Page 24 of Court of Talons
The warrior knights.
Nazar murmurs something beside me that’s lost in the screaming, but I don’t need his encouragement. I pull the seeing glass back up to my eye and stare.
The men have taken up position across from each other, their hands lifted as if they’re about to leap at each other’s throats across the broad gap between them. But they don’t move otherwise. At either end of the long field, the Divhs scream and roar. The warrior knights’ hands shift forward, and suddenly, chaos erupts, the sound of the lion’s pounding paws against the earth momentarily drowning out the noise from the crowd.
My eyelids peel back so far, I’m surprised my eyeballs remain in my head. Peripherally, I’m aware of the monsters racing toward each other, but the men have barely moved on the stands—barely moved, and yet are clearly locked in sudden, deeply intense conflict.
Somehow, Nazar’s voice reaches me, the priest leaning close to my ear. “Monsters capture the imagination of the masses,” he says. “The crowds. Warriors fight with their minds, and their minds are what direct their Divhs.”
“But…” The words die in my throat. They’rethatconnected that the barest twitch, the slightest gesture sends these mountainous creatures hurtling forward? Merritt alwaysoveracted, throwing his body forth and screaming his orders for Gent to follow. These men…
The warriors on the platform remain completely still, each with a left hand outstretched palm up, a right hand gripped in a fist at his side. They could be statues, standing there, but through the glass, I can see their faces. They’re set in fixed ferocity, glaring across the open space as if they are avowed enemies. My glance jumps to the center of the field where the Divhs collide in a rush of hide and bone, the winged fire lizard shifting to the right at the last minute, scoring its talons down the side of the pale lion. My gaze pings back to the men again. The sky-blue knight staggers back, a thin trace of blood blooming on his shoulder.
The crowd roars. First blood!
“They arethatconnected.” Nazar’s words batter my ear. “Life to life, death to death. You start the fight with fists and rods and sword, you end it with the mind. That is the way of the warrior.”
The attack in front of me is suddenly replaced by the image of Merritt and Gent dropping from the sky, falling to the earth, sprawling out in the wrecked clearing of the practice field. Gent had disappeared—died, I’d thought—as Merritt breathed his last. Then Merritt’s band had moved—moved with such speed and ferocity, and now I’m banded. I’m a warrior—a warrior with no clue of what these men are doing, no idea how?—
“You do know, Talia. Look.”
Whether Nazar is still talking, or the words are echoes of my own panic, I fix on the fighting creatures, my own warrior band tightening on my arm with a painful squeeze. I stare at them, and somehow—something opens up inside me; a door through which a thousand songs pour forth, each rising and falling in a hopeless jumble of noise, each building to a different crescendo.
One of the loudest of those songs belongs to the purple lizard on the field, I realize with a startled blink—another to the Fourth House’s sky-blue lion.
The fight is raging with furious intensity now. The deep-purple lizard spins around, but its tail takes a few moments longer to clear its opponent. The light-blue beast lunges forward with a powerful paw, wrapping its claws around the tail and flipping it upward.
I swing my gaze back toward the wooden platforms, and in my mind’s eye, the Divhs are superimposed over the warriors, their feverish battle overlaying the minimal, impossibly elegant movements of the knights. How can they…how do they?
But those answers aren’t important now. What’s important is the sudden, swamping connection I feel between these men and their Divhs, the weight of it nearly staggering me. The Fourth House warrior flicks his hand only an inch, but the Sixth House knight wheels back, staggering a few steps as his Divh goes crashing head over tail, making three full rotations before it regains its position and soars upward again.
The men reset, and I can both sense and see their incredible exertion, though it’s their Divhs who slash and tear. Both warriors are sweating through their tunics, however, their effort plain on their faces and their trembling arms.
“Great warriors don’t fight with their fists, nor with a stave or blade, for all that they may be wielding these when they go to war.” Nazar’s words are clearer now, closer. Somehow, his voice carries over the screech and howl of the crowd around me. “Great warriors fight with their minds. With their spirit and their hearts, yes, but mostly with their minds.”
“But how—” I stare at the dance of death in front of me. The lizard has shot in close to the lion again, has buried its long snout in the larger animal’s neck. It’s not a big snout, but the spot is a sensitive one. Both Divh and its linked warrior on the woodenplatform wheel back, arms and giant forelegs in tortured concert as the beasts grapple in the open field.
The Fourth House warrior knight breaks first, bursting backward and wheeling away. Blood now flows freely down his neck, and his face is a ghastly mask of pain as his creature bucks and roars, trying to dislodge the lizard. A chance crack of the giant lion’s paw rakes across the lizard’s gossamer wing. Twin screams surge over the crowd, and it’s the Sixth House’s warrior’s turn to falter as the lizard finally opens its long jaws and blows back as if a puff of wind has caught it full sail.
This is a boon for the Fourth House Divh, but one that comes too late. On the field, the enormous sky-blue lion sinks to the ground, its forelegs trembling as it shakes its head, once, twice, clearly trying to get its bearings. The pain that reverberates from it is so strong, I can feel my own bones begin to quiver, and the band on my arm flares with another burst of heat.
On the platform, the men are affected as well. The blue-garbed knight of the Fourth falls forward to one knee. His right hand covers his left arm below the shoulder, only this time, his left hand comes up as well to form crossed arms over his chest. The purple knight of the Sixth, in contrast, remains standing, though he’s clearly wobbly. He raises both arms high, and a figure in long black-and-gold robes steps forward on the First House’s stone overlook. The figure lifts a horn to his mouth. A single clear note blows over the spellbound crowd, and everything stills.
Both warriors turn, their right hands finding their left shoulders. I hear their words in my own head, sending their Divhs back to their own plane.
The monsters disappear from the field.
The songs within me go silent.
Then the crowd catches me off guard with a new, startling roar. This time, they shout out a hero’s welcome as attendantsexit the doors at the top of the wooden towers and rush toward the warriors, apparently to give them aid. Both knights are surrounded. I try to see what’s happening to them, but the crowd is surging around me now, the day’s spectacle apparently done.
“Wasn’t that great? Wasn’t it?”
Caleb’s at Nazar’s side suddenly, bursting with excitement as I cringe back, trying to disappear. “The most amazing opening exhibition ever, mark me plain. Only fools thought the Sixth House would fall because the flying lizard was smaller than the lion of the Fourth. They were wrong. I knew it from the start. Small is often better. Small is fast, small is smart.”
He bounces up and down. Rather than being irritated, Nazar turns to him, blocking me from view for another few seconds. “And why do you think that, Caleb?” he asks mildly. “Why is small smarter?”
“Because it has to be,” Caleb shoots back. “Big will make you pay if you’re not fast and savvy. Like Merritt with his trick with the cane, flipping it round so he could crack ol’ Hantor in the head. Boy’s brains are still probably rattling around in his skull. Where is Merritt, anyway—” he peers past Nazar and his eyes peel wide. “Oh, Light! Lady Talia, right? But…where’s Merritt?”