“On the table boy,” Granfather said, with an excited grin on his wrinkled old face.
Hyden set the bundle down gently on the table, while Gerard found their grandfather’s food box and pulled out some bread and cheese as if he owned the place. In council and in public, this man was the Eldest of the clan, and all of the Skylers treated him with the utmost respect, but here inside his harvest hut, just like in his home, he was just the grandfather of two excited boys.
He leaned over the table and studied the chick for a moment, and then he brushed the long, silver-streaked hair out of his face and sat down. He motioned for the boys to do the same, indicating that Gerard could bring the bread and cheese with him.
“This is a wondrous thing,” he said in his deep, scratchy voice. “Great things will come of this.” He looked to Gerard, then to Hyden, and the smile on his face slowly faded. “But there is the potential for terrible things as well.”
Gerard handed Hyden some bread and cut them both some of the cheese as he spoke.
“The story says that a man will harvest an egg and that it will hatch for him. Then, he and the hawkling will go off and do great things together.”
“Aye, Gerard,” their grandfather agreed. “That the story does say.”
He stood slowly, then walked to the other side of the little hut, and began rummaging through a pile of old furs and leather satchels.
“The story though, is just that. It’s a story. The true legend is written in the old language—the language of dragons and wizards. It may or may not be a true prophesy. The Elders and I have often argued that.”
He stopped speaking suddenly as something came to him. He dug around some more, and then pulled an object out of an old bag made from the skin of some shaggy mountain animal.
“Here it is!” he exclaimed. “My father’s translation.” He opened the tattered volume and looked at the pages for a while.
A few long moments passed, so long that it began to appear that he had forgotten the two boys sitting at his table.
Hyden looked at his brother with a grin. He was about to clear his throat to politely remind the old man of their presence, but the hawkling chick did the job for him.
The little featherless bird wiggled his body and rose trembling to its tiny, clawed feet. It extended its neck up into the air, opened its beak, and began screeching for food. Gerard immediately pulled some jerky from his pack and gave it to his older brother. Hyden chewed it up just like before. Once the meat was soft, he gave it to the bird.
“Is this the first time you’ve fed it?” their grandfather asked with a look of childish excitement on his old face. He seemed to have forgotten his book entirely now, and he watched with rapt attention as Hyden took out another piece of chewed meat and fed it to the hungry bird.
“Mmm—no,” Hyden answered as he chewed. “I fed it—mmm—once this—mmm—morn.”
“Then it will be your familiar,” the old man said matter-of-factly. It was the voice of the clan Eldest speaking now, not their grandfather. “It will bond with you alone now, Hyden. You’re its mother.”
All eyes seemed to fall on Gerard at that moment, searching for some sign of disappointment, or other ill reaction to the decision. Gerard wasn’t very upset. He had the ring after all. Besides, he told himself, what respectable clansman wanted to be a mother?
“I and the Elders who are here at harvest will hold a council on this at moonrise,” their grandfather informed them as he opened up the old book again. “Stay near the lodges this night. We will want to speak to you about this… Both of you,” he added before Gerard could ask the question that had already formed on the tip of his tongue.
Walking with his face in the old book, the Eldest gracefully shouldered his way through the elk skin door and was gone.
Chapter 3
“Where ye headed, Mik?” Ruddy, the nightshift stable master at Lakeside Castle’s Royal Stables, asked.
“Can’t say,” Mikahl replied. Mikahl was the King of Westland’s personal squire, and the King had told him, with much distress in his voice, to prepare for a long journey, and to do so quietly. Mikahl was almost certain that by “quietly,” the King had meant undetected. Mikahl had asked if he should prepare the King’s mount as well, and the answer had been firm. “You’ll be going alone, Mik, and the journey will be a long one. No one can suspect that you’re leaving.”