Passages by Mercedes Lackey

Author:Mercedes Lackey [Lackey, Mercedes]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: DAW
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Cloud Born

Michele Lang

Sparrow was weary of waiting.

A year and more had passed since she and her heartmate had encountered the pain of the Forest of Sorrows first hand. Funny how she and Cloudbrother had rushed to Haven with their little son, ready to warn the world of the threat growing in the north, and then their headlong flight had turned to a long vigil.

Somehow, the world had kept turning while they cooled their heels in Haven.

Now, Sparrow and her son Tis stayed at her older brother Keeth’s house on Haven’s outskirts, waiting for her heartmate, Cloudbrother, to return from the Heralds’ Spring Council.

A Herald cannot act without the knowledge or the sanction of the Crown. Again and again, the Council of Heralds had assured Cloudbrother that they were considering the best way to address the dangers they all faced.

Once, Sparrow would have chafed at the delay. But motherhood had taught her patience. The world would reveal its secrets to her in its own sweet time.

Sparrow’s big brother, Keeth, was in the Guards, and a fine, loveable dunderhead he was. He and his loud, teeming clan had welcomed her and her quiet, dark little son into their family bosom, to stay indefinitely if need be.

She loved Keeth dearly, but he gave her a headache, too. He and his mate had seven sons; all of them had joined the Guards too and had married, and not a one of them had left their home down the Hill yet. As a girl back in the tiny northern village of Longfall, Keeth had seemed like such a man of the world to her, traveling all the way to Haven to protect Valdemar by joining the Guards.

But so much had happened since Keeth had left. In the middle of all this noisy domesticity, Sparrow realized that over the years she had changed from an unsure, quiet farm girl into . . . somebody else. Keeth had now become the rooted one, the domesticated one.

She enjoyed the family cacophony. But Sparrow, hidden within the screeching flock of her brother’s house, still looked forward now to the open road.

Sparrow sought quiet places in the meantime. She was sitting on the front porch steps, shelling peas on a cloudy afternoon. Tis was outside with her, where he wanted to be, playing in the damp and the drizzle. Oddly intense, he was digging with a stick in the soggy dirt of the empty road, making what looked like elaborate maps of an imaginary world.

And all at once, Cloudbrother and his Companion, Abilard, reappeared like a thunderclap of a vision. All at once, her heartmate was back, after a fortnight cloistered away with his Herald kin.

And he was furious.

His face was red to the roots of his silvery hair, his jaw clenched as he sat tall and slim on his Companion’s back. Cloudbrother’s eyelids, sealed shut by a childhood fever that had robbed him of conventional sight, hid the subtleties of his rage from her.

Sparrow’s heartbeat pounded in her ears, a warning drum.

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