A Voice in every Wind

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A Voice

in Every Wind

Don Sakers

A VOICE IN EVERY WIND

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events

portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblence to

real people or events is purely coincidental.

Published by

Speed-of-C Productions

PO Box 265

Linthicum, MD 21090-0265

The stories in this book take place in The Scattered Worlds

universe. In chronological sequence, it falls at 4.882. For

more information, visit the Scattered Worlds website at

www.scatteredworlds.com

The first portion of this book appeared in

Amazing Stories

anuary 1986.

ISBN: 0-9716147-5-X

First edition June 2003

Scanning and distributing books on the Internet without

permission is piracy, and deprives authors of income.

Authorized electronic texts of this book are available at

www.scatteredworlds.com

OAST

INE

SF Writers Consortium

The CoastLine SF Writers Consortium is an organization of

professional writers and editors devoted to excellence in

sf/fantasty publishing. Publications bearing the CoastLine

logo are assured to meet professional standards.

Dedication:

For unwavering friendship, shared joy, and mutual

understanding of the creative temperment,

A Voice

in Every Wind

is dedicated to Renfield and June.

Also by Don Sakers

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Dance for the Ivory Madonna

The Leaves of October

Hunt for the Dymalon Cygnet

(forthcoming)

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Act Well Your Part

Lucky in Love

A Voice in Every Wind

Part One:

A Voice in Every Wind

I have a copy of the Fifth Forbidden Book.

My friend Treyl was very anxious to see it; he did not

realize that my people used books. So I led and Treyl

followed with his strange ungainly waddle, away from the

clevth and northward into the hills. This was in the time of

the wet spring winds, when the rimmith bloom for their

rief lives and the sun passes the Seam of Heaven in a

shower of sparks. The clevth was upwind, and every gust

rought the awareness of my people preparing for the time

of breeding: young females ready to mate and drop their

eggs in the shallows, half-year-olds anxious to pick up the

eginnings of their coats, adolescents ready for a last taste of

the ancestral waters before entering their fina1 forms. The

night was alive with sensation, alive in a way that made

Treyl and the Fifth Forbidden Book so much more exciting.

With Treyl watching I carefully took the Book from its

wrapping — cured membranes of the large jarief flsh — and

cradled it in my three forward hands. My copy of the Fifth

Forbidden Book is a heavy thing, with leaves made from

pressed plantfibers and separated by more membranes. As I

held it, my hands detected its ancient holiness, and I caught

a wisp of the long-ago scribe who had lovingly transferred

the words of the original Book to this copy. I opened the Book

to its first leaf, raised it to my face and caressed it with my

antennae. Just as he had deposited them so long ago, I felt

the thoughts of Ep-Naph the Great Warrior, thoughts that he

had left to be preserved by the brotherhood for those of his

descendants who could comprehend them.

Treyl leaned forward, looking naked without a coat of star-

shaped pled by their hundreds, looking ready to fall over as

he balanced on an amazing two limbs while reaching for me

with the only other two he possessed. When I first met Treyl,

I closed my mind against the onslaught of pain that had to

emanate from one so crippled — only later I learned that his

A Voice in Every Wind

people are naturally malformed.

His backpack spoke: a combination of the soundless

speech of my people, and the noisy chitters and clicks of the

secret tongue of the brotherhood. “May I see it, Dleef?”

“It is old and fragile, my friend Treyl. Please take care as

you would handling a newborn.”

He left me holding the Book, removed an antenna from

his backpack and brushed it lightly over the surface of the

leaf. “Amazing. That chemical traces could be so exact. That

your sensory apparatus can pick them up. That they convey

so much information.”

“The Book is old,” I told him, “and was but a copy to

egin with. Many passages have faded and are hard to

read.”

“My backpack can read them all. Possibly it can duplicate

the chemicals and make those passages easier to read. Would

you like me to do that?”

I regarded him well, this odd small creature from

nowhere. The rest of the clevth bore him the usual disregard

for a stranger who does not smell right; why did I trust him?

Was it that other thing, which made me a part of the

rotherhood and brought me the emnity of my people?

Whatever, I knew that I

did

trust Treyl, trusted him with

something in me that went beyond his smell and his

strangeness. “The clevth leaves with morning, and although

I do not wish to go south right now I shall accompany them.

You may work your maglcs on the Book until daylight.”

“Until daylight.” He pressed one of his hands against

mine, gently, to avoid hurting himself on my pled coat. And

through the interstices and the living bodies of my pled

seeped a measure of his alien feel, and once again I

wondered about him.

About myself.

Treyl read, and the night deepened. The winds bore taste

of my sleeping clevth, and of oh so much more: bands of

hunting jrill on far-off plains, the scent of other clevths, and

A Voice in Every Wind

always the life-bearing fragrance of the sea.

The first of the great moons rose presently, its tiny half-

disc swlmming amid the glittery fish that live on the Seam of

Heaven. Every night there is a gap in the Seam, a gap that

slowly works its way from east to west — the brotherhood

says it has been there since Ep-Naph died and shattered the

world as it was. More is told of this in the Second Forbidden

Book, which I have never seen.

Treyl says that the gap is the shadow of the world. The

rest of my people do not think about it. Nor, most of the

time, do I.

But there are times, times when a feeling comes that is at

once dlfferent and familiar: when one looks at something one

has known all her life, like the Gap or a rimmith blossom,

like the summer winds or the tiny bodies and shells of one's

own pled — and one begins to muse, to wonder.

It comes and it goes, this feeling, and even the

rotherhood (the creator of speech) has no word for it. None

is needed, for without the feeling there are no words; there is

merely the language of the air and the land and the water,

there is only the unknowing twitch of antennae, there is only

snorting and growling and baying at the moons.

The night deepened, and in me that feeling ebbed.

The moon.

The taste of the clevth, and the far-off smell of hunting

rill.

The night winds caressed me, and I knew their messages

without knowing, dozed without knowing I slept, awakened

without awareness of what it means to wake. Most of my

people live always this way, never tasting for a moment the

terror and the joy of that feeling which the brotherhood does

not name.

Treyl read.

When morning came, the Seam of Heaven announced the

sun's arrival half a limb early, becoming a red arch across

half the sky. And the winds told me that the clevth was

A Voice in Every Wind

awake, awake and ready to set out for the sea. Gone was all

trace of my resolve to remain, to go north — now I

responded by turning for the clevth and the sea.

Treyl wrapped the Fifth Forbidden Book, reverently, and

without considering, I took it from his hands and tucked it

under my pled coat in front, where the pled shells have

grown and not anchored themselves to my thorax plate. I

think Treyl's backpack spoke to me in the language of the

rotherhood, but all I could hear was the voice of the winds,

all I could do was answer them.

His backpack's long antenna touched me smelling of

question, and I reassured him that all was right, that we

were to join the clevth on its march south, that I knew of his

presence and I approved.

Clevth.

Clevth is not a place, although place is important and the

very soil of the clevth carries a part of its life and its

memories. Clevth is people, yet people may leave and enter

the clevth without altering its quality. Clevth is the animals

that serve us and live with us, it is the houses in which we

dwell and the spaces through which we move. Clevth is

people, and it is much more: lt is the smells, the feelings, the

tastes of one’s home. Clevth is a process, something always

growing, always changing and never complete. The trace of

all of us is in the clevth, and each adds to its structure.

For all that my clevth distrusts me and would at times

have me gone, it is

clevth and it is what stands between

me and…and something which I cannot name, but which I

fear beyond terror.

That morning, with the sun mounting Heaven's Seam like

a bead on a string, my clevth set out. Makers, farmers,

herders; carriers, runners, shamans — all fell into their place,

with their tools and their herds, with their burdens and

A Voice in Every Wind

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摘要：

AVoiceinEveryWindDonSakersAVOICEINEVERYWINDcopyright©2003,DonSakersAllrightsreservedThisisaworkoffiction.Allthecharactersandeventsportrayedinthisbookarefictitious,andanyresemblencetorealpeopleoreventsispurelycoincidental.PublishedbySpeed-of-CProductionsPOBox265Linthicum,MD21090-0265Thestoriesinthisb...

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