Drift: River of Falcons Book 1

Separate Threads

Magus circled high above the valley. He had been searching all morning, but all he had to show for his effort was an upside-down rowboat stuck on a sandbar. He had found the boat that morning at about the same time that the flock of apprentices was searching the witch's cottage. The rowboat told him what he had already suspected: that Drift had been on the river again. When he rolled the boat over and examined it, the only clues he could find were a broken arrow and some lichen, which could have come from any number of places along the river.

He shifted back to a Peregrine and sliced off through the damp morning air. A flock of gulls was circling noisily over a sandbar where a dead fish had washed up. The Peregrine tipped toward them, bursting through the flock at high speed and slashing one of the gulls across the neck. Blood sprayed down toward the foaming water as the gull went limp and tumbled into the surf. The Peregrine did not stop to claim his prey, but sliced off at high speed toward the north, leaving the rest of the gulls to fight over the remains.

Soon Magus caught sight of the apprentices winging their way down the river in a ragged flock. He made a scornful noise at the sight of them. If he also imagined slicing open the neck of the Red Tailed Hawk in their lead, it was only a fantasy, at least for now. He continued northward on his own search pattern, unseen by the flock beneath him.

Neither the apprentices nor Magus noticed the three otters slipping out from a narrow tributary and entering the main flow of the river.

*

Sasha was soaring at an even higher altitude than Magus. He had parted with Sarai as soon as they were safely away from the flock of apprentices. His were the sharpest eyes in the valley (Vultan's, perhaps, excepted), and he spotted Magus's falcon, the flock of apprentices, and the overturned boat with ease. However, he couldn't find Drift. The only thing that gave him hope was the fact that the hunt was still on, which told him she must not have been captured.

At first, Sasha ignored the three otters far below. On his third pass above them, however, he realized they were moving downstream in a triangle without stopping to dive and hunt for fish. He had seen otters on the river many times before. Usually they hunted. Sometimes they played. Very occasionally, they shifted into wild-looking people with dark brown, otter-like hair. The ones that shifted often swam in a more purposeful manner than real otters. These three, then, were Otter People. However, having reached this conclusion, Sasha looped away and searched the forests and meadows again. He was not looking for Otter People.

On his fourth pass over the otters, he noticed that two of them had light strands mixed into the brown fur on their backs, and then he knew he'd found her. Now he would keep an eye on her and make sure she reached The Garden. He was pleased to see she was already more than halfway there. It also pleased him to think that the many crows and ravens flying to and fro beneath him were ignorant of her current form. Should they all attack at once, he did not know what he would be able to do to help. But if he could just fight them one or two at a time... His mind turned to pleasant fantasies of heroic swordplay, interrupted only by the appearance of a dark-phase Peregrine Falcon racing across the landscape, above the flock of apprentices. He knew that form and he did not want to be spotted by Magus, so he circled cautiously upward until he was so high that the three otters were mere dots in the rippling river.

*

The white heron, a low-altitude flier, found it slow going with so many of her enemies in the air. In mid-afternoon Sarai finally made it to the base of the river, where she landed on the grounded rowboat, looked around to make sure she was unobserved, then shifted back to herself. First she noted heavy boot-prints in the wet sand. A sorcerer had already been there, she surmised. She hoped the boat had not contained Drift and Ubi at the time. There were no footprints to suggest that it had.

Continuing her careful examination, she noted a small quantity of rich red-brown mud in the bottom of the boat. Several long strands of lichens were caught on a seat, and the bilge was stained with tea-colored water that smelled of old spells. She also noted the broken-off head of an arrow in the floorboards. "Well, Drift," she said to herself, "where have you been, and where are you now? Wherever you are, may the Spirits guide you." She fingered a strand of lichen, then added, "And, if they are so inclined, may the Otter People guide you, too."

*

Up in the high, rocky pasture where Nighthawk had encountered the wolves, the last of the injured goats was struggling to its feet and stumbling off to rejoin the herd. Its bleeding had been staunched, and Nighthawk thought it would recover.

However, Nighthawk was not doing nearly as well. She was flat on her back, her eyelids fluttering and her breath shallow and irregular. Her well of magic was so depleted that she was not certain she could stand again, let alone shift and fly home.

The wind was rising and it would be too cold to stay where she was overnight. "Sasha," she called. "I need you!" She tried to initiate a sending, but was too weak. Gritting her teeth, she forced herself to her feet and began to stumble downslope. Almost immediately, she stepped into a hollow and twisted her ankle. "Spirits!" she muttered as she limped onward. "I don't know if I can make it."