The Winged Histories: a novel by Sofia Samatar

Author:Sofia Samatar [Samatar, Sofia]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781618731159
Publisher: Small Beer Press
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

If so, then he is not only a parricide. He is not only guilty of hanging my father from a tree. He is guilty of killing Vars and all his companions, of leaving these loyal and eager young men to the mercy of the Duke of Bain. The withdrawn, unhappy boy I knew so briefly is a monster, as surely as if he had horns growing out of his forehead. “Can’t you get away?” I asked. It seems I am fated to tell others to escape, to advise everyone to flee.

Vars lifted his chin. “We will defend our prince to the last man.”

“Don’t be stupid,” I said. But before I could argue further, wind rattled the balcony doors, shouts reached us from the courtyard, and I glanced at the window smeared with melting frost. It was then that I saw the ilok.

It rose above the Alabaster Court, huge and clumsy as a vulture, chains swinging from its neck. Its beak shone dull bronze. Its wings, impossibly vast, cast a shadow over the roof on the other side of the court. At first I could only stare and gasp and stutter—for the iloki never leave their garden, they are creatures of ancient history, incarcerated like dusty archives in a library, and no one has ridden one of them since the War of the Tongues, yet this one had a rider—two riders—no, three!

“Look!” I cried at last.

Vars turned. When he saw the creature, he opened the casement and leaned out with such violence I feared he would fall. “Captain!” he shouted. Other shouts rose from other windows and from the court, while the ilok circled, tentative, as if learning to fly.

“Captain! Captain!”

It was hard for me to make out the faces of the riders, but Vars knew them, and when the bird dipped down for a moment, I recognized two of them: Lady Siski of Ashenlo, and, clasped in her arms, secured with ropes, sagging, apparently unconscious, Prince Andasya. The foremost rider, who seemed to be guiding the creature with his knees, I did not recognize, but this was the one Vars addressed as “Captain,” and when he cried “Captain Tavis!” I understood that the black-haired rider in the military jacket was the prince’s other cousin, Tavis of Ashenlo.

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