WINGS OF STEEL
Disclaimer: The Immortals Quartet, consisting of Wild Magic, Wolf Speaker, The Emperor Mage and Realms of the Gods, and all the characters, concepts and storyline therein belong to Tamora Pierce. Zircah Bladewing, the extra bits, and any characters or concepts you've never heard of before (eg. Stuttering Birdtamer) belong to me. Or Wyrren.
A/N: This fic is dedicated to Wyrren Sarrasri, without whom I would never have re-read the Immortals Quartet and created Zircah. She's a wonderful Packsister, vastly amusing, the best beta reader an author could ask for... and the source of much of the entertainment you'll find in this fic. The things we came up with in Math, SOSE and RAP shall never be forgotten. At least not by me. ^^ So, mega-kudos to Wyrren, Go Read Her Stuff Now. Well. After you've read this, maybe. *grin*
Prologue: History of a Feathered Futureteller
Zircah's head was bowed in both sorrow and anger as she perched far away from the nation on a low branch. She had abandoned her eyrie earlier that day for this low perch. Here she would be safe from Jokhun and his new grovellers. At least for a while.
Her ice blue eyes were far away as she gritted silver teeth together to stave off her pain. Her jaw ached dully from hours of this, but still she clenched it mercilessly. All day she had pondered the reasoning behind this occurrence, because there was no way in the Realms of Chaos that Jokhun could have defeated her queen. All her life, Barzha and her mate had been two of the few who had been kind to her in her life. Even as she refused to admit to Barzha's death, the dark-haired Stormwing grieved.
Zircah Bladewing had crawled forth from her egg on her birth and immediately been lost to a Seeing. Zhaneh Bitterclaws, looking down on her, had thought that her only daughter was having some sort of fit until she saw Shakith's blind white eyes staring out from the eyes of the Stormwing chick. Then Zircah had foolishly spoken the words of her prophecy: "You shall die at the hands of a Mortal girl-child."
At first her words had created confusion and shock - a Mortal? Stormwings had not visited the Mortal Realms for three centuries. Then the anger burned fiercely in Zhaneh's eyes, and Zircah had been thrust roughly from the nest, out into the abyss that was Long-Drop Gorge. She hung in mid-air for a moment before she plummeted like so much dead flesh. Her wings were still wet when she plunged deep into the icy current of a river that flowed like lifeblood through the open wound in the Divine Realms that the gorge created. She had struggled, wasting her breath as she screamed with both her voice and her mind. The current was swift and treacherous, slamming her heavy body into rocks. Her wings lacerated her legs and stomach as she was tossed in the river's maw. Panic had risen to grip her heart as she thrashed in the freezing water, but the animal gods of the water took pity on the poor immortal that had fallen into their midst. She was pushed as gently as possible onto rocks that burned from their time baking in the sun, and left there.
When she had hacked up pints of water and bile, Zircah lay still and just breathed. Already a burning hatred had built, hatred of the one who had abandoned her so cruelly. It blazed through her veins, over her mangled, bleeding skin and between every feather of her broken wings. Her breathing harshened momentarily and suddenly all the pain was gone. She felt drained and dizzied. Her head had fallen forward onto the rock, and she had slept. It was almost nightfall when she awoke, and cooling fast. Zircah knew instinctively that she had to get into the air or be stranded here for the night. She was starving. Slowly, taking advice from voices she didn't recognise, she flapped her steel wings and rose into the cold, unworkable evening air.
Zircah had wandered the Divine Realms for twenty years, always staying as far away from her own species as she might. Her fear and loathing of her mother made her work to train herself to develop the fighting techniques she knew she would need to rise in a nation's hierarchy. She was taught all she knew of Stormwing politics at twenty years old by Weiryn, the god of the Hunt. Finally, when she deemed herself ready, she set off for where the god had told her Stormwings usually resided.
Avoiding Long-Drop Gorge as much as possible, Zircah flew straight for the Maze and the Stormwings that lived there. In the centre of the Maze was a great stone pillar they called the Stone Tree, and that was what their nation was named for. A while after Zircah had seen them, they appeared to notice her. Several flew nearer to investigate the youngster. Zircah had set her face in a bland expression and firmly ignored their jeers. Her hair fanned out behind her like black mist as she swept towards the eyrie at the summit of the Stone Tree - the eyrie of the queen.
Barzha Razorwing was four centuries old and very beautiful. Her dark hair and eyes glinted in the sunlight as Zircah swooped down to land at an unimposing distance from the edge of the eyrie. The queen of Stone Tree nation beckoned Zircah forwards, trying not to let her interest show.
"Which wind steered you, stranger?" Barzha inquired. A slightly younger Stormwing glided carefully down to stand beside her. Zircah noticed that he shifted his weight from one foot to the other frequently. He has none of his queen's confidence.
"I'm searching for a nation who'll have me." Zircah replied bluntly. There was no point in skirting the issue. Barzha's silver teeth gleamed in a grin.
"You're young," she said. "Very young for leaving your nation."
"I have never had a nation." Zircah had replied, almost proud. "I was rejected from the nest of Zhaneh Bitterclaws on the minute of my birth. I have trained myself these past years. Now I search for a nation. Will you have me?"
Barzha glanced at the male beside her. His grey eyes gleamed fervently despite his apparent anxiety. "What do you offer?" he countered easily. Barzha's gaze snapped back to Zircah expectantly, and the younger Stormwing realised that the male must be Barzha's mate.
"I am unsure of how to measure myself against your standards. Perhaps it would be best if I showed you rather than told you of my status as a fighter. I am a Healer and a Seer. What else would you demand?" Zircah let herself smirk a little as Barzha's eyes glinted in amusement.
"Well, why not? Hebakh? I'm bored - I think I shall take her on myself. If you meet with my standards, I'm sure you'll get around to establishing a pecking order in no time." The queen declared. She raised her wings and shrieked loudly to get her nation's attention.
Zircah had expected that Barzha would inform her nation of the battle that was to take place. Instead, her mate opened his mouth and bawled the message so that Zircah wouldn't have been surprised if the dragons had heard it from across the Sea of Sand. Stormwings flew closer or further away until they hovered in a sphere around Barzha, Zircah, and Hebakh. The queen's consort glided off to take his place in the sphere as well, leaving Zircah alone with Barzha on the crown of the Stone Tree. Barzha grinned wickedly. "Now, let's see you dance, girly!"
Zircah had won. Her outlandish fighting style had stumped the queen, and she was welcomed with open wings. Zircah smirked a little sadly at the memory. She was the most skilled fighter in Stone Tree nation. Her self-training had paid off in ways she couldn't have imagined by giving her a unique style of flight and battling. Pair this with her strange magic and her unnerving attitude, and she was undefeated by anyone in the sky and on par with Hebakh Silverquill's status in the nation.
It had taken almost a month for Zircah to establish that she was, indeed, the best fighter. Each Stormwing that she defeated lost a feather to the deadly collection attached to her hair. Her more persistent opponents - there had only been two - had lost teeth, which were threaded onto a leather cord around her neck, and talons to the powerful young Stormwing. The talons dangled from her earlobes, bewitched so that they didn't rip through the more delicate flesh of her ears. She was a respected and feared adviser of her queen, a prime warrior in any battle to be fought.
But now... Zircah bowed her head and the feathers in it tinkled like Yamani wind chimes. Nearly eighty years later, Barzha was gone and so was Hebakh. Apparently bested by a weedy, six-century-old Stormwing by the name of Jokhun Foulreek - in the Mortal Realms. The emperor of a mortal country had broken the holding spells on the gates of the Divine Realms and summoned the Stormwings through it, forcing them into making a pact. Since then, Jokhun had grown over-confident and even more annoying than he had been prior to the emperor Ozorne. Zircah snorted contemptuously. There was simply no possible way Hebakh could have been beaten by Jokhun, let alone the queen of the nation. The rest of the nation had accepted it fairly easily, but Zircah could not. She had followed Barzha with the blind faith of friendship, and to have that ripped from her was like cutting off her wings.
"Are you going to sulk all day, Bladewing?"
Zircah's head snapped up, the feathers in her hair a-jangle. The speaker was Rikash Moonsword, a blonde male only a few years older than she was. She glared at him ferociously and he withdrew, but only slightly.
"You ought to pay your respects to the king, you know."
Anger consumed Zircah once more. "While I still mourn the old, Moonsword?" she snapped. Rikash sniggered and landed on the branch above her.
"He's giving everyone new posts."
Zircah remained silent, trying to control the urge to spit at him. Her eyes were narrowed dangerously as she glared stonily at nothing.
"I hear King Jokhun has special duties he wants you to perform." He said snidely, eyes gleaming with malicious laughter. Zircah bared her teeth in a snarl and let out a shriek of fury so loud that the entire nation stopped their movement and stared in the direction the sound had come from.
They were met with the sight of Zircah rising into the air, wingtips blazing with blood-red magic laced with gold. The feathers in her hair chimed death as she performed a quick circle to gather speed and then dove, talons extended, towards Rikash. The male's green eyes were wide with surprise and a touch of fear as he leapt into the air to avoid her. Zircah swooped past and raked her silver talons past his head, knocking him off balance. Rikash did a rather stupid twirl in mid-air as he tried to regain his balance and fly away at the same time, but Zircah was incensed. She let out another scream of challenge as she circled back to fire bolts of flame at him.
Rikash yelped as they singed his wings and flapped frantically to gain speed and altitude. As Zircah's shadow fell across his face he looked up in panic and gasped in pain as she descended to plunge her talons into his stomach. Her face was twisted with fury, hatred and a savage triumph as she shook him from side to side, ripping her clawed feet through his intestines, and discarded him over a long drop to broken rocks. She hovered briefly, watching him slam into the rocks with a feeling of satisfaction, and a smaller, more insidious twisting of guilt. Zircah flew back to her eyrie, and the entire nation stayed out of her way.
All but Jokhun, who came fluttering down into her eyrie full of outraged indignance. Zircah barely controlled the urge to push him off the edge.
"What do you think you're doing, Bladewing?" the pompous new monarch demanded. "You've just attacked my vassal."
Zircah coughed slightly. Rikash? A lord? "He annoyed me." She replied calmly, giving him a look that informed him he was annoying her, too. Jokhun appeared not to notice.
"Heal him at once." Jokhun ordered imperiously. Zircah's ice blue eyes widened.
"I can't." She said in clipped tones. She would use up too much of her own energy trying to heal all Rikash's wounds, and she didn't care to give that much of herself over to a pest of a male. Besides, he was probably dead already anyway.
"You can and you will. Heal him, or leave the nation." Jokhun replied waspishly. Zircah gritted her teeth. I'm going to kill you, she promised them both.
"Yes, my lord."
She spread her wings again, glaring at all who gave her even a sideways glance, and circled as slowly as possible. If Rikash hadn't died yet, she wanted to give him the time to do so properly. But as she landed, she noticed with some disappointment that he was breathing. Faintly, but his chest rose and fell with life. She scowled and summoned her Healing power, closing her eyes to concentrate.
Zircah closed the punctures in his lungs, leaving his broken ribs for the moment. She stilled the silver blood that gouted from his stomach and rejoined the skin there, smoothing it over until its tanned musculature lay undisturbed once more except for a scar across his chest she left to remind him of this battle. Next came the broken bones - his ribs, a wing and a clawed foot that had been crushed awkwardly as Rikash had plummeted to the ground. Finally, she brushed through his mind and rid him of the bruising in his brain. Not that it would have affected your thought patterns much, Moonsword. Almost exhausted, she Healed the grazes and bruises on his back and side from landing on the unforgiving stone.
Rikash's green eyes flickered open as she panted, swaying slightly from the magic she had used. His eyes widened in remembered panic and then calmed again slightly as he took in her condition. He scrambled awkwardly to his feet, bringing his wings up into a defensive position just in case.
Zircah saw this and laughed dismissively. "Fly away Moonsword. You have more sense than I gave you credit for since I met you." Her breath came harsh in her lungs, burning as it whistled through her throat. She laughed again, bitterly this time. "You are right to fear me..."
Rikash's eyes widened slightly as he took in the blazing rage and hatred in her eyes. She wanted vengeance. She wanted blood. Not his, but it hardly mattered - a Stormwing this desperately bloodthirsty would surely kill anyone in her way.
"You are so right to fear me." Zircah hissed, her lips curling back from her silver fangs in a feral smile. Rikash pushed off from the ground as fast as he was able to rejoin his flockmates in the skies. Within minutes he had regained composure and was bragging shamelessly.
It took Zircah several minutes to summon the energy to fly back to her eyrie, but Jokhun was demanding her presence at the crown of Stone Tree. When a snarl-haired female, Ludahn, came to tell her of this, she fixed the brunette with a withering stare. "If Jokhun wants to speak to me, he can wait or he can come to me." I will waste no more of my energy on him.
Jokhun eventually made his way down to scold and prance before her. She tried to ignore it all, but knew that she must have worn an unimpressed sneer the entire time he spoke. Eventually he got to the point and declared her Champion of the Stone Tree Nation of Stormwings. Zircah could have laughed. As though she hadn't been.
*
A/N: Well, what do you think? This fic takes place throughout the Immortals Quartet, so you'll be seeing many familiar faces - although probably not portrayed in the same light. Please review and tell me what you think of "Wings of Steel". :)
~ Raven, a.k.a. Rose Flame