Chapter 32

When Turan lived on Hisaril Hill, black eagles would prey on his sheep just as wolves and leopards did. Their strength was truly astonishing, considering they weighed less than a fifth as much as an ordinary sheep.

The one before him was not particularly large for a monster, no bigger than its ordinary kin, but it was surely far stronger. Unlike the other monsters, this black eagle was confined in a cramped cage. For some reason, it was staring at him, blinking its golden eyes.

“How much is this one?”

“Fifteen hundred gold coins.”

That was far cheaper than he had expected. Of course, even that was close to his entire fortune.

“What abilities does it have?”

“It’s clever and flies well.”

That gave him some idea of why it was priced that way. Monsters without special abilities tended to be valued somewhat lower than others of their level. Its small size would also mean less strength.

Even so, it seemed far too cheap for the amount of mana it possessed. When he voiced that doubt, the House Head’s daughter shook her head.

“Black eagles are usually quite popular. They can easily carry a person through the air. But this one is so clever that it refuses to obey even after being tamed. It seems to think, ‘Why should I listen to creatures stupider than me?’”

Then, astonishingly, the black eagle nodded as though answering for itself. After a moment’s hesitation, Turan asked it a question.

“Did you just answer her?”

It nodded.

“You aren’t simply nodding at everything, are you?”

It shook its head.

“You’re very handsome.”

It nodded.

“Still, I think hawks look more impressive than eagles.”

At that last remark, the black eagle snapped its beak together and looked furious. It wasn’t merely picking up on the tone of his words; it understood them precisely.

Tilly was clever too, but not to this extent. Apart from being unable to speak, wasn’t this bird practically a person? Half dazed, Turan spoke.

“It certainly understands speech.”

“Yes. We even tried teaching it to read, but it wouldn’t. Whether it didn’t want to learn or couldn’t, I don’t know. It amounts to the same thing.”

Apparently, it was so willful that it had once escaped after being sold, forcing them to ask House Zahar to catch it.

“It’s a shame. It’s strong for its size, and we’ve fed it quite a few monsters. If only it obeyed, we could have sold it for much more.”

At first, that sounded like a complaint, but there was a subtle note of encouragement in it. Perhaps he could bring the creature fully under his control and become its master—and then he would have bought a fine monster for an absurdly low price.

He had felt this while speaking with the House Head too: this house seemed determined to raise its nobles as merchants. As Turan listened quietly, a thought struck him, and he addressed the black eagle.

“Come to think of it, since it understands us, I can just ask it directly. Hey, is there anything you want?”

The House Head’s daughter gave a small laugh and shook her head.

“We’ve asked it that several times, but it never gives us a proper answer. It’s so willful...”

Before she could finish, however, the black eagle cocked its head once, then pointed a talon at Turan. The House Head’s daughter gaped in astonishment.

“What? Why would it suddenly...”

“You want me?”

The black eagle nodded at Turan’s question.

“I’m not anyone particularly special. Is there a reason?”

At that, it merely tilted its head from side to side, as though unwilling to answer or unable to find a way. Even Turan could see that it wasn’t a question easily answered with gestures.

“If I buy you, would you be willing to learn to read and write? I’ll teach you myself.”

When it nodded at his next question, Turan turned to the House Head’s daughter.

“I’ll buy it.”

“What? Oh, well, I think we’ll need to reconsider the price—”

Now that she had seen the eagle behaving so obediently, she seemed reluctant to part with it. Of course, Turan had no trouble bringing her back to reality.

“I doubt our friend here will be this cooperative with anyone but me. Isn’t that right?”

The black eagle gave two emphatic nods, then struck the iron bars with a talon in the daughter’s direction. It looked as though it was threatening her to sell it to Turan immediately. Seeing how perfectly the two worked together, she looked from one to the other and sighed.

“Well, I suppose there’s no helping it.”

* * *

“Be joined as one. You are me, and I am you...”

After fetching gold from the chest he had left in his room and paying for the eagle, Turan had his consciousness bound to the bird’s under the supervision of none other than the House Head himself. With the incantation, he felt part of his soul connect to the black eagle.

This was taming magic, the ability of the Tamer bloodline. Rather than merely controlling an animal temporarily as other wizards did, it spiritually bound two living creatures together. Undoing that bond or changing whom it connected likewise required a noble of the Tamer bloodline.

Once the connection was complete, Turan felt some of the black eagle’s thoughts flow into him: the satisfaction and pride of finally finding something, and the sense of liberation at being able to leave its cage. What on earth had this monster seen in him? A special bloodline? Talent? Or something else entirely?

“It’s done.”

At the House Head’s words, Turan opened the cage and freed the black eagle. Rather than flee, it hopped onto his arm and preened its feathers, as naturally as though it had been there all along.

“What should I name you?”

In answer, the black eagle gave a cute little cheep quite at odds with its fierce appearance. Its thoughts came through their soul bond along with the sound. They lay somewhere between articulated thoughts and abstract feelings, making them difficult to decipher clearly, but he could make a reasonable guess.

“You want to choose your own name? After you learn to read?”

The black eagle nodded.

“All right. Do as you like.”

Turan was hardly gifted at naming things anyway, so that suited him. The bird did seem a little too independent... but it obeyed him well enough, so surely it didn’t matter.

He thought of the sheepdog he had kept as a child. When his mother came to Hisaril Hill and bought the old shepherd’s house and flock, the dog had come with them.

After he lost his mother to illness and the dog died of old age, Turan never kept another. His magic let him tend the sheep perfectly well without a sheepdog’s help, and above all, he did not want to experience something precious to him growing old and dying again.

He probably wouldn’t have to worry about that with this black eagle. In general, although monsters lacked skill with magic, they were physically superior to wizards of the same level, and their lifespans were correspondingly immense. This one might even outlive him.

“Remarkable,” House Head Karl murmured as he watched them. “It wouldn’t even spare the Baraha heir a glance when they visited. What could it find so appealing about you, Master Brahms?”

House Baraha was a great house situated east of the Enril Desert, if he remembered correctly. Weren’t they said to wield fire and light through their Sun bloodline?

Turan had no idea why the bird was drawn to him either, so he intended to ask once he had taught it to write. Whether it would give him a satisfactory answer was another matter.

“I’ll take good care of it on my travels.”

“Do as you please. Now that it’s left us, it’s no longer one of ours.”

Karl added that if it escaped, Turan would have to catch it himself. It was hard to tell whether that was advice or an ill wish.

“Well, then...”

“Ah, a moment.”

The House Head stopped Turan as he was about to leave. For some reason, an uncertain hesitation had appeared on the merchant’s perpetually calculating face.

“You’re welcome to think nothing of this, but do you happen to have any connection to Lord Talis?”

“Lord Talis...?”

“No, never mind. I was merely wondering. Forget I asked.”

Seeing Turan act as though he had never heard the name before, Karl hastily shook his head. It was as if he were trying to erase the question he had just asked.

Turan instinctively realized that Karl had seen someone named Talis in his face, and committed the name to memory. Then he decided to ask the question he had been unable to raise earlier, given the mood. After all, the other man had been first to ask an idle question.

“Then, my lord, may I ask you a question as well?”

“Go ahead.”

“Do you happen to know a woman named Vije?”

“Vije?”

“She looks like this.”

Turan took out a sheet of paper buried at the very bottom of his bag. Ash scattered across the fine paper formed the face of a woman who appeared to be in her late twenties.

“Drawn with magic, I see. Quite a talent for someone of the guardian bloodline.”

“I have a friend skilled at this sort of thing. I asked them to draw it.”

Drawing portraits by scattering ash across paper was a technique he had learned while practicing magic with Maysa. By picturing an image in one’s mind, arranging ash into that shape, and pressing it onto paper, even someone with no talent for drawing could transfer the image they imagined.

His mother had died five or six years ago, so he couldn’t be certain he had reproduced her perfectly. Still, the likeness was close enough that someone who knew her ought to recognize something of her in it. As the House Head studied the portrait, Turan focused on his every movement and the scents coming from his body.

‘Well, what will it be?’

He felt comfortable showing his mother’s portrait because she had been an ordinary person. Even if he had inherited his Zahar bloodline from her, someone who wasn’t a wizard was unlikely to have been important enough to commit some great crime. Of course, he did have to consider the possibility that identifying his mother would lead straight to his father...

Contrary to his hopes, however, Karl studied the picture for a long time before shaking his head.

“I don’t recognize her at all. I doubt I’d easily forget a beauty like that. Is she your mother or sister?”

“Something like that.”

Even with his sense of smell focused to its utmost, Turan detected no scent of alarm or surprise from the man. The discovery brought him both relief and disappointment.

“It seems you have your own circumstances.”

“Who in this world doesn’t?”

“True enough.”

From his heavy tone, Karl seemed to live with troubles of his own. What those might be, however, was beyond an outsider like Turan.

With the agreement concluded, Turan left the palace and headed south out of Komad to give his new friend’s abilities a proper test. The sight of him carrying a sizable black eagle on his arm with a knight accompanying him drew stares.

After a few dozen minutes of walking, he began to smell the dry, sand-laden wind. Soon a desert lay before him, nothing but sand stretching beyond the horizon... He had caught glimpses of it from the ship, but setting foot on it himself felt entirely different. Turan reached out and lightly stirred the dry air.

‘It isn’t hot, probably because it’s a winter night. If anything, it’s rather cold.’

Being at the desert’s northernmost edge probably had something to do with it as well. The Enril Desert was famous for its staggering size; even within the same desert, the climate varied from region to region.

On the map, hadn’t House Zahar’s territory been some three to five times the size of Arabion’s? Of course, given the nature of the desert, its population might actually be smaller.

“Then shall we try a little flight?”

As soon as he finished speaking, the black eagle took to the air, and Turan caught one of its sturdy legs in his hand. A powerful force pulled him upward, and in an instant, the world sank far below.

“Oh...”

The oncoming wind stung his eyes, and Turan quickly blocked the air in front of them. The sensation of speed was on an entirely different level from levitation magic, which merely lifted his body into the air. This seemed far faster even than running himself.

He didn’t know how the Zahar noble had caught this bird, but it certainly couldn’t have been by chasing it on foot. Capturing it by stealth, perhaps.

Glancing back, Turan realized that Komad had already shrunk enough to take in at a glance, and laughed. In the other direction, the desert still stretched endlessly away, yet perhaps because he was looking down from so high, it seemed less daunting than it had from the ground. It was as though the distances had become far less imposing.

When Turan cast levitation magic on himself to reduce his weight, the black eagle beat its wings faster, seemingly delighted by its lighter burden.

“At this rate, we could cross the Dakayn Plains in a day with time to spare...”

Truly, it was fast enough to make him feel foolish for having traveled on foot all this time. One man and one black eagle delighted in their flight until the bird finally tired and descended.