Frostfell_ The Wizards - Mark Sehestedt [60]
"Then you've given up hope?"
Gyaidun said nothing. Durja set to cawing again, and at the sound a sudden image, a memory, filled Amira's mind.
The field after battle. The sun gone in the west but an angry light still burning in the sky. The air thick with the buzzing of flies and the call of ravens. The stench was the worst. Blood she could handle. But in dying, stomachs were cut open, skulls split, bowels emptied, and spells burned both grass and flesh. For once Amira did not push the image away.
"Despair is for the dead," Amira said. "You are still alive, Yastehanye."
"As is your son," said Gyaidun, though there was no offer of comfort in his voice. Only bitterness. "What of my son?"
"I don't know. But if there is no hope for him, there is always vengeance."
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The Endless Wastes
No dreams-good or bad-troubled Jalan's sleep the night of the massacre of the Tuigan nomads. He slept beside the fire, but with no one to tend it, the fire was nothing but cold ashes by morning. And still Jalan slept. His mind and body wrung out by fear and exhaustion, he did not even turn in his sleep as the thing in the ash-gray cloak fled the coming dawn and buried itself under blankets and hides inside one of the Tuigan yurts. Most of the pale northerners and their wolf mounts slept, scattered throughout the carnage.
Around midday the high slate-colored canopy of clouds fell lower and thickened, deepening to the color of charcoal. The guard pacing near Jalan stopped and, smelling snow in the air, smiled.
Behind the tapestry of clouds, the first edge of the sun was setting in the west when the first spark of awareness stirred within Jalan. Not wakefulness, for his body still slept, his breath even, and his heart beating slow. But something deep within Jalan, something buried far beneath conscious thought, was waking up.
Shadows deepened in the camp, the last of the day's light gathering to a colorless glow in the west. Both wolves and their riders began to stir, the beasts blinking and yawning, the pale northerners kicking their blankets away and setting to packing.
Disturbed by the activity around him, Jalan moaned and woke, though he did not open his eyes. Why bother? He could feel the damp cold in the air, and even with his eyes closed he knew the day was over and they would soon be leaving. More than anything, he wished to fall back into the oblivion of sleep. Lying there hoping for sleep only strengthened his wakefulness, but with it his awareness sharpened and he noticed something. Still he felt hollow, as if the horror of the past few days and the crushed hope of being rescued only to be taken again had scraped his insides clean, but now… now floating in that emptiness was… something. He couldn't put a name to it. Not light exactly, nor warmth. But there was something very much alive inside him, both a part of him and separate.
Be not afraid. He remembered the words from the dream, the voice amidst the song.
Jalan focused his thought on that something within him and formed a single thought. Vyaidelon?
Nothing. No answer, no music, no voice. Still, it did not go away.
Night fell around him. Though he still lay with his eyes closed, Jalan sensed its coming-not the night, but the one who came with it. He was always there, that dark, cold thing, aware of him. Watching. Studying. But in the daylight, the awareness spread out, still there but stretched thin. With the coming of night it pressed upon him again, sharp as new frost.
Jalan, knowing he was coming, squeezed his eyes shut as tight as he could.
He heard the flap of the nearby yurt torn away, wrenched off its wood-frame hinge. Either by dread curiosity or reflex, Jalan started and his eyes opened. The thing in the ash-gray cloak stepped out and straightened to his full height. The air seemed to thicken and become brittle, and Jalan could sense the thing's