What did Javin care? For that matter, what had Javin ever cared? When he'd found Cheyne, Javin had been looking for the Collector, just as he was now. All
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Javin had ever told him was that Cheyne had been the only survivor of a vicious attack on a trading caravan. Cheyne had turned the story over and over in his mind, searching each detail Javin had supplied for historical consistency, for truth. There were things that just didn't seem right. For one, the ores had done a strange thing in killing off the drivers and the families traveling with the traders. Usually, ore bandits, well known for their laziness and lack of organization, just took what they could carry in a lightning strike of a raid and let the caravans go on, knowing they would return via the same, the only path, laden with more goods. It had taken some thousand years for the ores to understand that principle, and they practiced it with consuming faith. Why, then, had they destroyed their own livelihood for one haul of goods in that raid? It didn't make sense. It never had.
Apart from his first name, Cheyne had never recovered any memory of events before that day. AH his life, the questions of why he had been part of the lost caravan or who his family was gnawed at him like rats, growing bigger and more insistent with every new summer's end, the anniversary of the attack. Now it was his twenty-first year in Argive, and also here in Sumifa- that was the year a person took a name and left their father's house-and still he had no more than the amulet and Javin's shaky story to claim as his heritage.
For Cheyne, it seemed life had begun the moment Javin had shaken him awake, pulling him from an enchanted sleep, with only the strange amulet around his neck as proof of the first ten years of his life. For months afterward, he could not even talk. That's when Muni had come. Muni was the best linguist there was, and it had taken him nearly a year to get the boy to speak coherently. All the while, Cheyne awoke every night bathed hi a salty drench of sweat, shaking and terrified by indecipherable, recurring dreams-bizarre images of color and light, of a tall, sear-faced elf, of a man with no face.
SONG OF TIME
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Cheyne's dreams weren't the only ones in question. Before Javin could remount his dig, the Fascini heard about the hapless traders and permanently closed the caravan route, causing the elves to retreat into their magical forest, leaving no paths for outsiders through the curtain of light. As if that weren't enough, Javin had lost the support of future crew members-nobody wanted to go where the ores were so vicious. Barely escaping them three times on the way back, Javin knew he could never make it across the hostile lands of the Wyrvils again alone, even if he could convince the elves to let him in. So because he had troubled to care for Cheyne, Javin had lost his chance to dig in the Borderlands for all time.
So why, when Javin faced the same loss again, would he ever care about Cheyne's desperate need to search out his identity? The perfect sense of it dawned on him with stunning clarity. Javin had too much at stake here to be distracted by anything-a man like Javin, who, before he had found Cheyne, had lost two wives in foreign plagues, who now fostered no friendships and sought no roots-to such a man, work was everything. Javin's heart was set on this dig. Come the Fascini or the whirlwinds, he would not be denied this last chance to find the Collector's grave.
"Look, Cheyne, I've had enough. I'm going to bed. Muni has found a man willing to stand guard at the vault. We've taken out most of the sand, but there's still a corner full of it. The Collector isn't down there, but I'm sure that it's his house. Maybe he's on the next level, but we have to empty this one first. Think you can help Muni for awhile tonight, while it's cooler? I don't know how long before the Fascini come. We need to move as quickly as we can," said Javin, his voice strained with fatigue.
"Sure, Javin," Cheyne answered hollowly.
As Cheyne made his way up the dunes, the three sisters, first evening stars in this part of the world,
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appeared one by one in the deepening sky. Though the sun had set an hour ago, heat lightning still flashed in the west and the dunes still reflected the day's warmth on his face and hands. Soon the warm air would turn into a cold and constant breeze that would sweep over the site relentlessly until dawn.
Cheyne mounted the topmost dune as the blue dusk turned to complete darkness. He stood looking at the fading horizon for a moment, the peaceful view soothing the pain of Javin's disinterest. Some of the old palace's outer columns, invisible only a few weeks ago, ringed the site like silent sentries. Their basalt heads were chipped and cracked, or missing altogether. Still, they looked regal to Cheyne as they cut even darker silhouettes against the flashing sky. Behind him, the broken shell of a round watchtower, probably the tallest part of the ruin, rose in stark elegance.
He took out the totem from his tunic and held it to the sky, watching the colors in its edges dance with the lightning. He thought of the totem's glyphs and imagined that it was his name, his true name, carved there, sign of the beloved king of a great and mighty people, holding a just court amid those tall columns, his ancestors' faces carved in the stones behind him and looking on with approval.
He laughed aloud at the fantasy, sure that of all the pasts that might be his, this was not one of them. His voice echoed peculiarly in the columns just as the totem's edge caught a strong flash of lightning and the rainbow shot upward into the sky, the tight beam of colors softening to form the image of a woman's hand, her first two fingers oddly crooked at the first joint. Hie vision was gone almost before Cheyne saw it. Cheyne turned the prism in every direction, trying to make the image appear again, but the lightning moved off after a couple of minutes, and the sky was truly dark. He shook his head in disbelief, thinking the desert played tricks upon his eyes, that the lightning had deceived him. He put the totem back in his pack and moved on toward the vault.
SONG OF TIME
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The high desert air tasted clean and pure, and the brilliant white stars nearly outshone the large moon and its small companion. Cheyne often marveled at the little moon-it had been an integral part of every ancient civilization he had studied. In Argive, each record of the moon's advent was the same, though. One night it hadn't been in the sky-the next night, it was, and it had been there ever since.
It just appeared there, no way of knowing how. Like me, he thought as he trudged up the dunes to the vault, where Muni leaned casually against the marble slab they had moved that morning. It lay in the same position, the plaited ropes in their original knots.
"I am glad you have returned safely from your adventure. My apologies, by the way, for the assassin, though you acquitted yourself admirably. I had my hands full with his three friends."
"You followed me?" Cheyne looked at him incredulously. Muni smiled broadly, his teeth showing very white in the darkness.
"No. I took a dead man home. On my way back, I saw your predicament." Muni held the ropes up and offered him one end, securing the other one around his own waist.
Cheyne did not move. Muni sighed.
"Cheyne. You come and go as you will. When our paths cross, it is my calling to assist if I may. A simple 'thank you' will suffice, my friend." Muni bowed deeply, as Almaazan man to man.