Bai:

The whip-crack of a sudden surge of magic shattered the stillness of the night and rippled around the Tethiri camp, shaking the caravans and flattening the long grasses for several feet in every direction. The horses showed the whites of their eyes, stamping a skittish dance as they strained against their tethers, their nostrils flaring with alarm. A second bolt from the blue had them screaming in terror. One broke its rope and high-tailed it into the grasses. Several tribesmen swore and ran to calm them, cursing the base-born piece-of-shit that had startled the animals. They loudly wished him to the nearest Hell and hoped his eyes would fall out and his manhood shrivel.

The man responsible for the commotion rose in their terrified vision behind the flames of the campfire, sending sparks spiraling into the star-scattered black of the sky. The curses abruptly ceased.

Those few still seated around the campfire shrank away from him. No-one moved to draw sword or dagger; they knew better than to threaten their war-rider. He was lightning-quick with both sword and whip, but the worst thing about him was his tongue. They proudly said he could flay a man with one sentence, when they were speaking to outsiders, and never mentioned that they themselves lived in mortal fear of incurring his wrath.

He stood now under their wary study, his brows drawn together in a deep furrow of intense pain as he wearily brushed coppery sparks from his coat. The smell of singed wool and burned metal thread filled the air. Energy crackled around him. He clenched his hands into fists against his hips and dug his nails into his palms, taking deep breaths against the screams that rose to his lips with every shuddering inhalation.

The tribe’s windrider stood and pressed a Rune to his heart, and when the strength came to steady him, he stood and shivered, the weight of her hands on his shoulders grounding him.

He could not, would not, show any weakness here, in front of his people. They’d cast him out if he did, and declare him not fit to lead them. Even if all he wanted to do was crumple in a heap face-first in the flames, he would not.

A million hells couldn’t compel him to lose face in front of his tribe.

One of the men who had previously cursed him ran forward with a flask of harsh wine and thrust it into his hands. He drained it without drawing a breath, and shoved it back, gasping. Now that he’d remembered to breathe again, he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs and sucked it in in great, choking gulps.

‘Bai penvarzhavoy, what troubles you?' The windrider spoke. She was old and proud and infinitely dangerous. She wore a headdress of braided rawhide and polished blackpine beads, the only indication of her rank. The rest of her appearance was plain; a coat of quilted cream wool, loose trousers of grey linen, and laced boots of scuffed brown leather, their toes curving upwards and green tassels hanging from the cuffs.

She fixed him with a look that saw deep inside him to his core. He hated when she did that. She could spot a man’s deepest secrets. He was grateful he had none to hide from her.

‘Well? What did you see?’ she asked, releasing him from her scrutiny and sitting back on the ground.

He hesitated. He did not want to speak of it, not least because very little of it made any sense to him.

'I saw nothing,' he said, after a moment, when he could trust his voice. He folded his legs under him and sank onto the patch of bare earth that circled the fire, gritting his teeth against the lancing burn in his bones. There was cold at his back and fire on his front. The contrast worried him. It was too like the other place, the one he’d come from. ‘I am fine. Na hafan svárath y cyllav y.’

The windrider snorted disbelief and flung a handful of foreign salts into the flames. They glowed blue for a moment, lighting the circle of night-folk who still sat up, in want of sleep, to hear stories of ancient heroes and learn the old lore from her, or from the young zither-player whose fingers danced light as marsh-lights over his silver strings. None made any comment; he couldn’t fathom why, since they normally would have done, but he was grateful to them nonetheless for their silence.

‘You’re a fool,’ the windrider said. ‘I have always told you that magic is a double-edged sword and that you would have to take both sides of the blade. You didn’t believe me then, so why now?’

Bai looked up. The stars speckled the sky like diamonds on a velvet cloak; it seemed to him that they weighed heavily on the world that night, like a crown on the head of a child too young to bear it. He shuddered. They had looked like monstrous horrors to him only a moment before.

‘I am only just beginning to understand.’

The windrider nodded her understanding. 'The High Roads are not for the faint-hearted,' she murmured. ‘And if you met with one of them which I believe you have, then you have my sympathy. I can’t imagine that would be a pleasant experience. They are malevolent, bitter, vengeful. They were always thus; even in the young days when they drove away our own gods.’

‘One day they too will be driven out. New gods must rise,’ Bai said.

'Who was it?'

'The Golden Archer,' said Bai, and raked both hands through his ragged hair. The Archer burned with a fire of a thousand suns and he never, ever wanted to meet her again. He could almost feel his soul shrivel under the heat of her stare.

The windrider grunted satisfaction. 'Then you were in no danger, may her arrows warm your heart. Did she speak?'

'Not a single damn word. Must I ask for more wine? Somebody fetch it for me!’

‘Have mine,’ said the young zither player. He sat with his curved, tasselled sword across his knees and his tanshán open, roasting his bare flesh by the fire. He sat close enough to be almost in it, and didn’t seem to flinch from the heat. His zither gleamed pale gold in the light.

He passed the flask to Bai. ‘It’s only gorse-wine. Not varrtir.’

‘Just as well. You mother will skin me alive if she thinks I’ve been letting you rot your guts with that, Lute.’

Lute’s mouth curved in a rueful smile. He'd had another name, before he was five Autumns old, but folk laughingly said even his mother couldn't remember what it was. He wouldn't have answered to it anyway.

The windrider imperiously snapped her fingers for the flask, and Bai, speechless, handed it over. He could only watch as her hands worked deftly at a stone mortar, grinding roots with a fat thorn-wood pestle. She poured a generous measure of Lute’s wine into the mortar and renewed her pounding.

Bai shifted impatiently, fidgeting with a loose button on his coat. ‘They cannot be allowed to walk this world unchallenged any more. I’ve seen the signs. Their wards on the prison of rakshin-corth are crumbling. When they fall away altogether, he will break free.’

‘And what do you intend to do, Bai penvarzhavoy?’

‘What it’s my job to do. Keep my people safe.’

‘And more?’

‘I am prepared.’

She stopped her grinding and fixed him with an iron-hard stare. 'Are you? Be sure that you are strong enough. Not all are: I warned you this quest for such power would not be easy. And I warned you it would come with a price. It always does. I imagine you are in some pain now.’

He grimaced. How did she always see to the heart of things? 'My bones...'

His voice cracked on the whisper. It would pass, this agony, he knew that, but until then it hurt to so much as flex a finger, despite the rings he wore on each hand. Silver was supposed to lessen the impact that travelling in such a way had on the body. He could not understand how anyone without silver could do it, although he was beginning to suspect that it might just be a rumour. An old wives’ tale.

'Drink this.' The windrider held the potion out to him, her mouth downturned. 'You must leave it a full moon from now before you try again. Give yourself time to heal, else your bones crumble before you are thirty summers! But tell me - did you get far, this time? Did you walk the Roads? Even a little way?’

He shook his head with a sigh, and downed the drink, swallowing hard. Her potions were never savoury. But they worked. Within moments the piercing throb in his bones subsided. He drank a draught of varrtir. Though it exploded like sour fire on his tongue and burned his throat, it took away the taste of fouler ingredients. Relief flooded him and he sagged at the waist, drooping his head over his knees.

She watched him for a moment, her wrinkled eyes unreadable, then grunted her approval. He felt his eyelids droop. He was vaguely aware of a faint shadow moving beside him, and his brain flashed images at him from that seemed to come from long-gone dreams of grey wind, and ice, and tundra.

The heavy weight of a felt blanket shrouded his shoulders and brought him back to earth. He had not realised he’d been shivering.

He sank lower, drawing the blanket tight under his chin, and willed the shaking to stop. Doubt egged it on.

He felt wretched, useless. 'I'll never master the Roads. I can’t.’

You can, and you must.

He shivered. ‘I cannot.’

The windrider pursed her lips in disapproval at that.

'You can.' The windrider snapped her fingers under his nose, her eyes wide in alarm.

Then, with a visible jerk of her shoulders, she composed herself.

‘Hmm.'

‘Vol’ch zhabis Ni, old one,’ Bai snapped, ‘but what does hmm mean?’

She pursed her lips, then leaned away from him to speak to Lute. The young man rose and went to one of the nearby caravans, and returned a moment later with a girl, a bowl of white curd cheese and a pot of ryeberries stewed with barley in her hands. She laid it, with a smile full of invitation and promise – and hope, he noted with dismay - at his feet.

He ignored the longing in her eyes, and taking up the bowl, touched it to his forehead, then dipped the spoon she’d brought into the cheese. He wasn’t hungry, but he knew from experience that a few mouthfuls of food were the best remedy for the feeling of displacement that travelling on the High Roads gave him. Food grounded him, reminded his soul that it possessed an armour of flesh and blood. And the cheese was good. He took another mouthful.

‘The way is blocked to me, I think,’ he said, once he had eaten his fill. He stood, bowed to the girl, and laid the bowl on the ground in front of him. Then he sat again. ‘But I’m always led where I didn’t intend to go, and then forced back as if I’m an invader and I have no right to be there. I get as far as the ruined Riverstone and the gates, and then…’

He fell silent, gazing moodily into the flames. ‘It makes no sense.’

She grunted. ‘If things made sense, you wouldn’t be trying to travel to the Serenthyr for answers! If things made sense, we wouldn’t be mages; you least of all. Our job is to make sense of the insensible. And speaking of which, I am tired, and my head hurts, my bones ache, and my ears ring with the whining of men insistent on death or battle, whichever most suits their egos. Good night, Bai penvarzhavoy. Remember what I told you, on your sixteenth birthday, when I went after your soul-name.’

‘I remember.’ He’d never forget. Even if he had no idea what it meant.

‘Well, then. This is your destiny.’ She gave him a long look, as if challenging him to argue. He didn’t. He’d learned long ago that arguing with a windrider was like trying to catch the wind.

Or ride it, he thought.

One day, though, he would. If it killed him to do it, he’d ride the wind.

‘Maybe I can help,’ said Lute. He’d sat down again, as near as the fire as before, a bowl of soup in his hands. Bai wondered where he’d got that from. Probably that young maid, if he knew Lute. The boy was seventeen and already a seasoned charmer. All he had to do was smile at a maid and anything he wanted to eat or drink was laid at his feet.

Only a matter of time before he wants more than just food, and then I'll have to leash the little sod. 

‘You don’t leave your mother for another month, boy,’ he growled. ‘When your eighteenth winter dawns then you can come and beg me to take you to your death!’

Lute slurped his soup cheekily, and didn’t take his eyes off Bai. ‘You’re not going to yours. Why should you suppose I’d be going to mine? Haven’t I proved myself to you? And I earned my saddle by your side a year ago.’

Bai had to concede this was true, and also that he himself had become war-rider a year younger than Lute was now, but he didn’t like the idea of Lute accompanying him on the High Roads. Riding second to a war-rider in peace-time was one thing. The trouble that could be found on the High Roads was another. Bai wasn’t stupid enough to want to risk Lute’s neck with it. Or his own, when his mother found out. Until the lad learned to Ward, he wouldn’t be going anywhere near the High Roads.

Bai said so, and Lute got up, made a very formal, stiff bow to his war-rider, and stalked off to bed.

Damn. Didn't mean to be so harsh.

‘Sit down,’ he growled at the girl who’d brought him the curds and who was now halfway to her feet to go after Lute. ‘Leave him.’

After a moment, he debated ordering everyone else to their beds too, then decided it was easier to just go himself, so he went.

He was pretty sure he wasn’t going to get any sleep. He laid his head on his pillow anyway, reciting a sheep-counting song to himself, and gave up when it became apparent it was a useless thing to do.

From a few caravans away came the sound of a zither being plucked with an air of wounded pride, and Bai went in search of it, knowing the plucker was Lute.

If he couldn’t sleep, he might as well listen to sweet music.