The Sword of Feimhin by Frank P. Ryan Page B

figure ahead, watching closely as she turned her back on the landscape to venerate the rising sun, which within a few minutes of the dawn, was already three quarters above the liquid-goldline of the oceanic horizon. He saw Shah-nur-Kian lift her head to the sky as if studying the wisps of cloud or the strength and direction of the coastal breezes. Mind-to-mind, he heard her dutiful homage as the sea took fire, the golden incandescence devouring the tall, erect outline of the Queen.
    Over the naked prow of her breastbone, between the powerful pectoral muscles that tensed as she opened her eight-foot span of wings, she bore the radiant gold-and-turquoise regalia of her royal rank. Her scaly, grey, membranous wings were tattooed with emblematic scenes of the dawn on her left and the ocean and its inhabitants on her right. Glistening arcs of those same royal colours decorated her great bulbous eyes; gold above the left and turquoise above the right.
    Her voice was deeply melodic, incanting a repetitive psalm. Alan caught snatches of meaning. It was a hymn to the deities of dawn, sun and moon, which were the daughter-sisters of the Creator-of-All.
    Taking his cue from the nearby Iyezzz he bowed his head, honoured to be there, but also puzzled at the honour.
    What is it? What’s really going on here?
    As if reading his mind, the Garg prince explained: ‘Mahhh-nur-Sakkk, Sacred Lady of Tide and Oceans, saved the ancestors from drowning in the great flood, which was sent to punish the first people, who built the City of the Ancients. She did so by conferring wings upon them, so they could ride the storm that was to come. And here, inUtna-Harruscum, the place of sanctuary, the ancestors of the Eyrie People made sacred these islands, which were birthed from the consummation of golden desert and the blue ocean.’
    Alan was careful to demonstrate his respect for the Garg way of thinking. He now regarded Iyezzz as a true friend. The prince had shown himself to be both brave and resourceful in leading them out of a perilous swamp, helping Alan to find Kate after she had escaped from the Tower of Bones. How he wished that Kate was there right now! The Gargs respected her a lot more than they did him, and he was only just beginning to understand how much they revered her, with her emerald-green Oraculum of the Second Power: the power of healing and birth itself. Kate had greened the wasted lands of the Gargs, restoring life to the sacred tree. But she had left him to go back to the city of Ulla Quemar, the only surviving city of the Cill, where their leader, the Momu – a strange being that Alan had met in the cave of the City of the Ancients – was dying. She felt she had to help the Cill by saving the Momu.
    Kate! I need you here!
    Later today, Alan and his company would be heading for a formal confrontation with Iyezzz’s father, Zelnesakkk, the Garg king. That meeting would decide whether or not the Gargs would help them invade the Wastelands to take the war to the gates of the Tyrant’s capital city, Ghork Mega.
    Alan should have been spending time preparing for themeeting, discussing tactics with the young Kyra, Ainé, her spiritual adviser, Bétaald, and his friends, Mo and Qwenqwo. Instead, Iyezzz had enticed him here to observe this ritual of veneration by his royal mother, Zelnesakkk’s wife. Alan knew that Iyezzz understood how critical the help of the Gargs was likely to be – and that suggested that Iyezz had a reason beyond the obvious for bringing him here.
    Alan took a deep breath, reining in his frustration.
    The estuary was vast and windswept, but still hauntingly beautiful in the morning light. It was icy cold, with dew twinkling like diamonds in the fronds of lichens, coating those spiky, rocky outgrowths that sprang upwards like miniature steeples.
    Alan turned to Iyezzz, keeping his voice low: ‘Your father – surely he’s not opposed to helping us?’
    â€˜Do not