Charlotte Boyett-Compo - Windreaper

The WindLegend's Saga
Book I: Windkeeper
Book II: Windseeker
Book III: Windweeper
Book IV: Windhealer
Book V: Windreaper
Book VI: Winddreamer
Book VII: Windbeliever
Book VIII: Winddeceiver
Book IX: Windretriever
Book X: Windschemer

Terrible and dreadful is he,
From himself derive his law and his majesty.
Swifter than leopards are his horses,
And keener than wolves at evening.
His horses prance,
His horsemen come from afar:
They fly like the eagle hastening to devour;
Each comes for the rapine,
Their combined onset is that of a stormwind
That heaps up captives like sand.
He scoffs at kings,
And princes are his laughingstock;
He laughs at any fortress,
Heaps up a ramp, and conquers it.
Then he veers like the wind and is gone
This culprit who makes his own strength
His God!
Habakkuk 1: 7-12

His sons were playing tag along the garden wall, ducking in and out of shrubs and bushes, squealing with childish glee, pretending to shoot one another with invisible bows. They had dark hair like his and Liza's, but they had his bright, sky-blue eyes. "A deadly combination," Gezelle had said, when she told him how the little girls in the village were already beginning to follow the two boys about. They were handsome lads, Legion thought with pride, and getting taller every day, it seemed. Jarad would be five in April; Kells, the youngest, and by far the most precocious, would be four in two days' time.

King Legion A'Lex turned his proud gaze to the boy he had taken on as his own. The boy was sitting beside him on the fountain, staring wistfully at his half-brothers as they ran about. The seven-year-old had a heavy frown on his face.

"It won't be long now," Legion remarked, patting the boy's knee.

Codian McGregor turned melancholy eyes to the man he knew as uncle and father, and grimaced. "It just bores the heck out of me."

Legion threw back his head and laughed. "I know." He glanced at the lad's left leg, encased in a heavy cast. "When the cast comes off, you should try safer and more graceful pursuits than falling down stairs."

Codian, his shy gaze following Jarad as the child leapt with ease over a low shrub, shrugged. "I think so, too, Papa."

"You could try teaching your brothers and sister how not to break a leg," Legion teased.

Codian blushed and ducked his head. He thought back to his laughing commentary as he tried to show his younger siblings how to slide down the curving banister from their sleeping chambers to the main floor. He had failed dismally. And broken his leg in the process.

"I don't tink I care to wearn dat," Kells had told him with a smug look on his almost four-year old face as Codian howled with pain. "Must huwt wike hell, huh?"

Tall and ungainly for his seven years, Codianor Cody, as his mother called himthrived on his role as teacher to the younger children. He had set himself up as their tutor, confidante, and all-around boss. He dreamed of one day becoming a great scholar and felt he had the brain for it. Although Cody knew, should anything happen to his older brother, Corbin, who was interned at the Great Abbey of the Domination high atop Mount Serenia, he, himself, would one day be King, his thoughts were not of ruling.

The boy was really painfully shy and nervous; strangers made him uneasy and he preferred a good book to conversation. Unlike his father before him, Cody McGregor did not covet what, by rights, was not his. Instead, the only son of Galen McGregor was thankful for whatever he was given, accepted it with pleasure, and asked for no more.

"Cody?" a small voice called.

He sighed, looked to the heavens, then turned to Legion. There was rampaging misery on his face. "Papa?" he pleaded.

"Might as well answer her, Cody," Legion warned. "She won't give up."

Cody nodded sagely, sighed again, and shook his head. "Ain't that the truth?" he asked in a voice beyond his years. He looked about when his name was called in a more plaintive cry. "Over here, Jillian!"

Jillian's face was excited as she ran to A'Lex and her half-brother. She held out her hands. "Look what Uncle Marsh gave me!"

Legion, uncle and father to the girl, let out a long breath. He was going to kill Marsh Edan yet. "Who's going to care for it, Jillian?" He eyed the little puppy with a mock frown.

"Me, Papa!" Jillian exclaimed, cuddling the puppy close to her chest. She planted a loud kiss on the wiggling puppy's head. "His name is Deogie."

Cody actually winced. "De-o-gie?" he asked in an exasperated voice.

Jillian smirked. "You named your cat that silly name. Why can't I name my puppy just as silly a name?"

Legion's lips twitched and he gazed sideways at Cody. The boy was not only blushing, he looked positively embarrassed.

"'Ceatie' isn't a silly name," he defended. "It's an ancient Viragonian name meaning 'jungle hunter.'" He narrowed his gaze. "I told you that."

The little girl, only ten months younger than Cody, lifted her snub nose and turned her pretty little face to Legion. "It spells 'cat,' Papa. Doesn't it?"

"I believe so, dearling." Legion felt as though he was looking at Brelan Saur when her dark eyes lit in triumph. She turned them to Cody with condescension.

"See?" she snapped.

Cody sighed as though he had the troubles of the world on his thin shoulders. He looked away and saw Gezelle's oldest boy, Christos, being bombarded with make-believe arrows. The three-year-old melodramatically clutched his chest and fell down to the giggling glee of his playmates. Cody sighed again and wished he could be playing with them. He liked to assume the role that Jarad was now playing to the hilt.

"I am the Dark Overlord of the Wind!" Jarad called as he leapt to a stone bench and clutched his right fist over his heart. "I will set things to rights! I will turn the world with my bare hands!"

"You'll turn that bench over if you don't get down, Jarad A'Lex," his mother said quietly from her place under the spreading willow. "Get down."

Legion chuckled. Liza was sitting there, knitting in hand, not paying attention to her brood's rampaging of the garden, yet she was perfectly aware of everything going on around her.

"Mama!" Jillian shrieked, running to the willow. "Look what Uncle Marsh gave me now!"