seen. Dried blood and dirt still smeared his face and caked his hair. Amira used a little water and the hem of her cloak to clean it off. Amira looked down on the face and laughed sadly. 'A ghost of fire.' 'What?' said Gyaidun. 'The first time I saw him,' she said, 'I was wounded. Half dead, more likely. And delirious. I woke with him bending over me, chanting beside the fire. My first thought was, 'A ghost of fire.' Looking at him now, I see no ghost, no fire.'
Both warriors exchanged a look and scowled, probably thinking it some subtlety of Common that they didn't understand. 'Our people believe the body is only a home for our ghost,' said Lendri, 'and our word for 'ghost' is uskeche.' 'Uskeche?' 'It means fire,' said Gyaidun. Amira looked down at the belkagen's face. There was no fire there. Not anymore. Only a vague remembrance of it, like cold ashes. 'I…' said Amira, and found tears welling in her eyes. 'I never thought… it would be him. Going after my son, chasing his captors, I thought I might die. I half- expected you two to get yourselves killed, but I never thought… not him.' They stood in silence over the body a moment before Lendri spoke. 'I think he did.' 'What?' 'I have thought long about this,' said Lendri. 'All belkagen are given wisdom in Hro'nyewachu. It is said it is the source of much of their power. But Belkagen Kwarun once told me that his blessing was just as much a curse. 'The one burden no warrior should ever bear,' he told me.'
'What was it?' asked Amira. 'He never told me, but I think Hro'nyewachu showed him his own death. It is the one thing every warrior risks but the one thing he never knows. But I think the belkagen knew.' Gyaidun nodded, his eyes distant and a cold fire burning in them. 'Yes,' he said. 'On Arzhan Island, when he heard Amira's tale… she awoke a great fear in him. I think it may have been why he balked at first.' His face clouded, his nostrils flaring, and he looked away. 'I shamed him. And myself. I… should have-'
'No,' said Amira. 'No, I think you made him proud. He was afraid, yes.
Who wouldn't be? But you reminded him of courage and woke it in him. I only knew him a short time, but I think he was proud-very proud-of both of you.'
The Vil Adanrath built dozens of pyres, arranging them in a wide ring on the hilltop. Finding enough wood for so many had been no easy task, but the survivors had roamed many leagues and brought every scrap they could find. When that was not enough, they dug through the snow, cut the grass beneath, and bundled it into tight sheaves. The heavy snowfall-already melting with the return of autumn weather-made everything damp, but the Vil Adanrath had lived in the Wastes for many generations, and building fires in the snowfields was the least of their skills. The belkagen's pyre was the tallest of all, a waist-high bed of grass and sticks that stood in the middle of the great ring of dead Vil Adanrath. The belkagen lay upon it, his staff beside him. The sun touched the rim of the world in the west, and a great howling filled the air. The surviving Vil Adanrath, elves and wolves, stood just outside the ring of pyres. Each stood over a fallen comrade, brother, sister, or lover. Some few of the older elves stood over the body of one of their adult children. All stood honor's distance away from the hrayeket, Lendri and Gyaidun, who stood witness over the belkagen. Amira had chosen to stay with them, as had Jalan and Erun.
'It is time, Lady Amira,' said Lendri. 'The sun sets, and the song of the people will sing their brothers home.' Amira raised her staff, the gift of Hro'nyewachu that the belkagen had named Karakhnir, and she spoke the words of power. Fire roared to life beneath the belkagen's body, flames the same color as the sunset consuming the shell of her friend. She forced herself to watch. The old elf's hair, the hoary gray mixed with glistening silver, lit at once, curling and blackening in bright, tiny blue flames that produced a thick, black smoke. The skin tightened, shriveled, and blackened. Amira could hear it sizzling. Bile rose in her throat, but she would not let herself look away. The old elf had risked his life for her and died protecting her son. She would not look away from his death. The flames quickened and soon she could see no more than a dark form amid the flames. Lendri half-spoke and half-chanted a long string of words in his own tongue.
When he was finished, Gyaidun translated for Amira and Jalan.
Flames of this world, bear our brother's flame to our ancestors.
Kwarun burned bright. His exile is ended, his rest assured.
The five of them stood in silence, watching the smoke in flames, then Lendri spoke again. 'Lady, someone must take fire to the omah nin, that the other pyres might be lit.' 'Me?' said Amira. 'Gyaidun and I, we are hrayeket. We cannot.' Amira tore her eyes away from the fire and looked to the omah nin, standing several dozen paces away over the body of his younger brother. Leren stood beside him. 'After all you did,' said Amira, 'risking your lives. Still he stands behind his honor'-she made no attempt to keep the bile from the last word-'rather than beside his firstborn.' 'Your ways are not our ways, Lady.' 'Indeed,' said Amira. 'Let the omah nin get his own damned fire.' Lendri scowled. Amira looked to Gyaidun and caught the flicker of a smile before the sternness returned to his face. 'Lady,' said Lendri. 'That is… most discourteous.' 'My ways are not his ways.'
'Lady-' 'I will take it.' Everyone turned to look at who had spoken.
Erun. He still bore the scars of his… ordeal. Amira felt stupid calling such torture an 'ordeal.' Monstrous, she had named it to Gyaidun. Blasphemous. Even those words seemed to fall short. Yet already the young man showed signs of recovery. Whatever being had come to him-no, Amira corrected herself-through him, much of that strength remained. Yes, his cheeks were still sunken like a corpse-far beyond the natural thinness he'd inherited from his mother's people-his bones showed under his skin, and much of his color had not yet returned, but there was a light in his eyes. Not burning, precisely. But smoldering. A glow of promise, perhaps, like the bright sky before sunrise. Looking at him now, standing next to his father, Amira thought it would be a wonder indeed to see what would happen when the sun fully rose in him. Erun stepped forward and pulled one of the larger sheaves out from the bottom of the pyre. Half of it was already well ablaze. He stood, his back straight, and looked to his father. 'My grandfather will take fire from me,' he said, and Amira heard a deeper meaning in his words. She watched him walk away, strength and confidence in his gait, and in that moment an image struck Amira-Arantar, wise and powerful, walking the steppes. She turned to Gyaidun and saw a dark look on his face. 'What is it?' she asked. 'What is what?' 'You look as if you just saw your own death.'
Gyaidun looked her in the eye. 'No. It…' 'What?' He returned his gaze to his son, walking without fear to the omah nin. 'Things happen quicker than I thought they would.' 'Things?' It hit Amira then that in the past day-the joy at being reunited with Jalan, the grief at finding the belkagen, funeral preparations, not to mention being tired beyond all rational thought-she had forgotten to ask Gyaidun exactly how he had turned up on the shore of the Great Ice Sea knowing what had to be done. Standing over the pyre of her friend, she remembered Gyaidun's argument with the belkagen, asking why he could not seek Hro'nyewachu if she knew something about Erun. 'You did it, didn't you?' she said. Even Lendri and Jalan turned to look at Gyaidun.
Durja, resting on Gyaidun's shoulder, squawked as his master looked down on all of them. His gaze raked over each of them, his jaw grinding, then he stared into the fire. 'You went to Hro'nyewachu' said Amira. 'Didn't you?' Still he said nothing. 'Rathla?' said Lendri, awe in his voice. 'Is this true?' Durja squawked again and flapped his wings but did not leave his master's shoulder. 'I had no choice,' said Gyaidun. 'You sought the Mother's Heart and lived?' said Lendri. 'How…?' 'You are not Vil Adanrath,' said Amira. 'The belkagen said-' 'I am athkaraye,' said Gyaidun. 'Human, yes, but the blood of the Vil Adanrath lives in me through Lendri.' He raised his right hand, opened it, and the gash showed plainly across his palm.
'And through Hlessa, and through Erun.' 'But the belkagen said you couldn't, said you hadn't studied the arcane or the ways of the gods, said-' 'The belkagen was one of the wisest I have ever known,' said Gyaidun. 'And I sometimes ill-treated him, to my shame. But he did not know everything.' 'What do you mean?' said Lendri. 'Hro'nyewachu,' said Gyaidun, 'she… she is a being of… need.' 'So said the belkagen. Yes.' 'A mother's need,' said Amira. 'That's what he said.
What the belkagen told me. 'Hro'nyewachu has a mother's heart.' He said I had a mother's need, and that our hearts would beat the same song.' Gyaidun looked back at his son, who had reached the omah nin and was presenting him with the fire. The Vil Adanrath chieftain stood tall and proud, almost rigid, but he took the fire. 'So how did you survive?' Lendri asked Gyaidun. 'I introduced her to a father's need.'
'At the shore,' said Amira, 'after you came back, you were covered in blood. Much of it your own.' Gyaidun shrugged. His wounds had been tended, but he still bore many new cuts and scrapes. 'It was not an easy… conversation. I…' 'What?' Gyaidun stared into the fire a long while before answering. 'I was blinded by grief, despair, anger.
Kehrareth we would say. I… I think I went there hoping she would kill me. At least grant me a warrior's death. I went with no sacrifice.' Lendri gasped. Amira remembered what the belkagen had told her-'Hro'nyewachu is… akai'ye. There is no good word in your tongue. Ancient. Primal. Tame blood will not sate her. She needs the blood of the wild.' 'The blood of the wild,' said Amira. 'She took your blood instead. As sacrifice.' Gyaidun flinched
