Sword Mountain (13 page)

When the sun glowed red and warm among the western peaks, Cloud-wing fluttered outside her window, tapping on the glass.

“Dandelion!”

Dandelion opened the window. He landed on the sill. “How did your entrance exams go?” she asked.

Cloud-wing winced. “Great, except I'm sure I failed. I had to do a triple back flip and I barely managed.”

“Meaning you got in.” Dandelion laughed.

“I don't know for sure,” said Cloud-wing. “The results won't be announced till two weeks later. But I think everybird did all right, except Pudding. He doesn't try; he doesn't really want to be a warrior, anyway.” Cloud-wing shrugged.

Dandelion remembered the pudgy bully. “But what will his father think if he failed?”

“It doesn't matter to Mr. Pouldington Senior,” said Cloud-wing. “And Pudding's older brother is one of the best at Rockbottom, anyway. It's an honor for even one of the family to get in—anybird in the Skythunder mountain range can apply to it, so there's fierce competition.”

“Anybird?” asked Dandelion. “Even those from the valleys?”

“Y-yes.” Cloud-wing looked stricken. “I mean, any young male bird of prey who is fairly able-bodied,” he mumbled, embarrassed by his mistake.

Not girls, Dandelion realized. Rockbottom would take a valley boy—but not a valley girl.

“It's a military school, after all,” Cloud-wing added lamely. He wanted to move away from the topic as quickly as possible, Dandelion could tell. “Anyway … flight,” he said.

At this, Dandelion grabbed the backpack and harness and handed it over, showing Cloud-wing how the parachute, neatly folded within, had been put back together airtight.

“Oh, Dandelion, I thought of something—simpler. It might work better than the parachute. You could really fly today.”

He pulled out a length of rope.

“What am I supposed to do?” Dandelion just stood dumbfounded as Cloud-wing offered her one end of the rope. How could an ordinary rope be a match for the pull of gravity?

Cloud-wing did not appear worried. “Hold on to this and don't let go. I'm at the other end. And we'll jump together, and we'll fly!”

Dandelion gripped the end, shaking her head. “But … but I'll just plummet like a ripe old apple off the branch! And you'll be dragged—”

“No, I'll be here, at the other end of the rope, and I'll hold you up,” said Cloud-wing. “What have you got to fear?”

Dandelion squeezed the rope. “Then let's go,” she said.

She climbed on the windowsill, and for a moment the two eaglets teetered at the edge. Dandelion stared at the clouds below her, crawling on the invisible surface of the atmosphere; the rays of the setting sun at that moment slanted, and all the windows of the castle were ablaze. The wind touched her talons, whispering for them to uncurl; buffeted her feathers, her wings; and she felt suddenly alive, alive for flight!

“You'll walk on the clouds!” Cloud-wing shouted.

A single breeze blew toward her, and she walked forward into open air, wings raised high as if to embrace the whole world below. Cloud-wing was right beside her. For one chilling second she realized she was spinning down, and the rope went taut in her grasp. A rock formed in the pit of her stomach. She felt much more exposed than she had in the parachute, much more breakable.

“Relax! Close your eyes, ride the wind, don't grasp at it,” Cloud-wing cried from above, fanning his wings as Dandelion dangled from the other end of the rope. “I'm here.”

Dandelion forced herself to close her eyes.

She adjusted her wings to suit the wind, becoming a buoy in the ocean. She had it! For a second, she had it. She rose back up in the air, the rope fell slack, and she looked up at the grinning face of Cloud-wing.

Being airborne felt so fragile. If Dandelion were to let go of her breath, she felt that whatever it was that held her in the air would disappear. Hadn't her mother told her that she needed a special force to defy gravity and soar? Dandelion knew she herself had none of the power. It came from Cloud-wing—his compassion, confidence, and courage coursing through the rope and lending a moment of magic to her wings. She knew she would never fall with Cloud-wing holding on.

“See?” Cloud-wing said. His eyes sparkled. “How does it feel to fly?”

Dandelion didn't have to answer. There was a candle glow in her heart.

Cloud-wing beamed. “We're just hovering now. There's lots more to see!”

Dandelion was amazed. “Go farther out? I'm not sure if I can stay aloft that long.” The archaeopteryx scars on her shoulders began to ache.

“Just a little more,” he assured her. “We can have more lessons, but you've been here for weeks, and you haven't had a proper tour of the Castle of Sky.”

He pointed to each of the four towers crowning the castle. “The north one, facing the wind, is the king and queen's. Their chamber and his workroom are there. The south tower is Prince Fleydur's study. The eastern tower is Forlath's. The western tower is the watchtower, where the soldiers go, to look out from the heart of the mountain range.”

Only the watchtower was lit.
Where has the royal family all gone?
thought Dandelion.

Cloud-wing pointed out the banquet halls, libraries, offices, the wing for guests, and the wing for the castle staff. Then, lowering his voice, he gestured at the foundations of the castle and told her of the dungeon. “It just runs around the perimeter of the foundations, because kings past wanted the throne room in the center to sit upon stone and earth, not above criminals,” he explained. “The dungeon walls are twice as thick as the rest of the castle, and damp with slime. There is not a single window.”

“Is anybird shut in it now?” Dandelion asked.

“None, at least nobird we remember,” he said. “It'd be awfully lonely, and a bird could be easily forgotten in that dark.”

Dandelion shivered. She observed the castle again. Lights shone from many of the windows now. Dandelion noticed that Cloud-wing had overlooked one of the brightest. “And that?” she whispered.

“The windows of the audience chamber,” Cloud-wing said. “The brightest room of all. It's where the Iron Nest holds its assembly.”

It all clicked in Dandelion's mind.

Fleydur will ask the court to pass his proposal!
she remembered. “Tonight Fleydur will be there,” she said.

Music and poetry can't be repressed;
They're needed for birds to be whole.
Poetry's always the speech of the heart,
Music, the tongue of the soul.

—
FROM A SONG IN THE
O
LD
S
CRIPTURE

A
ssembly! Assembly!” called the herald into the antechamber. “Prince Fleydur is here to present his proposal.”

Bang! Bang! Bang!

Some of the ancient advisers of Morgan resented Fleydur, similar to the way Olga resented Dandelion. But instead of banging doors, they banged books. Slamming down the heavy volumes some of them were pretending to read, the sixteen advisers tottered toward their usual places—readily seen because of a shiny hollow in the floorboards each had worn from standing in the same place year after year. To them, any change was like a burp, best surpressed as a matter of good taste. They glared at Fleydur, who stood alert in the center.

“Did you read the details about the music school he wants to build?” one whispered. “For the life of me, I cannot imagine how I am to suffer through all his unrealistic, nonsensical—”

“Hush—here's the king!”

The advisers straightened, standing in two rows like chess pieces upon the black-and-white floor.

“Good evening to all assembled,” Morgan called to them, flying to perch on his metal throne. He was much recovered now, his once-frail body filled with new vigor. “We've reviewed your proposal, Fleydur. The Iron Nest has informed me, though, that they must question you.”

The king had barely finished speaking when old wheezy Simplicio, the tutor, lumbered forward onto a new square, his feathers puffed. “Prince, your proposal is very … thought-provoking. No, just plain provoking!” the tutor declared. “You wrote that this music school will be a place where that valley child will be treated well. Treated well? Do you mean that in my classroom I treat her poorly?”

Murmurings erupted among the advisers. The queen's eyes were fixed upon Fleydur's face.

Simplicio continued, “In my classroom, the purpose of education is to ensure that birds act according to their places! She is a valley child and should be treated like one. It has been so and will always be. It is tradition.”

The members of the Iron Nest muttered loudly among themselves once more.

Morgan waved his scepter for silence. “Other questions, on other aspects of Fleydur's proposal?”

Simplicio panted for breath but was intent on continuing to be the spokesbird of the Iron Nest. “Yes, Your Majesty, I do have another point. No respectable, traditional eagles of the mountaintop will let their children enroll in a music school and forego a proper education under me.”

Simplicio turned to Fleydur, waving a copy of his proposal. “‘Birds from other places, of other species may enroll,' you also wrote. But strangers are not allowed on the mountaintop! Are you trying to bend another tradition?” Simplicio's spittle flew sideways.