Listen.
“I am listening!”
For a moment, the connection in his mind was cut off. A strange blankness filled his head, and it was only once the connection with Ashd was gone that Koradan realised how prominent it had been. The vreki had been inside his head ever since he’d arrived in the stable, a gentle flicker, constantly tasting his emotions and tugging on his thoughts.
A moment later, the connection was back, smoother and quieter this time.
Listen, Ashd said, low and commanding.Ashd feel. Salas feel. Anticipate. Ashd move, salas…He stopped, then made a grumbling noise.Name?
“I’m Koradan.”
The vreki snorted.Stupid name. Koradan could feel Ashd’s mounting frustration, and knew it was just a token grumble, not a real insult.
“Says the guy whose name sounds like a sneeze,” he said in reply.
Fly, Ashd said, nudging Koradan with his head.Straps. Listen.
“How?”
With fingers and chest and heart. Feel vreki.
Koradan tried, making an effort to concentrate on the link between them. And somehow this time, when he adjusted one of the straps, he could tell when it was in the right place and the right tightness. He couldn’t feel the strap as a physical sensation, but he could feel Ashd’s satisfaction that it fitted comfortably. He continued adjusting the rest of the saddle in the same way, feeling Ashd’s approval when he was finished.
“Okay, what now?”
Paddock. Run, leap, fly.
Koradan followed him out to the paddock, then climbed apprehensively into the saddle.
Straps. Legs.Ashd showed him a mental image of how to strap himself in.
“Okay. I think I’m ready.”
Concentrate.Ashd showed him an image of how a vreki took off, the short sprint, rising up on his hind legs, then the leap into the air. He went a step further and showed him what the other salases looked like when they flew, where their hands and legs were, how they held their bodies.
The difference, of course, was that the other salases had had a decade or more of training to prepare them for their first flight. Koradan had had a two minute pep-talk from a depressed vreki. It wasn’t too late to get out of the saddle and tell Ashd the whole thing was a bad idea.
But, being linked to his mind, Ashd was entirely aware of his apprehension.Trust, the vreki said, pushing a strong wave of reassurance at Koradan.Partner. Cooperate. Together.
This time, Koradan understood the deeper meaning behind the words. This wasn’t just an opportunity to ride Ashd for an afternoon and give him some exercise. It was an invitation to become Ashd’s rider. His partner.
“Let’s do it,” Koradan said. Opportunities like this came along once in a lifetime, if ever. “I’m ready.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Varismont – Present Day
“Ithrew up after that first flight,” Koradan told Lynette, no longer embarrassed by the admission, given that twenty-five years had passed since that day. “Ashd thought that was hilarious. A guard came and demanded to know what the hell we were doing. We were pretty easy to spot in the air, and the flight wasn’t authorised. So I ended up being dragged in front of the Stone King. That was terrifying – even more so than riding Ashd. But he was strangely okay with it all. He had a long conversation with Ashd – the king learned to mind merge with vreki when he was just a child – and Ashd told him that he wanted a new rider, and that I was the one he’d chosen. And that was pretty much the end of it. I started military training, Ashd was put back in service, and twenty-five years later, here we are.”
Lynette had a strange, half-smile on her face, her eyes seeming a little unfocused. “It’s an amazing story. But there is one thing you left out. You’re the leader of your group of men, right?”
“That’s right,” Koradan said. “Originally there were seven of us. That’s the standard number for a military team. But two of us were killed in the not-too-distant past.”
“So how does a stable hand from the lower end of town end up leading a company of some of the Stone King’s finest warriors?”
Koradan smirked. “A damn lot of hard work, that’s how. I had to work twice as hard as everyone else just to keep up. They all had twenty years of experience ahead of me. And then I had to do more than just toe the line. Everyone expected me to fail, so being ‘good enough’ was never enough. I had to be better than average just to prove to everyone that I wasn’t a waste of time and space. And then, once you’ve got into the habit of training harder and showing up early and staying later than everyone else, the natural progression is that you actually end up learning and improving faster than they are. So I was promoted to surveillance specialist. Then to second in command. Then to leader of a company. I mean, that all sounds simpler than it was. But that’s the short version.”
Koradan had long since finished his meal, feeling full and satisfied for the first time in over a week. Lynette stood up and cleared the plates away, dropping them in a tub of water in the sink to be washed later. “We need to do something about what’s happening at the Gate of Chalandros,” she said, leaning against the kitchen counter with her arms folded. “Most humans have absolutely no idea that there’s a whole, diverse, functioning world behind that gate. They don’t realise that they’re slaughtering history and culture and a blazing courage and determination to survive.”
