Shadowed By Wings Read Online Free PDF Page A

Dono’s hostility and the pulsating, persistent memory of Kratt’s pleasure in whipping me senseless the day previous.
    Both were equally unsettling.
    It burned that I had allowed Kratt to injure me, see. It smarted that I had so readily submitted to him, he whom I had been about to murder. I had planned it so carefully, had schemed for years over how I might exact vengeance upon the man who’d ruined my clan and my childhood. Up until the moment when the dragonmaster had singled me out from the crowd lining the Mombe Taro lane, I had been resigned to execution for killing Waikar Re Kratt.
    Now the madness that had gripped me upon receiving that outrageous hope from the dragonmaster seemed just that: madness. Here I was, suffering excruciating pain when I could have been plunged into the nether-blackness of the One Dragon’s Essence. Instead of enfolded in the numb oblivion of death, here I was, horribly alive and reeling from the shocking hostility of a milk-brother who had no desire to realize that I had joined the dragonmaster’s apprenticeship, defied convention, and allowed my sworn enemy to live, all so that those such as Dono and myself might one day be free from the tyranny of Temple, aristocrat, and Emperor all.
    I collapsed onto my knees on the cool dust behind a grain silo.
    I knelt there, swaying in the meager shade, buffeted by pain both physical and emotional, as the bloated sun rose hot and pulsing into the sky.
    I thirsted. I dreamed.
    I dreamed of a carrion bird, the carbuncles on its wattles obscenely red. It stood before me, its narrow gray head cocked to one side. How brilliant and cruel those glass-bright eyes as they stared at me!
    “I can stop it, hey-o,” the buzzard cackled. “I can stop your pain.”
    I ignored the hallucination, concentrated on breathing, on not toppling face-first onto the ground.
    “A bargain, yes?” the bird croaked. It lifted a wing the length of my arm. Flick-flick; its beak darted in and out of its bedraggled plumage, snapping at lice and dust motes. The bird looked at me again and tucked its wing back into place. It held a feather in its beak. A blue feather.
    Of course. No fever-dream was this, and no ordinary carrion bird. This was my mother’s haunt. I hated and feared the thing almost as fiercely as I was glad to see it.
    “Mother,” I gasped.
    The haunt placed the feather on the ground, carefully.
    “A bargain,” it croaked. “Health for service.”
    I stared at the feather that shimmered in the heat, and I reminded myself that this was not my mother, but Mother’s obsession with finding Waivia made manifest. Whatever dregs of my mother that remained within the creature were sunk deep beneath layers of madness, magic, and dire intent.
    “You know this can heal you, yes?” The bird’s scaled claw shifted the blue feather slightly in the dust.
    Yes, I knew the feather could heal me. It had done so once before. And I needed to be healed to not only survive the enmity of Dono and his peers but also tackle the daunting task of living life as an apprentice.
    “If you take it, you agree to leave here and find Waivia,” the bird croaked. “Health for service.”
    “Agreed,” I said, and I lurched for the feather, as swift as an adder’s strike. With a squawk, the buzzard jumped into the air, wings beating clouds of dust into my eyes and mouth. My hand closed around the feather; it burst into an effervescing cloud that settled over me as soft as mist, as tender as a mother’s caress. A moist scent delicately laced the air, that dainty fragrance that bespeaks dew sliding slowly down an orchid’s petal, moisture adorning spider silk.
    My head was at once clear, my senses sharp. While the wounds upon my back still pulsed, the pain was vastly muted and quite bearable.
    The buzzard alighted upon the ground again, several feet away. It regarded me with wary defiance.
    You will leave here now, the creature said, its voice embedded in my skull. You will keep