Gold Wings Rising, page 16
“You have to come with us,” the first Owl Mother said.
She was young, probably not much older than him, but her face was already creased with lines from a hard life at high altitude. While Owl Mothers had access to the sap of the blood birches, which could heal them and toughen their skin, they never used it on themselves. They claimed it was because their scars, scabs, and wrinkles were sacred signs of full lives. Brysen suspected they had other reasons, ones they didn’t share with outsiders or even with the boys of their covey, who lived on the sap. Jowyn didn’t even know why, and he spent most of his life with them. When Brysen thought about the augur in that alley, about his ranting and raving, he did wonder if that had something to do with it. Jowyn had looked pretty shaken afterward. Did the Owl Mothers keep the boys addicted to the sap to control them?
“I’d love to go with you to the blood birches, but I can’t,” he told them. “The ghost eagles want me to go this way, and they’re holding a friend of mine hostage. So unless you want to argue with them, you should probably just let us go on our way.”
The young Owl Mother in front of him raised her eyes to the one still holding him tight. She let go and turned him around to face her. She was strong enough that she could spin him with one hand and keep him in her grip with the other. He might as well have been a feather doll in her arms.
Her skin was dark and her eyes bright. The coils of her hair were tied up in a crown, decorated with white owl feathers. She wore gray-and-white climbing clothes with a slew of brown-and-white scarves. This made her blend into the landscape of the mountain, and before she even spoke, Brysen felt the ripples of her authority. She was someone accustomed to being obeyed.
“The talorum has lured you through every step of your life, boy,” she told him, using the old word for the ghost eagle. “And what have you gained by it?”
“It hasn’t been all bad,” he said. “I kinda like my new look.” He waggled the eyebrow above the bronze patch as best he could. The Owl Mother was not amused.
“We were always fond of Jowyn,” she said, “and would hate to see him hurt, even in exile.”
“Are you threatening him?” Brysen dropped his pretend playfulness. “Because that would be a very big mistake.”
“Oh no,” the older woman said. “We are threatening you. He accepted his exile on your behalf, and it would break his heart to lose you, which will happen if you continue on this path.”
“So you came all this way down the mountain to protect Jowyn from a broken heart? Thoughtful.” Brysen didn’t believe it, but he still didn’t know what they were after. If they wanted to steal the egg from him, they could’ve already, and if they wanted to bash his skull on a rock, they could’ve done that, too.
“Just bring the egg and come with us, and everything will be fine,” the younger Owl Mother told him. She tried to soften her voice, to sound reassuring, but reassuring wasn’t a natural tone for an Owl Mother. It still came off like a threat.
“Nope,” Brysen said.
“You don’t have a choice,” the older Owl Mother told him.
“Of course I do,” he replied. “You could’ve ambushed us and killed me for the egg, but you didn’t. We’re having a chat. That means there aren’t enough of you to ambush us and you two are on your own, or you’re afraid to hurt me for some reason but you think threatening me will get you what you want. Threats are only for the weak, and since when are Owl Mothers weak?”
The women looked at each other, each waiting for the other to reply. Brysen’s confidence soared. He was holding his own, pushing back against them, seeing through their deceptions. He felt pretty good about it.
Until the older one spoke.
“You’re right,” she said. “We can’t kill you or your sister, and if we took the egg from you right now, the ghost eagles would easily take it from us. But, like them, we have no problem killing your friends, including Jowyn, whom we truly do hold dear. That is how important it is that you bring the egg to the blood birches yourself. We came to you first, to ask that you and your little questing party follow us up the mountain. We won’t ask again; we will compel.”
Brysen glanced back toward the camp. He could hear the murmurs of Nyck and Lyra talking. He wondered if there were other Owl Mothers watching them right now, preparing to strike.
“The ghost eagles will not just let us go with you,” he repeated.
“You have more power over them than you think,” the older Owl Mother said. “And if you come with us, we will do our best to protect you. We would die to protect you, in fact.”
“So you’ll either kill my friends or die to protect me? You really know how to make a guy’s head spin.”
“Is this really fair to the others?” she asked him. “Putting them in danger, knowing you are safe?”
“They know it’s dangerous. They chose to come,” he said. “And I’m hardly safe just because the ghost eagles won’t kill me and you say you can’t.”
“You’ve been here before, on this mountain, passing our way against our wishes. We thought you’d have grown wiser by now.”
“I’ve never been accused of having wisdom.”
“Enough with the sarcasm, boy!” the younger one snapped. “You let everyone risk themselves for you over and over again, flying the same doomed path. We continue to be amazed by your selfishness.”
“We?” He felt a small swell of pride. He was a topic of discussion among the Owl Mothers.
“We find your antics tiresome,” she added. “Every single one of us. But even the tiresome aren’t hopeless. Do the right thing now, and you can protect your friends and loved ones from what awaits them on this path. That is a choice you have to make for yourself. An entire civilization is at stake!”
“So you say,” Brysen told her. “Maybe you should explain it to me before I make any promises.”
“We don’t have to explain anything to you,” the older one said. “We don’t require you to understand. We require you only to obey.” She raised her fingers to her lips as though to whistle; this was likely a signal for the Owl Mothers Brysen couldn’t see, the women hiding somewhere in the mountain mist rising off the boulder field. Brysen was an expert in seeing when he’d used up someone’s patience, and he had used up theirs.
“Wait!” he shouted.
The older one paused.
“Promise me that if I cooperate, if we follow you, then you won’t just protect whoever has the egg. Promise me you’ll protect all of us. Nyck and Lyra and Grazim and Jowyn, too.”
“Fine,” the older Owl Mother said.
“Swear on your owl.”
“That is a sacred oath,” the younger Mother snarled at him, “not to be wasted on presumptuous boys who—”
“We will swear it,” the older woman said, cutting off the younger. “Although you do not deserve it.”
“If help was given only to those who deserved it, civilization would’ve collapsed a long time ago,” Brysen said.
“Look at your world.” She sighed. “It has collapsed.”
Brysen bent down and picked up the bag with the egg. Peeking inside, he saw swirls of gold on the shell.
“Change is not collapse,” he said.
The younger Owl Mother looked at the older one, who looked at Brysen in stony silence for a long time.
“So I guess I need to tell the others we’re changing course and you’re our bodyguards?” he said. “They are going to have some questions of their own.” He thought about Nyall, wondered what would become of his friend when they defied the ghost eagles’ plan. Could he really risk one friend’s life to protect a few others? It was bleak math, and he never was great with numbers. He just had to hope the ghost eagles needed Nyall alive. As long as Brysen had the egg, they probably would.
He hated that so many lives hung on that uncertain word: probably. It was a flimsy branch to perch their hopes upon, but it was the only one he had.
“Hey, Bry!” he heard Jowyn call. “You okay? Or did your ma’s cooking do something unmentionable to your—” Jowyn froze when he saw the women in front of Brysen.
“Clava, Siwoo,” he gasped. “What are you doing here?”
The younger Mother, Clava, looked glad to see Jowyn, but the older one, Siwoo, didn’t take her eyes off Brysen. She tapped the tips of her index fingers together before finally answering.
“We’ve come to escort you safely on your way,” she said, at last looking at Jowyn and giving him what seemed like a genuine smile. She returned her gaze to Brysen. “I hope none of us comes to regret it.”
22
Grazim and Kylee stood the moment they saw the Owl Mothers step around the boulder behind Brysen and Jowyn. Brysen tried to gesture at his sister that it was okay—they weren’t all about to get murdered by owls. He hoped he was right.
The tailor’s hawk on Grazim’s fist cried, and she had to whisper something to calm it and keep it from bating away. Hawks and owls were of the same family but were not much fond of each other, like cousins who only meet at cliffside funerals and poorly organized weddings. They’d endure each other’s company but not without compulsion. Brysen would’ve just hooded the hawk, but the Hollow Tongue was more effective.
Nyck was lying down with one arm over his eyes, and Lyra had her head on his stomach. It was a point of pride among battle boys that they could fall asleep anywhere. Brysen had once seen Nyall fall asleep on a table at the Broken Jess and stay asleep while Nyck and Fentyr used his back and some cooked noodles to plan out their battle pit strategies. He only woke up once to complain that the noodles were cold before going right back to sleep. Brysen floated a wish to the bare, blue sky that Nyall was still alive and would stay that way.
“Kylee, Grazim,” Siwoo greeted both girls. She cast her gaze over the sleeping battle boys with the indifference of an owl flying past a potato. “It has been a long time. I trust you’re well?”
Kylee just eyeballed the two Owl Mothers, but Grazim broke into the biggest smile Brysen had ever seen on her. Her whole body leaned forward like she was about to run and hug them, but then she caught herself, reset her face to its usual statuesque scowl, and touched her index finger to the cheekbone below her eye.
“An honor to see you both so far down the mountain,” she said. “We did try to come to you, but…”
“The boy explained,” Clava confirmed without looking at Brysen. She returned Grazim’s gesture with her index finger. “So we have come to escort you up personally.”
“Up?” Kylee said. She glanced at her brother. “But we have to go to the Talon Fortress. The ghost eagles—”
“Have your friend, yes,” Siwoo said, cutting her off. “We know. However, many more people and their friends will suffer and die if you do not get that egg to the blood birches. It cannot be returned to the talorum and allowed to hatch.”
“Wait.” Brysen stopped her. “You didn’t say anything about it not hatching.”
She looked at him sideways but returned her attention to Kylee. Now that Siwoo had seen Grazim and Kylee, Brysen felt the Owl Mothers’ old indifference to him return. He was only of interest to them because he had the egg.
“We have ways of preventing it from hatching,” Siwoo explained. “But only in the forest. If you come with us, we can put an end to it. When we do, the convocation will depart.”
“How do you know?” Kylee asked her.
Brysen regretted cooperating. He had to get the egg away from the Owl Mothers, but doing so would endanger everyone else. He felt like a leaf fallen into a rushing river, pushed on by too many currents, pulled this way and that, half drowned but never dragged under.
“Because,” Siwoo told her, “it has happened before.”
That stopped him cold. He and Kylee looked at each other, confused.
“You aren’t the first children to have called a ghost eagle’s egg into existence,” Siwoo said. “And as long as people cry out in weakness and want, you won’t be the last. But we have always been there to prevent catastrophe. We have always made sure these eggs do not crack open.”
“Why?” Brysen whispered.
“How?” Kylee asked.
“As I told your brother,” Siwoo said, “you do not need to know. You need only come with us. If that egg is allowed to hatch, I promise worse terrors than the ghost eagles will be unleashed on this world.”
“Is that why they’re afraid of us having it?” Brysen asked. “Are the ghost eagles afraid of it hatching, too?”
“Yes,” said Siwoo. “They fear it more than anything, and they want it to hatch more than anything.” She almost smiled at a thought that crossed her mind. “I suppose like all parents.”
Brysen didn’t find it funny. The colors on the shell’s surface swirled wildly now, gray blacks crashing into red blacks, mixing with blue blacks. He saw his sister shifting her weight from foot to foot, ansty, feeling the pull of the shell as it called to her. It was calling out to him, too. It wanted to hatch. It needed to hatch but didn’t know how. It also knew it was in danger. It knew because Brysen knew. Kylee looked at him.
She tried to signal something, but he didn’t understand. The two of them used to share an entire unspoken language, but ever since they’d each taken different pieces of the Hollow Tongue, it was like they’d lost parts of their own language. Knowledge, like family, was not a static thing; it changed and moved and blew away with the consistency of clouds. At least Brysen had Jowyn now. He worried his sister was a lone cloud, adrift in endless sky. Although she’d shove him to the ground for thinking about her like that.
He tried to signal something back to her, which she did understand.
He was going to run.
At the first chance they had, he wanted them all to run.
Kylee shook her head no.
She looked up at a large boulder, then opposite it, at a steep cliff. There were stones out of place, areas of slight discoloration.
Camouflaged Owl Mothers, watching. If Brysen and the others ran, they wouldn’t make it far. He’d rather climb freely than as their prisoner. So, he would have to bide his time.
“Okay, well, the sun is up, and we better make some distance before nightfall,” he said, talking quickly. He went over to Nyck and Lyra to wake them.
“Wha? Huh?” Nyck rubbed the sleep from his eyes. Lyra lifted her head off him, leaving a strand of drool.
“We’re going up to the blood birches after all,” Brysen told them. He bent down to help Nyck up and whispered in his ear. “When I say run, you run.”
Nyck didn’t have time to respond, because Brysen moved on without looking back. There was a steep cliff between them and the fastest path to the blood birches, and scaling the cliff face would take them most of the day. He wondered if maybe, when they got to the top, more of the Owl Mothers would reveal themselves. Or maybe, when night fell, the ghost eagles would return and send them all back on the path to their nest. He knew now why the image of the blood birches made them sad. It was where their children went to die. Brysen would not let this egg get there.
“Zasaase,” he whispered to the egg again. “You’re safe with me.”
Jowyn gave him a funny look. “They’re here to help us,” he said. “They know what to do with that thing.”
Brysen didn’t reply. The boy still believed in the Owl Mothers, even though they had exiled him. He didn’t need to know they’d threatened his life to get Brysen’s cooperation. If he could get Jowyn safely away from them without breaking his heart, that’s what he’d do.
“Time to climb,” Clava announced.
Among their group, Kylee was the strongest climber, and while Brysen was confident in himself, he hadn’t done any free climbing since the Kartami took his eye. He was pretty sure Jowyn could climb, having lived so long with the Owl Mothers, but Nyck and Lyra were more the sorts to climb onto pub tables than steep mountains. He didn’t know what experience Grazim had, growing up on the flat plains of the plateau, but she lived with the Owl Mothers for a time, too, and must’ve learned something.
He reached into his bag for the coiled rope he’d packed. He and Kylee could rig a simple belay system, so the others could climb with a little more confidence that they’d all reach the top alive.
Kylee caught up with him and Jowyn at the bottom of the cliff while the others were gathering their things and making their way on the narrow path.
“What’s going on?” she demanded. “You’re acting strange.”
“No, I’m not,” Brysen told her. “This is just how I act.”
“So you are acting?” She cocked her head at him. It was so annoying how she laid these verbal traps for him. They both knew she was smarter than him; she didn’t have to prove it all the time.
“I’m just…,” he started, before he knew what he was going to say. “I don’t think we should trust them.”
“Who said I trust them?” Kylee replied. “We both know the ghost eagles are afraid of the blood birches, so if we get there, we’ll be in a stronger position.”
“You’re not worried about Nyall anymore?” he asked her.
“Of course I am!” she said. “But they won’t hurt him as long as we have the egg. And maybe, along the way, we can get the Owl Mothers to tell us more about it. Having more information is never a bad thing.”
“I can’t let them destroy the egg,” he told her.
She sighed. “I know,” she said. “But we’ll hear them out, okay?”
“They won’t explain anything to me.”
“I’ll hear them out,” she clarified. “But we’ll decide what to do together. No sudden decisions. Just don’t—”
