ROWAN’S SONGS HAD been so precise. Saker gave thanks for the musician who had taught him all the old songs, the invasion songs which told how many of the old blood were killed in each place, and where they were buried. He wondered, briefly, where Rowan was now, and Swallow his wife, and Cedar their drummer. He had Traveled with them for months, learning the songs, and it had been the happiest time of his life.
Until now. Saker smiled as he turned over the ground and the spade revealed the graves. They had been shallow when made, but the centuries had covered them with layer after layer of dirt. He had had to dig deep. These bones were not in such good condition as others he had found. They were much browner, and soft, crumbling as he touched them. It was the damp. Water was a great destroyer of bones. The grave here was in a hollow which must have collected rainwater for untold years, making a lush patch in an otherwise scrubby field. Fed by the blood of his ancestors, Saker thought, and watered by the friendly rains of their home.
This was the fourth site he had excavated since Carlion, and it was almost routine. He sorted through the bones until he had taken fingerbones from each skeleton. Sometimes it was hard to decide which bone belonged to which body, and then he took extras just to be sure. After he had the fingerbones he laid them out on a piece of cloth and called to them, going over his litany of names. When he felt the twitch in his mind that told him the spirit had not gone on to rebirth, he placed that bone into the sack with the rest of his collection, and made a note of the name on his scroll. He had amassed quite a collection of names, now. He felt both triumphant and sad to read them over. So many, ready to fight. So many lost to Acton’s greed.
He had sorted through almost two-thirds of the bones from this site and had gathered another dozen names when he heard the shrieking. He froze, immediately remembering the sound from terrible nights with Freite, the enchantress who had trained him. Wind wraiths. He began to shake with fear, as though he were still a child.
She had used the horrible spirits to cow him into obedience — had threatened to give him to them to be eaten, or worse. She never said what the worse was, but she didn’t have to. The sight of them, their long, clawed fingers, their sharp teeth and, most frightening of all, their hungry eyes, filled him with terror. He had given up his strength to her, holding nothing back, rather than be delivered into their hands. She had lived so many extra years because of that, but he had been much older when he had discovered what she was doing with his power.
They came over the hill and swooped down into the pasture, crying out, crying triumph. He had never seen them in daylight before. They were barely visible, merely a suggestion of movement in the sky, like a ripple in water. But their harsh voices were as strong as ever, and he shook at the sound.
Then he set his mouth. No. He was not a child to be terrorized anymore. Never again. He was an adult, and more powerful than any sorcerer had ever been, even Freite. He had seen her tame them. He could do the same.
Except that Freite had tamed them with music, with whistling and fluting, and Saker was as deaf to music as he was indifferent to dancing. He could not use her spell, the five repeating notes. But if he could find the right words, the right sounds, that would work as well. He thought frantically, quicker than he had ever thought in his life, while they swooped and jeered above his head.
“Feed us, enchanter!” they screamed. “Feed us flesh and spirit!”
Saker paused. Feed them? That was what they had asked of Freite, and she had fed them, he knew, on vagrants and unwanted children. He had been excluded from those ceremonies as part of her obsessive desire to keep her secrets safe, but he could guess what had happened there. Perhaps he did not need to fear them after all.
She had told him, once, that they could not take what was not given. “At least, it’s so in the settled lands,” she had said. “A prohibition was put on them by an enchantress. My tradition says it was done by a woman named Tern, but where she lived and how long ago I don’t know.” She had smiled, the smile that she used to terrify him. “They cannot take, but they can be fed. Beware, child.”
He shook off the unease of memory.
“Not yet,” he answered the wraiths.
“When? Whennnn?” they screeched.
“Soon,” he said, “soon.”
He was disturbed, and unsure. Flesh he could give them in abundance. They could have all they could eat of Acton’s people’s flesh. But spirit? Now he realized what the “worse” was that Freite had threatened. To have the spirit eaten . . .
Should he set them loose on the warlord’s men? Should even justice go so far? He did not know. He did not know how to decide.
But if he wanted to restrain them, he had better find a spell that would work. Or they would turn on him and his ghosts, too. The ghosts’ bodies might be unassailable, but what of their spirits? It might be that they were even more vulnerable to the wind wraiths than the living. He could not risk it. The warlord’s men would have to lose their chance at rebirth as well as their lives. Unless he could find the right spell.