The crescent moon, gloating and glowing in its safety above them, made their night travels across the plain a cold pleasure. The sky was devoid of clouds and littered with shards of stars. The cliffs rose up like marooned ships, their ragged stone masts pointing at the star-filled heavens, and their horses began to descend, winding their way downward into Solemn on the far edges of Quondoon. Kjell of Jeru, Captain of the King’s Guard, had only been there once before, but he remembered the simple attire of the desert dwellers, their covered heads and their quiet ways.
They’d seen no sign of the Volgar—the monstrous birdmen—in the last few days, no nests or carcasses, no stench or even stray feathers, and he wondered again at the hysterical reports in the villages on the border of Bin Dar about devastation in Solemn. But there was something in the air, and his horse, Lucian, was restless, chuffing and flighty, resisting the descent and the press forward.
It would be so much easier if he had Queen Lark’s ability to command and destroy. Instead, he and an elite group of warriors had traveled through the provinces of Jeru, north to Firi and west to Bin Dar, east to Bilwick and back to Jeru City, hunting the Volgar the hard way, at the end of a blade. He’d spent the last two years on the back of his horse, destroying what was left of the winged creatures that had once laid waste to vast provinces and almost decimated an entire kingdom.
When he’d received word that there were flocks of the birdmen in the cliffs of Quondoon, he’d left Jeru City again, oddly grateful there was something to do. Tiras, his half-brother and the king of Jeru, ruled ably, finally freed from the affliction that had kept Kjell so close for so long. They’d rarely been apart since the day Tiras ascended the throne in their father’s place, young and Gifted, with no one else to turn to but his illegitimate older brother. But Tiras didn’t need Kjell anymore. Not in the same way.
Kjell didn’t desire riches. He didn’t want power or position. He’d never longed for possessions or even a place to call his own. Though he was older than his brother, he’d never wanted to be king, and he’d never envied Tiras—legitimate son and heir to the throne—who shouldered the weight of his responsibility with a calm acceptance Kjell had never mastered. Kjell had always been happiest watching his brother’s back or lost in the heat of battle, and he’d always known who he was.
He hadn’t been especially proud of it, but he’d known.
He was the bastard son of the late King Zoltev and the servant woman, Koorah, who’d warmed His Majesty’s bed for a time. A very short time. She’d died in childbirth, and Kjell had been named by the midwife, who thought his infant cry had sounded like the scream of a Kjell Owl before it attacks.
But there was more to a man than his parentage. More to a man than his blade, or his size, or his skills, and all that Kjell had once known had shifted and changed in the last year. He’d been forced to accept parts of himself that he’d always denied. He was Gifted. One of them. One of the people he’d feared and forsaken. And it had not been an easy adjustment. It was as if he’d battled the sea all his life only to discover he had scales and gills and belonged beneath the depths instead of casting nets. He no longer knew who he was or what his purpose might be. Or maybe he knew and just didn’t like it.
It had grown cooler as night fell. It would be hot—too hot—when the sun rose again, but Quondoon enjoyed extremes. Heat in the day and cold at night, towering peaks and flat plains, brief, punishing rains followed by long, dry spells where the rain refused to fall for months on end. The people of Quondoon were shepherds and scavengers, weavers and potters, but they didn’t grow much. They couldn’t. Kjell wondered again at the Volgar sightings. The Volgar preferred the swamp-lands. If the Volgar were nesting near the villages of Quondoon, they had truly grown desperate.
An eerie howling rose up suddenly from the precipice above them, and Lucian started in fright.
“Halt!” Kjell commanded, and his men obeyed immediately, hands on their swords, eyes on the canyon walls to their right, looking for the source of the sound. As they watched, figures materialized on the bluff that rose and plateaued to the right. The city of Solemn lay beyond. But these weren’t suspicious sentries. These were wolves who resented the interruption of their evening’s activities, and the baying rose again, making the horses shudder.
“There’s something there, Captain. Something wounded—or dead. The wolves want it,” a soldier spoke up, his eyes glued to the darkness that clung to the base of the tallest cliff.
“If it’s Volgar, it’s alone. The wolves wouldn’t go anywhere near a flock,” Jerick, his lieutenant, spoke up.
“It isn’t Volgar,” Kjell answered, but he dismounted and drew his sword. “Isak, Peter, and Gibbous, stay with the horses, the rest of you, fall in behind me.”
His men obeyed immediately, creeping through the brush and dry grass toward the base of the sheer wall that jutted from the earth. The shadows obscured whatever lay crumpled—for there was indeed something there—among the pale rocks. Something rippled—a dark billowing—like a Volgar wing, and Kjell paused, bidding his men to do the same.
Oddly, the wolves felt no compunction toward silence, and a lone howl rose above them before the others joined in the chorus. The baying did not cause the shadows to shift or the rippling to halt, and Kjell moved forward again, eyes on the shuddering darkness.
With several more steps, the moon unveiled her secret. The movement they’d seen was not a Volgar wing but the billowing dress of a woman, lying in a lifeless heap. Her hair was crimson, even in the shadows, blending with the red of her blood and the warmth of the earth. She lay on her back, her eyes closed, the oval of her face as pale and still as the rocks around her. Her arms were thrown wide like she’d embraced the wind as she fell.
Her back was oddly bent and one leg twisted beneath her, but she bore no teeth or claw-marks, and her clothes weren’t in tatters. It was not a Volgar attack; she’d fallen from the ledge above. Jerick was the first to close the distance and kneel at her side, touching the white skin of her throat with the impudence he usually reserved for Kjell.
“She is warm, Captain, and her heart still beats.”