Sword Quest. Nancy Fan Yi

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СКАЧАТЬ the gem first. “Yes!”

      But it was none other than the prince. Turning in the direction of Maldeor, he lifted the gem up in the air. “I have found the gem!” Phaëthon pronounced, gloating.

      You little bother! Maldeor grumbled angrily to himself and gripped his sword tighter. He gave a curt order to his soldiers to kill all the doves they could find. The foolish birds would have to pay for their defiance of the emperor – and Maldeor would have to go and get the prince. If only he hadn’t agreed to bring the brat here. As if in answer to his hidden wishes, a dark shadow suddenly loomed from the grove of birches behind the prince.

      Now, this was no dove or archaeopteryx. It was the last of the long-lived flying creatures who had four wings. This intelligent creature, neither reptile nor bird, had blundered along in the darkness of the bracken for years and years and years, revealing himself to his contemporary cousins only when necessity called. Lizard eyes staring, he scanned the battleground he had just come across and focused on a young, tender specimen. A bigger bite than the doves he thought. The evil cogwheels in his ancient brain whirled as he calculated.

      He sprang into the sunlight, unfurling four wings. For trembling seconds the dinosaur eclipsed the sun, then, lifting its leathery lips, bore down on the fat young prince.

      The mouth opened, in went the front half of the prince, and the mouth closed. The prince’s muffled squeals came echoing out of the creature’s nostrils. Six times the size of an archaeopteryx, the monster jerked its neck, trying to swallow.

      “Prince, Prince!” Sir Maldeor yelled hoarsely, grudges forgotten, as pure fear flooded his being. What was this? Was the prince dead already? My knighthood and life are in jeopardy! He jumped towards the four-winged dinosaur. His soldiers swarmed to corner the new danger as well, but their spears clattered off its scales and did not worry it. Now the fat legs and tail of the prince were kicking between the teeth. Maldeor grabbed one round leg and started desperately pulling.

      Phaëthon, in the throat of the monster, was suffocating. He has little hope, Maldeor thought, and tugged at the gemstone instead. He wrestled fiercely to uncurl the stiffening talons, even beating on the prince’s foot with his sword, but it seemed of little use. Like any dying bird, the prince’s claws fastened tightly to whatever he was holding in an iron clutch.

      Maldeor succeeded in loosening two toes, but just as the gemstone wobbled, the dinosaur broke loose, reared on its hind legs and tipped its head back. Phaëthon disappeared, gem and all.

      Before Maldeor could try to slash open the creature’s throat and belly to retrieve the prince’s body and get the gemstone, a sudden deep groan issued from the winged monster. Its eyes shrivelled up like two huge raisins, and, with a horrified bellow, it dropped to all fours and disappeared in a wreath of blue flames.

      Sir Maldeor hacked the air as fiercely as he could where the monster had been, but it was gone, along with the prince and the gemstone. He looked back in despair. The dove who had knocked the gem out of his claws was nowhere to be seen. He howled in frustration and panic.

      Meanwhile, Irene the dove mourned for her destroyed tribe and her dead father. Between each trembling wing beat, she distractedly wondered where she should head. An image of foaming waves flitted across her mind. The archaeopteryxes never patrolled the southern seaside, except on a rare mission. Yes, the seaside would be a safe place to go for now, she thought.

      The trip that she made to the sea was an extraordinary one. Where it might have taken a seasoned migratory bird two days, she got there in just one day. Exhausted, she fell into a deep slumber in a crevice within a seaside cliff and did not wake till morning.

      She felt wretched with despair. Now she had lost everything. Family, safety, responsibility. She staggered along the sand in the whispering tide, her vision blinding white with sickening greyish shadows.

      A few days later, she laid an egg, and her interest in life was renewed. I won’t lose you to the archaeopteryxes, my little one, she vowed. I will die for you if I have to.

      The days that she brooded her egg brought the worst sea storms ever imagined. The clouds finally cleared on the day the egg trembled and broke; and a thread of light fell upon the small bird, who was covered with down as delicate as frost.

      Irene stared at the hatchling, amazed. Doves never hatched with feathers! The strange little bird turned his face to his mother, and his eyes opened, dark and shining. But baby doves were hatched blind. In the distance the sea wind sang. Winds could be gentle or powerful. Winds could be captured, but never for long. Irene cupped her claw around her hatchling’s head and whispered, “Wind-voice…”

      Still, the hatchling looked a lot like her: red beak, red feet and an honest little face with a perpetual smile on it. She feared, sadly and bitterly, that somehow the archaeopteryxes would be a threat to her hatchling.

      When the four-winged dinosaur awoke in a room with shadowy granite walls, he was diminished in size. He pressed a trembling forelimb to his heart. Nothing was beating.

      Before him, misty smoke whirled in a gigantic circle. High up in the very middle of the spinning grey wisps, a voice boomed out. “I am Yama, Lord of Death. Welcome, four-winged creature. You are no longer truly alive, but partially a ghost, and here you shall be known as Yin Soul. You have swallowed a sacred gemstone, a crystallised tear of my opposite, the Great Spirit. It is lodged inside you. This is your punishment! You shall be suspended here in torment in this small space, between the world of the living and the dead.”

      The dinosaur widened his eyes. “What? There must be a mistake! I didn’t eat a gem; I ate an archaeopteryx!”

      “The archaeopteryx was holding on to a gemstone. It is one of seven that points the way to the magical sword in Kauria, the Island of Paradise. A hero will come to get the sword in the fifth full moon two years from now. When he does, you shall die an utterly painful death.”

      Yin Soul yelped. “Can I get out? I don’t want to be here!”

      “Only if you manage to reincarnate in the body of a likely hero before Hero’s Day and get the sword yourself will you escape. Otherwise, my realm shall welcome you!” Yama’s voice sent chills through the dinosaur.

      In the same mysterious way he had come, Yama dissolved.

      There were bookshelves full of dark tomes all around Yin Soul. In the long, agonising days after his arrival, he devoted himself to learning ways of trickery and deceit. All the while, he scanned the frozen thoughts of dying birds, searching – searching for a victim to pull him out of this wretched place.

      He waited bitterly for two years before he finally found one.

       Resistance is hatched from oppression.

      FROM THE OLD SCRIPTURE

       2 THE DEFIANCE

      No empire since the creation of the sword had spread so quickly or so ruthlessly as that of the archaeopteryxes. They were a shrewd, hardy species. The key to their sudden expansion was that they thrived on everything: fruit, seeds, insects, fish and carrion. Soon most of the other tribes were serving them as slaves or paying them tribute. Even the powerful alliance of the crow, myna and raven clans had fallen.

      Some СКАЧАТЬ