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9:20 Dragon
Clan Lavellan, Somewhere in the Free Marches
“Look, look, Rian!” Estral called, running up to Deshanna’s First, grinning.
Rian was probably her favorite person in the whole world, after Mam and Dad, and Keeper Deshanna of course. He was a wonderful mage and a better teacher, and he taught Estral more than he taught anyone else in the whole clan. Really, he was more like a brother than a teacher, even. Sometimes Estral liked to pretend that he was her brother, though of course he was much too old, and he had said that that was just fine with him, that he loved her just as much as he loved his real sister. He gave her rides on his back, and a leg up to the wild apple trees, and sometimes made lights at night to dance above her bedroll and help her get to sleep.
He turned around from where he had been reading something on one of his scrolls and caught her up in his arms, tossed her high in the air. “Estral, vhenan, and a happy birthday to you! Climbed a mountain and crossed a river this morning, have you?”
Estral laughed. “Don’t be silly!”
“No?”
“No. I went to see the fawns when I got up—they’re gorgeous, Rian. So cute! And so tiny—will they really get big enough to help pull the aravels one day?”
“They get bigger like you get bigger, vhenan,” Rian said, wincing and lowering her to the ground. “Only two winters past I could carry you to Antiva and back in a basket, it seems, and now you’re all but too heavy for me. Soon you’ll be a great big girl, and soon the fawns born this spring will be quite big enough to help pull the aravels. And having babies of their own too.”
Estral couldn’t help bouncing up at the very idea. “More babies!” Then an even better thought occurred to her. “Rian, wouldn’t it be grand if all the halla were babies?”
Rian seemed to think this was funny. “And how would they pull the aravels then? Would you help them?”
“I bet I could,” Estral said, thinking hard. “You too, and Keeper Deshanna. I bet we could do it.”
“And set the camp wards, and defend us from bandits and wolves and bears, and do the studying each day?” Rian asked her.
Estral thought about this for a moment. “Maybe not,” she admitted. “But the fawns are so cute. Anyway, then I went to Mam and Dad’s fire for breakfast, and Mam made special flatcakes, with strawberries and blueberries and blackberries in, and special cheese Mam traded for near Starkhaven, and—” she bounced again then, remembering what she had wanted to show Rian in the first place. “And Dad gave me this!”
She produced her special birthday present, a beautiful little flute, carved with flowers and little birds on, and showed it to Rian.
Rian went quiet. “Did he now?” he asked, taking the flute.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” Estral asked. “It’s like Teral’s or Lorrin’s, but just my size, and I can already play on it a little, see?” She snatched it back from Rian, and concentrating, brought the mouth hole to her lips and blew. A high, sweet, breathy sound came out, and Estral loved it so much she had to stop and laugh again right there. “That’s all I can do so far,” she admitted to Rian, “but Dad says he’ll show me more. I’ll be able to play so many songs, Rian, or—”
Rian interrupted her, in a tone rather different from his usual one. “Estral, I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to play this.”
Estral frowned. “What?”
Rian ran his fingers through his hair. “You know I love your music, but it’s never just me and the rest of the clan listening, now is it? The spirits that seek you out in the Fade—”
“They aren’t demons,” Estral said quickly. “Keeper says! None of them have ever asked me for anything!”
Maybe she had been a little loud, because Keeper came over then. “What’s all this?” she asked.
“Dad got me a flute for my birthday, and Rian thinks I should never play it at all, or give it back, even!” Estral said, scowling.
“Keeper, the spirits—”
But Keeper was shaking her head. She was on Estral’s side! “Are not demons, just as the da’len says, Rian. They are spirits—sometimes wonder or curiosity or peace, but mostly of joy. If Estral goes to her dreams fearing them, that may change. I had thought I taught that to you.”
“But Keeper, they stalk her—”
“They greet her, just as you greet your friends in the clan in the waking hours,” Keeper said, stern. “You yourself made an amulet to keep her dreams quiet, and you were privy to all our lessons to her on how to tell friend from foe in the Fade. Do you not trust your own skill? Do you not trust mine?”
Rian hesitated. His lips pressed together. Estral knew that Rian loved her, but sometimes she wondered if he loved the Keeper as much. “I trust you, Keeper,” he said finally. He turned back to Estral. “Be careful, vhenan,” he told her. “Cautious and cunning, always. You remember what the Keeper and I taught you?”
“Stay calm,” Estral recited. “Most demons will not attack unless they are very, very frustrated—or mad—and you can tell when they are. Instead, they’ll try to trick or bribe you into giving them power over you. They’re much weaker on their own, especially in the Fade, where the reality of our minds is just as real as theirs is. Listen to what the spirits say—the kinds of questions they ask and the things they are interested in will reveal what they are and what they want. If it’s power, or knowledge of our world that they don’t already have, or something alien to what they already are, they are per—perverse. But you have the strength to banish them. Or to kill, if you must.”
She beamed, proud at remembering it all, and Rian relaxed, just a little. Keeper Deshanna reached out and ruffled her hair. “Good,” she said. “Now, what’s this flute you say your da gave you?”
Estral showed her. Keeper Deshanna was very admiring. “Very nice,” she complimented Estral. “Fine craftsmanship. Did your da make it or trade for it?”
“He traded, I think,” Estral said. “Said he saw it and thought of me.”
“And no wonder,” Deshanna replied. “See all the little birds carved onto the shaft?”
Estral nodded.
“Do you know what those are?”
Estral thought about it. “They look like those little brown songbirds, the ones that live on the ground instead of in the trees. But I don’t know what they’re called.”
“Larks,” Rian said, smiling a bit. “Small and brown all over so the hawks might miss them in those nests on the ground, and the hunter and the scout too, if they didn’t sing so beautifully. More beautifully than any other bird in the forest, some say. Your dad chose your present well.” Estral looked at him, uncertain if he was really all right about the flute. He smiled at her. “Go on then. Didn’t you tell me he was going to show you how to play it?”
“Mmhm,” Estral confirmed. She flew at Rian, flung her arms around his neck, and kissed him twice on the cheek. He hugged her back and mussed up her hair, then let her go. Estral hugged the Keeper as well, then darted away from Keeper Deshanna’s fire to go back to her own mam and dad’s for the rest of her birthday present.