“We have a good deal for you to do, Master Mage,” the first wing said, turning back to Rignar. “The Eyrie has a decent stock of crystals, but that will soon change in the event of another incursion.”
“Is such a thing expected?” Rignar asked.
“The Maw is sparing in the signs and portents it provides. It could belch flame for a day, and yet the skies remain clear of its foul denizens, only for dozens to spew forth a fortnight later. I’ve often thought we could do with a seer in the Eyrie, but as yet none has felt sufficiently disgraced to join our family.”
“They tend to be a solitary lot,” Rignar agreed. “Disgrace is reserved for those of us who actually engage with the world.”
“Ah yes, the world.” Morgath’s brows rose in faint interest. “How fares it?”
Rignar’s face formed a humourless grimace. “Poorly. Not so many of the Treaty Realms still hold to ancient obligations, hence our number.”
“Numbers aren’t everything. I’d rather three stout hearts come in search of restored honour than a hundred souls forced to our door by mere obligation.”
He smiled again, less broadly, before turning to Tihla, voice lowered. “I’ll need to take Fleyrak for another patrol before nightfall. Saw an odd shadow in the smoke.”
The second wing’s scarred brow creased in concern. “Something new?”
“Or just a trick of the light. My eyes aren’t what they were.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“You have more pressing duties.” He cast a meaningful glance at Shamil and the others. “I’ll take Shirmar. He’s fully healed now and keen to get back into the sky.”
“Take Lamira too,” she told him, her tone hard with insistence, before adding with a bland smile, “Her eyes are younger.”
Morgath gave a brief laugh, then turned to bow to the three new arrivals a final time. “Tihla will see to your training. Throughout the days ahead it would be best to remind yourselves that what she does, she does out of love for family.”
He turned and walked away, leaving Tihla to regard them with a baleful eye. “Understand this,” she said in very precise tones, “I do not love you. Mage.” She beckoned Rignar forward, pointing to the western edge of the Eyrie where the carved tiers abruptly ended in a stretch of vertical rock. It was covered from base to crest in wooden scaffolding, the rock face featuring numerous circular, cave-like openings too regular of appearance to have been naturally formed. “Best if you take Shelka’s old chamber. It’s on the lowest tier, second from the left. She left behind a pile of books and trinkets you may find a use for. Get settled, and join us to eat after dark. You’ll go to the nest tomorrow. Better hope one likes you, or you’ve had a wasted journey.”
Rignar hesitated, turning to regard Shamil and Lyvia. “I assumed I would be training with my friends . . .”
“Mages don’t train,” Tihla interrupted. “Can’t risk losing your talents. Apart from the leap, of course. No sentinel can avoid that.”
Rignar gave a reluctant nod, forcing a smile at his younger companions. “Until tomorrow, then.”
After he started for his new home, Tihla stood in silent regard of her two charges, gaze roaming over their various weapons. “Know how to use that, do you?” she asked, gesturing to the strongbow slung across Shamil’s shoulders.
“I do,” he replied.
She blinked before her eyes slid to Lyvia, narrowing with a resentment Shamil assumed resulted from the disrespect the noblewoman had shown to the first wing. “And you?” Tihla flicked a finger at the sling dangling from Lyvia’s belt.
“All women of my house are trained in combat from a young age,” Lyvia replied promptly. “Proficiency in weapons is considered as important as comportment and etiquette.”
The edges of Tihla’s mouth curved very slightly. “We’ll see. For now”—she nodded to a stack of broad-bladed shovels resting near the gate—“you have a far more important task to perform.”
4. Fledglings
“Morgath Durnholm was the worst pirate in the entire history of the Treaty Realms.”
Lyvia’s words were muffled somewhat by the scarf she had fastened over her nose and mouth in an effort to assuage the stink, but Shamil detected the heat in her words, nonetheless.
“He didn’t seem . . . piratical.”
“What?”
Like her, he had covered his mouth so was obliged to pull down the black silk kerchief in order to repeat himself. “He didn’t seem . . .” Shamil choked off as the miasma that filled the roofless channel immediately assailed his nostrils and throat. He coughed, fixing his kerchief back in place and shaking his head.
“They say he took over a hundred ships,” she went on, grunting as she forced her shovel through a particularly stubborn mound. Once dislodged from the stone, it came apart to unleash a stench so thick they were forced to the tunnel mouth, where they spent several minutes retching and heaving clean air into their lungs. This end of the tunnel led to the south-facing flank of the mountain, ending abruptly in a sheer drop of dizzying depth, the stone below streaked with white and yellow from years of discarded effluent. They had learned over the course of the previous two days that seeking relief at the tunnel’s other opening would earn only a rebuke from Tihla and a curt instruction to get back to work.
“He wasn’t kind to the crews either,” Lyvia continued in a gasp, slumping against the tunnel wall. “Dozens of sailors thrown to the tiger fish for his sadistic amusement. When the king’s fleet finally caught him, it’s said he spat in the admiral’s face and demanded immediate execution.”
“And yet here he is,” Shamil pointed out. “Pirate no longer.”
“It was the admiral that brought him here, in chains. The admiral’s name was Argath Durnholm, you see.” She gave an exasperated sigh at Shamil’s puzzled expression. “His father. Morgath was . . . is a renegade son to one of the great houses of Mira-Vielle. A man of even slightly less noble blood would have been subjected to the eighty cuts, and that’s not a pleasant fate, let me tell you.”
“When was this?”
“Oh, before I was born, twenty-something years ago or thereabouts. I really didn’t expect to find him still alive, let alone first wing of this place.”
“And I didn’t expect to spend my time shovelling this.” Shamil cast a scrap of ordure through the opening with his shovel blade. “How many tons will it take to gain a disc, I wonder?”
Her response was drowned out by a piercing shriek that echoed through the tunnel with sufficient force to pain the ears. It was a regular occurrence, but Shamil doubted he would ever accustom himself to the calls of the mighty birds roosting in the great cavern above. So far, the only evidence they had seen of the creatures consisted of a few overlarge feathers and the steady but unpredictable arrival of the substance they had the dubious honour of clearing away. Worse than the effluent, however, were the bones. Most were the cracked or severed remnants of goats or sheep, but now and again they would unearth a skull of unfamiliar appearance. Most were too badly damaged to make out much of their features, but Shamil eventually found one that was mostly intact.
“Any notion of what this might be?” he asked Lyvia. They had paused to enjoy the benefit of a gust of wind from the southern end of the tunnel, an infrequent event that would banish the stink for a blessed moment or two.
He crouched to retrieve the skull from a dried mound of droppings, the yellow ash falling away to reveal what at first glance he might have taken for the skull of a child. The rounded crown of the head was roughly human in shape, but the resemblance disappeared when he turned it to examine the face. Two overlarge eye sockets regarded him above narrow nostrils and a set of misaligned, jagged teeth. Each tooth was the length of a coffin nail and still sharp, as he discovered to his cost upon touching a finger to the tip of the most prominent one. It was a small tap, but blood swelled immediately from the pinprick wound, soon followed by a sharp pain more acute than seemed natural.