Sword Quest Page 5

  “I did not lie! I told the truth. You destroyed me,” Maldeor said, and for a moment his stiff calm evaporated. “I did nothing but serve you. All the knights of the court pleaded for me when I came back. You know they would have fought against you if you beheaded me, so you cut off my wing instead. You expected me to die. I didn’t. It was hate and vengefulness that somehow dragged me up from death. Do you know how I suffered, my stump constantly bleeding? I had been your best and most loyal knight. Who knows what other cruelties you have committed? Or what you will inflict on others in the future? I shall show you what an emperor should be.”

  “Guards!” the emperor cried furiously. “Take him away!”

  Maldeor laughed. “Didn’t your servants tell you that they had a message from Sir Kawaka? He has agreed to serve me now. His birds have overpowered your guards. Your court wishes for a new emperor to follow.”

  There came a tapping on the door. Maldeor quickly put on his heavy cloak again before opening it. Instead of the emperor’s guards, Kawaka walked in. Beside him was the chief scholar of the court. Other knights and scholars flanked them. Armed birds from Kawaka’s battalion pressed in close behind.

  With an angry stare, Hungrias tore out his beak ring and tossed it at Maldeor’s claws. “Take it! Take it!”

  Calmly Maldeor bent and scooped it up with one claw. He held it up. It was pure gold, finely crafted, with a single dark onyx sphere caught in a web of gold twine. Along one edge were inscribed the words RULER OF THE TOOTH-BEAKED.

  “Thank you, Ancient Wing,” said Maldeor, pocketing it. “I accept this responsibility. I will command your battalions. I will bring peace and order to the world. Everything will be under my control. There will be no more evil. There will be an end to birds like you.”

  “I can’t believe…you rascal, you criminal…” Hungrias huffed.

  Maldeor ignored him.

  Maldeor smiled serenely at the knights and scholars. He raised a claw and jingled the beak ring once.

  “Ancient Wing,” shouted the scholars, the knights, and the soldiers. Each thumped his left foot on his chest feathers in the archaeopteryx gesture of loyalty. That was all that was needed for a new emperor to rise.

  The soldiers behind them echoed the gesture. “Ancient Wi—”

  With a crash, Hungrias leaped forward with spider-like venom, a hidden sword drawn out and pressed against Kawaka’s throat. “Traitor…”

  Hungrias never finished his sentence. There was a metallic blur behind him, and he toppled, his sequined doublet now shining dully.

  “That old spider had tricks, always,” Maldeor said, sheathing his own sword. He had used his specialty, the Deadly Fate move, which seldom failed. He ruffled his feathers, then continued. “Send out word to every battalion that they have a new emperor now,” Maldeor ordered. “I have plans for them all. First, we will leave this place as soon as possible and return to Castlewood. This winter palace is for weaklings. Enduring the cold winter will strengthen us.” He glanced scornfully at the body of Hungrias.

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” The head scholar walked up, holding a piece of paper in his claws. “But before we go, Your Majesty, do you wish us to circulate the new list of wanted birds that Hungrias issued?”

  Maldeor was about to snap “No!” but changed his mind. “Read off the names.” He listened intently. Suddenly the words “013-Unidentified” made him jump. Yin Soul, my mentor, spoke of this bird! he thought. “Yes, 013-Unidentified, I want him!” Maldeor barked. “Double the reward of acorns and pine seeds. Make sure you put a sketch of his face on the posters. What crime did he commit?”

  “He yelled openly at Hungrias and escaped against Hungrias’s wishes.”

  Maldeor nodded and stored this information in his head. One thing at a time, he thought. Next, Kauria. He spun around, turning to the chief of the scholars. “All right then, what do you know about Kauria?”

  The old archaeopteryx blinked in surprise. “Kauria? It is a legend, my lord, a mythical island where snow never falls and the flowers never fade, ruled by a phoenix, Pepheroh. But it is a just a story. Nobird with any learning thinks it truly exists.” He faltered a little under Maldeor’s stern glare.

  “It exists,” Maldeor said fiercely. “And I will find the way there. Search your books and scrolls. Tell me anything you find. All of you!” His gaze traveled across the group of birds.

  “Your Majesty, here is a yellow Leasorn gem, which Kawaka had brought.” The head scholar raised the gemstone that had been stolen from the kingfishers.

  The words are in Avish…I must learn the language in time and decode them, Maldeor thought. Feeling better, he thundered on. “Now then, anybird you meet, soldier or slave, who knows anything of Kauria—I want to speak to that bird. Let that order go out to every archaeopteryx in the land. Is that understood?”

  “Aye, Ancient Wing.” They all bowed.

  The world is in my claws, Maldeor thought as he rolled the beak ring slowly in his talons, back and forth, back and forth.

  Chaos can cast a shadow on one’s conscience.

  —FROM THE OLD SCRIPTURE

  6

  BEWILDERED

  Wind-voice, Stormac, and Ewingerale flew along the edge of a small woodland. Suddenly Wind-voice, in the lead, ducked into the shadows of a thicket. The other two followed. Silently Wind-voice gestured with his beak toward an archaeopteryx ahead in a clearing, nailing a poster to a tree with a thorn.

  After the toothed bird had gone, Ewingerale went up and read the words on the paper out loud.

  “‘It is proclaimed that the head of 013-Unidentified, a bird white of feather with red bill and feet, is wanted by the Marshes Battalion as well as the new Ancient Wing…’ See?” whispered Ewingerale. “Your head is worth twenty bushels of acorns and pine seeds, plus a bag of treasure!” He looked up in shock.

  “A lot, when you think about it, in early spring,” Stormac muttered.

  “That’s not all.” Ewingerale read on. “‘Along with the aforesaid Unidentified bird, one woodpecker, number 216, and one myna, number 987, are wanted and are highly suspected to be accomplices…’”

  “We’ll have to be more careful than ever,” Wind-voice said. “Everybird will be looking for us now.”

  Wind-voice was right. The swordcraft he had learned from Fisher was put to the test quite soon. As they were flying near the shores of a lake, five dark shapes suddenly melted from the trees. The commander, who was wielding a halberd, was in the lead. Two birds, armed with matching falchions, flanked him to the rear so the three formed a V. Between those two flew an archaeopteryx with a spear, and another, spinning a slingshot, brought up the rear.

  In combat, the stocky leader would hack with his halberd at whatever was in front of him. At his signal, the two birds with falchions would rush forward and block victims from escaping to the left or right. The spear bird would dive down underneath to the other side to fight from the back while the archaeopteryx with the slingshot would fly overhead to shoot down hard round stones. It was grimly effective, and it was exactly what they did as they discovered the wanted birds: 013-Unidentifed, 216-Woodpecker, and 987-Myna.

  The falchion-wielding bird on the left struck Wind-voice as familiar. He whirled to face him, bringing his sword to a guard position. The soldier attacked. Wind-voice dodged, but his foot was nicked.

  He recognized the face of Dubto. “013-Unidentified!” the archaeopteryx called.

  “You were kind to me once!” Wind-voice cried. “Why do you want to kill me now?”

  “It’s the command of the new Ancient Wing.”

  “But…why listen to him? Why not listen to your heart?”

  “He has the beak ring. It is the age-old custom.” Dubto’s face shone with fierce loyalty. “Archaeopteryxes must follow whoever wears it.”

  “This is…” Wind-voice looked bewildered. “What about yourself? What would you choose for yourself?”

  “I—” Dubto whispered, but he did not finish, for in
that instant Stormac swept up and thumped his staff on the archaeopteryx’s shoulders. Dubto plummeted away into the water below. Wind-voice looked around. The other soldiers had fallen as well and were struggling to rise again through the spray of water. Archaeopteryxes were powerful fighters but clumsy flyers.

  “Looks like you have trouble dealing with that one. Just lending a wing,” Stormac said cheerfully above the noise of the splashing water.

  Wind-voice was dumbstruck. “You almost killed him!”

  Stormac hovered, bewildered. “Wind-voice! They were sent to kill you! The archaeopteryxes nearly roasted you! Have you forgotten?”

  “Hurry!” shouted Winger. “We must fly!”

  Confused, Wind-voice matched wing beats with his companions till the archaeopteryxes could no longer be seen through the screen of lakeside trees. Was he fighting for revenge now? A picture formed behind his eyes: He, as an old warrior perched on a hill, saying, “Yes! I made him pay for that,” and checking off a grudge out of a list so long that it tumbled down the mountain slope. Is this what my life would be? he thought, troubled.

  Later that night, by their tiny campfire, Ewingerale came up to Wind-voice. Without a word, he carefully used a few strips torn from his vest to bind up the wound on Wind-voice’s foot. “Nothing is clear in life,” he whispered. Then, sitting back, he tuned his harp and started playing and singing a little song:

  Why do we fight?

  We often don’t know.

  Isn’t the reason we fight murky like stew?

  Thick like split-pea porridge.

  We often don’t know what’s false and what’s true,

  Just face it with some courage.

  Wind-voice listened mournfully. He tried to smile back at Winger. The song helped a little, but confusion still swirled in his head. Had Stormac’s warrior logic been correct? Could it be truly right to kill a bird who had once been kind to him, even if that bird had been sent to kill him now? Or was there some other way?

  As they traveled on, they passed fresh ruins of homes. Once they saw birds gathered together in an eerie cemetery, staring at the sky. “We’ll join the dead soon, we’ll join the dead soon,” a wren bawled. Vultures spanned overhead. When Stormac called to the mourners, asking what had happened, they only said, “Maldeor’s back.”

  “Who is Maldeor?” Stormac demanded.

  No answer.

  “A league away, there are more carcasses.” They could faintly hear the croak of one vulture to another.

  “I don’t care!” the second vulture howled from the ground beside a still body. He looked wildly about. “For a long time I was glad the archaeopteryxes had taken over. Rotting carcasses that were unburied and unclaimed were bountiful. But it’s different when one of them is my own murdered sister.”

  Wind-voice and his friends helped the stricken vulture bury his sibling. Winger cried softly:

  The howling wind carries away our elegies.

  Behold: white bones piled up at the graveyard,

  Unburied.

  Dear ones killed,

  Neither by gods of thunder nor plague

  But by toothed birds.

  Can wailing call them back?

  Can mourning comfort their souls?

  Only ghostly songs echo.

  We can’t let this happen—the world, turning into a graveyard! Wind-voice thought. “I must find the hero and help stop the archaeopteryxes,” he said aloud.

  The marshland grew drier, turning into a forest. Wind-voice’s injured foot worsened. The wound had gotten infected, and the foot was beginning to swell. Stormac asked directions of a small, frightened hummingbird, who told them the way to a beech tree in a thicket where a healer, a shrike named Rhea, could be found.

  Just outside her bush, Rhea, wearing a faded purple shawl, sat tending to the wounded birds. When Wind-voice showed Rhea his right foot, she applied a pungent paste to it and bandaged it. “Here, drink this and you will feel better.” The delicate old shrike gave Wind-voice a cup of crabapple cider. “There is something I must attend to. Rest here as long as you wish.”

  She went deeper into her thorny bush.

  Wind-voice wondered if it was his imagination, but he heard faint murmurings, as if from voices in the distance. Then a small finch, one wing wrapped in a clumsy bandage, came through the door and asked for the healer.

  “She went through there,” Wind-voice said, and hobbled over to call her. He found that the murmuring voices grew louder as he went farther into the bush. From the wide eyes of Stormac and Ewingerale, he knew they heard them too.

  They ducked under a low branch of the bush and found themselves inside a tree. The bush concealed a secret entrance to the beech tree, which had a hollow trunk. Cracks in the bark above let in light. Many birds were crowded into the hole, some with battle scars, some wearing the robes of scribes. Young and old alike perched, listening. Not all were forest birds. A sandpiper twitched uncomfortably in a pile of wood chips. A bright lyrebird made a splash of color in the corner.

  The three companions slid into the back row, concealing themselves behind a dry old branch with a pointed tip.

  “…as I have said, a new threat seems to be gathering,” a troubled chiffchaff was saying. “That knight, Maldeor, the one who lost the prince and was abandoned to die, is alive. And he’s back. It’s rumored that he dethroned Hungrias himself! He’s searching, too, searching for something, and killing whatever gets in his way. You all know of his notorious Deadly Fate move.”

  “What should we do, then? How can we protect ourselves?” one of the younger birds said.

  The dry old branch beside the three listeners suddenly became animated. The pointy tip opened and said, “Aye! Tell us!” The thing was not wood at all but a bird, a tawny frogmouth, so camouflaged that they had not recognized him.

  A gruff voice rang out. It belonged to a proud old mockingbird. “I’ll tell you what we must not do. A false notion spreads fast. Put a drop of ink into water and pretty soon everything’s cloudy. Some have the false idea that we can ally ourselves with the archaeopteryxes. The Three Brethren have done it already. See where it has gotten them! The crows and ravens and mynas are no better than servants.”

  Wind-voice heard Stormac, beside him, draw in a sharp breath.

  “If you befriend them, they’ll turn on you or use you like a tool,” the mockingbird went on. “We must stay apart from them. Don’t be sympathizers or weaklings.”

  “You speak in generalizations,” Rhea the healer argued. “‘They,’ ‘we’? We are all birds, all of the class Aves. Can an entire race truly be evil?”

  “Well, yes, I suppose you have some individuals who are different,” the mockingbird conceded. “But just a few; and how important are those few? Most are our enemies and must be destroyed. Yes, there is another false notion that we must guard against: the idea that help will be arriving soon. There is no help but ourselves. Believe in such a thing and we’ll be languishing, vulnerable. We must—”

  Wind-voice crept out from behind the frogmouth. “But a hero is coming! We just have to prepare for him and help him.”

  “Hero?” the mockingbird sneered. “Who? Where is this hero? Why hasn’t he shown up before now?”

  “I don’t know,” said Wind-voice. “But when he comes—”

  “Where did you come from?” the mockingbird demanded. “Who let you in here?”

  A young eagle stood up. “Sir…please. He’s got a wound. Rhea was—”

  The mockingbird stood, his wing tips flicking in anger, white patches flashing. “Were you hatched yesterday? This hollow, why, it belongs to us, the seasoned and aged. You can’t even hold a sword properly. What made you think you have the right to speak here?”

  “I will not have my patient mistreated,” Rhea said, and stood up as well.

  “He’s the unidentified bird!” the frogmouth shouted. “Those three, they are the ones from the posters…the ones the archaeopteryxes want.”

  “See? See?
Getting yourselves into trouble. Calling attention to yourselves, and then coming here to risk our lives as well!” the old mockingbird spluttered. “Nowadays youths think wars and battles are fun and games!”

  As the meeting broke into an argument, Wind-voice stood still, shocked. Ewingerale was blinking rapidly, looking flustered. “Why don’t these birds understand what we want to do,” he whispered.

  Wind-voice shrugged miserably. “I guess it’s because I look so different. I belong to no species. We’re younger than they are. We don’t carry their bias.”

  Just then the young eagle sidled through the crowd and made his way to Wind-voice and his companions. “Come on now, my laddies, this is not a good time. Quickly!” The eagle brought them through Rhea’s thicket and back to the outside world. “Don’t mind the mockingbird. Can’t blame him, poor bird, he lost his son and daughter to the archaeopteryxes. But you three had better get out of sight. Too many eyes and ears here.”

  Stormac remembered Fisher telling them of an eagle friend when they left. “Are you Fleydur?” he asked.

  “Of course!” Fleydur smiled gaily. A broad, braided band of ribbons interwoven with all sorts of beads and small medallions crossed one shoulder. On it hung clusters of silver bells.

  “Fisher told us about you. He said you’d help us cross the river,” Wind-voice said.

  “I know he did. I got a message three days ago. I suppose you’ve had to travel slowly and keep out of sight.” The eagle checked the position of the sun. “Now, now…I imagine he meant for you to cross the Amali River into the Dryland. Archaeopteryxes are fewer there. Yes indeed, I will see you safe all the way.

  Now,” he added, looking into a knapsack, “the checkpoint is several miles east of here. You three wear these.” He produced several frills and bells to be hung over their shoulders.