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The wind tickled the trees. Leaves twirled in sparks of sunlight, tiny amber ballerinas dancing just to taunt him.
Elodin paced over the cool stone floor of his prison chambers. Haven’s most luxurious suite, built to hold a Namer. To hold him.
He stopped again and watched the wind. But he could not feel it. Could not smell the flowers or hear the bees or taste the storm approaching. Black clouds swirled across his forehead as he pressed his face to the glass, just to feel something of the outside world. But he was shut in.
It became too much. His isolation was absolute except for the orderlies. And even they did not stay with him much. He could sense their fear when they brought him food and water. The Masters never visited. Oh, what he would do to them if they dared.
What he could get away with in this deafening silence, where even God could not hear him.
The wind whipped a swirl of leaves into a small tornado. Violently, Elodin pushed away from the window. He turned in a circle, imagining he was the epicenter of that circle. Spinning, tumbling. The wind at his fingertips, the leaves an army at his feet. If he could just be out there, just feel that brush of air. Even a breath would do for now.
Dancing with his eyes closed, he stubbed his foot on the bedpost and yelped.
“Kist! Anpauen! Shit on Tehlu’s teeth!”
Elodin hopped, hugging his offended foot to his chest and swearing with relish. He ripped his sock off to see the damage, but there was none. He only felt the pain, he could not see it.
He seized the armchair in the corner. Lean but comfortably padded, this was his nap chair. It had shared some of his worst dreams. He hefted it over his head and hurled it at the window. It crashed against the glass, which had resisted all he could bring to bear against it. Even Sympathy, though he could not do much, with his mind the way it was.
The chair broke, rent to pieces. It made only a muted crash, muted by the same magic that kept the wind from him. Elodin watched fragments of wood explode upward like sparks in a campfire. He heard them clatter against the ceiling. Feathers burst from the torn cushion, pierced by shards of wood and nail. They drifted downward, lifeless without a wind to catch them.
Elodin cried, watching them fall down dead. A hot tear dripped on his aching toe, and he imagined that made it feel better. A baptism of misery.
He stood again before the window, on the carpet of armchair bones and blood. He watched the wind push through the trees. It was like a frenzied horse today, he could tell even without feeling it. The kind of wind that makes folk grab their hats and run indoors, that sends animals sheltering to bushes, that breaks the arms of trees and roofs of buildings.
Where are you going today? What’s your hurry? Why not stay here and dance with me?
He thought of old winds he had felt. Surely this one felt nothing like them. What he would do to feel just a moment of this wind on his face.
Its strength, to feed him. Its fury, to calm him. Its passion, to free him.
Elodin screamed into the glass. It misted over. Took his voice and remained unchanged. His ears popped. His toes curled on the cold stone floor. His head began to hurt.
Elodin turned, shut off the lamp, and lay down in the remains of the armchair for a nap.
A crash of thunder woke him. He felt it in the shiver of stone beneath his cheek. He saw the feathers quake and hunker down. He sat up.
Rain turned the whole window into a shimmering waterfall. For a moment, he put his hand out, believing the glass was gone and he could reach outside. But his fingertips just pressed against the cold.
Elodin watched the storm. He wept, his eyes never closing.
Another clap of thunder shook the floor beneath him. He put his palms flat against the stone, just to feel something besides himself.
The stones were cool, indifferent. But not like the glass. The glass watched him cry with relish, but the stones—the stones knew he was here, and crying or not, they were there too. They simply were. It was not the stones quaking in the wake of each thunderclap, but the thunder itself, hitting the stones and finding something it could not break through. Bouncing back. The stone became the thunder’s grave. And the stone welcomed it as everything else—with a touch like moonlight and a brief sigh of forever.
Elodin watched the stone. It did not watch back. It did not need to. It knew his past, his present, and all the things he could decide to do. When something is eternal, time doesn’t mean anything at all.
Thunder burst again, and he heard the stone speak. Just a hint, a whisper. He saw his own empty eyes reflected in the solitude of stone.
And, oh.
Elodin stood up. His eyes flickered around the room, taking in the walls, the floor, the ceiling as if he’d never seen them before. In fact, he hadn’t. Not as they saw him.
Thunder cried out again and in the darkness Elodin saw the stones dance. A million pieces of togetherness melted into one and torn apart and shaking back together. With him inside.
Elodin laughed into another clap of thunder. He spoke the name of Stone.
He spoke it, and he said it with triumph. The stone shook like his words were part of the storm.
He whispered it, and he said it with awe. The stone warmed like his words were from a lover.
He snapped it, and he said it with vengeance. The stone broke like his words weighed more than the moon.
The great stone wall disintegrated. It turned as one to a great curtain of sand, dissolving into powder at the sound of its name, spoken like a thousand years of water pouring over one spot. Elodin watched his prison fall like waves around his feet, over his toes and into his sock. It was soft.
And the wind! Oh, the wind filled him. It whipped into his hair and threw feathers like confetti and filled his ears and mouth and heart. He laughed! He laughed with showers of rain splashing into his face. His laughter was another sound he had not truly heard in years. But now his ears were clear, and his laughter sounded like a bell.
Elodin put his arms out and twirled with the wind around his room. He felt borne aloft by it, as though he stood not on his own feet, but upon the wind itself.
Like Taborlin.
The door burst open. The orderlies had heard the disturbance in his room. Three of them—Ren and Jost and Grady—ran in with cries of shock and warning.
“Master Elodin!”
“Stop!”
“Look out!”
But Elodin laughed. He could feel the wind. Their words were like shimmers on the water. Their lives were candlelight.
Elodin called the wind like the name of a dear friend. It stilled, wrapping around them all with warmth and strength. The orderlies gasped, but even their breath was known to him.
Elodin turned his back, facing the wind and the broken wall and the storm outside.
He could have stilled it if he’d wanted to. But why would he want to? He watched the wind and the trees, and the endless game they play together.
He called the wind without despair, and it bore him to his freedom.