‘Time to fly,’ he said.
I climbed onto his back, strapped my own legs into the battle-seat and tried to make myself comfortable.
‘Ready,’ I said through the waves.
Ciera leapt upwards with his hind legs and spread his wings. Smoke and mist whirled beneath us as a divine wind gave the enormous skyearl lift. He roared through the waves, letting all of the strike force know we were on our way. Ciera was adept at broadwaving to large numbers of skyearls and now that he was bonded to an Anzaii, his communication abilities would expand even further.
Amadeus waved with one clawed hand. Ciera shot up and the dawn rays caught us in a burst of warmth and radiance. I lifted both hands in the air and revelled in the freedom of flight.
Ciera flew higher and higher. I belatedly wished I had worn the coat from Sarlice underneath the chainmail and flax cloak. Ciera’s breathing laboured and a great fog came from his mouth in the cold air. The same fog was coming from my mouth too. I wondered if shrouding was the same as breathing out vapour on a cold night.
‘It’s similar,’ Ciera replied through the waves.
The rushing air would have made it difficult for me to hear him out loud.
Ciera had flown so high that we were above several layers of cloud. We could not see any land below, but my Sleffion-kin knew exactly where he was going. Soon, I became aware of another presence in the waves. As the rays from the morning sun danced with the clouds around us, a hovering shape came into view ahead. A golden skyearl waited for us, marking a safe place for the shroud to be created.
We came to hover in front of them, which was very difficult for Ciera with his belly full of water.
‘Greetings Emperor,’ the skyearl cried in a distinctly female voice.
On her back was a girl of about seventeen. She was dressed in black armour like mine and sported the same black cloak and helm. It was heartening to think there would be other Anzaii to help the strike force. The girl bowed her head to me.
‘Astor,’ she intoned. ‘My name is Riftweaver. It is an honour to meet you.’
A glimpse of the golden skyearl’s perceptions told me how magnificent Ciera and I appeared. The shining blue, purple and green fur of the Emperor’s hide was dazzling in the dawn light. The young rider on his back was formidable, bearing a blue sword, wearing Anzaii armour. It was dizzying to see myself from another’s point of view. The golden skyearl and the girl sensed my accidental intrusion.
‘I apologise,’ I told them. ‘My wave-speech to Sleffions other than Ciera is newly acquired.’
The skyearl’s eyes glinted.
‘It comes to you surprisingly young,’ she said aloud. ‘Many humans work for decades trying to learn the skill and even then it is only possible with skyearls they already know and trust. You will go far.’
And even though the skyearl didn’t will it, I sensed her unspoken thought, ‘If any of us survive this war.’
‘How fares the battle?’ I asked.
‘We are holding our own for now,’ Riftweaver replied. ‘It will take more than a few thousand Zeikas to breach our perimeters.’
The fact that Condii’s leaders could spare Riftweaver for this task encouraged me.
‘There are many tasks to be carried out in a war,’ Ciera said. ‘While footsoldiers and Rada-kin march out to battle and skyearls patrol the skies, there are people going about their normal lives in Condii City. Back in the city proper, merchants are still peddling their wares, blacksmiths are hammering armour, street cleaners continue their work and water boys empty the slop buckets of those who can afford them.’
‘In other words, there is still time to defend the city,’ I replied. ‘You have to forgive my small-mindedness, Ciera. I come from a village of only a few hundred.’
‘The strike force will soon be there to assist you,’ Ciera said.
Riftweaver nodded. No more words were required. The golden skyearl flew away a fair distance and turned to watch. Ciera glanced back at me once and then focused his mind on the task. He drew in deep breaths of air. I felt the gathering of his will along with a heartfelt cry to Krii. A strange howling sound reverberated through the waves. Ciera swept downwards through the first layer of clouds. He blew out steam as he went, venting great gusts of white cloud. The shroud formed slowly behind us as he circled and soared. His body strained with the effort and I could feel a burning pain in his throat and stomach. The water he had spent hours swallowing earlier this morning was being released as vapour.
We flew on for what seemed like hours. Eventually the golden skyearl flapped away.
‘Until we meet again,’ the skyearl sent to Ciera.
The shroud behind and beneath us gathered into a tight mass, but on the edges it stayed wispy and vaporous. Ciera had formed a second level of mist about one hundred feet above the main shroud, shielding it from eyes above. Ciera’s shroud was easily the size of the strike force camp. When it was finished, he reached out his feet and collapsed onto the spongy, white surface in the centre. He rested there for some time, breathing heavily. Water dripped from his open mouth.
I stepped down from his back, thrilled with the swooping ride I had just enjoyed. The flight from Centan had not been nearly so interesting.
‘Flying is magnificent!’ I declared.
I tried to touch Ciera’s mind with my excitement, but he was unreachable. I knew he was just asleep—after such exertion it wasn’t suprising.
I wandered around on the platform, trying to get close enough to the edge so I could see below. It was difficult with the amount of mist around the edges. Every now and then, the breeze would lift the veil and a spectacular view came into sight. We seemed to be even higher than when the strike force had flown here. During the mission to come, Ciera would make the shroud move much closer to the ground. Right now, with the sun shining down around the edges of the cloud above and a fervent breeze lifting my hair, I could hardly imagine having a pitched battle on this very cloud.
I rested for a while and fossicked in Ciera’s pack a few times for food and water. As the day wore on the breeze became a buffeting force. With little else to do I soon became bored. Ciera seemed to be even further away from me now. If he dreamed, it was well out of my reach. I dried the drooling water from his lower jaw and stood beside him.
‘Astor, are you safe?’ Naltoch, Jett’s Rada-kin, touched my mind from far away. ‘The other Sleffion have noticed Ciera’s almost total withdrawal from the waves and the prince is concerned for your safety’
I reached back to the viperjay. ‘He seems fine—just sleeping.’
‘I suppose that is to be expected after creating such a mobile shroud,’ Naltoch said. I could almost hear the upturned pitch of a viperjay squawk in his sending. ‘It isn’t done very often.’
Now that I had my attention focused on the rest of the strike force, I could sense a jumble of conversation between kin. The words and feelings slipped and slid like dust motes in the air in front of me. I could tell they were there, but I couldn’t catch them. Several of the Rada-kin sensed my awareness of them and turned their thoughts to Tiaro and I. A wave of vertigo washed over me. I sat down hard on the surface of the cloud. Ciera’s shadow protected me from the late morning sun’s glare.
‘Astor Talon,’ came the gentle, rumbling wave of a bear named Kotor, ‘The strike force continues to prepare for battle. Prince Tyba has requested that we convey to you the information you will need.’
‘Very well,’ I responded. ‘I will do my best to commit it to memory.’
‘I will help you,’ Tiaro added.
Kotor and Naltoch’s presence in the waves became more pronounced and I sensed that the viperjay had landed on Kotor’s back. The physical touch heightened their ability to share senses and thoughts. The contrast between the two beings became more obvious at the same time as their thoughts aligned to deliver the information to me as coherently as possible. I received an image in my mind, at once close and far away. I tried to clear my thoughts and simply observe what they sent me, but it was hard not to feel the bear’s ceaseless, niggling hunger and the viperjay’s nervous restlessness.
When I thought about their differing perspectives, the image began to make sense. From the one came an intimate knowledge of terrain; humps and hollows, rocks, ravines, rivers and trees, then buildings, towers and roads. From the other came a vision much like a map, but instead of being hand-drawn and made up of symbols, it was like looking straight down on the landscape from Ciera’s back, with no clouds hindering the view. The rivers and ravines I’d seen from Kotor’s point of view suddenly fitted together as a majestic whole, a network of watercourses both dry and running. Trees dotted the landscape and dissipated gradually at the foot of an unnatural mound. At the top of the enormous motte were the city walls of Condii. Tiny drain-pipes emerged from a few spots around the motte depositing a slow trickle of city waste. The grass was greener there, but few people went near the dirty water.
Small details followed so that when I thought of Condii, I knew the best places to perch and preen, the places to find puddles after rain, how to pinch bread-dough from the bakehouse and quiet places under the rafters of the donjon and surrounding buildings in the bailey. I knew intimately the very fibres that made up the walls and rooves, the wells and bridges; even the smell of the red and black paint on the marketplace buildings and fence posts.
I bathed in my new-found knowledge. The amazing, but baffling, vision of a great many trees and rocks far beneath Ciera’s massive body started to make sense. The bent tree I had seen was a landmark and a scentmark. The little hollow with the patches of black bushes was a place to shelter and roll in herbs. The forest of yellow-barked trees was a snacking spot for skyearls. And I gradually found that I knew this place, knew it like I knew only the forests around Jaria. It was an inspiring sensation.
‘It’s called imprinting,’ Naltoch told me. ‘And it’s not unlike the learning that takes place when a young creature first imprints on its parent.’
I felt stuffed with new and unexplored knowledge, even though the imprinted map only extended a short distance around Condii.
‘And that is not all we need to convey to you,’ Kotor said gravely. ‘There are a few routes and rallying points you need to memorise before we join the battle.’
And so the unlikely pair combined once more to draw my attention to their dual vision of the terrain, one from the ground and one from the sky. By the time they were finished, I was certain I could easily navigate my way into and throughout the city and that I knew every good hiding place in the forest nearby. I also had a rough idea of where we would regroup if things went bad, where each of the Condiite armies were based and where to find food, water and medical supplies, among other things.
I spent the rest of the morning mulling over these things and trying to remember the best military tactics I’d learned over the years. There were other castles and garrisons throughout Tanza, from which a counter-attack could be launched to help Condii but, from all reports, the Zeikas had simultaneously assaulted the major outlying cities and so it would be wise for each castle and garrison to defend its closest major city only.
For the Zeikas to divide their own offensive armies like that could mean only one thing; they had far superior numbers to our own. I had never heard of such a force and knew I wouldn’t be able to come to terms with it until I saw them with my own eyes.
Chapter Twelve—Battle Plans
C
iera eventually stirred and his urgent need for food and water dominated my mind. He felt hollow and dry inside and a stinging weakness was spreading through his body. If we didn’t fly to land soon, we wouldn’t be able to. The great skyearl’s fur and feathers glistened with dew and it was slippery climbing on. Although my eyes had mostly adjusted to the brightness of the day, I was blinded by light as we launched off his newest shroud. The clouds beneath us seemed to glow with their own brilliant light.
Looking back, I saw the shroud following us lazily. Ciera swung backwards and forwards to slow his passage through the sky. The shroud moved slowly over a layer of creamy cumulous below us, protecting us from eyes below. Even if the Zeikas were scouting with their dragons, it was unlikely they would fly as high as we were, especially in exactly the right place to be able to see us. But Ciera wasn’t taking any chances.
Ciera’s shroud stopped following us when he felt it was safe to fly on without it. After that he shot through the air like an arrow. In very little time, he was landing near the strike force camp so he could feed on the lush vegetation. The smell of hunger and thirst was all around him. The silver in his saliva had gone thin.
‘You go on,’ he said aloud. ‘There will be more strategies and plans for you to discuss.’
‘What about you?’ I asked.
He shrugged. ‘It is more important that I regain my strength for the coming battle. Besides, you are my Sleffion; it is your role to speak for both of us when I am absent and convey information to me.’
I wondered if my memory would be as reliable as he expected. It already felt like it was about to burst; my head still ached dully. Leaving him to his tree-felling, I padded back to the camp. A tall stranger with iron-grey hair in a shaggy ponytail was talking to
A.S.T. Bero and A.S. Rialb. Tyba was engrossed in studying a map on a large tree-trunk table.
I removed my armour, except for the legguards, and sat next to my Great Aunt Jaalta on a large wooden log in front of the main camp fire. She was stirring herb-scented tea in an iron jug. She winked at me as I sat down, offering me a mug.
Some of the guardians were sparring in a stone-marked ring nearby. At least fifteen others stood around honing weapons, talking, eating or drinking.
‘Jaalta,’ I began, ‘When an Anzaii dispels a conjured beast, what’s to stop the Zeika from just conjuring another one?’
Jaalta sighed and shook her head sadly. ‘Nothing. For that very reason we need as many Anzaii as close together as possible. We may not be able to get down there and melee with the conjurers and kill them, but we can slow them down somewhat by dispelling again and again.’