| There was a young man watching
me; I could see him in the mirror. His bright, curious blue eyes
sparkled from a face that had only recently lost its youthful
curves, framed by jet-black hair, and beginning to grow stubble. The
man in the reflection seemed older than me in the flickering light
of the torches. As his hand reached up to stroke the blackness on
his chin, his eyes seemed surprised, as if he had not expected it to
be there.
As I examined the tall figure, dressed in a
black cloak that spilled down his back like a waterfall of shadows,
I didn't recognise him. There was some resemblance evidenced to my
master, who had taught me so much over the last five years. He wore
the same black, strange material that seemed to shimmer blue in the
light. His hands where ordained with the same curves of metal that
my master had worn ever since I'd met him. But my master was old
now, too old to carry on teaching me. The stranger looked at me with
familiar eyes that I felt drawn to. I lifted my hand towards the
mirror, and the stranger's hand lifted with mine, in perfect
synchronisation. My fingers touched his on the surface of the glass
in wonder. I moved closer to the mirror, just as the reflection did
the same: not quite believing the man that I saw myself to be.
The crude wooden doors suddenly rattled,
startling me, and I became aware of the wind whistling past outside.
In the reflection, my mouth contorted into a smile as I made my way
over the stone floor on booted feet, and threw open the
double-doors, letting in the cool dry wind, and the darkness of
night. With nervous anticipation, I stepped out onto the cold stone
ledge that looked down onto a bottomless well of blackness on the
side of a cliff, high up near the peaks of the Rowl Mountains.
For a while, I just stood there with my
cloak and tangled black hair flapping behind me like a dark flag. I
spread my arms wide with glee, and fell forwards through the
hundreds of meters of windswept air.
Memory of that first flight came to me:
that time almost two years ago when I had stood on the hilltop of
the Island of Shadows as my master instructed me; the day I had been
looking forward to for three years. The wind had been as strong on
that day as it was now: perfect conditions for a shadow to take
flight. But then it had been daytime as I had awkwardly manipulated
the chords to catch the wind and give me lift. My master's teaching
repeated themselves in my mind: the angle of the body; the tautness
of the chords; the feel of the wind currents. I had come a long way
from then as I expertly gathered in the primary and secondary chords
on my cloak, and took my arms out wide. The effect was immediate;
with a sudden jerk my momentum ceased to move vertically and I sped
forward parallel to the rolling hills of Yakatar beneath.
I flew in a straight line towards the
lights of Prote, with the familiar feeling of wind catching in the
canvas of my wings. But then I noticed a small town below me, and I
pulled at a primary chord on my right wing: my flight slowed and I
circled the town in a clean spiral.
This is where it had all started, I
reflected, right there in that now-overgrown field at the back of
the school, where I had been training for the quarterly sports day.
So long ago, it seemed in another lifetime. I remembered waiting my
turn in a line of ramblemen, watching the elves enviously, as they
flitted across ropes close by, as if they could walk on air.
I had first noticed the cloaked stranger
standing at the fence as I finished my run of the obstacle course,
puffing and sweating. He watched the ramblemen training with intense
interest.
As I pulled on a couple of primary chords
again, to angle myself back to Prote, and drew in all the secondary
chords to catch the wind, I knew meeting Night Shadow, and
subsequently discovering that the majority of legends I'd heard
about him were false, could never have made its way even into my
overactive imagination. But that was what had happened, and I still
didn't fully understand what had made my master choose me on that
day.
I hadn't been the most athletic by any
means. I had never won any of the contests; Mark Calder would have
been a far better choice, as he excelled in anything remotely
sporting. Neither had I been particularly intelligent, I
contemplated as I sped on towards the glittering lights of Prote
with the speed of the wind. I had been far from the top of my class
in anything. Nor was I a fully blooded rambleman, because my
grandmother had been an amicman, but that didn't seem to matter.
The only reason I could see was that I had
been an orphan, and had no family, meaning that I would have no
reservations about leaving. I had also had to resort to acting for a
mere 3 shelrons* a day, and even thieving to keep myself alive.
Perhaps that was what had made me a suitable candidate.
Whatever the reason had been, I was a
shadow now. The lights of the largest city in The Lands of Aldálon
where now beneath me, and I angled my body to the right, slackened
the secondary chords to slow me down, and pulled on two primary
chords to bring myself in a wide circle a round the centre of the
giant city. Although the wind blew, I cut through the air in
graceful curves; an unexpected change in wind never caught me
off-balance.
I smiled: today I had become a shadow of
the night, and I would make my master proud. I pulled sharply on all
8 primary threads and dived down into the city; ready for anything
its sprawling mass could throw at me.
*The currency in Aldálon is Protian
Grestles, and there are 100 Shelrons in one grestle. |
