Kedra responded swiftly, "Then I thank thee, Keakhor, for thy visitation, I honour thee for thy wisdom, and I release thee to sleep again on the Winds. Go in peace."
"I go, littling, but do not let thy good father waken yet. There is one here who would speak, if thou wilt hear her."
Even in the depths of my trance I was surprised. I had heard of this happening, when I was trained by Leealissenit, but it had never happened to me before. Kedra nodded. "If there is one who would speak, we honour and welcome her. Farewell, Khernirnakunakhor."
"The Winds bear thee up, youngling," said the ancient one, kindly, and was gone. Again the feeling of falling, dizziness, then caught up all in a moment by another.
Oh no. No, please, I cannot bear it.
"I give you greeting, my Khetri—what are you called, my littling?" said the one who spoke through me. It was the wonder of the Kin-Summoning that I could hear her voice and not mine. Oh, my heart.
I knew that voice as I knew the air that I breathed. It was Yrais, my beloved, my soul's other half. I had not heard it in eight hundred years.
Kedra was shaken, though he knew not why. "I am called Kedra. Who speaks?" he asked, his voice heavy with awe.
"I am your mother, Khetrikharissdra," she said. Kedra shivered to hear his true name spoken, but not with fear. The love in her voice could not be mistaken.
I knew that tone in her voice, she only ever used it when she spoke with me or with our son. Oh, ye Winds, bear me up in this. "Littling, I cannot stay, but when Keakhor looked in your father's mind he saw bright and shining your own son. Know that Shekrialanentier6k is known to me now, for all time, and know that my love comes to him through your father."
Yrais!
"Fare you well in all your travails, my kit, you and Mirazhe your beloved and Sherok your son, and may the Winds carry you safe wherever you fare."
And she was gone, save for a sweet gentle touch on my mind as she left—a phrase, an echo, of the Song of the Devoted we had made together so very long ago.
I rose out of the trance of the Kin-Summoning racked with a pain I had thought long since healed. It was forbidden to call up the Ancestors for personal reasons. I had never dreamt to hear her voice again.
Kedra came near and held me, helpless, as I cried out my agony to the Winds. Sorrow endless as the long years, longing like torture pierced my breast, against which the pain of the end of the Kin-Summoning passed unnoticed.
Unless you have lost one you truly love you may not understand, but I would gladly have fought demons to have been spared that sweet, gentle touch, that voice so well beloved and so swiftly silenced forever, and the memory of a song I would never hear again this side of death.
Soon after my lord Marik was restored to himself, Berys arranged for us all to leave my master's home in the Merchant quarter of Elimar. We were to take up residence in Ver-faren so that Magister Berys might continue his work at the College while looking after Marik. We travelled slowly: what should have been little more than ten days' journey even in winter took nearly a fortnight, and it was hard on my master even so. I spent several days simply helping him recover from travelling.
Once he was feeling better both Berys and I took a great deal of time working with him, helping him to walk and, eventually, to ride again. His recovery was wonderfully swift, all things considered, but I was still concerned. The vision of his patched-together mind haunted me.
It was late one night towards the end of the second moon of the year, just as the worst of the winter was leaving and the days were getting longer, before I had the chance to speak to Berys alone. My master was asleep. He had ridden some few miles through the fields that day and eaten well afterwards, all good signs. I was delighted to see him doing so well, even as I feared it was but temporary.
I knew that Berys could not be working so late on anything of importance, but I was passing his chambers last thing at night on the way to my own and saw a light under the door. I knocked quietly and to my surprise was answered immediately by his servant Durstan. He welcomed me and took me in to Berys's study after only a very short wait. I found him seated behind his desk, plainly busy but pleasant enough.
"Master Maikel," he said, nodding to me. "You are welcome. I trust our patient is no worse?"
"He recovers still, Magister," I replied, somewhat absent-mindedly. There was a peculiar smell in the room and I was trying to think what it was. I thought I remembered it from somewhere.
"Then what brings you here?" he asked, smiling.
It was difficult to say, he seemed so kind and so concerned, but I knew I had to say something. "Magister, I have sought the chance to confer with you about Marik. I fear for him."
"In what way?" he asked, genuinely surprised. "Has his condition deteriorated?"
"No, he is as he has been since you healed his mind," I said. "But—"
After a moment's silence, he said rather more pointedly, "But what, Healer Maikel?"
"It's not right." I managed to get the words out. "Magister, I have the greatest respect for what you have done, but I have seen his mind. It was lost and broken, and true enough you have healed it, but the healing is patchy and largely on the surface. The break is still there, the rift between sanity and madness, and the bridge is very insecure. It would take very little to drive him back across and very little more for him to fall off altogether. My fear is that he would then be worse off than before."
"Are you questioning my methods?" asked Berys, smiling. "He has done nothing but improve since I brought him back. He grows stronger every day, mind and body. What you are objecting to, Maikel?"
"I—well—forgive me, but yes, Magister, I question your method. I admire beyond words that you have brought my master back from that dry! dead place, but surely a slower approach would have had more lasting results. This patch, this overlay of healing—I fear it cannot last." There. I had said it.
Berys stood up from behind his desk. He came close to me and stared into my eyes. "Hrnmm. Seems to be wearing off."
"What, already?" I asked, shocked. Did he know something of Marik that I did not? Surely that fragile sanity was not breaking already.
He laughed, a sharp, unpleasant sound. "I was not speaking of Marik. No, he will last some time yet. Perhaps in time my quick work will take root, though I do not know. However, he is well now. Is that not what you desired?"
"Not this way," I said. Suddenly I was reminded of my old reservations about Magister Berys. I had perhaps been too critical, but there was still something wrong about him. Something about his eyes—oh Goddess. What were Marik's first words to me? Not a simple greeting, not so much as "Hello Maikel," no, he'd said "What's wrong with your eyes?" I had wondered at the time. Now of a sudden I was frantic to be gone, to look in a mirror, to see if I had the same taint as Berys. In the same breath I remembered what the curious smell was.
Raksha-trace.
Dear Lady, see me safe out of here, I begged silently.
Her answer was swift in coming.
It was raining. It had been raining for-bloody-ever. The weather had turned foul a week after that fight in the dark, with a cold rain driven by a colder wind, and I had caught a sniffle that would not go away. We had been rained on for what felt like a solid fortnight: as we crossed the Arlen to travel south through the western reaches of the North Kingdom, as we rode through fields and woods to keep off the main roads, as we seemed to crawl our way south: sometimes harder, sometimes no more than a gentle mist that got into our packs and soaked everything, sometimes just a dreary never-ending drip all day long.