Emerging Legacy by Doranna Durgin

Emerging Legacy
    Kelyn knew she was the clumsy one.
    Even if she hadn’t noticed it herself — with all the tripping,
stumbling, dropping things and running into overhangs and low branches she’d
done — the others in her hunting pack weren’t about to let her forget. How
unfortunate that the words “Clumsy Kelyn” rolled off their tongues so easily.
    All the same, she was still alive. They couldn’t say that
about Sigre, whose favorite craggy perch Kelyn now occupied, her feet dangling
comfortably over the edge of a drop so far that she found herself looking down
on the distant treetops below. She took a generous bite of the dried plum she’d
brought with her to this quiet moment, and spat the pit out into the misty
morning air.
    She lost sight of it long before it reached the trees — though
last week, she’d had no problem watching Sigre all the way down. Or hearing
her, a fading scream that turned to echoes before Sigre disappeared into the
pines below.
    There were some who said it should have been Kelyn. Sigre
had always been light of foot, always graceful on the ledges and narrow,
dangerous trails of these high, craggy mountains. She’d always been their
trailblazer, taking them to new places in the thin air, finding them new
hunting grounds.
    Kelyn missed her — but the scattered community at the base of
the mountain range would miss her more. Until now, their pack had brought
in the most meat from this summer hunting, providing the old and the young with
plenty. Young adults in training under the harshest of teachers, the
high Keturan wilderness, the pack provided for their own families and more, and at the
end of each summer they descended to the harsh rolling terrain a little more
seasoned, a little more capable. A little more prepared to survive this
difficult climate with its lushly coated rock cats and other predatory dangers.
    Or crumbling rock edges. Kelyn stood, as careful as
she ever was, intensely aware of her awkward nature and her need to counteract
it. When she kept her wits about her, she seldom had trouble. It was only
when she let her mind wander...
    She stepped back from the edge to join the others. Even so,
had she not heard her packmate Mungo’s approach, his “Kelyn! Be careful!”
might just have startled her into a scary step or two. She turned on him with
a glare, but wiry Iden came up from behind to put himself between them. Behind
Iden came the others. Trailing Gwawl — as usual — came little Frykla, still
uncertain in her first year with the pack.
    Though not so uncertain that she didn’t give Mungo a good
hard glare. “Kelyn saw nightfox sign this morning,” she told Mungo, who
scowled under all the scrutiny, tugging his rough-edged leather vest as though
it had twisted out of place. “It would make me proud to bring down nightfox
pelts for trading in my first year. But I don’t suppose it’ll happen if you
make her so mad she doesn’t show us the spot!”
    “I can find my own nightfox dens.” Mungo tried for dignity,
but it was hard to carry off. He looked to be growing into a stout frame, but
for now he was the only one of them left with the precious fat of a well-fed
child and it made him appear even younger than Frykla. “You fuss over
nothing. Kelyn’s father is the great Thainn, remember? Surely with such a
mighty hunter’s blood in her veins, she heard me coming.”
    “I did hear you coming,” Kelyn said coldly, picking up her
staff — Reman ironwood, bound with leather, weighted on both ends; it had come
from her mother and served her well as a defensive weapon, especially as she
was not allowed a long blade. “I begin to understand why my father always
hunted alone. And maybe even why he left.”
    He’d left Ketura before she was born — before she was
even conceived. Kelyn’s mother had met him in Rema, and never expected him to
stay with her. At Kelyn’s conception her mother had traveled to Ketura to
raise her child in her father’s