before Mena, unsteady on his feet a moment, hair and beard splattered with snow, he said, “I say it will help us, Princess. I say it will. Next, I’ll teach you to make snow caves. Warmer than your tents. There’s so much to teach you, and I will do it!” He bounded off, scooping up fresh handfuls of snow and tossing them as he did.
Mena understood it then. The mock battle. The snow. The apparent futility of it. Yes, there was a lesson in all that, and she had learned it. But also there was a joy in life to be had, even in the face of absurd obstacles. Haleeven Mein had chosen to remind them of that.
Perrin said, “I’ll still be packing my tents when we march. Should I call for them to-”
Mena did not so much throw the handful of snow at him as spoon it on to his clean-shaven face. Stunned, he lost his balance and pinwheeled backward, feet stuck fast in the snow. Seeing the look first of surprise and then of mirth on his face, Mena burst into fits of laughter.
She was still laughing when the shouts reached her. The sound had an edge to it different from anything they had done that day. Casting about, she saw soldiers running with real alarm. Others stared at the sky, shading their eyes and pointing. The archers fumbled in their supplies. They were looking, she realized, for real arrows.
A shadow passed over her, and she knew just what had alarmed them all. She felt the presence rush into her mind so suddenly that it overwhelmed everything else. Elya! Spotting her lean, wide wingspan through eyes squinted against the glare, she shouted, “No! Don’t shoot at her! It’s Elya!”
Perrin picked up Mena’s order and spread it. When she was sure that the men were calm enough, Mena sent a welcome up to Elya. She envisioned her descending to the snowy battlefield, landing in a space cleared just in front of Mena. She saw her wings spread wide and beautiful, translucent with the sun’s light shining through them as she touched down as softly as a songbird landing on a branch, though infinitely more magnificent. She sent her the message that she could roll tight her wings and rest them from her long journey, and she showed her in images that Mena would rush to embrace her the moment she could.
That was exactly what happened. Met with a collective inhalation of breath from soldiers that had never seen her, Elya touched down. Mena buried her face in the creature’s soft plumage, inhaling the sweet scent of her. The citrus smell flooded her with memories of their first days together in Talay. Golden, warm days spent walking the wind-touched grassy hills, just the two of them falling in love with each other.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Mena whispered. “You shouldn’t be here.”
In answer, Elya’s breast hummed, a soft vibration that felt like nothing else in the world. Warmth and energy and life and love all captured in the thrum of the whole of her body. Mena gave herself over to it. She tried not to hear Perrin say that he had no idea Elya was so impressive a creature. She pressed her face deeper when Edell said that with this mount, the princess could own the sky and know exactly what the Auldek were doing without them ever being the wiser. She tightened her grip when Bledas mentioned that the Auldek may also have mounted riders, and squeezed with her fingers when Perrin came back with, “Yes, they might. But they won’t be like Elya. Did you see her wings?”
No, Mena thought, this is not for her. War is not for her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
I think I have names for the hounds,” Dariel said.
“What?” Birke lay beside him, the two of them staring at the stars, absurdly bright and numerous above them. “More colors? Flowers?”
Dariel nudged him with an elbow. He held a few of the odd, slimy plee-berries in his mouth, rolling them around on his tongue. He swallowed them and said, “When I was young, my father used to tell us stories. There was one about Bashar and Cashen.”
“The two cousins?”
“No, brothers. They were brothers.”
Birke made a skeptical noise low in his throat. “Bashar and Cashen were cousins. Bashar could throw lightning bolts, and Cashen was jealous of it. He roared every time Bashar showed off. He pounded on the earth and grumbled.”
Dariel said, “That’s not the way we tell it.”
“How does your way start?”
“Bashar and Cashen were two brothers. They had a great fight over power.”
“That would make more sense.”
“I always remembered that story. It scared me. I didn’t want to think of brothers fighting-not with the way I loved my brother. Anyway, later Aliver told me that the Santoth had explained that tale differently. He said Bashar and Cashen were not brothers. They were tribes, whole races of people. The friction between them was that of a world turning on itself. Once, though, they had been close. And they could be again. That’s what Aliver told me.”
Birke cleared his throat. “So Bashar and Cashen. Brothers or tribes or cousins… and now hounds?”
“That’s what I was thinking.”
“Better than Scarlet and Blue, or whatever colors you were thinking of naming them.” Dariel reached over and jabbed him in the ribs with a finger. The motion brought one pup’s attention. Cashen, the reddish one, scurried between them, plopped his butt down, and sat waiting for something interesting to happen.
“Tell me your tale,” Birke said.
“Which version?”
“Both. Tell me both. I’ll judge them for myself.”
Dariel did so as best he could, hearing his father’s voice and taking on the cadence of it. He told both stories, and did not mind losing sleep that night. Tomorrow they would reach the Sky Isle. He would finally meet Yoen and the elders. For some reason, he felt he needed to be awake for as long as he could. He needed to sort through all the things Na Gamen had told him.
D ariel, I’ve been waiting for you, the Watcher said. At first I thought it might be a short wait. I thought our sins could not go long without punishment. And then, later, I began to doubt that you would come. There was no Giver, after all. Why should there be justice? There isn’t, but all things do come to pass. Just never in the ways that we imagine.
Yes, Dariel thought. They sat side by side in a dark, rectangular room now. The wall in front of them was blank. The floor bare, smooth stone. A river of air rushed from one side of the room to the other. Had Dariel to name the purpose of the room, he would have failed. Had they needed to speak words, they would have had to yell. Because they spoke directly to each other’s minds they conversed despite the roar of the air and the flapping of their garments. Na Gamen sat as if he did not notice it all. Dariel did the same, and it was almost true.
I want you to know how I came to be here. Why I waited for you. Look.
A magnificent palace appeared on the wall before them. Dariel saw it from high above, dizzying, as if he were somehow a bird on the wing. It lay like a lace scarf draped in serpentine curves across the high reaches of one of the barrier islands. So it looked from a distance. Closer, it was a flowing, molten structure similar to the Sky Mount, only sumptuous and alive in a way the mount was not. Gardens of trees sculpted by the wind into fantastic, eerie shapes. Fishponds and waterfalls and dining terraces cut into improbable promontories, with views of the sea and the other barrier isles, many with similar estates.
See this? This was my home for several hundred years. I adored it. I built it from nothing, first by my own labor, soon by the labor of others. I made something of a rock that had never known human habitation. I was proud. And I was angry. I hated Tinhadin as fiercely as any among us. I jumped at the opportunity to punish his people. For many years it was I who sorted the spirits that eat death. Do you know what that means?
No.
I chose which children would go into the soul catcher. Not all souls are strong enough for it. Some have a greater force within them than others. I learned to sense it. That became my work. I decided which children would give their lives in labor, and which would give their lives through the gift of the soul energy. I was good at this work, and I did horrible things because of it.
The things he did Dariel saw and felt, though for a time he did not hear the Watcher’s voice in his head. It was not just that the children were scared seven- and eight-year-olds, who had been stolen from their homes and
