Chapter 4
Zara
Adrenaline had rushed through my veins, making my hands shake and my breaths come in pants.
We had left the downed eagle and its rider miles behind us and made it to the shelter of the trees, like General Isa ordered, an hour ago, but there was still no sign of them. Had they survived their own battle?
Call, it had said.
Call and I will answer!
Had I really called forth the power of the wind?
I thought of that powerful blast that tore the eagle and its rider out of the air.
Of the way they’d crashed to the ground.
There was no other explanation for such an impressive gust of wind—no sudden tornado from the sky.
Being connected to the vastness of that ability, even for a moment, felt like it would drain away my energy until my heart stopped.
My heart was beating normally now, but exhaustion wrapped around me, dulling my senses and making it difficult to sit up straight.
How could Ama have called this a lesser power? I asked Shazeera. She shook out her mane and twitched her tail but didn’t answer me. Shazeera?
What was the matter with her?
“Shazeera?” I whispered, but she still didn’t respond.
An ill feeling of dread swirled within me, gaining momentum with every minute that I couldn’t hear Shazeera through our bond. There wasn’t a moment in my life when I couldn’t talk to Shazeera and hear her answer in my mind. Not since I first bonded with her.
I was three years old, and Ama carried me in her lap while she rode Nafalla to the grasslands in the very center of the Equnox Plains.
An ancient band of horses, descended from the very first horses created by the Earth Mother, surrounded us.
They were a beautiful array of colors, from the deepest black, to rich chestnuts and bays, to shining white.
Their tails were so long they dragged on the ground.
In the center of these beautiful stallions and mares were the foals, happily playing.
As soon as Ama helped me down from Nafalla’s back, the adult horses parted, and the foals came over to me on their impossibly long legs.
I remember laughing at the way they seemed to dance around me.
I wanted to join them, but they were all more interested in playing with each other than with me.
But one filly left the others and came to stare at me with her big doe eyes.
Her coat was a much duller version of the deep blood bay it would eventually become, but even then, with her short, babyish mane and tail, it was beautiful.
She tossed her head at me and did a playful half rear, inviting me to join her.
I laughed and jumped at the chance as she led me in a game of tag.
The elders looked on approvingly. And when we were so tired we both collapsed in a heap, Ama came and helped me to my feet, while the little filly’s mother did the same.
The foal’s mother lowered her head around her baby in an embrace, and then on shaky legs, the filly walked over to me.
She wasn’t much taller than me, but she still had to lower her forehead to touch mine. The moment she did, warmth spread throughout my body—it was like waking up in the night terrified, only to be enveloped in your mother’s embrace. Like the purest love. Tears streamed down my face.
I’m Shazeera, she said for the first time in my mind, and the bond between us solidified inside me.
When I felt for our bond now—that strong, seemingly unbreakable rope that connected us—it was different, no longer easily found within me. It was like it was buried deep underground, and I would have to dig for miles to find it again.
Shazeera, I said, my mental voice sobbing. Tears stung my eyes, and my throat felt thick. I placed one hand on her strong neck, the other entwined in her mane. She turned to look at me, one eye meeting mine, and I could see the fear in her gaze.
Panic surged within me so fast, the edges of my vision went dark. Then it wasn’t just me. She knew something had happened to the bond, too.
Before I could say anything else, we both heard the rumbling of hoofbeats. Relief hit me when I saw General Isa astride Kamil and the others behind her, but at the same time, I tried to hide my growing panic at whatever had happened between Shazeera and me.
“First Daughter!” General Isa said, glancing at the now-empty sky before cantering toward me. “I’m sorry it took us so long to find you. You were farther south than I thought you would be.”
I decided then not to tell her about our own battle. What would I even say happened? I could barely explain it to myself. “We were only concerned for you. What happened to the Eagle Rider?”
“We managed to critically injure the enemy enough to force his retreat.” Her eyes narrowed. “But they’ll be back. We must leave this area immediately.”
Shazeera fell into line behind Kamil, and the two warriors flanked us as we kept a fast pace west. Reflexively, I kept reaching for the bond with Shazeera again, like prodding a sore over and over with my tongue.
Every time I found silence on the other side, it felt like a noose slowly tightening around my neck. What had I done?
Hours passed. With our camp location over one hundred miles from Queen Jazela’s canyon city of Nazeeran, it was a hard three days on horseback. General Isa and the others didn’t make small talk, so at least I was spared from having to act like I wasn’t rapidly dissolving into a puddle of fear.
What if I can never talk to Shazeera again?
I had never heard of a Zephyrian being able to use magic that could cause a daughter and her horse not to be able to communicate.
They were entirely without magic. That left only the wind power I had called upon.
And though it had been terrible in its strength, calling upon it had also done something to the bond between Shazeera and me.
Which meant I was responsible for damaging—possibly even destroying—the bond between us.
What if I broke our bond forever?
I shuddered at the thought. I had never heard of a daughter or son breaking their bonds with their horses while they were still alive. The only time it happened was when either the human or the horse died—something that occurred far too often because of the war.
A memory hit me then, of Ama providing mental healing to a daughter named Cassia who lost her bonded mare during battle. Only it hadn’t been to arrows or a sword.
Cassia’s words drifted through my mind again, the pain echoing.
The eagle landed on top of my mare, and I knew it was crushing her under its weight.
She screamed as its talons raked down her back.
I tried to get up…tried to go to her. And then…
She’d swallowed hard, her voice thick. The eagle sank its talons into her throat.
The last thing she said to me in my mind was, “I love you. They’re coming.
Run. Live.” It was the other Children, you see.
A small group of warriors had heard my mare’s screams and released a torrent of arrows on the eagle and its rider.
The eagle released my mare and flew away—neither of them were even injured.
They killed her as easily as a falcon kills a rabbit.
The horror of watching the eagle’s talons tear into her beloved horse must have been a soul-crushing loop in her mind.
The loss of her mare had made her a shell of a person.
Ama worked with her almost every day for two years before she even was able to smile again.
A severed bond only made the grief harder to bear.
We lived under constant threat of this happening to our horses or the people we loved, but the fact that I had brought this on by using a strange power I didn’t understand gutted me. I couldn’t blame our enemy. I had done this to us.
The wind whistled past my ears, cooling my sweaty neck as though trying to ease my mind. But I couldn’t take comfort from it, not when there was silence at the other end of my link to Shazeera.
That night, as we camped in darkness, we didn’t dare light a fire.
Our horses lay on the ground, and we leaned against them for warmth.
At my back, Shazeera’s steady breathing was as familiar as my own, but the lack of communication between us felt like a missing limb.
I gazed up at the sliver of moon and thousands of stars, glad that we didn’t have more light as tears slipped down my face.
After offering me bread and honey, which I couldn’t bring myself to eat, General Isa and the other five warriors fell asleep almost instantly.
I thought of Ama, with a fear that prickled over my scalp.
We hadn’t gone very far before we had been set upon by that first Eagle Rider.
Had Ama and the others been attacked, too?
Had she regained consciousness? Or was she still strapped helplessly to Nafalla?
Even if Ama had woken up, without her ability to shield, she wouldn’t have been able to defend herself much more than I could with a bow and arrow.
Surely if the others had all been killed—if my own mother had been fatally wounded by an eagle attack—I would have sensed it.
I may not have been able to wield earth magic, but I was of the Sorayan line just like all the others in my tribe.
Their blood would have cried out to mine.
Or if not to mine, then at least to General Isa’s.
I squeezed my eyes closed, desperately wishing I were able to discuss any of this with Shazeera. After a moment, she shifted so that her whole body was curled around mine. I wrapped my arms around her neck and pressed my face into her mane.