Destiny: Child of the Sky

82

Oven as far from the Moot as she was, she could still hear the sounds of shrieking and merrymaking, could still see the bonfire’s roaring flames flickering against the dark sky in the distance. The wind that blew around the rise of the swale on which she stood carried with it the smell of embers and the taste of a bitter Past made sweet again by hope.

Anwyn stared down at the horn in her hands. Even in the absence of the moon’s light it gleamed, like a luminous pearl in the darkness. Its metal was still warm, doubtless residual heat from the woman who had usurped its usage, had pressed her perfect mouth to it and summoned Anwyn’s own people to her feet. Of course they had been compelled to come. None that sailed from Serendair, nor those of their blood who came after them, could resist the command of the horn; Gwylliam had made certain of it.

It was no excuse, not for the betrayal she had suffered.

No excuse whatsoever.

She closed her eyes and held the horn aloft, stretching out her arms to the starlit darkness of the sky.

The words of the upstart wench came back to her now, blowing in the laughing wind of night, drunk with celebration.

Anwyn ap Merithyn, tuatha Elynsynos, I rename you The Past. Your actions are out of balance. Henceforth your tongue will only serve to speak of the realm into which your eyes alone were given entry. That which is the domain of your sisters, the Present and the Future, you will be unable to utter. No one shall seek you out for any other reason, so may you choose to convey your knowledge better this time, lest you be forgotten altogether.

The Seer began to laugh. At first the mirth came forth as a chuckle, then a gasp. Then she threw her head back and roared with merriment, maniacal as her sister Manwyn, but far more insidious. She laughed until it would have been impossible to tell if she were screeching with glee or shrieking in madness, though no living soul could hear her above the bellowing of the bonfires that still filled the Moot with dancing light.

Henceforth your tongue will only serve to speak of the realm into which your eyes alone were given entry.

Anwyn clutched the horn even tighter, her searing blue eyes gleaming in the darkness as they opened.

-

“Very well,” she said aloud. “As you command, Your Majesty.” need your memories, the demon-spirit had whispered from within the fire. Her own reply blended into the bristling wind. “I understand,” she said.

Anborn was in an unusually good mood as he rode west across the foothills to the broad expanse of the Krevensfield Plain. Considering the way the day had started, and what had transpired, it was a refreshing surprise to see how well things had turned out.

It had been many centuries since the Lord Marshal could remember feeling so free, so burdenless. The wind was high, the night clear and starry, the damp air of near-morning filled with the fresh scent of summer tinged with the sharp odor of smoke from distant bonfires. Anborn pulled the helmet from his head and set it before him, running his hands through his streaming hair. The smooth gait of the horse, the pounding against the earth beneath them—there were still things in life to be cherished after all.

After so many centuries of disillusionment, the vault of stone around his heart had shattered at last. Anborn had been an idealist in youth; he remembered the intensity with which he had once lived life, the deathless vows he had made early in his martial training to uphold the statutes of the Kinsmen, the ancient brotherhood of warriors to which he sought inclusion. All of that impassioned commitment had died on the battlefields of the Great War, along with his soul—or so he had presumed.

He remembered the words of his instructor in the sword, Oelendra Andaris. I serve no Lord, no Lady, only a people, she had said. When those that would lead would also serve, then shall I swear fealty to a crown. Only then. For both of them, Anborn and Oelendra, both Kinsmen, both irreparably scarred by a war, the time had come to believe again. Like the coming dawn, perhaps peace was on the horizon.

His mind went to Rhapsody, as it often did when he was not concentrating on anything in particular. Anborn wondered what she was doing at that moment, then squelched the thought. He had caught the look between her and Gwydion. Unless his nephew was an utter fool, he had a fairly good idea what she was probably in the process of undertaking, and it would not be gentlemanly to speculate about it further.

He laughed aloud, delighted in the turn of events and the promise of a new beginning. Good cheer broke over him like a wave, racing through his hair like the wind that flapped his cloak behind him. His spirits were high as the starry sky above him, around him, all the way to the endless horizon just beginning to lighten at the approach of morning.

Anwyn brought the horn to her lips and sounded it.

The blast that issued forth was not heard in this time, nor by any living soul. It echoed instead through the realm of the Past, as it had so many centuries before, swelling from the silvery horn and hovering on the heavy air of ancient memory.

Then, after a long reverberation, it rained slowly down from the air and settled into the earth.

Anwyn smiled and closed her eyes. In a voice hollow with memory she began the chant.

The raid on Farrow’s Down. .

The siege of Bethe Corbair.

The Death March of the Cymrian Nain.

The burning of the western villages.

Kesel Tai.

Tomingorllo.

Lin en Swale.

The slaughter at Wynnarth Keep.

The rape of the Tarimese water camp.

The assault on the southeastern Face.

The evisceration of the fourth column.

The mass execution of the First Fleet farming settlements.

The Battle of Canderian Fields.

One by one, ever so patiently, she recounted each grim history, each bloody event in the Great War, a conflict ignited by the F’dor but brought about by simpler factors—rage, betrayal, jealousy, lust for power. Hatred, even older than the Before-Time.

When she had recited all the great losses of the war she moved on, to each conflict since, each place where men fell at the manipulation of the demon-spirit.

Finally, when the litany was complete, she raised the horn to her lips again and sounded it.

Anwyn opened her eyes. She smiled.

As Anborn crested the rise of a great swale his stallion reared in fright. Anborn brought him to heel, gentling the animal down, then cast a glance over his shoulder to see what had spooked the horse.

For a moment, he could see nothing in the dark. Then, as his vision sharpened, the blood of the dragon within his veins roared like fire with panic.

“Sweet Creator,” he murmured. The words caught in the back of his throat.

The darkness at his feet was shifting.

The wide expanse of the Krevensfield Plain was moving.

Without taking a second breath Anborn dragged his horse back from the brim of the swale and bolted, galloping back toward the Moot, as the ground beneath him split asunder.