Disclaimer: Everything recognisable as pertaining to the world of Velgarth and the Kingdom of Valdemar is the sole property of the author Mercedes Lackey.
Notes: Uh… something.
Sense.
The golden light from the not-long-risen sun is pouring over the mountains and pooling in the valleys. It creates glorious sparkles and shifting patterns of light as the early morning mist catches the light, reflecting and refracting it back before curling up into the air to wisp away to nothing.
The air itself is crystal clear and you almost feel that you could stretch out and bury your nose in the velvet dark greenery that blankets the lower reaches of the slopes opposite you and inhale deeply. You can imagine doing it, and feeling your nose and lungs filling with the deep, clean scents of unspoilt pine trees and morning-damp loam.
It's peaceful and quiet. Over the muted sounds of your own footfalls— and the faint creak-jingle counterpoint of well worn tack— threads woodland birdsong; thin and high and unbelievably pure.
Listen; you can hear it.
Muted hoof beats ring against the shifting dirt and shale that makes up the trail and you make each footstep steady and careful; placing your feet with precision to avoid overbalancing and unseating him.
Him— you can hear him breathing without even having to twist your ears back and concentrate to pick the sound out. You never have to concentrate to pick up anything about him.
Quite the opposite, in fact.
You can hear him breathing; each paired set of inhale-exhale sounds short and choppy and you can sympathise with the fear and anger and bone-deep weary sickness at this whole damned pointless war that are unspoken, beneath his breaths.
If you listen, you can hear it.
In your mind, your careful footsteps form a background beat— or maybe a counter point rhythm— to the litany of words that you've been repeating since you set off this morning.
:That's my Herald— you can do this.:
You've said them so often that they've lost all meaning to you. You've said them so often that they're now just a meaningless string of repetitive sounds that provide the monotonous melody that plods over the top of your hoof beats.
If you listen to yourself, you can hear the words once more. You're not sure that he can hear them.
You keep on saying them anyway.
It takes all the time in the world and not nearly enough time at all to get to the hollowed out little dip in the mountainside where you'll be spending the rest of the day. You hope it's just a day that you're hear and you know from the mental whispers that he isn't vocalising to you that he desperately doesn't want to be here.
But here he is— here you both are— and what either of you wants isn't important right now.
:That's my Herald— you can do this.:
He slides off your back and comes to stand in his accustomed position beside your head, one arm draped over your lowered neck. His fingers tangle in your mane tight enough to make them blanch and then purple as the blood flow it cut off from them.
Both of you look silently after Fedor and his Companion as they set off back down the pathetic excuse for a trail that leads to this little dead end where you are making your stand for today. Neither of them looks back at you, and both man and Companion's posture is tight and tense, betraying the unease and worry that has become a way of life to those on the Border.
You turn your head far enough to bump against his side in a gesture of comfort, and then you are consumed with staring down at the heavenly looking valley vista spread out below you; looking for the first signs of movement from the south.
It's all so beautiful and it's going to be dying and gone by the end of the day and if you hadn't already seen and experienced the horrible things that you had, you'd be unashamedly weeping at the sheer pointlessness of it all. The early morning breeze has picked up and the soft sighing sounds it makes as it probes chilly fingers into the rock crevices that mark the mountainside rising behind you sounds like mournful crying.
Listen. You can hear it.
Waiting is one of the worst things ever, but the fact that it's the only real time you have to spend alone together has made it into something special, something to be cherished.
So you do; you cherish this time that you get to spend together and you empty your mind of memories and thought and you listen to the sound of birdsong echoing through clear mountain air.
Listen.
You see them before the birdsong breaks off; but it's that that makes the unholy nightmare unfolding down on the distant valley floor a reality. The undulating, formless shape of the Karsite army looks like a black plague oozing into the valley.
He feels ill at the sight, ill with ever-present nerves.
Both of you want nothing more than to be far, far away from this.
Maybe, when this is over, the pair of you will run away and live in the northern mountains and listen to nothing but birdsong all of the time.
He's shivering; the trembling travelling down his arm and vibrating against your neck. "It's time—" you hate the way that he sounds like there's dead things living in the undertones of his beloved voice.
Listen. You don't want to hear it.
You brace, tensing your legs and trying to patch up the crumbling walls of strength that you hope are keeping to sane and then—
—and then the air is full of the roar of Lan's dragon.
You can hear it. Listen.
And then there's not really any rooms for sounds and there's barely any room for sight and all of you is focused on being the boundary that holds the thrumming, howling fury in check and allows him to function without losing reason and control.
It's getting harder each time.
You're not sure how much longer he can keep doing this.
The pebbles a short distance from your feet are juddering and vibrating and making multitudes of pinging sounds as they dance in place.
You're not sure how much longer you can keep doing this.
Plink plink plink plink plink— the pebbles sing for you as the bleed off from his power, his dragon, heats and cools them.
Plinkplinkplinkplink—
Listen. You can hear it.
And then—
And then—
And then the world seems to tilt and shift in some indescribable fashion and it feels like he's slipped away from you a little bit, even though his arms are wrapped around your neck and his fingers are clenched so tight that a large proportion of the strands of hair that he's holding are no longer actually a part of your mane.
:Chosen?:
But he doesn't respond because he's not listening and that's how he's always been with other people when he's like this.
How he's always been with other people, but never been with you and that scares you.
You can hear your increasingly frantic attempts to gain his attention.
Listen.
And you can hear the faint sounds crawling up from the valley; thin, high sounds that sound like the calling of hunting swallows and skylarks but aren't— aren't.
Underneath and shoring up the thin sounds is the deep, profound roar and rumble of the ever-hungry flames.
You can hear them.
And the pebbles are being joined by larger and large stones and the ground all around you is jumping and shaking and tumbling around upon itself like something alive, something possessed.
Something trying to free itself of its demons and tearing itself up in the process.
PlinkplinkplinkPLINK—
There— just there on the very edge of your awareness, outside of the place where the rocks dance and the dragon howls— there's the hint of a voice ( :Lan! Lan! Lan!: ), a mind, that you think you should recognise but you're not really sure ( :Run Lan! Run run run!: ) and after a moment you forget why you even had the thought in the first place.
And you can hear the dragon cry—
And you can hear the rocks dancing—
And the fires burning—
And the faceless men screaming—
And the deep throated twang of the crossbow firing—
Listen.
You can hear it.