Tarashana Rachel Neumeier (top 10 motivational books TXT) 📖

to grab his claw-weapon and kick him hard in the chest. This time when he fell, he did not catch the edge of the bridge.

The force of my kick had flung me into the glimmering spire of light. I caught myself against its strange solidity and flung myself down, hearing a sword cutting through the air behind me, knowing I would be too late to avoid that blow completely, hoping only to take a wound that might not be mortal at once so that I might take one more enemy with me into death.

But no blow fell. I came to my feet, spinning with an effort I felt through my whole body, guarding myself with the claw-weapon, and stopped in amazement. I was so astonished that I even forgot my fury.

The eagle had come. He had plummeted from the sky with blazing speed to strike my enemy, tearing gaping wounds into the shadow warrior’s back and shoulders and face with his talons. I understood now that the sound I had heard was the wind whistling through the feathers of those great wings, not the sound of a sword cutting down at me.

The eagle turned on a wingtip, spinning impossibly fast—no ordinary bird could have done that, not in the land of the living—dropped to the bridge, and rose up as a man. No one could have mistaken him then. He stooped, pivoting, and came up with the sword I had lost, so that now he held a weapon in each hand. Before I could move—before Aras could decide that I should move—he cut down the wounded ka’a. Then, rather than flinging himself into the air and once again becoming an eagle, he raced down the glimmering stairway, straight toward the other shadow warriors. Where he could not have stopped them along a broader front, obviously he could do so easily on this narrow stairway.

I did not watch. Now that there was no need for urgent speed, I could barely move at all. I straightened slowly, catching my breath. Then I turned, and walked the other way, upward. Aras waited for me, but he said nothing to me when I came to him. He glanced at my face and then looked away. I could not speak unless he permitted it, but I would not have said anything anyway. I had nothing to say to him.

His condition was no better than mine. From the way he held his arm, at least one bone was probably broken. I was far too angry to care.

He drew a breath, let it out, and began to climb the stairs painfully slowly, one step after another, almost too weary to make the effort. I understood exactly how he felt, and resented that bitterly. I fell into step beside him—that was not my decision, but I hardly cared now what he did, what he made me do. Above us, Inhejeriel sang, and my sister, and Lalani. Shivering just beyond the edge of hearing, the voices of the uncountable stars wove an intricate harmony. Surrounding us, above us, crowding the stairway that led into and through the sky, I half saw and half felt many shades—not exactly shades. I still did not know what to call them. Aras and I walked side by side, not very fast, along the stairway that spiraled up and up into the sky, surrounded by those who had been lost and might, now, be redeemed.

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Aras glanced back now and then, and after a while he made me turn my head so that I could see as well. Then we both turned completely around and stood together, watching.

I saw the eagle-warrior fall, cut down, cut completely in half by the dark sword of a greater ka’a warrior. But the parts of his body fell, not off the stairway, but through it, blending with and then falling through the light, and then the eagle swept away and up, unharmed by any enemy weapon. Moonlight and mist streamed through his feathers, a trail of light that lingered along his path.

He swept down and down, stooped into a blazingly fast dive, and vanished.

The foremost of the shadow warriors took that chance to race forward. They had not yet given up, so I supposed that meant they had not yet been defeated decisively enough. I tried to prepare myself to fight again despite my weariness and wounds—I knew Aras would send me to fight before he took up the effort again himself—but before I took even one step, the eagle appeared directly above the ka’a in the lead. The eagle struck that shadow warrior so hard and fast that the blow flung our enemy from the stairway. They fell locked together, a tangle of light and shadow.

They had not fallen far before the eagle pulled free and wheeled away, leaving his enemy to fall alone the long distance down and finally into the dark emptiness that eddied now just below the peak of Talal Sabero. The eagle vanished again—

— and plunged from the vault of the heavens, striking the surface of the stairway, blurring instantly from bird to warrior. Dropping to his knees, he plunged both his swords up to the hilt into the starlight where he knelt. A sound like the scream of an eagle sliced through the air, and that stair and the two above and below that one all cracked into pieces and fell away, the pieces shattering into smaller fragments as they fell, dissolving into drifting mist. The shade of the warrior fell with the broken shards of light, then swept away again on immense wings, milky light streaming around him, through him. The remaining shadow warriors fled the shattering bridge, leaping away to fall into their dark tide. The eagle swept around in an impossibly tight turn and stooped upon them, plunging into the shadow tide himself.

“That most certainly wasn’t—isn’t an ordinary shade,” Aras said softly.