MPNS Ch 92

Chapter 92

The wings of a great golden eagle cleaved the sky. So vast was the bird that its shadow lay stark upon the ground. Its course ran toward the Taurus Mountains, a massive range beyond Iteren, the great northern domain.

The Taurus range held mines, yet monsters were rife there. Like a folding screen, the mountains encircled the northern lands, bristling with conifers that shaded the earth in deep, long gloom, unfriendly to human trespass.

Monsters were born chiefly there. They did appear elsewhere, but this year—so agreed the lords—their numbers would swell exponentially in the North.

A lord could sense monsters from within a half hour’s gallop; even from the distant Taurus, they could feel many being born. Clearly, they were coalescing around an intelligence.

Thus Yullan dispatched Jikari ahead as a scout. Jikari’s heart was hot; soon enough, the beast-cubs would scent Nikiel and begin to harry him, and yet Jikari was still treated like a child. An affront to any male’s pride.

He must finish reconnaissance swiftly, rejoin the marching host for the Hunting Tournament, and take his place at Nikiel’s side. Naive Nikiel would not grasp the peril the beasts posed.

Distrustful of men’s words, Jikari did not believe for a moment that Yullan or Raymond—however they pretended indifference—felt none within. When Nikiel’s name was spoken, their hearts quickened, and the pheromones of males seeped forth.

Lucian sensed it too, raising those usually winter-dulled red eyes and hissing at him like a snake—had he not? For Jikari, who must cull rivals among snake, wolf, and reindeer to invite Nikiel into his own nest, misfortune piled high.

A mercy: from the instant he wished to be Nikiel’s only male, Jikari had begun to grow, little by little. Yet this was no unmixed blessing. Even after casting off the human and newly embracing himself as a golden eagle, he had retained reason—only to find, the farther he flew from the capital, a dim frenzy creeping in.

‘It is because I am far from my golden one.’

His guess was right. Distance from Nikiel thinned his patience. Ironically, the least human of the lords—the only one spared frenzy—had, once he recognized his precise desire for Nikiel, recovered reason enough to be devoured by frenzy instead.

He had to hold fast to the gleam of that hair like sunlight and those lake-blue eyes; else a black shadow would gnaw at him from within.

Unlike the other lords, Jikari had no immunity to frenzy—he had so rarely known it. Even so, he could not halt his growth. Before the others fully set their sights on Nikiel, he must show him that he—and only he—could build the perfect nest. Nikiel was wholly human; if Jikari hoped to mate with him, he could not remain a bird. A male, for his mate, must cut even bone to fit himself.

While he turned this over, the eagle’s broad wings bore him tirelessly toward Iteren. Past spires of spruce, beyond Itenium—Yullan’s stronghold—rose the Taurus.

Near now, Jikari spiraled down, descending. He might have flown hidden among clouds, but his span was so wide his shadow could betray him to monsters, who were brethren of shadow.

Lower and lower he slid toward the range—then saw, far off, smoke rising. In a range as harsh and little-traveled as Taurus, smoke was strange.

He feared detection at full growth and strained to compress his body. When drenched in Nikiel’s sacred power, enlarging or shrinking came easily; starved of that grace of late, it was hard.

Before skulking into Nikiel’s bedchamber, he had found it hard to grow. Since learning human desire, he now found it hard to shrink. Dizzy from forcing the change, his wingtip rasped the spear-pointed spruces.

His course wobbled; branches clipped him; feathers rasped. He flurried hard, spread his wings before he fell, and rose again—then noticed how strangely quiet the forest lay.

‘The mountain birds… are gone.’

Wintering birds should remain, with only migrants bound south—but no wing-rustle whispered. Not only birds. The other beasts of the forest were silent as extinction. Jikari held his breath and beat upward.

He perched upon a limb thickened by centuries and watched. The iris of the eagle’s eye narrowed and widened, raking all. Then, a scent—no, a sound reached him.

A creaking, like screws tightening. No cry of any beast. A monster’s voice. Jikari slid his body beneath the branch and peered toward the sound. Two enormous Humbibi carried something between them.

Humbibi were giants with leonine claws, bronze scales sheathing their trunks, and bison horns crowning their heads. At their tails sprouted a serpent’s head—Vexi, a monster that parasitized and controlled the Humbibi. The Humbibi’s wits were dull; the Vexi steered and aided their hunts in a kind of symbiosis.

Even under Vexi control, Humbibi cared for nothing but the kill. Yet here they were, bearers of burdens—eerily like human industry. Jikari tightened his iris to see.

They hauled several stags with shattered skulls. Humbibi ordinarily ate prey where it fell. They had no habit of hoarding. To carry off meat—and cooperate rather than brawl over it—was wrong.

Then a low sound came, with the cadence of human speech. Jikari inched to the next tree for a better listen, flapping so slowly to silence his wings that his shoulders ached.

He folded them, widened his iris to heighten sight, and looked—just as a harsh rasp sounded and a vast shadow swept over his head.

Smiling and chatting, the pair returned untroubled to the ballroom. Throughout, Lucian strained his hearing to learn how Raymond had handled Gaspar. As they entered, Lucian’s gaze met Raymond’s.

Raymond cast one look at Nikiel’s hand in Lucian’s and turned away with a bitter face, heading for the king. Lucian watched with cool eyes, then turned back to Nikiel with a gentle smile.

“The next piece is a waltz.”

“The very one practiced together, my lord.”

Nikiel answered with a small smile. To Lucian’s eye, he was truly kind. Whatever he had been before, he was now shrewd and firm of will.

Of the four lords, only Raymond had practiced courtship within the palace. Lucian, having recognized his heart early, set about compensating for lack of experience with sure initiative. That Nikiel never asked after Jikari meant the foolish fledgling had never truly approached him in his proper form. Lucian had suspected as much from the first day he’d said something was odd about Nikiel.

Though they had scarcely met, Nikiel was already dear. Since living at his side, Lucian’s coughing—once the scourge of a wasting lung—had eased as if erased by sacred grace; Zoltan, his butler and childhood guardian, had been beside himself with joy.

Even without such small miracles, Lucian wished to remain with him. Whatever the beasts might boast, among men it was often not the strongest male but the most enduring who prevailed. While the other fools kicked away their chances, Lucian meant to keep his place at Nikiel’s side.

So their waltz began.