Sword Quest Read online

  How lost her face looks! She lost her children. I lost my mother. This is what war does to birds, Wind-voice thought sadly. He looked down at his plate. The delicious smell almost unnerved him. For a bird who had lived on spoonfuls of watery bulrush-root soup, this was a feast for a king. There were worms with chokeberries. The worms were long and thick, roasted to perfection. Brown and crisp, the skin had rich fat sizzling between the cracks, and the juicy meat still had a tint of pink. The chokeberries, boiled into a rosy sauce, brought out that tender, earthy flavor so unique to worms.

  Between beakfuls of food, he and Winger told the marshland birds what had happened. “I burned myself off the spit and flew out of the smoke hole, flaming. Then, fortunately, Winger saved me,” Wind-voice finished. He did not mention the strange dream of Yin Soul.

  “Brave thing you did. That’s the true spirit!” a kingfisher said, cheering.

  “Aye! What a tale,” an egret agreed.

  “I think…” Ewingerale murmured tentatively, “I think I would like to play a song to celebrate this. Would you happen to have some spare bowstrings?” To the surprise and admiration of them all, the woodpecker fed the string into the holes of his piece of curved wood with deft precision and, in no time at all, held a harp.

  Strumming it, the woodpecker sang,

  Fate is an underground river,

  We can’t possibly know what direction it flows

  Till we are carried along its twists and turns.

  But the waters are quite smooth now,

  Flowing quick and fast.

  We are happy and thankful that

  We’re free—long may it last!

  Let us hope that fate may bring

  Wonderful things next spring.

  His song flowed over the pools, which were pale green with a fine skin of duckweed. From them rose the crooked limbs of dead, bare trees. They were hung with curtains of Spanish moss, and their branches, sharp white wood, framed the sky like teeth. A few cold flakes of snow fell. It had been over twenty seasons since it last snowed here. It was both bizarre and beautiful, as if little stars in the vast, dark sky had decided to fall down.

  “It’s a pity, but those candles have all burned out…” Aredrem’s voice floated in the darkness.

  As the song faded, Fisher came over to Wind-voice. “Why don’t you rest?” the heron asked.

  “I’m afraid to,” Wind-voice admitted. He turned to Fisher. “Suppose something eats you from your inside, trying to control you. Suppose it lures you to do something, and you know it is not at all good, but you also know that if you listen too long, you will believe. It’s more dangerous than anything outside you. Perhaps the way to defeat it is never to give it a chance to speak to you.” Like Yin Soul, who promised me life in the face of death, he thought. Like fear, like despair, like greed, like anger.

  Fisher stared at the young bird. “After all you’ve been through, after living and struggling on when some would have just given up and died, nobird would dare try to force you to do something you didn’t choose. I think that your experiences and choices have tempered you so that you can be the master of yourself.” Because your heart and soul have awakened, Fisher thought.

  He watched as a strange calmness came over Wind-voice. Then the young bird spoke seriously. “Fisher?”

  “Yes?”

  “I saw you…practicing with the sword. There’s Stormac with his staff. I think we all need to learn how to protect ourselves in the days to come. My foot…will I ever…?” His voice trailed off. His right foot hung by his belly, the scales scratched and mangled. It was tinted purple with bruises and darkened blood within.

  “Yes, yes, you will,” the heron replied firmly.

  For the first time that Fisher had seen, the white bird smiled, revealing his youthfulness. But it was not a brief smile of joy or hope. It said: Fate lays a difficult path ahead for me. What I have done and what I am will shape my future.

  Smile on, little one. Always smile, Fisher thought.

  Then the young bird fluffed up his feathers, crouched on his good foot, tucked his head beneath his wing, and slept.

  Fisher slowly crept into the cedars, toward a hut made from planks of deadwood propped together. In it were the weapons of all the marshland birds. A crane sentry was stationed nearby. The crane stood with a rock held in his claws so that if he fell asleep while on duty, the rock would drop and he would be awakened. “Hello, Fisher,” the crane said, understanding. He allowed the heron inside.

  Fisher went to the back of the hut and bent down. Soon he straightened up again, holding a small sword of simple but graceful design. It was a blade that Fisher himself had wielded when he was young. Something light, quick, and true.

  Then he crept back, the coals in the fire dimming, holding that small weapon. Gently he opened Wind-voice’s balled claws and placed the sword’s hilt into the palm. The young bird did not stir, but the bruised claws closed tightly around the hilt. Fisher wrapped his own spindly claws around Wind-voice’s, feeling the power and strength of a determined young soul.

  “Yes, yes, you will,” he whispered again.

  Hundreds of miles northeast, where a blizzard was sweeping across ancient forests of spruce and fir, a beggarbird teetered on top of a hill, a dark flea-sized dot on the white mound.

  “Abandoned! Days and days, with shame for a hat and hunger for a coat. Nobird takes pity on me here. With one wing, am I even a bird anymore?” he shouted at the sky, his remaining wing raised. He waited angrily, but the storm only howled on. The dried maple leaves he had strung together and worn as a shirt rustled; brown-and-khaki tatters of his uniform on his gaunt frame below thrashed about in the wind. “No answer! You are like the rest. Always ignorantly scornful! Hateful!” The beggar wheezed. Wiping the dribble off his teeth, he lurched down the hill. The frostbitten and rotting stump of his left wing was bleeding again. Maggots writhed inside it, burrowing for warmth. “You eat me, I eat you,” Maldeor growled. He picked a slimy white one out with his beak and swallowed it. “So hungry…” He tripped and fell. He lay still. The dark frozen mass of blood on his shoulder shone like a garnet, eerily beautiful among his filthy rags.

  Gradually, snowflakes started to cover the beggarbird Maldeor, former head knight under Emperor Hungrias, now an exiled criminal.

  Strong of body, clever of mind, tactical, daring, but downtrodden enough to be vulnerable. Yin Soul had devoted every second to finding a bird matching this description. He needed a bird who would be clever enough to find the hero’s sword but still weak enough to take Yin Soul’s essence into himself. After his failure with Wind-voice, he still had Maldeor to fall back on, but he was afraid—afraid that Maldeor would recognize him as the one who had eaten the prince. “He won’t,” Yin Soul grumbled, and took care to rearrange his manteau before sending his raven messenger to fetch the archaeopteryx. I have to be more careful this time and not reveal everything all at once, Yin Soul thought.

  Revenge. Power. Strength. Yin Soul promised Maldeor all of these.

  “Look at yourself. A knight, reduced to a crippled criminal. Your eyes spew flame while they glaze, even now, in death.”

  “Don’t taunt me.”

  “Feisty, aren’t you? Here you have two paths ahead. One you know: death. But I can still provide another. Once I was like you. I was robbed of my potential and power by Yama and the Great Spirit and forever bound in this accursed place between the living world and the dead. But I can help you find the power I never had.”

  Maldeor did not look up at all. After his wing had been chopped off, his face had developed a permanent grimace. “I’m waiting to die. Let me die. I’m not going to live in the agony and shame of a one-winged bird.”

  “You would die and let your enemy, Hungrias, triumph? I can give you a wing. It’s not a normal wing, but it shall fit you even better than the one you lost.” In the shadows, Yin Soul raised his wing and hacked swiftly down. His turned face shielded his expression of pain as one hind wing came
off of his ghostly body. It is worth it, he thought, gritting his teeth. He hunched over and hopped forward into the light again. His manteau was long and wide enough to hide his missing wing.

  “Here,” he said, choking, and raised a bony wing almost like a bat’s, with shimmering hairs growing out of pale scales that stretched over it. “Something neither sword nor arrow can destroy. It will let you fly once more. You can truly be a bird again.”

  Maldeor longed for it. To fly again, to have power over those who’d done this to him…but something was wrong with this offer. He knew it. He batted the wing off to one side.

  Yin Soul paused. He stepped forward and slowly drew a claw out from his tattered sleeve. He tenderly laid it on Maldeor’s blood-splattered head and turned it upward. As he gazed into Maldeor’s glazed eyes, two shining tears rolled slowly down Yin Soul’s thin cheeks. A flame hissed in the background.

  “Look what they have done to you.” His voice rippled. “Look what they have done to the world, these evil birds with nothing but their own power and pleasure in their hearts. Don’t you want to stop them? Won’t you let me help you?”

  He looked as if he grieved for Maldeor’s pain, for all the pain in the world. As if he knew what the archaeopteryx was suffering. As if he truly cared.

  “Please.” Maldeor believed that Yin Soul was sincere. His suspicions melted away and he broke down at last. “Please save me. Help me.”

  How was he to know that Yin Soul truly cared for nobird but himself?

  “As I am tied here, I cannot interfere directly in the affairs of mortals,” Yin Soul told Maldeor. “But I know much. The wing will help you fly again. See if you like it. But it is only a spirit wing, not made of mortal flesh. Every month, on the night of the new moon, you must return here, and I will give you a potion. You must drink it to give the wing strength. And, I will have something better for you later on. To shape the world into that of our vision, you will need the sword, the one the Great Spirit commanded Pepheroh to make. It’s hidden on the island of Kauria. I can give you one clue: Hero’s Day is on the day of the fifth full moon in a year and a half. However, there is a strange white bird called 013-Unidentified, who I feel poses a threat to your goals. Find and kill him. Then search for the gemstones, Leasorn gems, as some call them. They will give you the rest of the clues you need.” Yin Soul raised two wings upward. “That sword is waiting for a hero to wield it. It has the power to do anything…everything.”

  If you kill a thousand birds, you win a forest, yet if you kill an emperor, you own an empire.

  —FROM THE BOOK OF HERESY

  5

  SOON, SOON

  When Maldeor awoke, he jumped from the snow and tried to beat the air. The wing Yin Soul had given him worked. A malicious, gleeful cry tore from his throat.

  Having traveled along in Hungrias’s court during the winters when he had been a knight, he knew Hungrias was south in the Marshes Battalion. He took off in that direction, feeling his excitement rise with the temperature.

  Hours later, he was in a discussion with Kawaka.

  “I can’t believe it! You are still alive, and flying!” Kawaka said gladly. Hungrias had threatened to demote him because the unidentified slave had escaped. Now here was Maldeor, the great knight who had also been wronged by the emperor.

  “Follow me and overthrow Hungrias, Kawaka. When I am emperor I shall make you head knight.”

  “My soldiers and I shall serve you with all our hearts,” Kawaka vowed. “I remember the day when Hungrias ordered us to hack off your wing. We all knew that the loss of the prince wasn’t your fault. Soon, he will pay for the injustice.”

  For Wind-voice, the days in the marshland birds’ camp were the best he’d ever known. His wounds healed, and Fisher taught him how to wield the sword that had once belonged to the heron. Wind-voice learned quickly and found courage in the quick slashing movements, in the brightness of the steel as it sliced through the air.

  It was not only the training that gave him happiness but also his newfound friendships. When he was not playing his harp, Winger flitted around the field where Wind-voice practiced with Fisher, calling out encouragement. Stormac often came and practiced handling his staff alongside his friends.

  But the time couldn’t last, and Wind-voice knew it. “I can’t stay here. What if the archaeopteryxes started looking for me? I don’t want to draw trouble onto your heads, especially after all your kindness to me.”

  Winger had been writing in a diary, and now he looked up. “Wherever you go, I will go.”

  “I will come, too,” Stormac said.

  “You are welcome to stay with us,” Fisher told them. But when they insisted on leaving, Fisher sketched a map in the mud at his feet with one of his long toes. “The frontier territories beyond are safer. The archaeopteryxes are less numerous there. Near the Amali River you might find Fleydur, the eagle. There are other rebel groups across the river. He can take you to one or the other, if you wish to continue the fight against the archaeopteryx empire. But you don’t have to do so. You can strike out on your own if you choose. Find a peaceful place, if you can, where you can live out your lives. Nobird would blame you. This fight is a hard one, and we may never win it by ourselves.”

  Stormac scowled. Winger turned away, a look of longing on his face. But Wind-voice faced Fisher in surprise.

  “Do you truly think that?” he asked. “That we cannot win?”

  Fisher sighed. His long beak drooped. “I would not say this to many. There are great deeds to be done, young ones, but quite frankly, we alone cannot do them. We have no power or strength, though we take action in our dreams and hearts. The path ahead is too treacherous.” He stared into the sky. “But there is a hero who will succeed. He is coming…he is coming, and when he comes, he will release us from the claw of tyranny.”

  “Who is he?” Wind-voice’s words were shaky.

  “I don’t know his name, and his face is unclear. But he is coming, I know. When he comes, he will rescue the thousands of birds who are forced to live in hiding in barren lands. He will find good land for those birds to plant and harvest, and fill shriveled bellies. All birds will live side by side in peace.”

  Ewingerale looked up and listened as well, his eyes hungering.

  “If we had our gemstone, I would know more.” Fisher sighed. “That was a great loss. They say that gems like our Leasorn are supposed to hold clues to where a sword can be found, a sword that the hero will need.”

  “A sword? How can a weapon bring about peace?” asked Winger.

  “It seems like a paradox,” agreed the heron. “But it is not a war sword. Its hidden power will shake the evil. In the claws of the hero, it will bring happiness to us.”

  Wind-voice looked up wistfully and asked, “When is this hero coming?”

  The silence was cruel. “Soon, Wind-voice,” the heron said. “Soon.”

  Maldeor perched in the midst of Kawaka’ s soldiers, gazing quietly at the gate of the archaeopteryx emperor’s winter castle. A hood was pulled low over his eyes and a cloak hid everything but his scrawny claws. Snow fell, but he was still.

  Kawaka called out. Inside the gatehouse, an archer guard opened a small peephole. “What do you want in the middle of the night?” he demanded. “If you have a message to leave, be quick.”

  “I have a special message,” Kawaka said. “It is only for the Ancient Wing’s ears.” The guard surveyed the group. He was about to let them in when he saw Maldeor. Who is he? he wondered. Before he could ask, Maldeor raised his left wing slightly. The cloak he was wearing rippled away and left the wing bare.

  The guard swallowed. By the light of the moon, he saw moist gray skin. Beneath it, masses of blood vessels throbbed in and out of sight, as if challenging him. Though the rest of the creature’s body was still, the shiny black claws on the foot coming off the arc of his wing twitched.

  Whoever he is, he’s with Kawaka, so it must be safe to let him in, thought the guard with a shiver.
After a series of clicks, slowly the door opened a crack.

  Maldeor walked briskly in with Kawaka by his side and headed down the long green tunnel, past the lighted torches and trophies, past the soldiers on night duty and the servant birds. The scrawny head scholar he had bribed gave him a slight nod. Nobird attempted to stop him or question him. Maldeor turned before he came to the audience hall hung with jasmine, where Hungrias had received his tribute not long before. Down the left hall, up three branches, left again in the corridor, then right. There was no doubt or hesitation as he came to the final grand door, opened it, and slipped in.

  The emperor of Archaeopteryxes stood alone by his window, yawning, moonlight catching on the ring that hung from his beak. His body was swathed in a robe of red velvet, silk, and gold trim, and he still held a slice of crab pinched between two talons.

  “I’m back, Ancient Wing,” Maldeor said.

  The olive green feathers on the emperor’s neck stood on end. Beak ring jangling, he spun around and met a sight that made the crab tumble from his claw.

  “You—” Emperor Hungrias gasped, eyes bulging.

  “Yes, me.”

  “You’re still alive…” the emperor stammered. “Your w-w-wi—”

  Maldeor unclasped his damp cloak, the faintest of smiles flickering across his face. The cloth, maroon with a silver lining, fell in a glossy heap at his feet. He shook off the remaining snow. Maldeor raised his left wing. The Ancient Wing stared.

  “By my teeth, how could—” Again the emperor broke off his sentence, and again Maldeor smiled.

  “Why are you here?” gasped Hungrias at last, the green feathers on his fat cheeks trembling.

  “Don’t we both know?” his gray companion sneered. His sharp white teeth glittered like crystals.

  The emperor clutched the windowsill. It seemed best to vault out and flap away into the snowy darkness, but—no. “You murderer. And liar!” He propelled his fat body forward. “You killed my son. You lost the gemstone. You lied to me. Do you think that I am so foolish as to believe your crazy story of some four-winged dinosaur? Ha! Disappearing in flames…How dare you come back here!”