Son of Eaglefriend by Murray C. L

Author:Murray, C. L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

Blood

Roftome tried to set a stoic example while his flock screeched nervously around him, dwarfed by a reminder of the confines they thought they’d left forever. The beckoning ocean had comforted them with an offer of permanent refuge, escape routes along which no captor could follow. Now it was stolen from their sight behind an unnatural protrusion of the earth. This new curved wall was not of rock, water, fire, or air, yet it towered in a solid state like a composite of all four, and it had a twin that rose from the south in a grander, more rapid arc. Both were the jaws of one mouth that would clamp shut upon them after just a few sunsets, though the sun’s movement grew harder to track through the narrowing corridor high above.

He and others of his kind had outlived so many generations of humans who fretted about the end of the world that the very notion seemed nothing more than the shortsightedness of man. But how else could one describe this formation of a sphere that would seamlessly close off all life from the boundless heavens and seas? It would not shock him in the slightest if this abrupt end proved indeed to be a device of man.

Sydrenna had shared her knowledge of the Crystal Spear with him, and the horror that would ensue should the Ferotaur King come to possess it. Would she have sunk so low as to deliver it into such monstrous hands after learning that he, the king of the Pyrnaq, was not about his Mother’s business, and never truly had been for any of the days they’d flown together?

“It is her blanket come to smother us again, isn’t it?” said one behind him, and many others announced their agreement. “Her reach extends to every mountaintop, her sight to every valley. This is our punishment for daring to stray.”

“If we returned to her now, Roftome, would she be merciful? How long must we be buried before she would draw us out again?”

These initial bites of panic threatened to spread their venom beyond his control, so he propelled upward and flapped his wings broadly to summon their attention away from the entrancing threat. When he set down atop a boulder centered in their crowd, they focused on him only, and his voice commanded them to be calm. “You have no punishment to fear—no pit underground, no blinding cover, until you see me succumb to such traps, for I will see that no predator finds you without finding me first.” These last words echoed from a distant memory, one buried deep just as he had almost been in so many feet of snow. They were spoken by a man who stood over him, a man who had come not to mount, but to carry.

“Look at me, brothers,” he continued when the faded images and sounds left him. “Have the irons wrapped behind my wings again? Has my collar bolted shut at my throat? Our bonds are

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