Chapter 20

"You called, my lady?" the elder Vulkai bowed his head, nose almost touching the ground.

"I did," Ilesa nodded, smiling. "Thank you Ketna, for coming so quickly."

"The Vulkai do honor the Witch of the Vale," Ketna replied, raising his head again and grinning in the Vulkai way.

"As I honor the Vulkai," Ilessa bowed her head this time, then lifting it with a matching grin. "I wish I did not have to call on you, but I must. I must send you where I cannot go."

"What is your will, my lady?" Ketna's voice took on a new tone. A somber tone of unspoken debt and obligation.

"I have seen ... I have felt a need. You must go east, past Starhill and into Fedriksland to the Tatterik. You will be met there."

"Who must we meet, my lady?"

"I don't know. I fear ... I don't know. I would go myself, and be there to render aid, but cannot." she couldn't say more and lowered her head. It was enough.

"We go," Ketna, elder of the Vulkai told her. Then he turned his head and howled into the mist and the night. He was answered through the dark. "We go," he said again, to himself this time, and ran then, to meet his brothers.

The Vulkai came. Out of the Vale, out of the north, out of the winter wood, they came. South of Starhill they gathered, by twos and threes, by the dozens, they gathered until the Vulkai were several hundred strong. Only the youngest and the eldest remained, along with those sick, injured or those about to give birth or already nursing newborn. The Vulkai came, and when they had gathered, they ran, as a pack — a pack unlike any the Vulkai had ever seen. East, into the rising sun they ran into the mountains of the east and Fedriksland.

In Montcairn, King Tynis sat in a secluded arbor with his head bent low, the blood of the Right Born burning in his veins. The gift that was his by birth and blood sang to him and futures flashed before him. He shuddered, raising unseeing eyes to the sky and called out. "Ethric, we have a problem."

"What have you seen, my lord?" the wizard asked from his place nearby.

"I have seen the future and the past, and the past come to the future. I have seen everything we know undone and redone. I have seen change come to everything and nothing."

"I don't understand," Ethric shook his head and frowned.

"Good," the king sighed, rising from the freshly turned soil and brushing it from his knees. "I'm not sure I do either, and its better that way. Better for us all, I think."

Life dances and sings.

Within us, within our blood, within the very cells of us, life dances and sings a song we do not hear. I did not hear it. Did not know to listen for it, but it is there.

Like the song Gaen sings, the song that is each of us is magic. Not so great, of course, as Gaen's song, yet neither is it less. Different songs they are, while at the same time my song, my master's song, Ilesa's song — the song of each and every living thing — combine, blend — harmonize. All songs contribute to the greater song that is Gaen. Kitmade so much sense it astounded me that I had never seen it so plainly before this. That at least should be no secret to those whose senses are open to the magic.

What makes the Right Blood and the Might Blood what they are, it is said, is simply some small ability to hear the music, and affect it to some greater or lesser degree. The song that Gaen sings is the source of our power, so they have said, but before this I had never heard anyone say that we ourselves were singing this song. No one had ever said that it was our own combined voices we were crafting with our magical touch, and not just our own, but everything that lives, from the smallest unseen spore to the greatest hulking behemoths of land and sea.

I had been listening to my own song for weeks now. Rather than listening to the echo of it bouncing back as part of Gaen's song, I was listening to it as it pushed out to join the rest.

The tortures had stopped after a few weeks. About the time that Kei and Labo reached the Tatterik. The Tibu had been hard on their heels the entire way, and the obstacles overcome and dangers surmounted; the courageous acts and selfless bravery the brothers showed during that time might make someone a fine tale to tell some day. I hoped I lived to hear it told. I was not able to watch them as they went, confined as I was and as limited as I was by the Tibu wizards' interference. But the young Vulkai's songs had come to be attuned with mine over time and so I knew their songs, and heard them, even if not each note as it was played. I helped as I could. Reinforcing their songs with the little pieces of it that were shared with mine.

The tortures stopped when the Tibu realized that I wasn't really paying much attention to them. They went back to just general abuse and deprivation. They wanted something from me, but I didn't understand what. They couldn't want what I had learned while I had been here, could they? I hadn't known it until they'd taken me. It was their efforts that had driven me to it. I still wasn''t sure if they acted out of their own desire for retribution for my having broken the wards of the north, or on behalf of those who once had been held at bay by those wards. Those were the two options I considered most likely. What did the unhumans want from me, having succeeded in their use of me to break the wards? I didn't know.

While my song kept itself in touch with those of the boys, it too kept me in touch with others. A contact I had to keep at a distance for now. Especially the contact I had with Ilesa, Ethric and King Tynis. Whether by oath, emotion, magic or blood, my connection to those two had too much potential to even consider fostering while I was held by the Tibu and their wizards. It was not the sort of thing that would let me send of an alarm or even a single word directly spoken. When I could use this melding of songs, it would be far more complete and intimate than the kind of communication I had had with my master in the past.

My discovery did not make me suddenly filled with overwhelming power or incalculable levels of knowledge or understanding. It was an important insight, but a small one. Where it might lead me later could perhaps be more incredible, but for the moment, it was a simple insight into the ways of magic and the ways of Gaen. I was now a neophyte in a discipline which may well have me being the only practitioner. I was teaching myself, and didn't know where to begin. What it did do was give me something to dwell on beside my sad state of capture and torture, and a way to nurture my beaten and abused body which the Tibu and their wizards could not thwart.

I studied magic from a fresh perspective, and with no distractions — those things outside myself being unwelcome and ignored. I came to some realizations which were not so much new, as freshly prominent. Wizards, and those of lesser talent such as the weather-wise, common wood witches and the like, have two senses, really, when it comes to magic. The first is a simple ability to sense magic around them. This was let me, as a child, see the magic at play over the ruins of Mardain. It was this sense, more trained and refined which let me study the runes and magical workings done by other wizards, both living and long past.