The Name of the Wind

I heard voices. Peering around the corner of Shandi’s wagon I saw several unfamiliar men and women sitting around a fire. My parents’ fire. A dizziness swept over me and I reached out a hand to steady myself against the wagon’s wheel. When I gripped it, the iron bands that reinforced the wheel crumbled in my hand, flaking away in gritty sheets of brown rust. When I pulled my hand away the wheel creaked and began to crack. I stepped back as it gave way, the wagon splintering as if its wood were rotten as an old stump.

I now stood in full view of the fire. One of the men tumbled backward and came to his feet with his sword out. His motion reminded me of quicksilver rolling from a jar onto a tabletop: effortless and supple. His expression was intent, but his body was relaxed, as if he had just stood and stretched.

His sword was pale and elegant. When it moved, it cut the air with a brittle sound. It reminded me of the quiet that settles on the coldest days in winter when it hurts to breathe and everything is still.

He was two dozen feet from me, but I could see him perfectly in the fading light of sunset. I remember him as clearly as I remember my own mother, sometimes better. His face was narrow and sharp, with the perfect beauty of porcelain. His hair was shoulder length, framing his face in loose curls the color of frost. He was a creature of winter’s pale. Everything about him was cold and sharp and white.

Except his eyes. They were black like a goat’s but with no iris. His eyes were like his sword, and neither one reflected the light of the fire or the setting sun.

He relaxed when he saw me. He dropped the tip of his sword and smiled with perfect ivory teeth. It was the expression a nightmare wore. I felt a stab of feeling penetrate the confusion I clutched around me like a thick protective blanket. Something put both its hands deep into my chest and clutched. It may have been the first time in my life I was ever truly afraid.

Back by the fire, a bald man with a grey beard chuckled. “Looks like we missed a little rabbit. Careful Cinder, his teeth may be sharp.”

The one called Cinder sheathed his sword with the sound of a tree cracking under the weight of winter ice. Keeping his distance, he knelt. Again I was reminded of the way mercury moved. Now on eye level with me, his expression grew concerned behind his matte-black eyes. “What’s your name, boy?”

I stood there, mute. Frozen as a startled fawn.

Cinder sighed and dropped his gaze to the ground for a moment. When he looked back up at me I saw pity staring at me with hollow eyes.

“Young man,” he said, “wherever are your parents?” He held my gaze for a moment and then looked over his shoulder back toward the fire where the others sat.

“Does anyone know where his parents are?”

Some of them smiled, hard and brittle, as if enjoying a particularly good joke. One or two of them laughed aloud. Cinder turned back to me and the pity fell away like a cracked mask, leaving only the nightmare smile upon his face.

“Is this your parents’ fire?” he asked with a terrible delight in his voice.

I nodded numbly.

His smile slowly faded. Expressionless, he looked deep into me. His voice was quiet, cold, and sharp. “Someone’s parents,” he said, “have been singing entirely the wrong sort of songs.”

“Cinder.” A cool voice came from the direction of the fire.

His black eyes narrowed in irritation. “What?” he hissed.

“You are approaching my displeasure. This one has done nothing. Send him to the soft and painless blanket of his sleep.”The cool voice caught slightly on the last word, as if it were difficult to say.

The voice came from a man who sat apart from the rest, wrapped in shadow at the edge of the fire. Though the sky was still bright with sunset and nothing stood between the fire and where he sat, shadow pooled around him like thick oil. The fire snapped and danced, lively and warm, tinged with blue, but no flicker of its light came close to him. The shadow gathered thicker around his head. I could catch a glimpse of a deep cowl like some priests wear, but underneath the shadows were so deep it was like looking down a well at midnight.

Cinder glanced briefly at the shadowed man, then turned away. “You are as good as a watcher, Haliax,” he snapped.

“And you seem to forget our purpose,” the dark man said, his cool voice sharpening. “Or does your purpose simply differ from my own?” The last words were spoken carefully, as if they held special significance.

Cinder’s arrogance left him in a second, like water poured from a bucket. “No,” he said, turning back toward the fire. “No, certainly not.”

“That is good. I hate to think of our long acquaintance coming to an end.”

“As do I.”