Hawksong (The Kiesha'ra: Volume 1)
Amelia Atwater-RhodesPROLOGUEThey say the first of my kind was a woman named Alasdair, a human raised by hawks.She learned the language of the birds and was gifted with their form.It is a pretty myth, I admit, but few actually believe it. No record remains of her life.No record except for the feathers in every avian's hair, even when otherwise we appearhuman, and the wings I can grow when I choose
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and of course the beautiful golden hawk's form that is as natural to me as the legsand arms I wear normally.This myth is one of the stories we hear as children, but it says nothing of reality or thehard lessons we are taught later.Almost before a child of my kind learns to fly, she learns to hate. She learns of war. Shelearns of the race that calls itself the serpiente. She learns that they are untrustworthy,that they are liars and loyal to no one. She learns to fear the garnet eyes of their royalfamily even though she will probably never see them.What she never learns is how the fighting began. No, that has been forgotten. Insteadshe learns that they murdered her family and her loved ones. She learns that theseenemies are evil, that their ways are not hers and that they would kill her if they could.That is all she learns.This is all I have learned.Days and weeks and years, and all I know is bloodshed. I hum the songs my motheronce sang to me and wish for the peace they promise. It's a peace my mother has neverknown, nor her mother before her.How many generations? How many of our soldiers fallen?And why?Meaningless hatred: the hatred of an enemy without a face. No one knows why wefight;they only know that we will continue until we win a war it is too late to win, until wehave avenged too many dead to avenge, until no one can remember peace anymore,even in songs.Days and weeks and years.My brother never returned last night.
Days and weeks and years.How long until their assassins find me?Danica ShardaeHeir to the Tuuli TheaCHAPTER 1I TOOK A DEEP BREATH TO STEADY MY NERVES and narrowly avoidedretching from the sharp, well-known stench that surrounded me.The smell of hot avian blood spattered on the stones, and cool serpiente blood thatseemed ready to dissolve the skin off my hands if I touched it. The smell of burned hairand feathers and skin of the dead smoldered in the fire of a dropped lantern. Only thefall of rain all the night before had kept that fire from spreading through the clearing tothe woods.From the forest to my left, I heard the desperate, strangled cry of a man in pain.I started to move toward the sound, but when I took a step through the trees in hisdirection, I came upon a sight that made my knees buckle, my breath freezing as I fell tothe familiar body.Golden hair, so like my own, was swept across the boy's eyes, closed forever now but soclear in my mind. His skin was gray in the morning light, covered with a light spray of dew. My younger brother, my only brother, was dead.Like our sister and our father years ago, like our aunts and uncles and too many friends,Xavier Shardae was forever grounded. I stared at his still form, willing him to take abreath and open eyes whose color would mirror my own. I willed myself to wake upfrom this nightmare.I could not be the last.The last child of Nacola Shardae, who was all the family I had left now.I wanted to scream and weep, but a hawk does not cry, especially here on the battlefield,in the midst of the dead and surrounded only by her guards. She does not scream or beatthe ground and curse the sky.Among my kind, tears were considered a disgrace to the dead and shame among theliving.Avian reserve.It kept the heart from breaking with each new death. It kept the warriors fighting a warno one could win. It kept me standing when I had nothing to stand for but bloodshed.
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