Thank the gods, he thought. If he made it home, Kiril could confirm Filip’s parents’ second-to-worst fear—that he, like his brother, had died of his wounds. They would be proud of him, and he would live in their memories as a brave warrior who had made the ultimate sacrifice for his country.
Somehow he would find a way to be something else.
“As you’re aware, Filip, each of our people possesses the magic and wisdom of their Guardian Spirit animal. That magic and wisdom combine to form that person’s Aspect.”
Filip gave an almost imperceptible nod, his gaze switching among the three men who sat across the garden table from him. Two of them seemed close in age, late thirties or early forties, with similar short dark hair. But one of these two, the man in the center, had a presence of self-assured leadership—maybe too self-assured, Filip thought. This was Galen, who supposedly held all the answers. The other older man, Tereus, hadn’t spoken yet. He looked as if he had spent many hours listening to Galen pontificate.
The third man could have been no older than Filip himself. His smooth blond hair grew past his shoulders, brushing against the braided horsehair fetish around his neck. Filip had lived here long enough to know that these people sheared their hair to mourn the death of a close family member. This young man, Bolan, was only the second or third Asermon Filip had seen without short hair.
When the men had first arrived that morning, Galen confirmed Kiril’s escape from Asermos. The rescue effort to bring back the Kalindon prisoners had depleted the Asermon police force of its best officers. Filip tried not to look as pleased as he felt.
“My Guardian Spirit is Hawk,” Galen now continued, touching his red-tipped feather fetish. “My magic includes the ability to accurately recall events and words spoken, thereby making me an ideal messenger, either among humans, or between humans and the Spirits.” He bowed his head at the last word. “I act as both a spiritual and political leader. My wisdom focuses on the discernment of others’ gifts, which is why I’m here today.”
Filip’s shoulders tensed at the thought of his own powers, which was the last subject he wanted to discuss. He turned to Tereus, glancing at the dingy white feather he wore. “What about you? What’s your Aspect, or whatever you call it?”
Tereus tilted his head with a humility that seemed more genuine than his companion’s. “I’m a Swan. I interpret dreams.”
“You make a living doing that?”
The man laughed, something he seemed to do often, judging by the creases around his mouth and the natural sparkle in his blue eyes. “Unfortunately, no. I have a farm where I breed wolfhounds and horses.”
Filip’s eyebrow twitched at the last word, and he looked away.
Galen leaned forward. “You have an affinity for horses?”
Filip stared at the stone paving next to his chair and felt his jaw tighten almost to the point of cramping. “I was a cavalry officer.”
Bolan gasped. “You rode horses into battle?”
He glanced up at him. “It’s an honor, reserved for the most intelligent men from the best families.”
“Couldn’t they get hurt?”
“Who?”
“The horses.”
“They wear armor, like us.”
“But they still get hurt, right? They still get killed.”
“Bolan, not now.” Galen held up a hand, clearly sensing that he was losing control of the conversation. He turned back to Filip. “I’ll get to the point. I believe that you have the Aspect of Horse.”
Filip’s lip curled. “What in the name of all the gods does that mean?”
“The Horse Spirit has chosen you, given you the ability to hear the meaning behind the voices of animals.”
A sensation cold as a knife blade trickled across the back of Filip’s neck. “How do you know this?”
“Bolan, also a Horse, is Zelia’s son. She knows the signs. The way you look at her dog, for instance.”
“I don’t look at her dog.”
“Exactly.” Bolan’s eyebrows pinched in sympathy. “Ignoring them doesn’t shut them up, does it?” He leaned in to speak in a conspiratorial whisper. “The birds are the worst.”
Filip’s eyes widened, then he looked at Galen. “So what good does it do me to know I have this Horse thing? The animals don’t understand when I talk back. I can’t even make them stop.”
Galen spread his hands on the table. “You’ll be able to return the communication when you enter the second phase.”
“Outstanding,” he replied, with a satisfying sarcasm. “How do I do that?”
“Before you can claim your first-phase powers, you must undertake the Bestowing.”
“But how do I reach the second phase?”
“You must father a child. Bolan recently became a second-phase Horse.” Bolan arched an eyebrow at Filip, a subtle boast of this proof of his virility. “He will help you learn to use your powers,” Galen said.
“Use them for what?”
Galen motioned for Tereus to speak. The man who called himself a Swan set his elbows on the table and pressed his fingertips together. “Zelia tells me you’re ready to leave the hospital. You’ll come back to be fitted for your prosthesis when it’s ready and when your leg is healed enough to—”
“It’s not a leg,” Filip snarled, “and it will never heal.”
“When your stitches are out, then. In the meantime, you need somewhere to live.”
Filip ground his teeth. Now he was a charity case—for the enemy, no less.
“As I mentioned,” Tereus said, “I have a farm with dogs and horses. I live there alone, and—”
“You call those horses?” Filip snorted. “Those tiny, fluffy creatures dragging carts down the street?” He ignored Bolan’s glare. “Where I come from, the horses stand tall and sleek. Their beauty inspires great works of art.”
“I know.” Tereus shrugged off Filip’s insults. “One of your horses lives at my farm.”
Filip’s jaw dropped.
Tereus continued. “Keleos, his master called him. Does that sound familiar?”
Filip’s jaw dropped farther. “The colonel’s stallion? How did you get it?”
Tereus waved his hand. “My daughter Rhia stole him, but that’s beside the point. As I was saying, I live alone and it’s difficult to handle all the farm chores myself. You can have room and board in exchange for helping with the animals.”
Filip looked away, turning over the options in his mind. At least he wouldn’t have to depend on handouts, and he could see Keleos, who had been off-limits to everyone but the colonel and his attaché. His fingertips tingled at the thought of touching the animal’s gilded hide.
Then his nonexistent left foot stabbed with pain.
“I can’t,” Filip said to Tereus. “Not with—” he gestured to his leg “—this.”
“I’m not asking you to do cartwheels. You’ll groom, feed and water the animals. And you can ride, even without the prosthesis.”
Filip looked up at him suddenly, trying to catch the lie in his eye. But Tereus’s gaze held no guile. “I can ride?”
“If you want. Though our style might be different from what you’re used to, and like you said, our ponies are—”
“Can I ride Keleos?” Filip heard the tone of his request, like that of a little boy pleading with his father. He cleared his throat. “That is, if he needs exercise, I could provide him with the sort of equitation to which he is accustomed.”
Tereus looked amused, but not in a patronizing way. “Of course you may ride him, though not to the exclusion of the other horses. Are you coming?”
Filip hesitated. His father would have wanted him to be practical, and the alternatives—staying at the hospital or wandering homeless—would humiliate him more. Perhaps he should bide his time in Asermos until a better option presented itself.
Yet he suspected their generosity. “What do you want in return?” he asked them.
“Information,” Galen said.
“I thought so.” He sat back in the chair and crossed his arms. “I won’t betray the land of my birth, whether it’s still my country or not.”
“I assure you it’s for defensive purposes only. We have no desire and no plan to attack the nation of Ilios.”
“You sent a band of warriors to my city.”
“To liberate the prisoners your brigade stole from Kalindos. A thousand soldiers, ransacking an undefended village of a hundred. Was this an honorable use of arms, in your opinion?”
Filip held the Hawk’s gaze for a long, silent moment. “No. It was unusually cruel, and unworthy of the uniforms they wear. My people are not so atrocious.”
“They’re not?” Galen leaned forward. “Prove it.”
09
With strength she hadn’t felt in weeks, Rhia ran across the forest floor into her father’s arms.
Tereus clutched her tight until she gasped for breath. “It feels like four years since you left home, instead of only four months.”
“It’s been a long summer.” She turned to Lycas as he dismounted the gray mare. “You actually came.”
“I couldn’t miss my little sister’s wedding.” Lycas lifted her high off the ground in a hug, then set her down. “I heard how hard Kalindons celebrate. I could use about a thousand drinks.”
“I knew Mali would drive you crazy.”
“Don’t start.” Lycas stepped back to examine her. “She’s half a month more pregnant than you, but she’s twice as fat.”
Rhia grinned and wagged her finger. “I’ll tell her you said that.”
“Do it, and I’ll stuff the words back in your mouth until you choke.”
“Children, play nice.” Tereus led the ponies farther into the village. “I’m not an expert, Rhia, but you do look small for four months pregnant. How do you feel?”
“Like I could climb Mount Beros in an hour.” She swung her arms as she walked, the crisp autumn air filling her with excess energy. After three months of plaguing her sleep, the voices of the dead had faded, even the vindictive Skaris. They hummed in the back of her consciousness, like an infectious tune, but no longer made her ill. “Finally no more headaches, dizziness, throwing up—although that’s probably more detail than you wanted.”
She stopped when she realized she was talking to herself.
Behind her, Tereus and Lycas had come to a halt, gaping at the network of tree houses above their heads.
“It’s incredible.” Lycas lowered his gaze to Rhia. “But so empty.”
Her face fell. For a few moments, her happiness at seeing her family again had overcome the daily dread of reality.
“Any word from the Asermon rescuers?” she asked.
Tereus shook his head sadly. “They left Velekos over two months ago,” he said. “The Hawk sent a message when they arrived in Leukos.”
“We heard. What about after that?”
“Nothing.” His lips turned down. “The Hawk has gone silent.”
Rhia’s stomach seemed to drop. “Dead?”
“Maybe not,” Lycas said. “She’d just gotten her third-phase powers, so that might cause a communication problem.”
“There’s another possibility.” Tereus jutted his jaw to the right. “Galen thinks our powers might diminish in that land, so the Velekon Hawk could just be muted.”
“Why would Galen think that?”
Tereus and Lycas exchanged a look. Her father said, “Let me tell you about Filip.”
They led the ponies to the new paddock and stable while Tereus explained. Rhia was intrigued to learn about the Descendant who had acquired his own Guardian Spirit after a short time in Asermos.
“If our magic fades in Descendant land,” she said, “does that mean the Spirits have no power there?” The idea worried Rhia. On the other hand, it was a more comforting explanation for the Hawk’s silence than her death.
“We don’t know yet,” Tereus answered, “and without sending more third-phase Hawks, which we don’t have, we have no way to test that theory. Filip has helped us in some ways, but I doubt he’ll ever become one of us. He refuses to discuss the Bestowing.”
They entered the paddock and tethered the ponies, replacing bridles with halters. “Tell her the bigger news,” Lycas said.
Tereus glared at his stepson. “I said we’d wait for the wedding so everyone can hear it at once.”
“What could be bigger news than the loss of the rescue party,” Rhia said, “or the fact that our powers might fade in Descendant lands?”
Tereus put a hand on her shoulder. “Forgive me, Rhia, but first I need to meet with the Kalindon Swans.”
She gasped. “Common dreams? A prophecy?” Her gaze darted between the two men. “Is it good? Bad? It’s bad, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s good.” Tereus gazed into the emptiness of Kalindos. “If it’s what I think it is, it’s exactly what our people need.”
The following morning, in front of more people than Marek had expected, he and Rhia were married. Kalindon weddings usually attracted few guests, which couldn’t be said for the feasts afterward, when most villagers would sidle up to the tables, pretending they had been there all along.
But today the ceremonial clearing was crowded with spectators, who whooped and wept when the bride and groom sealed their pact with a kiss. After the invasion and ensuing summer of struggle, the Kalindons needed to celebrate life—even if one of the objects of revelry was an Asermon.
The feast was the most raucous he could remember. There hadn’t been time or the will to hold wakes for the elders killed in the Descendant attack, and the Kalindons’ pent-up energy was releasing itself now in waves of defiant euphoria. It was as if they were trying to send a message to the Asermons, the Descendants and the Spirits themselves: Kalindos lived.
Marek sat at his new family’s table with Rhia, who gazed up with amusement at her father’s attempts to calm the crowd so he could make a toast. The revelers were slow to quiet, giving Marek several moments to do nothing but admire his new wife.
Rhia’s pale, delicate features had bloomed with color these past two weeks as her strength had returned. Tonight her auburn hair was swept up in an elegant style that let her curls drape around her cheeks and jaw. The dark green dress brought out the vibrancy of her eyes, which seemed to reflect the life of the forest around her. His gaze traced the white lace edging the neckline. It swooped low enough to hint at the curve of her breasts, and he had a swift, sudden urge to leave the party.
Needing a distraction to keep himself from carrying Rhia off right now, he shifted to look at Alanka, who sat on his left side. She dragged her lips into a reluctant smile, which he knew would fade the moment he turned away. He’d hoped the party would break his Wolf-sister out of the shell she had sealed herself into the past few months. The possible failure of the rescue party, which included her former mate, Adrek, had added to her gloom.
Slouched over tree stumps and tables, the Kalindons gazed blearily at Tereus, waiting for the boring part to be over so they could go back to dancing.
The Swan cleared his throat. “I hope this will be like no other wedding speech you’ve ever heard. Partly because it will be short but—”
A roar of approval drowned out the rest of his sentence. Tereus laughed. Marek closed his eyes for a moment and reveled in the sound. It had been too long since he’d heard voices raised in anything but anguish.
The crowd finally humored Tereus, quieting to low murmurs.
“Thank you.” He lifted his mug of meloxa. “First, to Marek and Rhia. If I prattled on about how I felt about them, they would die of embarrassment. So I’ll just say that I’ve never known two people more willing to crawl to the ends of the earth for each other. May they never spend a day apart.”
A jovial cheer rose from the Kalindons. Rhia widened her eyes at Marek. Apparently the work she had done to soothe and console the mourners had made up for her accidental role in bringing the Descendants’ wrath upon Kalindos. Or maybe the villag
ers understood her devotion to Asermos, as fierce as that which they felt for their own home.
Tereus continued when the crowd noise had fallen lower than he could shout. “I also have an announcement, about something affecting the fate of our entire people.” His words made heads turn and mouths silence. “Several Asermons have come to me recently with the same dream. I’ve conferred with your two Swans.” He nodded to them, a man and a woman. They returned the gesture solemnly. “They tell me that a few of you have dreamed the same vision. Our interpretation is unanimous.”
He paused, and Marek noticed that Tereus’s mug trembled in his hand.
“What’s the dream?” someone shouted in the back. A round of nervous laughter passed through the crowd.
The Swan did not smile. “Some elements change with each person, but the central image is the same. It starts with a flock of crows.”
The tension around Marek thickened—he could smell it. Everyone’s gaze shifted to Rhia. He squeezed her hand.
“The crows meld together into one giant black bird, which in turn transforms into an egg. The egg falls to the ground and shatters.”
Marek shivered. His former mate, Kalia, had been a Swan; he knew enough about their interpretations to know that an egg meant a child. Such dreams were said to predict a person’s future Guardian Spirit, since an animal usually emerged from the shell.
But if the egg smashed, it predicted a hard or tragic birth. Kalia had had such a dream of a flock of swans before she went into labor with their son. He had thought it nothing but a new mother’s anxiety, but it had proven completely and fatally true.
Tereus waited for the murmurs of dismay to taper off. He took a deep breath, then another. “Out of the egg—” his voice hushed “—flies a raven.”
Marek had never known such silence, not even in the dead of a winter’s night. He heard nothing but Rhia’s heartbeat, surging and skipping. He wanted to look at her, but couldn’t tear his gaze from Tereus’s face.
“It is well-known,” the Swan continued in a near whisper, “that Raven has never bestowed Her Aspect. She is the Spirit of Spirits, the Mother Creator, the one who sees all times, all places. No human can hold such power.
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