Elizabeth Haydon - Destiny - Child of the Sky

“I know. Thank you.”

Stephen stepped back onto the second floor, rubbing his hands together awkwardly. “I was afraid to take it, and more afraid to leave it there, with you so grievously injured,” he said slowly, his mind wincing at the image in his memory. “I—we—had always joked about me stealing it from you, after you gained it—”

Ashe dropped the sword and ran to his friend, meeting him halfway across the museum floor in a desperate embrace. Stephen was trembling with shock, and Ashe cursed himself, and his father, again.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, squeezing the duke’s broad shoulder. “I would have told you if I could.”

“May the All-God forgive me for spurning His blessing,” Stephen answered, returning the embrace. He loosed his grip on his friend and walked through the billowing blue light to where the sword lay, bent, and picked it up, handing it to Ashe again. Ashe took it and sheathed it, dousing the light once more.

“Come back with me to the keep,” Stephen said, turning toward the dark stairs. “It’s cold as a witch’s tit in here; we’ll sit before the fire and—“I can’t, Stephen.”

“You’re in hiding still?”

“Mostly.” Ashe went back to the corner and looked down at the table again; Rhapsody had once referred to it as a shrine, and he could see why. Aside from the altar cloth and candles it held the last of the possessions that he had been carrying the day he went after the demon: his gold signet ring, a battered dagger, and the bracelet Stephen had given him in their youth, fashioned of interwoven leather braids, torn open on one side. Attached to the wall behind the display was a brass plate, intricately carved and inscribed with his name. His dragon sense noted a lack of tarnish on it compared with the brass plates of the museum’s other displays.

“Why, then? Why do you reveal yourself to me now?”

“Because it’s my birthday?” Ashe said jokingly. His smile resolved into something darker. “I’m no longer hiding as I was these past twenty years; I didn’t show my face to anyone, Stephen, even to Llauron, in all that time. Now I’m being very careful about when and to whom to reveal myself. The demon is still looking for me, no doubt. I want to be the one to choose the time when it finds me.”

“I remember hearing sightings of you, years back, and fairly recently, but it was laughed off as rumor and myth.”

Ashe shuddered. “It was neither, I’m afraid. Nor was it me.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

“That’s why I came tonight. Yes.”

Stephen smiled for the first time. “I don’t believe that,” he said humorously. “You were undoubtedly just hoping to scrounge a piece of birthday cake and a drink. Come; I can get you into the keep unnoticed. We can go through the stables to the wine-cellar tunnels. Perhaps we’ll pick up something to celebrate your birthday with on the way.”

Rhapsody could no longer feel her feet; the stinging snow had numbed them into oblivion. How many days and nights she had been out here she no longer knew, only that her strength was ebbing and her goal was nowhere in sight. She no longer had any idea where she was.

All around her the wind shrieked, and the forest spread forth in a vast, unending pattern; copses of trees and brush melded into identical copses of more trees and brush, until the landscape around her blurred into a white whirl of sickening confusion. Rhapsody was exhausted, and she was lost.

She tried to navigate by the stars, as her grandfather had taught her, but the stars here were foreign to her, even if she could have seen them through the building storm, which blotted out all visibility. The gladiator no longer even tried to awaken; she expended all of her diminishing fire lore keeping him from freezing across the back of the horse.

Finally she could go no farther. She sank onto her knees in the snow, the sharp ice crust jabbing her legs as she fell. Her hair whipped around in the wind, and she watched it dance before her eyes, like branches of a golden tree bowing before the same gale that commanded the flailing arms of the forest. The wind bit at her ears, its howl a fluctuating musical note that spoke of sleep and dark dreams. And something more—there was power in the wind, power she should remember.

Then it came back to her—the Kinsman call Oelendra had taught her.

- S

Rhapsody curled up, resting her head on her thighs, and tried to block out the insistent shrieking all around her. Her breath no longer provided her any warmth, and she tucked her hands under her arms so that she could concentrate, searching in the howling roar for the single note that would carry her cry of help to the brethren of the wind. Finally she found it; the clear, quiet tone ringing under the tumult, humming steadily as the wind raged and ebbed.

“By the Star,” she whispered, her voice cracking from the cold, “I will wait, I will watch, I will call and will be heard.” Around her the storm diminished, almost imperceptibly, and the quiet tone rang truer. Rhapsody summoned her strength.

“By the Star,” she sang again, in the words of her birthplace, the language of her childhood, her volume increasing steadily, “I will wait, I will watch, I will call and be heard.” The tone sounded, clear and bright, then whistled down into a humming breath and wrapped itself in the wind, disappearing into the night.

Rhapsody listened as it left, praying that help would come, but her heart reminded her that the star she swore by now lighted the sky over the sea a world away; the place where lived the wind that had answered the call of Kinsmen was long gone beneath the waves. Still, perhaps Oelendra would hear. Just to be sure, she sang her mentor’s name, sending messages of love to her, to the children, to her friends. She did not mention Ashe, for fear he might come.

Time passed, unhurried and unmarkable. The horse shivered and began to walk, trying to stay warm. She made a grab for the bridle and missed, toppling chest-first onto the icy ground. As she pushed herself upright again on her hands she thought she saw the figure of another horse at the edge of her vision, slipping in and out of the black trees at the horizon; then it was gone.

The snow began to harden as the temperature dropped even more, the soft flakes changing to crystals of ice, spraying as gusts of wind kicked up. They stung her face and blinded her; now she could not even see where she was. Rhapsody tried to press forward, walking on her knees, coming alongside the horse. Her father’s face danced before her, calling her name, and warmth began to descend; she knew she was freezing to death.

In the distance she could make out the silhouette of a dark figure standing erect in the changing patterns of swirling iceflakes and, even further at the edge of her disappearing vision, what was probably the horse she had imagined she’d seen. With great effort she raised up onto her knees on the hard crust of the snow, and strained to see better.

The figure seemed to move toward her. It appeared to be a large man and wide, with billowing edges that flapped in the screaming wind. It pressed forward with none of the difficulty she was having. The figure seemed to undulate as it moved; Rhapsody realized this was a result of the violent shivers that had taken over her body. She fought to stay alert, but her mind had already progressed to a stage of fogginess that she could not overcome. She reached a trembling arm up to touch the horse beside her and felt for the leg of the gladiator; it was still warm beneath its shroud of blanket and cloaks. She blinked repeatedly to stay focused. If the approaching man threatened them, with her last ounce of fire and Naming lore she would spur the horse with heat and order it home. Rhapsody patted the muscular leg in apology, knowing she had failed in her attempt to rescue him, and praying as the darkness began to set in that she had not put him in even a worse place than he had been.