The Door in Crow Wood

Vuzbal looked up and saw the Princess in the shadows by the gate. “Now lads,” he whispered, “softly—the Parting Song again.”

  They began once more, singing it in Kreenspam.

  Ji ka lokmang adrenu,

  ‘Ja ilban ka semu....

  Before they could finish the stanza, Simone rushed in among them.

  “No more!” she commanded. “Are you trying to cloy me to death with that sentimental nonsense?” She snatched Vuzbal’s flute and shook it at him scoldingly. “You Sarrs—you’re impossible. Music in the cold and dark. Couldn’t you tell I was trying to be depressed?”

  Vuzbal’s laughter was high and clear as his flute. The others hesitantly joined him. “But Princess, we did not think it dark for you, since your eyes are so large to let in light; and how can you be as cold as we are when you have all that extra pelt tied to you? Isn’t it warm and bright here?”

  “Why, you impudent Fuzzball!” Simone shrieked, highly pleased.

  “Impudent? No, I’m repentant, Lady. Please give me back my flute, and we’ll atone with a better song.”

  Simone carefully laid the wood and silver instrument in his long dark claw, allowing her fingers to brush his fur. “Give me a story, instead,” she asked. “Is this the same Hazot tower that you sang about just now?”

  “It is, Princess.”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Yes, but in the tower, Princess, by the fire?”

  Late into the night Vuzbal and the other Vults entertained Simone with their tales and songs. They told her of their people’s life on the Island of Alashiya before the Sarrs came to the Fold; and of their journey to the Fold in the first year of Narvan Reckoning; of their gathering to the first Vultlag in N.R. 34; and of the awakening of the first Vultlag, called from sleep by the legendary Emperor Kuley; and of the fall of Hazot, last fortress of the Bourasnians to surrender to the Vult armies. They told her heart-rending tales of the Lagkrals—or Lag-dead—who remained cold when all others awoke. A few of the Vults in this fire-lit circle were mourning the loss of friend or wife who had come to the second Vultlag, it seemed, only weeks ago. But more than four hundred years had passed as one long night. The beloved ones remained as stone.

  Vuzbal sang of lovers so parted, and Simone—resting her hand on his shoulder, her elbow brushing his wing—cried over the story. She thanked him when it was over, and asked for news of Athlaz.

  “We only know this, Princess, that Athlaz has not returned, and that all roads lying to the west have been closed by the Farjans. He can’t come back the way he went.”

  “What does that mean?” Simone asked tremulously.

  “It means that he and his companions must travel on to the River Eleutheria. They may hope to follow it all the way to the coast, and so take ship in a great circuit to the Seelkir pin Rom.”

  “If he’s still alive and not a prisoner,” Simone said gloomily.

  “We may hope so, Princess. That’s how that, oh-so-sentimental Parting Song has helped you. Bards no doubt took it west before the roads were closed, and so Athlaz will be warned by it not to use his own name in his travels. But keee!—one more merry song before we sleep.”