
his encounter with the seal seemed. If only he were the drinking type, he could
explain it away. But wine wouldn’t make the encounter less true or less
troublesome.

The King’s Highway followed what he
learned was the Avidan River, curving through villages and muddy tilled fields.
The lengthening days provided plenty of time to make good headway, and
travelers were numerous. Every one of them had a different truth about Thorn
Kingshield. “He died at the end of the war.”

“The king sent him to Fiera years
ago, to spy on all them cattle thieves.”

“He conquered Zhian singlehandedly!
Living posh in a golden palace there.”

“I don’t care where he is. He’s
avedra and a menace, and good riddance.”

Rhian stopped walking only when it
was too dark to read the next town’s welcome sign. He found the livery and
climbed into the loft. The warm smell of horses and manure overwhelmed his
nose; already he missed the salt scent of the sea. The wild ride on the seal’s
back had sucked off his shoes, and his feet throbbed with stone bruises. He
propped them up on the sheaves of hay and, staring up into the pigeon-infested
rafters, he muttered, “What in hell am I doing here?” He didn’t know where
‘here’ was, nor where the road was leading him, and he decided he didn’t really
care. Sleep came easily.

Halfway through the following day,
the Highway veered northward toward the mountains while the river meandered
south and east through rich farm country. Rhian chose to follow the narrow cart
lanes that clung close to the riverbanks. The muddy, leafy scent of the water
eased him more than the dry, dusty, lifeless smell of the road. His path took
him through two villages before dark and in both he heard more strange tales of
people vanishing. A raven-haired girl from Leania, an old man with only one
leg, a set of twins from the river mill. And everywhere he looked, Rhian met
glances rife with suspicion. A man even stopped him in the middle of the lane
and asked, “What’s in the bag?” Mud caked his fingernails, and he carried a sharpened
scythe over his shoulder. He seemed almost disappointed when Rhian showed him
half a dozen loaves of stale bread. Maybe he hoped he’d find a child tucked
inside and get to use that scythe on something besides grain.