Talon (The Astor Chronicles Book 1) (2 page)

‘How dare you?’
the voice shrilled. The wild cat ran forward several steps and seemed about to pounce on me. I held my ground. A drawn out yowl escaped the cat’s lips.
‘Speak prey! What am I?’

The joy I had felt was joined by a thrill of fear. The great cat’s raw ferocity and mental power stunned me. I blinked, trying to clear my senses, which seemed to have expanded. Smell, hearing, sight and touch vibrated outwards with a depth of perception I could not have imagined. I was suddenly aware of other creatures, plants, watercourses and wind I had not noticed before. Their sounds and smells were all around the icetiger and me. Each whisker and hair on her body seemed to be receiving and processing these impressions with ease.

Frustrated by my distraction, the icetiger growled and lifted its paw to strike.

‘Who am I?’
the cat shrieked.

‘Apparently you are a Rada-kin’
, I replied.
‘And for whatever reason be known to Krii, it appears that you are
my
Rada-kin.’

The cat stared at me for a long time, seeing and hearing far more than the words I spoke through the waves. I frowned, trying to remember if the other Rada-kin I had escorted to Jaria had been so affronted. I hadn’t been able to hear them in my mind, but I knew the body language of animals well. Most had seemed confused at first, then grateful, not only for the longer life but also for the sentience and fulfilment granted to them. It was a special gift for an animal as most were destined to live out their lives oblivious to the gifts of the Lightmaker.

Pulling thoughts out of my wide-open mind the icetiger responded with a menacing tone and a sharp flick of her tail.
‘Easy for you to say. You’ve had plans and purpose all your life. Imagine me, awakening one day, to find a question in my mind: “is there more to life than hunting and sleeping?” It’s unnatural.’

‘Indeed,’
I replied, smiling at the first hint of the tiger’s sense of humour.
‘You are no longer a natural animal. You are now a being of three dimensions.’

The icetiger padded slowly into the light and walked in a circle around me. She sniffed me from in front and behind, eyeing me. She growled and licked her lips.

‘What is this “life” and “death” you define yourself by?’
she asked.

‘I don’t define myself by them,’
I replied.
‘What makes you say that?’

‘“I am alive”, “my parents are dead”—are these not thoughts that define who you are?’

I supposed that at the most basic level I did define myself as alive and those I had lost as dead but to explain the intricacies of life and death to an animal was surely like speaking about it to a child. I hardly knew where to begin.

‘I am not only alive physically,’
I began,
‘but spiritually as well.’

‘Yes… I sense three facets to you….’
the icetiger replied. She fished through my knowledge for the words to describe what she perceived.
‘Body, soul, spirit?’

‘That’s right,’
I replied enthusiastically,
‘The soul or “mind” is what links the body to the spirit, more than just one’s intelligence, thoughts and desires.’

‘Your body is alive. Your parents’ bodies are dead, but their spirits are alive?’
She was smart, and quicker to understand novel concepts than a child.

‘Yes. There are three domains to our existence, each layered atop the other. The domain of the body is where we are here and now. The domain of the soul is the waves, through which we now converse. The domain of the spirit is harder to define and reach but it is the part of us that exists despite all else and the part that persists after our bodies die.’

‘How do you know if you’ve never done it?’

‘The Lightmaker tells us in the scrolls.’

She hesitated, needing more time to come to terms with what scrolls were than with the deep spiritual truths we discussed.

‘I know this Lightmaker already,’
the icetiger said with conviction.
‘Somehow I have always known him.’

‘Perhaps all animals know him in their soul,’
I suggested.

‘And now I have a spirit, like yours?’
the cat asked, with the first hint of being impressed with her new circumstances.
‘Body, soul, spirit.’

I bobbed my head, blinking slowly in a feline gesture of trust and approval. She allowed me to edge slightly closer.

‘Even though their spirits live on, it hurts that your parents left you here alone,’
she said curiously, delving deeper in my mind.

‘I try not to think about it.’

‘You try….’
she retorted.

The icetiger was picking up things all the time, meanings behind words I rarely even thought of. My very thoughts and memories seemed to be open to her, so I wondered if I could reach into her mind likewise.

A surge of wild instinct filled me. For a moment all I could think and feel was the need to fight or flee. The icetiger’s experiences were so alien to mine that I found myself sinking down to the floor. It was a carefree life she had given up. Not without pain and struggle but free from the burden of sentient thought. Until now her soul had been that of a natural animal—simple and pragmatic. Now it fired with the spark of the spirit, and emotions she had never experienced before.

Crouched on all fours, I locked eyes with her. She stared straight back at me with shocking blue eyes the colour of sapphire tree leaves. She raided my memories, springing and pouncing on them, devouring the happy times, sniffing and licking dispiritedly at the sad. Some kind of understanding passed between us. She looked at me and saw me for everything I was. It was the first time I had felt so connected with another living being.

‘Well,’
she said after a while,
‘if I am stuck with you, then how about some more of that fish?’

Chapter Two—Bonded

‘K
eep still, human!’
the icetiger instructed me.

She was crouched ahead of me in the long grass, stalking a deer as it drank from a creek. The tan-coloured animal’s neck was stretched over a patch of mud, its lips straining to reach the clear liquid beyond. My mouth watered with an urgent hunger. The icetiger inched forward, belly pressed so low that grass and mud stuck to it. We were strategically placed downwind from the deer—my Rada-kin said the animals of the forest could smell me a mile away otherwise.

I could smell the deer through the icetiger’s senses and its scent was accompanied by her ancient instinct to hunt and kill. The restraint it took for the hunter to creep slowly toward its prey with this instinct screaming at her was incredible.

‘Please stop distracting me with your thoughts.’

‘I don’t know how to keep them to myself.’

She crawled forward when the wind rustled the long grass, masking the sound of her near-silent approach.

The icetiger had been keen to show me how hunting was done by a master predator. Persistence was the key, she had told me. When one hunt was unsuccessful, you sought the next opportunity without dwelling on the failure on the last. From what she had seen in my mind, there was something of a lesson in this for my kind, she said.

So far this morning we had attempted three kills but, every time, something had happened to tip off the prey, whether it was me making a noise, birds sounding the alarm or the wind shifting.

I turned my attention back to the icetiger, on the verge of bursting from the long grass. The deer threw its head up, along with two of its fellows, sniffed the air and barked a warning to the herd. This time I couldn’t tell what it was that alarmed them, but their instincts were so attuned to the natural sounds of the forest that it could have been anything. There was a hush as the wind died down, like the calm before a storm. The icetiger exploded from hiding.

The herd of deer panicked and bolted. The icetiger’s blue form blurred across the distance between them, startling an elderly-looking deer that hadn’t been as aware of the danger, into the creek. Despite its age, the creature bounded away swiftly, with hooves lifting high. Water splashed in every direction as the icetiger plunged in after her prey.

I stood up to witness the chase, on the far side of the creek, just in time to see the deer change direction, to avoid a wall of thorns, and the icetiger’s powerful front paws crash down on its back. There was a sickening crack and the deer was only able to struggle feebly as the icetiger slid her teeth into its neck. She lay there panting and growling over her kill, eyes glaring ferociously.

The hunting instinct was so strong it blurred my thoughts and, for a second, all I wanted was to fight her for the chance to feed on the deer. I rubbed my head, trying to clear my thoughts. It was difficult to reach the icetiger’s mind. She growled thunderously at me when I got to the edge of the creek.

‘It’s me,’ I said aloud, ‘Talon.’

‘My deer, my kill, my deer, my kill. MY KILL!’

Her words reminded me of those of a child. Completely selfish. Instinctively self-centred. Sometimes a child would hurt you, to get what he wanted. In that moment, I believed the icetiger would hurt me if I went too close. She was still so new to being a Rada-kin. I kept my distance, but I felt that there was an important step for us to take here.

‘It’s me,’ I repeated, ‘your Rada, your Talon.’

‘My Talon. MY TALON!’

She remained there, glaring at me for some time, growls rumbling in her throat.

‘Icetiger—we must think of a name for you—can you hear me?’
I asked through the waves.

The question jolted her back to a semblance of civility and, as the deer had ceased breathing, she slowly released her hold on its neck.

‘I hear you,’
she muttered.

‘Will you bring the kill back to camp?’
I asked.

‘Yes, yes, not safe here. I’ll eat it there.’

I wondered briefly how any place would not be safe for an icetiger before I remembered the packs of dire wolves that ranged these mountains. From the volume of paw prints in the mud it was clear this was a frequent gathering place for them.

‘I don’t suppose you’d let me skin it first, before you put your teeth marks in the hide?’

The icetiger growled at me threateningly and did not answer.

She wouldn’t let me help carry the deer, insisting on dragging it herself, snarling all the while. I reached the camp long before her and spent some time gathering wood and getting a fire going. When the icetiger reached the camp with her kill, she let go of it and lay down, panting with exertion. She allowed me to approach her and stroke her back where the muscles most pained her. It was new for her to experience pain in an emotional way, and she seemed equally surprised by the pleasure of my touch.

I set some water to boil in my kettle and peeled a couple of shadow yams I’d dug up earlier in the day. I dropped them into the simmering water and put the tin lid on. I got to my feet and approached the deer carcass. The icetiger stared at me menacingly.

‘It will be easier for you to get at the flesh when I’m done.’

There was a minute of hesitation as the icetiger tried to stare me down. Everything in her experience screamed at her to protect the kill, but her renewed mind, which was linked with her new spirit, understood the sacred bond between us. In the relationship of Rada and Rada-kin, the former was the master.

‘Why should it be that way?’
she sulked.
‘I’m the better hunter.’

I had no response for her other than to point out the obvious—she was an animal and I was a human, made in the likeness of the Lightmaker, and ordained with dominion over all of Chryne.

‘Is it my job to clothe and feed you now?’
she demanded.
‘Is that it? Is that what I have this spirit for?’

‘Nay,’
I replied,
‘but your generosity means a lot to me. We are in this together, you know. I won’t abuse my power over you.’

‘Some would,’
she complained.

‘“The servant who continues to serve despite the cruelty of a master is a servant of the Lightmaker”,’
I said, quoting from the Holy Scrolls.
‘“The master who abuses his servant is, himself, a servant of Zeidarb”.’

‘And who is this Zeidarb,’
the icetiger queried moodily.
‘I do not know him.’

I was pleased at that.
‘He is the author of darkness, the antithesis of good and truth, the Lightmaker’s opposite in every way.’

‘Is he flesh and blood, then?’

‘Nay,’
I replied.
‘He is a spirit, but he is omnipresent, meaning he can be in many places at once. I have never seen him. He sends his minions instead, in the form of people with corrupted souls—Zeikas—or demons that have crossed from the waves to the waking world.’

‘Demons?’

‘Monsters given flesh.’

The word monsters had little more meaning for her than demons, but she delved into my memories to try to understand
.

‘That sounds unnatural. What are you getting me into, human?’

‘You’re going to encounter a lot of “unnatural” things in the human world, cat.’
I replied.
‘And it’s not all bad. There are things in this world you would never have dreamed of.’

‘Like this: I never dreamed the day would come when I would allow a human to skin my kill.’

I grinned at her, even though she needed the waves to understand the meaning behind the expression.

When I was done skinning the deer, I cut off a leg for myself and let the carcass fall to the ground, where the icetiger pounced on it and started eating.

My mouth watered. It would be a rich, tangy meat, much nicer than the grain-fed cattle of Jaria. I seasoned the meat by inserting cinnamon and bay leaf from my pack and set it to roast over the fire.