Falcon Heart: Chronicle I

Chapter 1 Pursued

With a deep breath, Kyrin shook back her long hair. She had not thought to watch the sea from her god-father's tower without Celine this leaf-fall. Falcons were true—but friends cut sharp as a treacherous blade. Lord Fenwer's tower gave her a high eyrie from storm for the second time in two years.

Another gust of wind batted shorter locks about Kyrin's face. A chair creaked. Her mother padded across the stone behind her. She heard the sigh of her tunic dropped to the floor, the rustling of a dinner tunic donned. Rain spattered the window sill and misted on the floor, a breath of coolness wafting against her ankles.

Father was not here to tickle her mother's ear with a kiss and a low laugh on the morrow—to seal her freedom for a day in the woods, thick now with yellow-clad willow and birch and green pines. He could not tell Mother she would be safe outside Lord Fenwer's stronghold despite the sea-mist and the cliffs, flying her hunters of the air. The sea-thunder boded ill—the moaning wind around the tower would batter any hawk or falcon to a bolt of wet feathers hurtling to ruin under the trees.

"What do you think, Kyrin?"

Kyrin started and turned, with a swift smile.

Her mother's tunic, the rich ochre of autumn, flowed to the tips of her doeskin shoes. The saffron sleeves of her over-tunic brushed her girdle. From the braided linen swung the key of Cierheld: a beautiful, handspan-long, angular piece of iron.

Kyrin stared at it grimly. Before many more sunrises she would hand her own key to a lord. And she had not yet found him.

"Are you well?" Lady Willa sat, her crippled fingers gripping the arm of her chair, living wood curling about a tree-knot. She can be hard as a knot too, when she settles her mind on a thing. Her concern enfolded Kyrin with the warmth of fur in winter. She said I had until fifteen summers to choose. Kyrin shivered. Her mother's grey gaze sharpened. "What is it?"

"Nothing, Mother. You will bring honor to Father this night, and Calee's tongue will wag in the kitchen—the sleeves are most becoming." Kyrin moved to the bed and dropped her tunic, which smelled of Aart, around her feet. She dug for a clean one in her mother's saddlebag. "Do not think of me, I'm well, truly. It was a long ride. But Lord Fenwer is as kind as ever."

She tugged at a strand of hair that had escaped the bonds of her leather circlet. Mother said her hair shone with glints of honey in the sun. It was not "drab as a draggled wren just in out of the rain"—as Myrna of Jornhold declared once with a disdainful sniff.

Kyrin's fingers tightened. Wren or not, she had time to show Esther and Myrna that hunting a falcon was about swift beauty, about something of use in her hand, and something she could not name that rose inside her on their wings. Esther, the nearest stronghold first-daughter, would not laugh at her again. And Mother must never know what she whispered of her hill-blood.

Everyone in the three strongholds knew Esther was the beauty among their first-daughters, with hair of gold and straw-flower eyes. Round faced Myrna was winsome in her ways, and cried over the rabbits that Kyrin's hawk, Samson, hunted for the stew.

But Kyrin of Cierheld was too small, with all the sharp angles of her blood, as apt to stumble into one with a scowl as to curtsey and smile.

An orphan and the stronghold daughters' companion, coltish, red-haired Celine was a born mimic—sure to find her place despite a rough beginning—if she stayed close to the others. So Aunt Medaen said. "High blood will call to blood."

As if old Medaen knows anything about high blood, or those of the blood of the hills—she followed Father from peasant to mercenary, and despised Lord Edsel until he repaid Father's protection with Cierheld. Now the other lords look at Father and Edsel's wall with suspicion. And Medaen can't see past her long nose. She insists I ready myself for Lord Bergrin Jorn. That I guard his suit as I can against Lord Edsel.