Sword Quest Part 6

"Oh, the clue!" said Wind-voice eagerly.

Fleydur's head jerked up. He was looking at the crest of the hill where the archaeopteryxes had disappeared.

"I think perhaps we should think about the clue later," he said, staring hard at the sky. "I think-"

And then the others heard what he had: steady wing-beats thumping through the air.

Archaeopteryxes are invincible!-FROM THE B BOOK OF H HERESY

8.

SCATTERED TO THE W WINDS.

The friends exchanged panicked looks.

"We can outrun them!" Winger cried.

"Too late," Fleydur said grimly. "Listen to that. There must be a hundred of them."

"Where did they come from?" Winger whispered.

Stormac shrugged and tossed his staff from claw to claw. "Who knows? They met an army regiment who were sent to receive them, maybe. How we're going to fight them is more important than where they came from."

"We need to distract them," Wind-voice said abruptly.

They came over the crest of the hill, an armed band of archaeopteryxes, swords flas.h.i.+ng, maroon banners fluttering like ribbons of blood. Teeth glinted. Eyes flashed under leather headgear.

Rattle-bones was in the lead. "There they are!" His cry drifted to them faintly. "Seize them!"

"Ewingerale, keep the Leasorn safe and fly away!" Wind-voice shouted. "Quick! That new emperor can't get this gem. We can't let him know anything about the hero's sword! Fleydur, go with him!"

Fleydur flew with the woodp.e.c.k.e.r, slas.h.i.+ng a path in the sky. Stormac drew his staff and planted himself back-to-back with Wind-voice.

Again and again Wind-voice brought down his sword, beating away the talons that raked at his eyes and clawed for his heart. He knew he and Stormac could not last more than a few minutes, but those minutes might be enough to let Winger and Fleydur escape.

A huge archaeopteryx came from behind the ranks and swung a cutla.s.s that swept Wind-voice and Stormac apart. Gleefully, the large birds surged forward to fill the gap and keep them from each other. They were all laughing now.

Kawaka, Wind-voice realized with horror. Wind-voice realized with horror. The big archaeopteryx is Kawaka. Oh, Stormac, The big archaeopteryx is Kawaka. Oh, Stormac, he thought sadly. He could not see the myna anymore. He opened both wings wide and whirled toward where he had last seen him. The archaeopteryxes in his vision blurred into a muddied sea. They backed away as his sword tip whisked about their faces, but not for long. he thought sadly. He could not see the myna anymore. He opened both wings wide and whirled toward where he had last seen him. The archaeopteryxes in his vision blurred into a muddied sea. They backed away as his sword tip whisked about their faces, but not for long.

Wind-voice's blade smashed into Kawaka's helmet. It rang like a gong. His claws felt numb from the impact. He flew a little higher.

Kawaka cursed and roared a command. "That one-don't kill him! Take him alive!" A cudgel crashed full force between Wind-voice's shoulders, and he tumbled down. In a last attempt he spun again. The cutla.s.s sought him and slashed across his back and chest.

Everything dimmed and swayed and he saw twisting colors. His wings faltered. He came to again as he fell on the ground, and he simply lay on his back on the bloodied gra.s.s, staring through the layers of wings above him at a small patch of sky, a sky gray with despair.

They did not kill him. Instead, he was bound and blindfolded and dragged behind the soldiers to Castlewood.

"We have him," growled one of the archaeopteryxes, and at last the blindfold was removed. He was in a room. An archaeopteryx pacing there stopped and turned. It was the head of the scholars.

His eyes flashed. "Where is it?" he demanded, swis.h.i.+ng his sleeves left and right.

Wind-voice tried to look steady. "What do you mean?" His head felt too heavy for his body to hold upright.

The scholar seized the feathers on the back of Wind-voice's neck. "Where is it?" the archaeopteryx screeched. "Where is it? The gemstone in the sack! You had other birds fly away with it, didn't you? Where did they go? Don't pretend you don't know!"

"You won't get it anyhow." Wind-voice's sight went fuzzy.

"Tell me! Tell me!"

"No," gasped Wind-voice.

Then a smaller archaeopteryx scuttled in and spoke to the scholar, whose anger subsided at his words. He smoothed his robes. "The Ancient Wing shall see to you!"

Ewingerale and Fleydur huddled inside a hollow tree that had toppled onto its side, waiting to be sure all sounds of the archaeopteryxes' pursuit had faded away before they ventured out. The toothed birds had come close. A spear had actually been thrust through a knothole of the log where they were hiding and nicked one of Fleydur's flight feathers. But the soldiers had not found them and had moved on.

"What will Wind-voice and Stormac do?" Ewingerale clutched the bag, holding the gem to his chest.

"Let's hope for the best," the eagle murmured, unwilling to admit what he knew-that there was no hope. Wind-voice and Stormac must be dead birds or prisoners by now. Wind-voice and Stormac must be dead birds or prisoners by now. "We must get this treasure to safety first. They would want that." "We must get this treasure to safety first. They would want that."

"Safety," muttered Winger. "Where can we find a place of safety? What about the healer, Rhea? Can she help us?"

Fleydur shook his head. "We can't ask her to take such a risk. The archaeopteryxes seem to want this gem badly. They will search everywhere nearby. If Rhea were caught with the stone..."

Winger shuddered. "How about just digging a hole and burying it? Or hiding it in a hollow tree?"

"You know how chaotic these times can be. We might not find it again."

"But then where?"

"I don't know." Fleydur's feathers drooped. "I can't...I can't think of a place. The archaeopteryxes are everywhere these days. I was supposed to keep you all safe from them, and I failed even in that. Perhaps there's no hope. There's nothing we can do."

Ewingerale gripped the red gemstone and was startled to see through his tears the eagle, who had so much more experience and had traveled so much farther, looking hopeless. He realized that this time it would be he, and not Fleydur, who would give the encouragement they needed.

"It's not the end," he cried.

Fleydur stared into the distance. Despite his size, despite his huge talons and sharp beak, he looked quite frail.

"It's only the beginning," Ewingerale insisted. "We still have something to hang on to. This Leasorn gem-we'll take it across the ocean. We'll take it to its home." Ewingerale, surprised, found himself the one making the plan, almost as if he were as strong as Fleydur, or as tough as Stormac, or as brave as Wind-voice. "And there's a clue." He turned the gleaming gemstone over. "'What you love most is the key.'"

Callousness is essential to ruling the sky and the earth.-FROM THE B BOOK OF H HERESY

9.

A BRIGHT T TALE OF D DARKNESS.

Soldiers dragged Wind-voice along a hallway and thrust him into a small, private room. In a shadowy corner was the toucan, slumped inside a cage. Wind-voice was forced into a crouch on the ground, and then the soldiers were dismissed. Silence prevailed. Gradually, carefully, he raised his head. Wind-voice stared at Maldeor, and Maldeor let him stare, calmly unclasping his cloak and finis.h.i.+ng a large, ripe pomegranate.

The onyx beak ring shone upon the gray bird's beak like a shard of glittering black ice, but it was Maldeor's left wing that held Wind-voice's gaze.

It was not a bird's wing at all. Up to his left shoulder, the feathers and skin looked normal enough, but then it merged with a bony limb and had a pale, gray, vaporous membrane, bare of feathers, stretched over it, spreading out like a huge fan. The limb, near the arch of the wing, had three talons with s.h.i.+ny claws, which Maldeor flexed. He grinned dourly at Wind-voice's gasp.

"Not pleasant, is it?" he asked, smiling a little. "But...effective."

How did he grow such a wing? thought Wind-voice. thought Wind-voice. Can he still fly? Can he still fly?

Maldeor raised and lowered the grotesque wing. Then, as if losing interest, he folded it onto his back.

"You have suffered much, I think," he said, looking thoughtfully at Wind-voice. The white bird was surprised to hear something that might have been sympathy in his voice. "From my court I have heard that you showed defiance in old Hungrias's face. I like that; he deserved more birds treating him that way. Yet he tried to burn you on a fire, didn't he? That old toadstool! It must have been terrible...but I know what pain is like. The most worthy birds can turn suffering into strength. My mentor has taught me that. Are you that strong, I wonder?"

Maldeor lowered his heavy lids and sighed. For a moment, Wind-voice thought that the archaeopteryx emperor, despite his wry and tired face, was lonely. But the illusion faded.

Maldeor sliced another pomegranate open with a sudden jerk, using a talon on his left wing. Red juice spattered about, and the seeds tumbled out like rubies at his feet. "Weak birds have no right to live. Weak, ignorant, foolish, selfish birds-I have gained this throne to put an end to their evil. But I need a weapon to do so. I'm close to finding it already. But I think you may know something about it, since you were so interested in that gem. So perhaps you are able to help me."

"Waterways...birds live near waterways..." Stormac was panting, flying as hard as he could through torrents of rain, following the path of the river that ran through Castlewood.

He tried not to think but to focus all his energy on seeking some movements of birds in the trees on each bank. Trickles of blood dripped down his chest, mixing with the rain. His berry pendant swung to and fro. He must fly faster...faster...The archaeopteryxes had taken Wind-voice toward Castlewood. But Stormac knew he could do little against them on his own. He needed help.

He glimpsed a flash of red and blue in a great grove of trees far down the south bank. "Hey there!" he croaked over the roar of the river. "Help me!"

His overworked wings were throbbing and he coughed out rainwater, but relief swept through him as he neared and saw that the birds he had seen were macaws, known for their resistance to the archaeopteryxes. "Help. I really need help," he gasped. "My friend and I were attacked by archaeopteryxes in the desert. I managed to survive, but-" He landed on a branch, and his vision blurred as tears oozed out of his eyes. He blinked rapidly. "Please, can you help me find him? Maybe he is still alive..." Then, to his astonishment and disappointment, his legs wobbled under him and he slumped onto his perch, his wings hanging by his sides.

The two macaws talked briefly together in low, muttering tones and then came forward to carry Stormac between them. "My friends, please," he mumbled, but he was too weak to object as they took him to a clearing in the woods. A small fire was burning in a ring of stones under the shelter of a tree whose thick branches were interwoven with vines to keep the rain out. They laid Stormac down near it.

A medicine bird stepped forward and offered him a cup of warm herbal brew. "I am Kari," she said. "A long way you've come. What brings you here, friend?"

So Stormac, reviving a little, told her and the macaws of the legends of the hero, the herons' amber, Rattle-bones and the red Leasorn, and the battle.

"...I don't know, but clang, clang, clang, and I lost sight of Wind-voice, feathers and all," he said. "I was trying to fight my way back to him when a warrior with a morning star struck me and sent me sailing into a tiny crack between two boulders. I went out like a candle. The crack was too small for them to fit in, thank the Great Spirit! I must have looked quite dead. I guess they jabbed at me with their longest weapons and hooked out some of my chest feathers as a trophy..." Stormac trailed off. "All this, for a gemstone!"

"The gemstone was worth it," Kari said sternly.

Stormac knew he owed the macaws a great deal, but he felt his anger rising. "Worth my friend's life?" he demanded.

Kari didn't answer directly. "You said the heron's yellow gemstone has carvings on one of its facets," she remarked. "And you think the red one is probably like it."

The myna nodded.

"Well," she continued, "we have a gem of our own. It is a great treasure of our tribe. There is a clue written on it-"

"Clues! Heroes! I don't care! The gemstones themselves are lovely enough, but I place life before fables." Stormac's face was stricken. "Wind-voice, that young fellow...he had such a keen interest in them, more than the rest of us, and now whether he's dead or alive I don't know!"

"But you kept the red stone away from the emperor, even if you don't believe in the story of the gems," Kari insisted. "For that we are in your debt.

We'll send birds to search for your friend and help you all we can; for now, you must rest."

Fleydur grew strangely still, as if listening to an echo of Winger's words. What you love most is the key. What you love most is the key.

"Love," he murmured. He ruffled his feathers in a fl.u.s.tered manner, paused, and repeated, "Love." He glanced at Ewingerale, agitated. "I wonder," he said, "if those clues are not just clues to help the hero find the sword but words of wisdom. If it hadn't been for love, I wouldn't have been so happy once, and so unhappy now. If it hadn't been for love, I would not have been in bells and beads, with song and dance..."

"You told us that you're an orphan from the Skythunder Mountains...but you aren't," Ewingerale said.

Fleydur reached out a claw and touched the Leasorn. "No. I'm not an orphan, but I have no family. Once I was a prince; strange, isn't it, Winger? I was a son of Morgan, the chieftain of the eagles. My brother, Forlath, and I were kept in our mountains by our elders. Seeing our size and number, the archaeopteryxes did not trouble us mountain folk. They expanded their lands everywhere else, but they stopped at our foothills.

"You know how youngsters are; I was curious. I'd seen archaeopteryxes, but I knew there were more things out there as well, more kinds of birds. But as the eldest son of the leader, I was expected to be perfect: brave, stalwart, familiar with every event in our history and each bygone battle; good with a sword, with military strategies, and fancy flying skills for display. I wasn't supposed to be filling my head with dreams about the world beyond the mountains."

"Your family loved you," Ewingerale said.

"Yes, and I loved them, too. But one day when a woodland sparrow from beyond came and told stories of misfortune and terror...I changed. She was a musician, too. She played a reed flute."

Ewingerale understood. "Then you loved music."

"Did I! It was such a heartwarming thing. I'd secretly hum melodies in the valleys when n.o.bird was around. Eagles don't sing, you know-not really-and music was supposed to be beneath the dignity of a prince. But from then on I was distracted, thinking of songs. I learned my sword well enough, and knew enough flying tricks to last me quite a while, but as I listened to my tutor's lessons on this or that long-dead bird's history and deeds to make the tribe safer and better, I couldn't help thinking, Certainly this is important, but this is the past. What about all those suffering birds out there, in the forests and flatlands beyond our mountain stronghold?

"On the other hand, Forlath was everything I couldn't be. He was perfect-wonderfully so-and I felt that n.o.bird would miss me if I went, for he would be a much better leader than I would be.

"And so, one night after a lesson on history, I slipped away down the mountains. I had not flown far when I found a campfire. The poor souls there! They let me join them and offered to share their bread and beetles. It could not be compared to the feast of river mussels and fish with pine seeds that had been spread on the table at my home, but it was all they had, and they shared it willingly. I told them I would sing in return for what they gave me. Oh, but Great Spirit, Winger! The poor fellows seemed to be in another world, so happy. Their eyes seemed to be cleared of doubt and worry. When I left them, they looked stronger. I was dazed as I reached home, and my father stormed out with many of the elders of my tribe. He'd suspected for some time that my heart was elsewhere. He'd sent a bird to spy on me when I left, and that bird had reported back everything I had done.