Talon (The Astor Chronicles Book 1)

Talon

Publishing Details
Talon
by Amanda Greenslade Published by
Tigerace Books
www.tigerace.com

© Amanda Greenslade The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright restricted above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

Designer: Amanda Greenslade Distributor: Australian eBook Publisher

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:

www.amandagreenslade.com

Talon

The Astor Chronicles

Book

1

Amanda Greenslade

Author’s Note

I first began writing
Talon
at the tender age of 14, inspired by my love of animals and fantasy novels by authors including Jennifer Roberson and Maggie Furey. I completed many drafts, self-edited, restructured, rewrote and grew up in the process of writing the novel and planning a series of eight books.

I engaged the services of four very different, talented editors: Stephen Thompson, Wendy Sargeant, Rebecca Wylie and the late Lin M. Hall. I am very grateful to these editors and to the many readers who made their way through various drafts to give me invaluable feedback.

I am also thankful to my family, especially my mother Kathy, for cultivating my love of writing from a young age. It has taken nearly twenty years for me to reach a point where I feel the first book of
The Astor Chronicles
is ready to be published, but it will not take that long for the rest of the series to come out!

Thanks also to Eve Doyle for the vector version of my hand-drawn map, and artists Sheridan Johns and Adele Sessler for artwork.

I hope readers all over the world will enjoy
The Astor Chronicles
.

www.AmandaGreenslade.com

www.facebook.com/amandagreensladewriter

twitter.com/starsabre

Chryne

East of the Kiayr Ranges

Contents

Chapter One—Who am I?

Chapter Two—Bonded

Chapter Three—Transformations

Chapter Four—Fishing

Chapter Five—Anzaii

Chapter Six—The Wavekeepers

Chapter Seven—Intruder

Chapter Eight—The Quarry

Chapter Nine—Heirloom

Chapter Ten—The Letter

Chapter Eleven—Rade

Chapter Twelve—The Darkening of the Sky

Chapter Thirteen—The Immortal Children

Chapter Fourteen—Allies and Enemies

Chapter Fifteen—Sting

Chapter Sixteen—Animal Instinct

Chapter Seventeen—Recovery

Chapter Eighteen—Strength and Weakness

Glossary

About the Author

Chapter One—Who am I?

L
ight. Glorious, blue prisms of light sparkled off every leaf and branch. Thick, powdery sap burbled slowly inside the crystalline structures. The Great Sapphire Tree of Jaria was one of only a few hundred sapphire trees that were still known to exist. Its leaves were hard and thick as sapphires, its branches like iron bars. Such trees were rare, most having been harvested for the mineral sapphite long ago.

I brushed the leaves with the tips of my fingers as I passed the tree, and stooped to get to the cave behind it.

I hadn’t made the climb to see the tree, rather to get at the cave and a likely source of milk bulb. I leaned down with a lamp, sniffed the air and listened. A soft scuffling noise reached my ears. Heart thumping, I withdrew my iron knife from its sheath.

‘Who’s there?’ I asked.

A faint growling rumbled off the wall of the cave. It was too deep and throaty to be a treelion. I guessed it was something more like a rock panther or maybe even an icetiger.

I tried to keep my breathing even. Today’s journey had just got a whole lot more interesting. Perhaps I would come home with a bond-mate of my own, after all my years of waiting.

There were a dozen Rada with rock panthers in Jaria presently, but no one was bonded with an icetiger.

Don’t be silly
, I told myself, trying not to get my hopes up.
The best I can hope for today is to see one and live to tell the tale
.

I shuffled further into the cave, holding the lamp high enough to throw light into its dark recesses. I saw only rocks, roots, spiderwebs and bones.

I pulled a pair of spicy dried sardines from one of my pouches and lay them on the ground.

Retreating back towards the entrance, I set the lamp between myself and the possible predator. I unhitched my pack, retrieved the leather mask from within and arranged it so that the bright eyes were on the back of my head. Gatherers, like me, often used them to keep great cats at bay in the forest. A wild cat was less likely to attack if it thought it was being watched.

I took a few deep breaths and decided it was safe to continue my work.

I tore a section of vine from the roof of the cave. The plant grew deep inside the walls. It would take much work with my pick-axe to determine where the precious bulbs were concealed.

If there was an animal inside the cave and it decided to attack me, despite the mask, I would use the pick-axe to defend myself. I’d rather not cause any lasting damage, just enough to scare it off.

I began the laborious task of hacking at the cave wall, removing rocks and dirt from around the vine.

A scuffling noise came from behind me. I turned ever so slowly to see a large white paw retreating into the darkness, fish in tow. Then there was the faintest sound of jaws smacking together and a large tongue cleaning a muzzle.

A surge of excitement passed through me. If I trusted that glimpse of a white paw, the creature in this cave with me was indeed an icetiger. Furthermore, somewhere inside me, I found that I knew the animal was sentient.

‘How long have you been here?’ I asked.

If I was right, then this was some fortunate Jarian’s new Rada-kin.
Mine?
The words I spoke were probably the first human words it had ever heard and understood. When the great cat still did not show itself, I sighed and went back to work. It would come out when it was ready. Besides, night was not too far away and I wanted to get this finished and start a fire.

I was on the third axe-head when the rocks around the milk bulb finally gave way. About two feet into the cave wall was the biggest cache of milk bulb I had ever seen. It would be fortunate if I could manage to carry it all back to Jaria. I used my knife to dig away the rootlets and dirt around the bulbs, severed their cords, and hauled them out in pairs.

Having lined them up at the mouth of the cave, I collapsed in a heap and lay panting for some time. The day-star hovered on the horizon. From my vantage point on the side of an incline I could see over an expanse of forest. The dying light made the balls of mist that hung over the landscape glow like fire.

Wild geese flocked across the sky to the east. Harmless though they were, I turned my eyes away from them, barely suppressing a shudder. Of all the animals in the world, birds were my least favoured.

Lying on my back with my head propped on my pack, I rubbed at the scar on my left wrist. It was the source of my nick-name and of my one true fear.

‘Who?’
The word came as an interruption to my thoughts, jolting me out of my reverie.

‘Talon,’
I replied. My heart thumped with excitement. The great cat!

‘No,’
it repeated, with a fierce edge to its voice.
‘Not “who are you?”. Who am I?’

I sat up. This wasn’t my imagination. It was real. That voice in my head… could it possibly be a voice for me? A Rada-kin, finally… for me? My soul soared and I had the distinct impression of Sy-tré, the wolf herald for my people, running and leaping for joy. My time had come—like my parents before me, I was a Rada!

‘Enough about you!’
the voice accused,
‘What have you done to me?’

I got to my feet slowly, feeling dizzy. There in the shadows behind me was a huge blue and white icetiger, its fur standing on end; puffed up it was even more immense and frightening than I had pictured. Its back was level with my thigh, large yellow fangs gleamed in its snarling maw and the tail thrashed like a farm cat’s. Thick blue-grey stripes and myriad black and blue spots covered its luscious pelt—no wonder these creatures had been so hunted that they were now rare.