Guardians of the Prophecy

Chapter One: Across the Desert

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One year later...

The hot desert sun blazed in the periwinkle sky, making Rima lower her head to the burning sand as she squinted her eyes and shielded her face.  She wasn’t used to being exposed to such heat, despite the fact that Almas, the city where she came from, was surrounded by buttes and mesas, was only a few miles away from the Scorching Desert. 

Not that she was complaining, of course.  She had to cross the desert in order to fulfill her duty as foretold by the Prophecy.  Nevertheless, Rima couldn’t help but think back to the home that had been on the outskirts of Almas.  It had only been about half a day, but she already missed the sweet clean smell of her aunt and the encouraging words of her cousins and relatives.  She missed the soft mattress and sheets of her bed, and the security and familiarity that surrounded her.

Today, the day of her eighteenth birthday, was the first time Rima would be alone on a journey.  She wasn’t supposed to be, though.  Her stupid bodyguard had been late.  She had no idea why he would be late considering how salient their roles were in ensuring the Prophecy would come true, but Rima had had no choice but to set out on her own with Gebal, the one-humped ungulate creature given to her as a parting gift by her family, and Shaheen, her female Perien falcon.  

It had only been eight months ago when she had stumbled upon the Perien chick, called an eyas according to her mentor Len, on the ground beside the tree from where it had fallen.  Rima and Len had gone to the mountains surrounding Almas for some fitness and magic training when Rima had found a fuzzy, grey-white chick near some roots and pebbles.  Her mentor had deduced that its parents had probably gone hunting.  It had amused her when the chick had followed the movement of Rima’s hand when she tried to reach for it with a wide-open mouth, so it looked startled. 

They decided to wait until the parents came back with food before leaving the chick alone.  When its parents arrived, Len spoke gently to the birds through telepathy, notifying them that Rima would use magic to help put the chick back in the nest.  After successfully using her power, the Perien birds came to trust the girl and her mentor, sometimes following them around the mountains as Len trained Rima for the next two months.

The chick that had fallen became especially attached to Rima.  After learning how to fly and hunt, the falcon would scout ahead and sometimes even bring back captured voles to eat when they settled down for the night.  She had even learned to fly to Rima’s arm when she whistled.  After the two months passed by, the chicks had grown and left the parents’ nest, yet the same falcon still flew after Rima on her way home.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay with this?  I’ve got a long, hard journey ahead of me.”  Rima had told the bird after tying a pair of jesses to her feet.  The bird hadn’t put up a fight whatsoever and merely looked at the girl with dark steely eyes.  Then she flapped to her shoulder and lightly nibbled her ear affectionately.  So Rima gave the falcon the name Shaheen.

She sighed softly and glanced up at the sky, watching as a dark shadow of the falcon soared high above them, before lowering her gaze back to the dull sand dunes that Gebal now plodded across.   The two-night trek would be arduous, but it comforted her to know she would arrive at the city by the third day.

When they stopped for supper later that evening, Rima made sure to feed Gebal and Shaheen first: Gebal with some hay, alfalfa grain, a carrot and water, and Shaheen with raw pigeon.  Len had wrapped a couple of the birds with leaves and cast a spell on them so the meat wouldn’t rot.  Birds are rarer in the area you’re walking across, he had explained when giving them to her before she left earlier that day.