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, die strongest of die 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. In 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 nothing.
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 ash-caked 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.