Cry of the Nightbird

✍ Scribed by Tirzah Duncan

• Year: 2014
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 60 KB
• Category: Fiction

✦ Synopsis

“Look—it’s a shadow, creeping on the wall.Look—it’s a nightbird, feathered, black, and tall.Look—o’er your shoulder; think ye twice,Look—out, ye wicked rats, pray he finds ye nice.”Risen suddenly to lordship of the fiefdom of Cavernad, young Ferlund struggles to fill the shoes —and carry on the marriage engagement— of his late father. Doubly sorrowed by the old lord's death and his duty to part ways with his common lover, Ferlund also seeks to pursue his suspicion that his father's death was no accident...Elsewhere in this fantasy-tinged novella, another man is recently risen to power. Joreth, formerly an assassin by trade, is newly the master of the assassin's guild responsible for the elder Lord Cavernad's demise. Wren, a servant girl deeply enamored of her new boss, seeks to gain his favor, and happens upon his strangest secret.A lone vigilante stalks this landscape of cloak and dagger, sense and madness, and grudge and ardor old and new; the preying Nightbird stands in judgement of injustice masked by night or noble station.In this tangle of stale bitterness and fresh affection, who will stand justified, and who will fall condemned? And will the cry of the Nightbird sound loud enough to go down as more than a washerwoman's four-line ditty?