"Did we seriously have to be up this high?!" Caelan called, but his voice was swallowed up by the wind.
His fingers found a new crack in the limestone and he hauled himself up another foot, arms burning, cheek scraping cold stone, and tried very hard not to think about how far down the ground was.
Above him, Master Alfor moved like water finding its level. No wasted motion, no hesitation, no apparent awareness that what he was doing was difficult. He simply went up, hand to hold to foot to ledge, the whole sequence so fluid it looked closer to walking than climbing. Every so often he would pause on some improbable outcrop and look down at the three of them with an expression Caelan had long since learned to categorise as professionally disappointed.
"Boy," Alfor called down. "You are slower than the last time."
"I'm conserving energy," Caelan said through his teeth.
"You're conserving it very aggressively."
From somewhere to his left, across a band of paler rock, he heard Merida laugh. She was tracking slightly above his level, her long arms reaching easily for holds that Caelan had to stretch for, chestnut hair tied back and already coming loose in the wind. "He does this every time," she spoke to no one in particular. "Every single time."
"I'm right here," Caelan said.
"I know," she smiled pleasantly, and pulled herself up another three feet.
Faris was below them both, which was the only comfort available. He moved well, better than he had six months ago, Caelan had to admit, though he would sooner have climbed the cliff with his teeth than say so out loud. The upper section had turned to looser rock and Faris was being careful, testing each hold twice before committing. His dark hair was plastered to his forehead by the wind. His expression was the particular one he wore when he was concentrating hard enough that the usual sardonic edge fell away from it, leaving something younger underneath.
"Stop looking down," he called up to Caelan.
"I'm not looking down."
"You were about to."
Caelan had been about to. He looked up instead, found the next hold, and moved.
The final stretch was limestone polished smooth by years of weather. He got his left hand over the edge, then his right, then committed his weight to it and hauled, arms shrieking, boots scraping uselessly for a moment, until he crested the top and rolled onto solid ground and lay there staring at a sky that had gone from pale grey to a clean, cold blue.
Alfor was already standing. Already facing the view, hands clasped behind his back.
A moment later Merida pulled herself over the edge with considerably more elegance, landing in a low crouch before straightening and rolling her shoulders out. She glanced at Caelan on the ground.
"Conserving energy," she smirked.
"Extensively," he agreed, and got up.
Faris came last, slower but unhurried, and when he reached the top he stood and let out a long breath and didn't say anything at all. Which was, Caelan had come to understand, Faris's version of relief.
"Up," Alfor said. "You'll want to see this."
None of them argued. They turned.
The Kelmoran woods spread below like a dark green sea, canopy dense and unbroken for miles, the treetops moving in slow waves when the wind touched them. Beyond the tree line the land opened into rolling plain, gold-brown in the morning light, threaded through with the silver lines of rivers.
And then past the plain, where land gave way to sea, was Athosea.
Caelan looked at it the way he always looked at it from height, with the strange doubling sensation of knowing a place completely and not recognising it at all. He had grown up beneath those walls. He knew the smell of the lower districts in summer, the particular quality of the light on the harbour steps in the hour before dawn, the sound the city made when it was fully alive. He had never needed to see it from above to understand it.
But there it was anyway. Pale stone, rising in tiers from the waterfront and spreading inland. The outer districts dense, closer in the streets widened, the buildings grew taller and more deliberate, the whole city shaping itself around its own heart. The sea was dark this morning, the waves breaking white against the harbour walls, ships moving slowly in the bay with their sails pale against the turquoise and deep blue of the water.
And at the centre of all of it, rising above everything else, impossible to ignore, the Spire.
Stone arches stacked on stone arches, each tier narrowing as it climbed, the whole structure built in the manner of the old coliseums but pulled heavenward until it had stopped being a building and become something else. A monument. An argument against both the sky and the gods. From here it almost grazed the low clouds, its uppermost tier disappearing into the white.
Merida stood with her arms folded and her head tilted slightly, hazel eyes moving from the woods to the plain to the city in a long, quiet sweep. Faris was very still beside her, grey eyes fixed on the Spire with an expression Caelan couldn't quite read.
Alfor let them have a moment, and only a moment.
"Enough. We didn't climb up here to go sentimental."
He moved and they followed.
The plateau behind them was flat and pale, the rock here wind-scoured to something almost smooth, cut through with shallow fissures. They crossed it in single file, low and quiet, Alfor setting the pace and the three of them matching it by instinct. No conversation. The wind dropped the further they moved from the cliff edge, and in the silence the plateau felt exposed in a way the cliff face hadn't. Too much open sky, too little cover.
Alfor slowed. Dropped into a crouch without signalling.
The three of them went down a half-second behind him, silent, and crept the last few feet to the plateau's edge.
Below, across a natural shelf of flat stone jutting out over the valley like a terrace, a lake caught the morning light in long silver sheets. Small, still, perfectly clear. Around its edges, arranged in a loose crescent, sat nests.
They were enormous. Caelan had known that, had been told, but knowing and seeing were different things. Each one was a great compacted mass of branches and bound stone and something pale and fibrous that might have been dried grass or might have been something else, each structure taller than two men and broad as a merchant's wagon. There were six of them, the far ones tucked against a rise of rock that caught the morning shadow.
And in the lake, and on the surrounding stone, and perched along the edges of their nests, were the eagles.
Four of them. Five. Caelan counted again and landed on five.
Even at this distance they were magnificent. Silvery-grey and white, plumage shifting in the light like metallic armour, and as thick as it too. Four wings, the upper pair larger, the lower swept close to the body, and when one of them near the water's edge shook itself and half-spread the full set, Caelan felt the scale of how big these birds actually were. He had only ever seen them from afar.
Beside him he heard Merida exhale, very quietly.
"Right," Alfor said, barely above a murmur. He settled himself against a nearby rock, and casually began to look at the state of his fingernails. "Listen carefully. We will not have the luxury of repetition."
That caught their attention.
"Eagles of this type mate for life and nest in established sites for decades. The birds you are looking at have been coming to this lake since before any of us were born, and they will be here long after. They are not stupid. They have excellent spatial memory, extraordinary vision, and," he added, "a wingspan that will inconvenience you considerably if you are caught beneath it."
"Encouraging," Faris said.
"I am not paid to be encouraging." Alfor studied the lake below. "We need one of the adults. Alive. Unharmed. That one — " his bearded chin indicated a bird at the lake's far edge, slightly apart from the others. Slightly smaller than the nearest bird, its plumage brighter, less weathered. "Younger than the others. Not yet established in the hierarchy. More likely to bolt than fight."
More likely. That's reassuring. Caelan couldn't help but roll his eyes.
"The approach will be the problem," Alfor continued. "The open ground between our position and the nesting shelf is approximately fifty feet. In that distance there is no cover. The birds will see any direct approach before you cover half of it."
"So we don't approach directly," Merida said.
Alfor glanced at her. "Correct. Faris."
Faris looked up.
"You will go wide. Around the back of the rock shelf, there's a gully that runs along the northern face, shallow but enough to hide. Come up behind the far nests. Make noise. Not too much. You are not trying to panic the flock, only redirect their attention." He paused. "If they all take flight, the exercise is over."
Faris nodded once.
"Caelan. Merida. While Faris draws the eyes to the far end of the shelf, you will circle below the plateau edge — " Alfor indicated the route, a traverse along a narrow ledge that ran below the lip of the stone terrace "— and come up on the near side, between the shore and the target bird. You have rope. Enough for two loops, one across the wings, one for the legs." A look at both of them. "Do not tangle it. Do not rush it. A bird that size, spooked at close range and struggling against restraint, will injure you."
"And if it takes flight before we reach it?" Caelan asked.
"Then it takes flight," Alfor shrugged, "And we find a different approach." He looked at all three of them in turn. "Questions?"
Silence.
"Good." He settled back. "I will observe from here. Do not do anything that requires me to climb down and retrieve you."
The ledge below the plateau was narrow and cold. They moved in single file. Caelan first, Merida close behind, inching along the traverse with their backs to the rock and their eyes on the nesting shelf below.
Faris had already gone. Somewhere along the northern face, working his way into position. Caelan couldn't hear him, which was either a good sign or a worrying one.
The target eagle was still at the water's edge, still preening, occasionally dipping its head to drink. Its back was partially toward them. If they came up from the near shore, moved low along the rock, they would easily reach it.
Merida's hand touched his shoulder. She pointed.
She had read the same thing he had, in front was a fold in the rock shelf that would let them close the last twenty feet without crossing the eagle's direct line of sight.
He gave her a nod.
They waited.
Then, from the far side of the shelf, a sound: a clatter of small rocks, followed by a hollow knock as something struck stone.
Faris.
The effect rippled through the lake immediately. Heads came up, all of them, a synchronised alertness that moved through the flock like a wave. The target bird raised its head and turned toward the noise, upper wings lifting slightly from its body, weight shifting forward onto its talons.
Now.
They moved.
Caelan covered the ground at a low run, staying in the rock's shadow, the rope coiled in his hands. He could feel his pulse in his fingertips. Beside him Merida matched his pace exactly, the second coil ready, her eyes fixed on the bird.
Forty feet. Thirty.
The eagle hadn't turned. Its attention was still toward the far end of the shelf where Faris was making himself known. The other birds had shifted, repositioned, tracking the noise. One had taken three slow steps toward the far nests and stood with its neck extended, watching.
Twenty feet.
Ten.
The target bird turned.
Not toward them, not yet at least. Some shift in the peripheral world had registered, some change in the texture of the air. Its head moved a quarter-turn, the gold eye sweeping the near shore—
They threw the ropes.
The first loop caught wing and shoulder, the cord pulling tight in a way that was immediately, obviously wrong. The bird lurched, not panicking, more offended, its massive wings driving downward in a single explosive beat that hit Caelan like a wall and knocked him sideways. Merida had the second line around the legs, pulling hard, heels digging into the rock, and for a moment, a single breathless moment, it almost worked.
Then the eagle drove its wings down again, harder, and lifted.
And Caelan felt the rope go taut around his leg.
He looked down. Somewhere in the chaos of the throw and the lurch and the wing blast, the first coil had unwound badly and looped back, and it was around his left boot now, and up around his shin, and the other end was attached to an angry bird that was actively attempting to leave.
He had approximately one second to fully understand his situation.
Oh shit—
The eagle rose. The rope pulled. And Caelan's feet left the ground.