The King Rolen's Kin: The Uncrowned King - By Rowena Cory Daniells Page 0,1
of the frothing stars told him it was full dark. Shudders wracked his body, sending powdery snow slipping off his chest and face. With caution, he tested his limbs... amazingly no bones were broken.
An odd bird call sounded, soft yet imperious. It was this which had woken him. Turning his head, he saw he'd ploughed through a drift into an inlet formed by an eddy on the side of the lake. This was Viridian Lake, which meant he had another good day's skating before he reached the abbey on the side of Mount Halcyon. He would need his wits to meet the abbot, so he decided to make camp and start out fresh at sunrise.
As soon as he got to the abbey he'd ask to see Fyn. He'd have to tell his youngest brother how Lence had died. Fyn would believe Byren had not betrayed his own twin. Byren had always got on well with his younger brother, even though Fyn had been gifted to the abbey as a lad of six.
The odd bird call came again. This time it was more imperious, followed by a harsh cry that finished on a furious, rising note.
Byren rolled into a crouch to listen. A glow formed in the hollow beyond the slope at the far end of the inlet. There had to be a camp fire. Unless it was the Merofynians, and he didn't think a scouting party would be this far from the main camp, he could claim traveller's ease and share some of his provisions in exchange for a place by the fire.
As the harsh cry returned, the glow heightened.
Had the travellers captured a bird, which was objecting while they prepared to slaughter it for dinner? Even though he'd hunted the valley since he was old enough to ride a pony at his father's side, Byren did not recognise the cry.
Something wasn't right. The more he studied the glow coming from the hollow, the more it unnerved him. He went very still, his breath held. The glow did not flicker like the leaping flames of an open fire. It was too steady, like concentrated starlight.
Untying his skates, he slung them over his shoulder and crept along the bank of the inlet. After working his way up the far slope, he stretched full length in the snow to peer down into the hollow.
For a heartbeat he simply stared. Nothing could have prepared him for this. Two Affinity beasts faced each other, both were as big as dogs and both were displaying. What was that bird called, the one with the glowing crest and tail?
The name came to him... hercinia. And his bestiary studies produced the text he'd memorised with the encouragement of his tutor's switch. Hercinias were rare, only found in deep forests and greatly prized for their glowing feathers, which were worth a small fortune. This one must be a female getting ready to mate because only the females glowed like this and only when they were fertile.
Even as he watched, the hercinia opened its tail feathers in a wide arc like a fan. In the centre of each feather's tip was a glowing 'eye', an iridescent patch that pulsed bright enough to confuse and scare off a predator. Even if the bird's feathers hadn't been in their glowing state it would have been magnificent. A fine, diamond-tipped tiara of lacy feathers grew from the crown of the hercinia's head. The brilliant feather tips danced like agitated fire flies as it confronted the other bird.
For a moment Byren wondered if this was the hercinia's mate and he was witnessing a rare, exquisite dance of love. Then the other bird leapt into the air, wings flapping, long tail trailing behind it and he recognised it as a calandrius. A ripple of shimmering colour raced up its long neck collecting around its eye sockets and beak, heightening its already brilliant colouring. To call those feathers red was an insult. They were vermilion... a living, pulsing vermilion.
Calandrius were prized by healers for their ability to tell if a sick person was on the verge of death. The calandrius could inhale the breath of the diseased person, absorbing the poisonous vapours that made them ill. But the birds were used sparingly for, to overcome the disease, they had to fly towards the sun until the illness was burnt out of them. Often they did not survive. And, if they did, they would not return to the healer once set free.