Drift: River of Falcons Book 1

Deadly Meditations

From Vultan's favorite viewpoint on the boundary of the Spirit Realm, he was able to see the souls of those who had passed on. They appeared like shadows, ephemeral and out of focus, but, if recently deceased, still distinct enough for him to identify. He sometimes travelled there to observe the souls of his enemies after he had dispatched them. It gave him pleasure to see their panicked flight to the next realm, followed by their frantic struggles when they discovered that they could not return. He, a shadowed figure standing on the steep, stony ridge that bordered the Spirit Realm, would watch those desperate souls try to climb up the far side, only to slip and fall again and again. He relished the sight. It was a final confirmation of the success of his kill.

However, Vultan's meditations at the moment were focused on a more practical purpose. He was wrestling with the tangled greenery of the Silvan Spirits' defense. Snake-like bundles of green magic twisted through the treetops, obscuring what was going on at ground level. In the Spirit Realm, the magic was more substantial that the trees, or even the souls of the recently deceased. Magic was always most tangible and easily studied in the Spirit Realm, and so he had gone there in a trance for that purpose. But because someone had evoked the Silvan magic to block his view of Drift and her magical workings, Vultan could not tell whether she had crossed the river and fled east, or had gone into the forest to the west.

He was annoyed by the interference, but by no means stymied. There was always the realm of the living, his realm, and the Spirits were no match for him there. He backed out of the trance, got up, and traded his gnarled alder staff for his most powerful oak one, then lay back down on his divan and entered a new and different sort of trance.

*

Several hundred yards away from where Vultan meditated was the tall stone tower he had built to house magical prisoners. In it, two other figures were also attempting to meditate. The tower's walls were made of spells as well as stone, and the dominant power in those spells was death. (Vultan had pitched children into the foundation hole as he laid his bottom tier of blocks, and their souls, trapped by a spell, were forced to stay locked in their final moment of despair, haunting the walls of the tower.) Despite this impediment, the two captives both persisted in their struggles.

In the highest chamber, a figure slumped against the dirty stone wall of her cell, her clothes reduced to rags and her spirit nearly defeated. She had once called herself Queen and had thought herself the most powerful person in her land. But the Queen was said to have died on the day the Palace fell. Someone, dressed in Queenly clothes, had gone out on her balcony and been the first person to be struck by a sorcerer's arrow. It had been the King's birthday, with a joyous party planned, and one of her lady's maids had been modeling gowns for her. The maid, who was similar in height and build to the Queen, had stepped onto the balcony to demonstrate how a gown looked in the sunlight. When the arrow struck her in the heart, she had fallen over the railing and crashed into a garden seven stories below. The Queen had slipped into her maid's modest garments, wrapped herself in a ragged servant's cloak, and snuck down a secret stair to a small back door, clutching a bundle tightly to her chest. She had almost made a clean getaway, but down near the river her trail had been picked up by apprentices, so she had hidden that bundle in a rowboat and pushed it out into the current of the river.

Hoping to protect the boat on its southward trip along the river, the Queen had led her pursuers the opposite way. Eventually she lost them and made her way northward to the bleak and windy Wastelands, where she was taken in by one of the few remaining caravans of Travellers. The next spring, she snuck back into the main city of Falcysine disguised as a Traveller, where she was sheltered by an elderly couple who she hoped would not guess her secret. She grew close to their son, a fisherman, and they had a boy child. However, she never dared ask around about the little baby girl she had set adrift.