When the beaten and exhausted captives saw the familiar-looking village, they brightened. One man praised Aiden, and the offended
guards cuffed him. Omra’s men slashed the bonds around their wrists and pushed the men forward.
The four captives hurried into the village, where the pale-skinned children greeted them enthusiastically, calling the men
farther into the square. The captured sailors, laughing or weeping with joy, threw their arms around the Tierran children
and stood, heaving great breaths.
The Teacher shouted a single order in Uraban.
The children moved like a dance troupe, their reactions perfectly coordinated. From their ragged clothes they produced knives.
Each child, down to the smallest boy and girl, was armed.
The captive sailors were surprised, perplexed. One blurted out a question. The children fell upon them in a frenzy of stabbing,
pushing forward, flashing their knives, each one wanting to feel the bite of a sharp blade into flesh and bone. Before long,
the four dead sailors were no longer recognizable as human.
“No hesitation,” the Teacher pointed out. “They are completely loyal, completely trained. They may have been born in Tierra,
but their hearts belong to Urec. Your plan will succeed, Zarif.”
Unable to tear his eyes away Omra felt great satisfaction. “We will call them
ra’virs
.” Omra took the name from a rare bird, the
ra’vir,
which had a habit of laying its eggs in another bird’s nest, so that its offspring would be raised among other species. But
ra’virs
often killed their fellows to eliminate competition.
“An excellent name.”
Omra’s
ra’virs,
these captive children, would look and act exactly like Aidenists, but would always be loyal to Uraba, ready to perform destructive
missions when they received orders.
“I’m pleased with this demonstration, Teacher. Continue your work. Soon we can start sending them north to infiltrate Tierran
society.”
Inside the Olabar palace, Adrea worked silently, unobtrusively. Some days, the guards let her out into the gardens to scrub
flag-stones and pull weeds. Today, she toiled in the spacious quarters of Soldan-Shah Imir’s third wife, Villiki. Using rags
and brushes, she scoured dust and dirt from cracks in the tile floor. She polished statues, cleaning the stone faces of arrogant-looking
men whose names she did not know. She used her spit to moisten the rag. A fresh dove dropping stood out on the man’s sculpted
head, and she took pleasure in smearing it all over the implacable face before wiping the filth away.
Uraban handmaidens with gaudy clothes and ripe perfumes twittered as they moved from room to room, fawning upon the soldan-shah’s
wife. Imir’s second wife had been murdered four years ago, not long before Adrea was brought here, and the first wife—Omra’s
mother—had lived apart from her husband for more than a decade.
Like creatures settling into a fresh tide pool, a group of scheming handmaidens surrounded Zarif Omra’s only wife, Cliaparia.
Cliaparia was Adrea’s age, dark-haired and beautiful, though with an arrogant self-absorption that diminished her charm.
As a mere palace slave, Adrea was immune to all politics. To the members of the court, she was invisible, a disguise she had
carefully cultivated during her years here. When she was first captured, she had expected to be raped and abused, passed from
one Uraban soldier to another, regardless of her pregnancy. At the very least, she had been sure she’d be forced into Omra’s
personal harem, since a Urecari man could supposedly take as many wives as he pleased. But to her surprise, she had not been
harmed; in fact, Adrea had been given her own simple quarters, and was fed and clothed.
When it was time for her baby to be born, a Uraban midwife tended her, spoke soothingly, gave her medicines and herbal tea
to ease the delivery. Without Criston at her side, Adrea had given birth to a baby boy, whom she named Saan. She had even
been allowed to keep him, to raise him.
Adrea didn’t understand these people.
Saan was now four years old, a perfect blond-haired, blue-eyed boy, and his face showed hints of her beloved husband. Every
time she saw her son, she ached for what she had lost in Windcatch—Criston, her family, her life. By now, he must have long
since returned home from his voyage. She imagined the
Luminara
sailing into Calay Harbor in triumph. Criston had likely received a fortune for serving on such a brave expedition… only
to come home to a devastated Windcatch, his mother dead, Adrea gone. In the fire and slaughter and confusion, she doubted
anyone had seen her captured. If anyone
had
seen it, they had probably perished that day as well.
How could Criston not assume she was dead? Her heart felt heavy as she wondered if he had married again. Criston would still
be young and handsome. He would probably never learn that she had carried his child—much less that the boy was alive…
Now, as she worked to make the marble of the statue gleam, tears sparkled in her eyes, but she wiped them away before anyone
could see. In all her time here, she had refused to let her Uraban captors see a hint of emotion from her, and she had not
uttered a word to them. They all believed she was mute, nothing more than a beast of burden—and a rather stupid one at that.
Such attitudes worked to her advantage, and she clung to her shield of silence while she did her tasks in the soldan-shah’s
palace.
Although Adrea had no desire to please her captors, she worked hard because she couldn’t risk being punished. She had too
much to lose. In her precarious position, if anything happened to her, then Saan would pay the price. Adrea knew she could
no longer count on Zarif Omra’s help; over the past several years, he had paid little attention to her. By eavesdropping,
she had long ago learned that Omra’s first wife died during a miscarriage, and she concluded that a moment of weakness had
caused Omra to protect her. Perhaps he had felt some empathy for her and her unborn son. But not anymore.
Each morning before Adrea left her quarters, Saan was taken away to a nursery school in one wing of the palace. She could
not object, but it disturbed her to know that her son was being indoctrinated in Urec’s Log, taught things that she found
hateful.
Her own protective silence had laid a trap for her. Though Adrea longed to teach him his own language and heritage, Saan spoke
only Uraban. The four-year-old did not understand his situation. Even when she held him in their quarters at night, clinging
to him like one last possession that couldn’t be taken from her, she feared that if she gave him words in his own language,
told him the name of his father, described the village of Wind-catch and the wonders she had seen in Calay, Saan might blurt
something to his teachers, and her secret would be exposed.
So when she whispered to him in the night, soothing him, making him feel loved and comforted, Adrea spoke in Uraban, but made
him swear never to tell anyone that she could talk. The boy had given her his word with all the earnestness of a child and
for four years she felt as if she had been holding her breath.
Each day, when she finished her work in Villiki’s quarters and most Urecari were preparing to go to their churches for sunset
ceremonies, Adrea waited for Saan to be released from the school and led back to their quarters.
Out in the long, open-air corridor, she moved on to the next statue, polishing it in the daylight that filtered through the
corridor’s vine-covered windows. Bees buzzed around the trumpet-shaped yellow flowers.
She looked up, hearing a rustle of sandals and robes.
While Adrea disliked ambitious Villiki, the mother of Imir’s second son, she had come to resent the Urecari priestesses even
more. Ur-Sikara Lukai flaunted her superiority over any Aidenist captive, but since Adrea did her assigned tasks reliably,
the sikara heaped scorn on her merely out of habit.
Today, red-robed Lukai herself brought the boy out, clutching his small hand. Adrea knew something was wrong. The priestess
smiled at her with a face as hard as the statues Adrea had seen all day. Out of habit, Adrea lowered her head respectfully.
Ur-Sikara Lukai spoke in broken Tierran, sure that Saan couldn’t understand her. “Your son… soon he will change. When he is
five years old, we take him from you. We train him.”
Adrea looked up, suppressed an involuntary cry of alarm, bit back the words she wanted to hurl after her.
Lukai seemed to enjoy her reaction. “He have the honor of being trained among
ra’vir
.” Adrea didn’t know what that meant, but she grabbed Saan and pulled him close. The sikara laughed. “Soon now, he is old
enough.”
The priestess turned with a sweep of her red gown and stalked away. Saan had no idea why his mother was so emotional. She
held him, her thoughts in turmoil, at a loss as to how she could protect her son.
High in a mountain meadow at the edge of Corag Reach, Criston Vora sat on a lichen-spattered boulder. The black and gray peaks
above the meadows were frosted with thick snow that would not melt even at the height of summer.
He watched his small flock of sheep graze contentedly on the lush spring grasses. Magenta, white, and yellow flowers splashed
color like daubs of paint across the greenery. Silvery meltwater streams trickled down from the highlands, gathering into
larger brooks, all of which flowed into valleys and eventually to the sea.
But he no longer thought about the sea. Criston preferred the solidity of the mountains to the rocking deck of a ship.
His dog, full grown now, bounded after a rusty-furred marmot. The pudgy rodent clambered up a lump of rock, out of reach,
while the barking dog circled. The marmot slipped into a crack to safety, though the dog would persist for hours, without
losing hope or interest, though still remaining aware of the sheep all around the meadow.
At the edge of the sparse forest stood two enormous talus boulders beside a cozy cottage built from fieldstone, timbered with
wood he had cut from the patchy trees below. On sunny days like this, he left the plank door and window shutters open, so
the breeze would air out the lingering smoke from his fireplace.
Criston sat in silence, comfortable and reasonably content. These days, he asked for nothing more. He no longer expected to
be
happy
. The world seemed quiet and still around him, and that was enough.
He whistled. “Jerard! Come!” The dog let out a disappointed bark, looked back at the boulders where the marmot was hiding,
then bounded across the meadow to his master.
For the first year, Criston had called him nothing more than “Dog,” but since this steadfast creature was his only friend
here in the wilderness, he eventually decided the animal deserved a name. So he named it after Prester Jerard.
Now an experienced sheepdog, Jerard came up to him, tongue lolling. Criston patted the dog’s head and rubbed his muzzle, then
turned him loose to circle the meadow once more, ensuring that the aimless sheep did not stray.
In the four years since leaving his old life behind, Criston had become skilled at avoiding his thoughts. He walled off his
memories and could sit for hours watching his sheep, thinking of
nothing
. Now he pondered only what he would have for dinner. Perhaps he could go down to the stream and catch a trout or two; he
had discovered that freshwater fish had an entirely different taste, and many more bones, than ocean fish. Criston kept a
vegetable garden near the cottage, and knew where to find mushrooms and wild onions nearby. The dog might even catch that
marmot, which would provide gamey but satisfactory meat.
With the nearest village a day’s walk away, Criston’s routine was unharried and unambitious. He had stepped off the path of
life and now watched the rest of the world from the sidelines.
Sitting on his favorite boulder, he took up his knife and began to whittle a chunk of wood. The sunshine was warm, and his
fingers were nimble. When he first began carving his small sculptures, he had let the shape of the twisted wood determine
his subjects: his dog, birds, indistinct humans. Soon he branched out into sea serpents, mermaids, fierce-looking sharks,
and the exotic fish that Captain Shay had studied. He based many of his designs on sketches in the captain’s battered scientific
journal, which he kept close at hand to read in the long, solitary evenings.
Eventually, Criston’s creativity drifted toward the creation of small ships. He carved models of boat after boat, though he
didn’t know why. He did not want to think of those days, but the wood seemed to speak to him. He crafted little vessels that
reminded him of fishing craft from Windcatch, or of the
Cindon
. Getting more ambitious, he re-created the
Luminara,
adding twigs for masts.
When he finished another small carving, he realized it was already late afternoon. He whistled for the dog, which expertly
rounded up the sheep. Criston had completed more than a dozen new carvings; it was time to make a trek to the village…
The following morning, with his whittled sculptures gathered into a square of cloth, he set off with Jerard trotting beside
him, leaving the sheep to graze in the open meadow. They would be all right for two days until he returned.
The high mountain village in Corag Reach was isolated and self-sufficient, located beside a deep, cold glacial lake that sparkled
an uncanny shade of turquoise in the sunlight. During his first year, the villagers had regarded him with suspicion, not knowing
why Criston was there or where he had come from. But he was quiet and friendly, offering no threat, and eventually they accepted
him. He obtained a handcart, with which he carried wool sheared from his sheep to trade in the village. He also began trading
his carvings for salt, flour, and other essentials. He had enough to get by.