Destiny: Child of the Sky

18

Chattered blasts of freshening snow rose into the air beneath the pounding of the gelding’s hooves. As it swirled up it blended with the clouds of mist emanating from Ashe’s cloak, forming a fragile white screen around him and his galloping mount. From a distance he and it appeared as little more than a gust of wind whipping the snow before him.

The southern forest rim crossed the borders of Navarne and Avonderre, areas that had seen some of the greatest bloodshed from random eruptions of violence. When Ashe had traveled through this place alone, it was always silently, on foot, carefully skirting whatever living beings registered on his dragon senses.

Now, with his body restored, his soul his own once more, he braved their notice, focusing all his attention on the wounded man sprawled before him across the horse’s back, and on locating his commander.

Shrike moaned intermittently as they traveled, whispering incoherently from time to time, otherwise lying silent across Ashe’s knees. Occasionally the dragon in Ashe’s blood felt the man’s pulse ebb, his breathing grow shallow. When this happened he rested his hand, with the Patriarch’s ring, near Shrike’s heart, wordlessly encouraging him to hang on to life long enough to reach Anborn.

The ring’s power seemed to be sufficient to sustain the man’s essence, to keep it trapped within its earthly shell, at least for the moment. Ashe shielded his eyes from the sting of the wind and the burn of ice crystals slapping his face, remembering the last time he had seen a First Generation Cymrian struggle with death.

Talthea, the Gracious One, sometimes known as the Widow.

The woman had been under the care of Khaddyr, the great healer of the Filids, who was also his father’s Tanist, his future successor. She lay, writhing in agony, locked in ferocious combat with the forces of this life and the next, on the Altar of the Ultimate Sacrifice, the ancient stump of a long-dead tree of massive girth, in the midst of the Circle, the center of the Filidic order.

Ashe, still a child, had stood by helplessly, dwarfed by the mourning crowd, muttering rote prayers he knew by heart but that made no sense to him and wishing desperately that she would be all right, despite never having seen her before. The wisdom of memory made him realize, more than a century later, that the anguish he felt then was mostly a reflection of the rest of the Filidic order’s grief, a palpable sorrow that was raging all around him. He had not been able to understand, then or now, why her gruesome fight was not to live, but to die.

Khaddyr worked tirelessly to save her, to keep her on this side of the Gate of Life, but in the end she succumbed to wounds that should never have been mortal. Ashe had been but a young boy at the time, and had watched, devastated, as Khaddyr had bowed his head over the woman’s body, then collapsed, weeping.

He could still feel the comforting grip of his father’s hand on his shoulder, Llauron’s voice speaking in his ear, as it did now in his memory.

She wanted logo, Gwydion. She did not wish to remain in this life any longer, and took the earliest excuse it offered her to leave.

Why’? he had asked as the Filid priests gently led Khaddyr away. He stared at the corpse’s alabaster face, wreathed in the death grimace of one who had lost a fierce battle.

Llauron’s grip had tightened slightly; then his arm slid around Gwydion’s shoulder. Longevity that borders on immortality is as much a curse as a blessing, my boy, maybe even more so. She may appear youthful, but only because she was a young woman when she came to this new land. She left her heart behind in Serendair, a homeland that was rich in magic. After she left, both her heart and her home came to rest, silent, beneath the waves of the sea; she lost much in the passage as well. She has lived half again a thousand years, bearing witness to much suffering in that time, none greater than her own. Now finally she is where she has wanted to be all along.

Why does she look so unhappy, then, Father? he had asked, staring at the contorted features, the furrows of pain frozen forever on her otherwise-beautiful face, her glassy eyes blindly reflecting the filtered light of the sun above the canopy of leaves.

It was a grim battle. It cost her dearly to leave this life behind.

But why?

The hand had patted his shoulder roughly, then released him. Because she was a Cymrian, as are we. Time holds on to us all, Gwydion. Khaddyr is a compassionate man, and a great healer, but he cannot see the mortal wound within Talthea that has only festered with the passage of the centuries, because he is not Cymrian. He, like all mortal men subject to the whims of Time, struggles to stave off death as long as possible, because he does not know it for the blessing it sometimes can be. Now come, it is time to return to your lessons. For you, and for me, Time goes on.

Ashe shook off the memory; it had come to him, stronger than it should have, with a clarity that belied ordinary recall, an almost tangible image. The scent of the funeral pyre, the grip of his father’s hand, the taste of bitter bile that had been in his mouth as he watched Talthea die—all the sensations that had been part of the experience were with him again. He blinked to clear his eyes of the childish tears that had welled in them, as they had a century before.

He wasn’t remembering the moment. He was reliving it.

A surge of heat on his hand shot up his forearm, making the muscles contract slightly as the power traveled up to his brain. Each tiny nerve in his fingers winced as the Patriarch’s ring hummed, imparting wisdom from ages past. Ashe tightened the grip with which his knees were holding on to the gelding, bracing himself to receive the surge of enlightenment from the ancient artifact.

As though being slapped and enfolded in the swell of an ocean wave, the knowledge wrapped around him, permeating his awareness. Silver sparks brightened the air before Ashe’s eyes, then illuminated a glistening path between his mind and Shrike, lying in grimacing semiconsciousness before him. His mind expanded, and he understood, at least partially, what the ring was trying to tell him.

The intense clarity of the memory was somehow connected to the man before him in the saddle.

Ashe looked down into Shrike’s face, watching him wince at the jolts and lurches in the rough forest road. There seemed a flicker of fear there as well, the aspect of a man who did not yet wish to pass through Life’s gate. It was all Ashe needed to spur him faster to find his uncle, a man he had seen rarely in life, and never since his all-but-death.

Time holds on to us all, Gwydion.

His thoughts remained with Shrike as his eyes returned to the road. May it bold on to you just a little longer, Shrike, he thought.

The wind picked up at sunset, a biting chill that penetrated the blankets within which he had wrapped the unconscious man. Ashe could feel the onset of the tremors even before Shrike began shivering violently. Against his will he finally had to concede that Shrike needed warmth and rest he was not getting, and might die without it.

He slowed the gelding to a walk and a gentle halt, then dismounted and hauled the ancient Cymrian’s body off its back, allowing the animal to wander away and stretch. A bower of large mondrian bushes made a suitable shelter from the wind; they alone among fruit-bearing branches native to the western forests were resistant to the flames of the fire he would need to build. Ashe settled Shrike into a soft snowbank beneath his cache of trail blankets and began to gather fuel.

Later, once the fire caught, he found himself staring into it as if entranced. The crackling flames brought a warmth and light to the frozen darkness that reminded him painfully of Rhapsody. She was never far from his thoughts as it was; now, alone in the shelter of brambles save for the unconscious Cymrian and the howling wind, she came to him again in the fire’s glow, smiling as she had in the light of their campfires when first they had traveled overland together. In the loneliest of times his mind always returned to thoughts of their journey to find the dragon Elynsynos. He had fallen ever more deeply in love with her as they traveled together through a land wakening into the sweetest spring in his memory.

Ashe shook his head, trying to dispel the thought. If he allowed himself to muse about her for more than a moment the emptiness would come back, haunting him in the depths of barren winter, the agonizing knowledge that when her memories were her own, she had consented to be his wife, had forgiven him the duplicity for which he could not forgive himself.

Now her memories were no longer her own. And by his own doing she was lost to him. It was more than he could bear to think about and still remain sane.

Shrike moaned in his sleep, snapping Ashe from his painful reverie. He uncapped his waterskin and held it to the wounded man’s lips, supporting his head as he drank weakly. As he recapped the skin he felt a distant prickle on his skin, an infinitesimal hum that felt at once alien and familiar.

He had caught a taste, a breath, of Anborn on the wind.

The once-Lord Marshal of the Cymrians was miles away still, but near enough for the dragon to sense. His was a vibrational signature heavy with power and threat. Ashe exhaled deeply, his breath forming evanescent clouds of steamy vapor that lingered for a moment in the darkness and firelight, then vanished on the wind.

“Hold a little while longer, Grandfather,” he said softly to Shrike, using the Cymrian term of respect accorded to elders in Serendair long ago. “You shall be back with your fellows and your commander ere dawn.” tangy scent of burning hickory cinders filled Ashe’s nose as the last vestige of light left the sky. To any other nose it would have been impossible to discern, miles away, but the senses of the dragon were keen enough to detect even infinitesimal changes on the wind or in the earth, and so he closed his eyes and followed the odor to its genesis.

Through the earth he could feel the source of warmth that had spawned the crisp scent, small but intense flames burning unsteadily in the winter wind. Torches, he mused. There must be a small hamlet or town deep within these woods. He would undoubtedly find Anborn there.

As if reading his mind, the unconscious Cymrian stirred. Shrike’s body shuddered as he came awake. Ashe patted his shoulder reassuringly as the man’s eyes opened, shot with blood from his injuries, the irises black and gleaming in the fire’s light.

“Rest easy, Grandfather,” he said in the Old Cymrian tongue. Shrike’s bloody eyes opened wider.

“Who are you?” he rasped.

“Your protector, for the moment,” Ashe replied, glancing behind him into the dark sheets of snow undulating on the stinging wind. “Your escort shortly. You asked me to bring you to Anborn. We are not far from him, I believe.”

Shrike blinked rapidly, as if fending off the falling snow with his eyelids. “Who are you?” he repeated weakly.

“Does it matter?”

The ancient Cymrian struggled to sit up beneath his blankets and managed to raise himself, unaided, against the rotten trunk of a fallen tree. “Yes, it does,” he muttered testily. “Not to me, but it will to Anborn. And to you, if you wish recompense from me.”

Ashe chuckled. “I’ve asked none such.”

Shrike closed his eyes. “Then you’re a fool, and deserve none such.” A flash of pain wrinkled his face. “I must have offended the All-God more than I had imagined, that he would curse me to spend my last hours in the company of a coward who hides both his face and his name.” He lapsed back into weary silence.

-

The wintry air grew dry as the dragon bristled at the insult. Ashe took a deep breath and expelled it slowly, willing himself to be calm as his face flushed hot beneath the hood of his reviled mist cloak.

The Cymrian’s words had struck deep. He knew that those who had suffered at the hands of F’dor would resent anyone who seemed to hide his identity, since that was the demon’s stock-in-trade. More, to be named a coward by one who had witnessed the Cataclysm, had survived the War and all that had followed it, rang truer than he could bear. He was whole now. Even if Shrike was the demon’s host himself, there was no longer any reason to hide. He reached up and took down his hood.

The light of the metallic curls of his hair, shining copper-gold in the fire’s glow, reflected off the ancient man’s face. Shrike felt the light and opened his tattered eyes again. The astonishment in them, tinged with horror, reflected back at Ashe.

“Impossible,” Shrike murmured. His face grew even paler.

Ashe smiled, and reached into the pocket of his cloak. He drew forth a small pouch, loosened the drawstring, and shook something small out into his hand. It caught the light of the fire in the same manner his hair had. He held it up before Shrike’s eyes. It was a thirteen-sided coin, struck in copper, oddly shaped.

“Do you remember this?” he asked. “You gave it to me years ago, when I was just a lad, to jolly me out of my boredom on a Day of Convening.”

The ancient man craned his neck with great effort, then collapsed back against the tree trunk again. “I remember.” He pulled the rough blanket up over his shoulder with fingers that trembled. “I can recall each time I have beheld you, Lord Gwydion, because it gave me endless joy to do so. Each time—I—looked at you I saw your grandfather, Gwylliam, at his—noblest, your grandmother, Anwyn, at her most wise. You were our hope, Gwydion, the promise—of—a brighter future for a war-torn people. Our solace. Your death was the end of hope for me—and for all the Cymrians.” The strain of speech overwhelmed him, and Shrike coughed, then went silent.

“Forgive me, Grandfather,” Ashe said softly. “I have carried the knowledge of the injury my deception has caused my family and friends. I regret any pain it has caused you as well.”

Shrike coughed again, this time more violently. “Why, then?”

“It was not of my doing, at first. Then it was out of necessity. I cannot explain it past that. But you are right; to continue to hide now is cowardly. I will do it no more.”

Shrike smiled wanly. “You intend to remove the shield from your face, then?”

Ashe smiled in turn, and rested his forearms on his knees. “When it suits me.”

“Does it suit you now?”

Ashe laughed. “Can you see me?”

The ancient man snorted with annoyance and pain. “Bugger you for toying with me in my last moments. Are you willing to stand in the sight of Time, and let your name be on the wind, or not?”

Ashe’s face grew solemn, and his dragonesque pupils contracted. “Yes,” he said.

Shrike inched up a little higher against the tree and smiled. “Then I have recompense to offer you after all, Lord Gwydion.”