Eagle's Guard

Chapter 4

1. A Burning BuildingWith his fingertips, Aiden sketched a shape in the air. Lines of light appeared in the wake of his fingers and remained shimmering before him, a circle with a line struck through it. It was the magical rune of Ailm, the seer. He enclosed the rune between finger and thumb and looked through. It focused his gaze and the distant Silver Eagle jumped into view. The edge of each feather, the curve of its talons and the sharpness of its beak became clear. Silver feathers rippled in the wind, wings spread wide, casting a shadow across the sun.

Aiden reached up, almost forgetting the great distance. As if it saw him the Silver Eagle swooped low, its eyes a flash of light. A Rider sat upon its back. Aiden squinted yet saw nothing but the silhouette of a person. The Eagle turned and gave an echoing call. Aiden’s heart thumped with a sudden certainty. The Eagle wanted him to go with it. He was meant to go with it.

He stepped to follow but something held him. The Eagle flew further away and he tried to twist free. There was a quiet thump as his blanket slid to the ground and he curled his toes against the cold. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it was too late. Pale light shone through his eyelids and his mother’s soft humming drifted up through the floorboards. He sat up, rubbing his face. A dull ache filled his chest, where moments before it had barely contained the wild beating of his heart. He shook his head and threw the rest of his blanket aside, walking quickly to the window.

Aiden opened the shutters with a creak, letting grey light seep into the room. He lifted a foot onto the windowsill and balanced there, one hand resting gently against the wooden frame above. His younger brother Andor shifted in his bed but did not wake. Aiden stood, ducking his head out of the window so that his face was almost pressed flat against the outside wall. Then he jumped, fingers catching the cool slates of the roof, toes finding familiar grooves in the stonework. He lifted himself onto the roof.

Aiden shivered in the dawn air as he scrambled over the slates. After a short way he laid himself down, leaning his head back. He wished he was back in his dream.

A bird wheeled above him and Aiden reached out a hand to sketch Ailm, the seer, in the air. Light shimmered behind his fingers, just as it had in his dream. He caught the rune in his hand and looked through, focusing on the bird. Black raven’s wings flapped back at him. Aiden sighed. The Silver Eagle, and its Rider, remained nothing but a dream.

Aiden let the rune fade and sat up. It seemed that no matter how much he wanted it, there was no escaping the real world. He looked out across Teraan City. Shadows fled the rising sun, racing across cobbled streets to hide in the alleyways or under the boughs of trees. Dew glistened in the gardens and dampened the earthen path that wound its way behind the houses.

The rhythmic thud of footsteps echoed along the street, followed by a patrol of the King’s soldiers on their dawn rounds. Aiden leaned forward watching as they passed, heads held high in their gleaming leather armour, the King’s crest, the winged crown encircling a tree, etched into their round shields. Black cloaks billowed out behind them, tiny runes for strength and protection sewn in silver thread along the edges of the cloth. Some of the cloaks were no doubt his father’s handiwork.

And would one day be his. Aiden slumped back onto the roof. Just a few months more and he would no longer be an apprentice but a cloakmaker. He tried to tell himself that there was nothing wrong with being a cloakmaker, but he could not shake the dream of the Silver Eagle. He wanted more.

Across the City, a sea of slate roofs spread before him, broken up by the jagged tops of trees and the cobbled canyons of streets. At its heart stood the tall stone buildings of the Restricted Zone and behind them a glimpse of the pink sandstone of the Palace. Aiden imagined an Eagle Rider, one of the great guardians of Teraan, taking flight from one of those turrets, soaring across the horizon to battle with a wild magic creature in a whirlwind of runes. His gaze swept with it across the City, past the great outer Wall and the houses beyond, to where the fringes of the City were consumed by the ever-whispering branches of the deep forest.

A lightness grew in his chest. What adventures awaited him out there? But Aiden stopped himself. His father was waiting for him.

Slowly, Aiden shuffled across the roof and sank to his stomach, lowering his feet and dropping down to the wooden ledge of his windowsill. He slipped inside the room and grimaced. Andor was gone and if his little brother was down before him then his father was certainly not going to be happy. Aiden threw on a change of clothes and took the stairs to the kitchen. The warm smell of oats filled the air and his mother, Kari, looked up from stirring the pot, her cheeks rosy in the glow of the fire. Aiden grabbed a few mouthfuls as he sped past, his mother raising her eyebrows at him.

Aiden slipped through the door into the workshop. Light shone in through the big window at the back and danced across the myriad of colours of cloaks and cloth hanging along the walls. The shop at the front of the room was empty, but behind the big wooden counter Aiden’s father, Brokk, stood at one of the smaller worktops. A cloak surrounded by spools of thread and frayed offcuts covered the surface before him and his nimble hands pushed a needle and thread through the earthy-red material. Andor leaned in next to him, his green eyes fixed on their father’s work.

“Sometimes Aiden,” said his father, not lifting his head, “it amazes me that your twelve year old brother still makes it down to work before you. And you’re the one who’s almost finished his apprenticeship.”

“I’m sorry,” said Aiden, stepping forward to stand by the worktop. “It was only a few minutes.”

“I’m not annoyed because you are late,” said Brokk, tying off his thread before looking up. “I’m annoyed at why you are late.”

Aiden set his mouth in a hard line and said nothing. Why today?

“You spend too much time up on that roof,” said Brokk. “You’ll be eighteen soon. How can I trust you to be your own man and take on more work in the shop, when I can’t even trust you to get through a simple day’s work without being distracted by magic?”

“Why do the runes have to be a distraction?” said Aiden. “We use them in our work, don’t we?”

Brokk drew in a slow, careful breath as he reached for a new spool. “Yes. We sew runes of thread into cloaks to give added strength or protection, but what you do is entirely different. You draw runes with light in the air. You’re calling directly upon the wild magic when you do that. That’s dangerous Aiden. Wizards train for years before mastering the art. If you got it wrong there’s no knowing what might happen to you. I don’t want you to wake up blind one morning… or worse.”

Aiden shook his head, his jaw tight. “That’s not how it works Dad. Using the runes makes it safe. They harness the wild magic so that it can’t go wrong.”

Brokk lifted his head. “I’m just worried you won’t know where the line between the two is. You can’t deny that magic has got you in trouble more than once in the past.”

Aiden looked down. Maybe it had, but not for a long time. “I’ll be careful, alright Dad? And I won’t let it get in the way of work.”

Brokk folded his arms, his brow furrowed. With a slow shake of his head his expression softened. He reached out an arm to pat Aiden on the shoulder. “Let’s put it behind us son. Now come, I have a job for you.”

Aiden followed his father over to the other workbench where jars of coloured powders were stacked neatly in rows. He sat heavily on the stool and avoided looking at his father as he set him the task of mixing dyes for a hunting cloak. The fine art of getting the colours just right, so that the wearer would be almost impossible to see in the woods, was one of the few skills Aiden had yet to learn before his apprenticeship was over. Yet why bother when a simple rune, drawn correctly with the right thought behind it, could do all that and more? Aiden clenched his fists, releasing them slowly. He would learn because that was what was expected of him, but he wished that just once his father would recognise his talent with the runes and let him actually use it.

Brokk left the brothers to their work, moving to the front of the shop to prop open the door. He stayed there, taking a seat on the far side of the big counter that split the room, a complex piece of sewing in his hands. Aiden dragged his eyes back to the dyes in front of him and tapped tiny amounts of the powders into a small bowl in front of him. He absently moved a spoon around the mixture tracing the shapes of feathers, his mind drifting back to the slow swoop of the Silver Eagle.

“When are you going to teach me another rune?” Andor whispered.

Aiden sat up straighter and glanced over at their father, but his greying head did not lift from his sewing.

“Didn’t you hear Dad?” Aiden whispered back. “If he’s not happy about me using runes, he’ll be even less happy about me teaching you.”

“But you can’t stop now,” said Andor, reaching across the workbench towards him. “You’ve only taught me three. There’s eighteen. And Dad’s not going to teach me any for work till I’m older.”

Aiden frowned at Andor and then glanced away. His brother reminded him too much of himself, and not just in appearance. His curiosity would be the ruin of him. “Maybe another day,” said Aiden.

Andor frowned. “When you were my age you’d already learnt all eighteen. Why do I have to wait?”

Aiden folded his arms. “If you want to teach yourself like I did, then feel free.”

Silence fell between them and their mother’s humming drifted through from the kitchen. Andor scowled, drawing back to his own worktop. Aiden watched him for a minute, trying not to smile at the deepening furrow between his brother’s green eyes. Maybe Andor would be different. Maybe he had more control over his curiosity. After all, if their places had been reversed, Aiden would not have been sulking about having to wait to learn, he would have been teaching himself. And he had, so that by the time he was nine he knew all the runes and by the time he was twelve he could use them all well.

Aiden turned back to his bench, trying to block out everything but the dyes in front of him. What was he trying to accomplish? Camouflage. Nothing more, nothing less. He added water to his first mixing, watching the colours run together into a muddy brown. It did not look quite right, but he took a scrap of cloth and dunked it in anyway. He wrung it out and laid it to dry. What did it need? Ailm, the changeling, his mind whispered. Or Onn, the craftsman. He pushed the thoughts away. It needed more green.

For the next few hours Aiden tried all sorts of combinations and created more variations of brown than he thought possible. But he could not get it right. And it did not help that silver tipped feathers tinged the edge of his vision.

Footsteps padded across the floor. “Not quite Aiden,” came his father’s voice.

Aiden looked up, but Brokk was already speaking to Andor. One of the travelling markets was in town. It did not surprise Aiden that his brother was going and not him. For a moment he felt a stab of regret. Then the tension in his shoulders began to ease. With his father gone he could take a relaxed lunch break and get his head straight. Maybe then the afternoon would go better.

The front door swung closed behind Brokk and Andor with a quiet thud. Aiden paused, then was on his feet, grabbing some food, up the stairs to the window ledge and climbing back up to the roof.