You look ridiculous, I show.
I look like a leader, he shows back, not angry at all.
We do not even know if they will come.
They will come, he shows. They will come.
He heard my vow to defeat the peace. I know he did. I was too angry to try and hide it, though he would have probably heard it anyway. And yet he has kept me by his side, so unafraid of my insignificance he cannot even pretend to see me as a threat.
Do not think I give away peace for nothing, he shows. Do not think they will have free rein to do with this world as they choose. There will be no repeat of the Burden, not while I am the Sky.
And I see something in his voice, something deep down, flickers of something.
You have a plan, I sneer.
Let us say that I do not enter into these talks without preparing for every eventuality.
You only say that to keep me quiet, I show. They will take all they can get and then they will take more by force. They will not stop until they have taken everything from us.
He sighs. The Sky asks again for the Return’s trust. And to prove it, the Sky would very much like the Return by his side when the Clearing comes to us.
I look up to him, surprised. His voice is truthful–
(–and my own voice yearns to touch his, yearns to know that he is doing right by me, by the Burden, by the Land, I want to trust him so badly it is like an ache in my chest–)
My promise to you remains, he shows. The Source will be yours to do with as you please.
I keep watching him, reading his voice, reading everything in it: the terrible and terrific responsibility he feels for the Land weighing on him every moment, awake or asleep; the concern he feels for me, for how I am eating myself alive with hate and revenge; his worry for the days to come and the weeks and months after that, how no matter what happens today, the Land will be for ever changed, is already for ever changing; and I see that, if forced, he will act without me, he will leave me behind if he must for the good of the Land.
But I see, too, how that would grieve him.
And I also see, hidden no doubt along the Pathways’ End, he has a plan.
I will come, I show.
The pinkness of the sun starts to show on the far horizon. The Sky stands in his battlemore’s saddle. His top soldiers, also in ceremonial dress, also with ceremonial stone blades, are arranged in a broad half-circle that encompasses the ragged lip of the hill. The Clearing will be allowed here, but no further.
The voice of the Land is open, all of them watching the edge of the hill through their Sky. We speak as one, shows the Sky, sending it through them. We are the Land and we speak as one.
The Land repeats the chant, tying them together in a single bond, unbreakable as they face the enemy.
We are the Land and we speak as one.
Except for the Return, I think, because the band on my arm is hurting again. I push the lichen away to look at it, the skin around it stretched badly as it attaches itself to the metal, bloated and tight with scarring, painful every moment since it was first put on me.
But the physical pain is nothing compared to what is in my voice.
Because the Clearing did this to me. The Knife did it. It is the thing that marks me as the Return, the thing that keeps me for ever separate from the Land as they chant around me, raising their single voice in a language the Clearing will understand.
We are the Land and we speak as one.
Except for the Return, who speaks alone.
You do not speak alone, the Sky shows, looking down at me from his steed. The Return is the Land and the Land is the Return.
The Land is the Return, comes the chant around us.
Say it, the Sky shows to me. Say it so the Clearing know who they are dealing with. Say it so that we speak together.
He reaches out a hand as if to touch me with it but he is too high, too far up on his battlemore. Say it so that you are the Land.
And his voice is reaching out to me, too, surrounding me, asking me to join him, to join the Land, to allow myself to become part of something bigger, greater, something that might–
The vessel of the Clearing suddenly rises into the air across from us, holding itself there and waiting.
The Sky looks out to it, the chant continuing behind us. It is time, he shows. They come.
I recognize her immediately. My surprise is so sharp the Sky looks down at me for a quick moment.
They have sent her, I show.
They have sent the Knife’s one in particular.
My voice raises. Could he have come with her? Would he–?
But no. It is another of the Clearing, his voice as loud and chaotic as any of them. And it is chaotic with peace. The wish for it is all over him, hope for it, fear for it, courage around it.
They wish for peace, the Sky shows, and there is amusement in the voice of the Land.
But I look up to the Sky. And I see peace there, too.
The Clearing ride their mounts forward into the half-circle but stop a distance away, looking at us nervously, his voice loud and hopeful, hers the silence of the voiceless.
“My name is Bradley Tench,” he says, through his mouth and his voice. “This is Viola Eade.”
He waits to see if we understand his language and after a brief nod from the Sky, he says, “We come to make peace between us, to end this war with no further bloodshed, to see if we can correct the past and make a new future where our two peoples can live side by side.”
The Sky shows nothing for a long moment, a quiet echo of the chant rolling unceasingly behind him.
I am the Sky, the Sky shows, in the language of the Burden.
The man from the Clearing looks surprised but we can tell from his voice that he understands. I watch the Knife’s one in particular. She stares back at us, pale and shivery in the cold of early morning. The first sound she makes is a swarm of coughing into her fist. And then she speaks.
“We have the support of our entire people,” she says, clicking her words only from her mouth and the Sky opens his own voice a little to make sure he understands her. She gestures to the vessel still hovering out from the hill, ready no doubt to fire more weapons at the first sign of trouble from us. “Support to bring back peace,” she says.
Peace, I think bitterly. Peace that requires us to be slaves.
Quiet, shows the Sky down at me. A command, softly shown but real.
And then he climbs down from his battlemore. He swings his leg behind him, stepping to the ground with a solid thud. He removes his helmet, handing it to the soldier nearest him, and he begins to walk towards the Clearing. Towards the man who, now that I can read his voice more closely, is only newly arrived, a forerunner of all those who are still to come. Still to come to push the Land out of its own world. Still to come to make all of us the Burden. And more will no doubt come after. And more after that.