Chapter 11
Talon
For several days, I revisited the battlefield in a dreamworld while my body slowly healed.
But more than any other, I dreamed of the battle that involved the Shendayah River Outpost, and I wondered if it was because not only had Lieutenant Callum died, but Emperor Altair had refused my recommendation to strip Captain Suna of her rank and remove her from commanding any outpost. Days after that battle, Emperor Altair had summoned me to the palace for the mission that had landed me in the hospital.
Captain Suna remained in charge of the Eagle Riders at Shendayah River Outpost.
The medics had drugged me with canthis root powder, which kept me unconscious. They didn’t trust that I would stay in bed otherwise, and they were right. The minute it wore off and I woke up fully, I asked to speak to the emperor.
A medic with a permanent scowl shook his head and told me I couldn’t leave my bed. He sent a servant to summon the emperor to come debrief me.
I wasn’t sure he would come. Emperors were the ones who did the summoning, after all, but he arrived so quickly I realized he must have been waiting in the hallway outside the clinic.
His face relaxed with obvious relief when he saw me. “It makes me happy to see you awake after so long. What happened, Cousin? I was told you crashed.”
Neo’s indignant screech rang out through my mind as loudly as if he were in the room with me.
I have never crashed in my life! Normally, Neo and I kept up mental shields to keep from sharing every little thought we had with each other.
But because of our injuries, we’d both been too weak to maintain them, so Neo overheard Altair’s comment through our link.
“The end result was a crash, yes,” I said, trying unsuccessfully to mentally calm Neo at the same time, “but that’s bound to happen when a cyclone from nowhere rips you from the sky.”
Altair looked stunned. “A cyclone? Since when do the Children of Earth use wind magic?”
I told him everything I knew about the girl who had called the wind—what little I had gathered from my near-death experience, anyway.
Altair’s skin looked as washed out as mine by the time I finished. “And you’re sure it wasn’t one of the queens?” he asked.
I shook my head against the pillow. “No, she was too young. She looked like she was around twenty years old.”
“Where have they been hiding a girl with power like that?” he asked. “There has never been any mention of someone who could control the wind, and even if there were, the chances of them being a Child of Earth are so slim it’s laughable.”
I’d wondered the same thing, so I had a ready answer. “What if she’s been in training? She seemed to be of royal blood—she was dressed in gemstones, which is why I thought she was the queen.”
He was quiet for so long, his expression deep in thought, that I began to slip into unconsciousness again. I startled when he suddenly spoke. “We must track her down, then. Kill her before she can grow to be a bigger threat.”
I thought of the vastness of that power—how Neo’s enormous wings became like a songbird’s in the face of that wind. “She was young, but she was incredibly strong. Her magic blasted us out of the sky like we were dust.”
“You and Neo are the best we have without question, but even still, she won’t be able to take on a squadron of Eagle Riders.”
A squadron meant fifteen. Fifteen may be enough, but I had my doubts.
Unfortunately, I was too weak to give it much more thought.
I fell asleep while Altair remained in the room with me.
There were times when I crawled back to the surface of consciousness and saw him sitting at my bedside.
I would have thought it was a hallucination, but the medics confirmed for me that Altair had kept vigil.
It was so different from our usual relationship—I’d spent so many times during my childhood comforting him through injuries—that the accompanying lump in my throat was unexpected.
Even with the medic’s intervention, I was barely able to walk unassisted for a few days. Neo, though, recovered quickly. He flew almost immediately after being mended by the medic.
In that time, the sorcerer Ozul had managed to scry the girl’s location.
She had made it to the Nazeeran Canyon, which wasn’t the best place to stage an ambush, as it was easily defensible.
There was a good chance for a successful attack, though, if she was caught outside the safety of the caverns, and this seemed like a possibility, since the horses grazed in the rich grasses surrounding the canyon.
The plan then would be to wait for a sufficiently cloudy day, fly high under cloud cover, and see if an ambush opportunity presented itself.
I had argued with Altair that I should be allowed to lead the battalion, as I was the only one with firsthand experience with the strange magic. He had stubbornly refused my every request, citing my injuries as too serious to allow me to fly again so soon.
The emperor insults me, Neo said, his thoughts pushing into my mind along with his outrage.
I would think he’s insulting me, I replied. He’s saying I’m too weak to participate in this mission.
No, he’s saying I’m too stupid to keep you safe.
I groaned inwardly. Eagles were very easily offended, and it didn’t help when Neo eavesdropped on my thoughts.
It didn’t take much to trigger a rant from him since he’d been knocked out of the sky by that wind magic, so I knew he was only getting started.
With effort, I closed the door in my mind that connected us, and went to bed.
I had to heal up as quickly as I could—I had a feeling this mission wouldn’t go as easily as Altair assumed.
The next day, a storm rolled in on the plains, giving the eagle battalion the cover they needed. Altair summoned me to his rooms to await the news of the mission, while I tried to shake the feeling that it was doomed to failure.
“Talon,” Altair said by way of greeting as I entered his sitting room. He was drinking a steaming cup of aromatic tea—I could smell its spicy scent even from the doorway. On his desk was a mess of papers, covering every inch. “It’s good to see you walking around.”
“Thank you, Majesty,” I said, bowing. As I stood straight again, I saw a figure shift in the shadows behind Altair. My hand moved toward the hilt of the sword on my hip as my entire body tensed like a bow.
Ozul moved into the light, his head still covered with the coyote mask, chest bare despite the chill.
I didn’t remove my hand from the hilt of my sword.
Everything in me said being in the same room with this creature was the height of stupidity.
But I tamped down my instincts to run and forced my breathing to slow.
I couldn’t see Ozul’s eyes through the slits in the mask, but I had the sense he was staring at me. My heart rate increased.
“The mission has changed since we last spoke,” Altair interrupted, and it took all my training not to flinch as his voice broke my concentration on the creature before me.
“How so?” I asked tightly.
Altair took a casual sip of his tea, as if the ghoul weren’t in here, looming threateningly over us.
“I asked Ozul if any of the Children of Earth had ever had wind magic, and he said no. It’s incredibly rare, and none of their bloodlines have ever manifested in such a way. He wants her brought here alive.”
I shifted my gaze back to the masked sorcerer. “To what end? So she can summon cyclones that pull the palace walls down around you?”
He said nothing, only continued to stare at me through the slits in his mask that were dark as pitch.
Altair answered instead. “No doubt she is extremely important to her people, and we will hold her for ransom to force their compliance.”
I gaped at Altair, my hand momentarily falling away from the sword hilt. “Forgive me, Majesty, but you should have consulted me on this before the mission. Even if the aerial cavalry managed to capture her, how will they control her power?”
“Through her horse,” a deep, gravelly voice said. It sounded slightly distorted coming through the mask.
I stiffened as I turned to look at the creature that called itself Ozul.
A loud pounding on the emperor’s door interrupted us. “Enter,” Altair said, his tone deeply annoyed.
Rhea strode into the room, her normally lightly browned skin looking pale.
Rhea was one of the best scouts we had, with a real knack for reconnaissance and returning without the enemy having any idea they were being spied upon.
She’d perfected the art our people had of schooling her features to appear statuesque, but now, she looked completely undone.
Her hair was a wild halo around her head, having escaped its braided knot at the base of her neck, and her eyes were so wide I could see whites all the way around.
“What is it?” the emperor asked, and by his restraint, I could tell he realized as I did that something was wrong.
“Captain Suna and her squadron are all dead, Majesty,” Rhea said, her voice shaky. “Their eagles, too. I saw it with my own eyes.”
My eyes widened at her words, and not just because the whole squadron had been wiped out.
Emperor Altair hadn’t consulted me on which squadron to send on this mission.
If he had, I certainly wouldn’t have recommended her.
I had never had the chance to punish Captain Suna for her role in Lieutenant Callum’s death due to her negligence.
Now, though, it seemed that the royal with the wind power had done my job for me.
“Did you locate the girl?” he asked sharply.
She shook her head. “We engaged in battle with a small group of Children, and amongst them was the girl with the power to control the wind. We were unable to capture her.”
Altair didn’t look at me, but I was staring at him, both eyebrows raised. “What happened?”
“She raised her hands to the sky, and a series of unnatural cyclones appeared out of nowhere. My eagle and I were flying at a higher altitude and were able to escape, but the others were caught within and smashed to the ground.”
“Thank you for your report, Rider,” Altair said, and Rhea bowed and left.
“Her ability will change the tide of this war,” I said. “The fact that she took down nearly an entire battalion on her own doesn’t bode well. We have no hope of capturing her now.”
Altair had been watching Ozul quietly, but now he turned his attention back to me. “There may be another way.”