Brothers of the Wind

by Tad Williams

  But I have told the story as though I was in Asu’a with my master every moment, and that leaves out the errand I undertook for the Protector and the Sa’onsera.

  * * *

  • • •

  During the Nightingale Moon, when we had been back in Asu’a for some time, Hakatri’s parents summoned me to their chambers. Lord Iyu’unigato was obviously distraught: he stood at the window, staring down onto the waters of Landfall Bay, but Lady Amerasu greeted me with gracious kindness and served me a cup of wine with her own hands.

  “Sit down, Armiger Pamon,” she said. “We thank you for coming to us.”

  “Ask him about our son,” Iyu’unigato said from the window, but did not turn to look at me. The Protector was tall and usually straight-backed, but he clutched the windowsill as if he might fall without it. “Ask him.”

  “I beg pardon, my lord and lady,” I said, “but surely you have had the entire tale by now. What can a mere servant tell you about your son’s injuries or our battle with the worm that you have not heard a dozen times already from Lord Ineluki?”

  Amerasu gently shook her head. “We do not want to ask you about Hakatri, faithful Pamon. I have spent much time with him, and when he was able to talk, he has told me all he remembers. It is our younger son whose thoughts concern us. We know of Ineluki’s oath, of course, and what came from it. But since returning he scarcely speaks to us, or to his close friend, Lady Nidreyu. We cannot but wonder whether something else happened during this fateful journey that we have not been told. Why should our younger son treat us like strangers?” She spread her hands in a gesture of honest helplessness and my heart flew toward her. She must have felt that she had lost two sons at once.

  “I do not pretend to understand Lord Ineluki,” I said slowly. “But since it is you who ask me, S’hue and S’huesa, I will tell you what I think.” I took a breath. “He is weighed down by his shame. He regretted his oath the moment it was spoken, but could not let himself unmake it—”

  “Could not?” Iyu’unigato turned from the window, his handsome, spare features made almost unrecognizable by unhappiness and confusion. “Would not. And now all of Year-Dancing Clan will suffer for it.”

  I had never seen the Protector so out of temper, and I was startled into silence.

  Amerasu looked at her husband with sympathy before turning back to me. “Do not think of us as anything but a mother and a father, frightened for their children, Armiger Pamon. We understand that Ineluki is furious with himself as well as ashamed, but we sense an even greater unhappiness in him, one that threatens to consume him. Do you know anything of that? Did he speak of it to you?”

  “Ineluki has conceived a hatred for the Hernsmen, my lady—that may be what you sense. He blames the mortals for failing his brother, for fleeing when the dragon came down on us.”

  “Mortals,” said Iyu’unigato, and his voice had a strange, despairing sound. “Always it comes back to the mortals!”

  I did not understand what he meant and so I stayed silent.

  “It is true that the Sunset Children seem to be woven through many of our most fateful times in this land, husband,” Amerasu said carefully. “Whether that is because of the mortals themselves or what they bring out in us remains to be seen. But Utuk’ku and the Hikeda’ya have already made up their minds that mortal men are our enemies. I can see nothing good coming from that in days ahead.”

  I was disturbed to be given such an intimate view of the masters of Asu’a, and still uncertain about where the boundaries lay in this odd new world, but Amerasu’s words had brought something to my mind. “Forgive me if I speak out of my place, my lord and lady,” I said, “but something has been troubling me, and this seems like the time to speak of it. The Hikeda’ya healer Jikkyo is much with my master, often whispering in his ear, yet he always falls silent when I enter the room.”

  “It is good of you to tell us,” said Amerasu, “but do not fear. Hakatri is too wise to give much credence to the words of Utuk’ku’s conjuror, whatever those words might be.”

  She was right, as it turned out, but what was true for one of her sons was not so true for the other.

  One more surprise awaited me. It seemed the audience had ended, so I bowed as if to leave, but Iyu’unigato said, “Hold. There is another reason we called you here, Armiger.”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “We have heard about our sons’ visit to Xaniko, the Exile of Nakkiga, and the part his advice played in the killing of Hidohebhi. We have heard that The Exile too was burned by the Snareworm when he destroyed that menace many Great Years ago.”

  “Yes, Protector. One of Xaniko’s hands is badly damaged.”

  “Go back to him. Give him this from me.” Iyu’unigato took one of his rings from his finger, a polished circle of witchwood carved to look like a twining rosebush, each thorn a shining chip of garnet. “This ring once belonged to Initri, Jenjiyana’s mate. Tell Lord Xaniko I send it as a gift, and ask him to come to us in Asu’a, where he will be received with all honor. Tell him of our son’s suffering. Ask him to come and tell us all that he knows about dragon’s blood.”

  I took the ring, awed and more than a little worried to have been entrusted with such a hallowed thing. Initri, husband of Jenjiyana the Nightingale, had been the Protector of Tumet’ai when that was still the first city of my master’s people, before the ice took it.

  “I will do as you ask, my lord,” I said. “But I fear the Exile will not come. He struck me as a very stubborn—”

  “Enough. It is not your place to make predictions.” Iyu’unigato sounded weary and impatient. He did not even look at me but stared at his own empty hands. “If you love your master as truly as you claim, convince Xaniko to come to us. The Exile has long been unwelcome in the cities of both his people and our own. Tell him that if he will come to aid us, those days are ended and he will be welcomed among the Zida’ya for the rest of his life.”

  I confess I was taken aback by the Protector seeming to question my feelings for my master, a love and loyalty that had been the center of my life nearly as long as I could remember. It must have showed on my face, because Amerasu spoke up.

  “Do as the Protector bids you, faithful Pamon,” she said. “It can do no harm and might do much good.”

  Except to me, I thought fretfully. I will be separated from my master at a time when he is most in danger. But I only bowed again—what else could I do?—and said that I would go at once. I made my way from their chambers even more distraught than I had entered it, and barely heard Amerasu’s kind words of parting.

  When I went to my master’s chamber to say farewell, Hakatri was deeply asleep and did not know I was present. Pale, blind Jikkyo was there, as he so often was, and his acolyte Ommu held a steaming cup with the remains of the sleeping draught they had just given him.

  “Do not worry, little changeling,” the Singer told me in a voice like a cracked flute. “We will take excellent care of your master—you may rely on that.”

  The silent, unblinking figure beside him nodded.

  * * *

  • • •

  My master, of course, could not ride any of his horses after the battle against the dragon, so I decided that I would take his charger Frostmane to Ravensperch. As I put the saddle on him, I had a moment of sadness remembering poor Seafoam, whose bones still moldered in Serpent’s Vale. Amerasu and Iyu’unigato had sent a company to the valley to recover the bodies of the Zida’ya like Yohe, who had been killed by the dragon in our first encounter, but they were not bringing back Seafoam or the other horses, which saddened me. I also mourned for the mare in a smaller, more selfish way: Frostmane was a proud and difficult steed, and never behaved as well for me as he did for my master.

  I rode for many days until I again reached the northern end of the Sunstep range and the looming shadow of the Beacon, then guided Frostmane onto the
steeply climbing track once more. It had been only the turning of a few moons since I had been there, but so much had changed that my first visit seemed almost a dream.

  When I reached high Ravensperch the mortal guards came out to survey me with the same slightly mystified air as on the first visit, but they opened the gates and admitted me.

  Lady Ona met me in the dark entrance hall. Only a few torches burned, and there were more shadows than patches of light. After having spent time back in Asu’a I could not help being struck by the gloominess of the place. Lord Xaniko was Hikeda’ya, of course, and needed little in the way of illumination, so I wondered whether the darkness of their great house was meant to soothe his homesickness for the stony deeps of Nakkiga.

  Ona smiled to see me, and I was truly glad to see her face. “Welcome back, Armiger,” she said as I bowed. “We did not expect to see you again so soon, but it is a pleasure to have you here.”

  “You are kind, my lady. I hope you and your husband are well—and Lady Sholi, too, of course. I bring a message for Xaniko from the lady and lord of Asu’a themselves.”

  She nodded. “We shall make certain to tell him. In the meantime, let us give you something to drink and eat after your long ride.”

  We sat together at the long refectory table in the hall, side by side and alone except for the silent guards by the door. As I ate bread and cheese and cold meat, Lady Ona sipped on a cup of mead. “I have never become entirely used to the taste of this,” she said, “but it is a comfort on cold nights, and it is hard to get good wine up the mountain. We are always running out. I miss the ease of the old days.”

  “Where were you raised, my lady?”

  “In Da-Yoshoga, by the sea, just like my dear Sholi.” She patted my arm. “That is where I met Lord Xaniko, too, but that is a very long story. I will tell it to you some other time if you wish, but not when you have just arrived and must be weary.”

  Other than a few silent mortal servants moving through the shadows like phantoms, we seemed to be the only people in the castle. “Will his lordship join us?”

  “Not tonight,” she said. “He is in one of his deep moods.”

  I asked the question that had been in my mind since long before I had seen the castle’s walls again. “And Lady Sholi? Is she still staying with you?”

  She smiled as if she had been expecting my question. “She is, Kes. She has already gone to bed for the night, but she sent her greetings. You will see her tomorrow.” Lady Ona gave me a long, searching look that made me a little uncomfortable. “Have you considered the things we spoke about?”

  “Which things, my lady?” I asked, though I thought I knew perfectly well what she meant. “We conversed on many subjects when my master and his brother were guests here.”

  “Ah, yes, your poor master.” She shook her head. “We do not receive much in the way of goods, but we do get the odd bit of news. I was so very sorry to hear what happened.”

  What happened seemed utterly inadequate to describe that dreadful day, a day I will remember until my last breath. “He lives,” I said. “But he still suffers. In truth, that is why I am here—to ask your husband’s help.”

  Her face was troubled. “As I guessed. Although I had half-hoped you had come back just to see Sholi and me. As I told you, we do not have many guests, especially of my own people—our people.”

  And there it hung, the very subject I had hoped to avoid, not because it was meaningless or offensive to me, but because I simply did not know how to respond. “I remember, Lady Ona. And I remember the things you said. I still feel shame that I cannot speak the language of our people and that I do not know more about their history.”

  “You say it as if your own ancestors were something foreign to you, Kes, lost along with the Garden, but the Dreaming Sea is still as much a part of you as your blood and your bones, and is for all of us Tinukeda’ya.”

  Her words set a flame alight inside me, small at first but soon to grow. When I was small, my mother had spoken of the Dreaming Sea, though I could not remember all her words. After she died, I asked my father what this memory meant, but he had forbidden me to speak of it.

  “What does that mean, my lady, when you say this Dreaming Sea is a part of me? Because this is not the first time I have heard of it, though I remember almost nothing.”

  She looked at me in honest surprise. “It is where we came from, Kes. Why do you think your masters call us Ocean Children? Our kind were born from that sea, back in the Garden.”

  Born from the sea? I was confused. Had my mother believed this too? “But I was not raised to know any of this, my lady. The truth is, I was taught almost nothing about those . . . about our people, except that we came from the Garden on the Eight Ships, and service is our honor and duty.”

  “Service to our Zida’ya—and Hikeda’ya—masters, you mean.”

  I shrugged. “That is the world into which I was born, my lady. It is the world in which I still live—and will always live. And my master has treated me well.”

  She swirled a little of her drink around in her mouth. “I love honey,” she said abruptly. “Why is it that mead always tastes somewhat strange?” She swallowed the last of it and set down her cup. “Now that you’ve had food, would you like me to show you to your room?”

  I would have thought a servant would do that, and perhaps my surprise showed on my face. “You are very kind, my lady.”

  She waved a negligent hand. “It is a real gift to have visitors, Kes, believe me. As I have said before, I chose my husband and this life willingly and would not undo it, but it can be hard. Before Sholi came to stay with me I would often wander this house feeling like a ghost.” She smiled at her own lugubrious words. “Do not worry—I will not keep you up talking.”

  When she brought me to the doorway of my room, she said something strange. “When you see my husband, please try to be kind, Kes. This has all been very hard for him.”

  I took the lamp from her and went in, but even after I sank into the comfort of a clean bed, I spent no little time trying to puzzle out her words before I finally fell asleep.

  * * *

  • • •

  Lady Sholi came down for the morning meal wearing a beautifully embroidered wool robe and slippers made of rabbit fur. I confess that I was amused by the informality of the household—I could not imagine seeing the Sa’onsera or her husband Iyu’unigato in their nightwear—but was very pleased to see Sholi. Her fair hair was lifted and gathered atop her head and held by silver pins, though a few curls had already escaped to dangle beside her cheeks.

  “Armiger, it is good to see you again,” she said as I bowed.

  “And I can truly say the same, Lady Sholi.” I had thought of her often in the days since we had first met, especially during the ride from Asu’a. I felt I might be looking at her more than I should, so I turned quickly to Lady Ona. “Will your husband join us?”

  She shook her head. “No, my friend—he is still occupied. But he will see you later and hear your embassy. Until then, I fear you must make do with only the two of us for company.”

  She jested, of course. The two of them were excellent companions, and for a little while, as we ate bread and honey and some splendid berries I had not tasted before, I almost forgot the sad errand that had brought me. Sholi told funny stories about the proud Niskie families of Goblin Rock, and Lady Ona asked me questions about life in Asu’a and about its rulers.

  “They say that there is no more beautiful city in all the world than Asu’a the Eastward-Looking,” she said. “I wish I could see it for myself.”

  “It is the most beautiful place that I have ever seen. That I can truly say, my lady. And you would be a welcome guest there, I feel sure. The masters of Asu’a have promised to honor your husband if he helps Lord Hakatri.”

  Again her smile had more sorrow than joy in it. “I do not think that l
ikely, Kes, but it is a lovely thought.”

  After we had eaten, Lady Ona led us out to the balcony. The sun was shining and the mountainside below us was carpeted with new grass and bursting with wildflowers. The foothills around the mountain’s base glimmered with blossoming hawthorn, the pale flowers like a sprinkling of unseasonable snow. Grazing sheep wandered everywhere, like clouds that had settled to earth. Ona called one of her mortal servants to bring more honey-mead and we three drank together, watching the shadows of clouds slide across the meadows.

  “It is very peaceful here,” I said. For the first time in longer than I could remember the drumbeat of duty had quieted a little inside me, and I felt a small contentment.

  “Peaceful, yes,” said the lady of the house. “But it is cold in the winter, and with so few in the household I sometimes feel lonely, as you have already heard me say.”

  “Lonely? With me here to amuse you?” said Sholi in mock annoyance. “Some people are never satisfied.”

  Ona laughed and embraced her. “You are the best of all companions, my dear one. But you know what I mean.”

  Sholi gave her friend a last squeeze. “Yes, of course.” She turned to me, bright eyes flashing. “We often talk about how nice it would be to receive more visitors.”

  I wondered again if I might be nothing more than a diversion; if they would have been just as friendly and forthcoming to any visitor. That struck me as an unworthy thought, so I did my best to push it away and enjoy the sunshine and the company instead. It almost seemed, though, that my fleeting worry had somehow changed the balance of the day, because Lady Ona suddenly grew more serious.

  “It is sad there are so few of our folk around,” she said. “I mean those of our kind, who can think and act for themselves. Nakkiga is full of the other kind, the ones who were shaped for their labor, bred to be little more than animals.”