Jay Kristoff: The Last Stormdancer

MILES AWAY BY MY RECKONING, MONKEY-CHILD. MY KHAN NOT BE SO EASILY SWAYED AS YOURS.

The gods themselves ride with us this day, friend Koh. Nothing can stop us now.

Up the face of the first sister, black crags and jagged teeth, snow thrashing and curling and twisting beneath my wings. Chill bearing down, pressing him tight to my back, my warmth, his arms about my neck. This little boy, who only a few days ago walked unbidden into my life, and now, had changed it forever. And did I believe, you ask? Believe as he did? In gods and destinies and things undone already sewn in the tapestry of fate?

I confess I did not.

But also, that I wanted to.

A fierce cry spilling from the scouts in the skies above. The eyes of the Skymeet upturned as we pierced mist and cloud, lightning cracking above our heads. I roared, Rahh answered, the Khan bellowing louder still as I skidded in to land, snow swirling about me, young Jun leaping from my back and bowing low, feeling about the Skymeet for any threat. Steam rising from my flanks, shaking head to tail to rid myself of the snow and ice crusted upon fur and feather, dipping my head in respect before my Khan.

“ Grandfather, ” I said.

“ What this? ” The Khan growled in response. “ Where been, young Koh? Why returned now, with boy who should have flown to his death days past? ”

“Have flown far, great Khan. Seeking truth of sickness. Seeking monkey-children who would fight it. Found them. Just below us. Enemies of our enemies. This Guild and their poison machines. They fight alongside—”

A roar, cutting off my words, chilling me to silence, the Khan’s eyes alight with rage.

“Defy our ways, granddaughter. Defy your Khan.”

“I sought only truth—”

“Not female’s place to seek truth. Nor fly free. Such is our way.”

“Then is BROKEN way,” I snarled. “Blind way. Old and foolish way. And old and foolish Khan who bids us cleave to it.”

Outrage amongst the elders. Snarls amongst the bucks. But in the eyes of the other females lurking about the Skymeet’s edges, I saw a gleaming. A pride.

“ You DARE, ” my grandfather snarled. “ Too much I gave, when your kin die. Too much love. Too much softness. There, I foolish. THERE, I blind. ”

“This place our home. Monkey-children fight for it. Why not—”

“ENOUGH.”

The great Khan stepped forward, hackles raised, his growl rumbling louder than the thunder above our heads. Lightning flickering in his eyes, along the curling tips of his mighty wings. A snarl spilling from the depths of him, making me quail despite myself.

“Khan spoken. Skymeet ended. We leave Shima this day. It over. Khan’s word is law.”

I felt the words as a blow to my chest, souring my belly, sinking down into my paws. It had been spoken. The Khan’s words could not be rescinded. The Skymeet would not disobey him. And old though he was, afraid of this new world and the terrors therein, still he was respected. Twenty years, our leader. Two decades beneath his wisdom. He was beloved. He was feared. There would be none brave enough to stand against him.

I looked to Jun, standing there in the snow, fear in his eyes. He knew it was not his place to speak. That his words here would only provoke further rage. And yet the need boiled inside him. The belief. Faith in the words of some old monkey-crone, probably moon-touched or speaking to him out of pity. Still, I did not believe. And yet, all she had foreseen was within our reach. With the arashitora onside, the Tiger Lord below could win his war. Purge the Guild. End the sickness. If only one were brave enough to cast the Khan down from his throne.

“ Then I challenge it, ” I growled. “ I challenge Khan’s law. And I challenge Khan. ”

My grandfather snorted, amusement bubbling among the Skymeet.

“Foolish child. Only males challenge. Female not be Khan.”

“Kill me then, Grandfather. Throw my scraps down with the remains of my kin. Your daughter. Your grandson. Leave behind when you flee, tail tucked between your legs.”

A roar, tail lashing, hackles bristling down his spine. All thought fleeing at my challenge, his pride and his rage swelling past his love for me, his last remaining kin. And as he tensed to charge, a buck stepped from the crowd of onlookers and roared at the top of his lungs.

“I challenge.”

My friend. My brother, not my brother.

Rahh.

He glanced at me. All that lay between us. That might lie before us. And he turned to the Khan and spoke again.

“I challenge.”

Two white shapes. Falling like meteors in the skies above our heads. Blood like rain amidst the thunderclaps. Lightning at the edges of their wings. Crackling across hulking clouds as they collided, screaming and roaring and tearing.

Heart in my throat. Pulse running quicker. Fear for him, my friend, my brother not my brother. A feeling for him, running deeper than I had known. Where did it come from? The monkey-child now inside my mind? His softness spilling into me? Had I always known this, and only now acknowledged it, when he might be taken away? The flood of it, the confusion of it, all a-tumble in my mind. Jun beside me, hand upon my shoulder, bringing more comfort than I could have believed but a day or two ago.

A strange thing, monkey-child. Your clumsy words failing me again. I felt I had awakened from a dream. I felt the proximity of gods. The hands of fate. So many intersections here, on the ground below, in the skies above. So many possibilities stretched before us. Only one outcome certain.

Death.

Rahh roared, kicking loose of my grandfather’s embrace, a spray of blood trailing from the old Khan’s claws. Rahh was quicker, stronger, younger. Yet the old Khan had wisdom on his side. Patience and cunning. Rahh’s was the charge, the strike, the bellow. But the Khan’s was the feint, the riposte, the deathly silence. Gravity and momentum, muscle and bone, majestic gleaming arcs of trajectory across the roiling black, collision and escape, and blood, blood, blood.

I prayed. Yes, we pray, monkey-child. To the father, Raijin. The God of Lightning and Thunder. To bring Rahh back to me. To show us a sign. That we were meant to remain, to fight for this place, once our home, now taken away by the sickly hands of metal and greed. I did not know if he heard. Or if he did, if he listened. If the outcome of this battle, as all battles, was preordained. If there was such a thing as fate. A part of me wished to believe so—in destiny and such. For if such existed, Rahh would not fail. Could not fall.

And yet, the part of me that had awakened in those last few days, roaming free, flying with the boy on my back—that part of me hoped beyond hoping that there was no hand at play here. That we were all free to do as we wished. That, if Rahh won, he won because he willed it more, not because some god upon some cloud intended it so.

The pair collided again, roars and shrieks, orphaned feathers falling from the sky. I squinted as the lightning flashed, Jun’s fingers clutching my feathers. The old Khan had his talons dug into Rahh’s chest, kicking with his back legs, claws like sabers. The pair plummeting from the sky. And yet, locked tight in that embrace, the Khan had left himself exposed. Rahh proved himself the stronger, arresting their fall with thunderous beats of his mighty wings, flipping the Kahn over onto his back. Rahh caught the Khan’s hind legs with his own, struck once, twice with his beak, tearing the tendons at the join of wing and shoulder, the Khan roaring in agony. And as they fell closer and closer to the jagged rocks below, Rahh clawed loose of the Khan’s grip, bloody spray and tattered fur, leaving the old beast to fall.