Hope is the thing with feathers
That perches in the
soul . . .
Emily Dickinson
“Hope is the Thing with Feathers”
Ferrian, onetime Champion-at-arms of the Horseblooded, Defender of Corrals, was fond of taking a scroll or book high into the uppermost parts of the library complex at Ladentree.
His wound had mended slowly, over weeks. He would never lose his limp, but he could walk, and sit a horse. The Healing Sages had advised him to stay for a time, to complete his recuperation, and he’d complied, reckoning his role against Salamá ended. The Trailingsword had declared as much. Seeing its splendor in the sky each night, he’d been moved with a profound new mood of hope.
Now he sat cross-legged in the tower of a silent bell so large a dozen men might have sheltered beneath it. Its bronze was green, its rope decayed away long ago, for the Birds of Accord nested nearby. The place had a solemnity that appealed to Ferrian, a thoughtful freedom he held especial. At times he heard the songs of the Birds, pure trilling like no other sound in the world. There was an airy view for miles, and an intimacy with the weather he’d missed in the Chambers of Healing.
Sitting with a folio in his lap, he heard the voices of the Birds again. This time there was unfamiliar cadence to it, a disorderly intrusion of other, shriller notes. He put the folio aside carefully and rose, pulling himself up with his left hand, to spare his leg. Following the sounds, he rounded the giant bell to a far corner of the tower. He trod carefully; rotting boards made treacherous footing.
Bracing himself with his left hand and leaning out carefully, he spotted Birds fluttering at the eaves of a lesser tower, darting in at nests there. Interest became surprise; they behaved like parents bringing food to their young, but the Birds of Accord had bred no offspring since they’d been driven out of the branches of the Lifetree.
The Horseblooded cocked an ear and listened. The shriller, more disorderly notes came from beneath the eaves. He recovered the folio and hurried off to find Silverquill. The Senior Sage had been a willing tutor, anxious to hear about life on the High Ranges. It was now their habit to seek each other’s company when the mood struck, a mutual privilege.
Silverquill was politely skeptical of Ferrian’s claim that the Birds had hatched young. Still, the old savant dropped what he was doing—comparing several copies from original manuscripts of Arrivals Macabre in an effort to learn what secret Bey had been after—and went off with the brawny Horseblooded to see.
They eventually found the correct face of the right tower. The issue was partially settled before they got there; high chattering of young Birds filled the confines of the peaked roof. They edged carefully around a last beam, and saw slots of light from the eaves. Birds of Accord fed and nurtured impossibly small, vocal hatchlings.
Silverquill shook his head, dumfounded. “This is unprecedented! The Birds may breed only in the branches of the Lifetree, and it was uprooted and destroyed an age ago, when the Great Blow fell.”
“Demonstrably untrue.” Ferrian grinned wryly.
“Even so. But that is no explanation.” They drew back, so as not to disturb that amazing scene.
Ferrian was snapping his fingers distractedly. “The Birds roosted here when their Lifetree was destroyed, and in all these years never bred. But now they have; it remains to discern why. How long is it betwixt their mating and the laying of eggs, and from that unto the hatching?”
“Who may say? Yet, let us venture that those are much as with other birds. What is your thought?”
“I bethink me of only one incident here in any reasonable span of time, and that is when Bey came, and we after him.”
The Senior Sage stroked his trim beard. “Aye, yet what can that mean? Surely the small glamour he used on Gil MacDonald cannot be the influence that has affected the Birds. Nor can it be attributed to the Guardian, with its fiery destruction, nor to Andre deCourteney’s Dismissal; they are of no nature to cause the Birds of Accord to beget.”
“Perhaps the terror of the day? Many of them perished from that.”
“All the less reason to think it made them bring forth young.”
The Horseblooded’s lips pursed. “What else then? I was wounded, and did not participate in what came after.”
Silverquill studied the weathered rafters, rubbing his thumb across his Adam’s apple. “The others came the next morning, the Trustee and her troops and Lord Angorman. They all met together in the rose garden and conferred. Thereafter, they parted ways.”
“Hmm, that seems of no relevance either. Perhaps we are not—”
“Hold!” The savant’s face lit excitedly. “There was another thing of it. All those combatants were under arms, and I bade them put those aside; Ladentree had seen enough of weapons. When Lord Angorman hesitated, the Trustee put him at ease, laying her Crook of office with Red Pilgrim, against a trellis. I remember seeing the Birds of Accord flitting round and round, alighting and hopping about, even on the Crook itself.”
Ferrian’s brow knit. “You are theorizing that the Trustee’s staff is hafted of wood of the Lifetree? She never gave hint of that.”
“True. Well, but, at least we have a glimmer of what drew the sorcerer here. The Lifetree is connected with it; armed with that fact, we may plunge into the assembled knowledge of Ladentree, and seek the rest.”
The tall Horseblooded concurred eagerly. The Trailingsword had set many things in motion, he saw. “Two men are often too many to keep a secret from Salamá; more is too great a risk, for Bey may yet have ears here. This hunt across paper and parchment falls to you and me, dear mentor.”