sooner.”
By nightfall, the wind had risen to a gale, picking up sand and gravel and hurling it along. They turned their backs to it and tried to suck in clean air through masks of cloth, but the fine ashes filtered through and choked them.
Syresh held Lenane, only partly conscious, so that she faced away from the storm. No stars to be seen on this night, but he longed for light. Andiene could call up fire, he thought, and laughed and choked. Fire is all we need! He was almost mad from the endless screech of the storm.
The wind lashed them like a whip set with knives. They had no water, and he knew that none of them, not even Andiene or Kallan, would have the strength to search for more, in the killing daylight.
Lenane still breathed, fighting each breath through her mask. Syresh fought the urge to rub his eyes, burning with sand and grit. The storm cried with the mocking sobs of the grievers of the forest. It screamed with the voice of a woman in bitter agony. It numbed his senses, deafened him, so that he scarcely realized when it died down.
Ilbran began to laugh, high cracking laughter out of a dry throat. Kallan joined him. Have they gone mad? Syresh wondered dully. Then the first warm drops of rain began to fall.
Chapter 22
The little band of travelers walked with their faces turned upward to the rain, the gentle rain, blood-warm, that falls at summer’s end. Already, the rocks and banks had turned green, as the moss sprang to life. In a few days, the grass would sprout again, the burnt-off blaggorn would send tufts and shoots up from its knotted roots.
They camped on a hillside below the mountains, in a little grove of lanara trees. Most of the forest lay to the north and west of them, but they could see one tongue of it stretching out toward them, the tall-trunked graywood trees, gaunt and bare.
“I am in no hurry now,” said Andiene. “We will not travel that way.” She knelt by the little pile of kindling that Syresh had collected. Though she did not make a sign, nor speak a word, the dry twigs flashed into flame.
Kallan studied the faces of his comrades, Lenane and Syresh. Amazement and awe, written clear. They would never learn, he thought, but then he turned and followed Ilbran’s gaze, not fixed on Andiene, but on his daughter.
Kare’s face was set in intensity. Her eyes had not turned from that witchfire, burning honestly now. She took a step forward, staggering as if she might fall. Ilbran sprang to where she stood, to kneel beside her and speak gently to her. She turned to him, called back to the world by his touch, and tried to smile. He took her by the hand and led her away.
Kallan watched them that evening, as they ate their first cooked meal in four months. Kare seemed dazed and quiet. Ilbran watched her with love and fear. We cannot understand these magic ones. It would be like one who is deaf and blind, trying to understand the looks and words that are exchanged all around him.
He rose and gathered windfallen branches. Though the cliff sheltered the fire, it did not completely shelter the people who gathered around it. They huddled close, shivering, though the steam rose from their wet clothes. “We forget so soon,” he said, as he held his hands out to the warmth. No one was listening. They were still summer-drunk.
Lenane and Syresh spoke in undertones, their heads bent close together. He thought that they would come to more than looks and words, soon. Blood runs hotter when summer is done.
The rain fell heavier. The river would fill and wash over its banks, but they were camped safely above its floodplain. Andiene left the fire and walked out into the rain, not caring, it seemed, if it soaked her to her skin. She stood and looked north. The raindrops drove against her face.
Kallan watched her. Bright and beautiful and unknowable. To the north, the mountains guarded the land of her birth. He walked to her side, and tried to speak lightly. “Lady, it is not healthy to wash your clothes while you’re still wearing them.”
“And your armor will rust,” she retorted. “There must be some cave we can find, to shelter for the night.” Then she laughed joyfully. “Oh! When I was little, this was what I wanted to do, to stand in the