They come from the Veil, the sister-world that lies alongside this one. They are many times the size of the ordinary animals they resemble, they live as long as their champions and sometimes longer, and no one has ever satisfactorily explained why they consent to come at all.

A champion hears their beast’s voice in their own mind, in words. Everyone else hears only what the animal actually makes: clicks, whistles, trills, a bellow, a roar. The beasts have their own opinions about this, and about most things.

A champion may bond only their own kingdom’s beast. That is the rule, taught everywhere, and it has never once been broken.

* * *

Some who are known by name

Ruki

A wyvern, which is not one of the ten. Scales of deep violet and indigo, near black in shadow, and lit through like stained glass where the moon comes through the wing. Two hind legs and no forelimbs at all — his wings are his arms, and on the ground he walks on the claws at their joints, like a bat. Pale bone-coloured plates run the length of his throat and belly. A low ridge of spines from the crown of his head to the tip of his tail, small swept-back horns, and four talons to a foot. His eyes flare gold-white when he calls his fire. He calls his champion brother, and considers birds beneath contempt.

Herla

A great seal of Galmar. Dark grey-blue, twice the size of a man, with two yellowed tusks the length of a forearm. Roars, whistles and keens.

Fanhir

A great eagle of Brevos. Deep russet-chestnut, twice the size of an Evarran hawk, with a clipped and fierce mental voice like the north wind.

Mirielle

A great hawk of Evarra. A lightning bolt through the sky, who sees the world through cold hunting logic.

Olax

A great bull of Orvyn, snow white beneath her iron plate. She has views on manners.

Glug

A great boar of Thevric, and the reason nobody stands in a doorway when Silver Hagun is coming through it.

Fiona

A great pig of Thevric, elderly, grey-bristled, one tusk broken. She ambles. She has earned it.