He did not say anything, only stared. I went on. "What would you be willing to wager on that voice you heard being the voice of the Winds you call on?
"Akor, what are they doing? What do they want of us?''
I tried to keep my voice calm, for her sake. I must tell her. "Hlanen, therre iss much I sstill musst tell hyu," I began.
Damn! "It is too important for Gedri speech, will you hear me thus?"
"Yes, if you wish. I'll try not to answer the same way. I'm so tired I suspect they would hear me at the Boundary."
"Littling, that I heard a voice while deep in the Discipline was no trifle. I have never heard of such a thing among all my Kindred. But at least as surprising was what it said to me. I was told that I must go through great pain for my people, but that if I was willing I might save them. No—that we might save them.''
"Save them? From what?"
How to tell her that which I had taken so many years to understand, and still bore so ill? "The son of Shikrar, who is called Kédra, has gone with his lady Mirazhe to the Birthing cove. Many of the females of my race are there, the Elders who remember what must be done, and Idai who stands birthing sister to Mirazhe, and Kerijan. She is the only other female who has borne a youngling in the last three hundred years."
"Three hundred years?" said Lanen, shocked. "Dear Lady, that must be a long time even as you measure it."
"It is as you say. My people are dying, Lanen Kaelar, and I have wondered these three hundred years and more what to do about it. Now I have heard the voice of the night Wind tell me that I will suffer great pain, that I will come to know joy again, and that you and I may save my people. And that I shall go with you, wherever you fare.''
"What?!"
"I tell you only what I was told."
''Akor, I told you, I spent most of yesterday wondering how to ask you if I could stay here on the island with you if I kept on the far side of the Boundary. I was afraid you'd be angry with me or have to refuse outright, but I couldn't think of any other way to stay close to you." She smiled, albeit grimly. "Things have changed now, of course, but still—how could you possibly go with me? How could you live in any part of Kolmar where there are people, without your own Kindred?"
"I do not know. I cannot imagine it, unless we were to find a cave far away from the rest of the Gedri. I shall have to think about this. May I ask what your Lady said to you ?''
"Only that what we are doing is right, and that all will be well if I follow my heart."
He hissed gently. "Your Lady is kinder than the Winds. Perhaps we could speak with each other's gods? At this moment I much prefer yours.''
I laughed. I was surprised I could still do it, but I laughed. Akor joined me. Suddenly it all seemed so absurd, everything from our first conversation to switching gods, and we both let go our fears. I laughed till I cried, not least because the whole clearing was filling with steam from Akor's hissing.
"Be hwamed, Hlanen," he managed to gasp out, throwing his head back. A wide swath of flame split the night and left me blinded for a moment.
It was, it had to be. A dragon belly laugh. What a mad. wondrous world it was.
Then he began to speak. His speech seemed to have recovered. "Ah, Lanen, what a life I am learning to lead! I stand here in the night and cannot yet believe the truth of all we do." His voice, so warm and alive, grew deeper yet and richer. "For the first time in years beyond living memory, Kantri and Gedri exchange lives and hearts and laughter, and we both are the stronger for it. The Four Winds guide all our destinies. Lanen," he said quietly. "The first teaching rhyme for younglings is our oldest knowledge.
"First is the Wind of Change
Second is Shaping
Third is the Unknown
and Last is the Word.
"It is not elegant, but it is true. All of life is a great cycle. I believe that you are the wind of change, Lanen Kaelar. blowing cold across the Kindred for good or ill, and for good or ill you have come to me. You must know, none of the Kindred have ever had silver armour before. I am the first and only, as best we know, since time began. My birth was seen as an omen by my people, but what it portends none can say. I believe this change is fated, as are you and I."
At another time his words might have surprised me, but I was beyond it by then. I do not know how or why, but I felt I could almost have repeated that rhyme along with him. I was in a most remarkable state, as if part of my mind listened to words spoken long before and only repeated now. Akor was only stating the obvious.
"Does that mean that you are to shape me?" I asked.
"I suspect we have already begun to shape one another, dearling," he answered. "I have expected you, or someone, for some time now, but I did not know you would come so soon. I
believe that between us we will do our share of shaping others as well."
So soon?
Not for the first time I wished to all the gods that I could read that immobile mask of a face more easily. It was terribly distracting. The tone of his voice often made his meaning clear, and he shifted his stance so often it must have some significance, but without thinking I kept looking at his face. Which never changed.
"What do you mean, so soon?" I demanded. I was getting tired of learning things after the fact. "What do you know that I don't?"
"Ah, dearling, forgive me. We have had so little time together and there is so much you do not yet know. I have had Weh dreams, and in one of them I had seen you before ever your foot stepped on this shore."
He had mentioned this before. "What is a Weh dream?'' I asked. He had said the words with reverence. He answered in truespeech.
"It is a dream during the Weh sleep. And the Weh sleep is one of the most closely guarded secrets of the Kindred, my Lanen. I will tell you of it—I cannot keep anything from you— but you must give me your word, on your life, never to reveal it to another of your people."
If I had not been so tired I would have been angry that he could doubt me even now. As it was I simply said, "You have my word, as Lanen Kaelar Maransdatter. I will never tell another soul."
And so I have not, and would not here did I not know that the Kindred are safeguarded now against any danger during the Weh sleep.
He spoke quietly but aloud.
"The Weh sleep is our one great weakness as a race. If word of it reached the Gedri, we surely would be slaughtered one by one as we slept.
"We do not require food as often as you. One meal in a week, if it is large enough, will sustain us. We also do not require sleep as often as you do—an hour or so in every day is enough, though some take more.
" I understand that your people reach a certain size early in life and never grow from that time on. I have long thought that a convenient way of living, but it is not our way. The longer we live, the larger we become. You have seen the size of Shikrar; he is more than six hundred years older than I.
"Knowing this, do you not wonder how it is that we can grow surrounded by armour?
"The answer is that we cannot. Every fifty years or so (the time is different for each individual) the Weh sleep comes upon us. We may have an hour's warning or a day's, but no more than that. We have learned that the only thing to do is to find a protected place and let it happen.