Book 3, Chapter 47

I watched six brakvaw wheel around the village up in the sky. They were too far away to hear, not that I could have understood their strange screeching language anyway. There was no doubt in my mind they were arguing over their next move, with the scorched, still burning corpse of their leader in a nearby field.

Twenty mages working in unison had brought the brakvaw down when they’d first shown up to attack the village. Though they lacked the skill to combine their magic into one powerful spell, that hadn’t stopped them from coordinating an unending barrage of fire blasts. I hadn’t even needed to step in to help.

There were a few storage crystals left untapped among the group, but I suspected they were good for, at most, one more brakvaw before they completely ran out of mana. If the remaining six decided to continue the fight, I would have to do something to keep the village from being torn apart and the humans from being killed.

Then Talvir surprised me. He came out of a hut with a small pillar, five-foot-tall and at least a foot in diameter, that had been converted into a storage crystal and was surprisingly well-shielded from detection. It took two men using strength-boosting invocations to carry, but they managed to haul it over to where the artillery mages were grouped together and drop it down right in the middle.

“Top yourselves off,” the local hunter ordered. “This is no time to be stingy with your magic.”

Everyone took turns pulling mana from the pillar, and soon enough, they were ready for the next attack. I simply watched from the sidelines, content to let them repel the attack. It would be good for the brakvaw to know that the villagers were capable of defending themselves, even if they actually weren’t. Getting some reinforcements from another village was one thing, but I was well known to the brakvaw by now and even if they underestimated how strong my magic actually was, they still knew I was on an entirely different level.

The brakvaw must have decided on their strategy, because they suddenly split in six different directions and swooped down to attack the village. By now, everyone not planning to fight had already fled indoors, leaving the mage group from Sanctuary, a few of Ghalin’s hunters who knew some basic magic, Zalick the former Wolf Pack mage, and myself out in the open.

Rather than charge straight at us, it looked like the brakvaw were going to try to knock down some buildings. Maybe they were hoping to sow some panic and confusion. Maybe they just wanted retaliation for their lost leader. Maybe birds made for poor strategists and they had no real reason for their tactic.

Whatever the case, the Sanctuary mages immediately picked two of the giant birds to focus fire on. Their repertoire was composed of mostly basic spells, but even those could kill easily. Fireballs erupted in the sky around the brakvaw, disrupting their flight so badly that not even the mana circling under their wings could keep them in the air.

One of them died before it hit the ground, but the other managed to glide to an awkward landing that ended with it crashing into a field and leaving a furrow sixty feet long and twenty feet wide. A few of the local mages kept up their attacks on it, but the rest switched targets to try to push the remaining brakvaw back before they could damage anything.

If I left the defenders to it, I had no doubt they’d drive off the invading brakvaw. That storage crystal had enough left in it to restore everyone at least one more time, so unless more brakvaw appeared to challenge them, Ghalin was winning this battle. That didn’t mean they’d survive tomorrow, when a dozen new brakvaw showed up looking for revenge, but they’d be safe for now.

“Should we activate the ward stone?” Zalick asked me as he approached.

“Can you? I assumed that storage crystal was to hold the mana you needed,” I said, gesturing at the pillar sitting on the ground in the middle of the assembled mages.

“Oh, no. We have another one. The village has been collaborating to store up as much mana as possible for times like these.”

“Smart of you. Who made the storage crystals?”

“I did,” Zalick said, looking proud of himself as he spoke. “I’m sure it’s not up to your standards, but those were quite the project. I never made one that big before, but we wanted as large a crystal as possible.”

“They’re well shielded. I didn’t even know you had them until Talvir dragged that one out.”

“Ah, well, I actually have your students to thank for that. I’ve learned quite a bit about hiding mana over the last few months.”

I was still surprised at the thoroughness of his work. The only other mage I’d met that could hide his mana core that well was Tetrin, and that was only because I’d taken the time to teach him how. Everyone else could, at best, shroud their cores to make it a bit harder to get an accurate read on how much mana they had. Some of our newer mages couldn’t even manage that. I briefly wondered who exactly had been teaching him, but I set the question aside for the moment.

The brakvaw that could still fly retreated, all four of them. Perhaps it was the sight of their dead kin that convinced them they’d find easier prey elsewhere, but I suspected it had more to do with another pair of hunters lugging out a second storage crystal. Brakvaw weren’t stupid; they knew what those pillars meant. They might have thought they could win in the end, but they knew it would cost them more lives to do so.

We watched the four remaining birds wing it back to the mountains for a moment before a ragged cheer went up from the assembled mages. “Looks like you won the day,” I said. “How long will it take you to replace the spent mana?”

“Not long,” Zalick told me. “A few days at most.”

Perfect. That meant I didn’t need to stay here any longer. “It looks like you’ve got yourself a capable defense force.”

“Unless they come back in bigger numbers. Even just those six attacking all at once stretched us to our limits.”

“They aren’t all that numerous,” I said. “In this area, maybe thirty adults and another dozen fledglings. Well, less than thirty now that there’s three corpses on the ground. Are you going to harvest that mana, by the way?”

“Harvest it? That’d be a trick.”

If it was just going to go to waste, I might as well take it for myself. “Excuse me a moment,” I told the old mage.

  *

My scrying spells chased after the fleeing brakvaw, following them to their homes to confirm their numbers and location. None of them seemed to want to take another pass at the village, which left me with a free evening. That was a good thing, since I had another appointment to keep.

Grandfather kept me waiting for nearly an hour this time, but eventually his projection formed on the mountain peak we’d been using as a meeting place. “Hello, Keiran,” he said tiredly when he saw me.

I inclined my head. “Grandfather.”

“You did it, then?”

“I did. Some of the others went after the village. I’m not sure if it was retaliation or a planned strike, but the villagers pushed them back without suffering any casualties. Three brakvaw died in the battle.”

“Yes, I am aware. I’ve done a great deal of scrying. The splinter factions are in disarray, but now isn’t the time to push them to rejoin the flock. If I appear to them so soon after their leaders have been killed, it would only deepen the divide between us”

“None of them actually know that those four elders are dead,” I said. “I summoned them to an isolated area to take care of them.”

That gave Grandfather pause, but he just shook his head and told me, “You are a terrifying human.”

“Only to things that get in my way,” I said. “What will you do now?”

“Give it some time, see if they return. Reach out to them again soon. It may be that without those treacherous birds agitating against me, my flock will return. Or it may be that I was the one who was wrong and our old way of life truly was better.”

“When you do talk to them, feel free to remind them that as long as they don’t go hunting for humans, I don’t care where they build their nests. I’m not even sure why they were attacking the villages in the first place.”

“Ah, well… As to that…” Grandfather got a wistful look on his face as he stared past me. “It’s been many years, but as I recall, humans are quite tasty.”

I couldn’t say I was surprised to hear that. Given their size, it wouldn’t be difficult for a brakvaw to swallow a full-grown man, and their beaks would be more than up to the job of nipping a person into pieces if needed. Plenty of smaller animals hunted and killed humans for sustenance, not even including the monsters that did it for mana.

“Not that I’ve encouraged that behavior for many, many years,” Grandfather hastened to add.

I laughed. “I’m not offended. Regardless, some of those humans are important to my plans and I’d prefer they stayed alive. I would appreciate it if you could impress on your wayward flock to stop attacking human villages.”

“Perhaps you should talk to them yourself,” Grandfather said. “They might respect you more than they do me.”

“Or they might attack me on sight,” I countered.

“Send a projection. That’s what I do.”

“You do that often?”

“If I must,” he said.

The old bird was literally haunting his descendants. It was no wonder they were all trying to get away from him now that he’d come down from his perch on the floating graveyard. I’d been haunted once by a necromancer I’d killed. It was the most annoying thing ever. I’d ended up delaying my plans by three months just researching a way to permanently banish the man’s ghost.

“Maybe I’ll give it a try,” I told Grandfather. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt. If nothing else, it’ll help me determine if I can trust the brakvaw that remain to leave the village alone.”

I left unsaid that if I couldn’t confirm that, I might very well hunt the rest of the flock down and kill them, one by one. I had other projects in need of my attention, and only so much time to waste in Ghalin. If it took a line of spires with brakvaw skulls mounted on them to convince the rest of their kind to fly on past, that’s what I’d do.

From the look Grandfather gave me, I gathered he sensed my thoughts on the matter. But he didn’t say anything, probably because he knew it would do no good. Grandfather and I had spent many months working together, and I found I quite liked the old bird, but I wasn’t going to hold myself back for the sake of his traitorous flock.

“If that’s all?” I asked.

“I’d appreciate more time to try to reach out to them now that their leadership has been… removed.”

I thought about it for a second. “Three more days,” I decided. That would give me enough time to return to Sanctuary and check up on things there. If Grandfather didn’t have this situation resolved by then, well, brakvaw had a lot of mana in them. I was sure I could find a use for it.

“Three days,” he agreed, an unhappy frown on his projection’s face.