Magic, according to my teacher, passes through the realms and touches ours in mysterious ways. The rules of magic are inconsistent. She'd said that we cannot fully understand its warp and weft, because the weave of it transcends our realm of solid objects and geography. However, there are also certain rules. Nothing comes for free.

  From the journal of Drago? Buh?scu

  Dragos turned toward the sound and squinted through the dark silhouettes of entwined trees, past the crumbled wall that concealed his fire. The faintest flicker of orange made him spin toward his own tiny campfire. He dropped to the ground, knee jarred enough for pain to flare past the dulling herbs he’d taken. Using a stick, he scattered the embers, slashing and pounding until the fire was nothing more than tiny specks of dull red amidst a scatter of twigs.

  Rolling onto his back, he sat up and breathed past the panic to assess his situation. He could not climb, and a hound would find them anyway. No one outran hounds, not even the able-bodied. The baying told him they’d found his scent. Escape was not possible. He shifted onto his hip, flicked a glance at Mirel suckling on her fist, nestled in his cloak, and reached for his last resort.

  Dragos pulled his knife and contemplated the edge. What had he last cut with it? Had he cleaned it? He shook his head and glanced through the gaps of stone, out to the woods. The crashing of fumbling men prickled at his ears.

  He tugged at the collar of his shirt, untying the tattered twine that held the neck closed to expose the tattoo of an owl on his chest. Despite the rising clamor of his would-be murderers, he forced his heart to calm. His breath slowed.

  Touching the blade to his palm, he murmured words learned long ago in the Cohort of Owls. Low and steady, he intoned:

  “Straj?-n noapte, ochi ?n fum,

  Tu ce vezi cand al?ii dorm,

  Din copac sau cer coboar?,

  S?-mi fii ghear?, s?-mi fii moar?.

  Du-te unde du?man calc?,

  F?-i s? piar?, f?-i s? tac?.

  Cu pana ta, cu ochiul stins,

  Pogoar? asupra lor ca-un vis.”

  With the final word, he drew the blade along his palm. He slapped the bleeding wound against the owl tattoo and opened his eyes. The knowledge of the Solomonari, long accused of consorting with devils and speaking with beasts, was called into service. The tattoo thrummed. Ancient magic surged outward; formless, invisible, but very real. For one brief moment, between the contact of his palm to his chest and the opening of his eyes, he saw something else. Leaves. Branches. The world was clear, bright, all but washed of deep color. Dragos felt a spinning sensation in his head as the owl took flight. It knew what he needed. Not blood, not death. Distraction. Stir whispers of terror into the hearts of foolish men.

  The owl’s cry echoed back through the forest as its wings whispered through the air. Dragos closed his eyes again.

  He counted the mob as the owl flew above them. Twelve men and a hound. The dog pulled furiously at the leash of the man holding it. Three bore torches. The spirit he rode with swept through the canopy, knocking down leaves on the mob by the slap of its wings. The torchbearer in the back, a spindly lad, looked up and screeched, waving his torch wildly at the fluttering shadows.

  The men ahead of him spun about, then laughed. One went over and plucked a withered leaf from his shoulder and twirled it between his fingers. The man joked, “Oh, these are terrifying monsters!”

  Dragos focused on his spell, releasing his mental hold on the owl who’d agreed to help him, reaching for more. Predators ranged far and wide, but there were still more owls within his reach. The men were not so close that he had to hurry. Each spirit was the distance of a thought, and he lured them. He could not demand or force them to do anything, but he could suggest. Wouldn’t it be amusing to scare these men into running away from your territory?

  Some came. Some didn’t. Soon, the trees shook with the passing of silent wings.

  A wind stirred high in the canopy, unnerving the men below, who’d slowed their pace despite their bravado. The woods had always held omens, promising to swallow anything that did not respect its power. The hound strained, but the handler pulled against it.

  Faces painted in flickers of torchlight changed as the wind above them guttered their flames.

  An owl’s shriek caused shoulders to jerk. Heads turned. One looked up and gasped. Leaves fell on them as if from a gale wind; a single feather drifted down. Dragos watched, slipping from one spirit to another, piggybacking the magic. All the while, he felt his essence thin. Every second that passed meant a wisp of himself slipped away.

  The air was cut by the rattle of branches. Owls screeched, the cries interwove, an unnatural cacophony that only grew as the vortex of birds continued.

  Men’s terror—dampened by firelight and self-righteous dreams of justice—swelled. Fear rose, nurtured by the night and the impossible parliament of owls above. The youngest torchbearer let out a high, thin wail and ran.

  “Magie neagr?!” Someone cried before they tore off after the youngest’s bobbing torch.

  As if some dam in their collective consciousness broke, one after another followed the boy. Another torchbearer raced back towards Plansura, howling of black magic. They crashed like spooked deer through the underbrush, choking out prayers to the Light.

  All that was left was the houndsman and his dog.

  Dragos let go of the owls, unleashing his spirit from the spell. He opened his eyes. While he waited for the last of them to arrive, he crawled back to Mirel and his travel box. In the dark, he found the salve he needed and bound the wound on his hand. He tucked Mirel behind the box in a nest of leaves. She sucked on her fist and whimpered, as if she knew the trouble they were in and tried her best to silence herself. He slung his cloak over his legs to conceal the crude brace he’d crafted for his knee.

  The pursuer’s steps crunched on twigs, rustled leaves, and drew ever closer. The last torch cast a growing orange glow upon the trees.

  When the hound sniffed around the edge of the old stone archway, it let out an eager baying, having found him. It pulled mightily against the leash, taut muscles strained beneath short black fur. Dragos smiled and met its gaze. He blinked in greeting and held his hand out, palm up. The houndsman thrust his torch around the corner before daring a look himself. When he saw Dragos, he let go of the leash.

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  The big dog lunged.

  “Hello, baby,” Dragos cooed, hand out to the dog from where he lounged.

  The black-and-tan scent hound bounded over and crashed into Dragos, licking his face. He clenched his jaw against a hiss when it stomped on his knee, sending an exquisite shockwave of pain through his body. Dragos breathed through it, then smirked at the man who stared, slack-jawed, as his hound betrayed him.

  “The Solomonari are friends with animals—didn’t you know?” Dragos said conversationally, draping an arm over the wiggling hound.

  The man pointed his torch at Dragos like a weapon and spat, “You’re not—”

  “I’m the Owl’s Bastard. I’m the stone best left unturned. I’m the silence that should not be broken,” Dragos said, each word more grave than the last. Then he patted the dog and gave the man a grin, all teeth and poison. “Take your dog and leave.”

  He gave the hound a pat on its hindquarters and a little shove back towards the hunter. The dog bounded a few steps, then turned back around to slap a big, wet tongue along the wanderer’s face.

  The dog’s master had no hand for a spear, only for the torch and the dog. Dragos spotted the hunting knife, but also the look in the man’s eyes. Fear held him docile. Legend was more terrifying than a wild boar.

  “Boian, come,” The man’s voice was tremulous, his fingers grasping at the air toward the dog. He didn’t take a single step forward.

  “Go to your master, Boian,” Dragos murmured, and gave the dog’s wiggling behind another thump.

  The dog bounded back to the man, prancing about him as if unaware of any betrayal. The hunter, too terrified to scold him, snatched at the dog’s collar and found the leash, slowly backing away from the ruins.

  Dragos listened to their progress. Their crashing through the thicket back towards town faded. No doubt they might muster up again, or, more likely, they’ll not set foot in the woods for a year, for fear of him. He hoped it was the latter.

  He took Mirel from her hiding place and slid down enough to rest her on his chest. The darkness was thick, but he could just make out the pale curve of her fuzzy head. She hiccuped and cried, and he patted her little back.

  They survived.

  Perhaps only to die tomorrow. Or in a few days.

  Unable to leave the ruins until dawn, Dragos drifted in and out of sleep, roused by the child or his own restless dreams.

  When the pale of dawn broke, Dragos woke to the sound of footsteps. He jolted upright, hand on Mirel, sleep-fogged eyes searching. A black figure bent over a new fire close by, the old bucket beside it.

  Dragos recognized the shaggy mane and dull-scaled limbs of the zmeu. “Zgavra?”

  “Do you know another zmeu?” it asked.

  Dragos’ crooked smirk answered the question. He sat up the rest of the way to see the bucket, full of water. He glanced at the zmeu and stretched to dip a finger in it. Fresh.

  He washed himself and the baby, keeping the zmeu in the corner of his eye and squarely in his awareness. What game was it playing? It crouched by the low flame, trailing a stick in the dirt at the fire’s edge. Giving nothing away.

  Mirel hitched and sobbed, squirming as she was washed. She might have been the most disgusting creature Dragos had ever taken care of. How could something born from the sky be so dirty?

  Still, he made sure she was clean. Padded her bottom well with flannel and filch that the old widow sold him, and wrapped her in a strip of blanket before doing what he could with her dirty clothes and swaddle. They were laid on the sun-kissed stone of the ruins to dry.

  “What a face,” the zmeu chuckled.

  Dragos looked up from dumping the filthy bucket of water. “What?”

  “Nothing,” Zgavra laughed and pitched a bladder at him. It hit the ground with a liquid thud. “Here. Milk. The screaming offends my ears.”

  Dragos scrubbed his hands on a tree and inched over to the bladder. He narrowed his eyes at Zgavra, then shrugged. If it wanted to kill them, there were easier ways than poison.

  “Thanks,” Dragos murmured. Then he added, as he fed Mirel, “You can’t eat the baby.”

  Zgavra huffed and poked the fire.

  Once the baby was fed, Dragos dumped the bucket and gathered his meager belongings. When he hobbled around to look for a good walking stick, Zgavra stopped him. The orange eyes squinted thoughtfully at the cerel before he spoke.

  “I’ll take you to where you can rid yourself of the little thing,” Zgavra said.

  Cruel words, but the goal was right. Mirel needed a home. Stability. A mother who could feed her. She would slowly waste away on milk from animals alone. Keeping her was impossible.

  “How?” Dragos asked, pausing in his hobbling about the ruins. “And why?”

  “I have my reasons,” Zgavra replied, dropping the stick and standing up straight. It turned toward Dragos, the seams of its form undone, flowing like smoke to become a long, sinuous serpent. Where it had stopped before, it continued, wings spreading like ink in water, out from its back. It solidified, clawed talons coming to rest on the ground, a dazzling red gem nestled between its shaggy brows.

  “You may not drop me,” Dragos stated. A stiff smile cracked his lips and grew out of control. To ride a zmeu like the old Solomonari…

  Zgavra dropped onto its belly. Dragos scooped up Mirel in her bucket. It took some doing to climb onto the dragon, and more effort before Zgavra found a space in the canopy that wouldn’t knock Dragos off, but then, with a thunderous beat of wings, they bounded into the sky.

  The wind tore Dragos’ breath away, but he didn’t care. Bucket in one arm, the other tangled deep into Zgavra’s mane, he leaned in and rose with the dragon, good leg hooked around the zmeu’s neck.

  The jagged ridges of the Embrace soared into view. A bark of elation escaped him as Calruthia revealed itself, spread before him like a fine tapestry. Forests, fields, towns, people, tiny as ants in their industry and idleness, and they flew past them all, far above where few looked to see them.

  Some saw. Some would surely remember.

  A Solomonar riding a dragon heralded hail and thunder, but he was no Solomonar. Dragos was merely the Owl’s Bastard, taught their ways. He inhaled the sweet air and sighed, glancing down into the bucket at Mirel, whose uncanny blue gaze met his.

  She might have a chance, after all.

  Cohort of Owls: Dragos's class in ?oloman??.

  Incantation rough translation:

  Watcher in the night, eye in smoke,

  You who sees while others sleep,

  From tree or sky descend to me,

  Be my claw, be my millstone.

  Go where the enemy walks,

  Make them vanish, make them hush.

  With your feather, with your darkened eye,

  Fall upon them like a dream.

  Magie neagr? (mah-GEE-eh NEAH-gruh): Black magic.

  Solomonari (so-lo-mo-NAH-ree) [rolled r]: A race of wizard strigoi that rode zmeu. Legend has it they worked blood magic and made pacts with demons and animals. Their school, known as The Dark School, was also known in distant lands as Scholomance.

  Zmeu (zmyeh-oo) : a form of dragon. A shapeshifter that travels between the world of the living and other realms. They are known to steal fair maids to be their wives. Suffers great hubris. Very powerful monster given to chaos, born of the Umbregrin. Solomonari wizards ride them when controlling weather patterns.

  Cerel (TSEH-rel) [rolled r]: Infant/young child. Living human form of Copiii ceruli.

  The Embrace: The mountain range that curves around the interior of Calruthia. The Spineback is one of many ranges attached to the Embrace.

  Calruthia (Kal-ROO-thee-uh): The country that Dragos was born in and currently wanders.