Chapter 19 #2
It was positively jarring, and yet … something sparked in the back of her mind. A story Ervos had told her once, long ago, about a princess and her pet dragon. A magical companionship, as lovely as it was fearsome, for the two had forged a lifelong bond.
When the dragon died, a part of the princess died, too, for they’d forged their souls into one being. It was heartbreak that killed the princess in the end, for she was unable to live without that bond.
Ezer had cried the first time Ervos told her the story. It wasn’t real, she knew, for dragons didn’t exist in Lordach. Only wyverns.
But perhaps she could take something from the tale.
‘You use the visions to speak to me,’ she said as she scratched the top of the raphon’s head. ‘Is that right?’
She barely noticed when Six’s tail twitched, just once.
‘I don’t suppose that would be possible. But …’
Another twitch of Six’s tail.
Ezer widened her eyes.
‘You are speaking to me. Aren’t you?’ Ezer asked. ‘Show me again.’
It seemed impossible that the raphon could do such a thing.
Because that would require magic of some sort.
Magic that would allow a single touch to spark a vision into Ezer’s mind.
Magic that no one seemed to know about, in all the books she’d read on raphons, in all the journal entries she’d looked back on thus far.
Not even Kinlear knew about what the beast could do.
But the vision suddenly came again, as if truly on command, stealing her sight away to that dark and swirling sea.
Two feathers floated side by side, one dark and one light.
Ezer kept her hand on the pup’s head, desperate to hold on to the image in her mind. It faded anyway, as if Six was done speaking.
‘It’s you,’ she said. ‘And me.’
She felt it, as sure as she felt the stones behind her head, the coldness lingering inside the cell.
And Six’s tail twitched again, just once.
‘Yes,’ whispered the wind.
Its arrival was sudden, but not unwelcome. She’d missed its voice lately, but she supposed that meant she’d also been out of any true danger.
Ezer grinned.
‘Do you have magic, Six?’
A single twitch.
Yes.
‘Incredible,’ Ezer breathed. ‘Does anyone else know?’
This time, the beast twitched her tail twice.
No.
No open-ended questions would do, but at least they had a way forward now. A mutual understanding of one another’s wants and needs.
Ezer’s heart began to pound in excitement.
‘The others,’ she said. ‘All the Eagleminders that came before. Did you try and speak to them, too?’
A long pause, and Ezer’s heart roared in her ears as she waited for Six to respond.
Then a single twitch of her tail.
Yes.
Which meant that, for whatever reason … she was the only one who’d ever heard. The only one who’d ever received the messages from the pup and understood.
The question was …
Why her?
When Ezer made it to her dorm that afternoon, she found Zey curled up by the fire, a book in her hands. Her pale hair was down, not smooth as before but tangled like she’d just awoken from a restless sleep.
‘Zey?’ Ezer approached her slowly, the way she would have a wild raphon. She’d rarely seen the Eagleminder sitting with anyone, even when they took meals. She seemed a floating island … all alone. ‘I need to talk to you.’
A moment passed, and she wondered if the Eagleminder would ignore her entirely.
But then Zey sighed and aggressively turned a page in her book. ‘I’m busy. Why don’t you run along and find Izill instead?’
‘You’re the only Eagleminder I know,’ Ezer said. And Kinlear is still nowhere to be found. She waited until the silence was painful before she added, ‘Please, Zey.’
Another flick of the Eagleminder’s pages.
‘What’s in it for me?’
Ezer crossed her arms. ‘We’re fighting the same war, aren’t we?’
Zey chuckled. ‘You are not fighting, Wolf Bait.’
Without her cloak, in just a tunic and trousers, she looked thinner than Ezer remembered. Her eyes looked tired and shallow. Eagleminders did not wield, so they did not age supernaturally as the Sacred Knights did.
No, this was a different sort of fading away. It seemed to come from her very soul.
Ezer sighed. ‘I’m still doing my part. I only need two minutes of your time, Zey. I don’t think that sacrifice is too much to ask of you.’
At that, Zey shut her book with a snap.
And her pale eyes slid up to meet Ezer’s.
‘Easy to speak of sacrifice,’ she mused, ‘when you aren’t the sacrificial lamb.’ She picked at something on her cloak. ‘Go on. Ask your questions. The clock is ticking.’
Ezer swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘What happens when you train an Eagle? Tell me about it from the start.’
Zey yawned, like she was already bored. ‘The war eagles have lived and bred in captivity for centuries, so their nature is already to obey. But each beast takes time. Trust must be gained before they’ll really listen. When a Sacred is young, we’re introduced to the war eagle fledglings.’
‘And they choose you,’ Ezer said almost reverently, remembering the stories she’d always heard. How magical it must be to be chosen by one of the godmounts.
But at that, Zey laughed bitterly. ‘You poor, naive little creature. Do you believe every story you’ve heard from the nomages?
Eagleminders are assigned, not chosen. There’s a sort of trial, every few years, with each crop of fledglings.
The War Table starves the beasts for three days.
Then they set us loose in the Eagle’s Nest – weaponless – with buckets full to the brim with bleeding meat.
It is only the ones who do not run away screaming that are given the job. ’
Ezer leaned forward. ‘But that’s cruel.’
And not at all what she’d been told.
‘And you think they care about that?’ Zey said.
She produced a silver flask from her pocket.
‘You came here with stories. Rumors. Mythical ideas about what it’s like to be a Sacred.
Some of the nomages fear us, but most revere us, dreaming of what it would be like to have our magic.
They think we are immune to feelings, to temptation—’ She raised her flask, and Ezer realized she’d probably been drinking here all afternoon.
‘Well, I’m happy to be the one to darken your stars.
’ She took another long sip. ‘My title may be Sacred. But I am just a woman, taught to ignore my instincts. And the eagles are just eagles, forced to do the same.’
A log broke in the fire.
For some reason, Ezer jumped.
‘But … it doesn’t make any sense,’ Ezer whispered. ‘The gods wouldn’t want it that way.’
‘And what way would they have it be?’ Zey asked.
Ezer didn’t have an answer. But this felt dangerous. Utterly raw, and she suddenly felt the urge to look over her shoulder, because if she was caught speaking this way …
She feared finding marks upon the backs of her own hands.
She actually feared what would happen to Zey, who seemed to be sliding down an icy slope, with nothing but darkness at the end of her descent.
‘How do you train them?’ Ezer asked. ‘Surely a bond begins, after all the work.’
‘We lead them through the motions of haltering, saddling, mounting, following the pattern of Minders who came before. Eventually, we break through the fledgling’s desire to fight back.’
‘But what does it feel like?’ Ezer pressed.
‘It’s not a feeling,’ Zey said, exasperated. ‘It’s a march. The result of time spent doing the same thing again and again. Repetition leads to success.’ She frowned. ‘Why are you asking me this?’
Ezer sat back, deflated. It couldn’t be true. She was eager to understand her own place in this, with Six, because she’d tapped into something.
And she thought maybe it was the way it always was, when a Minder found their match in a winged beast.
But now she only had more questions. About herself, about the raphon. About her magic.
‘And how do you get them to trust you when it really counts? To obey even when the war rages, and a Knight’s life depends upon their eagle?’
Zey’s green eyes met hers.
‘The same way a Sacred learns to obey the laws. We break them. We shatter every instinct they have to disobey our commands. Look closely at the war eagles, and you will see they are branded. Just as I am.’
A cold sweat formed on Ezer’s forehead, and she suddenly wanted to put out the fire. ‘The eagles pay penance? That’s—’
‘Cruel?’ Zey asked, with a dark laugh and another sip from her flask. ‘It’s the Citadel, in the midst of a twenty-year war with an enemy we cannot see nor understand. An enemy the War Table would do anything to defeat. Even if it means letting our King waste himself away.’
‘So, there is no bond,’ Ezer said softly. ‘No magic that connects a war eagle to its trainer, its rider, soul-deep.’
Nothing that would give reason to how Six and I share a bond.
Or how I can see the things she sees.
How I can feel her pain like it is my own.
‘Sometimes stories are just stories,’ Zey said, and stood.
‘And sometimes the truth is far worse. My best advice? Don’t get too close to the raphon.
It will be gone soon, given to someone else to finish out its journey, just like all the eagles I have spent my life training.
Give it your heart, Wolf Bait … and it will fly away with it.
And once it reaches the other side of the wards …
there’s a good chance it’s never coming back. ’
Her eyes were red as she stood and left, her book discarded in her spot.
‘Wait,’ Ezer said, and scooped up the book. ‘You left your—’
She frowned, pausing as the yellowed pages fluttered open, pushed as if by the wind.
Look, it whispered suddenly. See.
Ezer stared down at the pages, confused.
Because the book Zey had been reading, so intently …
Every page was blank.