It was noon, and the sun fell hard upon the sweeping grasses of the Rheari. Distant mountains claimed half of the horizon, a dark green hue soaking into their dead brown flanks, marking the early spring. The remainder of the circle of sky upon earth lay low and behind, light green bamboo rolling lightly down to the river hiding beyond the crippled village.

At foot, in the present, at the center of the tiny disc of the world that one can view at one time, knee-high vegetation swayed gently in the wind. From it, atop the rising earth, rose twelve mighty spires of bundled bamboo, perhaps a dozen paces apart and at least twice that high, seven of which stretched to meet at least one other in great gothic arches of yellow against the blue sky. Beneath one such arch lay a patch of grass matted heavily against the ground. Its shape was vaguely humanoid, though its size pushed the limit of that definition. The head of this relief laid directly beneath the lashing at the top of the arch, not far from the noon shadow of an angle where two great beams met in compromise.

It was in this fitted bed of stiff blades that Shenrakari had spent the night and the day before it, staring straight up at a legacy, trying to understand. He had watched the sun and stars and moon cross by, whisps of clouds and twilight, unwanting of sleep depite his body's weariness. His mind had focussed on one point throughout the turn of the whole sky, and it was the point at which two mighty pillars of strong bamboo met high above his troubled mind, where they would stay for generations, bound in a tangle of twisted grasses that bore his father's name.

All the night Shen had recalled that lashing, the song that his father had taught him, and that had been carried by his father's father from the strongweavers of old. It was a family's song, and also a living one, for in the mighty knot that had been above his head all night were the twists that Erisrakari had added to the age-old rhyme. The last few turns of the twine were his and his alone, and in their wraps and numbers were the key, just a few characters, to recalling the line of poetry he'd left for his children, and theirs and theirs, to weave upon. This was the way.

Shen had always wondered, as he had learned the song over his youth, why Eris had added what he had. So many weavers' lives lie in the song that Eris had been taught, and often their legacy had been only to each add their own name to the line of parents, children, teachers and students whose fragments of memory lived frozen in the string. Name upon name of geneology or instruction would come to mind with every practice of the lashing, each weaver over the ages having added but a few words to inscribe their name in history.

But Erisrakari had not added his name, as so many, including his own father, had done before him. Eris had, in his contribution, skipped himself, and added instead a phrase for his mate and son: "wanderer love and Shenrakari".

The reason for this was a question that had lay unasked by Shen for all of his life, one of the many with which he had refused to disturb his father's moments of stoic silence. Shen had just let it lie, always somewhere believing that someday he would understand.

It had been in the latter hours of the long night, underneath that song trapped in tightened twine, that Shen had finally understood.

Now, in noon's light, Shenrakari, son of Erisrakari, stood staring at his father's last work, emblazoned against the sky like the gold the humans so revered. He thought upon the state of the village, and its fate, as Nariaken had said, of likely being moved for fear of the return of the dragonlike demons that had burned it. He thought upon his father and so many others of his people, and how they were slain mere days after he and Fletcher had left. He thought upon Salome, and how she might feel if she knew she likely had led the wrath here. Perhaps she would feel even worse than Shen did right now, staring at the abandoned house of meeting that was his father's ghost, a memorial that would never even see the honor of completion or use.

A day and night had not been enough.

Shen closed teary eyes and lowered his head. His father was gone. His mother was lost. Random, and all the hope for order and restoration he had encapsulated, had been consumed by the Pattern, not even left to be remembered in ash as was Eris' frame. Even in the Eyrie a kind of chaos ruled, where Dragos' strange suicide had left no leader to follow. There were no kings, no comforts, and no clear paths. And in the stone Shen now carried, the Jewel of Judgement, there was the terrible and massive weight of fear, and ironically, no insightful aid to judgement to be found.

He turned himself windward, in the last direction of hope. There was still the reason he had come home, and not taken the Pattern to Salome's side as he had planned before Random had offered up the jewel and marched on to his demise. The Rheari, even tainted by invasion as it had been, was still a place of quiet and vision, and it was to here Shen had come when, in despair and confusion at the Pattern's center, he had known not where else to turn. Even now, in the scent of his village's ashes on the breeze, he was at least home, and the peace buried deep in its fields was all that held him from running far into the plains, leaving all the madness of both his homes behind, and perhaps meeting Dragos' fate. There was guidance in this land of winds, and he trusted that of those who lived within it.

He cleared his eyes, and with a last look at the unfinished structure before him in the bright day, he made for the village to meet Kali and begin their journey to the seer.

*                *                *

A thousand songs ran though Shen's mind as they re-entered the village, each a knot or lashing called back to mind by the strongweaving he'd done for the seer Rhoavin. The high sun and clear spring skies allied with the surreality of his voyage to give the impression that no time had passed, though it had been nearly twenty-five days ago that they had left.

Shen was as full of restlessness as he was concern, and he thought on the new grey stone and trump of Lucas he kept alongside the heavy jewel within his pouch. He was mournful, even fearful, at the idea of leaving the Rheari again, especially given what had come last time when he departed, but at the same time, he was anxious to begin his journey, and try to walk the Ni himself, in the way the seer said he could. He didn't know what to do from there, or how to proceed, but he knew he had to try. Rhoavin had said that his return to Amber was imperative.

As usual, the future was a cloud. Rhoavin had spoken of the Time of Lost Souls, and the Time of Deep Dreaming that would soon be nigh. What had the rest of it meant? So much was still unclear.

It was to that which was clear that Shen found himself clinging. He knew Amber required tending, and that, despite his feelings in the past, that he was needed there. He knew it best to keep the jewel safe in the presence of those who could protect it. That at least provided something.

But all of this said nothing of his mother or Harrison. Where were they, and why wasn't their rescue as critical as had thought? Perhaps it was because they were safe, thought Shen, but part of him almost knew better than to think that. There were forces changing the winds, Rhoavin had said, trying to dictate what they would bring. Shen almost wondered if he could walk the Pattern again, somehow find the strength. Once more is all it would take, he thought, just to find Salome and Harrison, and then they could all defend Amber. ...and each other.

Shen hoped that, upon his return to Amber, it might be clear. Perhaps whatever needed tending there would make itself more apparent than the general stagnant state of disrepair that reigned at the moment. Part of him wanted to leave it to its own; as he looked around his own torn home as they made for Kali's hut. Why couldn't he leave the Ni to itself? One world was already too much to manage.

A whole Rheari for every blade of grass on the plain, thought Shen, recalling the seer's words, and more lives than even this metaphor could convey, lay in the balance of what is to come. High would be the price, he thought, if what his mixed blood had brought to his father's people were any indication.

Shen dropped off Kali and took a moment to wander. Abandonment was on his mind as he watched the villagers begin to prepare for a migration. Generations of life uprooted and left behind. Centuries of peace ravaged with hatred from beyond the boundaries of existence. What kind of Wind Seeker brings this? He felt himself slowly fill with rage, and tears returned to his eyes. So much before him still to do, and yet he watched himself be held back by what had passed.

He turned from the village, dropping his travelling things, and made for the site of the long house at a full run. In mid-stride he swiped a tangled pile of twine from the ground, placed it in his teeth, and leapt mightily for the apex of a free spire of bamboo. His inertia bent it nigh to breaking, and brought him just within reach of another. He grasped the second with outstreched ankles and brought the two to cross with his powerful frame. Eyes squeezing out tears, he sang a song in his mind. A thousand years of history flew through his silent voice; a dozen dozen words and names of teachers and fathers and daughters and sons. With a fierce strength he held the beams so tightly to each other that they screamed with his every tremor. One by one the rhyme cast itself into binding rope; one by one, memory became thought became reality, and legacy alone bent the fabric of the plains to a child's will.

And at the close of the song, Shen let loose his tears over the part of the poem his father left him to finish: "wanderer love and Shenrakari... TO AMBER".

*                *                *

By the light of night, the unabandoned cathedral stood over the plain, quiet, living, and undisturbed, nine spires of twelve bound, its most recent lashing a few windings stronger than the one that came before.