Teri McLaren - Song of Time

"Riolla."

"Yes, Raptor?"

"Pay your dues."

"Yes, I am angry. Cheyne, there is more at stake here than you know. If you were any younger, I would send you home. As it is, listen to the facts and act like the grown man you are. First of all, you told no one where you went today. Aside from the fact that we are now very shorthanded here, that put me into a bit of a stir until you returned safely. A body was found here! And we still don't know why, except that we could be right on top of the Collector's treasure. You go and disappear-what am I supposed to think? Aside from your little excursion, there is the matter of the rumbling in the ranks of the Fascini. The old king at least had a sort of tolerance for us. So long as we didn't bother him, he didn't care what we did with this forsaken sandhill. But Maceo is another matter. I expect King Thedeso won't be cold in the ground before his irritating son is carted out here to decree our immediate dismissal."

Cheyne started to say that he'd already met the heir to the crown, but had no chance. Javin continued almost without another breath.

"There could be a fight-I must refuse to leave. It's my last chance at the Collector. I need to know where you are at all times from now on." Javin dropped his head between his hands, elbows propped on his knees. "And I need to convince the Fascini to give us at least one more season. It would help if there were money enough to buy Maceo off, I suspect. But until we find the Collector's treasure, all I can do is promise him his share of it. Things will depend on my powers of persuasion. Judging from the way those powers worked on you today, the dig is all but finished," he added miserably.

"Javin, I had to go. Because of the grown man I am," Cheyne began, certain that Javin hadn't sent anyone to the city to look for him because he probably hadn't been missed until the guard had seen him light the lamp in his tent. Javin had had too much else to think about. "You just don't understand. It's not about the treasure for me. It's about who I am. That's a question you never had to ask. You knew your parents, you knew your country, you knew your work. I don't even know what my face looks like, or what my full name is. Everywhere on this continent we have gone, people have a surname. Even the Sumifans who live in the Barca have that. There are too many mysteries for me. I won't always work on your digs, Javin. I want my own life. My own name. How can I have a future unless I have a past? I need to know where I fit."

Cheyne was about to pull the amulet from under his shirt and show favin the matching glyphs on the totem, but Javin whirled on him angrily, his patience worn away by the heat and the day's ugly discoveries.

"Cheyne! I gave you a direct order not to leave the site today. You disobeyed it. Why? Because you cannot see past your own small issues. If we-when we-find the Collector, I am sure that the answers to your questions will follow. But I need you to show some concern for something besides your own petty pains. Something far larger than your need for a name is at stake."

Cheyne's face began to bum with Javin's last words and he dropped the amulet back inside his shirt, a horrible new awareness dawning on him.

What did Javin care? For that matter, what had Javin ever cared? When he'd found Cheyne, Javin had been looking for the Collector, just as he was now. All

Javin had ever told him was that Cheyne had been the only survivor of a vicious attack on a trading caravan. Cheyne had turned the story over and over in his mind, searching each detail Javin had supplied for historical consistency, for truth. There were things that just didn't seem right. For one, the ores had done a strange thing in killing off the drivers and the families traveling with the traders. Usually, ore bandits, well known for their laziness and lack of organization, just took what they could carry in a lightning strike of a raid and let the caravans go on, knowing they would return via the same, the only path, laden with more goods. It had taken some thousand years for the ores to understand that principle, and they practiced it with consuming faith. Why, then, had they destroyed their own livelihood for one haul of goods in that raid? It didn't make sense. It never had.

Apart from his first name, Cheyne had never recovered any memory of events before that day. AH his life, the questions of why he had been part of the lost caravan or who his family was gnawed at him like rats, growing bigger and more insistent with every new summer's end, the anniversary of the attack. Now it was his twenty-first year in Argive, and also here in Sumifa- that was the year a person took a name and left their father's house-and still he had no more than the amulet and Javin's shaky story to claim as his heritage.

For Cheyne, it seemed life had begun the moment Javin had shaken him awake, pulling him from an enchanted sleep, with only the strange amulet around his neck as proof of the first ten years of his life. For months afterward, he could not even talk. That's when Muni had come. Muni was the best linguist there was, and it had taken him nearly a year to get the boy to speak coherently. All the while, Cheyne awoke every night bathed hi a salty drench of sweat, shaking and terrified by indecipherable, recurring dreams-bizarre images of color and light, of a tall, sear-faced elf, of a man with no face.

Cheyne's dreams weren't the only ones in question. Before Javin could remount his dig, the Fascini heard about the hapless traders and permanently closed the caravan route, causing the elves to retreat into their magical forest, leaving no paths for outsiders through the curtain of light. As if that weren't enough, Javin had lost the support of future crew members-nobody wanted to go where the ores were so vicious. Barely escaping them three times on the way back, Javin knew he could never make it across the hostile lands of the Wyrvils again alone, even if he could convince the elves to let him in. So because he had troubled to care for Cheyne, Javin had lost his chance to dig in the Borderlands for all time.

So why, when Javin faced the same loss again, would he ever care about Cheyne's desperate need to search out his identity? The perfect sense of it dawned on him with stunning clarity. Javin had too much at stake here to be distracted by anything-a man like Javin, who, before he had found Cheyne, had lost two wives in foreign plagues, who now fostered no friendships and sought no roots-to such a man, work was everything. Javin's heart was set on this dig. Come the Fascini or the whirlwinds, he would not be denied this last chance to find the Collector's grave.

"Look, Cheyne, I've had enough. I'm going to bed. Muni has found a man willing to stand guard at the vault. We've taken out most of the sand, but there's still a corner full of it. The Collector isn't down there, but I'm sure that it's his house. Maybe he's on the next level, but we have to empty this one first. Think you can help Muni for awhile tonight, while it's cooler? I don't know how long before the Fascini come. We need to move as quickly as we can," said Javin, his voice strained with fatigue.

"Sure, Javin," Cheyne answered hollowly.

As Cheyne made his way up the dunes, the three sisters, first evening stars in this part of the world, appeared one by one in the deepening sky. Though the sun had set an hour ago, heat lightning still flashed in the west and the dunes still reflected the day's warmth on his face and hands. Soon the warm air would turn into a cold and constant breeze that would sweep over the site relentlessly until dawn.

Cheyne mounted the topmost dune as the blue dusk turned to complete darkness. He stood looking at the fading horizon for a moment, the peaceful view soothing the pain of Javin's disinterest. Some of the old palace's outer columns, invisible only a few weeks ago, ringed the site like silent sentries. Their basalt heads were chipped and cracked, or missing altogether. Still, they looked regal to Cheyne as they cut even darker silhouettes against the flashing sky. Behind him, the broken shell of a round watchtower, probably the tallest part of the ruin, rose in stark elegance.