Drift: River of Falcons Book 1

Time

"Get up," Summer called from the bottom of the ladder.

Drift sat up abruptly, blinking. It was dark and she was very sleepy. "Are we going to fight the sorcerers?" she mumbled.

"Spirits! Don't talk like that. Get dressed and come help me with this healing. That's a good boy."

That was Summer's way of warning her they had a night-time visitor. She pulled on her leggings and tunic and reached up to check her hair. It hung down her back, like it had in her dream. "What in the names of the Spirits?" she muttered.

"Coming?" Summer called.

"Yeah," she said, remembering to speak in a boyish voice. She pulled her hair into a twist on top of her head and stuck a tweed cap on to hold it in place. Then she backed down the ladder.

"The Miller's little boy has a bad fever." Summer nodded her head toward the large man sitting at the table, cradling a pale, shivering child. "You'll have to go to the pond. It's where the best sorrel grows. I'd go, but the night is too dark for my old eyes."

"Your eyes?" Drift repeated. "Oh." Summer had especially keen eyesight, and she had recently taught Drift the trick of allowing her vision to slip out of focus and intuition to take over so as to see in the dark. It was called Spirit-sight, and Summer was good at it, but Drift guessed Summer did not want the Miller to know about that.

With a quick glance at the little boy, Drift slipped into her sandals, grabbed her cloak off its peg, and went out. The night air smelled of freshly turned soil as her path took her past the garden. She crossed a field, aiming for the ink-dark arch where the path entered the forest.

A few yards into the forest, and before her eyes had adjusted to the deeper darkness there, she tripped and fell over something unexpected.

She got up and brushed the dirt from her knees as she studied what seemed to be a mid-sized rock right in the middle of the path. Puzzled, she bent down and touched it. It was not a rock. It felt like one of the box-turtles she sometimes found in the woods, except larger. When it extended its legs, tail and head and heaved itself up, she jumped back with a startled, "Oh!" Then she remembered a picture of a tortoise in a book about rare animals. It's name, she recalled, was Agrionemys Giganticus. "But what in the names of the Spirits is a tortoise doing here?" she said to herself.

"Ah, yes, that is certainly a question," the tortoise replied, his deep voice offering a hint of good-humored irony.

"What?" Drift stumbled back, staring.

"However," he continued, "the answer makes a rather long story. Shall we walk as we talk?"

Drift collected herself. "You can speak! Wait, are you a sorcerer?"

"Your modern sorcerers lack the skill to master this form."

"Is that a fact."

"Yes. Now, isn't there a large pond somewhere near here? You must know the way. I feel an urge to walk there. Will you be my guide?"

"It's that way." Drift pointed. "But I'm in a hurry."

"In a hurry to get sorrel. Yes. Just the thing for that fever." The tortoise nodded approvingly. "Be sure to gather extra to save having to come back later. In fact, you'd better pick as much as you can carry. The fever will spread."

"Have you been spying on us?" Drift demanded.

"Spying, no. Watching, yes, but that is not the important part. Will you guide me to this pond of yours?" The tortoise nodded his head in what seemed like a formal bow as he said this.

"Why? I don't even know who you are."

"Yes, but I know who you are," he said. "And I know you are on a quest and do not want to be diverted. None of us do, do we? However, life is rarely as neat and tidy as we wish it to be." He took a slow step. "I am also on a quest. I've been on it for nearly a thousand years."

Drift's eyebrows shot up.

"My quest just happens to be to help someone who I believe is capable of fulfilling a prophecy. However, I should not help her unless she helps me first. That is how these things work, which is why I asked you to guide me to the pond. If you please."

"In case you're going to say something else about prophecies, just don't. I'm obviously not a princess!"

"Not yet," he said, eyeing her. "Did you know, Drift, that what you do determines who you become? You might just make that prophecy come true. And," he paused, staring off into the distance, "there may even come a time when you are the teacher, but it is so difficult to see the future."

"You know my name, but I don't know yours. I don't like that. Maybe these are just sorcerers' tricks. Are you a sorcerer?"

The tortoise smiled. "There's no point asking me, because if I were a sorcerer, I would lie. Are there other ways of knowing?"

Drift frowned. "I don't know." She paused, then added, "But if you were planning to kill me, you ought to have done it by now. So come along. I can't spend the rest of the night standing here talking. Not like that, for Spirits' sake. Can't you run? I'm in a hurry."

"If you never hurry, you'll never be late," he offered, his voice echoing oddly off the tree trunks around her. She paused, startled, as a strong tingling spread over her. The tingling was joined by dizziness as some unfamiliar and powerful force lifted her off the ground. "Stop that!" she shouted. A fluttering in her stomach answered the tingling and she felt something warm and soothing flood her body. Her feet touched down and the dizziness subsided.

"Here we are," the tortoise said. "Or almost. You resisted, so our journey ended a little short. But—"

"What did you do?" Drift demanded, her fists balled and her eyes flashing.

"Take a look around."

Drift looked. They were standing at the top of a beach. Starlight was reflecting off the dark surface of a body of water. "Wait, how did we get here?" she demanded.

"Time is like the flow of a river, and it may be navigated by those with sufficient skill."

"Navigated? How?" Drift demanded.

"I put us in a bubble and swished us on ahead, but you may also set the bubble around others and anchor them in place while you move past them. Use your imagination," he added over his shoulder as he plodded down the beach. "The possibilities are extensive. But do be careful! Time-workings are far beyond the skill of anyone from your era. I would teach you more, but I dare not risk the recoil. Good luck, Princess."

Before she could think of what to ask next, he simply faded away. She hurried over to the spot, and, as she had suspected, found that his prints ended abruptly in the damp sand. "That was some serious magic," she muttered. "I wonder if I can do it?"