Then, all at once, a shadow moved across us from the south, a chilly shade which removed most of the sound and color from the world. The crunch of gravel was still there, but far away as though heard through multiple layers of gauze. The call of the birds became dreamlike. We rode in a world of distance, of disattachment. Something moved past us, around us, toward the north, and we heard a shred of music and a voice speaking inside us saying, “Kinsman, help.” As soon as we heard the words a whip of air struck, and the quiet was gone. Dust swirled up around us, and we coughed, for the air was suddenly cold and smelled of storm.
Jinian gasped, “That was a wild, ill wind,” leaning over the neck of her horse and trying to get the dust from her throat.
All three of us had tears running down our faces, all of us were crying as though utterly bereft. The voice we had heard had had no emotion in it at all, and yet we had heard it expressing a horrible loneliness and despair. It took us an hour or more to stop the tears, and I cried longer than the women did, almost as though the voice had spoken to me in a way it had not spoken to them. I was not sure I liked that idea or Jinian’s compassionate glances toward me. That young woman seemed to understand too much about me already.
It was not long after that the dusk came down, soft and purple. Bird piping gave way to the oh-ab, oh-ab of little froggy things in the ditches. I heard a flitchhawk cry from the top of the sky, a sound dizzy with the splendor of high gold where the sun still burned. He made slow, shining circles until the darkness rose about him, and then it was night and we could go no farther. We talked then of the music, the voice, the wind.
“We must be sensible,” murmured Jinian. “Things do not occur without purpose, without order, without Gamesense.”
“If it is a thing which has occurred,” said Silkhands, “and not some mindless ghost.”
“A mindless ghost who calls us kinsman?” Jinian doubted.
“Kinsman to us all,” I said, “or to only one? And which one?”
“And asking our help,” brooded Jinian. “How can we help?”
“We can do nothing except wait,” I said. I did not even bother to seek the advice of Didir or the others¾not even Windlow. I simply knew that whatever it was, it would return, and no amount of cogitating or struggling would make anything clearer. I knew.
So we ate the food which had been packed for us in Three Knob, and let our talk wander, and grew more and more depressed.
“All day I have thought of Dazzle,” Silkhands said. “When the Ghoul came with his train, the death’s heads reminded me of her. Reminded me she may still be alive, there beneath Bannerwell in the ancient corridors. But she is likely dead, young as she was. There are so few old ones of us, Peter. Windlow was old, but he is gone. Himaggery and Mertyn are not old. There are so few old. I was thinking I would like to be able to grow old…”
I tried to make her laugh. “We’ll grow old together, sweetling. When you are so old you totter upon your cane, I shall chase you across the hearth until you trip and roll upon the rug.” It was evidently not the right thing to say, for she began to weep, the same strong, endless flow of tears we had experienced earlier.
“Will any of us come to that time? Life in Vorbold’s House is sweet! Need I lose it in some Ghoul’s clutches, be arrow shot by some Armiger at Game? I think of all I knew when I was a child, and so few are left, so very few…”
After that, I could only hold her until she went to sleep, then roll myself in my blankets and do the same, conscious all the while of Jinian’s silence in her own blankets across the fire. I knew she had heard each word. And in the morning she told us that she had.