“Walls for the wind, roof for the rain,

flame in the hearth, as night falls again.”

from Blessings from Antiquity

as noted in the journal of Scanlin Ross, First Sword in Tyrian, Believer

Whatever strength Lian had mustered to defend himself against Deyr’s untoward advances faded by degrees until what remained was pure exhaustion on the face of a pathetic ghost of the boy Aralt had known.

“Kynsei?” Ristaiel chewed over the name more than once. “Then…he’s kavistra?”

He might as well have rung the largest bell in the highest tower in the parish.

A rumble of disbelief rippled through the public house, and the piping bleated to a halt. The crowd gathered once more on the porch, jockeying for position. First only the faintest of whispers, then an explosion of oaths and praises to the Son of Peace filled the night air. Tyrians and Kevarni alike made toasts with clacking ale mugs. Someone began reciting Holy Scripture—poorly. Believers embraced, unBelievers wisely kept to themselves, and the superstitious from both camps headed in every direction in search of protecting talismans. Younglings splashed up and down the muddy street with the news. The kavistra had come to Tyrian. The kavistra! Windows and doors creaked open above and around them. People rushed to the scene, everyone talking at once. Scanlin held the crowd back—one arm outstretched in warning, the other pressed against his chest, fingers resting on the star worn on a chain at his throat. The six-pointed star that signified his faith. The faith of the Kynseis.

Aralt only stared. He could not deny the evidence before him, the six-fingered hands that any fool knew to be a sign of ancient Kynsei blood. Still, he could hardly accept that the boy was real. Black eyes returned his gaze, black eyes filled with something wild and haunting, something too much like a look he had no desire to remember. His brother Kynlan, vanishing beneath a spray of water and churning foam, his green eyes filled with terror.

A single tear slid down the boy’s dirty face.

Aralt banished the image from his mind. Where had Lian gotten that look? A look that only one about to die should wear? Breathe, he told himself. Breathe! Ristaiel would think him a blathering fool, but his words came faster than he could control.

“But they took you. I saw them take you at Kyrrimar. Where in Tinari’s grace have you been for three twisting years?”

The boy hung his shaggy head. An oath on one of the Seven Sea Lords was not the greeting the lad had expected. Not from his oath-brother. Aralt cleared his throat. Telta politely averted her gaze. Scanlin’s blue eyes shimmered with emotion.

“I—I had to hide. I had to—had to—I saw you, but…I…we couldn’t.” Lian’s small voice and smaller stature stood in stark contrast to his years. His words were nonsense. Saw him where? Couldn’t what? We who? “I wanted to, but…I…Dev said to go to the Old City, but you didn’t come. You weren’t there for Syth’s Eve!”

Syth’s Eve? Never had he heard one of Lian’s clan, sworn as they were to the service of their Creator, call the New Year’s Feast of Light by that name! Lian’s face glistened with moisture in the torchlight.

You…weren’t…there!

Waves of crippling sorrow washed over him. Lian had waited, had trusted, had believed to no avail. It had been too late, far too late by the time Aralt had arrived, but he had not delayed the journey on purpose! Surely Lian remembered the garden and Aralt’s desperate attempt to reach him!

“Wolf…”

Scanlin? Aralt blinked, unable to find his First Sword in the drizzling dark and the pressing crowd. He could focus on nothing except Lian’s upturned face. And his pain.

You. Weren’t. There. The words pounded inside his head. Lian’s lips moved again, his voice barely a whisper. “Your oath…”

Voices rumbled behind him; farther away, people ran shouting up and down the village streets like on a carnival day. Above it all, the kirke bells rang out under the weeping winter sky.

Ring out, the night comes swiftly,

Ring out, and have no fear,

Ring out, the First Light glimmers,

Ring out, be of good cheer!

The lamp tipped over as he set it aside, the flame pinched out like the last ribbon of sunset over the horizon. Searing pain, like sand shark venom, exploded in his fingertips when he touched Lian’s arm, the burning sensation crawling rapidly to his shoulders. Telta and Kolarin took over crowd control as Scanlin knelt beside him, spoke to him, but he could make no reply. Reality shifted into a dizzying spiral of otherness. Every hue shouted with a unique voice. The scents of the street and the people—did no one bathe in this parish?—burned his eyes to tears. Then he was on his knees on the wet cobblestone, Lian gathered in his arms. The boy was unconscious. Aralt wished he was, too.

Rallying against the surging tide of nausea, he staggered to his feet. People. Too many people. Too many… A dozen voices talking gibberish. Shut up, he wanted to tell them. Would they all just shut up? He squeezed his eyes closed, unable to separate his thoughts from Lian’s. Believers called the Kynseis soul-touched. Children of the Spirit. All Aralt knew for sure was that they often possessed unearthly gifts and talents, and Lian was obviously not in control of his.

“Have a care,” Russ warned, his sobering eyes wide and stupid in the dim light. “A man might lose ’is soul to them people.”

A fine thing to say, seeing as Russ himself seemed content to pour his soul out, drop by drop, with every drink. The next words out of his mouth had better not be….

“Is it really one o’ them fish-boys? Ye said they was dead.”

Aralt did not want to be reminded. He cut Russ off before any other derogatory language could spill off the foolish man’s lips. “His name is Lian, and he is not a Riahi.” Words. He had found words again. Now, if he could just work the leaden stumps of his legs and get himelf and Lian off the street.

“Winter’s taken a bite out o’ him,” Scanlin said, examining the boy’s blistered fingers and the gash on his forehead. "I’ll send for a healer.”

Aralt shook his head. Not here, he wanted to say. Not secure. All he could manage was, “Home.”

“Aye,” Scanlin agreed. “Telta, fetch us a cart. Take Munro.”

“Take…? Oh, aye, Commander. Come on then, Red.”

Russ scampered after her like an eager hound, spouting eerie tales about talking sea monsters and tidal faeries that would have put to shame an overzealous bard at a bonfire. Aralt exhaled pent breath. First, an explosion brings down the gas refinery. Now, this? Feuding clans he expected. Or the kirke bells gone missing again. Even a pack of glacier dogs looking for easy pickings at one of a dozen local farms would have made more sense after a long winter. He glanced down at Lian’s bruised face. If Lian was here, then what of his brother…his brother, who actually was the kavistra? Imagine their surprise when Aralt replied to the Kierran clergy that he finally had what they wanted. Imagine what came after that.

“Kolarin, search the town for…others.” The gawking crowd hung on his every word. “Go on, then, be about your business. And those bells are still ringing.”

Through the splintering blaze of color before his eyes, Aralt could barely make out Ristaiel’s familiar puckered face. The old Kevarn regarded him, then Lian, his gnarled fingers working along his grizzled chin. His brows drew together like two grey caterpillars after the same fuzzy leaf.

“What oath have ye to one such as this, Tremayne?”

He half-expected Ristaiel to call Lian fish, as Russ had. Damn superstitious northerners. Earning their trust had not been easy despite his role in liberating them from the last Horror. What would they think of him now? For years, he had guarded his association—his near kinship!—with the priestly clan from which Lian hailed. It never seemed fair to manipulate the Northern Alliance that way—or risk open war with unBelievers who might accuse him of being an instrument of the klesia kaeli, sent to extend the influence of Askierran in the north. Would Ristaiel lead the way, sword in hand to prevent whatever the jig he thought Aralt was trying to do? “Matarel’s dam, man, he’s just a boy. Don’t stand there staring as if he’s a Naharasii cannibal!”

The suffocating crowd had dissipated somewhat, but the chatter continued. There would be no keeping this a secret. He reasoned that they might keep petitioners and well-wishing Believers at bay for a day or two but beyond that…. Hang it all from the sliver of a waning moon. He had a Shirahnyn recovering from winter sickness locked up for further questioning, and in only a matter of days representatives from almost every domain in the Alliance were due to arrive. He could scarcely think at that moment, let alone calculate the impact Lian’s presence was going to have. Lords of the sea and air, boy, why now?

“The Kynseis were murdered,” Ristaiel said, rolling the words around in his mouth like so many marbles. “Forsaken by their own Creator.”

“Those sky-snakes massacred the people at Kyrrimar, and you know it,” Aralt answered, brimming with impatience. Where was Telta with that cart?

“Come from thirteen levels down, they did, and by the looks o’ him, took that boy back into the nether place with ’em. He’s come up from the very grave to ye, Tremayne.”

More than a few of the others took up the chant. Scanlin, he noted, cautioned them against blasphemy. For his part, Aralt could only wonder what he had to do to get Ristaiel to stop butchering his name.

“Give over, Tremayne—give over,” Ristaiel insisted. “What oath have ye to the last Child o’ the Spirit?!”

“It’s syr Tremayne, you mangy ice weasel! Can you manage that at least? The rest is none of your concern,” he growled, squinting past the swirl of red and black ink clouding his vision. Sweet Creator, did no one else feel it? Did no one else sense what he sensed? Not a one of them seemed affected. Or afflicted. He wasn’t sure which. But then not a one had made the oath he had made. Bound himself to obligations he was too late to fulfill.

You weren’t there.

He wanted to refute it. He wanted to tell Lian that he had come, albeit late, had seen…had seen…. No. It was better not to tell him any of that. Pray he did not remember. Let him at least be spared that.

Scanlin’s strong hand spread over his shoulder. “Be it well with ye?”

He shook his head, but he had survived worse. Well, maybe not, but he’d be damned if he couldn’t deal with it now. The inky blotches swirled in the periphery of his sight, and he fought the urge to unload Lian into Scanlin’s arms.

“None o’ my concerns, is it, syr Tremayne? Seems every man’s concern what be here this night!”

He swallowed deeply. This wasn’t going to go away, and neither was Ristaiel.

“Guardian,” he said softly, regretting his confession a moment later.

“Guardian? You’re kervallyn to a Kynsei?” Ristaiel asked, setting off another joyous chorus with the onlookers. “You’re oath-brother to the high priest of Askierran?”

No, that Lian’s brother. Devailyn, was kavistra, and Lian’s father before him, and he needed to put it right, but he was finding it difficult enough just to remain standing.

“I see the way o’ it now. All them fancy maps and peace treaties. It’s for them. For bindin’ us to ’em and dissolvin’ the Alliance!”

It wasn’t. It never had been. But Aralt had lost the ability to speak again and Ristaiel was beyond listening. The words pounded in his ears, his blood liquid fire in his veins. The rattle of cartwheels on cobblestone gave him focus. With effort, he seized on the privilege of command, forcing himself to move, shaking the rain from his hair. “Telta! Join the search with Kolarin. Call out my best rangers.”

“You don’t think he’s alone, syr Tremayne?”

Aralt tried to tell her that it seemed unlikely Lian had walked out of a bitter winter alive, traversing the pass at Wolf’s Folly and climbing the Weeping Wall in southern Tyrian alone, but it was too many words all at once.

“Just—look—into—it. Russ, get my esri….”

“Oh, no. Ain’t goin’ near that twistin’ beast,” Russ told him, shuffling backward. “He’ll put ’is spurs in me head. He hates me.”

“Everyone hates you, Russ. Why should the animals be any different?” Careless words flew in an uncontrolled rush before they could be regathered. He tried again. “Just turn him loose from the byre and give him a slap toward home. And would someone please pay the bell-ringer and tell him that his job is done for the night?”

They settled Lian against a heap of empty gunny sacks ripe with the smell of moldy taters and Scanlin slid the heartwood staff into the back of the two-wheeled cart. The proprietor of the public house offered them clean, dry blankets—and handed Aralt his greatcoat. Telta’s was returned to her. She would need it, riding forth on such a night as that one had become. Now, if they could only escape Ristaiel and his pressing questions about Aralt’s relationship to what might be the future kavistra. He owed no explanation to anyone on that account, though for diplomatic purposes he knew he had better construct one…fast. He looked at Lian one more time as he clambered onto the narrow driver’s seat. The wooden bench creaked under his weight. Maybe the old fool was right and the grave had given up one of its dead.