It was a grim battle. It cost her dearly to leave this life behind.
But why?
The hand had patted his shoulder roughly, then released him. Because she was a Cymrian, as are we. Time holds on to us all, Gwydion. Khaddyr is a compassionate man, and a great healer, but he cannot see the mortal wound within Talthea that has only festered with the passage of the centuries, because he is not Cymrian. He, like all mortal men subject to the whims of Time, struggles to stave off death as long as possible, because he does not know it for the blessing it sometimes can be. Now come, it is time to return to your lessons. For you, and for me, Time goes on.
Ashe shook off the memory; it had come to him, stronger than it should have, with a clarity that belied ordinary recall, an almost tangible image. The scent of the funeral pyre, the grip of his father’s hand, the taste of bitter bile that had been in his mouth as he watched Talthea die—all the sensations that had been part of the experience were with him again. He blinked to clear his eyes of the childish tears that had welled in them, as they had a century before.
He wasn’t remembering the moment. He was reliving it.
A surge of heat on his hand shot up his forearm, making the muscles contract slightly as the power traveled up to his brain. Each tiny nerve in his fingers winced as the Patriarch’s ring hummed, imparting wisdom from ages past. Ashe tightened the grip with which his knees were holding on to the gelding, bracing himself to receive the surge of enlightenment from the ancient artifact.
As though being slapped and enfolded in the swell of an ocean wave, the knowledge wrapped around him, permeating his awareness. Silver sparks brightened the air before Ashe’s eyes, then illuminated a glistening path between his mind and Shrike, lying in grimacing semiconsciousness before him. His mind expanded, and he understood, at least partially, what the ring was trying to tell him.
The intense clarity of the memory was somehow connected to the man before him in the saddle.
Ashe looked down into Shrike’s face, watching him wince at the jolts and lurches in the rough forest road. There seemed a flicker of fear there as well, the aspect of a man who did not yet wish to pass through Life’s gate. It was all Ashe needed to spur him faster to find his uncle, a man he had seen rarely in life, and never since his all-but-death.
Time holds on to us all, Gwydion.
His thoughts remained with Shrike as his eyes returned to the road. May it hold on to you just a little longer, Shrike, he thought.
The wind picked up at sunset, a biting chill that penetrated the blankets within which he had wrapped the unconscious man. Ashe could feel the onset of the tremors even before Shrike began shivering violently. Against his will he finally had to concede that Shrike needed warmth and rest he was not getting, and might die without it.
He slowed the gelding to a walk and a gentle halt, then dismounted and hauled the ancient Cymrian’s body off its back, allowing the animal to wander away and stretch. A bower of large mondrian bushes made a suitable shelter from the wind; they alone among fruit-bearing branches native to the western forests were resistant to the flames of the fire he would need to build. Ashe settled Shrike into a soft snowbank beneath his cache of trail blankets and began to gather fuel.
Later, once the fire caught, he found himself staring into it as if entranced. The crackling flames brought a warmth and light to the frozen darkness that reminded him painfully of Rhapsody. She was never far from his thoughts as it was; now, alone in the shelter of brambles save for the unconscious Cymrian and the howling wind, she came to him again in the fire’s glow, smiling as she had in the light of their campfires when first they had traveled overland together. In the loneliest of times his mind always returned to thoughts of their journey to find the dragon Elynsynos. He had fallen ever more deeply in love with her as they traveled together through a land wakening into the sweetest spring in his memory.
Ashe shook his head, trying to dispel the thought. If he allowed himself to muse about her for more than a moment the emptiness would come back, haunting him in the depths of barren winter, the agonizing knowledge that when her memories were her own, she had consented to be his wife, had forgiven him the duplicity for which he could not forgive himself.
Now her memories were no longer her own. And by his own doing she was lost to him. It was more than he could bear to think about and still remain sane.
Shrike moaned in his sleep, snapping Ashe from his painful reverie. He uncapped his waterskin and held it to the wounded man’s lips, supporting his head as he drank weakly. As he recapped the skin he felt a distant prickle on his skin, an infinitesimal hum that felt at once alien and familiar.
He had caught a taste, a breath, of Anborn on the wind.
The once-Lord Marshal of the Cymrians was miles away still, but near enough for the dragon to sense. His was a vibrational signature heavy with power and threat. Ashe exhaled deeply, his breath forming evanescent clouds of steamy vapor that lingered for a moment in the darkness and firelight, then vanished on the wind.
“Hold a little while longer, Grandfather,” he said softly to Shrike, using the Cymrian term of respect accorded to elders in Serendair long ago. “You shall be back with your fellows and your commander ere dawn.”
The tangy scent of burning hickory cinders filled Ashe’s nose as the last vestige of light left the sky. To any other nose it would have been impossible to discern, miles away, but the senses of the dragon were keen enough to detect even infinitesimal changes on the wind or in the earth, and so he closed his eyes and followed the odor to its genesis.
Through the earth he could feel the source of warmth that had spawned the crisp scent, small but intense flames burning unsteadily in the winter wind. Torches, he mused. There must be a small hamlet or town deep within these woods. He would undoubtedly find Anborn there.
As if reading his mind, the unconscious Cymrian stirred. Shrike’s body shuddered as he came awake. Ashe patted his shoulder reassuringly as the man’s eyes opened, shot with blood from his injuries, the irises black and gleaming in the fire’s light.
“Rest easy, Grandfather,” he said in the Old Cymrian tongue. Shrike’s bloody eyes opened wider.
“Who are you?” he rasped.
“Your protector, for the moment,” Ashe replied, glancing behind him into the dark sheets of snow undulating on the stinging wind. “Your escort shortly. You asked me to bring you to Anborn. We are not far from him, I believe.”
Shrike blinked rapidly, as if fending off the falling snow with his eyelids. “Who are you?” he repeated weakly.
“Does it matter?”
The ancient Cymrian struggled to sit up beneath his blankets and managed to raise himself, unaided, against the rotten trunk of a fallen tree. “Yes, it does,” he muttered testily. “Not to me, but it will to Anborn. And to you, if you wish recompense from me.”
Ashe chuckled. “I’ve asked none such.”
Shrike closed his eyes. “Then you’re a fool, and deserve none such.” A flash of pain wrinkled his face. “I must have offended the All-God more than I had imagined, that he would curse me to spend my last hours in the company of a coward who hides both his face and his name.” He lapsed back into weary silence.
The wintry air grew dry as the dragon bristled at the insult. Ashe took a deep breath and expelled it slowly, willing himself to be calm as his face flushed hot beneath the hood of his reviled mist cloak.
The Cymrian’s words had struck deep. He knew that those who had suffered at the hands of F’dor would resent anyone who seemed to hide his identity, since that was the demon’s stock-in-trade. More, to be named a coward by one who had witnessed the Cataclysm, had survived the War and all that had followed it, rang truer than he could bear. He was whole now. Even if Shrike was the demon’s host himself, there was no longer any reason to hide. He reached up and took down his hood.
The light of the metallic curls of his hair, shining copper-gold in the fire’s glow, reflected off the ancient man’s face.
Shrike felt the light and opened his tattered eyes again. The astonishment in them, tinged with horror, reflected back at Ashe.
“Impossible,” Shrike murmured. His face grew even paler.
Ashe smiled, and reached into the pocket of his cloak. He drew forth a small pouch, loosened the drawstring, and shook something small out into his hand. It caught the light of the fire in the same manner his hair had. He held it up before Shrike’s eyes. It was a thirteen-sided coin, struck in copper, oddly shaped.
“Do you remember this?” he asked. “You gave it to me years ago, when I was just a lad, to jolly me out of my boredom on a Day of Convening.”
The ancient man craned his neck with great effort, then collapsed back against the tree trunk again. “I remember.” He pulled the rough blanket up over his shoulder with fingers that trembled. “I can recall each time I have beheld you, Lord Gwydion, because it gave me endless joy to do so. Each time—I—looked at you I saw your grandfather, Gwylliam, at his—noblest, your grandmother, Anwyn, at her most wise. You were our hope, Gwydion, the promise—of—a brighter future for a war-torn people. Our solace. Your death was the end of hope for me—and for all the Cymrians.” The strain of speech overwhelmed him, and Shrike coughed, then went silent.
“Forgive me, Grandfather,” Ashe said softly. “I have carried the knowledge of the injury my deception has caused my family and friends. I regret any pain it has caused you as well.”
Shrike coughed again, this time more violently. “Why, then?”
“It was not of my doing, at first. Then it was out of necessity. I cannot explain it past that. But you are right; to continue to hide now is cowardly. I will do it no more.”
Shrike smiled wanly. “You intend to remove the shield from your face, then?”
Ashe smiled in turn, and rested his forearms on his knees. “When it suits me.”
“Does it suit you now?”
Ashe laughed. “Can you see me?”
The ancient man snorted with annoyance and pain. “Bugger you for toying with me in my last moments. Are you willing to stand in the sight of Time, and let your name be on the wind, or not?”
Ashe’s face grew solemn, and his dragonesque pupils contracted.
“Yes,” he said.
Shrike inched up a little higher against the tree and smiled.
“Then I have recompense to offer you after all, Lord Gwydion.”
19
The night seemed to grow darker around the small fire. Shrike’s eyes gleamed more brightly; it was as if he had drawn the light out of the air into himself, and now sat, staring into the flames, lost in thought.
Ashe waited silently, observing him closely. Though the ancient man’s damaged eyes had taken on new life, his skin was growing grayer. The dragon in his blood could feel Shrike’s body waning, his life ebbing away slowly, even as his soul grew stronger in the fire’s light.
Finally, when the wind had died down and the night had become silent enough that the snow itself could be heard falling in soft whispers on the frozen ground, Shrike spoke.
“My sword,” he said quietly. “Is it still here?”
Ashe rose and went to the gelding, standing twenty paces away in a copse of trees, blanketed against the snow. He unbound the curved scabbard from the saddlebag and brought it back to Shrike, putting it carefully into his hands. The old man’s heart beat stronger as he touched it.
“Thank the gods,” he murmured. With great effort he eased the weapon from its sheath and held it up before his eyes. It was an ancient blade of modest manufacture and without ornamentation, old and battered as its bearer. Ashe recognized the curve of it; it was a sailor’s cutlass, shortened in the same manner as the swords from the Cymrian ships that lay in the dusty display cases of Stephen’s museum.
Shrike watched the fire’s reflection in the dark steel a moment longer, then turned back to Ashe.
“Listen closely, son of Llauron, and I will repay your kindness.
“I met your grandsire, King Gwylliam, on the—day—the last ship of the Third Fleet set sail. I was a hand on the Serelinda, the vessel which—carried the king away from the Island for the last time.” Shrike leaned against the rotten trunk and closed his eyes, exerted by the effort of the speech.
“Rest, Grandfather,” said Ashe gently. “I’m certain there will be at least a moment to talk once we reach lodging and patch you up a bit. Surely Anborn won’t throw me out right away; you can tell me your story when you are feeling better.”
Shrike’s eyes snapped open, blazing with intense fire. “You’re a bigger fool than I thought, Gwydion ap Llauron,” he muttered. “What know you of moments?” He struggled to sit up taller and glared at Ashe. “I am the Lord of the Last Moment, the Guardian of That Which None Shall See Again, so—named—by your own grandsire. Are you saying that there is none such in your own past? Nothing you would—give your very soul to see again, just once?”
Ashe’s strange blue eyes blinked in shock at the harsh response. “No,” he said after a moment, “I would certainly not say that. There are any number of things I can think of that I would give a great deal to change if I could.” He looked away from the fire and out into the darkness, broken only by the ebb and flow of waves of crystalline snow.
Shrike snorted contemptuously. “I said nothing of change,” he muttered, breathing more heavily. “I cannot alter Time for you, Lord Gwydion, any more than I could for your grandsire.” He leaned back on one elbow, and brushed the snow from his head. “Now, do you wish to hear my tale or not?”
“Forgive my rudeness. I am listening.”
The old man exhaled deeply, and drew in a ragged breath. He tilted the sword to reflect the firelight again, then looked off into the sky above him, his eyes looking past the falling snow to another night, another sky.
“Your grandsire was a man given to changeable moods, Lord Gwydion,” he said finally. “Even before he had his vision foretelling the destruction of Serendair, the sailors told stories of his famous temper, his ready laugh that could turn to fury or despair in a heartbeat, then back again a moment later. Given that he was about to lose his birthright, and all that set him apart from any other mortal man, ’twas not surprising that he was in the clutches of a thick gloom the day we set sail, leaving the Island behind forever.” Shrike paused, and Ashe handed him the waterskin, from which he took a deep drink. Shrike capped it and handed it back, finally looking at his listener again.
“The seas were boiling, the fire beneath them raging, in the heat building from the Sleeping Child,” he said, his eyes darkening in memory. “We were sore afraid that we would not make it out in time, all but His Majesty, who only leaned despondently on the stern rail and watched morosely as we pulled out of port for the last time, the Serelinda pitching fore and aft like a cork on the sea. ’Twas a miracle we were not torn apart in the crosscurrent.” Ashe, a sailor himself, nodded.
“No one dared beckon the king away from the rail, though there was word passed among the crew that his retinue feared he might go over the side. His greatest friend, Lord Hague, remained ever at his side, talking with him, keeping him tranquil; there never was a man with more of a gift for calming your grandsire than he, Gwydion.”
Ashe smiled and nodded silently. Hague had been a direct ancestor of Stephen Navarne, his best friend in life when life was still his own. Perhaps more than blue eyes ran in Cymrian royal families.
He took in breath as silently as he could so as not to distract the ancient Cymrian from his tale; Shrike’s breathing had grown stronger, his lapses between words less frequent, as if the tale, and the memory it told, was sustaining him. There was a power in his voice that filled Ashe with awe, as if he was hearing history relate itself.
“As we neared the rim of the horizon, the king became even more anxious, pacing the deck and wringing his hands. He kept his eyes to the south, watching the Island ebb and return with the fallowing of the ship, panicking each time he thought it was gone from his sight forever. E
ven its return a moment later did not seem to calm him. ’Twas painful to watch.
“Finally, when he lost sight of it, with no return on the upwave, he grew hysterical. Madness was in his eyes, Gwydion. A score of sailors and noblemen hovered nearby, awaiting his pitch, for surely it was coming. Hague rested his hand on the king’s shoulder, and Gwylliam collapsed in despair.
“I was a lookout in those days. These eyes were once sharp enough to pick out a tern in the sun a hundred leagues away; they’re still a damned sight finer than most men’s, I can assure you. I was standing watch in the crow’s nest, and it was from there that I watched all the carryings-on.
“Gwylliam was moaning like a man on his deathbed, ranting at Lord Hague. ‘I’ve had my last sight of it, Hague; it’s gone, gone forever now. What I would give to see it just once more, Hague, just once more!’ Sad it is, to see a man suffer the death of all he has been, had ever hoped to be. Couldn’t watch it; I had to look away, and as I did, I caught the sight of Balatron’s highest peak, on the north side of that purple mountain range, gleaming in the rays of the setting sun.
“I called down to your grandsire, Gwydion, shouted the bearings for him to see it again. The first mate handed him a spyglass, and evidently the king was able to sight it, too, for he grew most excited and joyful, rising out of that pit of hopelessness like a seagull on an updraft.
“He stared into the distance a good long time, becoming contemplative again, and when at last he lowered the spyglass he looked up to the crow’s nest. His bright blue eyes sighted on me, and he called from the deck, ‘Ho, my fine man, come down so that I may thank you!’ And when your king calls you so, you scurry down with all due haste.” Shrike chuckled, lost in the pleasant memory, and Ashe smiled. He could almost feel the salt spray, smell the scent of the waves, hear the creak of the decks, watching the excitement in the old man’s eyes.