Torren woke before the camp did.
For a few moments he lay still beneath the furs, not because he was tired, but because he wanted to be certain the memory had been real. The golden eagle. The rushing wind. The valley below him, small as a handful of stones. He closed his eyes and tried to summon it again, but all he found was darkness and the faint smell of smoke caught in the hides above him.
Then the calm voice in his mind spoke.
You are awake earlier than usual.
Torren's eyes opened immediately.
He did not answer at once. Instead he listened to the shelter around him. His mother was still asleep, her breathing low and steady beneath the blankets near the far wall. Outside, the camp had not yet fully stirred. No shouted orders, no laughter, no scraping of blades. Just wind, and the occasional crackle of a dying fire.
Was it real? he asked silently.
There was no confusion in the answer.
Yes.
Torren stared at the roof for another few breaths.
I want to do it again.
The voice paused.
You may try.
Torren pushed the furs aside and slipped out into the cold morning air before the voice could add anything else.
The camp was half-shadow and pale dawn. The fires were low, the sky still washed in blue-grey light, and frost clung to the edges of stones and pine roots. A few of the older women were already awake, moving slowly between the shelters with baskets and wooden bowls in hand. One of them glanced at Torren but said nothing. Children wandering early were not unusual in the mountains.
Torren moved quietly uphill.
The path to the ridge was easier in the morning than it had been at night, though the stones were colder and the air sharper in his lungs. He climbed quickly, his bare feet knowing which rock would shift and which would hold. The higher he went, the more the camp seemed to shrink behind him.
When he reached the flat stone where he had sat the night before, he dropped into a crouch and looked up immediately.
Nothing.
Only pale sky and thin clouds drifting above the Mountains of the Moon.
Torren frowned.
Where is it?
The eagle is not yours to summon, the voice replied.
Torren scowled at that.
Then how do I do it again?
You do not command it. You notice it. You reach when the moment opens.
That sounded like the sort of answer the Tree Speaker would have given, and Torren disliked it instantly.
He hugged his knees and waited.
The morning grew brighter by slow degrees. The eastern horizon silvered. Mist still hung in some of the lower valleys, caught between the slopes like trapped river-water. Far below, the camp of the Painted Dogs was beginning to wake. He could see movement now—small figures walking between the shelters, smoke rising thicker from one fire near the center.
What if it never comes back? Torren asked.
Then another creature will.
Torren turned that over in his mind.
Can I do it with any animal?
Not any. Some minds are easier to touch than others.
Why?
Strength. Instinct. Proximity. Blood. Chance.
Torren frowned. That did not feel like one answer. It felt like five.
He was still trying to decide which one to ask about first when something moved high above the ridge line.
His head snapped upward.
There.
The golden eagle.
It rode the morning wind along the western cliffs, higher than any goat path, a dark shape with wide, steady wings. In daylight its feathers no longer looked silver. They were richer now, darker along the back and lighter beneath, with a bright gold sheen around the neck where the early sun touched it.
Torren felt his heartbeat quicken.
I see it.
Then do not think of yourself, the voice said. Think of the bird.
Torren swallowed.
He fixed his gaze on the eagle and tried to empty his mind of everything else—the cold stone beneath him, the camp below, the weight of his own body. For a few breaths nothing happened.
Then the world tilted.
It was not as violent as the night before. There was no sudden wrenching panic, no sense of being ripped from his own skull. This time it came more like slipping into cold water. The ridge softened, the mountains blurred, and then the world opened wide beneath him.
He was above the valley again.
The eagle's wings stretched around him, immense and sure. Wind pressed against his body—not skin now, but feathers and bone and a frame built for currents rather than slopes. The air felt different through the eagle. Cleaner. Sharper. Every movement below was distinct. Every break in the rock, every pale strip of snow lingering in shadow, every trembling line of mist caught between the lower pines.
Torren did not panic.
He felt the thrill of height instead. Fear was still there, but it lived farther back now, behind wonder.
The Painted Dogs camp lay below as a rough knot of hides and smoke near the edge of the trees. The lower slopes stretched eastward until they broke around the distant line of the High Road, pale and narrow through the mountain passes.
The eagle circled once, then shifted.
Torren felt it before he understood it: attention.
Something had entered the bird's field of notice.
Not prey.
Movement.
Far to the south-east, along a broken run of stone above one of the lesser trails, several figures were moving through the mountains.
Torren leaned into the sight without knowing how he did it.
The eagle banked slightly, and the world turned beneath him. The moving figures sharpened.
Men.
Not Painted Dogs.
Not Stone Crows either.
They were too far for faces, but even from above Torren could see the difference in the way they traveled. They did not move like hunters or raiders on familiar ground. They moved in a looser spread, stopping often, looking down into the valleys, then continuing.
Watching.
Scouting.
Who are they? Torren asked.
The answer came immediately.
Mountain clansmen.
Torren narrowed the eagle's gaze.
There were six of them. No horses. No banners. Fur cloaks, spears, axes. One carried a bow. Another had something pale tied to his belt that swung as he walked.
The eagle drifted higher.
Torren focused harder, trying to see details.
One of the men turned his head upward for a moment, and Torren saw the side of his face. The man's ear looked wrong—ragged, cut, or partly gone. Another figure beside him had the same mutilated outline.
The voice spoke again, colder now.
Black Ears.
Torren felt a sharp thrill run through him.
The Black Ears did not belong here.
He knew enough even at six to understand that. Painted Dogs held this valley. Stone Crows ranged the nearby passes. Black Ears kept farther north and east, closer to the Moon Brothers. If they were here, and in numbers enough to send a scouting party, then this was not wandering.
This was intent.
What are they doing? Torren asked.
Observing the valley. Measuring weakness.
The eagle kept circling.
Below, the six men moved carefully along the rock line above a narrow spur path that eventually fed into the same lower approaches used by Painted Dogs hunting groups. One crouched near a ledge and pointed into the valley. Another nodded. They spoke, but from this height Torren could not hear words—only the rhythm of a discussion.
Are they coming to attack?
Not yet.
Torren followed them for several long breaths. One of the Black Ears bent to examine something on the ground. Another looked west, toward the route Harrag and the raiding party had taken the previous day.
Torren's thoughts sharpened.
They know the camp is weaker.
There was no praise in the voice, but there was agreement.
Yes.
The eagle dipped again, lower this time. Torren felt the hunter's instincts tugging elsewhere—toward motion in the grass, toward a flash of fur among rocks—but he held to the men as long as he could.
Then the strain deepened.
He did not know how he recognized it, only that he did. The connection felt thinner now, stretched. The mountains blurred slightly at the edges. The eagle's attention drifted toward its own needs, its own body, its own hunger.
How long can I do this? Torren asked.
Not long yet.
One of the Black Ears stopped and looked up suddenly.
Torren stiffened.
The man could not truly see him—not Torren on the ridge, not the mind peering through the eagle—but something in the scout's posture changed. He shaded his eyes and stared toward the circling bird.
The eagle felt it too. Alertness tightened through its body. The wings shifted.
Then the connection slipped.
The mountains lurched.
The sky broke apart.
Torren gasped as he slammed back into himself on the ridge.
He caught himself on one hand before toppling off the stone, breathing hard. The world around him seemed clumsy and narrow for several moments after the eagle's sight. His own eyes felt dull. His body felt too heavy.
Below, the camp was still there, unchanged and unsuspecting. Above, the golden eagle continued its great circling path, already indifferent to him again.
Torren pushed a hand against the stone and sat upright.
They're there, he said. Black Ears. Six of them.
Correct.
They were looking at the camp.
Yes.
Torren stared down into the valley.
At first his instinct was to run straight back and shout it to the first adult he found. But the thought died almost as quickly as it came. He was a child. A strange one, yes, and one with sharp eyes, but still a child. If he said he had seen Black Ears from the ridge, some might believe him. If he said he had seen them through the eyes of a golden eagle, no one would.
Not his mother.
Not the old warriors.
Certainly not the clan chief.
The Tree Speaker might listen, but listening was not the same as believing.
And if the Tree Speaker believed too much, that carried its own dangers.
Torren pulled his knees back up and thought.
What do I do? he asked.
The voice was quiet for a moment.
What can you do?
Torren hated questions in answer to questions. He thought anyway.
If he ran back and simply said he had seen strangers in the south-eastern rocks, that might be enough to send someone to check. But if no one was there when the warriors went looking, he would be mocked, and worse, not believed the next time.
If he said nothing and the Black Ears struck the camp while Harrag was away—
He clenched his jaw.
They said they weren't here to attack. Not yet.
Scouts create options, the voice replied. Ignoring scouts is how camps die later.
Torren looked back toward the south-eastern slopes. He could no longer see the six men from here with his own eyes. The distance was too great, the light too flat, the rocks too many.
Can I see them again?
Perhaps. Not immediately.
That answer irritated him, mostly because it was probably true.
He sat in silence a while longer, thinking with unusual care for a boy his age.
Below him, two women crossed between the fires carrying wooden bowls. A pair of younger children chased each other around a stack of hides. One of the remaining old warriors stood near the edge of the camp and turned slowly, scanning the tree line out of habit rather than concern.
The camp looked ordinary.
That was what bothered Torren most.
Danger should have looked like danger. It should have come with horns or shouting on the ridge. Instead it came with six men moving carefully through rocks while everyone else scraped hides and mended belts.
The voice in his mind did not press him.
That, more than anything, made Torren straighten.
He was not being commanded.
He was being left to choose.
And that made the choice feel heavier.
If I tell someone, Torren asked, who should I tell?
The answer came after a measured pause.
Someone respected. Someone who values caution more than pride.
Torren thought immediately of Harrag, and that thought soured at once. Harrag was gone. The next faces that came to him belonged to older warriors who remained behind—men scarred enough to have outlived their own recklessness.
One in particular came to mind: a grey-bearded fighter named Cale, who walked with an old limp and rarely laughed. He was no chief, but when he spoke, younger men usually stopped talking long enough to listen.
Torren considered that.
And if he asks how I know?
Then you decide how much truth he deserves.
Torren did not answer that.
He stood instead, brushing frost and grit from his hands. The ridge felt different to him now. Not sacred exactly, like the Weeping Grove. Not frightening, like the first night the voice had answered him. It felt useful.
The thought pleased him more than it should have.
Before climbing back down, he looked up once more.
The golden eagle still rode the air above the valley, lord of a world made of wind and height and distance.
Torren watched it until his neck hurt.
Then he turned and began the descent toward the camp, moving faster than before, his steps careful but urgent.
He did not yet know what he would say.
Only that he would say something.
And somewhere beneath that decision, deeper than fear and deeper than pride, another realization had taken root: seeing was its own kind of power.