Tales of Ethshar

meant, that you’d be killing the one person who you’d been told could save you?”

Wulran merely blinked at that; he didn’t even try to respond.

Wuller said, “I wouldn’t have let them.”

“Ha! I didn’t see you doing much to stop them this morning!”

“But we’d already poisoned the dragon by then!”

“And what if the poison hadn’t worked?”

Wuller’s mouth opened, like his father’s, but nothing came out.

Seldis looked at him for a long moment, then at the dragon. The stream of blood had stopped; she capped the wineskin and hung it over one shoulder. Then she shoved her way past both the son and the father and marched on out of the crevice.

Wulran and Wuller watched her go. Wulran threw his son an apologetic glance, but Wuller was in no mood to accept it. He ran after her.

When he caught up with her he could think of nothing to say, and so the two of them walked silently back down to the village side by side.

When they reached the village, Seldis announced, “I’m tired, Wuller; we were up all night. I’m going to get some sleep.”

He nodded. “Good idea,” he said.

After she had gone into Illure’s bedroom — leaving the door open and unbarred, this time — he headed for his own bed.

Wuller awoke that afternoon to find her up and dressed and checking her pack. The wineskin of dragon’s blood was at her feet.

“I’ll be going now,” she said, without looking at him.

Wuller blinked at her from the doorway of his bedroom. He looked around at the familiar house — his mother’s painted tiles on the walls, the iron skillets hung by the kitchen, the broad stone hearth. His parents and his aunt Illure were somewhere nearby. Around the house stood his village, all the world he had known until a few days ago, home to his entire extended family and everyone he had ever known.

All of it was safe now, with the dragon dead, and Seldis was no longer needed. She would be going back to her own home, in distant Aldagmor, out there in the hostile and unfamiliar world beyond the village, the world where Wuller knew no one and had nothing.

“Wait for me,” he said, snatching up his clothes.

To his surprise, she did.

About “Night Flight”

Mercedes Lackey invited me to contribute a story to an anthology of fantasy stories about birds of prey, and I hadn’t written any Ethshar stories for awhile, so I wrote this one. I don’t know much about hawks or eagles, but I do know owls, and I figured most of the other contributors wouldn’t think of owls, or write from the prey’s point of view.

Night Flight

Princess Kirna of Quonmor sat upon her bed and frowned at the barred window. The sun was down and daylight was fading rapidly; she would be spending another night here in the wizard’s tower, and once again, she would be spending it locked in this room, all alone. This was not working out at all as she had expected.

Running off with a wizard had seemed like such a very romantic idea! She had thought she could entice him to either marry her, whereupon they would travel all over the World having wonderful adventures together, or to take her on as his apprentice, whereupon she would spend years learning all the secrets of magic and then someday return to Quonmor to find a usurper on the throne, whom she, as the rightful heir, would then depose and punish horribly for his effrontery. Her subjects would cheer as she crowned herself queen in her father’s throne room, and she would use her magic to transform Quonmor into a paradise, and to reconquer Demmamor, which her great-grandfather had lost.

And then perhaps she would reunite all the Small Kingdoms into an empire — after all, if that warlock Vond could conquer a dozen of them, without having even a trace of royal blood, why couldn’t a wizard-queen rule them all?

But this had all depended on this Gar of Uramor falling in love with her, or at least taking her seriously, and so far he hadn’t. He hadn’t objected to her company on the walk home, but when she had tried to flirt with him he had laughed and said she was too young, and when she had asked about an apprenticeship he had said she was too old.

When she had explained that she was a princess, so the ordinary rules didn’t apply to her, he had gotten angry and locked her up here, in this room with the thick iron-bound door and the distressingly-solid iron bars in the window.

When he came back — well, it had been downright embarrassing. He had treated her as if she were little more than a baby, and hadn’t agreed to anything. What was the good of being a princess if you couldn’t have what you wanted?

She pouted, and bounced on the bed — it wasn’t as soft as her featherbed at home, but it was pleasantly springy and fun to bounce on.

“Princess Kirna?” a breathy voice asked.

Startled, she stopped bouncing and smoothed out her face — her father had always told her a princess mustn’t pout. The voice hadn’t been Gar’s. It had sounded as if it was right beside her, but of course there wasn’t anyone else in the room; she turned toward the door and called, “Who is it?”

“Hush!” She jumped; the voice was right in her ear.

“Who’s there?” she whispered.

A vague blue shape shimmered in the air before her, and the voice said, in slightly-accented Quonmoric, “I am Deru of the Nimble Fingers. I’ve come to help you.” The blue shape raised a hand, and she glimpsed a blurry face.

“A ghost!” she gasped. “A real ghost!”

“No, I’m not a ghost,” Deru said. “I’m a wizard under a spell.”

She flung a hand up to cover her mouth. “You’re under a curse? That terrible Gar did this to you, and is keeping you prisoner here?”

“No, no,” Deru assured her. “I did it to myself, so I could get in here to talk to you. It’s called the Cloak of Ethereality. It’ll wear off soon.”

“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “You just came to talk to me?”

“I was sent to find out why you’re here.”

Kirna stared at the misty blue outline for a moment. Who was this person? Who had sent him? Was he really here at all?

He said he was a wizard — had the Wizards’ Guild sent him?

Might Gar be in trouble? Kirna had heard stories about the dreadful things the Wizards’ Guild did to people who broke its rules...

Maybe he wasn’t in trouble yet, but he could be, and it would serve him right for mistreating her.

“He kidnapped me!” she said. “He dragged me here and locked me up, and he tortured me!” She held up her left hand, where Gar had nicked her with a knife to draw a