Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

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?

Tes ? 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 to 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.

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.