“When I reached the deck the king was smiling again, something I had not seen since he boarded, had never seen, in fact, since I had not had occasion to meet him, or even see him before. I confess his first words to me gave me pause—‘Have you a sword, my good man?’ Given his wild swings of mood and temper, I was fearful for a moment that my life was in danger, that he was somehow angry with me. Nonetheless, I surrendered my cutlass to him, as one does when the king commands.
“He asked my name, and I give it to him. ‘Kneel, Shrike,’ he says, and I prepared for my beheading. Imagine my surprise when instead he taps me lightly on both shoulders, and dubs me ‘the Lord of the Last Moment, the Guardian of That Which None Shall See Again,’ with his thanks. Coulda knocked me over with a breath, lad.”
“I can imagine,” Ashe said, chuckling. He shook the accumulation of snow from his cloak.
Shrike’s face lost its smile. “I believe when he said it he was making jest, Lord Gwydion. But it was a strange moment, not just because of his own unpredictable mood, but because of the time we were caught up in. We were at the end of an age, the last age of the first place where Time began, being flung about on a boiling sea beneath which a star was rising. And even if all that weren’t the case, a king’s word is a strange and powerful thing. At the time it was said in jest, but later I came to realize that an oath, no matter how it is given, has the ability to command Destiny.”
Ashe’s face lost its smile. He thought back to all the times when Rhapsody had patiently explained to him the need for a Namer to speak only the truth, to be wary of what was said, even in jest, because words could become reality.
Shrike began to wheeze again. “The long and the short of it is that I am, in fact, Lord of the Last Moment, Lord Gwydion, the guardian of—that which none will ever see again. I found over the years that I could show your grandsire that momentary glimpse of our homeland again, and again, because he had given me the power to do so. It gave him great solace in his darkest times.” He pulled the blanket closer to his neck, his hands trembling. “Your grandmother, now, she didn’t appreciate my doing so. She felt only she should be able to look back into the Past, that being her domain.”
“I’m not surprised,” Ashe said dryly. “Anwyn is a dragon; she believes everything on Earth is hers exclusively.”
“She learned otherwise.”
“At incalculable expense,” Ashe muttered, then stopped as he saw the pain on Shrike’s face. “Forgive me, Grandfather. I’m certain your efforts brought Gwylliam great comfort, and I am glad you were able to give him sight into his lost moment.”
Shrike gave in to a racking cough, then turned his tattered eyes once on Ashe. “And I can do so with you as well. Now, do you still wish to wait until I have been returned to Anborn?”
“If you can show me the last sight of Serendair, it would be most interesting,” Ashe said. “But I would not risk your health further for such a vision.”
“Your last moment, you idiot,” Shrike growled. “Something lost to you, that you have seen, that none will ever see again. Do you have such a moment in your memory?”
Ashe sat up straighter in the fire’s light. Silence reigned for a time in the hidden woodland camp, broken intermittently by Shrike’s heavy breath and coughing. When Ashe spoke again, his voice was soft.
“Yes,” he said slowly. “I believe I do.”
Shrike nodded, then gestured weakly toward the low-burning fire. “Then move me nearer, lad.”
Ashe rose, setting his waterskin down on the frozen ground. He slid his forearms gently beneath Shrike’s arms, and carefully pushed him closer to the burning coals. Shrike grunted his approval when he was near enough, and Ashe returned to the log on which he had been sitting, watching the old man intently.
With great effort the ancient Cymrian raised his battered cutlass and held it so that it reflected the firelight.
“Look into the fire, Gwydion ap Llauron ap Gwylliam tuatha d’Anwynan o Manosse.”
Quickly Ashe’s outstretched hand shot out. “Wait, Grandfather; if you are to show me something in the fire, desist. I’ll forgo the sight.”
“Why?”
Ashe laughed bitterly. “Suffice to say that I don’t trust the element. I would not wish any memory of mine to be visible to its denizens.”
Shrike coughed deeply, then shuddered. “I cannot show you the Past without reflecting it to you in one of the Five Gifts, the primordial elements. In their power alone can something as fleeting as old—memory be held for a moment. We are nowhere near the sea; the stars are hidden by the snow, and the Earth—sleeps now. Fire is the only element readily handy.”
“What about a pond? Could you show it to me in such a surface?”
Shrike shook his head. “Yes, but it’s winter. Any pond would be frozen; it would distort an already hazy image too greatly.”
Ashe stood and drew his sword. Kirsdarke came forth from its sheath, the elemental water of its blade rippling like the waves of the sea. In the blue light that filled the small glade Shrike’s eyes grew wide.
“Kirsdarke,” he whispered. “Small wonder you were able to survive alone, eluding whatever was hunting you all this time.”
“Indeed.” With a smooth sweep, Ashe drew a circle in the burnt, frozen grass of the fire ring. The campfire snuffed instantly as clouds of billowing steam rose, folding in upon themselves in the moisture-heavy air, then dissipated into a wide, thin fog that hung low to the ground. Where the fire had been was a small puddle of clear water, deep and rippleless.
“Will this do?”
Shrike nodded, still watching the vapor as the wind took it, blending it into the falling snow. He turned and stared into the newly made pond.
“Very well, we’ll try again. Look into the water, Gwydion ap Llauron ap Gwylliam tuatha d’Anwynan o Manosse.”
Ashe sheathed the water sword smoothly, extinguishing the light in the glade. He bent over the pond and stared into its darkness, snowflakes falling lightly on its surface.
For a long time he saw nothing but the all-encompassing blackness of the water, reflecting the dark sky. He shook his head, and was about to look back at Shrike when a flicker of movement in the pond caught his eye.
He could see that what a moment before had been the white mantle of falling snow now was the reflection of moonlight, diffuse and hazy in the heat of a long-ago summer. Its radiance pooled in the flax-colored hair of a young woman, still a child, really, who had sat next to him on a summer hillside, in the sweet darkness of a summer night. The flicker of movement had been the blink of her eye, wide with wonder, shining with a light brighter than the moon. She smiled at him in the dark, and Ashe could feel his knees weaken now, as they had so long ago.
Sam?
Yes? he murmured now, as he had then. His light baritone sounded much younger to his ears, filled with anxious excitement, on the verge of cracking.
Do you think we might see the ocean? Someday, I mean.
He remembered feeling that he could have truthfully promised her anything she asked of him. Of course. We can even live there if you want. Haven’t you ever seen it?
I’ve never left the farmlands, Sam, never in my whole life. I’ve always longed to see the ocean, though. My grandfather is a sailor, and all my life he has promised me that he would take me to sea one day. Until recently I believed it. But I’ve seen his ship.
How can that be, if you’ve never seen the sea?
She had looked so wise, so sensible as she smiled at him on this, the eve of her fourteenth birthday. Well, when he’s in port, it’s actually very tiny—about as big as my hand. And he keeps it on his mantel, in a bottle.
Ashe choked on the knot that had formed in his throat, fighting back the stinging at the edge of his eyes. Rhapsody had been so beautiful then. Her face did not bear the awe-inspiring magnificence that she now kept covered with a hood, but rather the simple, dewy innocence of the spirited young girl that she was, the girl her family had called Emily. He never had the chance t
o see her in daylight; whatever Fate had thrown him back in Time had only allowed him one night with her, one blissful night in the hilly farmlands of Serendair where she had been born, more than thirteen centuries before his own birth.
The moment Shrike had shown him had been the moment when he had come to realize who she really was, and why Time had been altered so; she was the other half of his soul, born a world and many lifetimes away, but possessing a magic so strong that it could defy time and distance to bring them together.
Ashe’s stomach turned violently as the irony clutched at him. They had spent those few moments together, only to be separated by events and trials of gruesome proportion. Fate, more cruel than kind, had brought them together for a second time, and they had fallen in love once more, only to be separated yet again.
This time, however, the one that had robbed them of the chance to be together had been Ashe himself.
The pain was becoming too much to bear; Ashe’s breathing was labored. The image in the newly formed pool was beginning to fade. He whispered what he had said to her one more time as it blurred into the reflected moonlight and disappeared.
“You are the most wonderful girl in the world.”
The only answer was the whine of the winter wind. Ashe looked up, his eyes sore with unspent tears.
Shrike lay beneath the camp blanket in the dark, breathing shallowly. Ashe’s dragon sense warned him immediately that the ancient man had taken a bad turn and was struggling to hold on to life once more. He stood quickly and drew the blanket tightly around Shrike, then lifted him off the ground and carried him to the horse.
“No fear, Grandfather; we are almost to Anborn,” he said as he mounted behind Shrike’s hunched body. “Lean on me and rest. We will be there very soon, and you will find solace of your own.”
Shrike could only nod, then collapsed in a fit of labored coughing. Ashe spurred the gelding onward, following the vibrations he had caught of Anborn in the distance.
“Thank you for showing me,” he said softly.
Shrike did not hear him.
20
Ashe caught the scent of the cinders first, stronger now, wafting on the wind from the west. Shrike had fallen into unconsciousness, his skin gray and dappled with cold sweat, his breathing shallow. He was clinging to life by the slightest of threads, and Ashe knew there were at least two leagues more to cover before he would reach the burning brands that had sent the cinders skyward.
His dragon sense expanded as he neared the inn where he would find Anborn. For a distance of five leagues in every direction, all aspects of information washed over him like an ocean wave, indiscriminate: the fluctuations in the heartbeat of his galloping mount, the varying weights of snow on each evergreen branch in the wide forest, the soot on the feathers of the snowwren that circled above him on a chilly updraft. Ashe swallowed and honed his concentration, willing the dragon in his blood to focus on what he sought.
He felt it instantly. A small inn, made from the rotting timber of the forest, slathered between post and beam with dried mud and mortar, a story and a half, joined by a staircase of questionable sturdiness. Thatched roof, and floor of matted thresh. Paint peeled from the sign in front of the establishment, which had once borne a fair depiction of a crowing rooster and nothing more. Eight firebrands—two recently lit, five half-spent, one on the verge of snuffing out—lighted the path in front of the inn; Ashe could tell the length of time they had been burning by the amount of melted snow he could sense pooled around their unburned bases.
Shrike groaned unconsciously as Ashe spurred the gelding onward. Four riders were approaching them, all from the northwest. He knew Anborn was aware of his presence as well, though doubtless did not know who he was; his hood was up, and the mist cloak shielded him still. He began shouting as soon as his dragon sense told him their ears could hear him, timing his call to coincide with the fading whine of the wind.
“Help! Help me! I have wounded!”
The riders, hearing his words above the howl, turned eastward in his direction and began to gallop as fast as the muddy forest path would allow. Ashe slowed his mount, wishing to be stationary when Anborn’s men arrived.
It seemed an eternity before they did, a mismatched group of soldiers clad in various types of armor, bearing the standard of no royal house. Ashe recognized three of the men, Knapp, Garth, and Solarrs; they had been Anborn’s compatriots for all the time Ashe had known his uncle. The Patriarch’s Ring of Wisdom that he wore on his right hand told him that, like Shrike, both Knapp and Solarrs were Cymrians of the First Generation. The fourth man he did not recognize.
“Hie, in the name of Anborn ap Gwylliam!” he called. The riders slowed their mounts. Each carried a heavy crossbow that was trained on him. “I have Shrike! He is wounded!”
Three riders reined their mounts to a halt, while Solarrs, Anborn’s head scout, rode forward cautiously. He lowered his crossbow; the others remained pointed at Ashe.
“Shrike?” Solarrs shouted.
“He’s dying,” Ashe shouted back into the wind. “Take me to Anborn if you value his life.”
“You’d best not be responsible for his injuries, if you value yours,” Solarrs replied. He turned and signaled to the others. Knapp and the man Ashe didn’t recognize waited while he and Solarrs passed, joined as they did by Garth. The other two brought up the rear, and the group made with all due haste toward the inn, whose glowing brands could now be seen by human eyes in the distance, blotted occasionally by the falling snow.
When the five horsemen arrived at the inn, Ashe reined to a halt and waited for the others to come and collect Shrike. Anborn’s men dismounted hastily; Solarrs and Knapp rushed to him, easing the dying Cymrian from his lap and carrying him gingerly toward the inn.
At their arrival the inn door slammed open, and the flickering light of a roaring fire spilled into the snowy darkness. Several more shadows ran into the frigid night, each sliding an arm or a hand under one of Shrike’s limbs or his torso, easing his transport.
The light from the doorway was snuffed a moment later as a shadow filled it, blocking the fire’s illumination. Ashe inhaled deeply.
Anborn.
The ancient warrior cast a back glance toward Ashe, his face lighted by the firebrand nearest the door. Anborn signaled brusquely for him to come into the inn, then turned his attention to Shrike as the soldiers carried the wounded man over the threshold.
Ashe dismounted and tossed the reins over the horse’s back, patting it gratefully on the flank. He looked up for a moment into the blackening sky; a storm was coming, though it would pass before dawn. He took a deep breath, allowing the clear air to fill his lungs, stinging his nose and throat with the burning cinders. When the noise of the soldiers had abated, he walked up the short path made of trodden snow and came into the inn.
The innkeeper looked nervously at him as he closed the door. They were alone in the inn’s common room; Anborn and the soldiers were nowhere to be seen. The man gestured anxiously toward the rickety staircase, above which two doors were visible, and Ashe nodded. He took off his sodden gloves and draped them over the fire iron to dry.
Finally the innkeeper cleared his throat. “Canna get ye some ale, sir?”
Ashe nodded, kicking the snow from his boots against the hearth as the steam from his mist cloak surrounded him. “Thank you.”
The innkeeper scurried away behind the staircase, returning a moment later with a battered tankard filled with a thin brew. Ashe accepted the mug and returned to the fire, where he drained it. He turned to hand it back to the innkeeper, but the man had vanished.
In his stead stood the Cymrian general, the Lord Marshal of Gwylliam’s ignominious army. Anborn’s face was blank, and he did not look directly at Ashe. Ashe bowed slightly.
“Lord Marshal.”
“I am such no longer.” Anborn crossed his arms. “What befell Shrike?” He sat down at a table near the staircase. A moment later three men came down the shuddering sta
irs; Anborn looked up questioningly, and one of them nodded. The man went back up the stairs while the other two joined Anborn at the table where tankards and a pitcher waited.
In the light of the hearth Ashe took a moment to look his uncle over with his eyes; it was always interesting to note the things his dragon sense had missed, or could not discern.
Anborn’s face had not changed noticeably since the last time Ashe had seen him, twenty or more years before. It was the face of a middle-aged man, though his muscular body was more suited to a man of late youth. His hair and beard, black as night, bore a few more silver streaks than Ashe remembered. He wore the same black mail shirt he always had, its dark rings interlaced with bands of gleaming silver, and beautifully crafted steel epaulets from which a heavy black cloak once hung. Ashe knew that the cloak was now upstairs, wrapped securely around Shrike’s body, giving him warmth. The general’s azure eyes gleamed ferociously in an otherwise nonchalant expression. He was staring at the fire.
“I found him at the edge of the Krevensfield Plain, dying,” Ashe said. He approached the table where the men sat and set the empty mug down. “He had been ambushed, along with his retinue, by soldiers of Sorbold.”
The men looked up, startled, at his words, and exchanged a glance, but Anborn merely nodded, his attention still on the fire.
“Why didn’t you take him to Sepulvarta or Bethe Corbair to be healed?” one of Anborn’s men asked. “You risked his life further traveling with him so far in such grave condition.”
“He asked to be brought to you. He was most insistent.”
Anborn nodded again. “You have my gratitude. If you know anything of me you know that’s a valuable thing to have.”
“Indeed.”
“If you need to call in the favor, remind any of my men of your rescue of Shrike, and they will seek to aid you.” The warrior rose from the chair, but Ashe did not move. After a few moments of silently standing still, impatience darkened Anborn’s countenance.
“Be off with you, then, man. I’ve wounded to tend to.”