Within arm’s reach the burning skeleton of a horse lay, its high-backed saddle melting in the heat. A battered cutlass lay next to it, reflecting the fire. Anborn reached for it with a hand that shook violently, not feeling the pain in his back.
The bodies of all the other attackers must have already been consumed by the fire through which he was crawling; he had been breathing their ashes, inhaling their remains and their souls, on his crawl along the burning forest floor.
Even Shrike’s.
For the first time since entering battle he thought of his friend and mentor, a humble sailor who had served on the crew of the Serelinda, the last ship to leave the Island before it sank beneath the waves, transformed by the journey across the Prime Meridian into a surly, immortal soldier. He had been a loyal if sometimes reluctant follower of Gwylliam, Anborn’s father, then of Anborn himself, for almost fifteen centuries between them, and had always given a perspective that could only have come with the wisdom of someone who had lived through the death of two worlds.
As he lay on his side, Anborn felt grief creeping in, a grief the likes of which he had not known for centuries. He closed his mind to it, held it at bay; it would only serve to divert him from his overwhelming task.
Once rested, he crawled to the body of the archer and, after spitting in its lifeless face, he seized it by the jaw and dragged it along with him, knowing he would need it for his purposes.
Above his head, the massive limb of a towering tree crashed through the canopy, roaring with flame, then collapsed to the ground nearby. Anborn shielded his nose and mouth from the ash and burning leaves that rose in its wake.
His lungs, already stinging with the caustic cinders he was inhaling, began to burn.
When finally he began to choke, gagging blood from the creosote and fire residue that had thickened the air to the point of being black, Anborn had to acknowledge that if he was alone in his effort, he was not going to succeed.
It was time to give in to the one last lifeline he had.
For a moment the world around him hummed with a destructive static, too loud and full of noise to hear anything. Impatiently he rubbed his ears, cursing his useless legs, and tried to block out all noise, all clamor save for the gentle song of the wind.
It took him a long time to hear it, but finally a tiny breeze picked up, perhaps generated by the fire itself. Anborn listened for the fluctuations in it, the subtle whine as it changed directions, whistling with power.
The General summoned all his strength, lifted his head, inclining it to the west, and spoke the call that he had answered but never put onto the wind himself until this moment.
Leuk, the west wind, the wind of justice, hear me, he rasped in the Ancient Lirin tongue, the only words in the language he knew, his voice thick with smoke and pain. By the star, I will wait, I will watch, I will call and will be heard.
As he spoke the call of the ancient brotherhood of soldiers, he thought back to the last time he had answered it, a clear, soft cry on the wind of a snowy forest in the black of a storm. He had followed the source to discover a woman, shivering in the cold, leading a freezing horse over which an unconscious gladiator was stretched.
A woman who had become the Lirin Queen, the Lady Cymrian.
A gladiator who she had taken into the realm beyond life and death and left there. He had returned to be chosen by the Scales as the Patriarch.
He winced at the irony of it all now.
He had thought then he was rescuing her, rescuing them both, though at the time he had wanted to put the brute to death. When he felt the pull, the intrinsic magic, wrap around him and transport him on the back of the wind to where he was needed, he believed he was going off to save a fellow Kinsman. He knew now that in doing so he had actually rescued himself, been absolved for his crimes in the Cymrian War that had haunted his dreams and his waking moments.
He had finally been able to sleep after that.
And now she was gone. He had failed her, had broken his oath to his nephew to protect her, to keep her, and their child, safe. The agony was too great to be borne.
From deep within his viscera another cry came forth. He called to north wind, the strongest of the four, in hopes that it would carry his cry farther, for Kinsmen, as he had noted to Gwydion Navarne, were few and far between.
“By the star!” he shouted, inhaling more of the smoke, “I will wait, I will watch, I will call and will be heard!” He coughed from the depths of his lungs.
The towering walls of fire roared in response.
No other sound could be heard.
Anborn struggled to fend off the despair that hovered near the edge of his consciousness, whispering to his doubts. Not all Kinsman calls were answered, he knew; he himself had thought he heard two only a few weeks before, had listened, stood ready to go, but the doorway in the wind never opened to him. He had not been able to find the one who was calling for help.
Just as now, perhaps, there was no one to answer him.
Jahne, the south wind, most enduring, he rasped, his voice beginning to give out from the smoke. By the star, I will wait, I will watch. He swallowed, trying to force the sound from his throat. I will call and will be heard.
Time seemed to expand around him, twisting on the heat of the fire like glass in a blower’s hands.
The smoke was sinking now even to the forest floor, the ground on which Anborn’s head now lay. The General buried his face in the crook of his arm, trying to breathe, but it had become laborious to do so.
No one was coming.
The General rolled onto his back and stared up at the blazing orange sky above him, punctuated by bands of smoke, black and gray, sparked with flashes of intensely bright light that fizzled and died.
There is no one left to answer the call, he mused, watching absently as the great trees of Gwynwood broke under the weight of the flame and fell, the forest, the ancestral lands of his grandmother, the dragon Elynsynos, reducing to ash before his eyes.
Anborn could feel the skin on his face, once healed by Rhapsody’s power of Naming, start to crack with heat again. He took one last breath, turned as much to the east as he could, and whispered the name of the last wind.
Thas, he said softly. The wind of morning. He swallowed, remembering its other appellation. The wind of death. Hear me.
His voice, clogged with smoke, had lost all of its tone, leaving only the sandy fricatives of his dry tongue and rattling teeth.
By the star, I will wait, he whispered. I — will watch. He swallowed, once more trying to force the sound from his throat. I — will — call.
His lips no longer moved.
At the edge of the sea, a man the color of driftwood looked up from the patterns he was drawing in the sand, as if hearing distant voices on the wind. He stared into the gray-blue-green of the ever-changing horizon, listened again, but heard only the cry of the gulls.
He shook his head, and went back to his pictures in the sand.
30
When the Kinsman heard the call, he was on horseback, riding across verdant green fields on the way home.
He paused and reined his mount to a stop, sitting up high in the saddle, tilting his ear to the wind, endeavoring to catch the sound again, the plaintive words that he had heard once before, long ago, in a language long dead.
By the star, I will wait, I will watch, I will call and will be heard.
He didn’t recognize the voice, a thick rasp that signaled its speaker was very near death, but he didn’t expect to.
He looked around at the undulating highgrass, rolling placidly in the warm breeze; the sun was just beginning to wane, hanging in the sky high over the western horizon, casting afternoon shadows to the east, the direction in which he had been traveling a moment before.
He heard the voice again, weaker this time, but clear; it had caught the wind that was blowing in his direction.
By the star, I will wait. I — will watch. I — will — call.
Then not
hing.
The Kinsman searched the pockets of breeze, looking between the gusts that bent the grass of the wide fields for a doorway, a path of some kind, that would lead him to the one who was calling, as had happened the only other time he had heard the call. But there was no swirling vortex in the air, no misty tunnel to ride through, as there had been before. Nervous now, he dismounted and shielded his eyes, staring beyond the waving ocean of grass to the edges of the horizon, but finding nothing.
He turned to the west, from whence he imagined the call had come.
And blinked.
The ground in front of him had begun to shift; the highgrass parted as the earth split, unraveling noiselessly, the darkness below the surface suddenly filled with bright light. Before his eyes the hole grew deeper, wider; the wind blew through, snapping the cloth of his tunic, beckoning to him.
He shook his head, having never imagined that the wind would call to him through the Earth, though it hardly surprised him. He seized the huge horse’s reins and led the animal into the passageway en route to answer the Kinsman call.
The moment they had passed through, the tunnel closed up as noiselessly as it had opened, leaving nothing but an endless sea of verdant meadowgrass, waving in time to the breath of the wind, beneath the afternoon sun.
Anborn was still on his back, watching the forest canopy burn off above him, the black leaves floating on the smoky wind into the unseen sky above, when he felt a tremor within the Earth, a rumbling that went up his back to the base of his neck.
He blinked as the heavy wall of smoke above and around him began to shift near to the ground. Bright streaks of light flashed intermittently from the forest floor, piercing the gloom that hovered above it; the ground trembled as if in the midst of an earthquake.
Slowly, and with the last of his strength, he rolled onto his side, his ashcaked eyelids blinking more rapidly to clear his vision.
Even hovering near death as he was, Anborn could sense the presence of deep magic, of elemental power at work, an occurrence that never failed to leave him simultaneously awed and frightened. He had seen much of this ancient magic at work in the days of the war, watched his parents wield it for ill, and had seen the fallout from it. Even when it was used for good, as Rhapsody or his nephew sometimes made use of it, it still set his teeth on edge, and his mind humming with nervous anticipation.
He was too weak to rise further, to be in any position other than all-but-prone, as the whirling smoke and light grew in intensity, but he knew that if this was a Kinsman coming in answer to his call, he could be no worse off than he had been a moment before.
In the fiery haze he thought he could see a figure appear, coming toward him, leading what appeared to be a horse, though its outline was hazy and impossible to define. The searing light from the ground disappeared, leaving the figures backlit only by the raging fire all around them.
When finally the Kinsman and his mount emerged from the smoke, Anborn squinted to see who it was, his eyelids still heavy with ash. The man was almost upon him before recognition set in.
The General stared in astonishment for a long moment, then rolled onto his back and sighed, breaking into weak, croaking laughter.
“Bloody gods!” he rasped, coughing shallowly. “You?”
His rescuer’s brow furrowed as he squatted down beside the ancient Cymrian warrior, clicking to the enormous horse.
“Rather odd ta be laughin’ now, Oi’d say,” Grunthor said dryly, catching hold of Rockslide’s reins. “But each to ’is own. Can Oi hoist ya without damagin’ ya further?”
Anborn nodded with difficulty, clutching the cutlass. “Have to — get word — to — Haguefort,” he whispered, his voice faltering. “They’ve — taken — Rhapsody.”
The amber eyes of the Firbolg giant darkened with alarm.
“Where? ’Oo?”
The General shook his head, struggling to keep from succumbing to unconsciousness. “I don’t — know. Had — Tysterisk.” He gestured weakly.
“Where did they go?” the Sergeant demanded as he slid his arms under Anborn’s back and lifeless legs.
“West,” the General whispered. “Into the — fire.”
Grunthor saw Anborn’s face begin to go gray; he lifted him carefully and started to carry him to the horse.
Unable to speak, Anborn grasped hold of the body of the bowman on the ground, refusing to let go, then lapsed into unconsciousness.
Grunthor pried Anborn’s fingers loose of the corpse’s wrist, then continued his trek, laying the General over Rockslide’s back for a moment. Quickly he tore off his own tunic, threw it on the ground and kicked the body into it, then lashed it to the back of his saddle with a length of rope. He stared for a moment into the belly of the inferno, then mounted and, holding the dying Kinsman before him on the horse, rode off, hell-bent, for the Filidic Circle at the Tree.
When Anborn came to consciousness in the gray hours of the next morning he was looking into two of the most unpleasant faces he could imagine seeing, only slightly less surly than his own.
The first was that of his rescuer, the gray-green hide and amber eyes in the heavy features of Firbolg mixed with some other race — Bengard, he thought he recollected Rhapsody saying once. The Sergeant-Major, with whom he had once served in Rhapsody’s honor guard, was silently staring down at him, consternation deeply etched in the lines and crevices of his face.
Beside him was Gavin the Invoker, the quiet, taciturn forester who had been the most trusted advisor of Llauron, Anborn’s brother, succeeding him as head of the religious order when Llauron left to commune with the elements, abandoning his human form for a dragon one. The expression in the Invoker’s eyes denoted a less personal anguish that Grunthor’s, but a more widespread one. Anborn understood his torment; a forester’s soul was tied to the forest, and until this fire there had been no more beautiful, deeply magical forest on the continent than Gwynwood.
And it was burning.
Anborn’s head felt as if it would split open. His skin and eyes, though protected from the scorching flames by Daystar Clarion, were red from the heat and stung maddeningly. He struggled to sit up, but Gavin quickly laid a hand on his shoulder and pushed him down against the pillow of the bed in which he lay.
“Stay. You have had the attention of healers, but you are still weak. How do you feel?”
“Bugger how I feel. Did you find her? Has there been any word at all?”
“No,” Gavin said quietly. “The fire has been contained. But there is no trace of Rhapsody.”
“Oi’m about to send birds to ’Aguefort and Ylorc,” Grunthor said brusquely. “What did ya want with the body Oi dragged out wi’ you?”
“He’s a witness,” Anborn said, his voice returning slightly. “The bastard took down Shrike; if only for that and nothing else I would have left him to burn alive if I could have. But the Patriarch is said to be able to speak with the spirits of dead; this is the only clue to what happened to Rhapsody that isn’t ashes now. I shall take this piece of filth to Sepulvarta and have the Patriarch wring the information from him.”
Grunthor nodded. “Sounds like fun. When ’e’s done with ’im, Oi want a turn. Oi’ll torture ’im so brutally ’e will feel it in the Underworld.” He stepped back and started for the door.
“Sergeant,” Anborn said, his voice ragged from the forest smoke.
Grunthor stopped.
“Tell Haguefort to send out a falcon. A regular messenger won’t be able to locate Gwydion if he’s on the road.”
The giant Bolg nodded and started for the door again.
“Sergeant,” Anborn said again.
Once again Grunthor stopped.
“My life is yours,” Anborn said heavily, in the custom of the ancient brotherhood of Kinsmen. “Thank you.”
The Sergeant nodded, and a hint of a smile played on his bulbous lips. “Good. Oi’ll find a way to put you ta good use. Always did want an Ancient Cymrian ’ero to serve as pissboy to the Firbol
g army.” He took hold of the cord of rope that served as a door handle and withdrew from the Filidic hospice, closing the door behind him.
Gavin gently squeezed the General’s shoulder. “I sought the spirit of the forest through the Great White Tree once the fire was contained,” he said, his words halting; the Invoker rarely spoke, so words were arduous for him. “Rhapsody, if she still lives, is not in Gwynwood, nor anywhere within the great western forest. That forest runs from the Hintervold to the Nonaligned States, Anborn. Either she has been taken away by sea, or —”
“Don’t even whisper the word,” Anborn said acidly. “They took her alive. If they had wanted her dead they would have filled her full of bolts before my eyes. Don’t even whisper the word.”
The Invoker stared down at him.
“I will leave it for others to pronounce. It is not a reality I want to be the one to invoke. But you must be prepared to accept what may have come to pass here.”
As Grunthor strode through the grounds that comprised the Circle around the Great White Tree, the Filidic priests and foresters scattered, hurrying to stay out of the way of the giant Firbolg who was their Invoker’s guest, but nonetheless looked as if he was ready to bite the head off the shoulders of anyone who got in his way. With a jaw that size, and tusks that were visible in the corners of his mouth, jutting above his lips, there was no question that it would not have taken more than a single bite.
He made his way out of the forest through neatly maintained gardens, bursting with fragrant flowers and medicinal herbs, that surrounded the healers’ area, to the edge of the wide, circular meadow where the Great White Tree stood, an ancient wonder older than any living thing in this part of the world.