It was the middle of the night. Out in the rainforest, the noise of life and death went on as it always did. The air smelled of rain and fresh vegetation. Hirad sat on one of the three other swept-back chairs on the veranda, feeling the weave shift to accommodate his broad shoulders.
‘I’ll get you some tea,’ said Kild’aar, levering herself out of her chair and walking slightly stiffly down the steps to the fire pit.
‘Your shouting eventually woke you up too, did it?’ said Rebraal, a smile touching his lips.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Hirad.
Rebraal shook his head. ‘Tell me. If you want to.’
‘I’ve felt the same thing a few nights but not with this - uh - sorry Rebraal, I don’t have the words.’ He switched into Balaian. ‘This intensity. It’s like someone’s been battering on the door and now finally they’ve broken it down.’
‘Ilkar?’ asked Rebraal.
Hirad shrugged. ‘Well, yes. Daft I know. I still miss him, you know.’
‘What have you seen?’
‘Oh, that’s hard to say.’ Hirad pushed his hand through his hair, feeling the lank braids and the moisture left on his hands. ‘I know it’s him but I can’t quite make him out. His essence, I can feel that so clearly. Everything that made him. And I fill in the smile and those damned ears myself. But he’s in trouble. That’s why the dream is so bad. I got the feeling he was running but I don’t know where. That something was close that scared him. And though I reached out, I couldn’t help him. He was always just beyond my grasp and my vision.
‘Huh, speaking it makes it sound lame. Not scary at all.’
Kild’aar came back up the steps and handed him a mug of the herb tea that Ilkar had been so fond of. Deprived of coffee for more than a year now since his supply had run out, Hirad had developed a taste for the sweet aromatic teas of the elves. He’d had no choice really. The trade to Balaia had gone. No ships had come from the northern continent for three seasons now. Part of him worried about what that might mean. Most of him was glad they didn’t trouble to make the journey. There was only one man on Balaia that Hirad missed and Blackthorne had never relied on trade with the elves so he would be unaffected. And Jevin, the last time he’d seen the elven skipper, had said he preferred not to sail north any more. He didn’t say why.
‘Thank you,’ he said, once again speaking elvish. ‘I’m sorry I woke you.’
Kild’aar waved away his apology and sat down, her eyes on Rebraal. ‘You haven’t told him yet?’
‘We hadn’t got round to it,’ said Rebraal.
‘Hadn’t got round to what?’ asked Hirad.
‘You didn’t wake us,’ said Rebraal. ‘Or at least, not me.’
‘So you were having a late night, so what?’
‘So I’ve had the selfsame dream,’ said Rebraal.
‘I beg your pardon?’ Hirad felt cold despite the humidity of the night and clutched his mug tight between his hands.
‘I have felt him too. He was your good friend. He was my brother.’
‘Yeah, I know, Rebraal, and we’ve laughed and cried about him a good few times these last couple of years but, you know . . . He’s dead, and there’s nothing we can do about that.’
‘No, we can’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t help him.’
Hirad felt a growing unease. Rebraal and Kild’aar were both staring at him too earnestly. He frowned.
‘You’ve lost me completely.’ He knew his tone was a little sharp but he was tired and this was just riddles. ‘That’s the trouble with dead people. It’s too late to help them ever again.’
‘Hirad,’ said Kild’aar softly and leaned forward to cover his hands with hers where they were locked around his mug. ‘I know it hasn’t always been easy for you here and that we, at least in the beginning, did not make it easy for you at all. But we have always respected why you wanted to come here. We know of your love for Ilkar and your desire to learn the ways that made him what he was.
‘And you and your Raven will always be friends of the elves because of your actions in stopping the Elfsorrow. Rebraal calls you a brother and Auum, well, Auum let you run with the TaiGethen for a season, didn’t he? And that is respect no human has ever had before.’
‘He still said I was slow and deaf and blind, though,’ said Hirad, smiling in spite of himself and the increasing feeling he was going to hear something he didn’t want to.
‘You will always be human,’ said Rebraal. ‘Some things not even Auum can teach you.’
‘Tell me about it,’ grumbled Hirad. ‘Never give me a jaqrui again. I think I scarred Duele for life.’
‘The point is this,’ said Kild’aar, stilling Rebraal’s next retort with a sharp glance. ‘Though we trust you, there are those facts about us that you as a human should never know. Secrets that could be used against us. We have already seen what humans do with such knowledge. ’
‘Not me, Kild’aar. Never me.’
‘I know, Hirad,’ said Kild’aar, releasing his hands so he could drink. ‘Even so, we are only telling you this because you have had the dream and that makes you closer to us than we could ever have thought possible. It makes you family.’
‘Telling me what?’ Hirad took a long sip of the tea.
‘The dead of an elven family are never truly lost,’ said Rebraal. ‘We can always hear them if they need us.’
Hirad felt a thrill through his heart. ‘And can you talk to them?’
Kild’aar’s smile extinguished his hope. ‘It isn’t communication as you would understand it because the dead do not exist in any way you can conceive. But messages can still be passed. It is one of the purposes of the temple at Aryndeneth.’
‘The Al-Arynaar have been the keepers of this secret too,’ said Rebraal. ‘No other order can hear the dead. We learn it over years, decades. And even then it is difficult and uncertain.’
‘What do they ask you? Why would they need you?’
‘That is a difficult question to answer,’ said Kild’aar. ‘Elves make life bonds of incredible depth and often the transition to death is difficult. The dead seem to have moments of clarity amongst so much else we cannot guess at. They seek support if they feel lost. News of loved ones. They impart knowledge they had no time to speak when they were alive. You must understand that any communication that comes through is broken and sometimes all but incoherent. The dead no longer have the rules that guide us.’
‘All right,’ said Hirad carefully, trying to take it all in. ‘But that doesn’t explain one thing. How come I heard him tonight, if indeed I did?’
‘Oh you heard him, all right,’ said Rebraal. ‘But you shouldn’t have been able to and that is what is worrying us. I shouldn’t have been able to do any more than sense him outside of Aryndeneth.’
‘So didn’t you ask him what’s going on?’
‘I couldn’t. It was like he was shouting for anyone to hear him, to help him. Anyone with a connection as strong as family. Hirad, other Al-Arynaar have had this same dream in the past days . . . this same contact I should say. But no one can communicate at the temple. Something is wrong in the world of the dead. Something is threatening them.’
Hirad made to speak and then stopped, at a loss. He sat back in his chair. ‘What can threaten someone who is already dead?’
‘We don’t know,’ said Kild’aar, sharing a guilty glance with Rebraal. ‘Or at least, we aren’t sure.’
‘Well we’d better find out and fast,’ said Hirad. ‘We’ve got to help him.’
Hirad was half out of his chair before Rebraal’s hand on his shoulder pushed him back down.
‘That’s why we’re talking to you now. It might have been better in the light of day but since you are awake, now is the right time.’ Rebraal levered himself out of his chair, took all three mugs and jumped lightly down to the fire pit around which insects buzzed and died. ‘There are other elements to this which are too convenient to be coincidence.’