“And what did you talk of?” Shamil prompted.
“Oh, many things over the years.” Rignar placed the onyx in his satchel before rising, hefting the strap across his shoulders. “Things that made me abandon my life of greed and embark upon a very long road that eventually brought me here, to find this.” He patted the satchel, then moved to the cave mouth, crouching to begin the climb down. “Time we got back, I think.”
“But why?” Shamil persisted, hurrying to follow. “What for?”
“The same thing that brought you here: a desire for restored honour.” Rignar began his descent with much the same fluency as his ascent, swiftly disappearing from sight and forcing Shamil to scramble in pursuit.
“How does seeing Sharrow-Met in your dreams dishonour you?” he pressed. “I would have thought the opposite would be true.”
“The things she told me led me to many places and many acts. All of them necessary but not all of them admirable. I have stolen, lied, cheated . . .” Rignar fell silent, and Shamil glanced down to see him paused in midclimb, his balding head lowered. “And killed, all in service to words told to me by a woman who lived four centuries ago. Perhaps”—he let out a humourless laugh as he resumed his descent—“you’re right, and I am mad after all.”
“But her words were true.” Shamil leapt clear of the cliff as they neared the base, landing on the outcrop at Rignar’s side. “They led you to the onyx. There must be a reason.”
The mage regarded him in silence, his expression a mix of subdued amusement and apologetic regret. “Of course,” he replied eventually, shrugging. “But telling you won’t change what will happen here. Nor make it any easier.” He stepped towards the ledge, then stopped as Shamil moved into his path, arms crossed and face stern with insistent resolve.
“Make what easier?” he demanded. “What is going to happen here?”
Rignar’s sigh was that of a weary but indulgent parent who couldn’t be bothered to spank a defiant child. “The legends are at least partly true regarding the Sentinels. At least in the manner of their founding. Sharrow-Met did create them and call upon the great wings to provide them with allies in the centuries to come. Their purpose has always been to contain the vile issue of the Maw, but their very existence conceals a darker truth: Sharrow-Met failed. She defeated the Voice’s malign horde and drove it into the bowels of the earth, but the Voice persisted. She told me she wasn’t even certain it could be destroyed, and so created the Sentinels to contain it whilst she began a quest to discover the means of ensuring its ultimate defeat. A quest, it transpires, that proved either fruitless or endless.”
“So it’s true? She still walks the earth?”
Rignar shook his head, lips forming a sad smile. “I don’t know. Our conversations take place on that empty plain and nowhere else. It took her months to traverse it, even with her black wing’s help, and every night she would camp and talk to me via the mind of the man who travelled with her. For years the visions have only repeated what she has told me before, revealing nothing of her fate, what she found beyond that plain. I know she went in search of the remnants of the immortals, the undying beings said to have once held dominion over the earth entire. ‘From their seed did the Voice first rise,’ she said. But traces of the immortals are rare, their stories too ancient and wreathed in myth to even be called history. Perhaps she really will return one day, but I find it . . . unlikely. She isn’t coming to save us. I think she suspected that would be the case and so in me found a means to contest the Voice when it finally rose again.”
“The Voice will rise again? She was sure of this?”
Rignar glanced over his shoulder at the smoke-shrouded statue and endless plume of yellow-grey foulness leaking from the Maw. “‘As long as there be malice in the world, so will the Voice contrive to persist.’ Those were the last words she said to me at the end of her trek across the plain. If she spoke true, I think we’ve both seen enough of this world to know that the Voice may have grown stronger than ever.”
7. The Leap
The helms Ehlias issued to Shamil and Lyvia were a testament to the smith’s skills in that each was a perfect fit despite being constructed purely by eye. They weighed less than Shamil had expected but still possessed a decent heft, the weight distributed evenly between the elongated blade that extended two feet from the rear of the helm and the brass-and-copper mask that comprised the visor. This protruded several inches in front of the wearer’s face to accommodate three sets of lenses.
“First is just plain glass,” the smith explained. “Half an inch thick so it’ll guard your eyes from any claws that come stabbing. Flick the lever on the side to switch to the next.”
Shamil duly pressed a finger to the curved piece of iron on the side of the helmet and found himself confronted by the irregular and colourful mass of an old burn mark on Ehlias’s forehead.
“Fine-ground curved glass,” he said. “Gives you about three times the sight you’d normally have. Can’t match the birds, of course, but it might let you see a Maw beast before it gets close enough to sink its teeth into your throat. Good for spotting vehlgard on the ground too.”
The third set of lenses rendered the smith’s workshop a shadowy alcove of deep shadows, transforming the glimmer of his oil lamp into a faint pinprick of light. “Powdered obsidian mixed into standard glass when it’s melted,” Ehlias said. “Protects the eyes from blinding light, and it can get awful bright when the crystal-heads start flying.”
They had only an hour to accustom themselves to the helms before Tihla came to ask them a question that had become a daily ritual after their fourth visit to the nest. Shamil had expected some measure of satisfaction, perhaps even a small glimmer of pride, when he gave his answer only to receive a frown of deep skepticism in response.
“You ready?” the second wing asked. “There’s no doubt?”
Shamil didn’t allow his gaze to linger on Tihla’s frown, replying with a firm nod and as much certainty as he could muster. “Kaitlahr now accepts food from my hand and has allowed me to touch him. I feel the bond.”
“Enough to name him, apparently.”
“Yes. It means ‘golden storm’ in the ancient tongue of my homeland . . .”
“I don’t care what it means, fledgling. Neither does your bird. Naming them is our custom, one we adopted long ago, but only when we’re sure they’ve accepted us as riders.” She stepped closer, brow creasing further. “There’s no shame in waiting,” she told him, voice pitched far below her usual stridency. “Build the bond over weeks, months if that’s what it takes, if it’s truly there. The leap is not to be taken lightly. If you fall, you fall, and you’ve seen the bones of those that judged this wrong.”
Shamil’s hesitation was brief, but he knew she saw it. The bird he had named Kaitlahr was the same huge but youthful fire wing that had consented to accept his offered meat during his first foray into the nest. In truth, it was the only bird that continued to do so, and despite his claims, Shamil felt no real connection to the creature. He saw occasional glimmers of scrutiny in Kaitlahr’s eyes, and he hadn’t lied when he said the bird had allowed him a touch, but only once and for no more than a second before flaring its wings and launching itself into the gloomy recesses of the nest. Nevertheless, he clung to the notion that the fire wing had accepted him and would do what was required when he leapt. Rignar’s words had left little doubt in his mind that his chance to win his disc would shortly arrive, and the prospect of failing to grasp it held more terrors even than the leap.