Drift: River of Falcons Book 1

Whispers

The sun had risen through the remnants of the storm. Jasper, tired from his long night on duty, had nodded off with his back to a stone wall, but as the sun reached him, he shook himself awake.

A pair of guards were on duty up there too. He eyed them with irritation. They had come to relieve the old guards, but had not bothered to bring him any breakfast.

He pulled his cloak around him, pretending he was still asleep. After a while the guards went off, probably to get more breakfast. Jasper eyed the little cloud that was still tugging on its invisible tether high above him, and smiled. It pleased him to think that Magus and the other sorcerers had no idea how much he actually knew. He had done quite a bit of studying on his own, slipping into the library at the Keep and memorizing spells from ancient scrolls. Now he was presented with an opportunity to test one of those spells.

He reached into his pocket for the folding knife he always kept there. It was a bit rusty and there were chips in the bone handle, but the blade took an excellent edge when sharpened on a piece of flint.

He sliced off a tuft of his own hair, pricked his thumb, dripped some blood onto his hair, then placed the hair carefully in a sheltered corner. He set the knife on top of the hair to keep it in place. Then, chanting softly, he reached back and snapped the tether that held the spellbinding to his neck. With the correct chant, it was surprisingly brittle and easy to break. Chanting again, he leaned over and attached it to the tuft of his hair, then looped it several times around a stone block so that the cloud would not blow away.

He waited nervously for several moments, wondering if Magus would notice. Then he smiled again.

*

To a bird, the air is divided into many layers. At treetop level and below, the air is attached to the earth. It smells like earth and follows the contours of the ground beneath it. Where a wide open meadow permits, the air moves rapidly. Where trees or a ridge of land capture it, the air collects and becomes heavy and cool or else excited and hot, depending on how much sun reaches the spot. Songbirds usually stay in this first layer of air and learn to navigate its many pools and eddies.

Above the treetops where larger birds like herons, crows, and ravens fly, the wind is more consistent, but still effected by major elements such as hills and tall stands of trees. Also, hot sun on a south-facing slope always creates an upwelling of warm air upon which a bird may rise. These thermal currents are passages to the highest level of air where steady winds blow in good weather and storms form in bad. It is in this topmost layer that eagles like to fly.

After ducking his mother's questions and listening dutifully to a lecture on what not to do (the list had included just about everything he intended to do the next day), Sasha had gone to bed early. He wanted to be well rested. His plan was to leave long before his mother or sister awoke.

Then, early in the morning, he had slipped out of his bedroom window, diving into the cool darkness of the valley and shifting as he fell. As soon as his wings took shape, he had pulled out of his dive and sliced across the valley, clearing the ridge on the southern side by such a narrow margin that he had to tuck his talons in to avoid scraping them on a boulder. The lingering night air was thin and cool and offered no uplift, so he continued to fly at ridge-top level until the sun cut through the darkness and touched the eastern-facing sides of the hills below him. Then the air began to change, warming and thickening as dawn progressed. Soon he found a small upward current and he eagerly embraced it with his strong wings, circling skyward until the morning chorus of sparrows and meadowlarks had been left far behind and he could hear nothing but the whistling of the high-altitude winds. There were no other birds up there that early in the morning. He would be able to go where he pleased.