Chapter 18
Zara
The sun was still high in the sky when I knew Shazeera could go no farther that day.
I only hoped they’d allow us to make camp and rest, but somehow, I knew that wasn’t a possibility.
She’d kept pace with the eagle flying just ahead of us, but she had to maintain at least a canter or fast trot the entire time.
Now, her nostrils flared so wide I could see red inside, her sides foamed with sweat, and her breaths came in heaves.
“Enough,” I said to her and to Commander Talon above us as I flung myself off Shazeera’s back. Keep walking! I told Shazeera when she threatened to halt. She couldn’t just stop now; she risked her muscles seizing and worse things.
She walked in tired circles around me as Neo landed nearby.
Why didn’t you slow when I asked you to?
Better to collapse than willingly be carried by that monster, she said, her inner voice sounding as exhausted as she looked.
Commander Talon walked over to me, his boots making soft sounds on the grass. “I don’t know much about horses, but she doesn’t look like she can go on.”
I looked over to Shazeera, where she was stumbling along. “Can we make camp here for the night? I know it’s only afternoon, but—”
“No, the treaty needs to be returned as soon as possible.”
I stared at Neo, whose talons were as long as daggers and who looked right back at me with his golden eyes.
“How do you know he won’t hurt her?” I asked, arms wrapped around myself with a shudder at the thought of Shazeera being attacked in front of me. “What if he gets hungry?”
“He knows she’s important to you. And he ate a big breakfast.”
It was obvious now that Commander Talon and his eagle could communicate, possibly on the same level that I did with Shazeera, but still, I felt sick every time I imagined her in the eagle’s clutches.
“I still worry she’ll be terrified,” I admitted.
Commander Talon glanced over right as Shazeera stumbled for what must have been the tenth time. “I don’t think she even has the energy to be frightened at this point. Have you considered blindfolding her? It might help with any fear of heights.”
I’ll do it, Shazeera said suddenly in my mind. He’s right that we need to get the treaty back. I shouldn’t have been so selfish.
You weren’t being selfish. You were afraid.
Still, many lives hang in the balance.
I walked over to her and put my hand on her sweaty neck. Are you sure? Do you want me to blindfold you as Commander Talon suggested?
Shazeera swung her tired head toward Neo. After a moment’s thought, she said, Yes.
I went to my bag and pulled a silk scarf free before returning to her, tying it carefully over her eyes, and securing it beneath her throat. Just rest easy here. I’ll talk you through everything so you won’t be surprised.
I followed Commander Talon over to Neo’s side, and maybe it was because I was trying to be brave for Shazeera’s sake, but I didn’t even flinch when Neo turned to look at me with those piercing eyes.
“Would you feel safer riding in front of me or in back?” Commander Talon asked as I tilted my head to look up at Neo’s saddle far above us.
My mouth suddenly felt dry. It was slowly sinking in that I would soon be in the air.
On the back of an eagle. Part of me was thrilled—flight was something I’d always dreamed about.
But the other part of me—the part born on the soft grasses of solid earth—wanted to fling myself onto my belly and refuse to leave the safe and familiar ground. “What would you suggest?”
“Wind currents that high can get pretty strong, and since you’re not used to it, if you rode behind me, they might rip you off Neo’s back.
” He said all this matter-of-factly, and I tried to nod as though I were taking it all in calmly.
In reality, my heart raced so fast in my chest that I felt a little faint.
“Ordinarily, if that happened, Neo could catch you.” He pointed to Shazeera.
“However, he won’t have that ability this time. ”
“So, in front of you would be best.”
“Yes, that way I can catch you if we hit rough air.”
“Rough air,” I repeated slowly.
“Unless, of course, you can control the wind currents,” he said, his gaze holding mine. “Then you can make the flight as easy as you’d like.”
Could I do such a thing? I wasn’t even sure, but I also knew I couldn’t let Commander Talon know that. It was better for all if they thought my control over the wind was complete. “I only call upon the power of the wind in desperate situations,” I said, which was the truth.
“It shouldn’t be desperate, but Neo can fly low to avoid it.”
That wasn’t reassuring, but I tried not to let my apprehension show as Commander Talon took my leather bag and secured it to the back of Neo’s saddle. When he finished, he held his hand out to me. “I’ll give you a leg up.”
I looked at the huge expanse of eagle before me, without a mane or withers to help me pull up. “Where do I hold on?”
Commander Talon reached up and grabbed a piece of leather from the saddle and harness secured to Neo. “You can use this to hoist yourself up. When you get up there, kneel and then sit back on your heels so that your legs don’t hinder his wings.”
Commander Talon joined his hands together in front of him to give me something to jump from, and I put my booted foot in the center of his palms. I gripped the leather strap and sprang from his joined hands, feeling a powerful boost at the same time, as Commander Talon launched me into the air.
I landed on Neo’s back much more roughly than I would have done to Shazeera, and without thinking, I put my hand on his feathers to apologize. Neo turned his head slightly to look at me, and I yanked my hand away with a yelp.
His feathers were much tougher than I expected them to be, still smooth, but with a rigidity to them that made them nothing like chicken or goose feathers.
I was positioned just behind his head, in between his wings, which rose on either side of me.
Neo was bent forward so that his back was level, his wings outstretched to keep his balance.
With one hand on the same strap I used, Commander Talon sprang from the ground and pulled himself up at the same time, settling into the saddle behind me much more lightly than I did.
He knelt, too, his powerful thighs on either side of mine.
I glanced down at them, heat rushing to my face.
I definitely hadn’t expected to be sitting this close to him.
As soon as he was on Neo’s back, the eagle folded in his wings and straightened.
In that moment, I realized why he’d been bent forward in the first place.
When he stood, Commander Talon and I were nearly vertical, and it was only my strong leg muscles—honed from years of riding bareback—that kept me from falling back against Commander Talon’s chest. I gritted my teeth and squeezed, legs pressed into smooth feathers.
My hair was tumbling back onto Commander Talon, no doubt directly into his face.
“Neo,” Commander Talon said, his voice slightly strange since we were effectively hanging onto the eagle’s back like a pair of ticks, “remember that we have someone who has never flown before on your back.”
There was a shifting beneath us, and then Neo leveled out again, once again allowing us to remain horizontal on his back.
“Was it because I landed so roughly on his back?” I asked, and I couldn’t believe I was worried about an eagle’s comfort. But then again, this particular eagle had not just me, but Shazeera at its mercy, and I couldn’t afford to offend it. “If so, tell him I’m sorry.”
I turned my head just enough that I could see Commander Talon out of the corner of my eye, but he appeared to be smiling. “Believe me, you are so light that you’re nothing more than a fly landing on his back. He didn’t even notice.”
“Good,” I said.
“You will need to hold on now, though. He’s going to lift off first before taking hold of your horse.”
Cold fear trickled through me at that announcement, more on Shazeera’s behalf than my own. I glanced over at her where she stood, head hanging in her exhaustion, eyes still blindfolded.
Shazeera, the eagle is flying over to you now. Be ready.
Shazeera lifted her head, her ears twitching this way and that, and I knew despite her fatigue, she was afraid. My stomach churned with a sickly mix of regret and nausea. She was doing this for me.
Neo shifted again, and we seemed to be lowering as he crouched.
On either side of me, Neo’s powerful wings pumped once, then twice, and then we launched into the air, leaving my stomach far behind.
Commander Talon was right in that Neo flew like we were no more than flies on his back.
He flew high above Shazeera, talons spread.
I barely had time to think to Shazeera, The eagle is coming now—faster than I thought.
Neo grabbed hold of her, claws wrapped carefully around her belly. And then, with a weak scream from Shazeera, Neo pumped his wings rapidly until we rose higher in the air. The wind buffeted my ears with every beat of his wings, louder than the roar of thunder.
Are you all right? I asked Shazeera, but all she could convey to me was the sense of weightlessness, and the ever-present wind.
Commander Talon gently touched my shoulder. “Lean forward just a little,” he said. The moment I did so, I slipped beneath the airstream, and the wind grew much calmer. He did the same, leaning forward with me slightly. “Better?”
“Yes.”
“Your horse didn’t die of fright?”
I turned to glare at him—this didn’t seem funny to me—but the wind grabbed a lock of my hair that had come free of its braid and threw it into my face.
With a laugh, Commander Talon reached forward and pulled it out of my mouth for me. “That’s something else I didn’t think about,” he said, pointing to his own short hair.
And then Shazeera finally answered me. I’m not being pierced by talons, so I’m well enough.
I let out my breath in a powerful sigh. I hadn’t realized how tense I was until I knew for sure that Shazeera was okay. But now that I did, I couldn’t help but notice my surroundings.
The sky. How long had I stood below, staring up at it in awe?
How many times had I wondered what the clouds felt like?
Now, we flew through them, and it was like riding through mist on a cold day.
The clouds were a brilliant white, made brighter by the sun, and when I glanced down at the earth I knew to be below me, I couldn’t see anything anymore.
There was nothing but the bluest sky all around—like we were in the middle of the ocean.
The sight was mesmerizing, so much so that I found myself trying to sit up again to take it all in, only to have the wind hit me with so much force I slammed back into Commander Talon’s unforgiving chest. His arms came around me, and again, he pushed me forward. The warmth of his body surrounded me.
“Stay down until we hit a calmer patch of air,” he said, his voice directly in my ear to be heard above the wind.
Warmth crept up my neck. I should have felt incredibly awkward and uncomfortable being shoved against him like this, but there was something about him that put me at ease.
Which was weird considering how we’d first met.
I did as he suggested, and even though I couldn’t take in the sights as well, the sensation of flying was everything I’d always imagined it to be.
It was like galloping full out on Shazeera, and then plunging over a cliff, with a drop that went on forever.
Even the wind seemed delighted that I was in the air, as a warm breeze that had no business being this high curled around my neck like a scarf.
I knew I shouldn’t feel like this. Guilt hung around at the edges of my consciousness, threatening to pull me under, but I selfishly ignored it.
I only wanted to revel in the feeling of soaring through the sky without any of the repercussions.
With Shazeera dangling from Neo’s talons, though, that was impossible.
Time passed swiftly—the speed we were traveling made it seem fast, perhaps, or maybe the fact that I dreaded the moment of arrival.
Suddenly, I could feel us begin to descend from the clouds. Below, Shazeera let out a worried whinny, and my heart rose to my throat.
Down we went, sinking through the clouds like a stone in deep water, and then the mist cleared.
Laid out below us were the plains, endless grasslands, and beyond that, forest. But rising from the earth like jagged pieces of stone were the mountains, gray and snowcapped.
There was an alien beauty to them, especially from this vantage point, where I was practically looking down on them.
Commander Talon leaned toward me. “We’re almost there.”
We had flown over two hundred miles, across the Mid-Plains of Equnox to the Angora Mountains in the east in mere hours. The swiftness of our travel was staggering. And just beyond the trees I could see it, rising from the side of the mountain as though it had grown there.
Golden Eagle Palace.