Realms of Shadow - Lizz Baldwin [81]
The orange fire broke apart in the air to reveal the blackened forms of Atop the Sky and Suspended in Air, feathers gone from their wings. They fell impotently, dead. Atop the Sky's steel scimitar whirled, spinning down next to the bodies. Astride the Wind had come with six seasoned warriors of the Soaring Heights Clan, the clan that called him chief, to confront six of the humans. One of the humans was dead, but now Astride the Wind had lost two of his own.
The man with the hairy hands growled something in his indecipherable human tongue and Astride the Wind saw that another of his conjured images was gone.
* * * * *
Some seventeen hundred years before, the kenku who would one day form the Soaring Heights Clan were an undisciplined, barbaric race who lived high in the Columns of the Sky and hunted in the Myconid Forest north of Shade Enclave. The kenku sometimes harassed the citizens of the town of Conch, which sat on the eastern slopes of the Columns of the Sky.
They could not speak. They had no written language, and their manners were more like the birds they resembled than the humans they stole from. They had mastered fire and were carving crude tools from shale and wood. Strangely, they were devoid of religion and superstition. They had no mythology or philosophy. They had no fear of gods or mortals.
Kaeralonn Jurneille was determined to put an end to that.
He was called "General," though the title was more ceremonial than a real military rank. The men he commanded were assassins, scouts-the sort of soldiers who went in either first or last, but never in the middle, and never in force. Not all of them were human. Kaeralonn drew his operatives from whatever race or construct was most suited for the mission at hand. He employed everything from enormous, powerful, and mindless golems to fickle and wily sprites.
The kenku were brought to his attention by a farmer who sold barley to Shade Enclave and kept an eye on the village of Conch for the Twelve Princes. Kaeralonn paid the farmer well for a dead kenku, then he erased the man's memory and began studying the bird-men in great detail.
Scouts, Kaeralonn thought. These creatures would make exceptional scouts.
Kaeralonn put the dead kenku on ice and started to think. He walked the streets of Shade, sailed through the cool skies on his private skiff, and haunted the libraries of House Tanthul.
The plan formed quickly enough. It was a simple plan and one he'd used before. Kaeralonn was three hundred years old and did very little quickly. It was months before he opened the self-freezing casket and began to thaw the dead kenku.
As the bird-man thawed, Kaeralonn removed the arrows and sealed the wounds. He set the creature's broken wing and helped some missing feathers to grow back. When the time was right, he brought in a priest of Shar, who muttered his prayers and waved his hands and brought the kenku back to life.
The creature burst up from the table and the sound of its wings unfurling echoed in Kaeralonn's laboratory. The priest grumbled and stepped back, but Kaeralonn smiled and stepped forward. It was a beautiful beast, and Kaeralonn knew it would serve him well.
The kenku twitched its head to take in the chamber, crowded with glass and apparatus. It glanced sideways at the priest, then fixed its eyes on Kaeralonn, who had just finished a hastily-cast spell.
Release me, a voice, shrill with panic and indignation, vibrated in Kaeralonn's mind.
"Is that you?" Kaeralonn asked the kenku, then he thought, That was you, wasn't it?
Release me, the kenku repeated into Kaeralonn's mind, the voice less shrill now and more insistent.
Kaeralonn could feel the spell he'd just cast fill his own mind, wrapping around the kenku's silent speech.
You are among friends now, Kaeralonn thought to the kenku. I would like you to stay.
"I will take my leave now," the priest said, almost startling Kaeralonn, certainly annoying him.
Kaeralonn waved the chubby little man away and didn't watch him shuffle