Songs of the Earth (Wild Hunt Trilogy 1) by Cooper Elspeth

Author:Cooper, Elspeth [Cooper, Elspeth]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780575096172
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 2011-06-15T16:00:00+00:00

Aysha’s balcony was still in shade, but out past Chapterhouse’s walls the sun shone and the wind tossed the tops of the trees with a restless hand. Mare’s-tail clouds streaked the pale bright sky as if painted on with a brush.

‘Wind’s changed,’ Aysha said. ‘Backing round to the north. I think we might have seen the last of summer for this year.’

‘I was wondering when winter would get here,’ said Gair. ‘It feels strange for the weather to still be so mild so late in the year. In Leah we’d be tobogganing by now.’

‘Tobogganing? What’s that?’

‘A toboggan is a sledge – a wooden platform on runners,’ he explained, seeing her expression remain blank. He sketched one in the air with a finger. ‘You sit on it at the top of a snowy hill, push off with your feet and ride the sledge all the way down to the bottom.’

‘And then?’

‘You drag it back to the top of the hill and do it over again. It’s fun.’

‘Sounds cold and wet to me.’ She shuddered.

‘Does it ever snow here?’

‘There’s plenty over the mountains, but not lower down, saints be praised. I don’t like the cold.’ A tingling along his nerves told him she had reached for the Song. ‘Come on. North winds always give me the fidgets. Let’s go chase some rabbits.’

In seconds Aysha’s kestrel shape was darting away down the valley from Chapterhouse and over the orchards of the home farm. Gair followed as a fire-eagle. It really was a glorious day. Autumn as he recognised it had finally arrived and it painted Penglas as vividly as a chapel window. Fiery reds and yellows lit up the lowland forests, and the fields were chequered with pale gold stubble and the brown of ploughed earth. Higher, where the landscape began to fold itself into mountains, the flaming broadleaf woods gave way to steely spruce and evergreens and the air had a tang of frost. Winter was undoubtedly on its way, but the sun on his back said it still had some miles to go.

On the north side of the island, the land was steeper and less forgiving. Neatly terraced fields girdled the slopes with stout fieldstone walls, and sandy-coloured sheep browsed the scrubby grass. Unlike the ones Gair was accustomed to, all thick fleece and slot-eyed skittishness, these were more like goats, with beards and heavy spiral horns, even on the ewes. They suited the rockier terrain, which in its turn suited the fire-eagle. Where expanses of sun-warmed rock gave way to the sudden drops of knife-cut valleys, the chillier breath of the north sculpted the air into a cathedral of glass through which an eagle-shape slid as easily as a prayer.

It was not the only bird Gair could shape. Thanks to Aysha there were nearly a dozen different birds he now knew well, from owls to finches, but in this form he felt most comfortable. It was familiar, well worn-in, like an old pair of boots, and unless instructed otherwise, this was what he always came back to when there was flying to be done.

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